Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I wish the member for Gippsland well. He does not have any boundary changes—but he has effectively diverted me from what I was saying.

There are positives in this particular arrangement; it does involve local government. One of the great problems with the previous program was that it was open to abuse in a whole range of areas. It could be abused at the area consultative committee stage. I am not suggesting that of any of the staff. The staff of the New England North West Area Consultative Committee are very good, and the board members are, in the main, very good, but the position of the chair became greatly politicised in recent years. I think it was back in the early 2000s that the Chairman of the New South Wales National Party was made the chairman of the area consultative committee, so you can imagine what sorts of processes started to unfold. He was replaced some years later by the current National Party member for Barwon in the state parliament, so you can imagine what sorts of shenanigans were going on regarding funding streams et cetera. There were some quite blatant abuses of those funding areas, which the New England North West Area Consultative Committee embraced, and some of those are still under investigation. There was a development, value-adding, of an orange farm in the citrus industry. I think about $280 million was accessed through Regional Partnerships. A photograph was taken of a cheque being presented by the former Deputy Prime Minister. Nothing has happened; the money has gone but nothing has occurred. I am told that there are still some investigations into the probity of that particular process. There was a guideline within the Regional Partnerships process where what were called ‘competitive neutrality issues’ were breached. That has been clarified by this recommendation. By competitive neutrality I mean where favouring one business gives another business competitive advantage.

I disagree with the member for Hinkler and I agree with the previous member who spoke. I argued on the committee that the commercial organisations should not be funded through these discretionary funding arrangements. They should not be funded. They were funded. As with the citrus business that never occurred as one of those commercial activities, nothing ever happened. It was open to abuse at that particular stage and, within the electorate of New England, for instance, the breaches of the competitive neutrality guidelines did occur on a number of occasions.

There are two zeolite mines within 15 kilometres of each other; in fact, they can see each other’s dust on a still day. One was granted Regional Partnerships funding—they are private businesses—of something like $300,000 to upgrade its plant and equipment, not to do some marketing exercise with the Chinese or the Russians or someone else externally but to upgrade its equipment. Obviously, because they are in the same business—they are both mining zeolite—that would have a competitive effect on the non-funded business. Both these businesses are run by very decent people; I know them both very well. But that is an unfair advantage that was bestowed by government. I see Malcolm Turnbull and others in the parliament berating the Prime Minister and the Treasurer over some sort of unfair advantage that some fellow in Queensland was getting with his motorcars. We have not seen any proof of that yet, but for some of these people in the parliament to be getting on their hind legs and suggesting that granting someone an unfair advantage is a crime, when these crimes were committed under the former Regional Partnerships arrangements, I think is quite interesting to watch.

There have been, as I have said, other areas where I believe the previous program did not work and was blatantly politicised. Let us look at the example of the much reported Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre in Tamworth that I was involved with and have been for over a decade. I was the state member when we received funding from the state government at that time. I was involved with keeping the various national equine groups together on a committee. I was brushed aside, in a sense, because of my political persuasion—being an Independent—and then other people were installed in that position. The applications for funding that went on at that particular time were brushed aside, as independent people came in and assessed the project—which was valued at about $13 million at the time—as being non-viable. So the Commonwealth was unable to fund. That particular project now, instead of costing $13 million, costs about $35 million and is judged as being terribly viable, and that amount of money was requested from the Commonwealth parliament. So I think that is a demonstration of the lengths that some people went to in order to create circumstances not to fund and then to create an opportunity to fund the same projects.

Another improvement noted in the document that we are debating today is that the acquittal processes are much clearer. They were quite blurred in some areas and abused in others. I think there is less opportunity for the politicisation process to occur. I would recommend to the government and to the minister: do not go down that path. In fact, great credit comes to government when it does not politicise the funding and try and take political advantage of it.

A classic example of that—I am sure the mayor of Gunnedah, Adam Marshall, would agree—was the previous government’s Roads to Recovery program. This was a very fair program, where everybody got their fair share and people appreciated it. They still appreciate it out there now, and they appreciate what the current government is doing. But as soon as a government try to abuse the process, they abuse the people, and the people are more likely to abuse them at the polls. So it is a counterproductive exercise.

The National Party took hold of what was originally a very good program with quite good intent—it was actually initiated by Simon Crean many years ago—and abused that intent over time and politicised it. As a consequence, they have not gained seats but have lost them. They have lost credibility and respect in the electorate, even from those who received money from that program. There were deals done in coffee shops. There were deals retrospectively. There were deals done all over the place. People do not respect those who do deals of that nature, particularly when they are using taxpayers’ funds.

I think the involvement of local government is a positive because local government is elected and at least there is some stream of accountability in that process. Under the previous arrangements, local governments could apply and, if they were of the right political flavour, they might have a chance and, if they were not, they did not. There were a whole range of ways in which you could dodge and weave around them, but they were not considered as the elected body with a legitimate priority in terms of which of their major projects should be looked at.

I agree with the changes proposed in the report. As I said earlier, I think there needs to be a firming up of penalties on ministers that abuse the Financial Management and Accountability Act. There need to be real penalties, not of the kind where a minister will have a black mark against their name or their conduct will be noted by the Audit Office. I make this plea to the Audit Office: look at this program as it unfolds over time and see whether there are any abuses of it and make sure that, where we can, we strengthen the FMA Act so that, if a minister starts to interfere in a fair process and politicises it, as happened under the previous government, they are penalised with the loss of their job.

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