Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance) Share this | Hansard source

I want to primarily discuss the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related bills—the budget—in my capacity as a parliamentary secretary and talk about development assistance issues, but before I do I want to briefly make some comments about some national issues and some issues particularly relating to my constituency. The fundamental long-term political significance of this budget is that it has already changed the public understanding of economic management. The economic responsibility equation has changed already and it is reflected in the opinion polls and also in public discourse. The irresponsibility of the spending of previous budgets and the irresponsibility of the spending proposals of the alternative budget is remarkably apparent. It is unwise to underestimate the capacity of the public to see through these things. That in such a short time the Treasurer has been able to establish a lead in the polls on the issue of responsible economic management is a very significant transformation of the political landscape as a result of this budget.

Of course, the debate around budget measures has provoked the usual flurry of short-term, post-budget diversions, with the immediate displacing of the important, and a phalanx of sanctimonious hypocrisy has come forward. We have had people claiming that putting a tax on luxury cars is a terrible imposition, when they are the same people who supported a tax on luxury cars for a decade. They are simply saying we should not change it from 25 per cent to 33 per cent. They are standing up and railing about the definition of luxury cars when the definition has not changed; what has changed is the rate. We hear the most sanctimonious hypocrisy, and it is galling but common. I think we need to cut through all the smoke and haze that surround the immediate, which causes great media frenzy but is of no lasting significance whatsoever, and go to the core of the budget, which is about economic responsibility, nation building and equity. From a national perspective, I am very proud to be supporting the budget.

From a local point of view, mine was the constituency where the alarm about what might happen was very great because of the alarmist talk that was going on about the catastrophe that would befall Canberra as a consequence of the budget. The alarmists have been proved wrong. We are a sector and a city that has taken a bit of a hit, but we have stopped relying on an unsustainable level of spending and got back to a spending base on which we can build. We could not sustain real spending increases of four per cent. Of course it was good in the short term for people in my constituency, and I enjoyed the fact that it meant that there was virtually no unemployment in my constituency. It was a very positive thing, but everybody knew it was unsustainable. We are now moving to a sustainable base.

I welcome the fact that in parallel with this budget and reflected in it is a major review of the role of the National Capital Authority. I do not wish to divert this speech to a discussion about the merits of that—we will deal with that when the review is concluded—but everybody in my constituency knows that I have been very critical of some aspects of the performance of the National Capital Authority. I welcome the review, I welcome the changes and I look forward to the process continuing.

The biggest issue for my constituency in this election related to measures involving universities generally and in particular with regard to the ANU. My constituency has more university campuses in it than any other in the country and they are a very important part of what makes the city tick—not just the ANU but the University of Canberra, the campus of the Australian Catholic University, the Defence Force Academy and, outside my electorate but still in Canberra, the campus of Charles Sturt University. All of those are an important part of Canberra and I welcome the establishment of the $11 billion education infrastructure fund. Not only is it bigger than the older Higher Education Endowment Fund; it is better structured. I was worried about that fund. I was pleased when it was set up and said after the previous budget that I welcomed it because it did create some capacity for enhanced funding of universities’ capital requirements, which was necessary. But there was a disjuncture between the investment profile that was needed to preserve the long-term viability of the fund and the capital requirements of the universities. It was better to have it than nothing, but it was not well structured for the purpose. The EIF looks to me to be a better proposition and I welcome that. I welcome the short-term $500 million provided to universities in the lead-up to the budget. That will be reflected in all the universities here in Canberra to which I have referred, other than ADFA, which is separately funded. In particular, I welcome the special recognition for the ANU, which has been disadvantaged by the formula operating for higher education funding for a long time.

I had a community meeting in my electorate recently, one of a series I have regularly all year round, in the Downer Community Centre in the inner north suburbs of Canberra in my electorate. I was pleased to be able to settle a couple of the myths that had spread and been perpetuated in public discourse, particularly as they related to the pensioners in my electorate. There were people who, because of the character of the public debate, seriously thought that their pension was no longer indexed, and I think people had been deliberately setting out to create that impression. They thought they were not going to receive the bonus when in fact they are. They thought there was no increase for them when in fact there is an approximately $1,000 a year increase for pensioners in the budget. So I am pleased that those who attended that meeting were able to leave satisfied—not that everything had been done for them or that we had finished the task of improving retirement incomes for pensioners but because they had been recognised in this budget and we had set the framework for enhanced recognition in the future. They are the local and national matters I wanted to raise.

In the remaining time, I want to focus on the budget as it relates to Australia’s International Development Assistance Program. As a person who has been engaged in this issue all his adult life, who for the 12 months before the election had the responsibility of developing policy alternatives for the then opposition and who now has responsibility for the new government in implementing these programs, this is a very exciting budget document for me. It is a key building block for the government’s long-term strategy to make our development assistance programs bigger and better. In travelling around the country since the budget I have been delighted to find people of different political persuasions, including some very conservative people, who made it quite clear that they had never voted for my party in their life—

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