Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in response to the Governor-General's speech where he outlined the government's program for this term of parliament. I will come back to that excellent speech, but, firstly, although it is five months since the election, I do need to thank the people, the electors, of O'Connor who have honoured me with a third term of representing them here in Canberra.

O'Connor is a remarkable electorate and one that I'm proud to represent. It's 866,000 square kilometres, encompassing a wonderful mining province across the Goldfields, centred on Kalgoorlie; an extraordinary agriculture sector running from Esperance to Manjimup; and covering wheat, sheep and some very high-value horticultural products. Also, on the south-west edge of the electorate, we have the town of Collie, which is the main power generation centre in Western Australia. The very hardworking people of Collie honoured me with a very large swing in the electorate. So thank you very much to the people of O'Connor. I'm here to work on your behalf for the next three years, and this government will continue to deliver the services and the infrastructure that we need and deserve in our wonderful electorate.

I want to thank the many helpers who worked on my campaign and on the polling booths, not only on election day but also on the pre-polls, which were open for up to three weeks prior to election day. That really tested the resolve of our volunteers, but I thank, from the bottom of my heart, those people who helped out through that period. They are the true believers. They are the people who were prepared to give of their time and effort at a time when everybody, every pundit, had written our party off. They still made that extraordinary effort for their values and their beliefs and to support me, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

But, of course, no-one deserves my thanks more than my beautiful wife, Tanya, and our four children, Emma, Annalise, Phillipa and Archie. They spend many, many nights when I'm away from home and I'm not there to help them and support them through life's daily challenges. This is the sixth year that I've been doing that, and they've got another three years ahead of them at least. I absolutely thank them for their sacrifice to support me to do this very privileged job.

I also want to thank Steve Martin, who's my divisional president. Steve has done more than anybody else outside of my family to help me become the member for O'Connor and to support me through the three elections that we've had since I've been the member. Also in my division there is the executive who form the bulk of my campaign committee and, of course, my wonderful staff. I'm very fortunate to have seven permanent or part-time staff, and they do a wonderful job. Not only during the election campaign but during the interim period, we're servicing constituents and making sure that the people of O'Connor are well looked after by the Commonwealth government.

The date of 18 May was a defining moment for this country. It was when the quiet Australians roared. I think there are some implications of what came out of the result on 18 May. Firstly, Twitter will no longer be seen as the go-to platform by the media. Also, I read in the media just the other day that the Labor Party have woken up to the fact that Twitter does not represent the Australian people. The people on Twitter tend to be people who've already got a very strong position, and they reinforce that position on a daily basis with their contributions. But, largely, it does not represent the quiet Australians.

The fortnightly Newspoll has probably brought down four prime ministers in the last 10 or 12 years. The media trawl through those results, analyse them to death and fill the fortnight with them until the next one comes around, when they can reanalyse the entrails of those particular results. I think most Australians now understand that all that a poll does is represent a snapshot in time of the way people feel. While someone who's responding to an opinion poll—for example, mid-term between elections—can perhaps convey their discontent with an existing government, and there are no consequences to telling a phone pollster that you're going to vote one way or another, as people get closer to election day, they very much decide that there are consequences and they vote accordingly.

The all-powerful GetUp! was threatening members on only the coalition side. Mr Paul Oosting said the other day that they were only targeting right-wing coalition members. I'm not sure that the new member for Wentworth would describe himself as particularly right-wing. They certainly went after him, as well as many other coalition colleagues, and I would go so far as to say their efforts were completely counterproductive. If I were a member sitting on the other side and GetUp! said that they were going to come and campaign in my electorate in the next election, I'd be saying, 'Please don't bother, fellows, because you actually do more harm than good.' I think that we won't see much of GetUp! in the future. They have actually got no credibility left, with their bullying and misogyny, particularly of my dear friend and colleague Nicolle Flint, the member for Boothby. Anybody who associates themselves with GetUp! is effectively endorsing that type of behaviour. I think there are not many decent Australians left who would like to be associated with that behaviour.

I've heard other members on our side of parliament delivering their speeches on the address-in-reply and saying that we dodged a bullet—that old-fashioned cliche. Well, I reckon in O'Connor we dodged an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead, because some of the policies that were being put forward by the other side had massive implications. I'll go through the ones that we're all aware of that were Australia wide.

There was the retirees tax, the tax on people's franking credits, the double-taxing of people who are shareholders in companies, who pay the 30c in the dollar tax as a shareholder of a company and then receive their dividend plus the distribution of the imputation credit. I had one particular constituent who came to me who was completely self-funded, living quite modestly. His only income was from his share dividends and franking credits. His income was $38,000, so not the top end of town, not living in a harbourside mansion, just living very modestly, very proud that he'd never had to draw on the taxpayer in his retirement. However, the loss of his franking credits would have reduced his income to $28,000. It is pretty tough to live on that sort of money. That's probably less than a pensioner couple receive through the pension. That was the sort of impact it was going to have on many, many self-funded retirees across my electorate. Of course, Albany, Denmark and the south coast are a retirement Mecca for self-funded retirees, and they were going to be very heavily impacted.

The Labor Party's negative gearing policy would have had two impacts in my electorate. The investors are overwhelmingly people on middle incomes, people earning up to $85,000 a year. Let's face it, for those middle-income earners—the policeman and the nurse—the only way they really have of generating some additional wealth for their retirement is to invest in an investment property. When they've got their current mortgage under control, they might decide that, if they invest in a property, it's an enforced saving scheme. They'd like to think that, in the next 20 or so years of their working lives, they'll pay that mortgage off, and the property will be worth considerably more than they paid for it. It really is, for many middle-income families, the only mechanism they have to build some wealth over and above their compulsory superannuation. Not only that; in many of the small regional towns, the only investors in housing stock are the negatively geared investors. So the opposition's policy would have had a devastating impact on the rental stock in many of the small regional towns that I represent.

Something that went under the radar somewhat was the $3,000 cap on accountancy fees. I have nearly 20,000 small businesses across my electorate. I think I'm in the top three in the nation for small businesses. Any small business turning over a reasonable amount of money would be spending a considerable amount more than $3,000 for accountancy fees. I heard the then opposition Treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, describe accountants' fees as a rort—'We're going to fix this rort'—which certainly exercised a few of the accountants across my electorate, who work very hard and do a great job for their clients in, legally, minimising the amount of tax that those clients pay. That is within the law. That's what accountants do. That's their job. They were quite taken aback to be described as 'rorters'. So that was another bullet that we dodged.

But, in an electorate like O'Connor, the 45 per cent emissions reduction target would have been absolutely devastating. We have a mining industry, we have a large agricultural sector and, of course, we have a heavy transport sector. All of our goods and services and supplies are delivered via heavy transport, and, of course, the cost of that transport would have gone through the roof. Electricity generation represents about 27 per cent of our emissions, the next highest is agriculture on 19 per cent, transport is on 17 per cent and mining is on 13 per cent. So where do you think a government that had a 45 per cent emissions target were going to go looking for emissions reductions? The answer is: all of those key industries across my electorate, and it would have been devastating.

The other one was 50 per cent electric cars by 2030—just over 10 years away. How would a government force 50 per cent of the population to buy an electric car? I was looking for a Hyundai Kona, which is a little SUV four-cylinder vehicle. I just happened to be flicking through, and the petrol version is around $25,000. Then I saw one worth $70,000! Why was that one worth $70,000? Because it's an electric vehicle. So how would a government force people to buy a $70,000 vehicle and not a $25,000 vehicle? Well, it's quite easy: you just keep cranking up fuel taxes. You just keep putting up fuel taxes until it reaches the point where it's more economical to buy an electric car for $70,000 than a petrol car for $25,000. The impact on the people who live in my electorate—who travel distances of 600 kilometres from Perth to Kalgoorlie, 730 kilometres from Perth to Esperance or 430 kilometres from Perth to Albany—would have been absolutely devastating. But, effectively, if they wanted to get to 50 per cent electric cars by 2030, that's what would happen. It's not only that. The other day I saw a story about an electric vehicle, a Nissan LEAF, one of the smaller electric vehicles. When it was eight years old the batteries needed replacing, and the replacement batteries would have cost $23,000. But the valuation on the vehicle was only $12,000. So you can see the problem that that might have for, for example, students leaving school and looking to buy their first car. It's a few thousand dollars for a petrol vehicle at the moment, but, no, no, in the brave new world it would be at least $20-odd thousand for an electric vehicle with a new battery—hopefully, if they could afford it. So these are some of the ramifications that people in my electorate would have faced, had the election gone the other way.

Of course, that main platform that we took to the election was about tax cuts. We're about cutting taxes for everyday Australians, and we've delivered on that promise: the $1,080 rebate—$2,160 for a couple—for people earning between $45,000 and $87,000 has been delivered and is in people's bank accounts, if they've submitted their tax return. We continue to reduce company tax for companies turning over up to $100 million, and that will reduce to 25 per cent. In the longer term, by 2024-2025 we'll be reducing the tax rate to 30 cents in the dollar for people earning between $45,000 and $200,000. So we've delivered on those already, and there's plenty more to do.

I just want to touch on a couple of local issues and local projects that were funded during the election campaign. Firstly, there's the Albany Ring Road project. This has been exercising the community in the Great Southern for a long time. The first stage of the ring road project was completed in 2007, and we have now put $140 million on the table to complete sections 2 and 3. The state government has contributed $35 million, and that project will be underway as soon as the planning and engineering designs are completed. The money is there and ready to go. We also committed $40 million for the Southern Forest Irrigation Scheme to top up the $27 million that the WA government has contributed and the $11 million that local growers contributed. So that's an $87 million project that will secure water in the Southern Forests region for the foreseeable future. There is $16 million for the Laverton Hospital. Laverton is a little town of 200 to 300 people, mostly Indigenous people, 390 kilometres north-east of Kalgoorlie.

The Western Australian coalition government, prior to the 2017 election, had committed to rebuild the Laverton Hospital. When the Western Australian Labor government were elected in March 2017 they withdrew that funding. Quite disgracefully, the Minister for Regional Development, Alannah MacTiernan, said that the mining company should pay for that hospital rebuild. Well, I'm very pleased to say that the Commonwealth government has committed the $16 million to rebuild the Laverton Hospital with no conditions attached.

We also contributed $70 million to the Roads of Strategic Importance program, which will be implemented across 40 shires in my electorate and also in the electorates of the members for Durack and Pearce. We also funded some small projects: the Kojonup medical centre—the George Church Medical Centre—to top up the $500,000 that was left to the community by the much loved George Church. That was $750,000 to build them a medical centre. There was also $500,000 for the Katanning medical centre, which will renovate the old shire buildings and provide state-of-the-art rooms for a medical practice to operate from. Goldfields Rehabilitation Services received $1.5 million towards operational costs for their program. Unfortunately, that's a service in the goldfields which is oversubscribed. We need to support Goldfields rehab to continue the good work they're doing. There was $278,000 for the Kambalda pool, which opened up some other funds from the state government and several of the local mining companies. And of course the mobile phone program has continued.

There is much more work to be done across my electorate of O'Connor. There are many worthy projects that still need to be delivered and, of course, making sure that the people of my electorate receive the infrastructure and the education and health services that they need. And we also need to address the labour shortages that occur across a large part of my electorate. That shortage of labour is a major economic constraint for local companies and is among my priorities.

I say to my constituents that, after working very hard for them, I recommit over the next three years to deliver that infrastructure and those services that they absolutely deserve and need.

See this speech in context