Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge my colleague the member for Kooyong, who has allowed me to sneak in front of him here tonight. It is appropriate that our discussion tonight is on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011, which is to appropriate an amount of $1.36 billion for ordinary annual services to the government, and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011, which is to appropriate about $1.024 billion for non-ordinary and other annual services of government.

I was elected on three major platforms for which I lobbied in my preselection. One was to protect small business and work towards reducing red tape. These appropriation bills offer me an opportunity to work towards changing the culture of our Public Service and trying to introduce more efficiencies. I come from a transport background. I had 14 depots throughout Queensland. I employed 105 permanent staff and contractors. Our growth strategy had two sectors to it. The first was an internal sales team that worked on domestic growth, and the second was mergers and acquisitions. We merged many businesses into our own, which got us to the size that we were, but as a result of that I was no longer a transport operator but a specialist in mergers and acquisitions and in the changing of cultures. So I believe I have a skill set that can offer some assistance in reducing some of the red tape and bureaucracy. I can advise the parliament that it is my intention in my first term to prepare a paper about how I will achieve those objectives.

The second point on my election platform was to fight for a better price for farmers at the farm gate. This week it is appropriate that we speak about the price war that is taking place between Coles and Woolworths on the price of milk—$2 for two litres. This will have huge ramifications for our dairy industry. I have 35 dairy farmers throughout my electorate. Whilst it is the given right of any business to turn a profit—in fact, it is their duty and it is their responsibility to their shareholders—I take objection and draw the line at companies profiting at the expense of other businesses, such as corner shops, milk bars and milk vendors. Some milk vendors have reported to me a loss of 30 per cent of their revenue from their route trade as a direct result of the people they service being unable to compete with the multinationals by selling generic milk brands.

There is a way that those small businesses can, hopefully, protect themselves. As a nation, we have protection mechanisms in place via the Trade Practices Act, in particular section 46, which speaks to the misuse of market power. This week alone, I have spoken on several occasions with Coles executives and on several occasions with the Queensland dairy organisation. It is our intention to pursue these matters so that we can get out the other side and offer that protection of prices at our farm gate.

The third part of my platform was to fight to keep more money in mums’ and dads’ pockets. Mums and dads go to the elections, and the great majority of Australians are not very politically connected. They do not particularly care whether it is local, state or federal government, but at the end of the day their ears prick and they become very interested when some government wants to put its hand in their pocket and start taking money out, which puts pressure on their day-to-day and week-to-week activities. Part of my role here as an elected official for the seat of Wright will be to propose new taxes. It is quite relevant that we speak about taxes, because this week and in the last several weeks we have seen the introduction of possibly three taxes—the resources super profits tax, the ETS and the flood levy.

Before I go on and expand on that further, I would just like to talk about the macroeconomics of the nation and, in particular, our inflation band. Currently we have our inflation band set at two to three per cent. We are often told by our government how buoyant the Australian economy is, and that is a true statistic—the Australian economy is quite buoyant. But what is more dynamic about our economy is the fact that our resources sector is going through the roof. Our trade surplus is off the charts. That is driven by the demand from China.

Our resources sector in the next 12 months will experience a one-in-100-years spike in capital investment. That means we have the likes of Gorgon in Western Australia and Port Curtis in Queensland coming on, with reference to our gas exploration services. The Galilee Basin in Queensland will be coming on. We will have upgrades of a number of ports, Abbot Point in particular. The capital investment from the resources sector will be a one-in-100-years spike.

That puts undue pressure on our inflation rates. We are currently sitting at around 2.75, and that extra money stimulating the economy will push it out. I have said to Governor Glenn Stevens of the Reserve Bank that our traditional mechanism for dealing with inflation is to put the cash rate up. I have suggested to him that as a nation, when we put the cash rate up, it has very little impact on the resources sector because the resources sector borrow a lot of their capital infrastructure money offshore, so they are not subject to the cash rate as mums and dads and mortgage holders are. They are not susceptible to the volatility in our local market because they do not borrow from our local market. At the other end of the spectrum, they sell out on forward contracts, and possibly in US dollars, so they are not even susceptible to the fluctuations and the parity of the Australian dollar.

There are electorates in our nation that have links to the resources sector, and they can feed off the inputs that the resources sector requires. My electorate in particular is predominantly in a primary industry sector, so we have no linkages to the resources sector at all. So, in default, when the Reserve Bank puts the cash rates up, all that does is magnify the impact of the increase in interest rates for the people who can least afford it, the mums and dads who are on the ground, the mums and dads who are struggling to make their mortgage payments already under the adverse cost-of-living prices, the small businesses that are already struggling in the retail sector and the businesses that are already struggling as a result of slower commodity prices as a result of the parity with our dollar to the US. The point I am trying to make and emphasise is that, whilst we are told that the Australian economy is extremely buoyant, we have a two-tiered economy. One part of our economy is going gangbusters but the other guys are just hanging on for grim death. Movements in the cash rate will ultimately have a huge impact on the lower sector of the market.

I also want to take the opportunity to speak about the flood levy. We have recently spoken in the House about the flood levy. My seat of Wright was drastically affected by the floods, in particular in the Lockyer Valley and in the townships of Grantham and Murphys Creek. I hold the opinion that the government should have picked up the tab. There should not have been an impost passed on to the people of my electorate, the people of Queensland, the people of North Queensland, the people of Victoria and the people of Western Australia who are genuinely struggling in this time of hardship.

Take your mind back to the 1990s, when we had the Queensland and New South Wales floods. In Charleville and other places around the state, six people were killed, 60 were injured and 200 homes were inundated. We never called for a flood levy then; we had strong, diligent management. In 2006 Cyclone Larry went through Queensland. There was a damage bill of $1.5 billion. The government did not ask people to put their hands in their pockets then. They managed it; they got out the other side. More relevantly, in 2009 on Black Saturday, 173 people were tragically killed, 2,000 homes were destroyed and there was about $4.4 billion worth of devastation. We did not ask people to put their hands in their pockets then and we should not have done it this time.

One of the downsides of prematurely calling for a flood levy was that the generosity of Australians, their willingness to give to other Australians to help out in these dramatic circumstances, was shut off. Australians stopped giving straightaway because, once they knew they were going to be taxed, the generosity was shut off. It was a poor call by the Prime Minister.

I will also take the opportunity, while I am talking about the floods, to remind the Queensland state government that we are now at day 51. The Queensland disaster fund had $227 million donated to it through the generosity of Australians from all around this nation. There are people in my electorate living in motels. There are still displaced people in my electorate living with relatives and friends who are trying to make ends meet. These people face uncertainty about whether or not the damage to their homes is going to be covered by insurance and uncertainty about whether council is going to allow them to move back into their home. The state government could have given them more certainty and it could have simply given them a handout.

When people gave money to that disaster relief fund, they gave it with the intent that it end up with the people on the ground—and it is not a hard task. When someone gives you the money and an application is received with a name and bank account number on it, you simply take it out of one bank account and stick it in the other one. But this simple task has eluded our state government and it gives me grief. I will continue to belt the drum and remind our state government of the hardship, pain and suffering being felt in my electorate at the moment. It is my right as their elected official to stand up and constantly remind people of that hardship.

I turn to the ETS. It is going to be a vigorous debate. But in order for it to be an honest debate we need transparency. We need transparency from our government and we need transparency from a government that we can trust. It is hard to build trust and it is hard to break down the belief of many Australians that politicians of this nation cannot be trusted. Now is the opportunity for us to turn the corner. Now is the opportunity to stand up and be counted.

The Prime Minister, only days before the election, said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government that I lead’—yet only this week we received advice, through a bill introduced on the floor of the House, that there will be a carbon tax under a government that she leads. It was a complete 180 degree reversal, a complete turnaround, a complete deception of the Australian people. I need to remind the Australian people of the environment in which she made that comment. When she said that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led, the blood on her blade from her assassination of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was still fresh. I then bring your attention to the Treasurer’s comments just before the election, when he said:

Certainly what we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax … We reject that.

That cannot be interpreted in any other way; it is not a sleight of hand. That is not a comment that someone would make lightly. There was thought given to that. It was driven by polls. These guys, at the point that they made that decision, clearly said, ‘We are not going to have a carbon tax.’ But what has happened between that period and now?

In closing, I would like to quickly touch on electricity costs under the ETS—they are going to go through the roof. I can talk about opposing for the sake of opposing. There are some bills that we are going to be putting up that we would like the government to support. I thank you for your time.

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