Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No.3) 2011-12 and Appropriation Bill (No.4) 20011-12. I am particularly concerned because the purpose of these bills is to continue to raise additional revenue. We see major blow-outs in a broad range of areas. I think immigration is a classic example, where there is an additional $330 million to cover last year's underestimations. We are now looking at a $1 billion fee in relation to a failed policy. Prior to 2007 this issue had been comprehensively addressed by a government that I was very proud to be in.

I do apologise for my tardiness. My legs slowed me down a little. We have just come back from a vote in the House and in my view we are going to see a very significant winding back of private health insurance in this country. That in itself is going to force a lot more people to either exit private health insurance because it will become unaffordable or, at the very least, reduce their cover. In doing so, it is going to put a massive impost on regional hospitals. As I spoke about last night, in Cairns they are already bursting at the seams and do not have the capacity because of underfunding and gross mismanagement by the state government and the politicisation of the health bureaucracy, which has seen some appalling decisions. It is struggling to cope. When you have a look at that and then you have a look at the money that has been squandered over the last few years, you have to despair at the money that was lost—$2.4 billion on pink batts—and at the lives that were lost, including one up in my region. We are familiar with the other fiascos. The school building program up in our area was a joke quite frankly.

But there are other impacts. Last year I raised the issue of the flooding of six communities in the outer islands of the Torres Strait. After not getting any satisfaction or any interest from the government, I made a decision to put up a private member's motion. As that private member's motion was going through, I was a little surprised but also pleased that I was approached by Simon Crean's office asking me to delay the voting until August. From the advice I received from his office, the government was of the view that they would support the building of these walls with a $22 million investment. Rather than play politics with it, I agreed to hold it over. His problem was that he did not want to take the money out of the Regional Development Australia Fund. He wanted to find, in their words, another bucket of money. I agreed to that in the interests of having the matter resolved, appreciating that about a third of the Saibai Island cemetery had already been washed out into the sea, that there was $1 billion worth of infrastructure on these six islands that needed to be protected and that there were some serious health risks in relation to the inundation of water during the king tide period.

The vote eventually went through in August and I wrote a letter to Minister Crean thanking him for his cooperation and consideration with regard to the urgent needs of the Torres Strait Island communities and asking if he could give me a time frame for when the money would be available to start addressing these concerns. I should have been suspicious when there was a delay in his response. Eventually I got that response. I got it just before the Christmas break. I had gone around and seen the minister. At that point, he started umming and ahing—he was surrounded by department officials—and he said he would have a letter to me shortly.

Just before Christmas, I got a Christmas present from Simon Crean. Basically, he wrote to me and said: 'This is not a problem of the government; this is something that has to go back to local government. It's a state government, local government problem. We give financial assistance grants to the Torres Strait council for $6 million a year. Let them fix the problem.' This is in direct contradiction to the commitment that was given. I actually have an email from one of his senior staff members apologising to me for the deceit and for the misleading arrangement that they made. At every opportunity I get, I will continue to remind the Torres Strait Islander people of the deceit by Minister Crean—I think it was him more than his office because I actually have an apology from one of his former staff.

Sadly, because of that deceit, we have now seen the king tides hit again. We have seen more of the cemeteries—people's families—being washed out to sea, never to be recovered. I was amazed to find that this same government, at the same time, committed $328.2 million to micro Pacific nations to assist them in dealing with climate change. That money goes through the UN. Guess what that is going for? We see all of the problem at the moment about leadership. This is buying a position through the UN for none other than Mr K Rudd. They do not realise that the islands in the Torres Strait are in the Pacific. They do not realise that the islands in the Torres Strait are actually part of Australia. And these islands are having massive damage every year in king tides. It is totally fixable. They could do it over two years with $22 million.

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