John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Since 1947 the hands of the doomsday clock on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have been used to warn the world of the ever present danger of nuclear catastrophe. At present the hands again sit at seven minutes to midnight, the same position they were in when the magazine first appeared at the start of the Cold War. In 1946 Albert Einstein wrote that ‘the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe’. There is a new menace: rogue states and transnational terrorist organisations that have sworn to destroy the West by any means possible, including nuclear weapons. In 1939 Hahn and Strassman discovered nuclear fission in uranium, and the potential for a weapon was immediately obvious to the belligerents of the Second World War. In fact, the designers of the Hiroshima uranium bomb were so certain that it would work that it was deployed untested—a possibility that we must be aware of today when facing the chance of a nuclear terrorist attack.

The quality of uranium required to construct a workable Hiroshima style bomb is quite small. Just four 200-litre drums of yellowcake contain sufficient fissionable uranium-235 isotope to build a bomb with an explosive yield of approximately 15,000 tons of TNT, equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb. Extracting the explosive uranium-235 from natural uranium requires complex chemical and physical processing—not the sort of thing that can be carried out in a backyard or bunker but quite feasible for a Third World country with Western trained scientists.

The scientists who worked on the Manhattan atomic bomb project were in many cases profoundly concerned about the use of the weapon but were motivated by the real possibility that Nazi Germany would be the first to acquire a nuclear bomb. These days the potential construction of nuclear weapons by rogue states or terrorists would not be possible without the participation of highly trained technicians and scientists who may well have ideological commitments that lead them to ignore any scruples or concerns about the consequences of their actions.

A constituent of mine has recently expressed concerns to me that university level postgraduate research students from countries such as Iran have been receiving training in the kinds of technologies that may be useful to bomb makers without any exposure to ideas that could affect their preconceived attitudes. Now that these particular students have returned to Iran, it is not possible to determine if they are contributing to the evident Iranian nuclear weapons program. If members think that this is of small consequence, they should realise that the notorious Pakistani atomic bomb maker, Dr AQ Khan, employed his postgraduate students not only to source Western knowledge but also to produce materials and components needed for his bomb-building research laboratories.

Some years ago the FBI arrested two so-called students after they had attempted to buy high-strength steel for the construction of equipment designed to isolate uranium-235. These days Australian university engineering and physics departments appear to be recruiting foreign fee paying students, as dictated by the government, and to be concentrating on the provision of advanced practical training while neglecting the broader education of these students. Before the universities were corroded by the government’s commercial imperatives, engineering and science students, at least in some universities, were required to take subjects in the humanities as part of their compulsory course work.

All students, foreign and Australian, attending university should be exposed to challenging ideas. The current exclusive concentration on technical studies, especially in the engineering faculties, is producing highly trained but not well-educated graduates. We should remember that Osama bin Laden studied civil engineering at a Saudi university in the late 1970s. His attack on the World Trade Centre demonstrated that he had been well trained in the design and demolition of buildings but that he had never received what many would regard as an education. So the universities should seriously be putting additional funding into the broader education of both foreign and Australian students.

Another area where there is a shortage of funding is that of child care. In January this year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures that showed something like a quarter of a million women across Australia wanted to work but were unable to work because they could not find adequate child-care services. Last week the Barriers and incentives to labour force participation survey was released, and it revealed some very instructive issues: (1) child care is one of the top barriers to work; (2) problems finding suitable or affordable child care is the No. 1 reason women who want to work are not looking for it; (3) almost 98,000 mothers who want to work are unable to start within four weeks because child-care and family factors prevent them; (4) another 160,500 women who want to work or work more hours and consider themselves available to start immediately are not looking for work due to child-care factors; and (5) a lack of jobs with suitable conditions was the reason another 80,200 have difficulty obtaining work or more paid hours—a response the ABS noted ‘may reflect the need for more flexible working arrangements’.

When we were on leave in the middle of January the member for Lindsay raised the issue of child care—and I was very pleased that she did. She talked about, in particular, the problems for the care of the under-fives. In my view, four major reforms are needed to increase the amount of affordable high-quality care for the under-fives. We could start by collecting data on the shortages, because currently the government does not assess the unmet demand. The reforms include: direct investment in long day care places; government assistance in establishing centres in areas of chronic shortages, including the inner city and low-income areas; removing the disincentives for employer investment in child care by extending the categories of employer expenditure on child care that are fringe benefits tax exempt—currently, fringe benefits tax must be paid by employers on all child-care assistance to employees, unless the employer operates the whole child-care centre. Another area where the government could spend money would be to increase the child-care benefit.

There is enough money for the federal government to do more for child care. We are running a surplus in the order of $12 billion in the current year. In relation to child care, important findings by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show how inadequate the federal government’s funding and policy is, because child care is not keeping pace with the huge increases in child-care fees. In its report Australia’s Welfare 2005, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that new data shows that over 61,000 children have been turned away from a child-care service because there were no vacancies, more than 30,000 children are not in child care because fees are too high and 22,000 children could not access child care because there was no service in their area. The institute also found that since 2006 the cost of child care as a proportion of disposable income has increased for all family types except couple families with high incomes. In the new, extreme industrial relations environment that the government has visited on Australia, this will allow employers to require parents to work irregular and family-unfriendly hours—including early mornings, nights, weekends and public holidays—without overtime or penalty rates.

In my own electorate of Lowe in the inner west of Sydney, there is a very great shortage of child-care places. One centre just up the road from where I live, the Abbotsford Long Day Care Centre, currently has a waiting list in the order of 200 parents. The biggest problems are for those parents attempting to place toddlers under two years of age because parents are waiting at least 12 months and much more if they are to get the toddlers into child care at the Abbotsford Long Day Care Centre. I know the great job that the Manager of the Abbotsford Long Day Care Centre, Ms Michelle Sidoti, does and the great care and interest that she shows in promoting this problem. I have visited this centre many times over the years and I have a clear understanding of what the problems are for Ms Sidoti and those parents who want to get child care. Currently, it is costing between $80 and $100 per day per child. Parents find that there is no financial benefit in returning to work because most of their income is being taken up in child-care fees. They are facing the dilemma that if they fail to return to work in a reasonable amount of time not only has their employment position gone but also, if they extend their maternity or paternity leave, their skills are lost and their re-employment prospects are diminished.

Further, at the Abbotsford Long Day Care Centre, parents of children with special needs find that extra funding for their children is insufficient or nonexistent, with the end result that these children with special needs are being disadvantaged as well as the other children in centres that create spaces for children with special needs. Also in relation to Abbotsford Long Day Care Centre, early childhood teachers provide quality work, with most centres like Abbotsford having a well-developed mixture of experienced and newer staff. But with the low salaries there are fewer and fewer quality trained staff available, and we must ensure that the staff who are caring for and educating the future of Australia are adequately and fairly compensated for their labours.

I know that Ms Sidoti at the Abbotsford Long Day Care Centre has been on a crusade to get a salary increase for these staff who do such a very important job in forming the lives of very young Australians at an important time of their lives. I would hope that, as we approach the budget, with the message that is coming not only from Abbotsford Long Day Care Centre in the inner west of Sydney but from all around Australia—and clearly out in the west of Sydney, where the member for Lindsay has made her position clear to the government—the government does something to provide more funding in the coming budget.

I would also like to raise the issue of the plight of the public broadcaster. A few weeks ago the general manager of the ABC, Mr Russell Balding, once again submitted his triennial funding submission, in which he called on the government to give an extra $38 million to the public broadcaster. When you look at the totality of the government’s budget, particularly bearing in mind the huge surplus, an extra $38 million to help the public broadcaster is not, in my view, very much to ask. The additional funding is clearly going to be required over the next three years if the public broadcaster is to meet the objectives in its act of parliament and provide news, information, entertainment and drama—all the quality programs on the ABC that we have come to know and enjoy.

It is going to be terribly important to give that extra money to the public broadcaster so that it can better compete with the commercial players. We know that the government is planning to release its media policy, which might impact on the new-age media in Australia. On many occasions over the past five years I have expressed my grave concerns about the implications of the cross-media ownership legislation for media proprietors. If we let the ABC wither on the vine, we will be doing a great disservice to the public interest and the future of our democracy. The ABC has a very important role in Australian life, particularly in keeping people informed and entertained. I would ask that the government give serious consideration on this occasion to giving that additional funding to Mr Balding because we all benefit from that. I make that point because, as I have also said on many occasions, all the messages coming from the government are that it is looking after the two biggest and most powerful media companies in Australia.

The final issue I want to raise in this debate on the appropriation bills is that Sydney will desperately need a second airport in the near future. Yesterday and on Monday I got stuck into Mr Max Moore-Wilton, who now works for Macquarie Bank, which bankrolled the purchase of Sydney Airport for the Southern Cross Consortium. I am extremely alarmed by the expansion of the commercial operations of the airport and the implications for the people I represent and the people of Sydney at large. Quite plainly, Macquarie Bank paid far too much for that airport, and clearly the agenda of Mr Max Moore-Wilton—who went from being Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to Chair of Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd to working for Macquarie Bank—is to make that airport make every dollar it can in the interests of fattening the salaries of all the directors and shareholders of Macquarie Bank at the expense of the people I represent.

The government are allowing this to happen. It is an absolute outrage to think that hotels are going to be built on that land and they are proposing to build cinemas and so on. What a lot of nonsense! This is an airport. This is not a shopping centre but, clearly, it is being developed as a shopping centre so that Macquarie Bank can make vast amounts of money. If you go and visit the airport, you know how much you have to pay for food or service or if you want to buy clothing or anything at that airport. People are being absolutely ripped off. Doubtlessly, Macquarie Bank is charging huge amounts of money for the leases for subletting those businesses out at the airport. And the government are doing nothing about it. The consent for all this development rests with the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, Mr Truss. I ask for a message to be taken back to him to come down heavily on Macquarie Bank and do something decent and make sure that the long-term operating plan is put in place and funding for a second airport is provided to take pressure off Sydney airport. (Time expired)

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