Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start by congratulating the member for Indi, who has put a power of work into this. I read an earlier motion that she had prepared and I know she had been in discussion with the government and others on an earlier motion which had envisaged a joint select committee to inquire into decentralisation and regional development. Labor would have supported such an approach. We think the power of having both houses of parliament and the independence that is brought by a joint select committee would have brought a valuable contribution to the subject matter which is going to be covered by this committee.

As the Deputy Prime Minister has just said, Labor has a long and proud history in the area of decentralisation. It is well known that the Whitlam government established the Growth Centres (Financial Assistance) Bill 1973and the Albury-Wodonga Development Bill 1973 as a means of driving through this place a decentralisation agenda. It was not a process that stopped with the Whitlam government. I know, for example, that any of the members who are representing electorates that have an Australian tax office in their electorate have it as a result of a deliberate initiative of a Labor government to ensure that we decentralised the work that was being performed by such a large department of the government.

Some people have often quipped that this is something that is going to give Labor a natural advantage in some of these regional areas; it is a view that, if you are decentralising public servants out of Canberra, they will move to areas and change the political spectrum.

I always remind people who make that observation that actually the member for Farrer used to work in the Australian Taxation Office—I believe she used to be a union delegate in the tax office—and was one of the beneficiaries of a Labor government's commitment to decentralisation. We believe that there is a right and a wrong way to go about this. We think you need a methodical, systematic approach to decentralisation. I see the member for Hunter is here in the chamber with me today. He and I will have an active role in watching and participating in the work of this committee. I know that the member for Hunter has had some critical things to say about the move of the APVMA from Canberra to New England. We see this as an example of the wrong way to go about things: an ad hoc approach, very, very costly and a great disruption to the normal operations of that agency, without any cost-benefit analysis of the long-term benefits of that move.

This cannot be interpreted as a hostility from Labor to the proposition of decentralisation. It is something that we have had a long-term commitment to, dating back to well earlier than the 1970s, to the Chifley and Curtin governments, and even earlier than that. Labor have had a strong commitment to decentralisation. It has to go further than just looking at the activities of government, which is why I appreciate the work that the member for Indi has put into the drafting of the terms of reference for this committee, because they go to those important areas of regional economic development and the role of the private sector as well.

The objective of the decentralisation is to create jobs and economic opportunity in regional areas. That is what it is all about. Therefore, we argue that it does not make sense to be moving agencies or parts of agencies from capital cities into regional centres if, at the very same time, you are cutting jobs from other Commonwealth agencies that already exist in those regional areas. Sadly, that has been the case. We note that within the existing budget there are a further 1,200 jobs slated to be cut from the Department of Human Services—one of the most decentralised agencies in the Commonwealth. These are issues that need to be looked at and will be looked at. We will be looking at them very carefully in our participation in this new select committee. Once again, we want to congratulate all members of parliament who have had a role in bringing this motion to the parliament today, and we will be active and positive contributors to the work and the considerations of this committee.

Question agreed to.

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