Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I should not let the preamble go without passing this comment. I do acknowledge that there were important things done by the government that preceded the Rudd Labor government. But if you go to the question of essential health infrastructure and education infrastructure, there was no capacity in that government to fund it through Commonwealth funding. I remember the debate because I was the shadow Treasurer at the time and I suggested that the Commonwealth actually establish an intergenerational fund—which is what I called it because the Intergenerational Report was out and about—and that we should take the proceeds of what the nation had earned in the prosperous times and reinvest them into the future. Your Treasurer of the day, Peter Costello, ridiculed the idea and then came up with the Future Fund. But the future fund that he introduced was limited because the future fund that he said he was establishing was simply to pay off the Commonwealth's liability for Commonwealth superannuation. We accepted that was an important contingent liability that we needed to address, but we said, 'Why should the nation's surplus only go to pay off the debts from Commonwealth public servants? Why shouldn't it be used for the bigger issues of the nation?' Of course, your Treasurer of the day ridiculed that concept. So when we came to office we kept the Future Fund. We said that we were prepared to spend not just the earnings on the fund but also, where necessary, the capital on the fund—but we set up two more funds, one for education and one for health. So my point is that when one looks at the issue—and this was raised by way of a preamble saying that they did not neglect anything—you just did not have the capacity, because you did not think it through. We had it.

So let us move on to the next point, and that is your specific example of Southern Rural Water. I know that you have written to us about it, and I have asked the department to look at this because this issue has been raised in a number of other contexts. At the moment the guidelines for the first round, as I understand them, do prevent that consideration. If in fact the analysis that goes through the panel says 'but for that consideration this would have been the most worthy project' then I think that is something that we might need to look at in terms of subsequent rounds. I am not just taking that on notice; I am actually already looking at it and will come back and advise about that at a later date.

I might have said earlier, although I thought I had left it more flexible than this, that the first round would be announced on 1 July. Obviously, because there have been so many that have come in, it might take a bit longer than that 1 July date to be able to announce the first round. We will have to take advice on that. Obviously, we put the funding out immediately that the budget was announced and opened the first round, and we want to try and have this thing hit the ground as fast as is possible.

On the localism question, you do not have to convince me about the importance of it. I saw it in practice when I was the primary industries minister and also when I was the employment and training minister. That is how the area consultative committees were established. That is how we used the Landcare groups and the catchment management groups for better natural resource management initiatives. Indeed, one of the recommendations out of the Orgill review of the BER goes to that very question of recognising that for future programs there should be better local input. I hope that what we are doing in this budget is not just to signal our intention to commit resources to the regions but to also genuinely embrace localism and embed it in the way in which we govern things and embed it in a way that cannot be unpicked, just as other governments could not unpick superannuation and could not unpick Medicare. I happen to believe that localism is the right way to go because it can give you a more efficient outcome if you are creatively engaging locals. What I say to the locals and the communities is this: 'Just don't give me wish lists. I want the proposals that stack up.' If we are going to make this system work, we have got to show that we are spending the nation's resources more efficiently than spending through the sorts of examples that you alluded to before. If we get it right that will embed localism.

See this speech in context