Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Braddon for her contribution on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2017-2018 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. The privilege of being elected to this place carries with it a responsibility in participating in the contest of ideas in this place to represent and reflect the views of the electors of northern Tasmania. Whilst there are admirable attempts to ensure that the public have access to the speeches and events which occur daily in this place, there is little hope of rising above the snippets of vision that will be broadcast from question time or a doorstop during the day. This is my attempt to explain the differences in vision between my side of politics and the present policies adopted by the government, as expressed through the budget handed down by the Treasurer.

When I speak in this place, I often need to emphasise the disadvantage within my electorate. This is regrettable but necessary. Educational outcomes are poor. On multiple measures, health outcomes are amongst the worst nationally. The social determinants of health provide an explanation for poor health outcomes and point towards potential solutions, even if those solutions are long term rather than short term. Unemployment, in particular youth unemployment, is unacceptably high. There is, in common with other areas of disadvantage within the nation, intergenerational disadvantage expressed in long-term unemployment and reliance upon the social safety nets within social security and other legislation.

There are nevertheless actual and/or potential advantages within Tasmania, including striking beauty, a stable population, a temperate but much maligned climate and considerable expertise in primary production, fisheries and tourism. However, the economic performance of the state, measured in per capita gross-state-product terms, is significantly below the average per capita gross state product of other states. There are multiple potential causes of this deficit, including an older population and in particular a lack of educational attainment. Many young people feel that they are forced to leave the state to search for employment or, if they complete tertiary education within the state, they should pursue employment elsewhere.

We know that this electorate relies upon aspects of the social safety net, in particular services funded or substantially funded by the state and federal governments in the form of access to public health and public education as well as social security payments and benefits; therefore, any conversation on the topic of fairness has real, not theoretical, impact in my electorate. The importance of access to public health is consistently underestimated by those opposite. Access to a GP is constrained if a person is unable to meet the gap between the Medicare schedule rebate and the charge raised by the GP. Despite the statistics relied upon by the government regarding access to bulk-billing, it is very difficult to locate or access a bulk-billing GP practice within Northern Tasmania. Indeed, I am surveying my electorate at present to collate information on what services are able to be bulk-billed in Northern Tasmania.

The consequence of a lack of bulk-billing GPs is that many people who are unable to access a GP practice will attend the emergency department of a public hospital, leading to increased demand in our public hospitals. This is particularly notable at the Launceston General Hospital. That hospital has struggled with demand, both within the emergency department and within the hospital for hospital admissions. Health policy needs to address access to general practitioners as well as the proper funding and resourcing of public hospitals.

The Tasmanian health system can be properly described as being in crisis. This is a fair description, given that the Australian Medical Association Tasmania indicated on 20 May 2017 that it had lost confidence in the Tasmanian Health Minister, Michael Ferguson, stating that the system was 'plagued by governance dysfunction, deteriorating patient safety indicators, worsening hospital overcrowding and a toxic bureaucratic culture'.

This federal government, as successor to the Abbott Liberal government, has delivered cuts to health and education that have had a lasting impact on our health and education systems. In education the government has now adopted the mantle of a needs based system, in rebadging its education policy in the name of Gonski. What it still delivers is cuts to education, just as it previously delivered cuts to health funding. What most concerns me, therefore, is that this government is prepared to deny Tasmanian children, particularly disadvantaged Tasmanian children, the opportunity to put that disadvantage behind them through the transformative power of education.

There is no doubt that the Northern Tasmanian community that I represent in Bass understands the importance of policies that address unemployment, underemployment, low-paid work, the maintenance of penalty rates, funding for public education—and, indeed, education generally on a needs basis—and support for public health, including access to GPs and support for our public hospitals. The policies that I took to the 2016 federal election contained comprehensive responses to these issues.

The university transformation project and the Launceston sewerage improvement plan provided important infrastructure funding and consequent much-needed employment. The University of Tasmania project will see, as a consequence of the government's adoption of the UTAS proposal, $350 million invested in Northern Tasmania in relocation of the Newnham and Bernie campuses. Labor supported this project early and pressed the government every day of the 2016 election campaign to adopt it. Labor saw not just an infrastructure play but an opportunity to improve tertiary attainment within the state for the state's long-term social and economic benefit.

Labor's commitment of $75 million to the Launceston sewerage improvement plan would see a vitally important infrastructure project start sooner rather than later. It is disappointing that both the state and federal governments have failed at this stage to recognise the importance of this project with respect to both environmental outcomes and in supporting employment. Whilst it is wonderful to see significant private and public investment in Launceston—in particular, Launceston City Council's North Bank project, Errol Stewart's Silo Hotel and CH Smith projects, and Josef Chromy's continuing positive influence in the city at Penny Royal and its immediate environs—these developments occur within metres of a contaminated water body, where sewerage spills and outflows should be addressed by the upgrading of the city's ageing sewerage infrastructure.

Just last night, the House passed the government's Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. This has enshrined the government's $22 billion in cuts to education over the next 10 years. Labor is committed to the full restoration of these cuts when it comes to government. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the difference between our position and the position of those opposite when it comes to fairly funding education. The 2013 federal election campaign was marked by the government's dishonest claim that there was not a dollar of difference between the Liberal opposition and the then government in funding for education. The 2014 federal budget, where $30 billion worth of cuts were delivered to education, gave the lie to that. What makes the government's position worse is that at that stage, and subsequently, it consistently argued that it was delivering increased funding and that what would deliver better education outcomes was not more money but better teaching and, remarkably, that Labor's commitment to Gonski was unfunded.

Every school principal, every teacher and, indeed, every parent of a child denied funding in the 2014 budget needs to understand that the Liberals perpetuated a fraud on the Australian public by claiming that there was not a dollar's difference between the Liberals and Labor on education funding whilst claiming that years 5 and 6 of their Gonski funding plan—a plan that was incorporated into intergovernmental agreements—was unfunded. The fact of the matter is that Gonski 2.0 delivers increased funding from the low base adopted in the 2014 federal budget. This enables the present government to claim increases in funding. Put another way, what was a $30 billion cut to education is now merely a $22 billion cut. The Liberals demand credit for having introduced a less worse education package and now claim that what has been produced is needs based in accordance with the Gonski model.

The original Gonski plan was needs based and sector blind. This meant that, in order to reach the schooling resource standard by 2018-19 and, in the case of Victoria, by 2020, available funding for individual schools was based upon disadvantage. Gonski 2.0 does nothing of the sort. Some schools will never reach the schooling resource standard goal set by the original Gonski plan. Despite what I have said about significant disadvantage within the Tasmanian system, the indexation proposed in the name of Gonski 2.0 is the second-lowest level of indexation, after schools in the Northern Territory. What sort of system produces the lowest and second-lowest rate of indexation to the two most disadvantaged education systems in the nation? Schools within Tasmania will lose more than $84 million in the next two years.

When it comes to supporting low-paid workers and those in receipt of penalty rates, the government is nowhere to be seen. It is content to see low-paid workers in receipt of penalty rates lose up to $77 dollars per week come 2 July, whilst handing a tax cut to high-paid individuals and businesses. It is still determined to deliver a tax cut to the big end of town; a tax cut that will cost $65 billion or more over 10 years. I understand that small business needs customers who have money in their pockets. A cut to penalty rates just for hospitality and retail workers would mean a loss of up to $12 million from the Bass economy. It is an unfair and unaffordable cut.

In the time I have served as the member for Bass, I have been able to gauge from contact to my office what are the most pressing issues within my electorate. There are two issues that I would like to speak about in the remaining time available to me. Labor introduced the National Broadband Network. The present government has done its best to destroy or hobble the NBN. We have the absurd situation that Bass has both the best and the worst to offer with respect to internet connectivity within Australia. As of 11 am today, 30 May, a local Launceston internet service provider, Launtel, is offering Australia's first commercial gigabit internet connections. Meanwhile, substantial parts of my electorate—Legana, in particular—do not enjoy broadband internet access due to difficulties with the implementation of fibre to the node or, where fibre to the node has been installed, difficulties with the copper connections used for the service. This situation arises due to a failure of policy, for which the present government, and indeed the Prime Minister, should be loudly condemned.

The next area I would like to highlight is the government's absurd persecution of Centrelink recipients. The so-called 'robo-debt' program emphasises this government's incompetence and lack of respect for people who may be quite legitimately dealing with Centrelink. I have seen many occasions where the government's automated debt recovery program has produced injustice through no fault whatsoever of the Centrelink recipient. Indeed, I have become aware of circumstances where persons have received overpayments through administrative error and do not meet the supposed profile of a so-called rorter of the public purse. This person, who I will not identify, served in public life at a senior level. There could be no suggestion that this person had failed in their communication with the department, but they were overpaid. Indeed, my inquiries to the minister confirm that.

What I have seen is that ordinary citizens do not receive the benefit of the doubt or reasonable assistance when it comes to receiving correspondence which has been automatically produced. Every person should have the right to receive respect in their dealings with government. The former Labor government used a data-matching program but with human oversight in order to ensure that absurd situations did not cause undue hardship for those who are in receipt of correspondence from the department seeking clarification as to eligibility to claim benefits. This government claims that, in repudiation of its previous ideology, it has embraced concepts of fairness and equity. Its actions speak otherwise.

I would like to speak also about the issue of infrastructure commitment to Tasmania generally. The member for Braddon, in her address today, spoke about the fact that there was no additional funding for infrastructure within Tasmania other than that which had previously been announced and provided for in the budget. I commend the government for its funding of the City Deals, particularly for the city of Launceston and within the electorate of Bass. That is a laudable commitment to transforming the city of Launceston through the university transformation project, but any further opportunity that the government has to invest in infrastructure in the state of Tasmania has been well and truly missed. There has been no additional commitment to road projects; there have been no commitments to providing further funding for rail; there is no additional commitment for other projects which might provide economic assistance to the state of Tasmania—a state, as I said previously, which is beset by disadvantage.

This government needs to understand that we are in a federation. It is possible for the government to make strategic investments in the state of Tasmania.

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