Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been over three months since the Governor-General gave his address and outlined the Morrison government's agenda for the 46th Parliament. In my response, I firstly congratulate General David Hurley on his appointment as Australia's 27th Governor-General. He comes to the office well credentialed, and I believe with the good wishes of most Australians. I also thank Sir Peter Cosgrove for his time as Governor-General of Australia. Sir Peter served with distinction, and leaves the office with much respect and affection from the Australian people.

Of course, I would not be here to give this address at all were it not for the good people of Makin who, on 18 May, once again elected me to represent them in this place. They have placed their trust and confidence in me, and that comes with a great deal of responsibility, which I take very seriously. It is indeed a privilege and an honour to represent in parliament the community that I've spent my life living and working amongst.

On the subject of elections, it's already five months since the May election. That means that this parliamentary term has two years and seven months left in it in order to complete a three-year term. It is simply not long enough. Parliamentary terms should be much longer. However, whilst my view is that terms should be for four years, I'm fully cognisant of failed attempts in the past to change federal parliamentary terms and the complicated House of Representatives and Senate relationship, not to mention the difficulty in changing the Constitution.

An alternative proposition which should be considered is to have fixed three-year terms. Since Federation in 1901, parliamentary terms have effectively averaged less than 2½ years. Section 28 of the Australian Constitution states:

Every House of Representatives shall continue for three years from the first meeting of the House, and no longer, but may be sooner dissolved by the Governor-General.

Interestingly, the Senate has fixed six-year terms, with half-Senate elections every three years, unless of course a double dissolution occurs.

Frequent elections are costly and disruptive to policy implementation and a stable economy. That's why most other governments in Australia and overseas have four- or five-year terms. Australia is one of only three countries with a bicameral parliament that has a three-year lower house term. Four-year terms were considered and ultimately rejected by the Constitution founders but subsequently supported by several reviews, with the most recent being a 2004 report by parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. However, referendums in 1974, 1977, 1984 and 1988 on constitutional changes to parliamentary terms all failed. Most notably, the 1988 referendum, which proposed four-year terms, was lost convincingly, with only one-third of voters being in support.

Whilst there continues to be widespread support for four-year terms for the House of Representatives, the complicating factor is changing the six-year Senate terms. Four-year lower house terms, without also extending Senate terms to eight years, would mean that half-Senate elections would be held separately to House of Representatives elections. Voters would not likely be happy about longer Senate terms, nor would they be keen on voting twice—or the public cost of another election. It would also require changing section 7 of the Constitution. Constitutional change is difficult. Of 44 proposals to change the constitution to date, only eight have been agreed to—hence the dilemma.

An alternative option for more stable government is therefore fixed three-year terms, which may be possible without constitutional change. With bipartisan support and appropriate exceptions so that early elections can be called where the government has lost the confidence of the parliament, fixed three-year terms should be considered. They would ensure a full three years, and end the uncertainty surrounding election timing and the manipulation of election dates for political advantages by governments of the day. The idea is not new, with former senator Gareth Evans introducing a private senators' bill back in 1981 to lock in three-year terms by changing the Constitution. That bill was never pursued. Given the difficulty of changing the Constitution to four-year lower house terms, the fixed three-year term option has considerable merit.

On a separate matter: the loss of public confidence in what were traditionally considered reputable, respected pillars of society should be of profound concern to us all. I refer to religious institutions; international corporate entities, including our major banks, national utility providers and health insurers; and so many other sectors of society that in recent times have come under scrutiny and lost the confidence of the Australian people. Indeed, right now we have another two royal commissions underway, looking into two other sectors.

Of particular concern is the public loss of confidence in our parliaments and even in our judicial systems. When civic leadership at all levels is lost there is an imperative to act. It seems that we live in a world where traditional values, common decency and generosity are diminishing traits. Why large corporations such as IT providers and big banks and utility providers, who are already making billions of dollars in profit, see a need to offshore their operations, evade tax or squeeze more money out of customers when they already make healthy profits baffles me. It seems that greed and self-interest come first and foremost. Corporate culture needs to change, and governments have a role in leading that change.

Regrettably, I have no confidence that the leadership will come from the Morrison government. Its response to the banking royal commission is indeed disappointing. This is a government that does not have a long-term, inspirational ambition for Australia. It is a government that is filled with lots of empty rhetoric and big-dollar claims but is very light on substance. It is a government that keeps shielding itself by pointing to Labor's term in office. Can I point out to members opposite that that was six years ago. This government has now been in office for over six years. It can no longer shirk its responsibility for its own failures. How long does this government need before it takes responsibility and accepts that it has had plenty of time to turn around the so-called failures of previous governments? This is a government that has indeed failed. It has failed to manage the Australian economy, failed to implement an energy policy, failed to rein in the big banks, failed to fix Australia's health system, failed to competently roll out the National Disability Insurance Scheme, failed to implement an effective climate change policy, failed to fix the Murray-Darling Basin mess, failed to fix the aged-care crisis facing the nation, failed to articulate a coherent foreign affairs policy and, on a matter that is very important to my home state of Australia, after six years, failed to commence construction of the 12 submarines and other naval shipbuilding that is expected to take place. This is a government that talks big numbers, but we see very little action on the ground.

I turn now to the state of the Australian economy. I'll quote the campaign line used in Bill Clinton's campaign speech some two decades ago: it's the economy, stupid. It was an effective campaign line because everything hangs off the economy. So what is the state of the Australian economy after six years of a coalition government? Unemployment is rising. We saw the figures last month at 5.3 per cent. In my home state it is 7.3 per cent, the highest across the nation, and there are other job losses to come. Underemployment is now at 1.1 million people or thereabouts in this country, which effectively means that we have around 1.8 million Australians looking for work or looking for more work. Household debt is at record highs. Wage growth is stagnant. Consumer confidence is down. Productivity is declining. Living standards are falling. And net debt has doubled.

Those are not my figures. Those are the figures that are presented by economists and, indeed, in some cases by the government itself. The figures don't lie, and the story with respect to the Australian economy is not good. That's why the Reserve Bank has cut interest rates to an all-time low of 0.75 per cent. That in itself sends out a very strong message that the economy of this country is in crisis. That rate, 0.75 per cent, is an all-time low, and the Reserve Bank did that in the hope that lower interest rates would prop up the Australian economy. Regrettably, I don't believe that that will be the case. Indeed, when I read the comments of other economists, I see many of them feel the same way. I spoke to one person recently who made it very clear from his analysis and his assessment—and this is a person whose opinion I value—that it will make absolutely no difference at all to the Australian economy, just as reducing interest rates from one per cent to 0.75 per cent and prior to that from 1½ to one per cent et cetera had made no difference. The reason is that, when you get interest rates that low, it is no longer the interest rates that are a barrier to investment; it is concerns about the future economy of this country. People will not borrow, even at those rates, if they have no confidence in the future of the economy of Australia. And that is exactly what is happening.

And so the continuous lowering of interest rates is not the solution that this country needs. Quite frankly, I think it's starting to have an adverse effect. As others have commented, it would appear that people, rather than invest their money in Australia when interest rates are so low, start to invest their money in overseas jurisdictions where they might be able to get a better return. If that happens, that's simply a drain on the funds in this country that could otherwise be used for investment purposes. And so it seems to me that the government's whole strategy of managing the economy has not only failed but continues in a downward spiral. The more it cuts interest rates and the more it cuts expenditure to lower-income people in this country, the worse the economy is going to get.

Regrettably, not only do I not believe that the cuts in interest rates are going to solve the economic woes of this country; for two other reasons, I think they will do the opposite. One is that the big banks, as we have already seen, will not necessarily pass on the interest rate cuts in full. And yet, at the same time, they will cut the interest rates for anyone who's got money deposited with them, thereby cutting income to people who are dependent on their investments with the big banks. One of the groups of people that I'm particularly concerned about with respect to that are the Australian pensioners. For them, the cuts to the interest rates will cut further the meagre income that they already have. These are people who are likely to be hit twice, and they will be hit twice in many cases—not in all but in many cases—because on one hand they will lose interest income whilst on the other the deeming rates, which the government still maintains at too high a level, will be used to affect their pension income. So not only will they get less money from the banks but the amount that the government will deem that they earn when they don't actually earn it will remain high. And so they will be affected in both cases. My understanding is that there are something like 600,000 pensioners who are subject to the deeming rates alone.

This is a government that is no friend of older Australians, and yet it is older Australians who in most cases not only built this country but, quite frankly, are the ones who keep spending their money and boosting the economy wherever they live or wherever they go. For them, whatever money they seem to earn or have as income they are prepared to spend. This is a government that wanted to cut pension incomes by changing the indexation formula. It cut the pension of 330,000 Australians by changing the assets test. It wanted to cut the energy supplement from them. It wanted to raise the pension age to 70 years. It has left 129,000 older Australians waiting months and months—in some cases years—for home care packages, and tens of thousands more have been waiting months and even years for elective surgery. In the meantime, the cost of living for all Australians and, in particular, older Australians, who are often on a fixed income, keeps rising while their income continues to fall.

These are people who, in many cases, have no other option. They can't go out and get part-time work. They can't secure income from any other source, and so relying on the pension or the meagre interest that they might get from their bank deposit is all they have. Yet this government seems to think that it will make savings by squeezing people on low incomes, who are the most vulnerable in our society. If the government thinks that the answer to fixing the economic woes of this country is to squeeze the poor, it is sorely wrong.

On that note, I turn to the issue of Newstart. The base rate of Newstart has not been increased in this country since 1994. Yes, there have been some minimal CPI increases, but the base rate has not been increased since 1994. On the last figures I saw, there were 723,000 people on Newstart. Nearly half of them were over the age of 45 years. These are not young people who are simply bludging. These are people who have lost their jobs—probably in most cases they have been retrenched—as a result of changes in our economy and who now, because of their age, are finding it extremely difficult to find work. To ask them to try and survive on less than $40 a day is unreasonable, just as it's unreasonable to say to them: 'Just go and get a job. Our focus is on getting jobs for you.' As I said earlier on in my remarks, there are 1.8 million Australians trying to get work or trying to get more work. For these people, it's a pretty tough gig trying to get work when you're out there and, in some cases, you've got limited qualifications. But they're being told that they can, supposedly, live on less than $40 a day.

It is not only unreasonable to ask them to get a job but it is unreasonable to ask them to survive on $40 a day, particularly if they have children. It is high time that this government accepted that Newstart needs to be increased. If Newstart were increased, it would actually boost the economy, because these people don't have spare money and they would therefore spend their money and generate economic activity in their local communities and beyond. Indeed, there have been studies to that effect, which show that tax revenue in this country would probably increase to the tune of about $1 billion simply through an increase to Newstart. I have no doubt that those studies are pretty much on the ball because I am confident that any money that the government paid in additional Newstart would all be spent throughout the community.

My time has just about run out, but I say this in respect of the Governor-General's address in which there was a vision outlined for the 46th Parliament for this government. It's a vision that, quite frankly, doesn't set too many KPIs, too many benchmarks, against which the government can be measured at the end of its term. That is quite deliberate, because this government knows that it doesn't have a particular plan for this country. It doesn't have an agenda that gives us any hope for the future. It is prepared to just muddle along from one month to the next, one year to the next and then perhaps from one election to the next, in the hope that, if it doesn't upset people too much, they might re-elect the government. We need a government that's prepared to do a bit more than that, particularly at a time when the world is screaming out for leadership.

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