Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is with some degree of appropriateness that I follow the member for Canberra, the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, because he has encapsulated the core sets of values and overarching principles that motivate and activate our engagement with the global community in the struggle to provide an effective response to the millennium development challenges. More particularly in our region, he made reference to our self-interest because, with respect to the Pacific Island region, it is simply impossible to separate our interests as a neighbour, our strategic interests and our economic interests, with those that relate to international development assistance. In my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, I work very closely with the member for Canberra, and I put on record my appreciation of the very effective partnership that has evolved in that regard.

Because this particular forum will come to a close in about six minutes, I will use the opportunity I have today to address some of the more specific Australian issues, as well as some of my own electorate related issues, and return to the larger issues for which I have portfolio responsibilities, together with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, when I have the opportunity and parliament resumes after this coming break. I put on record now some general remarks about the budget context and the circumstances that confront me as a member of an electorate in the state of Tasmania and representing very proudly the people of its capital city, Hobart, as well as Glenorchy and now parts of Kingborough.

In the BBC program Yes, Prime Minister, the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister often confronts the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, with the proposition that something would be a courageous decision, and that is seen as code for a decision which is likely to create political controversy and to be resisted if the party in government is to not face some difficulties. But true courage in politics is actually about facing up to the realities that a community has to confront, doing things in anticipation of what is required and taking the necessary consequences that can be easily criticised. When this government made the decision in the teeth of the global economic crisis to make large expenditures to insulate, as best they could, Australia from the global recession and to play its part as a nation in a response that prevents what is a global recession becoming a global depression, that was truly a courageous decision. It was a courageous decision because it has been traduced consistently by the opposition, which is not willing to grapple with the huge complexities which the global community confronts, simply parroting phrases about debt.

You have to understand that when the world last faced consequences of the kind that it faced at the threshold of the great global recession that we have confronted, the world plunged into not a recession but a depression in the 1930s. This is the worst set of economic circumstances facing the globe since that time. At that time, leaders who did not have the benefit of the experience that we now have took measures that actually exacerbated the Great Depression. They retreated into isolation; they retreated into protectionism; they did not make large expenditure into infrastructure; they did not make the kind of spending commitments that the G20 has committed itself to; and as a result we faced a long and prolonged depression, with 20 per cent of people out of work in most of the developed world economies.

I do not pretend in any way to suggest that we are out of the woods in the difficulties facing Australia as a result of what is still a very deep global recession—those risks still remain—but we would have the best possible chance because this government took courageous decisions to inject funds into the community early and make infrastructure commitments that will have long-lasting benefit for all Australians in order to prevent that kind of consequence. We play our part both as a global participant in a larger set of decisions and domestically in a way which protects our community from the worst-case scenarios.

I look to my own electorate very briefly in the couple of minutes that remain. Since the Rudd government was elected, the seat of Denison has benefited from something approaching half a billion dollars. Of that I can identify $168 million in direct stimulus infrastructure funding in Denison alone to date. Some of the highlights include school upgrades—more than $7 million for much needed repairs and maintenance in 49 local schools. Ten of our primary schools have already been allocated $19 million to build new multipurpose halls and libraries, while the remaining local primary school upgrades will be announced in future rounds. Twenty-three new social houses, dealing with the very great scourge of homelessness, will be built locally and 36 dwellings are undergoing repairs and maintenance in our community. Three local councils, Hobart, Glenorchy and Kingborough, have received a total of $1.2 million to build local infrastructure.

Very large investments in our future in science have also been made. In research infrastructure, there is more than $52 million for the Integrated Marine Observing System hosted by the University of Tasmania; $45 million for the university’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies; and more than $44 million for stage 2 of the Menzies centre development. That is $168 million in direct stimulus infrastructure funding so far. In addition, the surrounding region has benefited from $164 million in federal government support for the Brighton bypass currently under construction and for the Kingston bypass. We are also getting large expenditure of $120 million for the replacement of the Southern Surveyor, the vessel that the CSIRO operates—making Hobart the centre of Antarctic and Southern Ocean science in Australia—with $29 million committed to Australia’s Marine National Facility to maintain the operations of the vessel pending its replacement. Small businesses and the all the community benefit—

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