Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In relation to the Customs Amendment Bill 2014, I want to tell the story of what is happening in Townsville at the moment. Townsville has a limited international airport. We want to start new international flights to another destination—say, Bali. To do that, we have to get customs, immigration and quarantine services into Townsville. On a discount-airline basis, it is a very competitive trade. But if we have to fly in these people and all these things, then all the extra costs in this space mean that we are no longer competitive. We previously had that flight when Strategic Airlines did it. To get customs, immigration and quarantine services into Townsville it ended up costing us more on the ground that it did in the air. So it was no longer competitive to come through Townsville to go to Bali. So when we did that, no-one used it and the thing shut down. What we need in Townsville—and this plays into the development of Northern Australia as well—is assistance to get customs, immigration and quarantine services up and running and to get them underway.

Minister Scott Morrison and his office have been fantastic to me and to Townsville airport in relation to our discussions in the space. But at every turn I have come up against the problem with the massive cost overruns we have had over the last six years. Our border protection policies, all that sort of stuff, has been in so much strife—$11 billion. No matter what the cost, we have got a real issue when it comes to being able to provide new services.

I see the member for Solomon in here. The member for Solomon is a valued member of the development of Northern Australia white paper committee. She has been around the north of Australia. She has been to my city of Townsville and she knows what a great place it is, as I know that Darwin is a great place. What the member for Solomon and I are all about is growing the north, growing opportunity.

But at every level government must balance its budget, and must live within its means. What we have to do is to try to figure out how we are going to get this service up and running when you have to fly in staff and it has to be on a cost recovery basis. So when it gets to trying to get customs, immigration and quarantine services, we are starting from so far behind the starting line that we cannot catch up.

Deputy Speaker Kelly, I heard you in Federation Chamber this morning talking about business. You spoke about going overseas and getting things done and all sorts of stuff about running a business. Up until 2007, Australia, as a business, ran with a great return to the company. We were reinvesting in the company of Australia, of Team Australia. We were getting all our stuff rolled out. We had money in the bank. We were investing for the future. We were able to afford anything. If anything happened, we were able to do that. The GFC hit, and no-one is denying that the GFC caused a lot of pain. I see the communications minister down there sitting at the table. He was the leader of the opposition at the time and he backed the first round of stimulus, as was right. He was also right when he walked away from the second round of stimulus and said that they were going too hard. And they just ran up so much debt. The member for Wentworth, now communications minister, was also right when he said we are losing control of what we are trying to do here. There was too much money going out and there was too much debt. Once you lose control of your cash flow, once your cash flow is going into paying interest instead of paying for other products or paying for upgraded plant and equipment in your business, you lose control of your business.

I am an auctioneer by trade, and my area of specialisation was in insolvency. I would go into businesses and shut them down, sell off of the plant and equipment, and move on. Just about every insolvency was around cash. If you lose control of your cash flow, you lose control of your business, if your debts are ratcheted up too high. I worked through the Keating recession of the early 1990s, when interest rates were in their 20s, and what really knocked a lot of businesses around was that so much of their working capital went into the business of paying off debt. And that is where we are at the moment.

So when it comes to the customs, immigration and quarantine services, the Customs Amendment Bill does a whole heap of things. It amends the Customs Act 1901. It is about making sure that we balance our books. It is about making sure that we are living inside our means. It is about making sure that we do have that base from which we can grow. If I had had this opportunity in 2007, it would have been a no-brainer. If I had had the opportunity in 2007 to put an international airport into Townsville or start international flights through Townsville—because we are a limited international airport at the moment—it would have been a no-brainer. We would have done it. Because we had the cash there to say 'Okay, that sounds like a great idea, we will do that.' But now, because of the way things are, money is very tight. So to get $2 million or whatever we need to get started is very hard.

All the way through, no matter what bill we are talking about—and this is the Customs Amendment Bill 2014—it all comes back to the economy. It all comes back to being able to afford what you want to do. If you have cash in the bank you can do anything you want.

I remember that great Australian story on the ABC on Kerry Packer about his kidney transplant. The great line that he said was: 'The beauty about having cash is you can go anywhere you want. I could have this operation in New York, or Geneva or wherever.' He said that the best bloke to do it was in Sydney. But he said that if you have the cash you make the decisions. If you lose control of your cash, you are not making your own decisions. You are playing catch-up and you are trying to do things you are not supposed to be doing.

When I speak about this bill, I speak about living within my means. I speak about making sure that we do live within our means and making sure that everything is affordable.

If I can just quickly touch on the ABC cuts in relation to this customs bill, because it all comes back to what you do with your cash. When you make your decisions, when you make your statements, you make it with the information you have at hand at the time. Six months down the track, or 15 months down the track, circumstances are vastly different and so your decisions have to be very different. And that is as it goes with the Customs Amendment Bill. It all comes down to making sure that we live within our means. It all comes down to making sure that we do the right thing by the economy. We can do what we want if we do that, if we get in touch with our base and build our base.

I remember reading just recently the valedictory speech of the great Labor finance minister Peter Walsh. He left the Senate in 1993. He bemoaned the fact that he did not think we would ever pay back the debt Labor had run up at that time. He did not think we would ever pay it back. The quote I love is where he said that the first thing you lose is your economic sovereignty, and then you lose your political sovereignty. As in business, you end up with administrators and liquidators moving in. As a country, you end up having to make decisions that no one is happy about. I support the bill and I thank the House.

See this speech in context