Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Federal/State Relations) Share this | Hansard source

The debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills gives me an opportunity tonight to speak on three matters of my shadow portfolio: firstly, my constituents in the ACT; secondly, federal-state relations; and, thirdly, international development assistance.

The particular matter I want to refer to with regard to the Australian Capital Territory is the indication in the budget papers of a very substantial increase in Public Service numbers—more than 5,000 is forecast—during the forthcoming financial year. Given the structure and composition of those changes, it is likely that a high percentage of those people will be employed in the Canberra region. From a broad economic and development point of view of this area, I welcome that. It used to be the case that people in Canberra thought that, if they voted Labor, they would get a much faster rate of increase in the Public Service. Some people liked that; some did not. However, it was the significant motivation. It cannot be the case in this election. It would be physically impossible to grow the Public Service any faster than it is at the moment. We cannot get the staff to fill the vacancies that are being advertised now.

My concern is that the situation in Canberra will grow into a town-planning and social development free-for-all. This is exacerbating the car-parking crisis in Civic in particular, which is the matter I want to refer to. I call on the Howard government—but, if it is defeated at the next election, I commit myself to work on this in the event of a Rudd government—to return to an intelligent public sector employment location strategy in Canberra. Too high a proportion of our public servants are moving into high-cost areas such as Civic and Barton, but it is Civic that I am particularly concerned about. It would be cheaper and more efficient for the Commonwealth if there were better planning and coordination. It would also be better for the city if there were balanced development—and I particularly want to emphasise the importance of this in relation to the crisis of car parking in Civic. Many people are concerned about it, and properly so. It is a very difficult issue for the local ACT government to manage. In the main, it is their responsibility, and I leave it to them. But it is not appropriate for the Commonwealth government to exacerbate the problem, at some significant expense to Commonwealth taxpayers, with an inefficient and ineffective distribution of public sector employment. In terms of my own constituency, I look forward to decisions that will lead to the relocation of public servants in the Belconnen and Gungahlin town centres.

I now turn my attention to federal-state relations. While this is an issue that I have been dealing with extensively as a shadow minister, it came back to me in a very interesting way recently. Last week, I held one of my regular community meetings with constituents. I invite people to come in and see me at different times and places around the suburbs of my electorate. I always learn something at these meetings. There is always a constituent who raises a new issue or a different aspect to an issue. What was raised at last week’s meeting was significant in terms of the issue that I want to talk about tonight. There was concern about the cynical way in which the government tries to use people’s fears to strengthen its electoral position. My constituents were looking for an offer of hope that things might get better rather than this exploitation of fear whereby things might get worse. They are looking to me as their local representative and more broadly to the alternative government—the Labor opposition—to give them that hope.

At the meeting there was also significant cynicism about the political process. People were concerned about the manner in which fear has been exploited over the last decade or so. Another legacy from years of the clever and cunning Howard government is that Australians will take a long time to forget this, and it will take our political processes some time to recover from it as well. In particular, I refer to the impact of the cynical manipulation of the so-called blame game. Instead of solving problems, the enthusiasm of the government lies in blaming someone else. The Howard government blames the states, and often anybody else. The recent budget speech by the Treasurer and the budget reply by the Leader of the Opposition provide a vivid illustration of the sorts of concerns that were being raised at the meeting. The Treasurer only made references to the states and territories in his budget speech when he was blaming them for the inadequacy of the current dental services—notwithstanding the fact that his own government has cut $100 million from these state run programs.

By contrast, the two principal initiatives in the budget reply by the Leader of the Opposition were predicated on a cooperative federal-state approach. The announcement of new trades training centres and the national water security plan for towns and cities are both based on the emerging 21st century concept of cooperative federalism rather than the old-fashioned blame game of the past. In the words of my constituents: they were based on hope of doing things better rather than on fear and blame. It is this fear versus hope which highlights the fact that, at the 2007 election, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the way in which the federation works and to put an end to the negativity of the blame game.

There are a number of reasons for that, and I do not have time to go through all of them this evening, but I want to highlight why I think there is a window of opportunity to reform the way our federation works and why it is important that we seize it. Opportunities like this do not come by very often. One of the reasons is the background, experience and enthusiasm of the Leader of the Opposition for the task. We have not had that for a very long time. Also, we have eight state and territory governments—and I am not talking about their political persuasions; I will refer to that in time—that have displayed in their work through COAG and through their initiative, the Council for the Australian Federation, a willingness to respond to reasonable proposals and to develop and advance the national reform agenda.

Parallel to that we have a very rare thing in Australia, where we have so many elections—far too many elections staggered throughout the electoral cycle. We have a very rare window of opportunity where there is no state election due for 18 months. That does not happen often in Australia, and it means that outside the context of somebody being under immediate electoral pressure we can perhaps get some substantive and continuing reforms.

On this question of reforming the federation, we have very powerful advocacy from the leaders of the business community, from academics and from independent commentators, who all say it is time to change federal-state relations. We have a growing body of domestic and international academic and bureaucratic reports on the strengths of federalism and the way it can work better. And finally we have enhanced recognition among Australians, reflected in my constituents at my most recent meeting with them, that the quality of the services they receive from government is affected by the blame game.

Given all these factors, it is hard to imagine a party running for election to govern Australia in 2007 that does not see the need for enhanced efficiency in the structure and operation of our federation. It is possible to see this challenge as a threat or an opportunity, and it seems to me that the Prime Minister sees this problem as a threat and the Leader of the Opposition sees it as an opportunity. It is an opportunity we need to seize.

Many people have cited the Business Council of Australia-Access Economics analysis, but there are plenty of others, including from many other business groups—AiG and the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry are similarly arguing for reform in this area. The Access Economics report commissioned by the Business Council illustrates the $9 billion of economic cost from the inefficiencies of our current federal-state relations. That is not all direct cost to the budget, but an analysis of that document shows that even a modest improvement in the operation of our federal-state relations will release significant public sector resources for higher priority use. So there is a way forward, but only one of the alternative governments going to this election is even looking at this issue.

Last week the Leader of the Opposition and I announced the formation of a high-level advisory group on federal-state relations to advise the Labor Party on policy in this area before the next election. I have been really pleased by the number of groups who have responded already, indicating their desire to participate in and contribute to that process. They reflect the general view in Australia that I see, that Australians do not want to see the federal structure damaged; they want to see it continue, but they want it to work better.

One of the first issues the advisory group will examine is that of specific purpose payments. There are more than 90 specific purpose payments to the states and territories and they each have cumbersome and time-consuming reporting requirements, in some cases costing more than the proposed payment. Some specific purpose payments require a level of detail that has no conceivable national policy use, which inhibits the capacity of the states to innovate in the delivery of their services. So we are looking to reform the way the federation works. We are looking to get an initial report from this advisory group about specific purpose payments by next month, and a more comprehensive review of the architecture of our federation more substantially by September. What I am hoping for out of that, and what I expect from that high-level group—which contains very experienced federal and state officials and academics—are reforms which will deliver us a federation in which the Commonwealth takes the lead on broad national policy directions and provides the funding, and the states and territories coordinate the delivery of services and provide policy and delivery innovation at a local level. If we can achieve that, we can leave the blame game behind and give Australians back the hope in the future that they are looking for.

The other thing I want to refer to in my remarks about the budget relates to my other area of responsibility, international development assistance. I have to say at the outset that I welcome the modest improvement to Australia’s aid program announced in the 2007 budget. It is easy to say the improvements are not as significant as the government is trying to paint them, but even a slight improvement to our pathetically inadequate aid program is welcome. However, I want to comment today on some key areas that have been missed and some wrong priorities that are reflected in the way the money is being spent.

In September 2000 the Howard government signed up to the Millennium Development Goals. These are a very important vision and framework designed to halve extreme poverty by 2015 and end it by 2025. Competent economists are saying we can mobilise the resources to do that if we have the will to do it, but there has been no focus in Australia’s aid program on the key tasks of implementing the Millennium Development Goals and there still is not.

It has taken the Howard government 11 years to arrive back at the point where it is starting to improve Australia’s overseas aid performance. Even now the aid program lags behind the international donor community and behind the level as a percentage of gross national income that it was when the Howard government came to office. The government claims to have increased aid expenditure, but in fact there has been no change in the ratio of aid as a percentage of gross national income. It is still stagnant at an embarrassingly low 0.3 per cent, way behind the international pack and still below the Labor government’s contribution to aid of 0.32 per cent in 1996 or the average OECD country effort of 0.46 per cent.

So in this welcome increase—I do not want to be churlish; I am glad to see it happening—the Howard government is filling in a hole it dug itself. It reduced this area of spending year after year until it started slowly to turn it round, and after 11 years we still have not got back to where we started. One of the problems we have, even with this modest improvement, is that there is an expansion of what activities are considered by the government as aid. It is really stretching the guidelines, for example, to include the detention centres in Nauru, which of course are not designed in the slightest for economic and social development in Nauru. They are designed to achieve domestic political purposes here in Australia.

I emphasise that I welcome the increase and I welcome the fact that the forward estimates suggest the increase is going to continue, but with the scaling up of the aid program I am concerned to ensure that these funds are spent effectively. It is difficult to determine how effective the aid program is or is likely to be, particularly because the much-vaunted first Annual Review of Development Effectiveness, which the Minister for Foreign Affairs with great enthusiasm stated would be produced last year, has still not been published and will not be published before the election. AusAID has made it clear that we will not get the first report during this parliamentary term. So the Prime Minister’s commitment to increasing the aid budget was conditional on the quality and effectiveness of aid and Minister Downer announced performance incentives based on appropriate reporting and assessment but without the annual review, which we will not get for this entire parliamentary term, how will this performance be assessed?

In the time available the other thing I will turn to is the question of priorities. When you are increasing spending you get the chance to make choices. These are choices that affect the lives and opportunities of the poorest people in our region. I think that in particular the government has its priorities seriously wrong in education. The focus in education should be on primary education. All the social evidence and economic analysis suggests that it is primary education that has the biggest effect. In some ways you could say it is preschool education, but at the very least, broadly defined, it is primary education. In fact, the proportion spent on basic education has fallen. UNICEF says:

A quality basic education will better equip girls and boys with knowledge and skills needed to adopt healthy lifestyles, to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS … to take an active role in social, economic and political decision-making as they transition to adolescence and adulthood.

It is a serious mistake for the long-term interests of Australia to be skewing our aid budget from primary education.

Similarly with infrastructure. It is not always fashionable for the aid budget to be invested in infrastructure, and I support the fact that the government has made this one of its priorities, but I am concerned that it is not addressing what I think is the priority infrastructure issue. The crisis is in the lack of access to clean water, the biggest cause of child death in the world. It is not that we are doing nothing, but the focus is moving away from that to other areas of infrastructure. Not everybody in the aid community says that infrastructure should be a priority. My view is that it should be, but water and sanitation are essential to poverty reduction, human health and economic growth. In our neighbouring region, a child dies every seven minutes from lack of access to clean water; 80,000 children under five years of age are dying from diarrhoea and 88 per cent of diarrhoeal disease is attributed to unsafe water supply and inadequate sanitation and hygiene. Our priority in infrastructure should be there.

As I said, when you increase spending—which I welcome—you have the chance to make choices. I think one area in which the choices do not reflect well on the government’s priorities is climate change. It is one of the greatest issues impacting our neighbouring region and it barely gets a mention. There is a lot to say here, but let me say for the moment that assisting our neighbours to adapt to the effects of climate change should be a major focus of Australia’s aid program. Climate change threatens to undermine Australia’s aid program and hard-won development gains. The Howard government’s token response of a one-off payment this year to financial institutions such as the World Bank is better than nothing, but it underestimates totally the response needed and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what is involved.

In conclusion, this is a very disappointing budget. It is hard to understand how you can spend so much and achieve so little. China is driving a mining boom that is delivering the greatest revenue boost in Australia’s history, yet we are finding in federal-state relations, in international development assistance and generally that we cannot fund our priorities. If we cannot fund our priorities at the height of the boom, when will we be able to do so? It seems to me that this is a government that has lost its discipline, its focus and its sense of rising to the challenges of the 21st century. This budget shows that Australia needs a new government capable of fresh thinking and of responding to the 21st century challenges in international development assistance, federal-state relations and generally.

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