Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thirty-two. There are over 976 schools in Queensland and the Labor Party’s policy is to provide a child-care centre at 32 of them. Compare and contrast that with the government’s policy. What is the government’s policy? Uncapped child-care places. Wherever you want to provide a child-care place—uncapped child-care places—you can, anywhere in Queensland, at any one of those schools or anywhere else, if you want. But Labor come to the Australian electorate and say, ‘Well, Queenslanders, we’ll give you just 32 centres.’ I know which deal I would rather have, and I think the mums and dads of this community also understand which deal they would like to have.

Certainly in my electorate the government’s proposal to uncap child-care places has resulted in a number of people who are currently not in the child-care industry coming to see me, saying, ‘Look, here’s an opportunity. We’ll go and test the market where there is currently a demand for places—in the new housing estates, for example; in the inner CBD where there is a higher density of people—and we’ll provide child-care places there.’ That, I think, is the policy that the Australian people will warmly embrace, and they will warmly reject the Labor Party policy of such a narrow position.

The respected organisation KPMG have stated in their Federal budget brief 2005 that it is pleasing that the government is moving further with its marginal tax rate reforms and in particular is proposing to significantly simplify and reduce the tax burden on superannuation savings—and, golly, haven’t I had a lot of positive feedback about that. It has been fantastic. KPMG say:

The Federal Government has not lacked advice on how to spend its budget surplus—

we all know that—

the size of which has fuelled a popular tax reform debate.

It has also been fuelled, of course, by the fact that so many more people are working and paying taxes these days. It is a great economy when you have almost full employment. KPMG continues:

At times this debate has ignored the need to be ‘banking some money’ for the future given our major structural challenge of an ageing population. On the other hand, we must keep pace, if not lead, in a world where countries increasingly compete with each other to attract labour and capital.

That is what the Labor Party do not understand: the fact that we have to continue to strongly compete with other countries. We do not compete internally; we compete with other countries to make sure that our standard of living stays ahead of our competitors. In its summary KPMG says:

... comprehensive tax reform is about investing for the future by achieving ongoing structural changes to better ensure our future prosperity and our revenue raising capacity without the need for increased tax rates.

I guess that is what the government has delivered in this budget. The breadth of the tax cuts was quite extraordinary and certainly very welcomed in my electorate.

I would now like to turn to a number of electorate specific matters. They range across a number of issues, as they always do in electorates. First of all: Indigenous affairs. I want to congratulate Mal Brough, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, for his courageous stand in relation to the problems in Indigenous communities. Mal has always been a fellow who calls a spade a spade. In this case he has been, with sleeves rolled up, into the Indigenous communities. I think he was just appalled at what he saw and he wants to do something about it. His first reaction, having seen the lawlessness, the lack of respect for law, which is at the root cause of the terrible things that are happening to children, was that he wanted to get together with the state and territory leaders. And what does the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, who has a very significant Aboriginal population in her constituency, say? ‘No, I’m not coming.’ What kind of an attitude is that? I will tell you what kind of an attitude it is: it is the attitude of the Australian Labor Party. Their approach towards Indigenous Australians has been wanting for so many years now—lots of platitudes and no action.

Now we have a minister who wants to do something. He wants police in these communities. He wants Australians, no matter what the colour of their skin is, to be subject to the rule of law and to suffer the consequences if they break the law. The only way you are going to do that is to have the state and territory governments, who are responsible for police, putting police on the beat in these Aboriginal communities where these atrocities are happening. That is what we need. Mal Brough wants to see that. The government wants to see that. The Australian Labor Party will not attend a meeting to achieve it. That is disgraceful.

I ought to know about these things, because I have Palm Island in my electorate. The Guinness Book of Records claims it is the most dangerous place on earth. It is a hopeless, dysfunctional community. Do you know what its problem is? We have black racists on Palm Island. That is what they are. The other problem is there is no community leadership and there is no will to follow the community leadership, so nothing changes. I have been over there. I have talked pretty plainly to the women’s group. I have talked pretty plainly to the council. I have said, ‘Here’s your problems. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can make suggestions. You’ve got to have the will to do it.’ There is no will. They do not want the police there. They want the police out of the PCYC. They say, ‘This is our PCYC. We should control it and run it.’ You know what would happen if that were allowed: the thing would be trashed within 30 days. There would be no rule of law. There would be no respect. It is what they do to their houses. You have to stand up and say, ‘If you’re going to do that, perhaps we should make some alternative arrangements.’

But we do want to see the rule of law enforced. Kids should not suffer the sexual atrocities that occur in these communities, time after time after time. They should not. It is extraordinarily upsetting to all of us. And Mal Brough is going to do something about it. I am going to back Mal Brough in doing something about it and the government will back Mal Brough. But the state governments have to accept their responsibilities as well because, hope against hope, I want to see Indigenous Australians have some hope. There is no reason why an Indigenous Australian cannot stand beside any other Australian and be equal in everything—no reason whatsoever. We want to hope and pray that that will ultimately be the outcome.

In relation to road funding, this year’s budget delivered the largest ever boost to road funding to the Bruce Highway between Townsville and Cairns ever. It is an extraordinary amount of money: $222 million available immediately, not over four years. That money was in addition to $48 million on top of the $80 million for attention to the flood problems with the Bruce Highway in the Tully region. I put both the Queensland government and the federal government—that is, QDMR and DOTARS—on notice that I intend, and have already started, to make significant representation to see some of that $220 million spent on extending the four lanes of the Bruce Highway from the Bohle school, north to Veales Road in the city of Thuringowa.

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