Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I want to record the privilege of my participation as a member of this House in two momentous events associated with the opening of parliament—the first being, of course, the Indigenous welcome. I want to say how overwhelmed I felt as I witnessed that welcome. I was a member of the Procedure Committee which reported to this House on the desirability of—and in fact firmly recommended—an Indigenous welcome to commence the proceedings of a new parliament. I am sad to say that the then Leader of the House, Mr Abbott, ignored that report and could not bring himself to respond to it for two parliaments before finally—and, I suspect, reluctantly—indicating that the government rejected the proposals contained in the report about the opening of parliament and, in particular, the Indigenous welcome. I should also place on record the feeling I had about the apology and about being a member of the parliament in the House of Representatives when the Prime Minister made that apology to the stolen generation. Could I also, in congratulating the Prime Minister on both these events, acknowledge the important role that the Leader of the Opposition played in offering bipartisan support to both events. I must say that, without that bipartisan support, those events would have been the lesser.

Deputy Speaker Schultz, as you would be aware, there was a momentous, record-breaking sitting on the first day of parliament—some 15 hours in duration—around the government’s proposals to provide for a sitting Friday. Was this something that was revolutionary and had not been seen on the continent of Australia before? That is not the case. The state the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer and the Manager of Opposition Business come from has had sitting Fridays since 2002. While there are some departures in important respects from the New South Wales Legislative Assembly sitting on Friday, I note for the Hansard record that the opposition leader in New South Wales, a coalition member, has announced no such policy of having question time on private members’ sitting Fridays. So, whilst for us in the Commonwealth it is perhaps a significant departure, there is at least precedent in New South Wales—the state that you, Deputy Speaker, come from too, I might add. I should also acknowledge your illustrious prior service in the legislative assembly before to coming this great House, Deputy Speaker.

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

I am humbled by your kind words.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. So here was the precedent. What were the concerns of the opposition that led to a 15-hour sitting of the parliament on its first day? The principal concern was that there was no question time on sitting Fridays. I do not think the founding fathers would have envisaged that we would have had a proposed parliamentary sitting day devoted exclusively to private members—that is, no government business whatsoever. I do not think the founding fathers, with great respect to them, would have envisaged the dominance of the executive over the parliament itself. Certainly there is not a provision in the Constitution for private members’ sitting days, although they are constitutional—and I will get onto that.

What sitting Fridays represented was a degree of generosity and reform by the Rudd government, in trying to balance up the power of the executive over private members. Who would have benefited? We would have had under those proposals committee reports being tabled in the House when it started on Friday, and then at 10 o’clock every committee member who served on the committee—in addition to any other member, for that matter—having the opportunity to give their version of that committee report. I do not apologise to this place for being one who champions the role of parliamentary committees. I value the contribution of all those who serve on parliamentary committees. It is a frustration of this place that those who do serve on parliamentary committees do not in a timely way get the opportunity to record their considerations of the issues confronting their particular parliamentary committee and why they may have recommended or not supported different proposals that went to make up the parliamentary report.

So the big winners would have been those backbenchers who had served on parliamentary committees. They would have had the opportunity to present a report when there was no competing government business. Committee members and other members would have been able to go straight into the Main Committee and give their contribution the very morning that the report was tabled in parliament. The other big winner, apart from private members having more opportunities to have private members’ motions debated in the House, was the opposition shadow ministry, because they could have developed private members’ motions—may I say, perhaps designed to embarrass the government over one issue or another. They could have had their remarks recorded in the Hansard, again without any competing government business. I thought there were considerable advantages in these proposals. It is also true that, if they were not participating on private members’ Fridays, members could have devoted themselves to other aspects of their parliamentary life here or, indeed, returned to their electorates.

But what were the arguments used in that record 15-hour debate? The first proposition was that the standing orders were designed to have no starting quorum. A starting quorum is a constitutional requirement for every parliamentary sitting day and you cannot actually start a parliamentary sitting day without a starting quorum. In other words, if this morning there had only been 28 or 29 members in the House, the Speaker would have been forced to adjourn the parliament. Every parliamentary sitting day requires that starting quorum and nothing in the proposals that the Leader of the House put could have given the slightest suggestion that we were trying to obviate a starting quorum.

The other proposition was in relation to deferring quorums and divisions to the next sitting day. There was an interesting argument consistently presented by the opposition that somehow this was breaching the Constitution. The Manager of Opposition Business said that the dinner breaks on Mondays and Tuesdays, the other precedent for that, were consensual—that is, there was agreement that there be no divisions and no quorums. I have to say that, if something is ultra vires the Constitution, it is ultra vires whether it is consensual or not. But the Manager of Opposition Business was mistaken. That is to say that standing order 55(b) and standing order 133 permit the deferring of quorums and divisions. So there is nothing consensual about it. Any member of the House on the opposition side or the government side can within the standing orders rise during the dinner break and call for a quorum. Divisions are automatically postponed, but they certainly can call for a quorum and that quorum must be counted, but it is deferred. So there was ample precedent.

It is true that the Leader of the House referred to the government obtaining a legal opinion, and much was made of the fact that the legal opinion was not tabled. I think the opposition would have had more credibility had they had a consistent track record of tabling legal advice. Of course, that was not the case. And I will defend the clerks of the House, if I may. I do not believe that the Clerk or indeed the Deputy Clerk would, without the greatest protest and argument with the Speaker, agree to any proposition that they felt breached the Constitution.

I thought it was rather sad to see the former leading law officer of the land, Mr Ruddock, the former Attorney-General, suggest that privilege was somehow at risk because of the issue of deferring quorums. Can I point out that, if the former Attorney-General were correct and even if you accept that the deferring of quorums and divisions in the dinner breaks on Mondays and Tuesdays was consensual—which is false—the alleged consensual nature of that deferment would not protect privilege.

Indeed, a member of the opposition did ask the Speaker about the possible loss of privilege because of the deferring of quorums and divisions on a sitting Friday. I will quote from page 829 of Hansard. The Speaker said:

The Clerk is not aware of any case concerning parliamentary privilege in respect of either house which has been decided on the basis of whether a quorum had been present when words were spoken or actions taken.

Standing order 54 requires that the Speaker cannot read prayers—

so we are talking about the commencing quorum—

to commence a meeting of the House unless a quorum is present. This provision will apply on scheduled sittings on Fridays.

So here you have the former first law officer of the land raising an argument about privilege which is unsupported by the Speaker on the advice of the Clerk.

The other point I should make is this: during the Howard government we had sittings of the Senate where there has been no question time. If question time is a requirement of accountability, why was it that the Howard government was happily sitting the Senate on Fridays? Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz, you know that in past practice the House has sat on Fridays without a question time and without an MPI. And what was the device that was chosen by the former government? We have not yet used it, and I hope that we will not—that is, that we sat through a Thursday and into a Friday at the end of session but called the extended session a Thursday sitting only. We have even broken on a Thursday and reconvened on a Friday but still called it a Thursday sitting. If the passion for a question time and an MPI on Friday was so great, why did the members of the former government, the ministers of the former government and, indeed, the leaders of the House in the former government, not have a question time and an MPI on those Fridays?

In conclusion, can I make a couple of points. The Rudd Labor government proposed not to decrease any question times. We still proposed to have four question times, exactly the number each week that the Howard government had. It was the same with MPIs—three MPIs a week, just as the Howard government had. But in that victory of killing off sitting Fridays—and I might observe that in the six months it has been the only thing that has unified the opposition—what have they now achieved? They do not get a private members’ day free of government time; they do not allow backbenchers to comment on parliamentary reports in a timely way. In fact, it is all being done in the evening. I referred to the leader of the Nationals, and I think he will be rising at 8.30 in the evening. I am sure that, notwithstanding his illustrious office, sadly, there will be very few media persons around to listen to proceedings. So we have killed off the opportunity of more backbenchers participating in private members’ time and we have really killed off the effectiveness of the opposition shadow parliamentary secretaries and shadow ministers to use private members’ time, as they legitimately can, to make points against the government.

This has been a great victory that the opposition has had, unifying them at least on one single issue in six months and devoiding themselves long term of opportunities to make points as they should as an alternative government. Instead they must do it in the evening when everyone has gone home and no-one is interested. Personally, that is the decision that you have to live with, but I am rather sad. I am sad for the parliament, I am sad for backbenchers and really it was a pathetic effort by the opposition.

Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking to this address-in-reply so long after the election, I will not address my remarks, as I usually would, so comprehensively to the issues of my local area but principally respond to some matters in the budget. But I do want first to take this opportunity to thank the voters of the electorate of Fraser. I acknowledge their support; I am very grateful for their support. I accept without question that all the other things that I have the opportunity to do are dependent upon their continuing support. I have never taken it for granted, I do not take it for granted and I intend never to do so. I also take very seriously my primary obligation as a parliamentarian. I am proud to be a parliamentary secretary. I enjoy the work in executive government, the policy development and policy implementation. But all of that is secondary to the obligation I have as a member of this parliament. I enjoy being a parliamentarian and I take it seriously.

Before I get to the principal matter that I wish to raise, which goes to the issue of development assistance, I also wish to support the remarks of the Chief Government Whip. I was out of the country on the day of the Friday sittings so I cannot comment on the detail of what took place on that day, but I have always thought that the initiative of a non-government Friday was a significant enhancement of the rights of parliament and parliamentarians. The parliament does not just serve for the executive or for the front bench of the opposition, which I have just spent much too long being on. It serves the interests of members of parliament. The Friday without government business, which gave members who did not wish to participate the right to go back to their constituency, which is a geographic reality of our huge country, but others who wish to be here the opportunity to participate, was, in my view, a significant enhancement of the rights of members to raise issues—issues of concern to them or concern to their constituency or both. That it was destroyed in the way that it was is a great pity. I hope that we may be able to come back and rescue it on a future occasion.

But today I primarily want to take this opportunity to express my pride and optimism arising from the initiatives in this budget relating to the development assistance portfolio and to put them squarely within the context of the broader strategy of the Rudd government and then talk about the international context. If you look at the features of the initiatives in this budget, they are very responsible. There may be people commenting who wish we had done a lot more, and of course there is so much more to do that you cannot argue with the principle behind what they say, but we need to proceed with measured caution, consistent with efficiency and effectiveness of expenditure. So the budget accords with that responsible economic management and responsible government. It fits the budget and the Rudd government’s projection of the long term.

This initiative with regard to enhanced development assistance is not about transforming our relationships overnight, although in some countries we have done so already, or about transforming the living standards of the poorest people of our region overnight; it is about a long-term perspective. It is about new priorities against the old, tired politics of division and seeking to use international issues as domestic political wedges. It is about a new way of governing, about opening ourselves up to new ideas, as flowed from the 2020 Summit and as we are trying to do through the development assistance program—opening ourselves up to more people and more comment—and it is about fresh new ideas about how we might take Australia forward in the world. I am very proud of the initiatives and of the governance context in which they occur.

As I have said, some people have indicated that they wish we had done more—and let me quote one of the critics, not to attack them but to agree with them. Oxfam Australia are one of a number of very fine institutions doing great work in Australia’s name on behalf of the poorest people around the world, and the headline of their press release on budget night was ‘Rudd delivers on aid promises but Australia remains below international standards’. You might think I would be a bit upset about that; this is my area of responsibility and they are critical, but they are right. Both statements are correct: that we have delivered on our aid promises—and I am proud of that—but that we are starting from so far behind international standards that not only are we still behind them but after we make another increase next year and the year after, and the year after and the year after, we will still be below international standards. Oxfam say:

The Rudd government has honoured its pre-election commitment and delivered a modest increase of $500 million this year in its contribution to making poverty history ...

The sum of $500 million is not exactly right but it is broadly correct, and they are right: we have acknowledged—in fact, exceeded—the specific commitment we made about a first-year budget increase. But they go on to say:

However, Australian aid continues to lag behind other rich countries—

and that is right. The average effort of OECD countries contributing development assistance is 0.45 per cent of their gross national income. Even after this significant increase, we have got to 0.32. Let us recognise—and it is very significant when you think about the dates—that this increase to 0.32 of gross national income, so far behind international best practice as it is, is the highest level Australia has achieved since 1995-96; that is, since the last Labor budget. The government’s declared commitment, for which we are on track with this initiative, to reach 0.5 per cent of gross national income, when achieved, will be the highest level since 1974-75. It is in each instance a Labor government with an internationalist perspective and a recognition of the humanitarian significance and the national interest issues involved in commitments to development assistance that has set the benchmarks. We aspire to get back there and ultimately to go beyond it, but we are starting from such a low base. Oxfam went on to say:

... the budget will lift us off the bottom of the ladder of rich countries performance, but won’t get us anywhere near the top eight, let alone being top of the ladder as befits our leadership position in the region.

I could be offended by that but I in fact support it. They are right. We are starting a long repair job. It is going to take us a long time to repair the damage that has been done, but we have started the task.

I want to embed our initiative centrally within the international campaign to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. They are the international standards that the world has set for itself. The goals provide a clear vision for halving extreme poverty by 2015 and represent a unanimous intent by the international community to rid the world of poverty and improve the lives of those most in need. The milestones set down in the Millennium Development Goals provide a common focus for policy dialogue on poverty reduction efforts between developing country partners and donor countries. This helps to ensure that donor aid programs remain focused on achieving reductions in poverty. We want to make a new commitment to the achievement of those goals and to contributing what we can as a proud and developed country to assist our neighbours to achieve those goals.

What might have slipped past my description of the Millennium Development Goals—which was a fairly standard, orthodox description—but which is noteworthy is that these goals are a unanimous commitment by the world community. That means Australia signed up to them. But we did virtually nothing about contributing to this outcome. I do not want to say they did nothing, because for the first years of the Howard government we did less than nothing; we went backwards. But in the latter years two positive things happened, and it would be unfair of me not to acknowledge them. One was the white paper, which had some good ideas in it and was a step in the right direction. I do not agree with everything in it; it is not the signpost to the future that this government will use, but it was a substantial and positive contribution to the debate in this country about development assistance. The second was the commitment made in 2004 that by 2010 we would double our aid budget. Given the rate of our economic growth, that actually was not a very significant contribution but it was a step in the right direction. It reversed the long-term trend of decline, and I welcomed it. But it does not change the fact that we finished the period of the Howard government behind where we started. This budget for the first time gets us back there.

Let us have a look at these Millennium Development Goals. Everyone talks about the eight goals, but there are many more targets and a vast number of indicators. There are up to 18 targets and 48 indicators. I do not have time to talk about them all, and in my view they are not all equally important, but we need to have a more comprehensive look at the issues we are focusing on. At the core of it, it is about the fight against global poverty. That should be core business for Australia. Under the Rudd government it is core business for Australia in its own right. It is a fundamental obligation of a decent, developed country in the 21st century that we accept that we are part of the global campaign against world poverty. It is not a peripheral interest; it is not cause for occasional gratuitous commentary. It is core business for modern, 21st century developed countries and governments and we intend to restore Australia to that vast array—the majority of modern, Western, developed countries in the 21st century—making the commitment to those Millennium Development Goals.

It is unashamedly in our national interest. There is no reason to apologise for the fact that, while we are doing good, we are serving our own interest. There is no reason to apologise for that. The Prime Minister himself has commented:

It is in our own interests to tackle poverty in our region, as part of a wider strategy to deal with the impact of terrorism, climate change, pandemics and refugees on Australia.

It is unquestionably in our national interest. That would probably be sufficient motivation to do it. But we should never lose sight of the fact that primarily it is a contemporary obligation of a modern nation to be a part of the campaign against global poverty.

The second thing to recognise is that, even if we are to achieve the millennium goals by 2015—and globally we might, although regionally we will not—it is only the beginning of the task, not the end. Meeting target No.1, to ‘Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day’, would be a very significant achievement—and we might get there—but the obvious corollary is that half would still be left behind. We will have more to do after 2015, even if we achieve the goals.

As we began the task of restoring Australia’s standing and our commitment to the global goals to which we were a signatory in 2000—which we were notionally committed to for seven years, and which we are now absolutely committed to and engaged in—the Prime Minister committed us to the global call to action for the Millennium Development Goals. On his most recent trip, we joined that MDG call to action to galvanise widespread support, momentum and concrete action for the Millennium Development Goals. We are committed to it, and it fits within the context of our broader foreign policy, where we have the three pillars: the US alliance, our Asia-Pacific regional focus and our commitment as a good international citizen to multilateralism. The last two of those three pillars lead us to the Millennium Development Goals and to setting ourselves on the path to increase our development assistance from 0.3 to 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015. That will take us in this budget to 0.38 per cent—approximately $5 billion—by 2011-12. We are at about 0.36 per cent this year and we have scheduled in this budget close to a 50 per cent increase, to be achieved by 2011-12. That is a big opportunity and a big responsibility.

I will talk about the budget measures in detail in this House and outside subsequently; today I want to emphasise that we have made this commitment because, as a government, we think the goals set down and adopted by the international community, including Australia, in the year 2000 remain valid today. We acknowledge that in the Pacific no country is on track to achieve all of those goals and at least one is not on track to achieve any of those eight goals. So we, as a nation in our region and the leading country in the Pacific, have failed, and it is time we acknowledged it directly and took seriously the task of remedying that failure. These are not extreme propositions: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV-AIDS, malaria, TB and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. This is not a revolutionary framework. This is about core common decency, applied internationally.

Our government will take a strategic approach to the entrenched causes of underdevelopment and instability, particularly in our region. We want Australia to become a leader in the fight against global poverty. We strongly support the millennium goals and our government is committed to helping developing countries achieve them. As I said before, on his recent trip Prime Minister Rudd announced that Australia has joined the MDG call to action—at last—to galvanise widespread support, momentum and concrete actions for the Millennium Development Goals. An important part of this will be an increased emphasis on basic education and on improving water and sanitation services. These are both focuses of the initiatives and funding allocation in this year’s budget.

We have, for example, committed to increase funding for water and sanitation by $300 million over two years from 2009-10. In this budget, sectoral increases are targeted very directly at the core Millennium Development Goals. Education programs are estimated to increase by five per cent to over $540 million; health programs are estimated to increase by eight per cent to over $440 million; expenditure on environment and climate change is estimated to increase by seven per cent to over $130 million; rural development expenditure—an area I think we will need to give more attention in future—is estimated to increase by seven per cent to over $160 million; and infrastructure assistance will be substantially scaled up to an estimated $380 million, an increase of 17 per cent.

It is not just about money; it is not only about making the program bigger but about making it better. But I am very proud that this 2008-09 budget lays the foundation for implementing the government election commitment to increase Australia’s official development assistance to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2015-16. It is a building block in the government’s scaling up of Australia’s development assistance, with a projected nine per cent real increase in total ODA over the 2007-08 budget figure.

The budget includes a package of new measures designed to take forward the government’s development assistance priorities. In particular—a source of great pride to me—the budget gives effect to our election commitments about climate change, about eliminating avoidable blindness in this region and about improving access to clean water and sanitation. I am proud of the initiatives in the program. I am proud of the context in which they have taken place and I commit the government to an increasing focus on achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I would like to use the first part of my address to express my deepest regret and sorrow on the passing of two public figures, and very important people to me, in the Northern Territory. They were people I knew well and both were very good friends. The first person I want to refer to is Frances McKechnie. I knew Frances for a long time—certainly for the last 25 years—and she was a very dear friend to me. It was extremely saddening to hear of the passing. Her funeral was held yesterday at the Uniting Church in Alice Springs.

She devoted her life to social work in the Territory communities and rural Australia more broadly. She had a stronger affinity with the pastoral sector and the Indigenous people of outback Australia. Frances was originally from Victoria’s Western Districts—Port Fairy. After completing year 10 at Camperdown High School she decided to train to become a deaconess in the Presbyterian Church at Rolland House in Carlton in Melbourne. Her brother Jack recalls asking Frances what made her decide to be a deaconess. At a Presbyterian fellowship camp at Warrnambool, Frances and others were sleeping in a church hall on palliasses. During the night she awoke and her eye was drawn to an unusually bright light in a stained-glass window. On the window were the words ‘Follow me’. Without flinching, Frances took the words to heart and decided to serve God as a deaconess.

In her training she specialised in teaching and social work. She was posted firstly to Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, where she stayed for nine years, before moving to Warrnambool for 11 years. In 1968 she took up a position in the Melbourne office of the Australian Inland Mission, an organisation she gave over 40 years of her working life to. She worked primarily in the field of children’s and women’s services. In the course of her work she travelled extensively around outback Australia, from the Pilbara, the Kimberley, to Cape York, western Queensland and northern South Australia.

Her love of the Territory brought her back to Alice Springs in an active retirement which included seven years as chaplain in St Philip’s College. Frances was the college’s first chaplain and the author of the college prayer. So great was the school’s respect for her that McKechnie House, a boarding house for rural students, was named after her. She worked tirelessly all her public life and in public life. She served on a number of committees in Alice Springs which reflected her interest in and concern for social justice and the preservation of the history of Central Australia. These included the National Trust, the Old Timers, and the Older Australians Advisory Committee, which was established by Carmen Lawrence as Minister for Human Services and Health in the Keating government in 1994-96.

Frances was also President of the Alice Springs Branch of the Australian Labor Party and a life member of the Northern Territory Labor Party. She was a regular and very much welcomed attendee at ALP and government functions right up until the last few months before her passing. She was a great friend to me in her role in the party and a great contributor to discussions about the issues of the day. She was a very important person in the life of the Alice Springs Labor Party community.

She was chairperson of the Adelaide House Management Committee, which has responsibility for keeping historical records of the first hospital in Alice Springs, built by the Reverend John Flynn. Frances was deeply committed to the Central Australian community and lived out her retirement years in a place very dear to her heart. ‘I love the place and the climate,’ she said. ‘Where do you get a retirement village like this?’ Frances said of the Old Timers nursing home in Alice Springs, where she lived in a quiet self-contained unit, a unit in which we passed some time sharing stories, having cups of coffee and a little natter. It is with great sadness that we must say farewell to this great and gracious lady.

The second person that I wish to pay tribute to this morning is Dr Marika. Dr Marika was a Yolgnu woman of the Rirratjingu clan, Yirrkala, in north-eastern Arnhem Land. She was an extraordinary woman who devoted her life to education and to bridging the gap between the English-speaking mainstream and her own society. I knew Dr Marika well. For more than 30 years I visited north-eastern Arnhem Land and watched her become an important and respected community leader. She helped to found the land management group Dhimurru, which applied the practices which Yolgnu people have employed since time immemorial. Her life was not an easy one. She overcame cancer in her early 20s and was troubled by heart problems. Despite this adversity, she was never happier than when she was retelling the traditional stories of her community or going through the details of the clan systems of north-eastern Arnhem Land. She could compare their insights with the ideas current in the Western world. She had truly a two-way vision.

The number of people who have paid tribute to Dr Marika is testament to not only how much of a public figure she was but also how well liked she was. I was particularly moved by the words of the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Ms Macklin, who commented that Dr Marika was the embodiment of reconciliation. Her genuine commitment to her people, particularly through improving the education and reconciliation, was recognised through her 2006 title of Territorian of the Year and last year’s title of NT Australian of the Year. It is a comfort to know that she spent her final days with her family in the stringy-bark forests of her country. Dr Marika was a truly brilliant Australian whose talent, dedication and passion will be sorely missed and forever remembered.

On a happier note, today marks the 80th birthday of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which has consistently provided a vital lifeline to Territorians and others in remote areas. On this day in 1928, the very first flying doctor flight took off from Cloncurry to answer a call for help from the remote town of Julia Creek. On board the single-engine de Havilland, the Victory, was the very first flying doctor, Dr Kenyon St Vincent Welch, and the first flying doctor pilot, Captain Arthur Affleck. The Victory had the most basic instruments and no radio. On that day, the Reverend John Flynn’s extraordinary vision—I referred to Reverend Flynn in terms of Adelaide House and the work that Frances McKechnie was doing in Alice Springs—to alleviate the isolation and suffering of people living the harsh outback life became a reality and a quintessential part of the fabric of Australia.

In 2008, we celebrate not only Reverend John Flynn’s dream but the incredible technological advances in medicine, aviation and communications which have allowed the Flying Doctor Service to bring the bush and coastal cities closer. We also celebrate the spirit of Australians whose courage continues to inspire the RFDS to provide excellence in aeromedical and primary healthcare across Australia. We must acknowledge the professionalism and the dedication of those who worked for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, because it is without doubt that they have delivered life-saving treatment to many Australians over the period since the twenties. Without that sort of creative volunteerism, which stimulated the first royal flying doctors’ efforts, there is no question in my mind that our community would be far worse off. So, to those people who are currently engaged and employed by the RFDS, I say ‘thank you’ for your continuing service.

Recently this Australian parliament did something which I did not think it would ever do. The 13th of February was a momentous and memorable occasion and a long time in the making. This was the day that the apology was given by the Prime Minister to the stolen generations. Much work remains to be done, of course, after the apology, but there are clear undertakings that the government has made—and Tuesday’s budget demonstrates our commitment to those undertakings—to improve health, education and employment outcomes for Indigenous Australians wherever they might live. The Indigenous health summit held in this place in March was a timely reminder of this. Over 40 Indigenous groups and national bodies converged to pledge, along with the government, to campaign for Indigenous health equality. Again, Tuesday’s budget demonstrates our commitment to that pledge.

The apology was an extremely important milestone in our nation’s history and a very important gesture which carried great meaning for all of those affected by the policies of past governments. As we know, we cannot erase the record of the past; however, we can acknowledge our past failures, express sincere regret and work towards establishing a better future.

It may come as some surprise that something has gone unreported, at least to date, in the Australian media—that is, the apology currently before the United States congress to its indigenous people. On 26 February this year, not two weeks after the apology in this place, the US Senate passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act Amendments of 2007. The ostensible purpose of this bill is to improve access to health care for Native Americans. It would boost programs of the federally funded Indian Health Service, prompt new construction and modernisation of health clinics on reservations and attempt to recruit more Indians into health professions. Importantly, attached to this bill is an apology amendment moved by a Republican senator from Kansas, Sam Brownback. The stated purpose of the amendment is:

To acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.

I believe it is worth observing some of the content of this proposed US apology, especially in light of the recent apology here in Australia. It is quite comprehensive—in fact, very detailed.

It begins by recognising the ancestors of the Native Americans as inhabitants of the land of the present-day United States ‘since time immemorial and for thousands of years before the arrival of peoples of European descent’. It speaks of their ‘powerful spiritual connection’ to the land and their ‘deep and abiding belief in the creator’ as reflected through their customs and legends. It goes on to detail actions the federal government took against American Indians, including violations of treaties with Indian tribes; the forced removal of Indians from their traditional homelands; attempts to assimilate children through their forcible removal; armed confrontations and massacres such as those at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee; condemnation of Indian traditions, beliefs and customs; and unlawful acquisition of tribal land and theft of tribal resources and assets. It recognises that there have been years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies and the breaking of covenants by the federal government regarding Indian tribes. The amendment goes on to apologise:

... on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States.

It expresses:

… regret for the ramifications of former wrongs and its commitment to build on the positive relationships of the past and present to move toward a brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together; …

It also:

… urges the President to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land …

This is clearly a statement with content and an apology which would be welcome amongst American indigenous peoples. The bill is currently at a committee stage in the lower house and may not come up for debate for a number of weeks or months.

I think that, although this particular apology, unlike the one in Australia, is words on paper—little more than a footnote to an appropriations bill—as far as apologies go, it does not meet the standards we have here in Australia. Nevertheless, it is an extremely important starting point. It has always been a thing of interest to me that the US government has acknowledged that its policies of the past have had a detrimental effect on its indigenous people. As yet there has not been an official apology made by the government to the Native American people. This bill, which will appear before the congress in the near future, represents an important opportunity to say ‘sorry’, and I hope that that course is followed. As in the Australian instance, it does not sideline the importance of improving substantive outcomes. This is always the primary focus. But an apology, as we have discovered in this country, is an important step. Its role is not to wipe the slate clean, to forget the past and move on; it is to recognise the misdeeds and misgivings of the past and to act as a pledge to work together towards a reconciled future.

What many people have failed to understand over the past decade has been the emotional harm that has been caused in this country by the refusal to say ‘sorry’. On the face of it, it is a simple act, described in denigrating terms by some as merely a symbolic action. For many of the stolen generations in this country, it is much more than this. We saw clear evidence of that on the day of the apology in this place. The refusal to apologise previously had amounted to a denial of the life experience of many of the stolen generations. They have not been able to tell their story in order to heal.

In less than two weeks, on 26 May, Australia will again pause and reflect for National Sorry Day. As much as it is a day for looking back, it is also a day for looking forward to the future and working towards a reconciled Australia. I have to say, though, that I think the national apology here in Australia has given great encouragement to the peoples of the world. I know from the observations which have been made by colleagues here who have travelled to international fora—and, indeed, by the Prime Minister; it is an issue which has been raised with him by heads of state—that it has been a major issue for discussion with them. It is a matter of pride that I can stand here as a member of the Australian Labor Party and a member of this government to say that I was part of that process and to say that here we all sat in this place as part of that apology. I hope that we will see the same thing in the congress of the United States some time in the near future.

But I have to say that, in my own communities, the impact of the apology cannot be underestimated. That is the thing. For many of us it is an abstract notion, but the reality is that, for those who were the subjects of the apology, it is not an abstract notion. In the meetings I have had with people over many years about this issue, there was no question about the very real pain and hurt that people have suffered as a result of previous government policies. To be part of a process where this parliament apologises to those people in a bipartisan way—and I commend the Leader of the Opposition and the opposition parties—has indeed been a great privilege.

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

The new Labor government that came into office at the beginning of last December is committed to building a modern Australia for the 21st century. In doing so, there are many areas in which this government has had to make up for the neglect, complacency or mistakes of its predecessors. In the short time that Labor has been in office, we have made rapid progress in addressing many of those issues, including the measures announced in this week’s budget by the Treasurer. In the Governor-General’s speech at the opening of this parliament, he highlighted the importance of a new productivity agenda to the country’s long-term economic prospects, and it is productivity that I want to speak about today.

Increased productivity is the key to generating economic growth without the disastrous consequences of rising inflation. Yet for all of the rhetoric about responsible economic management from the former Howard government, productivity growth was woeful under its watch. The Prime Minister outlined this disastrous record in a speech some time ago to a business leaders’ forum at the Queensland University of Technology. Productivity growth had averaged 3.3 per cent a year in the five years up to 1998-99. In the following five years to 2003-04 it fell by one-third to 2.1 per cent a year, and now it is running at just 1.1 per cent a year. This is just one-third of the rate that the Howard government inherited from Labor in 1996. This collapse in productivity growth has been a major contributor to rising inflationary pressures in Australia, and among the main reasons for the decline have been the failures to invest in human capital, technology and infrastructure—failures to invest at a time when we had unprecedented budgetary opportunities from the proceeds of the current resources boom. Government spending certainly increased under the previous government, to unprecedented levels in fact, but very little was directed at addressing the constraints in our economy, including lifting productivity.

As the Business Council of Australia notes in its 2008-09 budget submission:

Of the $87 billion per annum that economic prosperity has delivered as windfall revenue to Canberra since 2002, all but $2 billion has been spent on income tax cuts and new spending.

At the same time, despite high commodity prices giving us the best terms of trade in more than 50 years, export growth over the past decade has fallen to half the rate of the decade before. Our current account deficit has reached record levels and foreign debt exploded threefold during the term of the Howard government. The need to redirect the proceeds of the resources boom into the future productive capacity of the Australian economy could not be clearer, and the Rudd Labor government is rising to that challenge.

Skills Australia has been established to lead an integrated response to the skills crisis, and the government is committed to creating an additional 450,000 training places over the next four years. Secondary schools are being invited to apply for funding for the construction of new trades training centres. I am pleased to report that I have initiated discussions with the seven secondary schools in my electorate about how their allocations of this fund can best be deployed to make Bendigo a shining example of modern trades education.

To provide national leadership on infrastructure development—including transport, energy, communications and water infrastructure—legislation establishing Infrastructure Australia has passed through the parliament and its inaugural chairperson has been announced. An expert panel has been appointed to assist the private sector proposals for building the national broadband network and construction is planned to start by the end of the year. For the first time in Australia’s history, the federal government, a Labor government, has taken a national leadership role in planning for our long-term infrastructure requirements.

At the end of the day this country’s future prosperity depends on our meeting the challenges of globalisation, and all of the government’s initiatives that I have outlined will contribute to that goal. But if we are going to respond to these challenges we need all of our businesses, large and small, to be world class. Unfortunately, the Australian Industry Group’s World class skills for world class industries study of 2006 shows that Australian industry is not yet world class, and not world class by a long way. This is not only the opinion of some academic or consultant but the view of the industry itself. Only 18 per cent, less than one in five, of more than 500 businesses surveyed by AiG say that they are currently world class. While this result is disappointing, it is encouraging that at least many do recognise the need to lift their game. Of those firms that are not already world class, 85 per cent thought it was important for them to become so in the next three years. So the imperative is clear.

There are, however, real questions about how Australian businesses become world class. How can we as a nation best invest to position ourselves for survival and prosperity after the current resources boom? It is essentially Australian management who must step up to the plate. While it is appropriate for us to celebrate the achievements of the few Australian businesses that are succeeding on the world stage, we must be ruthlessly realistic about the performance of Australia’s managers. We have to question, for example, why this country has almost no global leader in any market except for the resources industry and some niche sectors in the financial services industry. Where are our world-class manufacturing companies? Where are our world-class information technology companies? The Sydney Morning Herald reported in March that at the CeBIT conference in Hanover, which is the largest information technology fair in the world, just five exhibits out of 5,800 were from Australian companies. This was less even than from New Zealand and hardly the representation one would expect from what is supposed to be the clever country.

So what is world class when it comes to business? A 2001 study by Dr Darryl Hull and Vivienne Read at the University of New South Wales found that excellent Australian workplaces are characterised by world-class performance, competitiveness and innovation. But being world class means more than maximising short-term profits, more than high returns to shareholders. A fundamental tenet of Western capitalism is the free market, a market where competition and the threat of oblivion produce economic growth and increasing prosperity for all. But unfortunately, despite their rhetoric, many of those who are responsible for making capitalism work—business owners, board directors and executive management—do not much like the idea of a competitive marketplace. In fact, they spend much of their time working to dominate or eliminate any competitors. Why? Because they can make more profit if they operate in a market that is a duopoly or oligopoly than they can if there is real competition. More profit means higher dividends, a booming share price for investors and bigger bonuses for fat cat executives and directors. One of the many problems of oligopolies is that they allow managements to get lazy. They forget how to innovate, they forget how to get the best out of their people and they forget how to compete. They are anything but world class. Unfortunately, many Australian industries are just duopolies or oligopolies, and we have to ask ourselves if this contributes to our lack of world-class companies and our woeful export performance, particularly in manufactured goods.

Australia’s businesses have to make some fundamental changes to the way they operate and manage their people, not least because of the changing nature of work in advanced economies. For example, Professor Frank Levy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Professor Richard Murnane from Harvard University predict that future employment growth will be dominated by jobs that they refer to as ‘expert thinking’and ‘complex communication’. These are jobs requiring creativity, design, problem solving and innovation and involving more face-to-face communication. They predict that there will be little or no growth in repetitive manual jobs in developed countries. Professor Richard Florida, a United States economist, estimates that what he describes as the ‘creative sector’, which includes these expert thinking and complex communication jobs, grew from 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the US workforce in the period 1980 to 2002.

These trends mean that Australia can no longer rely on being able to perform simple unskilled jobs as competitively as developing countries. These include routine manual jobs, such as in call centres or in routine software coding, as well as those that follow well-defined rules, such as assembly-line manufacturing. These jobs have declined considerably in advanced economies and they are always highly vulnerable to automation, outsourcing and offshoring. Indeed, a 2005 report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that up to 19 per cent, almost one in five, Australians were employed in jobs vulnerable to offshoring. In this global environment the organisations that will be successful are those that look after their people and ensure that their working environments foster and reward creativity, new ideas and risk taking.

The research by Dr Hull and Ms Read I referred to earlier, which incidentally was funded by the Business Council of Australia, tried to identify the very factors that distinguished ‘excellent’ workplaces from ‘very good’ workplaces. They concluded that quality working relationships are the central pivot on which excellent workplaces are founded. They found that in all excellent workplaces there was an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. They said:

We became convinced ...  that to produce quality work in Australia, one must have quality working relationships ... which requires constant renewal and reaffirmation by all parties.

They said that these relationships are underpinned by ‘trust, respect, self-worth and recognition’ and that the fundamental importance of trust ‘couldn’t be over-estimated’. Importantly, and fortunately, there is no magic in this. They say that the characteristics of excellent workplaces are ‘identifiable, quantifiable and manageable’. They found that management practices that promote respect, recognition and self-worth directly impact on business performance. They found that workplace leaders in excellent organisations, whether supervisors, team leaders or more senior managers, were aware of the impact that their behaviour has on the way people feel about the workplace and their job.

Of course, all this people management stuff is a bit too touchy-feely for some of our more macho managers who are driven solely by the bottom line. Current accounting standards must share some of the blame for this situation. How many times do we read in annual reports that a company’s greatest assets are its people? Yet, when we turn to read its balance sheet, there are plenty of assets listed but no human ones. In fact, every dollar that a company spends on hiring, training and improving the capabilities of its employees is reported as a cost, not as an investment in its most important asset. It is no wonder that managers spend so much time trying to reduce the cost of their people and it is no wonder that training and a whole range of people management spending are among the first things to go when a company is trying to cut costs. This accounting treatment also leads to poor public policy.

The Howard government’s Work Choices legislation, which was so strongly pushed by our peak business bodies, was clearly designed to reduce the cost of labour to Australian business in a short-sighted attempt to compete with labour costs in developing countries—an unnecessary attempt, according to a recent study by KPMG. Despite all the bleating from the big end of town about the cost of operating in Australia, KPMG found that we are one of the least costly locations in the industrialised world in which to do business. Their 2008 competitive alternatives survey found that Australia is already ranked fourth in terms of competitiveness after Mexico, Canada and the US. And, what is more, there is less than one per cent separating Australia from being the second cheapest place in the world to do business.

So further driving down wages is not what this country should be looking to in order to increase business profitability. There is ample evidence that increases in both productivity and profitability are best achieved by better management of the workforce. In fact, research from the UK has found that there is a greater payback from improved human resource management than from giving more attention to business strategy or to product quality or to new technology or even to research and development—and Australian employees know when they are not being well managed by their bosses.

Research released in March this year by recruitment consultants Hudson shows significant gaps between what workers want and what employers offer. More than one in two employees are currently thinking about changing jobs or are ready to walk out the door. In my own state of Victoria, two-thirds of employees are dissatisfied in their current role and are thinking about taking or are ready to take a new job. This is why I believe that, if Australian business is going to be world class, it has to be world class in the management of its human resources.

I have already given notice of my intention to move a motion in private members’ business to this effect. I will be proposing:

... the establishment of a National Commission for Workplace Innovation and Excellence that will, in conjunction with the business community, trade union movement, professional associations and education providers:

(a)

identify workplace factors that positively impact on workplace innovation, excellence and productivity including human resource management practices and organisational culture;

(b)

develop policies that promote workplace innovation, excellence and productivity including best practice models, codes of practice, awareness programs, business exchanges and awards; and

(c)

support research, management education and training in conjunction with higher education providers and professional associations.

I would like to take a few minutes at this point to acknowledge the research on this subject conducted by my late chief of staff and good friend, Richard Clarke. Richard tragically and unexpectedly passed away last month at the young age of 50. He was an inspiration to all who knew him. That is a cliche perhaps, but in Richard’s case it is definitely a true one. He spent most of his working life striving to make things better for others. Selflessly, and seeking no accolades for himself, he succeeded in that objective and improved the lives of thousands of people. Whether it was those with mental illness, whose plight he was strongly committed to, or designing and implementing a pioneering workplace agreement, his paramount concern was for the wellbeing of his fellow human beings. Richard drew on a wealth of experience from his work as a ministerial adviser to former Victorian health ministers Tom Roper, David White and Maureen Lyster and later as a senior health administrator both here in the ACT and in Victoria. He served on the board of management of the Bendigo Base Hospital in the late 1980s and later again as a director of Bendigo Health.

He believed strongly that substantial increases in productivity followed from enriching the working environment for employees, and his groundbreaking work at the Casey Hospital is just one example of this. He wanted to understand how differences in relations between employers and employees distinguished the world’s outstanding corporations and government agencies from those that are merely successful. He was convinced that Australia’s national productivity and profitability can be significantly improved by identifying these differences. Richard was acknowledged as a successful change management practitioner and was highly regarded by both employer organisations and trade unions. He understood more than most the need for continual change in workplace practices, as our national economy responded to increasing globalisation. Not for Richard the pointless industrial disputes that left only one side still standing. He was far more interested in the practices that resulted in everyone being better off than they were before and constantly striving for the win-win scenario. Richard Clarke was not just a visionary manager but a good friend for almost 30 years, and I will miss him greatly.

In conclusion, the election of the Labor government provides the opportunity for new thinking about Australia’s economic performance, for new thinking about what our businesses—both large and small—need to do if we are to be competitive in the global market and maintain a high standard of living for all Australians and for new thinking about how we should manage our most vulnerable resources, our people.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the outset, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land upon which we stand, the Ngunawal people, as well as the traditional owners of the land of my electorate of Chisholm, the Wurundjeri—their elders past and present. One of the most outstanding parts of coming back to this parliament was definitely the welcome to country ceremony performed in this great parliament building. It was an honour and privilege to be part of that after so many years, and it was an incredibly moving ceremony. It was an honour to be part of not only the sorry apology, which I think got an inordinate amount of attention, but the opening of parliament the day before. The very moving and I think poignant ceremony of welcome to country is something that we should all treasure for a long time. It was too long in coming.

I would like to acknowledge at the outset also my great appreciation to Professor Joy Murphy, one of the elders of the Wurundjeri clan, who did a welcome to country to my office when I took possession of it some 10 years ago. We did not have the smoking ceremony because we thought that DOFA would not appreciate us setting fire to a newly acquired electorate office, but we certainly did go through the ceremony of welcome to country. It was a very moving experience and one that I would really like to encourage, if members have not held one in their own electorate offices, as something that they can do to connect with their communities.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has kept you safe for the last 10 years!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has kept me safe for the last 10 years in what is a very marginal seat, regardless of what the numbers now say. Chisholm is a great place to represent and probably not associated hugely with an Indigenous community, being in metropolitan Melbourne, but there is an Indigenous metro community, who we often overlook, whose issues are often put aside and ignored. Professor Joy Murphy of the Wurundjeri clan ensures that we remember that there are metropolitan Indigenous communities that we need to respect and we need to think about, and we need to look at their specific plight. So it was indeed an honour to be part of that process when this parliament was formally endorsed at the beginning of the year.

I would like to finally put on the record my great appreciation of the terrific people of Chisholm, who have again bestowed upon me the honour of being their local member. I do feel like the address-in-reply debate has been a long time coming, so I am feeling a little silly that it is now months down the track and I am doing it. But, now that I have the role of Deputy Speaker, actually getting a chance to speak is fairly difficult. So it is with great joy and pride and honour that I can say that I have had the privilege to be elected again to this House. This is my fourth term. I am now the longest serving member—it did not take long to be the longest serving Labor member for the seat of Chisholm, but I am actually now one of the longest serving members for the seat. It is a great honour indeed. Certainly the first member for Chisholm was there for a very long time, but I have now outdone the time of my predecessor, Michael Wooldridge, within the seat of Chisholm. He swapped seats at the 1998 election when I first ran. It is a great honour to have that privilege bestowed on me.

When I first ran for parliament back in 1998, I distinctly remember saying at the time to my husband: ‘It’s all right; I won’t win. I’m standing. I’m going to fly the flag for the ALP. I’m going to do my bit as a good local member, having grown up and lived in the seat all my life and having association with it, but don’t worry; I won’t win.’ Lo and behold, Dr Michael Wooldridge swapped seats, and I had to ring my husband and say: ‘You know how we had the renovation plans? Perhaps we need to put those on hold.’ Ten years later, I am still here.

Not only this time, winning was a great joy, but to finally be part of government is indeed a great honour and something that I have been looking forward to for a great long time. A change of government has happened on just six occasions in the past 60 years, so it was indeed a momentous occasion. Clearly there was a mood of change. There was certainly a mood of change within my electorate. Within my electorate, climate change was the No. 1 issue on people’s minds, followed closely by health and education. So there certainly was a mood out there, and it was a thrill to be part of government. Since elected in 1998, I have spent 10 long years in opposition, which, whilst a great apprenticeship, was a tad tedious and incredibly frustrating. But now starts the hard work of government. Everybody keeps saying, ‘What’s government like?’ I say, ‘Well, it was really easy in opposition; you just blame the other side.’ Government is actually much harder, a greater responsibility but a great joy to be part of because now we can actually drive. We can bring through the change, and I do not have to sit there feeling frustrated with a Howard agenda, which I was totally opposed to on so many fronts.

I would like to thank all those in the Chisholm campaign who ensured I got here: my local branch members for their unstinting faith; my family, friends and committed locals, who are great supporters of the Labor Party but will not join; and particularly the Young Labor volunteers who were out there in force. Indeed, my staff—Fiona, Jason, Rick, Janet, Louise—and those who came on board during the campaign—Paul, Liana, David, Di and Raff—were all of tremendous support and help. I would like to particularly offer my thanks to Kerry Piva, who came and volunteered full time for the campaign. She was there day and night without a single pay and then turned up on election day with her husband and son to hand out all day for me. It is the likes of Kerry that make campaigning worth while, and I really did appreciate her help.

I need to thank my family: the endearing Steve, who makes it all worth while and achievable, because without him I just could not do it, and Madeleine and John, who already know what it is like to letterbox and to hand out—they are my greatest fans and my greatest supporters. Mind you, at the last election Madeleine did say to me that she did want me to lose, because she had worked out that, if I lost, Mummy would not be so busy. This time around, John, who was five at the time, was getting very concerned about all the posters, because I was pictured standing next to Kevin Rudd. John looked at me very seriously and said, ‘Mummy, how long are those posters going to be up for?’ I said: ‘Till after the election. It’s two weeks off—two swimming lessons away.’ He said, ‘I’m getting very worried. People will think you are married to that man, Mama.’ So here he was very concerned that people in the electorate were thinking that I was married to Kevin Rudd and not to Daddy—the things that go through your children’s minds. They are fantastic human beings and I need to thank them for all their great support.

I need to thank my mum, Joan, who not only babysat but sat for numerous hours on the pre-poll, and my dad, Bernie, who also sat on the pre-poll and convinced everybody in his new accommodation that they had to vote for me. It was the first time in that home that my vote went up. I think he badgered them all into voting for me personally. I thank my brothers and sisters—Tony, Nina, Sophie and Paul—and their respective spouses and children, who also all had to letterbox and hand out on voting day. As most of them actually live in the electorate, they also had to vote for me. I want to say thank you to them.

I also want to put on the record my great thanks to the numerous volunteers out there, particularly Howard and Marie Hodgins; Joan and George Edwards, who were not as out and about as much because of their ill-health but were certainly there; Adele Mach, the world’s greatest letterboxer; Allen Clausen; Peter Chandler; John Burke; David and Lorie Werner, who are the backbone of many of our campaigns; Kirsta Durham; Kathleen Brasher; and Senator elect Jacinta Collins, who I had out doorknocking, which I did assure her was going to help her in her senatorial candidacy. She did not believe me, but nevertheless she was out there doorknocking. I thank all the state members within my electorate, who gave terrific support and assistance, and I thank their staff as well. To all those in Bob’s and Ann’s office: it is always a joy to work with you, and I thank you very much.

It was a terrific occasion. I also want to welcome and express my appreciation to the member for Deakin, Mike Symon, who has been brought into our fold. It was terrific to work with Mike’s campaign and it is lovely now to have a neighbour in the eastern suburbs bordering my electorate. To Mike and his team, congratulations on a terrific win. It was an amazing effort. They worked incredibly hard and they worked an amazing community campaign with all the local residents out there.

I am proud that this is a government that has already apologised to the stolen generation, which the Howard government refused to do. I am proud that this government has already ratified the Kyoto protocol, which the Howard government refused to do. I am proud that this government has brought down a budget that is friendly to working families and aims to restore the balance that was lost during the Howard years.

All election promises made by the Rudd Labor government have been honoured within this budget. I do not think too many governments before could make that claim. This is significant, because past governments have not always followed through on election funding promises. As the Governor-General said in his speech at the opening of the parliament on 12 February this year, this is a government that is ‘committed to bring a fresh approach to governing’ and that ‘has a vision for Australia’s long-term future’. This includes listening to and consulting the Australian people and being up-front with them on the problems it can solve and those it cannot. It also means actually tackling problems that need solving, and doing the hard work—not putting them in the too-hard basket and hoping that by ignoring them they will go away. Compared to the previous government’s arrogance and lack of an evidence based approach to problem-solving, this is a breath of fresh air.

My constituents overwhelmingly wanted a government that would listen to them and address the problems of concern to them: climate change, health and education. They voted against a government that sat on its hands in relation to climate change, pulled millions of dollars out of the public health system and let our universities go to rack and ruin because it did not have the foresight to invest in them. They voted against a government that would not invest enough in education to create the skilled workers who we now so desperately need—and now we are paying with higher inflation and higher interest rates. The Howard government had no long-term vision and people were tired of having the wool pulled over their eyes. The Rudd government has wasted no time in going to work on these problems, with the aim of building a modern Australia capable of meeting the challenges of the future.

The very successful 2020 summit held in Canberra was a sign of the government’s intention not only to consult but to consider new ideas for Australia’s long-term future. Parliament House literally became the people’s house for a weekend, where delegates from all walks of life and all parts of Australia came to voice their opinion. People were delighted that the government finally wanted to hear what they had to say and, more importantly, take note and act on those ideas.

Locally, a 2020 summit for the south-eastern and eastern regions of Melbourne was held at Monash University, in my electorate, in April this year, with the six local Labor MPs in the area attending—the member for Holt, the member for Bruce, the member for Hotham, the member for Deakin, the member for Isaacs and me. One hundred and forty delegates attended. Six groups discussed climate change and water, education, health, the future of our economy, national security, and community and Indigenous issues. It was a phenomenal day and I want to thank all those who participated and all those who were involved. Most particularly I want to thank the summit co-chair, the Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, Professor Richard Larkins, who added an enormous note of intellectual rigour to the day and made it all run more smoothly and more professionally.

Monash University were very supportive of this venture and donated facilities and services for the event, which we were grateful for. Among the delegates were school principals, small business people, doctors, community leaders, academics, environmental activists, CEOs from community health services and many, many others. The groups were co-chaired by MPs along with people who had considerable expertise or background in that particular field. This made for some very well informed, well guided and often very loud but very harmonious discussions. Everybody came along willing to participate with their ideas, and the day did not actually have one disagreement, with everybody prepared to listen and put forward what I think was a great vision for our area.

For example, the national security group, co-chaired by the member for Holt and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International) of Monash University, Stephanie Fahey, had no less than eight experts in the field. At the end of the day we had a great discussion about the notion that in a security sense we have been ‘punching above our weight’ and how we wanted to take that term out of our lexicon because it just does not represent the way Australia should represent itself in the national arena. Apart from that, Richard Larkins, who was co-chairing and summarising, also said, as a health professional interested in preventative health, that as a nation we should not be supporting the art of boxing.

My own group, which discussed strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion and the options for the future of Indigenous Australia, was co-chaired by Wurundjeri elder Professor Joy Murphy. This was a terrific group, with over 40 delegates representing various local communities and organisations. It was a very robust debate. The group discussed many issues around funding models, many issues around the notion of community groups not being listened to and many issues around the funding formula under which we come along with a package and say, ‘Apply for the funding,’ but do not actually look at the issues that the various communities are supporting and working on. All these groups have been up and going and providing services for a long time and they find it really quite frustrating that year-in year-out they have to go cap in hand and beg for new project funding, when what they really want to do is just continue doing the great work they are doing.

One of the group’s issues that was fairly vigorously discussed—and it is a big issue in my area—was the notion of skilled migrants. Whilst I welcome in the budget the report about increased skilled migration, skilled migrants need more support. One of the issues I have been dealing with, particularly over the last five years, is skilled migrants arriving in the country and not being able to get work in their chosen field. There is nothing more frustrating than packing up your home and coming to a promised land as a skilled migrant who has lived and worked in an area and for internationally recognised organisations and not being able to get an equivalent job in this country. They come to Australia, they have promised their families a better life and they are not finding the work, they are not finding the assistance that they need. There is no support given to those individuals. I think that is something we seriously need to look at. The area that I represent attracts huge numbers of skilled migrants, particularly from India and Asia, and growing numbers from African countries are coming here as skilled migrants, and we need to be giving them more support.

This whole 2020 process was great—to have so many people from so many different backgrounds, interested groups and parts of the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne represented. Often we overlook the notion of regions in metropolitan areas because we are also talking about regions in rural and remote communities. My community is a community—it is an area, it is a region; it should be recognised as such, it should be valued as such and it should be funded as such. So there was a discussion about putting the metropolitan areas on the map. I do not denigrate in any way, shape, size or form the difficulty that regional and remote areas have, but my area is a community, a vibrant one, and should be recognised and respected as such as well.

I know that MPs were delighted to be able to chair these groups and be involved in some very interesting and proactive discussions. Each group produced a summary of two to three items which were later fed through to the 2020 summit in Canberra. It was a great success and we have received excellent positive feedback from delegates. Some MPs have said they are interested in having follow-up discussions with delegates on these topics. Monash University is interested in becoming more involved in development issues for the south-east, including an innovation precinct. The notion of clever communities was canvassed on the day and is something I am willing and happy to support and progress within my electorate. I have Monash University, one of the largest universities in the country. Next door to Monash Uni is one of the largest CSIRO precincts; across the road, in the member for Bruce’s electorate, is the Synchrotron; down the road is the Telstra’s big research area; and dotted around them are small areas where many manufacturers are doing research. We need to be supporting research and development and a manufacturing base within this country. Earlier today I listened to the member for Kalgoorlie say that we do not manufacture in this country. No, we do not, and it is a great tragedy. We need to get back into manufacturing or producing or designing. Sitting within my little niche in Clayton I can see that it is an amazing resource, and if we could harness those resources together, we could do great things for our nation, our community and the country. So we look forward to engaging on this idea of clever communities.

We welcome greater engagement by our universities in local and regional development issues and in policy development. With so much expertise on our doorstep we would be crazy not to use it. As I said in my speech on the higher education support amendment bill in the House yesterday, with both Monash and Deakin universities in Chisholm, I have many university students, staff and graduates living in my electorate. This makes for a well educated, politically aware electorate—my constituents are generally very conscious of issues affecting them at local, national and global levels—and they let me know about it fairly regularly. As I mentioned earlier, from the emails, phone calls and letters I regularly receive in my electorate office, climate change, health and education are the issues of primary concern to my constituents.

Coming out of the forum and from the electorate is the issue of transport related to health. Within the suburbs, we need to be actively looking at issue of providing public access transport to the regions in the area. I want to put on record my long-term commitment to seeing the train extended from Huntingdale train station to Monash University and out to Rowville. It has been too long coming. We need to do it to make access easier for students to get to Monash and to cut down on car usage in the area. I would also like to put on the record the need for greater train transport within the eastern suburbs, which also came out of discussions at the local 2020 summit that we held at Monash University—they are depleted—and the need for a commitment from the state government to rebuild Box Hill hospital.

I believe the financially responsible budget provided by the Rudd Labor government goes a long way to addressing the numerous concerns of my electorate in the areas of climate change and education—I welcome the additional funding for the universities—and in the area of early childhood education and the need to lift year 12 or equivalent education rates. Additional places within and funding for aged care are also greatly needed in my electorate, and I commend their inclusion in the budget.

Prior to the election I had a fundraising dinner at Box Hill where Alastair Nicholson, who was a previous Labor candidate for the seat of Chisholm, spoke. Other previous Labor candidates for the seat of Chisholm also came along, two of them being John Button and Helen Mayer. Tragically, since that dinner and since this parliament last sat, both John Button and Helen Mayer have died due to cancer. I want to thank them for their support over the years and I know this parliament was greatly blessed by their presence. We will miss them greatly.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 24 November last year, voters across the country put their trust in Labor to make a difference. They had had almost 13 years under a Howard government, and during that time, it is fair to say, their trust in government, their trust in democracy and their trust in each other had diminished. We have done more in the first months since coming to office than the Howard government did in the last 11 years of its government. Since the election, we have signed the Kyoto protocol, we have made a formal apology to the stolen generations, we have introduced legislation to abolish Australian workplace agreements and we have initiated a white paper on homelessness in Australia—the first white paper of the new government. It is about the issue of homelessness in Australia and how to tackle it. We have established Infrastructure Australia, a body that will provide advice to government about infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks. In the most recent budget we set aside $21 billion to make some of that become a reality. We have established a social inclusion unit in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to tackle poverty and address social exclusion. Before the recent investment in the budget, we invested $150 million to assist state and territory governments in cutting elective surgery waiting lists. And of course there is additional funding set aside in the budget for hospitals. We have set up a timetable for eliminating discrimination against same-sex couples from Commonwealth legislation. Again, for this most recent budget, we have contributed information about—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Debate (on motion by Mr Slipper) adjourned.