Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening in this debate on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Democratic Plebiscites) Bill 2007. It is with great pleasure that I rise to make a contribution to this bill before the House. Firstly, this bill would not have been required had the Queensland state Labor government not acted in the way it did to bring forward legislation to deny the people of Queensland the right to have their say. They were prepared in Queensland, under the premiership—which will soon be the former premiership—of Premier Beattie, to bring forward legislation, and they brought forward legislation, that would see such draconian measures put into place, whereby local councillors and their mayors, if they dared to encourage, bring forward or provide an avenue for the voice of their ratepayers to be heard in relation to the forced amalgamation of local shires in Queensland, would be sacked or fined, and an interim council would be put in place of those elected representatives of those local communities. It is a sad day when the Commonwealth has to bring forward such legislation because of the actions of a Labor government that are totally out of touch with the people that elected them a little over 12 months ago.

When I saw the process that was being supported by local councils across my electorate, in relation to the size, shape and sustainability of those local government areas, I supported it—just as the local government representatives and the Local Government Association of Queensland did. For two years, local governments have been working cooperatively with their local communities and neighbouring shires to look at the size of their local shires, to look at whether they are going to be sustainable in the long term and to ensure that the shape of the shires reflects the road linkages and communities of interest today. Perhaps in some cases those boundaries did not reflect the communities of interest, nor the connections by road that have emerged since those boundaries were drawn 70 or 80 years ago.

What was happening while that process was proceeding in the local government areas was that the Labor government—under the premiership of Peter Beattie and his Labor minister, Minister Fraser—the department of local government in Queensland or somewhere in the bureaucracy that is controlled by the Premier was actually drawing up maps of local government areas before that process of size, shape and sustainability was complete. What we saw then was that the Labor government in Queensland were not prepared to wait for that process to be completed. They brought forward legislation into the state parliament whereby they appointed a so-called independent commission and commissioners to go through submissions from local councils in about a 40-day period. They were then required to report to the government on the size, shape and sustainability of the Queensland local government areas.

Do I have an interest in this bill? I certainly do, because I represent something like 25 per cent of the local government areas in Queensland—rural shires that are proud of their achievements; rural shires that are connected well to their communities; rural shires that represent the aspirations of local people. In some of these local shires they provide services such as Meals on Wheels. In fact, in some of the remote councils in my area they are actually the undertakers as well. Some of these shires are going to be amalgamated, against their will and without the opportunity for the locally elected councillors and the community to have their say, because of the draconian legislation that was put forward by the state Labor government in Queensland.

Australia is one of the oldest democracies in the world and we are the lucky country. Our democracy was formed through the free vote and free will of the people of Australia—one of the few democracies in the world where it did not arise out of a civil war or a war with neighbouring colonies or countries. So we are a very lucky country. The right of people to elect their governments—their local governments and their state government—is a fundamental principle of any successful democracy in the world today, but that was going to be stripped away by the Labor government of Queensland.

That is why this bill to allow local councils in Queensland to conduct a plebiscite of their ratepayers and gauge the opinion of the people of those local shires had to be brought forward in this parliament: because the Premier of Queensland—soon to be the former Premier of Queensland—was not going to allow those councils to conduct the plebiscite. What he put into law in Queensland was the most draconian piece of legislation that I think the nation has ever seen. He was going to sack those councillors who even encouraged, talked about or acted in a way that would provide an avenue for the voice of their local council ratepayers to be heard.

We have heard from the Leader of the Opposition that he is opposed to what the Premier was doing up in Queensland. He thinks that there is a better way. Words are cheap in this place; action is what counts. We know that the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Griffith, was in a former life the chief political adviser to the Premier at the time, Wayne Goss. What did they do with his advice? After all, it is that sort of experience that he claims gives him the ability to be the Prime Minister of this country. What did he do? He gave advice to Premier Goss when Labor was in government in the early nineties that saw the amalgamation of shires in Queensland.

It is one thing to go out in front of a camera, to go on radio or to put an advertisement in a newspaper in Queensland saying: ‘I think there’s a better way. I’ve had a chat with Premier Peter Beattie. We’ve had a cup of tea and I have told him that he should do it a different way.’ But I say to the people of Queensland and to the people of Australia: if the Leader of the Opposition is so weak that he cannot convince the Premier of Queensland not to proceed with draconian legislation which would deny the people of Queensland their democratic right to have a say, the Leader of the Opposition is not fit to be the Prime Minister of this country. He is a weak leader. If he were strong, if he had the ability or even a chance at ever leading this country, he would have been able to convince the Premier of Queensland that what he was proposing was undemocratic and that the draconian legislation that he was bringing forward must not proceed. But the Leader of the Opposition failed there, just as he would fail if he were ever to be elected the Prime Minister of this country.

The Premier of Queensland is going to leave the people of Queensland a little over 12 months after being elected in good faith to lead the state for the next three years. But he has decided that he is over it. He is stepping down; he is out. By Thursday, he will leave the parliament. But what he leaves behind him, apart from this legislation and this process that is going to fail the communities of Queensland, is a litany of failure: failure in the health system, failure to provide water for the people of Queensland and failure to provide sufficient infrastructure to meet the needs of the growing population of the south-east corner of Queensland. He can blame the drought, but every other day we heard the Premier saying, ‘The population of Queensland has risen by another 150 today, and we are going to be the second most populous state in Australia within 20 years,’ or figures like that. He has failed in his premiership to provide the infrastructure necessary for a population that was anticipated by governments as long ago as when the National and the Liberal parties were in coalition in the seventies and eighties. That coalition built the South East Freeway, the Pacific Highway to the Gold Coast, Wivenhoe Dam and Hinze Dam and had plans for further infrastructure development to meet the growing needs of Queensland based on research that showed that it was going to be the fastest-growing state in Australia. He leaves all of that behind him as a failure of his administration.

Of course, these forced amalgamations of local councils will leave behind another legacy. If these are not stopped and these boundaries are not amended, many small rural communities will be left in a situation where people will become landlocked, their assets will be devalued and their small businesses will be devalued because, inevitably, when you centralise control and administration in any sphere of government, the workforce that has been employed in smaller councils will move to the larger centre as part of that amalgamation of shires. There have been no impact statements done in relation to what will happen to some of these smaller rural shires when, under this proposal, they are amalgamated into a supershire. What will happen to the value of that council worker’s house—their little piece of Australia; their pride and joy; their family home—when the population of that small rural shire declines because jobs have inevitably shifted to the larger centre? Those houses will be unsaleable. I already have in my electorate houses that were for sale and for which contracts were signed subject to the outcome of these forced amalgamations that have now been put on hold. Houses in a town like Tambo that might have been worth $120,000 or $130,000 may now be unsaleable and have no value at all.

Under this proposal, we will see the Shire of Tambo amalgamated with the Shire of Blackall. The administrative centre will be in Blackall. The Shire of Tambo and their 60 workers—the administration and the workers—will inevitably move to Blackall. I can repeat that story over and over again with this proposal that has been put forward by the arrogant, out-of-touch state Labor government in Queensland.

What happens to the small business that has just established itself in, say, Aramac—a little corner store, a family running a nice little business because there are workers in town, there is a future in town and the council is supporting the community and encouraging new business into the town? What will happen to the value of that small business when those 60 workers inevitably move to the larger centre where the council will be located? Has there been any study done at all by the Labor government of Queensland as to the impact that these forced amalgamations will have on the value of private assets, be they the family home or the small business? There has not been any study done on that.

It appears that the new Premier of Queensland is going to be Anna Bligh. I respect Anna Bligh. I have got to know her. I do not have to agree with all she does. I call on the Premier, whoever it is, and if it is Anna Bligh, to go back to the drawing board in relation to these forced amalgamations and say: ‘Under my premiership, I want to make sure that, if these proceed as it is proposed that they proceed, there will not be net losers and winners. There will be no net loss, no net disadvantage, to communities or to families.’ In fact, my colleagues in Queensland put forward in the state parliament a private bill—which the Labor Party in Queensland opposed and did not vote for—to ensure that, if these amalgamations proceed on the basis which has been recommended, there is no disadvantage to a community, an individual or a small business. That was opposed by the state Labor government of Queensland.

So I say to the new Premier, if it is Anna Bligh, that she will have a great opportunity now—and she could borrow a phrase from the retiring Premier—to say: ‘Well, I think we got it wrong; I’m sorry. I think we should go back to the original process that local governments were going through voluntarily, looking at the size, shape and sustainability of their local councils.’ I hope that the new Premier of Queensland will take up that offer, because, if it is Anna Bligh, it is her premiership, and it will be her legacy if she fails to change direction in relation to these forced amalgamations.

In relation to the interim committees that are now being formed as a result of this draconian legislation in Queensland: there are two representatives from each of the councils on those interim committees. So, if there are three councils being amalgamated into one council, there will be six councillors from the three representative councils. But imposed on that committee as part of that transition committee will be three unelected union officials—three unelected union representatives. They were not elected by the shire council ratepayers, and I have had it reported to me in one of the western Queensland shires that it is actually now the union officials—unelected people—who are controlling the agenda. Of these union officials out in western Queensland in my electorate, the odd one comes from the community, but in the seat of Flynn, in Barcaldine, which is going to be the centre of two other amalgamated shires, one of them comes from Gladstone—not even a ratepayer in the shire that is proposed to be formed into a supershire. But these are the actions of the Labor Party. If Kevin Rudd, the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Griffith, were a strong leader, he could have ensured that this sort of process would never happen in Australia.

So I say to the new Premier, when she is elected tomorrow: go back to the drawing board. Let democracy prevail in this country. Let us ensure, whatever happens in Queensland in relation to these local government areas, that the local people, the local ratepayers, have a say in the size, the shape and the sustainability of their shires. There is too much at stake to see these council amalgamations that are proposed by the state Labor government forced on com-munities against the will of the people and the agenda taken over by the unions of Queensland.

The other thing I might just conclude on is that there is going to be one net winner if this goes forward. His name is Bill Ludwig. He is the AWU leader in Queensland. He has not said a thing about the job losses that might occur and would occur under the models that have been forced on local governments in Queensland. He is not interested in workers; he is just interested in power. He is interested in union power and imposing that on the good people of Queensland. Let them have their say. This bill would not have been necessary had it not been for the actions of an out-of-touch, arrogant Queensland Labor government. (Time expired)

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