Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure that, as a member of an electorate in regional Australia, I get to speak on the Regional Investment Corporation Bill 2017. What we heard this week in relation to this bill is those opposite trying to praise the Deputy Prime Minister—the minister who brought this bill into the parliament, the minister whose legitimacy to stand in this place, to sit on the front bench, is in question. And those opposite are saying, 'We're the party of regional Australia; we're the party that now has to bring forward this election commitment, this corporation.'

But the history of this government is continued backflipping on these policy commitments that they make. The backpacker tax was a real corker of a one that really had a huge impact on regional Australia. Having these commitments doesn't actually make these commitments good policy. This bill hasn't got a lot going for it, really.

Those opposite are saying that the Deputy Prime Minister is out there, getting out of his electorate of New England, across regional Australia. Sure, he might go out to regional New South Wales, regional Queensland or a little bit of regional Victoria, where the National Party holds seats, but I can tell you now: this Deputy Prime Minister, this Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, very rarely comes to my regional state of Tasmania. In fact, last year, I wrote to the minister when I was newly elected, because my farmers said to me—those dairy farmers who were hit hard by the dairy crisis—that they were not hearing anything from the government or any support for them. So I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister and I said, 'Please come to my state, to my electorate, to my farmers and talk to those farmers.' And he didn't say a word.

Now, this is around the household assistance package for those farmers. That package took the farmers forever to actually apply for; it took them so much time and even a lot of money to actually get their application ready. The reply from the Deputy Prime Minister was a bit of, 'Too bad, so sad. That's the process you have to go through. But I'm not even willing to come to Tasmania to talk to you.' But he's willing to go to National Party seats. That's perfectly fine, but if you're going to be a minister for agriculture—maybe a legitimate minister for agriculture, and we'll see how that pans out—then you need to go through the whole regional area and all the farming areas of this great country of ours.

When we talk about this bill, it talks about the farm concessional loans, which this corporation will look over. There's $4 billion sitting there that farmers aren't even taking up. You have to ask the question of why. I think that's something that the corporation will probably do some work into. I'm the deputy chair of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources, and we're doing an inquiry into irrigation at the moment. Farmers and irrigation bodies are saying to us that one real concern for those farmers, who are looking at water efficiency, is energy prices. That is something that this government is in a policy paralysis on. They're not offering any hope to these farmers that they can then switch to more efficient ways of delivering water when there's this high cost of energy associated with that. So a lot of farmers are now probably going back to diesel generation for their pumps. They're not getting the water efficiencies that we so desperately need, particularly in areas like the Murray-Darling, which has been the topic of conversation quite a lot.

What this minister talks a lot about is water development. Since the election of last year, in this current parliament, he has been to Tasmania just once. Just once, for a little fleeting visit to the Southern Midlands irrigation scheme. This is one of those things that is quite quirky about all this: this corporation is going to talk about how we can fast-track the construction of dams and priority water infrastructure, but not one irrigation scheme in Tasmania and not one dam project in Tasmania was ever thought of, funded and committed to by the coalition or the Liberal party at a state level. We have had significant amounts of federal and state money invested into water infrastructure in Tasmania. Every project has been delivered by Labor or planned by Labor. But it's fine for the Deputy Prime Minister to come to my state and claim credit for at least one scheme. There's one that's being built in my electorate in Smithton. The Deputy Prime Minister may very well claim credit for that one as well, but it has all been planned by Labor and I doubt he will pass that credit onto us.

But there's another part of this legislation that is quite concerning, and that's around where this corporation is going to be located. When you have, before the corporation has even started, said, 'Right, we're going to put this corporation in Orange,' then I have to ask: what is the process? You have to ask yourself what the actual process is. They are putting this corporation, with a number of employees to be employed by it, in a location without a process.

The funny thing is that this process that the government has actually looked at to put it here is not even a process. It's a determination that they used when the Deputy Prime Minister decided that he would put the APVMA in his home town of Armidale. If that's not pork-barrelling, then I don't know what is. I say that because that was an absolute disaster, and we all know that. We had our public servants working out of McDonald's, for goodness sake, because the Deputy Prime Minister was adamant that that's where it had to go.

Now we've got the corporation going to Orange, which is fine. That's great for Orange. I think there are 30 jobs, and its operation costs will be $20-odd million a year that this corporation will have. But even those who have consulted on this bill are asking, 'Why is it going to be here?' The Pastoralists and Graziers Association of Western Australia are asking, 'Why has there been a unilateral decision made on this question?' But no-one can tell us why, and I think this is fine if you look at who's actually in the seat of Orange—the member for Calare! It's great for him. He's already talking this up. I think you have to look at whether this is a little bit of a nudge and a wink from the Deputy Prime Minister for the member for Calare where he's saying: 'I'll look after you, mate. I'll look after you.'

Why couldn't this corporation be in a place like Burnie in my electorate, Bairnsdale, Ballina, Bowen, Devonport in my electorate, Deniliquin or Derby? Why weren't they considered? Has the Deputy Prime Minister just spun the wheel and gone: 'We'll put it in Orange because that's where one of my colleagues is. I think the history of that electorate is it was one that was held by Labor for a number of years, then it went independent and now the Nationals have picked it up. We'll bring some jobs there.' That's fine. We're very supportive of decentralisation on this side of the House—absolutely. It has its place, but you have to look at where these people go and what functions they're going to be providing in the service that they're in.

The APVMA was totally one that doesn't work, and I've spoken to people like the CPSU around how we can get decentralisation and bring some of the public sector jobs to Tasmania. We're very cautious about looking at what the functions are that we can support in a state like Tasmania, which is quite removed from Canberra—absolutely. You have to be smart about this. You have to actually think about where these jobs should go. You can't bring a group of highly skilled specialised scientists from Canberra to Armidale and expect it to work without actually doing some consultation. But, no, the Deputy Prime Minister wanted the APVMA right there in Armidale. What about this corporation? The Pastoralists and Graziers Association of Western Australia are suggesting it should be in Canberra. That's fairly reasonable. Was that considered? Who knows?

This is quite an amazing bill! This went through the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills and there was a dissenting report. I'm just trying to find it amongst all my papers here because it's quite interesting what they have actually come up with. The dissenting report states:

… that the Government:-

this corporation. That's because the functions of this corporation actually exist. The water development projects that happened in Tasmania happened, and they happened well. The future of water development in Tasmania is very, very unknown. We don't know what's going to happen with further opportunities that might arise or that have been identified by Tasmania Irrigation because the government's not really focused on it. Will the corporation focus on the future irrigation needs of Tasmania or dam construction? Who knows? The government has offered mixed messages when enunciating the policy objectives for the establishment of this corporation and has failed to undertake a cost-benefit analysis to give confidence that the $28 million cost of establishing and operating the corporation delivers good value for the Australian taxpayer. That's absolutely quite extraordinary, really. It goes on and on. Thank you to those senators who have provided that dissenting report.

But there's one other issue that others who have looked at this bill and provided some commentary on it have raised, and that is the governance structure. The government has made a really slight amendment to this and they have now established that the board of this corporation will consist of a chair and two people. That's to look after $4 billion of taxpayers' money—two people. Now I think they have extended it in their amendment—because they thought, 'Oh, maybe that's a bit low'—to three. I know that the National Farmers' Federation in their submission stated, 'Oh, gosh, if you're going to be looking after $4 billion, we need a better governance structure here,' and they've suggested at least six. But the government hasn't listened. Of course, they haven't listened. This is $4 billion of taxpayers' funds that is going to be held under a board of three people. There's no accountability around this. If you actually look at the bill, the accountability structure particularly for this parliament is pretty non-existent. When you're dealing with $4 billion of taxpayers' money and you've got a Deputy Prime Minister that said, 'Oh, we're going to place it in Orange, in a National Party-held seat, and we've got a board of a couple of people that are going to dish out this money for water infrastructure development and support for farmers,' where's the scrutiny in it? It's not in this bill.

This parliament has limited say as to what is going to happen under this corporation. A lot of these functions happen now, with our states and territories looking after concessional loans. That's been happening with water development. This goes back to the government having a lack of policy for water development into the future. And I'm sure my colleague the member for Herbert can talk a lot about the lack of water development policy that this government has undertaken, particularly in Northern Australia. The future in irrigation development in my state of Tasmania is really at a standstill. But, thanks to Labor, it has been continuing for the last 10 years with the construction of the Meander Dam in 2007.

This government in the previous parliament and this parliament has really done nothing about water development for Tasmania or Northern Australia for that matter. The policy paralysis around energy is quite staggering. What farmers talk to us quite a lot about, particularly in the agriculture and water community, is: what is going to happen with energy and energy costs and the impost that has on my farming operation? They really do not know. The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development in Western Australia stated in their submission that anything less than the four members on the board may be perceived as government leaving the decision-making for the $4 billion portfolio in the hands of two people. Two ministers will be overseeing this corporation—the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, but the parliament will not necessarily get a say on it. The government has made four tiny, tiny amendments to this bill after it went through the scrutiny process, with submissions from the National Farmers' Federation, bodies in WA, the DPI, and pastoralists and graziers. The government came up with four teeny, tiny amendments that do not get to the heart of what some of these issues are. I say to the parliament: you just can't support this bill. This needs far more work from a Deputy Prime Minister whose legitimacy in this place is under question and whose record is clearly around pork-barrelling and looking after his mates but not regional Australia—certainly not my regional state of Tasmania, which he's been to once. I've invited him to come to my state—no strings attached. I know that the state Liberal Party don't want him there, because I've had members of the Tasmanian Liberal Party tell me that. And that is sad. That is really sad. I hope we can get over this and I hope this government can start looking at the issues that matter to our farmers the most.

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