Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I did not think when I came up here I would be so interested in the contribution of the honourable member for Riverina, who should ever after be known as ‘Kay Husks and Hull’. But I do support her and I want to place on the record that the New South Wales rice industry is a very efficient one. It certainly is a very environmentally concerned industry and it seeks constantly to improve not only its product but the way in which it is grown and manufactured. It not only depends on the Australian market for its livelihood but is a quality exporter to Japan and to Italy with the specialised rices. It has come a long way and I think, if my memory serves me correctly, it still has a single-desk marketing organisation. May I express the hope and the wish that it will always be so.

Like the honourable member, I too am a little aggrieved about a story I saw in the papers over the weekend. It referred to Westmead Hospital, which is of course one of the very big tertiary teaching hospitals in Western Sydney. If the honourable member for Parramatta were here, she would say that of course Parramatta is the capital, the beating heart, of Western Sydney, a region larger with a population than South Australia.

The article went on to say that Westmead Hospital is over budget and is being forced to restrict the number of operations at the hospital. I need to place on record again that this hospital is controlled by the Sydney university medical faculty—that is, a university whose existence is many kilometres outside Western Sydney. In fact, I refer to it as the university of east Sydney because that is a more geographically accurate description.

Part of the reason why they have run out of money is that they are doing operations that they should not do. What do I mean by that? Westmead should be doing the most complex of operations, the ones demanding the most skill. In fact probably today there would be between 80 and 120 patients who, quite correctly, should be in Blacktown Hospital given the nature of their illness not in Westmead Hospital. They should not be operated upon in Westmead Hospital. And what is the reason? The reason is that Blacktown does not have the equipment that it should have to be able to fulfil its mandate to the city of Blacktown.

Blacktown City, by the way, is the largest local government area in New South Wales. There are nearly a quarter of a million people living in Blacktown City. It is only the last redistribution that has brought my attention to the lamentable state of Blacktown Hospital and I say again and place on record my concern with the officials of the Sydney West Area Health Service that they have been captured by the medical faculty at the University of Western Sydney. Arguably, it is absurd that when we are building a medical faculty—and we have one and we are building it up—at the University of Western Sydney, why should the university of East Sydney control Westmead Hospital and Penrith Hospital? Surely, in our own region we should be able to control our own facilities, and it concerns me that equipment and budgeting money are skewed in favour of those hospitals dominated by the university of east Sydney.

I am aware that the state government and the Sydney West Area Health Service have applied for some $200 million of Commonwealth funding to bring Blacktown up to scratch. I think it should be brought up to scratch because we are the heart attack capital of New South Wales. We place at risk people who have heart attacks in Blacktown City because, essentially, they can be transported to Blacktown Hospital, they can be admitted but they cannot be dealt with and have to be on-transported to Westmead. Any delay in treating heart attack victims places at risk the severity of the attack and, indeed, even the possibility of a fatality. So why should so many people be transported out of Blacktown City away from Blacktown Hospital to Westmead? It is not good enough.

Also, Mr Deputy Speaker, the demographics of New South Wales show that we have the largest number in any area, city or country, of premature deaths of adults. People are dying in Blacktown who should be living. There is a complex solution to that. Part of it relies on community health; part of it relies on preventative health. But it also has to do with the acute facilities that are available to them.

I have never believed, ever since I have been in this place, that somehow the people of Western Sydney are second-class citizens or should be treated by any government as second-class citizens. Blacktown Hospital has been long neglected and I will support to the greatest extent possible these applications for funding. But I say to the New South Wales government that you have a serious problem in the highest echelons of management of the Sydney Area West Health Service. I note that Clair Blizzard, who I think was formerly at Mount Druitt Hospital—there is a twinning arrangement between Blacktown and Mount Druitt—has resigned because of the budgetary situation. But the budget is not the problem; it is the lack of facilities at Blacktown Hospital that has been ignored by the Sydney Area West Health Service for years and years. That is the biggest problem. Do not worry so much about the budget; start worrying about saving people’s lives and providing them with decent health care.

These appropriation bills involve implementing the government’s nation-building package, in particular the package introduced in December last year. One of my great disappointments in this unprecedented time of economic turmoil in the world is that, as Australians and members of this federal parliament, we were unable to come together in a bipartisan way. I do not believe there was any manual we could refer to or any aspect of history that would have benefited us in dealing with what is in modern times a very unique and difficult problem. But the truth is that we did not come together as a parliament. We could not sit down in a bipartisan way and agree that we had to take action and take that action with mutual support from both sides of parliament. Indeed, one of the criticisms was that we were taking action prematurely. We were jumping the gun; we were not waiting for modelling; we were in haste. Ironically, given the level of those arguments, it has turned out that we were on the money—that we had to take action. It was a proper and right thing for us to do for the Australian people to ensure that all deposit-taking institutions had a rolled gold guarantee.

It did not happen in other countries. Banks and insurance companies have folded in other countries, but not in Australia. Why? Because we decided we had to take action, unprecedented as it was. We wanted to cushion the inevitable hardship that will beset some of our fellow Australians. We wanted to boost consumer demand. What was the great criticism? ‘This is just a cash splash. You won’t get any benefit from it. The December figures did not show anything and it is all a great waste of money.’ That money, by the way, was in two parts, with some going to assist individuals and some going to nation building. One of the criticisms, of many criticisms by the opposition, was that it was poor-quality spending.

As the Minister for Finance and Deregulation said today in the House, in the December quarter figures only a few days captured the spending that occurred as a result of this package—only 13 days out of the quarter, if my memory serves me correctly. Even so, we still saw a benefit. Even so, we finished the year in positive territory. I think it is unfortunate that we could not adopt a bipartisan approach to it, but the opposition have opposed these measures. In terms of the global financial crisis they have said, ‘Let it rip.’ I suppose their argument is essentially that, if there is going to be unemployment, it will be better if the unemployment occurs in even greater numbers than we anticipated. We have taken a different approach.

We value every job in Australia. Sadly, there are people who are going to be jobless. But we are trying to cushion the blow. We are trying to ensure that domestic demand is kept at a really high rate. There are a whole raft of payments that are going out today. If my memory serves me correctly, 21,000 farmers will be having cheques sent in the mail to them today to try and see them through tough times. I am sure those farmers and the communities in which they live and will spend the money are going to be very grateful that that is the case.

These appropriation bills, I think, spend money on some very decent projects. The Black Spot Program was a very good project. We started it. One of the great mistakes we made—I think in 1995 or 1996—was to get rid of it. History shows that it was brought back in by the Howard government. The Black Spot Program gets an extra $60 million worth of investment. The essence of the program is that by spending money we are going to save lives. This money goes to the most accident-prone intersections, roads or whatever they may be, to ameliorate the situation, reduce the level of accidents and save lives. Is that a poor-quality investment? It has been described as such. Mr Deputy Speaker Schulz, can I say that in our own state the Bulahdelah bypass, a notorious stretch on the Pacific Highway, is receiving funding. In Queensland, the Douglas arterial on the Bruce Highway in Townsville is receiving funding, as are other projects.

I think there is some really good spending on workers, particularly apprentices. Not only are we trying to give employers and group training organisations all the money they currently receive for taking on an apprentice but we are now providing additional money for those organisations, small businesses and individuals who take on an out-of-work apprentice. In a downturn there can be nothing worse for someone who is an apprentice than to find themselves out of work and unable to complete their indenture. We are increasing the completion payment for apprentices to $1,000. This will make a total benefit of $2,800 for apprentices or trainees.

So I guess my argument would be this: the one thing that the Australian people can rely on is that the government are absolutely focused on doing the best that we can through nation-building projects in infrastructure and education. I have not spoken about education. As a member for one of the more disadvantaged electorates in Western Sydney, I am absolutely delighted by what we are doing for public schools and private schools. We are providing up to $200,000 for each school for maintenance. We are providing $3 million for each primary school. We are also funding science labs and language labs. Sadly, in the case of my electorate, some of the high schools would have to have a new emphasis on science and a new emphasis on language. But I hope they do. I think they are very important for this nation’s future. Sadly, they have not been emphasised enough in the high schools in my electorate, but this funding is available for all of them. I have always said that the most important thing in a school is actually what happens in the building—that is, the teaching. But isn’t it a great thing that we can actually offer modern facilities for them?

Of course, we also have the program providing computers for our high schools. If there is an information-poor electorate, I regret to say that it is mine. Getting these computers into schools and having them available for students is just terrific. We are in an information age and anyone graduating from school, at whatever year and in whatever they are inspired to do—whether it is entering the world of work, whether it is undertaking a diploma at TAFE, whether it is doing at apprenticeship or whether it is going to university—will need to be computer literate. They all need to be familiar with IT. Of course, our younger generation are much more skilled at it than you and me, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. But you have to start somewhere and, unfortunately, a lot of homes in my electorate do not have a computer. I suspect there may be the odd one in yours, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is so important that they have access to this. It staggers me that the opposition would have voted against this proposal for all our schools. I am delighted about this program and I know that teachers, principals, parents and the community are delighted about it. It is going to make such a difference to my electorate. I commend these bills and I look forward to voting in support of them in the House.

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