Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Getting back to the budget, I say again that it is one that we can be very proud of. In the final comments by the member for Blaxland, he said that we are spreading little bits all over the place so that everybody will receive a benefit. That is true: we are distributing it. The overwhelming majority of people across the broad spectrum will receive a benefit out of this budget. When I think back to pre 1996, I can recall that each time we had a budget we would sit in great apprehension, wondering who was going to get whacked this time. Whether it was going to be the smokes, or the drink or the fuel, we knew that one of  those excises was going to get hit. We also knew that wholesale sales tax was going to go up somewhere. Taxes were also likely to go up. They kept lifting the marginal rates of tax to try to cover some of the deficit.

How different it is now. For five consecutive years we have seen tax cuts coming back to the people. We are now in a situation where we have to be earning $70,000 to $80,000 before we are out of the 30 cents in the dollar—30 per cent—tax rate. It increases to $180,000 before we see the highest level, which of course is 45 cents. Some years ago, it was 47 or 48 cents in the dollar. So there have been significant changes and they are ones that we can be very proud of. This is all about economic management.

We have paid back that massive debt that we inherited when we came into this place in 1996. That is the reason we have been able to do some of the things we are doing now. It is not rocket science. Any suggestion that this is a budget where, because it is an election year, we are suddenly starting to give tax cuts to hand money back to our taxpayers is an absolute nonsense. As I said, we have been giving tax cuts for the last five years. I suppose the suggestion could have been made last year and the year before and the year before that. The same goes when we talk about giving additional money back to people like pensioners and carers. It is becoming an expected norm now that we do that. It is because we do not have that interest component of something like $8½ billion a year that we would have to draw out before we could look at returning one single dollar back to the benefit of the Australian taxpayer. When you look at it in that perspective, I think it has been an outstanding achievement.

There are some areas of the budget that I was particularly pleased to see and one of those is road funding. We have continued to maintain that with another $22½ billion going into AusLink. It is money that is certainly needed and it will go a long way towards rebuilding our national highways and national railways, which have been well and truly neglected for a lot of years. In my own area, work has already started on the flood proofing of the Bruce Highway. With the Tully sector, it has taken a lot of work to drag the state government in and to get them to focus on that area. It is an area that stops traffic completely almost every year—it is an annual event. It is not a matter of if it is going to happen; it is a matter of for how long it will impact on our region. At times we can have our main highway shut for six to eight days. That has a huge impact on our business community. We have set money aside for it. We are still, unfortunately, dependent on the state government and the Queensland main roads department to set priorities. The state government is setting priorities which I would love to see changed. We are also dependent very much on them building the roads, which they do quite slowly at times. If they are not able to deliver, it would be great if we could look at other ways of doing it. Possibly we could tender it out to other companies that could probably do it a lot more cost effectively and a lot quicker. But we have continued to put money in there; we have got money in the bank for those projects. There will be more needed but, with $22½ billion of AusLink money, I have got no doubt at all that further money will be quarantined as it is needed to ensure that that project is completed.

While I am on the subject of roads, a further $10 million has been allocated for the Peninsula Development Road to provide us with another section between Lily Creek and Crocodile Gap—another much needed measure. But we have to look further than just doing small sections like this. In recent years, the government also contributed a $5 million component into upgrading the road from Kennedy Creek to Laura River. This government contributed funds to support people in Cape York who were impacted by Cyclone Larry and Cyclone Monica. Money was also put into a scoping study for the entire Peninsula Development Road—which is some 450 kilometres long—to identify how long it would take and how much it would cost to weatherproof the road so that we do not have problems every year. That information has been slowly dribbling in from the state government. It should have been here in December. We are still waiting on a final word. We have some work in now, but it again highlights the concerns. You wonder whether or not they are being deliberately slow in providing this information. But, once that information is available, given the amount of investment we have in AusLink, I would certainly like to see an amount set aside for the full weatherproofing of the Peninsula Development Road.

I was also pleased to see the additional funding going into the black spots program, which has been an outstanding success in my electorate, along with the Roads to Recovery funding which will continue. On top of that, $250 million will be made available in this financial year for strategic regional programs. I think that is great to see. Some $83 million of that is being made available in Queensland. I guess that just highlights the need that we have in that area for these programs.

Moving away from roads, another measure which I was very pleased to see was the Higher Education Endowment Fund. This is something that is really visionary and is really looking towards building for the future. The plan is to invest some $5 billion into the fund with the intention to continue to grow it into the future and also have it available for private contributions for those who would like to do so. That will certainly ensure an ongoing stream of significant funding that will help to keep our universities right up there at the cutting edge.

Speaking of the cutting edge of universities, James Cook University, which has campuses in both Townsville and Cairns, has benefited immensely from this government over the years. Some years ago we allocated funding for a medical school which is now turning out its first doctors. What is particularly special about this is that the overwhelming majority of young people who are training as doctors are actually staying in our region; they are not moving into the metropolitan areas. Something like 70 per cent of those being trained at and graduating from our university in Townsville and Cairns are actually staying in the area. The other thing in which I take a tremendous amount of pride is that we are seeing our first Indigenous doctors graduating from these courses. On top of that we have a satellite program in the Torres Strait and students are also graduating in nursing, which I think is very special to see. Again, these people are staying in the communities and helping to build on that local base that is needed to provide the health services in our region.

After the medical school, we were then successful in funding a veterinary school in Cairns—again, funded by this government. I was particularly excited to see in this budget a $65 million commitment over a four-year period to establish the new regional dental school at Charles Sturt University. I think that this is money very well spent in regional New South Wales. The reason I am excited about this is that James Cook University in Cairns have only very recently submitted a proposal for a dental school in Cairns. They have put up an outstanding submission, one that I believe is very credible and certainly deserves serious consideration. I believe that it will get that consideration because what is unique about our region—this is something that I was made aware of—is that tropical dental health is very different to dental health in other areas, as is dental health in remote communities and in the Torres Strait. There is a whole different gamut of issues that need to be dealt with and there is a speciality there in itself.

Given that we have such a chronic shortage of dentists in Northern Australia, I think this will provide a great opportunity for us to be able, as we have with our doctors, to train local dentists, get them into our community and retain them in the community. I would hope that in the process, as we are working through this proposal to get this dental school established, we will get a commitment from Queensland Health that all of the training places that are necessary will be provided by Queensland Health in our northern hospitals to allow these students to be able to complete their courses.

The other thing when we are looking at the initiatives on dental health is that it is good to see that, for those chronic cases of need, you will be able to access dental care through Medicare. It is certainly a start. We have been criticised over the years for withdrawing from the program, but of course we never ever withdrew from dental health. There was an agreement for a short-term program to try to catch up and allow the state governments to catch up. That program was fully funded and at the end of that program the states were expected to continue, as they should, and provide that service. But we see that that has not occurred and we have some horrific waiting lists out there, particularly in Far North Queensland. To provide the $2,125 for an individual to be able to get that emergency care through a private dentist and through Medicare I think is very important. I am pleased to see that that has happened.

There is also $1 million being spent helping individuals particularly with their lifestyle issues in relation to diabetes. As you may be aware, diabetes is a major issue up in my electorate, again particularly in the communities. We have invested money there in the past in educating people in relation to lifestyle and identifying early indicators of diabetes. We have a wonderful doctor up there who travels around the Torres Strait. I could not begin to count the number of limbs of individuals that he has saved because he has been able to deal with their diabetes much earlier. We are seeing a lot fewer people in the area losing limbs to diabetes than we saw, say, 10 years ago. This $100 million initiative is going to go a long way towards continuing the good work that has been done by Dr Singer over these years.

Another program that is very important up in the Torres Strait is a $2.1 million program over three years for mosquito control. Japanese encephalitis is a problem that we have up there. It can be fatal. We also have issues with dengue fever, which is another mosquito-borne virus. So it is important that we have these initiatives to help minimise the risk. Generally, the budget has been welcomed in my electorate—very much so. The $500 for pensioners certainly helps them to meet annual costs in particular. They can now come up with the money without having to draw on their pensions. The carers allowance is also important. We have recognised the value of carers. It becomes, again, an annual event. I know for those carers it is not just a matter of the money but the recognition that they get for it. Looking at greenhouse issues, another great initiative is the doubling of the solar panels rebate to $8,000. It really makes solar energy a serious and an affordable option. If you have a rebate of $8,000 on a $14,000 investment, it is a serious option. With the rebate from your solar hot-water system et cetera, you can actually look at having solar as your main source of power and having your mains power as a backup. That has certainly been welcomed in my area, as has the continued commitment and additional money that is going into the NHT. In an area where we are sandwiched between two World Heritage areas, it has been of great benefit. I commend the bills to the House. (Time expired)

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