Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a great respect for the member for Gorton; I think he always argues his case quite passionately. I have never seen him more uncomfortable with a subject than this one. I do not think he was, for one minute, convinced of the merit of the argument that he had to present, and I think that is regrettable. It is interesting, too, Mr Deputy Speaker, that if you look at the speakers list—and if you discount the member for Kennedy, who is an Independent—there is not one opposition speaker from Queensland on this list. If, as the Leader of the Opposition says, he is supporting this referendum idea or supporting councils having a say then he has done precious little in this bill to do something about it, and his colleagues in Queensland have done even less. That, too, is regrettable.

The member for Gorton should not make a virtue of the fact that the Leader of the Opposition suddenly had a road-to-Damascus conversion when it came to this matter of forced amalgamations. You will recall that the Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, announced this gutting of local government on 17 April. What followed was very interesting. There were then four weeks of total inaction by the opposition. But, during that time, the Leader of the Opposition managed to dance on television with Kerri-Anne Kennerley, fly to New York and dine with Rupert Murdoch, speak about his toilet habits on radio and quit his weekly television spot because of some fake memorial service. So he could fit all that sort of trivia into the four weeks between the time when Premier Beattie made the announcement and the time when the opposition did something about it. But I live in the area that is most affected by this, and the panic in the ALP machine in Central Queensland was palpable—absolutely palpable.

What happened was this. The federal Labor candidate for Flynn, Chris Trevor, was doing a tour of western Queensland and no-one was turning up to his meetings—or only a handful of people were. I am told that in one shire they could not get the caretaker to open the hall for him. In another, in the coalfields, where you would expect a good roll-up for a Labor candidate of some consequence, 11 turned up. He obviously went back to the Labor hierarchy and said, ‘Gee, we’re in trouble over this amalgamations thing.’

It is significant that the Leader of the Opposition made his statement in the electorate of Flynn, in an area that was in my electorate of Hinkler before electoral redistribution. He made the statement at Auckland Hill, where all the major announcements of any worth are made in Gladstone. Auckland Hill overlooks Gladstone Harbour, where you can see all the industry and everything. When you want to really get punchy, that is where you make your announcement. In fact, I thought he was coming up to usurp an announcement I was making at the same site at the same time the following day. I thought, ‘Oh, damn it; he’s stolen my thunder’ on what was known as Kirkwood Road, where this government has given $13 million to make sure it proceeds. But no—he spent this whole meeting with the media, all bar the last five per cent of it, saying how much he disagreed with this. And it was patently obvious that he disagreed with it because, in that hinterland behind the coastal strip, this is the most unpopular measure since the rise of One Nation and the gun laws. It is more unpopular than the two GST campaigns; it is more unpopular than the sale of Telstra. And he knew it, and he knew that his candidates would be in some trouble. It is surprising, too, that my colleague the member for Capricornia, whom I also respect and a lot of whose shires are affected by this, is not here tonight to debate this issue.

I am not against amalgamations per se, provided that there is a process of consultation; that there is printed material for people to consider on the efficiencies of councils, their costs and their incomes; and that, at the end of the process, there is a vote on whether you want to be wholly or partially within a particular shire or city. That would be fair enough. In fact, there is probably a good argument for some of what are known as ‘doughnut shires’ around cities. Certainly the inner ring of those, the more semi-urbanised part of those, would be better off joining with cities. I have some reservations about the outer rural areas. So I would have gone along with that if the process had been right—but what was the process?

The government set up a thing called the ‘triple S’ process—size, shape and sustainability. I suspect the government did not think that the shires would embrace it, and a few did not; a few were a bit reluctant at first. But 118 out of 125 embraced it and it was becoming obvious that the councils in clusters were making interesting moves, like machinery pools, shared building inspectors and all that sort of thing. They were really going down the track that the government was asking them to. I think it was going to become embarrassing for the state government that there would not be grounds to do a lot of changing of boundaries.

So, all of a sudden—bang!—overnight, on 17 April, the old process was killed and the Queensland government announced an Electoral Reform Commission. Reform? You were given 30 days to get your submissions in—30 days, for something as momentous as that—and then the commissioners were given 60 days to consider 37,000 submissions. If you divide that number of submissions by the number of working days in 60 days, you will see that it was simply an impossible task.

They also had a covenant on them that they were not to split shires unless it was absolutely necessary. That meant that, in not splitting shires, you could not get real reform anyhow. There are some shires in my area, like the Miriam Vale Shire, where there is a fair body of evidence to say that the southern part might have a Bundaberg ambience and the northern part a Gladstone ambience. That needed to be tested, but those sorts of things were never tested.

So we went through this sham process. The commission handed the report to the Queensland government one morning at about 10 o’clock and by about 12.30 the government had ticked off on it. It took 60 days to draw up this report and after two to 2½ hours consideration it was foisted on the people of Queensland. But it did not stop there. Oh no, it did not stop there; it was worse than that. The state government said, ‘If any council defies the government and holds a plebiscite or referendum, we’ll fine them.’ Then they said, ‘We will sack any council that does it.’ That jackboot treatment resonated very poorly across the state, even with Labor voters. They were not going to have a bar of that. So, reluctantly, the humiliated Minister for Local Government, Planning and Sport, Andrew Fraser, was forced to back down. He was like the member for Gorton, who did not seem convinced of his brief. I have never seen someone so disillusioned in appearance as Andrew Fraser was when that decision was made.

The process was a shambles from start to finish. Not only is it a shambles; it is part of a wider malaise in Queensland. This malaise has two strands to it. The first strand is: ‘Let’s kill off the conservative voice in the country.’ You will find in lots of country councils that there are conservatives—Liberals, Nationals, former One Nation people and current Family First people. Those sorts of people, by and large, except in the larger provincial cities, play a significant part in local government. So the idea was that if you could force amalgamations you could get rid of some of them. It was quite blatant. I will give a few examples.

In the Central Highlands district, which is currently in the federal seat of Maranoa but will be in Flynn, the number of councillors will be reduced from 38 to eight. In my own area of Bundaberg it will go from 32 down to 11. North Burnett, where I currently represent five of the six shires, will go from having 41 councillors to seven. That will mean that some shire areas, even if there are wards, even if you go on a population basis, will not get one representative at all. I cite examples like Eidsvold and Mount Perry. They probably will be flat out getting one representative on the new council. At best, most areas might get one councillor. If they are lucky, they might crack the mayor as well.

The current shires, which the new supershires will replace, are quite big areas. They are quite substantial areas with quite substantial problems in development, infrastructure, the delivery of social services and the delivery of civic amenities. All those things are just as important in a country town or a small provincial city as they are in a big provincial city or a capital city. They will be left with perhaps one representative covering a vast area—some of them bigger than the electorate that I seek to represent after the federal election. That is incredible. Who is going to go out and look at the potholes in the roads? Who is going to see whether the dam needs to have a new top put on it or whatever it is? Do we think that the supercouncils, remote from those areas, are going to be all that interested? No, I do not think they will be. I do not think that there is anyone out there who believes it either.

This malaise of making things greater is about a contraction of the voice of country people as much as it is about a call for council efficiency. You can look around Australia at where there have been forced amalgamations. Look around the Canberra area, for one. Look at Victoria some years ago—but I would make the observation about Victoria that at least Jeff Kennett allowed 78 of his councils to continue. For Victoria, which is a very small state in area, he allowed 78 councils. Queensland, a vastly bigger area, will be left with 73. The second biggest state in the Commonwealth will have 73 councils. Imagine the representational problems with that. The same thing happened in Tasmania.

It does not make for more efficiency. I will tell you one of the first things that happens. I am not predicting that this will necessarily happen in Queensland, but this is what has happened over time in other areas. When the new supercouncil gets together, perhaps not in the first year but when it starts to feel the growing pains of difficult administration and centralising a lot of the services to the new capital, for want of a better word, what happens then? Someone moves that they build a $20 million or $30 million civic centre or administration centre. Then you might find councils that have previously been pretty close to borderline with debt control and so on taking on another $15 million or $20 million, for small shires, or perhaps up to $30 million for a reasonably large one, now that they have been amalgamated with other councils.

There is to be a council on the Darling Downs based on Toowoomba, which is simply mind-boggling. I am staggered that you can take Toowoomba and the area north and west of Toowoomba from 69 councillors down to 11. For God’s sake! What sort of a show is that going to be? It is probably fair to say that they will have to build a new administration centre for a show like that.

So that will be one thing: slowly, the machinery that was individual to particular shires will be pooled in one area. Then you will find that it is considered too difficult to give subsidies to the local show or the local art competition or whatever it might be. You will find that the workers will tend to be centralised after a while, and that will mean that the purchasing from what used to be the local council will go to the central pivotal town. That will mean that the shops in the smaller towns will drop one or two employees. You might find after that that, if the pupil numbers drop enough in the school, the school will drop from three teachers to two. The police station will drop from two constables to one. Slowly this spiral will commence. It will not happen overnight—and I am not suggesting it will—but this is part of the centralisation malaise that the Labor Party have caused in Queensland.

It is not the first time that they have tried this. They tried this under the Goss government, and I find it equally bewildering that the Leader of the Opposition, who was a chief of staff and secretary to cabinet in that previous Goss government and who presided over the last round of forced amalgamations in Queensland, is suddenly the champion of letting shires have their say. Come on! Do not look at what they do; look at how they act. Faith without good works is dead. I am sure that, as a Christian democrat, he knows that statement. So that has happened before. This is the second tranche, if you like.

There is another aspect to it. If you want to stand for state parliament in Queensland, at the time you nominate to stand you must resign from the local council. You cannot be stood aside for the length of the campaign or anything like that; you must physically resign. Of course, that runs a lot of councils into by-elections costing anything from $50,000 to $100,000 to pick up that one new councillor. It is totally unnecessary, because about half those councillors get defeated at the state election and could well resume their roles in the local council and save countless thousands of dollars. They tried to impose the same thing on the federal members—if you wanted to stand for federal parliament you could not be on a local authority. But the High Court had something to say about that, and it was dropped.

Regional health councils—the poor things are emasculated anyhow but what is even more sinister is that they have been combined: North Burnett with Bundaberg and South Burnett with Toowoomba, and so on. Then you find too that the port authorities are being combined: Rock-hampton with Gladstone, and Bundaberg, Brisbane. The whole thing is a never-ending focus on centralisation.

In the few minutes remaining to me I would like to say that this amendment about constitutional recognition is about as well thought out as the whole policy of the Beattie government in this matter. If you really wanted to do it properly you would have a constitutional convention along the lines of the republican one. You would perhaps first have a meeting of all the local governments of Australia. They would pick, say, 100 to 150 delegates to it. You would have state and federal government representatives, eminent people from former local government positions and eminent local government administrators. You would define the parameters of local government and not only its autonomy but its authority and whether the boundaries right across Australia needed to be looked at. Then that constitutional convention would make recommendations. After the public had been consulted on the constitutional convention, and after the booklet had gone out with the options, then—and only then—would you have a referendum. I would support that. But just rushing in and saying ‘constitutional recognition’ for a quick fix or to try to embarrass the government, or dragging in the nuclear debate, is just pitiful. There are no Queenslanders in here from the Labor Party to debate this issue. The Leader of the Opposition has been caught out on the whole matter. It is a disgrace. I support the bill; I reject the amendment.

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