Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with a group of 35 young rural Australians who have come to Canberra as part of the Heywire Youth Issues Forum. These kids come from some of the most remote areas of this vast country. All have inspirational stories to tell, and we should look to the future with great optimism, as this next generation of leaders is full of promise and potential. The Heywire Issues Forum is in its 13th year.

This year, Heywire is partnered with Left Right Think-Tank to further develop the quality of the program delivered to rural Australian youth. Left Right Think-Tank is Australia’s first independent and non-partisan think tank of young minds. It was founded in late 2008 and is staffed completely by more than 60 young volunteers ranging from 15 to 24 years of age. Left Right has two key objectives. The first of these objectives is to deliver innovative policy reflecting the position of the youth of Australia across a broad range of issues. The second is for Left Right to provide opportunities for young Australians to engage in intellectual discussion and debate, enhance their knowledge and understanding of public policy, expand their networks and develop their potential as future leaders in our society.

As a measure of the quality of this purpose, the Left Right Think-Tank has attracted and continues to attract an incredibly high calibre of individuals. This is reflected not only in its staff but also in its members, its board, its patrons and its general supporters. Today I would like to welcome to the parliament two of the senior leaders of Left Right, the executive assistant, Hayley Caulfield, and the programs director, Clay O’Brien, and pay tribute to the work that they do for the youth of Australia and for the future of our country. In his absence, I want to recognise the leadership of Left Right’s CEO, Rick Newnham. Rick has taken the idea of Left Right Think-Tank and turned it into a very impressive reality. Left Right Think-Tank is now the premier youth organisation reflecting the ideas and aspirations of young Australians. Well done, Rick Newnham.

I previously mentioned the Left Right Think-Tank in this House on 4 December 2008 and today I would like to reflect for a moment on how far they have come as a youth led organisation. Yesterday a team from Left Right ran a workshop with the Heywire participants. This workshop was focused around developing their ideas into a reality. The issues that they focused on ranged from mental health and the wellbeing of rural youth to the environment and climate change to Indigenous affairs, areas that the Heywire participants have identified as issues relevant to their communities and in dire need of action. However, in a broader sense this highlights the unique position that Left Right Think-Tank occupies. It is a forum for young people to develop an idea into a well-thought-out contribution to contemporary debate.

The principal avenue through which Left Right provides these opportunities to young people is its programs, one of which is the fellowships program, which is offered to senior secondary and first-year tertiary students. Fellows have the opportunity to meet with key players in the policy process. This takes place in an informal and relaxed roundtable setting. Participation in this fellowships program develops knowledge and offers discussion on pertinent issues through a series of seminars. Left Right fellows also compete on a policy project and then submit that project to government. The fellowships program was first run in Victoria in 2009 and is now being run in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. The growth of the fellowships program is indicative of the growth of Left Right as an organisation. In little more than a year, Left Right has grown from a Victorian organisation with five staff members to a national organisation with a presence in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia and a staff of over 60 volunteers. This rapid expansion highlights the yearning and desire within young people to have their voices heard in the policy debate within Australia.

While in Canberra this week the senior team of Left Right will be mentoring the Heywire participants. They will also be meeting with the minister, the shadow minister for youth and some of its patrons, including the Deputy CEO of the Business Council of Australia, Melinda Cilento, and a former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold. During their meetings they will be discussing how society will move forward whilst embracing the ideas and contributions of young people. Today we make decisions, the effect of which today’s youth will inherit. The Left Right Think-Tank is fast gaining momentum and taking steps towards its vision of a society that seeks and embraces the ideas of our young people. The work of the Left Right Think-Tank is an excellent example of what dedicated young people in this great country can achieve. It is important that we recognise the work and successes of Left Right but it is more important that we support and consider the contributions that young people can make to public policy. This goes far beyond just youth policy. We must remember that at any given time youth are the stakeholders in all of today’s decisions. The Left Right Think-Tank is in a unique position and offers an invaluable contribution to contemporary debate in that Left Right, by its very nature, can develop forward thinking policy without the restriction and consideration of election cycles. I certainly wish Left Right every success and I know that the parliament and its members will be supporting the worthy ideals of this wonderful organisation.

I will stay on youth issues for just a moment, if I may, and recognise a fine young North Queensland Australian, Jonathan Pavetto. He is wearing a blue tie and is in the visitors gallery. Jonathan is a classic example of what young Australians are doing today. Jonathan is 18, yet at the age of 18 he has already attended the UN Commission on Sustainable Development in New York during last year. He was one of nine representatives worldwide selected to be on the committee for water at The Hague International Model United Nations Youth Assembly in Holland in 2008. He was the first member to be selected for the THIMUN Youth Assembly Water Committee from Australia. He was also the Committee Coordinator for the Human Development and Environmental Sustainability Working Group at The Hague International Model United Nations Youth Assembly in Holland in 2010.

In the community he has been the member for Hinchinbrook in the Queensland Youth Parliament Program. He has held the position of Premier in the first Youth Parliament to be held outside of the south-east corner of Queensland. He has been President of the Hinchinbrook Shire Youth Council, Vice-President and then President of the Gilroy Santa Maria Leos Club, a member of the student representative council for three years, and so it goes on. This a fellow from a cane farm in Ingham in North Queensland. His has been an amazing achievement in the world. Currently he is studying at the ANU, and this is how I got to know him, doing a Bachelor of Economics-Bachelor of Arts in international relations and, of course, he is learning Arabic—as you do. He already speaks fluent Italian; he knows some French and he does speak the odd bit of English even though he is from the wrong end of the mafia in Ingham. I mention Jonathan—and I could go on and on—because he is a great example of what young people can achieve today with their incredibly bright minds. Well done, Jonathan.

In the time available to me I would also like to talk about health issues in my electorate of Herbert, which is based on the largest tropical city in Australia, which is Townsville. It is a city that has been largely insulated from the events of last year. It is a city with an economy that has a very broad base, with lots of money being spent. The only issues whose effects we really felt during the global financial crisis were things like a bit of a downturn in the mining industry. That has since recovered and otherwise the broadly based economy has gone very well, with defence, health and education being key drivers of that. But I do express my disappointment about the government’s failed promises on health as to my electorate of Herbert.

In the 2007 election campaign, the Prime Minister announced that he would be building superclinics that would provide 24-hour health care across Australia, and we heard that talked about in the Main Committee here earlier today. The promise to build 35 GP superclinics across the nation appears to be in tatters, with only one completed centre, which was the subject of the previous member’s speech, in operation after two years of Labor government—just one. Despite the Prime Minister’s claims that six more centres are partially complete, at least two are offering little more than conventional GP services, and one centre claimed by the health minister, Nicola Roxon, as a partially functioning GP superclinic in Darwin is in fact being fully funded by the Northern Territory government. Mr Rudd campaigned for the 2007 election promising to spend $275 million on superclinics—medical one-stop shops in areas struggling with inadequate medical services. The centres were to offer after-hours general practitioners, specialists, mental health services, chronic disease management, allied health practitioners and training for medical students and trainee specialists.

Last year, the Minister for Health and Ageing announced in my electorate that a $5 million contract to build one of the Rudd government’s superclinics had been signed. The successful tenderer was Nicholl Holdings, who have been able to provide a 24-hour GP service in the city of Cairns for some time. Last year, the company’s facility in Cairns saw about 1.5 million patients, which is 3,000 patients a week. Dr Nicholls runs absolutely superb clinics. This was a fantastic announcement for Townsville, and the minister was correct in saying that these plans for GP superclinics would take pressure off our hospitals. We certainly need that in Townsville, with problems every day at the Townsville Hospital. It goes on and on, and the Bligh government say, ‘We’re going to fix it,’ but they never do. It is just extraordinary.

Two years after the election, there is still no superclinic in Herbert, and the planned 1.5 million people a year have been really disappointed. I would have thought that three years was enough time to get an election promise in gear and operating. It certainly would have been enough time for the coalition government to deliver on such an important issue as regional health. We are not going to see the GP superclinic opened in Townsville until mid-2011. That is really poor service, and I think my colleagues would probably agree that 3½ years to develop and a GP superclinic is too long. We should all, on both sides of the parliament, be able to do better than that.

Certainly, it is disappointing for Townsville, but there was another problem—the funding for the current after-hours clinics that operate in Townsville—and I wrote to the minister expressing my deep concern about this. While the department has extended their funding, which was to be cut off in the middle of this year, the outcome is very different to what was promised at the election. The department will continue to support Twin City Doctors, located in Kirwan, up until March 2011 and the Northtown Medical Centre, located in Townsville, until June 2011. However, the after-hours GP service, which is a significant contributor to health provision in Townsville, has only been invited to apply for an extension of funding through what was described by the department as a competitive process, which we all know does not mean that the funding will necessarily be delivered.

So what is going to happen to that particular service that operates now? If it closes, how are we going to fill the gap until the new superclinic commences operations late in 2011? This is worrying. It is poor planning by the health department and the government. I guess it must be disappointing even to the Prime Minister that in its one term the Rudd government has nothing to show for its GP superclinic promise and there is no improvement in the provision of health services in my city of Townsville. While I am doing everything I can to ensure that there will be after-hours health care available for residents of my electorate, it is really difficult when you get the pushback from the department and the government in relation to timely service delivery.

During the five minutes I have left, I just want to draw the parliament’s attention to a statement from Mitch Hooke, Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Council of Australia, a very significant, influential, highly regarded body in this country today. And of course it is about climate change policy. Mitch said in his public release:

The Coalition’s climate change policy strikes at the real intent of pricing of carbon …

There will be those who say, ‘You can’t believe what the Minerals Council says because they have a vested interest.’ I accept that.

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