Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure that I rise to speak about the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and the related budget bills. Firstly, I welcome the tax cuts and my constituents welcome the tax cuts and the family payment increases contained in the 2006 federal budget. However, in many other areas this budget has been a string of missed opportunities. One thing to remember in terms of the residents of Holt, many of whom have a taxable income between about $40,000 a year and $60,000 a year, is that they will get, according to budget documents, a tax reduction of about $9.80 per week. The tax relief in this budget is long overdue—certainly that is the feedback that I get from my constituents. After all, this is the highest taxing government in Australia’s history and families are going to need every cent of that tax cut to cope with the interest rate hike and record petrol prices.

When looking at the assessment of the interest rate increase that we had in May, a family who has recently bought a typical established home in Narre Warren faces increased mortgage repayments of $37 per month. A family who has recently bought a typical established home in Cranbourne has an increased payment of roughly $33 per month, and a family who has recently bought a typical Endeavour Hills house will pay up to $39 more per month as a consequence of this interest rate rise.

At the same time these families in Holt, many of whom are dependent upon cars for transportation, are facing record petrol prices and spending at least $40 a month per car extra on unleaded petrol compared to a couple of months ago. In fact when I was driving around my electorate at the weekend I noticed that prices of $1.33 a litre and $1.30 a litre were quite commonplace. The fact is that many of my constituents have two cars because their households have a mum and a dad. I have the highest rate of couples with dependent children in the country. I also have the highest rate of mortgagees in this country. The 2001 census data had it at 49 per cent and it must be well into the fifties by now, so an interest rate rise is going to severely affect families in my region.

What they are very disappointed about is that nothing has been done to tackle the record petrol prices that are increasing the financial pressure on families in Holt. There has been no specific funding in this budget for the ACCC to investigate widespread community concerns about price gouging within the petroleum refining and distribution industry and no funding for the ACCC to formally monitor fuel prices under part VIIA of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

It is interesting to contrast this with the action taken by President Bush, who recently instructed the ACCC equivalent, the Federal Trade Commission, to investigate whether the price of gasoline had been unfairly manipulated in any way. I would like to use the words of George Bush. He recently said:

Americans understand, by and large, that the price of crude oil is going up and that the prices are going up, but what they ... will not accept is manipulation of the market. And neither will I.

That is worth thinking about when oil profits for companies like ExxonMobil and other oil companies that produce most of the petrol we consume are expected to exceed $134 billion this year. ExxonMobil chairman Lee Raymond has an income of $200,000 per day and, when he retires, he is going to get the princely sum of $400 million.

I did not have the opportunity to raise this in my motion on fuel and petrol yesterday in the House, but there are serious concerns by elements associated with petrol refineries and service station operators about the price manipulation and the padding of what is called the terminal gate price by oil refineries owned by companies like ExxonMobil. The terminal gate price is determined by oil companies and then on-sold to petrol retailers. The VACC has investigated the practices of those refineries that are selling at the terminal gate price and assessed that the terminal gate price is 8c higher than it should be, with all the profits going to oil companies.

The VACC has something like 5,000 members—these are crash repairers, service station operators and petrol retailers—saying that they believe that there has been price gouging of up to 8c per litre in the terminal gate price. Why isn’t this being investigated? The American President, George Bush, when petrol hit, I think, the equivalent of $A1.20 in America recently, pushed the panic button and said something had to be done and it had to be investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, but there has been no action by this government. President Bush also released a comprehensive energy statement that spoke about biofuels and the need for the country in the future to diversify fuels.

I did not have the opportunity to raise this in the fuel motion that I put to the House yesterday, but why isn’t this an item on the COAG agenda? No-one can tell me and my residents that this is not an issue that is going to concern Australia into the future. I know it is not listed on the COAG agenda, and that is a serious issue. It should be front and centre. If it is good enough for President George Bush when the price of petrol hits $A1.20 a litre, it should be good enough for John Howard when the price of petrol is averaging, in my area, between $A1.25 and $A1.33. It is not good enough and it is certainly not good enough for the residents that I represent in Holt.

The other issue for families in Holt, who have experienced the second interest rate rise in 14 months, is that they feel the budget fails to make the investment needed to solve the skills crisis. We have heard a lot about that in parliament over the past couple of months. If we do not address that, there is going to be further upward pressure on interest rates. It is interesting that there have been fewer opportunities provided for young tradespeople in the area, and there is some concern about the wages that are being paid to apprentices in the area. Contrast that with some of the stories that we have been looking at in the papers with respect to cheaper imported labour being brought in which may take the jobs of these apprentices that want to establish a career in the area that I represent.

I would like to cite an email that I received from a resident in Cranbourne—I will not name her—in regard to her son Brett. This illustrates the issue. He is a first-year motor mechanic. He works 40 hours a week and receives $6.53 an hour before tax. Out of this he has to make repayments for his tool box and school books of $5 each per week as well as having to pay for the additional tools required and vehicle running costs. The son is disheartened by the amount that he is paid for the work that he is required to carry out, given that he could take an unskilled position and receive a much higher wage. We need these sorts of apprentices to keep our economy, our country, ticking over. When apprentices like this fellow feel that they would be better off getting out of an apprenticeship rather than into one, it shows that this government have failed to invest in our young people in Holt—and we have a large number of young people in Holt—and have missed the opportunity to build on the future economic prosperity of Australia. As I said, they are looking towards employing cheap labour from overseas.

The budget is also a big blow to parents in Holt who cannot afford or find child care in this area. We have a very high birth rate in the city of Casey—of the order of 3,000 births per year. Not a single extra place is guaranteed, child care in the area will not be a single cent cheaper and the issue of quality still has not been addressed.

The government announced that it will get rid of the cap that currently applies to outside school hours child care—before and after hours school and vacation care—and family day care from 1 July 2006. There is no evidence at all that this decision will result in any new places. The problems of affordability and availability of child care have nothing to do with the cap. I cite the example of a mother, also from Cranbourne, who continues to struggle with this child-care system. I received an email from this lady. She is currently studying an arts-law degree but feels she may have to give it all away due to lack of child-care options in the area. Her son goes to school and since she has started she has had nothing but trouble getting before and after hours school care for him. She wants to work while studying but cannot because of the lack of care. Now she may also have to give up her studies for the same reason. She says there is just one centre in Cranbourne that picks up from her son’s school and provides before and after hours school care, and that centre is full. She writes:

This is ridiculous, how many other people don’t work because of the same problem. The government wants to force people off welfare when their kids start school but how can this happen when the ratio for after school hours care is like this. I have tried family day care that the council organise and they don’t have anyone who will pick up from any schools. I have tried family and friends but that is not a long term solution as they have to work or go to school themselves. I have called every centre in Cranbourne and the situation is they are either full or don’t do this sort of care.

After seeing John Howard appear on the Sunrise program, which is a very popular program in my electorate I might add, on 10 May 2006, she writes:

Then I had a good laugh at Mr Howard on the Sunrise program this morning when he said there are enough before and after school hour programs in operation, and that people just need to look hard enough to find them.

I think from the evidence I have provided, she has been looking pretty hard. She continues:

I pose a challenge to anyone who dares to try, including Mr Howard, to come to Cranbourne and find a before and after school care place for my son. It’s not like the school he is in, is located within an area that is miles away from the town centre, it is in the centre of town.

She believes that it shows just how out of touch this government is with the everyday lives of families in Holt, telling them that the child-care crisis is their problem and that families need to look harder to find places. This is family belt central. The area I represent is a mortgage belt, growth belt corridor. These are the people that John Howard purports to represent.

At a time when families are working hard to pay off their mortgage and provide for their children, this budget lets families down on proper tax reform. The budget has done nothing to stop the tax grab on families extra earnings. Hardworking families in Holt will still routinely face marginal tax rates higher than 51c in the dollar on extra income due to the intersection of the tax and family benefits system.

Given the large number of families, it is also worth looking at the community based facilities, community organisations and the demand on services. The growth in this area has outstripped the social infrastructure capacity. So when looking at the budget that has been brought down and at how it might affect the provision of these services, I was very disappointed to find that there is no funding for local sporting clubs and community sporting organisations, which are the glue that binds the community in these sorts of areas. Their facilities, as I have said, are under pressure due to the rapid population growth.

A study prepared for the City of Casey in July 2004 of a recreation facilities development plan in Narre Warren and the surrounding areas found that total active membership of sports clubs in this area had increased by 25 per cent from 2002-04; of all active members, 82 per cent were juniors; and a shortage in facilities in cricket ovals, Australian rules ovals, soccer fields, netball outdoor courts for training, lawn bowls greens, tennis courts and indoor basketball courts. There are a lot of young people wandering around shopping centres in my area looking for these sorts of facilities. I was certainly hoping that there would be some funding and acknowledgement of that in this area. I will show you why. There is a contrast here, which shows the hypocrisy of the government. I will draw it to this chamber’s attention in a second.

The study found that a high number of young families in the area, almost 60 per cent of the residents, were under the age of 35 and that there will be continued high demand for facilities in the future. There was strong community support for additional facilities for junior sport expressed throughout these extensive community consultations. It is clear in this area in particular that sporting participation is rapidly increasing. Why not? Facilities are not adequate and they will not be adequate in the future, given the number of young families in the area. In fact, 65 families per week shift into the city of Casey. I think it is the third fastest growing council area in Australia. There is strong community support for additional facilities for junior sport, but this government is out of touch. Again, looking at the budget, there was no funding for sporting facilities for Holt.

There is no better example of this electorate not getting its fair share of sports funding than the Cranbourne Aquatic and Leisure Centre. The current pool in Cranbourne, the Cranbourne Indoor Heated Pool, is 25 years old. Part of the structure and plant are nearing the end of their life, so a quality state-of-the-art facility is needed. A new facility is also needed to cater for the massive population growth in the area. It is estimated that between 2001 and 2006 the population of Cranbourne East increased by 1,270 per cent, Cranbourne North by 16 per cent and Cranbourne West by 50 per cent. Whilst swimming and better facilities were the most requested future participation activities in the scoping study, no federal government funds have been provided. Here comes the contrast: the Frankston Regional Aquatic, Health and Wellness Centre, in the electorate of Dunkley, has just received $5 million for its construction.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is just coincidence.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why wouldn’t I be looking for it? It is just coincidence. Those are the facilities that are needed to bind communities, the facilities to keep our kids involved in physical activity. They are the facilities that families want. There is no funding in a growth belt corridor, with 40,000 kids aged between zero and 12. It is just mind blowing.

I also want to look at an essential service in the area, the Casey Cardinia Community Legal Service. We all know that the budget had an $11 billion surplus. Do you know what? The Casey Cardinia Community Legal Service received no new money. The Casey Cardinia Community Legal Service was established in 1977 to address the legal needs of the local community. It is a free legal service, providing assistance and advice to those who cannot afford to pay the high costs of engaging a private lawyer. In the last financial year, it assisted over 7,500 people who reside in the rapidly growing areas of the city of Casey, the shire of Cardinia and Dandenong. The Casey Cardinia Community Legal Service made it clear to the federal government that it is in urgent need of funding, due to massive increases in demand for their services and rising costs. But this government again in this budget simply turned a blind eye, and the funding for the community legal service this year will not even keep pace with inflation—meaning that the Casey Cardinia Community Legal Service will be in an even worse position.

No meaningful increase in funding in a decade from this government has already taken its toll on this legal service. Earlier this year, the service had no choice but to cut its hours, with its principal solicitor cutting down from full time to 4.5 days per week. At a time when very hardworking families in Holt are under enormous financial pressure—from interest rate rises, from petrol price rises, from increased child-care fees—access to free legal services is vital. The lack of funding from the government for this particular service means that many families are having to be turned away or put on very long waiting lists. It indicates to me and to a lot of the people down there that the government seems to be completely out of touch with the lives of working families in Holt.

I would also like to touch on a couple of other issues in the time remaining. One pertains to doctor shortages. I have painted a very strong picture of the substantial growth that occurs in my area and the adjoining federal seats. The shortage of doctors in Holt has hit crisis point, with just one full-time GP for 1,833 people. These are statistics compiled by the Dandenong District Division of General Practice, which oversees this area. The Commonwealth health department regards areas with a ratio of 1,400 people per equivalent full-time GP as areas of need. The ratio in Holt is 30 per cent higher than this figure. The ratio of 1,833 people per GP means Holt now has the fifth highest doctor shortage in Victoria and the 12th highest in Australia. Families in Holt are seeing the impact of this government’s neglect as they face very long waiting lists to see a GP, particularly when their children are ill and they struggle to find any doctor outside of business hours. I have seen this for the number of years that I have been representing my electorate. They wind up in the emergency departments of state government funded hospitals.

The chronic shortage of doctors in Holt means that it is more than an area in need; it is an area that requires decisive action. Yet there was no funding for after-hours medical services to take the pressure off emergency departments in this area and, further, the government has also ripped $1.5 million out of the More Doctors for Outer Metropolitan Areas program. The concern about whether or not GP training is adequate has been raised by me and by representatives from the Dandenong division of general practice. They are finding it more and more difficult to attract doctors to the area. The incentives that the government has put forward are just not adequate. They need more doctors because they are going to start running out of doctors. I have heard really disturbing figures of, say, one GP to every 3,000 or 4,000 people in the next four or five years if this decline continues, and that is completely unacceptable.

I want to take the opportunity to also talk about the fantastic service that has been provided by the Casey North Community Information and Support Service and their struggle to get appropriate funding. The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs through the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy has a funding program called Local Answers. Local Answers is a $137 million program, which is funded over five years. On three separate occasions, the Casey North Community Information and Support Service—which provides counselling services, emergency relief and advocacy, to name just a few activities for disadvantaged members needing support in the city of Casey—has been unsuccessful in getting funding through this program.

It was a service focused on low-income families experiencing relationship problems. It was an intervention and prevention model. It provided support to families who had experienced separation in order to avoid economic and financial crisis. It was aimed at families with young children and young parents on low incomes. It would have assisted over 3,000 families in my electorate. No local funding was forthcoming through Local Answers in this area where the rate of family breakdown is an issue identified by all levels of government. No funding was forthcoming through the Local Answers program in an area which 65 new families call their home every week. No new funding was forthcoming in an area where families are under extreme financial pressure due to interest rates. It just goes to show that in this budget the government has ignored families in Holt. (Time expired)

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and related bills. Firstly, I would like to share with the chamber some of the points that I make to constituents when I talk about the 10 years of the coalition government. You can get used to a good thing and not realise that there are alternatives; that prosperity is not a generic inheritance. I ask them to cast their minds back 10 years. I ask them to assume, wild as it may seem, that it may be a Labor government now. I remind them that the net government debt when we came into government was $95.8 billion—Beazley’s black hole. What would that be now? What would it be with the interest charges payable on that greatly expanded government debt? With good management, however, we have brought it down to a surplus in terms of government owings.

Remember that there are some 1.3 million Australians who now have invested in property—in their own homes and in investment property. Back in 1996, the average mortgage rate was 12.75 per cent. Very few of those Australians would have been able to invest in property or in their own home had those mortgage rates continued. Of course they would not have been able to. With Labor’s burgeoning debt, we know that their average mortgage rates would have increased. I am pleased to say now, though, that—thank goodness for families in Dawson—the average mortgage rate is 7.15 per cent. Those who remember blue suede shoes and such other things from the sixties—and I must confess that I have only seen photos of them—that was about the last time—

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

I’ve worn them!

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’ve worn them! The member for Hinkler: sartorial splendour! Average mortgage rates have not been that low for 30 years. The small business lending rate now is down from 14.25 per cent to 8.75 per cent.

What about Australians at work? I can recall doorknocking before the 1996 election. As I went from house to house, guess what I found? Generally the person who answered the door was an unemployed young person, someone at home watching a video, looking pretty disappointed with their lot. I can recall handing out how-to-vote cards at polling booths where there were very disgruntled young people coming through. If you talked to them they did not have a job. The youth unemployment rate was some 30 per cent. It is one of the great shames of the Labor Party’s time in government that they did not give a future to young Australians.

The number of Australians at work—I will refer to my own electorate shortly—now totals some 10 million. The unemployment rate has fallen from 8.2 per cent in March 1996 down to 5.1 per cent. The figure for the long-term unemployed has fallen from 197,800 to 95,800, so much so that we now have programs looking at the long-term unemployed. Certainly it is difficult to take people who may have drug and alcohol problems, as they have in Mackay, perhaps living under a bridge, and get them used to a work ethic. It is a long, hard road, but I am very pleased to see that a number of the employment agencies in Mackay are giving real hope to the long-term unemployed.

What about household wealth? Household wealth has increased from $2.048 billion in 1996 to $4.553 billion. That means the average Australian now has a stake in their own future. They own a home or are paying off a home. They have considerable assets. They are far more prosperous. It is a great thing to see young people in my electorate, perhaps 20, with a new car, a mobile phone and looking to put down a deposit on a house, looking at a prosperous and secure future with a place to raise their own family.

What about waterfront crane rates? I recall that it was said that they could never improve from 16.9 per hour. The rate is now 27.7, helping our exporters considerably with lower costs and a far more efficient waterfront.

I want to now talk specifically about the budget. In our budget there is $2.3 billion for AusLink, including Roads to Recovery. This is significant assistance for roads like Farrellys Lane, which is a major turn-off from the Bruce Highway into Paget in Mackay. Mackay is now the largest coal exporting port in the world. It is significant for us to be able to ensure that port access is efficient. I look forward to some of the AusLink money being spent in Mackay to make sure that our exports travel efficiently.

I want to talk about taxpayers as well. With the coal boom in my electorate, I am very pleased to see that hardworking coalminers and others in the seat of Dawson will benefit from new tax scales. It was only six years ago that the top marginal tax rate cut in at $50,000. That is changing. We are now looking at new tax scales. This low tax scale will be 15 per cent to $25,000, 30 per cent to $75,000, 40c in the dollar to $150,000 and 45c in the dollar for above $150,000. What a change! What an incentive for people in the electorate of Dawson who work hard, who work four days on, four days off or who may work shift work.

For senior Australians there are also benefits. They are eligible for a tax offset, which means they will pay no tax up to $24,867 for singles and $41,360 for couples. Families will now be able to earn up to $40,000 a year without having their part A entitlement reduced. These are significant benefits for families. I would like to talk about older Australians for a moment. This was the first government to tie the age pension to male average weekly earnings. Again, I remind constituents of what the single pension rate used to be back in 1996. In 1996 the total single pension rate, taking into account the pharmaceutical allowance, was $8,873.80. The married rate at that time was $7,355.40. Now, 10 years later, thanks to the coalition government, we are looking at a total single pension rate of $13,143 and a total married pension rate, obviously per person, of $10,922.60. Why? Because for the first time we have indexed it to real earnings.

The government has removed the cap on the number of child-care places that can be provided. Child-care fees of eligible parents on welfare, while they are looking for work or completing training, will be paid in full by the Commonwealth. These changes mean that, for the first time, there is a real opportunity. If a mother wants to go back to work to top up the family’s income, there will be no cap on the number of places that can be provided.

For those selfless people in the community who care for someone with a disability, there is a one-off payment of a $1,000 lump sum carer bonus. In Dawson, 800 selfless carers will get that $1,000 carer payment, and another 2,600 recipients of the carer allowance will receive a $600 one-off bonus. This is a significant recognition of the enormous contribution these carers make to caring for those in our community who are unable to care for themselves.

I now come to skill shortages. I would say that the rarest thing in Dawson at the moment is probably a young person with skills. We are really chasing young people with skills. The Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, Mr Hardgrave, has visited the Dawson electorate and we are delighted with the support he is putting into apprenticeships and training. There are now 3,500 people in the region who are undertaking apprenticeships and training. That is to be augmented by the removal of barriers to a nationally recognised training system. Only recently I visited three young people—Jai Bailey, Joshua Ribaldone and Ryan McKenzie—all of whom are looking at federally funded training programs to give them the opportunity to become electrical apprentices and boilermakers. For young people to get that training and be able to see themselves in a secure career in the future is a tremendous outcome. Training features of the budget include: an allocation of $2.5 billion for training and apprenticeships, which is a significant investment in our young people; $106.7 million over four years for New Apprenticeships Centres; $53 million over four years to create a nationally recognised apprenticeship program; and $6 million being allocated to the national skills shortage strategy—which, with businesses, will find solutions to address current and future skills shortages.

I will turn very briefly to doctors. I am very pleased to see that Minister Abbott is investing in funding medical graduates. Since 1996, in Queensland the number of medical graduates has increased by 25 per cent, while the population has increased by only 21 per cent. This government has put in three new medical schools, with 160 funded places. We are putting in the hard dollars to create medical graduates in Queensland. But I am disappointed to say that, unfortunately, this is not matched by the Queensland Beattie government.

In the last three years, in Queensland, 2,462 out of 4,000 doctors have resigned. You have to ask yourself why, out of a total of 4,000 doctors, 2,462 would resign. The reason is that Queensland Health is an appalling system to work in. Why would that be? Recently, in 2004-05, the Queensland government hired 4,853 public servants—and how many doctors did it hire? It hired 123. Public servants are great people, and we work with many fine ones in Canberra. But I will tell you what: if you need medical care, you need a doctor; you do not need more public servants.

The fact is that 90 per cent of first- and second-year registrars in Queensland refused to renew their contracts. The reality is that the amount of money the Beattie government says they are going to commit to this is not going to change a system which is awash with public servants, is bureaucratic, has red tape and is an appalling workplace environment for medical graduates. I am delighted that this federal government is doing all that it can to increase the number of medical graduates and the number of medical schools, but the reality is that until Queensland Health lifts its game the crisis in Queensland is going to continue.

I would now like to return to senior Australians. I am delighted that the Treasurer has addressed the intergenerational challenge that we face—the reality that there will be fewer younger Australians to pay the way for an ageing Australia. The sensible thing to do, of course, is to encourage senior Australians to provide for their own retirement and take responsibility for themselves where they can. The superannuation changes are going to go a long way to addressing that. At the core of this plan for intergenerational change is a proposal to exempt Australians aged 60 or over from any tax on their end benefits where those are paid from a superannuation fund. This will apply from July 2007. That means no tax on a lump sum or a superannuation pension. This is a tremendous incentive for all Australians, but particularly for older Australians and for the self-employed, to invest in super to provide for their own retirement. It will boost national savings significantly.

I will now deal specifically with the seat of Dawson. Minister Dutton has delivered a sound outcome for the Airlie Beach charter boat industry. As you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Airlie Beach has more beds on the water than it does on land. The Whitsunday charter boat industry is world renowned. Many overseas visitors fly to the Whitsundays to go game fishing and to rent for a week or a few days one of our magnificent modern charter vessels and go out to 76 tropical islands. Charter boat owners will no longer be at risk of having their charter business effectively closed down by the ATO because of an arbitrary level of profit to be declared as the criterion for a legitimate business. Charter boat owners, like every other business in Australia, will have to prove on the existing criteria that they are running a legitimate business, but 50 per cent of them will not be at risk, as they were, of closure due to some arbitrary profit limit arrived at by the ATO. This is a great relief to the hundreds of charter boat operators at Airlie Beach, whose whole industry was at risk. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of the chairman of the Whitsunday Bareboat Operators Association, Mr Adrian Pelt, the secretary, Annie Judd, as well as numerous others, particularly Minister Dutton, who gave us a very good hearing.

I would now like to talk about recreational fishing grants. There is a huge recreational fishing industry in the seat of Dawson. The region has already successfully applied for four projects under the program totalling $234,394, which were funded. We have looked at successful projects, such as the Molongle Creek boat ramp, which received $41,500 for a community activities area; the Home Hill Boat Club, which received $18,394 to improve fishing amenities at Groper Creek; and many others. I am very pleased to see that this very successful program is already being supported with additional funding in years to come.

Illegal fishing, however, is a concern for our fishers, and there is $389 million over four years in the budget to deal with illegal fishing to protect the nation’s fish stocks from foreign poachers. It is very important that we ensure that, with the fishing areas open to Australian fishers, those are not exploited by foreigners. I am delighted to see this initiative in the budget.

In terms of more Dawson initiatives, there is $9.7 million for financial counselling. I would like to mention the George Street Neighbourhood Centre, which has a very good financial counselling service. It provides that not only for farmer but for others. During tough times, people can be very reluctant to approach friends or perhaps an accountant if they are in financial crisis. The George Street Neighbourhood Centre has done an outstanding job in financial counselling. I am very pleased to see this additional funding for financial counselling.

In terms of Roads to Recovery, I would like to mention the funding for some of our shires: Mackay City Council will get an additional $1.7 million; Burdekin, $835,000; Bowen, $826,000; Mirani, $297,000; Sarina, $334,000; and Whitsunday, $495,000. Again, this will enable them to take on Roads to Recovery initiatives within Dawson. This will add to the already extensive work being done on the Bruce Highway—Wilmington Overpass, something that has been near and dear to the hearts of many of those near the town of Bowen, and $10 million for the realignment of the Bruce Highway at The Leap.

I would like to talk now in the time left to me about the resources boom in Dawson. I am pleased to see that there is now $100 million in addition to that already committed to develop clean energy technology as part of the Asia-Pacific partnership. It is absolutely vital that we look at more initiatives to ensure the continued success of our coal export industry in Australia and, particularly, in my electorate. Dawson is the coalmining powerhouse into the future.

This is a sensible way to approach the responsibility of greenhouse gas abatement. Under the Labor Party, they are going to sign the Kyoto protocol, a tax on coal exports. As many of the major mineral and coal exporters out of Australia have said to me, they would move their capacity offshore. You do not build a nation by closing down its major resource industries as the Labor Party have proposed; the way to build a future is to look at technological ways of ensuring abatement of greenhouse gases. I might add that Australia has met its greenhouse gas abatement targets, but it is very important to see in the budget that there are more initiatives to ensure that that good work continues.

In terms of the post resources boom, obviously in my electorate the community of Bowen are working hard to ensure that they are in line to secure the Chalco refinery in Queensland. I am very supportive of their initiatives in that regard. Chalco is looking at taking up a bauxite lease in Aurukun, and we will be looking at a greenfields refinery.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aviation and Transport Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The current resources boom has produced a multibillion dollar windfall for the government’s revenue stream. The estimate of additional revenue produced as a result of the unexpected resources boom and increase in commodity prices is in the order of $17 billion to $18 billion in increased revenue. It is a very large amount of money by any estimation. It was completely unexpected. If you go back and look at last year’s budget and at the forward estimates of how much money the government thought it would get in tax, it is well below the actual revenue that the government have collected.

It was therefore no surprise to see a budget on budget night armed with some $17 billion or $18 billion in extra revenue that the government had not anticipated just 12 months ago and that there should be what was described as a big spending budget—even an election year budget. The great pity of that tale is that, instead of investing that windfall gain in the desperately needed infrastructure of Australia, in the future growth industries and in the skilled development and training of the Australian people, the Howard government have once again played short-sighted politics.

No-one knows how long this windfall of enormous proportions is going to last. In fact, in the weeks immediately after the budget the commodity prices started to take a dip and the share prices of mining companies in Australia suffered as a consequence. We all hope that the commodity price boom continues and that the revenue it generates provides wealth for Australians not just in that industry but across the country and, in particular, increased revenue to the government so that important programs around our nation can be undertaken. I have little hope, though, that this government is about to undertake those measures.

There is nothing in this budget that builds for the future. The Australian people have seen through the government’s veneer. On budget night and in the press the next day, this was billed very much as a budget for everybody. And yet, two weeks later, every opinion poll said that the Australian people were not impressed. I think that one of the reasons the Australian people were not impressed is that they understood that there had been a multibillion dollar windfall but they also understood that the massive amount of money in the government’s budget documents was actually increased tax that was coming from them.

One of the other things that did not miss the attention of people in the electorate of Brisbane is that the tax cuts will actually evaporate before they are received. For most people, these tax cuts are less than $10 a week. Most Australians earn less than $60,000 per year. In the budget 12 months ago as well, the government announced tax cuts—some of which come into effect on 1 July this year. In the budget last year, not one cent in tax cuts was provided to those Australians who earn $60,000 a year or less. That happens to be most Australians. They did not get a single cent in tax relief 12 months ago in the budget. The second tranche of the tax cuts in last year’s budget come into force on 1 July.

The tax cuts announced in this year’s budget also come into force on 1 July. At least the government heeded the criticism of the Labor Party over the course of the last 12 months and did provide some tax cuts for Australians who earn less than $60,000. On 1 July, someone earning less than $60,000 will get a tax cut of $9.81. I have to say that that looks very pale in the face of increased petrol prices and increased interest rates. There is every likelihood that these are the very same people—those who earn $60,000, $50,000 or $40,000—who are most in danger of working at a place like Spotlight and finding that the industrial relations system has turned their standard of living on its head overnight. That $9.81 a week will not go far for those families.

I want to contrast that with someone who earns $120,000 a year. They get double the income, but how much tax cut do they get? They do not get double the tax cut but eight times the tax cut. A person on $120,000 a year will get a tax cut of $78.85. On what basis does the government argue that is fair, equitable and decent compared with the tax cut that a worker on $50,000 or $60,000 a year will get? And let me say that the average weekly wage is nowhere near $50,000 or $60,000; it is actually about $40,000, so let us put this in some perspective. Average weekly earnings are around $40,000, but someone who is actually doing better than average and has got a good job—they might be a teacher, a nurse, an electrician, someone who works in a profitable venture or something of that kind—might be pulling in $50,000. If they are lucky, they might pull in close to $60,000. They will get their tax cut of $9.80.

The person who earns double that money—the person on $120,000—is going to get a tax cut that is eight times that amount: $78.85. I know of no principle of fairness, equity or decency that says that is a proper way to relieve tax burdens on the Australian population. Nevertheless, every tax cut is welcome—we all know that—and I welcome the tax cut. I do, however, grieve for those Australians, particularly my constituents who earn $60,000 or less, who will see very little of that $9.80. They are already paying more than that for their petrol price increase and the interest rates that have already gone up.

There is one provision in the budget which I particularly want to single out for positive comment. That is the increase in funding for medical research. I have long been an advocate of the need for Australia to invest more in medical research and health support systems. I have spoken on youth suicide in this parliament on a number of occasions. I have also spoken about the need for research into type 1 diabetes. I am pleased to see that members on both sides of the parliament who have argued for those very important initiatives can take some comfort out of the provisions in this budget which do provide a lift.

In the case of those suffering mental illness, I look forward to the states, as part of the recent COAG agreement in support of those with mental illnesses, pulling their weight as well. These are serious issues that confront our society and, although we seldom want to talk about things such as mental illness and youth suicide, we have an obligation to do what we can as legislators to overcome those problems.

I want to spend most of the time available to me in looking at what could have been—what could have been done with those billions. Instead of the government playing the short-term politics that they have so often put ahead of the national interest, what could have been done with those billions of dollars that are a windfall—unexpected largesse at the disposal of the government? They could have been invested in things like major transport infrastructure in our capital cities. For example, there was not a cent for south-east Queensland roads. Even the Courier-Mail, which very rarely publishes a word of criticism of the Howard government, was moved to produce a photograph of the Hume Highway, with a few trucks on it, together with a photograph of the Ipswich Motorway as it usually is every day, fully congested—pointing out that one of these roads got a big bucket of money and the other one did not get a cent.

The fact is that urban transport issues are important, and by that I do not mean we need to build more roads and more tunnels. I do not have time here to have a broadside at the Brisbane City Council’s tunnel program, which the Liberal lord mayor has been unable to convince any of his counterparts in Canberra to provide a cent towards. What I am talking about here is a sensibly coordinated public infrastructure network for our capital cities. We do not want to turn our major cities into the vehicle traps and bottlenecks that we see in so many other large cities around the world. We have a tiny window of opportunity to get these things right. In Brisbane that window of opportunity is closing pretty rapidly as the population increasingly moves to our corner of the world. It is an enormous disappointment that the government have not provided any funding for road infrastructure in south-east Queensland, one of the fastest-growing areas of the country.

We need as a nation to be doing something serious about water supply, and that is water supply across all parts of the country, not just the Murray-Darling. We need to look at the use of water in our high-use areas, with industry, and in our heavily populated suburban regions. We need to look at waste water processing and recycling. There are proposals, which have been starved for funds, to take Brisbane’s sewage, recycle it and use it on crops in the Brisbane area, the Lockyer Valley and the Darling Downs area. They are major proposals. They provide many ecological and economic benefits.

This was an opportunity to invest in some long-term nation-building opportunities, but we saw none of that in this budget. We saw no commitment to sustainable energy research. Australia should be the world leader in sustainable energy research. We should be second to none in solar research and the production of solar powered cells, and yet, despite the fact that there are brilliant scientists in Australia who work in those fields, they go starved of money, when we should—not only for environmental reasons but for good economic reasons—be investing in them for the future opportunities that would present to us as a nation, not to mention the benefits it might hold in dealing with a number of the current debates that exist around the energy issue.

We need also to be doing far more in skills training. I am tired of government members and the minister hopping up and talking about what a great job they have done with skills training. If that is the best they can do, they should get out of the way and let someone do the job properly. There is an acute skills shortage in this country, across virtually all industries. It does not matter whether you talk about the traditional trades, tertiary qualified areas or even master’s and PhD areas. Health was mentioned before by one of the speakers. It does not matter whether you look at the GP shortage, the surgeon shortage or the number of trained nurses we have in our hospitals across the country—this is not something peculiar to one state or even to the public system; this is a problem, public and private, in every state of Australia.

There is a shortage of teachers in particular subject areas. Tradespeople are in heavy demand across all the traditional trades—plumbing, carpentry and metalwork. The manufacturing industry is crying out for investment in skills training. The mining industry is paying top dollar to get people, because they have the income rolling in—not because of anything the government did, I might add, but purely by the coincidence of China and India being out in the marketplace soaking up massive amounts of minerals and basic resources. We just happened to be lucky that we are one of the big suppliers. That is one of the causes of the windfall gain to start with. It was no brilliant strategy on the part of the government. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time. There is an acute shortage of skills in the mining sector. We do not even have enough qualified child-care workers. That is why a large number of child-care places remain empty. There are nearly 100,000 unallocated child-care places. These are places that are funded but do not have the trained people to do the work.

The government could have used these billions of dollars to have a better, fairer tax cut for ordinary Australians and those earning within the normal range of incomes. They could have done that and at the same time had billions left over to invest in those nation-building activities that would have provided us with long-term income-generating opportunities.

But, no, this government’s approach to these windfall gains is much like that of the former government of Nauru, who found themselves sitting on a big pile of phosphate that the world wanted to dig, so they sold it. They all became millionaires on paper. The trouble is they did not invest any of that money in anything that was going to generate a dollar down the track. We know the situation in Nauru now. Nauru is a nation state in dire peril of collapse. Why? Because it had a government that took windfall gains and did nothing about investing in the future. That is the Howard government’s approach to long-term planning. It is the same as that of the government of Nauru. The only thing that saves us from the fate of Nauru is that we have a few things going for us in this country other than the mines. But the philosophy is the same—a total absence of any long-term commitment or understanding of where these windfall gains should be going.

I want to make a comment also on the lack of investment this government makes in its own people. I mentioned skills training, but I want to talk about the government’s investment in tertiary education. When Labor left office in 1995 we were investing 1.35 per cent of gross domestic product in tertiary education. That was well above the OECD average, which was only one per cent. As a Labor government we prided ourselves on investing in the people of this nation and their skills to help build a better future. Immediately when we lost office the Howard government set about winding that back. A year after they came to office, that 1.35 per cent had dropped to 1.18 per cent. And so it happened year after year. In the most recent figures the government’s investment in tertiary education stands at 0.8 per cent—barely more than half that which they inherited from the former Labor government.

That is the approach the Howard government have taken to long-term planning and investment in their people, and it is in concrete terms; I am not talking in nominal figures. Government members get up and say: ‘In 1996, $1 million was spent by the Labor Party on something. Now we’re spending $2 million.’ Of course you are. Inflation produces that increase. That is what happens over time. I am not talking about nominal figures; I am talking about the real measurement—the percentage of gross domestic product. Unfortunately the Howard government, the Liberal and National parties, have shown scant regard for investing in the learning and skills of their own people.

It is a problem that they have exported to the business community. When Labor took office in 1983, business investment as a percentage of GDP was 0.25 per cent. We immediately set about building that up because we realised we did not just need government to invest in people, we needed business to invest. So we put in place a whole raft of schemes to promote that business investment. It grew steadily, so that when we were defeated in 1996 that 0.24 per cent of GDP had become 0.87 per cent—a massive increase in business investment in R&D.

What happened the year after we lost office? One year of John Howard and that 0.87 per cent had already dropped to 0.8 per cent. The year after, it dropped; the year after, it dropped again; and, the year after, it dropped again. In about 2001 someone in the government decided that they had actually been on the wrong horse for four or five years and they had better do something to try to lift that investment. So they started to put back in place some of the things that they destroyed. The trouble is, when you talk about research and development, it is not like a tap you turn on and off. You can close down a university laboratory next week if you want to but, if you want to set it up again, it takes years to get the trained, qualified people and it takes years to get the research back to where it was. So they have only just started to do that and they have now got themselves back to the point it was at when we left office, having destroyed the investment for the first half of their term in office.

But it is not just in business investment that you see that downturn. If you look at investment across all sectors in research and development and compare us to other countries, on the latest figures we are down at the bottom. We are below the OECD average. The OECD average of investment in research and development is now 2.26 per cent of GDP. In Australia the investment is 1.6 per cent. We are well below the OECD average. We manage to be just ahead of the Czech Republic. We actually do beat the Slovak Republic and Poland by a bit, but look at the countries that are above us. There are big countries of course, but look at other countries, whose populations are not dissimilar to our own. At the top of the list are Sweden and Finland, comparatively small countries but with high standards of living, high-tech industries and a wealthy population. It is no coincidence that they also happen to be at the top of the list in investment in R&D. They appreciate those things that Labor valued when we were in government and sought to raise.

That is the missed opportunity of this budget. That is what could have happened with the billions of dollars this government simply had fall upon it by happenstance, by the coincidence of being in this place when the commodities boom occurred. That is the great tragedy, not just of this budget; it is the tragedy for which Australians will pay a price. Unfortunately it will not just be us who will pay the price—it is not just the politics of this parliament—it is the price that our children are going to pay. Industries that they will want to go to will not be there because of this government’s short-sighted approach to politics and to economic management. Unless this government changes that tack, then we will see Australians continuing to lose those opportunities. We know that it will not and that is why at the next election the Australian people will get rid of it and install a Beazley Labor government.

Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to acknowledge those allocations in this budget which go directly, or are aimed directly, at assisting the people of the Northern Territory. The funds for health, education, roads, defence—the list goes on—are welcomed and thankfully received by all of us in the Northern Territory.

We are often reminded in the Northern Territory that our budget allocation per head is well in excess of the per capita allocation of those who live in the populous states of the south. That is the case with this budget, and rightly so. It does not matter how many times or how fast one says ‘horizontal fiscal equalisation’, there are still state premiers and national journalists who constantly refer bitterly to the truckloads, now trainloads, of dollars that pour into the Territory from the south. It has been happening since the Territory was the northern territory of South Australia and I have no doubt it will continue to cause unnecessary rancour among those who are uninformed or choose to ignore the necessities of a federation which espouses, as far as possible, to provide equal standards and opportunities for all Australians regardless of their location in this great continent of ours.

Members will have noticed in the past few weeks that the Territory administration has come under scrutiny for the way in which it has allocated the Commonwealth’s annual largesse, and this is not for the first time. In particular the assertion has been made, and hardly denied, that money that the Commonwealth intends to be spent on Aboriginal education and health is diverted instead to pleasure parks and grand waterfront developments in the Territory’s capital and that the motivation for this is to pork-barrel the swinging electorates of Darwin and Palmerston and thus ensure the return of the Labor government to Territory administration at future elections.

I would be the last person to stand up in defence of Labor government in the Northern Territory, or anywhere else for that matter, but these assertions have a familiar ring to them. The former CLP government stood accused of the same misallocation of funds over its quarter-century of Territory government. Its main accusers then were, perhaps not surprisingly, the same people who stand accused today—most particularly, the Labor Party’s Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin, who also chooses to hold the Indigenous affairs portfolio as part of her responsibilities, despite the presence of several cabinet members with Aboriginal heritage and/or electorates. The Bulletin’s incisive observer of and reporter on Aboriginal issues, Paul Toohey, says:

Who, in the Northern Territory, would know she actually holds the Indigenous Affairs portfolio? Very few. Because Martin, carefully, deliberately, refuses to deal with Aborigines, let alone say the word. Does she visit communities? Hardly ever. Her view has been that Aborigines are a federal problem.

This brings to me what I see as the heart of the matter. Successive Territory administrations have stood accused of, at worst, discriminating against and, at best, ignoring their Aboriginal constituents. I remind the House that the Territory’s demographics are unique in Australia. Aborigines constitute some 33 per cent of the population. No state has an Aboriginal constituency in excess of five per cent, and a little over one per cent is usual.

This House seemed to take this into account more than 30 years ago, when it imposed upon the Territory a unique piece of legislation. It was unique in intention, unique in application and, I argue today, unique in consequence. I speak, of course, of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, which seeks to recognise and protect Aboriginal land rights. The act saw the establishment of land councils and the Aboriginal Land Commissioner. It set up a land claims process, established processes for land use proposals and, I emphasise, provided for the act’s prevailing power over all Northern Territory laws. I will say it again: the Aboriginal land rights act has prevailing power over all Northern Territory laws. The act further dictates that all decisions over Aboriginal land must be made by the relevant traditional Aboriginal owners in accordance with Aboriginal law.

It is ironic, you would have to agree, that today the Commonwealth government and the national media are calling for one law for all Australians, while we have on the books a law that specifically legislates for regional parliamentary laws to be overruled and applies a formula for decision making based on a system of law that has never been formally identified—and, indeed, is currently under the most severe scrutiny, as it has been invoked as justification for the bashing of Australian women and the rape of Australian children.

The member for Bennelong is one of, I think, three members in this House who were present when the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Ian Viner, introduced the bill in 1976. He may recall that the minister stated in his second reading of the bill his belief that there had been ‘a fundamental change in social thinking in Australia, recognising that within our community there are some people, the Aborigines, who live by a unique and distinct system of customary law’. Mr Viner said that Aboriginal ancestors left in each country certain vital powers that made that country fruitful and ensured a good life for people forever. He said, ‘An Aboriginal’s country, no matter how stricken a wilderness it may seem to others, is, to him, a Canaan.’

Tell that to the people of Wadeye, who live within the utopia that former Minister Viner and the Fraser government sought to create. And tell that too, to the Northern Territory’s Chief Minister who, understandably, in view of this act, believes that Aboriginal problems are a federal matter. It is understandable, because she heads a Territory parliament that cannot acquire Aboriginal land for public purposes. If she thought it desirable to build a school or a bigger police station at Wadeye, she could not, at least not without complex negotiations probably involving some trade-offs with the land councils.

Land councils in the Territory are unique powerbrokers, established not by the will or customary laws of Aborigines but by this same Commonwealth act. It has been a surprise to some that since the Labor government was elected in the Territory its long-held claim that it could work with the land councils has proven unfounded. The relationship between land councils and Labor has steadily deteriorated since the day that Clare Martin came to office. It should not be a surprise. This act has always placed Aboriginal and public interest at loggerheads. The acrimony that arises between Aboriginal and public interest, between land council and Territory government, is written into the act.

The Commonwealth, through this act, set up the dispute between the Territory government and the land councils that continues today. The courtroom is where government must argue its case for the public interest, to plan for future services and to provide water from catchment areas, pasture for cattle on the move, pipelines, powerlines, public parks, access for the enjoyment of beaches and rivers and to build schools, health clinics and police stations. Courtrooms have been the battlegrounds that seem to denote racial division in the Territory.

Today, no-one knows who owns schools, health centres or other community facilities on Aboriginal land. The land councils count such assets as having zero value as they are not their asset. Taxpayers, through their government, also have no proprietary interest as the buildings do not stand on public land. The same dilemma faces the Territory as it attempts to meet the challenge of providing public housing on Aboriginal land, one of the factors identified as being at the root of law and order problems in places like Wadeye.

I welcome the initiatives in this budget that seek to address Indigenous disadvantage in the Territory. I welcome the $3,300 million allocated to Indigenous concerns in this budget, but I anticipate—no, I warn—that little will be achieved while the Territory government can point out that more than 50 per cent of the Territory lies beyond its control while layers of Commonwealth, Territory and land council bureaucracies argue the toss and Aborigines remain confined within Ian Viner’s splendid isolation.

I acknowledge that in recent years successive federal ministers have recognised these difficulties. The former Indigenous affairs minister Philip Ruddock put an option on the table for the patriation of the land rights act to the Northern Territory government back in 2003. The Territory’s Chief Minister simply ignored the offer, probably in the belief that the land councils would go ape if she were even to acknowledge such a possibility and almost certainly believing that continued Commonwealth responsibility for the Aboriginal constituency was not such a bad thing. The next minister was organising some redrafting of the land rights act when she visited Wadeye and concluded that things were not as bad as she had been told. As Paul Toohey writes:

She came to the north and visited Wadeye, the Territory’s biggest and most troubled community, and declared all was well. She couldn’t see it either. She didn’t want to. Towns were cleaned up for her arrival and the neat, clean kids with big white teeth were presented to her for inspection.

The Prime Minister also stopped at Wadeye, and again the town swept the problems under the mat—so effectively, in fact, that in his address to the community barbecue, the Prime Minister congratulated the people of Wadeye on the new levels of school attendance and announced a package of some $2.7 million of practical assistance, including $2 million for broadband linkages, $243,000 for the school to help with the larger number of students now attending and $546,000 over four years for playgroups to help young families sort out some of the health problems of early childhood and general parenting problems.

The current minister has had a somewhat different experience. As Paul Toohey writes:

It was a blessing that the current minister, Mal Brough, turned up in Wadeye this month in the midst of a riot. He saw the truth of Wadeye for himself, and he saw the town camps of Alice Springs.

The national focus since the minister’s visit to Wadeye and Alice Springs has been on lawlessness and depravity at its worst. The issue of the application of two standards of law, taking into account traditional customs and beliefs, has been at its heart. But I would argue that, horrific as these crimes are, they are only the boils that erupt on a body that is festering internally, that is moribund because of the misguided and well-intentioned act of the Commonwealth parliament 30 years ago.

I agree with Paul Toohey, who writes that the current Northern Territory Chief Minister has comprehensively and deliberately failed to represent Aborigines of the north. She has been caught out; she has failed her four Aboriginal parliamentary colleagues and she has failed her entire Aboriginal constituency. She has no vision for the people who make up nearly a third of the territory’s population. But this act—this dated piece of Commonwealth legislation—is her excuse. It provides her, and every subsequent representative of the Territory, with an out: 33 per cent of the constituency is the responsibility of the Commonwealth or of the land councils and 50 per cent of the land is beyond Northern Territory government control. The Northern Territory government cannot even acquire the land for public purposes. How can it be blamed for the mess that it is in?

Further, the Aboriginal land rights act is fundamentally detrimental to the advancement of the very people it is supposed to protect. Again, I must quote Mr Toohey. I do so because he writes so closely to my own views that, were I to express these thoughts independently, I would certainly be accused by some of plagiarism. Mr Toohey writes:

To fear the influx of wider society is to fear being born. And the permit system—

again, established by the Commonwealth act—

works against the Aborigines who treasure it. It keeps people in, makes them think they are somehow a special part of Australia ... until the day comes when they can openly interact with white Australians—by opening caravan parks, fishing resorts, locally staffed guided tours of country, none of which happens in north Australia—the divide between black and white Australia will only increase.

…            …            …

Opening up those hidden worlds will go a long way towards changing some very un-normal parts of Australia.

For 27 years successive CLP governments in the Northern Territory sought to represent Indigenous Territorians and gain control of the Aboriginal land rights act. The Clare Martin Labor government has a completely different approach: they have no desire to take responsibility for land rights and no desire to govern Aboriginal Territorians. Clare Martin must be made to face up to this most fundamental element of government, and the time has come for the Commonwealth to impose this responsibility whether she likes it or not. If this government is really serious about addressing Aboriginal disadvantage in the Northern Territory then it must patriate the Aboriginal land rights act to the Northern Territory as a matter of urgency.

Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For 10 years the government has lauded its national security credentials. Successive ministers have been ever ready to use our troops as a backdrop for promotional photos—it creates a good political image. But managing our nation’s defence is much more than imagery. For the last five years Defence has had continuing qualifications of its accounts by the Auditor-General. For the last two years Defence has been in breach of the Financial Management and Accountability Act. The extent of the uncertainty relating to Defence’s accounts—according to the National Audit Office—was $6.8 billion last year and $7.4 billion the year before. These are not just technical issues about bean counting—the inadequacies of the department are affecting capability.

The more publicised programs which are in trouble are the Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopter, the Super Seasprite helicopter, the M113 armoured personnel carrier project and the frigate upgrade project. In addition, the Auditor-General has found failings in respect of a number of projects, including the amphibious transport ship project, the Bushranger vehicle project, major equipment acquisitions, management of the supply system, management of property and facilities, management of defence inventory and workforce planning. In the most recent finding in respect of explosive ordnance, released several weeks ago, the findings were damning. As ASPI says, pretty much the entire life cycle of some $2 billion worth of assets is not being managed as well as it should be. Extraordinarily, $1.4 billion of explosive ordnance was classified in the other than serviceable category. That is an outrage.

I can understand, as the minister has come to power, that he would want to distance himself from the administrative failings of his predecessor, but addressing the systematic mismanagement in the defence department requires more than simply initiating five inquiries and six reviews, that we have counted, over the last four months. As Neil James, the executive director of the respected Australian Defence Association, has said:

Any structure that needs such constant major review is fundamentally flawed.

The bottom line is that the Australian people are entitled to far more than the spin and regular misinformation that has become the trademark of the Defence public affairs unit. For instance, in this year’s budget papers, one of the government’s press releases stated that the Howard government had increased defence spending to 1.9 per cent of GDP, alleging that is considerably ahead of that spent by Labor. The reality is that, as a percentage of GDP, Labor spent significantly more than the current government. When the figures are calculated to the same methodology, under the Hawke and Keating governments defence spending reached a high watermark of 2.5 per cent of GDP and, on average, Labor spent 2.2 per cent of GDP on defence throughout its period in office, compared to an average of just 1.7 per cent under the current government.

Having made those points of criticism, we do recognise the continuation of the real growth in defence spending that has been decided and confirmed at three per cent over the next five years. We welcome this as being essential. In fact, it is the minimum that is required. As ASPI points out in its analysis of the 2006-07 budget, there has been a three per cent growth trend in defence spending since World War II—and, again, that is essential. However, the unfortunate reality is that, if projects continue to suffer from cost and time blow-outs as a result of the mismanagement that we have seen, then this amount, which equates to about $10 billion in extra funding over five years, will simply not be enough to do the task.

Again, as ASPI has pointed out in its analysis of the 2006-07 budget, the current piecemeal cycle of investment followed by bids for additional personnel and operating costs is no substitute for coherent, long-term planning. It goes on to say:

Put simply, there is not enough money in the budget to operate all the equipment currently being purchased ... It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars on new equipment unless it’s certain that there will be enough money to operate it.

This means that the government must immediately regain effective financial management of Defence’s huge $19.5 billion budget and limit cost blow-outs on major capability projects. If that is not addressed, as ASPI points out, we will simply be confronted, as the funds run out, with a situation of axing the next project in line.

For instance, Dr Robert Ayson of the Australian National University in a lecture on 23 May stated:

... such generous funding is unlikely to be sufficient to meet projected commitments. For example, it is not clear just how many Joint Strike Fighters will eventually be afforded because per unit costs of this aircraft are unlikely to respect current estimates.

As experts have advised, we need four squadrons of the Joint Strike Fighter to be effective. If it is the case that, as a result of mismanagement, we are unable to acquire a total of four squadrons, then our air superiority in the region will be significantly impeded and perhaps even lost.

But the real worry is that the government has not addressed what the Chief of the Defence Force has himself described as the No. 1 challenge facing the Australian Defence Force. That challenge is the ongoing failure to recruit and retain adequate numbers of military personnel. Instead, this defence budget overwhelmingly prioritises equipment over people. The three per cent real growth in spending will be worth about $750 million in this coming financial year alone, yet there is less than $50 million, or 6.7 per cent, allocated in the same period for measures to tackle recruitment and retention. Even if, to be fair, we are able to include some $45 million that is to be spent in the next 12 months on establishing a high readiness reserve, the total spent on the personnel shortfall is just $93 million, or about a tenth of the additional funding.

While expanding capital expenditure by some 20 per cent, the government is simultaneously projecting an immediate fall in the total number of our military personnel. Under the government’s Hardened and Networked Army initiative, the defence department will be required to recruit an additional 2,500 troops by 2010. Astonishingly, the budget papers forecast that the Army’s strength will actually decline by 39 personnel in the coming financial year. With 2010 only four years away, the decline in strength is far from a flying start to acquiring the numbers that we need.

Labor welcomes the establishment of the high readiness reserve, but the funds allocated for the Army Reserve under this budget thin out very quickly. For instance, the allocated $181.6 million is spread over four years and must improve salaries as well as establish the new high readiness reserve capability. Next year’s modest increase of $36 million in salaries and allowances for 19,250 reservists will be unlikely to penetrate the labour market to improve recruitment of reserves.

While the increase in defence spending has attracted headlines, the reality is it falls well short of tackling critical personnel issues. There remains a pressing need for much stronger investment in personnel. It is a shame that the government has not been more creative in this important area. Experts have suggested a number of reforms that could be made, including an alignment of defence workforce planning with workforce trends in the private sector. Such trends include increased flexibility and career mobility across an individual’s working life. The difficulty in transferring between categories within the individual services and between the services themselves is a disincentive to retention in this age of increased flexibility of employment. Gone are the gold watch days of static employment over the course of a person’s working life. This reality should be reflected in the way Defence manages its own workforce. There is a need to acknowledge the propensity of the modern workforce to shorter term engagements and the desire to obtain a greater and broader experience from a number of callings.

The defence minister would do well to implement reforms suggested by the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy. General Leahy has suggested a reduction in the overall number of big Army bases spread throughout the country. This would allow Defence families to be less subject to regular transfer moves, which can be quite destabilising for partners and their children. We believe the government should not only back General Leahy on this constructive suggestion but also closely examine further measures to reduce the hardship of military life. The long duration of overseas deployment could be reassessed in some circumstances as it is clearly a burden on a mother or a father to be away from home for sometimes up to six months at a time.

When I have met our troops and their families they have often expressed to me the wish for ease of access to child care, including babysitting facilities, particularly at a time when families are posted to new locations and have not as yet established connections to assist in minding the children when the parents are required or have the opportunity to go out together. The government should also explore building better links with training authorities and the private sector to ensure more accreditation is available for specialist skills learnt in our armed forces, as well as recognition of the acquired expertise in leadership and personnel management acquired by officers in our defence forces.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has conducted research showing that defence salaries have simply not kept pace with average weekly earnings. While rates of pay are only part of the more complex issue, this widening gap cannot be ignored; it must be addressed by all sides of politics. Further potential for defence workplace reform is available by looking at the way in which other nations have addressed problems of recruitment and retention. The Israelis, for instance, have for many years been operating a broad range of programs to address this problem, many of which are proving successful. While they have conscription in that country, it applies only for a limited time, and they have been successful in retaining the involvement of young men and women and, indeed, older men and women in the defence forces through a number of strategies. Several programs aim to reinvigorate lower socioeconomic sections of the community while tapping an untouched resource for the defence force. For instance it may be that, with some additional training, kids who perhaps have not achieved the literacy standard to satisfy defence admission could be the subject of some additional training to get them up to that standard.

Other Israeli defence force recruitment initiatives attempt to cure wider gender imbalances in skilled trades. In stark contrast, the Howard government’s 2006 budget abolished a $38.5 million scheme to encourage more women to take up training in the traditional trades. Tertiary studies programs are made available to the Israeli military personnel in a number of different formats. They are carefully designed to link in with a comprehensive set of career benefits which are targeted at personnel of different age brackets as their military careers develop and, ultimately, enhance their ability for lucrative employment in the private sector. These benefits are also designed with a broader view of developing social infrastructure, including the use of defence housing to reinvigorate struggling municipalities. The army neighbourhood scheme develops affordable, comfortable housing for military families in areas requiring urban renewal. Interest-free loans and mortgage assistance for such houses is available in exchange for six years of mandatory service. This would be an attractive proposition to many defence families in a highly expensive housing market, particularly in our major capital cities.

Unlike in Australia, the issue of technical qualification in Israel has been resolved through a scheme which gives military tradespeople the same qualifications as their civilian counterparts. This has created a demand for military tradespersons in the private sector. The military relationship with technical colleges in Australia could also be improved. In some countries the military have even developed their own fully accredited institutions to meet the special needs and simultaneously enhance skills that ultimately flow to the community. There are opportunities already in place through the vocational education and training schemes that many state governments are now implementing, where students at high school level can start undertaking trade courses in conjunction with private employers who provide outplacement opportunities. There is no reason, I believe, why the military could not be identified and certified as an appropriate employer provider for those purposes. It does not necessarily mean that a child will be compelled to accept military service in exchange for that education, but merely that if a child elected to pursue a trade and expressed interest in a military career then they would have the opportunity of obtaining that experience within our military. I believe there is no reason why those sorts of measures should not be further explored.

It has also been shown in the United States and the Israeli militaries, and obviously other militaries around the world, that there is considerable benefit in creating a feeling of constant advancement. Again, as an example, in Israel after six or seven years of military service the first university ‘rest’, as it is called, becomes available to career personnel. This allows them to undertake a degree with all the associated university benefits. Further intervals become available at different points in their career and all are pursued on full pay as a normal posting, and that is highly significant. Recruitment for the skilled trades is also initiated from the high school level. Students interested in leaving school early to pursue a technical trade have options available through the Israeli Defence Force. The Israeli Defence Force is affiliated with a number of technical colleges which it uses to qualify potential recruits in mechanics, electronics and other necessary trade qualifications. Again, these are models which could and should be pursued in Australia.

An appropriate balance must be reached between developing the Australian Defence Force’s hardware capability and recruiting and retaining its human capability. We are seeing with our deployment in East Timor that increasingly over the next decade the demands on our defence forces are going to be for troops, literally for footslogging troops. That is the basics of the law and order activities currently being engaged in in East Timor. The troops obviously have skills greater than the traditional footslogger, but, basically, we need soldiers in boots to perform that sort of activity. And in all likelihood we will have to do that in the coming decade in a number of countries in our region to assist them to address law and order issues—indeed, to prevent states from becoming failed states.

All experts recognise the threat to our security of having a failed state in our region. Not only do those states tend to become havens for criminal activity, such as the drug trade, but also potentially havens for terrorists to launch attacks from our backyard very much into our territory. So this going to be a crucial security issue in the next decade and it will only be addressed by having sufficient soldiers available to undertake the task. I believe our East Timor deployment over the next three months will cope, and cope admirably. If the deployment is longer than that I think real strains are going to show because of the inattention that has been given by the government to addressing the recruitment and retention crisis in our military.

In conclusion, I am reminded of a verse from the Navy recruiting advertisement which confirmed the need to emphasise the human rather the technological capabilities. The slogan developed was: ‘Today’s pride of the fleet is you’. The 2006 budget demonstrates that this government has forgotten that the pride of the fleet, or the squadron, or the battalion, is its people. Much more must be done to address the needs of our serving men and women and their families.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget, acclaimed as Peter Costello’s greatest budget, is the product of a strong economy, itself the consequence of 10 years of sound economic management. It has seen a record surplus, and all of the Labor Party’s debt finally repaid. Who would have imagined that Australia would become a debt-free nation, that the Commonwealth would be debt free? Taxation has been reduced. Income taxation has been reduced. Tax on superannuation has also been reduced dramatically and, just as importantly, simplified. In my capacity as Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with a responsibility for water policy, I was especially pleased to see the commitment of $500 million in the budget to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission.

The Prime Minister has often said that water is our greatest environmental challenge, and so it is. It is not only our greatest environmental challenge but also the one environmental challenge for which the solutions and answers are entirely in our own hands. But the Prime Minister does not just talk about these great challenges; he acts—and not just in this budget. In 2004 he led the governments of Australia into the National Water Initiative. All Australian governments today are committed to unprecedented reforms, which are the envy of the world, to secure our water future. He established the Australian government water fund, which has $2 billion over five years to fund water infrastructure. The fund will support large-scale projects like the piping project in the Wimmera-Mallee, where thousands of kilometres of open channels will be piped, saving more than 100 gigalitres of water which had hitherto been lost to evaporation and seepage. The fund will support large iconic projects like that one, as well as small community water grants for schools and local councils, where water conservation is taught in a practical way at the grassroots.

To date, 33 water conservation projects have been funded from the WaterSmart Australia fund, which is the largest part of the Australian government water fund, with $1,600 million committed to it. Those 33 water conservation projects involve $416 million of Commonwealth money, and more than $1 billion in resources—mostly from the public sector but with some contributions from the private sector—have been mobilised to support the conservation and more efficient management of our water. And now in the budget $500 million is committed, in one hit, to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. This is five times their annual expenditure in recent years. It is the biggest single financial commitment ever made to our most important river system.

Why is the Murray so important, and what will that $500 million do? The Murray-Darling Basin has only six per cent of Australia’s run-off, over a vast area covering Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. It is the lifeblood of many communities, large and small—including communities as large as Adelaide, all the towns on the Murray and all the communities on the Darling and its tributaries. Seventy-five per cent of our irrigated agriculture is in this one basin alone, and it produces 40 per cent of all of our agricultural output. The Murray-Darling Basin is an indispensable part of our economy, our history and our community, but it has been heavily taxed by the claims of agriculture. The ancient river and its tributaries have been regulated and dammed, both for irrigation and, originally, for navigation, and they are now regulated working rivers. These practices have had impacts on the quantity of water in the river, the timing of its availability, and the environment has, generally speaking, suffered due to what now appear to have been overallocations to the agricultural sector.

In 2005 there was a commitment in the Living Murray Business Plan to recover 500 gigalitres of water for the river. This was the first step of the Living Murray initiative, the aim of which is to restore and protect six iconic ecological sites, including the Barmah-Millewah red gum forests, the Hattah Lakes and the Murray mouth itself. Until recently, progress had been slow. The initial focus was on funding large infrastructure projects to save water which would otherwise have been lost to inefficiencies, and the water saved was to be placed on the environmental account. But it appeared only a few months ago that there was no prospect of meeting the 500-gigalitre target which the governments had agreed to reach by 2009. Only Victoria looked like meeting its target. The other two states were a long way off.

But in the last few months there have been some major changes in water policy and in the climate for water reform generally. Most importantly, the commitment of $500 million delivered in the Treasurer’s budget is a signal of the importance that the Howard government places on water conservation and water management. It will be split, with roughly $300 million going to works and measures along the river which had been postponed and put back due to lack of funds. This work is needed to repair infrastructure vital for the operation of the river and the environment which depends on it. That will now be done and done quickly. In addition, $200 million will be committed to supporting the Living Murray initiative and the acquisition of water.

But how are we going to acquire the water for the Living Murray target? There have been considerable concerns in rural communities about governments buying water. There are concerns about water being traded, indeed. The concern is that, if the government or governments buy water for the environment, it will reduce the pool of productive water in a community and, while the vendor of the water may get a financial return, all of the other businesses and interests that depend on the productivity of the agricultural sector in that community will suffer.

In Adelaide, in April, I proposed, on behalf of the Commonwealth, a new policy to acquire water for the Living Murray initiative—a new approach. Ten days ago that was endorsed by the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council. There will be a tender to purchase water from willing sellers, but it will be a tender with a difference: the water purchased will be water which has been made available from water efficiencies. The aim is to achieve two goals: to increase the amount of water that is available for the environmental objectives of the Living Murray initiative but at the same time ensure that we are promoting the more efficient use of water. Whether you subscribe to all of the forecasts of the scientists or not, very few people in rural Australia do not agree that we are heading into a hotter and drier future and that it is more likely that we will have less water in our future than more. So the efficient use and management of water will become more important over time, and, the sooner we can make those investments to use water efficiently, the better.

There are enormous inefficiencies in our use of water, and of course they are not just in rural Australia. Goulburn-Murray Water, who are one of the biggest water utilities in the Murray-Darling Basin, told me recently they estimated their losses from inefficient infrastructure to be as high as 30 per cent. That is about 900 gigalitres, which is around twice as much as Melbourne consumes in a year. The losses can be even greater where water is distributed through long, open channels. A grazier I know on the Lachlan River recently piped 180 kilometres of open channels and discovered that he had, through that old, seeping system, been losing 90 per cent of his water. He now has 2,000 megalitres he did not have before.

There are enormous savings from efficiencies but, just as there are savings at the level of big projects, which is what the Living Murray initiative has been targeting to date, so there are savings that can be achieved at the farm level. So we are aiming to get the money down to the farm level and encourage anyone who believes they can save water through efficient practices, better infrastructure, more efficient farming practices, to then have an opportunity to sell that water back for the environment through this tender.

At the same time, both South Australia and New South Wales, in particular, have shown a new energy to meet their obligations under the Living Murray initiative. South Australia, at the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council, presented proposals to acquire 35 gigalitres, thereby meeting its share, assuming that that water is placed on the eligible measures register, and New South Wales has proposed new water saving initiatives, including water purchases. There is, consequently, a new optimism that the Living Murray initiative target of 500 gigalitres by 2009 can be met. If it is met, it will in very large measure be due to the leadership shown by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer by making these funds available in this budget, because it showed a commitment, a determination and a preparedness to invest now for a more secure and sustainable water future.

Another key objective of the National Water Initiative is interstate water trading. The scheme of the National Water Initiative is elaborate, but in a simple way it can be seen as involving the restructuring of water entitlements so that the balance between consumption, mostly agricultural, and the environment is set at a sustainable level—granting those water entitlements property rights and then enabling those water rights to trade. This has the support of all Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal. But this is not at all a pious genuflection to the memory of Adam Smith; it is a vital tool to ensure that water is allocated to its highest and best use. To those who say, and many do, that we should not be growing rice or cotton in Australia, the answer is very simple: farmers themselves struggle to pick the right crops; do we really imagine governments could do any better? The answer is to give secure title to water, let it trade and allow the market to make the right choices. That is the scheme of the National Water Initiative and the policy of all Australian governments.

Until recently, there had been a failure to achieve a key water-trading objective of the National Water Initiative, and that was the enabling of interstate trade of permanent water entitlements across the borders of New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. The National Water Initiative and the various governments had committed to achieving that by July 2005. Because of the failure to achieve that milestone, competition payments were suspended. There was a great deal of unhappiness and much finger pointing across the Murray. But now, only 10 days ago at the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council, the three states—New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia—which had been working together with support and leadership from the Commonwealth government through the COAG water trading group, have announced that they are committed to the commencement of trade under an interim tagged trading regime. The National Water Commission will be reviewing their progress towards a permanent trading arrangement by January 2007, which is the next milestone. The aim is that, if it can be achieved by then, the suspension of the competition payments would be reviewed.

There are many hurdles, not least of which is the vexed question of exit payments, which are the charges that irrigation cooperatives and irrigation companies place on the sale of water that is being sold out of their area. Do those exit payments reflect a reasonable estimate of the pro rata share of maintaining the infrastructure over the years ahead, or are they excessive? Are they a barrier to trade? Views differ, naturally enough. It is a controversial issue, and the states have requested the ACCC to investigate and form a view.

In summary, on the Murray in the course of this year, we have seen, thanks to the leadership of the federal government and the support from the budget, a massive injection of cash into the Murray-Darling Basin Commission to fund essential works and measures—the single biggest one-off commitment of funds to support our most important river system. We have seen the water acquisition program for the Living Murray initiative get back on track, with new funds and new policies endorsed by all governments. Interstate trading in water in the southern Murray-Darling Basin is not yet as concrete a reality as we would hope it will be shortly, but it is on the verge of happening. Having met with the state water ministers at the ministerial council in Melbourne recently, there seems to be a sense of common purpose to achieve this. All of that will ensure that our water future is more secure and sustainable.

There are many more challenges in the realm of water. At the core of them is the realisation that water is a national issue. It is perceived as a national issue by most Australians but every community and every locality is different. The water solutions for one town are very different to another because of differences in climate and differences in topography, geography and geology. It is national, but it is very local. Nonetheless, there is more that we can do to manage water on a national basis and to support each other in managing our water future. The policies and the directions are all there in the National Water Initiative. We need to continue to work towards uniform, standard methods of registering and recording water entitlements. We need to sweep away the barriers to trade, be they in the form of exit fees that are too high or, often, Dickensian bureaucratic processes for the transfer of the water entitlements.

We need to recognise in our cities that our water shortages are not a function of drought alone but a function of poor management and poor planning. We can afford to have, in our big cities especially, as much water as we wish to pay for. Even if you take the view that there are no more good dam sites, recycling and desalination offer unlimited potential for augmenting our water supplies in our cities. Urban water in our large cities is therefore not a finite resource in the way we used to imagine it was. Water can be manufactured. Shortages are more a consequence of planning errors than they are of climactic changes or water shortages.

But the days of cheap water are over—they are over in the cities; they are over in the country. The efficient use of water, the better management of water and the conservation of water will be increasingly the focus of all Australians committed to a secure and sustainable future for our country. Great civilisations and great empires have been built on the management of water. Consider the aqueducts of ancient Rome—11 aqueducts delivered 1,000 litres of water per person into Rome 2,000 years ago. When they were broken the city fell. Australia’s prosperity has been built on the management of water and our future prosperity will be sustained on its wise and efficient management in the future.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I enjoyed the contribution from the member for Wentworth to this debate on the appropriation bills. He makes some very good points. Some of those points are debatable, but he is right to focus his contribution on one of the most pressing matters facing this nation—that is, our critical water shortage. I thought he was verging on homily towards the end, but I suspect it is an issue about which he holds some passion. In this debate on the appropriation bills, I also want to make some reflections on the budget. I should start by saying this was a pretty good budget. It is a budget you would expect from a government awash with money, with full coffers thanks to an unexpected resources boom and a longer than expected resources boom. They have plenty of money to spend and indeed they did spend it.

How good a budget you would consider this would depend on your perspective. If you were a high-income earner, I suspect you would think it is a very good budget, with massive tax cuts going straight into your pocket. Politicians, like you and I, Mr Deputy Speaker, will not be too unhappy with this budget, which will probably involve a tax cut of between $3½ thousand and $4,000 annually. It is quite different from that to be expected by lower income earners. I should say that the distribution of the tax cuts this year is much fairer than last year. I am not necessarily absolutely happy with them, but Labor is prepared to accept them on the basis that at least the distribution is somewhat fairer.

Those who were looking towards the future in this budget will be the most disappointed. This budget took in all the proceeds of the resources boom, something which is a windfall to the government, not part of anything the government has done and not something the government can take credit for but a function of international economic circumstances—in particular, the high demand for our resources and our energy in China. The government has taken that money and returned it to people in the form of tax cuts. It would have been much better for the government to have taken the proceeds of the productivity gains that we have not had over the last 10 years and delivered those as tax cuts, to have returned to the taxpayer the dividends of those significant achievements over the last decade. But of course we have not had those achievements. The government has dropped the ball on productivity.

On average, during the period that Labor was in office, productivity hovered around 3½ per cent. Today it hovers between one and 1.5 per cent. As former Prime Minister Paul Keating is fond of saying, if you have five per cent growth and you have productivity running at 3½ per cent, that leaves only about 1½ per cent to be taken in the form of inflation. But, if you have growth of five per cent and you have productivity running at only one per cent, that leaves four per cent for inflation. That is where we find ourselves at the moment. That is why the Reserve Bank is constantly looking at increasing interest rates. That is why it increased interest rates last time around. The economy is still effectively running too fast, it is still too dependent on inflows of capital, and productivity is low. It is no wonder that the Reserve Bank governor is concerned.

If you were looking at this budget for your children, you would ask yourself whether this was a wise budget—whether it was right to grab the proceeds of that resources boom and splash them straight back into Australian consumption, or whether it would have been better to draw those goodies out of the productivity grab that we did not have and, just as importantly, whether it would have been better to invest that money in a productive capacity or bank some of that money in the form of superannuation savings. That does not add, of course, to growth. If you were one of those people, you would be a bit concerned.

You would also be a bit concerned if you had kids, because the government simply dropped the ball on training in this budget. It is a mystery to me why a government being called upon to do so by so many economic think tanks and peak body organisations did not see fit to make a significant investment in one of the most pressing issues facing this nation—the very thing doing the most to hold back our productive capacity—and that is our skills shortage. Why would the government not take some of those proceeds and reinvest them in that area? It is a mystery to me, and I know that people who look at this, particularly those who will not get much more than $10 in their pockets, will think: ‘Am I better off with the $10 in my pocket or would I and my family have been better off if they had just kept the $10 and invested it in the future of my children?’ I think if you polled this issue, you would get an overwhelming response that it would have been better invested in our children.

But, if we had had productivity gains over the last 10 years at the rate we enjoyed in the decade up to about 1995, we could have done both things. I often become amused at this argument about whether we should be investing in infrastructure or investing in tax cuts. If we get the formula right, by way of dynamic gains, we can have both—but the government has not got that balance right in this budget. I think people are starting to understand that, and that has been reflected in the opinion polls.

If your main focus was on superannuation you might be happy or you might be unhappy. You would probably be pretty happy if you were approaching 60 or if you are already 60—you are going to get a huge tax break, the details of which we still have not been given; there was nothing in the budget. We have it out there as a proposal but people around that age group are right to be fairly excited at their prospects. The small business people approaching retirement who might have wanted to invest some of their capital into super would have a different view because of the talk of caps being imposed on their ability to do so. So what you think of this budget depends on where you stand, and it does not surprise me that there is not a universal jumping for joy as a result. But with such a windfall, with such a surplus and with such a capacity there could have been jumping for joy all round if only the government had got the balance right.

I want to take the 12 or so minutes left to me to raise some issues from my electorate. The first issue relates to the Investing in Our Schools program. Tomorrow on the Notice Paper will appear some questions in my name about the distribution of these funds, and whether they have been distributed equitably and fairly. I am not suggesting that they have not been, but I want some answers because I have had some experiences in my electorate which suggest that it might not have been done on a fair basis. I hope to get some answers from the minister as a result of those questions about the distribution in the five electorates across the Hunter region, about whether the criteria have been applied stringently and, of course, about whether there has been an equal distribution between public and independent schools.

In particular I want to raise the issue of Cessnock West Public School, in my hometown of Cessnock, which applied under the second round of applications in August 2005 for a security fence to surround the school. The cost of the security fence was some $143,000. This is a critical issue for the school because it is in a tough area and it has been beset by vandalism—the school library was burned down and had to be replaced at a substantial cost and, unfortunately, the school canteen was badly vandalised and had to be closed down for a period of time while repairs were done and in the process some asbestos was removed.

I understand, thanks to some of the members of the P&C, that the principal was told unofficially by the state Department of Education and Training that the application had been approved. On Wednesday, 3 May 2006—the day after the approved schools and announced projects were published on the website—the principal was phoned by someone called Lynne from Investing in Our Schools to say that the application has been approved but they had run out of money. Mr Deputy Speaker, it had been approved but they had run out of money. There are two points to be made about that. One is that the security fencing and the difficulties of the school in the past I would have thought made it a perfect, snug fit with the objectives of the scheme. But it is extraordinary to suggest that the school had its hopes raised by oral advice that it had been successful in its funding application only to be told that the department had run out of money.

I have put these questions on the Notice Paper but I can understand why the school P&C and the school staff are distressed. I welcome the funding that I have received in my electorate under this program for both public and independent schools, and I am not going to begrudge any school in my electorate getting some money potentially at the expense of another school. But what I want to know is that the criteria are being applied fairly, that the schools most in need are getting the money and that there is a reasonable proportional distribution of funds going to both public and independent schools. If the minister can show me that that is the case I will retreat happily, and I will simply have to explain to Cessnock West Public School that they will just have to make another attempt under the next funding round. But you can understand, Mr Deputy Speaker, why they would be surprised at their unsuccessful attempt to secure this money.

I want to quickly give a plug for the Hunter Regional Tourism Organisation, which is currently applying for funding under the Australian Tourism Development Program. The Hunter Regional Tourism Organisation is a fantastic body that has identified the fact that Hunter tourism is at its crossroads and parochialism was at the forefront of tourism planning in the Hunter region, when indeed parochialism should be set aside for a products based approach to our marketing. The organisation has done a fantastic job over recent times, led by its chief executive officer, Andrew Fletcher. It has developed a Hunter plan—a marketing and strategic plan for the Hunter—which takes in the needs of the whole region and it has applied for funding under the Australian Tourism Development Program. I will be writing to the minister, urging the minister to look kindly upon that application.

There were many things in my electorate and region that unfortunately missed out in the budget. I will never understand why the Howard government will not give some funding for Energy Australia Stadium—home of the Newcastle Knights and the Newcastle Jets. The Treasurer, in particular, and the Prime Minister keep telling us that they cannot give money to Energy Australia Stadium as it is effectively a state concern. Lo and behold, though, since the first time the Prime Minister made that statement, they have given millions of dollars to the Dragons, millions of dollars to the Sharks, millions of dollars to the Panthers and millions of dollars to the AFL club Western Bulldogs—but they cannot give the poor old Newcastle Knights some money.

That is notwithstanding the fact that we have modelling from the University of Newcastle that shows that this is not just a sporting arena—this is a key economic driver in the Hunter region. The rugby league team, at least—just setting aside the soccer team for the moment—attracts more than 30,000 people to every home game. Think of the jobs it creates and the knock-on effects amongst the community. If we had a fully completed stadium we could have a Super 14 team—it would be 15 in those circumstances, but we could. We have missed out on opportunities in the past. When the Rugby World Cup was in Australia we could have had a game at Energy Australia Stadium if only the stadium had been up to standard.

The state government has put about $35 million into the project. Why won’t John Howard make a contribution? Why won’t the federal government make a contribution to Energy Australia Stadium in the same way it has made a contribution to the rest of those stadiums? Is it because the Hunter electorates so faithfully and so regularly vote Labor? Surely not. Surely the Prime Minister would not be punishing people for making that democratic choice. So I appeal to the Prime Minister. I am sure that there is a little hollow log in the budget somewhere. We know how the budget documents work—rabbits can be pulled out of the hat. I appeal to the Prime Minister to reconsider the plight of the Newcastle Knights, the Jets and the other users of that stadium and to have a go.

The F3 link is a 16-kilometre stretch of road between the northern end of the F3 Freeway and the New England Highway just north of Branxton. It is critically needed in the Hunter. I have been fighting for the project for some 17 years. Maybe that makes me an ineffective first councillor and now member, but this is something critical to the region. It has the unanimous support of all the region’s mayors, and all the peak industry bodies nominate it as the No. 1 infrastructure project for the region, but the government will not fund it. When I started the campaign it was worth about $180 million. It is now worth close to half a billion dollars. So every year it gets put off it becomes more expensive.

What is the government doing? It keeps dribbling small amounts of money into the project for preconstruction costs—an obvious acknowledgment that it is an absolute must for the region—but it will not deliver the big bang, the big bucks. Very generously, I thought, I publicly told the minister, Minister Jim Lloyd, ‘If you want to talk about alternative funding models’—and I suppose that is code for a toll, if we are being honest with ourselves—‘talk about them publicly and I will not criticise you, because I would rather have an F3 link with a toll than no F3 link at all.’ Maybe it can be constructed it in a way that picks up traffic travelling through the region but does not pick up intraregional traffic—so if you are travelling from Singleton to Newcastle and you want to jump on the link road maybe you would be within the confines of the area where you are not exposed to the toll.

So please, Minister Lloyd, let us have the public conversation—let us hear what the people of the region think. Do they want and need this thing so badly that they are prepared to wear a toll? Let us have that conversation. Up until now he has not been prepared to do so.

The University of Newcastle did not get any restoration of its regional status, which is costing it a bucket of money and disadvantaging the region. The GP crisis is a big issue. We want to attract young people to our medical school. We cannot get regional assistance. That was another disappointment in the budget.

I turn now to the collapse of the Bay Building group. This is a consolidation of four companies in the Hunter that some months ago went belly-up, leaving creditors owed something to the tune of $35 million. Some of them were secured—some bank and non-bank financial institutions—and they will be okay, of course, as honourable members would understand. But the majority of them were unsecured creditors, suppliers to those four entities which were effectively working in the construction and property game. Some of those businesses have already gone bust as a result of the collapse of Bay Building. They have fallen under the weight of their incapacity to secure the money that was owed to them.

This time around I am not going to criticise the government or ASIC. I am probably not even going to criticise the Corporations Law. We know how the Corporations Law works. We understand that we have to have corporate entities able to shield themselves from attacks on the personal property of the directors. If we did not have that sort of protection in this country we would not have much investment at all. We all understand that. But now and again a case comes along where it really is rotten. You really do ask about society when you have people who knowingly default on the money owed to the people who have worked so hard, who have put their living into and shown such faith in the directors of that company by doing work on credit.

We knew we were in trouble on this one when the administrator moved in and discovered the mainframe computer had been stolen, so there were no accounting records. We knew we were really in trouble when we discovered very early on that there were related entity loans—that is, loans between the four entities in the group.

I want to pay tribute to the administrator, Jonathan McLeod. There was suspicion of him on the part of the unsecured creditors. He was appointed from Brisbane; he was an outsider. And there was some concern, at least on the part of a small section of the unsecured creditors, that he might have been a bit of a puppet of the directors. I think Jonathan McLeod has done a good job. He has raised with ASIC a number of breaches of the Corporations Law. He has been able to discover that many of the inter-related loans were bogus, and therefore the directors’ attempts to use the nature of the debt related loan to use proxy votes at creditors meetings were indeed bogus themselves. And I want to say that ASIC has done a good thing by confirming its willingness to contribute $20,000 towards the prosecution of those directors.

As is, sadly, too often the case, there is no money left in the cookie jar. These unsecured creditors are not going to get their money back, and that is very sad for them and their families, particularly those who have already gone under. Some will bat on; some will not be able to. But they want justice. I appeal to ASIC tonight to use all the power available to them to lock these guys up. (Time expired)

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to talk to the chamber tonight, in this debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and related bills, about some of the areas of responsibility that I have as the Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing, in particular to Tony Abbott and, less so, to Senator Santo Santoro, who is the Minister for Ageing.

One of the areas for which I have particular responsibility is mental health. I am delighted that in this budget a $1.9 billion package was announced for spending in the area of mental health. I would like to range across that topic tonight in this debate, and also to talk about some of the areas of change in the budget to do with drugs, suicide, asthma and the trans-Tasman therapeutic goods agency agreement that we are coming to with New Zealand.

The issue of mental health has been a major issue for some time in Australia, since the deinstitutionalisation of the mentally ill starting in the 1960s and 1970s. Over the last 10 years in particular, mental health has become an ever-present issue for us as members of parliament—I have found this as a lower house member, and I am sure the House would agree—and, more importantly, it is a major issue in the electorate and the community, particularly for the families of those with mental illness. There seems to be a dramatic dearth of facilities and services available to the mentally ill in the community. Part of the agreement the states had when they decided to deinstitutionalise was that they would put money into community support. That did not eventuate and, tragically, I think many of the states saw the denuding of mental health facilities and services as a way of saving money, which they did. To put that in perspective, in the early 1960s, when the population of the country was 10 million, there were 30,000 acute beds available for the mentally ill; today, in 2006, less than 4,000 beds are available and yet we have 20 million people. That puts in some perspective the incredible strain on the services that are available for the mentally ill when we have double the population. So it is no surprise that in the areas of homelessness and crime, one of the trends is that people with a mental illness commit many of the crimes and are homeless. They need help and support from a health perspective rather than simply being left on the streets, as they have been in the last 10 to 20 years.

It is not a traditional area of responsibility of the Commonwealth; it is a responsibility of the states. After a great deal of debate and discussion in this country over the last few years, it has become quite obvious that the states have not stepped up to the plate, no matter how much political pressure has been applied to them. As a consequence, the Prime Minister decided that he would step forward and put $1.9 billion of Commonwealth spending on the table and ask the states to match that spending. The area of spending that the Commonwealth will be responsible for is more primary health and clinical services and some of things that we traditionally fund through Medicare. The states are responsible for acute hospital beds, prisons, crisis services and emergency services—the areas that they have been traditionally responsible for. This package does not delve into their areas, but it tries to do the Commonwealth’s part of mental health well and then calls on the states to do their part of mental health well. We are not going to take over their areas of responsibility but nor are we going to let them off the hook by simply funding, through shared agreements, areas that we know they should be doing. We are going to do our areas well and expect the states to do their areas well, which would be a nice change.

We are going to put a substantial amount of funding into mental health in four broad areas. There will be more health services in the community through supporting new Medicare benefit schedule items that will help psychiatrists and GPs have closer working relationships with psychologists. They will be able to refer to those psychologists patients who are better serviced by a psychologist than a psychiatrist. This will give psychiatrists more time to free up their books to see those patients who need to be seen by a psychiatrist. It will mean that GPs will have another option than simply referring to a psychiatrist a patient who is better seen by a psychologist. And it will better use the services of psychologists who, in the opinion of the government, have been underutilised in recent years.

There will be new non-clinical and respite services for people with mental illness, particularly provided by the non-government organisations. This will help families, carers and those with a mental illness living in the community in particular. There is a substantial investment in the mental health workforce and there will be new programs of community awareness, particularly in relation to drugs like cannabis. We are now discovering more and more that it has an incredibly deleterious effect on people’s brains, yet it has been treated in many respects as a substitute for alcohol in some communities over the years.

I will flesh out some of these measures. From November this year, the MBS items will be restructured to allow psychiatrists and GPs to refer patients to particular types of psychologists—those who have done necessary training—to be taken care of. This will cost $538 million, so it is the largest and most substantial item in the package. There will be an extra $51.7 million for rural and remote areas to ensure that there is employment of mental health nurses and that these new arrangements for GPs and psychiatrists do not bypass rural and remote areas but get to everybody in the community. There will be the creation of specialist mental health nurses in psychiatry and GP practices, costing $191.6 million, and this will dramatically reduce the burden on GP and psychiatry practices, as they will be able to employ mental health nurses to help with the day-to-day management of their clients’ needs. It is a substantial change and I think is extremely well received by the industry. It does mean the government needs to make a commitment to increasing the workforce in mental health, and for that reason we are spending money on creating 420 new specialist mental health nurses and 200 more places for clinical psychologists from next year.

In new non-clinical and respite services, there will be new funding for drug and alcohol treatment services—$73.9 million from 1 July this year. That will largely go to non-government organisations, many of which are already operating rehabilitation services, crisis care and emergency services for the mentally ill in the community. This is a substantial injection of funds for many of the organisations, which put together what resources they have and use what trained staff and volunteers they have to run services which could be better and more comprehensively run with a substantial injection of Commonwealth funds. So that is what we are doing in this package.

There will be more funding for telephone counselling and web based activities for those people who try and self-help. This will be particularly useful for teenagers who will not necessarily speak to their parents, their GPs or even their friends about concerns they might have about their mental health but are likely to access web based services and self-help. There are some very good ones that are now operating in Australia, and the funding of $56.9 million under this package from 1 July this year will support Lifeline and the Kids Help Line specifically and also web based services.

We are also expanding the National Suicide Prevention Strategy by $62 million over the next five years. To put that into perspective, over the last 10 years, the Commonwealth has spent $10 million on national suicide prevention, so this is a dramatic increase in support for the reduction of suicide in this country. Even that $10 million has made a difference to the number of suicides in Australia, which I will get to later on in this speech on the appropriation bills.

Nine hundred new personal helpers and mentors will be rolled out as part of this package to care for people in their own homes and to give people support in day-to-day living and in accessing services, such as accommodation, Centrelink services and, ambitiously—maybe some would say too ambitiously—Job Network services down the track. We are also increasing the number of places in the Personal Support Program to help people return to or stay in employment, and we are going to put $46 million into non-government services in particular to help people stay in their own homes, conduct normal lives, cook, do domestic chores—things that everybody else takes for granted—and enjoy more social interaction with the community around them. In many respects, we are doing the things that the states promised to do but never delivered on as part of deinstitutionalisation.

For young people, we are expanding the Youth Pathways project by 8,500 places, which will help young people with mental illness to stay in school and to address issues at school rather than be lost to the system. We are also putting $28 million into new programs to help parents, local communities, teachers and principals identify and respond to children at risk of mental illness.

One of the Prime Minister’s pet aspects of this package is $200 million for new respite places for carers. Too often parent and grandparent carers are stoically struggling to look after their children or grandchildren with mental illness. We are not talking necessarily about teenagers; we are talking often about adult children in their 50s and 60s being looked after by parents in their 70s and 80s and beyond. It is a tragic situation. We have all seen the stories in the newspapers of such families. One I particularly remember in Sydney was of a Chinese-Australian who took his own life and that of his child because he did not believe that his child would be looked after when he was gone. A lack of respite services provided by the states means that there is very little support for carers of people with a mental illness. This $200 million will go some way to creating 650 new respite services for perhaps a day, a few days and maybe a week to provide opportunities to recharge the batteries of carers.

There is $20 million being put into the training of front-line workers in Indigenous communities for the early assessment of mental illness and the opportunity to get Indigenous people into mental health services very early in the piece. This will train 850 Aboriginal health workers and 350 transport and administrative workers in Aboriginal communities. It will fund 25 new scholarships and 10 direct mental health workers.

I have talked about the increase in the mental health workforce. We are providing $21 million for researching the link between cannabis and mental illness and to run education programs to expose the risks that people put themselves in by using cannabis. There is the potential of exacerbating a mental illness that might be genetic but not obvious or in fact causing schizophrenia, which has been linked with cannabis very clearly through the research. Finally, we are increasing funding to Mental Health Council of Australia by $1 million over the next five years so that they can continue to monitor the work that is being done and advocate on behalf of the mentally ill.

One of my other areas of responsibility is illicit drugs. I am pleased to say that we announced $38.9 million in the budget for combating emerging trends in drug use. I am sure the shadow minister for health will be pleased about this, because while we are having great success with respect to the use of cannabis and heroin in this country, the use of illicit drugs like ice and ecstasy—psychostimulants—is growing. It is an area that we obviously need to take a particular interest in. So about $40 million will go some way to helping front-line workers research the use of these drugs to try to combat the scourge that they are, particularly to young people. It will also help fund the continuing national drugs education campaign.

A new aspect of the budget is $19.8 million for university counsellors on university campuses to address drug issues and alcohol misuse at the university campus level. This gives counsellors access to many hundreds of thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students for the early prevention of the abuse of drugs and alcohol and where possible to identify mental illness at an early stage so it can be treated. We are also establishing a National Cannabis Control and Prevention Centre for $14½ million to do a whole raft of tasks—to coordinate research, to coordinate campaigns and to provide a focus particularly for highlighting the links between cannabis and mental illness and to shine a light on cannabis in a way that has not been done in the past.

I have already talked about the substantial increase in funding for suicide prevention in the budget. Although every suicide is a great tragedy, over the last 10 years there has been a quite dramatic drop in the number of suicides in this country. The rate has dropped by 23 per cent since 1997, when the number of registered suicides was 2,720. In 2004, there were 2,098 suicides registered. That is a dramatic drop in the number of suicides in Australia. Particularly amongst young people the statistics are very encouraging. We have obviously particularly targeted young people as part of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy. In 1997, youth suicide peaked at 509 deaths. In 2004, that dropped to 265 deaths. It almost halved in that period of time. I am sure the issue of suicide prevention is a bipartisan one in politics in Australia. All sides would welcome the obvious impact that the government’s strategy is having on reducing suicide.

There are three other areas of my portfolio responsibilities that I would like to touch on briefly. The national priority of dealing with asthma is having some impact after some years of putting resources into trying to reduce the prevalence of asthma. The death rate attributable to asthma has significantly declined since its peak in 1989. In 1989 there were 736 deaths from asthma and in 2004 there were 311 deaths attributable to asthma. When government turns its attention dramatically to an area, puts resources into it, puts together a plan and work with GPs, schools and others to roll out programs, it can have an impact. To have more than halved the number of deaths attributable to asthma is a great achievement, and that has occurred under both Labor and Liberal governments.

As part of the budget, we also pledged $5 million to a new industry project called DrinkWise. As part of the alcohol industry’s attempt to reduce the abuse of alcohol, they have established with the community an organisation called DrinkWise, and we have pledged $5 million to DrinkWise. People involved in alcohol are part of the board of DrinkWise—Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia, or DSICA; the Winemakers Federation; the Australian Associated Brewers; and companies like Lion Nathan. The board is made up of representatives of both the alcohol industry and the community. People such as John Saunders, Peter McCarthy, John Dwyer, Father Chris Riley, and Trish Worth, the former member for Adelaide, are members of the board of DrinkWise. It is a genuine attempt by the alcohol industry to address concerns and to make a difference with respect to the abuse of alcohol in the community. I welcome that, and I am delighted to have been able to deliver a substantial injection of funds into that organisation to give it an opportunity to start making a real difference in the community.

Finally, one other area of responsibility I have as the parliamentary secretary is the trans-Tasman therapeutic goods agency agreement with New Zealand. I am happy to say that we are making great progress in bringing the TGA in Australia and Medsafe in New Zealand together to form the first trans-Tasman regulatory agency. I am very confident that it will be up and running by September 2007, or the second half of 2007. We have very recently publicised the rules that would go with such a joint regulatory agency for industry consultation. Industry consultation is very important as part of this process, because it will be up to the industry to implement the quite complicated arrangements for a trans-Tasman regulatory agency. It will be a template for arrangements for other regulatory agencies of its kind between New Zealand and Australia. I am delighted that Annette King, the New Zealand Minister of State Services, and I have been able to continue what has at times been a tricky negotiation process but one that does seem to be reaching an important period of fruition. I am sure the industry and consumers will be the better for it. I thank the chamber.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the appropriation bills for the 2006-07 budget. The budget will appropriate $42 billion to the Department of Health and Ageing, with significant amounts going to the roll-out of commitments associated with the Council of Australian Governments health agenda announced earlier this year. There are also allocations related to the Howard government’s pre-announced changes to the private health insurance system and the sell-off of Medibank Private.

Last year’s budget administered a $1.3 billion cut to health. On the surface this budget appears different, with a new amount of $3.2 billion allocated across the forward estimates. However, if you scratch the surface we can reveal that this budget confirms what is already well known to those who work in the sector and those who rely on the health system to get well and to stay well. Scratching beneath the surface of this year’s health budget reveals that although we are three years on in Minister Abbott’s tenure in the Health and Ageing portfolio, nothing has changed. Sadly, at a time when Australia is economically well placed to rebuild our health system, the budget again is a montage of preannounced measures, tangential agendas and piecemeal policies which add to the creaking mass of programs and items that make up our health system.

The budget confirms one thing and that is certainly this: over 82 per cent of the budget’s health measures are being driven and delivered by someone other than the minister for health, Tony Abbott. Sixty-two per cent of the total health budget is allocated to measures driven by the Council of Australian Governments—that is, to the additional health budget—and we know that the Council of Australian Governments has dragged the Commonwealth kicking and screaming to the health reform agenda table. Twenty per cent of the total new health budget is allocated to measures driven by the sale of Medibank Private, which has been the responsibility of the minister for finance ever since the Howard government realised that it was more important to fatten it up for sale than use it to deliver a more competitive and value-for-money private health insurance product.

You are probably wondering what the minister for health, Tony Abbott, does with all his time. I have been wondering that too, so I was happy to find out recently, with the help of his department, what the minister actually does do with his time as health minister. Recently, information received through a freedom of information request from the department of health confirmed what we already knew about this minister. He sees his job not as managing the health system but as managing the way his management of the health system is perceived.

In August 2003 the minister’s department commissioned the Wallis Group to undertake a series of surveys of the general public on the health system. Another consulting company, Campbell Research and Consulting, were involved in the preparation of the survey which took almost 18 months to complete and included development, approval, testing on focus groups and ‘cognitive testing workshops’. The first survey was not conducted until February 2005 and there were 10 surveys in all, from February to November 2005.

Some might argue: isn’t it a valid use of resources for a minister to conduct a survey of perceptions of the management of his portfolio if it can be used to make the system better? This might be true if the survey polled regular users of the health system, particularly in areas that are not already covered by the department’s own data collecting agency or the government’s own official source of statistics. But this survey asked about things like their access to services and doctors, which is already covered by the minister’s own departmental statistics on Medicare, his portfolio agency, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s data releases, the government’s own ABS, and labour market statistics from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations.

The survey asked about the use of private health insurance and hospitals which, again, is already covered by the minister’s own portfolio agencies, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Private Health Insurance Administration Council and the government’s own ABS. The survey asked questions about the PBS—again covered by official sources from the department’s Medicare data and available from Medicare Australia’s website for free.

I am not so sure that the minister or his department were too interested in finding out the facts in any case. On close examination of the survey’s sample population we can reveal that the department explicitly excluded the frail aged and those who are too ill. Can you believe that from a survey on health? The sample also excluded most people who were from a non-English-speaking background. In the first month of the survey alone this had the effect of excluding 300 potential respondents who would undoubtedly have provided a more diverse range of views on their recent experiences with the health system.

How much did this exercise cost the health budget? Not only did it employ and divert valuable departmental resources over a period of almost three years; it cost $1.2 million, with this year’s annual departmental report undoubtedly set to disclose further information on consultancies employed to manage this process. The only point of this research was to assist with the minister’s spin doctoring. This is a shameful waste of time and resources. This is all about the image of the Minister for Health and Ageing, Tony Abbott, and nothing to do with Australia’s health system.

The 2006-07 budget has confirmed the sale of Australia’s biggest not-for-profit private health insurance fund, Medibank Private. However, the budget fails to disclose how the sale will occur, whether this sale will be by trade sale or float and how the sale will impact on members of Medibank Private. The budget allocates $20 million to the Department of Finance and Administration to manage the sale of Medibank Private in this financial year. The fact that the sale costs are budgeted in this financial year confirms that the Howard government is prepared to sell off Medibank Private at any price. Scheduling the sale in this financial year will see Medibank competing against other major privatisations such as those of Telstra and the Snowy Hydro. Medibank Private will also be sold despite concerns about competition and that the sale will lead to higher private health insurance premiums.

With repeated premium increases well above CPI, private health insurers are failing to offer value-for-money products, and the situation may get even worse after the sale of Medibank Private. Selling Medibank Private will not guarantee greater competition. If Medibank Private is sold as one entity then there will be exactly the same number of private health insurers in the market as there was before the sale. If Medibank Private is bought by one of the bigger for-profit private health insurers then this will shrink the number of players in the market. If the trade sale sees the fund split up and sold in pieces then that too will shrink the number of players in the market.

Labor is opposed to this sale. Labor believes there is a role for a public, not-for-profit health insurer that can deliver quality and competing products, with its contributing members as the company’s main focus. Labor also believes that the Howard government owes it to the Australian people and, in particular, Medibank Private members to answer the following questions. How will the sale be structured? How will the sale affect existing members? How will existing members be reassured that premiums will not rise if Medibank Private becomes a for-profit fund by more than they would have had it remained as a not-for-profit fund? How will existing members be reassured that existing policies and claims will be honoured in the same way as they are currently? Does the cost of the sale include legal advice about whether the sale should be structured to return benefits to members? Does the cost of the sale include the legal costs of defending a class action from members whose contributions have built up the fund?

Labor is also concerned that additional funding for medical research announced as part of the sale of Medibank Private will be conditional on the sale of Medibank Private. In Budget Paper No. 2 there is a $500 million commitment over four years for health and medical research and a $170 million commitment over nine years for research fellowships. However, each measure has the following caveat:

This commitment follows the Government’s announcement ... to sell Medibank Private Limited ...

If medical research is an investment that will bear fruit for technological and health advancements and deliver dividends to our economy, it should not be linked to the sale of an asset, particularly when around 64 per cent of Australians are completely opposed to the sale of Medibank Private. The Howard government and indeed the finance and health ministers have yet to explain whether delivering any of the new money for medical research is contingent on the sale of Medibank Private.

The Minister for Health and Ageing has also tried to bury a series of health cutbacks in the budget paper. Under the boasts of increased health spending lie cutbacks which will hurt average Australian families. The biggest cut is a cut of $260 million to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The budget refers to the cut as a ‘parameter variation’, but this means that budget estimates on PBS spending have been cut because fewer sick Australians are filling prescriptions than was originally expected. Whilst the government has tried to use a series of explanations for this fact—including most recently, and ridiculously, a claim that public holidays in the reporting period affected the statistics—it has provided no real explanation as to why there are fewer sick Australians filling prescriptions than was originally expected.

This continues a long series of cuts to the health budget, including $1.3 billion from the PBS last year and $500 million from Tony Abbott’s ‘rock solid, ironclad’ Medicare safety net. The government’s attacks on the PBS have made essential medicines increasingly unaffordable for many sick Australians. As a consequence, we can expect more hospital admissions and greater health care costs in the future. Despite claims by the Treasurer that the cost of the PBS was skyrocketing and urgently had to be reined in, the growth rate of the PBS has dropped below two per cent. Official government data shows that, over the 2005-06 financial year to date, PBS spending has grown by just 1.6 per cent.

The budget also makes cuts to the government’s 2004 so-called Strengthening Medicare program, which in the run-up to the election campaign was touted with an advertising campaign which cost $20 million. Neither the workforce measures nor the bulk-billing incentive measures for concession card holders and children, which were key aspects of Strengthening Medicare, have been funded beyond 2009. This proves that Strengthening Medicare was nothing more than a pre-election con, just like Tony Abbott’s ‘rock solid, ironclad’ guarantee about the Medicare safety net.

Other cuts include $1.5 million ripped out of the More Doctors for Outer Metropolitan Areas measure and $6 million ripped out of the Better Access to Radiation Oncology program. The Treasurer and the health minister want us to believe that their brutal PBS cuts are necessary if new medicines are to be listed on the PBS. More than two months ago, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee approved two new long-lasting insulins for PBS listing, Lantis and Levemir. Despite the enormous benefits these medicines will provide to diabetics, the minister is yet to take them to cabinet for final sign-off.

More than 15 months ago, the PBAC approved Enbrel for the treatment of small groups of patients with crippling psoriatic arthritis. Again, the minister is yet to take this to cabinet. Women with breast cancer are waiting anxiously to see whether the PBAC will approve Herceptin at its July meeting, but they might wait even longer for the minister to ensure this drug is listed on the PBS. There is also evidence that for two years the minister for health has been sitting on recommendations by an expert subcommittee of the PBAC for expanded PBS access to cholesterol-lowering drugs, particularly for people with diabetes. These drugs are now off patent. Expanding their PBS listing would be very affordable and would have massive health benefits in preventing heart disease.

The minister’s failure to respond to this expert advice has frustrated doctors to the extent that 17 top specialists have personally written to the minister to urge him to act within his ministerial responsibilities in a timely manner so that those patients whose health and finances suffer because their medicines are not listed on the PBS are not unduly affected by his incompetence. But the minister has form on failing to respond to expert recommendations, as his rejection of the ATAGI recommendations for childhood vaccines for pneumococcal disease, chickenpox and polio showed.

Minister Abbott should stop playing politics with the PBS and do his job, so that the PBS continues to provide affordable medicines to those who want to manage their chronic conditions so that they can get on with their work and their family commitments. What on earth could be more important than that? The minister for health should be concentrating on fixing our health system and building the health system of the future, a health system which will be prepared for an ageing population. This budget could have delivered so much and it has simply failed to do so.

It certainly should have delivered after-hours medical services to take pressure off emergency departments. Right around the country, particularly in outer suburban and in regional areas, emergency departments are under pressure night after night because there is nowhere else for people to go if they have a health problem outside ordinary hours. This has been driven by the medical workforce crisis that the Howard government has exacerbated with its early cutbacks to medical training. It is a problem created by the Howard government and it is a problem that should be fixed by the Howard government. Of course, it remains unfixed.

This budget should have reinstated the Commonwealth Dental Scheme, to get the 650,000 Australians waiting an average of two years for dental care off waiting lists. Before we hear any absurd claims that this is not a Commonwealth responsibility, pick up a copy of the Australian Constitution. And, before we hear any absurd claims that this is the fault of state Labor governments, recognise that every state Labor government has expanded investment in dental schemes. This budget should have redesigned and invested in our medical workforce supply and distribution systems, and it should have reformed the relationship between the Commonwealth and state governments to reduce waste, stop buck-passing and end blame-shifting in our health system.

Access Economics has supported Labor’s view that Tony Abbott has failed to deliver an agenda for the future of the Australian health system and has squandered an opportunity to build a reformed health system with a focus on prevention and early intervention which would meet the needs of average Australian families. An Access Economics report describes the Howard government as ‘slow moving’ and explains that the government has ‘passed up opportunities to improve health outcomes’ and is ‘ducking’ areas like obesity and increasing pressures on public hospitals.

In conclusion: in respect of health, the 2006-07 budget is full of hidden cuts and simply squanders the opportunity to fundamentally reform our health system and invest in creating a much better health system for the future.

Mark Baker (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last year we welcomed and passed a budget which delivered on over 10 years of strong economic management. Importantly, the 2004-05 budget delivered on our 2004 election commitments. Last year we fulfilled our promises, while this year we are delivering the fruits of the coalition government’s strong economic management and securing our future. This year, billions of dollars in tax cuts over the next four years and additional benefits for carers, seniors and families in our communities are the dividends of the coalition government’s strong economic performance. Major reforms to income tax and superannuation, bonus payments for families, carers and seniors and increased investment in our roads will help to continue Australia’s growth and prosperity.

Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, for being parochial, but I believe it is also important to put this budget into the context of what it will mean for my electorate. Members may be aware that, as a result of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, in 1996 unemployment in my electorate of Braddon, which encompasses north-west Tasmania, was around 11 per cent. The outlook was bleak and clouded and the region was stagnant, with our young people moving away to find employment. Now unemployment is around six to seven per cent. There is a skills shortage. Our young people have a future, with business development and sound economic growth.

I have said before that regional Australia is the first to feel the effects of an economic downturn and the last to recover. Tasmania, and in particular the north-west coast, was hit hard by the economic mismanagement of the previous government. ‘The recession we had to have’, high unemployment and high interest rates left not only my electorate but regional Australia reeling.

Over the past 10 years, the Howard government has turned around the national economy, and gradually regional Australia has begun to show the benefits. Direct assistance in the form of such programs as Sustainable Regions, though much maligned by those on the other side of this House, has provided added impetus for jobs growth where it is most needed. In the last few months I have had the privilege of announcing funding projects which are creating many new jobs in my region. For example, who would have thought, 10 years ago, that a milk cooperative in Burnie, Tasmania, would have the confidence to diversify into premium aged single malt whisky? But they have.

Whisky Tasmania, a subsidiary of Betta Milk, will soon be releasing the first bottles of what I am sure will become known as Australia’s finest whisky. And I am proud to say that the coalition government has been there to assist, providing more than $800,000 through Regional Partnerships and the Sustainable Regions Program. This funding is assisting Whisky Tasmania to get its product out on the shelves sooner and to open a visitor interpretation centre, which I am sure will become a major new tourist attraction. But, most importantly, the funding is expected to help create more than 20 new jobs—and they are full-time jobs. This project demonstrates much about the north-west of Tasmania and about how the coalition government is working to assist and develop regional Australia.

The benefits of strong economic growth, low interest rates and low unemployment have filtered down from the national level into our regions. In addition, the coalition has provided direct assistance to help our regions get back on their feet. In north-west Tasmania, we are seeing the benefits of the up to $12 million committed to our region under the Sustainable Regions Program. Myriad projects have been approved totalling well over $11 million, and they are already delivering results in the community, including world-class research and development in the agriculture and fishing sectors.

This year’s budget will continue to build on the coalition government’s achievements for regional Australia over the past decade. I believe the income tax cuts in my electorate will inject another $25 million into the local community in the next year alone. Based on north-west Tasmania’s average taxable income of $35,000, the tax cuts will deliver $25 million, if not more, in savings in the coming year for our region’s more than 38,000 taxpayers. This is admittedly an estimate but, if anything, it is a conservative estimate. If we base our estimate on population share then the real value of these tax cuts to the north-west community could well be much higher. Low-income owners, of whom there are many in my electorate, will particularly benefit, with a saving of some $1,011 a year, or almost $39 a fortnight, for those on an average annual wage of $25,000, thanks to a 27.8 per cent cut in the effective tax rate.

Families, seniors and carers will all benefit. Figures provided by the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs illustrate that the 2006 budget will deliver for thousands of north-west families, carers and seniors. Some 2,400 north-west Tasmanian families with three or more children are expected to benefit through the extension of the large family supplement. Those who care for others will also benefit from the one-off bonus payment due to be paid by the end of next month. The around 800 recipients of the carer payment will also receive a $1,000 bonus, while the 2,001 recipients of the carer allowance in my electorate will receive $600.

As many as 100 north-west farmers who have lived on their properties for 20 years or more will benefit substantially from the removal of their farms from the pension assets test. This means that they will not be forced to sell their farms to receive the age pension when they retire. I know this measure will be enthusiastically welcomed by many in the north-west community, given our ageing rural population, but also throughout regional and rural Australia.

Older Australians will also benefit, with approximately 12,000 seniors in my electorate expected to benefit from a one-off bonus payment of $102.80 to recipients of the utilities and seniors concessions allowances. Around 1,900 families will also benefit, with an average increase of $9.60 a fortnight due to the change in the family tax benefit part A threshold. These figures confirm the strength of the coalition government’s support for families, carers and seniors.

At the same time as putting money back into the pockets of north-west Tasmanians, this budget will deliver better and safer local roads throughout our region. Members may be interested to know that Tasmania is the only state where the Australian government spends more on road infrastructure than the state government. Given the enormous windfall that the Tasmanian Labor government is pocketing in GST revenue, this illustrates their mismanagement of road infrastructure. Tasmania once led the nation on road safety but, sadly, today we are followers. Not only is our state government stale on new road safety initiatives, it is also ignoring its responsibilities for maintaining safe modern roads, and one struggles to comprehend where we might be without the federal government’s assistance. In contrast to the state government, the Australian government is to provide a massive boost through the 2006 budget for road infrastructure. In my electorate another $18 million has been allocated in this year’s budget for duplication of the last 5.5-kilometre section of the Bass Highway between Burnie and Devonport. Work on stage 2 of the more than $70 million project which involves the construction of a second bridge over the Leven River is expected to start in August.

Municipalities with large local road networks are big winners from this budget. In Tasmania local councils will receive an additional $10 million in Roads to Recovery funding for the remainder of this financial year, a sum equal to that allocated for the coming year. Almost $4½ million has been allocated to the seven local councils in Braddon under the Roads to Recovery program, twice the amount provided in last year’s budget. The government not only will maintain funding under Roads to Recovery to assist our councils to upgrade their local roads but will also deliver supplementary funding equal to their annual allocations. This is a major win for local councils and will assist in the maintenance and upgrading of country roads throughout the north-west.

Roads to Recovery is one of the Australian government’s most successful programs because the councils determine the priorities and the Howard government provides funding to assist with this work. The extra funding provided in the budget will allow north-west councils to carry out works on roads which otherwise may not have been attended to for at least another year, if at all. I know that our local councils will be excited by the bonus funding and I am sure that it will assist to deliver safer roads across the coast. The great success of this program is that the funds are invested directly by the councils. There is no state government bureaucracy to contend with. The councils decide on their priority projects and get on with the job.

Roads to Recovery funding was in addition to the almost $1.7 billion provided to local councils by the Liberal government through general purpose and local road grants. For 2006-07 Tasmanian councils will share in some $27.6 million in general purpose and $27.3 million in local roads funding, a 3.3 per cent increase over the current year. North-west councils will also be able to continue to apply for funding under the AusLink black spot program for urgent safety improvements on roads where there has been a history of accidents. Through Roads to Recovery, local road grants and the black spot program, the Australian Liberal government is helping local councils deliver safer roads throughout the region.

The Burnie and Devonport airports will also be among the beneficiaries of the great economic recovery that this government has been able to achieve, with the five regional airports sharing in $1½ million to improve security. While this additional funding has been widely welcomed, it has not stopped Labor from misleading the public, particularly in my electorate, over airport security. Labor has tried for some time to mislead the north-west community into believing that the Australian government funds the provision of passenger screening at our major airports. The truth is that in all the major airports where passenger screening is required it is the owners of those airports that are responsible for this security measure and, presumably, they pass on the cost to airlines which then pass it on to passengers. All airports operating jet aircraft are required by legislation to provide passenger screening. Labor wants us to extend this requirement to the more than 150 non-jet airports around Australia, including Burnie and Devonport, despite the fact that a security assessment has found this to be unwarranted. If Labor had its way the cost would be carried by the airport owners, who would then pass it on to the airlines and ultimately onto passengers through higher fares. This would have the potential of undermining the viability of both the Burnie and the Devonport airports and, indeed, many regional airports around Australia and would have immense ramifications for regional Australia.

The Australian government is also taking major steps to address skill shortages in Australia. With the announcement of 25 new Australian technical colleges around the country, the government is creating a new way of skills based learning. These new colleges are about taking industry to education—a direct contrast to the old method of taking education to industry. This new method of skills based training will put industry in control of the skills that apprentices will learn, so that a graduating qualified tradesperson will have up-to-date skills which are relevant to their industry. I am proud to be able to say that there will be a campus in Burnie in north-west Tasmania. Through this college we will be able to provide industry led training to give our young people the skills that are needed for local industry.

I fought hard for a campus of the Australian Technical College Northern Tasmania to be located in the north-west, because this region is one of Tasmania’s major industry hubs. With major engineering, manufacturing and construction industries located in north-west Tasmania, skills based training is paramount to the growth of such industries. The Australian technical colleges will bring together the know-how of industry, the experience of local training providers and the expertise of educators to help meet skill shortages. In addition to completing years 11 and 12 school studies, students at the colleges will learn a trade and will be well advanced in their apprenticeship by the end of year 12. This will be a great step forward in skills based learning for Australia’s industries and their future growth.

The strength of the Australian economy over the past 10 years can be identified by: record low unemployment with the creation of some 1.7 million new jobs over the past 10 years; record low interest rates, which have enabled more and more families to purchase their own homes and businesses to expand, grow and develop; an increase in real wages of over 16 per cent, which is a dramatic comparison with the 1.2 per cent real wages growth under 13 years of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments; and a steady inflation rate of around two to three per cent, which has allowed price increases to be kept low and businesses to get on with the job of investing in capital projects.

As per the figures from the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics report, the gap between the nation’s rich and poor has narrowed as a result of the Australian government’s family tax benefits. This report found that the mean weekly incomes of low-income earners grew faster than those of middle- and high-income groups over the past 10 years. The mean weekly income of low-income earners rose some 22 per cent between 1994-95 and 2003-04, while the weekly wages of high-income earners rose by 19.3 per cent. The closing of this gap indicates that government policy is supporting and lifting low-income earners to a higher standard of living.

From 1 July 2006, the increase in income tax thresholds will be: the 15c rate up to $25,000, the 30c rate up to $75,000, the 40c rate up to $150,000, and the 45c rate for income over $150,000. Across these estimates, more than 80 per cent of taxpayers will now have a top marginal tax rate of only 30 per cent. Only two per cent of taxpayers will be affected by the top marginal tax rate from 1 July 2006.

These figures speak for themselves. The latest budget is projected to have a surplus of some $8.9 billion for 2005-06, with estimated continued surpluses of some $7.9 billion in 2006-07, $8.5 billion in 2007-08, and $9.3 billion in 2008-09. Australia is now a world leader in economic management—a stark contrast to the financial predicament Australia was in some 10 years ago, when we had a record number of bankruptcies and families losing their homes because of extraordinarily high interest rates.

In summary: what a difference between two eras. Through the 1980s and early 1990s under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, we had doom and gloom, record high unemployment, record high interest rates, high inflation, a $96 billion debt and a country suffering from gross mismanagement. One should reflect and compare that era to the last 10 years of the Liberal-National coalition government, which has seen prosperity, record low unemployment, the lowest interest rates in decades, low inflation and Labor’s $96 billion debt paid off. The country has weathered the Asian financial meltdown, the burst of the information technology bubble and the instability of the Middle East. Australia is our lucky country and we as Australians have much to look forward to under a Liberal-National coalition government.

Graham Edwards (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary (Defence and Veterans' Affairs)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In dealing with the appropriation bills, I want to compliment the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs for some decisions he has taken since coming into the portfolio and for his preparedness to review previous attitudes and venture where some previous government ministers dared not go. I appreciate his recognition of and support for the great work done by Jim Bourke and his team on Operation Aussies Home. I also appreciate his support for the veterans of Rwanda. I also think the setting aside of funds in the budget, as per the request I put to the minister earlier this year in the parliament, to help Vietnam veterans commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan is a worthy initiative. It remains to be seen, however, how these funds will be spent.

I also want to express my appreciation to the ALP spokesman on veterans affairs, Alan Griffin. Alan has been like a breath of fresh air in the portfolio area and he has picked up the issues quickly. Indeed, he led on the Rwanda issue and placed the government in a position where it had no option but to follow and to recognise service in Rwanda. So I say: well done to the ALP spokesperson on veterans affairs—well done, Alan. I encourage Alan in his duties as shadow minister and place on the record my support for the work he is doing. I also recognise that we have a long way to go and a lot of work to do if we are going to rebuild the support and trust of the veteran community. The ALP recognise this and we are keen to get on with the job. The government also have a long way to go, but I doubt that they recognise this. They still seem to me to take the veteran community for granted.

I want to refer to some budget comments which have come from within the veteran community. The first of these comes from the Vietnam Veterans Federation under the heading ‘Here is the great disappointment, the great failure of the 2006 federal budget’. In their dot points, they say:

None of the long standing, substantial injustices suffered by the war veteran community was addressed.

No acknowledgment that the TPI pension has lost over $80 in value since 1997 when the government omitted to reindex the TPI in the same way it reindexed the Age, Service and war widows. No move either to reindex the whole of the TPI pension to stop it continuing to lose value compared with community incomes.

No move to solve the cyclical hiatus of General Practitioners and Medical Specialists refusing to accept the Gold Card.

No mention of funds to conduct the health study on the sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans despite the Minister having received a scientific report confirming its feasibility.

No move, either, to remove the age limit of 36 for the sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans seeking counselling at the Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service.

No move to change the immoral practice of forcing war veterans to financially contribute to the treatment of their war caused disabilities through the continually increasing pharmaceutical co-payments.

No move, either, to stem the declining value, compared with community incomes, of veterans’ military superannuation (DFRDB etc). So many veterans retiring as they did from the Services at young ages, watch their standard of living slide further and further behind that of the general community.

In summary, the 2006 Federal Budget has badly failed war veterans and their families.

It is signed by Tim McCombe. Tim is the President of the Vietnam Veterans Federation and is a Vietnam veteran. The other issue I want to refer to in the same vein is a media release put out immediately post the 2006 Costello budget. It is under the heading ‘The Howard government budget 2006 has forgotten TPI veterans’ and it says:

While the Howard Government continues to produce record budget surpluses their mean spirited attitude towards veteran’s remains. Through an unfair indexation system not experienced by other government pensions, TPI veterans have lost $80 per fortnight in the last 6 years. Unlike other pensioners, TPI’s will see their compensation for loss of income due to their service related disabilities continue to be eroded and result in a lowering of the standard of living for them and their families.

Veteran’s advocates across Australia are complaining of a tightening up of the granting of disability pensions by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. On the Government’s own figures there has been a reduction of 8% in the number of disability pension increases across Australia in the last four years. This at a time when veterans are getting older and sicker. The day to day experience of many veterans reflects a Government, a Department and a Repatriation system that is becoming increasingly tighter and failing to meet the needs of veterans and their families. At the same time we have a government continuously prepared to put servicemen and women in harms way but turn its back on them when they need help as a result of their service.

The dissatisfaction of the ex-service community with the Howard Government has been apparent for some years. In 2001 and 2003 there were peaceful demonstrations by veterans outside parliament house—something unheard of in the past. There has been hundreds of letters and submissions sent to government only to be ignored. An organization has been formed of the Partners of veterans because they have not been listened to. The Clarke Review of veteran’s entitlements attracted over 3000 submissions and again they were ignored. ... On ANZAC Day we had groups of frustrated veterans marching wearing orange ribbons as a sign of their frustration with the Howard Government. Even though the TPI Federation has 15,000 members consisting of the country’s most disabled veterans, the office of the PM refuses to speak to me.

The TPI Federation is now continuously under pressure from sick veterans to organize another major protest rally against the government. Prime Minister John Howard should be ashamed of his Government’s handling of veterans issues. Veterans and their families are simply not important to the Government.

Those two critiques of the budget do give some reflection of the frustration and anger that is building in the veteran community, particularly in the ranks of the TPI veterans, many of whom are indeed needy and many of whom are simply watching their standard of living shrink in comparison with that of the rest of the community.

I have a very high regard for the Vietnam Veterans Federation and the TPI Federation for the work that they do. I do not agree with all that they pursue or all of their policy positions. However, I recognise that they are fearless in their pursuit of veterans’ issues and that they put the welfare of their members first. They are not afraid to take on ministers—or, indeed, shadow ministers, for that matter—when they reckon that that minister is wrong. However, it is disappointing that the Prime Minister refuses to meet with the national president of the TPI association. There are many in the veteran community who feel that if the national president had been a brigadier, colonel or some other high rank he would have had no problem getting in to see the Prime Minister. But of course the national president of the TPI association was a warrant officer. I would hope that that suggestion is not true but, as I said, it is a disappointment that the national president of the TPI association cannot get a meeting with our Prime Minister.

The other issue that I want to turn to relates to the recent announcement of the ADF medal—an issue which has been going on ever since the announcement of the national service medal some years ago. I want to quote a letter that I have received from a squadron leader—a letter which he has also written to the minister. I do not intend to quote all of it, but I do intend to quote some of it, because it really reflects the high volume of correspondence that is coming across my desk and the desks of other members of parliament and it reflects some of the issues that are generating some bitterness within the current and former serving veteran community. This former squadron leader says:

As an ex veteran who has served in both the Regular Army and the RAAF I am very concerned about the changes recently made to the criteria for the issue of the Australian Defence Medal (ADM) that now allows National Servicemen to also be eligible for this medal without having to have completed a period of Voluntary Service that was applicable at the time.

…            …            …

The ADM was initially proposed in 2004 and was to be for Volunteers only. The original medal sample had printed on it ‘For Volunteer Service’ and the criteria was for Regular Volunteers and service was to be no less than six years.

The criteria for the ADM was changed in 2006 following complaints raised in regards to periods of enlistment that Volunteers could initially sign on for and to cater for personnel discharged on medical grounds, died whilst serving or were discharged due to Government policies at the time (e.g. servicewomen who married whilst still serving in the armed forces).

The things mentioned in the last paragraph were part of the ALP policy right from the word go. We recognise those things because of the very involved consultation that we had with the veteran community. I was very pleased when the government, I think under Minister Brough, adopted those ALP policy positions and put them into their amended policy. However, the policy was amended even further, but I will come to that shortly.

This squadron leader says in his letter to the current minister:

I would appreciate if you can answer the following questions:

a.

The Government claims it consulted with the ex-service community but nowhere can anyone be found who was involved in this consultation. It is the firm belief of the Volunteers that the National Service Association were the only ones ‘widely’ consulted and somehow convinced the Government that the ADM should be awarded to them as well. Why?

I think that is a fair question.

b.

How can the Government vary the qualifying criteria for a medal without consultation with the Defence and ex-service community?

I think that is a fair question.

c.

Why have National Servicemen of all conscription periods even been considered for a volunteer’s medal (unless they had completed an additional period of voluntary service)?

d.

Why isn’t the criteria amended to read its true worth?

Finally:

e.

Why is the Government destroying our Honours and Awards System?

He goes on to say:

I look forward to your comments and an early reply.

I hope that the minister will respond to that letter. I and the ALP welcome any recognition for current and former members of the Australian Defence Force. We are disappointed that, while the government accepted much of our policy in relation to the issues I have already mentioned, they did not adopt our whole policy. Since the most recent criteria for the ADM were announced and since the rush to get medals into the community around Anzac Day, there has been much complaint. Indeed, there has been bitter complaint about the policy and the change that the government made to its amended criteria without any apparent consultation with the broader veteran community.

I do not want to see the veteran community tear itself apart over these criteria. During the Vietnam era, national servicemen and regulars worked together, supported each other and were as one. I say this to the veteran community: we must stay as one. I would encourage anyone eligible for the medal to apply for it and to wear it with pride. I certainly understand the angst particularly surrounding the awarding of the medal to three- and six-month national servicemen of the fifties and sixties, when today the serving infantry have to complete four years to be eligible for that same medal. I might say that that is four years of fairly heavy operational service, if the current tempo continues. You can see the differences in criteria in terms of length of service, and you can understand why there is some bitterness over this decision. But, as I said, the veteran community of national servicemen and regulars served as one; we should stay as one.

The government have made their decision, and it appears to me that we are now stuck with it. I do not see how it could be changed retrospectively perhaps a couple of years down the track. What is still required, however, is distinct recognition of volunteer service within the Australian defence forces. I can assure the veteran community that the ALP will be consulting with them in the near future to ensure that their voice is heard on the issue. It may well be that what we need to do is look at the idea of a clasp which recognises volunteer service and which could be worn on the most recent ADF medal. National servicemen certainly have their commemoration medal. They are recognised. It was a good move. It was a move supported by the opposition of the day. But there is without doubt a need to now end the division within the veteran community and ensure that, quite distinctively, volunteer service is recognised.

I say this in conclusion. Setting aside the issue of the criteria, there are still big problems being experienced by people putting in for the medal. I am in receipt of a letter from the Injured Service Persons Association, which points out a number of anomalies within the process of these medals being applied for and being either awarded or rejected. They have set out a number of examples where the same sorts of people have applied for the medal and one has been rejected and another has been accepted. This sort of stuff just cannot continue. When it came to medals, we used to be able to laugh at the Yanks. But we in Australia can no longer laugh at the Americans, because we have our own problems with our medals and they are problems that need to be sorted out and rectified. The sooner that is done, the better off and more harmonious the veteran community will be.

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to discuss a number of issues on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills. I commence this by saying that the 2006-07 budget has once again been well received by the Australian public, particularly by those in the electorate of Hume—which I represent. Of course, the majority of punters have welcomed the additional tax relief provided for in this budget, which delivers $36.7 billion back into the hands of hardworking Australians. I will read for the House part of the front page story which appeared in one of the Hume electorate’s local newspapers on 12 May 2006:

As a boy, East Bowral resident Simon Unwin remembers Federal Budgets as a time when the adults groaned about increases in taxes on various items.

These days, Budgets can be somewhat more positive, and Mr Unwin likes the look of Federal Budget 2006 in terms of income tax cuts.

Mr Unwin and his wife Jacqui live in East Bowral with their four children—Alyss, 13, Jessica, 11, Chelsea, 8 and Zachary, 4—so are slightly above the Federal Government’s new definition of a “large family”, reduced from four to three children.

Simon works as an engineer earning between $70,000 and $80,000 a year and Mrs Unwin is a stay-at-home mum.

Based on the Federal Government’s Budget, Mr Unwin will have $44 to $52 more in his pocket each week.

While the Unwins won’t be receiving anything extra in terms of family benefits, they’re happy with the extra cash they’ll have from tax cuts and are confident they’ll come out ahead, even with a mortgage and petrol costs.

“We’ve got a little bit more than we did and, even if we’re using it, we still have that little extra to use,” Mrs Unwin said.

“If we hadn’t got anything, it would have been harder.”

That really is the crux of it. Through its strong economic management, the Howard government has been able to give something back yet again to the Australian taxpayer. I take this opportunity to compliment not only the Prime Minister but, more importantly, the Treasurer not only for being able to deliver nine surpluses in the 10-year period of the Howard government but also for the magnificent work that they have done on behalf of taxpayers by paying out the $96 billion debt that the government inherited when it came into government in 1996. That has relieved the taxpayers of this country of the $6 billion in interest that was required to be paid each year on that debt. That $6 billion has now been freed up to be used in a very constructive way for the relief of various items centred around taxes. Of course, we will always have those who say it is never enough, but it is tax relief at a level which is affordable and sustainable. I am pleased we have been able to deliver it and deliver it responsibly.

I am also pleased we have been able to offer a helping hand to a group of people often neglected—our independent retirees. These are people who have worked hard their whole lives and saved so that they could ensure that they would not be a burden on taxpayers in their twilight years. The superannuation changes contained in this budget have been applauded by groups, including the Association of Independent Retirees. President of the Southern Highlands branch in the electorate of Hume, Sheila Ring, described the changes as ‘super’. She would not be alone in doing so. These changes will dramatically simplify superannuation and improve the retirement incomes of the more than 10 million Australians with superannuation accounts.

Another group I know that is very pleased with the 2006 budget is older Australians living on the land. The decision to amend the pension assets test for rural land-holders has been widely welcomed by farmers and rural residents in Hume. Many are eager to see full details of the changes, which come into effect in the new year. I must thank the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs for his interest in this matter—a matter I have been raising with a number of my parliamentary colleagues, including the member for Gilmore, who sits in this place tonight, and with this government now for some two years. How we as a government could have allowed such imbalance to occur between home owners in our cities and those on the land is unfathomable.

It has concerned me for a number of years now that pensioners in rural areas were not treated in the same way as those in built-up areas when it comes to the age pension. For example, a person living in a $600,000 house in Mittagong has always been able to claim the pension because their home is exempt from the assets test. People living on rural acres, however, have only ever been exempted from the value of their home and the surrounding five acres, meaning many people have been forced to subdivide or to sell. This comes at a time in their lives when other stresses, such as their own health or caring responsibilities, are already present. It is an added burden our seniors do not need.

Also to benefit seniors, the government will provide $134.2 million over four years to continue capital assistance to aged care providers in rural and remote areas. The funding will and has facilitated the building, rebuilding, upgrading and extension of residential aged care infrastructure in rural and remote Australia to ensure these facilities conform to building and care standards. I know providers in the Hume electorate are already assessing their eligibility for this new funding.

For older people who do not have access to appropriate aged care, the government will provide $152.7 million over five years to improve care for older patients in public hospitals by enhancing in-patient services and the transition to appropriate long-term care, avoiding readmission to hospital and improving care services when people stay long term in smaller rural hospitals. Again, this is a measure which will have a very real impact on constituents in the Hume electorate.

Another budget announcement which has been highly praised in my electorate—and it is something I have been working to achieve since my days as a state member—is the decision for this government to fund the preliminary stages of the duplication of the Barton Highway between Canberra and Murrumbateman, including the Murrumbateman bypass. I am very pleased about that because I have always maintained that, as far as road funding is concerned, we should concentrate our efforts as governments on the issue at hand—road safety and the reduction of the deaths and mutilation on our roads and, more importantly, the sadness that those deaths and injuries bring to many families.

I had been frustrated, I must admit, since 1988 because I had not been able to convince members of this government, through former transport ministers, of the need for this funding. It was frustrating for me because political games were being played. Those political games have been played not only in relation to the Murrumbateman bypass but also in relation to the Hume Highway, so I was very pleased to see that huge package of $800 million going to the Hume Highway. I can recall that just after the 2001 election I made some critical comment about the need for us to put aside the politics of expediency and concentrate on the needs. It did not matter whether the roads that needed funding in the interests of saving people’s lives were in the electorates of Labor, Liberal, National or Independent members. If the need was there, we should have funded them.

It was frustrating from my point of view—after some 10½ years in the state parliament of New South Wales—to come into the federal parliament and make those comments about the Coolac bypass, the duplication of the Sheahan Bridge on the Hume Highway at Gundagai, the Tarcutta truck stop and the Hume Highway between Tarcutta and the Victorian border, and be told by a then staffer of one of the ministers of transport that I should not be making public comment about that and making policy on the run. I will not say in this House what I told that particular staffer. Members who have concerns about the deaths of people on roads should not be in a position where people can even attempt to gag them for saying what is publicly and painfully obvious.

The allocation of $20 million for the Murrumbateman bypass and the duplication of the Barton Highway will include $2 million next financial year for the completion of planning and design and the progression of property purchases. The construction of this road, which will of course require further significant AusLink funding once planning and land acquisition is complete, will go a long way to improving road safety in the Murrumbateman area and streamline access to Canberra for the many hundreds who commute to the city from Yass and the surrounding region each day. When this funding was announced, comments by the Yass shire’s mayor, Nic Carmody, on the front page of the Yass newspaper summed up people’s reaction to the news: ‘Finally, the Murrumbateman bypass is reborn.’

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, Jim Lloyd, for his assistance in resurrecting the Murrumbateman bypass and Barton Highway issue and also the Prime Minister’s office, who have been willing to accept my repeated representations on this matter. I only hope we can now progress this project as quickly and with as little hindrance as possible through the community consultation and planning stages. Road safety is far too important for this project to be delayed any longer.

And, of course, I welcome the allocation of funding in this budget to provide a fairer child support system that is more transparent for both parents, places a greater emphasis on shared parental responsibility and is focused on the needs and costs of children. As members would know, I have been lobbying long and hard for these changes to child support, which will receive $877 million over five years. Most pleasing of all—perhaps even over and above the much awaited changes to the child support formula—is the fact that the package includes $146.6 million over five years to improve service standards and undertake significant cultural change at the Child Support Agency. I live in hope. At the end of the day, ironing out the anti-male bias which exists at the CSA will be one of the most fundamental changes undertaken. I do not make any apologies for saying that, because my records show that what I have just said is a matter of fact. I know families all over Australia are celebrating this package and looking forward to its full implementation.

In other areas this budget has also provided a real boost for the constituents of Hume. The announcement of 400 additional medical school places, putting more doctors into rural areas, is a budget measure vital to the long-term future of rural communities. This initiative is just part of new funding of $268.8 million over four years for an extra 2,020 new Australian government supported places in health disciplines, including nursing, clinical psychology and mental health nursing. It is a fact that we have a rapidly ageing medical workforce in regional areas, and it has concerned me for some time how we, as a government, could address that problem. This budget provides more than $60 million in extra funding over four years for an additional 400 places for first year medical students in Australian universities, many of whom will be bonded to rural areas. In communities such as Young in the Hume electorate, which suffers a critical shortage of skilled medical professionals, particularly GPs, this news has been warmly welcomed.

Still on education: I was reading the other day in a local newspaper the answers of three young people to the question: ‘How can more young people be encouraged to take up apprenticeships?’ Their answers were: ‘Make more apprenticeships available,’ ‘Up the pay a bit,’ and ‘The jobs need to be something where people can go in and actually do something, rather than just sit back and watch.’ I am very pleased that the Howard government is doing just that. We now have record numbers of young people in new apprenticeships, with almost 400,000 Australians in training, compared with 143,700 in December 1995. The New Apprenticeships Incentives Program provides a range of incentives to encourage employers to take on and retain new apprentices, as well as personal assistance incentives for new apprentices. Now we will provide $10.6 million over four years to extend the New Apprenticeships Incentives Program to new apprentices—and their employers—who are undertaking training in diploma or advanced diploma qualifications which are an entry level requirement for an occupation.

Employers of new apprentices in select diploma and advanced diploma apprenticeships will be eligible for a payment of $4,000 per new apprentice from 1 July 2006. Over the next four years up to 10,600 more employers of new apprentices will be eligible for the incentives for these higher level qualifications. We are also improving the situation for apprentices with funding of $53.5 million for national reforms in vocational and technical education to address the barriers to people taking up training opportunities, and to assist them to move into employment. It will also support a national approach to apprenticeships and alleviate skills gaps in the economy.

I am also pleased to see an additional $77.2 million allocated to the Regional Partnerships program in 2006-07. Regional Partnerships has already helped many hundreds of communities Australia-wide to strengthen growth and opportunities, to improve access to services, to create employment and to adjust during times of major change. This is particularly so in the regional areas, in the very severely drought affected rural areas of New South Wales and, in particular, the Hume electorate, where I am the representative.

It is heartbreaking to see the effect that this prolonged drought, the worst drought seen in a hundred years, has had on families and communities. I can say to you that the Regional Partnerships grants that have been allocated to communities to help them stimulate employment and attract visitors to their area combined with the water grants that have been made out there to allow people to sink bores and assist the community to continue offering sporting facilities in many of those areas have been welcomed with open arms by all of the rural communities that I represent. I know that those communities in the Hume electorate who have already received the funding are thankful for the leg-up it has provided. I look forward to working with communities in Hume and with their area consultative committees to put forward more projects eligible for support under the expanded program.

In closing, I want to say that in my lifetime this has probably been the most significant and the most beneficial budget that I have seen from any Treasurer, be it at state or federal level. It is very pleasing from my point of view to know that, because of the significant responsible management of the Howard government and the Treasurer, Peter Costello, we can look forward to more surpluses in the next two or three years and beyond. I think that the Australian public will understand that those surpluses have been as a result of the hard decisions that have been made by this Howard government and they will respond in the most appropriate way at the next election. I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to make these comments in this debate tonight.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take this opportunity on the appropriations bills to raise a number of issues. All of them are of interest to my electorate but one of particular interest is access to telecommunications, especially broadband access. I would like to spend quite a bit of time on that because it is an issue that is increasingly becoming a problem, despite my holding an inner-city seat in Melbourne. You might be surprised to know that, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, since you come from a regional area, but it is a very real issue for my electorate too. We often talk about the problems with broadband access and telecommunications and the digital divide being an issue just for regional Australia but, as you will see when I make my comments, this is actually a very real issue even for people that are only a few kilometres from the CBD. I would also like to touch on two issues of particular interest to my portfolio area, as the shadow Attorney-General, that relate to community legal centres and family relationships centres, and I will do that later.

I was very disappointed that in this budget there was no money at all dealing with expanding access to broadband internet across the country. There is no new money in this year’s budget for broadband technology that would link Australia to the rest of the world at the click of a button, no new money for broadband infrastructure that would place Australia at the cutting edge of developing information and telecommunications technologies and no new money for broadband infrastructure that would open up educational opportunities for our children. These things are of great concern to me, particularly the restrictions we might be placing on our children. Increasingly, the need for information and the internet as a research tool is becoming part of everyday schooling, but it is not yet part of everyday home access and facilities. It did not surprise me that there is not anything in the budget for this sort of change, because the tired old Howard government does not seem to be that interested in fresh ideas for Australia’s future. The government has failed to recognise the potential applications and uses for broadband technology and has left Australia lagging behind while our international competitors pass us by. Given the well-established significant social and educational benefits of home computer use and internet access, the neglect of broadband infrastructure is holding us back.

Recent overseas studies have shown that the presence of computers and internet use at home are strongly and positively associated with the academic outcomes of schoolchildren, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds. I think the Telstra ad that we see on television at the moment puts it quite well. A father is talking to his child. When the child asks about the Great Wall of China and why it was built, the father, a little bit flummoxed, says that he thinks it was built by ‘Emperor Nasi Goreng’ to keep the rabbits out. I think all of us can relate to that. The fear we have that, without the benefits of access to new and emerging telecommunications, we do not have the answers to questions that seem to be at everybody else’s fingertips is very real. We need to make sure that that father or anyone else in the community who is trying to help their child learn how to find out information, how to do research and how to get answers to questions will actually to be able to do so through the use of this modern technology that puts such a vast range of information at our fingertips.

Unfortunately, my electorate remains one of the most disadvantaged in metropolitan Melbourne in its telecommunications services. We know that access to information technology is critical in this day and age, and the lack of telecommunications infrastructure throughout Australia just serves to compound this disadvantage. We could be using broadband for interactive tutoring or internet training programs to close the digital divide. Instead, the government’s neglect has widened that divide. Business could be using broadband to process payments, maintain complex intranets, place or make orders overseas and save the hours wasted waiting for documents to download.

Broadband has amazing implications for the way Australia does business and engages with the rest of the world. Our geographic isolation means nothing when we can hold five meetings all over the world in one day via videoconferencing or download the latest DVD from America. Broadband holds great potential. It has already given us voice over internet protocol, which, if you can get effective broadband, makes STD calls obsolete. These kinds of innovative technologies could be developed in an Australian market if we had the infrastructure to support them. But, because of the Howard government’s self-serving preoccupation with selling Telstra, we do not.

The speed and price of broadband in Australia just does not stack up to what is available in comparable countries in the rest of the world. In Canada, the entry-level retail broadband plan is cheaper and offers six times the speed and 30 times the free monthly download capacity of an equivalent product in Australia. Clearly, the roll-out of broadband technology in this country is patchy at best, and that is not just in the bush. Without real government leadership on this issue, Australia will continue to be left behind countries like Canada or Korea, which has almost double the number of broadband subscribers per 100 people that Australia does.

In my inner-city electorate of Gellibrand, we have significant black spots in our broadband internet services. In suburbs that are less than 20 kilometres from the CBD, a number of houses and businesses cannot get broadband internet access at all. Altona, which is only 16 kilometres from the CBD, is clearly not rural, regional or the bush. It is part of the inner city of Melbourne. But the National Party tells us that the problems with the telecommunications services only happen in the bush. As a result, Gellibrand will not get a look in for the coalition’s $2 billion slush fund from the sale of Telstra. Particularly worrying to me is the fact that a number of small businesses, particularly in the industrialised parts of the Altona and Altona Meadows regions, cannot get access to broadband for their businesses. Numerous studies have shown us that the productivity gains to business of broadband internet are significant. How many wasted hours are spent in waiting for the new webpage to upload with a dial-up connection or in posting off invoices that could be sent by email in a second? It is businesses in my electorate that are suffering because of the lack of these services.

People in my electorate have been offered expensive wireless services or satellite broadband as an alternative to cable or ADSL, but the cost is prohibitive, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the service is patchy. The maximum speed for wireless internet is still only two megabytes per second, not enough to download any of the new video features that will be so important as this technology moves forward. While the take-up of broadband in Australia has increased over recent years, I am also concerned that, due to a lack of infrastructure, those in my electorate who are willing and able to take up this technology cannot and may even be disadvantaged by the low home internet use in the area, just as rural and regional communities are disadvantaged by the lack of infrastructure.

There is one family in my electorate with one child in primary school, another in secondary and the parents are running a business from home. They could be doing all of this much more efficiently if they could get access to broadband. Both their business and their children’s education suffer because of the second-rate broadband infrastructure in the area. This is of great concern to me because we still have significant pockets of educational disadvantage. We still have relatively high rates of youth unemployment and, although we are an industrialised region, we still have a shortage of jobs. This technology could be not only skilling our children for future jobs but making some of the businesses even more successful and able to employ more people. We are holding them back because of this lack of vital infrastructure.

The technologies that broadband make possible like voice over internet protocol that I mentioned before would also be invaluable to constituents in my electorate, many of whom come from non-English-speaking backgrounds and often have brothers, sisters, parents, husbands, wives and children overseas. The prospect of being able to speak to their loved ones over the internet whenever they want is surely an exciting one for them but it is not much use if access cannot be obtained. All these possibilities are being held back by the government, who had a lack of vision in this budget for our future in this regard. They have had 10 long years to bring this country up to speed, but in telecommunications they have failed.

Labor’s broadband plan for a joint venture to deliver a national broadband network will deliver internet speeds at least 25 times faster than the current industry benchmark and provide essential infrastructure to the business community. Superfast broadband is estimated by the government’s own broadband advisory group as having the potential to add $12 billion to $30 billion to national production every year. Not only will Labor’s plan provide the telecommunications services we need now; it will also lay the future foundations to adapt technologies as they develop by providing the necessary infrastructure. It will provide equal access to broadband internet in the city and in the regions and banish broadband black spots like those in my electorate.

It is a national investment that will set up the next wave of economic growth needed to secure the future of our children. The piecemeal and patchy services currently available do not meet Australia’s infrastructure needs for the 21st century and the needs of hundreds of people in my electorate. People in my electorate deserve access not only for their children to this sort of technology for their studies and future employment prospects but also for the businesses that they are trying to run today without these services.

Secondly, I want to turn to an issue that is of concern to me in my portfolio area—that is, community legal centres. Sadly, the budget does not contain any new funding at all for community legal centres. When I say it does not contain any new funding, it does not even have a CPI adjustment for the small amount of money that is allocated to community legal centres. They do an enormous amount of good work. They provide services to the community, ordinary families and ordinary working people, who may have problems with their neighbours, problems with the law, a dispute with Centrelink or a family dispute. All of those are reasons why people may need legal services but cannot afford them.

Community legal centres provide a free service, and often advice given early prevents people going to court in the future. These services provide enormous value to the community. They are under extraordinary pressure, and the government has not even indexed their meagre budget. On top of this, we have seen a huge legislative program from this government that is going to increase the amount of work that these community centres will need do to. Unfortunately, we believe this program is going to disadvantage millions of Australians by attacking their rights at work, introducing new rules in both family law and the welfare system and forcing more people to seek advice and remedies through the legal system. It is a shame that the budget could not see its way to indexing current community legal centre funding to cover the costs of inflation. This appalling neglect of CLC funding has led to a number of CLCs suggesting that they will have to reduce service hours to be able to cope with existing, let alone increased, demand.

The Howard government’s extreme industrial relations changes will increase the volume of people seeking legal advice on their employment contracts by encouraging individual contracts and reducing the role of the Industrial Relations Commission and trade unions in resolving disputes between employees and employers. Of course, this will have the result of workers having fewer places to turn to find advocates or even just information about their rights. Community legal centres will become one of the few resources left for working people to seek that advice free of charge.

By removing protection against unfair dismissals, the new laws will increase the number of people seeking a remedy for unlawful dismissals through the courts, which inevitably again means more work for CLCs. Put on top of that the Welfare to Work legislation, with its stringent and onerous reporting requirements for single parents and disability pensioners, and we are going to see an increase in the number of people seeking assistance to appeal decisions on their Centrelink payments or to have payments reinstated. Social security disputes already make up a large proportion of the workload of community legal centres, and this will only increase as Centrelink customers come to terms with the new laws.

Then there are the complex changes to family law which were passed earlier this year, not to mention changes to the child support system, which are also close upon us. These changes affect some of the key principles in determining residency and parenting arrangements and they also create new penalties for those who breach court orders. There is no doubt that these changes will increase the number of families that are seeking advice about how the changes might affect their arrangement. In fact, given that the government is planning a national advertising campaign about these changes, we should expect a flood of people walking into CLCs for advice and information. Even though—a matter that I will come to in a moment—the government is setting up new family relationship centres, those centres are expressly asked not to provide legal advice. There will, whatever happens, still be some people who will need legal advice, and the CLCs will be the places that people will turn to.

While the government is increasing all these pressures on families, single parents and anybody who is in the workforce, it seems to be intent on reducing access to free legal advice and assistance by systematically undermining the community legal centres. So it is very unfortunate, despite other things having been allocated money in this budget, that nothing has found its way to the community legal centres. They have been long suffering under the Howard government, and we have seen time and time again that the government has preferred to spend public money on private legal services and advice for itself, to the tune of more than $170 million each year, while the entire community legal centre program, which provides legal services free of charge to the broader Australian public, gets only $24 million each year. Surely we can allocate our money better than that.

On top of the pressures on the existing services, we have not got any new services in a number of areas that desperately need them. All of the indicators show that the electorates of Bendigo, Hindmarsh, Richmond, Cowper, Paterson, Greenway, Hinkler and Dobell are in great need of community legal centres. I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, having a community legal centre in your electorate, would be very well aware of the good work that they do and the struggle that they have in trying to provide outreach services to those neighbouring electorates that do not have them. But again we see nothing in the budget that acknowledges (1) that the existing service is under pressure, or (2) that there are actually new growth areas that are not serviced and that need services and that the government will have to put some money into doing so.

I think it is also particularly important to note that some of the specialised services, like the Women’s Legal Service and the Aboriginal legal services, are not being adequately funded. In the current debate in which we have been dealing with questions of abuse and domestic violence in Aboriginal communities, we cannot simply talk about increased policing; we also need to talk about what other things might assist in increasing conviction rates and we need to look at how we provide support to victims, how we provide advice to victims and how we increase community education and awareness. All of these things are done regularly by community legal services and we should look at whether providing some further assistance to these services could also be part of our solution to what is a very serious problem.

We do need to support people in the Aboriginal communities that are prepared to speak out and want access to justice, and we should make sure that we provide them with support. So far, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has been ignoring the federal responsibilities that exist for providing some of this support and has been focusing just on territory and state responsibilities. But this neglected program is one that does help Australians of all colours and backgrounds to get access to justice when they cannot afford expensive lawyers fees, and we need to seriously revisit it.

In the short time remaining to me I want to also talk briefly about family relationship centres, because this is one of the programs that the government has allocated money to in the budget. We are pleased about and have supported the existence of these centres and we know that there is some extra money in the budget that has been allocated on top of the money in last year’s budget, because the roll-out is happening slowly. But that extra money has been allocated because new work is going to be given to the family relationship centres in addition to what was originally intended—that is, a big chunk of advice on child support matters, which is going to dramatically increase the work and expectations for these family relationship centres.

I am concerned that, despite the money being allocated and us broadly being supportive of the program, there are already signs that it is being mismanaged and that it has been plagued by political interference and bungling from the beginning. We recently obtained departmental advice that was given to the Attorney-General from FaCSIA on the areas most in need of these family relationship centres. To my surprise, the list that the Attorney announced significantly differs from the FRC locations that were recommended to the minister. The electorates of the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Assistant Treasurer, the Minister for Workforce Participation and even the Prime Minister were favoured when the government ignored departmental data to make sure that the centres were distributed on political grounds, not on the basis of need.

Two centres were ranked highly for Melbourne’s west—one in my electorate and one in the member for Lalor’s electorate, in Melton. We received only one, to be located in a neighbouring electorate. But, although only one centre was ranked as suitable in northern Sydney, they have magically received two, one in the Prime Minister’s electorate and one in the health minister’s electorate. It is of great surprise to me that the western suburbs of Melbourne were recommended to have two, they got one and we find that one of them has moved to the northern suburbs of Sydney, where all the indicators of need from FaCSIA—such as child support customers, single parent families and parenting payment recipients—rank very low.

I am concerned that although the Attorney says that there is no political bias, we are not able to see how these centres are being allocated on the basis of need. Even some of the electorates which do not have community legal centres, such as Bendigo, Richmond and Patterson, will not get family relationship centres. The neighbouring services will be under extraordinary pressure. We do not see sufficient money being allocated and we do not see the Attorney taking these issues seriously. (Time expired)

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The issue that I wish to address in this speech is energy, or, more specifically, what steps we need to take to secure our energy future. As I stated when I opened the debate on nuclear energy in a speech in March 2005, the issue of our energy future is critical. Unfortunately, the opposition has chosen to take a path of simply opposing nuclear energy without evaluating the option to see whether its view actually has merit. To illustrate just how stupid the Labor position on this is, consider the following scenario: let us, for argument’s sake, consider that nuclear power is 100 per cent safe, that it costs absolutely nothing and that there is no waste whatsoever. Would Labor, in that instance, continue to reject nuclear energy? If it did then it would be clear to all that the Labor position was sheer Ludditism, that it was simple ideology gone mad.

If Labor did accept nuclear energy in the scenario outlined then the case for nuclear energy would have to be determined with regard to thresholds—in other words: what level of risk is acceptable? After all, everything in life has risk. What economic costs would be deemed acceptable?

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

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

Is the member for Tangney willing to accept the question?

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I will continue with the speech.

With waste, how much, how long a life and what level of radioactivity would be acceptable? These are all questions that are worth asking, and they are questions that Labor rejects outright in its simple-minded world view that the ‘N-word’ is bad and never to be discussed in polite company. The fact is that the inquiry that the Prime Minister has called for will allow an evaluation of those issues and others.

Labor does not want to know the truth, which I guess is why it so strongly pushes social engineering in the guise of outcomes based education. Curriculum councils appear to think that science is something that should be taught in a social context, rather like one would analyse history. Labor clearly thinks that ‘right think’ is the way to go with this, and to hell with the facts. Imagine if we were considering the internal combustion engine 100 years ago. No doubt Labor’s position would be that we could drill three oil wells and export oil but none of those terrible, newfangled cars for us: ‘The horse and buggy will do us, thank you. They can use cars and oil overseas, but we cannot use it here.’ To take the analogy further: penny-farthing bicycles would be analogous to alternative energy. Labor would say, ‘Penny-farthings and horse and buggy would be acceptable, but no cars for us, thank you.’

Let us consider the three aspects that are relevant to this important energy source: safety, economics and waste. Regarding safety, as I mentioned in my speech last year, nuclear power is demonstrably the safest form of power generation. At present, only about 56 deaths can be attributed to Chernobyl. This is not the result of some study by some group with a vested interest. This is the result of a comprehensive study conducted under the auspices of the World Health Organisation. Consider the thousands of annual coalmining deaths and the probable millions who have died as a result of respiratory ailments due to coal-fired power. Consider the fatalities resulting from gas or hydroelectricity production, and it becomes clear that nuclear energy is very safe, even when you look at the history and take into account a substandard Soviet RBMK reactor.

However, for Australia, I believe that we should be using generation IV reactors, which are inherently safe. These reactors cannot melt down—due to the physics of the design of the reactor, not due to fail-safes appended to provide safety. As I said, with this generation of reactor, meltdown of the reactor core is impossible. This is not just theory; this was actually trialled with a pebble bed nuclear reactor. The coolant flow was stopped for a period of days, and all that happened was that the reactor temperature increased to about 1,200 to 1,400 degrees and stabilised there until the coolant flowed again. The reason that this is possible is that the energy density or energy per unit volume in these reactors is low, so they can never go supercritical.

There are added benefits of generation IV reactors. They do not require much water, so it is not necessary to site them near large sources of water. Effectively, they could be put anywhere in Australia. In reality, they would need to be close enough to their markets that transmission losses are not overly large. Most generation IV reactors also do not require enriched uranium, so the reserves of uranium would last about 50 times as long as it is assumed they will last for conventional reactors. It is significant that generation IV reactors, which will be modular in design, will allow small reactors to power smaller population centres and will allow multiple modules to be joined together at the site of larger power demand. So, while the antinuclear warriors believe that there would be only 20 years worth of high-grade uranium left if all the world’s electricity were generated using nuclear power, the reality is that current reserves, with generation IV technology, would last around 1,000 years, assuming no new reserves were found—clearly a ridiculous assumption. Nuclear power using generation IV reactors is extremely safe, and Labor should embrace the technology.

The economic side is put by some as a criticism. In fact, when you look at what is being considered, the economic argument is not a strong one. What this parliament needs to consider is whether to legislate to allow nuclear power generation. Economics should be left to the utilities which choose whether to use it or not. Interestingly, the fact that many in the antinuclear movement push this line so strongly indicates that they are concerned that the economics of nuclear energy do stack up.

Consider why this is so. Let us assume for a moment that their argument is correct—that the economics do not stack up; that nuclear electricity is too expensive. Why are they so concerned about legislation that would allow nuclear power generation? After all, using this scenario, no utility would build a nuclear power station. So whether enabling legislation was in place allowing nuclear power generation would be moot. Having said that, studies that I have seen, including an independent study recently commissioned by ANSTO, indicate that the economics do stack up—even for the current generation of reactors. Economies of scale with generation IV reactors will bring the price right down.

Then there is the issue of nuclear waste. This is a subject that is extremely sensitive to many people. There has been considerable misinformation put out on this issue. There has been a lot of talk of needing to have the waste stored under armed guard for a period of 250,000 years. This is unmitigated rubbish. This comes about due to negative elements stating that plutonium 239 has a half-life of 25,000 years and that you need 10 half-lives to be safe. This can be seen for the errant nonsense that it is by considering the following. Assume you have one atom of plutonium 239 in 10 tonnes of concrete. Does this 10-tonne block of concrete need to be stored for 250,000 years? Of course not.

The simple fact is that it is the radioactivity level of the entire high-grade waste element that needs to be considered. In that case, the radioactivity declines to a point where, in a little over 1,000 years, the radioactivity level of the fuel rods is about the same as the ore from whence it came. Alternatively, you could simply dilute the fuel rods by a factor of 1,000-10,000 to one and put it in the hole that it was dug from. This is largely the same ‘method’ that is used by coal-fired power stations with the multiple tonnes of uranium, thorium, cadmium, arsenic and lead that are put into the environment every year. With this 10 half-lives argument, consider naturally-occurring uranium. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. We had better put all the sites of uranium ore under guard for 45 billion years! This is clearly nonsense.

We have an ideal material in Australia to store radioactive waste: synroc. Synroc was developed as a result of the discovery of a natural nuclear reactor in West Africa in 1972. The way the uranium was distributed in the rock and the fact that there was water flowing, moderating neutrons, meant that a chain reaction occurred about 1.7 billion years ago. The interesting thing is that the high-grade waste was naturally stably stored in this rock for that time period. The late Professor Ted Ringwood of the ANU examined the rock structure and came up with a synthetic equivalent—‘synroc’, for synthetic rock—which will store high-grade radioactive waste for geological time periods. Not only that but also, if immersed in water, the leaching of radioactive material is one-tenth that of granite. Safe storage of nuclear waste is not a technical problem; the problem is one of political will.

As I said earlier, generation IV reactors in the majority of cases have the ability to use unenriched uranium. The waste from these reactors has far less volume than that from conventional reactors and the waste is short lived. It is safe to handle in 200 to 300 years. Furthermore, the depleted fuel rods from conventional reactors can be used as fuel for these generation IV reactors, meaning that these reactors can clean up the majority of the waste that is currently stored at various sites around the world.

In addition, generation IV reactors will provide a very useful stepping stone to thorium reactors, which will have very short-lived waste. The thorium cycle is proliferation proof; thorium is a lighter element than uranium. Australia, in addition to having the largest uranium reserves in the world, also has the largest thorium reserves in the world, and there is about double the amount of thorium compared to uranium.

Labor have been playing a scare tactic on the siting of nuclear reactors based on the left-wing Australia Institute study of proposed nuclear power plant sites. They believe that this will get them traction. I am going to completely disabuse them of that notion. On Thursday last week I was quoted in the West Australian as saying that I supported a nuclear power station in Tangney. This was repeated later in the West Australian on two occasions and in the Australian. The quote was taken out of context, but I did not worry about correcting it as I felt it might be interesting to see how the community really felt about nuclear energy.

Tangney is a small electorate and there is simply no space anywhere for a nuclear reactor. Given this, if Labor were correct with their fear tactic on this argument, you would think that my office would have been flooded with negative phone calls and emails and that my staff would have been totally snowed under by a mountain of comment. So how many negative communications did I get? I got two negative phone calls, one negative email and one protester outside my electorate office wearing an antiradiation suit. I would like to thank that protester for helping to raise the profile of both my electorate office and me. I telephoned the two people who had called the office and discussed the issue with them, and they are now both comfortable with the idea, having heard the facts on the issue.

Far from Labor’s scare tactic working and despite the Leader of the Opposition having the ludicrous idea that this is an idea that is going to wedge the government, the reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. I call on the Leader of the Opposition to be a statesman and to consider our energy future with an open mind and not, as in the title of a recent movie, with eyes wide shut. If the Leader of the Opposition is unable to show leadership on this issue, then I call on Labor members who have shown leadership on the issue, such as the members for Batman and Hunter, among many others I have spoken to, to lead the way on the issue. This issue is far too important to attempt blatant politicking in the guise of defining responsible policy.

Let us look at the Labor Party’s position on the issue. It is clear that what we have is a cobbled together excuse for a policy in order to attempt to placate both sides of the party. I am tempted to say that the Leader of the Opposition is once again trying to walk both sides of the street, but I will refrain from doing so. On the cobbled together attempt at a conciliated position, we have a sop to the member for Batman on uranium enrichment to enable him to win with his union while, at the same time, trying to placate the member for Grayndler by insisting that we would have no nuclear reactors.

It has been said before, but it is worth repeating, that when the Leader of the Opposition said there will be no nuclear power in Australia under a Beazley government what he really said is that there will be no Beazley government. He has drawn a line in the sand and he is on the wrong side. My advice for the Leader of the Opposition is this: you do not lead from the rear. Be a statesman—the statesman you so desperately want to be. Lead from the front and have a careful examination of all the facts. Do not put politics before probity. Scaremongering on nuclear energy will not deliver you government; the public are better informed than most of your colleagues.

Debate (on motion by Mrs Gash) adjourned.