Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking to the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills this morning I want to reflect on what was happening in Australia in 1996 and then talk about this year’s budget. In 1996 Carlton were the reigning AFL premiers, there was a team called Fitzroy still in the AFL, Hey Hey It’s Saturday received a Logie for the most popular light entertainment and Australia actually lost a World Cup cricket final. When we think about those things from popular culture, it seems like almost another world away. But we also need to remember the economic situation that the Labor Party left, the economic situation that we faced in 1996. Under Labor, government debt had reached $96 billion, inflation was averaging over five per cent, unemployment was high and real wage growth was going backwards. Today unemployment is at a 32-year low, the lowest it has been since November 1974. But, significantly, low unemployment has not come at the price of higher inflation. Inflation has been kept at between two and three per cent because of all the reforms we have had in competition, our very disciplined management of the budget and a very disciplined approach to monetary policy by the Reserve Bank.

When we look at the economic situation now, we see that consumer confidence is at a 32-year high, wages over the last 11 years have increased 20 per cent in real terms, inflation is low and stable and we have budgets in surplus. This budget has a surplus of $10.6 billion. When we look at the Labor track record, we see that in the last couple of Labor budgets they had budget deficits of almost 3.9 per cent of GDP. That would be the equivalent of bringing down a budget deficit today of almost $39 billion—instead of a $10 billion budget surplus, there would be a $40 billion budget deficit. This year’s budget is the government’s 10th budget in surplus since 1996. Australia is one of the few countries within the OECD to have eliminated government debt at a national level. Because we have paid off Labor’s $96 billion government debt, we now do not have to pay the annual $8.8 billion in interest. So we can focus on investing in the future and preparing to combat the challenges to economic growth in the future.

Something that has not been mentioned much in the debate—it is a very small part of one of the budget booklets—is the need to focus on the three Ps: productivity, participation and population. The Secretary to the Treasury, Ken Henry, has given a number of speeches focusing on this. The important thing in the budget is to look at things that will in the future improve our productivity, our participation and our population, because they are the only real sources of growing the economy. If we can invest in those things, what we will effectively do is raise the speed limits for growth for Australia in the future.

One of the challenges we face is the ageing of our population. This is a challenge that many OECD countries face. Having looked at all of the OECD countries, in my view Australia is very well prepared for the ageing of our population. We have things like a very strong retirement income system, with compulsory superannuation, an income and assets tested age pension and people’s own savings on top of that. From the government point of view, we have set up a Future Fund to pay for future superannuation liabilities for public servants and for the military. So Australia is in a good position to deal with the ageing of our population because of the healthy budget surpluses we have built up over the last 10 years.

A document that came out before the budget—the second Intergenerational reportlooked at what we can expect over the next 40 years. Its predictions, from the three Ps again, are that population will add only 0.1 per cent of GDP per person and that participation now is the highest it is going to be. We are going to see participation—that is the average hours per person over 15—fall over the next 40 years and be a drag on real GDP per person. So the main source of growth in the economy in the future will come from labour productivity. By contrast, over the last 40 years we did see a positive impact coming from growth in the share of the population over 15 and also the average hours per person over 15 working. That means that investing in labour productivity is absolutely critical. We need to make sure that we have flexible labour markets and that we invest in trade and investment, education and training. They are the things that will make sure that our only source of the economy growing, labour productivity, gets a contribution from the budget.

I will focus on the budget from my electorate’s point of view. Given the ageing of our population, we are going to require a large investment in health over the coming decade. The first Intergenerational report predicted that the Commonwealth government would go from spending four per cent of GDP on health to up to eight per cent and a lot of that would come from increases in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. One provision in the budget is for $485 million to fund a variety of medical research facilities across Australia. I am particularly pleased that $10 million was found for a cancer centre at Flinders Medical Centre in my electorate.

One of the things we will see with the ageing of the population is an increase in the burden of cancer. In the decade leading up to 2011 it is expected that the incidence of cancer will increase by a dramatic 31 per cent. That means that, whilst most of our focus is on treatment, it is equally important that we focus on research and being able to better identify the precancerous stages—for example, polyps in people with colorectal cancer. That will be the principal focus of the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer. It will be a $21 million facility. The state government has put in $2.5 million and the Flinders Medical Centre Foundation has raised $6 million. Working with the foundation, a budget submission for $10 million was made last year and it was received in the budget. I pay tribute to Professor Graeme Young, Dr Rhys Williams, Ms Deborah Hethersay and Alan Young of the Flinders Medical Centre Foundation. The Flinders cancer centre will be a world-class facility that will place Australia at the forefront of cancer prevention and early intervention research.

On the issue of road safety, over the last 30 years we have seen a decline in the death toll arising from road trauma. It is now at about a third of what it was at its peak in the 1960s and early 1970s. That has been due to a whole lot of interventions: the wearing of seatbelts—something that was originally advocated by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Victoria in 1973; the introduction of random breath testing; and improvements to roads. One of the things I am very interested in seeing is improvement to roads, which can reduce the number of deaths on our roads and the number of accidents as well. There was $345 million in the budget to extend the AusLink black spot program—to run until at least 2014. That will fix about 2,300 dangerous locations around Australian roads. For South Australia, that means about $3½ million in black spot funding for the next year. In my electorate, we will be getting an upgrade of two local intersections which were both deemed to be black spots. South Australian councils will also receive $25 million for the 2007-08 period to upgrade many neglected local roads. Marion and Mitcham councils, in the electorate of Boothby, will receive over $1 million from this commitment.

One of the issues that we have had in the dole-out of road funding was that, under the existing formula, South Australia was deemed to get only 5.5 per cent of road funding, whereas we have eight per cent of the population and we actually have 11 per cent of the country’s roads. That was addressed in Roads to Recovery, and we now get a fair share of funding—eight per cent of funding. That has been continued in this year’s budget. This year we will be getting $13½ million more than we would have been getting under the existing formula.

There were also many practical initiatives in the budget to tackle climate change. The doubling of the Photovoltaic Rebate Program will provide households with a rebate of up to $8,000 to install solar panels, and schools can receive up to $12,000. This is an issue that is commonly raised by constituents through my regular surveys and when door-knocking. The doubling of this program is just one example of the government’s commitment to addressing climate change through practical measures and encouraging more use of renewables. There is also a $200 million investment to address deforestation around the world and new tax agreements to encourage carbon sink forests. These are just two more examples of practical measures to address climate change. There is also $103 million for the CSIRO to look at this issue and $126 million for the Australian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation.

Part of adapting to the effects of climate change includes using water more efficiently. I commend the government, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources on showing real leadership on the $10 billion National Plan for Water Security to improve water efficiency in the Murray-Darling Basin. One of the frustrations in South Australia has been the way the perennial problem of overallocations on the River Murray has been managed. The plan was announced in January and we are now in May. The sticking point is the Victorian state government, who are refusing to sign up to this plan. Every other state has agreed. We need to be able to go forward on this to provide some security for future water supply and also for irrigators.

At a local level, we still recycle only a small proportion of our water. One of the things I have been particularly supportive of is the community water grants. In the last round we had 16 local projects in the electorate of Boothby and we received funding that will eventually save up to 61 million litres of water per year. These projects are typically only $50,000, but they enable schools to introduce things like waterless urinals or to have better flow valves on their taps, or dual-flush toilets. It is a small amount of money but it does provide the ability for sporting clubs and schools to become much more water efficient. The budget does say that there will be another $200 million over the next six years. So many more projects will be able to apply for this.

At the beginning of my speech I mentioned the three Ps, and one thing that will particularly encourage increased participation and productivity is our focus on the education system. There are a lot of very significant parts of this budget which focus on the education system—for example, the vouchers for people who need to improve their literacy and numeracy skills. And we have looked at ways of encouraging teachers to attend summer school. But of particular importance is the $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund. For the whole tertiary sector across Australia, the total endowment is only $5 billion. This measure doubles the amount of endowment that the universities will have access to.

When you look around the country, there is a lot of difference between universities’ endowments. The University of Melbourne, which has been going for 150 years, has an endowment of about $800 million; that is the top one in Australia. The University of Sydney has about $700 million. The University of Western Australia is particularly well endowed. But in my own electorate of Boothby, Flinders University, established in 1966, has an endowment of only $10 million, and there would be many universities that that would be typical of. Their initial graduates have not yet got to the stage where they are leaving money to the university. But this university, which is the major university in my electorate, will now have access to a $5 billion fund.

It is hoped that the corporate sector will also look at ways of endowing higher education. When we look at Harvard University in the United States, we find that they have an endowment of $30 billion. The Australian university sector has nothing like that. But corporate sector participation is part of our vision of having a tertiary sector which will be truly world-class and where endowments will be able to support capital works and research facilities.

There were some measures in the budget on technical and further education. These came on top of our commitment in 2004 to establish the Australian technical colleges, and I will speak briefly on that. The Howard government has a much more workable plan than Labor has on technical and further education. One of the key things in technical education is the cost of establishing appropriate facilities. I had to laugh, when I saw the Leader of the Opposition, in a photo opportunity on technical education, standing there with a 30-year-old lathe that would have been imported, at the idea that that was where the future of technical education lay!

In my electorate, at Urrbrae Agricultural High School what they do is state-of-the-art, with computer-assisted design, aquaculture and viticulture. In my view you need to have centres that focus on these things. That is why having the Australian technical colleges is a much better idea. The idea that you are just going to be able to set up some machines in every high school in Australia is ridiculous. It shows that the Labor Party do not really understand the challenges of technical education and what is required to make sure that that sector is going to be able to make a big contribution to Australia in the future.

Lastly, I turn to tax cuts. For the fifth year in a row, the budget delivers tax cuts for Australian taxpayers. When you look at families, you see that a single-income family with children now has a real net tax threshold of over $50,000. After taking into account all of the family assistance they receive, that means they are not effectively paying tax until their income is over $50,000. For a double-income family, their real net tax threshold is between $54,000 and $55,000. These amounts have increased by 41 per cent since 1996 in the case of a single-income family and by almost 50 per cent for dual-income families.

It was a budget that was good for the country and good for individuals. I see that, based on the Newspoll poll, it was the best received budget since they have been looking at this. This budget delivers a lot of things for my own electorate, but more importantly it focuses on the three Ps, which means that we are making an investment in the future which will enable our economy to grow down the track.

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

This was a budget with an eye on the upcoming election much more than on the nation’s long-term future. In fact, taken with the comments of the Prime Minister reported in the last 24 hours, it confirms that this is a Prime Minister who is focused more on his own future than on the nation’s future. That said, the budget does include a number of initiatives which Labor has been calling for for some time. We have made it clear, for example, that we support the tax cuts and the one-off payments that have been announced in the budget. We have been arguing for many of those for some time.

I listened to the member for Lilley, the shadow Treasurer, speaking in the House earlier today, referring to a speech he gave two years ago calling for an adjustment in the marginal tax rate of the lowest income bracket, along the lines of the provisions that are currently contained in the bills before us with the tax cuts. So more than 18 months ago the shadow Treasurer was calling for these adjustments. You have to remember that at the time that we were calling for those adjustments the government was resisting them. In fact, for the last five budgets we have seen tax cuts for low-income earners that would buy them a hamburger and a milkshake if they were lucky, while those on double and three times the average weekly earnings were getting tax cuts 10 and 12 times those being provided to people on low incomes.

The fact is that for the last four budgets this government has ignored the calls of Labor and the community for significant tax cuts for those in low-income brackets. This budget delivers on that and we support it. We have been calling for it. Indeed, we moved amendments to an earlier series of budget bills to do just that. I am pleased that the government have finally done it, although you have to ask, as with so many other things that we are seeing the government do backflips on at the moment, why it has taken them this long. Surely it is more than a coincidence that we are just around the corner from an election—an election that is clearly generating concern in the minds of the Prime Minister and his senior colleagues.

Those provisions are important. They will be a welcome relief to many Australians, and I and the Labor Party welcome them. But this is a budget, like most of those we have seen in recent years, that fails the future test. It does very little about building the future productivity of our nation and wealth for our children. Instead, it relies very heavily on a continuation of the mining boom as the basis of our future economic prosperity. The current mining boom has injected a massive $55 billion into our economy just over the last year. If you look at the last five years, you see that the mining boom accounts for some $300 billion that has been injected into the budget. That enormous injection has masked what has been poor productivity growth in this country in recent times—and I will come back to that in a moment.

The budget fails to address the long-term challenges we confront as a nation: the urgent need to revive our flagging productivity; the need to improve investment in education and to pick up on Labor’s education revolution reforms; the need to deliver on a national high-speed broadband network central to any modern economy; and of course decisions to deal with the economic cost of climate change and our national water crisis. I will return to those matters in a moment.

Let me look at the critical question of productivity in Australia. I commend to members of the parliament and the public a speech made earlier today by Simon Crean, the member for Hotham, referring to economic and productivity growth under a Labor government compared to what we have witnessed in recent times. Far from lifting productivity, the 2007 budget papers indicate that Australia’s productivity growth will decline from the end of the next financial year—that is, decline significantly below the levels that we experienced in the 1990s. Let us have a look at a comparison of those two periods, the 1990s when Labor was in office and the recent period. In the five years during the mid-1990s, Australia’s annual labour productivity growth was at 3.2 per cent. In the five years that led up to 2003-04 budget, that had declined to 2.2 per cent. So we witnessed a significant decline in labour productivity during the period of the Howard government.

Let us compare ourselves to other countries. In the United States they are expecting a 2.25 per cent growth over the period ahead in which the Australian government is projecting a growth of just 1.75 per cent. Our performance at the moment is behind what it was when Labor was in office, and the government’s own projections for the future have productivity growth worse than that applying in the United States.

The global economy is important in all budgetary considerations. It is important to our current income and expenditure. It is important to our trade. There are often comparisons made between one period in time and another. It tends to be done selectively, and I have listened to a couple of government members who have quoted very selectively about past performances without actually looking at the global environment. I think that is important. No matter who is in government, you need to actually take stock of what has been happening around the world, especially in economic matters. We know it is a global market and none of us are isolated from the ups and downs of that global market. At the moment, the global market is going through a boom. The Treasurer will not say that. The Prime Minister will not say that. The minister for workplace relations or Work Choices legislation, or whatever it is these days, will not say that. They will tell the Australian people—usually through a taxpayer funded ad—that the economy is going gang busters because they are wonderful managers and they have managed to introduce the most extreme industrial relations laws this country has seen at a national level.

The truth is far from that. If you dig down into the budget papers you can actually find the truth, but you actually have to dig into the budget papers to get to it. In the government’s Budget Paper No. 1, statement 3 sets out some of those important comparisons and actually tells some truths about what has driven economic growth—truths that we have not heard from the Treasurer or the Prime Minister, and I am sure we will not. Statement 3 says:

The world economy grew by 5.4 per cent in 2006, the fastest growth rate recorded in over 30 years ...

So last year, when the government boasted about their economic credentials, they ought to have taken into account that the world economy was growing at the fastest rate that we have seen in more than 30 years. If the Howard government cannot run a decent economic balance sheet when the global economy is going gang busters, better than it has for 30 years, they really should pack up their bags and get out of town—because you do not have to be too clever to have the Australian economy in good shape when the world economy is at a 30-year high, which is in fact the situation. This is from the government’s own Budget Paper No. 1, statement 3. I repeat:

The world economy grew by 5.4 per cent in 2006, the fastest growth rate recorded in over 30 years ...

Another truth buried in the budget papers that the Prime Minister will not bother telling the Australian people, also buried in statement 3 of Budget Paper No. 1, is:

The Australian economy continues to benefit from strong world demand, with labour and capital continuing to shift towards the mining and construction sectors in response to the increase in commodity prices.

That tells us two important things: firstly, that, in the view of Treasury, world growth has been driving investment both in labour and in capital; and, secondly, that it has shifted that investment into the mining sector and the construction sector. This is the point Labor has been making for the last few years. The massive amount of money falling into the coffers because of the mining boom has provided this government with a once in a generation opportunity to build for the future, and it has squandered it.

This is the point Labor has been making for the last few years. The massive amount of money falling into the coffers because of the mining boom has provided this government with a once in a generation opportunity to build for the future, and it has squandered it. The mining boom that we have been witnessing in the last few years is not going to last forever. We have a limited opportunity here to use the benefits of that to build a sustainable future for our children economically and environmentally. That opportunity has been squandered. There is no doubt, though, that that is what has been driving the financial benefit—the largesse that the government has sought to hand out. Elsewhere referring to the mining boom, statement 3 in Budget Paper No. 1 says:

The recent strength in the terms of trade has predominantly been driven by non-rural commodity export prices ...

Non-rural commodity export prices are your minerals. That is what we dig out of the ground and export—sadly with very little value added, but we dig it out of the ground and export it at the moment at very high prices. Statement 3 goes on to point out that these non-rural commodity export prices rose by around 67 per cent over the past two years. There has been a 67 per cent increase in commodity prices over the last two years. No wonder there is a lot of money flowing through the coffers. It is not brilliant management and it sure as hell ain’t Work Choices legislation either. It is a massive boost in commodity prices, which we thankfully benefit from because of our enormous mineral wealth.

Statement 3 continues in the same paragraph:

This aggregate increase was dominated by large rises in the prices of iron ore and coal, as well as mineral fuels, gold and metals.

There you have it—a 67 per cent increase in the price of those things that we are digging out of the ground and exporting and that is producing an absolute motza to this government, not because of good management, not because of good laws and certainly not because of Work Choices. Elsewhere the statement points out:

New business investment is forecast to increase by 7½ per cent in 2007-08, underpinned by continuing strength in the mining and construction sectors.

It is not underpinned by government management or by Work Choices but by a massive growth in minerals.

I will quickly refer to a couple of other examples out of that same statement. It is important that these matters be put on the record by this side of the House, because you can be certain there will not be a Liberal or National Party member telling the people of Australia what is buried in Budget Paper No. 1. Thankfully, the Treasury are honest enough to tell the economic story the way it is. You will not get that honesty out of government members in this debate. Statement 3 says:

The business investment environment remains favourable, with high corporate profits, high rates of capacity utilisation, a relatively low cost of capital and continuing strong global demand for mining commodities.

There you have it again—mining commodities are driving it. It continues:

While the increase in commodity prices has boosted mining investment, it has also had a positive impact on investment in other sectors, such as manufacturing and property and business services.

So those flow-on benefits that everyone in the economy knows are happening, that Labor has been saying have been occurring and which the government denies, are in fact acknowledged by the Treasury papers. The document also says:

Growth in non-rural commodity exports is expected to accelerate in 2007-08, after solid growth in 2006-07. The acceleration in growth reflects the huge investment of around $55 billion undertaken by the mining industry over the past five years.

You might think that $55 billion has a bit of a knock-on effect in the economy, and of course it does. It has been a major benefit to this nation, no thanks to this government.

What does the document say about wage growth in that context, bearing in mind that profitability is at a very high level? Statement 3 says:

Wage growth is expected to remain solid at 4¼ per cent in 2007-08. While there have been localised wage pressures in those sectors most affected by mining and construction activity, overall wage pressures remain contained.

In other words, yes, there has been pressure for higher wages in mining and construction where these billions of dollars have been going—and that is common sense; you do not need a PhD in economics to understand that. But what is happening to the rest of the workforce, which comprises most Australians? The budget conclusion is that ‘overall wage pressures remain constrained’. In other words, most people in Australia are not benefiting in their pay packets from that wealth that has been running through the mining and construction industries. If you are in the mining or construction industry, you are doing well and good luck to you. But, if you happen to be one of the other Australians in the workforce subjected to Work Choices legislation, the simple fact is that you are missing out on it.

One of the reasons I got involved in public life as a young lad was a very strong view I have about education and the view that all Australians should be able to access quality education. I am appalled at the way this government has denigrated and reduced the resources available to education and reduced the priority given to education over its time in office. Government members will quote to you absolute figures in dollar amounts or sometimes, if they are really adventurous, they will quote to you real dollars. But, of course, real dollars taken over time with growth in the economy is not very useful. The real measure of the priority you give to something is this: how much of your budget and of your national economy are you willing to put into this bucket? What percentage of GDP do you allocate? The simple fact is that this government allocates less and less to education. Even after the measures announced in this budget, funding for education as a proportion of GDP has declined from the two per cent it was when we left office to just 1.6 per cent in 2007-08. Our overall investment in education is below that of countries like Poland, Hungary and New Zealand. We invest less of our national wealth in education than do Poland, Hungary and New Zealand. That affects all Australians at all levels, from preschool through to tertiary.

Let me say something about the tertiary level. The government want to paint their tertiary endowment fund as big news for the tertiary sector. In 1996, when we left office, the government contribution to higher education was 0.9 per cent of GDP. It has now fallen to 0.6 per cent—that is, the government are committing less of our wealth for tertiary education today than Labor did 11 years ago. After 11 years it has gone backwards and not forwards. What is that telling you about their commitment?

Let us look at this endowment fund—a $5 billion endowment fund. If there ever was a house of mirrors then this is it. That $5 billion is a lot of money. It sounds like a lot. People hearing it would think that that will benefit tertiary education significantly; that this will be good for tertiary education. In fact, they do not get the $5 billion. What they get is the interest earned from it, which is estimated to be around $300 million, as an income stream. So it is $300 million, not $5 billion; the actual money that will buy something is $300 million. That $300 million is to be split up amongst 38 eligible universities. That gives them about $7.5 million per university each year. Let us have a look at how far $7.5 million goes in the real world in a university. Here in Canberra at the ANU there is a new medical centre. It costs $125 million. At the regional centre of Wollongong there is an international security centre. It costs $70 million. What, I ask, is $300 million split up going to do when it amounts to $7.5 million in each university? Sadly, the answer is very little.

Labor has put forward a number of alternative proposals in the budget reply given by Kevin Rudd. They are alternatives that go to building the future and the opportunities that this government has missed in using that windfall, massive amount of funds from the commodity boom and a strong global economy. One of those things is a $2.5 billion fund for trade centres—not an endowment fund, but actually $2.5 billion we will spend in secondary schools around the country to produce opportunities for young Australian kids to stay on in a range of trade related skill activities. We need to do that for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because our retention rate is slipping. I do not have the time now to talk about the importance of the retention rate, but I assume members accept that children staying on to year 12 is a good thing. Everyone in the OECD thinks it is a good idea and I certainly do, both as a former teacher and as a parent. In 1982, when we inherited office from the Tories, the retention rate stood at a measly 36.3 per cent. We built it up every year so that, when we left office in 1996, we had doubled it. Instead of only one kid in three staying to year 12, more than two in three did. We changed it from 36 per cent to 73 per cent. What is it now? We handed over a 73 per cent retention rate in schools. Today it stands at 76 per cent. After a decade of this government it has barely moved. It has stagnated. But—worse than stagnating—it is now going backwards. The retention rate in the last two years has dropped under this government. Over a 10-year period it stagnated and in the last two it went back. Members on the opposite side want to defend that. Good on them if they think that is a great record. Education funding has suffered too much under 11 long years of the Howard government.

There are other commitments Labor has made, both in the budget reply and prior to it. Our $4.7 billion commitment to deliver a national broadband network to 98 per cent of the population is important and should be picked up. Currently we are 25th in the world in terms of internet bandwidth, behind Poland, Hungary and Slovenia. I do not think most Australians would want us to be placed there. Other commitments are there to do something about the water supply, the leakage of water in our local government distribution systems. These are all important initiatives; they are nation building initiatives that go to creating the wealth and productivity of the future, and that is the missed opportunity of this budget.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise to speak today about the initiatives of the budget and what they deliver to all Australian people—in my case in particular to the people of the Riverina. We have had an enormous benefit out of the budget and I certainly thank the ministers involved. The member for Macquarie, Kerry Bartlett, and I worked very hard, with an extremely good proposal from Charles Sturt University, in order to address the supply side of the problems of access to dentists. It is a fact that Australians in rural and remote areas have had limited access to dental care. There was data that showed that access to dental services within a capital city was around 56 dentists per 100,000 people; however, in rural areas there was a much lower level of access to services, with around 31 dentists per 100,000 people and decreasing.

Charles Sturt University have embarked upon a program of deliberate training for rural professionals to offer rural services in rural areas. It is an absolutely sensational concept. They are not being all things to everybody. They have absolutely changed the way in which their programs are formulated and funded, and decided that rural Australia requires and deserves more rural professionals. In order to do so, Charles Sturt University decided they would undertake this badge to ensure that this was made available to those people who want to enter into the rural stream and who generally, if trained in a rural area, will stay in a rural area.

They have built up significant success stories. When Charles Sturt University was able to offer pharmacy, there was great angst from many of the sandstone universities that a regional university should be offering this course. Prior to Charles Sturt University being able to offer pharmacy, we were getting an average of about two pharmacy graduates per year into rural areas—that includes Canberra—so of course we were not able to offer pharmacy services in many areas due to the lack of trained and skilled pharmacists. Since Charles Sturt University have entered into training in pharmacy and offering a pharmacy degree, of an average 41 students who might complete pharmacy, 39 are staying within rural areas in order to practise.

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

Outstanding!

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is outstanding. It is the best success story. Charles Sturt University worked very cooperatively with me to say, ‘If we can have that type of success in pharmacy, we can also have success in other significant areas if we are given an opportunity.’ Veterinary science was one such opportunity. The number of veterinary surgeons in rural areas is at an all-time low, particularly vets specialising in heavy animals. Most veterinary surgeons decide to specialise in companion animals, but rural and regional Australia had problems getting enough heavy animal veterinarians and veterinary surgeons. We argued for and fought to get vet science included in the Charles Sturt University curriculum. To Charles Sturt University’s credit, they reorganised and restructured their payments and the way in which they funded their courses and decided to offer vet science, with no contribution from government.

They have been extraordinarily successful in attracting the most eminent professors from international arenas to come to offer a fabulous model and course for veterinary science that is done in conjunction with the local vet surgeons and the local veterinarian surgery. It has been a success and I am very, very proud that within the budget we were able to access $2.1 million for Charles Sturt University vet science in addition to their previous budget $2.1 million that has seen some fantastic diagnostic facilities and laboratories established at Charles Sturt University.

To expand on this, Charles Sturt University indicated: ‘We have a significant supply side of rural dental professionals.’ So Kerry Bartlett and I, with an excellent proposal worked up by Charles Sturt University, embarked upon ensuring that this proposal on its merit was absolutely successful. We and Charles Sturt University were rewarded for our very, very hard work in the budget when $65.1 million was allocated to Charles Sturt University. That was to provide services and a dental school. We have a dental school with a preclinical and clinical facility constructed in Wagga Wagga and Orange, and three dental education clinics will be constructed in Albury, Bathurst and Dubbo. It was excellent news on budget evening to learn that Charles Sturt University will be able to offer this dental course to start to resolve particularly the supply side of dentistry through regional areas. We will have 240 new training places for dental and oral health students over five years.

This, in itself, is an enormous commitment from this government. There have been allegations flying left, right and centre that the Howard government cut dental out of the budget and cut the money for dental services when it came to power in 1996. That is wrong—absolutely wrong. That allegation is false. Former Prime Minister Mr Keating and the Labor government put in a program to assist the states with dental funding, but it had a sunset clause.

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

It was a four-year catch-up program.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a four catch-up program, as my learned colleague the member for Hinkler rightly determines. This was not the Commonwealth being responsible for dental health. This was the Keating government deciding at the time that it would offer a four-year catch-up program, but that would be it; it had a sunset clause. It was not in the forward estimates. It had no intention of being continued. This was not the Commonwealth’s responsibility and the former Prime Minister, for the Labor Party, recognised that. So there was no money in the budget for that to continue.

The government, in 1996, inherited a $96 billion debt. How was it to introduce further spending that was not allocated by the former Labor government when it was faced with significant cutting of expenditure in order to get out of the significant debt that was left by a financially deficient Labor government? I dispute the discussion and the allegations that have been made during many speeches in the House on who cut dental funding and whose responsibility it is. I was really pleased to see that the appropriate area of Commonwealth expense on dental is the supply side; it is the education side. That is what the federal government, the Howard-Vaile government, has continued to do: it has continued to provide the supply side. The supply side is something that they have never turned their backs on. I really felt that I needed to reinforce that issue here today. By addressing the supply side you will start to address the issues that are confronting people right across Australia.

In addition to that supply side, there was additional Medicare funding of $378 million over four years announced for those patients whose dental health is impacting on a chronic medical condition. There will be a Medicare benefit of up to $2,125 for dental treatment in the private sector when referred by a doctor. So there has been significant treatment and I am extremely pleased to see that the Commonwealth government, which within its guidelines has responsibility for the training of dental practitioners, has been very proactive in providing that.

In addition, we have had significant benefits to our schools. I particularly welcome the commitment, for those children who have not achieved national literacy and numeracy benchmarks in years 3, 5 and 7, to the provision of a voucher for parents to get those children extra tuition outside of school. This voucher will be for $700. It can only be used for tuition and it is designed to give these children who need it specialised personal assistance. Furthermore, in 2008 there will be a bonus of up to $50,000 available to schools that make significant improvements in the literacy and numeracy standards in their schools. This will reward school excellence. There is significant money in the budget—around $102 million—for establishing summer schools for teachers to undertake professional development for teaching in those areas of literacy and numeracy, Australian history, maths, science and English. And those teachers, who will be attending those schools in their own time, will receive a $5,000 bonus from the Australian government on completing their course. We also get more practical experience for those training to be teachers—in fact, from 2008 an additional $77 million. You will pay institutions to provide a minimum of 120 days experience in schools for trainee teachers who are doing three- and four-year degrees.

There will also be—which is very welcome—an estimated $60 million for the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme. This scheme is extremely important, particularly in rural and remote areas. It helps the families of primary, secondary and tertiary students under 16 years of age who are unable to attend an appropriate government school on a daily basis primarily because of their location. This scheme will assist students who have no choice other than to board away from home at a school, hostel or private home. I have seen that in my own electorate. I have seen children who have no other form of access to education being able to live in Claughton House in Hay to attend any form of school, whether it be private or public, through a benefit paid to their families in order for them to have access to a school gate.

With our Investing in Our Schools Program, we have seen over a period of time dollars invested in excellent outcomes. I turn to Investing in Our Schools in the Riverina, where over $7 million has been put into both private and public schools—the majority, of course, into public schools. It has been extremely welcome and there have been fabulous projects. There have been projects involving shade shelters, air conditioning, playground equipment and soft fall surfaces, enhancing the quality of the learning environment of our young students. It is a fabulous program and one that has been so popularly received and so welcome. It is an absolute pleasure to visit schools and be involved when they are celebrating their new facilities.

I move on to the area that was covered by our previous speaker, and that is vocational education. I interjected that you can have a retention rate in year 12 that has been at the absolute expense of those people who wanted to enter into a trade or profession but who were forced to go into an education environment that they neither wanted nor were suited for. They were discouraged and treated as second-class citizens if they wanted to move from a school certificate year 10 level to an apprenticeship to be a panelbeater, a spray painter, a mechanic, a bricklayer, a house builder, a concreter or an electrician. You could name any of the trades and services.

In the era of Labor, under Knowledge Nation—or ‘noodle nation’, if you want to enter into that debate—parents who had let their children leave school and enter into a trade were almost discriminated against. Peer pressure was enormous. The view was that you had allowed your child to enter what was then classed as a second-rate opportunity in life as a career—that is, a trade. This is one parent who stands here today committed to trades and services. I suffered extreme peer pressure. The view was that the intelligence of my children was being wasted by going into a trade and service. That was the mentality. The government have resurrected trade training. We have now changed the focus to encourage our youth and our students of today to enter into a trade and to assure them that if they decide to enter into the service sector then their qualification is every bit as valuable and as important to society and to them as a university degree.

That is no disrespect to a university degree. There is significant importance placed on university degrees, but they are not for every child in the Australian education system. We have now paid particular attention to rectifying the wrong and the injustice that was carried out over all those years. The skills shortage has been a result of a very long period of Labor being in government, when you were certainly not encouraged to do a trade or service or to leave school in order to enter into a trades or services apprenticeship.

We have an additional commitment to Australian apprentices under 30 in trades where there are skills shortages. They will be able to access a tax-free payment of $1,000 per year for the first and second year of their apprenticeship. This really does recognise that there is still a financial burden faced by apprentices during their early years of training and it aims to encourage them to enter into trades and complete their very valuable qualifications.

I turn now to the apprenticeship training voucher. Again, from 1 July 2007, Australian apprentices in trades where there is a skills shortage will be entitled to a voucher valued at up to $500 to help pay for their course fees. The voucher will be available in the first and second years of their apprenticeship to encourage them to participate and complete their trade qualifications. We have also moved on to work skills vouchers. The government is providing $80.5 million in 2007-08 for work skills vouchers. These vouchers will provide value of up to $3,000 to people aged 25 years and over who do not have formal qualifications in order that they can undertake year 12, or equivalent, or vocational certificate II qualifications. These vouchers can be used at a public, private or community training provider service. Once this has been fully implemented, there will be 30,000 vouchers available each year. That is a significant encouragement for people to retrain and reskill in order to move forward into the very lucrative trades and services era that we now find ourselves in.

We also have our business skills vouchers, which mean that businesses will be able to provide up to $500 to apprentices in traditional trades or newly qualified tradespeople to undertake accredited business skills training. Once that is fully implemented, you will have up to 6,300 vouchers that will be available each year.

I was extremely pleased because this was a sensibly managed budget. There was something for everybody in this budget. I was particularly keen to look at the way in which the Treasurer, over a series of years, has balanced our tax cuts. The one that I was most pleased about was the 30 per cent tax rate that only applies to income over $30,000, which is up from the current threshold of $25,000, and that is from 1 July. So, for a person on the average wage, the tax cut is around $16 a week. But in 1999, taxpayers earning $30,000 paid $6,222 in income tax. From 1 July those same taxpayers will pay only $2,850. This is a reduction of around 54 per cent. There is an ongoing effect, and ongoing cumulative benefits have been provided year in and year out by a very competent Treasurer. It is a very competent budget.

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

One of the reasons that I am a member of the Australian Labor Party is the Labor Party’s belief in social justice—a belief that, in many situations, through collective action we can achieve things. That is not to say we do not protect the rights of individuals and understand that people sometimes make their own way through life. But I also believe that we should be involved in governments that understand that there is a need often to help those who are in disadvantaged circumstances, to recognise that some people, because of their lot in life and their life chances, do need assistance.

I am afraid that, after 11 years of the present coalition government, I just see too much that the government is not actually governing for all Australians; it is governing in its own interests, especially now in the run-up to the election. If I take an electorate like Scullin, for so many basic services Scullin has been neglected by the various Howard governments—whether it was the Howard-Anderson, the Howard-Vaile, the Howard-Costello or the Howard-Costello-Downer government. Under whatever guise you want to put it, it has become apparent that this is a government that does not understand the impact of many of its policies on regions. Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, I think you have an understanding, coming from a rural region, of the need for a federal national parliament to discuss issues based on the way they affect the various regions of Australia, that we acknowledge that a policy cannot have the same impact throughout the whole of Australia.

The honourable member for Riverina got fairly agitated in talking about dental health. I just want to talk about dental health briefly, because this is an area where, if you look at the public dental health centres run by the Plenty Valley Community Health Centre and the Banyule Community Health Centre, you can see that there is a great disparity in the way in which people actually have access to a fairly basic service in regard to dental health.

At the dental health centre that is run out of the Plenty Valley Community Health Centre, there is something like a four-year waiting list for basic services. If you look at Banyule, for which I have more exact figures for general consultations and prosthetics, you will see that in general consultations there is a waiting list that equates to about five to six months. If you look at prosthetics, dentures and the like, you will see there is something like a four- to five-year waiting list, which is the norm in Victoria. In fact, the person who has been on the waiting list the longest dates back quite some years.

The member for Riverina tried to put the case to the Main Committee that (a) there was a four-year sunset clause on the previous Labor government’s contribution to public dental health and (b) because of the circumstances the coalition believed the Commonwealth budget was in they needed to take harsh action. Setting aside differing views about those arguments, the simple fact is that when we approach a budget in 2007 predicting a very large surplus—it is put together at a time when there is relative economic sunshine—we should be looking at the importance of some of these services for individuals. As the Australian Dental Association have said:

People who are disadvantaged by socioeconomic status experience greater levels of oral disease than those from more affluent groups.

They went on to urge the Commonwealth government to target funding to improve access to dental care for financially disadvantaged groups.

The success of the previous Labor government program indicates that for very modest amounts of money we can improve the dental health care of people. That then has an ongoing effect on their general health and is in turn a saving for the general health budget. I have often said in debate that I found it very strange that the argument was put that this was purely a state responsibility. At the same time, when we looked at the private health insurance rebate we saw that it had been calculated that the federal government was subsidising private dental care to the tune of over $300 million a year. This was an argument that was dismissed but recently taken up by health minister Abbott. He said that this was actually a virtue—that actually the Commonwealth was making a contribution to the progress of dental health in Australia through this $300 million a year in direct assistance to private dental health. I found it very strange that in fact an argument could be twisted so much to go from indicating that the government could have involvement to it being agreed by the government that they could have involvement but only involvement at the level of private dental health care.

We then saw the announcement in this year’s budget. I agree that it is appropriate for the budget to direct money to training dentists, to the establishment of the new regional dental schools and to creating opportunities for dental students to be trained and placed in areas of workforce shortage. But I think that that is very much business as usual. I will quote from the Treasurer’s budget speech. He said, ‘I am announcing additional Medicare funding of $378 million over four years for patients whose dental health is impacting on chronic medical conditions.’ It will be interesting to see what that actually does to waiting lists for public dental health, because it is a very narrowcast policy. Yes, it is aimed at people who are deserving of assistance with their dental health, but it does not go to the wider issue of those who are missing out on appropriate dental health not only because of chronic medical conditions but also because they are of a lower socioeconomic status. The other interesting thing was that the Treasurer could not help himself in his speech when he said:

... while primary responsibility for dental care lies with State and Territory governments, the Australian Government has responsibility for funding dental training and funding general health services through Medicare.

That was the lead-in to the announcement of the moneys in this budget. I simply say to those who are waiting for years to access dental health in an electorate like Scullin: this is very minor assistance in terms of you gaining access to appropriate dental care.

We then see headlines in articles and analysis of where programs are not adequately covering services—for example, that a suburb in the electorate of Scullin, Lalor, emerged as one of the federal government’s Victorian childcare hot spots. That came as no surprise to me because, through my office, we have done a Scullin price watch special survey on child care. That survey revealed the vast range of costs for child care. It indicated that at the top end we were looking at long day based care that was costing families $239 a week, or $47.80 per day. When you are paying that much for child care and you want to get into employment, you have to look for a pretty good job right from the start to make it all add up. I have no beef with the quality of child care in my electorate, but it is the cost and the accessibility. The survey also indicated that there were a number of waiting list constraints on people. For instance, one of the franchise childcare centres indicated that there was about a two-month wait; another centre—from the same franchise but at a different site—indicated that there was a waiting list of 20 to 30.

We really have problems when it comes to people being able to (1) access appropriate child care and (2) access affordable child care. When we look at the hot spot sites in Victoria, we see that they are Lalor, Tullamarine and Yarraville—northern and western suburbs. Again, one has to raise the question: is this a government that is actually governing for all or is it willing to put regions of Australia on the scrap heap because it does not believe they will contribute to the return of the government that has now indicated that it might—if it believes its own spin—have become a tired government that lacks initiative and imagination about the way it can tackle problems?

Another issue that I wish to raise, the carers allowance, is an issue that I have had some great concerns about not only because it is an example of the way in which the Prime Minister has of late been making policy on the run but also because the Prime Minister would make policy on the run without considering the ramifications that that would have on people who might believe that they were to be assisted by a policy change. The government has announced a review of the carers allowance. There was a very famous case running in March of this year that was being championed by Neil Mitchell on 3AW. On 23 March, when Neil Mitchell was interviewing the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister indicated that the government was going to make an ex gratia payment of $10,000 to the family that had been seeking assistance—and I quote the Prime Minister in this Neil Mitchell interview—‘to cover a period through to when the results of any review of the policy are going to be available’. Neil Mitchell then asked whether this was only for this particular family, to which the Prime Minister answered:

Yeah well obviously other people who might feel; I mean it’s an ex-gratia payment for their circumstances but there could well be other people in a similar situation, but we would have to deal with that on a case by case basis.

That brief discussion left the question dangling as to whether people who were getting the carers payment and not the carers allowance might be eligible for this $10,000—and there was a belief in people’s minds.

I was invited to discuss this with a number of parents at the Diamond Valley Special Development School about 10 days later. The important aspect of this was that the parents I was dealing with have older children of secondary school age with severe disabilities, and they have been looking after them for 12, 13, 14 and 15 years. It had started to unfold that this policy-on-the-run announcement by the Prime Minister was only going to be for families with children from birth to six years of age, and it was going to be limited to cases in which a catastrophic event had led to the disability. This came as a dreadful shock to the people that took on face value the sympathy the Prime Minister had given to the case of an individual family. They thought this gesture might apply to others.

I have seen some cruel things done by governments in the past, but in speaking to these parents I saw that the way this had been dangled in front of them was really a very cruel deception. When they rang Centrelink, of course Centrelink did not know anything about it. This was a classic back-of-the-postage-stamp announcement by the Prime Minister, and he should realise, given the length of time he has been not only leader of Australia but also a member in this place, that you cannot do that to people. You cannot lead them astray by letting them think there will be a flow-on benefit of a simple gesture, which was made, perhaps, because he could not think of any way to get out of it given the way it had been portrayed in the popular media. He cannot do this. He has to understand that he is not making one decision here and one there, but decisions that should be seen for all Australians.

In the run-up to the election we are going to get plenty of examples of where there is going to be strange funding. Mr Deputy Speaker Quick, I know that you raised the issue in the context of moneys being made available for roadworks. There is a program called the Strategic Regional Program—‘yet another pork barrel’, perhaps we should say. I was interested to read in the Australian that when they tabulated those seats that were going to get this money, I saw under ‘Labor seats, Victoria, Scullin,’ that we had been allocated $1 million.

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

You must be marginal!

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

Mate, I am thinking, ‘Well, somebody knows something that I don’t know.’ Having been tipped off about this money I had started investigations. It is money going towards a road that starts in Scullin and ends in McEwen. The major portion in Scullin is a government responsibility. There is then a little portion, probably 800 metres, that will be shared between developer contributions and others. Then there is a major portion above that which is in the classification ‘developer contribution and others’.

Now—shock, horror—on further investigation I find that this $980,000 is for construction of a second carriageway in the section between Harvest Home Road and Bridge Inn Road, which is in the seat of McEwen. Their real problem at the moment is: that is the dead-end of this road; there is no civilisation around it. There are no developer contributions to match the money. The council—that is, the City of Whittlesea—are now scratching their heads to know what they are going to do, because it has been indicated to them that they have three years in which to spend this money. I am trying to say to them, ‘Use it down in the Scullin end’! But it raises the question of where this particular portion of carriageway came to light to be discussed and funded.

Last year, the council nominated three projects that might be considered for this additional money: the funding shortfall for the E6, which is the road that I am talking about; the funding for the construction of Findon Road; and the funding for the construction of McKimmies Road. They were very hopeful to put the last two in, because Findon Road and McKimmies Road are in the seat of Scullin. But the E6 probably was worth a shot, given that it was a shared road. But this is the part of the project that is probably going to be done last. So it raises the question: what rule of thumb was used to produce this piece of funding? It smells like a pork barrel; I think it simply must be a pork barrel. I leave it at that.

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

It is my pleasure today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008. I do so with great enthusiasm because we are in a position in this country which we should all be applauding. All Australians are benefiting, and particularly from the recent budget handed down by the Treasurer. Peter Costello is probably the most outstanding Treasurer of the modern era. He has been able to produce budgets that are in surplus—unlike the opposition, who always struggled to be in surplus when they were in government.

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

Even with asset sales.

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

Well, they used their asset sales to prop up the bottom line and not actually to invest in the future as this budget does. But it is no accident that the Australian economy is as strong as it is today because the Howard coalition government has put the fundamentals in place which will see a sustained, strong future. It would be quite terrible if the opposition were ever to get into government and get their hands on this absolutely stellar economy, which is brimming full of confidence and brimming full of economic opportunity and the wealth that has been created thereby.

We currently have inflation under check; that was not done before. It is below the target rate set down by the Reserve Bank. Home mortgage interest rates are at historic lows. Unemployment is at a 32-year low. And business confidence is at a 32-year high. So what does that say about the state of the economy? The state of the economy is so healthy that we can be proud of it, and we want to share in it. But the opposition, in their whole time in this place, have done everything they can to thwart the government’s ability to put the economy in the state that it is in now. They have voted against every measure that we have taken to reinforce the strength of the Australian economy—and yet they would try and benefit from it. So that is the challenge.

One of the most unbelievable measures that the Australian Labor Party are now proposing—should they ever get the opportunity to sit on the treasury bench—is that they wish to wreck the Australian workforce as we know it today. One of the reasons we are in this particularly successful state is that the government’s industrial relations reforms have given Australia an economy which is the envy of the modern world. It is the envy of the modern world because of its flexibility and its ability to respond. We have taken away the rigid shackles that the Australian Labor Party, with their union mates, had placed on it previously. And these shackles stopped the workforce being able to respond in a timely way.

The Australian workplace agreements that this government has put into the workforce have been so successful that now the Australian Labor Party would destroy them. You would have to ask: why would they want to destroy them? Mr Beazley said he would tear them up; he had on billboards around my electorate: ‘We will tear up Australian workplace agreements.’ You have now got the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, going to Western Australia, trying to talk to business and the workers over there, and saying, ‘We’re listening.’ On the plane the other night Ms Gillard, the opposition workplace relations spokesman, was sitting opposite me. She was going over there to talk to Western Australian business, workers and the state government. What was the response? She did not cut through at all.

The West Australian newspaper exclusive entitled ‘Carpenter warns Rudd against ending AWAs’ by Andrew Probyn states:

Alan Carpenter has warned that Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s intention to rip up Australian Workplace Agreements could have a detrimental effect on WA’s resource sector and the Australian economy.

The article continues:

... the Premier said that AWAs had not only become integral to the mining industry but were “almost the norm”.

The Premier said he had told Mr Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard to be mindful of WA’s industrial relations climate when formulating their alternative to AWAs.

The article also states:

... Carpenter was clearly worried that Labor’s policy would hurt the WA economic juggernaut.

This was reinforced by Business Council of Australia President Michael Chaney, who said that the ALP’s approach was a worrying ‘massive re-regulation’ of the workplace that threatened prosperity.

So that is the challenge. The Australian Labor Party have taken a very dangerous view that will destroy AWAs. AWAs are strongest in Western Australia, and in Western Australia there are only 15 House of Representatives seats. When there are 150 seats and only 15 of them are in Western Australia why would you consider Western Australia? I am going to explain shortly with the figures I have here why it is a dangerous endgame for the opposition to be playing. Their success at becoming the government at the next election largely hinges on their mathematical equation as to what may happen in Western Australia. But will they get it wrong? On the night of the election all eyes will be peering west two hours after the polls close to see how we are going, because at the end of the day Western Australia is going to play a big part in the election. I suspect the 16 seats that the Leader of the Opposition needs will be very tough, because if we gain seats in Western Australia—which is the current polling in Western Australia, by the way—his mathematical equation will be thwarted.

We know that AWAs nationally cover about 8.4 per cent of the Australian workforce and 22 per cent of the workforce in Western Australia. So that puts it into context. The common-law contracts, which are the alternative form of individual agreements, cover 32 per cent of the workforce. Collective agreements, which are favoured by Labor, cover 41 per cent of the workforce. So, obviously, not everybody chooses to be on an AWA. I need to make this clear because there is some very dishonest campaigning in the Australian media, supported by the union hierarchy, to get the Labor Party into government. This is their last gasp to be relevant; they need to make sure the Labor Party wins this election because the Australian industrial landscape is changing forever. So they are willing to put $100 million into ads. The dishonest ads say things like, ‘Sign or resign.’ We know that is illegal. The case on McLeod’s Daughters was of a 16-year-old having to sign an Australian workplace agreement. That is illegal. If you are under 18, you cannot sign an Australian workplace agreement unless your parent, guardian or someone represents you. The lies that have been perpetuated in the media have to be addressed. The fact is, if anyone tells you to sign or resign, the Office of Workplace Services will deal with them because it is illegal. So you have a choice—and what is wrong with choice? This is a government of choice. We want to give you a choice: private education or government education, private health or the normal public services offered throughout the health system in Australia. So we offer a choice, but the Australian Labor Party do not want to.

That is the context in which we find ourselves with Work Choices. The fact is that the unions are meeting—I can give you an update today, Mr Deputy Speaker. The unions are meeting in Western Australia today, and it was reported on the ABC:

W-A’s top union leaders will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss how to boost numbers in the wake of the latest figures showing a dramatic drop in union membership.

In fact, in Western Australia I understand that they are down to about 15 per cent, because people are actually happy negotiating an individual agreement which gives them more salary and more flexibility; and, if they wish to trade off any terms and conditions—and I emphasise the word ‘wish’, because they are not forced to—of their employment for a higher salary, they are doing that. So the unions are being dealt out of the game. Is it any wonder that they are having a crisis meeting? Their membership is falling away. People are voting with their feet. They are saying, ‘Why would we belong to something like that that wants to re-regiment us and put us all in a box and not allow us to achieve our ultimate potential and therefore our ultimate pay?’

The WA branch of the Australian Nursing Federation, which was part of that ABC report today, says that it has ‘bucked the trend’ because it has almost doubled its membership in five years. Federation secretary Mark Olson said:

… other unions should take note and start offering more relevant services like computer training and legal workshops.

“Those who think our services are non-traditional are really relics of the past, they are jurassic,” he said.

Why would Mark Olson be saying this, when he is from the Australian Nursing Federation in WA? Because it is the only nurses federation in Australia that is not affiliated with the Labor Party. As a result, they are serving their members and, because they are serving their members, they are growing their membership. So there is a case in point. Actually Mark Olson is in the House today, and I hope Mark is able to get through to a lot of members and explain to them how they are looking after their union membership and what they are doing for their nurses.

The fact is that AWAs in Western Australia have done an enormous amount of good. In fact, people on AWAs on average in Western Australia are earning $200 a week more. What an outstanding achievement: on average, they are earning about $200 a week more. Western Australia contributes 34 per cent of the exports or GDP, gross domestic product, of this country. They only have 10 per cent of the population. Out of 54,200 days lost to strikes last year, only 900 were from Western Australia. That is because the workforce over there has 22 per cent of people on AWAs.

To that end, it is interesting to note that an editorial in the West Australian newspaper on 21 April had the headline: ‘Rudd’s policy on IR changes will damage his chances in WA’. It is unbelievable—it says:

The unions are also behind his plan to abolish the controversial Building and Construction Commission, set up by the Howard Government to put a stop to the outrageous abuse and exploitation indulged in by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union on building sites.

No one owes more gratitude to the commission than Planning Minister Alannah MacTiernan. Her career was on the line because of the CFMEU’s disastrous disruption of the Perth to Mandurah railway project until the commission put a stop to the union’s antics.

Michelle Roberts as Minister for Housing and Works knows her reputation would be severely damaged if the CFMEU resumed its disruption of Perth building sites and she has raised serious concerns about the proposal to abolish the commission.

That a Labor Minister is prepared to publicly voice her concerns is an indication of how unwelcome these IR policies are in WA.

We would be back to the no ticket, no start regime that the CFMEU and other rogue and so-called militant unions had in Western Australia until Work Choices came in. In fact, we saved Alannah MacTiernan’s bacon on the Perth to Mandurah railway; it was stalled because of militant union action, and Alannah MacTiernan is a beneficiary.

Not only are AWAs growing in the mining sector; one of the great upsides of Work Choices is that women in the workforce have been huge beneficiaries of a more flexible workplace. As has been reported:

Figures compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the number of stay-at-home mothers to be at its lowest level on record ... the proportion of women aged 25-34 who are at home raising children has fallen from roughly one in four ... to about one in five ... A similar drop has occurred among women aged 35-44, from 23.3 per cent in 1999 to 19.7 per cent last year.

…            …            …

However, near full employment and a trend towards greater workplace flexibility have made it easier for women with children to re-enter the workforce, if they wish. As far as the higher number of mothers participating in the workforce reflects the removal of barriers to employment for those wishing to work, the statistics are to be applauded. Flexibility that gives parents the ability to negotiate workplace arrangements that work best for them is essential if Australia hopes to address the twin challenge of a skills shortage and the ageing population.

I could go on, but the fact is that women have a greater opportunity to involve themselves in the workforce because of Work Choices. For example, a woman in Waroona in my electorate has negotiated an Australian workplace agreement with a local recreational centre because it allows her flexibility with picking her kids up from school and with school holidays and allows her to earn more money by trading off unnecessary entitlements.

To put it in context, as I am running out of time, Western Australia has the largest number of AWAs in Australia. By the way, the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission would be disastrous. I had a call this morning from the ABCC because I reported that at a Goodwin construction site in Forrestfield the CFMEU were trying to enter and were coercing people to join a union. The fact is that during a second visit Joe McDonald and the troublesome Vinnie Melina, or Walter Vincent Melina, from the CFMEU tried to stand over people and the ABCC was able to run them off and call the police. McDonald is not even allowed on work sites, but he still tried to go back there again and heavy them to join a union. It just shows that it is working. These blokes can get on with their jobs and not have to be intimidated at work.

In Western Australia, the number of AWAs in Canning is second only to the number in the electorate of Kalgoorlie. Kalgoorlie has 39,118 people registered on Australian workplace agreements in an electorate of about 80,000—unbelievable. In fact, since Work Choices began there has been an addition to the original figure of 10,706. I run second in the electorate of Canning. Before Work Choices there were 23,500 AWAs in Canning; there are now 29,890—nearly 30,000 people. Nearly one in three people in the Canning electorate are on AWAs. And you don’t reckon I will be running hard on this in my electorate!—as will the member for Kalgoorlie and everybody in Western Australia.

To put it in context, in the electorate of Brand, which Mr Beazley is vacating, 27,500 people are on AWAs. In Cowan, which I am convinced we will win because of the retirement of the very popular Graham Edwards, there are 19,400 people on AWAs. In Curtin there are 23,000, in Forrest there are 14,000 and in Fremantle, Carmen Lawrence’s seat, there are 28,000 people on Australian workplace agreements, nearly as many as in Canning. It just shows that the member for Griffith cannot take it for granted, because there are 4,500 people on AWAs in his electorate, and he is talking about ripping up their contracts. Hasluck, which the Labor Party think they have a chance to win, has 22,300. It goes on: O’Connor, 11,000; Pearce, 14,000; Perth, 16,000; Swan, 14,500—and Mr Wilkie is surviving on something like 60 votes. You don’t think the candidate in Swan will be running hard on Australian workplace agreements! I could go on.

The fact is that, in all of these electorates, unemployment levels have been brought down massively. In my electorate of Canning, in 1996 the unemployment level was 9.1 per cent. Today it is 4.5 per cent—unbelievable. Do you think there is any correlation between Australian workplace agreements and the level of employment? People are choosing with their feet to get involved in Australian workplace agreements. It is at the dire peril of the Australian Labor Party if they go over there against the wishes of the Premier of Western Australia and Labor ministers and say, ‘We are going to tear up your agreements.’ I can assure you that from now till the election—and it is already happening in my case—we will be encouraging and working with all candidates and all those involved in the election in Western Australian electorates. We will be telling people that, should you get a Rudd-Gillard leadership, your economic wellbeing and your mortgages will be on the line. The fact is that you will get less pay because, as I said, people on AWAs are on average $200 better off a week. So those second houses that you might have bought as an investment or the money you have been putting away to send your kid to a better school are going to be torn up by the Australian Labor Party. It is an absolute disgrace. The people of Western Australia should know about it. It is a growing trend in Australia that the flexibility that is given to Australian workers allows them to make choices about their future. The Labor Party have done everything they can to destroy it. This country will be worse off if we have the Rudd-Gillard leadership tearing up AWAs in this country. (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The 2007-08 budget provided the government with an opportunity to outline its priorities for Australia, and indeed it did. It outlined its priorities for short-term political advantage rather than the long-term national interest. The national water crisis is one of the most important issues occupying the minds of many Australians. Almost every Australian in towns and cities and in the bush is affected. The crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin is hitting farmers and industry and it will impact on every Australian who is likely to pay much more for fruit and vegetables at the local grocer or supermarket.

Unfortunately, the budget states that only $53 million or half of one per cent of the $10 billion national water plan budget will be spent during the whole of the next financial year. After three years the government will have spent only 11 per cent of the national water plan budget. Let us be quite clear about this: the budget shows that almost 90 per cent of the $10 billion national water plan budget is scheduled to be spent after July 2010; that is, after the election after next. The Prime Minister has caused great angst for the Treasurer by staying on as leader of the Liberal Party, but not even he would suggest that he would be around in 2017. So when we hear about the $10 billion plan, it is in reality a $53 million plan not a $10 billion plan. That is half of one per cent of $10 billion being spent over the coming financial year.

On 25 January the Prime Minister went to great lengths to warn us about the danger of not taking ‘decisive action’ to address overallocated water licences. There is nothing decisive in what this budget says about government implementation of the national water plan. Water programs are needed right now, not after three years. Action is needed now to deal with the problem of overallocated water licences, but the Murray-Darling Basin is unlikely to see any benefit from the national water plan for many years.

Common sense tells us that this plan should have been front-end loaded in terms of spending rather than back-end loaded. We need action now. If we are going to fix up overallocation and provide support for increasing efficiencies and therefore achieve water savings, it makes sense to do that now rather than wait for further problems to occur. It becomes clearer by the day that the national water plan was a hastily prepared policy outline rather than a comprehensive strategy developed in consultation with the relevant federal government departments, including Treasury, state governments and with input from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission or even the National Water Commissioners. More effort went into writing the Prime Minister’s speech delivered on 25 January than into making sure that a national water plan clearly detailed water-planning issues and governance and financial arrangements for the basin.

None other than the Secretary to the Department of the Treasury has pointed out that the policy would have been much better had there been proper planning and proper financial input. Although the government has found only $53 million to spend on the national water plan next financial year, it will spend $52 million, almost the same amount, in the coming months on political advertising. That is what the environment minister said in parliament just two days ago.

Today we know that there is another lot of political advertising being done on climate change and water. We know that the plan is to mail out a covering letter and pamphlet to eight million Australian households. We know that this leaflet will be full colour, that it will have attached to it electronic media, and that it will be a five-fold leaflet. We know this because, when the question was first asked yesterday in Senate estimates of the Department of the Environment and Water Resources, they said, ‘No, that is not the case.’ Then later on they had to come in and the deputy secretary of the department said, ‘Yes, it is the case and we’re market testing the Prime Minister’s letter and market testing the pamphlet.’ How extraordinary is it that a letter from the Prime Minister is being market tested and yet the government will argue that this is not political advertising? Not only have taxpayers got to pay for the production of the pamphlet, the printing, the mail-out, the follow-up website and electronic media supporting it; they also have to pay for market testing to make sure the language is right and the manipulation is right. This is extraordinary.

Today in the parliament, when the Prime Minister was first asked about this by the Leader of the Opposition, he said he was not aware of any plans at the current time to have such a campaign. When he was asked a second time—with quotes from the deputy secretary of the department confirming that this was going on—he said that he had been very careful, or words to that effect, in choosing his words to the first answer. Once again, we have a Prime Minister being cunning, clever and tricky. We have a Prime Minister being prepared to use more taxpayer funds for advertising than on the national water plan in the coming year.

To put that in perspective, more taxpayer funds are going to be spent on climate change advertising up until the election, in the immediate coming months, than will be spent on the national water plan in the entire year of 2007-08. These are quite extraordinary priorities. It is clear that the government has got its priorities quite, quite wrong. Last year the budget papers showed that, since 2004, $700 million was allocated for the Living Murray program. After allocating $200 million in 2004, another allocation of $500 million was a key part of last year’s budget. It was front-page news in a number of nationally distributed newspapers. The Living Murray program is supposed to recover an annual average of up to 500 gigalitres of water. Unlike the states, the Commonwealth has deliberately chosen not to purchase overallocated water entitlements. Instead the Commonwealth developed a program where, through a tendering process, it tried to recover water for the Living Murray initiative through efficiency measures. On 22 May last year in response to a question from his own side, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Mr Peter McGauran, stated:

The government will also allow up to $200 million of its contribution to the purchasing of water from on-farm efficiency savings by way of a tender system that the parliamentary secretary is working up now.

We know from Senate estimates that there were only three tenders taken up, valued in total at just $765,000. So you have a $200 million program of which more than $199 million remains unspent—quite extraordinary. The parliamentary secretary for water, now Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, said on 19 June last year in the parliament that the government would not be seeking to acquire more than 200 gigalitres.

The extraordinary figures from Senate estimates are that not a single gigalitre, not one, has been acquired under this process. A total of just 454 megalitres of entitlements has been acquired—an absurdly small figure. So I repeat: this is a $200 million program in which only $765,000 is expended, with an objective of acquiring no more than 200 gigalitres, where less than half a gigalitre is actually acquired. This is a failure of monumental proportions and it is little wonder that the government tried to cover it up. There has been no announcement. The tender closed on 31 January; they then extended the time for the tender. There are no press releases out there about this. There is nothing on the website about this.

When it comes to water policy, this government has consistently failed to deliver on its own commitments and on its own promises. It has shied away from public scrutiny. It is extraordinary that the freedom of information applications by Channel 7 and by the West Australian newspaper have found that there were only 22 documents, in Channel 7’s case, covering the preparation of the 25 January announcement of the national water plan. The government refused to show those documents. The West Australian shows that there was one single document which existed in the Department of Finance and Administration, and that was just a couple of days before, and then another on the day of the Prime Minister’s speech. But, of course, they refused to make that available also and it is little wonder because it is quite clear the hard work was not done. What is extraordinary is that the government has excluded that process from public scrutiny, even though the one-pager was attached to the Prime Minister’s speech on 25 January—extraordinarily arrogant and extraordinarily out of touch.

Of course, the budget makes it quite clear that the Howard government has no position of support when it comes to urban water. They believe that you can have a national water plan which excludes the 18 million Australians who live around our coasts in our towns and major cities. Water infrastructure and water solutions are important for both rural and urban Australia. That is why Labor has a 30 per cent recycling target for waste water by the year 2015. That is why we have announced a $10,000 real interest-free loan for households that will support families to renovate and make their homes energy and water efficient. And in the Leader of the Opposition’s budget reply on 10 May, Labor announced a $250 million plan with matching funds, meaning it will contribute half a billion dollars to make a start on fixing up that infrastructure such as leaky pipes, to make sure that waste is reduced and that water actually flows through to the taps. Australians want action with long-term water issues but they also want practical action dealing with water where they live. Yet the budget papers show that of the $2 billion announced as part of the 2004 election campaign for the Australian Water Fund a majority has gone back into consolidated revenue rather than be spent. It is quite extraordinary that the government, at this time of a water crisis, has been prepared to allocate money and then simply not spend it. But that is consistent with its failure in terms of infrastructure in general.

Across the board, the budget failed to do what groups such as the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia and Engineers Australia have been calling for—that is, to establish national coordination of planning and development of infrastructure, a very clear announcement that was asked for. Labor have announced that we will have Infrastructure Australia, a statutory authority which would report to COAG through the state and territory infrastructure ministers, to make sure that we get national coordination and that input. We know that the failure to invest in infrastructure in key areas such as water, telecommunications, energy and transport has meant that Australia is now 20th out of 25 OECD countries for its investment in public infrastructure as a proportion of GDP. That has led to what the BCA has estimated to be an infrastructure deficit of some $90 billion. Here is what the BCA had to say:

... the key issue still appears to be the lack of long-term integrated planning to drive investment to address ongoing bottlenecks ...

They were not alone. Deloitte infrastructure head, Roger Black, said:

... there is little in the Budget papers to suggest there is a comprehensive, integrated coherent vision for dealing with Australia’s social and economic infrastructure needs and the related masterplan ...

Engineers Australia said:

Transport infrastructure is vital to the growth of the Australian economy and many bottle-necks have not yet been addressed because investment has not kept pace with the expansion of the economy.

The Treasurer’s 12th and final budget failed to show how the government will work cooperatively with the states and benefit from efficiencies that a coordinated approach would bring. Long-term infrastructure investment decisions must also take into consideration the effects of climate change and have that adaptation response there. But, as always, the government has failed to meet the future test.

The budget does little to address the water crisis and our infrastructure shortfalls which undermine Australia’s long-term economic prosperity. To remain globally competitive and meet future challenges such as climate change and an ageing population, we must plan and we must invest in infrastructure. To boost productivity growth the Howard government should have matched in the budget Labor’s national broadband network, which will improve broadband by providing fibre-to-the-node broadband to 98 per cent of Australians. But the Prime Minister is just incapable of understanding how important broadband is for our economic prosperity in providing that educational opportunity and providing business with that fast speed broadband so that we can compete with our neighbours in the region and, indeed, across the globe.

The government should also have seen major cities as economic engine rooms worth investing in, as Labor does, rather than playing the blame game and just saying that it is someone else’s responsibility. The Treasurer’s 12th budget offered no forward-looking, nation-building agenda. It failed the future test, it failed the coordination test and it failed the national leadership test. After 11 long years of the Howard government we have not come to expect anything different. It is also the case that, when you look at the budget papers and at the spending shortfalls which were there in the past, even the modest commitments and objectives which the government said in past budgets it was trying to attain, you will see that the budget papers show, with their massive underspends in key areas, particularly in dealing with our national water crisis, that this government has only one concern—that is, its own political survival, rather than the long-term national interest.

Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008. I would like to congratulate the Treasurer on what is, I believe, his best budget yet. There are no losers in this budget. It is a responsible, forward-thinking budget that locks in the gains of the past 10 years and secures Australia’s future prosperity. The Treasurer highlighted very well the huge gap between where we stand today and where we were in 1996. We have taken a huge step forward in the last decade. When the Howard government came to power in 1996 the budget was $10.1 billion in deficit. That is a deficit of almost two per cent of GDP. We owed $96 billion. Real wages had fallen by 1.8 per cent over the preceding 13 years of Labor government. The unemployment rate was 8.2 per cent, and almost one million Australians were out of work and in the dole queue. Wholesale sales tax was on the increase and promised l-a-w tax cuts were not delivered. Inflation was averaging 5.2 per cent and interest rates were 10.5 per cent.

We did not inherent the current position of economic strength. Australia was in a fairly tenuous economic position in 1996, as those numbers quite clearly demonstrate. After 11 years, I think people more readily forget what those times were like. Getting a job was difficult for many Australians. Many families lost their homes. Thousands of small businesses were forced into bankruptcy. That is the historical context through which I view this budget. We have come a long way. We have come a long way to have a budget in surplus to the tune of $10.6 billion. We have come a long way to have reduced the inflation rate to around 2.5 per cent. Net government debt has been eradicated entirely, which is saving taxpayers $8 billion a year in interest repayments. We have cut personal income taxes in the last six successive budgets. Two million new jobs have been created in the last 11 years and unemployment is at a 32-year low at 4.4 per cent. Household wealth has more than doubled since 1996 and real wages have increased by 20 per cent.

There is no shortage of good news here and none of it happened by accident. We did not accidentally find ourselves in this position of economic strength and security. The government made very hard decisions—decisions that were opposed at every step by those who sit opposite. But those decisions were right and were in the best interests of the country, and we are now reaping the benefits. That is how we found ourselves in a position to announce so many initiatives for so many working families, for those on low incomes, for higher education and technical education, for aged care and for the elderly.

The first major aspect of this budget will be a major boon for working people in my electorate of Cook. The 30 per cent income tax bracket will now apply to incomes over $30,000 a year, up from $25,000. For low-income earners, the tax-free threshold is now effectively $11,000. Thanks to our low-income tax offset, the tax-free threshold has now more than doubled since 1996. From 1 July this year low-income earners will be getting a $21 a week tax cut, while those on the average wage will get a $14 a week tax cut. Strong economic management has allowed us to provide low-income earners with tax relief worth more than $1,000 a year. That is significant relief that will make a great difference for working families and workers on low incomes. It also provides greater incentives for part-time workers and low-income earners to work. For middle-income earners we have increased the top end of the 30 per cent tax bracket to $80,000, so that now more than 80 per cent of taxpayers are in that bracket. We have generously provided for low- and middle-income earners in this budget, as we have in previous budgets.

With respect to aged care, this budget has a strong focus on new initiatives for veterans, seniors and their carers. We have allocated $1.6 billion in funding to help older Australians stay in their homes and to further assist aged-care facilities. In the last financial year, two aged-care providers in my electorate received funding for a total of 44 residential places. Aged care is a major concern for seniors and their families in my electorate, and seeing funding boosted to local providers allows them some peace of mind for their future. For pensioners who qualify for the utilities allowance or the seniors concession allowance we are providing a $500 one-off bonus payment for individuals and a $1,000 one-off payment for couples to help alleviate some of the costs associated with staying at home and running a household on the pension.

In the area of medical research, the government has committed an additional $772 million for research that will help to better direct and treat chronic illnesses and a further $4.86 million for medical research infrastructure. For carers we are continuing our strong support. For those who are receiving the carer allowance we are providing a one-off bonus payment of $600. This is the fourth successive year we have paid the bonus to carer allowance recipients. We have been able to provide this additional support to carers because we have been managing the economy well and ensuring that significant budget surpluses are available for programs such as these. Also, in July this year the veterans special rate disability pension will increase by $50 a fortnight. The government will also make a one-off payment of $25,000 to Australians who were prisoners of war in Europe, and it is appropriate we should do that. This payment is available to them or their surviving widows. This initiative has my strongest support. It is great to see those who served our country in conflict being recognised for their sacrifice and great hardships.

There is also plenty in this budget for young families. We have further boosted the childcare benefit rate by 10 per cent and given parents more timely access to their rebate as a direct payment through Centrelink. These programs are incentives for mothers to re-enter the workforce, and historic lows in unemployment are plainly evident. We acknowledge the very considerable costs associated with child care. I think anybody who has a family recognises that during the early years of having children it is tough on economic grounds to meet all the bills. It is often tough having to live off one income and yet the needs of young children in the formative years are great, and mothers being at home with their children is important. We should be supportive.

For women who want to re-enter the workforce we need an incentive. We need to have childcare assistance. The fees are rising very steeply, particularly in capital cities. The budget obviously seeks to address that problem and I am confident that young families in the Sutherland shire and the 700,000 families across the country affected by these initiatives are going to notice the helping hand this budget gives them in this area. It is a great plus for young families in Sutherland shire, where we are seeing many young families that want assistance that can make their family situation stronger. Because our economy is going well, because we have managed the economy well, it is appropriate we should share those benefits with the families of Australia.

In the area of vocational and technical education, this budget lays down concrete programs to address the skills shortage and encourage young people into trades. There is no doubt that Australia has quite a challenge in terms of the skills area right now. As Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration, which is looking at the manufacturing and the services sectors, I know that the No. 1 factor people are concerned about is getting skilled people. It is a great plus that our economy is going so strongly and that the unemployment level is down at 4.4 per cent but, on the other side of it, trying to find people with the training is difficult. Of course, the resources sector is consuming a lot of the skilled tradespeople that we have, leaving others not being able to find those resources.

The government is spending $549 million in this budget to assist first- and second-year apprentices in skills shortage trades by giving them each a $500 voucher towards their fees. Those apprentices who are under 30 will also receive a $1,000 tax-free cash payment designed as a wage top-up. Isn’t it appropriate that we should be assisting apprentices and providing incentives to them? It is not all about going to university and doing an arts degree—not that there is anything wrong with an arts degree, speaking as one who holds one. But we find young people who think, ‘If only I could be a film director and do all these wonderful things,’ when the real need at the moment is getting people in trades. It is often trades that can reward people much more; they can own their own business and the financial incentives are there. There is great demand and need for skilled people.

So a real incentive in the form of this $1,000 tax-free cash payment designed as a wage top-up is important for these young people who are often struggling. They see their mates who have gone down to work at one of the retail outlets, where they get the bigger pay straightaway, while they have reduced wages because they are apprentices. This provides a real incentive for them to stay in their apprenticeship and to recognise that the Australian government says: ‘What you are doing is really important. We want to encourage you in that role. We want to see that you are financially okay.’ I am sure this will be well received by our young people. This policy is a great incentive for young people who want to take up or who are already undertaking apprenticeships. It will help to address the shortage of skills in some trades and perhaps allow some young people to consider apprenticeships that they would not have otherwise considered. I commend this policy and hope it encourages young people in my electorate to consider a trade as a career and helps those apprentices who are already on their way to gaining a trade.

I believe that these five areas are the most significant gains for my electorate of Cook: aged care and medical research, assistance for carers, tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners, more incentives and programs for apprentices and apprenticeships and increased childcare support. This is the stuff of life in many ways in terms of my electorate and, I am sure, in yours, Mr Deputy Speaker. A lot of these people are out there working as carers. It is a tough role. For low- and middle-income earners with families, the incentives are there. There are incentives for apprentices and incentives to assist with childcare support. These are just a few of the many programs this budget has delivered, thanks to strong economic management by this government. They are the five that I would identify as the most important for the people of Cook.

We must also look at the bigger picture. The Treasurer of course has announced the largest spending in a generation on higher education. The establishment of a $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund doubles the total endowments and financial investments in tertiary education in Australia. We are doubling the money available to universities around the country for research infrastructure, capital works and a raft of other programs. This is a great day in terms of the opportunity for young people to see this great investment in the universities in this country. There has been a shortage of funds in the past and we all are aware of that, what with the great growth and proliferation of universities across Australia following the Dawkins report—and let us not debate that issue now; it happened. What we are seeing now is a reverse of that situation so that we have this $5 billion fund. When the fund is topped up we will have $1 billion a year to reinvest in universities for research facilities, for new buildings and for new programs, which will assist enormously. Of course, young people deserve that. One of the great money earners at the moment for the country—we have received $10 billion from it—is the educational sector in terms of trade. Many people are coming here from all around the world. This will assist our position because of the quality of the facilities that we are going to have in this country. So that is a great thing for our universities.

Numeracy and literacy are also important. A further $3.5 billion has been allocated to improve outcomes in schools to help meet numeracy and literacy benchmarks and to ensure better teaching. Of course, that is important. We want to ensure that we meet those benchmarks and we put the emphasis on numeracy and literacy. That is a key part of it. As part of this, the government is providing $102 million to establish summer schools for our teachers to undertake professional development for teaching literacy and numeracy, Australian history, maths, science and English. We will pay teachers who participate in their summer holidays, in addition to their existing income, a $5,000 bonus on completion of the course. We will also pay a bonus of $50,000 to schools that make significant improvements in literacy and numeracy standards. Some would ask why we have this $5,000 bonus for teachers who undertake that. If you are going to give up your school holidays and your time down at the beach and on holidays, it is worth an incentive. For those committed teachers who want to improve their skills, it is highly appropriate.

We are investing back into the country—in our young people, in the teachers—for the future. The most valuable area of all is teaching our young people, an incredible resource. It is very important for parents in my area who are eager for their children to get strong, tangible outcomes from their children’s learning. The quality of schools and teachers in Cook is first rate. I have been constantly impressed by that on my school visits in the past nine years. I am a strong supporter for ramping up teacher quality, and providing additional training is no reflection on the teachers in Sutherland shire. They are a very capable, committed lot of professionals. However, we must ensure that as young, new teachers come through the system we provide them with the capacity to meet excellent standards for the sake of their students.

In summary, I can say the Sutherland shire will reap great benefits from this budget. I have outlined the main areas where I think there is most significance, but there are a variety of significant initiatives for everybody—from education, defence and security spending to better health care and even transport infrastructure and funding for the film sector, which I think is important for showing our cultural life to the world. It would be impossible to cover everything but I believe I have highlighted some very noteworthy gains for the shire residents. I am very proud to have served with this government in terms of the achievements in the quality of life and living standards of Sutherland shire residents during this time I have represented them. Because of the strong economic management of this government we have been able to afford the significant benefits contained in this budget—benefits in terms of aged care, assistance to veterans, education, training and assistance to apprentices—and at the same time deliver tax cuts for working Australians in the last four successive budgets.

The budget is something of which we can all be proud. It is going to make this country even greater. Each successive budget adds its own part, but we have been very fortunate in this country to be blessed with incredible resources, skills and talents. There is no doubt that the success of the resources sector has fuelled much of the ability of the economy to afford these measures. But it also goes to the ability to undertake strong economic management by this government. Without providing unfortunate comparisons, that is the strength of this government. That is the basis on which we can provide these significant results for young people, for working families, for low-income earners, for carers, for veterans. I certainly commend this bill and this budget to the House.

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

I fear that this is part of a valedictory by my friend the previous speaker, the member for Cook. He made it very clear to us in his final remarks that he will not be here after the election. I have to say, as someone who has known him in my capacity as a member of one of the committees on which he serves, he will be a loss to the parliament. I hope whoever wins his seat is a Labor Party person but, in the event that it is not, whoever takes his place has a lot to live up to. I want to thank him for the work he is doing on those committees.

I do not want to thank him, however, for supporting all the things the government does because, clearly, they err and they err often. Although many of the announcements within this budget are welcome and long overdue, what we have seen is an election year budget, as we all know, which is full of cash and promises. We have seen the debate in the last couple of days about how the government is prepared to spend millions upon millions of taxpayers’ dollars seeking to advertise its wares to the Australian community. During question time today we heard about the market testing of correspondence from the Prime Minister to Australian citizens on the issue of water. I would have thought that if the Prime Minister was genuine he would not have to market test a letter to people. Clearly, the reason he is market testing it is that it is not about giving people information; it is about election prospects. Unfortunately, that is the way in which this particular budget has been framed.

I want to address my remarks to the contribution that this budget will make to the electors of Lingiari, those I am privileged to serve in this place. I have to make the observation that there is very little in this budget to provide for a better future for regional Australia—very little at all. In the context of my own electorate, I think we have been absolutely neglected, no doubt because we are not a marginal National Party or Liberal seat. And that is unfortunate but it is the way in which we know now that this government goes about its business.

As I said, some things in this budget are welcome. The tax cuts announced will offer welcome relief to working Australians. These are tax cuts which Labor proposed in 2005 and we are glad to see they have been delivered by the government, but I make this observation: I wonder how far these tax cuts will go. If you look at the impact upon ordinary Australians, Australian working families or single-parent families, I would say to you that, given the additional costs that people are confronting in their normal daily lives, these tax cuts will be rapidly eaten up. Today in Alice Springs the price of fuel is over $1.50 a litre. As you know, Alice Springs is an urban community and the further you move away from Alice Springs, the higher the costs of fuel. So of the many people in my electorate there will be some who are paying up to $2 a litre. In that context, you would say that the government’s tax cuts ain’t going to go far. For all the largesse that the government says it is delivering, there is clearly a real issue here about the cost of living that people are confronting. Fresh, nutritious food in many parts of rural and remote Australia is difficult to get at the best of times and people in remote areas can pay almost twice what the average food basket costs in a city like Darwin. For the people who live in these communities, whilst the tax cuts are welcome, they will not deliver a great deal.

For people who live in the bush—and this of course is an old National Party argument, which you would be conversant with, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott—it is a little hard to swallow that, while tremendous growth has been achieved throughout our economy as a result of the mining boom or indeed in my own case in the electorate of Lingiari with the expansion of live cattle exports, both of which have a tremendous impact on our export earnings and on the economy generally, it is the areas where this productive activity takes place that are the most obviously neglected when it comes to government expenditure. I make that observation, as I am sure you have done in the past, Mr Deputy Speaker, although you are not in a marginal National Party electorate. I do support the drought assistance measures for farmers in this budget. They are building on the previous federal Labor government’s national drought strategy and are of course necessary. It is worth noting however, given the state of rural industries across Australia, the deathly silence in the budget on the issue of climate change. It is the biggest issue really for the longer term which is confronting our community, yet it is something which this government fails to address in this budget.

This budget also fails to deliver any initiatives to empower regional communities. There is no new funding for area consultative committees. As you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, properly resourced, these bodies are important in developing our regional economies if used effectively. I will not go into the regional rorts, because I am sure—or I at least hope—that the government has now learnt its lesson and that we will see a great deal more transparency. But I do note that some of the heads of these area consultative committees around Australia have been replaced by government lackeys, so their independence of government can now be questioned. Of course, their very virtue in the past has been that they have been able to be of independent mind and put up proposals that are in the best interests of the community and not just in the best interests of members of the National Party or the Liberal Party. However, it is now very clear that, as a result of the changes that have been put in place, we are more likely to see sycophantic approaches made by some of these area consultative committees on the basis of the change in membership which has been orchestrated by the government.

Again in this budget there is nothing to increase broadband across the bush. People in the bush remain underresourced and underserviced when it comes to telecommunications. I am sure you are only too well aware of that, Mr Deputy Speaker. The government is not trying to match the broadband commitment of the Labor Party, which would see broadband rolled out to all of the Australian continent, to all of the people in Australia. For the two per cent who cannot receive or will not be able to receive the benefits of the fibre-to-the-node network which we are proposing, we will ensure that Australians living in regional and remote areas not covered by the fibre-to-the-node network will have a standard of services, dependent on available technologies, which as far as possible approximates that provided by the new network—the fibre-to-the-node network.

We have seen no equivalent commitment from the government, and I think that raises very serious questions. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that you, as a member of the National Party, will be raising in your party room why it is that regional Australia is neglected so much by this government. We note that there has been great discussion in your party room about AWB. I will not give you the benefit of what I think about that, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I will say to you that there are other important issues that are worth fighting for, and it is about time you started fighting.

We know that the lack of broadband is a serious impediment to local government, small businesses and individual citizens because it affects the way they do their business with suppliers, funding bodies and other government agencies or the way they address their own communications needs. The absence of effective broadband removes a vital lifeline, for example, for defence families who want to keep contact with loved ones who may be on hazardous overseas deployment. It stops families in remote areas from keeping in touch with families in the southern states, and that is a vital element of their wellbeing. Labor’s fibre-to-the-node network will bring vital infrastructure to regions and it will meet the needs of business, government and families, and it will do so because it will not be dictated by market forces. It will not be something that is fobbed off with statements that it is properly only the business of private enterprise to deliver these services. It is the government’s job to see that regional and remote areas have decent and equitable levels of service and infrastructure, and Labor will make sure that no region misses out.

The other issue which I think is of almost equal relevance in the context of my part of Australia, the part of Australia that I live in and represent, is the issue of roads. They are, of course, as you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker—coming from a country rural electorate—a crucial infrastructure, the lifelines of our country. This is particularly the case in Lingiari, where the bitumen is scarce and fallen bush roads between scattered remote communities and pastoral properties are the norm. In this budget, the money that has been provided is money which in the old days would have been provided for the national highway network—money for the Victoria River bridge on the Victoria Highway; $10 million for upgrading the Outback Way; and $4 million for widening and fixing up bits of the Stuart, Victoria and Barkly highways.

In the wake of the budget, we have found out through the Senate estimates process that Lingiari will get an additional $1.7 million from the AusLink Strategic Regional Program out of the $250 million that the government needs to spend by the end of the financial year. We will get $700,000 for all-weather access to Batchelor and $1 million for local roads around Gunbalanya. This money is welcome, but I would have to say that it is not strategic, and I am concerned that it does not address the priorities that would otherwise have been set in consultation with the Northern Territory government and other sectors of the economy. I know it does not address, for example, the needs of the pastoral sector. We had members of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association in this parliament only yesterday talking with the member for Batman, Martin Ferguson, and me about their transport and road infrastructure needs. This government can spend $1.7 billion in advertising—seven times more than the entire AusLink Strategic Regional Program—but it cannot supply decent roads to isolated pastoral properties and remote communities in the north while it pork-barrels its mates in marginal seats. I think that is a national scandal, and it shows what the priorities of this government really are. There is a backlog that is piling up year by year, budget after budget.

Housing is another area. I have spoken in this place on many occasions about Indigenous housing—particularly about overcrowding, affordability, dwelling conditions, homelessness and connection to services. On figures published in the Northern Territory government paper titled National issues on Indigenous housing 2004-05 and beyond, rates of Indigenous homelessness and overcrowding in the Northern Territory are three times the national average. Unmet housing needs in the Northern Territory are estimated to be about $850 million, while it is $2 billion nationally. To this end, $294 million in additional Indigenous housing funding is a positive step, but it is clear that the government does not appreciate the immensity of the problem. According to the Ministerial Council for Aboriginal and Torres Islander Affairs, MCATSIA, Aboriginal communities will be short 18,000 houses by 2009. The amount provided in the budget does not go anywhere near meeting the shortfall. From the additional money provided, we can expect that around 700 extra houses will be able to be built.

The government has taken the emphasis away from community based housing. We have seen the responsible minister parading around Northern Australia, making promises about housing in exchange for people giving up their title to land and providing leases back to the Northern Territory government. The government has moved to dismantle CHIP and replace it with the Australian Remote Indigenous Housing Accommodation Program, which looks like little more than rebranding except for the fact that it now includes a homeownership scheme. Homeownership is regarded as a right by all Australians, and it is now being seen as something which Indigenous Australians should take up. They have had that opportunity previously, and I have to tell you that it has not been taken up. It may well be, but it has not been.

The minister responsible made much of four new houses built at Wadeye at Wadapuli, at the outstation. We now know that the real cost of building these houses is somewhere around $700,000 to $800,000. In this particular instance, the government offered the people who were living in these houses the opportunity to buy them after renting them for two years and meeting certain obligations set down by the government. The obligations were that their kids had to go to school, they had to keep the place clean and they had to pay their rent. Then they would be given the opportunity to purchase the house at the end of the two years at a concessional rate. There is no way on God’s earth that, if the true cost of these homes were to be retrieved from the purchasers, Aboriginal people living in that community would be able to afford to buy any of these houses. That is the simple fact of it.

What we need to know is what proportion of the cost of these houses the Commonwealth is prepared to write off before it offers a price to these people to purchase these dwellings, and what will they do into the future in similar sets of circumstances where they so grossly underestimate the cost of provision of infrastructure such as in this particular instance for these houses?

There is much that needs to be done, but the simplistic approach adopted by this government, which is seeking to impose its will upon people, has not, in my view, been the best approach. And whilst I believe that the minister responsible, Mr Brough, has good intentions, I do not believe he has any understanding of the way he should properly be dealing with Indigenous Australians. Imposing artificial time lines on negotiations and imposing conditions that they will find extremely difficult to meet or that they will be unwilling to meet is not the way ahead. The way ahead is to sit down and negotiate outcomes and sets of arrangements which all people can live by, while at the same time giving people the opportunity to debate with government their own priorities. We need far more additional money for Indigenous housing and other infrastructure.

The other area that I want to address briefly is the question of health. In this budget, $37.4 million was provided for Indigenous health initiatives. Similarly, this goes nowhere near addressing the inequity in health outcomes for Indigenous Australians. It is well short of the $460 million that the AMA says is needed for Indigenous primary health care. It is also well short of what the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, NACCHO, estimates is required to achieve funding equity. NACCHO has called for an increase of between $350 million and $500 million per annum. So what the government has delivered is less than 10 per cent of what is needed and it is simply not good enough. It is not my intention now to repeat all the indices of Indigenous health.

One final area that I want to address, but time has run out, is education. In my view this budget goes nowhere near addressing the education needs of people who live in rural and remote Australia, particularly the people of my electorate of Lingiari. (Time expired)

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The 2007-08 budget is reflective of the Howard government’s strong economic management over the past decade. Since the coalition came into government in 1996, interest rates have reduced, inflation has halved and unemployment has reached a 30-year low. It is only because this government has made the tough decisions over the last 11 years and paid back all Labor’s debt that we are able to lock in our current prosperity, keep the nation secure and address the challenges of the future.

Labor’s economic credibility remains under a cloud following the opposition leader’s claims that he would fund all Labor’s promises from an alleged $3 billion in savings that does not even exist. Labor similarly has no credibility on economic management and no plan to manage their $234 million budget. On the other hand, the coalition’s hard work and fiscal discipline has resulted in a budget that is providing a helping hand across the board. There is extra assistance for working families and low-income earners in Dobell, putting more money back into their pockets. New personal tax cuts worth $31.5 billion reward hard work and savings. Over 80 per cent of taxpayers will be paying a top marginal tax rate of 30 per cent or less. This builds on the $36.7 billion personal income tax cuts provided in the last budget.

Central Coast families who rely on the government’s childcare payments will be substantially better off. From 1 July 2007, rates of childcare benefit will be increased by 10 per cent on top of indexation. This means families will get to put more of their earnings towards other important household expenses. In combination with the changes to taxation, these reforms will significantly improve work incentives for mothers. In addition, the government will bring forward payment of the childcare tax rebate of up to $4,200 each year per child. This is great news for Central Coast families. This year they will receive two years of rebate, which would mean a total of up to $8,400 per child, depending on circumstances.

This budget also represents a commitment to securing retirement incomes. There is a one-off doubling of the superannuation co-contribution for eligible contributions. This means an eligible person who contributes $1,000 will receive a co-contribution of $3,000 from the government for that year, greatly encouraging and supporting residents of Dobell in securing their future. The government’s simplified superannuation reforms will take effect from 1 July 2007. I know many self-funded retirees in Dobell will be pleased to be exempt from paying tax on the benefits they receive from a taxed fund. Senior Australians in Dobell will also benefit from the one-off seniors payment bonus of $500 if they are eligible for either the utilities allowance or the seniors concessional allowance as at 8 May 2007.

There is also an increase in care provisions for veterans. Veterans and war widows will continue to receive high-quality in-home respite care services through the announcement of $10.4 million for veterans home care service providers. They will also benefit through programs aimed at helping them to better manage their medications, as well as providing them with additional assistance and support upon being discharged from hospital.

This budget also recognises carers. We owe a great deal of gratitude to our carers, and the extension of the carers bonus to recipients of the carer payment and carer allowance, offering them $1,000 and $600 respectively, is great news. Dobell’s 2,980 carers clearly deserve this important extra recognition.

The budget also represents a huge investment in road and water infrastructure, dental health services and education. Wyong council will receive $250 million in funding under the AusLink Strategic Regional Program. Warnervale Link Road, Dickson Road and Brush Road will receive funding under this allocation. The Warnervale Link Road will play a vital role in supporting the new developments at Warnervale and will better connect the Wyong and Warnervale areas, improving travel times between these suburbs. An allocation of $3 million is on top of the $2.5 million that I secured for this road in 2004. This project has received my strong support because it will relieve the traffic burden on local roads, making the area safer for families and the elderly. Wyong Shire Council will also receive $800,000 for the Dickson Road upgrade to realign, widen and provide an initial seal of an 800-metre gravel road section of Dickson Road in Jilliby. This will improve safety along a section where a number of crashes have occurred.

An amount of $675,000 was announced to construct the remaining 900-metre gravel section of Brush Road, linking Ourimbah to Tumbi Umbi. This funding is important because the New South Wales Labor government has been slow to upgrade the Pacific Highway, which has resulted in significant traffic congestion. This announcement will provide a safe and viable alternative route to the Pacific Highway and the Ourimbah interchange for residents and local industry.

Our large commuter population on the Central Coast will also be a big winner, with the announcement of an additional $36 million in 2007-08 to continue widening the F3 freeway to six lanes between Cowan and Mount Colah. This section of the F3 operates at or near capacity for up to five hours each day and is stretched further on weekends and holidays. That is why I am pleased that construction is underway. It is expected that the extra lanes will be in use by mid-2008.

On the health front, I am continually fighting for improved access to health services on the Central Coast. In fact, the bulk-billing rate in my electorate has increased from 71.8 per cent in 2005 to 76.2 per cent in 2006. This demonstrates the continued commitment of the Howard government to increase access to high-quality, affordable health care, which is helping local families and our seniors to save money on their health bills.

The budget will expand dental care for patients with chronic and complex conditions, as people with chronic conditions and complex care needs have very poor oral health, which can adversely affect their medical condition or their general health. This measure will make it easier for these people to access dental services in the private sector when they need treatment or to receive preventive care. This will be particularly helpful to those who would otherwise have to wait for services. The Commonwealth government is providing funding of $376 million over four years.

The increased focus on education in this year’s budget is also good news for my electorate and reflects the commitment of the Australian government to ensure the quality of education and teaching for our children.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the honourable member prepared to give way?

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I am not. The highlight of the education spending was the establishment of a new Higher Education Endowment Fund with the initial investment of $5 billion funded from the 2006-07 budget surplus. This announcement will boost capital infrastructure in our universities. It will allow our universities to be more flexible and responsive to the needs of students, employers and the economy. Importantly, it will ensure that any eligible student who can benefit from a university education will have access to a place.

Recently I visited our local Ourimbah campus of the University of Newcastle to announce an additional $2 million of funding for new facilities under the Capital Development Pool of 2009. The Ourimbah campus is a fantastic initiative in this and it contains a university, TAFE, community college and local businesses all on the one site. It is truly a model for universities across the country. The campus is providing a future for many of the Central Coast’s young people; therefore, it is vital that the Australian government supports them. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the Ourimbah campus, Stephen Crump, was ecstatic about the creation of the Higher Education Endowment Fund. It will assist universities, including our local Ourimbah campus, in the provision of new and improved facilities to give our young people a head start in their futures. Also, $475 million over four years for the national literacy and numeracy vouchers program is a welcome initiative. This will provide direct assistance to parents of students who have not achieved minimum standards in reading, writing and mathematics in years 3, 5, 7 and 9; they will get extra help for their children.

The budget also includes provision to improve the quality of teaching in our schools. Last week I participated in Public Education Week in my electorate. I attended the Tuggerah Lakes Learning Community Values Forum, which involved 10 local schools. I must say that it was great to see firsthand the values that these school communities aspire to, and I congratulate the teachers on a job well done. I know that many parents in Dobell have also welcomed additional funding under the Investing in Our Schools Program, which provides money directly to school communities for important projects identified by the schools. Sixty grants have already been made under the Investing in Our Schools Program to the 52 schools in my electorate, totalling $7.3 million, for practical projects like air conditioning, new carpeting and computer equipment. I am also delighted that $159.9 million over two years has been allocated in this budget to extend the highly successful initiative. In contrast, in his budget reply speech, the opposition leader failed to mention any new funding or initiatives for our universities or for higher standards or quality in our schools. In fact, there is no commitment to schools, literacy and numeracy or universities.

This budget also offers support to apprentices and small businesses. Funding of $58.5 million will enable apprentices to complete their training sooner. This funding will contribute to the costs of negotiating new flexible wages structures as well as to the redevelopment of training materials to support the accelerated training. This program is a fantastic boost for the young apprentices in Dobell and will allow them to complete their training more quickly in an effective culmination of on- and off-job training. The introduction of a new tax exempt payment of $1,000 available to eligible first- and second-year apprentices in trades where there is a skills shortage is a great incentive for young people to take up an apprenticeship. The Howard government is committed to encouraging our youth to gain a technical education, helping to ensure their future. Unfortunately, for many of our young people on the Central Coast, their future is not a priority for our Labor state government, because the building of the Australian technical college on the Central Coast is not expected to begin until next year. It should have been opened and teaching our youth in January this year. Labor’s copycat proposal is for a one-off funding of $1 million per school to fund skills centres in our schools and will do nothing to raise the status of technical training. We need to get young people to see technical education as more than a high school elective.

The announcement of tax cuts for small businesses and the reduction in compliance costs aims to reduce paperwork and red tape for small businesses. This will enable them to boost productivity and further their business by allowing them to employ more workers. As a previous small business owner myself, I enjoy meeting and talking to small business owners in my electorate. Electricians, plumbers, mechanics and builders have all said that they support the continued flexibility the Howard government is offering them to employ more staff and efficiently run their business.

A final budget measure I would like to mention is water. Ensuring a sustainable water supply for the Central Coast is one of the biggest issues facing our region and our country. This budget includes an extra $201 million over six years to support the installation of water tanks and other water-saving devices by schools and community groups. There are 31 local community groups and schools in Dobell electorate that have already shared in $1.1 million worth of the government’s community water grants, and I look forward to securing even more funding for the Central Coast.

Locally, I have been working for some time with the councils to find a solution for the Central Coast water crisis. The Australian government contributed $6.6 million to the Hunter water pipeline, which is increasing our daily water supply by about 25 megalitres. We are being proactive in working with the Central Coast. Of course, this pipeline is only needed when our dams are not full. Currently, water is actually going back through that link because the so-called missing link between the Mardi and Mangrove Creek dams has not yet been constructed. A bipartisan approach to such a serious issue was really important but, unfortunately, local and state Labor members could not even be bothered to show up to an urgent meeting that I called on the issue last week. As a result of the meeting, my colleague the member for Robertson and I will lead a delegation to the federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr Malcolm Turnbull, in the near future, with both Gosford and Wyong councils involved.

I welcome any change in state Labor’s policy to secure Central Coast water supply and I take this opportunity to call on the New South Wales Labor state government to get on board with the interests of the Central Coast residents and to realise that their proposal for the Tillegra dam, which has been promoted since 50 years ago, may not even happen for 15 years, if at all. I think this issue in particular highlights the fact that the Howard government is the only government that is in tune with the needs of the Australian community. The opposition leader’s only response to our current water crisis was to give $250 million over four years to address leaks in 175,000 kilometres of urban water pipelines. On the other hand, the Howard government is investing billions of dollars to ensure our water security nationally. This year’s budget further demonstrates the coalition government’s commitment to ensuring a secure future for all Australians. I will continue to work with the Central Coast community over the coming months to secure our future locally.

On the issue of dental health, we also provided funding to the Ourimbah campus on the Central Coast to provide 90 places for oral health courses, and I was very pleased to call in and see this in operation last week. Here we have oral health practitioners being trained to a university degree level, and they are now providing oral health services to local people, pensioners and the general public. This has been a great initiative, and a very successful one at that. We are providing training to people from 18 to 50 years of age; they are doing a wonderful job. On the subject of technical colleges, we have the New South Wales state government refusing to give an education licence to the Australian manufacturers who are actually providing the Australian technical college.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene. I want to give the member for Dobell another opportunity to see if he wants to answer a question about dental.

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

Will the member take a question?

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I will not. I am talking about technical education. I have moved off dental; we have done a great job lately on oral health. During the state election we had the Premier of New South Wales announcing that they are going to put technical colleges in Gosford and Wyong. This was a haphazard thing because we have seen no explanation anywhere of what these technical colleges are going to be and how they are going to work. It is just another furphy because when I was going to school we used to have state government run technical colleges around the Sydney suburbs and it was the Labor government that closed these down so that people could walk away from technical education. All of their emphasis was on university degrees. I am very proud to say that I did my electrical engineering training at TAFE, and some of the things that I have done and constructed and designed over my years were things that people—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene. I have a question I would like to ask the member for Dobell on TAFE colleges.

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

Is the member for Dobell willing to take the question?

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will.

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

My question is: if he is such a strong supporter of the TAFE colleges in New South Wales, will he lobby the Prime Minister and the Howard government to restore the funding to TAFE colleges to the level it was prior to 1996, when they ripped money out of the TAFE system?

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the subject of TAFE colleges, I am interested in the colleges in the area of Dobell and, from what I can see, it would be the same situation as we see in public education, where the Howard government has been putting increasing money into public education. Indeed, the capital funding that I have been able to supply to public schools on the Central Coast is far in excess of what has been provided in the past. I commend this bill to the House.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am disappointed that the member for Dobell was not prepared to take a question on dental care because it is one of the topics that I intend to speak on in some detail today in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and related bills. In his electorate in particular, there are large numbers of elderly people stuck on waiting lists. The government say that is entirely the responsibility of the state government instead of saying: ‘We will help deal with this national crisis. We will roll up our sleeves and get involved and help clear the waiting lists and help people in the Dobell electorate who have been waiting for many months and sometimes years for dentures to get access to this program that the government has announced’—and I will go through this in some detail. But the government will do nothing to help those people. There will be a small targeted number of people who will—

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

Mrs May interjecting

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am quite happy for the member for McPherson to hear why I think the state governments have a role to play. I am quite happy to explain why I think the Commonwealth also has a role to play. My point is that this budget is not using the Commonwealth money in a smart way at all. The Commonwealth spent 11 years denying that they had any responsibility for dental care and we are pleased that the government has finally done a backflip and decided to put some money into dental care. But if you have a spare $370 million, why on earth would you put it into a program which has, for the last three years, been failing? Why would you not look at something that was actually going to help fix the range of problems around the country?

This program deals with giving dental treatment to people who have chronic diseases if their chronic disease will be made worse by their dental condition. So it applies to a very restricted group of people. It will be very welcome for the people who qualify. But what we have found is that in the last three years, when the government thought this program would spend $15 million, it has only been able to spend $1.6 million. Perhaps the member for McPherson will be able to do the sums. If it is $1.6 million over three years over 150 electorates, there cannot in her electorate be more than a handful of people who have benefited. And to think that this scheme with all the same restrictions and problems is suddenly going to be able to deliver massive improvements in dental care across the population is just ludicrous. I will go through in detail why we believe this is a misuse of the money. As I say, we welcome the Commonwealth finally giving in on their outdated view that they have no role to play in dental care, but why on earth could they not spend it in a more sensible way that would actually help people in our communities?

I have been travelling around the country in the last couple of months and dental care has been raised with me almost everywhere I have been. I have been in Adelaide, north Tasmania, Brisbane, Petrie and Longman. I have been on radio in Cairns, Bathurst and everywhere else, and people desperately want to talk about dental care. I agree with the member for McPherson that the states have some responsibility. I do not pretend at all that they do not. But in the last period of time, despite the minister trying to pretend that the states have taken money out, they have actually massively reinvested in this area. But to be frank, on their own, they cannot fix this problem. So if we have Commonwealth money that the Howard government is at last prepared to put in, why wouldn’t we actually put it in to help people who have been waiting for years to get access to care or to help people on the waiting lists to get a preventative check-up? Quite rightly, the people who have emergency needs or some particular crisis, or who are in pain, get dealt with first and the people who are trying to do the right thing to look after their teeth and get their regular check-up can never be seen in public dental clinics, which are dealing with ongoing crises.

There is a sensible role for the Commonwealth to play. We just do not think that they have picked the right way to do it. Unfortunately, I think it is typical of Mr Abbott. As we all know, he got put into health as a political fixer. He got put in to fix and close down political debate that was causing the government some grief. He has been fine as a fixer in political terms. What he has not been good at doing is actually fixing the problems that the community needs fixed. So the problems in the health system and the difficulties for the community are not the government’s concern. What is actually causing the government grief is their concern, and the dental program they have announced in the budget highlights this perfectly. It is about closing down a political campaign if they can, not about actually making some lasting change.

I mentioned some of the seats I have been travelling through because I think the government would be aware that this is a very politically potent issue for them—to have people resorting to using pliers to pull out their teeth and to have kids’ teeth getting worse. We used to be at the top of the international tables but we are starting to drop. We do not want that to happen. We want to be able to make sure that in a first-world country we can have first-world health care, and that includes first-world dental care.

I was not going to start on the dental care issue, but the member for Dobell provoked me, in particular knowing how big an issue it is in his electorate. I know that as a local member he will be very concerned that when those thousands of people on the waiting lists in Dobell—who no doubt will knock on his door and say: ‘Good. What does this mean? Will I now be able to access dental care?’—find they cannot get access to dental care, they are going to be absolutely furious. There will be a really heavily fought campaign in that electorate on this very issue. I think it is a shame that the member has not appreciated what sort of ground he is going to be fighting on. Had he been prepared to take a question from me on this, he might have explained why he is comfortable with the view that this will deal with his electorate’s concerns. I am not at all confident that that is the case.

In the health budget in particular, we have seen some welcome measures. We do not pretend for a moment that there are not some welcome initiatives in the health portfolio. We have made announcements and given our support to a range of those. By and large, the health budget has been what you could not describe as anything other than a sort of grab bag of initiatives—bits and bobs of programs, individually useful but with no really consistent message or theme, with no direction that the government is particularly trying to pursue. I think there are around 60 different initiatives in this package but there is little strategic planning or focus in any of them.

I have spent quite a lot of my time, since becoming the shadow minister in the last six months, arguing for a pressing need in the health portfolio for us to have a much more strategic approach to how we are going to spend our money in health. We believe that there is a need to refocus some serious attention on chronic disease and preventible disease—particularly prevention, not just treatment of these conditions—but it has been a message that the government has been determined to ignore. I think that has already been to the detriment of all Australians but it could get much worse if we do not actually see the government refocus its attention.

Having pursued this issue for the period that I have been the shadow minister, initially the minister was quite dismissive of these concerns, quite patronising really, thinking that we can just go off and play around on this issue of prevention without fully appreciating how serious a health issue this is for us. But I know that many of the stakeholders have been very positive about this approach, because they see a clear growing burden which, if we do not tackle, our health system will not be able to cope with. They have obviously passed that message to the minister. We did see in the budget that the minister had tied together with a big bow a range of different initiatives and said, ‘This is the amount of money we are going to spend on chronic disease.’ Unfortunately, the biggest chunk of that is on the dental package, which I have already touched on in more detail, where we know money is going into a program which has already been shown to fail. I do not think you can call the dental program available to people with chronic disease as successful, having only been able to spend $1.5 million over the last three years. To put that sum of money into it and call this part of a chronic disease program I think is overstating it a little bit.

There were also a number of initiatives in there that dealt with clinical changes—for example, specialists being able to consult for longer periods. They are welcome. No doubt they will be helpful for people who have chronic disease and need a longer consultation to deal with the way they should handle it. There was only just over $236 million in actual new money aimed at preventing chronic illness. While we welcome these initiatives to help Australians avoid preventable chronic illnesses, the funding committed does fall far short of what is desperately required.

Take, for example, the diabetes package. As part of the COAG initiative announced in April, the Commonwealth government has already announced that it would provide around $100 million over four years as its contribution to a cost-share initiative with state and territory governments to address type 2 diabetes and that money was found in the budget. When you think that $100 million sounds like quite a lot of money over four years, and when you are dealing with the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in our community, which has doubled since 1996—doubled in the life of the Howard government—really this is not a large amount of money per person. In 2001, about one million Australians had type 2 diabetes and the projections are that by 2031 this figure will be over three million people.

I think everyone in this House knows that without adequate management a person with type 2 diabetes is two to five times more likely than other people in the general population to have a heart attack or stroke. Access Economics has estimated that in 2005 the net cost of lost wellbeing due to type 2 diabetes was $11.6 billion, and of course with the expected growth that cost is going to balloon. So when you think about the scope and scale of the problem and how much diabetes costs the community—and not just individuals who deal with the personal cost but also the community in lost productivity—and the fact that the government has pledged simply $103 million over four years, it does put into perspective whether this is a major investment or not.

I am also particularly worried that the diabetes package that the community will be able to participate in requires a $50 copayment. We know that the highest incidence of diabetes occurs in our Indigenous communities and in our communities in lower socioeconomic areas. It is a disease where the impact burden is not evenly distributed across the community. I am concerned that a $50 copayment particularly in our Indigenous communities may well mean that the people who actually need these programs most will not be able to afford to participate. I would like the government to consider whether they will look at some sort of waiver system for people who clearly need to be part of this program but may not be able to afford that payment. I am sure the government, or the minister if he were here, would say, ‘Look, we want to give people some incentive to make sure they keep participating in the program.’ We must be aware that it can be a disincentive for people to pay that amount of money. If your cost of living is already under pressure because of a whole range of other things, something that looks like an optional expenditure, even though it might fundamentally change your health, might be something that people are not able to pay and I think we need to look at a way to support our Indigenous community particularly to make sure that they have access to these programs.

We are concerned about the approach the government has taken on a number of other issues. For example, in tackling obesity, which we know is a growing problem in our community, particularly childhood obesity, I am extremely concerned that the government has decided to fund the CSIRO to develop a diet book for children. I think it is absolutely outrageous that we would suggest introducing children to dieting. I think it is perfectly acceptable to want to talk about nutrition and healthy eating and I think the CSIRO is a great organisation able to do that. I have no problem with that. In fact, it is actually a rip-off of an idea that Labor had already committed to. Labor is developing a Healthy Habits for Life guide for parents to be able to use with their children promoting healthy food, healthy exercise and healthy lifestyles.

But should we introduce children to dieting when we already know that so much damage is done to very young children through eating disorders? We have very young children now with eating disorders. We have girls being bombarded with expectations of what their body image should be. We have increasing numbers of young men who have eating disorders. Do we really need to get children interested in fad dieting or even the concept of doing something for a short time and then getting back off it rather than developing habits they can live with for life? It may be just a naming issue but in this area the message is important and, if we send our children a message that they need to be worried about fad dieting, we are setting them up for more problems in the future rather than tackling what is a serious issue within the community. I have written to the minister to encourage him to make sure that this book will not be called a ‘diet book’ and will not be marketed as such. I hope that some members on the other side will raise this as well. I think it is a good initiative that could otherwise be spoilt simply because someone has not thought through clearly enough the way it should be marketed to children.

I would also like now to focus on the dental program. I have covered some of the issues and obviously many people on our side of the House have spoken about the program over the past years. The history is clear. The Howard government closed down the Commonwealth dental program when it was elected in 1996. It took about $100 million out of the public dental sector. We know that the waiting lists have skyrocketed since that time and there are now around 650,000 Australians on those waiting lists. The minister and the Prime Minister have said time and time again that they are not going to spend any money on dental care because it is the responsibility of the states, that they do not care if it is a community problem, that they are just not going to fix it. Despite this, we welcome their decision to play a role. But they have decided to play such a small role that there are going to be many people in the community disappointed that there is no solution to their problem. I think the government has done this to make it look like it is  doing something rather than seriously tackling this problem.

I want to go particularly to some of the concerns that we have about the package, because there are a number of unanswered questions. People in this House are no doubt aware that the policy is an extension of the MedicarePlus, or ‘Strengthening Medicare’, package for people who are being treated under a multidisciplinary care plan and who have an oral health problem which is significantly exacerbating their chronic medical condition. We know that under this package there have already been problems for people taking it up. We know, for example, that there is a fairly complex referral process, almost like a statutory declaration that doctors have to fill in, in order for their patients to access the dentist. We know that to meet that standard your chronic condition, such as heart disease, diabetes or malignancy of the head or neck, must be combined with poor oral health or a dental condition which will exacerbate that chronic and complex disease.

Even when you had gone through those hoops of the old program, all you could claim were three visits to the dentist; I think it was around $75 or $77 a visit—a maximum of $220 per year of program treatment. Way back in 2003, an hourly visit to the dentist cost $295. That was the average figure for visiting the dentist. So most people, even when they had gone through the hoops and qualified, were not able to get the treatment they needed under this program.

The government have increased significantly the amount of money that people will be able to claim if they get through all those hoops. But what they do not appear to have fixed in any way is the referral from the doctor that is still required and the strict qualifications that are required before you will be able to be part of this program, and they still have not dealt with the fact that large copayments will have to be paid by people who qualify for this system. We know that some of the people who will qualify will be the most vulnerable in the community. They have the least resources available to them and will be unable to pay what are often quite extensive copayments required to access this service. Mr Deputy Speaker, you would be surprised to know the amounts of some of the out-of-pocket expenses under the existing scheme—the copayments were almost $700. How people are expected to be able to meet that sort of payment I do not know, and the government have not been able to answer how this program is going to fix that.

A question that is also unanswered is: how is a program that has helped under 6½ thousand people going to make any impact on those massive waiting lists? The Commonwealth should not, of course, take over responsibility for those waiting lists, but they should help. We should help fix that problem.

The Australian Dental Association has criticised the program and has said that it will continue to fail to address the problems that those with chronic disease have unless prosthetic appliances like dentures are included. We do not even know the simple detail of whether dentures are going to be available under this program that the government has announced. If you meet all the qualifications, if the doctor does the referral and if you can make the copayment—if you can get through all those hoops and you need dentures—are you going to get anything from the government? We still do not know the answer to that.

It is critical, and I think that there will be many people in the electorates of government members who are going to start knocking down their doors when they find out that these sorts of things are not going to qualify or that they are going to have to make large copayments to get access to them. People will feel that a hoax has been played on them. There is a significant amount of money provided and we welcome that contribution, but it could have done so much more. Labor will look at how it can be redirected towards a dental care program that will really benefit working families.

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

It will have to involve the states.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will involve cooperation with the states, which the government has not been interested in committing to. (Time expired)

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to speak to the 2007-08 federal budget. I would say that all members of the government would be very pleased with this government’s track record when it comes to the economic management of Australia. Each of us knows that it is only through the careful economic planning and the responsible economic decisions taken by the Treasurer, Peter Costello, and the Prime Minister, John Howard, that Australians have been able to enjoy 15 years of continuous economic growth. The Economist magazine and the OECD refer to Australia as the miracle economy. For residents in my electorate of Moncrieff and, more broadly, the city of the Gold Coast, the economic management that Australia has enjoyed and the discipline and hard work of this government will certainly reap dividends for years to come—in a similar way to the manner in which it has reaped dividends over the past 12 or so years.

When you look at the track record of this government, you see that there have been some key achievements that have locked in place the gains achieved in the last 12 years and set this nation up to invest in the future. First and foremost among them would be the fact that the Treasurer has been able, through prudent and disciplined financial management, to repay the $96 billion of debt left by the Australian Labor Party. Make no mistake: the full repayment of this $96 billion of Labor Party debt is having a significant beneficial impact on all Australians but especially those in my electorate of Moncrieff. This government’s careful economic planning means that Australians are enjoying an $8½ billion saving on interest payments that the Australian Labor Party would have had us paying. We now have an extra $8½ billion each and every year to invest in schools, roads, hospitals and the defence of our nation. That is money that the Australian Labor Party would be paying offshore, money that Australians would have to pay income tax for, money that Australians would be required to pay in order to service that $96 billion of Labor Party debt. Because we have paid off that $96 billion, the coalition is now able to really invest in the future of our country.

That is only one significant achievement—there are many. One of the many that I am very pleased about is the fact that, over the past 12 years, Peter Costello as Treasurer of our nation has been able to deliver us 10 surpluses. That stands in stark contrast to the Australian Labor Party. In the final year of the Labor government, the then leader of the government and the finance minister left a $10 billion budget deficit for this government to inherit. So not only was there a $96 billion debt, but the budget deficit in the final year the Labor Party were last in government was $10 billion—not a $10 billion surplus, as this government provided in 2007-08, but a $10 billion deficit. The contrast could not be more stark. Our track record speaks for itself.

In addition, this government has been willing to make the hard decisions to ensure that the economic sunshine we now enjoy is able to be enjoyed in the future. For example, Australia now has the lowest unemployment rate for 32 years—something that could never have been achieved by the Australian Labor Party. Under this coalition government, we have the lowest unemployment rate in 32 years. The Australian Labor Party’s track record was to put one million Australians on the unemployment scrap heap. That is the record of the Australian Labor Party, which stands in direct and stark contrast to the track record of the Howard government.

I have been very pleased to be part of a government that has delivered tax cuts to all Australians. Since coming to power, we have delivered hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax cuts. I was delighted that in the 2007-08 budget the Howard-Costello government once again delivered a further $31 billion worth of tax cuts. This makes a real difference to the lives of ordinary Australians. These tax cuts that the Howard-Costello government has delivered—which I have been proud to support—are tax cuts that the Australian Labor Party voted against.

I am very pleased to be part of a government which has not only put Australia in a strong economic position but also been able to repay the Australian people by ensuring that we have record investment in roads, record investment in hospitals, record investment in education and, at the same time, returning a revenue windfall to the Australian people in significant and meaningful tax relief. Gold Coast residents can be pleased that they have extra money in their pockets, and that extra money comes about because this government is providing tax relief through prudent economic management.

I would also like to touch upon the fact that the Gold Coast, in particular, stands to benefit from a number of key reforms and key spending initiatives that were announced in the budget. It is Australia’s sixth largest city and fastest growing region. And I acknowledge that the Gold Coast is well represented by a team of four federal Liberal MPs who are always willing to bat for the people of the Gold Coast. I stand together with the member for McPherson, who sits at the table with me this evening, the member for Fadden and the member for Forde. But, as Australia’s sixth largest and fastest-growing city, the Gold Coast has a number of unique challenges. In broad terms, these challenges fall under the headings of roads, tourism—our key industry—water needs, university education for a rapidly expanding industry on the Gold Coast, skills and training initiatives for young Gold Coasters and, finally, the film and TV industry—again, another key industry in our city. On each of these issues, this federal budget makes significant strides forward. I reinforce that these strides are achievable only because of the disciplined economic management of the government.

When it comes to roads, the government announced an additional $22.3 billion under AusLink mark 2. This is a record investment in roads and rail transport by the Australian government. It represents a 45 per cent increase on the previous $15 billion or so that the Howard government invested in road and rail transport. I say to all Gold Coasters, especially those who live in Moncrieff: the fact that this government has been able to manage the economy in such a way that we can provide record funding for roads pays real dividends. For example, last year the Gold Coast City Council enjoyed a doubling of its road funding from the Howard government. The Queensland government has enjoyed a 119 per cent increase in road funding, thanks to the Howard government. That is based on the initial announcement of AusLink. I can only speculate on what sorts of dividends will flow to Gold Coasters as a result of the 45 per cent increase to $22.3 billion that will come under AusLink mark 2.

I reinforce to Gold Coasters that, when it comes to road funding, they should contrast and compare the performance of the Howard government to the performance of the Beattie Labor government. What they know in their hearts and from the information we provide them is that the contrast could not be more stark. At a federal level they are seeing record investment in roads, record support for the Gold Coast City Council and record funding flowing to the Queensland government, all of which is enabling more construction, enabling better maintenance and improving local roads at a great rate. It is a shame that the Queensland government does not use some of this record funding in a positive way to improve the amenity of our roads on the Gold Coast and to improve the livelihood of local Gold Coasters. Unfortunately, the federal government writes the cheques, but we require the state government to cash the cheque and to get into action. I say to Peter Beattie and the Australian Labor Party: it is time that you got into action by improving more roads on the Gold Coast. You have record funding; now it is time to make the rubber hit the road, so to speak.

With respect to our most important industry of tourism, the Howard government, under the former Minister for Small Business and Tourism, the Hon. Joe Hockey, announced a record funding allocation of some $800 million under the tourism white paper. Once again, in the 2007-08 budget the Howard government delivered in spades. The current Minister for Small Business and Tourism, the Hon. Fran Bailey, made the announcement that there would be a substantial increase—tens of millions of dollars—for Tourism Australia over the next four years. This builds on the record funding, as was announced previously in the white paper, that the tourism industry enjoyed. So Gold Coast tour operators can be buoyed by the fact that this government puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to supporting the tourism industry.

Again, it stands in stark contrast to the track record of the Australian Labor Party, because its track record on tourism funding is very clear. In New South Wales the Australian Labor Party cut funding. The Howard government is increasing funding to the tourism industry, providing more opportunity for Australia to market itself abroad and providing more incentives for international tourists to come and visit Australia and to spend their money. At the very time when the Howard government has been doing more than any other national government has done, the Australian Labor Party turned its back on tourism and walked away from the table. Sandra Nori, the previous New South Wales tourism minister, stands condemned for that action. That was a slap in the face for the tourism industry in Australia.

I have to say that the attitude in Queensland was not much better. Unfortunately, in Queensland, at a time when there has been record investment by the federal government, the state tourism minister did not provide a single real increase in tourism spending. That is the Labor Party’s attitude to tourism, and it stands in stark contrast to that of the Howard government.

When it comes to the film and TV industry—again, a rapidly expanding and growing industry on the Gold Coast; one that employs thousands of people and one that the member for McPherson, the member for Fadden, the member for Forde and I are all very supportive of—this government has a very proud track record. It was announced in the federal budget that a record funding package would be put together for the film and TV industry. So I have been very pleased to see a significant increase in the amount of money being provided for the film and TV industry.

The 2007 budget introduced a location rebate which replaced the film tax offset and increased the rebate from 12½ per cent to 15 per cent for qualifying expenditure. Additionally, a new production rebate was put in place to replace the old 10BA and 10B schemes which applied under the tax act. This will mean that there is more incentive than ever before for runaway productions from the United States and other countries, as well as for domestic film and TV industries, to flourish. That is good news for the Gold Coast because this record investment by the Australian government in the film and TV industry will help to create hundreds of jobs on the Gold Coast. It will help to ensure that this industry remains sustainable and it is exactly the kind of support that I know the film and TV industry is looking for. I am pleased that it has been received so warmly by local operators on the Gold Coast, who are very happy that this government is supporting such an important industry in our city.

When it comes to water, this is an issue of crucial importance in south-east Queensland and on the Gold Coast. The federal budget provided money that will be used in a very commonsense way—to support water usage, recycled water, new methods of saving water, to ensure that our city goes from strength to strength. We know, in the south-east corner of Queensland, that we are suffering because of a lack of planning by the Labor state government. In Queensland, a new dam has not been built for 21 years. The Labor Party has been in power in Queensland for 18 years. Despite being in power for 18 of the last 20 years, not a single new dam has been built. If that is not an absolutely damning indictment of the Labor Party’s inability to plan for the future, I do not know what is.

Whilst Peter Beattie and the Labor Party run around Queensland today making excuses as to why there is not enough water, I know, and the people of the Gold Coast know, that the real problem is that there was no investment made for the future. That is why the Howard government has once again stepped in to assist in a very direct way with water projects under the Community Water Grants program. I refer also to the beneficial impact that will flow from the Natural Heritage Trust, as well as direct funding of nearly $10 million to the Gold Coast City Council to help with a water program to reduce the pressure in the Gold Coast’s mains water pipes and which saves literally hundreds of megalitres each year.

Each of these initiatives will make a positive beneficial impact on the lives of Gold Coasters and ensure that this government once again puts its money where its mouth is. Unfortunately, one of the most important water systems in our country, the Murray-Darling Basin, is continuing to suffer because of the squabbling between the various state Labor governments. Again in respect of water, the Howard government has put aside $10 billion to deliver a solution for the Murray-Darling Basin, but the Labor state governments continue to get in the way and prevent the kind of leadership that I know all Australians are desperately calling out for from the Howard government. We are trying to provide that leadership; we just need the Labor state premiers to get on board.

One of the very key announcements that was made in the 2007-08 budget was the announcement of a $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund. This fund will play a crucial role on the Gold Coast in the future. I would reinforce that this is only possible because of the careful and considered economic management of the Howard government over the past 12 years. I am very pleased to have Griffith University in my electorate, a university that has gone from strength to strength, a university that received the highest allocation of university places in Queensland in the last round and the highest national allocation of new university places in the previous round. I know that Gold Coast kids will have the opportunity to go and study the course they want to study at one of the best universities in Australia purely and simply because we are providing them more university places than they ever had previously. In addition, this government has been providing capital works funding at a significant rate. There can be no doubt that the Higher Education Endowment Fund will play a fundamental role in providing a revenue stream for this university and the other universities on the Gold Coast—the University of Southern Queensland, Central Queensland University, Southern Cross University and Bond University—with the revenue that they need to undertake important construction and capital works projects as well as investing in important research institutions and organs on each of these university campuses. That would not be possible if it were not for the disciplined and careful economic management of the Treasurer, Peter Costello, and of the Howard government.

Finally, I would like to touch on the issue of skills and training. I am pleased to say that this budget continues to build on the $837 million Skills for the Future package that this government announced some time back. In the 2007-08 budget we saw the payment that will be made in the future of $1,000 and $2,000 boosts to apprentices to help them with their salaries to ensure that we create as much incentive as possible for apprentices who are currently undertaking their apprenticeships. In addition to that, there is a $500 credit that can be used by apprentices towards the cost of their education. This of course comes on top of the investment in the Gold Coast of an Australian technical college. I was pleased to join with the members for McPherson, Fadden and Forde in announcing the Gold Coast Technical College on the Gold Coast about 12 or so months ago. This is a real investment that picks up where the state Labor governments have left off when it comes to trade training through the TAFE system. It is sad that the Australian Labor Party would make out that in some way this government has been deficient when it comes to skills and training when they stand indicted by the absolute abysmal performance of their state Labor governments in delivering TAFE training to young Aussie kids. That is the real albatross around the necks of young Australians, that there is no investment at a state Labor government level. Because of that lack of investment by Labor, the Howard government has had to create, and is happily rolling out, 25 Australian technical colleges across the country to provide maximum opportunities for young Australians to get a trade, to go about living a sustainable and productive life and to have the kinds of skills that they need to do that effectively.

I have touched upon a number of the key announcements in the budget and the anticipated outcome that it will have on the lot of Moncrieff residents and of Gold Coasters broadly. It is a great shame that on each of these key initiatives where the Howard government has been forced to make difficult decisions, but ones that ultimately have been in the long-term interests of this country, we have had to battle every single step of the way against the Australian Labor Party. It is a great shame that in the creation of the Higher Education Endowment Fund and with the record investment in roads, education, health and other services, the Australian Labor Party has attempted to stop this investment each and every step. I commend the budget.

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

At the commencement of my contribution to this debate, I must say how disappointed I am to sit in this place and listen to speeches from the government members that constantly blame the state governments for every problem that exists in Australia. The Commonwealth government is the national government. As the national government it must take responsibility. It has to show leadership and it has to deliver to the people, and not just blame the states or blame somebody else for any problem that exists.

Unfortunately, I was not as overwhelmed as and my praises for this budget are nowhere near as high as those of members on the other side of the House. I see it as a budget that lacks vision. It is not a budget for the future. Rather, it is a budget for now. It is about winning an election. It actually makes me feel quite sad because I see this as a lost opportunity. Here we are at the time of an economic boom and a resources boom—and what does the government do? It wastes what I see as a fantastic opportunity to actually put in place the structures and the plans that will ensure the prosperity of Australia into the future. It is not difficult to understand when you look at the government and see that it is led by a Prime Minister who looks to the past for his inspiration. I always categorise this Prime Minister as somebody who is taking Australia back to the future. He is a Prime Minister who is unable to embrace change. He dreams of the white picket fence and the world the way it was. He has a definite picture of the societal order that should exist in Australia.

That raises quite a bit of concern for me because this vision and the policies of the Howard government have led to a situation in Australia where there is a great gap between the haves and the have-nots. Surveys by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that the richest 20 per cent of Australians have almost two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, or an average of $1.4 million per household. The poorest 20 per cent of Australians hold just one per cent of the nation’s wealth. They earn about $23,000 per household. That is of great concern to me and I think that as a nation we need to have in place policies that ensure that each and every person has the opportunity to share in the wealth of our nation.

Last week in this parliament we debated the legislation that led to the one-off bonuses being paid to people who are carers in receipt of the carer allowance, people who are on pensions and self-funded retirees. My concern in relation to this matter is that there is one group of people who missed out—that is, people who are in receipt of a disability support pension. I know that those people are very concerned that the government has disregarded them and their needs. Last week when I spoke on that legislation I raised the concerns of some of those people. One lady pointed out to me that she had very little food to last her until her next pension day. A young woman, Tracy Blair, works in my office on a volunteer basis. Tracy is confined to a wheelchair and she receives a disability support pension. She wrote me this letter:

Dear Jill:

I was rather disappointed with the lack of acknowledgement in the recent budget of people receiving the disability support pension. As we all know, there are many kinds of disabilities leading to various needs. What has been forgotten or missed is that these people in their own way contribute to society or the community. The fact that this group was forgotten while all other sectors of the community—aged care, childcare—benefited in this budget highlights the injustice. Having recognised this oversight, what can people on disability pension expect in the future?

I had to say to Tracy that, while the Howard government are in power, they can expect nothing because one of the signatures of the Howard government has been to totally disregard people on disability support pension. Another person from the member for Dobell’s electorate contacted me and commented that for people on disability support pension ‘invalid’ means ‘not valid’. In other words, they were invalid in the eyes of the Howard government.

This may be a good news budget for a number of people in Australia. It may be a good news budget to the people on the other side of this parliament. But I can certainly tell you it is not a good news budget if you are on a disability support pension and it is not a good budget if you are an unemployed Australian over the age of 55 who has to meet their mutual obligation by working in some voluntary capacity. I have also been contacted by people who fit into this group who say they use their own money to buy petrol to travel to the place where they volunteer and they have received no recognition in this budget. Whilst I welcome wholeheartedly the $500 bonus that has been given to pensioners, carers and veterans, little enough as it is, I really think the Howard government stands condemned for its divisive action in giving nothing to those disability support pensioners who often have much higher care needs than other pensioners. I hope that the government takes note of my concerns and I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I will be in there being an advocate, ensuring that the voices of those people who have contacted my office are heard.

The next issue I would like to concentrate on is the skills shortage. The shortage of skilled workers in Australia has increased enormously under the Howard government. The government has to a large extent ignored the skills shortage. Employer groups, which are strong supporters of the government, have been trying for a very long time to bring to the government’s attention the level of the skills shortage that exists in the country. I think our level of employment at the moment to a large extent reflects the fact that we have such a skills shortage and employers are looking, on an ever-increasing basis, to bring skilled workers in from overseas simply because the government has not done its job and has not looked after Australians who would like to train to work in a trade. They are now coming to recognise this fact, but they have ignored it for a very long time. I look to the technical colleges, the TAFE system that exists in my own state. I know that in 1996, when the Howard government was elected, it ripped money out of that TAFE system. That resulted in apprenticeship courses being reduced, pre-apprenticeship courses being reduced and young people who wanted to train in a trade being unable to undertake the training. I come from an area where trades are valued. Young people aspire to be trades men and women, and their inability to link into this system has been very detrimental for them on a personal level and for our society as a whole.

The announcement made by the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply, when he said he would set up trade training centres in every high school in Australia, was welcomed wholeheartedly by people in the electorate of Shortland. Those high schools, both public and private, that will host these trade training schools will be able to train our tradespeople for the future—something that this government has failed to do.

The education policy that the Labor Party has put to the Australian people, its education revolution, concentrates on early childhood education, literacy and numeracy. It focuses on literacy and numeracy in a way that does not involve issuing vouchers or trying to make parents, teachers and students jump through hoops to get money; it makes a real commitment to improving literacy throughout the nation by boosting the teaching of maths and science in schools by offering a reduction in HECS and establishing a national curriculum. There is also a program to foster and build new, first-class facilities, and which looks at the sharing of facilities between government and non-government schools. In my own electorate, in the past community partnerships have been formed whereby local government and the department of education have worked together to build shared facilities. That has been very successful. I think any program that develops partnerships with the community and between schools is in the interests of the community, as are the trade training centres in schools that the Leader of the Opposition highlighted in his speech.

Other issues that he highlighted and which I wholeheartedly support include high-speed broadband access. I know it has been a big issue for businesses in my area. They were, and still are, particularly disappointed that the government has done nothing to remedy the issues surrounding broadband access and the fact that they are unable to access high-speed broadband.

I come from an electorate that has an older profile. I have many constituents who have been on dental waiting lists for very long periods of time. I spoke to one person last week who had throat cancer. This person must have a maxiofacial surgeon operate on their teeth just to remove a tooth. Because of the high demand for that service, this person has been on the waiting list for a very long period of time, and is likely to remain so. I must say that the announcement on dental care in the budget was a great disappointment to me. Having been involved in an inquiry into health funding, and having been involved in putting together the report titled The blame game, I was convinced that the government would embrace the need for a Commonwealth dental health program. I was extremely disappointed in the program that they announced in the budget. It is a program that will not remedy the problems that exist. There are 650,000 people on dental waiting lists throughout Australia. Many people are waiting on dental lists in the Shortland electorate, and they have to go through a very complicated process to even be referred to a dentist. There is still a copayment as well. I think that is going to be a big problem. Recently, I conducted a survey throughout my electorate. Overwhelmingly, people responded by saying that there was a great need for a dental health program and for the Commonwealth to be involved in dental health. The program that has been detailed in this budget will not resolve the problem. In the survey, overwhelmingly, the cost of living was highlighted as a problem.

I have brought along a few surveys to share with the House tonight to highlight the issues that people have commented on. One gentleman wrote that petrol was a big issue. The next person said that petrol and funding for dental services were big problems and said, ‘The government needs to act on them.’ The next sheet I look at again mentions petrol. The next one says, ‘The Howard government has given tax cuts but food and petrol prices have gone up and the cost of living is increasing each and every day.’ They are not my words; they are the words of people I represent in this parliament. The comments continue: petrol prices are way too high, pensioners are struggling, the pension will stretch only so far, with two living on a pension it only takes one to get ill and then their budget is wrecked. Petrol prices, high food prices and inflation are all highlighted as problems.

From the surveys, I have to say that Medicare bulk-billing for pensioners in my area is practically non-existent and we have also got a chronic doctor shortage, which this budget has done nothing to address. The surveys mention petrol prices and dental care for the aged as concerns. Petrol prices are highlighted over and over again. I have a few more comments here, but I think I have made the point that the survey comments highlight that the cost of living is increasing and the government has done nothing to help these people. As I said at the start of my contribution to this debate, the gap between the people who are rich and the people who are poor is getting greater. Two-thirds of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the people with high incomes while the bottom one per cent of people live on a very small wage.

The government could have done a lot more to help these people. The government could have decided that it would invest in giving these people the support that they need. The government could have decided to invest in housing. I must make the point that housing was totally ignored in this budget. Instead, the government decided that it would spend money on things like the Prime Minister’s chairs for the cabinet. An inordinate amount of money has been spent there—a total of $197,749. While people are having trouble putting food on the table, the Prime Minister is spending $197,000-plus on the cabinet room. There is also the PM’s alcohol budget—$110,000 on alcohol in the last four years? Come on, Mr Deputy Speaker: how can the Prime Minister go downstairs and face the opposition in question time and face the Australian people when he is abusing the system in that way while people are having difficulty putting food on the table? Throw into that the problems with advertising. This government is the second largest advertiser within Australia. This government has absolutely no conscience when it comes to selling its message. It is all about selling its message—not about planning for the future and not about ensuring that all Australians have a fair go. It is not a government that is about all Australians; it is a government for its mates and a government that wants to see itself re-elected at the election this year. (Time expired)

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening, after that appalling contribution by the member opposite, to speak in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and related bills. These bills will appropriate money for a range of departments to bring into effect the initiatives the Treasurer announced on budget night. I say at the outset that it is a budget for all people, for all Australians. I think this has been highlighted even by media commentary, which saw the budget as delivering on the priorities but ensuring that there were not people left out in terms of sharing the appropriations that we as a government will be making as a result of the budget passing the due processes.

The other day I spoke in the grievance debate in the House and, because time was limited, I was not able to finish my remarks. I want to add to my remarks tonight. I was talking about the Beattie Labor government’s proposal to force amalgamation on local councils without the councils having their democratic right to vote on any proposition put forward by the commissioners—which are appointments that he has made. Do we have an interest at a federal level? You bet we have an interest at a federal level, and this budget highlights the importance that we place on rural and regional areas of Australia, the importance that we place on local councils and the role that they play in their local communities. So many of our programs at a federal level require local government input and require a local government to deliver them. Importantly, we respect the role that the local government plays right across this nation—in road building, in providing emergency services, and in providing a much needed local face to local people and local needs.

I attended a rally in Barcaldine 10 days ago, where some people had travelled over 1,000 kilometres to attend a protest. We marched as a group of people and protesters to the Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine. That tree is, sadly, dying. I think it is dying of shame. I do not think it was poisoned; I think it is dying of shame because the Labor Party in Queensland has absolutely walked away from its people. It has walked away from people in rural and remote parts of Queensland. I want to have recorded in Hansard some words that I was unable to include in my remarks during the grievance debate the other day because of the limited time. These are comments made by a councillor who came from the Boulia Shire Council. She came with members of the council, councillors, council workers, Aboriginal stockmen and Aboriginal workers. I want to incorporate some of her words in this debate on the appropriation bills tonight. I will read from where I left off the other night in the grievance debate in the House. These are the words of Kelsey Neilsen, a councillor from Boulia Shire Council:

Councils in the outback towns provide so many services to the people. They run the banks, the tourist centres. They are even the undertakers. An old lady recently asked of an outback mayor, “If the council goes—

which would be a result of Peter Beattie and his Labor government’s forced amalgamation of councils—

who is going to bury me?”

The government’s reform will strip us of local representation, they will silence our voice and they will see the far-flung places slowly starved of funding, people and services. Amalgamations will not bring any benefits to the people of Queensland neither will it bring a quick and clean death to the outback but rather like a slow and treacherous cancer it will eat away at our towns until they become shells and crumble. The domino effect of this loss of population which will surely follow amalgamations will see our services fall away one by one. The school, the bank, the post office, the police, the health centres. Families will be forced to leave and the social fabric of our towns will disintegrate. Vibrant, robust little towns, dots on the map connecting our great state, will become sad, lawless places—ghost towns. If I can draw on an analogy—the introduction of forced amalgamations and radical reforms will be to outback towns what the poison was that came from a gutless and cowardly hand to kill the Tree of Knowledge—The symbol of the people’s fight for what is right and the Aussie “fair go”.

There is no “fair go” in this reform process. The appointed reform commissioner members, Minister Fraser and the Premier hold the beating heart of the outback in their grasp, they are about to crush it and they will have the blood of the outback on their hands. I call on the reform commission panel to think long and hard about that. I want them to think about how they could be named in history as the group of people who brought the axe down on outback Queensland towns.

Councillor Neilsen went on to say:

The commission could be listed as the ones who stood by and allowed our ruthless, dictatorial government to push through radical and rapid change without regard for people and communities. As commissioner members, will they sit around the desk and deal out the death card to the Outback towns of Queensland? Will they be able to lie straight in their beds when they hear on the news that there has been an emergency in the west and people died in the vast and vacant outback as a direct result of the lack of medical services available to them. Medical centres that had been closed due to council amalgamations. OR will they listen to our story?

I was there with Kelsey Neilsen as she spoke to the assembled rally and I also represent 25 per cent of the local government areas in the state of Queensland. In my time as the federal member I have gotten to know those local communities and what they do for those towns. I know that the anger that is out there at the moment will not stop and that these people will fight for what they believe is right. If the Premier of Queensland wants to bring forward reform, give the people a say. We know in Queensland, as we have seen in other states, that the impact of forced amalgamations without a referendum of the people—that democratic right that people have—is that jobs will be lost. We know, as we have seen it in other states, that the power of that local council will be centralised and ultimately the smaller communities will lose out.

Many of the local council areas in my electorate are communities of 1,000 or 500. The Diamantina shire, right on the west of my electorate, covering Birdsville and Bedourie, I think has a total population of a couple of hundred people. Birdsville is iconic; it is on the Diamantina River. It will be a land where no-one lives and no-one is able to do anything for the few people who remain. The Diamantina shire is an area the size of the landmass of Tasmania, but I have to say that the Diamantina shire, with its very few people, can see its population swell to some 6,000 at Birdsville race time. I was talking to some people in Birdsville a couple of nights ago. There are tourists who are going out there because the inland rivers have flooded this year, with rains up in the north—water coming down the Diamantina River, Eyre Creek, Georgina River and into Lake Eyre. The pelicans have travelled out there to build their nests because that is where they build their nests: in the Lake Eyre Basin. There are literally hundreds of people going up there to see the wonders of the great outback. I can assure you that the pelicans are there in far greater numbers—tens of thousands—which is quite a remarkable sight. Nature at work is something quite unique to see; how they know the rains have occurred, the floods have occurred, the rivers are filled up and the lakes are filling up, I do not know, but they come from the coastal areas of Australia and fly inland some 2,000 kilometres, where they nest and their young are hatched.

I attended a couple of rallies in my electorate, apart from the Barcaldine rally, and there are more to come. I went to Surat the other night, a little community south of Roma in the Warroo Shire Council area, with a population of 700. A total of 250 people turned up. The population of 700 includes women and children. At seven o’clock at night most of those children are of course at home, ready to go to bed or perhaps doing their homework. People are spread around an area that is almost the size of Tasmania, so many were not able to travel the distance to be in Surat. But they were unanimous in their resolve that they will fight this because they are proud of their little community.

This community have won a tidy town contest. That is the sort of pride they have in their community. They have received a number of grants from the federal government under our Regional Partnerships program. They have a rural transaction centre that provides banking services to a community which lost its banking services 20 years ago. But they are back there under a program that the federal government have put in place, and we will be appropriating more money in this budget to continue that rural partnership program. They have received money for Roads to Recovery. They have received financial assistance grants, aged-care money for health services. So much of what is in this budget will continue to support the little community of Surat and the Warroo Shire Council.

I then went down to St George. St George has gained a little more notoriety since Senator Joyce was elected as a senator for Queensland. That is his home town. Out of 2,500 people in the area of the Balonne Shire Council, as it is known, 1,100 people turned up for a rally, which indicates the concern that these people have for their communities. The concern is not about reform of local governments. The concern is really about forcing upon communities the amalgamation of shires against the will of the people. Many people at that rally asked me: ‘What will happen if we are amalgamated with a shire and the headquarters of our shire is some 300, 400 or 500 kilometres away? What will happen to the value of my house—a weatherboard house with a galvanised iron roof in western Queensland—which is my piece of Australia, my pride and joy?’ I can assure the Main Committee it will be devalued, just as the local cafe proprietors in towns such as Surat and others—there will be fewer people living in the towns; there will be fewer business opportunities—will also have their businesses devalued. But is there, from Premier Beattie—an arrogant, dictatorial premier—any plan to even consider paying compensation to these people who may have assets devalued as a result of forcing the amalgamation of shires on communities?

The other element of this forced amalgamation that was revealed when I went to Charleville to attend the south-west Queensland local government conference was the grouping of councils out in that south-west Queensland part of my electorate of Maranoa. I give Minister Fraser credit for attending and fronting the councils. Of course our councillors, their mayors and their CEOs were all very polite; they listened to him in silence. But what made them angry was that he was not prepared to listen to any counter-arguments. He said, ‘This is going to be good for you.’ Minister Fraser went on to say that by September this year—and I am paraphrasing what he said—they will be putting legislation through the parliament of Queensland to force these amalgamations, based on recommendations from the commissioners who have been appointed by the Premier and his minister. They will be bringing forward that legislation to bring about the forcing of that amalgamation on local communities against their will.

He went on to say that these councils will have an interim committee to transition from the old council to the new council. He then went on to say that each of those interim transition committees will have a union official appointed by the government. That reeks of the Labor Party’s approach not only to industrial relations but also to their desire to take control of the workforce and unionise the Australian workforce if they are elected at the next federal election. There is no need to put a union official on each of those transition committees but if the Labor Party gets its way in Queensland it will continue to proceed with its dictatorial and undemocratic amalgamation proposal in relation to local government.

I have limited time left in this debate but I just conclude by saying that our budget does support our rural communities; it does support our capital cities; it does bring forward new initiatives that will help a whole range of people. In fact I said in my release on the evening of the budget that there is something in this budget for everyone. I would just like to highlight a few things. I think the incentives for working families are a great initiative, as are the tax measures so that there is a reduction in income tax and families will keep more of their hard-earned money. That will support our constituents living in rural and remote communities, which I have talked about in relation to the forced amalgamation of local government areas.

The education skills elements within the budget and the fact that first- and second-year apprentices in skills shortage trades will receive a $500 education voucher to offset fees will certainly help the people in my electorate and in those rural communities. The $1,000 tax-free wage top-up will also help those apprentices under 30 years of age.

I noted also rewarding our older Australians. Many of our rural communities have significant populations of older people. This federal government, through our aged-care funding, community aged-care packages and our whole approach to caring for senior citizens and older people, is trying to make sure that we do keep our communities together—unlike the Labor Party in Queensland which, through forced amalgamations, wants to split these communities and drive people away from the communities where they have lived their lives. We are supporting them, and this budget is further evidence of that.

One of the initiatives in the budget that I certainly also applaud is the $25,000 ex gratia payment to the ex-prisoners of war of the Second World War who were imprisoned by the Germans or Italians during that war, and I know that will be well received. In my electorate I have a number of those veterans who for some time have wanted to be recognised for the hardships and the privations that they suffered during the Second World War. You only have to go to any rural town and look at the war memorial in that community to see the large numbers of people from rural and remote parts of my electorate who came forward willingly and volunteered and who are listed on the rolls of honour of those who served. Tragically, so many did not return.

Another initiative that I know will go down extremely well in the natural resources and environment areas is the rebate of up to $8,000 for the installation of solar panels by households and $12,000 for community buildings and schools. That too will be well received in rural and remote parts of my electorate. If we are able to win the fight with the Labor government in Queensland in relation to forced amalgamations, this program will deliver significant benefits to those communities out there because they will be able to utilise that initiative to use the solar energy that is so abundant in parts of my electorate. (Time expired)

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The budget contained a $2 billion increase in the defence budget to what was a record $22 billion. We now have the defence budget at 9.3 per cent of total government outlays, which is 10.6 per cent higher than last year’s figure of $19.8 billion, and the government has in fact allocated an additional $14 billion to defence over the next 10 years in budget initiatives. That means that the defence budget has increased from $10.6 billion in 1995-96 to $22 billion this year, which is a 47 per cent rise over a 12-year period.

Defence spending has soared in part to cover the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I want to speak to these issues in some detail. Just last night, Colonel Mike Kelly, who is widely regarded as the most senior Australian soldier in Iraq, and who is now the federal Labor candidate for Eden-Monaro, was reported by The 7.30 Report, and in the Canberra Times today, as stating that he raised with appropriate authorities both bribes paid by AWB to Saddam Hussein and the issue of torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison long before the government says that it was actually aware of these matters. In the case of Abu Ghraib, Colonel Kelly revealed that he had told the government of abuse of prisoners as early as mid-2003. Yet the government claims it was only made aware of the allegations in January 2004.

The issue here is: what happened to Colonel Kelly’s statement? This is a most serious matter. It should be the subject of independent inquiry. It is the same with AWB. As Colonel Kelly stated, AWB’s conduct would be regarded by some as treason, yet we do not know what became of his reports, which ministers’ offices may have received them and what they did with them afterwards. This should also be the subject of independent inquiry.

It is no use the government claiming that we have had the Cole inquiry. The Cole inquiry’s terms of reference were limited to AWB and to two other companies. They did not include the government or government officials. The inquiry did not call Colonel Kelly or investigate his reports. Colonel Kelly’s revelations point to monumental government failure and cover-up and they warrant—indeed, they require—an independent investigation.

Let me turn to the war in Iraq. I ask the question: who said the following and when?

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we’d have had to hunt him down. And once we’d done that and we’d gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we’d have had to put another government in its place.

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi’i government or a Kurdish government or Ba’athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it’s my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.

The speaker was in fact Dick Cheney and he was speaking at the Washington Institute in 1991.

To understand what is going wrong today in Iraq and why, it is important to recap on the genesis of the Iraq war. In the wake of September 11 there was a huge outpouring of international support for the United States. Indeed, one French newspaper famously declared, ‘We are all Americans now.’ International consensus built rapidly in support of the strike on Afghanistan to end the Taliban regime which had harboured al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. That attack initially proved highly successful although bin Laden escaped. There was every sense that a new democratic nation could be created in the country.

However, pretty soon after the apparent victory in Afghanistan, talk within the Bush administration turned to its next target—Iraq. Opinions differ on the real basis for this shift. There was, of course, the issue of weapons of mass destruction. It turned out that there were none. There was the issue of Iraq being a rogue state in league with al-Qaeda. There was no evidence for that. Indeed, it was initially rejected as sufficient justification for war by our Prime Minister. There was the issue of Iraq breaching United Nations resolutions and sanctions. Of course, we should contrast that with AWB, which was actually breaching sanctions to the tune of $300 million to Saddam Hussein under the Howard government’s watch. There was the issue of regime change, democratisation and nation building. Once again, that was rejected as justification for invasion by the Australian Prime Minister.

Others more conspiratorially suggest oil. Certainly oil and other geopolitical and strategic interests would have been part of the US President’s calculations and would have been factored into the ultimate decision. But I think the simplest explanation or Ockham’s razor is that President Bush sought a mandate as a war president to define his presidency and to assist in creating Republican political dominance in future decades. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence from Bob Woodward in the book State of Denial and other commentators such as Frank Rich in the book The Greatest Story Ever Sold and Thomas Ricks in Fiasco to support this contention. Similarly, President Bush may well have learned a lesson from his father, George Bush senior, and the Gulf War mark I—that is, do not actually have the war end. In the end, as a Downing Street memo of July 2002 highlighted, weapons of mass destruction were merely the most convenient and most sellable of the rationalisations for the invasion. Ultimately, the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the predescribed policy to invade.

Since the original invasion we can see rhetorical shifts from our government, which is continuously seeking to argue support for the war using reworkings of key phrases out of the US playbook like ‘stay the course’ and ‘we must not cut and run’ and so on. Unfortunately, the facts on the ground have undercut all of these lines. Along the way, the public has witnessed not just the deterioration of the invasion into civil war but also other shocks, scandals and revelations. There was the looting of Baghdad immediately following the invasion. There was Abu Ghraib. There was the AWB scandal.

There was the civilian death toll, which ranges from 60,000 to as high as 600,000. It is a disgrace that there is no accurate data and that the government strongly denies the legitimacy of the higher figure despite the fact that the United Kingdom’s department of defence says that the Lancet survey—the ‘600,000 Iraqi civilians dead’ survey—was credibly based. There is no evidence of postwar planning. Iraq is now a terrorist haven, so the invasion has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Afghanistan continues to remain highly problematic and requiring of greater troop commitment and materiel due to the loss of focus caused by the invasion of Iraq.

Colin Powell famously told the US President prior to the invasion, ‘If you break it, you own it.’ Certainly, with over 3,000 servicemen dead, countless tens of thousands seriously wounded and a financial cost of several hundred billion dollars, the United States has significant interest in the outcome of the war. We have had former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan pointing to the paradox of the United States being in the position where it cannot stay and it cannot leave.

When asking ourselves what is going wrong, we have to reflect on the fact that bad faith and bad motives have led inevitably to bad outcomes. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that, increasingly, Australians do not believe the current government on many issues of public policy, whether it is kids overboard or missing weapons of mass destruction. There is plenty of evidence of a government being loose with the truth and a decade of this sort of behaviour finally starting to take its toll.

In the past, the Prime Minister was prone to suggest that the Iraq war was at a tipping point and, more recently, that we are witnessing a ‘hinge point’. We have had Iraqi leaders talking about the next month as being crucial. Well, in fact the United States witnessed a tipping point last November. We are obviously going to have to wait and see whether Australians require some penalty from a government which has supported such a rolled-gold strategic disaster as the Iraq invasion.

Prime Minister Howard says that the real question is: what should we do now? He also says that if the Americans pull out there will be a massive loss of American prestige, to which I make the following responses. (1) If this had happened under a Labor government, the world would have stopped and stood still until we departed the political stage in disgrace. The Liberals would be demanding our heads for such a monumental debacle. (2) The government should have thought about the prestige issue before they went in in the first place. The invasion did not have bipartisan support in Australia. Indeed, it did not have United Nations mandate or authority. But the Bush administration and the Howard administration were the know-alls who knew better. (3) How many military personnel and civilians are going to die in order that the Americans suffer no loss of face? You would think that we would have learnt something from Vietnam, but this war is no better; it will go on and on until we get out of there. Finally, yes, we ought to be good friends of the Americans and support them, but sometimes being a good mate involves not going along with every silly idea that your mate comes up with—it involves telling your mate that they have got it wrong.

So what is the best way forward now? How should Australia disengage from Iraq? First, it is important to recognise the nature of the current conflict in Iraq, and also to distinguish it from the situation in Afghanistan. Along with the broad world community, and in the immediate aftermath of September 11, Labor supported, and still supports, action in Afghanistan to combat and defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which have provided the foundations for extreme Islamist terrorists for close to two decades and provided the kernel of support for jihadists in our region, including those involved in the Bali bombing. So we recognise our obligations under the ANZUS treaty and also that bin Laden and the Taliban need to be destroyed. But we also have to bear in mind that, for several years, the government withdrew from this theatre, before the job was done, to get involved in the Iraq adventure. So, in committing more troops now, we are simply seeking to make up for lost time.

In contrast with Afghanistan, Iraq has now become effectively a civil and sectarian war, involving interethnic and interreligious forces. Tragically, rather than mitigating and decreasing the risks of global terrorism, the Iraq invasion has merely spawned new terror in the region and created a training zone for jihadists. The fact that the current US and Australian administrations conflate the two conflicts demonstrates a failure to comprehend reality. As distinct from Afghanistan, in Iraq the international community sees the need to find political solutions.

This is recognised even within the US foreign policy establishment. If you look at the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report of late 2006, and you look at recent moves made by the Democrat controlled congress and senate in the wake of the mid-term elections last year, and the defeat of the Bush Republicans, you can see an understanding that Iraq is a civil war which demands political reconciliation between disputing Islamic groups and that the Iraqis are the only people who can ultimately resolve their security crisis. The only people who are in denial and do not seem to see this reality are the Bush-Cheney presidency and the Howard government. The PM seems to have personalised the ANZUS treaty and, because of his relationship with the current US President, Australia is committing itself to self-defeating support for President Bush’s high-risk, low-percentage surge strategy.

Out of the work of the Iraq Study Group and others, the broad framework for how the international community manages the Iraq situation going forward would include: first, the need to set performance benchmarks for the phased withdrawal of allied troops in line with the Baker-Hamilton report; second, setting elements to our involvement so that we send a message to the al-Maliki government that it must do more to curb sectarian violence; and, third, defining the mission and the exit strategy. The opposition have sought to define both our mission and an appropriate exit process such that, on election, a Labor government would take measured steps to withdraw Australian combat troops from Iraq, but we would do that in a sensible and responsible way in consultation with both the US and the UK. In reducing our troop commitment in Iraq, Australia would be doing no more or less than countless other nations that have either removed or withdrawn troops, including the UK, Spain, Italy, Japan, the Ukraine, the Philippines, Thailand, Norway, the Netherlands, South Korea and others.

Australia has about 1,400 military personnel in its various Iraq commitments. Of these, approximately 900 will not be affected, including those involved with HMAS Toowoomba on gulf duties, overflight missions by P3C Orion aircraft and its personnel, and the Hercules C130 detachment providing supply and medical assistance. There are also over 100 personnel protecting the Australian embassy and officials in Baghdad. However, some 500 combat troops will be withdrawn in a sensible and responsible way. It is worth noting that even the Minister for Defence recently acknowledged that they have not been involved in direct military actions as such. By conflating the Afghanistan and Iraq missions, the government demonstrates a denial of reality and exposes that its foreign policy is being dictated by considerations other than Australia’s genuine national security interests.

We need to repair Australia’s reputation as a good international citizen. In 1996, on coming to office, the Howard government removed reference to Australia being a good international citizen as an objective of Australian foreign policy—and they certainly achieved that. The last decade has seen the effect of this strategy across a number of key areas. We have had a lack of respect for international law, as highlighted in our decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq. We have had a diminished human rights reputation and increasing disengagement from promoting human rights via increased criticism of human rights bodies. We have been involved in undermining international labour standards. We have been isolated from what our shadow foreign affairs minister referred to as inconvenient truths—for example, AWB committing the largest breaches of UN sanctions even while one of the reasons we invaded Iraq was in the name of its breaching these sanctions. We have had a failure to defend the rights of our citizens to due process. In David Hicks’s case we supported the Guantanamo Bay process. We did not support the rule of law; we did not support a fair trial. Consequently, our capacity to advocate Australian national interests from a position of strength as a good international citizen has been severely compromised and this affects our international bargaining power over issues as diverse and as important as global warming, trade policy, disarmament and international security.

In the remaining time I have I want to mention the issue of military and civilian casualties. It is a disgrace that the coalition of the willing, including Australia, has failed to make any attempt to maintain or publish any figures concerning civilian deaths of Iraqis as a consequence of the invasion of Iraq. One can only assume that this failure means that the alleged concern of that coalition for the fate of Iraqi citizens under Saddam Hussein amounted to crocodile tears. But it is clear that, in relation to both military deaths and civilian casualties, we have an ongoing debacle on our hands and that things are getting worse rather than better. Measurements of things like bomb blasts that kill more than 50 people have doubled in recent times and mortar attacks that kill civilians have quadrupled. The last year has been simply the worst in terms of civilian casualties. Fatal suicide bombs, car bombs and roadside bombing attacks have doubled from 712 to 1,476.

While the PM and others sought to dismiss and devalue the Lancet study showing upwards of 650,000 civilian deaths as a consequence of the war, we now know that the UK department of defence has confirmed that the methodology of the original study—and hence the results—was valid. This has been an ongoing humanitarian debacle, and it is time that this government listened to what the international community, the opposition and the Australian people are saying and came up with, however belatedly, an exit strategy that enables us to repair our reputation as good international citizens.

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

I understand it would suit the convenience of the Committee if the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for the next sitting.