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

What a wonderful budget for North Queensland. I advise the parliament that my community were very pleased with what we have been able to deliver for North Queensland. We have delivered a range of initiatives running to half a billion dollars—a tremendous outcome—for things like: new facilities and a boost in funding for the Australian Institute of Marine Science; a wonderful opportunity for James Cook University in the Higher Education Endowment Fund; and a very significant capital boost for Laverack Barracks, home of Australia’s ready deployment force and the 3rd Brigade. There is a very significant increase in road funding for the north: AusLink 2, $22.3 million—thousands of millions of dollars over the next five years being invested in road and rail infrastructure. Certainly it is much needed in the north and we will see many projects and benefits flow from that announcement.

My vice-chancellor at James Cook University, Professor Sandra Harding, certainly warmly welcomed the Higher Education Endowment Fund. It is a fund that will be there forever to continue, through its interest earnings, providing capital for developments at higher education centres across the country. The government has indicated that it has the potential for further investment year by year as we invest our national savings in the fund to do good things for higher education—and what better place to invest our savings than in the future of the young people of Australia.

That comes at a time when the Labor state governments, instead of adding to the nation’s savings, are adding to the nation’s borrowings and while the federal government, by saving money, is putting downward pressure on interest rates, the Labor state governments are putting upward pressure on interest rates. The decision that the Australian people will be asked to make later this year at the next federal election will be to look at who can best manage the economy. Make no mistake about it, a change of government means a change in the management of the economy, and I think that both sides who are offering themselves for consideration by the Australian people have a very significant track record, and I trust the Australian people to make the right decision.

Recently I invited the Minister for Education, Science and Training to North Queensland. Julie Bishop was very pleased to come up to the north and I was able to arrange a visit to James Cook University so she could see how one of the most significant tropical universities in the world operates, how well it does and how it leads the world in things like marine science through Federation Fellow Terry Hughes. The research collaboration and cooperation initiatives designed to build capacity within the region, and nationally centred on JCU, include the Australian Tropical Forest Institute in Cairns and the Australian Tropical Science and Innovation Precinct in Townsville. JCU’s strengths in medicine and allied health and expansion activities through the bid to establish the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine and the dental school at JCU Cairns are certainly leadership roles.

The uniqueness of JCU as a research-intensive regionally based institution that is internationally renowned in particular areas, such as marine science, was well recognised by the minister on her visit. The potency of the ‘enhancing life in the tropics’ theme, and its power to effect a distinctiveness for the university across the humanities and social sciences as well as in the sciences, in education and in research, certainly underpins the relevance to our region, to our nation and to the world. Our vice-chancellor made these points to the minister:

This issue of enhancing life in the tropics, of strengthening our attention to this theme, will receive serious consideration as the university reviews its strategic position later in the year. Should the university decide to pursue this theme in a focused way, I believe this holds in prospect the development of a university that is truly distinctive in the Australian higher education scene.

The vice-chancellor went on:

I further believe that such a development would be every bit as important to the development of the higher education sector in Australia as the University of Melbourne’s recasting of its undergraduate and graduate programs. Both developments aim to effect and to model a fresh, distinctive and potent approach to education and, in JCU’s case, research.

We often talk about the sandstone universities; we often forget to talk about our regional universities—regional universities that are leading the world in what they do in various fields. Australia has a wide range of choice in relation to higher education in this country, and that is to be commended.

Speaking of choice, I received a letter from Robert Miller of Cranbrook, in my electorate. His letter had the subject title ‘Work choice or no choice’. He thanked me for giving him a hearing regarding the matter. He has concluded that the federal government’s Work Choices is by far a fairer and just system than, as he says, ‘the corrupt and unjust system of the current arrangement’ that he works under. He said that, if he cannot rely on his union or legal aid in testing the bona fides of a workplace agreement document that he never sighted, signed or dated, he is very concerned about that. And he is very concerned about the operation of the Queensland government in relation to these issues. I thank him for his feedback.

Tomorrow is a historic day in Townsville, and I am privileged to be able to attend a ceremony at Mick Curtain’s Wharf on Ross Creek in Townsville. I will be on the HMAS Townsville. Australia’s Fremantle class patrol boats have served our country well over the last 26 years. Two Fridays ago I attended the decommissioning of the last two Fremantles; that was the HMAS Ipswich and the HMAS Townsville. The HMAS Townsville is a very significant ship in relation to our garrison city’s history and heritage. That is why I was tremendously pleased to be able to arrange the gifting of the HMAS Townsville to the city of Townsville, to the Townsville Maritime Museum. At 12.30 tomorrow I will be on the bridge of the Townsville and I will be signing, on behalf of the Australian government, the deed of gift and, when that is signed by Tony Manning, the president of the museum association, and myself, ownership of the ship will transfer to the museum to be preserved for future generations to see the heritage that that ship has produced over so many years.

I thank Navy; they have been wonderful. Normally you expect that, if a ship is to be handed over—and remember it is a Fremantle class—they would remove a whole range of things and basically gut the ship. Well, they did not. They have done every last single bit of maintenance, and the ship is in 100 per cent working order. Everything has been left on the ship except for secret communication equipment. All the antennas are there, and all the bridge structure is there. It is a working ship and Navy are handing it over to the city of Townsville. It is a wonderful gift. Unfortunately some cities that were offered their ship did not take up the offer. Ipswich did not take up the offer, so, sadly, that ship will go to the wreckers in Darwin. It is kind of an emotional moment when you see a ship decommissioned. Navy does it very well and very meaningfully. It was a wonderful ceremony in Cairns. The Air Force does not commission or decommission its aircraft. When an aircraft reaches the end of its life, it finds itself parked outside some RAAF base somewhere, up on a plinth or something, and there is no formality about it. If anybody wants an F111, come and see me in a couple of years time; I might not be able to arrange for one of those. But with ships it is different, and it is a very moving and emotional moment to see a ship decommissioned from service with the Royal Australian Navy. I thank the Navy, and I thank the Maritime Museum for preserving the ship for generations to come.

Last Friday I was again pleased to be the bearer of good news for our city, and it was in relation to the Townsville International Sports Centre. I was able to deliver $6.355 million to be part of a state and local government project to upgrade the city’s Murray sporting complex. At some time in a child’s life in Townsville, they will go to the Murray sporting complex. It is a very significant area, with 14 different sports represented. What we are going to do in the initial phase of this upgrade is to have a new international sports centre. It will be of international standard, of course; it will seat 1,400 people and it will be used by teams like the Townsville Women’s National Basketball League. I say Women’s ‘National’ Basketball League; there are not too many cities in the country that have a national basketball league. We have the male NBL as well.

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

You mean a team in the league. There’s a number of cities that have actual teams in the league.

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

But I make the point that we have a women’s team in the National Basketball League.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So does Canberra.

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

Not a lot of cities have that. I thank my female colleagues for their interjections. Of course, we also have the Townsville Crocodiles, which is the male equivalent in the National Basketball League. We have the Cowboys in RL as well. I say to all of the Cockroaches here tonight: we won last night and that is a fantastic result, although in the first half I was somewhat concerned. I congratulate and thank our local community for helping me deliver this Regional Partnership’s program, and I also thank the North Queensland Area Consultative Committee for helping get this money through. Make no mistake: this will be a magnificent addition to our city, and I am very proud of being part of the team that has delivered that.

One of the projects that I have not yet delivered but I certainly have told my community that I am going to deliver is the CBD revitalisation in Townsville. In the new CBD vision for Townsville, gone will be the dated, decaying and unfriendly mall. In its place will be a dynamic, fresh, people friendly retail and entertainment precinct, a CBD that North Queenslanders deserve and can be proud of; a popular CBD that people enjoy visiting. The design of the mall will open up the currently cluttered and unused spaces to allow increased participation, views and safety. Expanded street-front shopping and alfresco dining will encourage people into a friendly, market atmosphere. A historic main street retailing environment and flexible, people friendly areas will combine to create a dynamic atmosphere where business and people will flourish. Community interest in this project is very significant and that has created an environment primed to produce a result that the community wants and business needs.

This is an important project. The CBD in Townsville, contained within 100 hectares, accounts for 10.4 per cent of all economic activity in North Queensland. It is home to more than 1,080 businesses and it contributes more than a billion dollars to gross regional product annually. It employs 16 per cent of the Townsville-Thuringowa labour force. It captures 73 per cent of visitor retail spending and it is the major economic asset for North Queensland. That is why it is vital that we have a revitalisation project for Townsville’s CBD. It is the administrative and commercial hub of North Queensland and provides the largest concentration of retail floor space in the region. As such, it fulfils a number of unique roles within the retail market. It provides retail services to our CBD employee population, to the household market and to the visitor market. The Townsville CBD is both a workhorse and a show pony. It is the administrative and commercial hub of North Queensland. It is the visitors’ gateway to the region; it is our front door.

Flinders Street Mall, in my view, needs change. The current mall is hopelessly outdated and presents a poor face to the powerhouse economy and culture of North Queensland. The solution that has been developed is based on the best experience from around the world, with the addition of a unique tropical North Queensland touch. Townsville is a city that certainly punches above its weight in terms of its contribution to Queensland’s and Australia’s economy and identity. The people of Townsville, the largest independent regional city in Australia, deserve this development.

The solution needs to provide amenity, comfort and convenience. It has to be an inviting and safe place, accessible to all by day or by night; to have people friendly surfaces, with improved shade and circulation, connecting activities and experiences designed to enhance the shopping and entertainment experience; to be a lifestyle precinct for all people that continues in the tradition of developments like the Strand, Palmer Street and, hopefully in the not too distant future, Jezzine Barracks. There has got to be a home with a sense of belonging. There has got to be people inclusiveness. There has got to be economic viability. And there has got to be the special aesthetic character of the place, with integration of street furniture, paintings, plantings, artwork and lighting combining with the existing trees and greenery. Our community is very much behind improving the current sad and dilapidated mall. I give a commitment to the people of Townsville and North Queensland that I will do all in my power to make sure that this revitalisation proceeds. It is very important for our city and for our economy.

In the time I have left to speak in this debate I might just make an observation about amalgamation in Queensland. We have two councils in the region: Townsville and Thuringowa. Neither the councils nor their ratepayers have been consulted by the Queensland government. I believe that consultation should have taken place. I think the Beattie government have an agenda to just override the wishes of the people of Queensland—and override it they will with their numbers. It is not the way to do business, and people do not forget that. On a matter as big as this you really do need to ask the people of the region what they think about their councils and whether amalgamation is good. Yes, if we had had a choice we would have only had one council years ago, but that was not how we evolved. Now that the Beattie government have decided that we perhaps should change things, they should be asking the ratepayers and not just unilaterally deciding to force this on the people of North Queensland and elsewhere in the state. I ask the Beattie government to rethink their position.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is, in fact, a debate on the budget but I thank the previous speaker for his words regarding Townsville. It is a great temptation for me to consider visiting there in the future; it sounds like a glowing spot on the globe. But what we are really talking about here today is the federal budget. It is my privilege to rise and speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills, and I would like to begin by placing on record my acknowledgement of some of the positive measures in this budget from our point of view, and there are some.

I welcome the funding commitment in this budget of $71.8 million to the realisation of Griffin Legacy projects in Canberra as, hopefully, an acknowledgement by this government of the need for a strong and proactive relationship between the federal government and the nation’s capital. With the Canberra Centenary celebrations but a few short years away, I would hope we would see a continuation of this attitude towards our national capital into the future.

I also welcome the announcement of some of the tax cuts. They are long overdue and Labor has been calling on the government to deliver that very tax relief. Unfortunately, what is delivered could be interpreted as little more than bracket creep. This small relief will take some small pressure off families in Canberra who are putting that much and more into their petrol tanks and their shopping trolleys. I will be having a little bit more to say about petrol tanks a bit later today, given the latest frightening petrol prices emerging around the country. But with the increasing fuel prices and the knock-on effects of our ever-increasing grocery prices, one has to wonder how much of this new tax relief will be eaten up, if it has not been already, leaving little bonus in the pockets of working families.

I also welcome the one-off payments to carers and seniors. You would be pretty sour if you did not welcome that, but note that this government led by Mr Howard is apparently comfortable presenting to the electorate short-term, glossy, packaged one-off payments that provide a temporary relief but deliver no long-term plan to address the financial and other pressures that these people in our community continue to struggle with.

Contrary to much of the hyperbole around this budget, spruiked by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister in the days after the budget, the sad reality is that it has missed the mark. The government with this, their 11th, budget have failed to put forward a plan for Australia’s future. They have demonstrated the arrogance of extended incumbency, preferring to rest on their laurels. They choose to splurge an offensive amount of working families’ taxes on slick PR advertising campaigns, now totalling in excess of $1.7 billion since their election in 1996, with some $4.1 million this week alone on rebranding what I would call their shambolic Work Choices. It is Work Choices that has, in many cases, cut take-home pay and stripped away working people’s entitlements. These same Australians are footing the bill for this gross media buyout which the government hopes will somehow wipe out our collective memory. One has to stop and ask the question: surely this government could have and should have spent taxpayers’ hard-earned $1.7 billion better.

If people in my electorate were asked what they would like to spend their money on, I know they would say: improving access to bulk-billing and quality public health care; caring for people in our community who need our help—those with disabilities and illness, and our elderly; and delivering improved funding to our technical colleges, our universities and our schools. It is almost like the Treasurer went rolling down the supermarket policy aisle, picking the shiny sugary and hollow treats to keep the kids quiet instead of good long-term and solid policies which make for a healthy and cared for society.

I would like to concentrate for a moment on the issues which are impacting on the people in my electorate of Canberra. The city of Canberra is not only the nation’s capital, it is a place where great decisions are made and it is home to many of our national landmarks. Canberra is also a major regional city which provides the economic and social basis for the south-west region of New South Wales. Canberra, like many regional centres, is looking to the federal government to provide the services and infrastructure which will meet the needs of the people of that community. It is for that reason that I have already welcomed the funding commitment in this budget of $71.8 million, which I referred to as a hopeful acknowledgement by the government of the need for a strong and proactive relationship with the nation’s capital.

If we can just look at GP and Medicare services, one such issue our community expects the government will address is its poor access to affordable medical services. Affordable medical services come down to two things: the availability of GPs and specialists, and access to bulk-billing. Yet, sadly, the ACT continues to enjoy the unenviable tag of having the lowest bulk-billing rates in the country, at only 51 per cent. They have risen from the low forties, but they are still the lowest in the country and well below the national average of 70.8 per cent. This, along with very high out-of-pocket expenses when visiting the family GP, is a concern. The sad fact is that far too many people wait months to access specialist services.

Turning to dental care, the government has failed, in my opinion, to address the dental health of working Australians. Its announcement in the budget only pours money into this government’s already failed dental scheme which was applicable only to people with chronic diseases. They are certainly entitled to services, but this new announcement does nothing to address the waiting list backlog. This already failed program will not solve the dental problems of working families for three key reasons: it does not apply to almost all of the 650,000 Australians on public dental waiting lists, it has complex referral requirements, and it still sees patients paying very high out-of-pocket costs. Again, the government has taken the smallest of conciliatory steps to address the serious problem of its own making as a result of the rash decision in 1996 to scrap the $100-million-a-year Commonwealth dental program. As I said, we are now back to 650,000 Australians on public dental waiting lists.

Another glaring absence in this hard-sell budget was the omission of support for Australia’s People with Disability. Whilst the one-off payments to carers are welcome, the government announced nothing in the budget that can provide long-term hope to the thousands of carers in the Canberra community who are shouldering all of the responsibility for the care and welfare of our disabled. Negotiations for the new Commonwealth State Territory Disability Agreement—CSTDA—remain bogged down, and I believe it is due to be re-signed in the middle of this year. They are bogged down, while the minister responsible refuses any additional funding. Unmet need is continuing to soar and, frankly, people out there living with disability in their families face a bleak future. I believe it is an absolute national disgrace to see a federal government adopt this attitude. The minister cannot simply sit in the corner with his arms folded and say, ‘I’m sorry; no more money.’ I ask: how many millions of dollars are the government spending on their own political future, not the future of people living with disability?

Another area of concern in my community is child care. I welcome any funding directed towards improving the access and quality of child care in this country. Yet the Treasurer’s approach to child care has a touch of a cheap magic show act: hey-presto and, all of a sudden, families can now access the rebate for child care in the financial year in which they actually spent it rather than in the next year. I have never known the government to wait for payment from Australians, so why were Australians expected to wait for theirs? It was far too slow a system containing a flaw that was pointed out so often, so early, by so many, including Labor, and now it is suddenly being fixed. It is an election year. Child care makes up a substantial part of the average weekly wage. So whilst these discounts in costs are, again, welcome, they are, like many other government initiatives, so long overdue.

Parents are also concerned about the quality of care and the opportunities that their children have for the very best social experiences and early-learning opportunities. At present it is not hard to find a mum or dad who struggles to find any place, let alone a place that promotes learning, as well as quality care, for their children. In Canberra we are fortunate in that we have some very good centres. I want to commend, very sincerely, and thank those who work in this sector and work so hard in their care and their delivery of services to our kids.

Labor understands that quality child care serves two important roles. Firstly, affordable high-quality child care will encourage more parents back into the workforce, and giving those people the confidence to return will be good for today’s economy. Secondly—and many childhood experts would say most importantly—these early years are critical to the life learnings and capabilities of our children. For that reason alone, Labor believes early childhood care and education must be a priority. That is why I am really proud of Labor’s policy to introduce a $450 million early childhood learning program for our preschool children.

Locally I would like to pay particular ongoing tribute to the tremendous work that the local community organisations play in supporting our community, our families, our young people and our seniors. I make mention of the community based organisations Southside Community Service, Communities at Work, which covers Tuggeranong and Western Creek districts, and Woden Community Services for their ongoing efforts in the southern side of the Canberra community. All of them are involved in child care but also in more far reaching community services.

I would also like to take this opportunity to put a congratulation forward to the efforts of Red Cross on their decision to establish a mental health first aid training program. I was very pleased a few short months ago to have the privilege of launching this initiative. This program will play a positive and important role in raising the awareness and understanding of mental health issues in our community, how they affect people and how the public can best help. We all know what the Red Cross first aid programs do, so I am sure it would not take much imagination from members of this place to understand the importance of a mental health first aid training program by an organisation like the Red Cross. They are to be commended for taking that initiative.

The question of education is also paramount in my mind and in the minds of my community. This government have demonstrated what I think is a bit of a Johnny-come-lately interest in education only because they have been embarrassed into action by the policies Kevin Rudd has announced as part of Labor’s education revolution. Of course, we have welcomed quite honestly the $5 billion endowment fund, but it is a bit of a nicely packaged pre-election gimmick that only begins to fill the education hole that this government has dug for itself since it came into power. Labor has a long-held commitment to education—education highlighted by policies we have already brought to the community as part of Labor’s education revolution. They include: $111 million to encourage students to study maths and science at university; establishing a national curriculum board to develop a uniform national curriculum for the core subjects of English, history, maths and science; a $62.5 million pilot program to fund construction of shared facilities between government and non-government schools, and I have seen an example or two of that in the Canberra community and it is something that is really worth promoting nationally; a $2.5 billion plan to invest in our schools to help build new trade centres to lift school retention rates; and, of course, the $65 million Asian languages strategy. They are all very good and obviously useful and practical strategies towards our education revolution.

There is tremendous pressure on the budgets of Canberra’s working families, like so many families around this nation, as a result of four interest rate rises in two years. Housing is less affordable than ever before in Australia’s history. Households are now paying a record high amount on mortgage payments, with many families now spending 20 per cent and more of their disposable income. House repossessions are soaring, with recent reports of more than 5,000 repossessions in Sydney alone. I had consultations with a particular community agency here in Canberra late last year and again early this year—they specialise, sadly, in this sort of area—and the point was made to me: you look first at the numbers of repossessions but more importantly you look at the trend of repossessions. The trend is the alarming figure, with an ever-increasing number on a graph of how families are finding themselves put under very heavy stress in relation to mortgage repayments and the general cost of living. Then you add to that the level of rent that is rising faster than inflation. One has to ask, in light of these concerning realities, how the Prime Minister can keep a straight face when he says that Australian families have never had it so good.

As a result of those consultations that I held in my community, I made a point earlier this year of including in my community newsletter a specific insert which brought to the attention of all of the households in my electorate the need to be very aware, if any form of financial pressure begins to beset the family, of not leaving it too late—get in there and get assistance as quickly as you can. We listed with that a number of agencies that they can approach. It is enough to think that we needed to do that, and we were aware that we needed to do that given the stories that we were hearing about certain sectors of my community.

On the subject of local business, I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the ongoing role that small business plays in the growth of Canberra. I would like to thank local business owners who have responded to my recent business survey, an ongoing process at the moment. Businesses need government to help make it easier and simpler for them to do business. I do not know that that is happening as well as it should, with red tape a little bit out of control. A Rudd Labor government would understand this and deliver on our commitments to reduce business regulation, including: a superannuation clearing house; easy pay GST, which the government has adopted after months of criticising us for having put it forward as a policy; fast Commonwealth bill-paying to help improve cash flow for small businesses; and a standard disclosure form for financial services products.

The issue of climate change is of course a very big issue about which many of my community share equal concern with families around Australia. They are concerned at the failure of this government to have a plan to address climate change seriously. I believe the government have preferred to ignore this issue, denying its vital importance, only waking from their 11 years of self-induced slumber by the impending election, a few good reports and a Rudd Labor plan for action on climate change. On our side we have already announced 11 practical measures to tackle climate change. They include—and this is not an exclusive list: the $500 million national clean coal fund; a setting-up of the $500 million green car invasion fund; ratifying the Kyoto protocol; establishing a national greenhouse emissions trading scheme; boosting the use of renewable energy through enabling Australians to access low-interest loans to help install energy efficient measures such as solar panels; and so on.

Locally, I want to highlight and congratulate the efforts of residents and business owners in the suburb of Farrer who have commenced the process of making this the first carbon neutral suburb in Canberra. It is yet another demonstration that at the community level Australians recognise the significance of climate change and its impact on the environment—recognition that we need to take action to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce our production of greenhouse gases. I am pleased to see that community organising themselves in the way that they are.

In the short time left, I also want to talk about Norfolk Island. As part of my electorate I have the privilege of representing some Australian electors on the external territory of Norfolk Island—good, working Australians and their families, people I believe this government has let down. The government spent a tremendous amount of money last year commissioning a number of reports to review the governance and financial sustainability of the island. There was and is a need to work collaboratively with the Norfolk Island government and the island residents to ensure the island has a secure and sustainable future. Sadly, the minister’s subsequent submission to cabinet was dismissed, ultimately delivering nothing more than false hopes to the many island residents. The major question now is: what do the minister and his government have in mind for the future of Norfolk Island? There are many issues of concern that need to be addressed and, while it is easier to lay all responsibility at the feet of the Norfolk Island government, there is no question in my mind that the Commonwealth has an important role to play. It is extremely disappointing to see so much work done and so many dollars spent with this outcome, and I along with many residents of Norfolk Island await further word from the federal government.

We have also had a bit of success recently with FM broadcasting—given that many parts of the southern end of my electorate could not receive adequate FM broadcasting—with a lot of help from my office and elsewhere. ABC Classic FM and Triple J have announced they are going to build a new transmitter, commercial stations FM104.7 and 106.3 have new broadcast frequencies down there now and ArtSound FM, a community broadcaster, has announced a new transmitter on Mt Taylor—all power to them, literally.

At this point I would like to end where I started: on two points locally and nationally. As I mentioned earlier in my speech, Canberra is really a tale of two cities, one a major regional city, which serves us as a centre for a vibrant and growing region, and the other a national capital, a focus for who we were, are and hope to become as a nation. In just five years Canberra will celebrate its centennial. We here in Canberra are very proud of the role we play in living in and supporting the city as our national capital. However, our families, the businesspeople and our community in Canberra have aspirations for their futures and the future of our city. They want to have good education, good quality child care, affordable health services and an environment they can proudly hand on to their grandchildren. I hope that, in the future, they are able to do all of those things and more.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased once again to rise in this place and speak about a responsible and forward-looking coalition budget. Like the previous 10 budgets, it is responsible, delivers locally and builds nationally, so this morning I will be spending my time speaking again about the implications of this budget, not only at the national level but also at the community level in the electorate of Deakin.

The measures and priorities in this budget are an investment in Australia’s future. It is a dividend of years of hard work and tough decisions. The budget also comes at a time when we face many important challenges: the skilling of our workforce, climate change and infrastructure development. What we are looking at here is a period of unparalleled economic growth to secure economic prosperity well into the future, and this budget delivers in spades in those areas.

I am proud to have been part of major initiatives throughout this government’s term. On top of record investment into vital services such as health, education and the environment, this government has never sat on its laurels or lost sight of the need for ongoing reform in our economy. There has been vital tax reform, important structural changes to the health system and an emphasis on sustainability in preserving our precious water resources. Education is now set on a path of excellence, skilling future generations so they too can be part of a global village in the modern economy, and our ability to tackle climate change is moving forward in a positive and practical way.

The 2007 federal budget paints a clear picture of how far we have come as a nation in the past 10 years, and we need often to recall the last 10 years and just how far we have moved during this time, because there are many in the Australian community today who would not be aware of the dire circumstances this nation found itself in when we first came into power. In 1996, when the government was first elected, the focus was on dragging the economy out of the mire of the Keating era. All of us here remember those dark days very well and the $96 billion of government debt. I know a lot of people do not want these figures referred to, but we will. There was $96 billion of government debt, the $10 billion budget black hole, and, importantly and disgracefully, we saw unemployment sitting at over eight per cent, with many Australians unable to find employment and unable to have a wage which they could use to feed their families. This was a period in our nation’s history that required tough decisions to be made, decisions which would set the course for the longest and most stable period of economic expansion in our nation’s history.

What have we seen in the last 10 years? All government debt has now been paid back. Why is that important? If you pay back government debt—if you pay back debt of any kind—you have money that you can spend in other areas. In the case of the government, the interest savings alone of $8 billion can now be used in other vital—

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

Per year.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Per year; that is right, member for Blair. So that is $8 billion a year in interest payments savings which can be used in other vital services. For the 10th successive year the budget is back in surplus to the tune of one per cent of our GDP—and this is at a time when the GDP itself, the size of the economic pie, has grown by over 50 per cent in the last 10 years. Unemployment has reached a 33-year low of 4.4 per cent—and we have done this without setting the political targets that were encouraged by the opposition. Rather than those sorts of stunts, we just got on with the job and we have seen the results that have taken place.

We have seen wages rise by over 19.2 per cent over the past 10 years. The number of small businesses—the confidence to set up a small business—is growing exponentially. These days the number of small business men, independent contractors and private entrepreneurs outstrips the number of union members. Only 15 per cent of the non-public sector workforce is now unionised. That reminds me to compare the 15 per cent of the non-public sector who are unionised with the 100 per cent of those who sit opposite the Treasury bench in this chamber who are unionised.

We also see 80 per cent of taxpayers now paying a maximum rate of 30c in the dollar in taxes. We see a budget that has delivered. We see a budget which has cut taxes and increased payments. If we recall budgets of the past, they were never ones of: ‘Will there be a tax cut? Will there be increased payments for pensioners or bonuses?’ They were always, ‘What is going to go up and by how much?’ We remember quite vividly the headlines where the government of the day was applauded for not raising taxes by as much as was anticipated rather than for talking about decreases.

These great achievements in the last 10 years point to one thing—that the enterprising spirit of Australia is alive and well and that individuals and families are looking to their financial future with more certainty and with greater opportunity. We have seen evidence of this in recent times when, according to an Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey, consumer and small business confidence reached an all-time high. This is not an accident. This really is businesses and consumers responding to the environment in which they now find themselves—an environment with low taxes, low interest rates and more flexibility which is responsive to their needs.

It is unfortunate to hear that the Australian Labor Party after 11 years in opposition continue to oppose, block and rubbish every government policy that has enabled these economic conditions to come about. Last week Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, said they were now economic conservatives. If this is the case, then why has opposition leader Mr Rudd and his colleagues blocked every major economic reform this government has introduced which has delivered our economic stability? This approach to our reforms has not changed and it continues today. The problem for opposition leader Mr Rudd is that, even if he truly believes he is an economic conservative, he has not behaved accordingly and, most importantly, the team behind him are definitely not economic conservatives. They are true to their beliefs, and we will see this coming forward in the next few months.

Heaven help the Australian nation if the Australian Labor Party get in, because the forces behind opposition leader Mr Rudd will certainly assert their authority. Who are those forces? We will see ex-union bosses Bill Shorten, Greg Combet, Douggie Cameron and Richard Miles being parachuted into safe ALP seats at the next election. The Labor Party now is more captive to its union boss than ever before. Why are these individuals and a whole lot of others coming? It is akin to that great slogan that was used by Don Chipp—‘To keep the bastards honest’. That is why they are coming—to make sure that their agenda, their policies and their ideology are pursued and there is no deviation by someone who calls himself an economic conservative. The pay-off for having this team in Canberra is a $100 million war chest to oppose the government’s workplace policies.

Labor’s policy inertia on the important issues facing our economy does not stop here. In the area of taxation, we see a blank sheet of paper instead of a real policy by those on the other side. The Australian Labor Party are now at the stage where they dare not mention the word ‘tax’ for fear of offending those aspirational voters they now wish to court. Yet the simple truth is, when it comes to the economy, the Labor Party just do not get it. On tax, Labor shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan has no policy and in a recent interview said the ALP would not present a tax policy before the election. I agree with the Treasurer’s comments on Alan Jones’s program last week that the member for Lilley’s, Wayne Swan’s, tax policy could only mean two things: that Labor think that the tax system is ideal as it is—pretty unlikely—or that they intend to get elected and change the tax system but do not want to tell the voters beforehand lest the voters do not like their plans. This policy is one which will not go unchallenged by those on this side. We will pursue them in this policy area right through to election time.

I did not come here today to simply talk about the opposition, although it is always quite fun.

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

I thought that’s all you guys ever spoke about! That and the state governments.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on the other side never come into the chamber and speak about us—of course they don’t! But there are a range of policies and initiatives in this budget that have benefited us as a nation and, importantly, there are a range of initiatives and services which benefit the community that I represent, in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I want to touch on some of those in the time that I have left. The Springvale Road level crossing project received a vital cash injection in this year’s budget of $25 million to investigate alternatives and alleviate the traffic congestion that gridlocks over 120,000 commuters a day. This level crossing is now ranked by the RACV as one of the top intersection black spots in all of Melbourne. Thanks to this funding boost, the local council now has the funds to begin a comprehensive study to investigate alternatives to fix this chronic bottleneck in Melbourne’s east.

Without this injection of funds, commuters and residents throughout a large corridor of the Deakin electorate would be left with nowhere to go, particularly after the state Labor government, awash with cash, did not deliver one cent to this project. This is a road that traditionally would fall under the jurisdiction of the state government, and yet the state government, despite pleas from my office—and even from some of Labor’s own state MPs, who have basically been told to shut up and keep quiet—has walked away from the motorists and the residents in the eastern suburbs and refused to fund this project. The state Labor government has deliberately neglected this road and the region. Why has it done this? A source close to the state government revealed to me that a deal had been done by Premier Bracks not to support grade separation for fear it will divert traffic from the new toll link. I call on the Bracks government to reveal the contractual agreement and refute this claim, and to support the federal government’s funding for this road. This funding is urgently needed and has been called upon by all of us in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

Another very welcome federal government budget measure that will benefit my community is the preservation of the Blackburn Lake Sanctuary, whereby $1.8 million has been set aside to help purchase a one-third stake in the allotment adjoining the lake, thereby preserving a vital space for the local community. This funding comes off the back of widespread public concern in this area about land and habitat preservation. I am pleased to say that, after representations that I made on behalf of the community, the federal government has agreed to this buyback plan and it is well on its way. It will mean that a vital slice of Blackburn’s environment will be set aside for the residents to enjoy for the years to come.

I will also take this opportunity, while I am at it, to mention that there has been some muttering that some of the stakeholders who initially proposed to buy back this land—the local council and the state government, but in this case I focus my attention on the council—may be trying to do a runner on the residents, to weasel their way out the back door and not fund the purchase of this land. Having fought so hard to get the funding and having made commitments, they may now be looking at possible loopholes to avoid the purchase. Certainly if they do so the residents, the ratepayers and the taxpayers in the Blackburn area will be very vengeful, and they will take out their displeasure on the council at the coming council election, in 2008.

I entered parliament determined to make a difference for my local community and for our nation, as most members of parliament do. I always saw education as one of the areas where opportunities can be made and skills enhanced to improve prospects for future generations. I particularly welcome initiatives in the area of technical education. With an Australian technical college located in my electorate of Deakin, at the site of the Ringwood Secondary College, I have seen firsthand how important it is that we skill up our youth to prepare them for the future. I am very proud of this particular college. It has been established after vigorous representations by me to get its forerunner on that site, the automotive and manufacturing technology skills centre, established. The college itself will be taking over that skills centre and we will have a comprehensive educational facility which will deliver vital trade skills.

These policies in the area of trade are important. I commend the Minister for Vocational and Further Education, Andrew Robb, for working closely with a coalition of education groups and industry to develop policies which cut to the heart of the matter and engender real change in this particular area. These are not policy announcements made on the back of an envelope that there will be trade schools in every school. I do not know where they are going to find the teachers and the tradesmen to go into those schools, and not simply the numbers but even just getting them out to the various locations. It is a wishy-washy statement with very little thought having gone into it.

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

Ms Hall interjecting

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the time that I have left to speak in this debate—and I know that the honourable member for Shortland would not want me to be short of time, since she is someone I do get along with—I want to discuss a matter of great concern to my constituents, and that is the environment and everything associated with it, particularly the current debate on climate change. Thanks to the strong economic management which underscores this year’s budget, policy initiatives to address climate change can be made and, more importantly, can be funded. At the end of this month, the Prime Minister will be receiving the much anticipated emissions trading report by a task force involving industry. The report will determine if an emissions trading system needs to be established, what it would look like, whether targets can be or need to be set and, importantly—and in total contrast to the view of those on the other side—whether or not such targets can be sustained and what their consequences would be for the Australian economy and Australian industry.

I note that the recent international scientific panel on climate change report of 2 February predicted that if carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice their pre-industrial levels, the global climate will probably warm by 3½ to eight degrees and that there is more than a one-in-10 chance of much greater warming. Whether or not this will actually occur is a source of much debate and conjecture in the community. I know that the forces on either side are lining up with their particular arguments. Personally, without going into the science of it and whether it is 3½ or eight degrees, I do not dispute that global warming is taking place and that action needs to be taken in order for us to leave a more sustainable environment for our children. I am hopeful that the $4.3 billion that has been allocated in this year’s budget will assist in paving the way for many more directions on tackling climate change and, in particular, addressing some of the recommendations that will come out of the report to the Prime Minister. A move towards an emissions trading system would encourage a reduction in CO emissions, and the system should be tailored to meet Australia’s unique economic and environmental conditions. Any agreed trading model should act as a positive force, rather than as a punitive force that hurts Australian industries and Australia’s international competitiveness, and one that addresses the issues of climate change.

I have very little time left to speak in this debate, so I simply say that without a stable, growing and prosperous economy none of these initiatives would be possible, but the economic situation in which we find ourselves has not happened by accident. It has happened because tough decisions were taken and carried through. I am immensely proud of this government’s achievements in the areas of economic management, education, health and the environment. This is a government that actually delivers on what it promises and it has an economic record that is unparalleled in our nation’s history. I certainly support the budget and all its measures.

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

It is interesting that, once again, a member of the government, in this case the member for Deakin, has spent at least half of his speech talking about the opposition instead of their own track record. You would expect that, after 11 years of government, which they crow about on a daily basis, they would take the time to actually talk through their own budget in this appropriation speech. But they do not, and the reason for that is simple: the purpose of this budget was not to put things into focus; it was about taking problem areas off the agenda. It was about doing just enough in areas which had been neglected for 11 years—areas such as child care, tertiary education and climate change—just enough gloss, just enough of a bandaid to take the public’s attention off them, not on them. In fact, there is very little in this budget after 11 years of government that the government should be crowing about. It is not surprising that we are not hearing much of it in the House.

On budget night I, like many people on my side of politics, went into the House a little bit nervous. We heard rumours of massive spending. We were expecting a profound budget which would make a real difference but, as I sat there and listened to the speech and read the documents in front of me, two-thirds of the way through I started thinking: ‘There’s really not much in this. They’ve filled a few holes that they created themselves, they’ve put in a little bit of spin, they’ve repackaged some projects, they’ve reannounced a couple of projects and they’ve brought forward some projects from the last election.’ But this budget will flow across the community and in six months time there will be very little left to show for it.

Going out in the community, as I did the week after the budget, that is the view that was pretty much shared by people whom I spoke to. The budget flowed across their focus for a minute and pretty much disappeared. It was very much business as usual. When people did have something to say about small amounts of money that had been referred to in this way or that way, it was usually preceded by the statement that the problem had been going on for 11 years and, ‘Thank goodness something was finally being done, but it’s all a little bit too late.’

This is a budget which will flow across the community and, like this government, unfortunately, leave very little behind. At a time of one of the greatest booms that Australia has ever seen and a global boom greater than we have seen in 30 years, one would expect these are the times when governments do actually make a difference. When you sit down in the future and look back at 11 years of this phenomenal amount of money flowing around the world, and ask: ‘What difference did the Howard government make to the education of our children? What difference did it make to our cities, our public transport system and our infrastructure? What difference did it make to our exports? What difference did it make to our education levels?’ the answer would have to be in the negative in most of these areas.

Let us look at the Higher Education Endowment Fund, for example. Let’s face it: a $5 billion fund that will bring around $300 million per year to universities for research facilities is to be welcomed. But you have to put it in the context that there has been 11 years of neglect. Government funding to universities fell from 0.9 per cent of GDP in 1996 to 0.6 per cent today. The initial funding will provide $300 million per year to upgrade university facilities spread across each of our 38 universities. That is between $7 million and $8 million per university, if it is spread that way. If larger facilities are funded—and we now know of facilities that cost between $150 million and $350 million—then it will not go very far.

I went to the Rydalmere campus last year for the opening of a new building. Across all of the University of Western Sydney’s campuses, that was the first building in nine years—one building in nine years under this government. This fund provides enough to fund one building and some maintenance. With 38 universities the fund would provide one facility every 38 years plus a bit of maintenance—do not forget there is maintenance and minor upgrades as well. So if your five-year-old grows up and has a baby, when that child, your granddaughter, reaches university, there will be a new building. When that child graduates and goes to work at the university as a professor, just as she retires, there will be another building.

So let us put this $5 billion in context. If this $5 billion came on top of 11 years of support for this sector then it would be something this government could be very proud of. But to throw this amount of money after 11 years of neglect and then crow about it and call it an education revolution is beyond the pale. This is not an education revolution; this is a fix-it after 11 years of neglect. This is a bandaid—the level of neglect has been so great that this is merely a bandaid. I am almost expecting to see an advertising campaign about it, though, because the government is very good at those these days, if not at much else.

The people of Western Sydney deserve much better than this; after 11 years of the Howard government, they deserve much better. The people in Western Sydney still enrol in universities at just over half the rate of the rest of Sydney. The member opposite smiles; obviously he thinks that is funny. I tell you, no member in Western Sydney finds it funny that our children—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. The member opposite cannot assert any kind of thing on my behalf.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

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

The member was in fact smiling.

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

Shame!

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

Yes, I am sure it is very funny that people in Western Sydney enrol at half the rate of what they do in the rest of—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. The member opposite cannot assert statements on my behalf when I have not even opened my mouth.

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

Order! There is no point of order.

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

Let me assert on behalf of my constituents and my fellow colleagues on this side of the House who represent people in Western Sydney: it is not acceptable to us that people in Western Sydney enrol in universities at just over half the rate of the rest of Sydney nor is it acceptable to us that our major university in Western Sydney has been ignored for so long by the Howard government. Let me put it on the record and let me state it very strongly that the people of Western Sydney and I will not be satisfied with the performance of the government until they take concerted long-term action to do something about it, something that they have neglected to do for at least 11 years of government.

Let us talk about child care. There is a one-off 10 per cent increase in the childcare benefit in addition to the regular three per cent increase. Again, that is to be welcomed. There are people out there struggling with child care at the moment. Childcare fees for some of my constituents are more than their rent. But, again, let us put it in perspective. How bad did it have to get before the government finally listened and did something? How bad did they let it get? How long did they stand aside and let it happen before they finally did something about it? Surprisingly, they have done something about it just before a federal election.

The annual increase in childcare costs has been more than 12 per cent per year over the last four years. That is the annual increase. Childcare costs are rising five times faster than the average cost of all other goods and services. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, over the last four years out-of-pocket childcare costs for families have increased dramatically by 12.7 per cent, then 12 per cent, then 12 per cent and almost 13 per cent last year. What do we have now? An election. So the government does the bare minimum to take this issue off the rapid boil, a 10 per cent increase in childcare benefit. It is welcome, of course, but it does not even compensate for the 13 per cent increase last year or the 12 before that, or the 12 before that or the 12.7 before that. This year, with an election just around the corner, the government finally gives families the one-off bonus increase. This is after four years of cost increases and four years of bearing the costs—more than what some families pay in rent. Of course it is welcome; of course it is taking place just before an election. Let us wait and see whether what happened four years ago, when fees rose to absorb the bonus, happens again this time.

The budget also brought forward the childcare tax rebate. This is not a case of creating a problem and then asking for applause for fixing it; this is a case of deliberate government policy. The government made a promise at the last election and then they did not deliver it; now they are making it again. This childcare rebate promise—and given the track record of the government on this specific item, we might all be well advised to view it as the promise of a desperate, tired government until we see the cheque, not the advertising, in our own, hot little hands—is the same one that was made before the last election and not delivered. It simply promises to finally deliver on the Treasurer’s original promise, which he made back in 2004. There is a song called Fool me once, with the words: ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’. This is groundhog day. Before the last election, the Treasurer promised to pay the childcare tax rebate immediately after the financial year in which the childcare expenses were incurred. That was flawed policy, anyway, because it only helped those who could at least afford to pay it as they went and provided no assistance for those who could not afford it in the first place. Nevertheless, before the 2004 election, the Treasurer promised that families would receive payment of the 30 per cent childcare rebate from 1 July 2005. Then they won the election, and he immediately broke his promise and declared that families had to wait until 1 July 2006 to receive their rebate on childcare costs that were incurred in 2004. All this new budget measure does is finally deliver—it promises to deliver—on a commitment that the government promised once before, immediately before the 2004 election.

The promise of $8,000 per child sounds like a big promise. But wait—there is less. The average rebate, according to the government’s own figures, is only $813, not $8,000. Very few families are likely to receive payments of that order. Still, families are under such pressure that even a few hundred dollars will help with costs. But the government has done nothing to address other concerns of families, such as availability and quality of child care.

Why don’t the government take this issue seriously? I say, and enter into evidence, that they only do something about this in an election year when their own work and family balance is at stake, rather than that of the Australian electorate. Yet this is a critical issue, not just for families but for the economy. We hear about it from the government—the ageing of the population, the need to increase workforce participation—yet the only solution they put forward to that is Work Choices, a solution that is supposed to increase workforce participation by driving down wages and conditions. They say that will encourage people into work. Just imagine families sitting at home and deciding whether the stay-at home-parent, for example, should go back to work. They would consider the economic value for the family and the loss of family time. They would weigh up the options and say: ‘Oh, Work Choices—wages and conditions are lower. I’ll certainly go back to work!’ All the government put forward to bring people back into the workforce is lower wages and conditions.

Jokes aside, lifting workplace participation is a critical issue. We all know on this side of the parliament that meeting the participation challenge will be a key ingredient in maintaining our economic prosperity. How are we going on this? Not good. We do not have anything like the participation rates for women that many of our competitor countries do, and the experts say this quite clearly. The Productivity Commission recently reported that the cost and quality of child care were barriers to workforce participation for about 30 per cent of women aged 25 to 44, while a further 10 per cent could not access child care at all. The Bureau of Statistics said that 100,000 women are not in the workforce because child care is too expensive, not available or of low quality. We need our government to take this issue seriously. There is much work to be done, and we have never been in a better position to do something substantial about it. We have not been in a better position for the last 11 years. We have had 15 years of uninterrupted economic growth. We have never been in a better position to change the lives of people for the better.

One of the most powerful moves we can make is to invest in the early development and learning of our children, but there is nothing in the budget for this except a $1.4 million fund to establish a committee to look at intergovernment agreement on quality assurance and regulation. As important as that is, after 11 years of government we would hope for some action. On this side we have put forward a comprehensive and significant commitment, especially for our four-year-olds—not a one-off election bribe but a long-term commitment to providing access for every child to 15 hours per week of quality play based learning for 40 weeks of every year. That is a policy that builds for our future.

I would like to talk briefly about tax reform—or the recent tax cuts more than tax reform. When the Labor Party put the same policy forward two budgets ago, we were soundly condemned by the government. As recently as yesterday in question time, even after they had finally gotten around to doing it themselves, they were still playing that political game. The government have finally gotten around to providing tax justice for working families. Again, it is an election year, so they will do that. Between elections, they did not. Nevertheless, it is welcome because it is overdue and, with rising costs of child care, medicines, petrol and interest rates, families in my electorate really need it.

The skills crisis is another issue that we were all expecting would be well and truly covered in this budget—a skills crisis caused by 11 years of neglect—and once again we were hopeful that this time the government would do something substantial about it. Once again they have thrown some window-dressing on it; look out for an advertising campaign. On the whole we welcome new assistance for apprentices in the budget. After 11 years of the Howard government’s neglect of this most critical issue, of course we welcome that. But the government’s commitment to three more Australian technical colleges will not address our skills crisis in any real way.

On the government’s own figures, Australia will face a shortage of 240,000 skilled workers by 2016. The Howard government’s response is its Australian technical colleges, which will produce their first qualified tradesperson in three years time and by 2010 will have produced fewer than 10,000 students. That is assuming that the problems that have bedevilled the technical colleges so far—the late openings, the cancellations et cetera—do not continue. If they travel as they are supposed to travel, by 2010 they will have produced fewer than 10,000 students with a looming skills shortage of 240,000 skilled workers just six years later than that. Meanwhile our TAFE system, of which my community is rightly proud, which was capable of responding immediately and which has been starved over the last 11 years, is gradually being weakened by this government’s neglect. In contrast to the government, Labor’s plan is for the next decade and beyond, not just the election. It is led by our most recent policy to invest $2.5 billion to help build or upgrade trade facilities in our schools over a 10-year period, to lift school retention rates and to help provide real career paths to trades and apprenticeships.

I will dwell on retention rates for a moment because education is something that I care about deeply. When I look at school retention rates and school completion rates for the electorate that I represent, I am deeply saddened. When Labor returned to power in the early eighties, the percentage of kids staying at school to year 12 was way down in the 30s. When we lost office in 1996 it was in the 70s; we had achieved a doubling of school retention rates, and that is something that I am immensely proud of. But it has stagnated under 11 years of the Howard government, and that is just not good enough for our kids. Ask any parent who is struggling to keep their child in school or who watches, without being able to do anything, their child drop out—talk to any of those parents—and you will see that Labor’s plan will provide options for those kids who are inclined towards the practical skills. It will lift high school retention rates, which is good for the economy, but it will also provide additional options for families with teenagers to build the best lives they can for their children. It is a must for families and for the future prosperity of this nation.

We were expecting that the budget would be an environment budget. Even though the Treasurer has never used the words ‘climate change’ in any of his preceding budgets, even though the central piece of environment legislation that the government passed last year did not mention those words and even though we have a Prime Minister who does not believe in it and a whole front bench of climate change sceptics, we nevertheless expected, as did the media—given that it is an election year and the polls are saying it is a big issue—that finally there would be something significant on climate change.

But unfortunately, and unfortunately for us all, we were wrong. After 11 years of the most appalling neglect a very modest amount of $30 million per year has been allocated for the solar panel rebates program. We have argued for this before and we welcome it, modest as it is. But let’s face it, it is a policy for an election, not for the planet. The calculation is that after five years the reduction in emissions from this program will amount to only 0.01 per cent of our emissions. Before the budget, there were indications from the government that they would bring down an environment budget. So where are the plans to rein in our rapidly growing greenhouse pollution? Not in this budget, I am afraid. We in this country are connected to the land in ways that white Australia perhaps does not understand and it is time this government acted.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the federal member for Ryan, a federal seat in the western suburbs of Brisbane, it is a great honour to again speak in the Australian parliament on behalf of the people that I represent, on this occasion on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008. We have just heard an enormous amount of claptrap and certainly a misguided analysis from the member opposite, the member for Parramatta. I do not know where she was on budget night, but to say that nothing good came out of the budget for the Australian people really does reflect sheer arrogance on her part, if anything, and a lack of understanding of the budget process and of what this government has done for the people of Australia.

I must say at the outset that it seems I have got too much of a good thing to talk about. I have 15 pages here of the wonderful stuff done by the federal government and I have only 20 minutes in this presentation. But probably the most important thing for me to start off my presentation is to extend very warm congratulations to the Queensland State of Origin side, which last night defeated the New South Wales Blues 25 to18. What an example of courage and determination, of discipline and teamwork. What a wonderful example of ability and skill that, I might say, is not just acquired overnight or in the months leading up to the actual result on the night. I want to take the opportunity to compliment the captain of the Queensland State of Origin side, Darren Lockyer. This man is full of athletic ability and sheer football skill and I noticed that he led by example and demonstrated incredible leadership skills. Again, I might say, these were not just acquired overnight but honed after more than just a few seasons in the team. He seemed to lead his team with a remarkable self-belief and he also had faith in his team members. So what an inspiration!

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member for Ryan willing to give way?

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I decline. I would like to continue. Would a colleague in the national parliament rise to stop a member of the federal parliament who represents a seat in Queensland where many constituents love their football and love their State of Origin? This is an analogy to federal politics because it is all about teamwork, discipline, ability and skill. That is where I lead into my comments on the federal budget. I have a high regard for the member for Denison from Tasmania but for him to try to stop me from talking about skill and teamwork and ability, qualities that are not acquired overnight, is not on. I think there is a remarkable analogy there.

Of course, I am here to talk about the budget in more depth. I want to congratulate the Treasurer on handing down a very successful budget, his 12th consecutive budget, and, more importantly, his 10th surplus budget. The people of Ryan, whom I represent in this parliament, might be interested to know that the Australian budget is some $247 billion in size and value. Total revenues are $247 billion and total expenditure is $236 billion. So of course there is a budget surplus and the estimates are that it is some $10.6 billion.

I am a very big fan of the Treasurer, not only because he is a great guy and someone with a great sense of humour but especially because he is a fiscal conservative—a real fiscal conservative, not a pretend one, not a TV fiscal conservative—who has a real ability to do the job, just like the Queensland State of Origin players. He has a real ability to do the job, an ability to manage the economy of our nation. I believe that the people of Ryan will also share my view, as I am sure will the people of the electorate of Blair—I am delighted that my colleague and friend the member for Blair is with me at the moment in the chamber. I am sure that both our constituencies will share the view that the economic leaders of our country should really believe in what they say and they should have the ability and the skill and the experience to implement their policies. I think that on election day, when the tough decision has to be made to decide whether they want security for their families and economic stability in the country, and of course looking into the decades ahead at which political party has the ability to deliver results, at the end of the day, I am sure and I am confident that they will cast their vote for a very successful coalition government.

But this federal budget delivered by the Treasurer was a visionary budget. This is a budget for Australia’s today and for Australia’s tomorrow. This is a budget for modern Australia in the first decade of the 21st century and a budget for the future of Australia long after many of us in this parliament will be gone. There was a completely responsible fiscal budget and a budget that was practical in its direct benefit to the economic and social needs of the people of my electorate of Ryan and the greater wellbeing of our wonderful country.

The Australian economy is some $1 trillion in value. It is hard to imagine having that sort of economic security in your hands, but that is precisely the enormity of the responsibility in the hands of the federal Treasurer. Our $1 trillion economy is nearly 50 per cent larger than it was 10 years ago. With a population of 20 million, Australia spends more money on health alone per year than the GDP of some 65 per cent of the world’s nations. Just a one per cent margin of error in the guidance of our economic responsibilities in a $240 billion-plus budget such as this would wipe some $2.4 billion off our surplus. So this is no small responsibility that the national government has and that the federal Treasurer in particular has. There is just no margin for error in looking after an economy of our size. We do rank as the 13th largest economy in the world, despite only having a population of 20 million, or 0.3 per cent of the world’s population. So it is very significant for our country’s future that the government of the day is re-elected, with its skills and its experience acquired over many years.

The Australian economy simply does not run on some kind of autopilot switch. I know that many people in the community perhaps think that, and certainly I know that some in my Ryan electorate might have a view that our economy is just a case of switching on and off switches and pressing buttons here and there. But it does not work like that. It is not an autopilot system. One needs to have immense skill and ability and judgement to run our economy for the benefit of our nation.

I am delighted to see that another of my colleagues, the member for Canning, in the great state of Western Australia—another booming state, another booming economy—is in the parliament to support my remarks, as I am sure he does. I am sure that he will agree with—

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

Everything you said!

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

everything I said. He will even support my comments about the Queensland State of Origin victory last night. For some reason, I do not know why the shadow—he might become a shadow minister in the many decades ahead, but I am not sure if that is the case. I know that he was a minister in a previous government, a government that was too horrendous for us to even contemplate thinking about. But I do wish him well. He is a good man. It is a shame that he is in the wrong political party, but in our great democracy that is one that thing we can do—we can join the political party of our choice. It is a shame that he is not thought to be good enough by his leader to be on the front bench of his party.

Anyway, the experiences of the past have been that a Labor government—the Keating Labor government, if I dare utter the name of that former Prime Minister—within the space of a single term turned our economy into an economy that was on the cusp of being a basket case economy. And it has taken more than a decade for a conservative government to retrieve the nation, led by leaders who are real fiscal believers—to lead and to resurrect it.

I want to give an example for the people of Ryan, whom, when I give a speech in the parliament, I have great honour in representing as a 26-year resident of the electorate, someone who grew up in the electorate, who went to school and university there and who lives in the wonderful suburb of Taringa with my family, where I intend to bring up my son for a long time to come. The Ryan electorate would, I am sure, like to know that unemployment jumped from six per cent to 10 per cent in just over 18 months under the former Labor government and it took the Howard government some eight years to get it to fall to under six per cent. Under Labor, government debt, government unemployment, all skyrocketed. Debt skyrocketed from $17 billion to $96 billion in just five years—a remarkable mismanagement of the Australian economy by a Labor government. Interest rates have risen to over 10 per cent pretty much every time Labor has been in power in the last three decades and, at the end of the day, it really affects people right across the country, especially young families. So we must always focus on this.

The 2007-08 budget would simply not have been possible without the strong economy that we enjoy today. Ryan residents will, I am sure, be very familiar with the current strength of our economy, with an expected growth rate of 3¾ per cent in 2007-08 and a net government debt of zero dollars, compared to the $96 billion debt inherited by this government in 1996.

I should draw to the attention of my colleague the member for Canning, in particular, who would be interested to know—as will my constituents in the Ryan electorate—that when we came to government we inherited $96 billion of Labor debt, but I asked the Parliamentary Library to do a little bit of research on this and they came up with a very interesting figure. In particular, I draw this to the attention of coalition members, because it might be something that they can usefully take back to their electorates. I will continue in my future brochures to draw this to the attention of the taxpayers of Ryan and indeed to the future voters of Ryan, because it directly affects them.

When we came to office in 1996, with $96 billion of Labor debt, that represented $9,073 per taxpayer. It represented $5,230 per Australian. In 1996 I was 26 years old. I owed $9,073. My sister Catherine, who was 16 at the time, owed $5,230 because she was not a taxpayer at the time. In 1996, my brother, at age 23—I should give him a plug; he is one of this country’s finest young neurosurgeons and the health department of the Queensland government is desperate for him not to go overseas because they only have a handful of neurosurgeons—owed $9,073, as a taxpayer. So if you were five years old, 10 years old or 15 years old in 1996, you owed $5,230. If you were a taxpayer in 1996, with $96 billion of collective Australian debt of the government of the day, you owed $9,073. That is a very interesting figure.

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

What’s the story today?

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My friend and colleague from Western Australia, the member for Canning, asks me how much we owe today. This is perhaps a very good comparison that we should draw to the attention of our electorates. We in fact owe nothing. We owe nothing because there is no net government debt because this government has made all the tough decisions over the last decade to pay off the completely irresponsible management of the economy by the Labor government in the previous decade. Here we are being slandered by the opposition and absolutely defamed by them after 10 years of hard slog, 10 years of making the tough calls, 10 years of being forced to cut back on services to pay off $96 billion of debt, with a prosperous economy, with a capacity to contribute to the services and the welfare of the Australian people, with some remarkable and wonderful initiatives and some forward-looking policies. That is very significant and something that should be taken to the people of Australia.

I will continue to do that in the Ryan electorate because the support of my constituents, their votes and their vote of confidence in me are not things I take for granted, as no member of the coalition should in their own electorate. It is a shame that time is getting away from me in this debate because I am very proud to be a member of this government and to boast of the economic skills of our leadership team. Unfortunately, doing that has taken time away from me to talk about the specifics of this budget’s policies, but I want to make sure I talk about some of them because they are very important. As the member for Ryan, where the University of Queensland is located in the suburb of St Lucia, I want to draw to the attention of my constituents a very significant government announcement on budget night, and that was of course the initiative to implement the Higher Education Endowment Fund. Some $5 billion has been allocated for the establishment of that fund. This is education policy at its very best—a real education revolution. This fund will ensure that a very strong, well-resourced higher education sector will come into being for the students of the future. It is a very practical measure; it will make a very big difference. That $5 billion is in the bank, locked up to ensure that once the good times are over there will still be a strong education sector to keep Australia globally competitive once our economy confronts some challenges in the international community. If Labor comes to office it is almost certainly guaranteed that at least the university sector will have $5 billion locked in the bank. The interest payments on that can be contributed to vital university infrastructure and assets; as well, it can be leveraged to make a difference to the final amounts that can be spent in the universities across the country. It will operate in a very similar way to the Future Fund; indeed, this fund’s investments will be managed by the Future Fund’s Board of Guardians as a separate fund. I want to quote the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland, John Hay AC. He says: ‘Costello and the education minister, Julie Bishop, deserve real praise for this initiative.’ Of course, John Hay is not necessarily a man known to praise this government’s initiatives, so for him to make that comment is indeed very instructive.

Regrettably, I only have several minutes left in this debate and yet I have so much more to talk about, which is a great shame. One thing I want to draw to the attention of the people of Ryan relates to unemployment. At the end of the day, unemployment figures make a difference to the economic security of individual Australians and of their families. Again I want to draw an analogy with football or State of Origin rugby league. I hope the member for Canning appreciates this; if he has been to Brisbane he will know what I am talking about. I know that Ryan constituents will understand the picture I paint as a way of illustrating the very positive impact this government has had on the employment landscape of our country. Since 1996, when we came to government, more than two million Australians have found jobs. For those in the Ryan electorate and in the wider Brisbane city, this represents 40 Suncorp Stadiums filled to capacity. Suncorp Stadium takes 52,000 people; 40 times that number comes to two million people. So 40 State of Origin games—40 Queensland victories over New South Wales—represents two million people. And of course many Ryan constituents will be among those two million people who have secured jobs in the last 10 years. So you can visualise 40 Suncorp Stadiums of people as the number who have found employment in the last 10 years. Or if you happen to be a Victorian living in the Ryan electorate—I know many Victorians have moved up to the great state of Queensland—the equivalent would be filling the MCG on grand final day 20 times. The MCG takes 100,000 people, 20 times 100,000 is two million people, so imagine 20 MCGs worth of people able to secure jobs. When you pause to think about it, that is a remarkable figure: one in 10 Australians have had the opportunity of gainful employment, thanks to the economic management of the Howard government.

In conclusion, I am pleased to commend the budget delivered by the Treasurer and the Howard government to the people of Ryan and to encourage them to keep in focus the key aspects of living in Australia—economic security and family security. If you have a mortgage and are paying it off, it is so important to keep that at the forefront of your thinking when it comes time to choose a government at the next election. I know that there is a lot of talk about the federal Labor Party having good polling figures, but I just ask the people of Ryan and the wider Australian community to ask themselves a question: why take a risk? Rudd equals risk. He is an unknown and untested quantity. He has only been in the parliament since 1998. He has never been a minister and, at the end of the day, it is just not worth the risk. (Time expired)

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

The budget reply debate permits members to range over a wide field and, on this occasion, I want to put forward a proposal for the consideration of the public as to whether Australia needs to develop a national sexual and reproductive health strategy. There is currently no national sexual and reproductive strategy, although in 2000 the then Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care commissioned a report which recommended the development of such a strategy. In December 2005, the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing released $12.5 million for targeted chlamydia screening programs. My proposal is that the department and the community in partnership develop a sexual and reproductive health strategy which takes a comprehensive approach to the population’s sexual and reproductive health rather than just focusing on disease and the rate of abortion.

Despite the increasing incidence of sexually transmitted infections, STIs, rape, HIV-AIDS and abortion and the continuing high rates relative to other developed countries of teenage pregnancy, sexual and reproductive health has not been a priority area for Australian governments.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

The issue I was addressing before the division in the House was a proposal for a national sexual and reproductive health strategy for Australia. I make it plain that I am speaking to an initiative which I understand will be the subject of discussion by the parliamentary committee of which I am a member, the PGPD, the Parliamentary Group for Population and Development. But the idea makes important sense. Currently, the community must negotiate a range of service providers for sexual and reproductive health issues, and that makes access for many difficult, if not impossible. If we had a national strategy on sexual and reproductive health it would address fragmentation of services and ensure a broad and comprehensive approach to sexuality, people and their relationships and access to services.

A national sexual and reproductive health strategy could be underpinned by principles of relevant international declarations and statements which demonstrate the legitimacy of sexual and reproductive rights as a basic human right and which promote education, prevention and early intervention. Of course, those declarations and statements include the Jakarta declaration of 1997, the Ottawa charter of 1986, the Cairo declaration of 1994, the Beijing declarations of 1995 and the IPPF Charter on Sexual and Reproductive Rights of 1998.

The purpose of such a strategy would be to provide a framework for cooperation and support for and between government and non-government agencies, private practitioners, research organisations, service providers, community groups and the wider community to work together on a number of issues, including: improvement of sexual and reproductive health; improvement of the wellbeing and the safety of the Australian community; promotion of respectful, equitable, non-violent relationships; reduction in the transmission of HIV and sexually transmitted infections; reduction in the prevalence of undiagnosed HIV and STIs; improvement in the health care of people living with HIV and STI related chronic diseases; reduction in unintended pregnancy rates; reduction in maternal and neonatal complications associated with early pregnancy; reduction in the discrimination associated with early parenthood; reduction in preventable infertility; reduction in discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and gender identity; reduction in rape and sexual assault through education and prevention; and an increase in the community’s access to a range of sexual health services in locations where people actually live.

This is an issue which has an economic as well as a social context. Because of the fragmentation of our approach, we are not providing an effective national response to some of the large issues in the lives of many in our community. I appreciate that this is a difficult area that governments enter with trepidation, but I believe that this is not an issue that can be ignored if we are going to have an effective response in the interests of our community. We have been capable of courage in the past in relation to controversial issues. Australia’s record in terms of its national response to the HIV-AIDS issue has put it to the forefront of all countries. We have an enviable record internationally because of the courage, in particular, of Dr Neal Blewett. When he was health minister in the Hawke government of the early 1980s—at a time when many governments dived for cover; and regrettably some still do—Neal Blewett spoke directly and bluntly about the need for an effective program to deal with these issues. He communicated with the people who were most likely at risk of transmission and infection, and opened the window of enlightenment rather than closing the window and allowing the darker prejudices of people to dominate that particular debate.

We should not shy away from the fact that there are literally thousands and thousands, if not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, of young men and women and women and men of middle age and even older who do not have access to effective programs that deal with sexual and reproductive health. This is not an issue that is confined to aberrant behaviour; it is an issue that affects the community as a whole and it is one on which a national government can give effective leadership should it choose.

For too long, we have failed to develop a comprehensive strategy for addressing these crucial issues, which many of us wish did not require our attention but we know they do so. It is therefore an issue that I put on the table in response to this budget. I am certain it involves costs in the many millions of dollars in consequences for the wellbeing of the Australian community, with loss of work time, but it also involves the unnecessary destruction of lives. That is not something that we should endure on a continuing basis, and I believe there are inspirational opportunities for Australian governments. We should focus in our responses to the budget, as many speakers have, on the day-to-day consequences of those large macroeconomic decisions. But underlying those large macroeconomic decisions are real human lives and, where there are gaps, we need to identify them. One area where I think it is plain that there is a gap is in the failure, as yet, to develop a national sexual and reproductive health strategy for Australia.

Another area that I want to touch on, which, again, is often shied away from in public debate, is the issue of AusAID and family-planning guidelines. It is an issue which I know the minister is currently considering, but we are one of the few countries in the world which have guidelines that substantially restrict the capacity of AusAID to provide effective family planning in countries to which our aid is directed. Australia has followed the United States. The United States in turn responded to the pressure from the religious right to constrain the way in which their program delivery of overseas aid is offered. It means that Australia and the United States, alone of donor countries, place restrictions on the use of aid funds. It means that, even if a woman is dying or injured from an unsafe abortion, there is no effective way of our aid program intervening and providing effective information and treatment, even if we are engaged in work in other areas of sexual and reproductive health. It is not a sensible framework for us to continue, and I wish that those who are currently engaged in discussions—I understand that there will be a roundtable and a launch on 30 May of a document called ‘The Way Forward’—would encourage further debate in relation to those issues.

I do not pretend to be the author of these ideas; they are shared by many parliamentarians. The secretariat of the Parliamentary Group for Population and Development has provided much of the text that I have referred to in my remarks. It is a bipartisan group which involves many members from the government side—I suspect, actually, there are more from the government side than from the opposition in its active membership—and I am not seeking to make my remarks partisan. It is an issue that requires attention, and I hope that we get constructive outcomes both in beginning a dialogue about the need for a national strategy for sexual and reproductive health and in unwinding some of the constraints that have prevented effective aid delivery as part of our AusAID programs for overseas countries.

The next issue I want to address, which is also an important economic issue, relates only tangentially to that which I have addressed. It relates tangentially in the sense that Australia’s HIV-AIDS program has been enlightened in the area of harm minimisation when it comes to providing, for example, needle exchange programs and education about appropriate and safe means of injecting that minimise the transmission of HIV-AIDS. That is not intended to condone drug-taking behaviour in any way—it is a straightforward and sensible harm minimisation strategy—but it leads into what I think is a failure of our parliament to have a serious economic debate about the manner in which we deal with drug related issues.

In that regard, I commend to the attention of members of the Main Committee and the House at large a recently released report by the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, authored by David Collins of the Macquarie University, Helen Lapsley of the University of New South Wales and Queensland University, and Robert Marks of the University of New South Wales, which is the first Australian study to quantify the cost of illicit drug use. The report points out that the illicit drug market draws resources away from legitimate businesses supplying legal goods and services and paying their fair share of taxes. In launching the report, the foundation’s president, Dr Wodak, called for a new national approach to drugs, because law enforcement was failing as a strategy to protect both people and the economy. He said:

The potential for increased business efficiency could lead to greater export competitiveness, better worker and management rewards, higher profits and higher return to shareholders. We know that return on investment is very good with drug treatment, harm reduction and social services. Other governments around the world have already stopped pretending we can arrest and imprison our way out of this problem.

I am not suggesting that within the matrix of social responses to drug law there is not a legitimate argument that can be put for law enforcement and policing to be part of the strategy. It is a legitimate argument that can be put, but we have failed to look at the other two elements of any sound and effective strategy for education, social education or social messaging and effective targeting of messages to those who are actually users, and we have failed to look at treatment and rehabilitation programs in a way that balances out the equation. We have certainly failed to look at alternative models of dealing with drug law as a whole.

It is important to use the same rigour when we talk about drug law and the way we approach drugs as we do with other social phenomena. It is quite odd that we have not had any Productivity Commission report or any serious analysis by economic institutions of the effectiveness of the institutional way we are seeking to deal with those issues. The report that I have referred to is available from the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation website at http://www.adlrf.org.au, and I would commend it as a starting point for a larger discussion about how we can have a more objective, more rational, economically sound debate about our approach to drug use in our community.

In doing so, I will make a couple of quick remarks about its extent in Australia. There is no doubt that we pretend too often that drug use is an abhorrent social phenomenon. The truth is that we cannot recruit people now into our intelligence services, for example—those we trust with the highest level of responsibility—on the basis that they must be drug free before recruitment. It is simply impossible. There was a scandal when a footballer was reported to have used drugs, and that particular young man’s reputation has been the subject of public debate and discussion. I personally wish him well. But we should not pretend that it would not be widespread right across the community—and in the Australian defence forces.

We have just heard reports in the legal profession of a senior lawyer who is alleged to have died as a result of administration of a drug. Again there are outraged reports about drug use within the legal profession. But there is no reason to expect that amongst parliamentarians, amongst lawyers, amongst dentists, amongst doctors, amongst footballers, amongst members of the Australian defence forces, and amongst people in the community as a whole this issue is not one of significance. If we look at the statistics, that must be the case. Statistics show that over a third of the population have used illicit drugs at some stage of their life. We simply cannot imprison and treat as criminals all those persons; it is an absurd approach. So I do commend a starting point for rational debate and economic analysis that allows us to test some of the effectiveness of some of the propositions and deal with what I believe to have become an overemphasis on law enforcement and imprisonment as a solution for a much larger problem.

Finally, to balance this up at the end and put it in some context in the discussion of drugs, there has been a report recently that alcohol, for example, kills an Indigenous person every 38 hours. So we have our scandals and our hysteria about illicit drugs, but, if we know that a legally available drug is killing an Indigenous person every 38 hours, we know that across the population as a whole the greatest harms occasioned to our community are being caused by drugs which are lawfully available. I certainly do not except myself from those issues but I do commend a serious analysis rather than a trivial analysis of this issue.

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

I rise to add my congratulations to the Treasurer for yet another excellent budget. This document is further evidence of strong, disciplined economic management by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. This government has run an extremely prudent fiscal policy, in stark contrast to the record that Labor has and continues to display at all levels of government. Let us have a look at the rhetoric of the Labor Party and compare that with their so-called economic management and that displayed by the Howard government.

Labor attempt to say that the government has been the recipient of a lucky set of economic circumstances that have resulted in the excellent economic conditions now present in the nation. In their view, clearly, if we had just sat around doing nothing, as they would have done, then the conditions that now apply would have applied under their do-nothing policy. Let us analyse this lucky set of circumstances. First, the set of circumstances we inherited from Labor certainly were not too flash. We had an unemployment rate of 8.5 per cent; it is now 4.4 per cent. We had interest rates of well over 10 per cent; they are now around six per cent. We had a high level of industrial disputation; 547,000 hours were lost in 1995 compared with 132,600 hours lost in 2006. We had an inflation rate around eight per cent; it is now around 2.5 per cent. And, just to add to this terrible heritage left by Prime Minister Keating, we had a $96 billion debt. The interest bill for this debt alone came to around $8.5 billion per annum, a staggering amount. In short, the Labor heritage was a disastrous one.

To remedy this heritage, this government put in place a policy agenda which ensured that our economy turned the corner and became the prosperous economy that it now is. What was the response of the Labor Party to the policy initiatives introduced by this government? Given that they now claim to be fiscally and economically responsible, indeed economically conservative, you would think that all of these policy initiatives would have been accepted by them with alacrity. Not so. The opposition, true to the term, opposed all of the measures that we wanted to introduce in order to set up the prosperous society we live in. Later, I will touch further on how Labor are now saying that they will adopt our economic policies.

How about Labor’s view that we have inherited a fortunate set of circumstances—circumstances that have led to our time in the economic sun? In October 1997, there was the Asian economic meltdown. Who remembers Nasdaq and the dotcom crisis of 2000, which led to recession in many parts of the world? Yes, we sure were lucky in the early part of this government’s tenure as far as the world economic situation was concerned, weren’t we? What were we doing during that time? We were having balanced budgets or budget surpluses, reducing inflation, reducing unemployment and increasing wages. However, this did not come about by sitting on our backsides with our minds in neutral. No, we did what was required, which meant hard work, hard thinking and making tough decisions—something that is anathema to those opposite.

Maybe we just fell on our feet in the early part of this century and the good economic performance of this government was largely the result of a brilliant confluence of world strategic and economic situations. Once again, the record indicates that nothing could be further from the truth. September 11 2001 is a date which is firmly fixed in the minds of the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. The US and many other nations had recessions, but not Australia. But surely things were fine after that. In 2002 there was SARS, which went into the second half of 2003, severely damaging tourism, which had already been damaged by the collapse of Ansett Airlines in March 2002. This period also saw conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as many Australians killed in Bali in 2002.

We had the bombing of the Australian Embassy, Jakarta, in 2004. What was happening in Australia in terms of our economic and social performance? Lower interest rates, more jobs, lower unemployment, increasing wages and lower taxes—yes, we also had reducing tax rates. In addition, we continued to pay off Labor’s debt. In 2005 Bali was bombed again, as well as London being bombed. The drought that had started a few years previously showed no signs of abatement at that stage. This, remember, has been the worst drought since Federation. What was the government doing? Finishing paying off Labor’s debt, increasing employment, reducing unemployment and ensuring higher wage outcomes and continuing low interest rates, lowering taxes and setting up the Future Fund. We also put in place a workplace relations system that has significantly added benefits to all Australians—lower unemployment, higher wages, lower industrial disputation and very flexible working conditions, which have been fantastic for lifestyle changes among workers who desired these more flexible working arrangements. What has Labor’s response been to the required changes in legislation? To oppose them.

As can be seen, while we have had a minerals boom over the last few years, these years have not been a period of worldwide bounty and high economic growth. We have been the standout economy over this period. Labor tell us that things would have been as good with them, because they have now adopted a ‘me too’—or, in Austin Powers’s terminology, a ‘Mini-Me’—attitude. There are a few points that clearly demonstrate that this is arrant nonsense. First, there is Labor’s record of opposing all the changes that have made our economic high performance possible.

Labor members now have the view that they will adopt our economic policy and all will be well with their world of economic management. Unfortunately for them and for an Australian electorate that chooses to elect them, this is not true. Economics are not static and, by simply adopting and then not reforming our economy, we would move backwards. For instance, Australia performed well economically in the 1960s, but does anyone think that adopting the Menzian economic policy, successful as it was at the time, would lead to good economic performance today? The simple fact is: just to keep pace in the world today economically you need to move forward with reform. The economy is like a boat on a river: you need to have some forward momentum, which could also be called economic reform, just to remain stationary. To move forward on that stream requires real effort and skill. This is something that is beyond the ken of the Labor Party.

Do you think I am just pushing a scare story? Let us consider Labor’s economic performance at the state level as a guide to how they would be likely to perform federally given the same pro-union, pro-pattern bargaining proclivities. During the time that the federal government has paid off Labor federal debt and run budget surpluses, on a collective level the state Labor governments have run up multibillions of dollars of debt. They have been so inept in economic management that they have pushed housing prices up significantly through a complete lack of understanding of even the basics of supply and demand in their land release policies. They are in debt, in some cases approaching economic basket case status, despite this minerals boom which is supposedly the only reason we are prospering federally.

In fact, the Howard government legislated a GST for the express purpose of giving the states a growth tax. What a squandered opportunity by the states! What a complete and utter waste! In fact, the state Labor governments have been so delinquent in their responsibilities that we have had to initiate programs such as Investing in Our Schools to make up for state Labor neglect in fundamental infrastructure required by our children in education. Then, to add insult to injury, the state Labor governments rip off these schools by charging them an administrative fee for the privilege of having the Howard government pay for infrastructure that the state Labor government should have paid for. This is a disgraceful case of economic mismanagement. Yet the same people now want you to hand the reins of the federal economy to them so that they can do similar or worse damage.

Do you want to know what will happen if Labor get in federally? Not only will there be economic disaster so that social health and education programs will not be adequately funded but the GST rate can be increased with ease as well. I never thought I would be faced with a prospect of all state and federal governments having the same political persuasion, but we face the nightmare prospect of wall-to-wall Labor governments. I shudder at the thought. Imagine the untrammelled power of the unions. There is no clearer point of differentiation between the coalition and Labor governments, both state and federal, than this. The coalition policies are aimed at all Australians. Labor’s are always aimed at specific interest groups or those who can best assure the re-election of Labor. Who can forget the infamous Kelly whiteboard? It was a shining example of how Labor manages our money strictly in the interests of the Labor Party.

I have had many positive reactions from the constituents of Tangney to this budget. Many are families whose sons and daughters are in the process of entering the jobs market. The success of the coalition in producing historically low levels of unemployment is resulting in most of these young people not only being able to get a job but actually having a choice of jobs. Unemployment in Tangney in December 2006 quarter was an outstandingly low 2.3 per cent. This is a truly remarkable figure and a direct result of the economic policies of the federal government.

That is the record of coalition governments, and the 2007 budget is no different. As well as reducing Labor’s recession-driven unemployment levels, what else has the federal coalition done for businesses in Tangney? Many people in Tangney run small businesses, the sector for which the Labor Party has no understanding or interest. There are about 4,600 businesses in Tangney employing people. A vast majority employ fewer than 100 people, so the industrial relations reforms have been a godsend. These small businesses have been able to benefit by moving away from the union dominated one-size-fits-all system of compulsion beloved of Labor, and they are thriving. These are often family businesses in which people have put all their money to make a go of business and to create employment. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.