Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am grateful for the opportunity to continue my contribution to this important debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006. Yesterday evening in the House, I was dealing with the outcome of the recent COAG process. In doing so, I indicated that I welcomed the long overdue initiative from the state and territory governments in association with the Commonwealth government to actually try and pool their resources to do something of substance on the very important issue of mental health. I indicated that from my point of view—and not only from the point of view of the constituents of my electorate but, I believe, that of the community at large—we as a community are sick and tired of delays with respect to the failure of government action at all levels on the need to do something on the issue of mental health.

It is well understood that Australians believe that mental health is a very serious problem. We need to do something more seriously to try and come to terms with how we assist people who are doing it very tough and with respect to how they handle this issue in the broader community and at a local family and service level. The record shows that these people are sick of the de-institutionalisation experiment and the results it has had in lowering the quality of life for many with mental illness, pushing them into the prison system and straining families to breaking point. On that note, I refer to the fact that the Prime Minister, in association with the premiers and chief ministers, said at the conclusion of the COAG meeting that they hope this new mental health agreement represents a partnership blueprint to actually help tackle the issues of intervention, counselling and residential care.

I simply want to stress that from my point of view no one level of government can continue to escape their responsibilities on the issue of mental health. They should stop seeking to blame one another and should stop duck shoving with respect to the responsibility for this issue. It is a combined responsibility. We need coordinated government action at all levels of government to actually make progress in the way we provide assistance and increased support for those in the community who require assistance with respect to access for people, mental health carers and families.

It is in that context that I simply want to remind the committee of the joint media release of 19 October 2005 of the Brain and Mind Research Institute, the Mental Health Council of Australia and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to reinforce that this has got to be an outcome that is pursued at all costs by the COAG process. That media release states:

After more than 12 years of so-called reform we have a broken and failing mental health care system.

Referring to the report prepared by these organisations, it calls for leadership, accountability and investment. It also stresses:

Australia urgently needs all governments to commit to a process of genuine and well-resourced mental health reform.

Finally, it correctly points out to the Australian community:

Our services are failing to meet community expectations of reasonable emergency and ongoing care on a daily basis.

I stress these issues because they raise serious questions about the accountability and performance of the COAG process. If the recent performance of COAG is anything to go by, some people might be waiting a long time before they see the results of reviews of mental health, transport, energy or skills and training translated into real funding or real progress in appropriation bills like this.

My concerns are about the lack of focus in these bills on the big issues facing Australia—issues like skills and training for our future economic wellbeing and other serious social issues like mental health. I support the second reading amendment standing in the name of my colleague the member for Melbourne and join him in reminding the House of this government’s long list of failures, including in a range of areas of major national and international consequence for the future economic and social wellbeing of Australia. These include—and these points are underscored by yesterday’s Reserve Bank monetary report, which clearly raises some of these challenges—our need as a community to, firstly, stem the widening current account and trade deficits; secondly, reverse the reduction in public education and training investment; thirdly, address critical weaknesses in health, including mental health; fourthly, expand research and development; and, fifthly, address workplace productivity, which is falling.

I join the member for Melbourne in support of the second reading amendment and in his condemnation of the government’s draconian industrial relations laws that will do nothing for productivity or economic growth. The amendment moved by the member for Melbourne clearly puts on the table some priorities for government action, going to issues such as the current account deficit and structural weaknesses in the economy in training and infrastructure. With respect to the outcome of the COAG processes and the appropriation bills before this House, the government will be judged on whether or not actual outcomes occur rather than report after report and committee after committee. We want action, not further reports and committees. I commend the second reading amendment to the House.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on the appropriation bills before this House and raise an issue of extreme importance not only to my electorate of Canning but to the people of Western Australia in general. There is gross mismanagement of two major infrastructure projects in Western Australia, and the fact is that this mismanagement has caused a great deal of angst in the community because the responsible minister is very much involved in a game of nastiness and spite through a vindictive campaign because she cannot get her own way with certain people she is dealing with. My concerns go to her competence to fulfil the role of planning and infrastructure minister in Western Australia. I am referring to Alannah MacTiernan, the state Minister for Planning and Infrastructure. It is serious to the extent that the new Premier, Alan Carpenter, who is currently defending her in her role, may wish to have a close look because it is about to cost the people of Western Australia many millions of dollars through mishandling and misappropriation of public funds. Minister MacTiernan thinks that public moneys are almost her slush fund to do with as she wishes. She wantonly spends public funds irresponsibly so that, ultimately, she gets her own way, but the people of Western Australia suffer because she has not been able to deliver projects under her jurisdiction as planning and infrastructure minister.

The issue I am talking about is to do with the building of the Perth to Bunbury highway, of which I have often spoken in this House. In fact, it is also called the Mandurah bypass or the Peel deviation. I need to set out some of the background here because this is the strongest issue for people not only in my electorate but also in the Peel region. They want the highway delivered on time and on budget. Both since and before I became the member for Canning this issue has continuously been on the radar because there is a huge bottleneck in the city of Mandurah which not only is dangerous as a result of the number of road accidents—and there have been many road accidents in which people have been killed, particularly around Lake Clifton, recently—but causes a lot of environmental concerns due to the number of people stuck in their cars at traffic lights, pouring out fumes when they could be running in a seamless fashion on the highway. I am very concerned that the longer this is delayed the more people will be maimed or killed on this bit of road.

Before the federal election in 2004 the government committed $150 million which had been asked for by the state Labor government. It then said it needed an extra $20 million, so it was increased to $170 million. We agreed on a total package of $340 million. We were going to fund it fifty-fifty. But, surprise, surprise, the minister then came out and said that it was going to cost more than $340 million and that it was now going to cost $450 million or even more. She put the AusLink funds at risk for Western Australia, but the federal government held its line and was determined to see the AusLink money spent in a responsible way—that being that the Kwinana Freeway and the Mandurah bypass would be finished as a single build with a set finish date. We said that construction had to start by 2006—this year—and that traffic had to be running on the road by 2009. So we put a start date and a finish date on it and agreed that any future blowouts, for which the minister is well known, would be absorbed by the state government. After saying many times that she would not sign the AusLink agreement, she eventually signed it, as everyone expected her to do. Her Premier, the Treasury and her cabinet were never going to let her throw away $170 million and put in jeopardy the rest of the AusLink funding for Western Australia.

Earlier this year everything seemed to be going along very well with the continuous build of the Perth to Bunbury highway. It was announced in early January that a preferred tenderer had been notified by the minister and the roads department. The successful tenderer was the Southern Gateway consortium headed by Leighton Contractors in alliance with WA Limestone. That company in the last month has been recruiting staff and has started to put together its bid as the preferred tenderer. In an absolute surprise, in an article in the West Australian newspaper last Friday headed ‘Alannah wallops Leighton—MacTiernan deals contractor huge blow in its bid to win $450m road contract’, she suddenly announced that she was going to pull preferred tender status off Leightons.

That announcement, first of all, is a breach of faith with the company that had been named as the preferred tenderer. There are also the costs involved. But the most alarming part of this is that, if this bid is delayed any further and the work does not start in 2006, the minister gives up $20 million in funding for this road, because the condition that this government—and the Prime Minister in particular—put on when this funding was announced was that the work had to begin by 2006 for the state government to receive the extra $20 million. If the minister thinks we are not serious about the fact that if this work is not begun by 2006 the $20 million will be put in jeopardy, she should remember that we are not going to be stared down by her in her game of trying to have this road declared a disagreed item before the AusLink proposal was signed.

That was the first alarming thing the minister did. But it gets worse. The minister has acted out of both spitefulness and vindictiveness. This is not the only occasion on which the minister has displayed spiteful and vindictive behaviour. I will refer to the announcement of a measure before Christmas last year. An article that ran in the West Australian newspaper for some time stated that planning minister Alannah MacTiernan had decided to withdraw planning approval over a large development in an area called Gin Gin against a family company called Plunketts. This approval had been granted by the previous government in 1995. The then planning minister, Richard Lewis, quite properly went through the process of checking that the application had gone through the correct procedures and gave it planning approval.

People might ask why, 10 years later, a minister would withdraw this planning approval on a matter that had been in the pipeline for 10 years. It is very simple. The minister lives near the Plunketts in Highgate and she had a neighbourhood dispute with the Plunkett family many years ago. She threatened that she would square up with them eventually and would deal them some sort of blow for having a neighbourhood dispute about an overshadowing planning issue when she was in opposition. When she became planning minister it gave her a great opportunity to come back in a vengeful way and deal with the Plunkett family by withdrawing the planning approval.

I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Plunketts are not going to take this lying down. This matter will go to court. We are talking about approval for a development of 557 hectares. The Plunketts intend to engage the best possible legal advice to fight this. This incident demonstrates that the minister will do anything to square up with her enemies, whether they be political or, as in this case, neighbourhood enemies.

In addition to that, the minister, at a local level, shares the electorate of Armadale with me. I speak about facts when I say that the minister has attacked me in the state parliament a number of times over the Mandurah bypass issue. She has attacked me in a scurrilous way, calling me a great many names. I have been called worse names by better people, so that does not worry me. I will not be in name calling; I am just giving the facts. For example, Minnawarra House, which provides training for those with disabilities et cetera in the electorate of Armadale, is run by a woman called Sandra Leeder and her group. But because she is opposed to Alannah MacTiernan’s decision to alter the planning approval through the Armadale Redevelopment Authority, which she essentially controls, she has made it known that she is going to deal with Sandra Leeder and make sure she gets turfed out. She will even drill down to a local level like this by dealing with a woman in the electorate who has offended her.

Another case in point—and this is getting down to the grubbiest tintacks—is that a local government councillor decided that she would not support everything the minister did, so what did Minister MacTiernan do? She set about running a campaign to dislodge her from the council at the last local government elections. She was successful and bragged about having done that. Here is a minister who decides that when she is taken on by somebody she is going to pay them back. This is all about payback.

How does the payback come to Leightons? Leightons won the contract to build the Perth to Mandurah rail. The Perth to Mandurah rail is a small railway line. It runs for only 80 kilometres. Yet when the minister first took it over and changed the route the cost went from $900 million-odd—and that was the previous Kenwick route; the current route goes straight up the freeway and is the least efficient route—to $1.2 billion. The minister kept assuring everybody that it was on track, on budget, and there were no cost blowouts. In this time the cost has gone from $1.2 billion to $1.56 billion. It is blowing out all the time, yet she tells the public, people on air and the parliament that it is going to be delivered on time and on budget.

Minister MacTiernan decided the rail line would take the most dangerous route by tunnelling through West Perth, when that was not necessary, again because she wanted to put her own stamp on the route and change it from that decided by the former Richard Court government. This is the same minister who bagged the duplication of the Narrows Bridge and then opened it when she became minister. This is the minister who spoke against what is called the ‘Polly pipe’ tunnel in East Perth, and was then a great barracker for it. She changes her stance all the time. Leightons won the contract to build this rail line, but more particularly, the Leightons Kumagai Joint Venture won the contract for tunnelling through the West Perth end.

This project has been beset by industrial and planning delays—all sorts of problems. It is no accident that the CFMEU have had a real input to the delays on this project. Leightons have decided that they are sick and tired of this and they are going to sue the CFMEU. Currently Leightons have a claim lodged against the CFMEU. Minister MacTiernan says that Leightons have been monstered by the CFMEU, so she agrees with the claim, but they are going to sue her. I would be surprised, having lost one day in every fortnight as a result of industrial action, if Leightons do not have some sort of claim. This includes behaviour such as the ‘blue flu’. I understand John Holland is going to sue the CFMEU as well, also claiming that they have been sabotaged by the blue flu.

The problem is that the start date could be affected by the minister in her efforts to delay the bidding and the awarding of this project to one of the consortia. The Leightons Kumagai Group are currently in dispute with Alannah MacTiernan and the state government for something like an extra $300 million, which would take the project cost to nearly $1.9 billion. So we are heading towards the $2 billion price tag which Mr Clough said he would have had to bid for the project initially. Minister MacTiernan has taken it very personally. In fact, she would not go on ABC Stateline last Friday night because she refused to talk about the issue any more.

When the new Premier, Alan Carpenter, was asked on Stateline if it was going to cost $2 billion, his only assurance was that he hoped not. So this project has gone from a budget of just over $1 billion to be now heading towards $2 billion. Ultimately, the minister has decided that the best way to do this is to form an alliance. We know that alliances are quite often fraught with danger. At the end of the day, if a company like Henry Walker Eltin could go broke—as they did—that would expose the Western Australian public. That prospect is quite alarming.

I go back to the fact that this minister has personally intervened to take this project from Leightons. The article in the West Australian by Gareth Parker and Mark Drummond on 10 February 2006 says:

Ms MacTiernan revealed yesterday that she had stripped the Leighton-led consortium of its so-called preferred tender status to build the road ... compete with another contracting group for the States largest single contract.

…       …            …

Ms MacTiernan denied any link between her ferocious battle with Leighton over the railway and her decision to revise the tender program.

You do not have to be too bright to figure out that she is absolutely furious over Leightons suing her for $300 million when she suddenly reverses the announcement of Main Roads of a month or so ago that Leightons were to receive this contract and then decides to blame Main Roads Western Australia for having announced it without her authority and has decided she is going to take on Leightons and get them for having decided to sue her over the Mandurah rail issue. She is in the blame game. She is never, ever wrong. It is always everyone else’s fault. The article says:

Ms MacTiernan last night blamed Main Roads for her having to strip Leighton of its superior status saying the department had acted against her instructions by awarding the Leighton consortium the preferred bidder position in the first place.

They have got four months now to get involved in the next stage of the bidding process. We are in February. If it takes four months to put in another preferred tenderer, and then they form an alliance, we are heading towards the end of the year—you do not start digging the day after—and this $20 million of federal money is in jeopardy as a result. I believe that Main Roads and the minister herself may be looking at another legal case. If Leighton have put this month’s worth of time and effort into preparing their bid under preferred tender status, I would say that they have got a claim because they were told in writing by Main Roads that they were the preferred tenderer.

Let me bring this to a conclusion by saying that at the end of the day the minister has put this project in jeopardy not only at the expense of the people in the Peel region but also at the risk of the lives of people driving on this road. Why has it been put in jeopardy? It has been put in jeopardy because the minister has had a hissy fit with Leighton Contractors and has decided that she will deal with them, that she will pay them back. Everybody in the industry knows that this is the way she operates.

Her stamping of the feet and her nastiness towards somebody who has decided to take her on will cost Western Australian taxpayers, Western Australian motorists and all the good people who drive on that road dearly. Ultimately, they will have to face this delay and this problem because Minister MacTiernan has decided that she has an axe to grind with Leightons. I think it is disgraceful. I think Carpenter should do something about it. He should take her off this project like he took her off the Plunkett project and give it to somebody who can competently manage it rather than somebody who has decided that she is going to square up not in this case with a political enemy but with an enemy in the business community. She is a disgrace. (Time expired)

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My contribution to this appropriations debate is probably best organised by reference to the statement of monetary policy of the Reserve Bank of Australia that was released on 13 February—just yesterday. It gives a snapshot of where the economy is and, importantly, where it is likely to be headed. It also reveals some structural weaknesses in the economy, about which I have said quite a bit in the past and about which I will continue to say a lot in the future. But the backdrop is one of very strong global economic growth. The statement indicates that growth in world GDP is estimated to have been well above average in 2005. Remember that growth in world GDP has been very strong over the last few years. The Reserve Bank points out:

This has contributed to a substantial lift in Australia’s terms of trade, which have increased by around 30 per cent over the past three years, their largest cumulative increase since the 1970s.

We have been blessed with the good fortune of very high mineral prices, driven most particularly by the phenomenal growth of China and its voracious appetite for raw materials to produce the infrastructure and the housing so necessary to sustain Chinese growth of around nine per cent per annum.

In spite of that fantastic good fortune, the Reserve Bank points to a very unfortunate outlook for Australian exports. It says:

Australia’s export performance over recent years has been disappointing, despite the generally favourable international conditions.

The trade minister is in enough trouble as it is, but every couple of days in the parliament he makes statements about how fantastically strong our export performance is, personally taking credit for the very high mineral prices created by the very strong growth of China. These people will take credit for anything if they can get away with it.

I do not see how the Howard government can claim responsibility for high global mineral prices, but it can accept responsibility for the very poor response in terms of the growth in volumes of Australian exports. The Reserve Bank statement says:

While export earnings have picked up strongly, this has been mainly driven by rising prices, with only very limited increases to date in volumes.

There is a sense of deja vu about this because year after year, since 2000, Treasury has been forecasting a turnaround in Australia’s export volumes, and every year Treasury has gotten it wrong. Every year the Howard government has said, ‘The improvement in volumes is just around the corner—just you wait and see,’ and every year it is like a mirage disappearing on the horizon. As those volumes are supposed to come on board, there is another excuse, such as the bird flu virus or a global economic slowdown, despite economic growth that has been very strong over the last few years. Any number of excuses has been proffered as to why our export volume has failed to pick up. The statement goes on to say:

With substantial investment in the resources sector and in related infrastructure projects currently underway, it is likely that export volume growth will pick up, though the expected improvement has been slow to eventuate.

That is exactly the point that I have been making—that Treasury, the trade minister and the Prime Minister have gotten it wrong for the last five years and the improvement in our export volumes that is always forecast has not occurred. I will return to our appalling trade accounts in a little while.

The Reserve Bank statement goes on to say that there are various sources of upward pressure on inflation. It says:

At the current stage of the expansion there are a number of factors that could be expected to put upward pressure on inflation in the period ahead.

It refers to aggregate wages growth having picked up over the last year, reflecting the tight conditions in the labour market. Secondly, it identifies the fact that world commodity prices have resulted in some large increases in the raw materials costs of many business. Thirdly, the statement says:

... any acceleration in demand would more readily put pressure on the economy’s productive capacity than at earlier stages of the expansion.

That is, we now have a situation where demand for Australian goods and services is well and truly smashing up against capacity constraints. The government has done very little to anticipate and then ease those capacity constraints. I refer, of course, to skills shortages and the bottlenecks in infrastructure that are now very well known and identified by agencies such as the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and, of course, the Reserve Bank. These three influences together or acting alone could well and truly increase inflationary pressures. The Reserve Bank goes on to say:

Given the prevailing levels of capacity utilisation and labour market tightness, this outlook is consistent with a modest increase in underlying inflation.

This is a warning from the Reserve Bank that it is looking very carefully at the inflation numbers and the underlying forces acting upon the inflation outcome in Australia. It says:

... the Board recognises that policy would need to respond in the event that demand or inflation pressures prove stronger than currently expected.

That means that there is a tightening bias—that the Reserve Bank is disposed towards tightening rather than being neutral or easing interest rates.

You would think that the Australian government would have been able to manage such a great economic expansion, spurred so strongly by the phenomenal growth in China. China’s real GDP grew by almost 10 per cent last year, and the Reserve Bank says:

... China is now the world’s fourth-largest economy (at market exchange rates) ... and remains the second-largest when measured at purchasing power parity exchange rates.

There are very credible forecasts to suggest that, in purchasing power parity terms, China will indeed surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2015, which is less than a decade from now, and India will become the third-largest economy, behind the United States. We have this incredible growth of China and India in our own region, in the Asian century, and Australia is standing on the doorstep of that incredible growth.

There are enormous opportunities for the Australian economy but, sadly, the Howard government has failed to invest in the future so that we can fully take advantage of those opportunities. The Reserve Bank indicates that the outlook for economic growth in Australia remains favourable but identifies:

The income gains from the strong terms of trade ... providing ongoing support to domestic spending, particularly in the regions most exposed to the resources sector.

The Reserve Bank is saying that the housing market has now come off a bit, but not nearly as much as some had anticipated. Some of the domestic demand has been eased but we still have this injection of national income from abroad—$40 billion over the last few years. The boom times are well and truly here as a result of the voracious appetite of China, in particular, for raw materials.

When you put it all together, this very strong injection of income into Australia as a result of China’s growth, the Reserve Bank finds:

Business conditions generally continue to be favourable, as evidenced by strong growth in profits and investment.

It goes on to say that profitability in the mining sector should remain strong in the near term.

What does that mean for the budget, given that we are speaking about appropriations? We know that the Treasurer has consistently underestimated the size of the budget surplus. There has been very strong criticism from the Business Council of Australia of the Treasurer’s record in that regard. That critique of the Treasurer has been along the lines that this consistent underestimation of the surplus has allowed the Treasurer to argue that there is not the capacity for genuine tax reform in this country because the surpluses would not sustain it. But when the surpluses turn out to be, in some cases, twice as big as those forecast by the Treasurer, there is a collective, ‘Oh, oh. We’ll get it right next time.’ They have not managed to do that in the last few years.

There are now economic forecasts, prepared by private forecasters, of a budget surplus in the coming financial year in the order of $15 billion. Everyone will know that in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook the budget surplus figures were revised upwards for the current year by almost $4 billion, proving again that the Treasurer has systematically underestimated the true size of surpluses. Now, these independent forecasters suggest that perhaps the surplus could be as large as $15 billion. But the government runs the grave risk of squandering the opportunity for tax reform, because we have a Reserve Bank statement that says there are fairly strong inflationary pressures and that it is looking very carefully at the numbers underlying the inflation figures and at wages growth.

As a result, the Reserve Bank is poised, watching to see what happens with this budget. If we get big surpluses and the government says, ‘We will now fund out of those surpluses very substantial tax reform,’ then the danger is that the Reserve Bank will say, ‘That is an injection of extra stimulus into the Australian economy, which will be inflationary, so we will increase interest rates.’

We have now got a situation where the Treasurer is saying, ‘Even if the surpluses are big, we may not be able to embark upon genuine tax reform.’ How could you get yourself in such a situation? We have predicted surpluses of $15 billion, but then we have the Treasurer warning, over the weekend and even more recently, that because resources booms do not last forever it may not be possible to implement tax reform. In fact, I am not sure that the Treasurer has ever—since the great tax adventure of 1998 to 2000—uttered the words ‘tax reform’ in a way that is empathetic.

The Treasurer is on the record as saying: ‘We might be able to provide tax cuts. People do want tax cuts but they do not want tax reform.’ That is untrue, because everyone knows that the tax system is crushing incentive. It is crushing incentive to move from welfare to work; it is crushing incentive for people to seek a promotion or to do overtime; it is crushing incentive for people in the income range, for example, where the 42c rate applies. It is crushing incentive up and down the income tax scale, and yet the Treasurer is saying, ‘Even if the budget surpluses are very large, we may not be able to implement tax reform, because it might be too stimulatory and the Reserve Bank would then be forced to increase interest rates.’ What a parlous situation for a Treasurer to get himself into when Australia is enjoying the good fortune of such high commodity prices—the best commodity prices since around 1974.

We will have to wait and see whether the Treasurer will get any sort of interest in the tax reform debate, apart from putting down discontent on the back bench and promoting the member for Wentworth as a parliamentary secretary—not for tax issues, not for financial issues, but for water. Perhaps he could make some observations about bottom-of-the-harbour schemes, which, I am sure everyone knows, are returning with force. Using his water portfolio would give him a segue into the tax reform debate, and we do know that many wealthy Australians are up to their snorkels in bottom-of-the-harbour type schemes. That might be a way in, but I suspect the member for Wentworth will be told to stick purely to water and not to tax.

Geoff Prosser (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The comments of the honourable member are pushing the limit, I would think. He should not reflect on the member for Wentworth.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Forrest. The member of Rankin should not reflect on the member for Wentworth.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Far from it, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was praising the member for Went-worth for the contribution that he was making to the tax reform debate until he was so elegantly elevated out of it. Returning to our external accounts, because that is an area of potentially great pressure on the Australian economy, the Reserve Bank statement says:

While export prices have increased sharply, growth in the volume of Australia’s exports has remained lacklustre, with average annual growth over the past five years of only around 1½ per cent.

There is the Reserve Bank belling the cat, pointing to the lacklustre growth in export volumes. The statement goes on to say:

… recent business surveys report a pessimistic outlook for manufactured exports, and the Bank’s liaison with Australian manufacturers reports that producers are finding it difficult to compete with developing economies in Asia.

What is the government doing about the slump in the volumes of sophisticated manufacturing exports? Nothing at all. In the last 10 years of the Labor government, volumes of Australian sophisticated manufactured exports grew by 11 per cent per annum. Under this government, they have grown by one per cent per annum. Australian manufacturing is in deep trouble, and this government looks on and says, ‘Let the cards fall where they may.’ We have a situation where we have got the best terms of trade since 1974 and we have got Australian manufactured exports in real trouble. When the resources boom finally tapers off, Australia could well be in real trouble.

As a consequence of that vulnerability, we have now witnessed in Australia a succession of trade deficits—in the order of nearly 50 successive monthly trade deficits. The current account deficit, on occasions in the last year or so, has passed seven per cent of GDP. When Paul Keating warned of the dangers of Australia becoming a banana republic, the current account deficit was less than 6.3 per cent of GDP. Our net foreign liabilities, both debt and equity, have grown rapidly in the last few years and now total 60 per cent of GDP. As Treasury economist David Gruen has pointed out, we need to get the current account deficit down to about three per cent of GDP compared with the average of 4½ per cent over the last couple of decades and a much higher average over the last five years.

In order to stabilise our foreign liabilities at around 60 per cent of GDP, we will have to run a sustained trade surplus of between 0.5 and 0.75 per cent of GDP. That is a surplus, Mr Deputy Speaker. We have not run a surplus for almost 50 months. So the prospects of running a surplus on the trade accounts seem very remote. It is all very well for people to say, ‘Everything will fix itself; it’s not a problem to have massive foreign debt; it’s not a problem to have massive current account deficits.’ People are starting to get very worried about Australia’s current account deficits. If overseas money market operators become very worried about the size of our current account deficits and our trade prospects, there is a danger of a depreciating exchange rate. I am not predicting that; we don’t know. But there will be pressure, as the resources boom tapers off—it doesn’t fall away but tapers off—for there to be a depreciating exchange rate. The Reserve Bank statement shows that there is indeed very substantial pressure on the prices of non-traded goods. If there were such a depreciation, there would be great pressure on the Australian prices of traded goods—imports—into Australia, which would compound those inflationary pressures.

The government is ill-prepared for this and it has failed to invest in Australia’s future. It has failed to design and implement a new productivity raising agenda. As a result, productivity growth turned negative at the beginning of 2004 and it has remained stuck there ever since. We need a government that has a vision, that will invest in a new productivity raising agenda in this country and secure Australia’s future. That government is a Beazley-led government, and we can’t wait until we get the opportunity to throw this government out on the day of reckoning and restore economic stability and vision to this country.

Teresa Gambaro (Petrie, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this cognate debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006 and to outline the great successes that have occurred in the Petrie electorate since the Howard government was elected in 1996. It has benefited enormously, in a multitude of ways—in health, roads and the education system. The other day I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Australian Technical College in North Brisbane and I look forward to participating in the great work that is going to occur there. I want to speak about aged care funding, business infrastructure and some of our trade and export successes.

The Petrie electorate is a very diverse electorate. It is made up of Brisbane North, the metropolitan area, and also the city of Redcliffe, which is on a peninsula. It has a very long, diagonal shape and it is constrained by infrastructure issues. There are many road issues that this government has funded. The black spot program, a $44.5 billion program, has been a very successful program, including in the electorate of Petrie. In fact, many residents of the Petrie electorate regularly write to me and update me on what roads should be next on the priority list. The electorate has received $345,000 for black spot road improvements under the program. I want to highlight one improvement in particular—the Gaynesford Street, Aspley area and the Gympie Road area, where there used to be continual pile-ups of cars. It was continually like a car park. It was very stressful to get onto that main road. Because of this wonderful black spot funding, the residents of Aspley and surrounding areas now do not have to be stuck in traffic for longer than necessary. It is absolutely vital that we continue to free up our roads in the local area.

In recognition of this fantastic program, which is one of the best programs that we have had in terms of people being directly involved in the process and nominating roads, the federal government is committed to extending the program by a further two years. We have invested $90 million until 2008.

The Petrie electorate is blessed with some of the best hospitals in the country. The Prince Charles Hospital was part of my electorate until recently, but unfortunately it has been redistributed to the electorate of Lilley. In the time that I have been the federal member for Petrie we have had a substantial amount of funding. The last lot of funding received was through HACC funding to make sure that our older residents are serviced well, with a HACC office at Prince Charles Hospital so that people’s loved ones can access services when they are greatly needed. The National Drug Strategy is an area that has been benefiting the Petrie electorate: $261,998 was recently committed to the electorate.

The electorate has a number of welfare organisations that do an amazing job. I want to put on record some of those fantastic groups that help many out there who turn to them in times of need. Centacare is one that I particularly want to focus on. It provides respite care and accommodates three care recipients overnight in a homelike environment for an average of five nights and five days. It does a wonderful job. Recently it was the recipient of some $110,000 worth of funding. There is always a demand for low- and high-care places. I want to put on record the wonderful work that Ozcare and Blue Care do in the Redcliffe community area. I thank them for the great outreach services that they provide to the local Petrie constituents.

Child-care places have also been great beneficiaries of the Howard government. Some 129 outside school hours places were provided for the Petrie electorate recently. These reflect the ongoing commitment that this government has in making sure that families and supporting parents with school-age children have access to high-quality child-care places. I myself have in the past been a regular user of outside school hours care. I could not have functioned without this wonderful support. Expressions of interest for the second allocation are scheduled for the first half of this year. I commend the wonderful work that our schools and our community organisations play in providing those outside school hours places—and the care and commitment that their staff provide.

We have a growing electorate. The middle of the electorate, in the North Lakes area, will have some 25,000 people living there by the year 2011. A number of schools have been started and have grown and developed. One that I am particularly proud of is the North Lakes State College. It benefited recently from a $4.2 million capital grants program. It is doing some very innovative teaching. The very comfortable setting and the design of the school makes it a pleasure for the students and teachers. I commend them for their great work and for their classroom and music improvement section which we recently contributed to as well.

I want to talk about Investing in Our Schools, which is one of the best programs that the former education minister, the Hon. Brendan Nelson, instigated. It has been very well received in my electorate. It provides direct funding to P&Cs. Previously I would go along to P&C meetings and talk to them about federal-state funding. Now we have an opportunity to fund the P&Cs directly. P&Cs know exactly what schools are in need of. They work very hard to ensure that schools are resourced correctly. I want to place on record the $27,510 that was given to Somerset Hills State School for installing airconditioning. I am sure that that will make many students very happy. And recently Stafford Heights State School was outfitted for a computer lab upgrade and storage facilities—to the tune of $55,000. This has been a very successful program. I delight in visiting schools and seeing what a great improvement has been made in the lives of the students by providing this direct funding to the P&Cs and the school community.

The Lighthouse program has also been a successful school based program. It really shows our commitment to young people, particularly young people at risk. Literacy and bullying issues were clearly something that we needed to tackle. We have been able to deal with those issues through the Lighthouse program. I also want to place on record the great work that the Redcliffe Special School does, particularly with students with disabilities. They were recently provided close to $50,000 for a health and fitness room. I would also like to thank the Woody Point State School for developing those special school career options.

We have some challenges ahead as a nation. Childhood obesity is one of those challenges. Again, I commend the former education minister Brendan Nelson for the work that he has done there. I also commend the minister for health, Tony Abbott, for the Healthy School Communities program and making sure that school communities and canteens provide healthy food options. I want to place on record the fine work that Bracken Ridge State School, Somerset Hills State School, Stafford Heights, Grace Luthern College and Northside Christian College do to ensure that their students have healthy food. Some of those schools have banned soft drinks and are providing healthy alternatives. They have redesigned their tuckshops and they have put healthy food on the menu.

A surprising spin-off with all of this is not just that they have provided healthy food but that their profits have gone up, which is a very welcome addition that provides additional funding for the parents and citizens. If you can get that healthy outcome as well, that is good. Of course, they can then contribute some of those funds back into redeveloping the tuckshop further. I was very pleased to hear that that is a positive spin-off. The Clontarf Beach State School has had upgrades in the playground equipment. We have provided the Humpybong State School with shade cloth. Also, Hercules Road State School has benefited from a new school community hall. I want to say what a terrific program this is. I hope that it will continue and be funded well into the future.

Every year I take great delight, as do many of the members in this House, in presenting students in my electorate with student prizes. This year is no exception. We always have four or five students who go on and do bigger and greater things. It is wonderful to see them later on after they have left school to see some of the academic pursuits, endeavours and opportunities that they find for themselves. I think that this is a terrific program, providing $2,000 for students. I always welcome the opportunity of inviting their families and their friends to my electorate office and presenting the certificates personally, because I think that too often in this country we do not reward academic achievement as much as we reward sporting activities. I think we need to do a lot more of that and make people feel very special and privileged because they have achieved great things in their academic life.

Sporting communities play a large part in the Petrie electorate. It was a great delight when I presented the Peninsula Cricket Club with funding for their community organisation last year. I know that they will continue to provide great support to the community. It is a real collaborative program. They work with a number of other clubs. It is terrific to see the great work that they are doing enhanced with this grant to their sporting facilities. Redcliffe RSL is another great community in the electorate. The volunteers there and their advocates do fantastic work. I had the pleasure of working with them more fully in the portfolio area that I was involved in in the defence area. I want to pay tribute to them, their president, Bob Long, and the welfare advocacy work that they do in particular. We have been able to provide some $17,000 in funding through a building excellence in support and training grant to them. It will be a tremendous help and boost to ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen and it will help veterans, widows and widowers. I would also like to acknowledge the welfare organisations in my electorate, Chermside Anglican Welfare Ministries, Redcliffe Welfare Council, St Vincent de Paul at Deception Bay and St Vincent de Paul at Margate for the emergency relief funding that they provide and the care and dedication of their staff.

I mentioned earlier that last Friday I was at the signing of an agreement for a $17 million Australian technical college, the Australian Technical College Brisbane North. The Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, Gary Hardgrave, was with me. This is a wonderful achievement for the Petrie electorate. We have shortages, as do many other electorates, in the automotive, electrotechnology, commercial cookery and hospitality areas. Redcliffe City Council—I pay tribute to the mayor, Les Bradshaw, and all of the people on the committee—and businesses have worked solidly on this project for a year to provide that terrific pathway for students so that they will have the advantage of trade training and an industry placement in addition to their grade 11 and grade 12 academic year. The college will be located at the Scarborough campus of the Southern Cross Catholic College and a second campus will open at St James College in Fortitude Valley. This has been a collaborative effort. This technical college has been established in the north Brisbane region, which includes Redcliffe city, and has been made possible by the joining together of two organisations, the Redcliffe City Council and Commerce Queensland. They have been working together to form a strong industry partnership and gain the support of local businesses and employers. I pay tribute to Councillor Peter Howston, who has been a  leading light in the past year in making this project possible. I congratulate the Redclifffe City Council and the local businesses for what they have done to bring this project to fruition. Last Friday was a terrific day. The project is worth $17 million in buildings and it will be a great leap forward.

I also acknowledge the work of the four councils in the area, Pine Rivers Shire Council, Redcliffe City Council, Brisbane City Council and Caboolture Shire Council. They benefit greatly from the roads funding which the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, Jim Lloyd, administers. Improved flood-warning systems and natural disaster mitigation programs have been funded. These programs protect lives, homes and infrastructure, which sometimes we all take for granted. They also provide business and employment opportunities. I commend them for the great work that they do. They are all experienced in growing communities and they have many challenges ahead. Recently, $35,880 was provided to the Redcliffe State Emergency Service—I thank them for the work that they do—for a new garage, communications equipment and rescue tools. They do a great job whenever a disaster epic in nature occurs. The grants have been very important to the councils in my area. We will continue to ensure that they are funded and will provide some ongoing recurrent funding for infrastructure which is so important to our lives.

There are a number of great companies in the Petrie electorate that are benefiting greatly from the Export Market Development Grants Scheme. I think this is a terrific program. It gives companies a boost to get into the world export area. I pay tribute to Aeropower at Kippa Ring, Bayline Services, Military Agency Services at Bracken Ridge, Sirius Observations at Clontarf, the St Pauls Foundation and Polyflex. They work in a number of areas, including educational and technological services. They provide vital jobs for Australians: 20 per cent of all Australian jobs are dependent on exports and in regional areas one in four jobs are provided by export companies. It is a terrific scheme.

The Petrie electorate is a great beneficiary of both the Howard government’s fiscal management and the programs which have been introduced since it came into power in 1996. The electorate continues to grow. Queensland is one of the fastest-growing areas in Australia, and the electorate of Petrie is no exception. We have many challenges ahead. We need to work to ensure that the funding of infrastructure, particularly our roads, continues. I was delighted to see the state government finally taking some responsibility for extending and duplicating the Houghton Highway. That highway has been a constant source of problems and accidents in recent times. We have a strong economic future and it is only because of the Howard government and Peter Costello’s strong fiscal policies that we have been able to fund all these valuable programs. I am delighted today to have been able to speak about the great achievements of some of the companies and organisations in the electorate which are benefiting from our strong economic climate and the ability the government has to continue to fund its programs.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in this debate, although I am not sure that I am pleased to be talking about the matters that I am going to address. The reason for that will become patently obvious as I proceed. I note that the Special Minister of State described Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006 in his second reading speech by saying:

They seek appropriation authority from parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the consolidated revenue fund, in order to meet requirements that have arisen since the last budget.

I, too, would like to raise some concerns about issues that have arisen since the last budget and require the attention of the government in terms of appropriations. The common thread that runs through the issues that I will address is the lack of comprehension by the government of the realities of my electorate and the conditions under which people work, the conditions in which they live and the issues that in the first instance confront people who live in very small and remote island communities in the Indian Ocean. These concerns also reflect the failure of the government to adopt a coordinated approach when it comes to addressing issues that have arisen in my electorate and, indeed, across the north of Australia.

A couple of weeks ago I, along with other members of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories, was lucky enough to visit the Indian Ocean territories of Christmas and the Cocos islands, both of which, of course, are part of my electorate. In both communities I had extensive discussions with community members, business leaders and religious leaders about matters which were of concern to them. The most outstanding issue was one that was raised on Christmas Island and relates to a heavy lift crane on the Christmas Island wharf. This crane is used for the loading of phosphate mined on the island and lifting the dust bags containing phosphate from the land and putting them on-board ships. We have a problem. The problem is that the crane does not work and there is apparently no timetable for its remediation. That is a major cause for concern.

What happened was largely this: from 2 to 7 January, there was a planned maintenance shutdown for the painting of the crane. On 4 January, they identified cracks in the base footing stools of the crane. On 5 January, Christmas Island ports advised port users that there may be a delay in the use of the port. On 7 January, Favco engineers and welders arrived to address the issue of the crane. On 11 January, Christmas Island ports advised port users that the crane was out of service until further notice. On 13 January, an independent engineer arrived on the island to make an assessment. On 18 January, Christmas Island ports were advised unofficially that they were not to comment on prospects for future use of the crane until the Department of Transport and Regional Services had received a report and taken decisions, and that it would likely be four to six weeks before repairs are made—that was the unofficial talk of the time.

From 18 January to 2 February, the phosphate mining company on Christmas Island contacted DOTARS every two to three days and still found, at the end of that period, that the engineer had not finalised the report and until the report was finalised the department could not make a decision to commission the repairs. We have subsequently learned that that report is still not available—as we understand it. It is certainly not available to users.

We are left in a position where a port which is vital to the commercial viability of the phosphate mining company on Christmas Island is not functioning. This of course has a gravely detrimental effect on the operations of the Christmas Island Phosphate Company. Indeed, the viability of the company has been jeopardised. The major long-term economic activity on Christmas Island is phosphate production. The production and sale of that product depends on exports and the ability to off-load product from the port. Two forms of the product are exported: dust, which is packed into bags which are loaded onto ships by crane; and rocks, which are fed into the holds of ships by gantry. The dust is what I am talking about now.

It has been six weeks since the cracks in the base of the crane were discovered, and the mining company and the community need to know immediately what action the government proposes to take. The government needs to understand the significance of the cost impediments confronting the phosphate mining company and the impact on the future viability of the phosphate mining operation and therefore on the viability of the Christmas Island community as a whole. This afternoon I was told by the chairman of the phosphate mining company that they have a proposal to use an alternative arrangement: loading the phosphate bags from a small jetty onto barges and then transshipping them back onto ships. You do not have to be Einstein to work out the costs in time and money involved in multiple handling—costs which need to be borne by someone.

The Commonwealth, not the mining company, is responsible for this crane. The Commonwealth needs to ensure that the mining company’s operations are not handicapped and that the company does not suffer undue costs as a result of alternative shipping arrangements, which are indeed inefficient. We are told that loading a ship, which would normally take two to three days, could, under the alternative arrangements which are being proposed until a new crane is provided or the old crane is fixed, take six or seven days. The cost of that operation should not be borne by the mining company. Any losses which it incurs as a result of the breakdown of this crane ought to be underwritten in the first instance by the Commonwealth because the Commonwealth is responsible for providing infrastructure. Yet we have not seen from the Commonwealth any explanation as to when this infrastructure will be repaired, how it will be repaired and who is going to take responsibility for the fact that it was broken in the first instance.

We know that the crane was meant to have been fully inspected in April 2005, when its motor was in a state of disrepair. If the crane had been properly inspected in April 2005, you would expect that the fault in the base of the crane would have been identified. That, of course, did not happen. This is a challenge that the government needs to address immediately. It needs to confront the problem immediately. It needs to ensure the people of Christmas Island and the phosphate mining company on Christmas Island that the future of the phosphate mining operation will not be jeopardised because of the faulty crane and that the costs incurred as a result of the alternative arrangements being used while the crane is inoperative will not have to be met by the mining operators or the community but will be underwritten by the Commonwealth.

These people are entitled to a quick response. They are sick and tired of the shillyshallying that goes on when they deal with the Commonwealth government over Christmas Island. They need these assurances immediately. They need assurances that they will not suffer these increased costs. The phosphate mining company need to be able to assure their customers—as I am sure you would understand, Mr Deputy Speaker—that their dust can be placed in the market at the right time and at the right price. They will not be able to do that if this crane is not repaired quickly. I am sure that you and others will understand the importance and the immediacy of this problem. I urge the government to address this matter immediately and to give a proper and appropriate explanation to the community of Christmas Island.

The other matters I wish to raise relate to defence, a subject which I know, Mr Deputy Speaker, is high on your order of importance. A number of times over the past month we have heard about problems in the Department of Defence. On 6 December last year the shadow minister for defence, the member for Barton, outlined that $7.4 billion was missing from Defence’s $17 billion budget in its 2004-05 annual report. The member for Barton then described it as follows:

This is the second year in a row that the Auditor-General has found that the Department of Defence are in breach of section 48 of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997.

You may recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, that at the time I pointed out that if this were an Aboriginal organisation the government would have shut it down. No doubt you understand the history of the way in which ATSIC and organisations within ATSIC were treated by the government when they failed financial reporting requirements. But of course there are other issues which have been raised. The media reports over the past couple of weeks concerning defence equipment are very scary. As someone who as late as the end of last year visited our troops in Iraq and previously visited troops in Afghanistan and East Timor, I have to say that I am very concerned about the nature of the equipment which our troops are being asked to use. We now know that there are investigations into faulty defence gear. We see headlines like ‘Faulty gear puts troops at risk’ and ‘Soldiers gagged on gear concerns’. The government should ensure that it addresses these concerns promptly. It is about time that Australian soldiers were able to say with confidence that they are the best equipped soldiers in the world. I have to say now that in terms of their own personal equipment they would be right to say they are not.

Another issue I wish to raise relates specifically to Defence Force personnel in NORFORCE’s Arnhem squadron based at Nhulunbuy. Seven ADF regulars, only two of whom are single men, pay for their own electricity under an arrangement between the federal government and the mining company Alcan negotiated 17 years ago when the company was called Nobalco. The arrangements allow the company to recover the full costs of generation supply of power to all government properties. This makes the Nhulunbuy case an anomoly in the ADF allowances structure. The NT government also has an agreement to pay the full costs of power supply, but it sends out power bills to its staff at the standard domestic rate and then pays the company the agreed rate. This is not the case with the Commonwealth.

Power charges have increased steadily with the increase in petrol prices. Generators are powered by diesel, with a 43 per cent increase between April 2005 and October 2005. Alcan will continue to rely on diesel into the near future. The ADF families are being charged at the government rate of 21.88c per kilowatt hour, plus GST. Customs and Quarantine staff pay the same. This compares with the domestic rate for Nhulunbuy of 11.01c, plus GST—which is not applicable to company staff as the cost of their electricity is part of their pay and conditions—and the commercial rate, which has a sliding scale from 17.97c to 12.5c, plus GST. In comparison, people in Darwin pay around 12c per kilowatt hour for domestic power. Sample bills from two ADF families show a two-adult, two-children family paying $937.70 per quarter and a family of six adults paying $3,150.28 per quarter. If they were charged the domestic rate they would be paying $518.99 per quarter and $1,584.96 per quarter respectively. That is an outrageous discrepancy and a difference that needs to be addressed.

In addition, by way of comparison, it is worth noting electricity costs for Defence families at Weipa in Queensland and Karratha in Western Australia, both of which are largely mining towns. In Weipa the electricity charges are 19.27c per kilowatt hour on the first 300 kilowatts and 13.09c per kilowatt hour thereafter, plus GST. In Karratha charges are 0.25 per connection fee and 13.94c per kilowatt hour, plus GST. A current bill from Nhulunbuy is $937.70 for the consumption of 3,896 kilowatt hours of electricity; a Weipa Defence family would only pay $581.38 and a Karratha Defence family would pay $622.16.

These are anomalies which need to be addressed. In Nhulunbuy, Defence Force homes have been charged at domestic rates rather than the government rate. If they had been charged the government rate, the bill would have been only $471.42. These people should not be disadvantaged in this way by the way in which they are charged for electricity. Clearly families are being charged as if their homes were government offices. The families are getting desperate. The spouses believe that their partners will have no option but to eventually leave the ADF because they simply cannot afford to stay on as a result of the high cost of power combined with the excessive freight charges, contributing to the very high cost of food and groceries.

One of these people said to me, ‘If the word gets around, nobody will want to accept this posting.’ Another said, ‘I can’t afford this; we’ll have to resign if we can’t get this resolved quickly.’ ADF members have written to the minister and to me. They are keeping the army land commander informed and have kept Northern Command abreast of the issue. They are asking for the following: that power is charged at the Nhulunbuy domestic rate, plus GST; that there is reinstatement of an airconditioning allowance for this remote locality as a cushion against fluctuating prices as determined by the mining company; and that there is reimbursement from the government for billings of the government rate backdated to 1 September 2005, when the airconditioning allowance was terminated.

This is a clear sign that the government’s one-size-fits-all approach on these issues does not work. I appreciate that the remote locality conditions have changed in recent times, but what we know on an issue which I have confronted here on a continuing basis—no doubt you have heard me talk about it before, Mr Deputy Speaker—is the effect of these allowances on the fringe benefits tax reporting requirements for Defence Force personnel. In my view, there is simply no reason why we should not have an exemption for Defence Force personnel as far as fringe benefits for reporting requirements are concerned. I am strongly of the view that there should be a blanket exemption for all Defence Force personnel from these fringe benefits tax reporting requirements. This will make a material and dramatic difference to the conditions of service experienced by Defence Force personnel in remote Australia.

Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, I say to you as someone with an interest in these issues and a history on them that, if this were done, it would change dramatically the feeling of Defence Force personnel in remote Australia, particularly people based in the Northern Territory. It is something I have discussed here time and time again. The issue of the electricity charges at Nhulunbuy, however, highlights a major problem that the Defence Force need to address. That is that, when they locate Defence Force personnel in these remote areas, they should ensure that they are treated in the same fashion as you would expect other government personnel to be treated if they were working for a state or territory government. The fact is that they have been treated very differently. The fact is that in this instance they are required to pay a lot more for their domestic electricity than they should be paying. It is something which the government needs to address as a matter of urgency.

On the issue of the crane at Christmas Island, it is clear what the government needs to do. Not only does it need to give assurances; it needs to make a very timely intervention to make sure that there is a new crane put in place or that the old crane is repaired as a matter of urgency and that it underwrites any costs which are borne by the mining company of Christmas Island as a result of the failure of this equipment.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, may I say that you are looking sartorially splendid on this fine evening. In addressing the appropriation bills, I want to raise two issues in relation to capital and infrastructure. The first is the failure of the states to invest in adequate water and, in particular, ports, power and rail infrastructure and to put forward an approach which might deal with that. The second is to address a second kind of infrastructure, which is social capital within the Indigenous community—an issue which has now come within the remit of my portfolio and is becoming of increasing interest and concern to me—and to put forward a constructive proposal as to how to best advance Indigenous health and development outcomes.

In looking first at the question of hard infrastructure at the state level, I want to break this question up into three parts. Firstly, I want to look at the issue of water infrastructure within New South Wales; secondly, more broadly within Australia; and, thirdly, the implications of the failure to invest adequately in water infrastructure for other infrastructure projects across different disciplines within Australia.

Let me begin with demand and supply. At present we know that we are facing a gap—and this is information provided by the Water Services Association of Australia—of almost 1,200 billion litres a year by the year 2030. To give you a sense of what that means, that is getting close to twice the demand that Sydney currently has. We face that water shortage around Australia. That is on a business as usual case, based on decreasing water yields in some cities on a conservative basis and on increasing demands through population growth around the country. That is a significant problem. It is real, it is tangible and something which we have already faced in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide. It is a real problem experienced today as a result of a decade of neglect by the largely Labor state governments over that period.

The second element is the question of supply. We know that there is currently about 1,800 billion litres of waste, recyclable water which is currently discharged into our estuaries and oceans by state water authorities around the country. That is water which is recyclable. For example, in Sydney we have over 400 billion litres of primary effluent which is being discharged from the three principal outfalls. That water is recyclable. There is an environmental problem with this waste of water and there is an enormous opportunity cost which was made manifest in the somewhat ridiculous proposal to pursue a desalination plant for Sydney at a time when they continued to waste 400 billion litres a year of primary effluent which could have been recycled.

We know that the New South Wales government has ditched that plan, but it has failed to set out a clear proposal for recycling the 400 billion litres a year of effluent for industry, agriculture and environmental flows. That possibility is real. We recently discovered that the former AGL gas pipelines, which go to the largest industrial users in Sydney, remain as an option. These are disused gas pipelines, a conduit, which can be easily aligned to transmit industrial water for industrial purposes, thereby taking pressure off the environment in two ways. One is by decreasing the discharge of primary effluent and the second is by increasing the use of recycled water. Both of those are desirable outcomes, and the use of recycled water in place of potable water is a far preferable use of water for an appropriate purpose.

Why do we have this problem? You would imagine that no state would want to sully its coastline. The problem is that we have an old style mentality in relation to infrastructure. Water is seen as a single-use good. Traditionally there has been a notion that it is an inexhaustible good and free. Both of those concepts are wrong, but the notion that it is an inexhaustible good resides with bodies such as Sydney Water and Melbourne Water, which have failed to adequately prepare and reuse water that could be reused. Instead it is used once and discarded. There are small recycling programs. The figures available to me show that in Melbourne less than five per cent of water and in Sydney less than three per cent of water is recycled. In Brisbane 100 billion litres of water is discharged into the ocean—60 billion litres of that comes directly from the Luggage Point treatment plant and an additional 40 billion litres is discharged into the Brisbane River. This opportunity to reuse water must be accompanied by a commitment at each of the state levels to 100 per cent recycling. It is a simple proposition: the shortage is palpable, the supply is real and the opportunity must be taken.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are cutting across Malcolm.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry?

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Give Malcolm a go; he’s got potential.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Malcolm Turnbull is doing a tremendous job, and we have talked over the last year precisely about a national recycling project.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly, as we discussed, and we jointly worked very happily on this.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are a happy little team!

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely; we have a happy team. I ask the member for Rankin whether he believes it is appropriate that, in his city of Brisbane, 100 billion litres of sewage is discharged into the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay. It is a simple question: is that an acceptable practice in the 21st century? What we have around the country is a 19th century practice of disposing of water in the 21st century. In Israel, in California, in Virginia and in so many different places around the world, recycling is a real practice that is seen as essential. I make no apology for having set out in my maiden speech the goal of ending the practice of ocean outfall around Australia, of reusing that water for industry and agriculture and recycling it appropriately. We need to end that practice.

Moving forwards, we can see that this is emblematic of a problem with infrastructure spending around the states. We have been forced to step in to create a National Water Initiative, which reports directly to the Prime Minister, so he has the religion on water. We have contributed $2 billion towards water infrastructure around the country. But the question of infrastructure extends beyond the issue of water. We see a deficit in infrastructure spending at the state level. Why is this the case? What has occurred is that the states have learned the lessons of the early 1990s in the blowing out of state budgets in Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia. Instead of blowing the bottom line they have maintained the bottom line, increased recurrent expenditure but stolen from the budget for infrastructure. If you look around Australia, you see a decrease in infrastructure spending in terms of gross state capital: from 4.1 per cent to three per cent in Victoria, from 5.2 per cent to 3.7 per cent in New South Wales and from 5.4 to 4.2 per cent in Queensland. And on it goes through South Australia and Western Australia.

In practice this means that we have faced power shortages in Western Australia and New South Wales. We have faced the risk of water shortages in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland. The rail systems in Sydney and Melbourne have suffered. There have been inadequate gas supplies in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and Brisbane and there have been choked ports in New South Wales and Queensland.

These changes in expenditure from robbing from the infrastructure account to pay for the recurrent account have practical impacts both on national productivity and on people’s lives. The answer is simple: there needs to be a rebalancing at the state level. They need to control their recurrent expenditure but also contribute their fair share to the intergenerational equity which comes from infrastructure expenditure. That is an incumbent responsibility. It is less immediately obvious than the blowing of a state budget in Western Australia, South Australia or Victoria in the period 1990-92, but its effect on the long-term viability of those states and economies is just as profound. It is a classic case of robbing from the future to pay for the present.

I make the point that this links in at the national level on the issue of competency and fitness to govern—that is, how can you best manage your economy? I did some research with the help of the Parliamentary Library. We found that, over the past 40 years, the coalition at the national level has outperformed federal Labor governments. Over the last five decades, interest rates have averaged 6.6 per cent under coalition governments compared to 12.1 per cent under Labor governments. Unemployment has averaged 3.9 per cent under the coalition compared to 6.9 per cent under Labor. This has a dramatic impact on human lives. Similarly, inflation has averaged five per cent under the coalition compared to 6.9 per cent under Labor. Economic growth has been higher by 0.4 per cent. Over a period of 56 years of hard economic data, the bottom line is that, on average, housing rates have been 5½ per cent higher when Labor governments have been in control as opposed to coalition governments. It may just be coincidence, but it is 56 years of quite significant coincidence. The point is that at the state level we have a theft from the next generation’s infrastructure and at the federal level—if you take the 56 years of data or if you compare the current government with the previous government on all of these indicators—we have the same result. You see that there is a different impact on national productivity.

This takes me to the one area which I believe has had the greatest area of shortfall between aspiration and achievement within Australia over the past three decades and under all governments—that is, social capital in the Indigenous community. Undoubtedly—and I think it is critical to acknowledge—Indigenous health and epidemiology is a national tragedy. Today, a male Indigenous child aged between five and 10 years old can expect to live to 59 years—17 years less than the national average for a non-Indigenous child. Similarly, the life expectancy of a female Indigenous child is 65 years—18 years less than a non-Indigenous child. Infant mortality rates amongst the Indigenous population in Western Australia and the Northern Territory are 16 babies per 1,000 births or over three times the infant mortality rate of non-Indigenous Australians.

The National Health Survey reports that more than one in four Indigenous deaths are caused by cardiovascular disease—11 times the rate for non-Indigenous deaths. Diabetes is up to 25 times higher in the Indigenous community than in the non-Indigenous community. Indigenous people are eight times more likely to die from chronic kidney disease than non-Indigenous people. These health statistics translate to economic development, and there are many members of good faith on both sides of this House who have acknowledged that and recognise that as a priority.

As I look forward over the coming year to my priorities, Indigenous affairs is one area in which I wish to work much more actively. I have already been speaking with the new Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, on this question of Indigenous development and health. Last week I met with young Indigenous leaders from around Australia. I worked with them for three days in the Yarra Valley during the Australian future development forum, and I committed to them that this would become a prime focus of my activity.

The means to doing this is the interesting question. The reality of how we deal with this problem has undoubtedly been the great challenge for governments over the past three decades. One contribution which I believe can be made and which I wish to work on specifically is the link between Indigenous health and Indigenous land management. I have seen communities such as Mutitjulu at the base of Uluru who have money and rights but who have not succeeded in dealing with any of these great tragedies. There is a crisis with the epidemic level of addiction in the Mutitjulu community.

Similarly, I have seen communities based around land management at Dhimurru on the Gove Peninsula near Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory, where they run Indigenous protection areas. They are a shining example for Australia of how an Indigenous community can embrace land management and, through that work, provide real and meaningful activity for young people and real and meaningful health outcomes by being engaged in, alive and proud of their culture and twinning that with economic activity. Under the Indigenous protected areas program, for which I have responsibility, a total of 19 Indigenous protection areas have been declared around Australia. That covers 13.8 million hectares and there are another 11 projects under way. I think that has been incredibly important. This year we are looking at converting an additional six proposals into Indigenous protected areas, which would add 5.3 million hectares of land to the national reserve system. That is an outstanding conservation outcome but, much more importantly, it is an outstanding opportunity to use Indigenous protected areas as a means of promoting Indigenous land management as a means of promoting Indigenous health and development.

I believe that ultimately the best of these Indigenous protected areas could become Indigenous national parks. It is not about any additional transfer of land; this is land which was already under Indigenous title. It is about the status of land management and a practical means of providing Indigenous people with meaningful employment, of transferring culture and promoting economic development and, from all those things, providing practical health outcomes. People who are engaged and involved and have purpose on a day-to-day basis are less likely to be drawn into the culture of addiction. It is a challenge, but this and the question of hard physical infrastructure—in particular, water infrastructure and the objective of recycling 100 per cent of Australia’s waste water by 2025—remain my two primary campaign objectives at a national level this year.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage for an interesting and committed speech, but the fairy tale of Liberal administrations making greater investments in public infrastructure is so beyond all plausibility that I suggest he refrain from the political point scoring and focus on the substantial task in front of him, which I do not doubt his zeal to perform. He does himself greater justice when he focuses on those matters rather than on representing a party that was at the forefront of the privatisation of the public sphere and making complaint about its reduction.

In addressing the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006, I wish to speak about military discipline and the manner in which the defence forces deal with people against whom allegations of misconduct are made and instances in which military personnel are injured. We are facing what can only be described as a crisis in our capacity to attract into the military new recruits and retain those that have been attracted. It is no exaggeration to say that, without substantial increases in the attractiveness of the armed forces, the kind of speculation that was recently put forward by a former commander of the defence forces, which was that we would need to reintroduce national service, would become more commonly spoken. That would be a very retrograde step and not one I support at all. I went through the experience of the Vietnam years, when compulsory military service created great controversy at a time when Australian forces were engaged in a war on which the community was divided, and I would hate us to go back to that point.

Secondly, the military does not want a reintroduction of national service. It wants to be a volunteer force. It wants to be a streamlined, effective and professional military force. The idea of universal military service, which would be the only fair basis for its implementation, would place strains on those objectives. Imposing on them an obligation to train universal entry recruits into the military services for a relatively short period of time—insufficient time to train those recruits into effective components of the military service—would be difficult to make compatible with the streamlined, professional highly trained military using high-level technology that we are seeking to build.

If we were not to have a universal system and it was to be on the basis of random selection or some other mechanism, then it would suffer from the defects that the recruitment suffered from when people’s fates were determined by the draw of marbles out of a barrel, which led to great controversy and dissatisfaction. I do not want to go back to a situation where we have to contemplate military conscription. I do not think the government wants to go back to a situation where it has to bring in such conscription in order to fill places in the military. But that then leads us to the significant question of how we will recruit and retain people in the military if we do not have a fair system of military justice and if we do not find means of dealing fairly with those who are injured or incapacitated through their service and make claims against the Commonwealth.

I want to give three instances to highlight the difficulties of which I speak. The first instance relates to the very junior entrant—a person in the cadets. The second instance relates to a very senior person who was removed from command without explanation and without natural justice. The third instance is the long-lasting and longstanding problem of the Voyager survivors.

Going to the first instance, that of the cadet, I recently appeared in the Federal Court as part of a legal team which came together to press the case of the mother of a former Air Force Cadet, Eleanor Tibble. Eleanor Tibble entered the cadets with the objective of ultimately becoming a member of the Air Force. It was her life dream, and her passion was service in the cadets. Unfortunately, allegations of the following nature emerged. A youngish, 29-year-old senior instructor who was in part responsible for training developed a regard for young Ms Tibble. We understand that that regard was reciprocated. They went out to the movies together and they went to Ms Tibble’s family home—Mrs Campbell invited this young man into her home—but the young man realised, I think quite correctly, that his fondness for Eleanor Tibble was inappropriate in the case of somebody who was an instructor of a 15-year-old in the cadets. Although I do not purport to represent his exact words, he quite properly made it plain to his seniors within the cadets that he thought he could no longer remain because he had developed an inappropriate attitude towards or relationship with a 15-year-old cadet.

Were this to have happened in a school situation or at the Boy Scouts or what have you, we would have an instinctive reaction to any impropriety. Let me say that my understanding of the circumstances—and there may still be some distance to travel in terms of the ultimate determination of all the facts—is that there was no impropriety other than the fact that too great a fondness had developed between these two young people, a 29-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl. He recognised the inappropriateness of that and reported it. It did not go beyond that. But had it been a situation that occurred in the schools or the Boy Scouts or some situation of that kind, the instinctive reaction would have been that if there was any impropriety it would have been on the part of the 29-year-old adult, not on the part of a 15-year-old girl. But, sadly, a decision was taken which required her to resign from the cadets on the basis that she was unfit to continue as a cadet.

That was a disgraceful and grossly wrong decision. She was given no opportunity to contest it. She did complain, and ultimately the complaint wended its way up the military command. Ultimately, a decision was taken that the decision to require her resignation should be reviewed, and her commanders were told to reinstate her. But there was still delay. They did not pass on that information. About 10 to 14 days later—I do not pretend to be specific about dates—still unknowing that she had in fact been reinstated, she took her life. That in itself is tragic, but what is sadder is that the military thenceforth has done everything possible to prevent Mrs Campbell, the mother, from pursuing her claim in the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal of Tasmania to get redress.

The proceedings I was involved in in the Federal Court were resisting an application for the Commonwealth to dismiss those proceedings on the basis that the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal lacked jurisdiction to hear the mother’s complaint. Fortunately, that decision is now concluded and the matter will go back to the tribunal for ascertaining the necessary facts and to determine whether within the jurisdiction of the tribunal findings an order should be made. So those proceedings are not yet completed. You would understand my concern that any parent who has heard this story and hears the continuing resistance of the military to the open inspection and examination of these matters in a tribunal of a state should say, ‘Why the heck should I subject my child to procedures of that nature if I cannot be satisfied that the military will resolve these problems and it won’t happen again?’ The jury is still out on that question, but it is a crucial one, because unless people will enter the cadets and work their way up—and that is an attractive process of entry into the military—then we will have further difficulty with recruitment, notwithstanding all the personal tragedies that the obvious facts of that case suggest to anyone listening to it.

The next instance is in relation to Wing Commander Robert Grey. Wing Commander Robert Grey was formerly the senior officer responsible for the Air Force in my state of Tasmania, based in Hobart. For reasons that he is not aware of, and certainly I am not aware of, he was effectively removed from that senior role. There may be good reasons for that but, if so, they have not been disclosed. Wing Commander Grey, for the last four years at least to my knowledge, because he has sought my assistance, has been pursuing a request for review so that he can know the basis upon which his removal was effected and he can be accorded natural justice. The saddest thing about this is that, just as in the Tibble case, the 15-year-old girl, where the most vulnerable but the most junior of persons might be said to be subject to the military system—of course, cadets are not formally part of the defence forces and they are not part strictly of the military justice system but we would expect their treatment always to be fair—Wing-Commander Grey, somebody who rose through the ranks to a very senior position, was told effectively in correspondence, which has gone as high as the Prime Minister and still awaits final resolution, that he was not entitled in the determination of whether to hold a particular command to the application of natural justice such that he needed to be told what it was that he had done wrong and why his removal was required.

That is a dreadful situation. I understand that, in times of war, military command will be conditioned by circumstances that will sometimes require immediate judgments to be made. In those circumstances we would normally say that the niceties of civilian life have to be bypassed in requiring reasons why somebody loses confidence in a junior officer. In times of active service, when those decisions have to be taken in life or death moments, nobody expects a judicial-like process to occur.

But where in peacetime a senior commanding officer of a state is removed effectively from that office, and when reasons or opportunities for redress of grievance are requested and no opportunity is allowed, it must also enter the minds of people who might enter the military, ‘I have a career system here, but capricious and arbitrary decisions could cut short my opportunity to serve my Australian community.’ If the military at the highest levels say, ‘When we are making these command decisions, we have no obligation to accord such senior officers natural justice,’ again it must hang in the mind of any person who is thinking of re-enrolling or re-enlisting after a period of time to build their career, ‘Look, I might be better off doing something else entirely different where that kind of unfairness is not permitted.’ The military is a very large organisation, and facilitating decent treatment of those at the lowest and the highest levels is absolutely crucial.

Wing Commander Grey still has significant correspondence awaiting final determination. He has been promised review and an opportunity to have his matters considered, and he has correspondence yet to be answered. But years and years have passed and the buck has been passed from one level to another, back and forth, including from the Prime Minister’s office. It is a most unsatisfactory situation and one which leads me to be very critical. I hope in the end he does get what he has wished for—that is, an explanation for why he was treated in the way he was and an opportunity to at least put on the record his account in relation to those matters. He believes his reputation was effectively publicly trashed. It was a matter which got public attention; it was not a private matter. When you remove a commanding officer from a state such as Tasmania it does carry a very public awareness in the community. It is not simply a private matter within the military.

The third point I want to mention relates to the Voyager cases. A number of efforts have been made to find resolution in the Voyager cases, but there still remains outstanding litigation. Where that litigation is premised on disputed understandings of fact, I have no objection. If it is truly the military’s view that some people’s claims are not based on injury or effect caused as a result of the Voyager and they are contesting on those grounds, on the merits, no-one can object. Of course, it is something that the claimants would wish to be resolved as quickly as possible, and I share that desire.

But, sadly, what we find now is every technical legal point being taken. Years, decades, after the Voyager disaster we are still seeing the meanest, most technical of points that can be taken in relation to that litigation being taken. One of the practices that now often happens—and it has certainly happened in the Tibble and Voyager cases—is that the litigation is briefed out to major commercial firms. The old framework of litigation that the Commonwealth used to employ—that is, of a model litigant, where as a public litigant representing the public interest the ethical responsibilities of the Commonwealth were always placed in the highest spectrum and unmeritorious technical points were not taken—seems to be less influential as a doctrine. I think there are some serious questions that we will have to examine in due course about the consequences of the shift towards privatisation of public litigation. It has not been an altogether successful process, in terms of both its ultimate cost and the ethical environment in which that litigation is conducted.

Returning to the Voyager cases, the fact that these matters are not necessarily being examined and contested on their merits but on these very technical points must leave a sense of concern that, if you rise through the military but some misadventure occurs and you need to address the problem at a later stage, you may well be confronted by a litigant on the other side that is remorseless in its utilisation of the most technical defences available. And that of course is not the most attractive thing to somebody who might be contemplating a long-term career in the military.

So, to conclude where I started, these issues all go back to the desirability of having an all-volunteer Defence Force: one in which morale is high; one in which people who want to gain some military experience can do so; one in which parents of kids who want to join the cadets can be confident that they are placing their children in a safe environment where they will be treated fairly; one where, if someone rises through the military and reaches relatively high office, notwithstanding that, they will be treated fairly, unless warlike situations require decisions to be made in circumstances where natural justice cannot be afforded; and one where, if they are injured, they will be treated fairly through the litigation that occurs. These are important principles that we should never forget.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the appropriation bills. As this parliament would be aware, it is one of the few opportunities a parliamentary secretary gets to speak on the issues affecting their electorate. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the Prime Minister and my colleagues for their support in my appointment as parliamentary secretary. But I want to say right from the very beginning that, even though I have been appointed a parliamentary secretary, it will in no way lesson my drive and determination in pushing the issues that are important to the people of Paterson.

I also express my appreciation to Russell Chafer, who is in charge of the secretariat of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit. It was a time that I enjoyed, with some of the work that we did. As in all these things, when a person is elevated, they leave behind unfinished work—as did my predecessor—but some of the inquiries that we worked on, still to be reported to the parliament, will value-add to the work of this parliament. I encourage all ministers to take note of the recommendations that are made. They are well considered by both sides of the parliament when they come together at committee level to make sure that they advance the government as much as they can.

The key thing I want to say is that, upon my appointment and swearing-in on the Friday, I found that on the Sunday I was to head to India. The reason for heading to India as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism And Resources was to attend the first ever India-Australia Coal and Mining Forum. This was a critically important forum in that there were 73 delegates from Australia—the largest ever delegation to go to India on such a critical issue as coal and mining, on carbon sequestration and also on the partnerships between mining industries and the community.

But, coming back to the things are really important to my electorate, first and foremost are roads. In this parliament I have been a very strong advocate of roads like the Pacific Highway. And, if only the member for Denison had the courtesy to leave quietly—like the courtesy I afforded him of hearing him in silence—it would be very much appreciated. That being said, I have been a very strong advocate for the Pacific Highway, Weakleys Drive, the Bucketts Way and, indeed, the Lakes Way—in fact, all of the roads in my electorate. The true factor though is that, of all the roads in my electorate, there is only a very small portion of the New England Highway which includes Weakleys Drive that is a fully federal responsibility. We have funded that, but the delays and procrastinations of the Road Transport Authority and the New South Wales government, who conduct all the planning and the prioritisation of the works, have been incredible. Here we are coming up to the 10th anniversary of this government, and for 10 years this road has been in planning phases and still not a single sod of soil has been turned.

The costs have now blown out from some $18 million to $20 million to $33 million, and we have to accept that; we have to keep working. But it is now a project that has been brought in under the AusLink proposal. They say they are going to commence work on it next financial year, but I will wait and see. The problem is not the federal government; the federal government has put up the money. The state Minister for Roads put out a press release after the last budget, condemning this government for giving it only $3 million towards planning, but it was found out and the state minister, Mr Costa, was so embarrassed because all the RTA had actually asked for was $3 million. ‘Ask and you shall receive’ is the motto.

The arrogance of the New South Wales state Labor government surprises me when I look at roadworks and at the history of Bucketts Way, a road that the state government was trickling money into. It is a road of significant importance to the people in my electorate, in areas such as Stroud, Gloucester and all the suburbs in between, including areas up to Taree, in Mark Vaile’s electorate. We fought hard but we got $20 million for that road. Of that $20 million, $15 million has now been allocated, an underspend, and we can see the significant improvements in that road. But since then, since we put the money out, guess what has happened? The state government has refused to put money into roadworks. This is a regional road and a large share of the responsibility is indeed the state government’s—in conjunction with local government—but it has walked away.

So we got a little bit smarter and at the last election I went to the minister and the Prime Minister and I said, ‘I want $10 million for roadworks in my electorate.’ That was $6 million for Dungog Shire to be spent on the road between Dungog and Clarence Town and on part of the road between Dungog and Paterson. Also, to connect that road, I wanted $2 million for Port Stephens Council for the road between Clarence Town and Raymond Terrace. In addition, for Great Lakes Council, I wanted $2 million to be spent on the Lakes Way. But it was important, with this $10 million that the federal government put up, that we encouraged and forced the state government to match the funding. The state Labor government in New South Wales cannot see that this is a gift-horse and have refused to provide funding. They have refused to provide money for these roads. To give you an example of the state these roads are in, they are like the road in the McCain mixed vegetable ads where the trucks drive along with all the vegetables in the different boxes and by the time they get to the factory they are already mixed up because the roads are so rough and so bumpy.

We committed $10 million, but at this stage we cannot give the councils that money because the state government has refused to match it. So tonight in this chamber I am calling on the state government to think bigger than it does and come up with $10 million funding. In the absence of that, I am talking to Minister Lloyd about providing that funding directly to the councils. The people in these areas are being affected because of the lazy, arrogant, recalcitrant state government in New South Wales. The way that it treats the people in my electorate is amazing. It has never refused to spend money on another tunnel, collapse as it may, in Sydney, or to extend the freeway or to do something else in the Sydney area, but when it comes to regional areas it is always a problem.

Perhaps that problem has been further exacerbated with the Pacific Highway. Under the 10-year agreement, the federal government committed $60 million per annum to a state owned highway, the Pacific Highway—and we fulfilled that commitment. As it was a state highway, the state government were to commit $160 million per annum and, to their credit, they did that. Under the AusLink proposal, the federal government agreed to up the ante from $60 million per annum to $160 million per annum for the next three years, to be matched by state funding. So we have seen an increase in expenditure on the Pacific Highway alone of $100 million per annum.

The point that I am getting to is that there is an intersection called the Myall Way turn-off at Tea Gardens Hawks Nest on the Pacific Highway. The state government and the RTA, in their wisdom, have decided that there will be no flyover at this intersection. People with caravans, tourists largely, on their first time out of Sydney pull into Hawks Nest, connect their caravan and continue north. So they pull their caravan straight out in front of two lanes of traffic doing in excess of 100 kilometres an hour. It is a recipe for disaster.

I spent a week at Nerong, near Bulahdelah at Myall Lakes, over Christmas and nearly every day there was a serious smash in this vicinity—and that is with two lanes, not four lanes, of traffic. There are two lanes of traffic doing between 90 and 100 kilometres an hour and there are serious accidents every day. In the last couple of weeks there have been fatalities in the general area of this intersection. It is a bad area, but does the state government listen? No. In fact on 26 May the local community had a meeting with Michael Costa, the then roads minister, and put forward the case. The costing for that intersection then was $6 million. The new state roads minister, Mr Joe Tripodi, must have bought a new calculator because by the time he had had the report done into the intersection and came up with some costings, guess by how much that intersection had gone up to: it had gone up to $16 million. Inflation of $10 million in just over six months is an incredible inflationary index. But this is the state government saying, ‘We do not want to build that intersection so what we’ll do is inflate the price so that makes it unaffordable so we don’t have to build it.’ But what about the lives? What price is a life?

The key factor in all of this is you are going to have this roadwork completed by the middle of this year, so they say. By the middle of this year we will have trucks, B-doubles, doing 100 to 110 kilometres an hour past that intersection on not one but two lanes coming south and two lanes going north, with people venturing across that route. Mr Tripodi has said, ‘I’d fund it if only the federal government gave me more money.’ He does not understand that a $100 million increase per annum, from $60 million to $160 million, is an increase; it is more money. The thing that I find hard to understand is that the federal government, even though they provide matching funding, have absolutely no say in the prioritisation of where this money is spent. It is all at the whim of the state government. Mr Tripodi, in his wisdom, wrote a letter to the editor that is arrogance personified. Part of it says, of the review that was to be done on the intersection:

The review analysed traffic numbers and future growth, reporting that an overpass is not yet needed at the intersection of Myall Way and the Pacific Highway.

It was also found that the cost of the overpass would be $16.6 million including contingencies.

Contingencies of some 30-odd per cent! I have been in the construction industry and I can tell you that contingencies are normally between five and 12 per cent; 12 per cent is a bad project. But it is 30 per cent for the New South Wales RTA when they have already done all the geological surveys in the area and they have already tested the soils and already know what their costs are. Then this letter from Mr Tripodi, to the Manning River Times on 27 January, says:

Mr Bob Baldwin and Mr John Turner—

who is the state member for Myall Lakes—

must come clean with their electorates and explain the Pacific Highway is a National Network road and the Federal Government has financial responsibility for the intersection upgrade.

He also says:

Many parts of the National Road Network have the Federal Government funding 100 percent of any upgrades, others they fund 80 percent.

I am somewhat confused. A response was put out by John Turner, who is a former New South Wales shadow roads minister and understands the legislation and its requirements. I quote this part of Mr Turner’s letter:

I refer of course to Minister Tripodi’s ... letter to your paper which says that “... the Pacific Highway is a national network road and the Federal Government has financial responsibility for it”...

Minister, so you have some understanding of your portfolio, can I advise you that you, as Minister for Roads, own the Pacific Highway. Just ask the people who have had their properties acquired by the Roads and Traffic Authority.

You have the same title to the roads as people have in their homes, an estate in fee simple.

He does not understand that the Pacific Highway is owned by the state government and the federal government agreed to provide support funding in the interests of traffic safety. The Federal Highway going north to Brisbane is actually the New England Highway. So we see arrogance from a minister who has never even been to the area, has never seen the intersection and refuses to meet with constituents in that area. I find this amazing.

There is a boundary redistribution on at a state level, and at the next election the area of Tea Gardens will move from the state seat of Myall Lakes to that of Port Stephens. The response from the state Labor member, John Bartlett, for Port Stephens was: ‘It’s not in my electorate yet.’ I thought he would have been a caring and concerned man—but not at all. He is prepared to sacrifice people because it is not in his electorate yet. In March next year, when the state election will be on, I will be reminding all the people at Hawks Nest, Tea Gardens and North Arm Cove that he did not care about this road, this intersection or their lives because it was not in his electorate.

If I took that approach in the Hunter, on every issue in Newcastle—like the need for an extra federal magistrate—I could quite easily say, ‘It’s not in my electorate.’ On the F3 from Branxton down to Hampton, I could say, ‘It’s not in my electorate,’ and not fight to get funding for it. There are a range of issues. I could say about the port upgrade in Newcastle, ‘It’s not in my electorate.’ But as a responsible politician and representative of the community, it is important that I look beyond the boundaries and look at what is good for the whole of the community. As I said, in March next year, I will be urging people in his electorate right up to the stroke of midnight, when the ballot boxes close and the people have cast their votes, not to vote for a person who does not care about their future.

Much more work needs to be done on roads. I will again be meeting with the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, Jim Lloyd, and putting forward that this intersection needs to be looked at and that he needs to make a personal representation to Mr Tripodi—I know that he has already had correspondence with him—to see what can be done to install this intersection. We cannot wait 10 years when you consider how many people would be involved in serious or fatal crashes at an intersection like this.

I can only hope that in March next year there is a new government or at least a new minister in New South Wales who is prepared to get out of Sydney, look at this area and prioritise this intersection. I hope it will be a Liberal-National Party government, because I know that we have a commitment from their shadow minister and from the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Debnam, that this intersection will be prioritised and that it will be built.

As for the roads in the Dungog, Port Stephens and Great Lake shires, I am calling on Minister Lloyd to provide $10 million worth of funding, without state government ties. The state government will not recognise these roads. It will not provide the funding or the support, yet the people in these shires pay the taxes that provide for it. To give an example, Dungog council has to fund 120 kilometres of roads and its base is something like 9,000 voting ratepayers. Its 120 kilometres of regional roads is four times more than that of Newcastle council, six times more than that of Maitland council and three times more than that of Lake Macquarie council. The population of Dungog does not raise enough revenue to maintain the roads, let alone provide for all its other support services. Part of the reason for this is that 95 per cent of the roads in Dungog are not eligible for state government road funding assistance. If it were not for some of the black spot and Roads to Recovery funding provided by the federal government to councils such as Dungog, the Great Lakes and Port Stephens, many of these important road works would never be upgraded or safety improved.

In the short time left available to me, I want to say again that I will continue to prosecute the case for the people of Paterson. I will fight to make sure that their roads and their safety are paramount, but it is very hard to talk to a ‘stonewall’ minister who will not listen. I am sure that he was born without ears, and I can guarantee that he was born without a brain!

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I address Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006, I would like put on record how incredibly proud I am to be the member for Richmond. It is a culturally rich and very beautiful place to live. Those who live there can often overwhelm us with their warmth and generosity. I was not surprised that, in a recent study by Deakin University, Richmond was found to be the happiest electorate in New South Wales and the second happiest in the whole country. The people of Richmond know that this is because they have an incredibly strong connection to the community. Richmond has a lot of people dedicated to community work and a strong community spirit. We have a huge number of individuals and groups who give up their time and resources to reach out and help others—the sick, the old, the young, the disabled and the lonely. We have many committed community groups who work so hard to preserve our beautiful environment. Our locals are passionate and committed to many important local, national and international issues. I would like to commend all the people of Richmond for their strong community spirit.

Despite this incredible community spirit, we have many challenges because we have seen again and again over the last decade how the Howard government has failed the people of Richmond. By not having a vision for our great country, this short-sighted government has failed to invest in the things that make a community great, such as health care, aged care, education, training and the environment. Despite the strength, talent and hard work of locals, the reality is that Richmond has 10,000 families who earn less than $500 a week. We have soaring youth unemployment, a skills crisis and cuts in federal spending on our TAFE colleges and universities. We have a significant shortage of GPs, including GPs who bulk-bill.

Twenty per cent of Richmond’s population is aged over 65. Inadequate funding for aged care and constant cuts to the PBS make it very difficult for elderly residents. This government’s shameful record, particularly when it comes to health, affects many in this demographic in my electorate. There are many pressures on local seniors, especially the 13,000 on fixed pensions. As I said, 20 per cent of the population is aged over 65—one of the highest proportions in the country—so our health needs are major.

There is a national crisis in our health workforce and the Howard government is showing no real signs of leadership to fix the problem. With an ageing population, this situation will only get worse. Every day, locals are telling me about the difficulties they have in finding a GP, let alone one who bulk-bills. The monitoring of full-time equivalent GP numbers by the Department of Health and Ageing shows a critical shortage across the nation, with many of the costly programs thought up by the Minister for Health and Ageing having very little impact—and we see that on the ground in Richmond. The national average ratio of people per full-time equivalent GP has hit 1,451. The government’s own recommended figure is closer to 1,000 people per GP.

The Department of Health and Ageing regards areas with a ratio of more than 1,400 as an area of need under the More Doctors for Outer Metropolitan Areas program. The ratio in Richmond is 1,314. In the neighbouring electorate of Page, the ratio is especially dire at 1,589. Given that the Northern Rivers area has one of the highest proportions of elderly people in the country, this crisis has worsened, as the demand for GPs obviously increases with age. Local GPs have told me that when they are seeing a large number of elderly people the demands on them are much greater.

While GP numbers are dwindling as a result of an underinvestment by the Howard government in university places and GP training places, the current workforce is also getting older. More than 30 per cent of GPs are aged over 55 years, an increase of 10 per cent since 1996. The number of GPs under 35 years has decreased by 17 per cent since 1996, when the Howard government cut GP training places. The problem is even worse in regional areas because new GPs prefer to stay in cities and the Howard government does not provide enough incentives to attract them to areas of need.

The situation is exacerbated by the enormous HECS debts that young doctors now have when they leave university. They often have little choice but to stay in the cities to earn more and pay off these huge debts. They cannot afford to move to regional areas and there are no incentives for them to come to regional areas. The Howard government continues to rely on importing overseas trained doctors. At the last election, the major workforce policy from the health minister was to import 150 GPs every year to areas of need without additional support programs or a national competence measure.

The Productivity Commission in its health workforce report calls for the Howard government to provide leadership when it comes to addressing the critical shortage in the health workforce. The message to the government is clear: invest in universities, train more GPs, train Australians first and train them now. We see first-hand in Richmond how difficult this situation is with our ageing population.

Another major impact upon the ageing in particular in my electorate is this government’s attack on the PBS. It really does put the health of the local elderly at risk. One particular example that I would like to speak about is the removal of calcium from the PBS that we saw last year. There was a huge outcry in relation to this, particularly in my electorate. There was a major forum that many people attended to voice their concerns. There was a major campaign to have calcium reinstated on the PBS. Because of this huge community campaign and because of the pressure that was put on the health minister, it was returned for renal conditions but not for osteoporosis. Of course, people suffering from osteoporosis—or those who want to prevent it, as we have been told we have to do—desperately need to have access to calcium. It is absolutely shameful that the Howard government does not put calcium back on the PBS for those suffering from osteoporosis.

We also saw changes in last year’s budget that greatly impact pensioners, who now have to wait until they use 54 scripts a year before they are entitled to free medicine, with it going up to 60 by 2009. We also saw an increase in the Medicare safety net, even after the health minister’s rock solid, ironclad guarantee that it was not going to happen. These all greatly impact upon my electorate.

Another major health issue of huge significance in Richmond is dental health. There is a dire need for federal funding for dental health and, under the Constitution, it is indeed a responsibility of the federal government. As we all know, the Howard government scrapped the $100 million a year Commonwealth dental health scheme. The reality is that dental health affects your overall health, so it is so important that people are able to access it. The minister for health himself has said in relation to Labor’s dental health scheme:

The Keating government’s program did reduce waiting times. No doubt about that.

So why doesn’t he restore the funding? That is the reality—we need to have federal funding back to fix this problem. There are only about 240 public dentists to cater for more than 2.5 million health care card holders, children and the elderly across Australia. This compares with more than 3,000 private dentists that treat the rest of the population. We always hear the Howard government blaming the states. I am sick of their buck-passing. It is time for them to fix the problem. It is their responsibility under the Constitution, and they are obligated to provide this dental health care.

With an elderly population, aged care is another major issue within my electorate. More funding is needed for aged care, and it needs to be spent in the right places. So many people, of course, want to be able to stay in their homes, so we need to have a lot more money for CAPS and EACH packages to be adequately providing home care for those people. Many people are telling me how long they have to wait. They will be assessed and then often have to wait months and months before they get home care.

We also need more beds in our nursing homes. Indeed, our local aged care system is in crisis and the government has abandoned our elderly. When you look at Richmond, 20 per cent of our population is aged over 65. Current projections say that this will be our nation’s population in 40 years time. We will be looking at the same percentage, so we have a chance in Richmond to get right what we are going to be facing as a nation in 40 years time. But the Howard government has missed an opportunity to fix the problems on the ground now in preparation for the future.

It is not only our elderly but also our sick who are not being cared for properly by this government. Because of this government’s mean-spiritedness, often the responsibility to care for our needy falls on our tireless and underfunded volunteer and community organisations. One such organisation is the Tweed Palliative Support group. This group is coordinated by the Tweed Shire Council citizen of the year, Meredith Dennis, who won the award for her outstanding contribution to our community as the volunteer coordinator of the group. I have seen first-hand Meredith’s dedication and commitment to the dying. She and her team of volunteers do a remarkable job delivering support and in-home care for the terminally ill. They do this with immense sensitivity and dignity. That is why it was so outrageous that the Howard government recently knocked back its application for funding to purchase a support vehicle. Meredith was using her own car to visit these people who were terminally ill. It was a true testimony to our local community when they got behind Meredith’s plight, with our local clubs coming together to donate a vehicle. I certainly commend them, but it in no way excuses this government’s meanness and lack of support for these community groups.

I want to speak now on behalf of all the young people in my electorate who are facing a future of limited choice because of the Howard government’s refusal to address the skills crisis in this country. Youth unemployment in Richmond is at a staggering 30 per cent. This arrogant, short-sighted government has continually ignored warnings from the Reserve Bank and industry groups about a massive skills crisis in this country, and our young people are bearing the brunt of it. The sad truth is that, instead of investing in education and training, the Prime Minister wants us to compete with low-wage economies like China and India by reducing Australian wages. This out-of-touch government thinks it can address the skills shortage and youth unemployment with its backward and extreme industrial relations changes—changes that will strip workers of their rights, slash their wages and leave the most vulnerable, including the unemployed, the young, the old and the unskilled, on their own to negotiate their conditions with their bosses. This strategy not only is economically irresponsible but also will undermine the very way of life that Australians are so proud of.

Our education and training system was set up to support and prepare young people to reach their full potential in their adult working lives, yet the Howard government systematically ripped funding and investment out of this system, making it harder for our kids to access the education and training they will need to prepare them for the future. After a decade of the Howard government refusing to properly invest in vocational education and training, we are now seeing situations of $100,000 degrees. We are seeing 300,000 Australians turned away from TAFE each year. This is an outrageous situation.

The latest financial reports show that the federal government’s spending on skills development increased by a measly 0.8 per cent in 2004. In contrast to that, federal Labor is serious about education and has a vision for our future. We need to compete with overseas developing economies by addressing our skills crisis and building the skills of Australian workers, and that is why Labor is designing strong, practical measures to ensure our kids have affordable education and training choices, like providing free TAFE for traditional apprenticeships, creating more real apprenticeships, providing more incentives to train apprentices in areas of skills shortage and offering young people better choices by teaching trades, technology and science in first-class facilities. Australian businesses, students and workers deserve a government that is serious about addressing our skills crisis and serious about investing in vocational education and training.

Another major issue is the lack of accessibility to and affordability of child care in Richmond. This creates a huge problem for so many families within my electorate. The government is forcing many single parents back to work, but of course it is not providing adequate child care for those children. Also, another major issue is after school care and vacation care. There is only one after-school care centre in Tweed, and it is already full. We desperately need more after school and vacation places, as well as a greater investment in child care.

The environment is another major issue in the Richmond electorate that we feel very strongly about. All Australians deserve to live in a healthy environment with clean air and water, safe food and healthy ecosystems. Without a doubt, climate change is the most serious environmental challenge facing our local and global community. From this government we need to see policies that focus on shifting energy use and production to clean and efficient sources. Yet tragically, despite warnings from the scientific community, we have had a decade of inaction by the Howard government. But federal Labor is serious about climate change and will take practical steps to face this global crisis.

Firstly, we must ratify the Kyoto protocol. The vast majority of countries in the world have signed the protocol, Australia and the USA being notable exceptions. Australia’s per capita emissions are the highest in the world. Alarmingly, the Australian Greenhouse Office predicts that Australia’s emissions will rapidly rise to be 123 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020. The Howard government is making Australia an international disgrace when it comes to environmental concerns. We have to do our bit globally and sign Kyoto, we need to establish a national emissions trading scheme and we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by supporting green energy like wind and solar power and increasing our mandatory renewable energy target to five per cent. This will also serve to create regional jobs and foster the development of an internationally competitive renewable energy technology export industry.

We also need a strategy that will support our Pacific neighbours under the effects of global warming. Their future is most uncertain as they face rising sea levels, more extreme weather events and a collapsing environment. As a result, some of our neighbouring island nations will be flooded and uninhabitable. Climate change threatens our health, our economy, our natural resources and our children’s future. Delaying action for a decade is no longer an option; we have to see action on this. We have had a decade of the Howard government continually refusing to invest in the systems that strengthen our nation, our economy and our community—issues such as health, education and training, aged care and infrastructure.

I am calling on this government to stop looking after its own interests and to start listening to and addressing the needs of everyday Australians like those in my electorate of Richmond. We need to provide for the health of our families and our seniors so that they can get to a GP and get the dental work they so desperately need. We must address our national skills crisis and our soaring youth unemployment. We must look after our elderly and provide access to decent, affordable aged care facilities. We must support our working families with decent, affordable child care, and we must protect our environment and natural heritage and address climate change. These are the basics that underpin a great nation and these are the kinds of policies that we need to be delivering for Australians. Instead, we have seen massive inaction from the Howard government over the last 10 years that is greatly impacting upon my electorate.

As I said at the outset, we were rated as the second happiest community within Australia and the happiest within New South Wales. That is because of the great work that our community groups do and because of the great strength and the community spirit that we have.

Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s your great representation!

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is certainly the community that are wonderful. In particular, we have so many groups right across the board who care for people. One group in particular is Twin Towns Friends and its marvellous coordinator, Doreen Welsh. She runs a volunteer group and they visit elderly people in their homes. They receive no funding at all. As I say, it is a volunteer group. Doreen is just fantastic. Day after day, she goes out visiting people. We have so many people who move to our area. They retire here. Often their spouse becomes ill. They do not have a lot of family living close by and it is groups like these that spend all their time visiting them and providing that great community support. We have so many groups right across the board throughout the entire electorate that are so committed and that do such a wonderful job. It is this that forms the basis of a strong community.

As I have said, all we have seen from the Howard government is inaction right across the board, which is outrageous. We have to provide so much more for those within our community who so desperately need it. We have also seen—and I hear this all the time in the area of the Northern Rivers—the National Party abandon rural and regional Australia, which is a concern to so many people. We have seen them selling out on issues like Telstra and industrial relations. Lately, we have seen them involved in so much infighting and being concerned about themselves. I am afraid they are a spent force in representing regional and rural Australia. It is a concern that people raise with me constantly. The reality is that they are not able to represent people within these areas.

The reality is that we need to have so much funding within these vital areas right across the board. As I said earlier, 20 per cent of our population is aged over 65. If we do not start addressing these issues now, the crisis that we are seeing in Richmond particularly in areas like aged care and health care we will be seeing right across the nation. We need to be formulating plans, particularly with the baby boomers retiring, to make sure that we can adequately provide as people are ageing. Instead, we have not seen the government addressing any of these issues at all.

The issue of youth unemployment that members spoke about earlier is also of major concern. Particularly in regional areas, the options for young people are so limited. So many families tell me now that the option of their child going to university is just not on their radar anymore. They just cannot access HECS fees at all. There is a lack of training and employment opportunities for them. It is unfortunate that so many of them will have to move away, which is very difficult. They do not have the financial resources to do that. We need to keep people within our areas, staying with their communities and also their families. It is so vitally important.

I would also like to commend the community who also work so hard to preserve our local environment. We have a beautiful pristine area. A quote that we often hear from locals is, ‘We don’t want to be like the Gold Coast.’ That is because we do not. We are a very unique area and we want to maintain that. We want to sustain and preserve that for the future.

Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to be speaking this evening on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and addressing some issues of grave concern in my electorate of Blair. Recently I received a letter from the Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie. I was not the only one; there were lots of Queensland coalition members who received letters from the Queensland Premier. He wrote to me and he wrote to the other members, and he called us ‘champions for Queensland’. Indeed, that is a correct assumption by the Queensland Premier—we are champions for Queensland and we work very hard for Queensland. But it was a ridiculous and absurd letter from the Premier of Queensland, Mr Beattie, who spent $150,000 on ads in newspapers carrying on about what a disaster the Queensland health system has become. We all know that to be true—the Queensland health system is a disaster, and it is a disaster because of Mr Beattie. It is not a disaster because of the actions of anybody else.

The Queensland health service is run by the Queensland Premier and the Queensland ministers. They administer it and it is a mess and a disaster. Apart from the depredations we have seen as a result of Jayant Patel and the recent Caboolture hospital crisis, we have seen basically a winding down in health services in Queensland over many years. The Queensland Premier had the hide to write in his ads and to write in his letters to me and my colleagues that the problem with the Queensland health service was inadequate training of doctors at the federal level. That is the greatest tissue of lies in relation to Queensland that you could imagine. The problem in Queensland is that the Queensland system is so underresourced that doctors who train in that state leave the state. He is unable to keep the people in the state.

In this appropriation bill the question of health is so important to all Australians, and doubly so at the moment to all Queenslanders, who are faced with this abominably ramshackle state run system. We have an obligation here at the federal level—and I must compliment successive coalition health ministers for the efforts that they have gone to to increase the training of doctors and to facilitate the training of doctors from country areas. That has, I think, been a series of exemplary moves by those ministers to combat what is a very real problem. But for the Queensland Premier—who finds himself in more strife than Flash Gordon because of his continual neglect of the state and of the proper administration of the state—to try at the last minute, in a panic, to blame the Prime Minister of Australia and the federal health authorities for problems of his own making I think is just shameful. He wrote me a letter and I wrote him a letter back. I want to put it on the record:

Dear Mr Beattie

Thank you for your letter about the Queensland health crisis.

The state of our Queensland health system is of grave concern to me. I have noted your recent advertising campaign. It reminds me of earlier attacks you directed at me and the Commonwealth in relation to the Ipswich Motorway.

You cannot continue to blame others for the parlous state of planning and administration within your government departments.

Poor planning and under-funding by Queensland Health, workplace bullying, and the failure to direct resources to the coalface has resulted in the decline in Queensland health services.

Similarly, incompetence, politicisation, a focus on cost shifting and a failure to plan has produced a deficient proposal to upgrade the Ipswich Motorway. It falls short of the needs of our region in terms of traffic carrying capacity, network redundancy, separation of traffic streams and serviceability during construction.

Successive state ministers and their departmental side kicks have created a motorway plan based on self interest and a real political fear of nimby-ism. Sadly for your shoddy administration, motorists and industry in our region have a different requirement. They require a road that can actually carry the current and projected traffic numbers.

Your government has endorsed and continued to promote a motorway plan that would be redundant within five years of completion but only if unrealistically small assumptions about traffic growth are conjured into effect.

In reality, the motorway today is carrying more than the accepted capacity of a six lane road (80,000 vpd) on every day of the week.

Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a four-lane road that we are talking about here. I continue:

On Fridays, it is carrying 105,000 vehicles. If anyone in Main Roads still claims your plan can cope with these numbers or the real rate of growth, they should be sacked for incompetence or (more likely) sycophancy.

The rest will tell you that the alternative scheme for the Goodna Bypass devised by me and endorsed in the subsequent Maunsells Report will do the job for this region at least until 2035.

In your letter, you address me as a champion for Queensland. Thanks. Like all my colleagues (so named), I am concerned about issues like health and transport, where your government has failed.

In Queensland, the abysmal state of health services, the contribution of Jayant Patel, the Caboolture emergency crisis etc., all have occurred courtesy of Peter Beattie and the government you lead.

In our region, the Goodna Bypass will be the cornerstone of transport infrastructure for at least 25 years. It will be the basis of continuing development and regional capacity building for many decades more.

There is no viable alternative to the bypass.

Now the question for you is whether your government will help the Commonwealth to deliver this essential piece of infrastructure and do so in a timely manner.

Yours sincerely

Cameron Thompson

Federal Member for Blair

I wrote that letter to the Queensland Premier because the continual incompetence of the Queensland government presents itself in so many ways. As I said, we had the health crisis. But in my local sphere, the greatest question is: how the heck are we going to carry the huge traffic volume funnels through the Ipswich Motorway if we produce deficient plans that will be redundant before they can be implemented? That is the nature of traffic planning in the Beattie government.

The Beattie government, at the moment, have embarked on a proposal in which they intend to duplicate the Gateway Motorway. That motorway is a Commonwealth road. Why have they chosen it on which to implement a grandiose scheme? It is because they believe that they can implement enough tolls to recoup more money than it will cost them in the outlay. That is the only area in which they are prepared to contribute to traffic planning in our area, and it sucks. It is extremely deficient and the people in our region, who expect the services needed by the fastest-growing region in Australia to be met by the Beattie government, are being woefully underserviced and underrepresented by that government.

I want to speak some more about the Goodna bypass, because it will gobble up a lot of Commonwealth money. We have a strong Commonwealth commitment to going ahead with the Goodna bypass, which basically means duplicating the most congested section of the Ipswich Motorway. Instead of just having one road to drive on, there will be two. There will be proper network redundancy in the event that one road gets blocked. But what do we have from the Beattie government? We have a proposal to merely upgrade the existing road. They have continued to flog that plan even though, on the basis of studies that have been conducted, that road as envisaged by the Beattie government will be a dead duck before it is completed.

I have spoken on that matter before in this House, but I want to bring to people’s attention something that has happened recently. The Queensland transport minister, Mr Lucas, in a last ditch attempt to try to get the upgrade idea up front and proceeding again, came up with a proposal. I have a schematic diagram of it here. In it, he claimed that they could construct the entire Ipswich Motorway, which is 19-odd kilometres long, build this new road while 100,000 vehicles a day try to drive on it and complete this entire project within four years.

The timing that the Queensland transport minister, Paul Lucas, presented to show that he could do it in four years demonstrated that they would dig up every inch of the road from Dinmore through to Granard Road—the full 19 kilometres. He divided it into five projects, so that everything except for the interchange at one end would be occurring at once. So if you hopped in a taxi or on your treadly and you set out from Dinmore to drive to Gailes, as 100,000 people do every day to try to earn their living, you would be riding or bicycling your way through construction sites, up and down and past the workmen and the excavators, every day for at least a full year of the project.

There would be five of those projects going on at once—that is, every single one apart from the interchange on one end. Then, for a period of at least two years, there would be four of the five projects all going at once. You can see that for a four-year period, the disruption to users of that road would be so woefully horrendous as to basically bring the entire economy of Ipswich to a halt, not to mention the grave impact it would have on every employer across the whole of the south-east Queensland region who draws workers from that region.

It is a shameful and disgusting plan. What really angers me more is the absurd party-first notion of representatives of the Ipswich district who continue to promote that project, as dead a duck as it may be. They continue to promote that project to the detriment of every single stakeholder in it. The state government will not be advantaged by a project that will basically strangle our region. Even though it continues to advance it, it will not be advantaged by such a proposal.

The Commonwealth, the road users, the transport companies—if you go to Australian Meat Holdings at Dinmore, the largest abattoir in the southern hemisphere, you will find that they have about 4,000 workers who have to get to work every day for the three or four shifts there. They have to arrive on time. They have 700 tonnes of meat going out every day. They cannot afford to have that disrupted by construction continuing for four years—they say, but in reality it will be at least seven years—in order to complete that project.

But we have now found that, after the state government and the state transport minister wilfully tried to con the people of Ipswich with a plan to basically squash the whole project down into four years, after they tried to rip off people with this notion that they could somehow conduct all this work while people are trying to drive on the road and that somehow this would be good for us, the reality of what is doable is now starting to come to light. The Commonwealth had funded one part of this project prior to the state government announcing its four-year scam. The Commonwealth had put up the funding for the most direly needed part of this road—that is, the interchange between the Logan Motorway and the Ipswich Motorway. The Commonwealth put up $160 million for that project back in June 2004, under the AusLink program. It was signed off by the minister and that money was allocated back in 2004.

The Commonwealth has now agreed to proceed with that as part of our plan to build the Goodna bypass and duplicate the road west of the Logan Motorway. The state government said that it could build that entire project. As to its timing, it said that it would start construction of the interchange in June 2006 and complete it at the end of August 2008. But what has happened now? Now that we are actually down to signing off on that individual part of the project—because the interchange is universal to the bypass and the upgrade project, the reality is becoming clear—the state transport minister says that the best he can do is start in December 2006 for a completion date in December 2008, and that is being optimistic.

So a six-month slide in the schedule from Mr Lucas shows you how much he was prepared to gild the lily. He was prepared to tell the people of Ipswich that he would have his ill-conceived construction project going on six months earlier than it was feasible for him to do it. So that is a six-month con for motorists, who basically are left with another six months to cover in that process. Similarly, he said in his ill-conceived four-year plan that he would start construction of the Wacol to Darra section in September 2006 and complete it in February 2009, I think. That has slid out again at one end—by more than a year. That is another part of the project that the Commonwealth is now endeavouring to proceed with. But of course the state is not able to meet their half-smart rhetoric with reality, and they are sliding back by a year.

So that is a year more construction and interference by the state than they had sworn on a stack of Bibles it would take and, if they think that that is small beer, they are wrong. To people who earn a daily living by using this road that is a disgusting act for them to do. We expect honesty from the transport minister in Queensland. We expect a straightforward depiction of the facts of this argument and all we get is him continually leading the chorus of ee-i-ee-i-oh with all his Labor mates in the Ipswich area to the detriment of every single soul endeavouring to use the road. This is no small project. It is going to be over $1 billion. In the end it is probably going to be something like $1.3-odd billion to deliver up the fully upgraded section of the Ipswich Motorway and the Goodna bypass as envisaged by the Commonwealth.

What is really important about this is the vision in the Commonwealth scheme, as it has been articulated, to separate the heavy through traffic onto the new road and to create a new route whereby all of those trucks will follow the Goodna bypass and go down the Logan Motorway and cross over the Gateway Bridge, so we have a purpose-built road capable of carrying B-doubles and that kind of heavy freight. According to the study that has been done by Maunsells, if the Goodna bypass is built, 60 per cent of the traffic that is currently on the Ipswich Motorway will find itself on the new road and to a large extent it will be those heavy trucks with the through freight.

Our vision, the vision of the Commonwealth, does not end there. We are saying that the state’s insistence that we continue to force those trucks down the Brisbane urban corridor and up and down past the QEII stadium is to the great detriment of all people who live in that area, with the pollution and the damage to the road that that causes. That will end under our proposal. But the state government, that supposedly have the responsibility for traffic planning in our region, are the donkeys determined to force the negative outcome by forcing that traffic to continue to use that abysmally underprepared road, past all those letterboxes and up and down past the QEII stadium. That is absurd. They know that it is absurd and it is insane for them to continue to force this detrimental outcome on the people across the whole of southern Brisbane and Ipswich.

There is another point to this concerning the section of the motorway west of the Logan Motorway between Dinmore and Gailes. If we build the Goodna bypass we are going to have all that heavy traffic on the road and traffic that will remain on the existing Ipswich Motorway will be mostly the traffic that comes out of Brisbane Road. It will be the traffic of Ipswich, the people of Ipswich going shopping. People such as the member for Oxley and others in my area who continue to insist that even after we have built the Goodna bypass we should come back and build the state government’s grandiose scheme of a huge superhighway through there are just giving one more in the eye to the Ipswich people. We do not want the superhighway going through there if we have diverted all the heavy traffic into that other area. We want something that facilitates our community. I have heard that Queensland transport believe that if we do proceed as the Commonwealth is proposing, we might actually be able to reintroduce buses on the Ipswich Motorway. It would facilitate people shopping in Ipswich shops. Isn’t that incredible! That is anathema to the Beattie government. They want everyone to keep on using Ipswich as a dormitory and shop somewhere else—down in Indooroopilly or somewhere.

We have a vision of being able to reclaim the centre of Ipswich, the part of our town that has been a wasteland of trucks roaring by at 100 kilometres an hour, a sewer of trucks roaring by. We can reclaim it for the use of mums and dads and for people to go shopping and these sorts of things. We want greater access, more on-ramps and off-ramps on that road, more bus stops and more opportunities to access the train stations. The idea being paraded by the member for Oxley and the others in the region is insane, and the mayor has given vent to frustration about it from time to time. A great big motorway being built there would only inconvenience people who were seeking to shop and to take their kids to school. The Commonwealth is about building greater function into our area, greater service and greater flexibility for the people of Ipswich, a proper future under a proper plan. (Time expired)

Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very interesting to have the opportunity to speak in the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006 on the day after the Treasurer has put out his ritual annual tough budget warning. I refer to yesterday’s Australian Financial Review, with the headline ‘Treasurer warns of tight budget’. I am sure that all the people who follow these things thought, ‘It must be mid-February again!’ It is perhaps a little earlier this year because of the Commonwealth Games, but essentially it is the Treasurer’s standard game—and I do not just mean this Treasurer. It is the standard game of ‘treasurers’, plural, and, in some ways, a proper and appropriate thing for them to do even in years when they do not mean it.

But this year I hope the Treasurer does mean it, because the concerns that he has articulated have been raised by a number of people in this parliament, including me, over the years, and he has pooh-poohed them over the years. He has ridiculed them, and now he is articulating them. I hope he means it and is going to pursue it. He has said two things, one of which I do not wish to pursue today, although it is a very important issue and I understand that others, including the member for Rankin, have raised it—that is, the risk that, if the budget is too stimulating, it will lead to increased interest rates. I think that is a question that the Reserve Bank’s statement has left open, but that is not where I want to go and that is not the issue I want to pursue.

The Treasurer also went on to say, ‘The country had to avoid its long history of the economy faltering after a terms-of-trade boom ended in a bust. The country believes it can relax economic policy and spend up the proceeds. Inflation gets away, and the let-down is a hard adjustment.’ He is absolutely right about that and is absolutely right that we are in danger of doing it all again. It is ironic that he should be the one making those comments, because he is substantially responsible for the fact that we are in danger of doing it all again because of the way in which the economy has been allowed to grow and grow in such an unbalanced way with a trade crisis of monumental proportions. It is hard to believe that Australia can have the best terms of trade in a generation and the worst trade outcome in a generation.

Looking at it in big-picture terms, over the last 30 years there have been two big economic management mistakes made in Australia. Of course every year everybody gets things right and wrong in economic management because it is an inexact art. But there have been two big economic management mistakes. In recent years we have been so focused on not repeating one of them that we are galloping towards the other. I refer to the enthusiasm and speed with which we are proceeding to repeat the mistakes that were made when the now Prime Minister was Treasurer in the late seventies and early eighties, when we frittered away the benefits of the resources boom.

We thought the resources boom would go on forever, we spent it in consumption and it drove up inflation, it created a trade crisis and, at the end of the day, we finished the then Treasurer and now Prime Minister, Mr Howard’s treasurership with double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. That prospect—not double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment, because we are in a different global situation, but that serious question of frittering away the resources boom in short-term consumption—is what I want to pay particular attention to while we are debating these supplementary appropriation bills, as we are actually in the process of the government considering the next budget, and it is to that I wish to turn my attention.

I firstly want to refer to some recent remarks that were unfortunately very quickly retracted by the Minister for Finance and Administration, because I thought he had it right when he suggested cutting or abolishing the superannuation contributions tax was a more responsible and important reform than the current frenzy surrounding income tax and particularly income tax cuts at the top end. It is a great pity that the Treasurer seems to have overruled the finance minister and that this proposal seems to be off the table. It is very hard to believe that we are seeing a debate within the government dominated by calls for tax cuts when the official forecasts are suggesting continuing strong growth and the economy is already sucking in imports at an unsustainable rate.

As Max Walsh said in a recent article in the Bulletin, it is just not responsible—these are my words, not his, but that was the tone of his remarks—to be advocating the sort of tax cut that will lead to more consumption when excess consumption is one of those things, along with the shortage of savings, that is driving the trade crisis that Australia faces today. So this reinforces the point that cutting or abolishing the superannuation contributions tax is a much better policy option that top-end tax cuts in this year’s budget.

There is a real risk that the current and forecast surge in revenue driven by the global resources boom will not last as long as we hope. After all, basic economics tell us that the higher prices will attract increased production to meet demand, and this will inevitably slow the price boom for our resources. All booms end; this one will too. When the current Prime Minister was Treasurer, Australia frittered away the benefits of the last resources boom. We must not repeat that mistake. We need to use this temporary benefit to buy some real reform, some genuine structural change in the economy and some lasting social benefit.

One option would be a major program of infrastructure investment, but a cut in tax on superannuation contributions would deliver some real reform and deliver benefits to working Australians, yet not exacerbate the pressure on imports or interest rates. Access Economics has warned that a large tax cut and its consequences might lead the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates. This would make it at best a zero sum game and would leave many families worse off. But using the surplus to cut or abolish the superannuation contributions tax would boost the retirement incomes of all Australian workers without running these risks. The benefits would be substantial and real but would be locked up for the future—and boosting savings and retirement incomes is a significant long-term need. Such an initiative would not be just a tax; it would be genuine reform. But any step in this direction needs balanced consideration.

Last year the Treasurer delivered big superannuation tax cuts to himself and all those, including me, in higher income brackets, while low- to middle-income earners got nothing. We cannot justify doing this again. At the same time, the superannuation co-contribution scheme, which is claimed to be designed to assist those on lower incomes, is so open ended that much of the benefit flows to low-income earners in high-income households. Given that the biggest winners from abolishing the contributions tax would be high-income earners again, some balancing measures would be required. On the superannuation front, this would need to include attempts to better target the benefits from the co-contributions scheme or looking at other measures to balance the flow of benefits.

In addition, another genuine reform which might balance the flow of benefits would be to target such tax cuts as are responsible to low- and middle-income households to reduce the punitive effective marginal tax rates they face on any extra income they earn. Properly structured, this could also constitute long-term structural reform because it has the potential to address work disincentives at a time when demographics and economics are combining to put pressure on the labour market. There are many alternative packages which could be considered. The key questions to ask are: does the change address long-term economic and social challenges? Will the measures exacerbate our trade crisis? Will the proposals put upward pressure on interest rates? Abolition of, or substantial cuts to, the tax on superannuation contributions passes all these tests.

It is a great pity that our reform-shy Treasurer seems to have ruled it out. Let us hope the Prime Minister backs his new Senate leader and overrules the Treasurer. That is where the nation’s long-term economic and social interests lie. So I want to put that firmly before the parliament as a proposition that I think is far superior to the fevered pursuit of high-income tax cuts, unless those are funded by equitable base-broadening measures.

I turn now to another broad economic issue that I think the budget almost certainly will not address—because everyone is very complacent about it as the superficial statistics look good—but where I think there is a serious problem in our country. Contrary to popular belief, this year’s budget needs a jobs focus as well as needing to respond to the emerging skills crisis. It might come as a shock to many to realise how little progress we have made in lifting employment under the Howard government. On the surface things are fine. The unemployment rate is at a very low level, although it is starting to trend upwards and I expect it will continue to do so in coming months. But this does not tell the full story. Many Australian families are asking the question: if times are so good, why are we finding it so hard to get ahead?

Of course, there are many aspects to the answer to that question: changes to health insurance, the GST impact, the boom in housing and building costs, surging family debt levels et cetera. But there is a hidden explanation. So much of the employment created since March 1996 has been part-time work that we are effectively no better off on the employment front than we were in 1996. The full-time equivalent employment level has scarcely changed. These are Australian Bureau of Statistics figures. In March 1996, the full-time equivalent employment level was 77.6 per cent. In March 2005—which are the most recent figures I had access to—it had gone from 77.6 to 77.8 per cent. In other words, there was effectively no change at all. How can these two factors both be right? Unemployment is falling but the overall employment level is not rising.

The answer is the boom in part-time employment. The experience of many families reinforces this. Families which depended on a full-time job are now looking at one or more part-time jobs. Of course, there is nothing wrong with part-time work. If that is all you want, it is terrific. It is a supplement to family income or as a transition into or out of the workforce, but if you want a full-time job and cannot find one part-time work is better than nothing but a poor second-best to a full-time job. And the figures are crystal clear. The figures of the Australian Bureau of Statistics for September 2004 show 612,900 part-time workers wanted more hours. That means more than 20 per cent of part-time workers see themselves as underemployed. Of these, more than 360,000 wanted full-time work. Therefore, we should not have any nonsense suggesting that talking about underemployment is a slur on part-time workers. The two million part-time workers who are satisfied with the amount of work they have should be recognised for the legitimate contribution they are making to their families and to their community, but when we recognise that more than 600,000 part-time workers want more work the blizzard of apparently contradictory figures begins to make sense. It begins to explain how unemployment can appear low and yet wage pressures are so weak. The labour market is effectively no stronger now than it was in March 1996. This is one of the reasons that pressure on the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates is less than it would be expected to be with headline unemployment so low. The explosion in part-time work is also part of the explanation of the pressure on families to balance the budget, even in what appears to be economic good times.

Another significant aspect of this new data on the employment situation is what it shows about the vulnerability of families if the economy slows. When the economy started to slow in 1990 the full-time equivalent employment rate was above 80 per cent. It fell to 75 per cent and recovered to 77 per cent by the time of the election of the Howard government and has been stuck there ever since. This means that if the economy slows even a little, as it appears to be starting to do now, we will rapidly get to a full-time equivalent employment rate as low as or below those of the recession in 1990-91. The failure of the Howard government to create full-time jobs has left families vulnerable.

It is also very alarming that at a time of such significant underemployment Australia should be suffering a skills crisis. There is obviously no shortage of Australians available and willing to work. The skills crisis is not being caused by too much success in employment generation. It is an indictment of a decade of underinvestment in skills development and training. The 2006 budget needs an employment and skills focus. If this Treasurer’s 11th budget is as complacent on this front as his previous 10 have been, Australian working families will bear the burden.

In the remaining five minutes, I want to come back to a comment I made previously about economic debate in this country. In the lead-up to the 2005 budget in the United Kingdom, the British Institute of Fiscal Studies published an authoritative examination of the options open to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but nothing comparable is published in Australia. The UK commentary examined questions such as: how likely is the Chancellor to meet his fiscal rules, and what has been the distributional effect of the government’s tax and benefit policy decisions to date?

Despite good work by many commentators, there is nothing to equal this in Australia—and we would be well served if there was. Similarly, after the UK budget the IFS published a comprehensive budget analysis which contained both macro-economic and distributional analysis. Although we will see much well-informed commentary after the budget, there will be no equivalent independent and authoritative analysis, and our democratic debate is the poorer for it. That is why I have been calling for some time for Australia to establish a body similar to the UK’s Institute of Fiscal Studies to enhance the quality of our economic debate here. The quality of our economic debate is not an esoteric matter which affects only economists and politicians. If it was, it would not be worth spending even a dollar on it. But the experience of previous decades shows that the quality of economic analysis and debate in any one period is a significant factor in creating the preconditions for strong economic growth in the future.

The great economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s had their origins in the quality of the economic debate and analysis in earlier years, but the pace of reform is slowing. That is why we need to reinvigorate the economic policy debate. We cannot afford to repeat the complacency of the last period, as we did in the beginning of the 20th century, when Australia was complacent and slipped down the global economic league table. It took much debate and many difficult reforms in the 1980s and 1990s to turn this around. The signs of such complacency are re-emerging.

There are some useful elements already there to structure such a debate. If the Productivity Commission was given the role it should have in looking at the key economic issues, such as infrastructure investment and skills development, it could make an even bigger contribution to the economic debate. That would be a very substantial contribution. We already have that body, and it is very good. But we need something similar in the general area of economic policy, and fiscal policy in particular. There is a lot of rubbish talked about economic policy in Australia—we just need a factual base. We will still disagree about what measures we should take, because you bring values to bear on the data, but we need an independent source of the information. Even a cursory examination of the British Institute of Fiscal Studies makes the contrast stark.

An April 2005 briefing note assesses the government’s management of the public finances over an eight-year period and judges it against the rules it sets itself to constrain public sector borrowing and debt, and against the performance of other industrial countries over the same period. It then discusses how the public finances might evolve, given the tax and spending policies of the three main parties. That is, it looks at not just the government but at the opposition proposals and, in the case of the UK, the third party. I would be interested to see what they would think if they looked at the Greens’ approach in Australia: a very interesting but a very short piece of fiscal analysis. But in Australia the competing packages could well be assessed by such an independent institute.

A number of writers and agencies make good contributions: journalists in the media, Access Economics’s Budget Monitor and NATSEM’s important work on distributional analysis. But big gaps in Australia’s economic policy debate continue. No one initiative will solve that problem, but an Australian Institute of Fiscal Studies providing authoritative fiscal policy analysis and working beside an enhanced Productivity Commission, focusing on the big domestic and international economic policy challenges, will take us a big step forward. Economic policy debate in Australia today is dominated by simplistic slogans about surpluses and complacency built on the back of a one-off boost to our terms of trade. We cannot afford this arrogant complacency to continue. Reinforcing the institutional framework for policy analysis and debate will help.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006 as they form part of the government’s program, which has been a very responsible one from an economic point of view. This is a government that has created employment opportunities. It is a government that has created growth in real wages and has managed to keep inflation and interest rates low. So we really have a very proud economic record, and these appropriation bills form part of the strategy that underpins that economic record.

It is interesting to note that the member for Fraser was trying to draw some comparisons as to the relative performance on unemployment of the coalition and the current opposition. The people of Australia are not silly: they made their judgment in 1996 on the performance of the Labor government and they have repeated their judgment over a range of elections right up until the 2004 election, when they believed that the government best placed to keep the economy strong, the political party best placed to drive the economy harder so that we could achieve better economic outcomes for families and the whole community, was the coalition. Certainly people have little faith in the ability of the Australian Labor Party to manage the economy. They have passed that judgment time and time again. They have little faith in the Australian Labor Party to keep interest rates low. They have little faith in the Australian Labor Party to generate jobs. These appropriation bills are part of an ongoing strategy to build a stronger Australia and a stronger community.

I believe one of the major factors behind strong growth in regional and rural areas is infrastructure, and it is something that I want to focus on during my address tonight. I refer to physical infrastructure, such as road and rail, and also to infrastructure such as technology—vitally important matters to the people of regional and rural areas. If we are going to have strong investment in regional areas, people have to know that they can operate a business on a competitive basis and export their products around the country and the world from their regional location. A strong focus on infrastructure is part of that and is very much a strategy that this government has adopted.

Entrepreneurs in a range of locations in my electorate, such as some of the smaller centres like Bellingen or Bowraville, can service customers around the world through high-speed internet. It is very much a focus of this government to ensure that regional and rural areas have access to the sorts of telecommunications services that will enable regional Australia to remain competitive not only now but into the future.

Harking back for a moment to the issue of roads, one of the programs which The Nationals have been very much focused on is the Roads to Recovery program. This program has strengthened local road infrastructure in a range of local government areas around the country. It is interesting to note that most items that come out of regional and rural areas to be exported from this country begin their journey on a local road. That is why Roads to Recovery is vitally important. This program has enabled many local councils to improve the condition of road infrastructure for their ratepayers. I believe the success of the program is very much focused on the fact that it is local councils deciding local priorities, not Macquarie Street, Sydney, deciding what is right for regional communities and skimming off a substantial fee to go into bloated state bureaucracies. It is actually local councils on the ground making good local decisions because they understand their local area.

Another important area of infrastructure that concerns my electorate is the Pacific Highway. I recently distributed a newsletter inviting constituents to subscribe to regular progress updates on the state of the road. I also called on the members of my community to sign a letter to Mr Joe Tripodi, the state roads minister, who has become known around my electorate as ‘Slow’ Joe Tripodi because when ‘Slow’ Joe is on the job nothing happens quickly. Whenever ‘Slow’ Joe is around, there is one thing you are sure of: a grab-bag of excuses. No matter what the problem is, it is the federal government’s fault or someone else’s fault. If it is raining, it is the federal government’s fault. If the road is not finished, it is the federal government’s fault or there is some other reason. When ‘Slow’ Joe is about, there is always an excuse.

One of the projects that I have particularly focused on is called the Bonville deviation. Regrettably, notable is the large number of fatalities that have occurred in that section of road. We have had some 13 deaths since 2001, and the material that I have sent out to the electorate is encouraging people to write a letter to Joe or sign a letter to Joe, telling him to get on with the job, to get off his backside and stop whingeing and whining and make the Bonville deviation happen. This road is way overdue. It was originally planned in 1998, and the New South Wales state government announced it would fully fund the Bonville deviation. It was due for completion in 2003. ‘Slow’ Joe is a bit behind time on that one and we are certainly working hard to keep him accountable.

We have seen some action in Bonville. We have seen the start of some safety works, which is welcome—$5 million in safety works—but was ‘Slow’ Joe responsible for it? No. Who funded it? The federal government had to fund that. In addition, the federal government was so focused on the importance of the Bonville deviation that it offered ‘Slow’ Joe $30 million to advance the works and make things happen quicker. You would expect that, if any spending minister responsible for roads was offered $30 million to get things happening quickly, they would accept it. What did ‘Slow’ Joe do? He knocked it back. Today is 14 February and we have been waiting some 168 days since the $30 million was offered to the state roads minister—and he is still yet to take it up.

Remarkable as it is that a roads minister might reject such an offer, his excuse is even more remarkable. He gave the tenderers for the Bonville deviation some 13 weeks to submit their proposals. Then he gave the bureaucracy of the RTA some six months to choose between the tenderers. You may ask: was there a Melbourne Cup field of tenderers? It could be a very complicated job with 50 tenderers and lots of paperwork to go through to pick the one that would give the best value for taxpayers. How many tenderers did ‘Slow’ Joe have to pick from? Two! He has allowed his bureaucracy six months to choose between tenderer A and tenderer B—so committed is he to take up the $30 million offered by federal roads minister Lloyd to get this work started. It is no wonder that he is known as ‘Slow Joe Tripodi’ around my electorate.

There is a tremendous contrast between the federal roads minister, who is focused on making things happen with $5 million for safety works and an offer of $30 million to accelerate the Bonville deviation, and the state roads minister, who really wants to see things happen at a very slow pace indeed. Minister Lloyd and Minister Tripodi are like cheese and chalk. I have been working hard to bring to the attention of all the people in my electorate the need to keep pressure on Mr Tripodi. I have been working with my state counterpart, Andrew Fraser, the member for Coffs Harbour. He has been putting pressure on Mr Tripodi, but it is a tough ask. Mr Tripodi is very keen to sit on his backside and live up to his reputation of being ‘Slow’ Joe.

Another important thing about the highway is that we have had massive growth in heavy vehicle movement, which has increased by some 34 per cent between 2001 and 2004. I am delighted that we have been able to negotiate under AusLink some $960 million of state and federal money to be invested in the road over the three years between 2006 and 2009, because there is another important stretch of road which vitally needs upgrading: the Sapphire to Woolgoolga road to the north of Coffs Harbour—some 15 kilometres of road with 37 junctions. With 2,000 heavy vehicles thundering down that road every day, a massively growing population and lots of people commuting to Coffs Harbour from the outlying northern beach suburbs, it is a disaster waiting to happen—a mix of high-speed heavy vehicle movement through-traffic mixing with local residents making their way to work. It is vital we get that road upgraded as quickly as possible. I am delighted that we have been able to include that project within the next three-year funding plan. It is an absolutely vital project and one that my electorate is very focused on.

In talking about infrastructure, rail is also vitally important. It is very difficult if you upgrade a road network and you do not do something about rail, because you will only clog up the road network due to increased traffic. So the federal government is not only focusing on the Pacific Highway and road infrastructure but is investing some $450 million to upgrade the east coast rail line between Sydney and Brisbane, aiming to take some 120,000 containers a year off road onto rail by the year 2011. The federal government through AusLink is very focused on ensuring that we have the sort of transport infrastructure that will make Australia a strong economy and also make business competitive in regional and rural areas through a combination of highway upgrades with a strong focus on rail—a focus that has been missing. The New South Wales government has allowed the state rail network to deteriorate to a terrible state. The federal government has had to take a lease over the rail line to get this vital piece of infrastructure going and, through the ARTC, manage rail infrastructure in an efficient way so that rail carries its share of the total transport task.

I would now like to turn to telecommunications. I mentioned earlier the vital nature of telecommunications services for doing business in regional and rural areas, which need to be able to use high-speed internet to access customers around the world. We have, I believe, a good story to tell in relation to telecommunications. We have seen Telstra roll out infrastructure around the country. I think it is important that we move to full private ownership of Telstra. We have seen the telecommunications changes that have occurred to date make some dramatic improvements to the Australian economy. The Allen Consulting Group report for the Australian Communications Authority said that Australia’s economy was some $10.3 billion bigger in 2003-04 than it would have been without the introduction of telecommunications competition in 1997—a vital statistic—that small business would be some $2.16 billion better off in 2003-04 than it would have been without the introduction of competition at that time and that an additional 29,600 jobs have been created in the Australian economy as a result of competition.

I see that the member for Hinkler has just come into the chamber. He is very focused on the important role that telecommunications plays in rural and regional Australia. He is very focused on the importance to local businesses, local schools and local hospitals of having quality telecommunications. And this government has met that challenge. We have recently seen that over $3 billion is to be invested through the $1.1 billion Connect Australia program and the $2 billion communications future fund, which will ensure that regional and rural areas have quality telecommunications not only now but also in the future.

In my electorate, 29 exchange areas have been enabled for ADSL since the beginning of 2003. Over the same period, 26 mobile phone towers have been built and we have seen a dramatic improvement in mobile phone coverage and a dramatic improvement in high-speed internet roll-out. We still have a lot more work to do. The National Party is very focused on the fact that this process has to continue and is vitally important.

I would like to talk for a moment on the issue of health. The National Party is very much focused on the rural health strategy—

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed!

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hinkler agrees. He is very much focused on health needs in his electorate—a very well represented electorate, I might say. The federal government is very focused on health needs in regional and rural areas. We need to deliver quality health services no matter where an individual chooses to live. In Coffs Harbour, we have seen a $3 million investment in the rural clinical school. We can encourage more people to practice medicine in regional and rural areas if we get them training there. It is a great success. The University of New South Wales is doing a great job through the rural clinical school in Coffs Harbour in training young doctors in regional areas, and hopefully they will continue to practise there when their training is done. This is underpinned by a range of other measures such as bonded scholarships and reserve places in medical schemes for people from regional and rural areas.

Another fine part of the rural health strategy is the Medical Specialist Outreach Assistance Program, which funds medical professional specialists in regional areas so that people can receive the services they need in their local towns and regional centres rather than having to travel to Sydney. For many elderly people in particular, a very long journey to Sydney or Brisbane to receive specialist services can be quite a daunting task, not only in the procedures they face as a result of their illness but also in having to travel a long way from home and their support networks. That is why this government is focused on delivering the services where people live. It is not focused on the metropolitan centres but on equity of access to medical services no matter where you live. In 2004-05 some eight specialist practitioners operating under the scheme provided services to 3½ thousand patients.

The government is very much focused on infrastructure and the need to provide quality medical services in regional and rural Australia. The government is very much focused on the needs of a range of communities right around the country. I am proud to be part of this government because of that. I see infrastructure as a vital priority. I know that the member for Hinkler agrees. He is very focused on physical infrastructure and telecommunications infrastructure. As secretary of the backbench policy committee on health, I am very much focused on the need for quality health services. We see equity of access and opportunity for people to receive those services as being of vital importance. So I commend these appropriation bills to the House. They form part of what is a very solid program by a responsible government which sees a strong Australia and a strong economy as major objectives and is going to continue to deliver for the Australian people.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting. If this is such a strong budget and such a strong government, why couldn’t the member for Cowper use the full 20 minutes that he is allocated to discuss the appropriation bills? I will touch a little bit on some of the issues that the previous speaker mentioned in his contribution, but I will approach it from quite a different perspective to the one that he approached it from.

This is an arrogant, out-of-touch government that is pursuing its extreme agenda. It is a government of zealots driven by a philosophy based on individualism. There is no recognition of the fact that people succeed, strive and enjoy happiness more when they live together and are part of a community. Rather, it is a government that promotes winners and losers, in groups and out groups. As such it gains its strength from the fact that it causes great divisions within the community. It is beholden to its masters in big business, and its extreme arrogance is demonstrated by government member after government member coming up here to this House and attacking the state governments.

If this is such a strong budget and if this is a government that is putting forward such a strong budget for the people of Australia—looking after the people of Australia, moving Australia ahead—why is it that the members of that government cannot talk about the achievements of the government? Rather, they focus on the state governments. It seems to me that what they are doing is what they do time and time again in this parliament, and that is pass the blame for their failures on to somebody else: ‘It wasn’t me. I knew nothing about it. It’s the state government. It’s the local government. I will take no responsibility whatsoever for what’s happened.’

When history reviews the achievements of the Howard government I do not believe that it will treat it very kindly. I think it will find a place in history of being a time of great division, a time when Australian has been turned against Australian and when certain groups of people within our community have really been disadvantaged. I look at what has happened over the last 12 months and I see the Australia that I know and care very deeply about changing before my very eyes. Telstra legislation passed through this parliament to privatise Telstra, yet people in my electorate cannot even get mobile phone coverage. People in my electorate have problem after problem with their telecommunications. The workforce that Telstra employs has been downgraded considerably. I believe that this does contribute to the problems that I see in that area.

We had the industrial relations legislation pass through this parliament at the end of last year, legislation that I believe is going to extremely disadvantage many people that I represent in this parliament. The industrial relations legislation and the AWAs that will come into play will be fine if you have got a skill that no-one else has or if you are in a highly paid job. But, if you are a person that does not have that level of skill, your wages are going to be eroded, your conditions are going to be eroded and you will have less time to spend with your family. The government says nothing has happened. The opposition forecasted that there would be these changes, and I stick by that. But it will be slow. It will not happen today. It will not happen tomorrow.

At the weekend I heard of a case of a young guy who is going to university in Sydney and was working as a roadie, setting up for performances. He was told he had to be at work by six o’clock and that if he was not at work by six o’clock he did not have the job. He sat there for two hours, and the work started at eight o’clock. He officially finished at 12 o’clock, but the next two hours was spent tidying up. He was paid for four hours. He complained about it—and he did not get called in again. He needs that money to survive. These are the types of things that this government is allowing to happen.

The Welfare to Work legislation that passed through this parliament late last year is also legislation that I think has the ability to change the face of Australia. This legislation is going to disadvantage people who are on a disability support pension. I believe it will in fact make it harder for them to return to the workforce. As a person who worked for many years with people with disabilities to help them to secure employment, I know that the legislation is not the right way to achieve that. As recently as two weeks ago I had a constituent sitting in my office who had applied for the disability support pension and been rejected. He has quite a severe disability. When he was assessed he was allocated the 20 points he needed to qualify for the disability support pension, but those who make the decisions in Centrelink said no. They said that with some training he would be able to get a job. This gentleman comes from a non-English-speaking background, he cannot read or write, but he is being sent off to train. Added to that, Centrelink have refused to grant him a sickness benefit. They say he has to apply for Newstart and actively job search. I believe that the government will be liable if this constituent obtains a job and then injures himself or those he is working with, because his condition is such that it could jeopardise those people working around him.

Another flow-on from the government’s Welfare to Work legislation is shown by a case I raised in the House last week. An elderly woman, 61 years old, is caring for her mother, who suffers from dementia. Her mother needed to sell her home, which is in an area where the values have skyrocketed. It is a little miner’s cottage, but she received somewhere in excess of $500,000 for that house. That money is with the protective commissioner. The woman who is looking after her cannot draw on it, cannot touch it in any way. Her husband is a pensioner, but because her mother is not eligible for the pension because her assets are too high this woman is unable to get a carer payment. So she is put in the position of either having to look for a job, to actively job search, or having to undertake volunteer work. Her mother requires 24-hour day care because she has severe advanced dementia. This woman is saving the government a considerable amount of money, yet she is being disadvantaged by this government.

Another example I would like to bring to the attention of the House is that of a number of gentlemen who are working for a Meals on Wheels group within my electorate. The week after the legislation passed through the parliament my office was inundated with calls from these gentlemen who were undertaking their mutual obligation by working 15 hours a week for Meals on Wheels. They were all in excess of 60 years of age, but the Centrelink officer in question had advised them that now this legislation was through they had to actively job search. I am sure that members in the House know that that is not correct; that is not a requirement of the legislation. But the point I am making here is that the government did not even get the information to their Centrelink officers so they could administer the changes properly. In fact, I had to provide the Centrelink officers with the information so they could take it back to their offices and educate their staff as to what the requirements of the legislation were. I think that is a disgrace.

Today the Minister for Human Services said that there had been 24,000 days of unplanned staff leave in Centrelink over the last 12 months and that he has been able to reduce it. He also said that the Centrelink lines were shorter. I suggest that maybe the minister could put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and stand in one of those Centrelink lines. I actually did that in January. I went to pick up a carers allowance package for a constituent, and I stood in that line for 45 minutes before I could get some papers to take home to that constituent, who was housebound. If that is improving a system and making the Centrelink line shorter, I would hate to see what will happen if this minister is allowed to be in control of Centrelink for too much longer. I fear that those lines will extend outside the door.

Also, at that particular time people were contacting my office because they were being told that they needed to wait for between two to three weeks for an appointment. These were people who had absolutely no money at all. It is hardly what you would expect from a department that this minister has made twice as efficient! I suggest it takes more than getting rid of those 24,000 days unplanned leave to enable Centrelink officers to do their job a lot better than they have in recent times. Maybe providing them with the information that I provided to the Centrelink officers on Welfare to Work might help them.

Other legislation that has passed through this House includes the voluntary student unionism legislation. That has cost the University of Newcastle $6 million. I hardly see that that will benefit the people whom I represent in this House.

That brings me to the issue of health. Last night in the House I raised the issue of doctor shortages. I believe what the member for Cowper believes: we should have equity of access to health care and health services. But, unfortunately, in Shortland we do not have that equity of access. We are not considered to be regional or rural in the sense that the people living in the electorate of the member for Cowper are. The area that I represent is identified as an area of labour force shortage. The area that I represent has a number of doctors, all of whom have closed their books. The area that I represent in this parliament has a doctor who has just retired and left 2,000 patients without any access to medical treatment.

Unfortunately, because the government’s policies are geared towards supporting people in electorates like the member for Cowper, the people of Shortland are disadvantaged. It is not equity of access for all; rather, it is equity of access for those few who members on the other side of the House seek to represent. I find that an absolute disgrace. Within health, we still have an inordinate waiting list for public dental services. This government continually refuses to reintroduce the Commonwealth dental health scheme that it abolished when it was elected in 1996.

In the Shortland electorate, we are still trying to get our Medicare office in Belmont back, but the government ignores us. In Shortland, all the elderly people—people like the Swansea pensioners who visited me here in Parliament House today—have to pay more under the PBS and are unable to get their calcium tablets on the PBS, all because of the actions of this government. The Minister for Health and Ageing gave that ‘rock-solid, ironclad guarantee’ that he would not lift the Medicare safety net before the last election, and we all saw what he did there. Women in the Shortland electorate who are outside the breast-screening target group aged 50 to 69 are still unable to have their mammograms done in the public system. Adding insult to injury, the amount of money available to them as a refund under the Medicare schedule is nowhere near what it costs. This government has made a practice of disadvantaging all those people, but not its mates in big business, the high-flyers that it sees can give it an advantage.

If you look at education, you see the government’s approach to the skills shortage is: ‘Let’s bring more people in from overseas. Let’s bring doctors in from overseas. Let’s bring apprentices in from overseas.’ How about investing in apprentices here and in the young people of Australia? When we debate TAFE and university legislation, for the government it is about linking funding for those institutions to workplace relations, requiring the staff that work there to sign AWAs. It is an absolute disgrace.

Whilst the government is cutting back on these vital services to people that I represent and people that the member for Ballarat represents, moving to privatise Telstra and doing scoping studies in preparation for privatising Medibank Private, it is spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on advertising. In the lead-up to the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill, it spent $55 million on its propaganda campaign. Add to that the $152,000 that it spent on booklets that were to be sent to households throughout Australia. There were 458,000 booklets, but the government decided that it did not like the wording, so it just pulped them. And it is interesting that $120,000 of the money for printing those booklets went to Howard government mates: they were printed by Salmac, a company that is very closely aligned with the Liberal Party. And now I see that the government is all set to spend another $143 million on more propaganda. The government is arrogantly planning to spend at least another $143 million on advertising in the lead-up to the next election.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like a clarification if the member will accept the question.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No.

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hinkler has asked whether the member would accept a question.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Neville interjecting

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand why the member opposite is a little bit defensive, but this government has made an art of spending taxpayers’ money on propaganda to sell its attacks on the Australian people. This government has really exploited the Australian people.

I wanted to mention how the government has failed the veterans in Australia and how it has cut money to veterans’ groups—it will not even supply them with stamped envelopes to submit applications for pensions. I wanted to touch on AusLink from the perspective of the people I represent. They believe that the federal government is not putting their share of the money into the funding of the Pacific Highway. This government stands condemned for its failure to look after the Australian people. (Time expired)

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006, I want to focus on the Howard government’s neglect of two areas vital to the economic development of our regions—infrastructure and regional universities—and in particular how this neglect is impacting on my electorate of Ballarat. The government does not have a comprehensive plan for addressing Australia’s regional infrastructure needs. Road funding in this country has become a national joke. The government has abrogated responsibility for the national highway network, turning it from a federal responsibility into a patchwork of projects requiring state, federal and private funding. It has continued through this process to politicise road funding and has failed to take up Labor’s suggestion of a national infrastructure advisory council, which would take the politics out of infrastructure funding and introduce cost-benefit analysis into the decision-making process.

In my own district we felt the effects of that when, despite all the evidence, the government had to be brought kicking and screaming to finally agree to fund the Deer Park Bypass. Even then, it has not funded the entirety of the project, extracting a proportion from the state government for what is clearly a national highway project. It was only when the state government agreed to kick in a proportion of the funding for a project that should have been funded by the federal government years ago that we saw any movement on this issue.

Now I see the comeback senator, Senator Michael Ronaldson, has finally had something to say on the Deer Park Bypass. Having been in this place for 11 years and having mentioned Deer Park only once—in his farewell speech—it is plainly hypocritical that he now wants to champion the project at the eleventh hour. This is the man who during the 2004 election campaign called the Western Highway Action Committee, me and all of the residents of Ballarat who were desperate to get this project funded, ‘immature and doing a dummy spit’. Why? Because we dared to criticise the Howard government for committing only a fraction of the funding needed for this project, effectively delaying its start until after the 2007 federal election. To the comeback senator I say: if you are as interested in this project as you feign to be, stop point scoring and work constructively with the state government to get this project up. The project has suffered enough from Liberal Party politics and it should not suffer any more because of you.

The state government should never had to have put in money for this project because it is part of the national highway network. It was a network that, until the federal government rewrote the ground rules, was 100 per cent the responsibility of the Howard government to fund. The state money, as welcome as it was, could have been spent on state road projects in my area that are vitally important. It could have been spent on projects such as improving the Midland Highway—the highway that links the two great regional cities of Geelong and Ballarat. Upgrades to the Midland Highway are urgently needed. But now that the Howard government has moved the goalposts on national highways and required state governments to put some of their road funding into those previously 100 per cent Commonwealth government funded roads and further politicised road funding through AusLink the chances of getting any road projects up has been made that much harder, unless you are in a Liberal Party target seat.

Voters in Australia, especially those living in regional and rural Australia, deserve much better than this. They deserve a federal Labor government, which will base infrastructure spending on rational, impartial, unbiased analysis of needs, not favours for their mates. A Labor government will conduct a national infrastructure audit to establish a comprehensive and effective analysis of needs nationwide. A Labor government will establish a national infrastructure priority list to allow for sensible strategic planning. It will create Infrastructure Australia, a Commonwealth body with the special function of driving infrastructure rebuilding. It will establish the Building Australia Fund, a future fund that could make a positive contribution to our productive capacity. And it will work hard to reduce complex and overlapping regulations between the Commonwealth and the states, producing the capacity to work smoothly together, rather than the undermining and adversarial example set by the Howard government at Deer Park.

For 10 long years, the Howard government has presided over a severe deterioration in the building blocks of our national economy: our key infrastructure assets. It has failed to take advantage of 14 years of continuous economic growth, and has only now belatedly recognised that working with the states in a coordinated action on significant national economic infrastructure is in the national interest. And even now, that coordinated action has been undertaken grudgingly, with point scoring and an eye to the main chance at every step. The Howard government must address the structural impediments in our infrastructure in order to guarantee our ongoing international competitiveness and prosperity. Our regions demand no less. Despite the minimal agreements reached at COAG, there is much more to be done.

On another front, if the Howard government is failing regional communities in meeting transport infrastructure needs, it has absolutely left us for dead when it comes to telecommunications. The Liberal Party and their National Party colleagues sold regional and rural Australia out when they determined that they would sell Telstra. Yesterday in Senate estimates, and widely reported in today’s media, we have seen the failure of the Howard government to deliver adequate rural and regional telecommunications services.

In Senate estimates hearings, Telstra revealed that the so-called local presence plan designed to prevent it from abandoning the country after privatisation did not include one single legally binding commitment for rural and regional Australia. Telstra also admitted that, despite its fault rates in rural and regional Australia being higher than in metropolitan areas, it had scrapped $200 million plans to repair parts of the network. And we have had revelations from a former Howard government minister that the government has failed to honour its 2001 election promise to deliver mobile phone coverage on Australia’s highways.

Not one of the revelations in the Senate estimates hearings comes as a surprise to people living in regional and rural Australia. We already knew that the local presence plan was a farce. We have watched jobs disappear in regional areas as Telstra cuts back on the number of technicians who repair and maintain the network. We have just seen 13 full-time permanent positions go in my electorate in the past month, with more to come. And no amount of spin about casual contract labour call centre jobs being created can hide the fact that Telstra is dropping its country presence to a bare minimum of full-time permanent employees—largely focused on sales and marketing and less focused on maintaining, repairing and expanding the network.

Broadband services in regional and rural areas are woefully inadequate. The government has lauded its HiBIS program and its replacement program as being the solution. The reality is that Telstra should be providing these services anyway; it is its obligation to do so. Telecommunications is a vital part of our ability to function in a modern age, required by every sector. Schools, businesses, families, health providers and emergency services are increasingly reliant on good broadband and reliable technology. The recent bushfires in my own district pointed that out clearly as people desperately had to rely on the internet to try to get access to up-to-date information about bushfires in their area because they had no mobile phone coverage.

But what has now occurred is that Telstra will not provide these services to regional and rural Australians unless the federal and, in some instances, the state government give it money to do so. So much for a commitment to telecommunications services in regional Australia. People living in regional and rural areas did not want Telstra sold. Labor has consistently said that the Howard government should have fixed Telstra, not sold it. But the Liberal Party proceeded with the sale and the lap-dog National Party fell over themselves to follow suit.

Now we see Telstra talking up the 3G, third generation, network, and dumping the CDMA mobile network which cost the taxpayers of Australia some $115 million. I take no satisfaction whatsoever in seeing The Nationals scrambling to express their dislike of this plan. Because no matter what happens to the politicians who may cop the backlash at the 2007 election, the people who actually live and work and go to school in rural and regional Australia will already have paid the price.

The Howard government is also failing our regional universities and the communities that depend on them for economic growth. When we look at regional universities throughout Australia, we see a disturbing trend. Regional universities are almost universally falling behind the sandstone universities as a destination of first choice for school leavers, whether they are from the country or the city, and a decline in mature age student enrolments is set to compound the problem for universities, such as Southern Cross University, that rely heavily on this market.

Perhaps most indicative of the dramatic difference in the Australian culture versus the UK and US cultures of regional university life is shown by the recent first round of university place offers. In 2006, regional universities and regional campuses have been faced with a wholly unpalatable choice. They must decide between lowering their entry scores to fill places or losing funding—a hideous choice indeed.

The University of Ballarat in my district has seen a reduction in demand for places and has been forced to lower entry scores. Central Queensland University has had to hand back 490 government funded places, thereby losing $5 million in funding because it cannot fill them. LaTrobe’s regional campus at Wodonga has lowered scores to 50 to try and fill places in its business, hospitality management and arts degrees. Something very serious is happening to our regional universities, which poses a significant threat not only to the regional university sector but also to the regional economies with which they are inextricably entwined.

There are several contributing factors, and every one of them paints a dire picture for our regional university sector. First is the government’s 25 per cent HECS fee hike. With average household incomes in many regional areas well below those of city areas, there is no doubt that increases in fees have had an impact. With HECS debt blowing out to some $13 billion, even the most optimistic commentator cannot suggest that increases in fees are anything but a major disincentive for young people going to universities. Substantial increases to the cost of living under the Howard government have also contributed.

Students are subject to all the same increases in petrol prices and health care costs and lack of housing affordability as the rest of the population, yet this government has consistently refused to extend rent assistance to students on income support. Worse, the government’s recent abolition of student support services will make it even harder for students to access accommodation, part-time jobs and support services such as child care and medical assistance.

Then there is the impact of years of declining funding for universities. Australia is the only developed country to reduce investment in tertiary education—the only one! This government has overseen an appalling eight per cent cut in funding for tertiary education, compared to the OECD average of a 38 per cent increase since 1995. This decline in funding has been felt hardest in regional universities, which have less financial capacity to absorb cuts or to attract other sources of income.

The government claims that young people are taking up more trade opportunities and that is why there has been a decline in demand at regional universities. But this simply does not hold true when assessed against continuing higher rates of youth unemployment in regional areas. We have labour shortages in many regional areas, while the government has introduced a special class of visa to attract overseas apprentices into Australia. Again, this simply does not hold true when assessed against the continuing higher rates of youth unemployment in regional areas, the labour shortages in many regional areas and the fact that the government has introduced this new visa to attract overseas apprentices into the country.

But perhaps most insidious is that softer demand for university places overall has seen students choose the sandstone institutions at the expense of smaller regional universities. The big question is why? I have no doubt whatsoever that it marks a significant and increasing decline in the standing of our regional universities. There is a kind of snobbery about education that is damaging our regional universities. The logic says, ‘If I’m going to be paying such high fees to gain a university education and I have the score or, for a full fee paying course, the cash to get into Melbourne, Monash or University of Sydney, why would I want a degree from a regional university?’

Clearly regional universities have much to attract students, so where does this distinction come from? Students in the United Kingdom do not recognise this distinction. Oxford and Cambridge are honoured not for their location in a major urban centre but for their centuries of history and educational heritage. In my view, the neglect by former minister Brendan Nelson of regional universities and his promotion of the urban sandstone universities over regional universities has done much to promote this notion that somehow regional universities are second-class institutions. I believe this attitude is in danger of becoming so deeply ingrained that it could, if left unchecked, permanently damage the ability of regional universities to survive, let alone thrive.

Regional universities need much stronger investment, but they also need courses that will attract young people out of cities and into the regions. Deakin’s Geelong campus law school has been a good example, but we need more. The University of Ballarat, alongside La Trobe’s Bendigo campus, is pushing for a medical school, which would be an enormous boost for both regions and should be supported if the government is serious about the value of regional universities.

We also need to be able to attract substantial research funding. Again, former minister Brendan Nelson let regional universities down by pursuing a research quality framework that increases the concentration of research in the sandstone universities and ignores the importance of research at regional universities. It is time for the country’s leading academics in business, economic and medical research to be equally likely to come from a regional university. There is no reason for the sandstone universities to have a monopoly on leading research, but at the moment it is hard for regional universities to keep up, not because of a lack of talent, drive or hard work but because the funding simply is not there to support them.

Clearly, regional universities need to be able to attract the best academic and research staff, competing for staff on an equal footing to the sandstone universities. The University of Ballarat has been embroiled in industrial disputes for much of the past year, and the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda of providing no choice for new staff but to be on individual contracts is being pursued with some vigour.

University towns also need to work on supporting students properly by providing: quality affordable rental housing stock; vibrant entertainment, culture and arts precincts; good broadband access; excellent public study facilities; and a reliable public transport system. Regional economies prosper where there is a thriving university that is fully engaged with the local community. Sadly, the former minister forgot this. The alarm bells are sounding not just for regional universities but for those communities whose economies depend on them.

The policy areas of infrastructure and universities are just two areas where the Howard government is letting Australia’s regions down. In the areas of regional manufacturing and exports, regional health care, regional access to the arts, sports, culture and employment and skills training this government has failed to address the specific needs of regional communities. On coming to office the government closed the department for regional development, scarpered the regional economic development units and castrated the area consultative committees. It has never found a suitable ministerial home for regional development and has left it to become the plaything of the National Party. The much rorted Regional Partnerships program is the closest thing the government has, but it is a program in search of a regional development policy. It is a program out there in the ether, looking for a policy to drive it. It is clear that this government has no regional development policy, no clue as to how to develop one and no plan to grow Australia’s regions. They and the once great Nationals have let Australia’s regions down.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I move the motion that the debate be adjourned, I would like to say, as a person who worked for many years in regional development before I came into this place, that while I have a great deal of respect for the member for Ballarat and know she is a very dedicated member—

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. I do not quite understand: is the member seeking to make a contribution to the debate?

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hinkler has been called. If he wants to make a contribution to this debate—

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If he is not making a contribution to the debate, I would like to point out that I do not know under what standing order he can stand up and just make a comment. Because if he can then I will, and I believe the member for Ballarat would like to stand up and make a comment. But I must say that I have absolutely no problem with the member making a contribution to the debate—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland will resume her seat. The member for Hinkler has not spoken in the debate. He has every right to speak in the debate. I have called him. If he wants to speak in the debate, he may.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I realise that I forfeit my right to speak further in the debate. As a person who put a lot of time into regional development, I have to say that the REDOs which the previous Labor government put into place were a dismal failure. In fact, not one of them survived once the government funding was cut off. It is all very well to argue the toss about what are good models for regional development, but the previous government’s model for regional development—

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have a question that I would like to ask.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member for Hinkler accept that?

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I will accept the question from the member for Ballarat.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is: what have you put in place instead? It is not about what the Labor government did; it is about what you have put in place instead. You scarpered the regional economic development organisations—absolutely scarpered them. But you did not put them in place.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under the standing orders the question has to be brief.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was pretty brief; it was less than a minute.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a good question and it really goes to the heart of what regional development is all about. As an objective observer of regional development, which is my occupation, I have to say that neither government—of coalition or Labor persuasion—has ever given regional development the recognition it deserves. I think the failure of the REDO scheme—and I am coming to the member’s question—was that it depended entirely on federal government funding and, when that was cut off, the whole thing fell like a pack of cards. My personal view—and I am sure the member would agree with me on this—is that regional development only exists and prospers where the people involved with it have a sense of ownership.

Having lived with the regional development model for many years, the Queensland government have built a model of involvement. At least for the tourism side of regional development they have cultured a model under both coalition governments and Labor governments—so it is not exclusive but they have all had the good sense to understand how it works—whereby there is a membership base of somewhere between 400 and 600 members, depending on the size of the region. On top of that, the local authorities give money. On top of that again, the Queensland state government, to its credit—under both National Party and Labor governments, and it still exists under the Beattie government—have given another level of funding. So with those three levels of funding the regional development organisations, in respect of their tourism activities, have done extremely well.

The member has a valid point in her question insofar as no government of coalition or Labor persuasion has ever really seriously addressed the problem of building a fourth tier on that—a federal government tier. I suppose what the coalition has done has been to throw that job back to the ACCs—which, to the credit of the previous Labor government, were their invention. The ACCs, despite the criticism of some of them, have been very effective. In fact, I have two of the best of them in my electorate. I have one at the northern end of my electorate called the Central Queensland ACC, chaired by a fellow called Kym Mobbs, who is an exceptional practitioner. The ACC in the southern end is chaired—and most people in Australia know this man—by Bill Trevor, the mayor of Childers, whom you would remember from Childers backpacker fire fame. They are two men who are very proactive in bringing to the government projects that will enhance employment.

It is easy to say you can solve this problem by throwing money at it; you cannot. Unless there is that sense of ownership and involvement, it does not happen. I know this intimately because I was the regional development practitioner for a city and 10 shires. It is a very difficult job to pull all those diverse forces together. Coastal shires have the new lifestyle—the sea change mentality—the regional city for the area has a different mentality and the rural shires want to see the enhancement of rural life. You have to meld those forces together to create a generic promotion of that area.

I think the failure has been that we have so heavily complicated the system. The member’s question is a very important one; I am glad she asked it. I do not throw this back in her face; I really mean this from the bottom of my heart. We could be doing a lot more in regional Australia. The ACCs go a long way towards achieving that. I am not saying they are perfect. I am not saying that there is not a better level above the ACC. But in my area, because I have these very focused chairmen, we have been able to bring forward to the government some very important projects. Some of them are ACC regional partnerships, some are sustainable regions and some go back to the old regional solutions. There is a mixture of them.

To give you an example, a fellow called David de Paoli was growing chillies, and very successfully. What David de Paoli said was, ‘If I could get some money from the federal government, I would build a factory and I would process these chillies.’ I am not saying he did this just at the behest of the federal government; he put a lot of his own money into it as well. Now he employs over 100 people and is the leading chilli grower and manufacturer in this country and is exporting to the Middle East and Asia. That was about half a million dollars in round figures.

Then there was another company called Jabiru. You have all seen Jabiru aircraft at your airports. They are the little fibreglass planes that they are now using in aeroclubs. They come from a firm called Jabiru Bundaberg, which was founded by two men, Phil Ainsworth and Rodney Stiff, who had previously worked for the cane harvester manufacturer, Austoft, which you would be aware of, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley. They went out on their own and said, ‘There is a niche in the market for light aircraft.’ We have helped them on a number of occasions both with those sorts of grants and with export market development grants. The other day when the minister was not available at short notice because of the air crash—the name of which eludes me—and he had to go to the funeral, I was asked to open that plant. What a thrill it was not opening the plant but marking the step forward in that plant. Their thousandth aircraft went off the floor that day. This is a very small Australian company.

Then there is another firm that manufactures agrifibre. They have taken cannabis—the non-medicinal form, I might add—and used it to develop a fibre industry. That fibre will have a huge impact in the fibreglass and building industries and so on as it develops. Another project was soft shell crabs. I do not know if you know this, Mr Deputy Speaker—I did not know this—but at a certain time in its cycle of development the soft shell crab turns soft and sheds its carapace and its claws. Interestingly, during that short time it is soft.

If you harvest the crab at that stage you can cook it—the reason being that, during that period of going soft and shedding its carapace and claws, the crab purges itself, so there is no muck in its innards. So you have this beautiful fresh crab and you can eat the whole lot. If you harvest it at that stage the whole thing—the nippers, the legs, the carapace—is edible. Half a million dollars—it is huge business; six or seven times the price of fish on the international market. These industries are all worth about or under a half a million dollars.

Then there are the sea scallops. A firm in Bundaberg is growing the spat, the spat being the genetic product that creates the scallop. They take it out into Hervey Bay, to the east of Bundaberg, into farm type areas, where they deposit the spat and out of that grows the scallop and the shell and so on. It can increase the number of scallops in the area manyfold—three, 10, who knows how many times. That was done for half a million dollars.

I know that both the members in the chamber, for whom I have great respect, come from large provincial areas—Ballarat and the Hunter. Nevertheless, sometimes in country areas we look for the big hits in regional development. We look for the Comalcos. Not that I am in any way decrying Comalco. I would have Comalco in the southern end of my electorate, as I already have in the northern end of my electorate, tomorrow. But we often go for the big hits, and in this development of regional expertise we do not recognise the medium sized industry that employs 100 or 120 people. If you get four, five or six of these you can be employing anywhere from 500 to 750 people. In small and medium sized communities, that is a significant difference to the generation of industry in those areas.

So I appreciate the question. I know I have strayed beyond the general bounds of the honourable member for Ballarat’s question, but it is a thing I believe in passionately. I have never been able to get state or federal governments, even though they do it in tourism for some reason or other, to say, ‘Let’s empower the regional bodies to do this work.’ If you do not have the sense of ownership, the sense that you are creating jobs for your local region, it does not happen.

I have a great admiration for Gladstone, in the northern end of my electorate. For many years we had heard that there were $8 billion worth of projects on the drawing board. Gladstone is a totally different kettle of fish from Bundaberg, which is in the southern end of my electorate. Gladstone is the big industry. Gladstone is the fastest growing port in Australia. With 12 per cent of Australia’s exports it will rival the Hunter in the next 10 years. I do not say that with any sort of hubris but, if it is not ahead of them, it will be up there with them. It is big business. The honourable member knows that—she has seen Gladstone; she knows what it is all about.

Gladstone is a different kettle of fish. There we have big industries like Comalco, with 2,000 people employed in the construction and 600 permanent employees at the end of it. There will be 1,500 people employed to get to stage 2 and another 300 or 400 permanent employees after that. You would know that from the smelters in the Hunter Valley. But what they did in Gladstone was set up a development board—part local government, part port authority, part private industry. They said, ‘We’ll bring a practitioner in here. We will not tie him down with state development and this rule and that rule; we’ll let him be a free agent’—like a trade commissioner operates. Indeed, the person they appointed had been a trade commissioner and a consul-general in at least three overseas countries. The difference he made in two years was amazing. So the member for Ballarat is justified in asking that question. I think both sides of politics have really failed badly in not giving a sense of ownership to regional development in places like the Hunter, Ballarat, Bendigo, the Green Triangle, the Wide Bay region, the greater Mackay region, Townsville and the Cairns region. We have some amazing provincial cities.

One of the first jobs I had in regional development—and I started off, as you could imagine with my political background, being a bit ambivalent about it—was to analyse Gough Whitlam’s ideas on regional development. There are not many things on which I agreed with Gough Whitlam, I must admit, but he had the idea of going to the states and saying, ‘We’re prepared to take one of your provincial cities, like Albury-Wodonga.’ He apparently offered the same deal to Joh Bjelke-Petersen for Mackay or Bundaberg, which was not accepted; he was in the process of developing Monarto in South Australia. He said, ‘We cannot go forever just letting Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne’—and to some extent Adelaide and Perth—‘keep sprawling with no purpose. We need to have other cities in Australia that are not capitals that develop industry and purpose.’ To the credit of governments in New South Wales—and I know there has been a lot of criticism since and I know in some respects it failed—I think the Albury-Wodonga experiment has a lot to commend it.

For example, I still think today that, rather than let Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Ipswich continue to just sprawl, we would do well to go onto the Darling Downs, perhaps south of Toowoomba, between Toowoomba and Warwick, and build a new city of 200,000 or 300,000 people with fast rail links and road links to Brisbane—because that has to be done anyhow. Those on the Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services with the member for Shortland all know that, for the inland rail from Melbourne to Brisbane to work, we have to engage at some time or another with the Toowoomba range. Until we do that, a lot of these schemes are not going to work.

I think there is a great case for doing something about that and creating a new city on the Downs. It can be planned perhaps not with the same intricacy as Canberra but with the same sorts of values of wider footpaths and a better lifestyle. Plan it so you are not pouring money down the drain patching up after the event. I got up to give a small contribution, but nothing affects me or goes to the core of my being more than regional development, and I thank the member for Ballarat for the opportunity. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.