Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, not many councils in my area know much about it. I come from the Wide Bay statistical region, which is made up of the electorates of Hinkler and Wide Bay. I take some pride in having worked on a lot of projects that got unemployment down in my area in the time I have been the member, especially under the Howard government. When we came to power, one month after we actually came into the parliament with the removal of the Keating government, unemployment in my area was 8.3 per cent. In the month before the Rudd government took office—you will recall they did not sit over the Christmas-New Year period; they sat in February—unemployment was sitting at 3.9 per cent. But it is moving up: 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.5 again and 4.8 in the last five months.

My Centrelink figures are interesting too. They came down to nearly one-third of what they were under Labor. The figure was 6,000 under Labor, down to 2,300 in the time that I was a member of the Howard government. But, since Labor came to power, the figure of 2,300 has now gone up to 2,800 on the Centrelink lists, and in Hervey Bay, the other part of my electorate, it has gone from 1,000 to 1,400. In the face of those sorts of figures, how you can honestly look this parliament in the face and say, ‘We have created 75,000 jobs with our first package and we’ve consolidated 90,000 with the second,’ is totally and utterly bewildering.

But let us move on to some other features of the package. The sum of $12.4 billion to primary and special schools for libraries and assembly areas is quite a commendable objective, as are the $1 billion for science labs and language centres and the $1.3 billion for maintenance, up to $200,000 per school. Have you really sat down and looked at how you are going to do that? You will find that, if you analyse this, in the school package you are going to have to build 20 buildings or major renovations per day—not per week or per month but per day—and over 2½ years you will have no chance. Let me say this to you: the fact that it has got to the point where you have to bail out the state Labor governments says it is the most appalling demonstration of their utter failure to look after the kids in state schools across this country.

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