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

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

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

At a time of economic growth, at a time when there is an unprecedented demand for Australian resources, the Howard government has failed to invest in securing Australia’s long-term economic growth. Instead, what we see is a widening of the current account deficit; a chronic skills shortage across a wide range of occupations; a government that is failing to address the issue of climate change; a government that is full of climate change sceptics, and I suspect one of those is the Prime Minister; and a government that is failing to ensure that there are enough childcare places available to children whose parents have entered the workforce or who are working by choice. There is a chronic shortage of childcare places plus there is an enormous cost associated with it, and that has caused a lot of difficulties for families.

I see the Howard government as a rather arrogant, very old-fashioned, tired government, one that is fairly hypocritical and one that is a constant player of the blame game. I was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing that brought down the report entitled The blame game, and I think that every day in parliament you will see members of the government standing up and saying, ‘The problem is the state government.’ I am sorry; I do not agree with that. This government is the federal government, it is the Australian government, it is the government that is supposed to lead this country, it is the government that has the overarching responsibility, and when something goes wrong it blames somebody else. That is just not good enough, and I will return to that in a moment.

Firstly, I would like to touch on the fact that this government sees itself as an outstanding performer in the economic area. But all the changes and reforms that have put Australia in the position it is in now were undertaken by the Hawke-Keating government. The Hawke-Keating government totally restructured the economy, and never, ever do you see a government member standing up in the House and acknowledging its contribution to Australia’s outstanding economic performance over the last few years. But without the input and the changes of the Hawke-Keating government this country would not be in the position it is in now.

Secondly, we have the interest rate issue. I have to say that the highest interest rates that Australia ever had—22 per cent—occurred under the current Prime Minister of this country. So when I am talking to people I quite often refer to the Prime Minister as ‘Mr 22 Per Cent’. But the other fallacy that is associated with interest rates is that interest rates today are low, therefore housing is more affordable. I would like to draw the committee’s attention to the fact that there has been a massive jump of 75 per cent in repossession of houses since the 2004 election. What has happened since the 2004 election? A series of interest rate rises.

The Howard government promised that it would keep interest rates low. I know that Australians within my electorate are very upset about the fact that interest rates have continued to go one way—up. The impact that this has had on them has been enormous. Yes, the interest rates are lower, but the loans that they are servicing are much greater, and their level of personal debt is much greater. Because of that, every time there is a tiny hike in interest rates, it has a massive and devastating effect on people with mortgages. Consequently, a tiny spike in the interest rates leads to an increase in repossessions. This is something that the Howard government cannot walk away from: there have been 75 per cent more repossessions since 2004. It shows that the highest level of repossessions in New South Wales occurred last year, when the full impact of the interest rate increases was felt.

I see this as an area where the Howard government has failed to protect Australian families. Our budget should be designed around providing protection for families and around stimulating economic growth. There has been a slump in the sale of houses within my area. On the Central Coast of New South Wales, the two biggest industries are retail and construction. A falling demand for housing will have a devastating impact on the economy in that area.

Along with the current account deficit, the house repossessions and a chronic skills shortage, we have an unprecedented demand for Australia’s minerals. We have an unprecedented demand for anything we can dig out of the ground. But we have a chronic skills shortage in practically every area of occupation in our economy. I seek leave to table this graph showing the rate of repossessions in New South Wales.

Leave granted.

The skills shortage is impacting enormously on the economy, in particular, the economy of the Hunter. I have been involved in committee work throughout Australia, and I have heard time and time again how the skills shortage is impacting on various sectors of our economy. I am currently involved in an inquiry into workforce challenges facing the Australian tourism industry. The evidence that we are receiving highlights the problems associated with the skills shortage.

Unless the government gets serious about addressing these skills shortages, the problem will get worse and it will have a long-term effect on our economy. Of course, eventually, the government will be voted out and then it will be left to the Labor Party to correct the problems caused by the Howard government and to introduce policies like our education policy which seeks to ensure that we have an educated, skilled workforce in Australia. The most important thing that we as a nation can have is a skilled and educated workforce. The gold of the future will be an educated and skilled workforce. Unless we can turn the tide, we will end up in a very different position from where we are at the moment.

Whilst I am talking about the skills shortage, I want to mention the devastating impact that it is having on my electorate. I have raised in the House on a number of occasions the chronic doctor shortage that exists in the Shortland electorate. I have to say that it has only got worse. The Shortland electorate is classified as an area of workforce shortage, which means that doctors can bring an overseas doctor into their practices for a limited period of time. However, Shortland is not identified as an area of need. I do not know what it takes to be identified as an area of need if the Shortland electorate is not.

Between Swansea and Charlestown, virtually no doctor will take new patients. So anyone moving to the area has to travel to Charlestown to see a doctor. There are a couple of other doctors who, when I ring them, will under very special circumstances accept someone. The family practice of Dr Marsh at Windale has been very good and has accepted people as its patients. There are a couple of practices at Jewellstown that will accept people from time to time. But, overwhelmingly, Belmont and Swansea, the two major suburbs in the area of Lake Macquarie in the Shortland electorate, are not accepting new patients. This is quite an old area and a lot of elderly people have settled there. My office has even arranged to take people to the doctor. We have had to arrange for ambulances to pick up elderly people in their homes and take them to Belmont hospital to be treated because of the failure of this government to ensure that there are an adequate number of doctors in the area.

I have an after-hours GP access service that operates at Belmont hospital, and people can and have used that. It is supposed to be for after-hours service, so it is watched fairly carefully. It is an outstanding service, and I congratulate the doctors in the area for the work they have done in making that a great success. The Hunter urban division of GPs have been very innovative in getting that service up and running. The accident and emergency centre at Belmont hospital works overtime. People have to sit there and wait to see a doctor. Why? Because there is no doctor in the community. Members opposite would say, ‘People shouldn’t have to wait in an accident and emergency department.’ But if there are no doctors in the community, what option is there? It is not good enough.

I am disgusted that, despite my numerous contributions to debate on this issue, my contributions to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing in its blame game inquiry, the letters I have written to the minister, and my even raising it in the chamber during the consideration of budgets in detail—going back to when Dr Wooldridge was minister for health—nothing has changed; the problem still exists. But it is a lot worse than it was before. I am absolutely disgusted at the way this issue has been dealt with. I know that in many country areas the situation is even worse, but this is an outer metropolitan area. I have asked how many doctors have been located in the Shortland electorate under the outer metropolitan strategy. None that I can think of have come to the Lake Macquarie area. I have been told that two have. They have obviously gone to the Central Coast part of the electorate. It is not good enough.

I would also like to touch on the issue of dental health. The report of the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing entitled The blame game identified that there was a role for the Commonwealth government to play in providing dental services. Chronic waiting lists have developed since the Howard government removed the Commonwealth dental health scheme. I again urge the government to reintroduce that scheme or a similar one. I suspect that might happen in the lead-up to the next election. I will be very pleased if it does. It means that we will have put enough pressure on the government to do so. Australians expect to be able to see a dentist. Everybody should be able to see a dentist. Poor dental health impacts on a person’s whole body. The blame game identifies very clearly a number of issues that need to be addressed to stop the blame game.

There is one area that I would like to touch on very quickly—that is, Australia’s involvement in Iraq. Many questions have been raised in the House over the last week. I feel that the Howard government and the Prime Minister in particular have adopted an approach that is not in Australia’s interests. The first speech I ever made on Australia’s involvement in Iraq identified the problem of what happens after the war. I say the war is over. What we have now is a civil war, a war that is leading to thousands of people dying each and every day. Nothing is improving. We had a functioning society in Iraq prior to the war commencing. Now we have a hotbed for terrorism. What we have now is a society that has totally broken down. We have not only a Prime Minister who is becoming more tied to US policy but also a Prime Minister who is tying himself very closely to one side of politics in another country. I do not think that is healthy. It really would be in Australia’s interests if the Prime Minister were to distance himself a little from the President of the United States and not be so critical of the Democrats.

Another issue relating to terrorism that I would like to raise concerns David Hicks. I heard the contribution by the member for Paterson during three-minute statements. I have a different view to the member for Paterson. I think it is a disgrace that an Australian citizen is languishing in the most inhumane conditions in another country—an Australian who was not charged with any offence until very recently, an Australian whom the Prime Minister has chosen to ignore. He has chosen to ignore his plight. I think it is time that the Prime Minister made a move to resolve the issue of David Hicks. It is a disgrace for us as a nation that we allowed that to happen to one of our citizens. Other countries have acted. The UK have acted and their citizens have been brought home.

I was going to talk at some great length about climate change. I see that I have run out of time. The government has really failed the Australian people on that issue. I hope that, when we have the budget in May, it will be not just an election budget but one for—(Time expired)

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

We have seen much discussion on global warming, what we need to do about it and the amount of money that it will cost. We have seen some incredibly alarmist articles and reports. It is almost as though there is a desire for each successive report to outdo the last in terms of prognostications of doom. This has led to more and more extreme calls—calls that would cause our economy significant damage if they were acted upon.

Instead of all of the alarmist hype, we need careful, balanced consideration of the issues. First, let us look at the issue of the debate having been settled and there being no doubt about the anthropogenic aspect to climate change. The IPCC’s summary for policy makers has stated that there is a 90 per cent certainty that there is an anthropogenic component. It sounds good, but it is nowhere near as certain in scientific terms. For instance, I would hate to go over a bridge where there was a 90 per cent certainty that it would take prescribed loads. If you think 90 per cent is beyond doubt, think about the Australian cricket team. The odds of their winning the recent one-day series would have been extremely high, yet not only did they lose the finals, they in fact did not win one finals game.

Consider the issue even within the IPCC. Yuri Izrael, Vice-Chairman of the IPCC, has said there is no proven link between human activity and global warming. Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, an IPCC author and internationally respected climatologist, similarly has doubts. There are many other scientists both within Australia and internationally who also have doubts. In fact, I have spoken with many scientists expressing my doubts on the anthropogenic component. Funnily enough, I am not howled down by them in the same way that many of the true believers outside science do. It is probably because, even though many of them accept anthropogenic global warming, they know the uncertainties and complexities involved.

The IPCC process itself is flawed. Science does not work by consensus; it works on facts. Democracy is not a process relevant to science and scientific laws cannot be repealed by a vote. Look at Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick. This is the well-known graph of stable temperature over the last thousand years apart from a rapid rise in the 20th century. It was used multiple times in the third IPCC TAR. It is also wrong—some, such as McKitrick and MacIntyre, who analysed Mann’s work, state that it is fraudulently so. The problem was that Mann had to be forced to hand over the data he had used. So much for his belief in peer review.

When the evidence was given to the IPCC on this, the hockey stick was dropped with nary a whisper about the error. Where was the peer review and rigorous checking by the IPCC prior to releasing the third assessment report? After all, it completely contradicted what had been accepted before, such as the medieval warm period when the Vikings settled Greenland and it was hotter than it is now, and the little ice age when fairs were held on the Thames River. Both have been found to be global phenomena. The reason the hockey stick was accepted so easily was that it agreed with the dogma. It would have behoved the IPCC to take the advice of the late Nobel physics laureate, Richard Feynman, who stated:

Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.

Feynman went on to say:

If it (the hypothesis) disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.

You have another highly credentialled internationally famous scientist, Freeman Dyson, who similarly is sceptical and particularly decries the fudge factors used in the computer models predicting future climate. On climate stability we have Tim Flannery stating that the global thermometer has been set on 14 degrees for 10,000 years. This is absolute rubbish, so completely wrong it is embarrassing. Not only does it neglect little ice age and medieval warm periods, but also the cold Dark Ages, the warm Roman period and the Holocene optimum, which was much warmer than temperatures now are. The point with Flannery is that he is a media darling and they are quick to call him a climate expert. The fact is he is a palaeontologist, not a climatologist.

Chris Landsea, a tropical cyclone and hurricane specialist, quit the IPCC in disgust after his work was politicised by the IPCC. Dr Kevin Trenberth, a lead author, stated that his work showed that Katrina was more powerful due to anthropogenic climate change. Landsea protested to the IPCC senior leadership, but nothing was done. Interestingly, so much has been said of Katrina and anthropogenic global warming, but what about the extremely quiet tropical storm season in the North Atlantic last year? It is funny how the facts are so subjectively used by the global warming fraternity.

Let us have a look at the fourth report that came out recently. All we have seen so far is the Summary for policymakers. We have not seen the technical and scientific details—they only become available in May. The reason is that the IPCC wants to carefully go through the scientific reports and the Summary for policymakers to make sure that there are no contradictions. But what if a contradiction is found? The Summary for policymakers has already been released, so the scientific report would have to be altered—perhaps we should say ‘doctored’—to reflect what is in the Summary for policymakers.

On greenhouse gas, how many members actually know what the main contributing greenhouse gas is? Would it surprise them to know that it is water vapour contributing more than 90 per cent of the effect? We have all seen the graphs from ice cores showing correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide in past ages. I have two points: first, correlation does not equal causation; and, second, temperature change leads carbon dioxide concentration changes, not the other way around. In other words, if cause were to be ascribed, it would be more correct to state that temperature changes cause CO concentration changes.

On water vapour, the point that needs to be made is that a major contributor to climate, clouds, are not very well understood. This is acknowledged by the IPCC. There are major variations in the energy balance with IPCC reports, yet the IPCC claims the science is settled.

It has also recently been found that cosmic rays are likely to play a large effect on climate, as they interact in the atmosphere so as to form ‘seeds’ for cloud formation. Yet this is not considered by the IPCC at the moment. Looking at variations of cosmic ray activity and tracking temperature changes over the same period, the correlation is staggering.

The other fact is that the increase in solar activity has had a major effect on temperature. In fact, it has been found that warming is occurring on Pluto, Mars, Jupiter and Triton. The last time I looked, there were no evil greenhouse gas belching industries on those planets, subplanets and moons. This clearly indicates that the sun is a significant factor.

Let us have a look at some other factors. The Arctic is no warmer now than it was in the 1930s. Antarctica in fact has been cooling over 98 per cent of its area. The area that is warming is the Antarctic Peninsula, which is where all the magnificent calving of icebergs is occurring. However, it appears that there is a net ice mass increase in Antarctica—not the reverse—and this also appears to be the case in Greenland and Iceland. On the Arctic, if all of the ice melted in the Arctic, it would make no difference to sea levels, as the ice is floating.

An interesting fact to note is that the majority of warming occurred between 1900 and 1945, not in the last 30 years, as many would have you believe. Have a look at the 20th century. We have had numerous panics—global warming in the early period, then concern about an oncoming ice age, global warming again, an oncoming ice age again and now global warming again. There appears to be far too great a weighting on what is happening here and now and too little on the past.

The fact is that we had a warming trend about 20 years ago—for about 20 years up to 1998. From there, it has essentially stabilised, with temperatures almost constant since the record recorded temperature of 1998. You have no doubt heard of global dimming and atmospheric aerosols having cooled the earth somewhat, preventing even more catastrophic temperature rise. If this were correct, you would expect that the Southern Hemisphere would have warmed more than the Northern Hemisphere, given less industry and hence less aerosols. The problem is that the Northern Hemisphere has warmed more than the Southern Hemisphere.

Something that really annoys me is ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with the consensus position. The issues that they bring up and the science that they quote to support the critical arguments are shouted down by suggesting that they are all in the employ of the evil fossil fuel industry. Yet it could be argued that those in the IPCC et cetera have a vested interest. Research grants can be hard to get and global warming science would not be so well funded if it were found to be not a real problem.

Having said that, I do not like ad hominem attacks on either side. I believe in critical evaluation of the facts. The official spokesman for the Royal Society said:

It is now more crucial than ever that we have a debate which is properly informed by the science. For the people to still be producing information that misleads people about climate change is unhelpful. The next IPCC report should give people the final push that they need to take action and we can’t have people trying to undermine it.

That is a political position and it runs completely contrary to science, which should be about encouraging critical debate and analysis, not shutting it down.

I must say that I cannot recall in my lifetime such a push in science to only have one accepted position. This is more about religion and belief systems and less about facts and analysis. Indeed, when you have Al Gore’s disciples going through the land, preaching about global warming, it is clear that what we are talking about is religion, not science.

Michael Crichton has stated that the last time that he can remember when there was so much pressure for scientists and the population at large to accept a certain view as gospel was the issue of eugenics—and we all know where that led. We must accept a position of open and free debate and exchange of ideas and not go back to the Dark Ages, where only certain dogma was viewed as acceptable. If those that question the IPCC dogma are wrong, prove their arguments and scientific arguments wrong—do not resort to ad hominem attacks.

Given the foregoing, it is clear that Labor’s push on climate change is not only a politically contrived action; it is also damaging and not logical. Let us consider what Labor want. They want us to sign up to Kyoto, despite the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, who seems to see himself as the expert on everything, recognising that without China things are looking pretty marginal. This was in an interview on Meet the Press, where he was pushing his credentials, particularly as a Sinophile.

Let us consider just how far Labor is pushing a particular solution. First there is Kyoto, which leaves out so many nations. Let us assume that every nation is in the carbon trading scheme, that Kyoto is about everyone. Why is this the way to go? After all, carbon trading simply allows heavy carbon emitting industries to trade away their emissions—somewhat like shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. No, if reduction of carbon is the way to go, we need regulation of carbon emissions, with some transitional arrangements for existing industry but with any new industry having to achieve those standards. This would give the result without attempting to price the emission and essentially, therefore, attempt to pick winners.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation is looking at carbon geosequestration. It is becoming more and more evident just what a hornet’s nest carbon trading schemes would be and how difficult it would be to set a price on carbon. This is something that would have to be set from outside. It would not be a market mechanism. And there would need to be a review on an almost continual basis in order to try to keep things in balance. These sorts of measures have been attempted in the past with things like exchange rates. They patently do not work.

Having said the foregoing, and even if we accept anthropogenic global warming, why is carbon dioxide reduction the way to go? We see that carbon reduction will cost an absolute fortune, so why is that the solution? Why are we not looking at other potential control mechanisms? Just off the top of my head I can think of two. One is the injection of aerosols, as in small particulates not underarm spray, into the upper atmosphere. After all, we have heard about aerosols and global dimming. Or what about some sort of shadecloth put in orbit? In that way we could actually tailor the area of the shadecloth and adjust it according to the energy balance. The problem is that we do not really know where the energy balance is, as is evidenced by the IPCC floundering with where we are with the energy balance.

Look at the issue of water. The state governments have neglected building much needed water infrastructure, taking the increase in rainfall in the second half of the 20th century as normal. We have now entered a period where rainfall patterns are more similar to those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and have been caught out. The reason that cities are so short of water is inadequate infrastructure development, not drought. Consider Sydney, where the last dam was built about 40 years ago. They had an increase in rain in the 1970s and 1980s so did not bother with more dams. The population has approximately doubled, and the state government appears surprised at the lack of water. Blaming global warming is so much easier than owning up to their own inadequacies. The lack of planning is the reason that we see knee-jerk, quick, little thought out and inefficient responses. It is time for the state governments to be accountable. Are you listening, John Kobelke?

The more quickly the states realise that water is a national issue and not just a local issue to be played around with in an attempt to politicise it and pointscore from it, the better. The states must sign up to the $10 billion water initiative so that a well-coordinated strategy can be developed. This is a serious issue and it requires serious consideration of all the facts. The issue of global warming needs to be considered and calm action needs to be taken if the science does become settled. However, I believe that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett are correct in their view of the world, which is that you apply money where it can best be used, not in some area to placate a heavily politicised agenda that is not really about what it purports to be.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about an organisation in my electorate called Meals Plus. It is not the first time I have spoken about this organisation, because I am particularly proud to serve it. It is a very special group of people that work incredibly hard to serve the needs of one of the most disadvantaged communities in my area—the homeless, particularly homeless men. For the last 15 years Meals Plus has been providing meals from Monday to Friday, breakfast and lunch, in a place that used to be called ‘The Kitchen’. It is a permanent refectory style room in the heart of the Parramatta CBD. It stands just behind the Town Hall, so it is well and truly in the middle of what is the second largest homeless community outside the Sydney CBD. In Parramatta there are as many as 500 people sleeping rough every night. In addition to meals, the ‘plus’ part of its name refers to the range of counselling services and other services that it provides.

The reason I am rising to speak about this extraordinary service today is that it has been advised that it will lose its funding as of 1 July 2007. That means that, as of 1 July, that kitchen will close. For people who live in Parramatta and are aware of the size of the problem, with homeless men in particular, it is unimaginable that this service will not continue. It is very much a part of the Parramatta CBD and it is very much a part of the way our community addresses the rather intractable problem of homeless men.

Meals Plus is funded, like most services to the homeless, under the SAAP agreement. That is in some ways the reason why this problem is occurring. The SAAP agreement is a joint state and federal funded program. It is funded 50 per cent by the state, 50 per cent by federal, although in the last few years the New South Wales government has been funding more than half—about 52 per cent. But it is jointly funded. What that means, of course, as we all know in this modern political world of ours, is that the blame game plays front and centre. It is possible for each side to blame the other, and that is exactly what is happening now.

When the funding was first cut last year, I wrote to the then minister, Mr Cobb, who wrote back saying, ‘We have given the money to the states; it is their problem.’ The state has now come up with 50 per cent of the money. And the current minister, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mr Brough, has responded to that, saying, ‘Well, we gave the state the money; it is their problem.’ So, again, we have the state now saying, ‘It’s up to the feds to come up with the other 50 per cent,’ and we have the federal government saying: ‘It’s the state’s responsibility. We have given them the money.’

When I first became elected, one of my very smart constituents, whom I will not name in this context—although I am sure she would not mind, and it is a good story—wrote to me regarding a public transport matter about which she cares very deeply and I wrote back saying that it was a state matter. I got a very strong letter back from this woman saying: ‘Governments decide what’s state and federal, not me. It’s not my problem, it’s yours. If you can’t sort it out, go and get another job. Don’t blame me for your structural problems—fix them.’ I took that very much to heart as a way to look at our roles at this time when governments do tend to blame each other.

There can be no question that the one group that should never be left alone to try and negotiate a path through this state-federal divide is the homeless. If we in this House—with more power than virtually anyone else in the country to solve these problems of state-federal divides—cannot do it, how can we possibly expect the most disadvantaged people in this community to find a way through it? This is ridiculous. This is simply governments using the very instruments that they put together to serve these sectors as the excuse for this inaction. The SAAP agreement is not and never can be an excuse for not delivering the services that the community needs. It never can be.

Meals Plus is an extraordinary service. It does an amazing job. It serves meals in ‘The Kitchen’ five days a week, Monday to Friday, breakfast and lunch. Other services in the community have got together and scheduled times for the rest of the meals through the week. So it is possible in Parramatta to have breakfast, lunch, dinner and an evening supper at some place in the Parramatta CBD area served by either Meals Plus or other community groups such as Parramatta Christian Worship and the Times of Refreshing. Stepping Stone and Para Baptist Barbeque takes place in Prince Albert Park on Sunday at lunch. The Pizza Guy provides food on a Saturday night in front of the library. Food From the Heart serves dinner in Prince Albert Park on Thursday. The St Vinnies van does the late night suppers in Prince Albert Park. For every meal of the week one group has taken responsibility. The Greek Orthodox Church and the Hindus are also playing their part. It is an extraordinary place.

Meals Plus has provided a space in which many community organisations have come together and coordinated their efforts. It is an extraordinary success story. It also provides a conduit to other services. In some ways the meals that it serves, as important as they are, are the entry point for people to contact a group of people who can support them in other ways. People who have spent some time with the homeless will know that people become homeless largely because they are isolated. If any of us in this House suddenly found ourselves on the street one night, because of our social networks, our mental and physical health and our sense of wellbeing, we would have a friend who would give us a room to stay in or we would have someone who would invite us over for a meal. We would still have enough sense of our own abilities and confidence and probably enough cash in our pockets to get ourselves out of that. So many of these people really are alone. When their world falls over, when there are major crises in their lives or when they suffer from mental illness, there is nobody else to notice their gradual or sudden decline. Meals Plus is that network.

When a woman with a child turns up to Meals Plus two or three days before pension day, even though she still has a roof over her head there is someone there to notice that she is about to be in trouble and that she is on the edge. There is someone there to pay attention and assist that person not to become homeless. The early intervention program, simply because people notice when others are struggling, cannot be underestimated. If members of this House have friends who are parents of children who have their first mental illness episodes in their late teens, they would have seen their friends trying to make sure that when their children start to fail—when their medication starts to fail, when they start to stay out all night, when they have not had a shower for three days and when they turn up three days in a row in the same clothes—that there is somebody in their children’s lives to notice and pay attention before the problem gets totally out of control. I cannot begin to say how important this organisation is as part of that network.

It also provides an incredible meeting place for those who are already homeless. I, on occasion, go down to Meals Plus. I do not go as often as I would, because many of the clients bring me extra bits of food and I end up with a huge plate of food in front of me, which I then feel guilty about not eating. One cannot really eat eight bits of cake on a Wednesday lunchtime. I recently took some desserts from one of the Lions Clubs down to the Smith Street car park on a Sunday night. I had been to the Prince Alfred Park barbeque on the Sunday. Because of the regularity of it, because of the consistency of it, and the absolute caring and respectful approach of the service providers in this area, there is quite a sense of camaraderie. They know each other. Some of them now share houses together. Meals Plus is also very good at finding long-term accommodation solutions for people who have sometimes been on the street for quite some time. I quite enjoy my visits to these meals these days because I am starting to get to know quite a few of these people as well. Often, even after they have found accommodation and their lives are getting back under control, they drop down every couple of weeks to see their mates and to say hello. It has become an incredibly important social network for people who in a sense have fallen off the edge because they have been alone up until this point.

I cannot stress enough what my community would lose if it lost Meals Plus on 1 July 2007. I cannot imagine it. In some ways, Meals Plus is a victim of its own success. If you walk through Parramatta, you would not realise that there were 500 homeless people, because they have access to washing machines at Meals Plus. Most of the people in our area who do not have a place to live have clean clothes; they have a place to eat; and, if they need urgent accommodation, hotel-style accommodation is provided. Despite the organisation being incredibly strained in its resources, it provides an absolutely phenomenal service.

The other wonderful and quite extraordinary thing it has done—along with DOCS, the Parramatta Mission, the St Vincent de Paul Society, Mission Australia, the Department of Housing, the Office of Community Housing and Parramatta council—is to create an initiative called the Parramatta Homelessness Coalition, which specifically works with men in the Parramatta area. It shows what happens when a strong service sits in the heart of a community. For those who are familiar with working with the homeless, homeless men can be the most intractable. It is the area in which you do not have the joys, I guess, of working with young people who are starting their lives. You are quite often dealing with people who have intractable drug and alcohol problems or mental illness and who will probably be homeless or on the edge of homelessness or living in poverty for most of their lives. This is probably the most difficult area of homelessness in which to work.

As I said before, Parramatta Mission and its Meals Plus service is funded under the SAAP agreement. It is worth talking about that agreement because it has, in many ways, been a successful agreement. It has provided an incredible range of services that are jointly funded by state and federal governments. But the demand is far outstripping the available funds, and that has been the case for some time. An independent analysis said that demand had increased by 15 per cent and that it would require a 15 per cent increase in funding to meet the current need. The anecdotal evidence from organisations in my electorate, including Meals Plus, is that the demand is increasing so fast that current funding levels are already insufficient and will be drastically insufficient within another 12 months. Yet the funding to the SAAP agreement via the Commonwealth and matched by the states has not increased; in fact, it has decreased in real terms.

The current SAAP agreement, which was released on 1 June 2005 and runs from July 2005 to June 2010, provided no increase in core program funding in real terms in spite of the very real need for increased services on the ground in communities like mine and in many others. The lack of increase in real funding and, at the same time, the decrease in affordable housing and rising rents—particularly in boom areas like Parramatta, where what works very well for some sections of the community puts enormous strain on the most disadvantaged sections of it—make the demand even greater in areas like mine.

It is just not good enough that the federal government has not met this growing need. In fact, one could argue that it has increased the need through, for example, its Welfare to Work program and its decrease in funding to public housing. It is unacceptable that the federal government should simply say: We’ve put in the money. We’re not meeting increasing need. We’ve actually held the money steady. We’ve given the money to the states. It’s now their responsibility to squeeze more and more services out of the same amount of money.’ It is not a valid argument for a federal government that has not increased funding to meet the growing need to say: ‘It’s not my fault. We’ve given the states the money. It’s their responsibility to do the loaves and fishes and make that same amount of money grow to meet growing demand.’ The SAAP agreement is not and never can be an excuse for not delivering the services a community needs. It never can be.

The ramification of the federal government doing that is the closure of services like Meals Plus. The result is that a much-needed service in my community is likely to close its doors on 1 July. I am not naive enough to believe that the federal government would come to the rescue of Meals Plus because it does have a state-federal funding agreement and a system through which these services are delivered at state level. If I were to put my hand up for that project in my community, there would be an awful lot of other members of parliament putting a hand up directly for services in their community as well, because many other services are suffering like Meals Plus is suffering.

I put in a plea to the federal government that it reconsider its commitment to providing services to the homeless. It has not increased funding levels for the next five years. It has left some extraordinary organisations struggling. It has left many others with their services cut. It has also been in the habit over the last few years of proudly boasting about additional funding for particular projects, for new pilot projects, which it funds for a couple of years but does not follow up with further funding. Meals Plus, initially funded as a pilot project, is a good example of that.

As an indication of exactly how serious this problem is, a new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that around one in two people who request immediate accommodation under the current Supported Accommodation Assistance Program, known as the SAAP agreement, are turned away and that almost two in three children seeking immediate accommodation are refused a place. This is already a service which is not in any way meeting the need. No-one could say it is meeting the need when two in three children seeking immediate accommodation are refused a place. Yet in spite of that, and in spite of an independent evaluation of the SAAP which found that a 15 per cent real increase in funding was required just to maintain the viability of existing services, the federal government has refused to increase funding to these services at all and has entered into a five-year agreement taking us through to 2010 that will leave them struggling, reducing their services in real terms. The New South Wales government in particular is unable to fund even its basic services at any real level.

Because of the demonstration projects which are so proudly boasted of by the government, real funding is decreasing. They are being funded at the expense of base funding, which will actually fall from $178.5 million in 2005-06 to $175.3 million in 2006-07 and $175.8 million in 2007-08. Again, there is not much fat. In fact, there is no fat in the services for the homeless. They are already overstretched; they are already failing to meet unmet need. I doubt whether any community in this country—certainly not mine—would look at any of its services to the homeless and think, ‘Yes, that’s a bit that can go now.’ I suspect that what we are all doing is looking at them and saying: ‘That’s a great program. Why can’t we expand it? That’s a great program that is working’—in the case of Meals Plus—‘Can’t we keep it?’  These are lifesaving services—services that keep people off the street, services that guarantee people at least one meal a day and provide a place where they can have a shower. These are lifesaving services; they are not luxuries. They make a profound difference to the lives of people in my community. I beg the government to put the politics aside, to stop the blame game and to do its job in working with state governments to make sure that these services are properly funded.

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

I rise in the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2006-2007 and related bill to raise two basic issues. One is to continue my remarks about the importance of the Balancing work and family report, which we addressed when the report was debated here earlier this week—in fact we had only 10 minutes, so there are a few more things I would like to say. The other thing I want to raise is a very important issue in my electorate of Mackellar, and that is the sale by the New South Wales Labour Council of Currawong—truly something that ought to be listed as heritage property under the New South Wales Heritage Act—to a developer arranged by the agent who is also the buyer, for half market value.

There is an excellent article by Piers Akerman in this morning’s Telegraph newspaper. Piers points out in his article just how wrong this sale is. If something looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it is likely to be a duck. If a cosy sale of a vital property looks like a crock and it smells like a crock, it is probably a crock.

The player in this game is Mr Robertson, the proponent of the sale for the Labour Council. They want to use the money to run a campaign against the federal government on Work Choices. They say that is the reason. The amount is $15 million. The state government’s own Department of Lands put in an earlier bid of $12½ million, and guess what? It withdrew it. There were two other developer offers made on the property, one for $30 million and one for $25 million. Mr Robertson has allegedly said of the $25 million offer that came from Macquarie Bank, ‘Over my dead body.’ But he wants to sell it to an organisation called KWC Capital Group.

The main players in this group are a Mr Linz and a Mr Tanevski. Mr Tanevski was brought on board by Mr Robertson, and it was reported in the paper that he said, ‘We wanted someone who understood how property developers operate.’ He knows, all right. He was the agent for the sale and he is selling it to himself. He is selling it to another organisation of KWC. But it is all a bit cosier than you would ever think.

KWC Capital Group has its registered place of business at level 12, 32 Martin Place, Sydney, which is the place of business of a firm known as Kingsway Financial Assessments Pty Ltd. Kingsway Financial Assessments is said in Piers Akerman’s article to have had Mr Linz and Mr Tanevski as directors. In 2001 they were granted by the state Department of Commerce a contract called the services contract under contract 0500969, which allows them to assess the financial capability of contractors for prequalification, pre-contract award and post-contract award monitoring for a wide range of contracts, including capital works, facilities, maintenance, goods and services as well as information communications and technology. In other words, the New South Wales Department of Commerce has outsourced the approval of people who are allowed to get contracts from the state government to this company, Kingsway Financial Assessments.

They first got a contract in 2001 and then, on 23 September 2005, the New South Wales State Contracts Control Board awarded the contract to do all those things again to Kingsway Financial Assessments, which is the registered office of, and has directors in common with, the agent who wants to sell Currawong to the buyer who is buying Currawong for one-half of the market value. I said earlier that, if something smells like a crock and it looks like a crock, it probably is a crock.

Piers Akerman says in his article that there was a further little company that this group of people were involved in. I will come to the name of the company in a moment. I think it is in the article. The article says:

Dealings between Robertson, Linz, Tanevski and another KWC capital Group director, Michael Braham, go back at least five years, when they were all on the board of the now defunct Unions NSW internet venture Getonboard. A company called Kingsway Capital took a one-third stake in the NSW ALP and Unions NSW venture, which offered discounted PC and internet packages to members of the two organisations.

Linz and Tanevski were directors of Kingsway Capital while Robertson, his predecessor and now NSW Treasurer Michael Costa, NSW ALP boss Mark Arbib, and his predecessor and now NSW Roads Minister Eric Roozendaal were among the ALP and union connections on the failed company’s board.

Selling Currawong has been a long-term desire for Costa, who almost managed to offload the workers’ retreat to Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who marketed transcendental meditation ...

That was before that project hit the dust. There is no suggestion that Mr Costa, Mr Arbib, Mr Roozendaal or Mr Braham were involved in the ultimate sale of Currawong, but Piers Akerman ably points out that this is a very cosy group. If you go to another New South Wales government activity, something called the New South Wales urban task force, which collects information about people for developing purposes, two of the members are Mr Allen Linz and Mr David Tanevski. So to try and say that it is just a coincidence that Mr Robertson had Mr Tanevski just to tell him how to develop his work and that they are an arms-length purchaser just does not wash. These people are up to their armpits with the Labor Party government in New South Wales.

I forgot to mention that Mr Sartor, who is, of course, the minister in charge of the heritage listing, is also the minister in charge of all planning and sales. And Mr Robertson, who is in charge of selling the property and is heading up the sale, sits on the Heritage Council. Isn’t it amazing that the Heritage Council application never gets dealt with? There are many questions that need to be asked about this deal.

When I read that article this morning I went back to an old file which I had not looked at for some time, because the whole question of outsourcing of government functions and how much it costs the government may in some way provide some of those answers about New South Wales. They have had an enormous amount of money, but where did it all go? So in getting out the file I literally was twigged when I read the article. Kingsway Financial Assessments rang a bell. Then I found the file. It is a very serious business and many questions have to be asked in this lead-up to the state election to just see how sullied that government has become.

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

This is worse than WA Inc.

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

It has all the features of that sort of arrangement. Those questions need to be answered. Thank you to Piers Akerman for that excellent article this morning. I think I will continue to find the rest of the material that we dug out earlier when looking at some of these issues.

The second issue I want to talk about this morning is the Balancing work and family report. In the 10 minutes we had available the other day, I was unable to deal with the unfair way in which the current tax system is exercised. A very privileged few are able to get a tax deduction for their childcare expenses while ordinary mums and dads cannot. The method of doing that is to be employed by either the Commonwealth government or large employers such as banks which allow their employees to salary sacrifice for childcare expenses. They are then exempt from the payment of fringe benefits tax.

The commissioner has ruled in a public ruling that if an employer controls a childcare centre, employees may salary sacrifice and get the benefit of paying for their childcare expenses with pre-tax dollars. In other words, they say to the employer, ‘You keep this percentage of my salary, pay it to the childcare centre which you control, thereby I will get an effective tax deduction for my childcare expenses.’ The Commonwealth government in all its manifestations meets that criteria, but it must own or control the centre. The centre does not have to be on the premises, but the Commonwealth must own or control it. It can lease it and let someone like ABC Learning come in and run it. Let me give an example. Defence owns 19 childcare centres. ABC runs them, so ADF personnel who can get their children into those 19 centres can have an effective tax deduction for their childcare expenses. But other people who just go to an ordinary ABC Learning centre or any other sort of childcare centre cannot. There is no fringe benefits tax exemption because the defence department does not own or control those centres.

In Canberra, if you work for the Treasury, you can get a tax deduction because they have a childcare centre. The tax office used to operate their own childcare centre and their employees could get the effective tax deduction; they were fringe benefits tax exempt. They got out of owning or controlling it and gave it over to the ABS, the Bureau of Statistics. Because they were all part of the Commonwealth government, tax office employees could utilise the ABS childcare centre—and on it goes. The largest one is CSIRO’s. I think they have about 134 people utilising it. One department down here is going to spend I think I heard a figure of $2 million to build a new childcare centre—that is taxpayers’ dollars—and will meet the tax office ruling.

There are two things involved here. If we got rid of fringe benefits tax, which the report recommends, on all childcare expenses, everybody would be able to salary sacrifice and get that advantage. That is why we sensibly said in the report that there should be tax deductibility for all childcare expenses, so that we have no losers. If fringe benefits tax were removed all employees could get a tax deduction. But if you are self-employed you cannot salary sacrifice; you are left out in the cold. Equity on all terms says there should be no fringe benefits tax on childcare expenses so that ordinary mums and dads can enjoy the privilege that employees of the Commonwealth Public Service enjoy. It also means that, once you remove it, so that it is fair for self-employed people you need to offer a tax deduction. As I have pointed out many times before, if you can get a tax deduction for your motor car, your computer laptop, your mobile phone, your steel capped boots and so on—this current year we are giving back $16.9 billion for things that are tax deductible—it is an equitable argument which has to be seen as sensible.

When I was talking earlier this week I said that, regarding the money that the budget had allocated for child care, there was a vast underspend—a $280 million underspend in the current year. I should have said that it is in excess of a $280 million underspend over three years. In any event, the point is this: the Econtech report that we commissioned said that the package would cost $262 million. In excess of $280 million would certainly go a long way towards making that very affordable. It is the equity argument, together with the facts and figures put forward by Access Economics, which did our macroeconomic modelling for us, that show it is good for the growth of the economy. It said that if there were more mums who came back into the workforce and worked full time then we would see growth in our economy of between 2.8 per cent and 4.4 per cent, which, as I said, is more than tax reform under competition policy. That growth would be national income.

So we have an argument that says it is good for the economy, and we say it is good for mums and dads because, as I have said in other forums, there are a lot of similarities between aged care and child care. When I was the minister with responsibility for aged care, I was very keen and did in fact introduce thousands of Community Aged Care Packages which enabled people to stay in their own home and have in-home care instead of being institutionalised in an aged-care facility, because that is where they wanted to be. You can apply the same argument to the many mums and dads who would like to have their children cared for in their own home with in-home care so that they can, with a much clearer conscience, be in the workforce without having to institutionalise their children in centre based care, which is where the vast bulk of the $1.6 billion that we pay out on the childcare benefit goes.

So, on all counts, it makes sense. It is good for economic growth; it is good for kids; it is good for parents because it takes away the angst. It might even save a few marriages. If you are a mum, you have to get up, get the breakfast, get the kids washed and dressed, drive one to preschool and one to school, in different localities, you have to work all day and then you come home and you have to be charming as you are cooking the dinner and putting it down on the table. I suspect that if we could relieve mums of some of those pressures, there might be a lot less angst in many families.

I am speaking on this because it is such a sensible proposal. I know that this government responds to good, sensible arguments—both equity and economic. I wanted to wind up the remarks that I began earlier this week because I believe that when the benefits are really appreciated then, hopefully, the proposal will get a damned good hearing.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Appropriation Bill (No.3) 2006-07 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2006-07 are before us. These are top-up bills which provide additional budget appropriations of $1.8 billion. Appropriation Bill (No. 3) deals with the ordinary annual operating services of government—additional funds to all the departments and agencies implementing policy—and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) deals with tied grants to the states and non-operating equity injections and loans.

Labor is of course supporting these appropriation bills to enable the government to continue its work. But I also rise to support the amendment that has been moved by the member for Melbourne, which condemns the government for its poor performance in securing Australia’s long-term economic fundamentals, reasserts Labor’s opposition to the government’s draconian industrial relations changes and highlights the flawed budget documents and Charter of Budget Honesty election costing process.

The government claims it has been a very good economic manager. The fact is it has not. The government has benefited greatly from the resources boom and it has definitely benefited from the superannuation reforms of the Keating years that have injected so much saving for investment into our economy. But, unfortunately, in riding the booms and Labor reforms, it has continued to waste the opportunities that this has presented to our economy.

These bills, like so much of the legislation that comes before this House, are part of a now well-entrenched pattern on the part of the Howard government of ever-growing wasteful spending and wasting of opportunities. Over the past few years we have seen the government engage in a giant spending spree, generally but not always linked to the election cycle, that has been built on the enormous boost to Australia’s national income that has derived from the minerals boom. But the government continues to squander these dividends of prosperity. It is not investing for Australia’s long-term future and, in particular, it is misusing its authority to spend money in a variety of ways that are designed purely to win political support for the government and to reward its supporters or particular interest groups instead of funding projects that actually deliver long-term sustainable investments in our communities and our national economy projects that benefit everyone over the long term.

This is not a government that is focused on serving the long-term interests of the nation. I think we need to highlight some of the wasted opportunities and mistaken priorities of this government and underline the social and economic costs of such gross negligence. Australia’s persistently large current account deficits and spiralling half-trillion-dollar foreign debt are just not sustainable. Australia’s current account deficit is one of the highest in the OECD despite record high commodity prices.

You need only look at Australia’s trade statistics to expose the lie that this government has been a good economic manager. It has been lucky. 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 in a row. This is the longest uninterrupted period of trade deficit on record.

When Labor was 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 that compare with what the current government has achieved? Despite a record resources boom it has averaged 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, unfortunately. It is a woeful performance.

Australia is stuck in a trade rut at a time of 30-year record high prices and demand for minerals. Australia is dependent on a narrow range of commodity exports. Unfortunately, service exports remain weak. Since 2000 the performance of elaborately transformed manufactures has collapsed along with productivity growth. The Howard government has done nothing after the reforms of the Hawke-Keating years, except of course introduce Work Choices.

A recent OECD report, released yesterday, said that Australia’s productivity was well below that of leading nations and its employment rates for low-skilled and older workers were relatively poor. I think that is worth dwelling on. In my area, Newcastle, we have experienced much change and restructuring in industry, including the corporatisation of utilities like Telecom, and we have seen rapid increases in mature age unemployment. Older men were forced out of their jobs and their lack of skills keeps them out of new employment, and they have fallen off the government’s statistics altogether. They no longer apply for jobs. Their partner may work or they have become welfare dependent. It is pleasing that the OECD have recognised that employment rates for low-skilled and older workers are relatively poor in this country. At a time when the utilisation of labour is reaching the maximum, we have people that we have left behind.

Australia’s performance in high-technology industries is also being eroded by underinvestment in universities, TAFE and training. The Productivity Commission’s Report on government services 2006 showed recurrent public spending on vocational education and training had dropped by 3.1 per cent in 2004. The Howard government has turned 300,000 Australians away from TAFE since 1998. The number of VET—vocational education and training—students has decreased by 6.6 per cent between 2000 and 2004. And this is not because they are out there getting jobs. Teenage and youth unemployment remains around 25 per cent in my electorate. Government recurrent spending per student hour fell from $20.18 in 2000 to $19.12 in 2004.

In my own electorate, university fees have grown so much since the introduction of HECS in 1989 that federal funding to the University of Newcastle only just outstrips its earnings from students. The federal government contribution this year will be about $140 million—just $10 million more than what is expected to be collected from student fees. Universities are now finding almost half of their funding by shifting the financial burden onto students and their families. Nearly two in five of this year’s undergraduate intake could be meeting the full cost of their education.

Education is becoming unaffordable for some, and student debt is already out of control, as one of my constituents from Thornton, in correspondence to me, recently noted:

Uni fees (are) unbelievably high ... I have a son starting uni this year and am worried about the HECS fees he will have to repay even before he starts taking loans for a home and family later in life. He will already be in debt before he starts.

I hear my own daughter saying, ‘Mum, we can’t afford to have a baby yet. We’re both still paying off our HECS fees.’ Coupled with housing unaffordability in New South Wales, this is a real problem. They consciously want to pay off their HECS debt, but it is a real burden. I say to them, ‘It’s the lowest interest rate you’ll ever get—forget it.’ But it is a huge burden on young people. Another constituent from Beresfield wrote:

I finished my HSC last year after getting good marks ... now I have deferred Uni for 12 months as I nor my parents can afford to pay for it.

We need to redress the gross inadequacy of current funding arrangements for Australian universities. We need to give our young people a chance. This used to be the clever country; it has to be that again. Education must be at the centre of our long-term strategy for national prosperity. Education is the engine room of the economy. It is the pathway to prosperity for everyone; it is the key to being globally competitive. But for too long we have failed to see education as a core challenge for the economy and a core recipient of the economy.

Australia definitely needs an education revolution—a revolution in the quantum of our investment and a revolution in the quality of our education outcomes. Labor have recently launched a ‘New Directions’ paper about the central role of education in our country’s long-term economic future. We have a goal for Australia to be the best educated country, with the best trained workforce, in the world. It is central to Labor’s existence that every Australian have the best opportunity to perform and prosper. It is the Australian ethos, I suppose, that people like me have benefited from parents who both left school before they were 14 and never had the opportunity to have an education themselves. They knew the value of education for their children.

We have also seen the government refuse to act on climate change and, by doing so, fail to protect Australian jobs and the economy. The CSIRO estimates that temperatures in Australia could be up to two degrees hotter by 2030 and up to six decrees hotter by 2070. As a result, we can expect more severe and frequent coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, increases in extreme weather conditions—weather phenomena that could be catastrophic, such as droughts, tropical cyclones and floods—a reduction in run-off entering our waterways and greater incidences of tropical disease. These events will have an enormous impact on our tourism, agricultural and insurance industries, with particular consequences for coastal and regional communities.

This week, we have been able to take a closer look at the government’s much-touted $10 billion program for the Murray-Darling Basin. We know that the inception of this program did not involve the departments of treasury and finance—no economic modelling for this government. We know that the financial statement that was associated with the announcement was just a single page. There have been few occasions in political history when so much money has been committed with such an incredible lack of economic scrutiny. So many questions remain unanswered, yet there is a notional commitment of $10 billion of taxpayers’ money to this program—a program that is undeniably necessary but desperately in need of detailed strategies and economic modelling for it to succeed.

Yesterday it was revealed that Treasury has not made any detailed assessment of the economic impact of climate change. Unbelievable! Unlike the British Treasury, which commissioned former Chief Economist of the World Bank Sir Nicholas Stern to report on the economic implications of climate change, our government says there is no urgent need for Treasury to do so. I wish they would go back and look at the CSIRO reports issued in the late 1980s which outlined the problem and provided projections. The government have had those reports since the late 1980s and, unfortunately, they have just sat on their hands. With Australia’s greatest climate change sceptic at the helm, it should be of no real surprise that Treasury does not regard the lack of economic analysis as a pressing issue.

Australia’s health system is being damaged by short-term political fixes which have created spending blow-outs in key program areas but have failed to address critical structural weaknesses such as workforce shortages and rising health costs. The Howard government has spent more time on fighting with the states, playing the blame game and cost shifting than on fixing problems and dealing with pressing issues such as childhood obesity, the structural changes in health delivery caused by an ageing population and the inequity of funding arrangements for rural and regional areas. The people of Newcastle and the Hunter region continue to go without much needed health resources in the face of wasteful spending by this government. Like the rest of rural and regional Australia, we have acute medical workforce shortages in the Hunter. We need health funding to address the chronic shortages of GPs and specialists, including orthopaedic surgeons, paediatricians, radiotherapists and obstetricians in particular. One of my new constituents from Beresfield recently wrote in response to a survey:

It is difficult finding a GP whose books are not closed ... newcomers to the area find it difficult getting into a practice.

There is also an urgent need for public health dental services. Hunter public patients face a five-year wait for dentures. I do not think that is in any way fair. We can only be ashamed. A new constituent from Tarro, which was previously in the electorate of Paterson, said:

One thing I am most concerned about is the availability of dental care. Private is too expensive and the government dental lists are much too long.

The public know the reality. Another new constituent in Beresfield said:

Bring back the Commonwealth Dental Scheme—it is very important to older people.

These people talk from direct experience. Certainly, they are not fooled. The Howard government abolished the Commonwealth dental scheme in 1997. Labor understands that unattended dental problems can become very serious and cause other health complaints. Labor remains committed to fixing the dental crisis in Australia, but there is no extra money in these appropriation bills to do so.

Other health projects in my region that require investment from the federal government include a Medicare licence for the PET scanner at the Mater Hospital. People still have to go to Sydney to get their PET scan. These scans are an imperative to saving money and lives in the treatment of cancer. Diagnosis, identification and certainly treatment plans are much more efficient if a PET scanner is used. We also lack a Medicare licence for the new MRI scanner at East Maitland, servicing the new areas of my electorate.

A new joint Hunter Medical Research Institute and University of Newcastle research facility is needed at the John Hunter Hospital. Secure, ongoing funds for the GP access after-hours service is needed. It is worth pointing out that the member for Paterson re-annouces funding for the GP access after-hours service every year or so and makes it look like he has saved it again from doom, gloom and destruction. He particularly goes out in election years doing that. Let us stop playing those nonsense games and make sure these good services are sustained and that people can have confidence that they will continue. We also need to refurbish the Hunter dementia resource centre and to fund additional Commonwealth medical places at the University of Newcastle.

When you also look at the failure of the economy, you have to say that investment in research and development has been particularly weak. R&D as a proportion of GDP is only 0.89 per cent—nearly half the OECD average of 1.5 per cent. Australia ranks 15th in R&D effort in the OECD tables. Since 1996 business investment in R&D has grown at only 2.6 per cent, while in the previous decade R&D investment grew at 11.4 per cent. Chinese firms are boosting R&D expenditure at a rate of 21 per cent per annum. Look out Australia! Companies such as Merck, Intel and Microsoft spend as much on R&D as the sum of all Australian businesses. Australia has an $85.4 billion trade deficit in high-technology manufactures—an increase of 13.4 per cent year on year.

Productivity growth is unacceptably sluggish. It is the most important source of economic growth and with declining labour supply growth its importance will increase. The Productivity Commission has estimated that if productivity growth could be maintained at 1990s rates, the decline due to ageing could easily be contained—something we should be trying to do. This calls for more effort on national competition policy, infrastructure reform, skills development, tax reform and cutting unnecessary regulation.

The government’s industrial relations legislation is not about improving productivity or workforce participation. The policy aims of the legislation are to strip entitlements and conditions and to remove or reduce safety nets. There has also been an enormous waste of money as the government has spent wildly on advertising after the introduction of Work Choices. The government has a history of wild spending sprees, particularly in election campaigns. It has more than $20 billion over the forward estimates stashed away in the contingency reserve that it wants to roll out in the lead-up to the election campaign. Standards of accountability are slipping—I note that the Chair of the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit, the member for Deakin, is in the chamber—and of course accountability for spending is something we take very seriously.

The $10 billion 10-year water package contained no detail on the timing of expenditure or whether the projected expenditure is in the forward estimates period or in the never-never beyond the forward estimates. The Howard-Costello government is a big spending government compared to the Hawke government. Locking in spending against a tax base that will be eroded by intergenerational change is inherently risky. Much spending has been wasteful or politically motivated and is unlikely to secure higher levels of productivity or participation. There are also major problems with the transparency of the budget documents, and I think we all struggle with that at budget time.

There are other deserving federal projects that my region would like to have seen included, such as funding for a purpose-built Commonwealth courts complex. We would love a Federal Court building; the Family Court is all we have. Our legal fraternity currently have to go to Sydney to lodge bankruptcy, trade practices and environmental law cases. The pressure on the Family Court is accepted by the Attorney-General, but we do need a Commonwealth courts complex.

We also need an upgrade of our stadium. We are sick of seeing the Treasurer’s stadium and a few members’ stadiums get money while the Energy Australia Stadium gets nothing. Newcastle’s solar city bid is absolutely essential. The Prime Minister is trying to be fearful and cause division in mining communities like mine, but here we have a city that is advanced in R&D technology and solar energy and yet the success of our solar city bid remains unknown.

There are a lot of infrastructure needs in our area and of course broadband remains absolutely critical. One constituent wrote:

Having just moved into a new housing estate [I am concerned about] the lack of availability of broadband access …

Another Thornton resident said:

We applied for ADSL Broadband about 2 years ago and are still waiting.

So whilst these appropriations must of course go through, I join with my Labor colleagues in taking the opportunity in this debate to point to the wasted opportunities of the last 10 years. It is about time this government changed its direction. I know it will not, so we must change the government. The Australian people have the opportunity later this year to say: ‘Let’s have that change. Let’s get rid of this government and vote them out of office.’

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

I want to address a couple of issues in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2006-2007 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2006-2007 relating to my responsibilities as shadow parliamentary secretary for defence and veterans’ affairs. The first of these issues I want to address goes to the issue of the loss of value of the TPI pension. Before I get into that issue, I just want to say how ineffective this government has been in the face of the record reluctance of young Australians to sign up and join the ADF.

It is no wonder that the government has a retention and recruitment crisis on its hands. I have looked at some of the wasteful advertising on TV and in other places. The government are spending millions upon millions of dollars on this advertising, which is designed, I think, more to bolster the image of the government than to recruit. But it seems to me that, if they were dinkum about their need and the way they are going about their recruitment drive, they might be better off saving that money that they are wasting on advertising and putting it into looking after the veteran community—that is, veterans who served in previous eras or in previous conflicts—although, having said that, I am aware that a number of veterans who have served in Afghanistan, Iraq and places like East Timor are facing the same sorts of issues that older veterans are facing.

An example of that is in a recent letter that was sent to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and to ex-service organisations by the Vietnam Veterans Federation in New South Wales. I might say that the Vietnam Veterans Federation under the presidency of Tim McCombe, himself a veteran, is probably one of the most credible of all ex-service organisations in Australia. I commend Tim and all of his team out there at Granville for the wonderful work they are doing across the board for veterans. In this letter, which they sent to the minister, under a heading, ‘Loss of value of the TPI pension’ they say this:

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs is grasping at straws in his attempt to justify the government’s refusal to restore the lost value of the TPI pension and to stem its further erosion. His attempted justifications are untenable and contradictory. Our latest letter to the minister is enclosed.

I want to quote this letter because it shows that what is being said about the TPI is not just being said by me and other members of parliament on the ALP side who take an interest in these things but also in the broader veteran community. The letter is addressed to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and it says:

Loss of the value of the TPI pension

Since 1979, the TPI pension has lost value compared with other pensions and the erosion continues.

In recent correspondence to the Vietnam Veterans Federation and others, you have defended the government’s refusal to restore the TPI pension’s lost value and its refusal to completely stem its continuing erosion.

The justification you give for the government’s inaction is that the TPI pension/Service pension package is adequate because it is roughly equivalent to the average wage.

But the TPI pension/Service pension package and the average wage are simply not comparable. It is like comparing apples with oranges.

Firstly, the spouses of civilians on the average-wage can earn as much as they like without it reducing their partners’ incomes, whilst any significant wage earned by partners of TPI pensioners reduces the TPI pension/Service pension package. This reduction is savage enough to discourage a great many spouses from taking up work. The importance of this difference cannot be overstated as the vast majority of Australian families find it necessary for both partners to work for at least some of the time to make ends meet. When spouse’s incomes are added to that of their average-wage earner partners, the TPI pension/Service pension package recipient is left far worse off.

Secondly many civilians on the average wage are in transit through that wage level and will be earning much more in later life. No such luck for the TPI Pensioner. He is stuck on the TPI Pension/Service Pension package for life and often from an early age. Unlike his civilian counterparts, he will have no chance to upgrade his skills and gain experience which will allow him to earn progressively more, so he can buy a house and accumulate superannuation for his old age.

Thirdly, there is another even more basic difference. Generally speaking, the civilian average-wage earner has not been sent off to fight Australia’s wars. War service is like no other job, it is uniquely dangerous and arduous. TPI pensioners’ war service did not conform to civilian norms so there should be no need for any compensation they might receive for the war’s devastating effects to be restricted by civilian norms.

In short, your argument for adequacy based on this comparison is fallacious and we are disappointed that you continue using it.

We are disappointed, too, at the figures you use in the comparison.

The average wage is clearly ‘income’. Any payments compared with it must also be ‘income’. The government has decreed that only part of the TPI pension is ‘income’, the other part being ‘lump sum equivalent’. Yet in making your comparison, you have included the whole of the TPI pension including the part you have decreed as ‘lump sum equivalent’. Your calculations are therefore invalid.

Including the whole of the TPI pension you calculate that a single under-65 TPI service pension/Service pension recipient receives a net $10 a fortnight more than a single average-wage earner. But if you play by your own rules and recognise that only part of the TPI pension is ‘income’, the under-65 TPI pension/Service pension package recipient is, in fact, over four hundreds of dollars a fortnight worse off.

The simple facts are these:

The TPI pension was 47.3% of the average wage in 1997 and it is now 43.5%.

The TPI pension is still losing value.

We ask that the lost value of the TPI pension be restored and its erosion stemmed.

This is an issue that the government must address. This is an issue that the government have run away from for some years now. We know that they changed the system in 1996. That is over 10 years ago, and it is time they recognised that they made a mistake and fixed it up.

I know that this is also an issue for the ALP to address. In due course we must address this issue in terms of our own policies, and I am greatly heartened by the work that Alan Griffin is doing out there. Alan is the ALP spokesperson on veterans’ issues. He has been out in the veteran community, listening to them, taking on board their arguments and showing them a great deal of respect. I know that this is an issue that Alan wants to see resolved as well.

The important point is that the government is currently putting together its budget that will be produced in May. I urge the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, who is the government spokesperson for veterans’ affairs in this parliament, to ensure that he gets his fingers into the Treasurer’s purse and rectifies this disgraceful erosion of the TPI pension. As long as this government continues to treat veterans in the shoddy way that it has then it will be equally hard to recruit young Australians to serve in the ADF. Word of mouth through the veteran community to younger people is simply saying, ‘Think twice about signing up because when the flags have stopped flying, when you are out of uniform, governments forget about you very quickly.’ That, unfortunately, is a sad truth. If the government is dinkum about its care and concern for veterans, it will make sure that in this budget it rectifies that erosion of the TPI pension. I once again compliment Tim McCombe and the Vietnam Veterans Federation for the tremendous work they are doing.

The second issue I want to deal with is the Australian Defence Medal. We saw this medal announced with a lot of hoo-ha some time ago. I think it is a very sad thing to say that there are so many anomalies in the way in which this Australian Defence Medal was put together and in the way in which it is being processed and sent out to the veteran community that it is causing a lot of angst and a lot of concern in the veteran community. I want to deal with one issue in relation to all of those confronting problems with the medal, and that is the issue that relates to members of the ADF who have been discharged on medical grounds.

I was recently contacted by the Injured Service Persons Association national group. I know that this is an issue that they have taken up. Their national president, Ray Brown, has written to me and has written to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs pointing out the anomalies and asking him to get them fixed. But, in short, the military and honours and awards area is refusing to process applications for the Australian Defence Medal from former members of the ADF who were discharged on medical grounds. These people have just been put in a queue. They are in a sort of backlog area and no-one is dealing with their applications. Ray Brown quoted to me some correspondence that he had from one of his members, and I will quickly read it:

Hi, Ray.

I applied for my ADM in April last year. I telephoned around Sept to follow up as my husband applied same time as me & received his in July. I was told it is coming.

Yesterday I telephoned again & got an interesting response from Nigel at Directorate of Awards. He said all medical discharge applicants have been put on hold until they finalise policy about proof of discharge & compensatory injury. I asked him what he meant by that & he said they received more applicants than expected ... and many could not provide PROOF of their med disc and compensation.

I told him I found that to be quite embarrassing for them & inappropriate as most med disch would have some form of proof if needed.

In the end, he asked I provide further evidence. I had sent in my med disch certificate & now I have resent it with a copy of my compensation payment (which I marked confidential.) So another stuff around. With the letter I included I advised them since they were having so many problems even bothering to contact the members whom have claimed about their problems I would let my ESO know so they could inform all members.

As I see it, this is just purely a matter of resourcing. Surely, if this area—which we know was stripped of its resources some time ago by this government—had adequate resources, it could deal with and process these applications. There is no doubt that the government have made an absolute mockery of the medals situation in Australia and they continue to make a mockery of it by the way they are denying injured service men and women their access to a medal which the government trumpeted last year as being a very important medal. It is an important medal, and any backlog or any other reason that prevents these deserving members of the ADF from getting that medal should be rectified. I know it is something that I and the ALP will be having a bit more to say about later on this year. But there are a lot of anomalies in the way this medal is being processed and it is time the government accepted responsibility for them.

I have listened to a number of government speakers during the course of this debate. They have come in here whining and whingeing and moaning about state governments, trying to look for some scapegoats because of their own inefficiencies and their own shortfalls in the way that they have been managing the interests of Australia over the past decade. Instead of running around looking for scapegoats, they ought to come in here and accept responsibility for those things that they can affect and change, and they are not doing that. They are just running around, looking for someone to blame and, as Kevin Rudd says, playing the blame game. It is time they stopped doing that and it is time that they started to address the real issues.

Just in closing, last year I had a great opportunity to visit Salt Lake City as a guest for five days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was incredibly impressed with what I saw there. For instance, I was fortunate enough to attend the Sunday morning session of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints conference at the Temple Square in a centre that holds some 30,000 people. Prior to the conference we listened to the live CBS broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Music and the spoken word. This is a world-famous choir. This broadcast occurs every Sunday and is usually held at the tabernacle, which is currently undergoing refurbishment. At that conference we were also fortunate enough to listen to the address by the president of the church, Gordon B Hinckley. The president is now in his 96th year and is the 15th president of the church.

The thing for me which was a great eye-opener was to learn of the incredible work that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints does in humanitarian aid right throughout the world. It was just an absolute eye-opener to see the way that they are prepared, the way that they have stockpiled goods, and the way that they can so quickly respond to worldwide situations, including the tsunami, and the cyclone that hit their own country. I will quickly mention some of this. At a place called Welfare Square they have a bakery and a cannery. They provide employment services, grain storage, a thrift store, a dairy produce facility, storehouses and a family services office, as well as facilities to teach cooking. The philosophy of their welfare area is that people who want help must be prepared to help themselves.

It is interesting that, from 1985 through to 2005, the church, through its humanitarian aid services, provided $US830 million in total assistance to needy individuals in 163 countries. Distributions included 51,480 tonnes of food, 7,697 tonnes of medical equipment, 68,923 tonnes of surplus clothing and 5,753 tonnes of educational supplies. One product which really caught my eye was a maternity kit for mums-to-be or recent mums caught in disasters. It was a simple kit packed with the necessities of life for a new baby and a nursing mother. It was so practical yet simple, and I am sure it is of great benefit in times of need. I would like our Australian aid organisation to have a look at this pack. I thought it was just brilliant.

I want to thank those members of the church who hosted me and looked after me, particularly Phil and Trish Baker in Perth, Leo and Carmel Talbot and Lionel and Marianne Walters. I will be hosting them in Parliament House next month and we are looking forward to that. We are looking forward to about 40 young people coming here. I seek leave to table this report. It is simply a report I have written. Other members might find it useful. I would certainly like to once again compliment the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for the wonderful work they do worldwide. I seek leave to table that report.

Leave granted.

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

The defence budget is one of the largest items of the government’s appropriations and one of the most important. In the current security environment, with increased demand on our defence forces in our region on top of extremely expensive commitments in the Gulf and Afghanistan, it is appropriate that defence spending has risen and that equipment and personnel of the ADF should be upgraded. I make the point that, like other members on this side, I am a strong supporter of the defence budget, which constitutes only seven per cent of what we pay in transfer payments. Again, it is an extremely expensive item of appropriations which is overwhelmingly justified. Whether they are Centrelink payments or other pensioner payments, they are entirely justified.

Unfortunately, this government has a dismal record when it comes to responsible management of the defence budget. The Prime Minister has used the Defence portfolio as a dumping ground for ministers he is trying to get rid of—Ian McLachlan, John Moore, Peter Reith and Robert Hill. These ministers, in my view, were asleep at the wheel and the results have been predictable. At least now we have a defence minister who seems to take some interest in the portfolio, although his record so far is not much better. Just because parliament appropriates a very large sum for Defence each year does not give the minister a blank cheque. The money, in my view, is not being responsibly spent and accounted for to this parliament and the taxpayer.

This week we have seen the latest irresponsible rhetoric of the defence minister with his talk of scrapping the Seasprite helicopter program, which has so far cost the taxpayer in the order of $1 billion. As the honourable member for Hunter, the shadow minister for defence, has said, any decision to scrap the Seasprite project would be an admission of failure by the Howard government—an admission of failure to manage this project.

This government has been in power for nearly 11 years. It cannot evade responsibility for this matter. It cannot blame the Keating government, as some on that side have tried to do. The facts are that in 1994 the Keating government took a decision in principle, the correct decision, to buy helicopters that would operate from something that was called the offshore patrol combatant, which we were going to build in conjunction with the Malaysian navy. Unfortunately, the Malaysians decided to accept another ship that was provided to them by the Germans, which had a very large inducement paid with it, and Australia lost out. That was probably the stage—when this government took over the implementation of the project—at which the Seasprite should have been scrapped.

The contract to buy the Seasprite was signed by the Howard government in 1997. If there were problems with the Seasprite, it was the responsibility of the Howard government to know about them and fix them. Now, after a decade wasted and $1 billion spent, the minister, in what I can only describe as his Napoleonic style, is considering scrapping the whole project, despite the fact that, as we were advised, the problems with the Seasprite have largely been solved and full airworthiness certification could be achieved by 2010 for a cost of a further $35 million. I have no firsthand knowledge about that, but that is what we have been advised.

The minister now needs to explain to this parliament and to the Australian people what will happen if the Seasprite is scrapped. What are the alternatives the minister has in mind? How much will they cost? When will they be available? Does the minister think we can afford to wait another decade? The point is we have naval ships that need helicopters, either for surveillance or air defence or for air-sea attack, and they simply do not have them.

The honourable member for Hunter said this week that buying replacement helicopters would cost at least $1.5 billion. That is on top of the $1 billion already spent, which cannot be recovered because the terms of the contract which the Howard government signed preclude us from suing the contractors. That is right: this brilliant, free-enterprise government signed a contract which contained no clause that said we had a right to sue if the contract was not met. The figure of $1.5 billion seems to me to be a conservative estimate for the replacement of helicopter capacity. Military hardware has not become any cheaper since 1997. Even at that cost, replacement helicopters will not be available before 2010 and probably not until 2012 or 2015.

The Seasprite is the latest in a long line of defence procurement debacles under the current government, at a time when the policies of this government have put a great strain on our defence budget. Some of it is unavoidable; some of it is avoidable. This kind of irresponsible waste and bungling is simply not acceptable.

Another example is the joint strike fighter about which the minister has even now not told the House the full story. He has not told us of the impact that further delays to this program will have on our air capability, the cost to the taxpayer or the implications for our national security of the prolonged delay in replacing the F111s, which are 40 years old and nearing the end of their operational capability.

The government’s incompetence has already cost the taxpayer $3 billion through what I thought was a forced acquisition of the Super Hornet as a stopgap measure, although I notice in another backflip today the minister says he is not going to buy these stopgap aircraft. The thing that is really odd about that is: what will happen between the end of the F111 and the proposed acquisition of the joint strike fighter? Will Australia have no Air Force? It does not make sense to me.

Certainly the F22 has no stealth capacity. It would be easily matched by some of the aircraft being acquired from the former Soviet Union by countries to our north, and I think we ought to have an air superiority aircraft that would enable Australia to defend itself in the worst-case scenario of a conflict with these new, modern air forces.

This government’s mishandling of our defence acquisitions program is becoming a real threat to the sustainability of the defence budget and to our defence capability. The government seems to think it can go on wasting millions of dollars on failed defence procurement projects without any financial consequences. But the resource boom is not going to go on forever, giving us ever-expanding government revenues. Sooner or later the buck must stop somewhere.

I point out that these are not just the views of members on this side. We might for some reason be suspected of having partisan motives in our criticisms, but the same cannot be said of Australia’s leading defence policy centre, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which has issued a highly critical assessment of the government’s defence and national security policies. The report said that the government’s mismanagement of the Defence portfolio was undermining the safety and security of Australia. It highlighted the lack of planning, the failure to match our ambitions with proper funding and what it called a collapse in financial accountability.

Labor has been calling for a new Defence white paper to set out the government’s views on defence challenges facing Australia and how we are going to meet them and pay for them. This call was made last year by the honourable member for Barton and has been repeated by our new spokesman on defence, the honourable member for Hunter. I support that call, which I know is also supported by senior serving members of the ADF, and now the ASPI report supports that call.

I turn now to the government’s activities in electoral matters—something that has been of interest to me since 1998, when I became a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters when first elected to this House. Until last year I was deputy chair of JSCEM but made way for my colleague the senator from Western Australia. As I am already occupying the position of whip, I cannot now hold those two paid positions simultaneously. Previously, as deputy chair of the committee, and together with my Labor colleagues, I issued a minority report following the government’s inquiry into the 2004 federal election campaign. Major changes to Australia’s electoral enrolment were contemplated by the government on the—and I can only say—fraudulent claim of protecting the integrity of the electoral roll. Again, I feel like a robot repeating this, but I will keep repeating it until the next election, and I will keep repeating it through the media, as a lot of people are interested in how this disgraceful plan to close the electoral roll on the day the election is announced came about.

In 1983, when former Prime Minister Fraser and a previous conservative government ran Australia, nearly 300,000 people lost their right to vote after they closed the electoral roll on the day the election was announced. We had an inquiry immediately after the last election at which no evidence—not just little or infinitesimal evidence, but no evidence—was adduced that said the electoral roll in Australia had serious problems with it. The committee went to hearings all around the country. We considered these matters very carefully. We asked witnesses to provide us with this evidence. No evidence was provided. There were lots of complaints and lots of issues about other things, but to make a decision to change the requirements of Australian democracy for hundreds of thousands of people based on no evidence is a scandal.

In the period between 1990 and 2002 there were six electoral events—five elections and one referendum—and at each event 12 million Australians participated. So six events times 12 million voters is 72 million individual votes by Australians in that period. The Australian Electoral Commission, the body officially charged with looking after the integrity of the electoral roll in Australia, found that in that entire period, 1990 to 2002, there were 72 proven cases of electoral fraud in Australia. Most of them were to do with re-establishing people’s rights to get a motor car licence in northern New South Wales, vis-a-vis Queensland. They had nothing to do with political chicanery.

One in one million votes were proven cases of electoral fraud, and they were not done for political reasons. On that basis, we are now going to prevent hundreds of thousands of Australians from being able to use the normal period that they are used to using—and, I am very proud to say, Labor put into practice after the chicanery at the 1983 elections—which is the week after the election is called, to fix up their electoral enrolments, to find out the right polling booth to go to and to provide the Electoral Commission with some information so that the election can be conducted with some order. I predict that there is going to be chaos at all the booths, and the responsibility for this will lie squarely with the government. The names of the two relevant ministers, past and present—Nairn and Abetz—will stand for ‘chaos’ in terms of Australian electoral history, because that is what they are bringing to the Australian people.

We predicted that these changes would lead to the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Australians. In our report, we were highly critical of the government’s decision to change the Electoral Act to close the rolls on the day the writs for the House of Representatives were called rather than to allow a period of grace of five working days for voters to enrol or change their enrolment details, as the act has allowed since 1984. New evidence has emerged that the Australian Electoral Commission supports that contention even further.

The statistics are astonishing. At the end of 2004, there were 13,114,475 voters on the electoral roll. At the end of 2006, there were 13,081,539—a drop of 33,000 over a year. Why has this happened? Why is it important? The main reason that people go off the electoral roll is that they change their address or forget to update their enrolment. When the AEC notices that a person is no longer a resident at their earlier address, it quite rightly removes them from the roll. The AEC has stepped up its work of checking the roll so that the rate of removal is rising. In 2005-06, nearly half a million people were removed from the rolls. My colleagues the members for Bendigo and Chisholm will have noticed when they get their update from the AEC every month that more people in their electorate are being taken off the roll than are going on it. This is happening in all of our electorates right across Australia.

A secondary reason is that people who die or who leave Australia are rapidly removed from the roll. Also, the proportion of people who become newly eligible to enrol—they have turned 18 or have become Australian citizens—is falling. If the level of enrolment is falling at the rate of 30,000 a year—and it will be higher than that because the population is growing—at the end of a three-year cycle, we will end up with 100,000 people who may not be enrolled or who may be incorrectly enrolled. In the past, this would not have mattered much because, when the election was announced, these people would realise that they were not enrolled at their new address or were not enrolled at all and they would use the five-day period of grace to enrol. They will no longer have that option.

This is an election year and, of course, a certain number of these people will take action to get themselves enrolled well before the election, but many will not. The government says it will ask the AEC to run an awareness campaign before the election to encourage people to enrol. Australians have always run these campaigns and they have some success, but we manage to get enrolment up only to the level it has been, and it will not go higher than that, and that was in the previous circumstances when voters had a period of grace. I support the enrolment drives. I support the AEC and their advertising campaigns. But I have to ask: does the AEC know the date of the election? I think not. I have heard lots of government members gabbling around the House saying that it will be held in the first week of November, but I do not think they know. Most people expect it to be in late October.

Under our system, the Prime Minister can call an election whenever he likes. There is speculation that the Prime Minister is seeing his political position deteriorating and that he may opt for a snap early election—perhaps straight after the budget. All of these things are possible and all of them are an argument for Gough Whitlam’s great vision for Australia of a four-year fixed term. Like other democracies, we could go to our elections with our professional Electoral Commission fixing up enrolments, with citizens knowing they can come at a regular time, and with government not determined by such a short-term process as our current three-year term or by the whim of a Prime Minister of whatever political party.

What would happen to the AEC’s awareness campaign in the current circumstances? Enrolment would not happen; possibly several hundred thousand people will be caught out by having no time to enrol. Apparently, members opposite say, ‘Serves them right; they should have enrolled.’ We say that most Australians have higher priorities in life than politics and they should not be disenfranchised for the crime of not paying attention to the date of the 2007 election.

This country has a very good system of democracy. Our compulsory voting system gives us a very high participation rate but it also gives us the double duty of ensuring that our democratic franchise is as wide as possible. With our voting system being compulsory, we cannot possibly target for disenfranchisement, by neglect or difficulty, groups of young people, Aboriginal voters and people who quite often change their address who are more likely to live in rental properties. Some people like me who are cynical might think there is in all of this a deliberate plan or the black hand of Crosby Textor, who, in a Liberal world view and in an attempt to permanently disenfranchise voters with a propensity to support the Labor Party, is trying to cut out, salami style, union affiliation, Aboriginal voters, young voters and those in rental accommodation—people whom the government thinks this process will disenfranchise.

My suspicion is that the Liberal Party research team has advised the government that the majority of people who will be eliminated under these circumstances will be Labor voters; so freezing them out of the political process would be to the government’s political advantage. Current and former ministers’ plans have to be seen in this context. There is no other way of describing it than as a disgrace. It is a negation of the principles of democracy in this country and I am very proud that Labor has opposed these changes. We now oppose them all the more, having seen in the AEC report evidence of their likely effect on the level of enrolment.

Just as I know the shadow minister has made this pledge to the House, I make this pledge in the Main Committee: if after the election we are in government, we will repeal the harmful changes that have been made to the act. That will be a great thing for Australian democracy, along with our other plans for a referendum on Australia becoming a republic, looking at ideas such as four-year terms and many other democratic initiatives that will be seriously undertaken by a modern, reforming Rudd government. I can see a great democratic future for Australia and it is not going to be under this government; it will be under a new government.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I begin my remarks in the appropriations debate, I commend the member for Melbourne Ports for his passionate defence of our electoral system and for his attention to such detail. I add my concerns also about the way that these changes will impact on many people on the roll—or not on the roll, as the case may be. I know these changes will have a severe impact on my own constituency of Chisholm. Having two major universities within my electorate, I know that an awful lot of young people choose either to put themselves down at the college at which they reside or at the house they are renting or to stay enrolled at their family property or home, and often that this needs to be addressed does not come to their attention until the election is called. Now, when the election is called, their attention may be drawn to it, but there will be nothing they can do about it. I think this is unjust—and that is the plan.

I think the hypocrisy in all this is the assumption that these people all vote Labor. The government, of course, could be disenfranchising a great many of their own voters. Having been in the States recently and having heard a great deal of the commentary going on over there, I believe that one of the things we can be truly proud of is our electoral process. I would hate to see it eroded and for us to end up with the debacle that even the Americans themselves now claim their system is. So I do commend the member for Melbourne Ports for his contribution to the debate today.

Whilst we welcome this additional spending and we would in no way prohibit it going through in these appropriation bills, I do want to commend the member for Melbourne’s second reading amendment, which highlights the government’s inaction over many years. The government have now been there for a very long time—longer than we had hoped or intended. They have had years and years of prosperity and they have wasted them. They have squandered them.

We heard yesterday a frank assessment from the new minister for industrial relations that governments do not create jobs. After many years of the government saying they create jobs, and with their one centrepiece in this term being their changes to industrial and workplace relations and their great claim that this is going to be the help for future prosperity, we now know that is not true. They do not even see it so themselves, because they do not create jobs.

I had a recent email from one of my constituents and I would like to share it with the House today. It says:

Angels, Shepherds, and the I.R. Laws

by Peter Burman

‘While shepherds watch their flocks by night ...’ so the Christmas carol tells the story given us by St Luke. The shepherds had to work night shift as well as day shift. And they had to work 7 days per week, which prevented them from going to church or synagogue on the Sabbath.

It would seem that the industrial relations conditions have deteriorated seriously since the time of Moses. At least the law of Moses gave everybody a Sabbath, including servants and livestock (Exodus 20:8-11). Furthermore, Moses had earlier established a fair and just industrial relations system. When Moses saw one of the bosses beating a worker, he clobbered the boss permanently (Exodus 2: 11-15) then shot through like a Bondi tram. Later, after a brief stint as a shepherd (Exodus 3:1) Moses observed the workers were being given the short straw for the manufacture of bricks (Exodus 5) so, after a confrontation with the bosses, he established the brickmaker’s unions and they all took industrial action. In fact they did more than hold a rally in Federation Square then march up Swanston Street: they quit their job and marched out of slavery to freedom in another country.

The shepherds were not protected by any union and had to work 24 hours and 7 days per week. They were at the bottom of the social structure and in double jeopardy, because their job prevented them from Sabbath attendance, therefore they were regarded as the worst of sinners. Nobody seemed to care about them except the angels who came to visit them with the Good News. But there is no suggestion that the angels visited the makers of the I.R. laws. After worshipping the Holy Infant, presumably while the angels minded the sheep, the shepherds dutifully returned to their flock, working on Christmas Day, without penalty rates, of course.

Our elder daughter is a mid-wife and rostered to work dutifully on Christmas Day, which at this stage is ‘sacrosanct’ to quote one who makes core promises then later downgrades them to non-core promises. But the covenant, given a long time earlier to Abraham, then renewed to the shepherds, is stronger than a promise.

I think this little story, which has been beautifully crafted by one of my constituents, highlights the growing concern out there in our community about the changes to the industrial relations law. It is interesting that, in the stream of emails, letters and comments I have had from constituents, generally it is not their own concern they have; it is concern for their children and their grandchildren—the people turning up to face the new world of IR. They say: ‘Here’s the job. You sign this AWA’—which has eroded the terms and conditions—‘sign it or leave it.’

We only need to see the recent certified agreement that has been put in place which our staff are now under to see that we have eroded their terms and conditions by taking away the option of actually working overtime. They have been given the ability to earn a set amount of overtime, but over time that will erode. That will go. In time that will not marry up the ability to actually claim overtime to the amount of money that is being paid. Once you take away a term and condition, you can never replace it.

I know that probably all of us around this room at the moment who are going through the process of trying to decide what amounts to give to people have juggled with that issue. I think the interesting thing is that now I have spoken to the people who look after us and deal with our staff and their employment conditions and they say, ‘You can change it come June in the financial year.’ Yes, but once you give someone a lump sum, that becomes part of the salary. I do not want to be the one to tell my staff, ‘By the way, because of the change in office, I am actually reducing your salary.’ That is the actual direct link with that certified agreement. I think it is very poor indeed. I do not think it is actually going to give any member in this House the ability to actually operate their office or will serve the staff who are going to be working under it. Yes, it might look like a good thing now to have a lump sum, but over time that will erode and that dollar value will never be replaced for the staff.

The other issue of grave concern within my electorate at the moment is climate change. A day does not go by without my receiving at least four or five emails in respect of climate change. I would actually like to be relieved of emails at the moment because they are clogging my box considerably, but I do want to thank my constituents who take the time and effort to send me their concerns. The No. 1 issue at the moment would have to be climate change. Here is another email I have received:

Dear Ms Anna Burke,

My name is Lauren Marc; I am an 11 year old student, currently in year 6, from Melbourne, Victoria. I go to Roberts McCubbin  Primary School. Last year in September, my fellow grade 5’s and 6’s went on a camp to Canberra. We visited Parliament House and you talked to us. You may or may not remember us.

I have taken this time to write and send an email to you and other MP’s in federal, state and local levels of Parliament.

A few nights ago I saw ‘An inconvenient truth’. You may or may not have seen it. It is based on Al Gore’s slideshow about global warming. It shows many different troubles and problems that the world has. Along with many problems that we may not have noticed or thought about being related to global warming. If you have not seen it then I strongly suggest you do.

I understand that the U.S. and Australia are the only countries who have not joined Kyoto. This is because federal parliament is worried about it damaging the economy. I have been wondering why we didn’t have a referendum, so the people could choose.

Some of my close friends and I think we should, as a country, state or local area should do something more about this. Such as running more buses on ethanol or sewerage. One town in England, I think it was, had all its buses, trains and cars running on sewerage. I understand that this would be an expensive process, but it would be doing our bit, just to go that little bit further.

Thank you for your time,

Yours truly,

Lauren Marc.

I have an 11-year-old writing to me with an impassioned plea that we do something about our environment. We are out there; this is happening around us. It is of grave concern and we need to be doing more. This government stands condemned for its inaction. Yes, we can have the hullabaloo about this and that, and about the impact it is going to have, but unless we do something, and unless we do something now, there might not be anything to impact on.

We can have discussions about the water level rising and not being a concern because the area is high enough to sustain that water level, but it is not the case across the world. Very soon we are going to have to deal with people coming here from Kiribati, as their country will literally be under siege by water. We need to be doing more. We need to be grappling with this at a very radical level because it is there, it is real, it is happening. And the longer we let it go, it will not be something we will be talking about impacting on our grandchildren; it will be the environment I am leaving to my children. I seriously worry about that. With a four- and a seven-year-old, I constantly contemplate what world I am leaving them. Each generation should leave a better world for the next. We are not going to do that. This generation is actually going to leave behind a world that will be worse than the current one we have enjoyed. That is because of our inaction now on this one issue.

The government can talk about its $10 billion plan for the Murray-Darling Basin but we have not actually seen the details around it. It was done in such a hurry. The Prime Minister, who is meant to be great at reading these issues and how the public is feeling, suddenly woke up and thought: ‘I’ve missed that one. I’d better do something in a hurry.’ He puts together a cobbled speech and then says to people, ‘You’d better write the detail.’ We do not have the detail. We have had inaction on this. We have had major prosperity. We could have been doing so much more and we have done nothing. Future generations will not be thanking us for this because they might not even be here to enjoy it. Another constituent writes:

I wish to express my concern about the lack of response by governments in Australia to the issue of climate change. Federal and State Governments must take the lead now in initiating measures to slow down the rate of climate change. Although our population is small, we contribute more than our share of greenhouse emissions to the world and it is up to us to reduce that share as much as possible.

We are trying to do what we can in our home and business in terms of reducing energy needs but we need leaders with a vision who will make difficult, and perhaps initially unpopular, decisions about energy-saving or alternative energy options for the long-term. We need leaders to go out on a limb and provide sufficient funds to boost research into the development of viable alternatives such as solar energy, seeking to make such alternatives both efficient and affordable. Australia could become a world leader in alternative technologies if one of our leaders had the vision to channel funds into a concerted effort in this area.

My teenage children are becoming increasingly aware of the issues and increasingly concerned about how climate change will affect their futures and that of their future families. They are already asking questions about the environmental policies of major parties and I am sure this will have an impact on their future voting preferences.

I urge you to initiate and support measures which will reduce Australia’s contribution to climate change ...

I echo my constituent’s concerns.

Debate (on motion by Mr Barresi) adjourned.