Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The Governor-General in his address to the parliament at the beginning of this week commented on the change of government and said ‘how fortunate we are to live in a nation where governments change hands peacefully as a result of the free expression of the will of the people’. The smooth transition that there has been from the previous government to the new government, largely without great bitterness within the electorate, is indeed a tribute to our traditions and our democracy.

As a member of the outgoing government, I cannot say it was a period without pain. There was the disappointment, naturally, of having to say farewell to faithful staff, of meeting for the final time departmental officers who had served the government faithfully with fearless advice and assistance over the years, and of the knowledge that many of the people who had worked for the previous government would no longer have employment—all of those sorts of things were sad.

At the outset, I take the opportunity to thank my own personal staff, who made my role as a minister much more pleasant, enabled us to achieve some very worthwhile things and ensured that the government was also able to achieve worthwhile objectives for Australians. But there is a new government, and I congratulate them on their election.

There is a situation in Australia at present where, for the first time in our history, Labor is in government in every state, in every territory, and now in the Commonwealth. That of itself gives me concerns, because the absence of checks and balances is indeed a potential threat to our democracy. If Labor abuses its position of absolute power then the comments of the Governor-General about peaceful transition and the way in which we as a country go about changing our governments would indeed be at threat.

Labor has a particular responsibility, in view of its all-powerful position, to ensure that it consults effectively with the community and to ensure that it listens—that it does not just hand-pick an audience to receive an address from the Prime Minister and a few cabinet ministers, that when it chooses advisory committees it does not just choose the old Labor faithful but in fact obtains advice from people with alternative views. It will be particularly important with the sorts of issues that are potentially divisive in the community that it recognises that Labor comes from a particularly narrow base at the present time: 70 per cent of the frontbench are trade union officials. Labor is not just influenced by the trade union movement—it is a wholly owned subsidiary.

Substantial funding for Labor campaigns come from the trade union movement, yet only a handful of Australia’s workers are actually in the trade union movement, and it has been steadily dying over the years. It has a disproportionate representation within the policy-making processes of the Labor Party, whatever they might be, and certainly expects to be very powerful within the new government.

In this context I also refer to the funding imbalance that is becoming apparent in the electoral process around Australia at present. In state election campaigns, Labor can be expected to spend six, eight or 10 times the amount that its opponents are able to muster. In the last federal election, whilst the coalition and Labor spent broadly the same amount of money, there was a new player in the field—the trade union movement—that spent more than everybody put together. Our democracy, referred to so generously and accurately by the Governor-General in his speech, can in fact be put at threat if there is not a strong and healthy opposition and that opposition does not have the resources to be able to effectively question the government when issues arise. So there will be a close observance about the way in which Labor uses its absolute power.

There are concerns in the community that those interests that are legitimate and contributing to our country but are not highly thought of by the trade union movement and Labor will lose out. That will be damaging to our country. Labor and its newly elected members need to heed the advice that I think most of us are given when we arrive in this place: not all wisdom sits on the one side of the parliament. Useful contributions can be made by both sides. It is important that we seek to work constructively. Our government has accepted the judgement of the people. We acknowledge that there has been a change. We want the new government to govern in the interests of our country. I hope that they will be prepared to listen to the views of others when significant issues arise.

From a personal perspective, I thank the people of Wide Bay for returning me as the member for their area. It was a challenging campaign, but I am pleased and grateful to the people of my electorate for entrusting me with their confidence. My electorate was substantially changed. I particularly acknowledge the support received from the people of Noosa and district, who were added to my electorate this time. They did not want to be in the electorate of Wide Bay. It is a part of the Sunshine Coast. People of Hervey Bay that were moved out of my electorate into Hinkler did not want to be taken away.

We had a pretty dreadful redistribution in Queensland this time. I am not saying that it was particularly politically balanced—it was not. All Queensland members can draw attention to the ridiculous lines that were drawn on the maps. Almost every coastal city is split in two for no logical reason. That makes it very difficult for people to identify with their local member. Why were one or two suburbs taken out of Maryborough and put in an electorate with Bundaberg? Why was a bit of Bundaberg put into an electorate with Gladstone and, for that matter, with Longreach? It is just not logical. This was, frankly, the poorest redistribution I have ever seen. In the redistribution that comes up in Queensland again in the next couple of years, I hope that there will be a correction and that some of these illogical boundaries will be properly aligned.

In my own electorate, whilst my result was better than in most places, I really should have got every vote, because there were so many issues in the electorate where people were being very critical of Labor. I have three headline issues that particularly affected my electorate. The first was Labor’s local government amalgamations, forcibly amalgamating councils throughout Queensland into mega regional governments.

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