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

I need to begin my remarks by commenting on and referring to the speech made in the other chamber by the member for Kennedy criticising me in a very vicious and unprovoked way in relation to a whole range of issues. I once admired and respected the member for Kennedy, and I have to say that I just feel sadness at the way in which he has degenerated into a fantasy world. Every paragraph of his vicious assault on me contained factual errors. I will go through those quickly and briefly.

He first criticised me in relation to the import of grapes from California, saying I allowed ‘grapes in from California in the same month that one-tenth of the entire grape production in California was wrecked by pierce’s disease’. That statement is factually wrong, but it also puts aside acknowledgement of the fact that our quarantine system and our import risk assessment is a science based process. The legislation specifically precludes the minister from having a role in making decisions about what products should come into Australia.

The member for Kennedy went on to comment on pork, talking about a case before the High Court which he said produced a ‘scathing indictment of the quarantine services’. The case was actually before the Federal Court and the Federal Court determined that the permits to import pig meat were legal and the analysis to determine the roles associated with imports of pig meat was comprehensive, science based and rational. The member for Kennedy then went on to comment that ‘every single quarantine official said’ that black sigatoka had come in from the Torres Strait. That also is factually inaccurate. There have been previous outbreaks of black sigatoka and, as far as I am aware, no-one is aware of how the disease came into Australia. But, if the Jardine ferry has a role in it, then the member needs to remember that intrastate quarantine is of course the responsibility of state governments.

The member for Kennedy commented that foot-and-mouth disease is endemic in the Indonesian archipelago. That is factually incorrect. He commented on citrus canker and allegations that citrus material was smuggled into Australia. I met the person who made those allegations. I found him credible, but in the end there was no collaboration for the stories that he presented. If the member for Kennedy has evidence that somebody smuggled citrus material into the Emerald district, then he must put that evidence forward. The Crown prosecutors examined the evidence and were not prepared to proceed with any kind of prosecution because they regarded the evidence as insufficient.

The member for Kennedy claimed that I allowed beef to come in from Brazil, a foot-and-mouth disease country. The beef that he was referring to was processed beef. It came from areas where there was no foot-and-mouth disease. It was disposed of when not required in Australia, in accordance with New South Wales law.

He then went on to say that I have made negative comments about ethanol—completely false. The reality is that I was the one who announced the very first commitment by an Australian government to ethanol. In the 2001 election campaign, we committed to having 350 million litres of ethanol in our fuel mix by 2010. I have been a committed and enthusiastic supporter of ethanol and actually delivered results. It is sad that in the bill currently before the House this government is actually cutting assistance to the ethanol industry in a very backward-looking initiative.

He also spoke about an ‘outbreak of white spot which has devastatingly damaged the prawn-farming industry of Australia’. That simply has not happened. He then criticised me for supporting the harvesting of flood waters in Northern Queensland. Of course this is fundamentally a state responsibility, but as minister I funded over $1 million of projects to identify ways of harnessing the waters of Northern Australia in an environmentally friendly way to make better use of the opportunities that are provided in that area.

He criticised my role in the introduction of the mandatory code of conduct for the horticulture sector and in the debate about the managed investment schemes. Frankly, he was never in the cabinet room so he has no idea what I argued in relation to any of those issues, but what he has said in those paragraphs is completely wrong and totally misrepresents my position.

He also criticises me for commenting that we needed to address the issue of woody weeds, particularly the prickly acacia tree. Again, weed management is a state responsibility, but under my term as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry we introduced a range of major new eradication programs for weeds and I put before the parliament a practical way to take those initiatives forward in an environmentally friendly way.

He criticised the assistance packages which the federal government has provided for the fishing industry, the tobacco industry and a number of other industries which have been adversely affected by deregulation. Does he suggest that the government should not have provided assistance to those industries? He accuses me of winding back the tobacco industry and then providing compensation for the farmers. The reality is that the wind-back occurred before my time as minister. The compensation package was after my term as minister, so he has given me credit there where it is not in fact due.

He blamed me for the deregulation of the egg, the sugar and the dairy industries. There were no federal regulations to be eliminated in any of those sectors. It was the states that eliminated the regulation of the egg industry, the sugar industry and the dairy industry. We came in to assist sugar producers and dairy producers because the states would do nothing to mitigate the impact, the appalling impact on those industries as a result of deregulation. So we put in place a $2 billion assistance package at the request of the dairy industry and something like $400 million to support the sugar industry. The egg industry deregulation fundamentally occurred before my time, so his references there to compensation are also inaccurate.

The member for Kennedy then went on to suggest that Ian Causley had resigned within four years because of his dissatisfaction with deregulation of the dairy industry. Ian’s name has been taken in vain. He retired, I think everyone would accept, because he had served a long and faithful time in the parliament—eight years after dairy deregulation.

Then perhaps comes the saddest part of all. At the end, the member for Kennedy made a statement that he has made before: ‘every four days in Australia a dairy farmer commits suicide’—every four days. That would mean 90 a year, 720 since dairy deregulation has occurred. I know there have been suicides in the dairy industry and indeed in a number of other industries, and it grieves me deeply, but it is simply ridiculous to suggest that a dairy farmer is committing suicide every four days. We did put in place programs to try to support farmers through these difficult times. The statement is simply wrong.

And finally he said that a sugar farmer commits suicide every two months. Again the statement is simply factually inaccurate. It is disappointing that the member for Kennedy resorts to these vicious personal attacks. His entire speech, with just one or two lines excepted, was a personal attack on me. I think it was unbecoming of him and certainly it did not reflect well on the processes of the parliament.

The bill that we are dealing with, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008, essentially involves some new government programs, but I want to talk particularly about the savage cuts that are included in this legislation. The venom with which the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and the Labor Party in government are attacking people who live in rural and regional Australia is alarming. The cuts that are being dealt with in this legislation will attack the victims of inflation and higher interest rates, not those who are causing the problems.

The biggest cuts to a range of programs have been in rural and regional areas. Many are targeting the poorest Australians. They will weaken the economy, not strengthen it. Labor said before the election that it would support the needy and the underprivileged, reduce petrol and grocery prices, deal with the skills shortages and plan for the future in areas of infrastructure and the environment. That was in 2007. Just a few months later Labor has cut funding that helped drought-stricken farmers and regional communities. It has speared research into alternative fuels. It has stopped a funding program for broadband internet access. It has smashed an apprenticeships scheme to skill rural workers. It has cut funding for the Bureau of Meteorology. It has abolished a program to help sea-change and tree-change communities deal with rapid growth. It has stripped funding for a program to protect children from internet perverts and it has sliced into one of the most important plans for Australia’s future: the National Plan for Water Security.

Many of these cuts represent broken election commitments. The excuse that the finance minister has made for these cuts is that they will put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates. The reality is that we all know that, even if these $600 million cuts were genuine, their impact on inflation would be negligible, particularly since an underestimation in one government announced program has already taken up $400 million of that money. Labor announced a program to give tax concessions to overseas companies in Australia which they costed at $15 million. We already know that the cost of that program is $400 million. So essentially all of these so-called cuts have already been lost.

But many of the cuts are not real. The minister has gone to great lengths to point out that no farmer will actually lose any of their drought assistance, and yet over $110 million of the $600 million comes from drought assistance. This is because there was a lesser number of applications than expected and so the funds will not be used. So in this instance it is not a real cut at all and its impact on inflation will clearly be nothing. However, there are genuine cuts to drought assistance. The decision to take $10 million off research and development for drought is a real cut and it means that this critical area of research and development will be lost. Once more, it breaks a Labor Party election promise. Labor said they would not cut research and development; within months they have slashed $10 million from important research and development work.

It has also decided to abolish the promotional campaign to make farmers and small business aware of their entitlements under the drought relief program. Labor is not technically cutting the drought assistance—not at this stage, anyhow—but it is not going to tell anybody how you can access it. It is not going to give any information to the very people who may need to access that information. In fact, I heard the Prime Minister say yesterday in question time that he is going to send the drought bus, which was part of the information program, up to Mackay, to the flood victims. The flood victims do need assistance, although Mackay has a fine Centrelink office and staff who have been able to do that work. The drought bus is being taken into the flood areas to keep it active because the government does not see a role for it anymore in telling drought-stricken farmers or businesses about their needs. These are real cuts that are clearly designed to disadvantage those people who need to access this funding.

The government wants to address inflation issues, and that is reasonable—it should do that. Good economic management requires that inflation be kept under control. However, Labor is making much of its five-point plan to deal with inflation and, frankly, none of those five points will do a single thing to put downward pressure on inflation for at least a decade. It is an empty plan. It has no vision at all on how to deal with inflation in the short to medium term.

Let us look at the five-point plan as announced by the minister on 6 February. The first point is: ‘achieve a budget surplus of 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2008-09, provided growth prospects remain as currently anticipated’. If, in fact, growth prospects remain as currently anticipated, we will have a 1.5 per cent budget surplus. The government do not have to do anything to achieve that. That has been delivered to them by the previous government and its sound economic management. So the first point is absolutely empty.

The second point is: ‘examine all options to provide real incentive to encourage private savings’. No plan—just an inquiry. An inquiry into private savings is not going to deliver any downward pressure on inflation, and we all know that. The third point is: ‘tackle chronic skill shortages in the economy’. It is important to deal with the supply of labour and skills to our economy. But, if the only solution to upgrading skills is to build trade colleges, that will take at least a decade, and probably even longer, before it delivers any significant additional numbers of skilled tradesmen into the workforce. It is not a solution for inflation today—or even next year or the following year. It is something that may need to be done, but it is something whose benefits are a decade off.

The fourth point is: ‘provide national leadership to tackle infrastructure bottlenecks’. It is a little unusual to have that claim coming from Labor, since it is the Labor states that failed to invest in the ports, neglected the rail system and ensured that bottlenecks were created in the first place. The previous government had committed huge funding sums to roads and to rail; and yet, in the first round of announcements, we are told that all of the commitments that the previous government made to infrastructure are now going to be sent off to a new bureaucratic organisation to be reviewed. So, in fact, nothing is going to happen to deliver relief from infrastructure bottlenecks for years while this bureaucracy re-examines all of the decisions that have been made previously. Never forget that the choice of priorities was not something that the previous federal government did alone. The state governments—all Labor state governments—were involved in the development of the priorities of the projects.

The other very interesting thing that has come through from Senate estimates is that the promises that Labor has made are not going to be subject to any scrutiny. They are just going to go ahead. But ones made by the previous government are going to be dissected and dealt with again. Labor in the last election campaign promised to spend less money on infrastructure than did the coalition—less money. So how can their current programs do anything to deliver downward pressure on inflation?

The final point is: ‘provide practical ways of helping people re-enter the workforce and remove disincentives to working hard—to lift workforce participation’. That is fine. Why, therefore, did the Labor Party oppose the Welfare to Work reforms, which were designed to increase workforce participation and to provide assistance to people who can enter the workforce to do what they can in the community? The fact is that this five-point plan is economic illiteracy. The government has no plan to address inflation over the medium term. It would be at least a decade before these initiatives could have any effect whatsoever.

I have to say that I really dread the day when the Prime Minister realises that his first choice of Treasurer is not up to the job and he appoints the finance minister to take his place, because the venom and the viciousness with which the finance minister has attacked programs—in his first round of cuts—which are designed to support some of the most disadvantaged people in the community is particularly disappointing.

In the short time that is left to me, I will refer to some of these specific cuts. It is interesting to note that the cuts will be made across quite a range of areas where the incoming government professes a particular interest. For instance, Labor says that it believes in reducing global warming, that it wants to do something about addressing greenhouse emissions, and yet these cuts take $15 million away from the FutureGen project. They take $16 million from the Asia Pacific Forestry Skills and Capacity Building Program and the energy technology network. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority is to lose $45 million from its critical work in trying to address the water issues in the Murray-Darling Basin. The Low Emissions Technology and Abatement program loses $2 million and, in another attack on people who live in country areas, the Renewable Remote Power Generation program is to have $42 million taken away. Does this government believe in renewable energy, or does it believe that is it just city people who should have renewable energy and people who live in remote areas should be denied that support? As I mentioned previously, $16 million is going from the ethanol support program. This government clearly does not believe in alternative fuels, because it is slashing the very program that would have been designed to achieve our objectives in relation to renewable energy.

The government has slashed the Australia Connected BroadbandNow program, designed to give regional people access to broadband services. And then the Growing Regions program has gone. Labor says it is interested in dealing with infrastructure. This was a program to provide infrastructure for the most needy communities in Australia—the fast-growing areas, the tree-change, sea-change areas, where there is a desperate need to provide infrastructure to support those fast-growing populations. This program was axed altogether. A government that says it is into infrastructure cuts road funding, cuts rail funding and cuts the program that would have provided infrastructure support for the most needy communities in Australia. These cuts are ill-targeted. They will do little or nothing to reduce inflation. The government has no plan to deal effectively with inflation, and these cuts can therefore only be seen as a get-square by a government wanting to attack people who live outside the capital cities. (Time expired)

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