Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. It is always good to follow the member for Dobell. I know how passionate he is about his electorate and he is basically a good bloke, but I think he is starting to repeat himself. I have twice before heard him use the same ‘Get out of the way’ line in a speech. This is the third time now, so he is becoming a bit repetitive.

Be in no doubt—there is a lot of taxpayers’ money involved in these two appropriation bills. Each of these bills accounts for over a billion dollars of spending. The combined appropriation registers at well over $2.3 billion. As the member for Goldstein pointedly said in his contribution, these are appropriations for moneys that were not anticipated at the time of the budget, so this expenditure is essentially overruns or expenses that were unforeseen and unplanned when the Treasurer handed down the budget in May.

When we talk about such massive government expenditure and when we talk about unforeseen spending and overruns to the tune of $2.3 billion, it is pretty clear that proper and thorough scrutiny is needed. It is not only what the Australian people and, more importantly, the Australian taxpayers expect, but what they deserve. Yet over the last sitting days we have heard a procession of ALP speakers criticising the coalition for wanting this scrutiny.

Given this government’s history of being unable to achieve good value for money for the Australian taxpayer, we on this side of the House will not shirk from promoting a proper examination of these bills. After all, this is a government that is borrowing $100 million every day and spending $1.5 trillion over the next four years, which comes with an interest bill of $45 billion. This is an interest bill to the Australian taxpayer. This is a government that wasted millions on the pink batts scheme and could not get value for money on the school halls program. I doubt if we will ever know the real cost of the waste. If wasteful spending and poor management are allowed to continue, we will see a greater hit on families across the country through a higher cost of living. Dare we mention the word inflation?

Previous speakers have mentioned that these appropriations are an overrun and that they are due to bad management and poor process. I would have to agree that several components of this bill do suggest this. There is $35 million to be appropriated to address a shortfall in funding related to the transfer of the Office for the Arts from the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Apparently the shortfall materialised from the amounts being incorrectly appropriated to the wrong outcome in the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities during the 2010-11 budget. In addition, there was $15.1 million to support functions that were transferred from the former Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

It seems ridiculous that the sum of $15 million could be required for a reshuffling of public servants’ duties. My constituents and many others will be unimpressed that the government can spend $15 million on this and not match a $10 million commitment at the last election by the federal Liberal Party to build the much-needed Manning Road on-ramp, which even the Labor candidate agreed we should have. Communities in Australia are starting to look closely at expenditure by this government and they will perceive this as a waste.

In addition to poor management, close examination of these bills highlights the policy failure that this government has presided over. It is evident that Australians are still paying for the government’s dangerous pink batts scheme. Last year the government told us that it was going to wind up this program and allocated funds to do so. Now the government tells us that it needs a further $45.6 million to help wind up the program. There were blow-outs in the program and now there are blow-outs in winding it down. Many of my constituents have had insulation installed under the government’s scheme. In 2011 they are still trying to get their respective installations completed to an industry approved and safe standard. Labor cannot manage the spending of taxpayers’ money, and we have to go back a long way to find the last year that a Labor government actually delivered a surplus. Maybe members on the other side can tell me: was it 1990 or 1989? If Labor cannot manage the efficient rollout of a program like insulation into taxpayers’ roofs, how can they run this country?

I would like to make specific mention of a contractor in the southern suburbs of Perth. Like many other similar businesses, the contractor in question was given the task of installing pink batts on behalf of the government. The difference with this contractor was that he was so lax in his methods and so rushed in his work that even his local federal member, the member for Brand, has admitted that he has been inundated with complaints about how bad the work has been. To this day, constituents affected by this contractor in my electorate are still waiting for the installations to be brought up to a government accepted standard.

What I fail to understand is the level of accountability the government has avoided in this issue. In the time I have been in business, nearly 25 years, I have understood that a commercial contract, and all the responsibilities that go with it under the Trade Practices Act, is usually between the payer and the payee. You can, then, safely assume that the contract, and all those responsibilities, is between the government that introduced this flawed scheme and the contractors who they issued the work orders to. So you have a government which announces a scheme that invites and encourages people to put insulation into their homes to save the planet. The government announces contractors to get on board and save the economy by putting a grand scheme in place, the house owner invites the contractor to quote on the installation of insulation in their home and the quotation is sent to the government. The government then issues a work order to the contractor and, once the work is completed, the invoice is sent by the contractor to the government for payment. The government is supposed to pay the contractor but then does not pay for this particular contract. Why not, you may ask. Because the program collapses with four deaths and hundreds of house fires.

The collapse of this program exposes rorting. It exposes a complete failure by the government to implement, or have any ability to implement, any scheme beyond the headline of the day. But the real issue here is the woman in my electorate who, along with many others, has had below standard workmanship and below standard installation which is potentially a fire hazard and who is left holding the bag. Again, you may ask why. It is because this Labor government has made the householders sign an indemnity form absolving them of any contractual responsibility. I cannot think of anywhere else in the world where a government would hang its hat so publicly on a scheme and then totally walk away from any legal, contractual or fiscal responsibility towards that scheme. It begs the question: if Labor cannot get pink batts into a roof without damaging property or without setting roofs on fire, how can we trust them to deliver any program in the future?

Like the additional expenditure in the pink batts scheme, the appropriation in these bills of supplementary funding of $290 million for operational costs associated with the management of asylum seekers is an example of policy failure. Border protection continues to be a major concern for people in my electorate of Swan and in Western Australia and, unfortunately, the boats and tragedies out on the seas continue. The people in my electorate tell me that the government’s policy on border protection is not only weak but also inhumane.

Here we have a government that moved the goalposts on border protection, which was the equivalent of sending an invite to all the people smugglers to start their operations in Australia again. This is a trade that kills people and endangers lives, but we have a government that cannot admit it has made a mistake and cannot make the changes that will stop the people-smuggling trade. Dare we ask about the ‘Timor solution’, which no-one has signed up for? Not even this government has signed up for it. Again, this government cannot get passed a headline.

Upon reading through some of the other items earmarked for expenditure in these bills, it becomes clear that there is very little for WA to excited about. There is money for forests in Tasmania. There is money for a high-speed rail network study. There is funding for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. There are even millions of dollars for foreign aid, but almost nothing for Western Australia. How long will we Western Australians have to wait to be given a fair go by this Labor government?

The Gillard Labor government has lost control of Australia’s budget. The coalition knows this is a big call to make, but when you look at the figures they tell their own story—they tell a story of waste. This is a government that is deeply in debt but unprepared to cut spending. When a Labor government gets itself into this situation, we all know what happens: taxes go up or taxes are introduced. Last week we got two more taxes. We now have the flood tax and we now have, as the Leader of the Opposition calls it, the mother of all taxes: the carbon tax. On the Friday before the 2010 election Julia Gillard stated categorically: ‘I rule out a carbon tax’, having said a few days earlier, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.’ I know it is considered unparliamentary to use certain words in the federal parliament, but it is very clear that at the very least that Julia Gillard’s comments have fundamentally misled the Australian people.

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