De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the budget, the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills. The 2007 budget shares the outcome of the coalition government’s good economic management with all Australians. It invests in families and invests in the future. For families, there are childcare benefit increases such that a low-income family with one child and full-time day care will be up to $20.50 a week better off.

But it is the tax cuts that have certainly received the most attention in my electorate. Tax cuts for those on average wages will be around $16 a week, and for someone on $30,000 a year around $21 a week. The level at which the top marginal tax rate of 45 per cent cuts in will be increased from $150,000 to $180,000. If the threshold had remained at 1996 levels, the top marginal rate would have cut in at $68,000. What a difference! Now it is three times the level it would have been had the prevailing tax arrangements in 1996 been there.

But what has happened in previous budgets? Here is one example, and I am referring to the Age, which said that the most important moves in the 1993 budget were the deferral of the second income tax cut, worth $3.55 billion; increased petrol tax, worth $1.54 billion; and increases in wholesale sales tax, worth $1.34 billion. Not a budget anybody would have been excited about. That was the budget in August 1993. So people were not wondering how big their tax cuts were; they were wondering who was going to get hit—and, boy, they were hit, because the tax cuts were deferred. I think they were the notorious l-a-w law tax cuts.

But in the budget for 2007 the government has certainly delivered. Education vouchers worth $700 will be made available to children who need specialised assistance. Teachers who complete a summer school professional development course will receive a $5,000 bonus. It is a great incentive for teachers to update their skills. Eligible apprentices will receive a tax-exempt payment of $1,000 and a voucher of $500 to offset their fees for training. The thing that could never have been done by previous governments, a Higher Education Endowment Fund with an initial investment of $5 billion, will double existing financial investments and endowments for universities. A one-off superannuation co-contribution scheme will ensure that eligible persons who have contributed in the previous years will receive a $3,000 co-contribution from the government for every $1,000 that they contribute. There is a one-off seniors bonus of $500 to eligible seniors. Eligible carers will receive a bonus of between $600 and $1,000, and TPI and disabled veterans will receive pension increases.

There is a climate change initiative, with a rebate of $8,000 available for installing a solar hot-water system. There is a boost to AusLink and our road system. The government is also building and investing in infrastructure. In the next five-year round there will be a total of $22.2 billion available, including the Strategic Regional Program with $300 million, and supplementary funding of $250 million is to be paid direct to local councils before 30 June 2007.

There are so many initiatives that it is really not possible to go through all of them. But I want to draw the comparison between the low expectations—and they had to be pretty low—pre 1996 for budgets and what we have now. I want to draw the comparison between what was delivered then and what has been delivered in one of the most outstanding budgets ever brought down by a federal government. In fact, in 1992, the then Treasurer, according to the Australian newspaper, ‘left the way open yesterday for new or increased taxes to be introduced’. The arguments these days are about how much the tax cuts are going to be. That is the bonus of having good economic management that a government can share with all Australians.

I would like to move now to some specific issues that affect my own electorate. I am immensely proud that in Mackay we have the coal exports from Dalrymple Bay, Hay Point and Abbott Point that make it the largest coal-exporting region on earth. In fact, we have had a 42.5 per cent increase in our gross regional product—the largest growth in the state. We have significant investor confidence in the mining industry within the Mackay region. There was $500 million in capital expenditure on mining projects completed in the last six months. To put this in perspective: there has been $882 million in capital expenditure spent on mining projects completed over the year to April 2006.

Major projects that are forecast are the $1.1 billion expansion of Dalrymple Bay coal terminal. That will increase capacity from 60 million tonnes to 85 million tonnes by 2009. There is mooted construction of a 120 megawatt gas-fired power station in Moranbah and a 300 megawatt gas-fired peaking power station in Nebo, at an estimated cost of $800 million over the period 2006-15.

Mining, for my region, is now worth some $8 billion. The percentage contribution to the Mackay economy is 61 per cent. The annual increase is 77 per cent. That is an extraordinary figure for one region in Australia. The percentage contribution that mining makes to the Queensland economy is only 12.4, but to us it represents 61 per cent of our gross regional product. That is an extraordinary dependence on the mining industry and one that we welcome. It has meant some growing pains for my magnificent city and region, but it has certainly meant great prosperity, jobs growth and opportunity in the region.

Are there any threats to this glowing future? There certainly are. In fact, one of them was on the front of the Courier-Mail newspaper. It said:

Greens Senator Bob Brown is calling for the death of Queensland’s $24 billion coal industry and thousands of jobs, demanding an end to all coal exports within three years.

Senator Brown, in an interview with the Australian, predicted:

Job losses, higher inflation and economic turmoil would come as inevitable part of paying for climate change ...

In an interview with the Australian yesterday, Senator Brown said the first thing that had to be done to ‘stop worsening the problem’ was to place a moratorium on additional coal exports. Senator Brown went on to defend his plans to shut down Australia’s coal industry, saying, ‘There will be bumps.’ I will tell you what those bumps will be soon. They will be most of the people in my region. The article quotes Senator Brown as saying:

... “there will be bumps”, but if plans were put in place to deal with the pollution within three years the country could “minimise the bumps”.

People in my area are not too pleased to know that they are bumps. But that has other implications because, while Bob Brown, the Greens senator, wants all coal exports stopped, he has said this will be achieved in the first term of a Labor government. One might ask how it is that the Greens can set the Labor agenda, but I will move to that shortly. I would like to comment on Peter Garrett, now the Labor shadow minister for the environment. He has cast off his cloak of dedicated environmental campaigner and declared that he is an elected politician who supports Labor policy, no matter how expedient it may be, and he will do what he is told. Garrett has said in relation to the coal industry expansion:

One of the greatest difficulties we face is that we have got to rein in our greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of urgency, so I think it is completely understandable that there would be, of necessity, a huge amount of scrutiny on the business of expansions.

And then:

The automatic expansion of the coal industry such as we have seen in the Hunter region over the past decade is a thing of the past.

Make no mistake: ‘No automatic expansion’ is code for ‘No expansion, period’. And ‘No expansion’ is code for ‘Eventual phase-down’. All we have to do is add Bowen Basin and Central Queensland and we begin to see the enormity of the damage—or bumps, as Senator Brown puts it—that can and will be inflicted on the industry in my region.

What does this mean for the Mackay economy, which is 61 per cent dependent on coal? While the good Senator Brown is saying on national television that there is no such thing as clean coal and dismissing the whole argument as a mining-company-driven propaganda exercise, the Labor Party is going on about clean coal technology and promising a $500 million fund for research. Mr Rudd, the Leader of the Opposition, claims that, when it comes to securing a long-term future for coal, we have got to secure a long-term future for clean coal technology. It is all very well to talk the talk, but you also need to walk the walk. As a government, we have already invested $1.1 billion in clean coal technology.

But the reality is that we have two scenarios: Senator Brown saying that the coal industry will be closed down in the first three years of a Labor government, and muffled assurances from the Labor opposition. Mr Rudd, for instance, flicks Senator Brown off by saying:

I think Senator Brown has got rocks in his head when it comes to that matter.

So there we have it. However, it is interesting to do a little research on some of these things. We have Mr Rudd saying unequivocally ‘Yes’ for coal, Senator Brown saying unequivocally ‘No’ for coal and Mr Garrett saying, ‘Well, sort of, maybe, sort of, yes, no, a bit difficult to sort out.’

So what is going to happen? Let’s have a look at what happened in 2004. In the 2004 election the coalition lost four marginal seats as a direct result of Greens preferences going to Labor. Those seats were Adelaide, Hindmarsh, Parramatta and Richmond. However, more importantly, the Labor Party retained eight marginal seats as a direct result of receiving Greens preferences. These were Ballarat, Banks, Bendigo, Cowan, Isaacs, Lowe, Melbourne Ports and Swan. What that means is that the total Greens preferences were greater than the winning margins. In other words, without Green preferences those seats would presumably go back to the coalition. I pose this proposition to people in my electorate: not only is there a compelling reason in terms of gaining seats but there is a compelling reason in terms of holding seats for the Labor Party to agree to the Greens’ agenda.

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