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

Before the debate is resumed on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2006-2007, I advise the Main Committee that in the House it has been agreed that a general debate be allowed covering this bill and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2006-2007.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am in continuation, having commenced this debate in the main chamber. I inform this House that there are a series of things I would like to refer to with respect to this particular matter. They all just happen to start with ‘i’. Firstly, I want to start with a local matter, and that is the intersections along the Calder Highway in the electorate of Gorton. There are three intersections requiring construction. I want to talk to the people of Australia via this House about that particular matter.

Secondly, I want to refer to interest rates—the fact that there have been a series of increases to interest rates since the Prime Minister’s commitment to maintain low interest rates and certainly since the election. I think that has a bearing upon not only the difficulty for average householders to maintain their quality of life but also the increasing difficulty for average families to purchase an average home.

Thirdly, I would like to refer to Iraq. I think there is no doubt that there is a growing consensus in the community that the situation in Iraq is a debacle. It has been badly handled from the beginning. It was strategically incorrect to send our troops to invade that country. It was not in any way strategic insofar as targeting terrorists, targeting those who murdered people in New York and in other places—indeed, in Bali and in Spain. It certainly has not assisted the war against terrorism, and I would like to refer to that particular matter.

Finally, I want to refer to industrial relations. I think it is fair to say that, since its election in 2004, the government has shown itself to be arrogant and out of touch with ordinary working families. The introduction of Work Choices legislation has done nothing other than strike fear into the hearts of workers, knowing now, as they do, that their security of employment is very much diminished in most circumstances. The capacity to lose their entitlements such as penalty rates and other conditions of employment is certainly more likely now than prior to the introduction of that legislation.

I will now return to the need for three intersections to be constructed along the Calder Highway in the electorate of Gorton. There is no doubt that there is a major safety issue associated with the failure of the federal government to contribute to moneys required to construct the Calder Park Drive intersection, the Kings Road intersection and the Sunshine Avenue intersection along the Calder Highway. Most people are aware locally, as indeed are those who work on roads, that this is a Melbourne growth corridor. It is one of the fastest growing regions of Australia. There has been a significant increase in the traffic along the Calder as a result of population growth, not only in the suburbs I represent but also in the outlying communities of Sunbury, Gisborne, New Gisborne, Macedon, Woodend and even further towards Bendigo. For people travelling from Melbourne to those suburbs and towns, the Calder in this area is increasingly dangerous, with three ground-level intersections onto a freeway. As a result of the failure of the federal government to construct interchanges, there have been fatalities and injuries and they continue to occur. It is about time the government commits itself to construction.

I have asked the state Labor government to do the same. While it is a federal road, I have been given an undertaking from the state government to provide half the amount required to construct three interchanges. As far as Kings Road is concerned, they also would be willing to ensure the completion of that road to connect with the Calder, which would be their undertaking. It is about time that matter was resolved. I have had public meetings on this matter and people have come out in droves to support the need for the construction of these interchanges. There is no doubt in my mind that, upon completion, not only will they ensure less congestion along what is a freeway, after all, but also they will diminish the likelihood of injury or fatality along the road, particularly at those intersections. I call upon the minister for roads to match the Bracks Labor government’s commitments to provide 50 per cent of construction costs in order for those roads to be complete as soon as practicable.

I turn to interest rates. As I said, there have been seven interest rates rises—four since the election. This is against the backdrop of the Prime Minister during the last election campaign in September 2004 promising that his government would maintain ‘record low interest rates’. As we have seen and as was the case with the GST being a ‘never, ever’ consideration, we now see, with the undertaking given by the Prime Minister on interest rates, that those commitments were false and empty. Many people across Australia, certainly in the electorate of Gorton, are suffering economically and socially as a result of the failure of the government to meet its commitment to that target. What has happened, as you well know, Mr Deputy Speaker, is that these incremental increases have led to an extra burden upon ordinary Australian families’ household budgets.

In my electorate in the areas of Caroline Springs, Cairnlea, Taylors Hill and Hillside, and in other growing communities, many highly-geared families have invested in their family’s future by purchasing a home, but now find themselves very close to forfeiting that family home because they cannot sustain the increase in interest rates resulting from the Prime Minister’s failure to fulfil his promise of September 2004.

There is also another associated problem, and that is the affordability—or the unaffordability—of purchasing a home. The Housing Industry Association and the Commonwealth Bank reported only this week that housing is now more unaffordable than at any other time in the 23 years that they have been measuring it. For the first time, the average Australian household can no longer afford to buy the average Australian home. In the December quarter, the cost of the median first home was $376,000, which requires a gross household income of $93,000 to cover the mortgage of $2,332 a month—roughly $28,000 a year. This is against the average household income of $91,300.

The Reserve Bank’s three interest rate rises last year have increased debts, with an alarming rise in mortgage default rates. The figures from the Supreme Court of Victoria show that 2,791 property repossession claims were lodged last year—most of them against private home buyers—compared with 2,578 in 2005.

My electorate, as I indicated, has not been spared. One of the hot spots for extremely high mortgage repossessions and mortgagee sales has been the expanding housing estate of Carolyn Springs and Hillside. The Reserve Bank’s quarterly economic review says that the low vacancy rate in rental property is directly related to the housing boom. Official figures released yesterday showed that, last year, there was a massive 6.9 per cent jump in rents in Sydney. Rents rose at their fastest rate in 15 years last year and the Reserve Bank says that they appear set to rise a lot more quickly in the year ahead. I think it is very important to note, therefore, the government’s policy and how it has affected this particular concern in the rental market.

No-one in this place would want to see no improvement in the superannuation area, but there is no doubt that the immediate impact upon changing the superannuation laws has been that investors have very rapidly taken their money from the housing market and put it into superannuation. This, of course, has led to a reduction in investment in housing, which has in turn led to a reduction in the construction of housing and, therefore, a lack of availability of rental houses.

Rents are still low compared to the cost of buying a home. Unsurprisingly, there has been a surge in the proportion of householders wanting to rent as rising prices become unaffordable. Investors therefore are less keen to buy investment properties to rent out, particularly as there now appear to be only limited opportunities for making a capital gain when a property is sold. Across all Australian cities, vacancy rates have fallen to their lowest level in more than 20 years. The consequences are obvious: limited stocks in a time of rising demand push up rents, which further increases the stress on those families least able to cope financially.

Deborah Pippen from the ACT Tenants Union said:

The Bank is talking as if housing rents are just another financial instrument. But people live in homes. You are not looking at something that people can choose whether or not to purchase. If the Reserve Bank won’t address housing affordability and why it matters as a social issue, other arms of government will have to.

The chairman of the real estate company Raine and Horne, Max Raine, said that he believed that the worst was yet to come for rents. He said that, near the centre of Sydney, tenants were facing rent hikes of up to $150 per week. Vacancy rates of 2.5 per cent traditionally indicate full occupancy as there is always a degree of movement of tenants between properties. But with the vacancy rates currently at 1.5 per cent there is clearly a pool of people who simply cannot get accommodation.

While the Treasurer welcomed the Reserve Bank’s prediction that Australia’s underlying rate of inflation would fall, he was silent on the subject of rent rises. Governments of all stripes must also imagine what it means to be a householder. While average incomes slip out of sight of monthly housing loan repayments, governments will have to look beyond the traditional Australian prejudice that renting is just a brief pause on the path to homeownership.

For a generation of Australians, this pause is turning out to be a permanent settlement. Renters now comprise 28 per cent of all households, compared with 35 per cent who have mortgages. If we continue on this path of inaction, those figures will simply exchange places. The Western Australian government is showing the way, with a creative response to the tensions arising out of Western Australia’s own housing boom. Creative responses are needed if both federal and state governments are to offer younger and lower income Australians a way into the Australian dream of property ownership. Low or nonexistent wage growth in real terms and a booming housing market are a cruel combination. Prices rise, creating artificial wealth for those who have a stake in it, while wages fall or remain the same in real terms, cruelly opening the gap even further and preventing a generation of Australians from owning the kind of asset that might guarantee their financial future.

Now that this generation has the impact of Work Choices to contend with as well, things can only get worse. Not only are their wages static in real terms or falling, as proven this week by Professor Peets’ research, but also their jobs are insecure or becoming increasingly casualised, making it more difficult to plan any sort of long-term financial future. People come into my office and say how difficult it is to convince a bank to provide them with a loan as they cannot guarantee that their work is anything other than casual. This precarious form of employment is making it more difficult for people to plan for the future as they cannot secure commitments from lenders to purchase and pay off a house. A number of factors are making it increasingly difficult for people to purchase homes. It is about time the government sought to restore the balance in this area.

I refer to the Prime Minister’s intrusion, if you like, into the primaries in the United States. I think it was entirely unconscionable for the Prime Minister of this country to enter into the domestic politics of the largest Western nation, our biggest ally, by attacking one of the candidates in the Democrat primaries and the Democrats as a whole. As the Leader of the Opposition indicated, a political party that has had as its leaders Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and John F Kennedy should never be assailed in that manner. The Prime Minister was reckless in his language in attacking the fortunes of the Democrats in the forthcoming US election, in late 2008. It could lead to adverse relations between the two countries.

As we have seen, not only have Democrats responded quickly and harshly to the comments made by the Prime Minister but so have Republicans. A Texan Republican senator has invited the Prime Minister to stay out of American domestic politics. This is a dangerous course the Prime Minister has chosen to take. It is an illustration of the pressure he is under as more and more Australians realise that the invasion of Iraq was wrong. It was strategically wrong. It was morally wrong. It did not in any way assist the war on terror. Labor indicated our opposition to that from the beginning. We now ask the Prime Minister to outline in detail his way of getting Australian troops out of Iraq. The only thing the Prime Minister will say on this matter is, ‘We won’t be out until the job is done,’ and he will not define the job. It is about time the Prime Minister fronted up to his responsibilities and gave the Australian people a clear indication as to when Australian troops will leave Iraq. It would also be helpful if the Prime Minister chose not to attack potential American presidents in his attempt to score points at home.

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

Mr Danby interjecting

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or indeed people who might be on a presidential ticket. There are a number of concerns that confront Australians. They come in the form of interest rates, they come in the form of Iraq and how that has been handled and they come in the form of industrial relations and the way in which the government has chosen to attack the most vulnerable in our society. I think those three examples illustrate why we need to have a change of government at the end of this year and I think that, increasingly, more people hold that view.

Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian economy has entered its 16th consecutive year of economic growth, and high levels of business investment and strong profitability are laying the foundations for ongoing prosperity.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

The Australian economy has entered its 16th consecutive year of economic growth. High levels of business profitability are laying the foundations for ongoing prosperity for this country well into the future. Our government is in extremely strong financial shape. We have eliminated net debt. But it was a very different story a decade ago—those days, which many of us will never forget, when the Australian people inherited over $96 billion worth of debt from the Labor government. With that debt came an interest bill of $8.5 billion a year—an inheritance we are pleased to see the back of. Along with eliminating debt we have begun making provision for liabilities that were never funded before. The Future Fund is one of the great achievements of the Howard government. For generations, Commonwealth government spent beyond their means, delivering benefits to the current generation and the debts to future generations—those too young to vote or not yet born. That was a policy of financial recklessness.

To arrive where we are now has taken considerable discipline, restraint and ability because by any measure paying off $96 billion worth of debt is no small matter. I know how hard it is to pay off an outstanding balance on a credit card, and I think most Australians do. It requires discipline and restraint, and there is a feeling of being back in control when credit card debt is eliminated.

Because of our discipline, the government is in control and can spend on things of importance, such as the recently announced $10 billion to secure Australia’s water system. On the Gold Coast the drought has meant level 4 restrictions, under which gardens are watered with buckets. Residents are fitting tap fixtures that reduce water pressure and a must-have item is a water tank for the backyard. Finally, this week, the rain came and I can report to the House that my own water tanks are full.

The Prime Minister travelled to the Gold Coast to announce federal government funding for Gold Coast Water of $3.15 million for the pressure and leakage management initiative. This initiative is estimated to generate water savings of between seven and 10 gigalitres per annum and approximately 20 million litres per day for the Gold Coast—massive savings by any measure.

Gold Coast Water has a number of water management projects on the go and has federal government and overseas recognition as leading the way in this area. Gold Coast Water is in the process of building a desalinisation plant at Tugun. This project will have no reliance on the weather, and I am reassured by council that they have a portfolio of water strategies and that they have not put all their eggs into one basket.

Climate change is something we are hearing a lot about. The Australian government has joined forces with the Queensland government, the Gold Coast City Council and Griffith University, who together are investing more than $350,000 to research the effects of climate change on human health. The Australian government has contributed $55,000 to this study. The study will look at climate change scenarios and their implications for particular population groups. For example, heat-related disorders are going to increase as temperatures continue to rise. We need to know how this will affect older Australians and the very young, and what we can do to assist people with this. There is so much information out there about climate change that I have become a member of the government environment and heritage committee to help me understand the complexities of the issue.

Demographic change is bearing down on us. The Australian government’s continued strong commitment to fair and affordable access to high-quality aged care is demonstrated by the announcement of an additional $1.5 billion in funding for aged-care services over the next five years. Our ageing population has always been a priority of the Howard government and, to help meet the challenges that our ageing population poses, the Australian government last year allocated $4.5 million for the Bond University health sciences and medicine building—welcome funding indeed.

The ageing of our population is going to have a huge impact on all of us, and Queensland will feel its impact the most. Queensland has a projected increase in population from 3.6 million in 2001 to 6.4 million in 2051. Nearly half of this projected increase will be persons aged 65 and over. In 1971, in Queensland, for every 100 persons of working age, there were approximately 17 persons aged 65-plus. By 2051, for every 100 people of working age, there will be approximately 52 persons aged 65-plus. That is a huge increase and the pressure on our health budget will be extreme. Add to the mix Australia’s potential shortfall of 195,000 workers in five years time as a result of population ageing and the mushrooming economies of India and China, and it can be seen that we really do have our work cut out for us.

The ageing of our population means that we have to be far more flexible and innovative in the workplace to attract a wider range of participants, including people with disabilities, and to encourage older Australians to remain in the workforce longer. Work Choices provides us with that flexibility, as employers and employees are best able to negotiate a deal that suits their particular needs and not some one-size-fits-all outdated concept that the union movement supports.

The tactics of the union movement are a disgrace. They are waging a campaign that is misleading and in many cases a pack of lies against Work Choices. The unions and the Labor Party disagree with the industrial relations system. I would not expect anything less from them. But to spend megabucks misleading the Australian public is another story. They are offering no alternative solutions and want Australians to go back to the days of union power, the days of outrageous claims and strikes costing millions upon millions of dollars to this country.

I just want to say to the union movement and the Labor Party that without good people a business is worthless. People are a business’s strength and its most important asset. Do they really think a business owner who is shouldering risk and working hard to make a success of the business is going to jeopardise a business by not looking after his or her most important asset, the workers?

With the projected shortfall in workers and our ageing population, workers are going to be more valuable than ever and employers must be flexible and innovative in attracting and retaining staff. If the unions and the Labor Party think for a minute that the Australian government has introduced a far-reaching and major reform that is not in the best interests of the Australian people, they should think again. The Australian government makes policy decisions with the best interests of all Australians in mind. It is that simple. The industrial relations reforms have been introduced for one reason and one reason only—to reflect the reality of the marketplace and to secure our future.

Other funding that has been allocated to McPherson in the last 12 months includes funding for the Tugun Bypass—that 6.7 kilometres of road which has been such an important issue for Gold Coast residents. It is steaming ahead and the latest report is that it will be built well ahead of schedule. They run a very tight ship on the construction site at Tugun. When I toured the site late last year with the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, Jim Lloyd, I was struck by the professionalism of the management team and how well organised the construction of the road was. There was a very real sense of pride and ownership amongst all those working. It is important that we see this piece of infrastructure built on time—and we hear that it will be on time, that it will be before time—for the residents of the southern Gold Coast and also for those of northern New South Wales. It is an important piece of infrastructure that we have waited a long time for.

The history of the road goes back a long way. One of the reasons it has been such a long time coming is that we had to deal with a federal government, two state governments—Queensland and New South Wales—and also local government jurisdictions. But we have come a long way and it is being built. The bypass includes a tunnel that runs under the runway at the Gold Coast Airport. It is no small engineering feat and environmentally the bypass has thrown up its challenges, with the federal government designating it a controlled action. A great deal of planning has gone into programs to protect the wildlife and flora on the route. All in all it is a major road which has involved major planning and costs, to which the federal government has contributed $120 million.

Laurie Lawrence’s Kids Alive—Do the Five program has been reallocated funding of $330,000. Under the program, which has gone national, the number of drownings fell from 40 to 28 in 2004-05. The program, which has a target of zero drownings, has played a big part in saving countless toddlers’ lives in Australia. I have a very close working relationship with Laurie and I can say to the House today that his commitment and enthusiasm for the program is one of the reasons I am sure it has been such an outstanding success. I noticed again on national television this week that the program was featured, with Laurie teaching our young Australians how to swim and how to become accustomed to water.

Families are high on the Howard government’s agenda, and residents of McPherson will benefit from two major recent initiatives aimed at building stronger families. Centacare at Clear Island Waters has received $1.425 million from the federal government to establish a new early intervention service to assist families living on the Gold Coast. The service will assist family members at various stages of their relationships: prior to and during relationship formation, during relationships, through separation and divorce and during parenting, grandparenting and retirement. The range of early intervention services includes family relationships counselling, men and family relationships counselling, relationship education and skills training, parenting skills and specialised services for those who suffer family violence.

Centacare has also been named as the preferred provider to establish a family relationship centre on the Gold Coast. The new centre will provide the community with a central point for information about strengthening family relationships and dealing with relationship difficulties. The new service is part of the Australian government’s wide-ranging reforms to the family law system, which aim to shift the culture of separation from an adversarial process to one in which the interests of children come first.

Finally, I want to say that Australia is a small country by population, with less than a third of one per cent of the global population, yet we are the 16th largest economy in the world. The coalition government has much to be proud of. That is not to say that we do not face challenges in the future with our ageing population, but I think the strength of our government has been our economic management. Our strong economy means jobs for everyone in Australia, low unemployment figures that we continue to enjoy, low interest rates and continued economic growth for the future. I commend the appropriation bills to the House.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this morning to speak on the 2006-07 budget appropriation bills. In doing so, I note that Australia is lucky to be riding a wave of the longest run of global growth, in excess of four per cent per annum, for 40 years. I also note, however, that Australia’s own growth, at below three per cent for six of the eight quarters to the end of September last year, is relatively modest and that we cannot afford to take our eye off the ball, which is the challenge to the government with the forthcoming budget.

This growth has been driven by developing countries, which have contributed more than 60 per cent of global growth over the last five years. China has been front and centre of that growth; it alone accounts for more than a quarter of the global growth in that period—a contribution far in excess of its 15 per cent share of world GDP. Australia has benefited in two ways: the disinflationary effect of imports that has come from the growth in China’s exports, and the high commodity prices and strong demand that has come from China’s insatiable appetite for our resources. Resources are in demand in many other markets as well, especially in the growing Indian market.

The value of Australia’s minerals and energy exports is forecast to be around $110.7 billion in 2006-07. The value of energy exports is up by five per cent and minerals are up by an enormous 31 per cent. As was the case last year, Australia remains relatively reliant on the resources sector and on very many service industries that support it, such as engineering, tourism—which employs over half a million people—construction, transport, power, banking and finance, and information technology, to name a few.

The sector I am now responsible for as shadow minister includes tourism and transport. It is a key part of the resources export supply chain and is growing in importance. Export infrastructure is a major challenge facing Australia’s resource sector. It is a responsibility both of the state and territory governments and of the Commonwealth. This has been a controversial issue over the last two years, and the Hunter Valley coal chain, the Dalrymple Bay coal terminal and the Pilbara iron ore chain are all cases in point.

I note that the ABS, in its commodities report in June last year, said:

Much of the port, rail and related infrastructure supporting Australia’s exports has elements of natural monopoly.

In many cases it is impractical, or makes no economic sense, to have multiple systems.

In cases where there are strong elements of natural monopoly, infrastructure owners could provide too little capacity and too low a quality of service in the process of extracting monopoly rents if left unregulated.

The challenge for Australia, however, is to get the balance right between managing issues surrounding extraction of monopoly rent by infrastructure owners and maintaining the incentive for investment in infrastructure, particularly to prevent underinvestment. As I have said on many occasions, if Australia cannot keep up with the investment required to support the important expansion of our export industries, investors will flood elsewhere because there are plenty of opportunities in other parts of the world to meet the growing international demand and Australia will be left behind.

I raise these issues today because, unfortunately, this is yet another issue where the government is bereft of leadership, out of touch with industry and squandering Australia’s future. There is no better example than the Treasurer’s non-decision of 22 May last when at midnight the National Competition Council’s recommendation to declare BHP Billiton’s Newman railway under the Trade Practices Act was deemed rejected. This was the right outcome, but it came about only because Peter Costello was too irresponsible to make a decision as Treasurer and now, after appeal, it is set to be overturned by the Australian Competition Tribunal’s adherence to doctrinaire competition policy.

In December the Australian Energy Regulator decided to cap investment in Queensland’s transmission grid by Powerlink at an average of about $406 million a year for the next five years. This was despite advice that it is totally inadequate to provide the power for the billions of dollars of mine, rail and port expansion now underway and required for the future of Australia based on the resources opportunities out of Queensland. I say that because coal is our biggest export from Australia—more than $24 billion a year. But the competition purists, with the Treasurer in full complicity, would rather set hypothetical limits on export infrastructure investments in natural monopoly markets than properly secure the future of our major export industries.

These are just two examples of competition policy gone mad, which is threatening the expansion of Australia’s export industries and creating disincentives for investment. No-one would argue against an effective and efficient access regime for rail haulage for all Pilbara iron ore producers. But, in effect, competition rules favour access seekers over the operations of existing owners, who have borne the huge risk of investment, who maintain the infrastructure and who operate a sophisticated logistics chain to supply their export markets to the benefit of Australia, and especially of Western Australia.

I therefore suggest to the House this morning that it is time for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to implement the recommendations of their own Export Infrastructure Task Force, established by and reported on in this parliament. According to the task force—and I agree with it—the answer to the problem is to introduce an ‘efficiency override’ for applications for the declaration of export related facilities under part IIIA or its associated regimes. The task force goes on to say—and this is important—that the purpose of such a mechanism would be ‘to minimise the risk that access regimes would disrupt the very areas of the economy that have performed best in the management of export related infrastructure’. I could not agree more.

I would like to know whether the Treasurer agrees and when he is going to do something about this important challenge. Infrastructure investment in electricity, water and our export supply chains is far from the only threat to the future of our key resource industries and the jobs of tens of thousands of Australians, especially in our regional communities. Let me turn to the climate change debate and the proposition recently put forward by the Greens and their fellow travellers that we should close down the Australian coal industry within the next three years. What a disgrace! Destroying the livelihoods of Australian forest workers and timber communities is not enough any longer for the Green movement. Now it wants to destroy the lives of 30,000 coalminers in coal communities from Mackay to Moe, from the Bowen Basin to the Hunter and Latrobe Valleys, all areas historically well represented by the trade union movement and the Labor Party.

Climate change fever has captured the world, and the Green warriors believe they are now on the cusp of bringing down capitalism. Victory, so far as they are concerned, is just 30,000 jobs away in Australia. Let me, therefore, remind the House that the coal industry brings to this country more than $2 billion every month and that it directly employs about 30,000 people, not to mention the huge impact it has on indirect and associated employment. Coal also supplies 85 per cent of Australia’s electricity—safely, reliably and cheaply to our nation’s benefit. I simply remind the Greens and their fellow travellers that, without coal, Australia would be a Third World economy.

Coal underpins the current boom and is the key to its continuance. It is about time its beneficiaries stood up and were counted with respect to the need to defend this important industry. ABARE predicts that energy demand will grow by 70 per cent in Australia by 2030. A lot of that investment will include gas and renewables, and so it should. It is not about one form of energy to the detriment of others. The key to low-cost emissions abatement is an energy mix that includes the widest possible range of technologies deployed in places and for uses for which they are best suited and where they are most cost-effective.

However, in 2030, almost 70 per cent of Australia’s energy will still come from burning coal. Last year, the International Energy Agency forecast that total world coal demand will grow by almost 60 per cent by 2030. It is therefore worth remembering that, while Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal, it supplies just six per cent of the world’s total coal consumption. The Greens would have us close down the Australian coal industry—a responsible producer of coal to the benefit of Australia and the international community. Australian coal is regarded internationally as some of the cleanest coal in the world.

So I say to the House today that shutting down the Australian coal industry would do virtually nothing to curtail coal use or reduce emissions globally. There are ample other suppliers that do not have the same record as Australia does on a variety of fronts. I also say that emissions trading will work best if we have international technology cooperation, with everyone in the cart. Part of our responsibility is to make AP6 work. This is the lesson of the Tobin tax—some people have short memories—and we must pursue this same principle in developing an international emissions trading system. I say that because, even if the big emitter countries were in, it would take only half a dozen of them to refuse and then the whole system would be brought down.

Our responsibility is to work to ensure that we take everyone with us in solving this international problem whilst also acting locally, pulling our weight back home, on our emissions. Unless we pursue this aggressively, energy intensive industries will flock to those countries that choose to ignore such a development. We want to take them with us rather than have them stand outside the circle. Accordingly, the truth is that those who oppose the opening of new coalmines and mineral processing plants in Australia should be doing the exact opposite and insisting that this is done in Australia to the highest environmental standards, with the best available technology and in the safest possible way.

The coal industry—and I should also stress this—has never had a free run in Australia. The truth is that the coal industry, like every other mineral industry in Australia, has to comply with stringent environmental requirements, Indigenous consultation and planning approval processes at a local, state and federal level that are amongst the best and most rigorous in the world. Australian miners are at the leading edge of mining technology and the environmental technologies that go hand in glove with it. By and large, the coal industry is an accepted and welcome part of the Australian community in which it operates—and so it should be. It is important to the national economy, exceptionally important to some states and territories and exceptionally important to regional economies.

What Australians must do is take our industry expertise out into the world. That is the best thing that we can do as a nation in the global warming challenge that confronts us all. We must not only sell our coal to China; we must engage with China on cleaning up the technology it uses to generate electricity and on improving the safety and environmental management of its coalmines. Thousands of workers die in Chinese coalmines each year. In this country we consider it a tragedy—and rightly so—if just one life is lost in the industry in a year. Poor water management in Chinese coalmines pollutes local rivers and streams of vital importance to village communities. These are real issues that must not be forgotten in the clamour to address climate change. That is where Australia’s efforts must go when it comes to seriously dealing with global climate change policy and that is where we as a nation can make a real difference through strong national and international leadership.

We must be very careful not to mislead middle Australia about the real economic and lifestyle ramifications of a feel-good response to climate change. ABARE says cutting emissions by 50 per cent will double the price of petrol and push up electricity and gas prices by 600 per cent. That would be a disaster. But there are alternative opportunities to cushion such an impact, which I want on the table today.

Yes, we must set targets and act now on a no-regrets basis to reduce our energy use and lower our greenhouse emissions. But when it comes to emissions trading, let us crawl before we walk and put in place a national emissions trading system first. That would be a huge step forward for energy market reform and for climate change. It would be about what is possible at a given time. It would be a key instrument in developing a proper, practical and pragmatic climate change policy. National emissions trading is also what the electricity industry is crying out for today. I remind the House it is what the Prime Minister’s own energy market review, the Parer review, called for five years ago. Why hasn’t the Howard government acted on that simple recommendation in what was a well-prepared, well-researched and well-received report?

I also remind the House that, according to Parer, if we were to remove the distortions of the myriad of state and federal based systems in existence today and replace them with a national emissions trading scheme, electricity prices would actually be lower in the national market. Why aren’t we doing that simple reform, part of microeconomic reform in Australia, which would be to the benefit of industry and ordinary consumers?

Of course the price of carbon will increase electricity prices in the long term, but that reform today would be a productivity gain and help lower prices as part of that process. We might also then get private sector generation and transmission investment when and where it is needed and get rid of midsummer brownouts. That would be a giant leap forward for a truly national electricity and gas market.

There is also a link between climate change and energy security policies and there are major no-regrets steps forward that we can take in this area as well. The only two energy security issues Australia has are underinvestment in electricity generation and over-reliance on foreign oil.

If the Prime Minister is really serious about climate change and energy security, there are four things that should be taken on board immediately. Firstly, ratify Kyoto. It would cost Australia nothing and restore its standing in the global community as a leader on environmental policy. Secondly, focus on a national emissions trading system, not just an international scheme. We can actually do both—pull our own weight domestically and work to take the world with us internationally. Thirdly, focus on the conversion of our vast gas and coal reserves into clean diesel for the nation and reduce our reliance on foreign oil. Fourthly, focus on a domestic gas policy, not just LNG, to solve energy security problems of other countries such as China and India.

Never has a federal government had it so good in terms of the resources available to build a foundation for Australia’s future in the 21st century, but it actually comes back to political will and leadership. Never has a federal government had a better opportunity to invest in these issues and to lay down a foundation for the future. There are issues like intergenerational equity, the struggle of today’s old-age pensioners who did not grow up with the same superannuation opportunities that we enjoy, and the forgotten people, black and white, barely surviving on welfare in dysfunctional communities, sometimes unfortunately for second and third generations. There are issues like the decline in our skills base and the need to pave the way for the next generation of innovation and productivity improvements and for our economic security.

In conclusion, there are many challenges in the lead-up to the next election: issues like our reliance on the resources sector and the implications of that for manufacturing and other sectors; and the danger of creating a two-tiered economy, with the resource-rich regions and states versus the rest—workers in resources on boom-time salaries and bonuses versus teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters and childcare workers, to name a few. All of those, like other hardworking Australians, are being left behind on fixed incomes. There is so much potential for reform, yet the Treasurer’s last budget was a wasted opportunity. In the lead-up to the May budget there are some key decisions to be made, but I have also laid out today the importance of the resource sector. Those who condemn the coal industry ought to start fronting up to the fact that they are the beneficiaries of the export opportunities that the coal industry gives to Australia. We are all living off the back of the resources sector today, just as in the past we lived off the back of wheat and sheep. I commend the issues I have raised in this House today for consideration. (Time expired)

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Secker, I add my congratulations to you on assuming your current role.

Today I want to give a report to the parliament on the state of the electorate of Herbert, the state of the north, and I bring to the parliament some very encouraging and exciting news. Last week I was able to attend the opening of the Australian Technical College North Queensland. There have been a few knockers around the place about Australian technical colleges. They ought to come to Townsville and see the success of what we have built on a greenfield site in a period of 12 months, and they should see the opportunities that have been created for the young people who are attending the college.

The college was contracted to deliver 100 training positions. Being North Queensland, of course, we delivered 151 on opening day. One hundred and fifty-one young men and women will have the opportunity to get a year 12 qualification but also to learn a trade and ultimately gain an apprenticeship. But as I told them at the opening, they should aspire to more than that—they can be the foreman on the job site, they can be the supervisor, they can be the manager, and ultimately they can own their own operation. I think that is an exciting future for those young men and women who will be trained through that Australian Technical College. The college is state-of-the-art—built for the tropics but built with the latest training equipment. Indeed industry, who are a partner in setting up the Australian Technical College, marvel at the equipment that is there. They say that they could not find anything better for their own commercial businesses to do their own work. What a far cry that is from some of the equipment that exists in the old TAFE system that is 30 years out of date.

There are no books in the classrooms. They have MP3s, they have memory sticks and they work electronically. Classrooms are such that if you want to drive a car into the mechanical automotive classroom, you can. It has been absolutely set up according to all of the modern trends and according to how you best train a young student. I reckon it is the best ATC in Australia. I congratulate John Bearne and his team and Bob Knight, who is the college principal, on what they have been able to do in setting up a wonderful new skills resource for North Queensland.

I also advise the parliament that this particular college is not going to be working under the old system. It is not going to have a six-week holiday over Christmas and several lots of two-week holidays during the year. It is going to be open for 50 weeks a year. That is a great outcome. It is also going to have a mid-year intake. So in July we will take in another 50 students, and we will build the numbers to 200. We are already looking further into the future. We want to acquire an additional hectare of land next to the site so that in years ahead the college can further expand, because of the demand from industry to make sure we have well-trained young men and women. So not only have we delivered; we are looking to the future. We have a model that the rest of Australia would be mighty proud to adopt.

I will now report to the parliament on Palm Island—the place described by the Guinness Book of Records as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’. It is an Indigenous community where 50 tribes have been thrown together—a part of history that is a horrible, dysfunctional place. I have been going there for 10 years. I have compared it to other Indigenous communities that are model Indigenous communities. It is a chalk-and-cheese situation. I was at Warburton in Western Australia relatively recently. It is a great community, run by an Aboriginal council. There is a white mayor. Nobody sees colour of skin; they all work together. But the council banned alcohol so the rate of domestic violence is minimal, the health problems are certainly reduced, they run their own sewerage system, water supply, local store, airline and so on—all at a profit. The town is tidy, the houses do not have holes in the walls and kids go to school. It is a wonderful outcome, and they are basically in the middle of the desert. Indigenous communities can do it. Palm Island is the reverse.

Having said that, after going there for 10 years, I was there relatively recently—just before Christmas—and I detected a change on Palm Island. I detected a change among the leadership that they understand that they can do better, that they have to do better, that the people of Palm Island cannot go on living the way they are living. It is not acceptable. The solution is in the hands of the leadership of Palm Island. It is not in my hands, it is not in the government’s hands—it is in the hands of the leadership of Palm Island. Of course, there has to be the will in the community to follow that leadership.

There are a couple of key things that I have talked to the council about. Those key things are, firstly, the absolute necessity to address law and order and governance issues and make sure that that operates properly; and, secondly, land ownership. Certainly, Mal Brough, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, understands that and has been very proactive in relation to that issue. At the moment Palm Island is a Soviet-style collective: nobody owns anything. The central group has control. Nobody can own their own little piece of land; they cannot own their own little house. If you said to somebody in Brisbane, Perth or the Coonawarra, ‘You can’t own your own piece of land and your own house,’ they would be outraged. That is what it is like on Palm Island. We have to address the land ownership issues, and I think it is going to happen. For the first time in 10 years, I have some confidence that the island is heading in the right direction. I will give them every support that I can.

We have had a bit of rain recently in North Queensland. Two weeks ago in my backyard, two feet—600 millimetres—of rain fell. I wish a bit of it would fall down here and, of course, in the south-east part of the state. But it does rain in North Queensland. We have had some cuts in our Bruce Highway. The media have driven a campaign about the cuts in the highway. We see that every year when it rains. I understand that. As a government we have got to do everything that we can to minimise those road closures during the wet season. But I know that today the state Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Paul Lucas, has told it like it is and said, ‘You can’t flood-proof the highway.’ It would be extraordinarily expensive. In fact, you would have to build a bridge from Townsville to Cairns to flood-proof the highway. He has accepted the reality that there will be closures, but it is his goal to minimise the closure times. If you have to wait three or four hours for the flooding to go down then you have to wait three or four hours. That is his view. That lines up with the federal minister’s view. To completely flood-proof the highway would be financially impossible. The taxpayers would not accept that burden for the benefit that it would deliver.

In relation to other roads, I have certainly taken on a major program to build new roads in the electorate of Herbert in North Queensland. The largest ever road funding package is being spent on the Bruce Highway between Townsville and Cairns, but there is more to be done. I have committed to the community that I will find $40 million to build four lanes from Woodlands Road to Veales Road on the Bruce Highway. That is something that people along the Bushland Beach, Mt Low Parkway and Deeragun desperately want to see. I am going to deliver that and I am hopeful that in the not-too-distant future—certainly by the end of March—I will be able to announce that I have secured the $40 million and that the project will get the green light, and we will proceed to have that road done. We cannot not do it because too many people are being killed on that section of the road. If it comes to motorists having to wait a couple of hours for the floods to go down or stopping the deaths that are occurring on the highway, I will stop the deaths on the highway first and I will have the backing of the people of North Queensland in doing that.

Road construction on the Townsville ring road is about to commence within the next two weeks. That is a $119 million road—a high-speed motorway linking the Bruce Highway to the Douglas arterial road. That also is a flood mitigation project. It will avoid the flooding that happens on the Bohle River and it will connect the Northern Beaches and the northern Bruce Highway to Lavarack Barracks, the university and the hospital via a 100-kilometre an hour high-speed motorway. That is a great outcome and I am looking forward to that construction starting before the end of this month.

Also, a little bit further down the horizon, I am committed to the construction of the Townsville port access road. This is a nearly $200 million project. It is a fifty-fifty share with the state government. It is time that we got on with the design and construction of the port access road. I have spent considerable time with the port people. There is huge development going on and we are probably going to see tonnages triple through the port in the next 15 or 20 years. We need to get that freight down the port access road and not take it through some of the suburbs of Townsville. It is big money—a $119 million ring road, a $200 million port access road, $222 million in flood mitigation on the Bruce Highway and $128 million raising the road in the Tully area. They are huge licks of money and I have been part of delivering that. I am going to be part of delivering the further commitments.

I want to move from roads to Defence. Again, it is extraordinary news for the people of North Queensland and in particular industry and commerce in Townsville. We are going to proceed with the redevelopment of Lavarack Barracks stage 4, we are going to do 3/4 Cavalry Regiment, we are going to do 4 Field Regiment, we are going to do 3CER—$207 million. If it goes according to Defence’s time frame, we will see that start in August this year—$207 million being spent on the barracks.

It does not end there. In 2011 the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment will be transferred from Holsworthy up to Townsville, so we have to build the working accommodation for them. That is going to cost about $350 million and that will start probably at the end of 2008. So we have lined up over half a billion dollars worth of capital works at Lavarack Barracks in the next three years—extraordinary what it does to our economy.

But there is more. The Defence Housing Authority has to house these 800 soldiers and 700 support staff; it will probably need 1,500 more homes. Defence will spend a heap of money on phase 2 Single LEAP, which is the single soldier accommodation, for 168 single soldier accommodation units. That is extraordinary.

There is more. Over at RAAF Townsville this year we are moving all of Australia’s Caribou aircraft to Townsville—another 250 airmen to support that operation. Just across the runway there is more at 5 Aviation Regiment—$20 million to prepare for the arrival of Australia’s MRH90 helicopters, which will be based in Townsville and replacing the Black Hawks. On top of that there might be a little bit more. I am unable to announce that yet, but we are certainly working very hard on it. In other words, the future in North Queensland, the prosperity in North Queensland, is locked in—perhaps for the next decade. Families can plan for the future with confidence with these sorts of major developments locked in.

I now switch tack to an opportunity which has emerged today. That is in relation to Tiger Airways. Tiger Airways is the Singapore government Singapore Airlines low-cost carrier. It currently services Darwin; it has a connection between Darwin and Singapore. It is operating now. Tiger has confirmed that it is very interested in running domestically in Australia. I am in the process of setting up a meeting between our peak tourism people and Tiger to talk about the Darwin to Townsville connection. There is a very significant passenger load that is Defence generated between Townsville and Darwin, home of the 3rd Brigade and the 1st Brigade, and I think that route is currently not serviced by any other domestic airline. It is an opportunity for Tiger to move in on a new route and take advantage of the traffic loads that are undoubtedly there.

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

Do something that Qantas won’t do?

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Correct, as the member for Forrest correctly indicates. But more than that, it will give Townsville an international connection through Darwin direct to Asia, and of course Tiger on-flies to a series of other destinations in Asia. That is an opportunity we are going to have a good go at getting and we will give Tiger every support if it will support Townsville.

In the couple of minutes that are left to me, I want to pay tribute to the staff at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Over the last several years they have had some very difficult issues to deal with. They are headquartered in Townsville. They are charged as the custodians of the World Heritage area which is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. They do a wonderful job.

We have been through a lot of community angst, particularly with fishermen. But fishermen have now come to understand that what we said is true: if you have green zones, no fish zones, where you can go and you can look and you can touch but you cannot take, fish grow more rapidly and they move outside the green zones and fishermen can catch bigger fish and more fish. It is now coming through very clearly that the science has been proved right.

The initial objections from the fishermen about us, GBRMPA, taking away some of their fishing locations, have been found to be not sustainable. In fact, we have delivered a better outcome for fishermen. GBRMPA have weathered all of that storm and they have weathered all of the political interference that has been run. They have delivered a great outcome for fishermen in North Queensland. If you want to throw a line in the water, you can throw a line in the water. But these days you can catch more fish and you can catch bigger fish.

Yes, I agree that some of the commercial fishermen were impacted upon, but for the first time we ran a significant package to help the fishermen overcome the disadvantage that they did indeed suffer. I note a couple of my colleagues are still unhappy with GBRMPA, but they have to understand that we got a great outcome not only for fishermen but also for the World Heritage listed park. It is really important to pass on to our kids and their kids a wonderful resource in a better condition than that in which we ourselves found it. We intend to do that. We are doing that. Congratulations to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority on the leadership that they have shown on this issue.

Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills to illustrate the impact of the Howard government’s administration on various issues affecting my electorate of Bendigo, starting with the heavy-handed approach to community radio licensing. The demand of the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, for the Australian Communications and Media Authority to identify a suitable frequency for Central Victoria to receive the parliamentary news network has threatened local community radio stations FreshFM and Central Victorian Gospel Radio, CVGR.

Evidence from Monday’s Senate estimates process clearly identifies the minister’s role in jeopardising the licences of FreshFM and/or Central Victorian Gospel Radio. It is now clear that the decision to cancel FreshFM’s broadcasting licence had little to do with the alleged late renewal application and everything to do with the minister’s demand that a suitable frequency be allocated for the broadcasting of the ABC’s NewsRadio and the federal parliamentary proceedings. FreshFM has had a substantial presence in Central Victoria and provides a wide range of programming that is not available from any other broadcaster, and its future is of major concern to large numbers of Central Victorians.

It is interesting to note this exchange in the Hansard of the Senate estimates process on 30 October 2006 regarding the cancellation of FreshFM licence:

Senator CONROYMinister, is there any suggestion that you can make? It just seems a little harsh, even if they have failed to get their paperwork in on time?

Senator CoonanSenator Conroy, I have absolutely no role and no discretion, but I can tell you that the act provides that, at the latest, they must lodge 26 weeks prior to the licence expiry ...

Senator CONROYBut could I urge you to consider encouraging ACMA to expedite the reissuing of a licence. This is a 25-year-old station, that sounds as though it is having a few administrative difficulties, at a minimum.

Senator CoonanSenator Conroy, that is a matter for the regulator. That is why we have a regulator. I have no role in this, but I have satisfied myself that the act has been properly applied, and I am quite confident that the regulator is capable and, if there is some basis for looking at this favourably, it would be disposed to do so. That is as far as I can take it.

The minister has actually caused these three broadcasters to compete for two frequencies in Central Victoria. FreshFM and CVGR have been broadcasting successfully for many years and are now under threat because of the minister’s demand to force broadcasting of the federal parliamentary proceedings and NewRadio onto one of the frequencies that service Central Victoria. The minister, who states she has no role in these matters, has actually caused this very situation.

These two valuable community radio broadcasters are providing much-needed services across a range of programs that are only available through community radio broadcasters. The proceedings of the federal parliament and NewsRadio are already available to anyone connected to the internet via a real-time webcast. I am sure that while there would be people who would want to listen to federal parliament broadcast on radio, the overwhelming majority of listeners would prefer the programs put to air by FreshFM and CVGR. In February 2000 the frequency utilised by CVGR was reallocated to Radio for the Print Handicapped. This resulted in a large number of CVGR listeners being severely disadvantaged. No-one begrudges Radio for the Print Handicapped listeners receiving a radio service, as in most cases this is the only method by which their audience can receive information. They have a substantial and a legitimate need.

What I find annoying is that, after losing the frequency, CVGR, at considerable expense—remember that CVGR use their own financial resources; they have never requested or received any financial assistance from government—retained the services of a consulting firm to identify any potential unused frequencies that may be available. Radspec Consultants provided an in-depth technical report on the suitability of 101.5 FM. Permission was eventually granted to conduct a test transmission resulting in no claims of interference with other frequencies or users. Consequently, CVGR have been successfully broadcasting on this frequency since 4 October 2002. What I find absolutely astounding is that the authority have advertised this frequency for use by other organisations after CVGR went to all the trouble and expense of identifying this frequency—effectively doing the job that one would expect to be the responsibility of the authority itself.

I call on the minister to postpone the broadcasting of federal parliament and NewsRadio to Central Victoria until the Howard government sorts out the mess it has made of implementing digital radio and to grant permanent licences to FreshFM and CVGR immediately. May I suggest that the minister direct her department to carry out a thorough examination of all frequencies that might be suitable and even contract private agencies, like Central Victorian Gospel Radio did, to research any options that may be appropriate. If CVGR were able to retain consultants who successfully found a suitable frequency it beggars belief that the department seems incapable of doing the same.

Water is an issue of major concern in my electorate of Bendigo, right across northern Victoria and in most of the eastern states. The Howard government continues to play the blame game with federal funding for the Waranga to Eppalock pipeline. Media comments in December last year by the then parliamentary secretary for water, and now minister responsible for water, stated that the Bracks government was holding up an announcement on federal funding for the project. The minister was quoted in the Melbourne media on 20 December as saying that the Bracks government was ‘dragging the chain’ by not providing a detailed costing and that it was somehow responsible for the Howard government’s stalling on an announcement of federal funding for the pipeline project.

The state government has provided a detailed submission, including costings, as required under the guidelines for funding from the National Water Commission. The state government has also identified the pipeline project as Victoria’s No. 1 priority for funding under the National Water Initiative. The minister is clearly indulging in the same old blame game that the Howard government is renowned for—that is, always blaming the state Labor governments in an attempt to opt out of the federal government’s own responsibilities. We saw the same blame game being played on federal funding for the Liberals’ share of the Calder Highway duplication that stalled the project for four years, and now they are trying the same tactic with the pipeline funding. The Liberals were not fair dinkum about funding this vital project for Central Victoria.

There were no submissions to the National Water Commission supporting federal funding for the pipeline from any Liberal or National MP. The only coalition MP, senator or candidate to send a submission to the National Water Commission regarding federal funding for the pipeline was Howard government minister Dr Sharman Stone, who vigorously opposed any federal funding. Obviously the local Libs are all talk and no action. They are not fair dinkum about federal funding for what is plainly Bendigo’s lifeline. I call on the Howard government to stop playing politics and immediately announce federal funding for this vital project.

The construction of the Waranga-Eppalock pipeline should provide an opportunity to strategically rethink the way water is delivered and utilised in Central Victoria. The Eppalock pipeline will substantially change the options for the delivery of water throughout Central Victoria in the future. It would provide an opportunity for a long-term proposal to dramatically increase the full capacity of Coliban Water—Bendigo’s water authority—in normal conditions without the need for expensive additional infrastructure.

For example, Goulburn-Murray’s current full capacity is almost 12 million megalitres. Coliban Water’s current full capacity is just 137,000 megalitres. A reduction of just 2.09 per cent of Goulburn-Murray’s total capacity would result in an increase in Coliban Water’s capacity of about 280 per cent. This could be achieved by lifting Coliban Water’s Eppalock allocation from 18 per cent to 100 per cent by reallocating management responsibility for Lake Eppalock from Goulburn-Murray Water to Coliban Water.

Obviously, this proposal can only be considered seriously now because of the decision to construct the pipelines. Campaspe irrigators would continue to receive their allocations from the Goulburn-Murray system via the Eppalock pipeline instead of the current arrangement of drawing water directly from Lake Eppalock. Reducing Goulburn-Murray’s full capacity by just 2.09 per cent, or 249,752 megalitres, would still leave the authority with a massive capacity of 11,692,408 megalitres of water. A 2.09 per cent reduction for Goulburn-Murray would represent the loss of a small puddle compared with their ability to continue to hold over 11.6 million megalitres of water at full capacity. But it would mean a massive increase in Coliban Water’s full capacity, from 137,485 megalitres to 387,236 megalitres in normal conditions. This could free up 100 per cent of Eppalock’s capacity in the future to exclusively supplement not only Coliban’s requirements but possibly Ballarat’s existing water supplies in future emergencies. With the additional capacity of sustainable access to groundwater, these measures should drought-proof Central Victoria well into the future.

It is also interesting to do the sums just on a 50 per cent increase in Coliban’s capacity by lifting the 18 per cent it currently gets from the Goulburn-Murray system to 50 per cent. The current capacity, as I said, is 137,485 megalitres. An increase in capacity to 50 per cent would lift Coliban’s capacity to 235,910 megalitres—a 71.6 per cent increase in Coliban’s capacity—with a reduction in capacity of 0.9 per cent for Goulburn-Murray.

I have already outlined in this parliament a proposal to deal with the water emergency by establishing a water bank in Central Victoria to supplement the purchase of water from the Goulburn-Murray system via the Waranga to Eppalock pipeline if the drought conditions we are experiencing now prevail or become even more severe. Coliban Water has been investigating the feasibility of accessing groundwater to secure the water supply for the Castlemaine and Kyneton districts as well as investigating using groundwater from the Elmore and Serpentine district’s aquifers to supplement Bendigo’s water needs.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment—DSE—has produced maps identifying groundwater throughout regional Victoria. These maps indicate a potentially large groundwater resource south of Bendigo, stretching from south of Elphinstone to Melton in the south and from Creswick in the west to Kilmore in the east, and situated below large areas of Coliban Water’s normal catchment area. The salinity levels for this water are calculated to be below 1,000 parts and therefore suitable for connection to town water supplies. The small town of Trentham, for example, is solely dependent on this water for its domestic use.

The precise size, terrain and volumes of water held in this aquifer are not clear. However, maps commissioned by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment in 1994, as well as current maps produced by the DSE, show the potential for huge volumes of good quality water. If the drought conditions prevail or become worse over the next few years, the potential to enable groundwater from these sources to be pumped directly into the entire Coliban Water system may be a good option. I understand that, within the next couple of weeks, Coliban Water will be conducting test drilling in the Kyneton region, with a view to adopting the very proposal that I have outlined previously in this parliament. If those tests are successful, that would secure Bendigo’s water until such time as the Waranga to Eppalock pipeline is completed, which will be by September this year.

Accessing groundwater would enable a substantial addition to Coliban’s system, benefiting the Kyneton, Castlemaine and Bendigo districts without having to utilise the Elmore and Serpentine aquifers, which is the Liberal and National parties’ policy. Those aquifers are already at or approaching full allocation. Accessing water to Bendigo would result in more pipelines being built, which is very expensive and time consuming. It is far better to locate the water close to Coliban’s existing infrastructure and place that water straight into that system.

In addition to the Waranga to Eppalock pipeline and the recycling programs currently under construction by the Bracks state government and Coliban Water, accessing groundwater could provide the potential to drought-proof the Central Victorian region completely, possibly for decades. Surface water from the normal catchment areas of the Coliban and Goulburn-Murray systems, via the Eppalock pipeline, will secure our water requirements, but only if we get adequate inflows in those catchment areas in the future.

If the drought conditions worsen then utilising the available groundwater would become essential. When the drought conditions pass and the region’s catchments return to somewhere near normal, surplus surface water should be used to put water back into these groundwater reserves for future use. In other words, we would be establishing a water bank, accessing the groundwater from these aquifers in severe drought conditions and then replacing it or artificially recharging the system with our surplus surface water when conditions return to normal. The Centre for Groundwater Studies has said that artificially recharging aquifers—which is precisely what we are talking about—can also lower the salinity content of this resource.

There are many hundreds of farmers, householders and other landowners who depend on groundwater for their wellbeing and livelihood, and we must make sure it is always available to them. Accessing groundwater resources must be done in a carefully considered and sustainable manner, as aquifers are naturally recharged with surface water during normal conditions and therefore equally affected by drought conditions, resulting in a diminishing volume of water.

Because of the natural recharging process during normal conditions the aquifer should only require an artificial recharge of a percentage of the water removed in severe conditions to ensure the resource is always available. It would be unacceptable to do what the Liberal and National parties’ policy says, which is to simply plunder this resource without providing the means to artificially recharge the system under the right conditions. The Centre for Groundwater Studies’ website states:

Groundwater is the main water source of many towns and community centres all over Australia. It is also used for irrigation in several regions. In most areas allocation and/or use is in excess of the sustainable yield. In addition there is no single understanding or definition of sustainable yield across Australia.

Many terms are used to describe the resource potential; optimal yield, safe yield, mining yield and sustainable yield, but in general they are not well defined and in most cases are mainly described by the recharge component. The optimum utilisation of each resource depends upon balancing the recharge and discharge components with minimal disturbance to the other users (including the environment).

Although there are many scientific methods for determining recharge, discharge, storativity and specific yield, the application of these techniques in most cases are not well coordinated towards a sustainable yield concept and optimisation of the resource. At the same time, determining some of the parameters ie—specific yield are not well developed and are guess estimates.

Estimates of recharge have also been the basis for estimates of land salinisation, groundwater salinisation and river salinisation, the groundwater discharge component that is the main cause of salinisation has been grossly overlooked.

…                …              …

CGS research has demonstrated that even saline aquifers can be used to store temporary excesses of surface water to create new water resources or extend the life of over-exploited groundwater.

The conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water provides a flexible approach to water management. With the increased environmental constraints in siting surface reservoirs, conjunctive use for ‘banking’ surplus surface water in aquifers in times of plenty, for use in times of scarcity assumes increasing importance.

A technique called aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) where the same wells are used for injection and recovery to reduce operational problems such as well clogging, now offer viable ways in which water can be stored subsurface in deeper aquifer systems. CGS has demonstrated that brackish or saline aquifers, can be used to create fresh/potable water storages subsurface, where none existed previously.

So using the water bank principle actually helps lower the salinity levels of those existing resources.

These are very important issues that I have raised in terms of my electorate of Bendigo. I am delighted to hear the Prime Minister often say in this House that he is going to be very happy to run on his record in the forthcoming election. That pleases me greatly because his record in Bendigo and the surrounding district is appalling. There has been a four-year wait for the Calder Highway funding. There has been no announcement, when they said there would be an announcement for the pipeline funding by the end of last year. There is still no announcement; they are still blaming the state governments for delays. It took four years to get an MRI licence for the local public hospital. It seems that every major project that Bendigo has been able to win over the last four, five or six years has been won despite the government—we have had to drag the government kicking and screaming all the way. If Mr Howard is happy to run on his record, I am certainly more than happy to run on Mr Howard’s record in Bendigo—and I am sure we will be most successful.

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

I am happy to follow the member for Bendigo and happy to follow his lead in regard to Labor members campaigning on what this Prime Minister has not done, not only over this term but over the past 10½ years—what he has not done in Labor electorates and other electorates from one end of the country to the other.

But I also say that I am happy to follow the member for Bendigo and to speak with my other Labor colleagues in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006. There are 25 Labor members speaking on these appropriation bills. Two members of the government side spoke today. Three spoke in the House. Twenty-five to five is a ratio of five to one. That should be enough of a condemnation of the laziness of this government’s members, as I mentioned the other day in speaking to some other bills, in terms of their speaking duties in the House. If this government was not out of puff, if it had not run out of ideas—however good or bad those ideas are—if it had not run out of steam in terms of people being willing to commit themselves to what they have done, instead of simply relying upon Commonwealth public servants and the occasional minister to run the case for what is being done, or relying upon the media doing the job of parliamentarians in this place, there would not be a five-to-one ratio of ALP members to government members speaking on these appropriation bills.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I can assure you that, if you were to take a look at the speaking lists on a range of bills we have had before us in this parliament, you would see the same story over and over again. The members of this government are not taking the process of government, or their duties in relation to that, seriously. They are leaving it to Mark Textor and others, and to their advertising programs, to tell their story for them.

This is fine by me, in a way, because however insignificant people in the government think speeches in this House are, and however much things might have changed because of the changed nature of technology, the fundamental role of the parliament is to be a talk shop. It is a talk shop, Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr—as you well know from your ministerial experience—where, unless you are willing to get up and defend what you have been doing and to do that not just at ministerial level but down to every level of the government, you are not going to sustain yourself in government and you are not going to be able to energise the whole government process. The whole show has run out of puff when it gets to these ludicrous levels. The energy in this parliament is with the Labor Party—and has been for many long years now, as this indicates—and so it is proper that we should take the reins of government. I think that is important, but it is an important issue I mention in passing.

There are a number of measures in these appropriation bills, and this is basically catch-up. We have the budget appropriations where they lay out what they think they are going to do for the next year and what the provisions are. We then have a mid-year review to say, ‘This is what we have done so far and this is where we think we are going,’ and there are adjustments made—as there always are in the budget process—and moneys are sought for various programs.

I want to comment on the defence programs in both these appropriation bills—they seem to have doubled up. That they appear in both appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 is somewhat passing strange, unless I have misread the situation. I want to speak about our defence commitments, particularly in Afghanistan, and the security at our federal airports. This is a theme that I took up the other day in debating the AusCheck Bill 2006, which was presented by the Attorney-General and which you, Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr, spoke on as well. I want to take up some of the elements of that debate in terms of the government initiatives canvassed here and what else needs to be done in this area.

I want to flag an important study—hopefully I will get to it today—done by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Its author is Andrew Davies and it is entitled The generation gap: Australia and the Super Hornet. This important document has a direct and fundamental bearing on the appropriations before us. The government, from out of nowhere, has decided to buy a bunch of Navy Super Hornets from the United States, built specifically for aircraft carriers. The Australian government is going to spend about $4 billion on buying or leasing these aircraft in order to cover the strategic gap that will be there, we think, with the arrival of the JSF. This study bears on the fact that this is immensely important for our national security and defence posture. It also goes to the whole question of how this government decides to spend its dough. Like Menzies, the government is into adhocery at almost every level. There is not enough consistent planning at its basis.

I support the additional funding outlined in the legislation. A provision of $120.8 million is made for Operation Astute to restore peace and stability in East Timor. We have had to go back to East Timor in order to settle the problems that occurred there. This could not have been readily predicted and it is necessary to support it. The cost of these kinds of operations is increasing, as we continue to intervene in East Timor and in the Pacific region. This indicates the changed nature of the environment we face—it is very different from when we were last in government—and the pressures on the budget and on our defence forces.

A provision of $49.6 million is made in these bills for the first stage of the program to improve the retention and recruitment of Australian Defence Force personnel. This is necessary because of the minerals boom and because people who are highly qualified or who have great expertise in particular areas can make more by working outside—there is always a siren call for people in the defence forces. It is also because of the skills crisis that the government has allowed to develop. Well-skilled people in the defence forces are in great demand in the economy, and not just because of the minerals boom—they are in demand across the board. The government has not done an adequate job in the education and training area to provide Australia with the young, highly-skilled people it needs across all disciplines and in all areas—professional and trade. This is particularly important for us in the defence area. The government has contracted out or outsourced so much of its work. That is the way it has gone over the last 10½ years. It is no longer willing to sustain work internally. That presents a problem for us. I do not think it is a wise thing to do.

People used to be rolled back when they were injured in the field in a program where they would go through the workshops and do work they were capable of doing—light work. They would be kept involved in the process instead of staying in the barracks to deal with their difficulties. Active work is of great benefit to the defence forces as a whole. Most of that work has now been taken outside, and that has put pressure on our forces. Lastly, $32 million is provided to deliver stage 1 of the enhanced land initiative to increase the size of the Australian Army by one light infantry battalion. The government has made this decision largely because an expanded role is now being given to our defence forces.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would also draw your attention to the materials for appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 in the Bills Digest and what is laid out. It seems rather strange, but in the Bills Digest for No. 4 it says:

• $27.9 million will be allocated to the Department of Defence to fund a Special Forces Task Group to Afghanistan, and a further $27 million will be provided to deploy helicopters and support elements in Afghanistan; these increases have been fully offset by savings arising in the department’s non-operating budget

If we look at Appropriation Bill (No. 3), there is:

• $40.9 million to provide a Special Forces Task Group to Afghanistan
• $16 million to fund the deployment of helicopters and support elements in Afghanistan

Usually they would be in one bill rather than the other—unless the Bills Digest is wrong. I would be interested to know from the library if that is the case. Which bill are we looking at here? Are we doubling up or is it a case of clerical error? Are we going to provide two buckets of money to basically do the same job? The other major element here again crosses over. It is:

• a total of $34.3 million to the Australian Federal Police to fund the Joint Airport Intelligence Group and to implement phase 1 of community policing at airports

If one goes to the Bills Digest for No. 3, there is $29.2 million in a range of areas with the Department of the Attorney-General, including ‘$27.2 million for phase 1 of community policing at airports’—that is a difference of $0.71 million. Are we getting two cracks at this whip or is it just some kind of mistake? I would appreciate it if that was clarified.

If we look at what else is laid out in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) with regard to airport security, there are quite significant bits and pieces that are put together in an area where there is an expectation that our airports need to be as safe as possible. The extension of moneys needed for the war in Afghanistan will only continue in the future as pressure increasingly comes on coalition efforts in that country. But the pressure here in Australia to secure ourselves properly is indicated, particularly this year, in item 1 in relation to the Attorney-General’s Department asking for more money. The department wants:

• $18.1 million for security costs associated with the APEC Leaders’ Week 2007.

That is money for that. It is not just the leaders week we are looking at here in 2007 with massive security attached to that—60 leaders from the Asia-Pacific area coming in. Our very first meetings have happened already. They are happening in Perth. We have Comcar drivers going over there for ministerial and departmental meetings. We know that the whole month prior to APEC will be taken up with significant meetings between officials and essentially the leaders will come on to tick the boxes and do the presentation on what is to emerge from that conference. This is a vitally important conference for Australia to demonstrate itself to the world, and the security aspects and money spent on Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport are critical.

As part of that there is ‘a total of $54.6 million to the Australian Federal Police for airport policing measures’. I have already mentioned this in relation to community policing. There is also:

• $18.2 million to provide a first response counter-terrorism capability at relevant airports, and
• $9.2 million to establish joint airport investigation teams with the Australian Customs Service, who will also receive an additional $1 million for this initiative.

Related to that, in transport and regional services:

• ‘$11.9 million has been provided to the Department of Transport and Regional Services to improve security of international passenger aircraft through increased inspection of air cargo.

We need to do these things, but, as I argued the other day, we need to do a hell of a lot more.

The specific provision on community policing and on seeking to work with Customs and the Australian Federal Police for policing at the airport I do not think goes far enough, because it will not get to the nub of the key problem at that airport: our security has been breached in the past and it will be breached in the future because there are gangs operating—they have been operating for decades—at Sydney airport. Why? Because of the immense amount of drugs and other contraband that goes through the place that has not been adequately picked up. They only pick up part of it.

The money going to the Department of Transport and Regional Services for extra scanning will assist. But it will not assist in a situation such as that which existed in the old Ansett air cargo. People there were running a racket for years. They put pressure on new people who came to work with them to turn their heads the other way and not look at the trucks being driven out with contraband in them; they would be looked after if they did that. I know that from direct personal family experience, because my brother was working there. When he was threatened by these people, he only got out of that situation because there were some Maoris, who were pretty big blokes and pretty effective, who were willing to defend someone who wanted to continue to be honest in the way they did their work. That is a problem that existed there. It exists. If you talk to the people who used to work in Qantas security about the problems that existed then—and the problems that existed when Wackenhut came in and when SNP came in, with the outsourcing and contracting of work at Sydney airport—you find that these problems have not been readily fixed. Why? Because we do not have Commonwealth government employees in charge of that security.

I have some experience of this. While Mr Keating was Treasurer, and particularly in the time he was Prime Minister, I can indicate that, as his electorate officer, I was able to do some things at the federal government level to achieve a better security situation at Kingsford Smith airport and to defend the Australian government employees at Qantas and the security people when the security director, Geoff Askew—who is still in charge of Qantas security—wanted to throw those people out of their jobs and put in the Wackenhut mob from America. Eventually they got SNP and a combination of the two. He could not do it, because they were protected by the Prime Minister and by the Australian government and their jobs were secured—until the day before the 1996 election when they were told that, if we went out, they were gone as well. What went was a qualified security force that people could rely upon, who were willing to stand up and say, ‘You’re not going to get away with those kinds of breaches, because they are criminal, and you’re not going to get away with people just turning a blind eye.’ I have a branch president, Claude Killick, who did exactly that—put his life on the line time and time again. There was cargo going off to Japan with Prime Minister Keating and there had been evidence of potential tampering. Claude sat with the cargo throughout the entire night to make sure that stuff was not pilfered from it, in the time-honoured way that it had been done at Kingsford Smith airport.

The only way you will get a proper solution to the security problems, the contraband problems and the drug dealing problems is to have one dedicated force. I do not think it is enough just to have the intersection between Customs and the Federal Police. It is this Australian coalition government that has taken responsibility away from Australian government employees at that airport, that has allowed the outsourcing that has opened a window for a security breach—and that window can be exploited by virtually anyone who wants to. The measures taken through AusCheck and otherwise do not get to the core of the problem. You do not fundamentally know who is working at that airport, because the major security groups subcontract down to the point that, when casuals run into the place, they could be from anywhere. That is the fundamental security hole that has to be plugged. How do you plug it? Get rid of all the private security people, put Australian government employees in place who are responsible to the secretary of the department, who is then responsible to the minister, who is responsible to the parliament and the Australian people. That is the way the Americans do it; that is the way it was done under Labor; that is the way it should be done here.

In these areas I support what is being expended in relation to defence and the measures, inadequate though they are, by the Attorney-General in relation to improving security at those airports. But I want to underline here for anyone who needs to look at this situation in terms of the potential gap that is there that, as to going for a Super Hornet, which bears virtually no relationship whatsoever to the F18 Hornets we have now—and also to the upgraded and improved version of that, which is a $3 billion program that has been undertaken; I will return to this later in another context—it is a dumb decision to go with a plane that is inadequate. We should look at this from the bottom up again in terms of the expenditure here, because the $18 billion or so can rack up against what is recommended here—that is, $21.7 billion for 60 Raptor F22s.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The challenge of climate change is the largest single issue confronting Australia and the nations of the world yet, despite the overwhelming evidence that climate change has been driven by greenhouse gas pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, this government remains unrepentant in its determination to sabotage efforts to reduce emissions. As is now well known, this government, not just content with spreading disinformation about the consequences of global warming, deliberately set out from the start to wreck any attempt by the international community to establish a treaty to reduce the volume of greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

On 28 August 2006 the Prime Minister, despite all of the evidence for global warming induced climate change, stated on Four Corners that he remained unconvinced about the evidence and declared that he was ‘a climate change sceptic’. The Prime Minister was being disingenuous when he referred to himself as a sceptic, which implies some acceptance of the evidence, since his actions prove that he is completely opposed to any actions that could reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Now the member for Wentworth, the new Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, as ever the Prime Minister’s creature, announces that he too is a climate change sceptic, conveniently ignoring the mass of evidence that would, if he bothered to study the issue, inform him of the reality of the situation. In continuing an internationally condemned campaign of deceit and disruption directed against the Kyoto protocol, the Howard government has adopted policies that are not supported by scientific evidence but, rather, are clearly designed to advance vested interests and the Prime Minister’s self-evident dogmatic position.

The details of these policies were spelled out by Professors Ian Lowe and Tim Flannery on the ABC Radio The National Interest program on 27 August last year. Of course, you will never see the government issuing this sort of description of its policies, but the statements and actions of the ministers make it clear that what follows is an accurate account of their intentions. Firstly, there is complete opposition to any form of carbon tax or the imposition of trade restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions. The rest of the developed world, with the temporary exception of the United States, agrees that emission caps and financial incentives are required to shift the world’s economy away from fossil fuels and towards non-polluting energy sources. Secondly, there are larger subsidies for the coal industry, the largest greenhouse gas polluter, for research into vaguely described carbon capture schemes that have neither specific targets for emission reductions nor any starting date. This is despite the fact that this still-undeveloped technology would not be used on existing coal-fired power stations and could not be used for mobile sources such as vehicles.

Thirdly, there is opposition to adopting any limits on carbon dioxide emissions until developing Third World economies with much lower per capita incomes and emission levels do so first. This is of course in complete opposition to the principal position of the Kyoto protocol that states that those who can afford to act should do so now. Fourthly, there is the promotion of the establishment of a nuclear industry in this country. This is despite the very evident risks associated with nuclear reactors and the fact that building the 25 or so proposed nuclear power stations around the country would divert resources away from more effective and less hazardous emission reduction schemes. I would add to this list the Howard government’s evident hostility to any expansion of the renewable energy industry and a continuing threat to abolish the existing minimal two per cent mandatory renewable energy target.

There is also a determination by the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources to promote the clean coal lie. Let me be clear: there is no such thing as clean coal. Burning coal unavoidably produces carbon dioxide, although there have been some pilot schemes to pump carbon dioxide down depleted oil wells; the practicalities of compressing and cooling the millions of tonnes of hot gas produced annually by a large power station remain unresolved to say the least. Note that coal is a solid, but carbon dioxide is a gas. For every tonne of coal burned, approximately three tonnes of gaseous carbon dioxide is produced. No wonder there is a problem with this scheme.

The only conclusion to be drawn from the actions of the Prime Minister and his ministers is that their real purpose remains the sabotaging of any international emissions reduction scheme that could reduce the profits of the Australian export coal industry. The Australian Labor Party supports the signing of the Kyoto protocol as a valuable instrument for addressing the critical issue of global warming and equally as an instrument to express Australia’s support for the principle of equity, wherein wealthy nations such as Australia, that can afford to take immediate steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, should do so. The welfare of the Australian coal industry should not be the primary influence in deciding our stance on the Kyoto protocol.

For the benefit of the sceptical members of the government, I will explain the basis of the present understanding of the phenomena of global warming. The measurable changes that are now occurring in the atmosphere and in the oceans are a direct result of the current annual worldwide emission of more than 24,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. By the way, of this quantity, Australia’s contribution, including emissions from our coal exports, is nearly 1,000 million tonnes—around five per cent of the total; a small proportion but in absolute terms a not insignificant amount.

When radiant energy from the sun reaches the earth’s surface, some may be absorbed and some may be reflected. The sunlight that is absorbed heats the surface which then, in the process that was explained by Max Planck in 1900, radiates energy back into space as heat in the infra-red part of the spectrum. The gases that form the bulk of the atmosphere—nitrogen, oxygen and argon—do not absorb visible or infra-red radiation and so allow light and heat to pass through unabated. It is the minor constituents of the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide that are opaque to wavelengths of infra-red radiation that actually absorb and trap the heat radiated by the surface of the earth.

The heat-trapping effect of the atmospheric carbon dioxide can be accurately calculated from the properties that have been carefully measured in laboratories. The results of these repeatable measurements are beyond dispute. I want to emphasise this point because members of the government regularly claim that the science of global warming is uncertain and have constructed a carefully calculated campaign of disinformation to mislead the public into thinking that the evidence of the effects of carbon dioxide pollution remains in dispute.

Let me state the position explicitly. Global warming by the trapping of heat by atmospheric carbon dioxide is a well-understood phenomenon, as are the changes taking place in the earth’s climate that are being driven by a measurable increase in average surface temperatures. Measurements from the Antarctic ice core stretching back over 800,000 years demonstrate that the earth’s average surface temperature is strongly correlated with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the present-day carbon dioxide concentration has risen to 383 parts per million by volume, a measure that appears to be higher than any naturally occurring levels over the past 20 million years. There are other influences that drive the glacial episodes, such as the Milankovitch cycles, but the evidence for disruption of these natural cycles by the massive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is now overwhelming.

The World Meteorological Organisation warned in 2003 that the incidence and intensity of extreme weather conditions such as droughts in Australia, floods and storms and heatwaves in Europe and tornadoes and hurricanes in the United States were on the rise and that the emerging pattern of these changes is clearly linked to global warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution.

While climate change is rightfully driving our attention, the effect of carbon dioxide pollution upon the oceans has received less attention. Once again, the warnings issued by scientists have been ignored by this government in the hope that the issue will either disappear or be lost in the welter of other concerns. It appears that, to date, about one-half of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity has been dissolved into the upper layers of the oceans. The quantity of carbon dioxide absorbed in the oceans has been measured and because carbon dioxide that has been produced from fossil fuels does not contain the short-lived isotope carbon 14, which occurs in naturally occurring atmospheric carbon dioxide, there is no doubt as to the origins of this dissolved gas.

While the oceans have been a convenient dumping ground for our waste, the effect of all of this carbon dioxide upon the ocean waters is beginning to have serious consequences because carbon dioxide, when dissolved in water, forms a weak acid. The Great Barrier Reef, for instance, which is an enormous accumulation of constructions of coral and coralline algae, is not only under threat from increasing water temperatures that cause coral bleaching but now appears to be additionally besieged by rising ocean acidity. Other sea creatures that are likely to be adversely affected by increasing ocean acidity include the small marine snails that constitute a major food source for fish and marine mammals, including some species of whales. Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institute’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, has warned that acidification of the oceans through carbon dioxide emissions could, if unabated, cause a massive extinction of marine life similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs appeared.

As I have stated repeatedly, one of the greatest failings of this government is the complete refusal to adopt any measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Fortunately, the rest of the world is awake to the consequences of inaction. Many nations, including the United States, China and the European community, have introduced regulations to curb emissions from the transport, industrial, domestic and agricultural sectors. Quite extraordinarily, and virtually alone amongst the industrialised countries, Australia has not introduced any legislative requirements for emission reductions for motor vehicles.

The following is a list of regulations for emissions in grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre in the most important countries. In China, the Chinese government has regulated for a maximum level of emissions by 2008 from vehicles in various weight classes ranging from 131 grams per kilometre for the lightest vehicles to 481 grams per kilometre for vehicles weighing over 2,500 kilograms. In the United States, under the less stringent corporate average fuel efficiency requirements, this year’s cars have to achieve average emission levels of 210 grams per kilometre while light trucks must achieve an average emission of 260 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. In the European Union, the European Union’s environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, is promoting a new EU law requiring new European, Japanese and Korean car makers to meet emissions from new passenger cars to an average of 120 grams per kilometre from 2012.

In Australia there are currently no fuel efficiency regulations for cars or trucks, although in 2002 the Australian Greenhouse Office estimated that the average urban car emitted 192 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, equivalent to 12.8 kilometres per litre. In my view, Australia should immediately adopt the European standard and regulate to ensure that the average emission of all new cars sold from 2012 must be 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, the equivalent of 20 kilometres per litre. By 2020 the level must be reduced to 80 grams per kilometre, equal to 30 kilometres per litre if we are to have any chance of averting the worst consequences of global warming. The fact that the Howard government has done nothing to require Australian manufacturers and importers to improve fuel consumption means that for years into the future Australian drivers will be driving low fuel efficiency, high emission vehicles while paying ever-increasing prices for fuel.

Recent developments in vehicle technology suggest that, in the short term, the most effective means of reducing fuel consumption will be the introduction of hybrid electric cars and trucks with a capacity to recharge their batteries both from the mains overnight and from roof-mounted solar panels during the day. I believe that the Australian government should immediately introduce regulations requiring the makers of hybrid vehicles to include a plug-in battery charger in their cars and to investigate the potential of vehicle roof-mounted solar panels to further reduce fuel consumption. The present generous tax benefits available for the buyers of four wheel drives should be immediately abolished and the resulting tax concessions transferred to the buyers of hybrid or electric cars.

We regularly hear about schemes to produce petrol from coal or from oil shale, or from natural gas. While petrol has been produced from coal on a large scale in the past, particularly in Germany in World War II, the process normally used is inherently inefficient and results in emissions of carbon dioxide that are as much as four times as great for the equivalent volume of petrol produced directly from oil. For this reason alone, no proposals to produce oil from coal should ever be entertained by Australian governments. Similar arguments apply against schemes to manufacture petrol from natural gas or oil shale. The inefficiency of the processes and resultant carbon dioxide emissions are simply unacceptable.

George Bush in his recent State of the Union address gave his support to a massive expansion of ethanol production as a replacement for imported oil. While there are problems with George Bush’s scheme, any attempt to substitute a significant proportion of Australia’s petrol consumption with ethanol would be limited by the low agricultural productivity of Australia. Figures provided to me by the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources in answer to my question on notice No. 2110 in 2003 indicated that just to replace 10 per cent of the petrol consumed in that year it would have required approximately 40 per cent of the wheat crop.

I am a supporter of ethanol and I acknowledge the substantial improvements needed in the fuel economy of Australian vehicles. I also acknowledge that ethanol on its own will not be a total replacement for petrol in Australia. However, the government should do more to support the ethanol industry in Australia and it could learn from Brazil. For example, I asked why we could not grow more sugarcane near the Ord River in Western Australia. Increased ethanol production, though not a panacea for the global warming crisis, is one important component of a serious climate change solution.

Freight is the other part of the transport problem. Since 1996 we have seen an uncontrolled growth in emissions from an out-of-control road freight industry that has been mismanaged by a succession of incompetent Howard government ministers for transport. The member for Gwydir and the Prime Minister in introducing their Diesel and Alternative Fuels Grants Scheme Bill in 1999 boasted that transport operators would save money on fuel and be able to provide cheaper transport. At the time I asked various questions of the then minister for transport about some of the undisclosed costs, such as increased greenhouse gas emissions, road safety and the lack of equivalent support for railways. In his wisdom, the minister refused to reply, stating that either the answers were to be found on his department’s website or the questions were ridiculous.

We now know that emissions from road transport have risen by over 20 per cent since this government came into office. In this government’s view, truck drivers are—considering the frequency of fatal crashes—regarded as expendable and the alternative, the railways, are better off if the tracks are torn up and their equipment scrapped. Railways are the most energy efficient and least polluting form of transport, with energy costs and emissions between one-quarter and one-eighth that of road transport. I know the member for Hinkler, who is listening to this, supports that.

Back in the 1970s, investigations in the United States showed that railway electrification had considerable advantages over diesel traction and these advantages include higher operating speeds, reduced maintenance and, not least, lower overall operating costs and reduced pollution. In the present context, the great advantage of electrification is the potential for building up a transport system that, when operated from renewable power, produces virtually zero emissions. The present interstate railway system has not greatly improved since the 1950s, when duplication of the interstate tracks was abandoned. The main line between Junee and Melbourne remains a single track operation that is interrupted occasionally by passing loops and its trains are hauled by the obsolete diesel locomotives. No wonder it only carries 18 per cent of the freight between Sydney and Melbourne. I am sure that, if the Hume Highway or the Pacific Highway were to be restricted to single lanes with passing loops, there would be a national outcry. How is it then that our most important interstate rail link remains in this condition? The vital railway connections between Sydney and Melbourne and between Sydney and Brisbane have to be electrified and duplicated by 2020 at the latest. Improving the railways will reduce emissions. Improving the roads and neglecting the railways, which is the present government’s policy, will increase emissions. It is as simple as that.

The last matter that I wish to raise in this debate today is the coal-fired power stations that produce 95 per cent of our electrical power and more than 40 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions. As we know, the government does not intend to take any action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from existing power stations. It is content to allow the newer ones to continue spewing out massive quantities of carbon dioxide for the next 30 years or so. I have seen for myself the advanced solar power collector that has been installed at the Liddell Power Station in the Hunter Valley by Dr David Mills. This relatively simple and inexpensive piece of equipment, designed by Australian scientists, will produce the heating equivalent of approximately 1,500 tonnes of coal per week and will result in the power station generating 20 megawatts of electrical energy directly from the sun. We have heard that the Prime Minister’s nuclear task force has proposed that nuclear reactors be built alongside existing power stations so that the heat from these reactors can be used to replace the coal presently burned in the boilers. I have been informed by the designer of the Liddell solar power collector, Dr David Mills, that a solar collector no more than six square kilometres in area could replace all of the coal-fired heat used in that power station and similar sized power stations around the country. Why do we need to go down the nuclear path when locally developed technology could replace all of the coal presently being burned in Australian power stations without the dangers of nuclear terrorism or nuclear waste?

In order to encourage the owners of power stations to increase the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources, the mandatory renewable energy target—presently languishing at two per cent—has to be increased by a minimum of five per cent per annum starting immediately. Working at that rate, we would see virtually all of our power generated from renewable sources by around 2025 and at the same time a potential drop in locally produced emissions of 40 per cent. Those are the facts. In concluding, the United States government Energy Information Administration said in a report in 2002:

... Australia’s environmental progress is still sometimes slowed by a lack of clear federal leadership.

I wonder what they will say when George Bush is no longer the President of the United States of America.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First let me express my concern about the government’s watering down of the election disclosure requirements, particularly given the weekend revelations that the member for Indi is linked to a secret fund called the Friends of Indi which has received, amongst other donations, some $15,000 from the tobacco giant British American Tobacco. There are three strikes on the member for Indi over this matter.

Firstly, these donations were not declared to the Australian Electoral Commission. None of the cash, including the $15,000 from British American Tobacco, was disclosed on Liberal Party returns to the Australian Electoral Commission, nor did the Friends of Indi disclose its funds separately as an associated entity of the Liberal Party.

Secondly, there is a major question mark about where this money ended up and what the person who got it did with it. A spokesman for Friends of Indi said:

I don’t think that the Victorian division or the head office of the party would be aware of our existence or what we do mainly because we’ve never seen fit to get in contact with them about it.

... it’s not set up primarily to provide money to the party. We prefer to engage in more direct action.

It sounds as if the money might have gone to the local Liberal Party, except that the Liberal Party’s finance chairman for the Indi area, Andrew Randall, has never heard of it. He says:

I have never heard of a supporters group called Friends of Indi. I have never seen a cheque come into the Indi funds from any organisation calling itself Friends of Indi.

He says, not unreasonably, that he would be ‘most appreciative’ to receive its fundraising results including the British American Tobacco cheque.

So maybe British American Tobacco did not really donate the money to the Liberal Party at all. Maybe it just wanted to donate it to Friends of Indi. Well, not according to British American Tobacco spokesman, Bede Fennell. He has stated he had absolutely no doubt the company’s $15,000 cheque to the Friends of Indi was intended for the Liberal Party. He said:

For us that’s the main thing. That’s why we disclose it. We wouldn’t be giving money to bodies that aren’t connected to the Liberal Party.

The member for Indi has stated she was familiar with the group, and believed it was registered with the AEC as an associated entity. She is wrong about that. That is okay; we all make mistakes from time to time. She goes on to describe the group:

Just like a lot of political parties, it’s a fund-raising support organisation ... specifically for the Indi Liberal Party.

Yet the Indi finance chairman says he has never heard of it. The member for Indi owes the House an explanation. She owes the Australian Electoral Commission an explanation. Indeed, she owes the Liberal Party an explanation as to what happened to the money which went to the Friends of Indi, including the $15,000 it got from British American Tobacco.

There is a third strike: British American Tobacco says it made the donation ‘just to be part of the political process.’ It turns out they did a little better than that. They paid $15,000 to Friends of Indi in April last year. In October last year the member for Indi advocated in support of British American Tobacco’s offer of a buyout of the industry, encouraging tobacco growers to vote in favour of it. So British American Tobacco was indeed part of the political process. They donated $15,000 to a front group for the member for Indi—

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

Can I draw this back to the bill. I am wondering what this has got to do with government services and where there is any appropriation for this particular—

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is an appropriation for the Australian Electoral Commission and I speak, as members do in the appropriation debate, to matters of government expenditure and the provision of government services. Some years ago, the Labor Party stopped accepting political donations from the tobacco industry and it is time that the Liberal Party did the same.

I turn to the issue of Regional Partnerships. I have on a number of occasions previously raised in the House the abuse of the Regional Partnerships program by the Liberal and National parties for political advantage. I was therefore very concerned to learn on a recent visit to Mackay that the government had decided not to reappoint the chairman of the Mackay Regional Area Consultative Committee, Mr Col Meng. Mr Meng is extremely highly regarded locally. There was a near riot in the local paper and on radio and TV about his sacking. I am concerned that the decision to replace him will diminish public confidence in the integrity and transparency of the Regional Partnerships program.

There is already substantial public disquiet at the way in which Regional Partnerships moneys have been administered and concern that taxpayers’ money has been wasted on projects chosen for their political value to the government rather than on their merits. This decision suggests that the government have learnt nothing from the regional rorts scandal of 2004-05, Tumbi Creek, Beaudesert Rail or the A2 milk debacles. They are recidivists, serial offenders, and what everyone in Mackay suspects is that Col Meng has been sacked because the member for Dawson wanted him out. The question Minister Vaile must answer is: did he discuss with the member for Dawson the reappointment of Mr Meng prior to deciding not to reappoint him? The people of Mackay want an answer to that question. They are entitled to one. I have written to the Auditor-General asking him to add the issue of Mr Meng’s sacking to the long list of dealings he is investigating in relation to Regional Partnerships.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

One of the largest appropriations in the last few years has been that for the war in Iraq—$2 billion and still, sadly, no end in sight. The Prime Minister is so unwilling to admit that he got it wrong on Iraq that not only will he not contemplate any deviation from our present disastrous course but also he will not even contemplate the United States rethinking its position. His remarkable attack on Sunday on the Democratic Party shows this. In the Prime Minister’s view, even though the war in Iraq has now cost more lives of American servicemen and women than the September 11 attacks—3,000 killed and 20,000 wounded—and even though the United States has spent over $360 billion on the war, the United States has no business and no right to reconsider its own position. It is little wonder that some of the American commentary in response has been: ‘We’d take you more seriously if you had a fraction of the military investment in Iraq that we do.’

What is now out there for all the world to see is that our Prime Minister does not have a special relationship with the United States; he has a relationship with the Bush administration. He is prepared to allow that relationship to get in the way of managing Australia’s alliance relationship with the United States—an alliance between the people of both countries, beyond party politics. It means that the Prime Minister has a political use-by date. After the end of next year, when George Bush ceases to be President, the Prime Minister becomes a foreign policy liability. By contrast, the Labor leader—the Leader of the Opposition—is an experienced diplomat who would never offend a prospective US President with such an offensive claim. The Democrats, after all, control the congress. The Prime Minister’s approach is risky and reckless.

In recent days, the Prime Minister and other Liberals have been talking a lot about experience. Experience is not much use unless you actually learn from it. The trouble is that we have a Prime Minister who is, on the two biggest issues facing the world today, utterly unwilling to admit he has got them wrong. On the war on terror, it was a debacle to go into Iraq. It had no weapons of mass destruction; more American lives were lost there than in the September 11 attacks, to say nothing of the innocent Iraqi men, women and children who have died there; we have let Osama bin Laden run free in the meantime and given him a magnificent recruiting pitch, and there is no end in sight. It is not Vietnam; it is worse than Vietnam. But the Prime Minister will not admit that he got it wrong on Iraq, and that refusal, stubbornness and pig-headedness make him a foreign policy risk. He is carrying baggage.

It is the same thing with the other great threat facing the globe—global warming, also called climate change. The Prime Minister has experience all right, but his obstinate refusal to admit he got it wrong on climate change means that he is a risk to our future economic prosperity. He keeps saying that action on global warming could threaten jobs and the economy. He still does not get it. Inaction on global warming will threaten jobs in agriculture and tourism and will condemn our children to a bleak economy where droughts, floods, storms and bushfires are routinely the order of the day. It is another week, another blunder from a Prime Minister who is living in the past and incapable of admitting he got it wrong.

The final thing I want to talk about is the issue of David Hicks. The Attorney-General has entered what amounts to a not guilty plea to the charge of abandoning David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay. The government, he wants us to believe, has done all it can and continues to do all it can to help David Hicks. Let us look at the evidence. The Attorney-General says that a comparison of conduct of the Australian government with the British government, which had its citizens released, is not valid because the released UK citizens had not been designated as eligible for trial. In fact, in July 2003, US President George W Bush determined that six people were eligible to stand trial by military commission. One was David Hicks and two were British citizens, Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg. But their government—the UK government—said that the military commissions did not meet their requirements for a fair trial by international standards. They said that the British detainees should be either tried in accordance with international standards or returned to the UK. Mr Abbasi and Mr Begg were returned to the UK.

The Attorney-General says that the UK made it clear early on that a detainee would not be repatriated unless the detainee would be prosecuted. Under our law at the time, he says, that was not possible. He is wrong on both counts. The US-released British detainees were held by British police for questioning for a day and were then released without charge. So clearly it could happen in the case of the British detainees. It did happen in the case of the British detainees.

It is also noteworthy that a spokesperson for the Attorney-General has said that Australian citizens who engage in hostile activity in a foreign country face up to 20 years in jail under the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act 1978. When you talk about this question of David Hicks being tried in Australia, the Attorney-General responds that things like the likelihood of success, the facts in question and the rules of evidence in Australian courts must all be considered—and indeed they must. But the point here is that no government has a right to seek a guarantee that an individual will be successfully convicted. The Attorney’s obligation was to point this out to the United States—not to meekly accept such an idea.

The Attorney-General says that the new US military commission process ‘incorporates a number of fundamental safeguards’. He apparently thinks, or wants us to think, that a military commission constitutes a fair trial. He is wrong again. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

This is also set out in the Geneva convention, which recognises the right to trial before an impartial and regularly constituted court. It is also set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that ‘everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal’.

A military commission consists of officers appointed from the US armed forces who work for the person who appoints them. This is not trial by a jury of your peers. Furthermore, the military commission rules do not exclude evidence obtained by coercion—and that is a breach of the Geneva convention; they do not exclude hearsay evidence—that is a breach of the Australian Criminal Code; and they do not permit the accused to be privy to all the evidence. The military commissions are not independent or impartial, and it is noteworthy that the US Military Commission Act 2006 expressly stipulates that no American citizen can be dealt with by a military commission. If it is not good enough for American citizens, why is it good enough for Australian citizens?

I know that there are people out there who say and think that David Hicks is a terrorist and deserves all he gets. There are two problems with this approach. Firstly, that is for a properly constituted court to decide. Secondly, this issue has long since ceased being about David Hicks; it is about us. It is about whether we still stand for habeas corpus—that is, no imprisonment without trial—and its proud 800-year history. It is about whether we still believe in a fair trial and understand that the right to be tried by a jury of our peers is part of the package.

Labor believes that the rule of law should be universally applied. Anyone accused of a crime should be afforded a swift and fair trial, irrespective of the nature of the allegations or of political sensitivities. A fair trial is the legal form of a fair go. When we hear the Attorney-General saying that what he is seeking in David Hicks’ case is ensuring that any process is as fair as possible, that is not good enough. Either the process is fair or it is not fair. We have a situation where David Hicks is being held, right now, without charges having been laid, whereas the British citizens who were deemed fit to be charged have long since been returned to Britain.

As I said, the US government itself knows that military commissions do not constitute a fair trial. It has banned any US citizen from being tried under them. The point here is that deviations from the rule of law undermine the system and expose individuals to risks, physical abuse, injustice and the like. There is no doubt that the allegations against David Hicks are very serious, and what Labor is calling for is a fair trial, not special treatment.

I also raise concern about the issue of the current physical and mental health of David Hicks. I note that the Attorney-General has not been willing to seek an independent mental health assessment for him. The Melbourne psychiatrist Paul Mullen visited David Hicks in February 2005 and, in light of recent concerns that have been expressed about him, it is my view that a follow-up assessment should occur. But we have not seen it. It is also my view that this government needs to reacquaint itself with the tradition of a fair go, and these legal cases, which highlight the adverse consequences of government policy, should be no exception. Australian law should be administered without prejudice and every Australian given access to justice.

I note that there were reports that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had in fact requested an independent health assessment of David Hicks. We have got that on the one hand and we have the Attorney-General saying that the government had not asked for an independent health assessment of David Hicks on the other hand. When asked why, the Attorney-General said that it is a question of sovereignty—it is the prerogative of the United States to refuse such an assessment—and that there are 500 Australians held in overseas jails and we do not normally ask for independent medical assessments of them. He did not say whether any of those 500 had been held in overseas jails for five years without trial. It should be a matter of shame for the Attorney-General that he has not had the courage to ask for an independent assessment. At least the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has had the audacity to ask for an independent assessment.

I also note that the United States military prosecutor does not seem to hold the view that time already served should be deducted from any sentence which David Hicks might receive. I regard this as at odds with the basic principles of fairness and justice in the legal system. Again this does not seem to be something that has been raised by the Attorney-General. Rather than meekly accepting everything he is told by the Bush administration, the Attorney-General should be doing as the British government did and demanding that David Hicks be returned to Australia to face prosecution or be tried in America before a properly constituted United States court, not a military commission with a jury of military officers.

I note also that the Minister for Foreign Affairs said that he had received advice that David Hicks was in good shape. It turned out that this advice came from a consular official who had visited David Hicks for five minutes and had not even spoken with him. For the minister’s benefit, some consular official waving as he walks past on a tour of inspection does not constitute an independent mental health assessment.

The Attorney-General should release the advice that he has received from the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions as to whether David Hicks can be tried under Australian law. The Attorney-General has been claiming that Labor wants David Hicks to avoid prosecution. That claim is completely and utterly without foundation. It is expressly contradicted by the wording of the parliamentarians’ letter to the United States congress that asks that David Hicks be returned to Australia to face prosecution. The Attorney-General refers to the Director of Public Prosecutions as independent. This reference would carry more weight if the advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions was public rather than the private plaything of the Attorney-General which is presently being used for his own political purposes.

Furthermore, when the Attorney-General says that David Hicks cannot be prosecuted under Australian laws, he goes on to admit that he has not even seen the United States evidence. If we are to have a serious debate about this issue, we need to have the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions made public so we can all have a look at it. We need to have a serious debate about this matter of great national importance. (Time expired)

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When debating any appropriation bill, it is valuable to reflect on the overall progress of the Australian economy and the quest to sustain prosperity in our country. No better reflection could be provided than by the Business Council of Australia in its budget submission for 2007-08 titled Passing on prosperity: rising the high bar on reform. The Business Council of Australia observes:

The benefits that rising commodity prices have provided to the economy have masked underlying structural weaknesses.

This is a point that I have been making for about five years—that structural weaknesses have emerged in the Australian economy and they are not getting the attention they deserve. They have been masked by the strong rate of economic growth that has been achieved in Australia over the last 16 years. I point out that the government seeks to claim credit for all of that, including the almost six years of it that occurred under the previous Labor government. Nevertheless, the government does frequently boast of 16 years of sustained economic growth and in statistical terms it is correct; it has been the longest period of unbroken economic growth in Australia’s history.

The structural weaknesses that began emerging in the Australian economy around the turn of the century have been masked by that strong growth. It was growth that was built on the reform program implemented by the previous Labor government which unleashed a productivity surge through the 1990s. Today’s productivity growth is tomorrow’s prosperity, and today’s prosperity is a consequence of yesterday’s productivity growth. More specifically, it is a consequence of the productivity growth of the 1990s.

As the benefits of that productivity surge began to wane, the Australian people looked to this government for a new reform agenda. But it has come to pass that this government is reform lazy. It could have seized the opportunity to build on the productivity boom of the 1990s, but instead it has built ongoing economic growth on two subsequent booms, neither of which can be expected to continue indefinitely. The first of those was a housing boom in the early 2000s. We would not want a housing boom sustained indefinitely, because we can see now the consequence of it, with the lowest level of housing affordability for decades, including during the period of high interest rates of the late eighties and early 1990s.

When that housing boom petered out, as we hoped it would, a new boom came to take its place—the China boom. The Reserve Bank’s statement of monetary policy, released just yesterday, confirms that Australia’s terms of trade are not now the highest in three decades but the highest since the early 1950s. So there is a huge surge of income coming into Australia not as a result of the good, hard policy work of this government but as a result of the rapid rate of economic growth in China and also in India. Of course, the Minister for Trade claims credit for these record high mineral prices. It is strange, is it not, that the government claims credit for everything that is going favourably and blames everyone and everything else for anything that goes wrong. But the consequence has been a housing boom, followed by a China boom, masking these structural weaknesses in the Australian economy. What are those weaknesses? Again, I need not go to any source other than the same report by the Business Council of Australia. It says:

Australia continues to run a significant current account deficit; exports outside of resources are performing poorly; infrastructure bottlenecks are limiting activity; we are failing to manage key resources such as water; and significant pockets of entrenched community disadvantage remain.

Add to these challenges the impact of an ageing population and slower productivity growth as the benefits of past reforms fade, and many conclude that slower growth in the future is inevitable for Australia.

What an indictment, but the Business Council of Australia is right. It has encapsulated in two paragraphs the very structural weaknesses to which I have been referring over the last few years. At the heart of those weaknesses is Australia’s appalling productivity performance during the early part of this century. When the government could no longer rely on the productivity boom of the 1990s, which was built on the reform program of the previous Labor government, when it was on its own and needing to implement its own productivity enhancing agenda it failed to do so. Again, the Business Council of Australia points to this problem where it says:

More worryingly, labour productivity growth has slowed sharply in Australia.

…            …            …

This deterioration in productivity performance is a very real concern.

The government should be embarrassed about this. The Business Council of Australia represents the largest multi-state companies in this country, and it has set out in the clearest possible terms the structural weaknesses in this country, the productivity slump that has occurred under the watch of this government and the sorts of economic and social consequences that flow from it. And good on the Business Council of Australia for pointing out that one consequence of this is that social disadvantage is being entrenched, because we have had the capacity in this country to deal with entrenched social disadvantage and yet we have an entire underclass of people who are heavily dependent on welfare or who are in work but are on very low incomes or in insecure jobs. We can do better, but in order to do better we must regain productivity growth and ensure that the benefits of that productivity growth in terms of tomorrow’s prosperity are fairly shared.

The Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, appointed me to the portfolio of shadow minister for the service economy, small business and independent contractors. Again, the Business Council of Australia makes some pertinent observations in relation to services, a long-neglected area of the Australian economy in policy terms, contributing 80 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product and 85 per cent of all jobs. The BCA says:

While Australia’s capacity to maintain competitiveness in manufacturing, agriculture and mining remains important, it is time to recognise that our economic success and prosperity are increasingly linked to the competitiveness of our services sector.

It goes on to say:

Recent trends in the productivity performance of key services industries domestically raise concerns about the quality, effectiveness and competitiveness of services now and into the future.

The reason that the Business Council of Australia is so concerned is, again, because of faltering productivity growth, as that adversely affects the competitiveness of our services sector. Those are the observations of the Business Council of Australia. I agree with them totally.

But let us delve a little more heavily into Australia’s productivity story. From the 1950s, Australian labour productivity began a long slide and, because today’s productivity growth is tomorrow’s prosperity, that long slide in productivity growth had direct consequences for Australia’s prosperity and our place in the world relative to other countries in terms of gross domestic product per person, which is one measure of living standards. Between 1950 and 1990, Australia’s productivity fell from 180 per cent of the OECD average to a little more than 90 per cent. Australia’s standard of living, as a consequence, slipped from fifth in the OECD to 17th. It was that problem that the incoming Labor government inherited and recognised and decided it would deal with through a productivity-raising reform agenda.

Let us have a look at some of the commentary on the economic reform program implemented by the previous Labor government, not commentary by fellow travellers, by people from the Labor side of politics, but by John Hyde, who had been a member of the Fraser party room—that is, a Liberal member for Western Australia during the period of Malcolm Fraser and the then Treasurer John Howard. John Hyde describes what Labor inherited in these terms:

Fraser’s policies were a grab bag of popular measures including some that were inconsistent with the core undertakings to restore the economy to health, return the budget to responsible balance and reduce unemployment. He failed to cut stifling regulations, tariffs and licences that favoured the few at the expense of the many.

That was John Hyde, a leading economic dry, describing the economy that the incoming Labor government inherited. Then, when he gave the verdict on the Hawke government, he did so in these terms:

... the Hawke governments advanced the long-term national interest by deregulating the financial markets, floating the dollar, cutting import protection and privatising and deregulating inefficient state-run industries.

…            …            …

The Hawke administrations deregulated, reduced industry protection and privatised with a will that matched any government anywhere then, or at any time in Australian history. It cut wasteful expenditure and produced substantial budget surpluses.

You would never know from listening to the Treasurer that the Labor government produced substantial budget surpluses. Indeed, the surpluses now as a share of gross domestic product are lower than the surpluses that were recorded by the Hawke government in the late 1980s. So when the Treasurer says, as he did at the National Press Club, that Labor never produced a surplus, he is completely wrong. He knows he is wrong. Labor produced surpluses on many occasions, including surpluses that were bigger as a share of the economy than the biggest surplus that this government has produced.

I want to examine the impact of the reform program that John Hyde so eloquently described. During the 1990s average annual productivity growth leapt to 2.3 per cent, which was sharply up on the 1.1 per cent of the 1980s. So the reform program worked. There was a huge increase in productivity growth. During the productivity boom of the 1990s Australia’s standard of living recovered from being 17th in the OECD in 1990—to which it had plummeted as a result of the sloth and policy neglect of previous coalition governments—to ninth highest in 1999. So it was all working very well. All that was needed was foresight and commitment on the part of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to sustain that productivity growth and, therefore, to sustain prosperity in this country. But it did not happen. Compare the growth in productivity during the 1990s of 2.3 per cent to what happened subsequently. Between 2000 and 2006 Australian productivity growth slumped from that boom rate of 2.3 per cent per annum during the 1990s to just 1.5 per cent per annum. And it is getting worse.

Work Choices came into effect in March of this year. What was the government’s great claim for Work Choices? This was its one item agenda for boosting productivity growth. It is worth having a look at what happened to productivity growth following the introduction of Work Choices.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It didn’t go up; it fell.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It didn’t go up. You would think it would be disappointing if it remained flat, but it was negative. In the June quarter—that is, in the three months after Work Choices came into effect—productivity fell by 0.2 per cent. That is bad enough, but in the three months to September it fell by 1½ per cent. If productivity fell by 1½ per cent in a year, people would be very worried, but productivity fell by 1½ per cent in three months. So this should be deeply worrying. Yet we had the Treasurer on 1 November saying—this is hard to believe, but he said it; I have doubled checked it—in the parliament:

So the good news is that labour productivity was revised upwards. It shows that it is in line with, or marginally in front of, the last productivity cycle.

So, at a time when productivity was declining by 1½ per cent, the Treasurer was in the chamber saying, ‘Isn’t it terrific—it is going faster than the productivity boom of the 1990s.’ He is the only person in Australia who thinks it is good news when productivity growth turns sharply negative. No wonder there has been no investment program for the future. No wonder this government is reform lazy, because it does not care about productivity growth. It brought in Work Choices because it is an ideological commitment of the coalition government. That is why it did that. It did not do it to increase productivity growth. I do not assert that as a consequence of Work Choices productivity growth fell; what I assert is that Work Choices did not do the trick, it did not lift it, and Work Choices substituted for a genuine comprehensive reform program, because this government is reform lazy and has no time for such a program.

A number of excuses have been made. We heard the Prime Minister yesterday in the parliament say, ‘It is the mining sector’, because productivity growth is negative in the mining sector and it is dragging everyone down. I ask: what percentage of the economy does mining comprise? Less than five per cent. How can it be that productivity in one of the most capital intensive industries in Australia, which contributes five per cent of gross domestic product, could so pervert productivity growth in the rest of the economy? How could that five per cent tail wag the 95 per cent dog? It just does not make sense, but the government will clutch at anything. It will blame SARS, bird flu, a slowdown in economic growth when growth is going at about five per cent per annum, and international terrorism. It will blame anything and everyone it possibly can. It is never the government’s fault.

Another argument is being used as to why productivity growth is so sharply negative—that is, we are very close to full employment, and the extra workers that are coming in are not very productive because they have been long-term unemployed. On the face of it you think, ‘Maybe that has a bit of force.’ But there are 10 million people already working and there might be 50,000 or 100,000 extra workers that have come in during a quarter. How could the low productivity on the part of those workers so affect the overall result when they number perhaps a couple of hundred thousand compared with the 10 million who are already there? The government must be arguing that most of the 10 million have become less productive. If that is their argument, they should say so. They should say that the Australian workers are less productive these days. They are always looking for an excuse.

But there are no excuses. The government has run out of excuses. The OECD and the IMF and the Governor of the Reserve Bank have all warned that this is a big problem. In its most recent survey, the OECD warns:

Following a surge in the second half of the 1990s, productivity growth has reverted to its long-run average.

The IMF notes:

Productivity growth slowed in the first half of this decade.

There are similar observations by the Governor of the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank is now saying that we are going to have to get used to an economic growth rate with a ‘2’ in front of it. That is all because of the sloth of this government. It is only through the election of a Rudd Labor government that we will see the resumption of a reform program and the resumption of productivity growth in this country, locking in the gains that have been achieved and securing Australia’s long-term prosperity.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the honourable member for Hotham, I would remind the committee that this is a cognate debate covering Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2006-2007 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2006-2007. The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Melbourne has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. I call the honourable member for Hotham.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the amendment that has been moved by the member for Melbourne. Despite the resources boom that this country has experienced and the record commodity prices, it is our charge that this government has wasted an opportunity of a generation. It has wasted an opportunity to use the proceeds of that boom and the continuing prosperity—the base for which was laid by Labor governments—to invest in our future, to invest in the drivers of economic growth, in skills formation, in infrastructure, in innovation. These are the mechanisms by which we can take this nation forward and secure its prosperity. The government’s claim is that it has been a good economic manager. The fact is that it has not. It has ridden the resources boom but it has wasted the opportunity it has presented.

In the time that I have, I want to try to touch on three important areas. The first is in relation to our woeful trade performance, the second—and it follows on from what the member for Rankin has been talking about—is our failure on the productivity front, and the third, if there is time, the fiscal ill-discipline of this government.

On the trade front, there are some pretty revealing statistics that we need to set the scene. The Howard government has racked up the worst trade performance in Australia’s history. In December, the most recent figure, a monthly trade deficit of $1.3 billion was recorded and this was the 57th consecutive trade deficit. This is the longest uninterrupted period of trade deficit on record.

When Labor were in office—in every year between 1983 and 1996—we were able to average on an annual basis eight per cent growth in exports. How does this compare with what the current government has achieved? Despite a record resources boom, it has averaged a growth of only four per cent if you take the whole 10 years that it has been in office and for which the records apply, and just one per cent over the past five years. That is why the performance is woeful.

If Australia had maintained the rate of growth that we had set in place, instead of a trade deficit of $12 billion, we would have today a trade surplus of $14 billion. That is the wasted opportunity. That is a huge difference. They are the overall figures. If you go to manufactures, our rate of growth was 13 per cent per annum; theirs just three per cent. Thirteen per cent to three per cent: little wonder that we have seen 145,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector over the last decade, 60,000 of them since the last election. On the services front, service export volumes averaged 10½ per cent under our period of government in every year compared to the last five years where they have averaged a decline. In this prosperity we are going backwards in service exports.

This poses the question as to why we were able to achieve better outcomes without a resources boom than this government have been able to achieve with one. There are a number of reasons for that. One is their fundamental failure on trade policy. This government do not have a strategic approach to trade, whereas when Labor were in office, which led to that eight per cent per annum growth, we concentrated impeccably on the multilateral round, the Uruguay Round. We formed the Cairns Group. We formed a third force to effectively be the honest broker between the Americans and the Europeans and we achieved the breakthrough.

But not content simply to settle on a successful outcome in the multilateral round, the Uruguay Round, we persisted with the agenda through APEC. We achieved the Bogor declaration, which was an enhancement of the WTO outcome—if you like, APEC was WTO plus. On top of that, we then used the bilateral free trade agreements to enhance the opportunities yet again—WTO plus plus.

But what has this government done? It has essentially reversed the order. It has approached trade policy on the basis of securing bilateral trade agreements not as any part of a strategic trade agenda but as trophies to be obtained to simply demonstrate that people think it is doing something. In all three free trade agreements that this government has reached, our trade position has gone backwards with all countries—including, now that it is two years in operation, the United States.

In all cases, this reversal of order not only has not enhanced multilateralism, it has detracted from our trade performance. It has seen a massive diversion of resources away from the Doha Round. It has not seen any creativity in building upon the Cairns Group structure and recognising the new entrants into the WTO and how they need to be managed. It has failed to embrace or identify and engage with the emergence of the G20 group of nations, which are more of a force, sadly, than the Cairns Group itself.

I think that there is an opportunity this year for this government to start getting its trade strategy right. I am here to offer some helpful suggestions and I hope that it takes them up. APEC is being hosted by Australia this year. This is a golden opportunity for this nation to use that very forum that enhanced Uruguay to now drive Doha. What we have to do is to use the opportunity through the APEC fora—and there are many meetings between now and the September meeting when it is to be held—to really get a united and disciplined front to drive an early conclusion to Doha. This is a mechanism which, if pursued, might achieve that objective. Even if it does not, it provides the unity for being the most effective fallback if Doha were to fail. There is no harm lost in embracing this agenda. It either succeeds in clinching Doha, or it gives us the next best option.

The second point I would make in terms of our approach to Doha is that we have to insist more on the guidelines governing free trade agreements being much more multilateral compliant. That has not been happening. Australia has been negligent in its discipline with free trade agreements. With the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement it allowed carve-outs. Sugar is the classic example. It allowed circumstances in which the rules applying to investment from the United States in this country are a lot more lenient than those which we obtain in terms of trying to get into their country. These inconsistencies are undermining our authority. APEC has a framework in place to produce some discipline for the free trade agreements. Australia has to lead this charge in ensuring that free trade agreements are consistent with the multilateral principles.

The next thing I would argue that the government needs to do is to approach APEC and the openness in economies for economic growth and sustainability within the APEC region from the perspective of not just trade ministers but economic ministers. I say that advisedly. If we just allow the trade opening to be driven by trade negotiators, we run the risk of limiting the real opportunities for growth, expansion—capital flows in particular—between the countries concerned. We need to engage the economic ministers more intensely so that we can open up opportunities for better capital flows and address the issues of deregulation, as well as those issues of regulation which are important in ensuring transparency and accountability. We also need to give much greater emphasis to the services sector and not be preoccupied solely with the agricultural sector.

Another issue that I believe could usefully be put on the APEC agenda is the whole question of APEC’s enlargement. We have to engage in that. There are other countries seeking to come into this group. Just as the OECD has had to embrace enlargement, so too should APEC. Australia should be leading the pace in terms of guidelines for consideration of new entrants. But in the process it needs also to look at new governance procedures for APEC. At the moment there is a requirement for unanimity in decision making. My argument is that it is time to look at whether majority decisions or certain thresholds are sufficient to bind the group.

This is what a government that had opportunity in this area should be doing in terms of seizing the moment—if it had a strategy. It is what Labor would do if it had the opportunity now, and it is what Labor did when it had the opportunity prior to that, some 10 or 11 years ago, when it was a driving force in the formation of APEC. Trade policy in this country is a disgrace, and the figures are a demonstration of that disgrace. They represent an underperformance in terms of where this nation could be.

I turn now to the question of productivity. I want to go to the Work Choices debate because I think this is where the government argues that this is great for the economy. The fact is that Work Choices is not good for the economy. Quite apart from the unfairness inherent in Work Choices, the title of the legislation is really the greatest misnomer of any legislation brought into this parliament. It is no choices, it is take the job or take the sack, it is an erosion of collective bargaining, it is a diminution of the influence of trade unions in this country and it is an eradication of the independent umpire. For all of those reasons it is bad.

But it is not only bad on the fairness front, it is also bad for the economy. We have had the assertion that Work Choices is responsible for job growth in this country. The fact is that the great bulk of job increases have come because of the resources boom in recent months. That is on the record. If the argument by the government is right, how is it that there has been slower jobs growth over the months since Work Choices was introduced than before it? That is what the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations could not answer in question time today, and the avuncular dissembled into stupidity in terms of his response. He could not answer the question and said it was not the responsibility of the government, it was not the government that created jobs, it was business. Technically, that is true, but when it suits them they claim it is the government.

It is not just on the jobs front that their argument fails; it also fails on the question of productivity. The member for Rankin touched on this in part before. Labor achieved strong productivity growth in the period of the low inflation environment that it created for a number of reasons—the opening of the economy, the deregulation of the banking sector, the whole opening of trade that I have already referred to, floating of the exchange rate, the commitment to research and development, investing heavily in education, and getting the year 12 retention rates up, which are a huge impetus in terms of economic growth in this country. But the period that Labor was in office also saw centralised wage fixing replaced by collective bargaining linked to productivity. I heard the Treasurer yesterday claiming credit for having ended centralised wage fixing. He did not. But this is another case of the Treasurer always being pretender to the policy when it works but never having the wit or wisdom to understand how to implement a change.

The fact is that the system that was deregulated and moved to collective enterprise bargaining saw the biggest step up in productivity growth Australia has ever experienced. Between 1990 and 1996 annual productivity growth leapt from 0.7 per cent to 4.1 per cent—a huge jump. That trend in strong productivity actually continued for the first four years they were in office. Why? Because they inherited our system and could not change it.

Remember the early attempts, the Peter Reith first wave of industrial reform that he could not get through? The system pertained, and it worked and it drove productivity. So, up until 2000, that huge jump in productivity was sustained. But, once this government started meddling on its terms with its ideology on industrial relations, what did we see? We saw the full effect on productivity when the productivity level plummeted to an average of 2.3 to 2.8 per cent a year, and to just two per cent a year over the past five years. Great achievement! All because of this ideological drive and its perception about industrial relations.

The point I am making is that the reason Labor is trusted on industrial relations more than this government is not only the fairness argument; it is also the economic impact. Labor’s approach to industrial relations is not just fairer, it is better for the economy. If you compare the productivity growths of Australia and New Zealand over the same period, when New Zealand went to an individual based system, the workplace agreement system that this government is so besotted with, and we were developing our collective bargaining system, you will see that productivity growth in Australia was substantially higher than that in New Zealand, and the figures attest to that. So my point is that this government has no strategy in its approach to industrial relations: it is ideology, it is mean-spirited, it is wrongheaded and, in particular, it is bad for the economy.

The final point I want to make goes to the question of fiscal discipline, and we saw a classic example last night of the fiscal profligacy of this government. We saw the Minister for Finance and Administration lounging back in a chair, admitting that a $10 billion expenditure had not even been to cabinet, and we heard the head of the finance department, Dr Watt, saying some words to the effect that they ran a quick eye over it. What sort of discipline is that? If this were Labor making a claim on the budget of a billion dollars a year for the next 10 years, we would be pilloried daily by the likes of the Treasurer and his acolytes in the press for being economically irresponsible. The finance minister was lounging back in that chair, saying that it is no big deal, that it is only a small proportion of the budget outlays. What irresponsibility! Has this been submitted to the charter of budget honesty? It was not even submitted to its own finance department until the last minute to get the quick eye over it. This is a government that wants to lecture us about financial responsibility, a government that wants to say that it has got a charter of budget honesty to keep governments and oppositions honest! It is the most dishonest piece of legislation ever introduced by this government and it is treating it as a joke, with no respect whatsoever, and we saw the finance minister last night on display, attesting to that point.

So, whilst these appropriations must of course go through, we take the opportunity in this debate to point to the wasted opportunities. This is a government that has ridden a prosperity wave. This is a government that has inherited significant continued growth in its surpluses, but it is a government that has squandered them. It is about time it changed its direction. I know it will not, so we must change them and give us the opportunity to—(Time expired)

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on these appropriation bills as it gives me my first chance to give an overview of my new portfolio and to address some of the issues where the government is really letting down some of our most vulnerable Australians. It certainly is a portfolio in which I have had a very longstanding interest and a deep conviction that, as a community and in government, we need to do much better than we are.

There are a number of policy shortcomings in the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs portfolio. I will talk in a moment about Indigenous affairs, but I first want to turn to the families and community services part of the portfolio. Unfortunately, in Senate estimates this week, the additional estimates that have been released show that the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs are in fact in deficit, as they were last year. During the Senate estimates hearing that was held on Monday this week it was revealed that the department do not even have an accurate staffing model that can tell them who they have working on what or where. How on earth they can be responsible for supporting families, particularly some of our most vulnerable families, when they have not got their own house in order is a very serious problem.

The critical challenge facing Australia today is how we sustain our national prosperity after the resources boom is over. There is no question that the resources boom has been very good for our nation, but we know that booms always come to an end. What is it that we on this side of the parliament believe need to be done to make sure that we have sustained prosperity beyond the boom? From our point of view, there are two critical elements to that future prosperity—lifting participation and improving productivity. Unfortunately, yet again, we have seen the government fail to take action in these good times in these two critical areas. These appropriation bills that we are debating today stand yet again as evidence of that missed opportunity.

One critical step that we need to take in this country is to lift workforce participation. For the people who are in some ways cared for and are the responsibility of the families and community services portfolio—a portfolio that has appropriated to it billions of dollars to support Australians who are not in the workforce—lifting workforce participation is a particularly important objective.

We all know, and I think all of us would agree, that participation in the workforce is good for Australians, for their sense of self-esteem and of course for their standard of living. People need to feel that they are contributing and that they are supporting others, especially their families, so that they can rely on themselves and so that they can help their loved ones get through life. Work is one of those essential things like family that gives meaning to our lives. So a government that actually cares about people will do all that it can to foster people’s capacity to participate in work and to gain purpose through work. These human reasons are reason enough, but of course there are other very good reasons why Australia’s national government needs to increase participation in the workforce.

The ageing of Australia’s population will increase the demand for services and reduce the supply of people able to fund and deliver these services. So it is critical that we address the barriers to participation that currently exist in our country. Last year Senator Penny Wong, Labor’s shadow minister for workforce participation, released a discussion paper called Reward for effort which detailed how Labor will address this participation challenge. That paper reaffirmed our commitment to the principle of mutual obligation and proposed to harness mutual obligation so that it actually serves the interest of both the individual and the nation. Mutual obligation should be used to help income support recipients to become independent and also to help the nation to lock in our future prosperity.

Unfortunately, under the current government, mutual obligation is simply a way of keeping people engaged in some activity but not necessarily working. That is not good enough. Labor intends to put the mutual back into mutual obligation by making sure that people who do have participation requirements also have opportunities to get ahead to foster their independence. So what we want to do is bring both obligation and opportunity together. At the heart of that relationship is enabling people—especially those people with part-time participation requirements, some of our most vulnerable income support recipients—to build their capacity through study or training. This really is the missing ingredient in the government’s current plans.

From Labor’s point of view we intend to back up our proposals with options to turn this opportunity into reality. We intend to introduce measures that will be designed to give the financial backing to those who will benefit from investment in their skills. We know that skills are critical to participation. We have a major skills crisis in this country. There are jobs out there available for Australians, not able to be filled by Australians because many of the people who would like to work do not have the skills to fill them. Of course the government’s response to that is to bring people in from overseas on short-term visas rather than extending the opportunities for participation in skill development to our own people.

We know there are other very difficult issues in the social security and income tax areas. We know that some of the most vulnerable Australians face very high effective marginal tax rates when they want to come back to work. They lose more in their social security payments and in the tax that they pay than makes it worthwhile to work. For many, those disincentives are very powerful indeed.

We know for many others that problems to do with accessing affordable child care prevent them from working as much as they would like to do. We certainly do welcome the additional funding that this bill appropriates for the Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance program. An extra $20 million is being provided for this service and it is a program that we support. After all, the JET program is a Labor program, a great Labor initiative, and I am pleased to see that the federal government is supporting it.

We know that for people with children workforce participation is just not achievable without proper childcare support. So while there is this additional funding in the bill, and I do think that is a good thing, more broadly, unfortunately, the latest Bureau of Statistics figures tell us that childcare costs are spiralling out of the reach of many Australian families.

Just to inform the House of the increase in costs of child care, these latest Bureau of Statistics figures show that childcare costs have increased more than the price of bananas or fuel over the past five years. Since December 2001 out-of-pocket childcare costs for Australian families have increased by 82.5 per cent, eclipsing increases in fruit, which went up by almost 73 per cent, and petrol, just over 40 per cent.

You wouldn’t know it, would you? The Prime Minister was quick to blame the price of bananas for the increase in the cost of living. He at no point took into account the very significant increases in childcare costs that have burdened and continue to burden Australian families with young children. These increases compare to an overall increase in the cost of living of about 14.8 per cent in the same period. So you can see that there was a massive increase in the cost of child care compared with the general cost of living.

Of course, it is true that natural disasters can be blamed for increases in fruit costs, but you would have to say it is the disastrous policies of the Howard government that have sent childcare costs rocketing. At nearly $240 a week, it certainly is not easy for parents to afford child care when they have very tight family budgets. Parents—and it is still the case that it is particularly mothers—are acutely aware that if they want to go back to work or if they want to increase their hours of work it is very difficult for them to do so if they cannot afford the cost of child care.

Just recently we have seen that the government thinks that one of the reasons parents are not using the child care that is available is that they are too choosy. A recent report by the Treasurer’s department claimed that:

... contrary to popular perceptions, there is not an emerging crisis in the sector—

they mean the childcare sector—

… supply is generally keeping pace with demand and child care has remained affordable.

I think they need to get out more and talk to parents about the childcare reality that is facing so many families in this country.

The other element to securing Australia’s long-term prosperity is boosting productivity. We know that Australia must find new sources of competitive advantage if our prosperity is to be sustained following the resources boom. We on this side of the parliament believe that investment in our people is essential in creating an innovative and productive workforce that can adapt to a rapidly changing world.

The first priority that we have identified this year, and one that I know parents certainly agree with, is that all of our children deserve the best start in life. Overwhelming international evidence supports the view that investment can provide crucial support to parents and communities, helping to make sure that children succeed in life. So all the evidence is telling us that investing in the early years of life delivers strong long-term benefits for children and the wider community. Investing more and investing it earlier leads to increased educational attainment and labour force participation, with higher levels of productivity. It also helps tackle disadvantage, dependency on welfare, our hospitals and our criminal justice system—all the things that you would think the department of families and community services should be concerned about. Unfortunately, all we ever hear from the government is: yes, it is very important to invest in the early years. They would like it to be the case that four-year-olds in Australia get access to preschool programs, but frankly it has been nothing more than a lot of hot air from the government. They have made no commitment to this crucial area of investment in our young children.

Nobel Laureate James Heckman put it very well, I thought: ‘Learning begets learning, skills beget skills.’ The World Bank said, ‘It is never too early to become involved but it can easily be too late.’ According to the OECD, Australia spends just 0.1 per cent of GDP on preschool education compared with an OECD average of 0.5 per cent. So you can see that, under this government, Australia is not meeting the challenge that so many international experts have set for us. Our four-year-olds are being left behind at just the point where we can help them most.

The OECD reported that, in 2005, four in five Australian three-year-olds did not receive any pre-primary education, one of the worst results of the surveyed countries. What Kevin Rudd, the Leader of the Opposition, and I have done is indicate that Labor will put learning and development of our four-year-olds at the centre of Australia’s approach to early childhood education and care. For Labor, early childhood policies are not just about providing more care. Of course it is true that affordable and accessible child care is essential to lift workforce participation, but it cannot be the totality of any government’s ambitions in providing services for children during their early years. All parents, all of us, have very high aspirations for our children, and I know that parents across Australia share Labor’s concern that our children have access to high-quality early learning and care.

So, under a Labor government, all Australian four-year-olds will have enshrined in a new Commonwealth early education act a universal right to access early learning programs. We will make sure that our four-year-olds are eligible to receive 15 hours a week of government funded early learning programs for a minimum of 40 weeks a year. That will include a requirement for all early childhood educational care services catering to four-year-olds to have sufficient degree-qualified early childhood teachers to meet that entitlement. Structured play based learning would be provided to assist the development of pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills. We will provide $450 million in additional Commonwealth funding to cover the cost of these new programs in order to make sure that parents do not have to pay more as a result of this increased educational provision to our children.

We recognise that parents are going to use a wide range of different services. We will make sure that these services to four-year-olds are available in preschools or kindergartens, in long day care, whether it be community based or private, and in family day care. We are not going to be fussy about where it is provided; we want to make sure it is provided and provided by a qualified teacher. We intend to do it with the states and territories because we know that blaming others for the lack of service provision is not going to do anybody any good. When it comes to this government, all it can do is blame the states and territories. In the meantime, 11 years worth of four-year-olds have missed out on early childhood learning because all this government can do is blame somebody else for the lack of provision for these children.

It is going to take a Labor government to make sure that each and every four-year-old in this country has access to early childhood education delivered by a qualified teacher. We will also make sure that there are enough qualified teachers available by expanding the number of university places and paying half the HECS fees of those university qualified early childhood educators who are prepared to go to areas of need. It is only Labor that is proposing a way forward in this area, because we understand just how critical it is.

I just want to turn briefly to the other critical area of this portfolio, which is Indigenous affairs. Additional estimates hearings show that the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs will administer approximately $430 million in Indigenous programs in this financial year. That includes $292 million for community housing and infrastructure, yet their departmental expenses are nearly $110 million. That amount of departmental expense is equivalent to more than a quarter of the administered funds. If you take out the amount they are actually spending on community housing and infrastructure, the amount of departmental expenses almost equals the amount of administered funds; it will take almost as much to run the programs as the Commonwealth spends on them.

Last year my predecessor in this portfolio, Senator Evans, outlined our approach in this area. He noted the failed approach of the COAG trials, which have certainly overreached the capacity of the bureaucracy to deliver. In the time remaining I want to say that we are not interested in bureaucratic solutions. What we will be doing is finding the things that work and building on those, scaling up the things that work in Indigenous affairs and not taking an ideological or bureaucratic approach. (Time expired)

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think too many people would challenge the proposition that the first and most important priority of any government is the defence of its country and the people who are residents of that country. The Howard government’s performance in this regard has been somewhat wanting in recent years. I know that that concern would be shared by many Australians. That concern would be driven largely by our strategic direction in Iraq and the apparent lack of any exit strategy or even benchmarks on which to base that exit strategy. Around $2 billion has already been spent and, for the Prime Minister at least, it appears to be an open cheque book. Much has already been said about that today.

I want to zero in on a couple of other large and looming problems involving our ability to defend our country. I will give a few examples. The fast guided frigate upgrade is years behind schedule and the cost is over $1 billion. The Wedgetail airborne warning and control aircraft will now be at least two years late. The M113 armoured personnel carriers are at least four years late. We have seen the debacle with the Seasprite helicopters. Of course, it is very topical at the moment to talk about the government’s mishandling of the replacement upgrade for our fighter jets. I am pleased to see you in the chair, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie, because I know you have a very deep interest in that matter.

It is those last two examples that I want to focus on for a few moments this evening. This should always be seen in the context of budget sustainability. You cannot defend the nation if you do not have the money to do so. While it is true that the Howard government has been offering real growth in our defence budget, it is also true that it is spending it more quickly than it is adding to it. Indeed, while capital costs are growing, so are operational costs, but operational costs are not being accounted for. It is like allowing your 18-year-old daughter to purchase a car when she has the $10,000 necessary to buy the car but not insisting that she take account of ongoing costs like fuel, registration and insurance.

This funding gap that is opening up in defence funding should be of real concern to all Australians, and it is a matter that the government should be paying urgent attention to. We are not going to sit back and allow the government to pretend it is not happening until they get the election out of the way and then worry about it after the election. We want the government to start telling the Australian people before the coming election how they intend to deal with this looming funding gap over the course of the next four forward estimate years.

I return to the issue of the Seasprite helicopters which will, if they ever come on board, be located at HMAS Albatross. The government’s mismanagement of this program leaves it with some fairly limited choices. There are rumours that the national security committee was to meet today—and I do not know whether that occurred; we will soon learn, no doubt—to determine whether the government should proceed with the Seasprite project.

These are its choices: spend up to another $50 million and take the primary contractor at its word that an extra $50 million maximum will deliver a fully operational helicopter within the next three years. When I say ‘fully operational’ I mean meeting all the airworthiness accreditation standards and all the technological capacity and capability of that aircraft. That is one option. The second option is to scrap the Seasprite—and rumour has it that is currently in the defence minister’s budget—flush the almost $1 billion already spent down the drain and find an additional $1.5 billion to fund a new fleet of helicopters that probably would not be delivered any quicker than the Seasprite would be delivered if the government took the first option.

This is a scandal. The government’s mismanagement of this project has left it, on behalf of the taxpayer, with only those two choices. Neither is very attractive at all. The opposition are in no real position to determine which is the best option for the government—given that we are not given access to the information that is required to make such a decision—but I think most people would say that spending an additional up to $50 million might be well spent, given the evidence that the primary contractor has given that it does still have the capacity to deliver on this project, rather than letting the total cost run up to $2.5 billion and getting a helicopter no sooner and that is not necessarily any better.

If the government decides to scrap the project, it will be devastating for Kaman, the primary contractor, and it will be devastating for those in the electorate of Gilmore who were relying on the ongoing nature of this project to add substantially to the local economy and to support many jobs. I wish the Minister for Defence and the National Security Committee of Cabinet the best in their deliberations, but I remind those listening that we only find ourselves making this difficult choice because of the government’s incompetent handling of the project.

The other project I mentioned was the Joint Strike Fighter. Put simply, this is about our next generation of fighters. The government made a decision to phase out the forever faithful F111s and replace them with a combination of the joint strike fighters and, for a time, our existing FA18s. The government planned to purchase 100 joint strike fighters at a significant cost of around $15 billion, but it is well known that that project now stands to be delivered very late. We have been for some time warning what that will mean for the defence of Australia. If the JSF arrives late—possibly as late as 2018—and the F111s are gone and the FA18s are ageing, Australia will be left with a significant air capability gap. The most important aspect of the defence of Australia is our air superiority in the air gap between our continent and the nation states in the north. Originally the government denied that there was a looming capability gap. Then it turned around very hastily—and without the money to fund it—and announced the decision to spend $A4 billion on the so-called Super Hornet to fill that capability gap. Most, if not all, experts on these matters in this country are questioning whether the Super Hornet is up to the task of maintaining our air superiority.

The amazing thing about all this is that the government seems to have entirely ruled out the prospect of putting into the policy options mix the US F22, which is commonly known as the Raptor. People who understand these things well and know that the F22 is without challenge the most effective fighter aircraft in the world cannot understand why this is the case. I issued a media release on this subject today, and it drew a response from Minister Nelson. I found his media release fairly fascinating. He began by claiming that Fitzgibbon—that is me, of course—failed to grasp the facts. He said:

There is no gap in Australia’s air combat capability ...

I did not say there was; I said one was looming. He went on to say:

... and no gap will be allowed to develop.

He has not told us how he is going to ensure that that gap does not develop. He said:

The Government is continuing to explore options to manage the transition to Australia’s planned acquisition of the Joint Strike Fighter.

Again, he did not say how. You cannot do it through management processes, other than through bringing the Joint Strike Fighter forward on the time line, but we know that that is simply not going to happen. He continued:

Contrary to Mr Fitzgibbon’s claim, the Government has not asked the United States for access to the F-22 Raptor.

I had made the point: why is it now belatedly asking for access to the Raptor—that is, an opportunity to purchase the Raptor from the US—if it believes the Super Hornet is up to the job? I refer the House to an article on the front page of today’s Australian which suggests that the US deputy defense secretary, Gordon England, had written to the defence minister, Brendan Nelson, saying the US would not export the world’s most deadly war plane, the F22, to Australia. Maybe the Australian got it wrong, but it is very specific about the author of the letter. Maybe Minister Nelson is being clever in saying he did not ask for the Raptor. Maybe the conversation took a different tone. But certainly the US deputy defense secretary interpreted the conversation as one in which a request was being made, otherwise he would not have written such a letter. So I suggest that that is a very clever play on words on the part of the minister. In his press release he then goes on to say:

The F-22 is not currently available for Foreign Military Sales to any country outside the United States.

I did not know there were countries inside the United States, by the way, but I will not dwell on that; he has made his point. I do not know how he knows it is not available if he has not asked. I know there is legislation in place and that the congress has control of these things, but if he does not ask he cannot be sure. So there seems to be a conflict in his statements there. He continued:

Mr Fitzgibbon fails to understand that the F-22 is not the most suitable aircraft for Australia’s needs.

There is no shortage of experts around this country who will challenge that, and challenge it quite strongly. I make the point that alone, of course, it is not. That is his implication throughout the media release. Alone, it is not, because it is limited in its capacity to carry payloads and maintain stealth. But it is part of the mix and it is what experts around the country expect to be part of the mix. He continued:

The F-22 is primarily a single role air-to-air combat aircraft.

Again, I did not say it was not. But why not consider it as part of the mix? He continued:

It has limited strike capability.

Yes, it does. If it wants to maintain stealth, it does have limited strike capability. No-one is saying that we should not have a Joint Strike Fighter. We are talking about a looming gap in our air capabilities. He said:

The budget would not acquire enough F-22s to sustain concurrent tasking.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute put out a paper only this week—yesterday, in fact—in which a comparative analysis of the cost has been made. We all know, thanks to the recently tabled US defense budget information, that the unit cost of the Joint Strike Fighter is rising, and we do not know with any certainty what the cost gap between the Joint Strike Fighter and the Raptor will be. ASPI certainly talks about that comparison becoming very competitive. The ASPI paper, talking about the two, says that ‘the F22 is starting to look competitive’ on a cost basis. So the minister is making statements that are not supported by the experts. He goes on to say:

It does not carry the variety of weapons we need for strike operations.

No-one said that it did, but we are talking about the best way to close the looming capability gap in taking us into the future. He continued:

It loses its stealth benefits when carrying external weapons.

That is true, but it is capable of carrying a payload internally and therefore maintaining stealth; not potentially as much as we would like it to carry, but that is a misleading statement on the minister’s part. He goes on to say:

It has no maritime strike capability at present.

Nor does the Joint Strike Fighter; the panacea for all our problems according to the minister. So I do not know what his point is there. He says:

The Government continues to work on options to ensure that Australia maintains regional air superiority throughout the air combat transition.

But again he does not spell out what the plan is to do so. Surely the Minister for Defence should be in a position to spell out exactly how he intends to do so. The Australian people who consider the defence of their country want much more than a bit of rhetoric and assurance from the minister that no gap will be allowed to develop. They want to hear from the minister how the minister intends to ensure that it does not develop, because all the facts are that there is a looming gap. All the experts say that the Super Hornets are not capable of closing that gap. If he has been to the US and asked for access to the Raptor, he has himself come to the conclusion that the Super Hornet is not capable of closing that gap. He needs to do much more than to give us his rhetorical assurance that there will be no gap, and if a gap emerges he will close it. He needs to give us the facts. He needs to spell out how he intends to do it. It is ridiculous for the government to rush in and spend $4 billion of taxpayers’ money on a Super Hornet that may not be up to the job without any real debate either in the broader community or in this parliament. ASPI at the end of this paper comes to the conclusion:

A deferral of the decision to purchase Super Hornets would seem sensible. This could be for 6-12 months, during which the government could:

Gather availability, cost and capability data for the F-22, so that we understand the affordability and feasibility of moving quickly to a high-end fifth generation solution. Only if that proves unfeasible should we move to a fourth generation fallback.

Evaluate the fourth generation options available in the world marketplace and choose the one most likely to provide us with high-end capability through the decade beginning 2020 should we need to go that way.

That is not the opposition speaking. That is a report from the most highly regarded think tank on strategic air defence issues in this country and yet all we get from minister Nelson is this diatribe in his media release that is clever in its wording but absolutely empty in its substance.

In the time remaining to me, can I quickly say something about drought funding in my electorate. We were very disappointed in the Hunter when in about early October last year the Prime Minister announced an enhanced drought assistance scheme. The problem was the scheme applied only to areas which had an existing exceptional circumstances declaration. That included no areas in the Hunter, so there was nothing in that scheme for struggling Hunter farming families. Then, later that month, he restored an exceptional circumstances declaration for part of Hunter but left the other part undeclared—again, helping some but not others based on arbitrary boundaries.

Finally, only a few weeks ago, exceptional circumstances were declared for all the Hunter region and we welcome that. That will be very helpful. There are very long waiting lists as people in the first tranche of declarations are still waiting for their applications to be assessed and processed. Today I appeal to the government in the context again of giving thanks for an albeit late declaration for those regions to add to the resources within Centrelink and other organisations, to lift those levels of resources to a point at which it will be possible to process and assess more quickly those applications for those desperate farming families. If you have not experienced what they are experiencing on the land, you could not possibly understand the challenges they are facing. I appeal to the government to give those extra resources. (Time expired)

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

I did not hear the whole of the member for Hunter’s contribution, but I am sure it was an erudite analysis of the failings of the Minister for Defence in the application of his responsibilities, particularly as they relate to the question of the Joint Strike Fighter. I know that the member for Hunter understands—and the member for Grey would also appreciate—that I have some interest in this issue. I have to say that I share the concern of the member for Hunter. I understand you also have an interest in this, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie, having been a bit of a fly-boy in the past. It was F111s, was it not? We need a far better response from this government about the JSF than we have got to date.

I watched with interest the Senate estimates committee hearings today. Although I did not hear all of them, what I did hear left me wondering. I was really agog at the prospect of our being told effectively that we are likely to get the Joint Strike Fighter any time between roughly 2013 or 2014 and, perhaps, 2018. That is not good enough. The capability gap which the member for Hunter spoke about is something that we as a nation ought to be concerned about. He is dead right to say that this should be an issue which is discussed far and wide, and we should not be sitting here copping the prospect of the government purchasing Super Hornets—a $4 billion purchase—without a reasonable debate in the community about whether or not it is the most appropriate thing to do. We have not had that debate. I hope that, as a result of the interventions by the member for Hunter and others, we do get a debate, because it goes to the very important question of the capacity of this government to look after the nation’s security.

It is very clear that this government has been asleep at the wheel in relation to these issues. There have been a number of examples—the Seasprite is yet another—of where the government has not been able to manage the Defence budget in an appropriate way, and that is a risk to all of us.

Those Defence issues are what I want to talk about today, but principally I want to talk about Iraq. The Prime Minister’s performance over the last couple of days in relation to this issue has, I am sure, amazed many. There has been a constant failure by the Howard government, in a public policy sense, from go to whoa. I note that this bill earmarks an additional $202.4 million for the Department of Defence, including $120.8 million for Operation Astute in East Timor, $49.6 million for the first stage in lifting the retention and recruitment of ADF personnel and $32 million as the first instalment on increasing the size of the Army by one battalion.

I have no difficulty in supporting those budgetary measures. However, in relation to Iraq, it is very important, when we are contemplating these budgetary measures, to see how we have been dealing with defence and foreign policy issues. It is clear to me, and I am sure it is clear to the bulk of the Australian community, that the situation in Iraq is very grave and is deteriorating day by day. That of course was the opening assessment of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, which was issued in December of last year. In unusually sweeping and blunt language, that study group rejected the ‘stay for the course’ option that the White House and the Howard government, in tandem, have constantly adhered to. It called for a gradual withdrawal of American combat troops, greater self-reliance by the Iraqi government and diplomatic engagement with Iraq’s neighbours. Of course, just last month the Bush administration requested an additional 21,500 troops together with more funding for Iraqi reconstruction and increased Iraqi responsibility for security.

It is no secret that we on this side of the chamber did not support the military engagement in Iraq in the first instance, and I recall well the comments that I made in the House during the debate that transpired when we took the step of joining the war. I warned then against aligning ourselves blindly with American foreign policy, particularly on a matter which we on this side of the chamber said then was against both our national and regional interests—and so it has come to pass. We were told that this was all about terrorism and we said that this would exacerbate terrorism and the opportunities for terrorism throughout the world—and, again, it has come to pass.

We note that when the Australian troops were first deployed, our Prime Minister said that they would be deployed for a matter of months, not years. Those are his words, not mine. Despite the public protestations, the opposition expressed here in this chamber and, I have no doubt, a degree of opposition within their own party room, this government made the decision to take us to war in Iraq and to commit Australian troops. By troops, I mean generically Australian Defence Force personnel, because we have deployed successive rotations of Army, Air Force and Navy personnel to the region.

Whilst I opposed the original decision and I oppose the continuing presence of Australian troops in the region and I think they should be brought home, we must ensure that, whilst our troops are there doing their service for our country as desired by the Prime Minister and the government, we give them our absolute and utmost support and ensure that they are properly equipped and are able to do the job they have been asked to do.

I am one of a number of people who had the opportunity, as part of a delegation of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, to visit Iraq in October 2005. The purpose of the visit was to visit Australian armed forces personnel deployed in the Middle East area of operations. In particular, in Iraq we visited the Al Muthanna Task Group, commanded at that time by then Lieutenant Colonel Roger Noble, stationed in Al Muthanna province in the south of Iraq. When we came back, I made the observation publicly that I thought once the next rotation had finished we should bring our troops home. I did not believe there was any further need for them to be there then.

They have now been given a different task and have been relocated to the province of Dhi Qar, where they have met organised resistance rather than the usual hit-and-run attacks. This alarming situation was reported in an article in the Bulletin on 5 December last year. The article contained an account from a source close to Darwin’s Robertson Barracks. It stated:

The Al Muthanna task group now patrols Dhi Qar, which only has one route in and out. This poses a serious threat to troops in vehicles. The current task group has already been in fire fights as a result of the expansion of the area of operations.

In one fire fight 2,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 14 40mm grenade-launcher rounds and two rocket-launchers were fired [by Australians]. A sniper also fired 10 rounds from his weapon. Australian infantry soldiers have not been involved in fighting of this intensity since Vietnam.

So we need to be concerned, on the evidence of that article, about the safety of our troops in Iraq. Thankfully, our casualties have been limited.

After returning from Iraq I spoke on the quality of our troops, their training, their leadership, their professionalism and their motivation, and congratulated all those involved in Iraq for doing a very difficult task. I would do that again because there is no doubt that those troops who are serving our interests at the Prime Minister’s wont are doing so with great aplomb. Despite the danger, they are in fact very highly trained and very highly motivated, but the fact is that they should not be there.

When I came back, I said that I thought the situation in Iraq—a position shared by others, by the way—is one which is likely to be drawn out for many more months, even years. This is consistent with other opinions on the situation in Iraq then and now. Even Robert Gates, the recently appointed United States Secretary of Defense, gave a blunt assessment to the US Senate Committee on Armed Services when he conceded, ‘The war is not being won.’

From the performance of the Prime Minister today, we see that our commitment of troops to Iraq is of an indefinite nature. There is no plan to this mission. There was no mission statement at the beginning, there is no mission statement today and there is no plan for an exit strategy. We do not, as I said, challenge the professionalism of the Australian personnel in discharging their duties in this exceptionally difficult and dangerous operating environment. The core problem, however, remains that the ADF in my view has not been given a clear-cut mission statement and there is no way of determining, in the absence of such a mission statement, when the mission has been achieved.

You have to wonder about the basis on which you can send Australian troops to war if you cannot give them a reasonable expectation of what their mission statement might be and at least have a plan which says, ‘You’re going to be there for X months or X years and at the end of that period you’ll be withdrawn.’ That has not happened. We heard again today from the Prime Minister that our commitment is of an indefinite nature, and he has used those fateful words yet again: ‘until the job is done’.

But of course he has yet to define what the job is. Despite his attempts in the House of Representatives today at question time, he was unable to convince me, and I am sure anyone else who was able to listen to him, that he had a plan for Iraq, that he knew exactly where we were going with Iraq. He has no idea what the plan is for Iraq. All he is doing is relying upon the fact that the United States will determine its policy in Iraq and we will of course jump along lockstep, without question, in the same way, sadly, that the government was not able to bring itself to question the original decision by the United States government to enter Iraq in the first instance.

We can all remember those discussions, the debates in here and elsewhere about the reasons we were going to Iraq: weapons of mass destruction. It was to be a question of regime change. I can recall the words well of the Prime Minister. It was not a question of regime change; it was about weapons of mass destruction. There were no weapons of mass destruction and it turned out to be only about regime change. Now we have a situation where, at a minimum, 60,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed; estimates in the Lancet take that figure to 600,000. We have been partly responsible for those deaths, despite what the Prime Minister might like to think. We did not know what the plan was and we still have not see the plan.

We know that the Iraq war is a quagmire. In my very strong view, Australia should not continue its involvement in it. We should be looking, as the Leader of the Opposition has said, for a plan to exit—a proper plan; a plan which will not have us withdraw immediately but in consultation with our allies: the United States and the other members of the coalition. Other countries have taken this step and it has not been the end of the world, but of course we were one of the troika involved in making the initial decision and in being the occupying power in Iraq leading up to the Iraqi elections.

The government has a moral obligation to tell the Australian community exactly what its strategy is for Iraq, when Australian troops will no longer be required and when they will be brought home. In fact, it is clear to me that the Prime Minister has got neither the guts nor the vision to do this. I think it has been abundantly clear over the past week during question time that he does not—he simply does not. He is not able or willing to accept the challenge of the Leader of the Opposition to have a publicly televised debate on the issue of Iraq policy. I would have thought, given his supposed credentials on the issue of national security, that he would not worry at all about having a nationally televised public debate with the Leader of the Opposition. He would feel confident in himself that he could convince the Australian community of the merits of the policy or lack of policy in Iraq. But, of course, he squibbed it. He is not prepared to front up to a reasonable debate with the Leader of the Opposition so that the Australian community can compare their two positions on Iraq—the position of the Labor Party and that of the government. I would have thought that a Prime Minister who prides himself in knowing so much and being so willing to support the President of the United States would have no difficulty in confronting a mere Leader of the Opposition here in the Australian parliament. It is a lot easier to commit troops to Iraq than it is to get out there and publicly debate with the Leader of the Opposition, it appears. I would have thought it is in our national interest to ensure that that debate happens and happens soon.

We know that recently, over the last week, the Prime Minister has tried to interfere in internal discussions in the United States—ultimately in the presidential election race—and has been rebuked widely from across the political spectrum in the United States for his unprecedented interference. I note particularly the comments of John Murtha, a member of the United States House of Representatives and a democrat, who is reported in the Sydney Morning Herald today, saying:

John Howard is trying to interfere in an election and that’s uncalled for.

Even his own backbenchers think he has gone off the track in relation to this issue. The member for Moore, Mal Washer, commented:

We’ve got a Western alliance, I guess you’d call it, where we’ve got to have some solidarity in how we approach these matters. Spreading it to the Democrats probably wasn’t such a good idea.

I think there is an obligation on the Prime Minister to tell the Australian community exactly where we are headed with this. He has failed to do so.

A number of things have passed us by in recent times, but it is amazing that even ranking US Republicans have expressed deep reservations about US engagement in Iraq—and, I would have thought, by extension, Australia’s involvement in Iraq. Francis Fukuyama, one of the darlings of Washington’s neoconservative establishment, has also fundamentally repudiated his original position. Fukuyama, in his book of last year, After the Neocons, said:

I’m not shocked. I’m completely appalled by the sheer level of incompetence. If you are going to be a benevolent hegemon—

a reference to America’s status as the sole superpower—

you had better be good at it.

We owe it to the Australian community to ensure that our Prime Minister and the government are held accountable for their policy in Iraq. The Prime Minister prides himself on saying that he understands and believes that he is the one to govern Australia in terms of representing Australia’s national interest, and our national security interests in particular. He has demonstrated by his failings in Iraq that he does not really have that capacity. The Australian community will have a chance to judge him later in the year, but I would say that before then he has an obligation to stand up in front of the Australian people, along with the Leader of the Opposition, and debate these issues in a nationally televised debate. The sooner he does it the better, because he has been exposed and it is very important that the Australian community understands how exposed he has really become. (Time expired)

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the amendment to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2006-2007 moved by the shadow minister for finance. The nature of the second reading amendment catalogues the litany of fault lines this government has allowed to appear in Australia’s economy and, quite frankly, in Australian society. It allows us now the opportunity to stop and think about some of the difficulties that many of our constituents are struggling to manage on a day-to-day basis.

Many members in this place, particularly those on this side of the chamber, are all too well aware that the financial and time stresses placed on Australian families, the impact this is having on their economic decisions for their family units and the pressures this is placing on personal relationships are the normal sorts of things that we as members of parliament see on a day-to-day basis through the front doors of our electoral offices. For this government to arrogantly assert, as it continually does, that Australians have never had it so good because the economy is allegedly in such good shape is nothing more than a desperate bid to let national figures hide some of the local realities that we as members of this parliament deal with. The national aggregates, the broad generalisations and the average figures really do hide the reality faced by many of our constituents who continue to experience stubbornly high unemployment rates, negative housing equity, high credit card debt and other economic stresses. While states like Queensland and Western Australia benefit from the economic boom on the back of a strong minerals demand from emerging economies such as China and India, the reality in the more localised pockets throughout our country is considerably different from that.

While the government does not admit to it, it has benefited from the efforts of the tough decisions that were made during the Hawke and Keating governments. The Howard government has seen the benefits of microeconomic reforms, the deregulation of the Australian economy through the eighties and nineties and the benefits that have flowed into the Treasury coffers just simply blown away. This government has blown these benefits. It has blown them by failing to invest for the future and lock in the benefits over this period of prosperity. It is not difficult to find many commentators and experts who are more than willing to point out the fact that this government has failed to invest in the dividends of the current resources boom in securing Australia’s long-term productivity and long-term prosperity. I have to say that the government and the Prime Minister, who has been all too willing to pride himself on the stewardship of this economy, have been extremely short-sighted. This situation will permanently lower the ability of our future generations to achieve growth rates such as those experienced over the last decade.

While many have benefited from Australia’s current high economic growth and many have shared in the resources boom, there remain pockets of disadvantage and disconnection from the mainstream economy. The new realities for those communities are that, while vast sums of money have been slushing around in the resources sector and are flowing through to other sectors of the economy, these areas of disadvantage are not sharing in Australia’s good fortune. In my own community—the electorate of Werriwa in the south-west of Sydney—the aggregates, generalisations and averaging of figures simply mask the pockets of disadvantage that exist in suburbs, and it is a continual disappointment that the government are more than willing to sit back and gloss over the difficulties in many of these communities as they crow about the success of macroeconomic measures. Seeking out and implementing the real solutions to correct the imbalance within communities is something that we as policy makers should be giving priority to and pursuing as legislators.

One of the so-called solutions that this government has which does not assist the stubborn areas of high unemployment and financial stress throughout the community is Work Choices. There are not too many people in this place who would not know of my absolute objection to these extreme industrial relations laws. I objected to them when they were proposed, I spoke against them during the debate in the House, I voted against them and I will continue to oppose them until they are thrown out and replaced with something that is decent and fair for working Australians.

While the government tries to deny it and hide behind the aggregate figures, Work Choices is a real concern and it is having a real and negative impact on working Australians. I have heard the stories throughout the country first-hand as part of parliamentary Labor’s industrial relations task force. I have heard directly the experience of my constituents. I can assure you that these experiences certainly do not match the rhetoric and the spin that this government has tried to use to cover its position on Work Choices. In my electorate I have heard the experience of a gentleman who was sacked while he was on sick leave. When trying to seek a remedy for that, he discovered that the only recourse that he and his family had was to go to the Federal Court, something that a worker earning minimum wages and supporting a family could simply not afford. To do that, he would have had to commit resources in excess of $10,000 to prosecute his case.

I have also heard the experience of employees at Esselte, which is an establishment in Minto, whose conditions and take-home pay were being stripped. I have heard from the workers of Lipa Pharmaceuticals, who are having not only their hours of work extended but their overtime, and consequently their take-home pay, cut. I have raised that in this parliament. Those were cuts of up to $200 a week. These are workers who work on minimum rates as process operators. They are workers who do not have any real and substantial bargaining power. These are the people who are having their take-home conditions slashed. They did not have the real opportunity to negotiate. They were presented with contracts. And to use their words—what they put to me—they were told if they were not prepared to sign them there were plenty of people who would. Work Choices is the law that has brought this about. This law has encouraged good employers to act badly. While it is doing that, it gives a blanket protection for bad employers, but the real objection here is the level of encouragement that it gives to good employers to act badly. That encouragement is through Work Choices.

I find it interesting that the real-life experiences of working Australians stand in stark contrast to the rose-coloured views of the brave new world of industrial relations as outlined earlier in this debate by the member for Moreton. Earlier in this debate, when speaking about individual contracts, the member for Moreton said:

They are an opportunity for individual workers or their representatives to talk to their employers and an opportunity for those with abilities and skills who have something to trade with their employers and gain additional advancement.

Implicit in that statement is the effective condemnation of those with few skills and those seeking to work in unskilled jobs to a life of minimum wages and minimum conditions because in reality they have very little to trade with their employers. Spare a thought for women trying to return to the workforce who need to make arrangements in relation to child care and to have it recognised. These people could only be characterised in economic terms as price takers. In other words, either they accept the conditions that are offered or they do not take the job.

We are marginalising enormous sectors within our economy. Women in particular are being impacted by this change. That is borne out by the figures released yesterday in a study by Griffith University that indicated that women are not faring as well as male workers in being able to negotiate. This is because of their family commitments and because of the recognition that is required of those commitments. The absence of the ability to achieve some form of recognition of family-friendly conditions has impacted on this class of employee being able to have some equity in the workplace. The Howard government talks of aspiration and advancement, but the Howard government gives those with little to trade with their employer to gain additional advancement very little to aspire to. That is the kind of choice that the Howard government has implemented—no choice at all.

The member for Moreton went on to say that we on the other side of the chamber look to a return to everyone being paid the same in the same kind of environment, where no additional money is available to those with skills to trade with their employers. I know other politicians have a tendency to gild the lily, but I have to say nothing could be further from the truth. Not only does it completely and utterly misrepresent the position of Labor when it comes to its view on future industrial relations; it also shows a complete ignorance of the industrial relations laws of this country for decades.

The member for Moreton, and no doubt other members opposite, may not realise that it has never been the case that employers were not allowed to pay higher than award wages. The award system has always established minimums for either an industry or an enterprise and has always allowed overaward payments. An employer always had the ability to improve the level of remuneration or conditions set down in the relevant award by the process of overaward payments. ‘Overaward payments’ is a term that would have at one time just rolled off the tongue of many, because that is what people would have once negotiated to achieve. Payments made over and above an award formed what is referred to as a common law contract for the difference. That is simply the reality of industrial life. These people should revisit what has already been set down. These people now setting the terms and conditions of industrial relations for the future have really missed out on the benefits in the past.

The greatest act of economic vandalism that this government has perpetrated on the Australian economy is its contentment to simply ride on the wave of economic prosperity brought about through the reforms of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. This government has been more than willing to sit idly by and watch productivity growth falter. After a decade of average productivity growth of 2.7 per cent over the term of the last Labor government, productivity growth has been allowed to slump to a mere 1.6 per cent over the period of this government. The September quarter national account figures show that productivity has failed to grow since the June quarter in 2004. There have been more than two years of zero net productivity growth.

The September quarter national accounts also show that labour productivity growth actually declined by 1.6 per cent in the previous six months. This is not the worst of this government’s crimes against productivity. Economic commentators throughout the world were once impressed by Australia’s relative productivity growth during the nineties compared to the benchmark of the United States. The Australian economy was being studied to determine the factors and conditions that produced such impressive productivity gains and assisted in producing such buoyant economic conditions.

Following the rapid productivity growth of the nineties, Australia’s relative productivity was measured at that stage as 85 per cent of that of the United States. The decline that this government has presided over—the decline that this government has allowed to occur—means that Australia has dropped back to only 79 per cent of US levels. This government and its lack of action have presided over this. You have to ask yourself: is this government taking steps to address the problem? Is the government asking what is going on and why we cannot match the performance of the Hawke-Keating period? Is the government asking what we should be doing to regain average labour productivity growth of nearly three per cent? Of course not. It is simply trying to work out how it will spend the rivers of gold pouring into the Treasury coffers in a manner that will be of most advantage to its re-election.

For this government, pork barrelling, political pandering and buying off interest groups is the only benefit to be had from this minerals boom. Responsible governments would have invested in the future, increased spending on education and training and invested in infrastructure. A responsible government would use the good fortune provided to us to build the foundation for the next round of economic growth.

Working smarter and not necessarily harder, encouraging innovation and developing new technologies and new ideas is the means by which Australia will be able to compete with the low-wage emerging economies of China and India. This government does not seem to understand that, and it certainly does not have any aspiration to understand that. To build the platform for the next round of economic and productivity growth, and to lock in prosperity, we need to invest in the future, and we need to invest now. Around the world, our competitors are investing in their people. They are investing in education, skills and innovation. Instead of investing, we are in fact cutting expenditure in those areas.

If you do not believe me, just look at the statistics. Australia’s overall investment in education is 5.8 per cent of GDP, which is behind 17 other OECD countries. Other nations have, on average, increased their education spending by 48 per cent. Australia has actually had a reduction of seven per cent over that same period. We are ranked 29th in global competitiveness in science and education levels. No wonder we have a declining economy.

I am deeply troubled about the prospects of future generations in Australia should this government continue its neglectful management of the economy. To simply rely on funds that are flowing from the budget as a result of the minerals boom to curry electoral favour with various groups does not lock in prosperity and it does not bode well for Australia’s future generations. The government’s crimes against productivity will have long-lasting effects on the economy. To think that the government continues to ignore the need to invest in productivity infrastructure, to remove bottlenecks, to invest in education, skills development and training and to provide the means through which innovation and the commercialisation of innovation can occur so as to profit this country is, quite frankly, a disgrace. I look forward to trying to remedy these issues. I look forward to trying to correct the wrongs of this government. I look forward to the election of a Rudd Labor government— (Time expired)

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Debates such as this one on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2006-2007 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2006-2007 allow us, under the standing orders, to discuss public affairs. Today I wish to discuss the way in which the government puts in place its public policy statements. This week we had a discussion on a matter of great importance—our continued involvement in Iraq. In fact, we have had a ‘discussion’ about matters to do with Iraq in general, but what we have not had is a debate.

Often, I regret to say, members of the government have suggested that in some way, because this government has what it believes to be a more virtuous outlook on question time, that question time can replace proper debate. That is not the case because, as I have said before, if one reads the standing orders, question time is not a level playing field. I am not picking on Minister Hockey, but I give his performance in question time today as an example. If the opposition had asked a question that mentioned an individual’s name and in any way went on to make derogatory remarks about that person, it would have been ruled out of order. Today Minister Hockey, at the end of his answer to a dorothy dix question provided by a member of the government, took to an academic—with vague relevance but sufficient to have it ruled as relevant—who has very little opportunity for rebuttal.

I see that two distinguished members of the Procedure Committee—the member for McPherson and the member for Banks—are in the chamber. They, along with members of other committees, have thought that citizens should have a better right of rebuttal when comments are made about them in the chamber. In this case, the academic was named and his motives for putting a position were derided because of his past associations, including singing in the Trades Hall choir or whatever it was. I only raise this because it is about parliamentary standards; it is about the way in which we project ourselves to the rest of the world.

Last week, on the day that the state and territory heads of government were to meet with the Prime Minister about his $10 billion water plan, the Prime Minister was asked quite rightly and legitimately in question time, before that meeting, to provide the House with some detail about the plan—which had been out in the public ether for about four or five days by Thursday. What was his answer? He said that it would be inappropriate for him to explain the detail to the House before he explained it to the territory chief ministers and state premiers.

I am sorry, but if we are going to have fair dinkum debates about important issues like water, some of the action should occur in a parliamentary democracy—in the houses of the parliament. In fact, a week later, we find that there is a lot to question about this proposal. It would appear that this proposal was run out of the Prime Minister’s office—Australia’s equivalent to the Oval Office—without too much process through cabinet. I have never had to stand here and actually protect the rights of executive government before but, in this case, even that was bypassed. We have had the bypassing of the full executive government and we have had no discussion of this proposal in the parliament, and then this is portrayed in the community as the levels of government and the parties not cooperating on an important issue.

Of course we want to cooperate, because it is a serious problem. But we need a fuller discussion about this type of thing, when this goes to a criticism about the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, which was set up by a piece of legislation, amended as recently as late last year, and which has been a successful body where all tiers of government have been able to come to the table. All the states involved in the Murray-Darling Basin finally came to the table. We can remember a time when those who looked after the headwaters, the Queensland state government, were not involved. But they were all involved. We have not really had explained why there is a need for a new mechanism where the Commonwealth decide, in their version of new federalism, that they will take over holus-bolus without explaining to the public or to the leaders of the state governments in what way the powers will be divvied up.

I notice that it appears—and it is reported in the paper—that at least one member of the coalition parties, the honourable member for Mallee, has raised his concerns. How demeaning, last week, to get him to ask the dorothy dix question that went to matters that he has championed ever since he first came into this place. It is not as if he is somebody new to this question. He then gets, in the answer back from the Prime Minister, all the things that he has been promoting. Now, a week after that incident, he finds when he starts to study the detail that in fact there are a whole host of questions. So not even the processes of the coalition parties have apparently been followed with regard to this important piece of public policy.

Often people say, ‘Look, this is not about processes; this is about outcomes.’ But I can assure you, for those who should have faith in the way we put in place a parliamentary democracy in Australia: it is fairly important what happens here. And the cooperation that you can get across parties is fairly important.

Mr Deputy Speaker Haase, without drawing you into the debate, you as a contributing member to a variety of parliamentary committees know that that is the case. You know that we can achieve a lot of things, in the case of the House of Representatives, through bipartisan action. That is important. And it is a very important thing to do with the future development of Australia in a sustainable way.

One of the words that we do not hear enough about is sustainability. Sustainability cuts across all notions of public policy, whether they be economic, environmental or social. They are the pillars that we should be talking about. In the past, they have been pillars that have been hidden behind: ‘We can’t solve this or that environmental policy because of the economic damage that might go on.’ I think we have moved on from that, and we can have a sensible debate about things like the River Murray, but that is best done in a way that is inclusive and that understands that people expect a bit better out of their elected representatives in a parliament.

There is another aspect about this besides the lack of detail that goes to question time, for which I have given examples such as water policy and the attitude to answering questions about Iraq. I am on the record where I decried the fact that, especially in the early years of our involvement in Iraq, there was so little debate in the parliament. There were two longwinded debates before the troops were sent in, and then there was silence—because, of course, two or three months after hostilities commenced, we had that great scene on 1 May 2003 where George Bush, in the copilot seat of the fighter, made the landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, then got up and made the speech with the banner behind him: ‘Mission accomplished’.

Tell that to the families of the thousands of US defence personnel who have been killed, the families of the over 100 UK personnel who have been killed and the families of the at least 60,000 Iraqi civilians who have been killed. When we want to have a discussion about this, the only discussion that the parliament will have is in question time—which, of course, as I have said before, is very much not a level playing field.

I am on the record as saying that I did not think we should have gone in when we went in. I sure think that we should be out of there as soon as it can be appropriately arranged. Of course we understand that there is a need, in strategic terms, to look at that and do it in an orderly fashion. But, if the Prime Minister thinks that there is only one case that can be argued about the effect of Australian troops or the whole of the coalition of the willing leaving Iraq, he is wrong. What he does not consider is that their presence in Iraq is an impediment to the continuing developmental progress of a new form of leadership and control in Iraq. There is a good case for saying that. There is a good case for saying that the American personnel especially have been perceived—and I am not making any comment about their actions; I am talking about perceptions—as a catalyst for the civilian civil war occurring in Iraq at the moment. I think anything that we can do by way of other measures that can be taken to assist the continued development of a new Iraqi regime should be looked at.

The Australian Labor Party, Her Majesty’s opposition, are on the record as saying that we believe that the continued involvement in armed action is not the way. If we really want to be helpful, we should be looking at reconstruction. There are plenty of credible American commentators who are now saying that the situation has been going downhill since the time George Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and claimed mission accomplished. Something that could have been perceived as a victory has gone downhill. But, if America decides to involve itself in the peaceful development of infrastructure and in the training and skilling up of the Iraqi population, it will get a great deal more credit and there is likely to be a better outcome.

They are the sorts of things that I believe that a parliament like ours can be involved in. At the moment we are having a very vigorous discussion about matters to do with climate change. Slowly but surely the Prime Minister is seeing the light. Slowly but surely he is understanding the problems that confront the globe because of carbon emissions leading to climate change. I think that most people now accept that there is a problem that has to be dealt with. In the past even I have admitted that there may have been a view that this was incorrect. But I have always said that that was not a reason for not doing anything, because we could not afford to wait to take action before things were verified in a scientific way.

One of the aspects we have not considered in our response to climate change is that we need to be looking at sustainable solutions and sustainable action. Therefore we should not have this false debate where the dog whistle is whistled, where we say, ‘All right, this is between having a coal industry and jobs and an alternative that has something to do with improving our chances of surviving climate change.’ Both can go hand in hand, and most thinking people understand that.

One of the things about hydrocarbon fuels is that, at the end of the day, the one that will remain in abundance is coal, and the world will have to look at cleaner ways of using coal. I say that in the context that we should look at a whole range of alternatives. We need to break through and say, ‘Why is it that people claim that solar is not economical? Why is it?’ ‘Why do we have these disagreements about the placement of wind farms?’ Those things by themselves are not the solution, but there are plenty of other solutions that we can come to.

Whilst I have not been able to visit that part of your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Haase, I have listened to not only you but also the member for O’Connor, who has championed tidal power. I had to admit that, at one stage, I was getting a little worried about myself, because he is starting to make even more sense. He is developing a case for tidal power as an alternative source of energy, but he is also looking at ways in which it could be used economically. He is looking at how it could potentially help not only the north-west but also down towards Perth along the western coast. It is that sort of thing that I admire. It may be that, at the end of the day, he is wrong. But the point is: if he is willing to put forward ideas like that in the Australian parliament, that is where we should debate them. It has got to be an attractive source of energy, because it is there to be used. It can provide a sort of baseload that other alternative methods may not be able to provide. That should not necessarily be the argument that tosses things out.

With respect to climate change we should be looking at other methods of providing sustainability. We should look not only at the individual level, the household level, and the way in which we use resources. The Minister for the Environment and Water Resources might be dismissive of what people are doing to reduce their water use, but it is important because it tells us that people are thinking about the issue and there is a cultural change about their expectations of what decision makers should do. We should be looking at ways to reduce water use at family level, at household level, at community level and at city level.

In thumbing its nose at parliamentary practices, the government has not responded to the sustainable cities inquiry of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage. What we members of that committee say is that we have to take the holistic approach, because if we want to have sustainable communities it is about the use of resources, it is about the ecological footprint and it is about the environment—but it is also about the economy and about the social networks within our communities. That is what we really should be on about—instead of nitpicking about schooling and blaming teachers for everything that is going wrong. I wish the Prime Minister and other ministers who make comments like that would come and visit some of the schools in my electorate and see the job that they do in teaching the kids of the outer northern suburbs of Melbourne. They should judge those teachers based on the way in which they progress those kids—not based on a comparison with other schools in suburbs where there is less disadvantage. What a nonsense! There should be a cooperative effort between families, parents and teachers. It is not just about national curricula. Of course there is also a case for national curricula, but that is not the be-all and end-all. There is great strength in the diversity of Australia. If we do not have a regional outlook on many things, we will lose that strength. We will be a very mundane society and community as a collective.

So we should acknowledge that through our schools. We should celebrate our schools, the important role they have and the successes they have. We should not have schools, such as the ones in the electorate of Scullin in the government system, being decried because when they are compared to expensive private schools their statistics are not the same. The outcomes that they provide to the students that they are working with are very positive and families are appreciative of that. Families want to be involved in the education of their children and they know that, when they devolve responsibility for that during the daylight hours to educational institutions and school communities, those people are doing a good job.

I finish where I started. I would appreciate the Howard government really acting out—not just saying in words but acting out in deed—taking the parliament seriously and bringing on the big debates, not being scared of diverse opinion and taking that on board. Slowly but surely we will understand that there are other ways of improving Australia as a nation. (Time expired)

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to make this contribution tonight on the appropriation bills, I endorse the comments made very eloquently by the member for Scullin on climate change. Like him, I believe that climate change is an issue that deeply disturbs my community and my electorate. People are very unhappy—that is how I would characterise their attitude—in the sense that they have been told, for example, that everything is going to be okay with respect to the climate. What they have witnessed in reality is substantial change in climate and substantial threat to their future economic prosperity, their economic security and their very living security.

That is a responsibility that government should take. The government’s responsibility is to alert its people in times of crisis or potential crisis and to work collaboratively and collectively towards solutions. But what we have had in the midst of the 11 years of this government is 11 years of denial about a problem that threatens the very economic security and economic prosperity of our country. That deeply disturbs me. So I certainly endorse the member for Scullin’s comments on climate change, because it is an issue that my community is demanding that our government, of whatever persuasion, takes action on.

In speaking on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2006-2007 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2006-2007 tonight, I would also like to raise a couple of issues that concern my constituents. One in particular is the communication services that exist in the suburb of Cranbourne. I have been here in this Main Committee on several occasions and in the other place speaking about Cranbourne, which is a fantastic area and a suburb in my electorate of Holt. The very interesting thing about the suburb of Cranbourne is that in the past it was categorised as a rural township and it was known for that but, due to the very rapid expansion and growth of Melbourne, numerous families have shifted into the area and have changed the face of Cranbourne. So Cranbourne is now a very active, vibrant suburb of Melbourne, about 42 kilometres south-east of Melbourne.

In this suburb, which is inundated now with housing—in fact, the population growth of Cranbourne is astonishing—when someone picks up the phone to make a phone call, they have to pay an STD rate and that is ridiculous. The people of Cranbourne, who have lobbied this government for 11 years now for this particular issue to change, are very unhappy. Why is it, for example, that in the suburb adjacent or very close to Cranbourne, Berwick, a person does not have to pay an STD rate when they pick up the phone? When the residents of Frankston pick up the phone, they do not have to pay that particular STD rate.

So the question that I ask again on behalf of the residents of Cranbourne is this: in this rapidly growing suburban area, why do they have to continue to pay this STD rate? Really, it is a disgrace, because it is an injustice. The people of Cranbourne have asked their government to take their concerns into account for 11 years and they have not been taken into account. Because they are a suburban area, and that is acknowledged, they should not have to pay this STD rate. They have been told that everything is going to be okay. In fact, a local member of parliament who represents that region, or close to it, effectively said that this issue was going to be dealt with—it was going to be solved. There was going to be a government inquiry into it. The government was going to make submissions to Telstra and, on a great happy day 12 months subsequent to this particular announcement, the residents of Cranbourne, when they picked up the telephone, would not have to pay an STD rate.

Eighteen months have passed and Telstra has been sold, and there is no hope for the residents of Cranbourne. They have been deceived and they have been dudded by that member of parliament who made that promise in the local papers. He will be held to account for making that promise—you mark my words on that—because he has deceived the people of Cranbourne and they do not deserve to be deceived. The people of Cranbourne, for example, until very recently did not have a Medicare office—a Medicare office needed to serve a population base of some 30,000 people. Again, for 10 years before they got this office, they were lobbying the government, ‘We need a Medicare office.’ They deserved a Medicare office. They were located within the city of Casey and, until the Medicare office was opened in the city of Casey in 2004, when it had a population of 190,000, that city did not have a Medicare office and yet the city of Monash, which had a population of 165,000, had three Medicare offices.

The people of Cranbourne, like many of the residents of the city of Casey, pay taxes. The people of Cranbourne are good, hardworking, loyal Australians. They pay their taxes. They believe that a government should actually deliver a service which they are entrusted to provide—the provision of a Medicare office—but what has happened? It has taken them 10 years to actually get a Medicare office. That Medicare office was opened by the then minister, Joe Hockey.

What is interesting about this particular Medicare office? Unlike other Medicare offices in Fountain Gate, Dandenong and Frankston, which are all open until 7 pm on Thursday nights and between 9 am and 12.30 pm on Saturday mornings, the Medicare office in Cranbourne is the only nine to five, Monday to Friday office. There are an additional 5½ hours of access at the other offices compared to the hours of access at Cranbourne. Why are working families in Cranbourne being denied access to these services when just down the road in the Fountain Gate Shopping Centre people get those services? A lot of people work shiftwork and a lot of people have families.

In my electorate of Holt, I have the highest rate of mortgagees in the country. In my electorate, I have the highest rate of couples with dependent children in the country. These people work. They send their children to school. They take them to sporting events. They are not just the typical family working nine to five which this government seems to have in mind. These people are those who delivered economic prosperity to our country. They pay their taxes. Why aren’t the people of Cranbourne—hardworking people who have delivered this prosperity—being given access to a Medicare office operating during what I would categorise as reasonable hours? The Cranbourne shopping centre is a very busy shopping centre. People want to take their forms to that particular shopping centre, particularly on a Thursday night or a Saturday morning because some of them cannot get there. In fact, I have spoken to people who tell me, ‘We’ve been working and we just basically can’t get there.’ The fact that it has not been opened outside of the normal nine to five hours, I think, is a disgrace. Again, if you are a resident of the city of Cranbourne, you would feel quite rightly that you were being discriminated against.

The other issue I would like to raise which really irks a great number of my constituents is the issue of broadband in the outer suburban areas of Melbourne, particularly in my area. We have a lot of families shift into this area and a lot of them would like to run businesses from home. They want fast internet access. I can give you an example of a constituent who asked that the issue be raised of broadband not being rolled out by Telstra. He lives in Lyndhurst. He has asked that I not name him, but we will call him Mr L. He has asked me to talk about his story. He applied for ADSL with Telstra in December 2006. On approximately 5 January, he was informed by Telstra that they would not be able to connect a BigPond broadband ADSL for him because apparently there were no ports free for connection and ‘Telstra has no plans to add further capacity’. So he is left waiting for someone to part the earth or the very unlikely event of someone giving up their broadband connection for dial-up. This is in Lyndhurst. Incidentally, this person has been working in the IT industry for the past 18 years and wanted to set up a business from home. Great incentive to live in Lyndhurst!

Another gentleman, a resident of Hampton Park, which is not that far away from Lyndhurst—he also has asked that I not use his name, but we will call him Mr F—has been endeavouring for the past 18 months to get ADSL broadband connected. He has neighbours who have a broadband connection. However, after he made a complaint to Telstra he was advised that, because he was located 5.15 kilometres from the exchange at Lynbrook, he was too far from the exchange. Just remember that—5.15 kilometres. If you are 4.5 kilometres away—600 metres away—you can get a connection, but if you are 5.15 kilometres away from this exchange you cannot. Consequently, he gets nothing.

To show how the issue of broadband really affects the economic productivity of our country and how it can affect people in my area, I want to talk in particular about a gentleman called Walter Meyler. He manages a company called Pressotechnik Pty Ltd, which is based in a factory in Rimfire Drive, Hallam. This company is a high-technology engineering company involved in metal pressing and metal joining. They sell in Australia and they build special-purpose machinery for industry. High tech—this is the next wave of Australian industry coming through, the next wave of Australian manufacturing. This particular company is a daughter company of a firm in Germany. It employs five people, so it is a small business.

Around August last year this gentleman shifted his company into Hallam. He applied to get an ADSL2 broadband connection. They needed the ADSL2 to communicate more efficiently with the parent company in Germany. This, the next wave of manufacturing reform and development, is the thing that you would expect governments would be trying to encourage in this country. We keep hearing about niche manufacturing; as old manufacturing is moving offshore, we have niche manufacturing. Here is our niche manufacturer.

Mr Meyler wanted the ADSL2 because he needed quick internet access to the intranet site in Germany. He wanted to employ a design engineer. This person needed to download and send large engineering design files to counterparts in Germany, China and the United States and to their technical sales reps in New South Wales who needed to do reporting and access technical documentation via a customer relationship management package, which requires this particular technology to allow efficient access. When the company went to Telstra—because they expected that this would not be too much of a problem—they were advised that they needed a dedicated line from the Princes Highway, which runs close to Rimfire Drive, through a fibre optic cable. This would cost the company between $2,500 and $3,000 per month.

Other internet service providers said that the Hallam subexchange did not have the capacity and, therefore, they could not provide the ADSL2. Because the company’s access to the international intranet site is so slow, they have to get the parent company in Germany to post CDs with things like sales presentations on them. The area they are located in is industrial, with many small businesses and factories who would want to use this capacity in the future, if not now. Effectively, they cannot because of Telstra and because the government is not spending the money to roll out this broadband access which is needed.

When speaking to Walter about this issue—think about his company and what he does—he was very upset because he knows that in a country like Taiwan, which is looked at as an economic powerhouse in the region, the download speed is 50 megabits per second. What is his download speed? It is 0.5 megabits per second on his current ADSL. So how does he feel? We have to compete against companies in Taiwan. This company, from what I understand, is the sort of high-tech next generation manufacturing company that we need to attract into our area. We have a lot of young people coming through who need these sorts of jobs, and this company is seriously thinking of relocating as a consequence of this problem. So if you are a business and you want to shift into the Casey area or into Hallam, why would you do that?

What grossly offends me about this is that the department of communications confirmed in estimates on 12 February that the Howard government’s metropolitan broadband black spots program had spent six times as much on bureaucrats as on the roll-out of the broadband. More than two years after the $50 million program was announced by the Prime Minister during the 2004 election, government bungling has resulted in $1.3 million being spent on administration costs while only $200,000 has been spent on providing broadband services. People like Walter are not happy when they hear these sorts of facts. They want action. They deserve a government that delivers the services they pay their taxes for.

I would also like to talk about an issue of pressing importance in my electorate, and that is the Commonwealth Financial Counselling Program. You may recall that I mentioned that in my electorate I have the highest rate of mortgagees in this country. I have a lot of families. There are a lot of financial pressures in my electorate, and they were exacerbated when the price of petrol went to $1.40 and when there were interest rate rises. These people are very heavily leveraged and could do with some support. The Commonwealth Financial Counselling Program is administered by the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. The Financial Counselling Program funds incorporated non-profit community based organisations and local government community service organisations to provide access to financial counselling services free of charge to individuals, families and small business operators who are experiencing personal financial difficulty due to circumstances such as unemployment, sickness, credit overcommitment—and that is an issue in my electorate—and family breakdown, which unfortunately is also a substantial issue in my electorate.

A range of services can be provided by a financial counsellor, as people here would know. They can assist with negotiations with creditors, advocate on a person’s behalf, assist people to take the appropriate course of action in debt recovery and, importantly, assist people to develop a budgeting plan so they can take control of their finances and avoid other consequences. The Commonwealth financial counselling service that can be accessed by people in my electorate is the Casey Cardinia Community Legal Service. This service has such a high level of demand that it usually fills three weeks worth of appointments within two days and unfortunately once the waiting time has been reached—three weeks—it has to stop taking appointments. In fact, in the face of massive demand, the service is given so few resources by the federal government that it can only afford two part-time financial counsellors, which does not even amount to a counsellor being available all week. It provides two part-time financial counsellors to provide assistance to the more than 96,688 people in my electorate. Why is this the case? If the federal government are going to spend a very large amount of money—as I understand they did—advertising to the electorate about why they should be financially responsible, why is it that they cannot spend the money to provide more financial counselling services on the ground for the large number of people in my electorate who need that service and would grasp at it very quickly if it was available?

In closing tonight, I would briefly like to talk about the Holt Australia Day awards, which I initiated and presented at Betula Reserve in Doveton on Australia Day—a very good day to present these awards. The purpose of the awards was to recognise the spirit and the commitment of local volunteers who through their service strengthen our community and our country. And they do. They are the glue that binds our community together. When we called for nominations we had a phenomenal response from a huge variety of community organisations. We had a selection committee. They had a very difficult task in choosing them.

The Holt Australia Day awards recognised a number of people and tragically I think my time is going to run out to mention them. I wanted to mention the invaluable efforts of the local CFA staff and volunteers who, in addition to the large volume of call-outs that they have received for local fires and assistance, were travelling as part of the CFA strike teams to the recent bushfires burning around the state. We honoured the five CFAs in my electorate. There had not been a formalised ceremony by the community to acknowledge their efforts and, given the number of hours that they put in and the lives and the properties that they literally saved, it was appropriate that we gave them an award. It went down very well.

I may run out of time, but I am going to mention some of the other people who deserve to be mentioned because they are very rarely recognised. They are Vitolio Aia, Susan Bergman, Anne Brown, Gary Brown, Margaret Fairhurst, Terri Fallows, Jenni Hunter, Judy Martin, Shirlene Dawn Nadarajah, Glenda Novotny, Connie Newman, Derbus and Rachela Pequeno, Ed Price, Ken Ritter, George Stephens, Venice Taweel, James Ter, Neil and Tammey Tiley, the Berwick Opportunity Shop and the Cranbourne, Hallam, Hampton Park, Narre Warren and Narre Warren North Fire Brigades. I thank all of the individuals mentioned for their incredible service and their devotion to their community. What strikes me about those people was that many had to be nominated by other people because they would not put themselves forward for an award. They are the unsung heroes. They are the people who make our community tick over. It was a huge honour for me to, in front of 500 people in Doveton at Betula Reserve, present the awards to them and to give those people—those silent heroes who make our country run—at least some recognition to let them know that they are appreciated and valued by our community.

Debate (on motion by Mr Melham) adjourned.