Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I always find the contributions of the member for Kennedy interesting. I have tremendous support for him because he does represent a very core constituency in the Queensland population. His contributions are entertaining, but the points he makes are often very valid. I disagree with him in respect of the stimulus package and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, because what we are doing here with infrastructure is in the great tradition of Galbraith and Keynes. I have had many discussions with school principals and councils in my area, and my local community welcomes this contribution, this package, because it will make a difference locally in my community.

I remember a tutorial with Professor Ken Wiltshire when I was at the University of Queensland many years ago. We were sitting in the Michie Building, and he was discussing the Australian Federation. I cannot remember much about what he taught us, but in that lecture he said that what kept him awake at night was the additional cost to the Australian taxpayer as a result of the duplication of jurisdiction between state and federal governments and of the various government departments. Well, I think it is time for a new architecture, a new structure, of federation.

I am sure our founding fathers would have considered the federation and the allocation of responsibilities under section 51 of the Australian Constitution differently if they looked at Australia in 2009 as opposed to the 1890s. But we are left with a legacy of the Australian Constitution as it currently is. Our record as a country of changing that allocation, of changing that jurisdiction, is not good. Eight out of 44 referenda have been successful, with only one from our side of politics being successful. Even with a bipartisan approach to changing the jurisdiction of the federation and the responsibilities of the state and the federal governments, we have not been particularly successful. But money talks, and historically we have seen a change, with agreements between the states and the territories on one hand, and local government with them, and the federation. We have seen, for example, tremendous changes in areas like defamation law, in the slow movement and improvement in evidence law, in family law and in Corporations Law. But when it comes to the federation, money really counts.

We have seen the unedifying and undignified premiers conferences at various stages where premiers and territory leaders have come cap in hand to the federal government, not knowing what they were going to get. Sometimes those meetings resembled a love-in and sometimes they resembled a divorce. But what is really needed is security of financial support for the states and territories. We need a new architecture of cooperative federalism and funding arrangements, as the Treasurer in his second reading speech said on 12 February 2009.

The Federal Financial Relations Bill 2009 and the Federal Financial Relations (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2009 see some tremendous changes in the way we are dealing with the states. In the last federal election if you listened to the coalition members campaign you would have thought, from the way they were going on, that they were running for state and territory seats. In my electorate my predecessor constantly criticised the state government over a variety of different things. He criticised them and the Ipswich City Council repeatedly over responsibilities that were clearly state and local responsibilities, without almost any reference to federal issues. He never even once mentioned Work Choices in his campaign.

This legislation has real impact when it comes to providing financial assistance to my local community of Blair in Queensland in terms of health, education, disability services and affordable housing. It will make a real impact, and that is why I am very pleased to speak in support of the bill. Specifically, there will be ongoing financial support through general revenue assistance, national specific purpose payments and national partnership payments to support the delivery of specified outputs or projects to facilitate reforms. So this will help Queensland, where I come from, and the 20 national partnerships agreed at the COAG meeting will also help my area.

Queensland is a fast-growing state. We grew by 98,000 people last year. New South Wales grew by just over 70,000. One in seven people in the country live in South-East Queensland and South-East Queensland will grow to about 4.2 million people in the next decade or so. So these types of reforms and this particular architecture and funding agreement will help enormously in my area. I want to speak specifically about some of the changes and some of the impacts this will have on my constituency of Blair in Queensland. Blair makes up about 70 per cent of the city of Ipswich, all of the Lockyer Valley and the old Fassifern Valley in the old Boonah Shire. So geographically it is a regional and rural seat. About 60 per cent of the population live in urban areas and about 40 per cent live on farms and in small farming communities.

This funding will make a big impact in my area, particularly in health. The Ipswich Advertiser in its 4 February 2009 edition accurately stated the comments of Sharon Oxenbridge, the CEO of the Ipswich and West Moreton Division of General Practice. The headline reads: ‘Doctor Shortage Worsens’. We only have one GP for every 1,609 people in Ipswich and the West Moreton area. That is a direct consequence of the failure of the Howard government with respect to health funding. The Institute of Health and Welfare, in their report before the last election, made it very clear that the previous Howard government had failed in terms of health funding, and that specifically had an impact on my area. I am pleased to say that the Rudd government, in its rollout of health reforms and with what it is doing locally in Ipswich, will provide $2.5 million for a GP superclinic. A number of people have tendered for that particular project. But we are also providing $100,000 per annum for the after-hours clinic near Ipswich Hospital, which takes the pressure off the Ipswich Hospital accident and emergency rooms, which are under so much pressure. In Ipswich we are seeing 5,000 to 8,000 people coming into the area every year. We need a new classroom every week in the Ipswich and West Moreton area. That shows the extent of the growth in population. So providing more health care through the provision of this type of financial assistance will help my area enormously. The extra training of doctors, which we are doing under our $1.1 billion COAG process, which came as a result of the agreements reached with the states and territories and is reflected in the funding arrangements under these bills, will make a big difference.

It is to the eternal shame of the Howard government that they capped the number of training places for doctors. We are seeing the consequences in my electorate of the failure of the Howard government with respect to health provision. Certainly we can see that directly in the local area. Just north of my area, in the electorate of Dickson, we have the Esk Hospital, where the current member for Dickson has not been able to secure adequate funding to alleviate the long list of people who need oral health care. We have a big waiting list up in that hospital in the seat of Dickson. Despite the fact that he is the shadow minister and was Assistant Treasurer, he has failed to attend to that particular problem in his electorate.

We have seen tremendous need locally in the Ipswich and West Moreton area, the Lockyer Valley and the old Boonah Shire for more federal government funding. They have been crying out for it for many years, and the Rudd government is taking every step to provide it. There is massive expansion in undergraduate clinical training places in public hospitals and other health settings being undertaken by the Rudd Labor government—the single biggest investment in the health workforce made by an Australian government. This will have a big impact on my electorate and locally, and I commend the Minister for Health and Ageing for her commitment to my constituency through the provision of the GP superclinic and the after-hours funding.

On school funding specifically, I, like many people on this side of the House, have been visiting schools in my constituency and meeting with school principals. Last Wednesday I met with almost all the school principals in my electorate who are with the state school system at a meeting organised by the Queensland Teachers Union and held at Ipswich International Hotel. The feedback I got from that meeting was universal applause for the federal Labor government for its commitment to education. It is a fact that, to get public education back to where we were at the beginning of the Howard government, we would have to spend $1.6 billion. Professor Morrow has established that in the analysis undertaken for and on behalf of the Australian Education Union. So the school principals in my electorate in the state system have warmly applauded the Rudd Labor government’s initiative. I have attended a number of P&C meetings in the last week and have committed to act in my constituency as their personal ombudsman to ensure that local people will deliver local solutions and that we will deliver local employment in my area of Blair. So the school funding arrangements covered by this kind of bill, with the appropriations under this bill, will help my constituency enormously.

The Rudd Labor government’s initiative in education to change the funding arrangements for primary schools will make a big difference. It is incomprehensible that the Howard government did not do this. This comes directly out of the COAG meetings. An additional $635 million over the next four years will be given to primary schools, many of them in my constituency. I have 63 primary schools and 15 high schools in my constituency. I have eight state high schools, two grammar schools, one Lutheran school, one Anglican school and three Catholic schools. They will benefit also, because a number of those schools, like WestMAC in Ipswich, have a primary school component to them; WestMAC is a P-12 school. They will benefit enormously. The Ipswich Girls Grammar School and the Ipswich Grammar School will also benefit, because they have junior schools—primary schools—as well. So they are very happy. I have had meetings with Florence Kearney and Denis Frederiksen, the principals of the Ipswich Girls Grammar School and the Ipswich Grammar School—the boys school—respectively, in the last couple of weeks, and they are very happy with the funding. I had a meeting with Deidre Anderson, the Principal of St Mary’s College, a Catholic girls school, and Brendan Lawler, the Principal of St Edmund’s College, a Catholic boys school. These are all high schools in my constituency. So the private schools are also happy with the funding that we are putting into my area. To change the index to help the primary schools was a great initiative, and it comes as a direct result of the cooperative federal arrangements that the Rudd Labor government has undertaken in the new National Education Agreement achieved on 1 December 2008.

The other thing that will really help my constituency is the funding that comes as a result of the COAG agreement; again, the funding for this comes through these bills. That is the $807 million for legitimate on-costs for the computers in schools program. That will make a big difference to my area. We have seen in the last few weeks $1.3 million allocated to begin the digital revolution in the seat of Blair. We have seen state schools and private schools, including St Peter Claver College, a great Catholic school in Riverview, which is a working class area in my constituency. We have previously allocated $2.4 million for their building program, and we are now giving them $220,000 for computers in schools in that area. That makes a big difference to the lives of kids in that working class community. It is not just in the eastern part of my electorate but at schools like Faith Lutheran College, a wonderful little Lutheran school, which received $39,000 worth of computers as well.

This sort of funding coming out of the COAG process and covered by this particular legislation will make a big difference in the lives of kids in my area, and not just that. When you think about it, it is also assistance given to kids to learn about trades, and that is so important in today’s difficult times, with a global recession and with so many of our trading partners in recession. It is things like the Ipswich Trade Training Centre, where St Eddie’s as well as the two grammar schools got together. These young men and young women will learn about the wet trades, carpentry and other sorts of things. It is things like the recent announcement of $1.5 million for the Lockyer District Trade Training Centre, where engineering, automotive and mechanical learning will be undertaken by kids in the Lockyer Valley. These things make a big difference in my area in terms of skilling the local community in this difficult time.

I want to thank the Deputy Prime Minister very much for the funding for computers in schools and for the trade training centres, all of which come through a cooperative relationship with our state and federal colleagues. I see the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services is here. The Ipswich and West Moreton area has had a long history of institutionalised care for people with disability, going back to the old days of the Challinor Centre. I also see in the House Deputy Speaker Slipper. His family is a longstanding Ipswich family. He was practising as a lawyer in Ipswich when I commenced practising as a lawyer, so I knew him in those days. Ipswich, as he well knows, has a long history of caring for those with a disability. The old Challinor Centre was called a lunatic asylum many years ago.

In the Ipswich Art Gallery you can see some woodwork displays by one of the residents of Challinor, Peter Harley. It is a fantastic display of woodwork that was undertaken during his many decades of living in the Challinor Centre. I give credit to the former Deputy Premier and local member Sir Lou Edwards, who made a big impact and fought valiantly to deinstitutionalise the Challinor Centre, and to the subsequent occupant of the state seat of Ipswich, the former Queensland Treasurer David Hamill, who also helped people suffering from disability to live in the local community, to be accepted as part of the local community and to receive ongoing support.

The University of Queensland’s Ipswich campus’s research centre is studying the impact of disability on the local area. The Ipswich research centre is looking at the ongoing care of the people of Ipswich and studying how the health needs of this fast-growing area will impact upon the decision making in the state and federal arena in terms of health provision. The $5.3 billion that we have announced to provide better support for people with disability will make a big impact on so many people who live in my constituency. It will also help community groups like FOCAL and CODI in Ipswich. FOCAL is the Friends of Challinor Assistance League, and CODI is a great group that provides transport assistance for people with disability. The Lockyer Valley Disability Support Group, which is based in Laidley, is also an organisation that cares for people with disability in the Lockyer Valley. The Boonah Hydrotherapy Support Group came about as a result of my overtures to get funding for a Boonah hydrotherapy complex.

These groups need financial support, and the Rudd Labor government is delivering this. I want to pay tribute to Jenny Macklin, the Minister for Family, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong. He is here today. These kinds of funding announcements will impact locally in my area. These wonderful community groups which care for people with a disability need financial support. For many years, they got very little under the Howard government—to its eternal shame.

COAG has an ambitious reform agenda within the area of disability. These types of bills that we are passing today will provide the financial assistance for groups like CODI, FOCAL, the Lockyer Valley Disability Support Group and the Boonah Hydrotherapy Disability Support Group. These groups need our financial support for the work they do. They are the unsung heroes in our community. This bill and its accompanying bill will help those groups, and I commend the bill to the House. It is one of those bills that I really appreciate. It is a wonderful piece of legislation that will help my area locally not just the nation nationally.

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