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

It is in times of crisis and controversy that politicians and political leaders show their true spirit, their true integrity and their true character. I did not always agree with former Prime Minister John Howard on industrial relations, on the local issue of the Ipswich motorway and on other issues in South-East Queensland. There are a lot of issues that I did not agree with him on, but at times of crisis both locally and internationally, such as when the tsunami hit our friends in Indonesia, he was there and we supported bipartisanship. When it came to crises in our country, the former Prime Minister, to his credit, showed leadership and there was a bipartisan approach.

At the time of the greatest natural disaster in South-East Queensland, when so much of the Brisbane, Ipswich, Lockyer and Brisbane Valley communities are devastated, you would expect more from that person who sits in the chair just opposite and who wants to go across the table. You would expect more. You would expect that he would come and give a plan that he thought was good, appropriate and fair to the Australian community. You would not expect the procrastination we saw in the last few weeks. You would not expect ructions, rancour and rumblings in the coalition that you saw in the last few weeks on deferrals and spending cuts. You would expect there to be bipartisanship, and people in South-East Queensland, certainly in my electorate of Blair, would expect the opposition and government to come together to work in the national interest for the benefit of South-East Queensland. But what do we see? We see an argument today, raised as a matter of public importance, about the floods. I did not think I would see that happen. I thought there would be grace and humility from those opposite. Sadly, we are let down. The opposition alleges that we are a government of waste and big taxes when in fact it is not true. Those opposite know this is a government that has invested in their communities because they attended the opening of school halls in their electorates under the BER program and they know their communities supported the investment.

In this proposal from the Leader of the Opposition he wants to cull the money for those programs. I will tell you what those programs did. In the Brisbane Valley, in my electorate, the school hall in Esk and the school hall in Fernvale acted as evacuation centres. Without those school halls, built under the Building the Education Revolution, the people of Fernvale and Esk would not have had a place to go. In fact, they broke into the school in Fernvale because they were fleeing the floodwaters. Yet those opposite criticise us and purport to cut the funding for the BER. They would prefer to defer the funding to Indonesia when they know very well this was a bipartisan approach—an initiative of those opposite. They know after 10 years of drought in this country that this is the right time to do the water buyback. They know it very well. They know in their party room that they would blow a billion dollar hole—an economically irresponsible billion dollar hole—in the budget if the measures they announced just before the condolence motion yesterday were implemented. We also know that at the last election they came up with another black hole of $10.6 billion. They said they could find easy cuts in the budget just a few weeks ago. Guess what happened? We saw the Leader of the Opposition on Insiders last Sunday. I came back from a run—I was not inspired by him to go for a jog—and sat in my house with a cold glass of water and looked at the Leader of the Opposition being interviewed. There he was saying it was ‘hard’. The debate in the shadow cabinet in the coalition party room must have been very hard. He looked like a man under stress. Three times he was asked by Barrie Cassidy whether it was more important to donate to the flood victims or to the Liberal Party. Three times there was obfuscation and equivocation. Yet he comes in here and gives these political speeches at a time of national crisis in Queensland.

The record of those opposite is an absolute and utter disgrace. They know very well that when it comes to levies they have form. They have a record on levies. For example, the 1998-99 stevedoring levy surplus was $3.9 billion, in 2001 there was the dairy levy at $13 billion, in 2001-02 the airport levy was $5.9 billion and in 2002-03 the sugar levy was $7.4 billion. Then came the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. They are outrageous and extravagant and it was an attack on business that would have been passed through Woolworths and Coles to the average person. That was their Woolworths and Coles tax. What about the level of tax as a percentage of GDP? In this financial year it is 20.9 per cent.

They criticise us for being irresponsible when it comes to tax, but never once in the 11 years of the Howard government was tax revenue as a share of GDP below this. When Mr Abbott, Mr Hockey and Mr Robb—the Leader of the Opposition and his economics brains trust over there—were in power the highest tax rate was 24.1 per cent of the economy when it came to a percentage of GDP. It never, ever got as low as we have it now. We have stimulated the economy to save jobs. There are about 1.5 million people who work in the retail sector and about 250,000 who work in the construction sector. How many people in the construction sector have said to you that without the BER, without the roads funding, without all those stimulus proposals and programs they would have been out of work?

There was $37 billion in rail, road and port infrastructure in Australia, and $22 billion went to rural and regional areas, including many in National Party seats. That is the reality; that is what happened—investment to get rid of capacity constraints, investments in important infrastructure, in coal towns, in mining towns and in rural parts of Queensland that are currently under flood. We did it because it was in the national interest—not necessarily because it was in our political interest but because we knew it was good for the national economy. But guess what? Those opposite are not prepared to put the national interest ahead of the political interest, and that is why the flood levy email is so outrageous and disgraceful, and that is why those opposite know in their hearts that ours is a modest levy.

If you were a public servant in the Ipswich City Council on 80 grand a year and you were not affected by the flood, and you came, for example, to my electorate, you would pay about $3.50 at Cactus Espresso Bar or one of the other coffee shops. The truth is that, if you paid that for a cup of coffee, that is more than you would pay for the $2.88 weekly flood levy. But you would be doing it to help your fellow Ipswichians and the people in the Lockyer Valley, in the Somerset region and in Toowoomba. You know you would do it, because it is a mateship levy. It is helping out fellow human beings who have suffered. It is a show of compassion and charity.

Many people have made great donations. Millions of dollars have been raised. But we need billions of dollars. It is going to cost us $5.6 billion to get the economy back up and going. We know how important it is, and that is why those opposite are really acting irresponsibly when it comes to this. They were not prepared to support the stimulus to sustain jobs, to keep the economy going, to invest in roads, rail and infrastructure, and now they say they will not get on board in a bipartisan way to support people in the flood-affected areas of South-East Queensland. They have no charity in their hearts, no compassion and no humanity with respect to this issue. They are not prepared to put affection for their fellow Queenslanders front and centre. That is the reality of what we are seeing from those opposite. They are not prepared to do it.

The Leader of the Opposition has been all over the place. I just cannot understand his attitude. Sometimes, I have to say, the Leader of the Opposition makes good speeches. Sometimes he makes fairly good speeches. But those opposite know very well his performance in the past 48 hours shows he is not fit for the role he is currently in. And many opposite would like to sit in the chair that the member for Bowman is sitting in and would argue that they are better performers, are better prepared and would make better leaders of the opposition. They know in their hearts that is the case. The Leader of the Opposition is not fit to sit in that chair because of his attitude with respect to the people of South-East Queensland.

I say to those opposite, the members for Ryan, Wright, Groom and Maranoa: tap him on the shoulder, tell him he is wrong and make sure he gets with the program in a bipartisan way. Put Queenslanders front and centre, put the economy of Queensland front and centre, put the Queensland community front and centre and support the flood levy.

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