Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Roads and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I have heard a great deal so far in this debate on the appropriation bills, especially from government members championing the decisions made by their government on the funding that has gone into their electorates. So many of them, I note, are metropolitan electorates. Conversely, I represent a very regional and remote electorate—about a third of Australia and 1/150th of its population. I am amazed that I am hearing so many glowing reports about this budget, because my people are despairing; they have been gutted. They have had snatched away so many good programs, programs which had been introduced by the previous government.

There is something that amazes me even more. I have been listening incessantly to the chorus, the chortling, that goes on behind Minister Albanese as he talks about the ‘rorting’ that went on by the ‘dastardly’ Howard government in having a program that selected chairmen from regional areas to head up area consultative committees and that channelled funds into regional areas where they were desperately required—to improve the ambience, to improve service delivery and to improve job opportunities and the general liveability of those towns. We have been repeatedly told by Minister Albanese how all of this funding was nothing but pork-barrelling. Every time the Regional Partnerships fund was mentioned, you would hear the chortling of the now government members in unison about what a dreadful act it was to be involved in pork-barrelling. Well, me smells pork right now!

We have just heard much in the main chamber about how this new government has decided to honour all of its election promises. It has created a funding program called Better Regions, which is going to provide $176 million to fund all of the promises made during the election campaign. It is going to, amongst other things, fund a project in Mandurah, in Western Australia. Mandurah, coincidentally, is a marginal seat headed up by the member for Brand, Gary Gray, who also is the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia and heads up the Office of Northern Australia. Miraculously, his Better Regions program—the only one funded in Western Australia—has got a guernsey. There is no smell of pork there!

Apart from that, of course, there is Fort Street High School in Petersham, which happens to be in Minister Albanese’s electorate. It was outside the area designated for funding for acoustic insulation when we were trying to combat the excessive noise in the vicinity of Sydney airport. Fort Street High School was not in the area that justified funding—it missed out, as did its neighbours and other similar institutions in the area that were not in the area designated appropriate for funding. The school had repeatedly called for funding, but that did not get it into the area. The simple fact is that if you are not in the area for funding you do not get the funding—under a reasonable government. Yet—hello!—suddenly the government have found $14 million to put in acoustic insulation in a school that was not justified in receiving it because it was not in the area that justified funding for a project such as reducing aircraft noise. People involved in the project have confessed they could have built a couple of schools for that $14 million. But Minister Albanese is bold and loud in his approval of such funding being granted. I dare say he feels quite justified. It is, after all, his electorate.

One thing appals me most in this budget—that is, apart from the destruction of the very fine program Investing in Our Schools and an AusIndustry program called Commercial Ready, which allowed product manufacturers with an idea who wanted to move into an overseas market to develop that product and receive some assistance from the federal taxpayer. Those good ideas are gone. But what offended me as much as anything else was that, on the night of the budget, Treasurer Swan removed the exemption for excise on condensate from natural gas. Many of the members of this place will have no understanding of the ramifications of that move at all, but they voted the legislation through. They passed the Excise Tariff Amendment (Condensate) Bill 2008. In doing so, they put at risk investment in Australia’s petroleum industry. Right now there are multiple billions of dollars waiting for investment off the Western Australian coast and off the Northern Territory coast. Somewhere in the vicinity of $50 billion is waiting to be invested. This move on the night the budget was handed down by Treasurer Swan put that at risk.

One of the main attractions that investors find in investment in Australia is the very, very low sovereign risk. When treasurers overnight make decisions that can in the forward estimates period, the five years, take $2.5 billion out of Woodside Petroleum’s bottom line, that is unforgivable. What is it that this Rudd government has against the investors in Western Australia? What does he hate about Woodside shareholders that he would make such a move? This was an unforgivable move, but a move that the member for Oxley nevertheless said was simply ‘the stopping of a tax loophole; a loophole that needed to be plugged’—a loophole, I might add, that has been going on very satisfactorily, attracting industry investment in Western Australia and Australia at large, since the handing down of the 1977-78 budget, when Phillip Lynch handed down the budget because of the very necessary and delicate negotiations between the Woodside partners, the Western Australian government and the federal government to get underway what was then the largest ever infrastructure investment in Australia.

For Woodside and their partners to make a positive decision to develop the North West Shelf gas fields, they needed some sort of contribution from the taxpayers of Australia. The then Premier of Western Australia, Sir Charles Court, was prepared to make the negotiation. He was prepared to have vision. He was, I grant you, criticised at the time but he entered into a deal that saw a take or pay contract for domestic gas entered into. Those sorts of financial arrangements allowed this mammoth project—at the time worth some $13 billion—to get underway. It advanced the Western Australian economy like no financial decision ever made before.

The exemption from excise on condensate was one of the key financial planks in the decision to go ahead—and it was simply struck down in the dark of night by a Prime Minister-Treasurer combination that obviously does not care about working families if they happen to be shareholders of Woodside. This Prime Minister constantly rabbits on about working families—forgetting about pensioner families or families who are unable to work through some degree of incapacity—but then does in the eye overnight Woodside shareholders to the tune of $2.5 billion over five years. One can only presume that it is going to have an effect of $500 million on the bottom line of Woodside each and every year.

One of the vital aspects that is raised by such a decision is: what impact is this decision going to have on the price of a litre of LPG on the streets? When motorists took the decision to convert to LPG as a result of the very generous $2,000 contribution that the previous government made for a conversion from unleaded fuel to LPG, do you believe that they thought that they would run the risk of being dudded in a couple of years time by excise being placed on LPG, putting it through the roof by another 25c a litre? I do not think they did. When they voted for this Rudd government to come in and dominate politics in Australia, I wonder if they thought that the Rudd government would put at risk the future of motorists using LPG. They took that decision in good faith. They supposedly elected this ratbag government on the basis of the promises made in the lead-up to the election but they did not expect to be dudded on the night of the budget with a decision that will have such a disastrous impact.

The Prime Minister has thus far not been able to make any commitment that the price of LPG will not rise as a result of this decision. And I put this government on notice that, if as a result of the decision by the Treasurer announced on budget night to impose the excise to the tune of $2.5 billion—which impacts directly on Woodside shareholders—the taxation department now collects excise on LPG, this government deserves to be brought crashing down by a public who know that they deserve better treatment.

So much disappointed me in this budget. I am pleased to say that the tenacity of the opposition has now brought Minister Albanese to his knees. He has now decided to backflip on 86 projects that, remember, he previously condemned as pork-barrelling.

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