Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to be able to respond to the Governor-General’s speech. In doing so, let me start at the beginning. The election on 21 August was unique in our country’s history. The run-up to it was marked by the crumbling of the Rudd government. From the moment Tony Abbott took the leadership of the coalition on 1 December 2009, a new dynamic swept across Australian politics, with the polls showing a growing disenchantment with the Rudd government. In the last week of the 2010 winter session, that disenchantment in the government had developed into disillusionment and finally into panic. The execution cabal, consisting of union and ALP officials and former officials now in the parliament, was ready to strike and did so ruthlessly on Wednesday, 23 June. It was as close to a bloodless coup as we are ever likely to see in this country. Many rank-and-file members, and even senior cabinet ministers, had no idea what was afoot until the die was cast. Some of them did not know until they came back to the chamber from dinner engagements around 10 or half-past 10 at night. The party meeting was merely a formality.

Not surprisingly, there was disquiet if not outright shock in an unsuspecting electorate. This disquiet was palpable, certainly in my area, and especially amongst traditional Labor voters, many of whom were quite outspoken and said they would never vote Labor again. While the coup had many of the hallmarks of the faceless men of old, there was a troubling difference: the coup leaders were not shy about their roles. They gloated in media interviews and maintained their sense of smug self-satisfaction by indulging themselves in retrospective books on their roles, milking the previous leader’s demise for everything they could get out of it. It is little wonder then that the new Prime Minister evoked the catch cry ‘moving forward’, using it incessantly. Why the emphasis on moving forward? Because no-one dared looked back. The other mantra excusing the plotters’ duplicity was ‘Labor had lost its way.’ That too resonated in the electorate, though not in the same way Labor might have expected. The admission hangs around the Prime Minister’s neck as an albatross of constant reminder. It was certainly not a strong footing for a new government.

Against this background, we moved inevitably towards the federal election. Hinkler, which three years ago ceded Gladstone and the parts north and west of the Burnett River to Flynn and picked up Hervey Bay, has always been a volatile electorate. It has nevertheless been kind to me in its new and old manifestations over the last seven elections, and I deeply appreciate the loyalty and generosity of my constituents, especially on 21 August. Hinkler, which is now essentially the Coral Coast, Bundaberg, Childers and Hervey Bay, resisted the 8.5 per cent swing to Labor in 2007, despite which my margin was reduced to 1.7, and later by redistribution to 1.5. However, the results in 2010 not only recaptured old ground but took the LNP vote to 60.5, an increase of 8.9 per cent and two per cent above our notional recent best. I was humbled to win all 48 of the booths in Hinkler, with positive swings in 47 of them. In one the vote actually dropped from 65 to 63 per cent—my only bad mark in the campaign. Dreadful!

The rejection of Labor twice on these new boundaries deserves some attention, not for some personal self-indulgence but rather as the basis of an analysis of Labor’s contempt for the electorate. In both the 2007 and 2010 elections Labor made only meagre promises to Hinkler, two of them former promises—the Isis River Bridge and the Hervey Bay Community Centre. In 2007 we were promised $10,000 water grants for surf clubs. Why you would give water grants to surf clubs I have never been quite sure. Only half of them were ever delivered. A modest grant was also given to the Bundaberg Cricket Association. In 2010 Labor promised 50 per cent funding for an athletics track in Bundaberg and $70,000 to convert a toilet block into a sporting club canteen—hardly riveting stuff and paltry when put against the rampant ALP promises in some marginal seats where there were serious challenges, like Herbert and Flynn.

What infuriated me was the lack of collective vision on the part of the ALP when it came to local projects. You would think that both sides of politics would want to get these things for the community. These were practical, focused and, in many cases, modest proposals. It seems the ALP candidate was forbidden from matching my promises, important as they were to the community, no doubt on the basis that, if I were successful, an ALP government would not be committed to delivering them. It is a bit cynical, isn’t it?

In short, Labor’s failure to articulate a real vision for our communities or to commit to key civic infrastructure was their real undoing. Quite frankly, I was amazed that, outside those I have just spoken of, Labor did not identify one solitary key project to support or even map out a plan for the growth of the region. I think that lack of knowledge or passion for the electorate cost them dearly. The people and businesses in Hinkler are passionate about improving their future. They simply will not accept candidates who do not even engage with grassroots issues.

In contrast, the coalition made commitments to road infrastructure in Hervey Bay, a rapidly increasing city; improving local waterways; and building a performing arts centre at Urangan State High School. None of these were matched by my Labor opponent. In fact, she described the latter, almost unbelievably, as ‘unfair to other high schools’, failing to recognise the role of an integrated arts curriculum in a regional high school. Why should all these special arts faculties be only in capital cities? Why can’t we have one in regional Australia? I cannot for the life of me understand why the Labor candidate would not match the coalition’s $3 million commitment to get this project off the ground. She was once a supporter of it but backed away from it.

The projects I have been talking about have not been just plucked out of the air. They are things that have been identified by the community as local priorities and, in some instances, they are things that have been worked on for years. For instance, the performing arts centre at Urangan high school has the strong backing of the community and the school has been visited over time not only by lots of local people interested in the concept but also by former Prime Minister Rudd, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Mr Albanese, and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott. All of them have been there.

The coalition also planned $10 million for helping the Fraser Coast council upgrade key arterial roads around Hervey Bay, like the much talked about Urraween extension and River Heads Road, the access corridor to Fraser Island. This investment would have helped relieve traffic congestion in a growing city and would have been a much needed boost to business in the first instance and tourism in the second.

Hervey Bay is also lucky to be the home of the Fraser Coast youth mentoring service, which supports and guides troubled students who are having a tough time with school and need extra encouragement to stick with their education. We talk a lot about this, but we do not do much about it. Unfortunately, the program’s funding has not been renewed by this government—a situation that the coalition was ready to fix by providing around $600,000 to keep it running for a further three years. I have already met with the Attorney-General since we resumed about the continued funding for this youth mentoring service, and I am hopeful the government will take on board its importance to the local community and provide some funding to keep the doors open.

At the Bundaberg end of the electorate, I fought for commitments to clean up our local rivers with a new water weed harvester and to open up the mouth of the Elliott River by way of a groyne wall—both of which would have made a real difference to very serious environmental problems. The sense of disappointment in the electorate that Labor will not match these commitments is palpable. People are not stupid. They understand that the government holds the purse strings. So I appeal to the government to seriously look at these projects, match the coalition’s commitments and improve the prospects in my electorate of Hinkler.

I also identified some small projects like a grant of $260,000 to the Hervey Bay Hockey Association and others under coalition structured programs like revegetating the isthmus at Elliott Heads and consolidating sections of the Hervey Bay foreshore—a prime tourist area and currently a hot topic in that city at present. There is some erosion and some clumps of vegetation that need attention. We also identified, under our environmental high schools program, Bundaberg High, Isis High and Xavier College.

As I said, my opponents in 2007 and 2010 would not engage with me on these issues, not so much as a serious letter to the editor. It was as if they were ordered to be mute. During the 2010 election campaign they offered, as an offset, a contrived series of debates on health. I refused to debate these issues until the coalition’s policy was on the table. The debates went ahead without me and drew a paltry 25 and 30 people respectively. After you removed the media, organisers and ALP functionaries, the debates drew only 12 or 15 members of the public. In fact, the worst attended was for the then Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who did much of the speaking for the candidate, who was supposed to be debating, while a CFMEU devotee helpfully waved around a placard—no doubt to enhance the one-sidedness of the event.

For all that, we had a great campaign. May I acknowledge today my superb campaign team led by Rod Wilson, who has masterminded all seven of my campaigns. His meticulous attention to detail and his experience with the media is unsurpassed. Dick Bitcon was his deputy and the National Party-LNP’s ‘light on the hill’ in the Bundaberg district. Dick added even greater strength to the campaign, as did the team in the Hervey Bay office: Norma Hannant, John Rutherford and Jenny Sorensen. Steve and Trish Hoffman coordinated the Childers area in between the two cities. Ruth Gillespie also played a vital role in the finance for the campaign and I appreciate her help.

May I also acknowledge Brendon Falk, Wayne Fehlhaber, Dale Fehlhaber, Paula Harberger, Michael Nyenhuis, Ted Sorensen, Russell Green, John Rutherford, Julie Stewart, Stan Flack, John Norris and Steve Dixon for their hard work. The LNP’s Llew O’Brien, our regional vice-president, was also ready to help anywhere anytime.

It is not just the five weeks of a campaign which decides the fate of the sitting member; it is the time in between campaigns which dictates whether the seat will be held or lost, and I have been singularly blessed with excellent and experienced staff who have done the hard yards. Kate Barwick, Heather Hawkins, Janelle Geddes, Darlene Dobson and my former chief-of-staff, Leslie Smith, who returned for a short time, worked tirelessly before, during and after the campaign, doing the everyday things behind the scenes that got the right result on that day. The pivotal anchor of my campaign was my wife Margaret, without whose support and humour a tough campaign would have been made impossible.

As we look to the horizon of the next three years, or however short this term might be, I see some important targets for Hinkler. Firstly, we need to dedicate ourselves to a campaign to see pensions increased. Increasingly, I see pensioners come into my office who cannot make ends meet. This is not some whinge or annual push for more money; this is a serious cry to the government for help and to recognise how costs are impacting on vulnerable retirees.

11:14:33

While I acknowledge the special increase of $30 to single pensioners a year or so ago and the recent half-yearly adjustments, more has to be done to allow those who have worked all their lives to live reasonable and trouble-free existences. If members are in any doubt about what I am saying, let us look at the costs which have risen since Labor came to power. Let us look at the quarterly figures for December 2007 and September 2010: electricity prices increased by an average of 42 per cent across Australia; gas prices an average of 29 per cent; water and sewerage has increased by an average of 46 per cent; hospital and medical services by 20 per cent; education costs—school fees etc—by 17 per cent; postal costs are up 16 per cent; and property rates and charges have risen 19 per cent. Those increases do not factor in the recent pressures from a variety of influences—for example, the scarcity of properties in mining and mining service communities which has been instrumental in pushing rents up to a point where many pensioners have had to leave towns. If the cabinet leak which said that the current Prime Minister was opposed to pension increases is true I am truly staggered.

I am not a tree hugger; I am a practical environmentalist. I have demonstrated that in many ways in my electorate. But with the Great Barrier Reef and the offshore fishing grounds around my electorate of Hinkler there has to be balance. First, we had what was called the East Coast Trawl plan that took out 250 trawlers—in fact it actually took out 290. We were told the reef was then secure. Then we had the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s RAP program—its Representative Areas Program. It was originally only to take 20 per cent of the water surface of the reef, but when the maps came out it was 33 or 34 per cent. In my part of the reef, the southern end of the reef, the practical application of the government measures was 70 per cent. Now we are going to have a closure off Fraser Island. This is known as the Fraser Area for Further Assessment, which is a cute way of saying: ‘We are going to close down a bit more.’ We will come to a point where there will not be a critical mass left in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay to drive the processing works. Before all those programs I have talked about, we had about 80 trawlers each in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. Today we have about 30 in each city. Another cut could see that number reduced to 20 or fewer. Then we get to a point where we do not have critical mass, which then flows back through the community to the people who work in the processing works, to the chandlery, to the fuel, to the people who service the trawlers and, indeed, down to recreational fishing, which relies on a lot of those services as well.

The other thing I want to see is fair treatment for farmers. There is a push now to tell farmers that they are environmental vandals. That is not the case. I have never met a farmer who does not believe in looking after his property or in looking after riparian areas around properties. This is another push that is coming on to primary producers, not just fishermen but farmers. I call on the government to be fair to people when bringing these measures about, to understand that, yes, there have to be environmental measures, but you do not have to make life a misery for everyone along the chain.

Those are my views on the Governor-General’s speech. I hope that the electorate of Hinkler will continue to prosper. I will be doing everything in my power to make it so.

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