Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the previous speaker on his first speech. I also join with him in his remarks recognising the very long and good service of his predecessor, the former member for Corangamite, Stewart McArthur, who served that community and this parliament with great distinction over a long period of time.

I am pleased to speak in this address-in-reply debate following the election and my being elected for the third time as the member for Casey. All 150 of us in the House of Representatives are very fortunate to represent the communities that we do. We represent every corner of Australia. This House brings together a diverse range of people, representing the great diversity that is Australia. To be a member of this parliament is indeed a privilege.

In listening to the first speeches of the new members from both sides, I found it refreshing to hear members recognise those people who helped them so much. None of us can get elected to this parliament on our own. We all know that. You need the great help and support of family and friends and, of course for most of us in this chamber, of our respective parties. It is important to recognise the great democratic role that our parties do play.

We all look back to election day—Mr Deputy Speaker Bevis, you have had more election days than me—and at the sheer process of the party organisation in making sure that the right number of people are handing out how-to-vote cards at so many booths. You hope that the couple of hundred people involved all turn up on time and at the right place. The first thing I think about when the alarm goes off on election day is that everyone has turned up and that they are all in the right spot. It is something that the major parties do not recognise enough. While we have different views on so many policy issues, we recognise that the members of our respective parties are truly dedicated to the causes we believe in and that they play a critical role in our election to this parliament.

I want to thank my campaign team. Of course, those who helped numbered in the hundreds, but I particularly want to thank the Liberal Party campaign committee in the federal electorate of Casey. They include the state member for Kilsyth, David Hodgett, who was the chair of the campaign; Annette Stone, the electorate chair; Jill Hutchison; Christine Fyffe, the state member for Evelyn; Fran Henderson; Neil Gryst; Clive Larkman; Jim Dixon; Ralph Inglese; Peter Manders; Bryan McCarthy; and John Lord. I particularly want to pay tribute to them for the tireless efforts they put in on my behalf and on behalf of the Liberal Party to run a first-class campaign last October and November in the electorate of Casey. As I said earlier, without the efforts of these people and of so many others, my election would not have been possible—and that is true of every member in this House at this time.

The major parties and the party system get a pretty poor wrap from time to time. The party system does have its faults, but they are absolutely overshadowed by the contribution that the system makes to this parliament and to our democracy in Australia in giving it stability and order. Obviously I was very disappointed in the election result of last November, but that the transition to a new government took place in such a smooth way was particularly Australian and democratic. There has been much said and written about the wonderful democratic culture that allowed that to occur.

But the other thing that is not often recognised is that so much of that stability, order and ability for a smooth transition very much rests on the fact that we have major parties—the Liberal Party of Australia in coalition with the National Party, and the Australian Labor Party—here in this parliament. I do not say that in any way to denigrate the role of Independents but I do not shy away from the fact that if this House were filled with 150 independents, you would not have had the smooth transition that we had. The major parties bring stability and order to the democratic process so that the will of the people can be easily identified. A new government can be formed, sworn in and begin work prior to the commencement of parliament, and there is a certainty about a government being able to bring its program forward. I think it needs to be recognised in this debate that, for all the criticism of the major parties that occurs, without them this parliament would be a very different place. You only need to look to those parliaments around the world where there are multiples and multiples of parties and the lack of stability that brings to their system.

While I am talking about the election result of last year I want to spend some time, as you would expect—and I know as the minister opposite would expect—talking about the important legacy of the previous government. We left the country and the economy in very good shape. Having said that, we fully expect, as is the role of an opposition, to be blamed for absolutely everything that goes wrong for a considerable period of time. That is part and parcel of politics, but it does not square with the facts of the matter, particularly in terms of economic management.

In 1996, when we took the government benches, the budget situation and the economic situation in Australia were very different from what they are today. I particularly point out that the $96 billion of debt—and we hear that figure repeatedly—was a very real figure. It had been caused by successive budget deficits of $10 billion, $11 billion and more, which in today’s dollars is much bigger when you consider that the size of the budget has pretty much doubled. It had a very real impact on what the federal government could do. Part of the problem was that we had a failing tax system—a system that could not provide the revenues that a federal government needs to perform the important services that we all care about. We have a lot of differences, but we all care about education, health, defence and all the other key issues. But to fund those issues requires not only a strong economy and a strong budget position but, importantly, a strong revenue base. When we set about tax reform, it was absolutely key to providing the stable revenue base that is the backbone of the budget and our economy today.

Of course, we were opposed in effecting that reform. I remember, and it has been said often in this parliament, that the now Prime Minister particularly—and he was not alone—opposed that tax reform. He declared in this House in 1999:

When the history of this parliament, this nation and this century is written, 30 June 1999 will be recorded as a day of fundamental injustice—an injustice which is real, an injustice which is not simply conjured up by the fleeting rhetoric of politicians. It will be recorded as the day when the social compact that has governed this nation for the last 100 years was torn up.

Of course, as we approach the ninth anniversary, he does not believe that. He was engaging in cheap political point-scoring. We know he does not believe that, because he is not seeking to reverse either those reforms or what they have provided. But that tax reform, which was introduced with great opposition, and the paying off of government debt have left this country and particularly the new government in a very strong financial position. I will give you some idea of what $96 billion of government debt was costing the budget each year: about $8½ billion. With government debt paid off, that $8½ billion can now be spent on things other than interest. It is $8½ billion that is free to be spent on all sorts of priority areas.

Budget deficits are now being replaced by budget surpluses, and the talk of the budget is not how big the deficits will be but how big the surpluses will be. We have future funds that have been created, but that $8½ billion every year importantly enabled the previous government to fund new programs that could not have been envisaged when we were saddled with high debt, recurring deficits and a tax system failing to provide the revenue that the nation needed. Specifically, it allowed the government to step in and bypass state failure in a number of key areas. It enabled the government to step in and create community partnerships and direct communal links from the federal government right down to the local level.

I specifically refer to the Roads to Recovery program, which is a good example, and I urge those opposite to keep that program. I specifically refer to the Investing in Our Schools Program, which enabled the government to step in, bypass the bureaucracy that was holding back our local schools and fund local schools for the sorts of programs and projects that they determined were important. The $1.2 billion program over four years helped a huge number of schools—particularly primary schools, who spent $800 million of the $1.2 billion. We point out to the House that that program has been abolished. It should not have been abolished. Our local schools will suffer, and that direct link to the federal government has been severed.

At the local level—and I know the member for McPherson, here with me, will share the same experience—it had a huge impact on local schools. In Casey, $6.7 million was delivered to 139 projects at 59 schools—that is every school, government and non-government—for all manner of things that were key priorities at the school, from a performing arts extension at the Croydon Secondary College to shade structures at Monbulk Primary School. Croydon Primary School spent a significant portion of its money upgrading its toilets because they were in a state of disrepair and had had no work for 20 or 30 years. The state government had failed and, because of the extra resources from paying off government debt, the previous federal government was able to step in and create that program.

Another important program was the security cameras and crime prevention program. I fear that that program will go the same way as the Investing in Our Schools Program. The federal government stepped in directly with local communities to fund crime prevention strategies and security cameras, and that had a huge impact. In the electorate of Casey, security cameras have been installed at Lilydale and Croydon and are to be installed at Mooroolbark and Mount Evelyn. In Lilydale where they have been installed, there has been a 70 per cent reduction in crime. I say to the members opposite, particularly the new members: your communities will want to pay on results. They will not be interested in problems being unsolved or in being told that problems will be solved by the state government one day.

These direct partnerships are being severed by the new government. They are being severed in the name of its so-called new dawn of federal-state cooperation. From election day, this government has proceeded to cave in to state pressure. As I said, it has done so already on the Investing in Our Schools Program and I fear it will do so on security cameras. But I predict that this new federalism, which will evolve from its heady days now to reality tomorrow, will become a serious problem for this new government down the track as the failing Labor states seek cooperation to slide back to their comfortable position of failure and low standards. Federal-state cooperation cannot be cooperation to cover up problems rather than fix them up.

In the first three months of this government, we have seen a federal-state Labor love-in, as you would expect, and it is being hailed as a new dawn. We saw that very much with the comments of the Treasurer and other new ministers at the time of the first COAG. Of course, right now, they can meet and congratulate each other, and they can blame every failure on the previous government. They can blame every failure on John Howard. They can do that for a period of time. That was the way of the Labor states. Whatever problem occurred in the Labor states under the previous government, they pulled out that reusable fig leaf to blame the federal government for the whole period.

It is the case that right now the federal government and all the Labor state governments right across Australia are very much backslapping each other. The wedding has occurred. The confetti has been cleaned up. What will evolve in the future that will be important is how the marriage is going to work in practice. The difficulty for the federal government will be getting the states to actually perform their role. The state governments will want cooperation all right: they will want cooperation to cover up problems. If the Labor federal government does not agree to that cooperation to pretend things away, if it does not agree to cooperate to cover up state failure, in time the state governments will be blaming this federal government.

The real issue in federal-state relations is getting those state governments to meet their responsibilities. The rhetoric of blaming the previous government will work for some time, but soon, in reality, the important issues of actually fixing the problems that we have in our local schools and local crime hot spots will need to be addressed. The strategy may sound good now, but if the plan of the new government is to handball responsibility on all these issues back to the states—and it is pretty clear that that is the plan of the new government—we know what the result will be, because, when something is handballed to the states, they drop the ball. They do it every time. They cannot catch.

This federal government will hand back funds to the states for local schools, presumably, and then on the ground, when those projects are not being fixed like they were in the Investing in Our Schools Program, this government will be held to account. If the federal government decides to cave in to state pressure and abolish the Community Crime Prevention Program, that will be not just clear in this parliament but very clear in the electorates of those members opposite.

I would urge those opposite, as the heady days of this new federal-state marriage subside, to look with reality at the practice. I can say that Labor state governments certainly are not perfect, and state governments of a Liberal persuasion in the past have not been perfect either. At the end of the day, our responsibilities are to fix the problems in our local communities. At the moment, the only solution seems to be to handball every single responsibility back to the states so they do not have a light shone on their failure. As the states fail again in the future, as they have failed in the past, this federal-state cooperation will very much be a problem for this government that it will have to address in the months that lie ahead.

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