Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

As I rise this evening to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006 I suggest that it is difficult to provide a detailed critique of them, given the loose descriptions of the outcomes and outputs in the budget documents. Moreover, this is part of a long-term trend towards lower standards of transparency and accountability in budget documents and fiscal disclosure.

It is no wonder: this government has a lot to cover up—and not just the Australian Wheat Board scandal. Much of its spending has been brazenly wasteful and politically motivated. I refer particularly to the exorbitant propaganda campaign provided for by these appropriation bills to sell the Howard government’s draconian industrial laws to the Australian people using taxpayers’ money—their money. There was the Regional Partnerships Program, which was nothing but a pork-barrelling campaign for the coalition in the lead-up to the last election. I will also remind the House this evening that this is a government that blew $66 billion to get itself re-elected in 2004.

This is a big-spending government, living for today, ignoring intergenerational issues and the prospect of a shrinking tax base, and failing to invest in the important things for tomorrow, particularly education, skills and training for Australian workers. This is a government that spends more than nine per cent of GDP on welfare but directs it to rich families. It is a government that makes access harder for those who really need it. This is a government that pays welfare to millionaires. It pays millionaire wives to stay at home but expects poor single mothers to go out to work for $3 an hour.

As my colleague the member for Rankin has expressed and exposed, 76 millionaire families received welfare payments last year alone, along with 38,000 families on incomes above $100,000 per annum. In the next few years is it any wonder that Australia’s total welfare bill is likely to reach $100 billion a year? This is a bill the nation cannot afford. It is a bill the nation should not have to pay at a time when unemployment is low and the country is riding the wave of a resources led boom. Welfare dependency should be falling, not rising to the highest levels ever seen in Australia’s history. I agree with the member for Rankin when he says that Australia’s welfare state is out of control.

Meanwhile, with welfare at unprecedented levels, the biggest threat to the economy is the lack of skilled labour. Workforce participation is not as high as it should be. Recurrent public spending on vocational education and training dropped by 3.1 per cent in 2004. This government has turned away 300,000 Australians from TAFE places since 1998. Spending on health is spiralling out of control—at nearly 10 per cent of GDP. Nothing has been done to address the critical structural weaknesses and workforce shortages.

Before I discuss workforce shortages specifically this evening, I ask the House to contemplate the gravity of the health and welfare cost burden and to consider its unsustainability. Almost 20 per cent of Australia’s GDP is gobbled up in health and welfare spending every year. It is one-fifth of our production and the bill is growing. That is what it amounts to. Returning to the issue of workforce shortages, this government’s answer to the problem of the shortage of doctors is to increase full-fee-paying places for medical training. It is a policy measure that will only encourage Australian trained doctors to chase the big money overseas to pay off their exorbitant debts or to restrict access to the rich. The reality is that we need more HECS places for Australian students and we need programs that will encourage young people into training and retain those Australians most likely to fill chronic shortages back home in Australia—and also those especially important shortages in remote and regional areas. The people for those areas are not likely to come from the inner urban rich. They may well be bright kids from poor rural households who just need a fair go to get a start in life.

In my own portfolio, resources, the same thing unfortunately applies with respect to skilled labour. The facts show that we are not training enough people in engineering, science and trades who are prepared to work and live in remote and regional Australia where our mines, resources, forest industries and oil and gas industries are—industries that we are so dependent on.

When I gave my speech on the 2004-05 supplementary appropriation bills just two days short of a year ago, I suggested to the House that little had changed. Australia was then riding the back of a resources boom. That remains the case today. A year ago I said in the House that if this government were really serious about job creation and economic growth it would do something about the skills shortage in this country—a shortage which unions and employer groups both said was holding back economic growth. I said then that:

... $20 billion worth of major infrastructure and resource projects could be in jeopardy as a result of skills shortages primarily in trades and engineering areas.

I said the skills shortages were placing a serious capacity constraint on the economy. A year has passed but nothing has changed. The only difference is that today it is not me, the member for Batman and shadow minister for resources and tourism, saying it; it is the Reserve Bank of Australia. The Reserve Bank has acknowledged in its quarterly statement on monetary policy that skills shortages flowing through to labour costs are putting pressure on inflation. That is an issue of major concern to the Australian community. What it did not say was that this is a bad sign for investment and for new and expanded infrastructure and resource projects—the projects that underpin the economic health of Australia at the moment. Yet as far as skills and training is concerned, all we got from COAG last week was spin and no solutions.

I believe that this is a government of inertia—a government that is failing to properly and urgently invest in skills and in the training of Australian workers. This is a government that has failed the test of national leadership and allowed COAG to fall into the same inertia trap, with review after review. You just need to go through the list of outcomes from last Friday to see committee after committee and task force after task force, with more layers of oversight and more rhetoric, but no action and no real reform. That is the conclusion one gets from reading the outcomes of COAG from last Friday.

It is worth taking a hard look at COAG because we really have to think about where we are going as a nation. When I read the human capital component of the national reform agenda, what struck me most was that Australians would be surprised that it is suggested that this is a new agenda. We would all agree that the principles are honourable, but that is no more than we should all expect of good governance. In particular I note the commitment to a national approach to early childhood development and a focus on health promotion and disease prevention. However, the COAG communique is lacking any significant level of detail that would identify what action will be taken over the next few years to make serious inroads into these goals—although we have been promised various reviews and implementation reports some time down the track.

The next plank in the national reform agenda is competition. Competition with respect to energy, which is one of my portfolio responsibilities, must be a priority. Whilst the commitment to a progressive national roll-out of smart meters from 2007 is to be commended, it is highly qualified. Again, only time will tell whether the initiative is truly national in character. Beyond that, we have been promised a recommitment to earlier COAG reform proposals and a new ‘high-level expert energy reform implementation group’. I must say that is interesting, given the history of so-called energy reform in Australia. This new committee is due to report back to COAG before the end of 2006 on a range of energy market issues, including options for a national grid—I have heard that before—structural weaknesses in the electricity market and financial and market pressures to support energy markets. What the communique does not say is that this new committee is the Prime Minister’s latest attempt to address the inertia of his energy minister; the Ministerial Council of Energy, which also reflects some criticism of state and territory energy ministers; and the National Electricity Market Ministers Forum on real energy policy issues. Collectively, they have done virtually nothing over the last five years to progress these issues. This is an exceptionally important point, because we are no further advanced on the national energy market reform than we were when the Parer review was announced in June 2001, along with the establishment of the ministerial council and the national energy market.

The Parer review was released in December 2002 and only a handful of its recommendations have ever been implemented. It was August 2002 when the Productivity Commission review of the gas access regime was released. COAG now promises a response by the end of 2006. Guess what: a full 2½ years later—and people suggest that this government does not suffer from inertia! Then we go to post Parer, in 2002. Legislation was introduced in mid-June 2004, at the eleventh hour, to set up the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Commission. It took another year to agree on who would head it, where it would be located and how it would interface with the ACCC, with operations not actually commencing until July 2005. I would hate to see a government that was in a big hurry. And this government tends to suggest it is committed to reform! This government’s answer to the problem is to go back to June 2001 and make the same mistakes again: another national body, a review of the same issues and still no action or leadership at the national level.

I remind the House of these issues this evening because nothing has changed in the last year. It is almost as if today is groundhog day. A year ago, I said:

Internationally competitive supplies of energy are critical to Australia’s global competitiveness in a range of manufacturing and value adding industries, and while the success of the reforms of the 1990s cannot be denied, nor can the fact that much more needs to be done.

And that is the challenge to the House. COAG recognised this by commissioning the Parer report, but little action has been taken by the government. The Parer report correctly identified all the deficiencies in our energy markets but unfortunately barely any of its recommendations have been implemented. Our electricity and gas sectors remain burdened by excessive regulation, overlaps in regulatory roles, slow and cumbersome code change processes, anticompetitive marketing practices, poor market design and poor, if any, planning mechanisms. It is time for this government to get moving on both the Parer and the Productivity Commission recommendations.

I recall my colleague the member for Hunter saying this many times during the course of the last parliament when he was the shadow minister responsible for energy, as I am now. While we are still at groundhog day, let me remind the House that I put it to the House last year that a serious debate on financing and pricing of new transport infrastructure needs to take place in this parliament and in the relevant ministerial councils of this country. One year later, I am pleased that COAG has finally committed to asking the Productivity Commission to develop proposals for efficient pricing of transport infrastructure by the end of 2006, but the list of reviews and new committees from last Friday’s COAG outcome goes on. In fact, in the competition section of COAG alone, at least 37 reviews were mooted—and as many as 64, depending on the interpretation of the communique. This is what the government calls action.

Yes, it is a government in action—with committees and reviews—but no amount of reviews or changing of the guard will deliver reform. Real reform requires us as a nation to face up to tough decisions. It requires leadership from the national government, it requires cooperation with state and territory governments and it requires joint action. In the area of health, I am pleased to at least note that COAG has a focus on health promotion, on disease prevention and on mental health. That is an exceptionally important breakthrough, and the state and territory governments and the Commonwealth government are to be commended on that front.

Let me also remind the House that it has been federal Labor that has led the way by putting prevention at the heart of our health system, especially with respect to the issue of mental health. It is two years since my colleague the member for Lalor advocated wellness checks in a speech at the National Press Club. Just last week she launched Labor’s health promotion and illness prevention for Australian children initiatives. In the area of mental health, the COAG communique is long overdue and it recognises that mental health is a major problem in this country. We cannot afford delays in detailed action plans and I, for one, will be watching closely to see that the 2006 deadline is met. That might be an appropriate time to stop, given the hour of the day. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate interrupted.

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