Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on the report of the Joint Select Committee on the Constitutional Recognition of Local Government. I will say from the outset that I agree with the proposal and the words being proposed for a possible referendum, but I have been disappointed and somewhat frustrated at the way this has been handled. It is nearly 12 months since the expert panel, set up by the government to look at the constitutional recognition of local government, presented its report and we are still in the position that we are in today.

I was alarmed to read in the national presson Monday of this week that the minister is going to spend another six weeks negotiating with the states before a final decision is to be made. One of the witnesses to the inquiry in Sydney in January, the Australian Electoral Commission, indicated that, to run a referendum efficiently, you need approximately six months. Of course, we are past that point and we are getting into a narrow margin of time.

It is well known that some states are in favour of this referendum and some are opposed, but the states that are opposed made their position clear long before the words of this referendum question were made known and long before they realised what this proposal actually meant. As someone who comes from a local government background, to an extent I do not believe that this referendum goes far enough. On the other side of that, what is being proposed is basically to close up a loophole. It is to enable the federal government to directly fund local government in some programs. It is not a major overhaul of the federal-state relationship; it is not going to undermine the states' relations with local government. The programs that the federal government—sometimes on an ongoing basis, but sometimes on a temporary basis—fund for local government are very important to the people in those local government areas. The obvious one, the one that is discussed a lot, is the Roads to Recovery program. This program is seen, particularly in the bush, as the signature program. It is the ongoing legacy of John Anderson, the former member for Gwydir, that the program has been put in place. It has already had one challenge in the High Court. I believe that if the program were lost then most of the 17 local government areas in my electorate would be not viable.

The other program, if you cast your mind back to 2008, is the stimulus program implemented by the Rudd government. Many of those programs turned out to be a debacle—the insulation program and the BER program in many cases turned out to be a poor use of money.

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