James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021. I'd like to start by reflecting on some of the macro commitments made through these appropriations to our economy more broadly and then perhaps zip down into some of the projects that I am very proud to be working on with cabinet colleagues of mine in the Morrison government to deliver in my electorate of Sturt.

Firstly, a lot of speakers, including the previous speaker, have been talking about some of the programs that have been put in place in response to the economic response needed to the coronavirus pandemic that struck this country a little over 12 months ago. In particular, of course, there were the JobKeeper and the JobSeeker policies and the other supplementary payments that were made—other economic support payments, like what we did in child care and in so many different areas where we needed to undertake a significant economic response to the economic challenges of ensuring that we protected the health of Australians. Unfortunately, that meant needing to make some difficult but important decisions to hibernate elements of our economy whilst we protected all Australians, but particularly vulnerable Australians, from the risk of the coronavirus pandemic taking off in this country like it did in so many other parts of the world—in fact, in almost every other part of the world.

For everything else said about this time in history, it will be remembered for decades and centuries to come. I think about the performance of this country—not just of the government but of the people of Australia—in protecting our health and the risks by all coming together and accepting the very significant and difficult decisions that needed to be made in order to protect our health. There was the economic impact of that and the fact that everyone needed to work together to agree to follow the directions of Commonwealth, state and territory agencies and the fact that almost all Australians—and in my state of South Australia I would say it was every South Australian—understood and supported this, and came together in this time of crisis. It saw some of the greatest elements of the Australian character on display.

Obviously, though, in doing so, at the Commonwealth level we needed to undertake a very significant economic response to ensure that we were supporting the people, businesses and families of Australia. Whilst many of them were put under enormous economic stress and hardship, with many businesses at risk of closing permanently and many employees at risk of being told by their employer, 'The situation is unpredictable and dire and I have no confidence in the future so I have to make the decision to lay you off; there's too much uncertainty for us and we're making that decision now,' I think that the JobKeeper program, announced soon after the early responses, such as the closing of the international border, were made in March last year, will go down as one of the greatest examples of protecting jobs in the history of this country—and of any country, frankly. It compares as an exemplar against the types of responses put in place around the world and in previous examples, where governments haven't taken action to put a floor underneath jobs, effectively saying to businesses, 'We're taking your payroll onto our balance sheet.' To have the cooperation of the employer class with the employees of Australia so that program could be rolled out is one of the great stories of economic salvation and it has driven economic success.

We only need to look at the unemployment statistics released by the ABS last week to see, beyond our wildest dreams, how amazing the rebound has been for employment, particularly for some categories that we had the highest concern about—female employees, who were disproportionately affected by some of those economic shutdowns, and young people. And of course in this budget we've had some very specific measures to support young people back into the employment market. We know from the experience of previous recessions, particularly Labor's recession—the Keating recession—that young people, when they're unemployed, can take the longest to get back into employment, as well as some of the social challenges and the dislocation from a future that entrenched, long-term unemployment brings for young people. Avoiding that is something we saw as one of the highest priorities.

I'm very proud to be part of a government that has done this. In my electorate, for example, around 3,200 businesses and organisations accessed the JobKeeper program, and obviously there was the JobSeeker increase and the supplementary payments that were put in place—the $750 one and the $250 one. More than 40,000 people in my electorate were eligible to access these payments in their first rounds and a little over 30,000 people in the subsequent rounds. Most electorates would have very similar statistics, as all our electorates have about the same number of electors. There was no part of the country that was particularly less affected or more affected by these economic decisions. So, I suspect that every member of this House has similar stories of what a spectacular amount of support was put in place, at that level of percentage of people who accessed support, thanks to the decisions we made.

In these appropriations we have some important industry commitments. In particular, as a South Australian I'm very passionate about what we're doing in defence industry. We've of course got the submarine program and the frigate program, which are both thankfully being constructed in Adelaide. We've got the Osborne South shipyard. I had the pleasure of being out there for BAE's first cutting of prototype steel, just before Christmas. That shipyard is an unbelievable asset that is being built by Australian naval infrastructure by the government to build nine frigates, and we intend many more surface vessels into the future. Amazingly, that will be dwarfed by the Osborne North shipyard, which is in the early stages of construction now, where the 12 Attack-class submarines will be built for the Royal Australian Navy—tens of billions of dollars of economic activity in my home state, creating thousands and thousands of new jobs for decades to come.

With those two programs, along with other investments in defence industry that are happening at the Edinburgh RAAF base—and of course we've got the Woomera test range in South Australia—we are the defence state; we are the defence industry state. This is the government that is making enormous commitments to the future of defence industry across the country, particularly in my home state of South Australia and my home city of Adelaide.

Allied to defence, of course, are industries like the space sector and the cyber sector. I'm very proud that Adelaide was chosen to be the home of the Australian Space Agency. That agency is now open and operating at the Lot 14 site, the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site, just on the boundary of my electorate of Sturt. Whilst we appreciate that Commonwealth commitment, which is about a $40 million commitment across the establishment and recurrent expenditure in the first years of that agency, the most important thing about it is that Adelaide is going to be the natural home for space industry development in this country. It is an industry that has infinite capability here and across the planet as a growth industry. It will be tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs. And I have to confess that I hope the lion's share of those jobs are in my home city of Adelaide. Many of the people who are already working in that sector live in my electorate of Sturt.

We're also funding the Cooperative Research Centre for Smart Satellite Technologies and Analytics, which is an industry partnership with the University of South Australia. This is a $250 million program across the various private sector, government and tertiary institutions that are involved in that collaboration. The smart satellite CRC project will see enormous additional industry development in the satellite and general space sectors in South Australia, and in cybersecurity.

In cybersecurity there are enormous investments being made, again, in Adelaide. We've got the A3C, the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre, which happens to be also located just adjacent to my electorate, at Lot Fourteen precinct. They've got an impressive cyber range, which I think is certainly the largest in the country and probably the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. These are all really exciting examples of the future that my electorate of Sturt, the city of Adelaide and our nation has in these vital future industries. These are the growth driver industries: the defence industry, the space industry, the cyber industry and the creative industries. No-one would say there's not a huge future for these industries to grow employment opportunities into the future, and I'm very grateful for the decisions, the policies and the investments in this budget that are going into those industry sectors. Of course, we've got other industry investment through the Modern Manufacturing Fund, which picks up on some of those that I've mentioned already, like defence and space, but also med tech, agriculture, so on and so forth. I hope to see some of that expenditure come to my electorate.

In the final few minutes, I just want to quickly touch on a few local projects. I'm very grateful to have three urban congestion-busting infrastructure projects in my electorate of Sturt, including the Magill Road and Portrush Road intersection upgrade and the Glen Osmond Road and Fullarton Road intersection upgrade. The third is actually on my boundary with the seats of Boothby and Adelaide. These are all bottlenecks and they're all excellent examples of two great governments—the state and federal Liberal governments—working together to deliver practical benefits to the lives of the people of Sturt and the people of Australia.

The Magill and Portrush one, in particular, which is the largest at $98 million—a joint fifty-fifty investment between the Commonwealth government and the state government—is right in the heart of my electorate. In all the data, that is seen as one of the great bottlenecks in metropolitan Adelaide, with 65,000 vehicles travelling through it each and every day. Portrush Road is, of course, Highway 1. We've got lots of heavy freight that comes through my electorate. We've got schools all along the route. We've got, of course, commuter traffic. The Magill Road, which is the other road at the intersection, carries a lot of cement from the quarry in the Adelaide Hills, as well, of course, as commuter traffic. So that one in particular I'm very excited about. I know that in the next couple of weeks we're going to be on-site announcing a successful tenderer. That project is well underway already, but it will be exciting to see some of the early outcomes of that project, which is really going to transform the traffic flow and the experience of families and businesses in that area.

I'm also very proud of the money we're committing to the Magill Village Project, and I was very pleased to hear today that the state government, through their stimulus fund, are providing the final funds to complete the entirety of that project. That's a great local project for the people along Magill Road, through Magill, Tranmere, Kensington Gardens, Kensington Park and right down to near my electorate office at St Morris. It's going to be great to have the Magill Village. We've already undergrounded the powerlines there, but the streetscaping, the tree planting and the traffic softening is going to make that a really vibrant place for families to go and get a coffee, to enjoy pre and post recreation activities. It's going to be a great boost to the small businesses and the economy of that area. I can't wait to see that project, hopefully in the next 12 months, come into fruition.

For the Max Amber Sportsfield, where we've committed $5 million towards the $10 million project, jointly with the Campbelltown council, demolition has occurred on the old clubrooms there. That, again, is going to be a fantastic outcome for local sporting infrastructure. We're going to see an excellent facility for the existing football and cricket clubs, but we're creating a new netball club, which I'm really excited about. Of course, the facility is going to have appropriate female change rooms—not just for the new netball club; for women's cricket and football we're going to have the sort of facility that female participants deserve. It's also going to see an excellent upgrade to an important piece of local sporting infrastructure there at Max Amber.

The final one I want to mention is the Kensington Gardens Reserve, where we've put $3 million. Again, just recently, the state has tipped in a bit extra on top of what we've put in—the Burnside council. That is going to be a great environmental outcome for that site. We're getting rid of the dangerous polluted duck pond and creating a nice wetland instead that won't need to be fenced off as children won't be at risk of drowning anymore. It happens to have a unique connection, given that it's adjacent to the Kensington District Cricket Club, famous, of course, for being Sir Donald Bradman's cricket club and being near the home that he lived in for so many decades in the heart of my electorate. That's an exciting project that, again, is underway.

These projects are all being funded in this budget because we're committed to investing in local community infrastructure, local sporting infrastructure, local public amenity, and making sure that our neighbourhoods are safe and secure. I'm so grateful to the Treasurer and the Morrison government for what we're investing in my electorate of Sturt. I look forward to fighting for more funding in the future, and I know that people in my electorate are very grateful for what this budget is doing for them.

See this speech in context