Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

While the member for Dawson is still here, I put some questions to her. The interesting question, while the member for McMillan is also still here, is how the member for McMillan feels about the member for Dawson’s support and John Howard’s strong support for a nuclear energy industry in Australia, because that is certainly the biggest attack on the coal industry that I have seen. When John Howard talks about replacing coal as a source of electricity in this country with nuclear energy, it is a bigger attack than anything I have seen from Bob Brown. I see that the member for Dawson has left the chamber and does not wish to get into that debate, which is the genuine debate about the future of the coal industry under a continuing Howard coalition government.

This is about the budget. This is the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills, and I am pleased to have this opportunity to comment on the budget and what it means to my electorate of Capricornia. The thing that really struck me about the budget when the Treasurer was giving his speech earlier this year was that it was really a budget that was about plugging up political holes for the government—political holes that have been left behind after 11 years of the Howard government’s neglect of many essential services in our community and of essential infrastructure.

Of course, we have seen this before. Every election year, the Howard government discover a sudden interest in policy areas and services that they have ignored for years, and this year was no different. One of the obvious examples was in the area of dental health, where we finally saw the government throwing some money at dental health after spending 11 years since they cut the Commonwealth dental program telling us how this was all the states’ problem and the states’ responsibility. Now that it has become a political problem for the government, we see them accepting responsibility and putting money in—but, of course, only in a very narrowly defined way.

Similarly, the Howard government in its first budget made massive cuts to funding for universities, and universities have been struggling to come to terms with those cuts ever since. But all of a sudden, when we see the effects of that through falling productivity and through Australia’s shameful comparison when you look at figures from the OECD on education spending—Australia is falling well behind our competitor nations in the world—the Howard government seems to have realised that it is about time it started undoing some of that damage.

We know that John Howard is a clever and cunning politician and we should not be surprised that he is trying to patch up the holes. But, of course, it gets harder and harder for a government that has been in power for 11 years. If there are holes there—if there are important issues in the community that are not being addressed and problems that are out there—it is a sign that this government is not doing its job and has not been doing its job for the last 11 years. Those political holes are there because the government has neglected important areas of services and infrastructure.

Of course, being a clever politician—and a desperate politician, you might say—John Howard is not going to leave anything to chance. So, just in case throwing money at those political problems in the budget is not going to do the trick, he will give himself the best possible chance of winning people back by spending up big on political advertising. We have seen $850 million spent on political advertising by this government since the last election, bringing the total spending on advertising by this government since 1996 to close to $2 billion. That is just absolutely unprecedented in this country. When you put that up against the areas of neglect that they are trying to fix up in the budget, you can see that that $2 billion could have gone a long way towards fixing some of those problems long before 2007, only a matter of months before the next election.

The budget was all about plugging political holes for the government to get it through to the election, but, from the point of view of my electorate, it still left behind plenty of holes. The first one of those holes that struck me as I listened to the Treasurer’s speech—and it is too bad that the member for Dawson is not here to listen to this—was the failure of the government to put forward any initiatives to encourage and support the development of clean coal technology. For people living in Central Queensland at the heart of the coalmining boom, that is a major oversight, especially since the Treasurer spent so much of his speech doling out money derived from the resources boom that people in my electorate are working hard to create. If the government wants to spend the money coming out of Central Queensland mines, it should get serious about helping to secure the future of the industry, but there was not a cent in the budget for that. So there was the Treasurer spending the proceeds of the mining boom, and yet there was nothing in the budget to help the coal industry to meet the challenges it faces in a world that is looking to reduce its carbon emissions.

If the government wants to support the coal industry and the communities, both big and small, like those in my electorate that are built on the coal industry, then the government has to be part of finding ways to make the industry sustainable. Of course the budget just confirmed what we already know about this government: it has turned its back on the coal industry and on coalmining communities because it has embraced nuclear energy. Instead of working with the coal and electricity industries to develop clean coal technology, the Howard government is busy developing its plans for 25 nuclear reactors to be established around the country—and the member for Dawson has already put her hand up publicly to say that one of those can go near Mackay on the Queensland coast. I am sure her electors are just thrilled about that prospect.

Unlike the government, Labor understand the need for urgent action on climate change, and we recognise that reducing the carbon emissions from burning coal is essential if we are to make serious reductions in greenhouse gases. Right now, the technology is there to achieve that goal, but the political will and leadership has been lacking in a government that has ignored climate change and is now telling Australians we need to adopt dangerous and radical measures like nuclear energy, as a cover for its complacency and neglect. As someone who represents many coalminers, their families and communities right across the electorate of Capricornia, I am pleased to say that Labor is showing real leadership in this important area. Earlier this year Labor announced its national clean coal initiative, and the member for Dawson just endorsed that initiative in her remarks. It is a fund worth half a billion dollars which a Labor government would make available. We would ask industry to come up with proposals for clean coal technology projects and, by putting money in from that $500 million fund on a two-for-one basis with industry, we would be aiming to meet significant greenhouse gas reduction targets in our electricity generation industry. We would also increase Commonwealth funding for the CSIRO by $25 million over four years so that it can drive the national clean coal initiative. This is really forward looking for the coal industry, and it is making sure that that $23 billion a year in exports is able to be sustained into the future. We can continue to develop that technology here in Australia and export the technology along with our coal exports to the rest of the world, to those countries which realistically will be looking for ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the new environment where every country in the world is accepting a responsibility to reduce those carbon emissions and the impact on the environment.

One of the other great failings in this budget is in the area of broadband. I have to ask: when is the Howard government going to take this issue seriously? Once again there was nothing in the budget to improve the access of people in my electorate to high-speed internet. Meanwhile, Australia falls further behind its competitors in access to and the use of information technology. We continue to struggle along with what has now been confirmed in the budget papers this year as zero per cent productivity growth. The failure to invest in broadband is the surest sign of a lazy and complacent government that is happy to coast along on the crest of the resources boom while doing nothing to invest in the measures like education and world-class communications infrastructure that will secure our future prosperity.

This is a matter of equity and productivity. Why should people in Central Queensland be denied the opportunities that high-speed broadband internet makes possible—whether it is for improving their business, their kids’ education, health and financial services or any of the other potential uses of this important technology? I would like to give members two examples of the kinds of frustrations that I am coming across in my electorate from people who cannot access broadband—and that is hardly an unreasonable expectation in this day and age.

The first example is from Janine Bennett, who wrote to me from Eton, which is a gorgeous little town set amongst the cane fields just outside Mackay. Like many of the rural areas to the south and west of Mackay, Eton is experiencing fast population growth with the opening up of estates to cater for people who work in the mines further west or who just want the peace of semirural living. So it is a rural area but it is still only a 20-minute drive from Mackay, which is a major regional city. I received a letter from Janine, which said:

We were recently told that Telstra had updated our exchange and we could now get ADSL Broadband! Yehah! We all got excited, and yes we have been dial up all this time, not by choice but we live 30km out of Mackay ... Anyway we set out to join up and guess what?! We can’t get ADSL here, you know why? We have Pair Gain. What’s that you say? Yes so did we! Pair Gain is sharing a telephone line with your neighbour!

Janine goes on to say:

Even the Telstra staff laughs when they tell us!

I am sure people are thrilled by that response from Telstra! As I have explained to Janine, I have tried everything in the past to help constituents caught up in Telstra’s pair gain scam but to no avail. There is no doubt that Telstra has a lot of explaining to do to customers right around Australia when it comes to its use of this shonky second-rate equipment. But that is letting the government off too lightly for its role in the shameful state of broadband in this country. The fact is that Janine should not be battling with Telstra to get ADSL. In 2007 in a country as prosperous and advanced as Australia, she should be connected up to real broadband, delivering speeds of 12 megabits per second or higher. Of course, that is Labor’s plan.

The second example that I will give to the Committee is even more damning of the government’s record. A month or so ago I visited Swayneville State School. It too is located in an absolutely picturesque setting surrounded by bush and cane fields. Again it is rural but hardly remote, no more than 10 minutes drive from Sarina and 45 minutes from Mackay. The staff and parents of the school were successful in obtaining a grant from the government’s Investing in Our Schools program. During my visit the principal, Mr Ken Nichols, showed me the IT equipment that the school had purchased with the money. It is very impressive stuff and it is quite obvious that this opens up enormous potential for teachers to add value to the work they are doing in the classroom.

But before the government rushes to pat itself on the back for the grant it provided to this school, here is the downside. At Swayneville school there is no access to broadband, so in many respects the IT equipment that is there at the school is almost a tease. It offers possibilities to students and teachers, but so many of those possibilities are out of reach because of the limits of the dial-up internet connection.

After visiting the school, I made inquiries with Telstra and the answer just goes to show how far off the pace the government is on this important infrastructure priority for Australia. Here is part of the email from Telstra:

Shinfield—

which is the relevant exchange—

was one of the exchanges that Telstra identified for broadband enablement using the Federal Governments Broadband Connect program. A project was initiated to broadband enable this exchange however the federal government advised us that as of the 13 March 2007 the subsidy based funding available under Broadband Connect had reached its limit. The Government has since put in place transitional funding guidelines for the period 2 April to 30 June 2007.

And it goes on:

As it is the Government subsidy that enables Telstra to upgrade exchanges to ADSL in rural and remote areas where it otherwise would not be commercial, Telstra has no choice but to put a hold on further exchange upgrades until it can claim subsidies for customers connecting to those exchanges.

The email from Telstra goes on to say that it is now tangled up in negotiations with the government over definitions in the transitional guidelines for the Australian Broadband Guarantee program.

I do not want to go into the detail of all that except to call on the government to get in and sort that out quickly. But the point is that we should not be tinkering around with these piecemeal responses to what is an urgent national infrastructure priority. The technology exists to link 120 students at Swayneville school and all the other students in my electorate to the best educational resources in the world, but the government has failed to ensure that our infrastructure keeps up with those possibilities.

The government is still tinkering around with its latest broadband program—the Australian Broadband Guarantee. This is the latest in a long line of programs aimed at bringing Australia out of the Dark Ages when it comes to broadband speeds and access. But we know from international comparisons and statistics that Australia is still lagging behind most of our competitors when it comes to broadband. The Howard government has to drop its bandaid approach, which has seen it handing out bits and pieces of funding—some might say pork-barrelling—to projects scattered around the country. Equity and our future prosperity demand a nation-building approach to this task of bringing Australia’s infrastructure into line with the rest of the developed world.

Labor’s plan for a national broadband network will deliver high-speed broadband to the entire population of Australia. It will overcome the problems experienced by Janine and her neighbours in Eton and a lot of other constituents of mine throughout Central Queensland—all those people who are currently stuck with pair gain lines. It will give kids at Swayneville school the same connection to the world of the internet as kids in Rockhampton or Sydney.

Labor’s plan for broadband is to deliver a national fibre-to-the-node network that will deliver a minimum of 12 megabits per second to all parts of Australia. That is a speed more than 40 times faster than most current speeds available today. That will result in benefits such as slashed telephone bills for small business; enhanced business services, such as teleconferencing, video conferencing and virtual private networks; and enhanced capacity for services like e-education and e-health. The economic benefits are also enormous. We just cannot understand why the government has been dragging its heels on this important piece of infrastructure for so long. The estimates are for an additional $30 billion of national economic activity a year. It will make Australian small businesses more competitive. Some figures show that in Queensland alone true broadband access will boost the state economy by $4 billion and create 1,200 new jobs.

So it was obvious that the budget was plugging political holes and really not demonstrating that this government has a plan for the future. It has a plan for the future over the next three months, that is for sure—it is all about getting elected at the moment—but is not really serious about lifting Australia’s productivity and maintaining our competitiveness and prosperity.

I said at the start that those people in Central Queensland listening to the budget would have heard all that money going out. All that money can be traced back to the mining boom, a lot of which is happening in my electorate. There is one mining town in my electorate—I am sure in all mining towns we could find communities and projects that could use money—that has a particularly urgent need at the moment, and that is the town of Clermont. Clermont is a mining town, but it is a bit different to other mining towns in the Bowen Basin in that it has a higher proportion of elderly residents living in the town. At the moment there is a large and unmet demand for aged care in the town of Clermont. This is very serious because, while Clermont is about an hour away from Moranbah, it is about three hours from Mackay and four hours from Rockhampton, the other major centres. So when places are not available in Clermont people really are faced with putting their loved ones into facilities quite some distance away from the town, which is quite heartbreaking.

At the moment Monash Lodge, the aged-care hostel which operates in Clermont—a facility that was established in partnership between the community and the Belyando Shire Council—has an application before the government under the Regional Partnerships program to build an additional six units to try to meet some of that demand for aged-care places in the community. The community has been incredibly proactive about this, and I think it is very much a reflection of the respect and affection that the community holds for the elderly people in the town. The community has raised $300,000. This community has had its ups and downs over the last few years, but it has managed to raise $300,000 towards this project. I know that the application has been looked upon very favourably by the relevant area consultative committee and I ask the federal government to take a very close look at this.

This issue has a very human face. I received a letter from Peter Murphy back in April about his mother’s inability to gain an aged-care placement in Clermont. She was waiting for nine months in a hospital to get a place. This is a very real problem in the town of Clermont. The town has been incredibly proactive in dealing with this problem, and I call on the government to use the surplus to meet these urgent needs in communities like Clermont.

See this speech in context