Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night I spoke of the collapse of consumer confidence from 123.9 points in May 2007 to 89.8 points in May 2008. I think that this is hardly a vote of confidence in the new government if, only three months into the new government, Australians have already become pessimists rather than optimists. It has not come to pass that Australians are saying, ‘Kevin Rudd is Prime Minister; everything will be okay.’ No, the exact opposite has occurred. Australians have no confidence that this government can improve the economy and the lives of all Australians, and the evidence is there in the consumer confidence index.

But why is it so? Why do Australians have no confidence in the future? Is it because petrol prices continue to climb rapidly? No-one would deny that fact. Last week I filled our car at the local petrol station at 155.9c a litre, so that was around $90 to fill the tank. The Hazebrouek family in Cowan just bought a four-wheel drive so that the family can travel around Australia for their big trip of a lifetime: $230 to fill that vehicle up. Then there is the Pugh family in my electorate. Anne drives a Ford Focus, a very small car, but she said they now think a lot about where they drive and whether it is absolutely necessary to go there. Luckily, Steve Pugh rides his pushbike a lot.

But let us leave aside the narrow focus on working families. The truly tragic part of this is: what do pensioners do? The majority of pensioners cannot hop on a pushbike. Some of them cannot even walk very far. Those who can drive would be in, for example, 1.5-cylinder vehicles with a fuel tank of 45 litres. With petrol at $1.50, that is $67.50 per tank; at $1.60, that is $72 per tank. So filling a petrol tank is a difficult cost for a single pensioner on $546.80 per fortnight, especially after rent, which can be as much as $300 per fortnight in Perth.

It was not this way in the past. All the hype and expectations of the government have not seen any reduction in petrol prices, or gas or diesel prices. Of all the people that come to my office, email or speak to me in the street about fuel prices, not one has ever said that the prices reduced with the arrival of the Rudd government or even that the increases have slowed with the arrival of the Rudd government. I really have trouble finding a family, couple or person living by themselves in Cowan that feels that any progress has been made under the Rudd government. Even the Prime Minister, when talking about petrol and other costs of living, said of his government:

We have done as much as we physically can to provide additional help to the family budget …

It is clear from these words that the tax cuts provided by the good economic management of Peter Costello, the one-off payments made to pensioners and the childcare rebate are all that there is. That is all that the government have for the people of Australia. They have had 100 talkfests, committees, inquiries, reviews, forums et cetera, and they are out of ideas. That is it, is it? I wonder what would have happened if Brendan Nelson had not fought the government over the one-off payments for pensioners. If it was not for Brendan Nelson, this mean government would not even have made that payment. If the previous government had not created the original childcare rebate scheme, I really wonder what this current government would have come up with. The only positive move was on an idea of the former government that was saved by Brendan Nelson.

We have seen that the price of petrol continues to spiral, while the government is out of ideas that it can steal from the previous government. That is not the end of the harsh reality for Australian families, couples and singles. The price of bread, milk, eggs, vegetables, fruit and meat continues to rise. Percy Bleacher, a pensioner of Marangaroo, showed me a couple of lamb chops priced at $20 a kilo, so even lamb is becoming a luxury for older Australians now. At my local supermarkets, milk is up around $3.50, on average, for two litres. None of these reviews or inquiries have put the breaks on these very real price increases in basic foods, so it is no wonder consumer confidence is at its lowest level since Paul Keating was Prime Minister.

Moving on to more specific impacts that this government has had in Cowan, I need to talk about housing. This is a challenge that requires vision and lateral thinking, yet, for all the talk by the ALP before the election, not once before or since the election has the ALP confronted the shortcomings of the state governments with regard to land releases, stamp duty, state charges and public housing management. With regard to state housing, I note that the waiting list in WA has now blown out to 17,000—17,000 individuals or families without access to public housing. That is without consideration of shifting the eligibility criteria for state housing, given that there are families that earn too much to qualify for state housing but not enough to pay for private rentals. I mentioned before that some pensioners are paying up to $300 per fortnight or more in rent, and I would like to mention the very real circumstances of Mr Ronald Pomphrey. He pays $240 a fortnight in rent. He shares a house at a rent of $480 per fortnight, and he gets $71 in rent assistance. There is a big difference there.

The official interest rate is now up to 7.25 per cent, which is 0.5 percentage points higher than at the election. The promised big spending cuts did not materialise. The tough talk was nothing but an illusion. Real cuts became increased spending, with plenty more to come in the future, and future spending will come from the interest and the capital of the infrastructure fund and the higher education fund. Some families and individuals are doing it very tough at the moment. Since the Rudd government was elected, the only thing that has gone down is confidence, while the cost of housing, petrol and food continues to increase. What should also be of great concern is that this budget forecasts an increase in unemployment. An additional 134,000 people are expected to be out of work in the next financial year. I do not want anyone in my electorate to lose their job, because being unemployed will make their lives far worse with the cost of housing, groceries and transport.

Beyond the individual hardships which have not been fixed by this budget, I also wish to speak on a number of absences and changes to existing programs in the budget and on the effect that they will have on Cowan. I would like to start with the ALP’s election promises for Cowan, which I cannot find anywhere in the budget. I cannot find specific reference to the Hepburn Avenue extension at Ballajura, at $5 million; the dual carriageway upgrade of Hepburn Avenue at Alexander Heights, at $5 million; or the $10 million for the overpass at the intersection of Alexander Avenue and the Reid Highway. I note that the Premier of Western Australia suggested in July last year, after this promise, that work could start in the first half of this year. I note that Premier Carpenter is very silent on the matter these days. It is not there. I also note that it is a struggle to find reference to a $2 million grant for a stadium at Woodvale Senior High School or a $500,000 grant for a drop-in centre for youth in Ballajura. The other commitment was for a footbridge at Banksia Grove at $1 million—which the local residents, like community leader Geoff Westlake, do not actually want; what they do want is a solution to the safety problems for schoolchildren crossing Joondalup Drive. I find it very disappointing that these commitments were not funded as line items in the budget and I will, of course, continue to remind the voters of Cowan about all the shortfalls in promises made in the election.

The next matter that I would like to refer to is the axing of the highly regarded Investing in Our Schools program, or IOSP. As part of the election campaign, the Howard government committed to its extension. While the now Prime Minister spoke well of it at the time, IOSP did not survive the Rudd government. A couple of weeks ago I was speaking to Janine Egan, a P&C member at the new Hocking Primary School in my electorate. Janine was telling me how disappointed they were that IOSP was cut by the Rudd government. The parents wanted to install air conditioning or cooling in the school. As anyone who has visited Perth can testify, the place gets very hot in summer. Air conditioning is not provided in Perth schools by the state government, and therefore P&Cs have to raise funds to provide it. For Hocking Primary’s P&C to raise $100,000 or $150,000 to cool the whole school, it will take them around 10 years of sausage sizzles and other fundraisers to get the job done. By way of example, IOSP came through for the South Ballajura Primary School in 2006, providing $150,000 for cooling. The P&C in South Ballajura would never have been able to raise that amount of money. The other losers from this decision will be the new high school at Darch, Greenwood Primary School, Neerabup Primary School and Tapping Primary School, which could have achieved much more under a continuing IOSP.

Often IOSP provided funding to deal with the heat problems in Perth, so it is appropriate that I move next to the solar panel rebate decision by the Rudd government. It has been a theme of this government that they wish to precisely define who is rich and to ensure that they pay more or get less from the government. It started with persons over a specific amount of income not getting the whole of the Costello tax cuts. The Rudd government put a figure out to define the rich there. Then there was a figure put out for the family tax benefit eligibility. Then there was the supposedly luxury car tax, or ‘Tarago tax’, which included people movers. If you want a car worth over $57,000 then, again, you are rich according to the government.

But it is with regard to the solar panel rebate being capped to only those under a joint income of $100,000 that this defined rich list becomes totally ridiculous. I have been approached by the Mackay family, who tell me that they signed up on budget day for $20,000 worth of solar panels—or one kilowatt of production power. With the rebate they could have afforded it; they wanted to make a contribution to the fight against climate change. They cannot now afford the whole $20,000 and so have cancelled the contract. I also received a message from noted and well respected environmental volunteer John Chester, whose e-mail said:

Means-testing the federal government’s $8,000 rebate on grid-connected photovoltaic systems is a most regressive step. Rich or poor, we all need incentives to move toward an environmentally sustainable future. The only outcome that matters in the long run is the continued and preferably accelerated uptake of photovoltaic systems by all households throughout the country. These systems produce their energy without burning fossil fuels and therefore don’t add to greenhouse gas emissions and also take considerable pressure off the country’s overloaded power distribution and generating infrastructure, particularly during daytime peak load periods.

Given John Chester’s comments, I say that this Rudd government decision is wrong, it is bad for the environment and should be reversed immediately.

From the solar panel fiasco, it is appropriate that I move on to another concern for the environment. I speak to this point on behalf of the Friends of Lightning Swamp and their president, John Williams. John and I have been speaking about groundwater contamination issues in the south-east of Cowan, but on this occasion he emailed me about the impact of the Rudd government’s Caring for Country program. He tells me that under the Howard government there was important funding for the Swan Catchment Council. The SCC undertook critical water monitoring to check the health of drainage flows and streams which pass through environmentally significant bushland, wetlands et cetera. Yet the funding for this work has been cut because the Rudd government’s Caring for Country program has replaced the former government’s program. The state government has used this policy as an excuse not to allocate any further support funding. The services provided by the regional catchments, such as SCC, benefit the state, yet the state in this case will not provide support funding with these changes at the federal level. John Williams believes this Rudd government decision will result in the funding for water monitoring programs being halved from July 2008.

Another undesirable outcome will be that, due to the cut in funding, only one SCC officer will service the north and south catchments—Lightning Swamp is in the north catchment. The consequence of these limited resources and funding for sampling will be a substantial reduction in the number of sites to be sampled yearly, and there will be no possibility for any additional sites to be included. The water monitoring programs are vital and the great success of the previous government’s programs was that the money was provided to organisations to have people on the ground doing the critical jobs. This is another budget failure for the hard-working individuals and environmental groups doing excellent work out there in environmentally sensitive areas in Cowan and in Australia.

There is an often referred to line from Shakespeare, which has been slightly modified for modern language. It says ‘all that glitters is not gold’. I do not think too many people really saw this budget as glittering in terms of an improved life for your average Australian, but perhaps the glitter was to be the responsible budget that was to deal with inflation. Yet spending has increased across the estimates. This budget has stimulated the economy so, with what I have covered earlier, this budget has failed because it has not reduced inflationary pressures. But to come back to my point at the start of my speech, running an economy has to have an outcome on the streets of Australia. Aged pensioners like Ronald Pomphrey and others like Agnes Smith and Doris Arena in Girrawheen have to be better off. The budget must leave them in a stronger position after recognising the costs of living. Self-funded retirees like Marie Westlake and Bonnie Hull must be better off. Families like the Loubikis family in Girrawheen and the Pugh family in Warwick must be better off. This is the real test of an economy: are the people really better off once all the factors of cost of living and employment are considered? The answer to this budget is no. The consumer confidence index shows that Australians are very worried about the future—and they should be, given this budget has failed to improve the lives of every category of people in this country.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be speaking in favour of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and its cognate bills, and I note that they allow the government to deliver the budget and important services to the Australian people and the people of Wakefield. It is worth noting the context in which this budget has been framed. That necessarily involves the basic examination of the previous government’s record. The record of the previous government is defined by three facts: it produced the lowest productivity in 17 years, the highest domestic inflation in 16 years and eight interest rate rises in three years. Those economic conditions particularly cost working families, pensioners and those on fixed incomes—and there are many of those in the electorate of Wakefield. These economic conditions, along with radical industrial relations laws, cost the coalition government. In framing the budget, we must also acknowledge the difficult international environment we face: a credit crisis and the prospect of a US economy that is stalling; the rising cost of credit to banks and to consumers; and, contrasted to and contradicted by this, the high rate of growth in China and India; rising commodity, petrol and food prices; and a rising Australian dollar that places pressure on our manufacturing exporters.

The Rudd government’s first budget is framed in a challenging global environment and has four main features to address Australia’s domestic needs. Firstly, it is economically responsible and fiscally conservative. Secondly, it delivers relief to working families through a package for those families and support for older Australians. Thirdly, it provides for the future by establishing three important funds in infrastructure, education and health. Fourthly, and most importantly, it delivers on our election commitments, especially those made in the electorate of Wakefield.

I think it is important to examine these areas in some detail. The first is economic responsibility, and this budget has that feature at its core. We have resisted the temptation to spend the surplus, which many in the Liberal Party have advocated. The budget delivers a surplus of 1.8 per cent of GDP, as opposed to the previous government’s forecast of 1.2 per cent of GDP. We know surpluses are important because they reduce pressure on demand, on inflation and on interest rates—something that has a big effect on working people. As some economic commentators have noticed, the government’s budget has brought fiscal and monetary policy into sync, making the job of the Reserve Bank less challenging than it was in the last years of the previous government when spending was driven by politics and the electoral cycle rather than economics and the future. What the budget does is to send a coherent message from government to markets, to business and to the community that this is a government which is an active partner in meeting the challenges of inflation. It is a sober and careful budget that is designed to meet a complex and challenging environment.

It is also a budget focused on working families and seniors. Labor’s tax cuts are aimed at working Australians rather than the top end of town. They are aimed at truck and forklift drivers, cleaners, shop assistants and child-care workers, teachers, nurses and factory workers—the people who, with other people like them, add great wealth and value to our economy and to our community. What this budget does is to provide taxation relief in an environment where, as I said before, inflation, petrol and interest rate rises have placed great pressure on family budgets. An example of the tax cuts is that a family with a single income of $40,000 would receive a $20.19 per week tax cut, a reduction of 16.8 per cent. A family with a combined income of $100,000 where the primary earner has an income of $60,000 will get $31.73, an 8.8 per cent reduction. The child-care tax rebate is increased from 30 per cent to 50 per cent, covering half of families’ out of pocket child-care costs. We know child care is a big cost for most families. Low income workers on less than $14,000 will pay no tax at all. This is particularly important to those in the retail and hospitality industries, which are dominated by part-time and casual workers who face constant economic uncertainty in their working lives.

Most importantly, this budget ends a tax trap deliberately created by the previous government. The Medicare levy surcharge as levied by the previous government was an inappropriate use of the tax system. When this levy was first introduced, it covered approximately eight per cent of taxpayers, but as incomes have risen over the past decade so have the number of taxpayers caught by the levy. If nothing was done, the levy would apply to over 40 per cent of taxpayers. So the failure of the previous government to increase the income thresholds created a situation in which the tax system was used in a completely unfair manner and was levied on people on very modest incomes in order to prevent them exercising choice. That choice was to join or not join the private health system. I want to state for the record that I have no problem with private health and I am a member of a fund. But to use the tax system in this way in relation to those on modest incomes is unfair, undermines public confidence in our tax and health systems and is an unnecessarily coercive use of a taxation measure and one which any reasonable person would oppose. That is why the government will be increasing the threshold from $50,000 to $100,000 for singles and $100,000 to $150,000 for families: to relieve working people from a coercive coalition tax trap. This budget is about making sure that the tax system is fair and delivers to working families and working Australians.

It is also a budget that provides some relief and support for older Australians. It must be said that many older Australians, seniors and pensioners, in my electorate do it very tough and have very few luxuries in their lives. This situation is often distressing for the individuals, their friends, families and the community. As I said in my maiden speech, nothing is as distressing as poverty amongst the elderly. Economic distress for the elderly has been building for the last 11 years. Our first budget provides assistance in the form of a higher utilities allowance of $500 per year, up from $107.20. It also provides a one-off lump sum payment of $500 by 30 June 2008.

On the Saturday immediately after the budget I made one of my regular visits to the Munno Para Shopping Centre, a very busy shopping centre because it has a good Foodland which provides a lot of specials. A lot of pensioners shop there, many of whom are supporters of mine, and they did provide a fair bit of feedback about the budget. Much of it was positive, and some of it encouraged us to go further. And when I went out to the Port Wakefield Senior Citizens Club last Friday I received similar feedback combined with great hospitality. The budget does deliver support to older Australians, but we are well aware of the situation that many pensioners face. The government is committed to working for pensioners and seniors in an economically responsible way, and this budget is a demonstration of that commitment.

Of course this budget is also about building the nation. It is a nation-building budget for a nation-building government. Labor have always been the party of nation building and the party of the future. That is why we have established Infrastructure Australia and the Building Australia Fund. Infrastructure Australia will be a key part of developing a plan to modernise Australia’s infrastructure assets. Infrastructure is a key driver in productivity, in economic growth and in community confidence. And it is a key indicator of national progress. Infrastructure Australia will complete a national infrastructure audit and develop a priority list to guide public and private investment. It will help to identify projects which will be funded from the Building Australia Fund. In the future I am sure that the Building Australia Fund will be seen as a critical part of the economic achievements of the Rudd government. The fund will finance projects that are beyond the capacity of the states and private investors. The allocation of $20 billion from the 2007-08 and 2008-09 surpluses will ensure that the fund has the ability to undertake its nation-building role. And the good news is that work has already begun: $75 million has been allocated in 2007-08 to undertake immediate feasibility studies on high priority transport projects across Australia. Transport is especially important to my electorate.

For the first time in a long time, the planning and provision of infrastructure is front and centre of a national budget—and that is an important thing—but this budget also delivers on health and education. And just as infrastructure has a critical effect on economic growth, so does education. Especially in the modern, globalised world, education is both an economically and socially liberating force. The Education Investment Fund is designed to finance capital investment in vocational education and training. It will also finance capital investment in higher education systems. Labor knows that both vocational and higher education are critical to the maximum utilisation of our workforce and that individuals are increasingly likely to access both systems over their working lives. These systems are complementary and will both benefit from the Education Investment Fund. As I said before, education is an important force in our economy and our society, and this budget provides the foundation for the future.

The third fund put in place in this budget supports one of Labor’s long-time priorities. The ability of all Australians to access a safe, affordable and modern hospital and health care system has always been a key goal of the Labor Party. The Health and Hospitals Fund has been created to finance infrastructure in hospitals and medical research facilities and to provide for medical equipment and other facilities in these areas. Having visited the Lyell McEwen Hospital in my electorate many times as a candidate and member of parliament—and having been born there and having had a family member stay there with illness a few years ago—I am well aware of the challenges that our health system faces and the excellent work that our local doctors and nurses undertake. This fund will give those workers in the health sector and the community confidence in future investment and future support of our hospitals and our health care system. This is a budget framed with nation building and the future in mind. It is a budget that will resonate decades from now. It improves living standards through long-term investments.

Having grown up in Kapunda in country South Australia, I know how important government services are to regional areas. This is a good budget for those Australians who live in regional Australia. Firstly, it provides $271 million over four years to fund the Australian Broadband Guarantee to ensure all Australians have access to broadband internet services. Access to broadband is, I believe, the single biggest social equity challenge Australia faces. The Howard government approach left Australia behind the times and left many Australians isolated from broadband services. The funding for the Broadband Guarantee and the work being been done on the Australian Broadband Network is critical to all Australians in regional Australia and it is critical to the nation. These policies will allow some of the tyrannies of distance that affect regional Australia to be eliminated.

In addition to this, we have made significant progress on another key issue—water. We are providing funding and leadership in the area of water policy and there is now going to be a 10-year policy framework called Water for the Future. This policy will have a big impact on regional Australia. National leadership, on the one hand, and local solutions, on the other, are the path forward. An example of this in my electorate is Tarac Technologies near Nurioopta, which recently received a grant to expand their recycling of waste water from local wineries for use in local vineyards. They have big plans in the future to harvest some of the methane gas that is produced in the process. This is the type of project that should be encouraged around the country.

The budget establishes the Better Regions policy to provide both funding for regional projects and a program that the community can have confidence in. Two projects in my electorate will have a big impact on the regional communities. These projects are the community and recreation facilities at Angle Vale, which will provide a growing community with their first real community and sports facilities; and the Gawler River junction project in the town of Gawler—which I think the Gawler council will be discussing tonight—which will help to provide access and amenity to this beautiful but underutilised part of the town of Gawler. Both these projects will add to the unique character and lifestyle of these communities. So in the case of my electorate this budget delivers on the key priorities—economic responsibility, support for working families and seniors, nation building, and local commitments. It is a budget that delivers to the nation and to Wakefield.

It is worthwhile to contemplate the alternatives to the government’s budget. It is worthwhile for the Australian people to contemplate the various replies from the opposition. The opposition’s response has been characterised by three factors: weak leadership, division and economic irresponsibility. We should start with weak leadership. The member for Bradfield is in a terrible place. He does not command sufficient support among voters or his own party room to sustain his leadership into the future. Leaders in this position can respond in one of two ways: they can articulate a clear set of beliefs and stand firm, or they can be swept along with other people’s agendas and the events of the day. It is fairly clear that the Leader of the Opposition has never had a belief he was not prepared to jettison for future advancement. So we find him being pushed along by Senator Minchin, by the ambitions of the member for Wentworth and by the shrewd calculations and agendas of those in his party. His leadership is like watching a fish out of water—lots of movement but you know it cannot last. It is this weakness that is driving the divisions within his own party. It is this weakness that is driving the economic irresponsibility of his party. And both division and economic irresponsibility are an insult to the hundreds of thousands of conservative voters who rightly expected something quite different from their party.

We know that the Liberals are divided on so many issues. There is one, in particular, I want to go to—the issue of pensions. On 16 May, the member for McPherson, the opposition pensions spokesperson, went on Steve Price’s program on 2UE:

STEVE PRICE: Let me just be clear there, the opposition is now endorsing an increase in the base rate of the pension.

MARGARET MAY: Yes. Absolutely.

STEVE PRICE: But the leader doesn’t know about it?

MARGARET MAY: Well, the leader doesn’t know that I’m putting that in a petition. A report that we supported, the unanimous report, said that the base rate of pension was not enough, I believe my leader will support me on this, I have discussed it with Brendan, what he doesn’t know is that I’m releasing a petition, but I believe I will have the support of my leader, if I don’t I will be very disappointed, but that’s what I’m prepared to do Steve, because I think these people have been ignored.

What an extraordinary situation it is when a shadow minister’s opinion of her leader is so low that she does not even consult him on a policy change worth billions of dollars. We know there was policy division here because her proposal was not supported by the Leader of the Opposition or the shadow Treasurer. So what we have here is a fundamental economic irresponsibility—raising the hopes of pensioners who do it tough while providing not a shred of explanation of how to pay for it.

We know economic irresponsibility is something that oppositions are regularly accused of, but in this case it is absolutely true. How else can we explain the situation when the opposition makes a great number of extravagant and expensive policies, does not properly cost them, does not nominate any savings measures to offset those uncosted policies and proposes a $22 billion raid on the budget surplus that will cost every Australian through higher inflation and higher interest rates?

This approach to a national budget was last seen during the Peron era in Argentina. That is the last time a commodity-rich country indulged in such economic irresponsibility and it is why the Liberal promises cannot be trusted and cannot be delivered. They are a fiction and a fantasy. They are a figment of the Leader of the Opposition’s imagination and his tenure in the job. Labor’s budget delivers on our election commitments, including on my commitments in the electorate of Wakefield. Most importantly, it is focused on nation building and it is focused on the working people of this country.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Wakefield is a new member and he might not be aware of the forms and traditions of the House that, if an honourable member intends to attack a colleague, he should give that colleague the opportunity of knowing that that attack is about to be made so that he or she is able to come into the chamber and respond at the appropriate time. Maybe the honourable member was not aware of that tradition in the chamber, but if he has indeed advised the honourable member for McPherson that that was what he was going to do then it would obviously not be appropriate for me to criticise him.

In this debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and its cognate bills, I would like to mention a number of matters. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, you would be aware that this is one of the few debates in the chamber where honourable members are able to traverse a whole range of topics of relevance to their electorate, sometimes referring to the budget and on other occasions just referring to matters that are of importance to local constituents. I just want to emphasise that, since the budget has been delivered, my office on the Sunshine Coast has been inundated with complaints from pensioners and independent retirees that they have been completely ignored in this budget. The government sought to give certain benefits to certain sectors of the community, but they seem to have forgotten that just because someone is a senior Australian it does not mean that person is not of worth and of value to the Australian community.

We have had numerous tear-jerking stories of people who are quite genuinely in a desperate situation financially. They had their hopes that this government—given the surplus it inherited from its predecessor, the Howard government—would take into account the needs of that important sector of the Australian community. But sadly those hopes were dashed. People who are pensioners and independent retirees worked hard during their working lives to give Australia the freedom, stability and way of life that does make us the envy of people throughout the world. Just because someone is an older Australian, it is important that the government recognises that that person still has worth and value and makes an important contribution to our community.

In a media release I called for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to act quickly to examine the predicament of pensioners and independent retirees and to rectify the situation as soon as possible. People who are retired Australians have lived through wars, struggled through difficult times and worked hard for this country. Many of them have found themselves retiring prior to the introduction of widespread superannuation. As they looked towards retirement, many of them knew that they would be dependent on the pension, but there was an acceptable and widely held belief that this was something that they had contributed towards during their working life. These pensioners have found, however, that the government has treated them with contempt because the government has calculated that our ageing population would place an ever-increasing pressure on the welfare system and has therefore decided to cut senior Australians adrift.

I have to say that many people who rang my office said that they voted Labor at the last election. They now regret that decision because they believe that the Rudd government has not demonstrated what it said it would do before the election—that is, to be a government for all Australians. There are admittedly some initiatives in the budget for seniors, but most of them owe their existence to the former Howard-Costello-Vaile government, such as: the utilities payment, which is being increased from $107.20 to $500; the seniors concession allowance, which will increase from $218 to $500; and one-off payments of $1,000 to those receiving care and $600 to carers.

We are all aware though that the government was forced to reverse its intention in relation to carers and the opposition is responsible for the fact that the payments will indeed go through to those people who carry out such an important role in our society by caring for loved ones. If carers did not do what they do out of a sense of compassion and love for family members or other loved ones then the burden on the community which would result from the community having to look after those people needing care would be absolutely quite incredible. I would like to implore the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to look seriously at the needs of pensioners. I just believe that it is important that the government looks at the fact that it inherited a robust economy with the previous government having done the hard yards, having repaid some $96 billion in Labor debt. The Rudd Labor government inherited an economy that was the envy of people throughout the world, but unfortunately the Labor government has not chosen to look after those people to whom we as a nation owe so much.

The Treasurer has said that the government will review age pensions. I hope that it is done promptly and that the necessary changes are made to assist pensioners as soon as possible. While he is at it, he should also look at independent retirees—people who have worked and made provision for their retirement so that they would not be a cost to the Australian community. Independent retirees—and we have many of them on the Sunshine Coast—deserve incentives that recognise their value and encourage other Australians to follow suit. I can see you are smiling, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. On the Sunshine Coast we even have many of your former constituents, retired wheat farmers, moving to the Sunshine Coast, where they continue to carry out a very valuable role in our society.

Independent retirees are also in the firing line of the budget due to changes of the eligibility criteria for the Commonwealth seniors health card. The Commonwealth seniors health card was a very important initiative of the former Treasurer, the honourable member for Higgins, because it gave independent retirees access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme at the same rate as pensioners, provided their incomes did not exceed certain limits. The card was brought in at a certain rate. Shortly afterwards, the government substantially increased the eligibility levels but, regrettably, for, I think, some 10 years or so, the income levels for eligibility have not increased, so many independent retirees who previously enjoyed access to the Commonwealth seniors health card and the PBS at the concessional rate have now been ejected from the card scheme. At a stage in their lives when they have increasing medical needs they are finding it more and more difficult simply to make ends meet.

This government went further. Instead of upgrading or indexing the eligibility criteria for the Commonwealth seniors health card, they have made changes which mean that the income, which is the eligibility criteria for the card, will also include income from superannuation income streams, tax sources and salary sacrificed superannuation. This means that more people will be thrown off the card scheme. It means that Mr Swan will come and take eligibility for the Commonwealth seniors health card away from more retirees. So, instead of redressing the inequity and indexing the income eligibility levels to 2008 levels, the government has made it even more difficult for independent retirees to hold on to their cards. I think that is eminently regrettable. In fact it is despicable.

Prior to the election, I pushed, without success, the former government to index the income eligibility levels. This would have been a golden opportunity, given the budget surplus, to reward those people who have made provisions for their own retirement. Unfortunately this has not happened. The eligibility for the Commonwealth seniors health card remains at $50,000 for singles and $80,000 for couples. That has been frozen for a period of more than a decade—and $80,000 today clearly does not buy what $80,000 bought 10 or 12 years ago. The loss of the card for so many senior Australians will bring about elevated financial pressure at a time when grocery prices, petrol prices and home mortgage interest rates have already climbed to disturbing levels. The changes will also reduce the incentive for others to contribute to superannuation funds. It really is important as part of a review of the pensions process that the government rethink the eligibility criteria and reconsider the needs of these senior Australians to continue to have access to the Commonwealth seniors health card. Personally, I believe that it is really important for those people who have lost their access to the Commonwealth seniors health card to have that access restored as soon as possible.

I do want to applaud the fact that the government has, in the budget, agreed to fund a number of its election promises made prior to the November 24 poll last year. On the Sunshine Coast, this includes projects announced in the electorates of both Fisher and Fairfax, including $5 million for the upgrade of the renamed Stockland Park at Kawana, $1 million for the upgrades of two parks at the Mooloolaba spit, $5 million for a new Sunshine Coast exhibition centre, $3 million for a visitor centre at the Maroochy botanical gardens, $1.3 million for the Nambour CBD refurbishments and $4.6 million for a water recycling project at Coolum ridges. Some of those projects are in the electorate of Fairfax, represented by my colleague the Chief Opposition Whip, but we think of ourselves as a community. The Sunshine Coast received those promises from the government and I am pleased that these projects have been confirmed as being in line to receive government funding—apart from $1 million for parks at Mooloolaba which remains in limbo. I think the government is trying to find this promise and trying to find what it actually said. I hope that those parks at Mooloolaba will be upgraded as promised by the Labor Party prior to the election.

I would like to congratulate the team which conducted the successful search for the HMAS Sydney. Another ship that was attacked and sunk during World War II lies undiscovered in waters off the Sunshine Coast. I refer to the Australian hospital ship Centaur. This ship was lost in 1943, resulting in the loss of 268 lives. The torpedoing of this ship was a war crime. It was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine when it was displaying the red cross and was therefore legally immune from attack. A memorial to the tragedy is located on the shoreline at Kings Beach, Caloundra. Many of the survivors, and some of their families and the relatives of those who died, live on the Sunshine Coast and elsewhere, and they are trying to find answers to the remaining mysteries of this wartime tragedy.

We now have the technology and we now have the skill and experienced people to do the job. And we have a fairly good idea where the Centaur went down. All we need now is the funding. We know where the ship was 10 minutes before she was sunk off Stradbroke Island. The search team had incredible success in locating the HMAS Sydney, which was in an undefined location, a long way from land and in very deep waters. That was quite impressive and amazing. We are told that the calculated location of the Centaur is relatively close to land and it is believed to be in much shallower waters. We have spoken to the man who led the search for the Sydney. It cost $3.9 million to find the Sydney, but the cost of finding the Centaur would be substantially less. I have written to the government to consider funding a search for the Centaur, which I am told is the last remaining ship that was sunk during World War II in Australian waters yet to be discovered.

Once found, the location of the ship should be recorded and then the vessel left as it is, undisturbed—I suppose, in a sense, a war grave, although I think the marine term is a protection site, to prevent unauthorised visits. I have spoken to the honourable member for Lingiari, the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel, and he is certainly sympathetic. I want to commend him upon his attitude. I gather that it is not certain whether the Minister for the Environment and Heritage or the assistant minister for defence is responsible for this, but the government have looked at my proposal quite seriously and I am hopeful that they will look at it favourably, because there are a lot of people out there who would like to know what actually happened and it is important that we are able to respect the memory of those 268 people who were lost and also to recognise the service of those people who survived.

I would also like to refer to railway upgrades on the Sunshine Coast, particularly in the area of Mooloolah. Mooloolah is an iconic village in the Sunshine Coast hinterland about 20-odd kilometres from Caloundra. The Queensland government is currently undertaking the mammoth task of upgrading the north coast rail line, which stretches between Brisbane and Cairns, and it is a laudable effort. The apparent need for the rail upgrade was detailed in the South East Queensland Regional Plan and also in the South East Queensland Infrastructure Plan and Program 2007-2026.

I would like to raise concerns in particular about upgrades to the line between Landsborough and Nambour. This is defined in Queensland Transport documentation as the Landsborough to Nambour Rail Project. This rail line has been in operation since 1891. Suggestions include not only duplication of the line but quadrupling of the line in the longer term, which the Queensland government claims would require a corridor of some 60 metres wide. This would require significant resumptions. For Sunshine Coast railway towns like Mooloolah, Landsborough, Eudlo, Palmwoods, and Woombye, which were developed and built up over many generations around the local railway line, it will mean massive changes in the amenity and the user-friendliness of the business districts.

Concerns are that cutting a swathe through the towns, as appears to be the selected option, will destroy these towns completely. These are wonderful hinterland villages with a delightful ambience and a caring community. If you quadruple the size of the rail line and have massive overpasses, it will be like having little bits of Sydney in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. I believe that it will result in a lot of ugliness. The attractiveness of these towns, including the historic nature of the architecture, will be spoilt and this will seriously adversely affect the local economy because the area will not be as attractive for tourists and so on.

I have been contacted by residents of Mooloolah who, with others, make up the Sunshine Coast Hinterland Railway Towns Preservation Society. They are concerned that a combination of the railway upgrades plus plans in the South East Queensland Regional Plan to urbanise the town of Mooloolah by introducing significant areas of high-density housing and industrial business to the area will impact adversely on the town. A document prepared on this matter by a retired civil engineer suggests that doubling of the rail line would suffice ‘to the extent that further construction is unlikely to be required within the lifespan of existing technology’.

The community at Mooloolah has been dealt further blows with the announcement on 5 May by Premier Anna Bligh that the deadline has been brought forward by one year for a review of the South East Queensland Plan. As a consequence, the deadline for public submissions to the review has been brought forward to 6 June, just one month after the new deadline was announced. This gives residents of Mooloolah, who have these genuine concerns about their town, just four weeks to prepare and submit their concerns and suggestions for a plan that will dictate development in their region until 2031. This is clearly an unworkable and unfair deadline and time frame for local residents. The community is concerned that they are unable to raise their very real concerns with the state government and that correspondence has gone unanswered. They understand this is a state project, but unfortunately the state government, which does represent the area at state level, is not taking into account what needs to be done—that is, listen to the concerns of local residents. I raise this matter here in the Australian parliament because Mooloolah residents and residents of other railway towns deserve to be properly heard. I call on the Queensland state government to genuinely listen to the concerns of these people and to seriously consider changing the rail plans to ensure their livelihoods are not destroyed.

I am also very sorry that the new government has put an end to the extremely successful Investing in Our Schools Program. This was a practical and cutting-edge initiative in that it helped fund projects that school communities identified as priorities. The good thing about the Investing in Our Schools Program was that it recognised that one size did not fit all and that individual school communities had individual needs. Unfortunately, with the scrapping of this program, there will be many unmet needs—needs that will be unmet by the Queensland state government—in state government schools. Independent schools on the Sunshine Coast, some of which are not at all wealthy, will also not be able to fund the improvements they need.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2008-2009, Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2007-2008. In effect, this is a discussion of and an assessment of the 2008 Rudd Labor government’s first budget. This budget is framed, as we all know, at a time of countervailing forces, with turbulence in financial markets abroad and comparatively high inflation in Australia. Despite the denials of those opposite and their refusal to accept the Reserve Bank’s continuing warnings on the issue, Australia’s underlying inflation is currently running at 16-year highs. Thus with slower global growth and the impact of higher interest rates, the economy is expected to slow to 2¾ per cent growth in 2008-09, and this budget is accordingly premised on these expectations. It is a realistic, responsible budget which delivers on Labor’s election promises on the macro and micro levels, seeks to keep inflation in check and interest rates as low as realistically possible and invests in key areas of social and economic health of our nation, both now and into the future. In addition, the Rudd Labor government has committed to a comprehensive review of Australian taxation to be led by Dr Ken Henry, Secretary of the Commonwealth Treasury. The review will address all forms of Australian taxation, including state and local government taxes and also including income for retirees and the aged.

As promised, this budget has rewarded working families. As promised in the lead-up to the 2007 election, working families will be assisted through the $55 billion Working Families Support Package, which includes some of the following: tax cuts of $46.7 billion over four years; an increase in the childcare tax rebate to 50 per cent; the introduction of a 50 per cent education tax rebate; the $2.2 billion housing affordability package, which includes a First Home Savers Program whereby the government will contribute 17 per cent for the first $5,000 saved each year; and the fact that from 1 July 2008—and this is often forgotten in all the broad sweep of this budget—part-time workers will be able to earn up to $14,000 without paying tax, up from the current $11,000. Consistent with our commitment to responsible economic management, the government will put fairness and integrity back into the income tax and transfer systems by better targeting benefits to families and making income-testing arrangements more comprehensive and more equitable.

Importantly—and this is often overlooked—we made a commitment to make federalism work, and work better. The government will continue to work cooperatively with the states and territories to implement a modern federation that can meet the challenge of a modern economy. We are already working together to develop reforms in the priority areas of health and ageing, education and training, climate change and water, infrastructure, business regulation and competition, housing and Indigenous disadvantage. These reforms, underpinned by the new federal financial framework of streamlined specific purpose payments and reform based national partnership payments, will assist in improving productivity and workforce participation. This framework will provide the states with greater funding certainty and budget flexibility, while enhancing accountability and transparency. There is a commitment that no state will be worse off from these reforms and that incentive payments will be in addition to—I reiterate: in addition to—existing payments.

Another hallmark of this budget and our promise to the Australian electorate is that we would invest in our future—that we would fund for future priorities. The government will invest budget surpluses from the 2007-08 and 2008-09 budgets in three nation-building funds: the Building Australia Fund to finance transport and communications infrastructure such as roads, rail, ports and broadband; the Education Investment Fund to fund higher education and vocational education and training facilities; and last, but by no means least, the Health and Hospitals Fund, whereby funding will occur for health, hospitals and medical research facilities, projects and technology equipment. I was very pleased that the Minister for Health and Ageing and the Prime Minister only yesterday announced a further tranche of that very important funding, particularly to tackle waiting lists and the provision of equipment for our hospitals that are doing a good job but under a lot of pressure. With transfers from the Higher Education Endowment Fund and the Communications Fund—which will be absorbed into the EIS and the BAF respectively—these funds will provide in the order of $40 billion for future capital investment. I understand disbursements from these funds will be subject to rigorous evaluation and an assessment of the macroeconomic conditions in the years in which payments are made. The government will make further contributions to the funds from future surpluses as appropriate.

Where funds are used to finance projects with the states, they will be disbursed to the states through a new Council of Australian Governments Reform Fund. The COAG Reform Fund will also disburse funding provided from the Commonwealth budget to the states for national reforms through National Partnership payments. These funds underpin our commitments to investing in Australia’s future prosperity in the areas of transport and communications, education and health facilities, which are so important to all the members that I can see in the House at the moment. In terms of infrastructure, a $20 billion Building Australia Fund is a central plank in our policies to lift Australia’s productive capacity and international competitiveness by providing leadership on national infrastructure planning and provision. This includes the establishment of Infrastructure Australia, implementation of AusLink land transport commitments and funding for Better Regions projects.

We also promised to commence an education revolution that is so necessary for the future of this country. The education revolution is also integral to lifting the participation and productivity of Australia’s workforce through an investment of $5.9 billion over five years in education and skills. Education and employment are also at the core of the government’s social inclusion aspirations. As part of the education revolution, a range of early child education and care measures worth over $800 million over five years are being taken forward, including universal access to early learning centres and services for children in the year before formal schooling. There are also 260 childcare centres, including an early learning autism centre to be located on the north-west coast in my electorate of Braddon.

The majority of these measures are being progressed through COAG. The government has also committed $500 million in 2007-08 for the capital requirements of universities, primarily for teaching and research infrastructure. In addition, the $11 billion education infrastructure fund will fund capital investment in higher education and vocational training. In future the EIF could be extended to include school infrastructure as further contributions are made to the fund.

In terms of the infrastructure funds, the Health and Hospital Reform Plan plays a central part. The government will spend $3.2 billion on the Health and Hospital Reform Plan to revitalise the health system. This will deliver on election commitments including the $300 million investment in public hospitals agreed to at the March COAG meeting; GP super clinics, two of which will be located in Devonport and Burnie in my electorate; reducing elective surgery waiting lists; improving dental health; and strengthening the care for older Australians. The government has also established the $10 billion health and hospitals infrastructure fund to provide additional investment in hospitals and health infrastructure and medical projects. There are also a range of preventative health measures aimed at reducing childhood obesity, improving nutrition and increasing participation in sport and physical activity. Indeed, these do not get as much coverage as when we discuss hospitals in our communities, but I think that preventative health measures and primary health care are very important because they will actually affect demand for our hospitals in the future. Perhaps that is what we should be discussing a lot more in this place.

Finally, meeting the longer term challenges of climate change and water security are at the heart of this budget as well. The government will provide funding of $2.5 billion over five years focused on the three pillars of the government’s climate change policy. I will reiterate those: helping to shape a global solution—that is, indeed being part of it and recognising it; adapting to unavoidable climate change; and reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions primarily through an emissions trading scheme. I, like all members in the House, look forward to seeing more details of that scheme and being able to assist people to be part and parcel of it. This will include $500 million over seven years for the National Clean Coal Fund, $300 million over five years for green loans to help households install water- and energy-efficient products, and $150 million to assist countries in the region to prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change.

I will now get to more specific details of the budget as they affect my beautiful state of Tasmania and more specifically my beautiful region on the north-west coast of Tasmania, and of course I always include the jewel in that crown, King Island. Again, I invite you all to visit some time in the very near future, particularly you Minister O’Connor. I would love to see you very soon.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment Participation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I love the cheese.

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

Mr Randall interjecting

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And of course you, Don. The first Rudd Labor budget delivered on additional significant health and transport infrastructure funding, some of which is in my region and which I will highlight in a moment. I note that in terms of general revenue assistance, Tasmania in 2008-09 will receive over $1.7 billion in GST payments from the Commonwealth and that these payments are expected to grow to close to $2 billion by 2011-12.

While I am at it, I would like to congratulate the new Premier of Tasmania, David Bartlett, and the new Deputy Premier of Tasmania, Lara Giddings. They are two very capable, energetic, innovative, visionary younger generation leaders. I think they reflect what is going to happen throughout the rest of Australia in terms of a new generation of leaders. I really encourage them and I look forward to working with them as I have in the past and certainly will in the future. I also acknowledge the great work that the former Premier, Paul Lennon, did for our state, most particularly when he was working with David Crean and the late Jim Bacon. They were an excellent triumvirate. Tassie, I must say, has come out of the doldrums and into the 21st century and is now a state that has a terrific future. Under the new government I think that future will be assured.

In regard to specific purposes payments, now that you ask, Don, in 2008-09, Tasmania will receive estimated payments totalling $864 million and that includes $694 million in payments directly to the Tasmanian government.

I would now like to highlight some of the specific commitments to my electorate as outlined in this first budget. I do so for a number of reasons: firstly, to put these commitments or projects on the public record as they are so often lost in the broad media sweep of the more generic budget programs that we hear about, think about and lobby for; secondly, to acknowledge the hard work of the many individuals, organisations and local government bodies who lobbied to secure projects on behalf of their communities; and, thirdly, to demonstrate how national policies in relation to a whole raft of areas in our daily lives can be localised and made more real. Every one of the projects committed to in this budget will benefit my region. Finally—and for some perhaps, surprisingly—these projects are a first-up, up-front fulfilment of our election promises.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Core promises.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Core promises indeed. Well, there are only promises; you do not need core and non-core. It has been redefined in the past but we have now corrected it.

I would like to work through some of these projects, if I may. In relation to the creation of jobs, we have had a commitment of $12 million to an Enterprise Connect centre. It is to be located in my region and will work and operate for the whole of Tasmania. Likewise there has been a $1.2 million commitment to business and employment located in Devonport for state-wide initiatives, particularly to help small business.

In terms of infrastructure there is $500,000 for the Oakleigh Park overpass at Burnie; $2 million for the Formby Road in Devonport; $1 million for Port Sorrell Main Road, in the eastern part of my electorate; $700,000 for the King Island freight equalisation scheme, which is so important in terms of intrastate recognition and support; and $30 million has been committed to a rail upgrade between Burnie and Wiltshire in Circular Head.

In terms of tourism, $12 million has been allocated to the Bass Strait Passenger Vehicle Equalisation Scheme. The subsidy has been increased from about $168 to $180 to help all those people who want to visit Tasmania, particularly in the near future. There is $185,000 for the Table Cape Lighthouse tourism project in Wynyard and $175,000 for the King Island food and recreation trail project.

In the area of health, there is $7.7 million for a new cancer treatment unit, with a preference for it to be located in the north-west and/or the north. There is $10 million for better patient transport, with a focus on the north-west coast; up to $5 million for a GP super clinic in Devonport and up to $2.5 million for a GP after-hours clinic in Burnie. There is $1.25 million for the Sisters of Charity in Devonport to continue their excellent work in trauma counselling, which they offer to the whole of the state. Remember, many of these are services which will be provided to the whole of Tasmania. There is $60,000 for the Penguin Medical Centre, and there will be a specialised autism centre based in the north-west, servicing Tasmania, and a Medicare licence for the MRI machine at the North West Regional Hospital. Also, of course, infamously, there will be federal funding for the Mersey Community Hospital.

In terms of community infrastructure there is $3 million for the Burnie Waterfront and Cultural Precinct, which is to get underway very soon; $1.8 million for the Ulverstone wharf and showground; $1 million for the Mersey Bluff in Devonport, $200,000 for St Brigids Hall in Wynyard; and $300,000 to assist the King Island community to receive a basic digital television service. There is $750,000 for the Ulverstone to Turners Beach pathway; $125,000 for the Somerset Sharks Soccer Club, $720,000 for the Circular Head Community and Recreation Centre; $30,000 for the Circular Head Little Athletics Centre; and $200,000 for the Port Sorell Surf Life Saving Club extension.

I am very proud to have put that on the public record. It may seem a lot, and indeed it is a lot, but that is the result of communities who lobbied long and hard. They were listened to very carefully when we were in opposition. The projects were all put together in packages and I am very pleased to say that they were delivered in this first budget. It is interesting that promises were made and they were delivered in our first budget in this term of government. I look forward to working with the minister at the table, Brendan O’Connor, and many others to deliver these important projects to a beautiful part of Australia, the north-west coast of Tasmania and King Island. I am very pleased to represent it.

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

I would just like to say how pleased I am to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2008-2009, Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2007-2008 this evening. Before I do I would like to congratulate the member for Braddon. It sounds as if he won Lotto on behalf of his constituents, so he must be a very good member. Well done!

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. I know you work hard too!

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

Yes, but it is very nice to see. I am only asking for $3 million through Regional Partnerships, and I will outline that shortly. I have sought leave from the opposition to table some letters at the end of my speech. If I can do so, I would appreciate that. This was the first budget delivered by the Labor Party in almost 13 years, and many Australians are probably pretty pleased about that because during those years this country has never been in such a strong financial position and delivered so much for, and on behalf of, the Australian people. However, this was a typical Labor budget. It was full of broken promises, which I will outline later in this speech, and has let down many Australians—just ask the older Australians. You would have seen the demonstration in Melbourne the other day that underlined that.

This is a budget about increased taxes, as well. I am not one, generally, to agree with the member for Kingsford Smith, Peter Garrett, but he was right when he said before the election: ‘Once we get in we’ll just change it all.’ That is what we are seeing happening.

I want to start by outlining my grave concerns about what has happened to Regional Partnerships in my electorate of Canning and in the surrounding Peel region, which I share with the member for Brand, Gary Gray. Let me start with the fact that the Labor Party has ripped $1 billion from rural and regional Australia. More importantly, in my electorate of Canning there has been the axing of approved Regional Partnership funding of more than $3 million. As I talk about $3 million I feel humbled, having just listened to the member for Braddon. I could not keep up in adding up the millions of dollars that were being mentioned. But, as I said, it is good to see a member delivering for his electorate. Good luck to him!

It is pretty obvious that the Labor Party has taken more than it has given. In saving $436 million by the cutting of the Regional Partnerships program and Growing Regions, it is only putting $176 million back into regional development—conveniently already committed to Labor’s election promises. There is no new money for regional projects available until late 2009. And—surprise, surprise!—late 2009 just happens to coincide with the run-up to the next federal election.

I stand before you today with the letters of approval—and I wish, as I said, to table these letters shortly—for four projects benefiting the Canning residents and the local community bodies and organisations that have worked hard to secure this funding. I will say at the outset that I tend to agree that there may have been some approvals for projects that were probably wrong, and they should be weeded out. But do not weed out the ones that were properly applied for, properly signed off on and that had matching funding from local government, local organisations, state Labor governments and the federal government but from which money is now being taken away. The ones I wish to outline as examples in my area are the Pinjarra indoor heated aquatic facility, the Meadow Springs open space facility, the Port Bouvard Surf Sports and Life Saving Club, the paediatric ward of the Peel Health Campus and the c-pod digital studios in the city of Gosnells.

Now, as I said, I want you to look closely at these letters. Slashing funding from these projects is nothing short of dishonourable. The cloak and dagger manner in which this has been handled is totally unprofessional. In fact it is unprecedented for an incoming government to reach back into a former government’s programs—where approval has been given in the most proper way by ministers and through departments and budgeted for in the forward estimates—and to take the money away from these groups. For the past six months these invaluable projects have been left in limbo while construction costs continue to soar.

I have a letter here from the Mayor of the City of Mandurah. He has written to the Hon. Gary Gray today, the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia, and the heading is ‘Regional Partnerships program: non-funding of approved projects’. The candidate against me at the last election was a councillor from the City of Mandurah. He was there at the launch and approval of many of these programs. He voted for these programs through the council of the City of Mandurah. I considered it a fairly strong Labor council—you cannot make generalisations but it is stronger than some others in my area—and yet this council and the mayor have written an absolutely ferocious letter to the parliamentary secretary today outlining their abhorrence at what has happened to their community. One of the lines in the letter is, ‘I remind you that people affected by this incomprehensible decision are working families’. This is a letter from the Mayor of the City of Mandurah today. I am going to table that letter so I do not take up too much of the time in this debate.

While we have been waiting for the department and the government to make up their minds, the costs have soared enormously. The Labor Party appears to be hell-bent on punishing constituents living in seats held by opposition members now, rating politics higher than representation. We know what sort of infrastructure Labor regards as important. Do not forget the $2.6 billion for the dead tree of life in Queensland. It is going to get a tick. The electorate of Brand neighbours my electorate of Canning. These electorates straddle this area of the Peel region, in one of the most rapidly-growing areas in Western Australia. The Peel Area Consultative Committee covers an area of some 6,000 square kilometres and incorporates the local government areas of Rockingham, Kwinana, Serpentine-Jarrandale, Mandurah, Murray, Waroona and Boddington. During the 2006-07 financial year, 12 regional partnerships applications were submitted from the Peel region, including the above-mentioned Pinjarra pool, Meadow Springs open space facility, the surf club and the paediatric ward. Six projects were approved, with the total amount of funding being $3,365,000 and this funding contributing towards $20 million of capital development in the region. So that $3 million was going to make $20 million worth of capital projects.

I have raised the matter of these projects with the member for Brand myself, and I have been surprised and disappointed that he continues to ignore the needs of his own constituents. I wrote to the member for Brand on 24 April of this year, specifically in relation to the surf club project. I have yet to receive a response. Let me detail these projects now to more fully outline their importance to the region and their value to the local community—for example, the Port Bouvard Surf Sports and Life Saving Club. The former minister approved $651,200 in writing in August 2007—and as I said, I will produce the letters—towards the construction of club rooms at Pyramids Beach. The club rooms’ proposal included a viewing platform for lifesavers, a first-aid room, a training room, a kiosk, change rooms and storage, not to mention a base for the club’s 200-plus members. This project had support from all levels of government and community organisations, with significant funds coming from the Department of Sport and Recreation—which is a state government department—the City of Mandurah, some $200,000 from Lotterywest and $120,000 from the club itself. The bottom line is that this club saves lives. Everything possible should be done to prevent a repeat of the tragedy of February last year when a father drowned trying to save his two sons at this beach. I repeat: a father drowned at this beach trying to save his two sons who were caught in a rip, and we are trying to build something substantial. At the moment the surf-lifesavers operate out of tents on this beach. I will hold the Rudd government accountable for any future tragedies at Mandurah’s southern beaches until this funding is honoured, because they could have honoured it and the fact is that they have not. Let us just remember that this went through the area consultative committee, it went through the state department of DOTARS, it went to the federal department and it went through three ministers and was approved well before the election. The fact is that contracts were not entered into because they were waiting for notification of the funding. So it was a catch-22 situation.

I turn now to the Pinjarra pool project. Some $1.1 million was committed to the expansion of the existing Murray District Community Recreation Centre to include an indoor heated eight lane 25-metre pool, spa and leisure pool. This is a project that had been on the community agenda for well over a decade so the centre could offer swimming lessons, water fitness classes and hydrotherapy as a rehabilitation option. In an innovative partnership—and this is very interesting—Alinta, the state gas supplier, was to provide natural gas free of charge for 10 years to run the micro-turbine that would provide both electricity and heating for these pools, saving a remarkable 273 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year and at least $150,000 in operating costs. This micro-turbine operating system was believed to be the first used in an aquatic facility in Australia. Perhaps this is just another example of Labor not taking climate change seriously despite all the rhetoric.

Funding of $502,000 towards the construction of a 12-bed paediatric ward, furniture and equipment for the Peel Health Campus was approved by the minister—and the foundation has done a remarkable job raising over $3 million towards this project. Families throughout the Peel region would benefit from this new, potentially life-saving, facility. There is no12-bed ward for children in the Peel region now, and this funding was to go towards that. It has now been ripped off them.

Then there was the Meadow Springs open space project in the electorate of Brand but in the Peel region; $1.1 million was committed towards the construction of a $5 million purpose-built sporting community facility. The project is focused on healthy living and community involvement, and offers education and tourism opportunities. Minister Albanese’s allegations of pork-barrelling are just false, as these projects were awarded funding entirely on their merits.

Debate interrupted; adjournment proposed and negatived.

These projects were thoroughly planned. The application process, as I said, was completed in accordance with the program guidelines, and the projects were recommended by independent bodies and finally approved by a panel of three ministers. Last week, Mandurah’s sitting mayor confirmed as much in the Mandurah Mail, the local newspaper, on 22 May. Quite rightly, the mayor is outraged that the Peel community is being punished. The city does not believe Labor’s excuses for dumping the Regional Partnerships program are significant enough to rob many local governments of funding for valid regional projects. Mayor Creevey said:

“To say the Government will only honour existing contracts and not those which had departmental approval and letters of confirmation reveals a blatant disregard for many Australian communities especially when the justification given is worded ‘to ensure funds are allocated for legitimate local needs’.”

In other words, she is offended and regards it as a slur. She went on:

“We believe we do have contracts because of the funding approvals given, so for the Government to announce in the May budget that it would be dishonouring previously approved projects to offset various regional election commitments is nothing short of a double standard.”

She continued:

“It’s about time promises were honoured and local communities were treated with the respect they deserve.”

Labor’s $176 million Better Regions Program is hypocrisy at its best. Despite its fundamental criticism of the Regional Partnerships program as being a coalition slush fund, the Better Regions Program is nothing more than a Labor rort. Remember Ros Kelly’s whiteboard? That is what we are heading back to—because we know that in Labor areas their projects are being funded, whereas in coalition electorates ours have had their funding ripped away. Here they have $176 million worth of election promises to honour in their own key seats. We have just heard about what is happening in Braddon, and good luck to the member for Braddon, as I said—but at least he is getting his projects funded. There has been no application process and no paperwork except for the watchful eye of the Labor campaigners involved. This is the pot calling the kettle black, and local governments and community groups should not have to, and will not, stand for it.

This budget fails to tackle ever-increasing grocery prices, petrol prices and housing affordability, as we know. The Prime Minister founded his election on the needs of working families. We heard Mr Rudd say it over and over again, but it is exactly that group of people that Treasurer Swan’s first budget is hurting, as well as pensioners and small business owners. And Mr Swan says the Australian people are happy! What is that—’happy talk’? I do not think so.

Since Labor was elected, the average mortgage has increased by $152 per month and petrol has increased by 12.8c a litre. In fact, since this speech was written, it has increased further. Health insurance premiums will soar with thresholds for the Medicare levy surcharge being increased; unemployment will go up; and there are new taxes on alcohol, cars and software. Thirty-eight per cent of Canning residents, or one in three residents, have private health insurance. I can assure you this will fall dramatically under Labor’s budget proposals, putting increasing pressure on WA’s already stretched public hospitals and waiting lists. The state governments are not happy. They want to know where the money is going to come from to prop up the state hospitals.

The Rudd-Gillard team seem keen to foster the emergence of an intrusive state, a nanny state. The term ‘nanny state’ was first used in December 1965, in Britain. Today it could not be more relevant. At that time conservatives warned that the lives of citizens were in danger of being overseen and overly directed by intrusive Big Brother bureaucrats that people had to bankroll through even higher taxes. This is what we are seeing under the Rudd government. Mr Rudd has a huge ministry and the ability to regulate and interfere in the everyday lives of ordinary Australians.

We are already seeing the higher taxing with mark-ups on mixed alcoholic drinks, or alcopops. Interestingly, one bottle shop near my electorate office was quick to warn customers of Prime Minister Rudd’s intrusion. Mr Deputy Speaker, I will demonstrate that with this photo I am holding up. I happened to go through the bottle shop the other day—and I suspect the owner is not a Liberal voter—and a sign out the front said: ‘Due to Mr Rudd’s new alcohol policies, all alcohol has increased in price.’ At the bottom it says, ‘Sorry for the inconvenience.’ This is going through all the bottle shops in my electorate, not inspired by me but by the bottle shop owners. They are outraged.

Going back to the issue of the ever-increasing cost of living—despite all of the Prime Minister’s promises, in his 22 May press conference he confessed that there was nothing more he could do to combat the problems. He said:

… we have done as much as we physically can to provide additional help to the family budget. Recognising that the cost of everything is still going through the roof. The cost of food, the cost of petrol, cost of rents, costs of childcare …

Where is the Labor Party’s plan? We know he has actually hoisted the white flag on this issue, from his own words. In fact, he probably deserves a white feather award. Mr Rudd inherited the strongest national economy of any first-term government in Australian history. Unemployment was at record lows, mortgage rates were low and real wages growth was well up. Thanks to the coalition, the government now has a $22 billion surplus.

The education revolution has been a farce. Primary schools will do it tough, with no new funding directed to them in the budget and the highly successful Investing in Our Schools Program axed. I have almost 40 primary schools in Canning, which I fear will be significantly worse off under this government. These are schools I visit frequently that tell me of the things they were able to achieve with IOSP funding. Can we really rely on the state government to look after them now, to replace carpets or provide new desks? No. In fact, school maintenance has gone down.

Treasury has forecast that, as a result of Labor’s recent budget, the unemployment rate will close in on five per cent—we are going to get out of the fours now and go back to the fives—and around 134,000 Australians will lose their jobs As the Leader of the Nationals pointed out last week, this is like everybody in Darwin being without a job. It is just unacceptable.

Not only are there going to be 134,000 jobs lost but the Labor Party is trashing the Work for the Dole scheme. In fact, what is even worse is they are combining it with Green Corps and, as a result, they are taking away the funding of $290-odd a week to participants in Green Corps. Instead of encouraging people in, they are going to coerce people into this, and they are going soft on those who do not want to work. We know that they are not going to be breaching as strongly as they are to get people back into work, and so the people will start manipulating the system. Under the coalition, wages were increased by over 20 per cent in real terms and two million jobs were created. During Labor’s 13 years, the increase in real wages was only 1.3 per cent. Of those two million jobs, 53 per cent were full-time positions.

In my last few moments, I would just like to mention two things that I have been fighting for and would like to see the Labor Party take on board. I have been fighting on behalf of people caught up in franchises. I have raised this on several occasions in this parliament. People have been caught up in franchises where some companies—and I have mentioned Lenard’s in this place before—deliberately churn out weak franchisees. As a result, these people lose their houses and often lose their marriages and lose everything. I am asking the new minister, the Hon. Dr Craig Emerson, to put forward the legislation—which we did not, I must confess—to toughen up the disclosure and transparency for people being involved in franchises. There are some real rogue operators out there, and we need to do the best that we can to make sure that people who think that they are going into a job creation scheme on behalf of themselves and who use their retirement funds to get into a small business do not lose everything. So I appeal to the Labor Party, and to the minister in particular, to have a really good look at this because there are people in really desperate situations.

Finally, Perth Airport is an absolute disgrace. I have written to Prime Minister Rudd about this, and I had a response from Minister Albanese. They understand this is a problem, and I encourage them to get on with it. (Time expired)

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

The question is that Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 be now read a second time. I call the member for Isaacs.

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

I seek leave to table some documents, which I sought approval for from the previous speaker in this House.

Leave granted.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Commonwealth budget is an opportunity for a government to lay out a path forward for our nation. It is an opportunity for the government to address the challenges that our nation faces now and in the future. This budget demonstrates to the Australian people that this is a government which will fulfil its commitments on education and skills, its commitments on climate change and the environment, its commitments on infrastructure and its commitments on health. It is a budget which does so in a fiscally responsible manner. The budget has delivered a surplus of 1.8 per cent of GDP. Together with the Prime Minister’s five-point plan to tackle inflation, this budget demonstrates that Labor is the party of fiscal responsibility and economic reform. It is a budget in the Labor tradition, which delivers for the people of our Isaacs electorate. It delivers for working people, for seniors, for pensioners and for those doing it tough.

I want to mention just a few aspects of the budget, starting with taxation. This budget delivers income tax cuts worth $46.7 billion over the next four years, announced prior to the last election. These tax cuts are directed to low- and middle-income earners, easing the pressure on working people and working Australians and on those seeking to re-enter the workforce. These tax cuts put real money back into family budgets, or individual budgets, of the people of my electorate of Isaacs.

Thousands of seniors in Isaacs will benefit from the 2008 budget. Many seniors in my electorate of Isaacs are doing it tough. They are under pressure. The failure of the previous government to deal with the inflationary pressures in our economy has hit those on relatively fixed incomes, such as pensioners and retirees, particularly hard. The Rudd Labor government understands the pressure that they face, and we believe that they deserve our support. The government has made available in this budget $5.6 billion over five years to increase the utilities allowance from $107.20 per year to $500 per year, to increase the seniors concession allowance from $218 per year to $500 per year and to increase the telephone allowance to $132 for those with home internet access. In addition, there is $1.4 billion for a $500 bonus to be paid to eligible seniors. As we have heard, the Prime Minister has specifically included retirement incomes and pensions in the review of taxation that is to be headed by the Secretary of the Treasury, Ken Henry.

On education and child care, the budget shows that these matters are of the highest priority for this government. Education and child care are priorities that the government shares with every single parent in our electorate of Isaacs, and I know this because all through 2007 that is what I heard from the people in my electorate. This budget is an education budget. After 11 years of neglect and underinvestment by the former government, this budget meets our election commitment to invest in education at all levels. In early childhood, there is $2.4 billion over the next five years, which includes more than $500 million to provide all Australian children with access to 15 hours a week of early learning programs for 40 weeks a year in the year prior to formal education. Through the childcare tax rebate, the government is helping parents meet the cost of child care. This is a $1.6 billion investment that will see the rebate increase from 30 per cent to 50 per cent for out-of-pocket expenses and will raise the cap from $4,354 to $7,500. Again, these are matters of great concern to people in the electorate of Isaacs, particularly young families in fast-growing suburbs like Carrum Downs, Skye and Keysborough.

This budget also demonstrates the government’s commitment to building a world-class school education system through the government’s $1.2 billion investment to deliver a digital education revolution, guaranteeing access to information and communication technologies for all years 9 to 12 students. There is $577.4 million to assist schools in improving student literacy and numeracy and $2.5 billion over the coming decade to build and upgrade school facilities so that all young Australians have the opportunity to study a trade at school. Again, this is of great importance to the people in my electorate and to people throughout Australia. This budget provides $4.4 billion to assist parents in meeting the education costs for their children, and, specifically, eligible families will be able to claim 50 per cent of key education expenses, with a limit of $750 for each primary school student and $1,500 for each secondary school student.

There is another area of great importance dealt with in this budget—that is, dental health. The Rudd government is providing national leadership in this area. It is an issue on which I have previously spoken, and one on which I campaigned strongly during the last election. One of the more miserly acts of the now departed Howard government was the scrapping of the Commonwealth dental health program, which ripped more than $100 million from the public dental system. It was a government action which directly affected people who could not afford dental care, and the effect of it was, of course, that many people stopped getting dental care altogether. For some people the legacy has been chronic illness and, at a more general level, a greater burden for the public hospital system. This budget is seeking to reverse that miserly act of the Howard government back in 1996 by committing $290 million over three years to re-establish the Commonwealth dental health program. This will help state and territory governments to fund up to one million additional consultations and treatments. As well, there is a commitment of $490.7 million over five years for the teen dental plan. In our electorate, these measures will help cut public dental waiting times, and services will be provided at the Central Bayside Community Health Service, the Greater Dandenong Community Health Service and the Frankston Community Health Service.

Turning to the budget measures that deal with the environment, I would refer to something I said in my first speech in this place: the need for us to care for the land and to think of the land as ‘our country’ in the Aboriginal sense of the word, a place to be cherished and nurtured. This budget has placed the care of our land, of our country, at the centre of national policy. It is a budget which directly addresses the challenges posed by climate change, delivering $2.3 billion to initiatives across government. What a relief it is for the people of my electorate—indeed, what a relief for all Australians—to have a government which wants to do something about climate change, which is committed to doing something about climate change and which has started to do something about climate change. The budget also commits $2.2 billion to the Caring for Country program, focusing on six areas of national priority. Importantly, for my electorate of Isaacs, which has a long stretch of coastline along Port Phillip Bay, coastal environments and critical aquatic habitats are areas of national priority for the Caring for Country program.

I turn to other matters of longstanding concern for me and which are dealt with in this budget, the first being legal aid funding. It can be said that this budget delivers in legal aid funding. Access to our justice system is vital to maintaining a fair and democratic society. Legal assistance at legal aid centres and at community legal centres can be the difference between social inclusion and social exclusion. Legal aid funding is important because it enables full access to justice for people who need it but are unable to obtain professional representation. Legal aid funding, the provision of legal aid, directly empowers people for whom, without legal representation, contact with the legal system would be potentially a terrifying if not a crushing experience. It can also be said that legal aid funding in fact saves money in other areas by aiding the proper working of the justice system and reducing the costs of running that system because of the function performed by professional representatives within the system. I am proud that the government is committed to improving legal services for the most vulnerable in our communities. Even at this time of fiscal stringency, the Rudd Labor government has increased funding for legal assistance, and it stands in stark contrast to the Howard government, which slashed legal aid funding in its first budget. This government has provided an additional $11 million for the Expensive Commonwealth Criminal Cases Fund. This will ensure that national security trials do not drain legal funds from other areas, such as family law, and it is likely to be particularly important in Victoria, where major Commonwealth criminal trials occur.

I should note also that prior to the budget the Rudd government announced a one-off $7 million injection to legal aid commissions, which included $1.9 million to Legal Aid Victoria in my home state. As well, the government provided a one-off $10 million injection to support the Commonwealth Community Legal Services program, which is notable because it is the largest ever injection of funds into the system, and $4.9 million into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services. This funding will support the important work serving people in our electorate by community legal services, including in particular the Peninsula Legal Service, which will receive from this one-off support more than $270,000 in additional funding, including $250,000 for family duty lawyer services, a very important function at the Dandenong Court. The Rudd government will also—this has been announced by the Attorney-General—place the issue of legal aid front and centre in the work of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General so as to work with state and territory governments on more effective provision of legal aid.

I last come to the provision that this budget makes in relation to consultation on human rights and civil responsibilities. In this budget the Rudd Labor government delivers on its election commitment to fund a national consultation process on human rights and civil responsibilities. Labor governments have always had a proud record on human rights. It was a Labor Foreign Minister and later Labor leader, Doc Evatt, who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which was the first piece of truly universal human rights law. It was a Labor government which passed the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, a highly controversial issue at the time. It was a Labor government which developed the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and it was a Labor government which introduced the Sex Discrimination Act and the Disability Discrimination Act.

A Rudd Labor government is committed to the international law of human rights. The Attorney-General and the Minister for Foreign Affairs recently announced that Australia is beginning the process of ratifying the optional protocol to the Convention against Torture, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. All these international conventions were effectively ignored by the Howard government. As Australians we can do better. We will do better. The Rudd government has embarked on the process of working on these international conventions.

Our consultation at the national level on human rights and civil responsibilities will ensure that all Australians are given the opportunity to have their views heard on this critical question for our democracy. The consultation will provide the opportunity to talk about the rights which we value, the rights which we cherish and the rights which we want to protect. The $2.8 million commitment in this budget is the next step in Labor’s long record of protecting human rights. We know that community consultation can be very effective from the consultation which occurred and led to the Charter of Rights and Responsibilities now enacted in my home state of Victoria. That community consultation was a process by which the consultative committee attended 55 community meetings and 75 stakeholder consultations and received over 2,500 submissions in just six months. It represented a tremendous dialogue on human rights throughout Victoria. We should praise the work of the consultative committee, which consisted of Professor George Williams, Rhonda Galbally, Andrew Gaze and Haddon Storey, who was a former Attorney-General in a Victorian Liberal government. The budget measure for a consultation on human rights and civil responsibilities will ensure proper consideration for how best to express and protect the rights and responsibilities which are fundamental to an equal, just, democratic and tolerant society, which is the kind of society we want for our nation.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 to remind the new Rudd government that there is life beyond the capital cities. There was some expectation that they, the Labor government, would continue the legacy of the Howard government in committing adequate resources to protecting the environment, including the preservation of our native flora and fauna; the preservation of water and soil quality; the control of weeds and feral animals; measures to help us adapt to and ameliorate climate change; measures to sustain agriculture, to preserve our capacity to feed ourselves while still sustaining the landscape; measures to close the gap between the life experience of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians; and measures to enrich the cultural life of all Australians through the support of the arts and respect for social inclusion.

Sadly, in their first six months of government and in the framing of this, the first Rudd government budget, we are seeing the resources and programs previously committed to these critical sectors slashed or disappear altogether. The natural resource managers and environmental advocates, including those in both the public and the private sectors, the workers on the ground, the people in various research institutions, have had to sift through the rebadging and the rebundling to try and see the real picture. But now it is all too painfully clear, a few weeks later. Landcare, for example, that iconic 25-year-old environment and conservation flagship program, has 4,000 volunteer groups across Australia. For every dollar of government funding it has received in the past it has been able to leverage about $10 in private sector sponsorship and in-kind donations. Landcare has been lauded and emulated internationally. The Rudd government and the Rudd budget buried Landcare in their new Caring for our Country program, the new name for what was the coalition’s Natural Heritage Trust and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. The coalition of course delivered the biggest funding ever into these two programs, which we called colloquially NHT and NAP, because we understood the significance and importance of protecting and conserving Australia’s natural resources. It was the biggest funding ever committed by any government, the John Howard government, since Federation to natural resource and environmental conservation. Labor have not only buried Landcare within the Caring for our Country labyrinth; they have taken away 20 per cent of their funding.

Then there were the catchment management bodies, which the Howard government created to manage the NHT and NAP on the ground. We understood that it was essential to have the state officials, local volunteers and the agribusiness sector on the ground delivering the programs through the NHT and NAP. We also expected these catchment bodies to integrate the state government contribution expected, which was at least matched grants in the case of the National Salinity Action Plan and in-kind contributions from the states to the NHT. These catchment management bodies have been slashed by 40 per cent in this new budget, but they are still expected to deliver in the same way. Chairs of the catchment management bodies—and these bodies are Australia wide—are already putting off staff. Ten have been put off in the North Central CMA in Victoria. Over $2.5 million has been slashed from the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority, and that of course translates into human capital as well as programs. These bodies simply cannot do the job Labor apparently expects them still to do with 40 per cent less funding.

The CMAs, as they are often called, have been told that they can compete for some contestable funding to make up these shortfalls. CMA executives and chairs are now talking to the officials from the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and they are trying to find out where this contestable fund is, when they might expect to see it and how they access it. They are getting the same vague and blank looks that they get from each other when they try and find out what is going on, where the money is buried and how they can find out what their futures might be, because of course they have to pay their staff right now and they have to make decisions about the environmental funding on the ground. This is a not just a tragedy for the people who have committed themselves to sustain our natural resources but a tragedy if you think of the way, very quickly, weed reinfestation occurs and feral animals take back control over a lot of native habitats. You give up on the environment for a period of government—in this case, the Rudd government—and it takes generations to win it back, if you can at all.

Minister Peter Garrett went off to an OECD conference in Paris in April this year. In his speech there he boasted about a program the coalition had introduced, the Environmental Stewardship Program. Many environmentalists sighed with relief when they read these words uttered in Paris on 28 April, because they thought, ‘Well, although the minister for environment, Peter Garrett, has been missing in action since his election to the ministry—refusing to see delegations or to travel to regions, despite the pleading of drought ravaged communities—at least the Environmental Stewardship Program must be safe.’ I will read you Mr Garrett’s words:

Australia has recently launched an Environmental Stewardship Program which focuses on the long-term protection, rehabilitation and improvement of targeted environmental assets on private land.

That was a bit of a con because, of course, it was not recent—the coalition had launched the program at least five years before. But, nonetheless, he went on to say:

Land managers are selected through auction, tender and other marketbased mechanisms. We expect significant private investment to emerge from this initiative, engaging in partnerships with Governments, NGOs and landholders.

As I say, these were words of real comfort to the Australian agribusiness sector and environmentalists who thought, ‘At least Mr Garrett understands the Environmental Stewardship Program’s significance.’ What happened a few weeks later in the Rudd budget? The Environmental Stewardship Program lost its funding. It disappeared without a trace. There was not a murmur. Gone. So you have to wonder to yourself: was it that Mr Garrett lost the battle in caucus or wherever they do the final budget deliberations, or was he missing in action there too and did not even make representations in relation to the program he boasted about in Paris just a few weeks before?

Sadly, we have this issue of slashing and burning right through the environment sector. We have the Bureau of Meteorology having to do with much less. It has to take $5 million out of its weather measures because of the extra two per cent efficiency dividend, so-called. Of course, speculation on staff cuts are rife, including in particular in the severe weather warning area. As we know, with climate change you get a lot more severe weather in the form of storms. Our capacity to forecast and let the community know about storms approaching is now severely impeded by the fact that they are going to have to slash their staff in those areas.

We of course have ongoing concerns about the whale envoy and whale monitoring. There is no funding there. The government has reneged on a key election commitment to take Japan to the International Court of the Justice with regard to whaling. We can see that it was all froth. Labor was taking advantage of a bit of a quiet time over Christmas in the media. There was no real commitment to saving one of our iconic, endangered species.

Community Water Grants have gone without a trace. We can go on and on and talk about the EnviroGrants. Right throughout Australia we have had EnviroGrants from a fund that is now supposed to be embedded within Labor’s new Caring for Country. We have searched through the spaghetti of Caring for Country to see some trace of the old $135 million Envirofund, which dealt out to small community groups, even individuals, funds for, say, revegetating a rocky knoll which was the last known habitat for a particular species—that sort of thing. The EnviroGrants are not to be found. They have disappeared without a trace.

Let me move on to the arts sector, a sector where I am also responsible for trying to keep the new Rudd government honest. Mr Garrett was a shadow minister for arts when the Howard government was in power. He is now the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. There was an expectation, because Minister Garrett does himself have a performing background, that he would have understood the importance and significance of arts funding—for both the performing and visual arts. Would you believe it, before the budget was even announced, we saw over $50 million slashed from the arts budget. This included the disappearance of the Australia on the World Stage program. It disappeared. This supported our cultural diplomacy. This assisted performers to show themselves as some of the world’s best in international places where our reputation could be built. There is no new funding for young and emerging artists. We have seen Screen Australia established. That was of course a coalition initiative. But there are going to be 28 jobs slashed, even though Mr Garrett announced, and it is in writing supported—

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

Order! The honourable member has transgressed standing order 64 a number of times. I request that she refer to other members by their title.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I beg your pardon, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has stated previously that there would be no staffing implications or disadvantage in transitioning to the new amalgamated Screen Australia. In fact, there is a loss of 28 jobs. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has also presided over the slashing of Chamber Music Australia’s funding. There has been the defunding of CrocFest, which was one of the major ways in which young Indigenous students saw, some of them for the first time, Indigenous and non-Indigenous performing artists of world standing. The list goes on and on. We have had the Regional Arts Fund slashed by $11.7 million over four years. That is such a drop in funding that they now doubt that they can in fact get in those buses, fuel up—given the cost of fuel—and travel across the nation and deliver a real experience of the great cultural variety, performances and visual experiences that city people get and can quite readily access, because they can jump on a tram, bus or train. With the regional arts fund slashed we ask: what about social inclusion? What about an experience for people in areas where they must drive for perhaps four hours to a local concert and for people who do not have the means to pay $120 or $130 for a ticket to go to the opera? Regional arts funds have been slashed. I think that is an extraordinarily cynical and uncaring move, especially given the terrible times a lot of eastern Australia is still experiencing with drought.

Then there is the resale royalty scheme. This has long been on Labor’s agenda. It is one of their policy commitments, so we were not surprised to see it in the budget. What we were surprised about is that there is only $1.5 million over four years to implement the resale royalty scheme. How on earth can that amount of funding allow you to set up an administrative regime and the communication, information and education program that is necessary so that artists, gallery owners, wholesalers, retailers and the private sector understand what this scheme is all about? How is it going to ensure that Indigenous artists make their last wills and testaments so that the resale royalty scheme for art can be real when it comes to Indigenous artists? The coalition, of course, actually funded the writing of wills and sent people out into the communities, the remote Aboriginal settlements, to help them write their wills. There is no money for continuing that work in this Rudd budget.

I have to say that this is deeply disappointing for those who expected much more, because they had believed the hype. They believed the slogans. They understood that the minister for arts—who is himself an artist, a singer of renown and a performer—would be more sensitive or perhaps more persuasive when it came to continuing the extraordinarily high level of funding that the coalition had delivered to the arts. What they have had is a real slap in the face and I feel very sorry about that. I have to say that the broken election commitments do stack up. The National Institute of the Humanities was not funded. There is no funding for the theatre and dance strategy of the Australian Council for the Arts, and the ArtStart program for artists’ welfare was not funded.

There is a lot of explaining to do, so it is no wonder that the minister for arts is missing in action when it comes to engaging the arts community. He is invited, he is begged to come and talk about the impacts of these program cuts. He is asked politely if he would like to come and see some of the performances so he can value the different forms of artistic endeavour from both our young Australians and those who are now of world, professional standard. But, just as he is on the environment, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts is missing in action. He is probably best portrayed as the silent minister.

When it comes to Indigenous affairs in terms of the performing arts and Indigenous artists, the coalition was most keen and was in the process of ensuring that there was a code of conduct in regard to the treatment of Australian Indigenous artists. There were programs developed to ensure the authenticity of works and to help with their copyright protection, particularly from potential domestic and international copyright breaches. None of that work has been funded for continuation and, again, I say that that is a huge disappointment. I, along with the shadow minister for family and community services, have been charged with keeping a close eye on Indigenous affairs and I am very pleased and honoured to have this role of ensuring that Australia’s Indigenous peoples have a fair go and that we do close the gap in life expectancy, education, training, and employment. I often see ongoing discrimination when it comes to someone giving an Indigenous person a fair go as they step through the door and look for a job.

As you know, we responded to the Little children are sacred report some six months before the last election, when that report was delivered in the Northern Territory. We set in place one of the best funded and most ambitious rescue programs ever for a set of communities in the Northern Territory which were in such a state that I think most Australian were in such a state that I thinks it shocked and dismayed most Australians. The coalition said that we would stop pornography and we would change the permit system, which excluded grey nomads, journalists and travelling non-Indigenous Australians from visiting those places, going into the local art gallery and visiting the community store. We said we would change the permit system so the places you would normally expect to visit in an Australian country town were also accessible to you as a drive-through visitor. Of course, no sacred places, no private homes and nothing off the actual public place register could be visited.

This business of the permit system was shamelessly attacked during the election campaign as an attempt by the coalition to have blow-ins go to sacred places and so on. We have seen the permit system watered down and once again we will have apartheid in the Northern Territory—where Australians who wish to travel, may not, where again it will be out of sight and out of mind for the most impoverished, and where the most unacceptable housing and infrastructure will go unseen and perhaps again be neglected, because this new Rudd government has chosen to reinstate the permit system as it was before.

The Labor government has also said pornography is okay as long as it is only up to 30 per cent of content on pay TV. We say no, that is not at all what the Indigenous community wants and has said to us; we are appalled by this change. We are also very concerned that there is now going to be an allowable condition where you can drive pornography or indeed alcohol through those settlements and there is not an offence committed if you do that. I am concerned that, while we have had ongoing funding for the emergency response, it is $20 million less and there is a relaxing of the pornography and alcohol bans and a reinstating of the permit system.

But perhaps I am most concerned about the employment prospects for Indigenous Australians right across the country, particularly in those emergency communities. There was a program running there—CDEP—which only helped about 20 per cent of the unemployed population in those settlements. They were the lucky ones—the men mostly—who had a little bit of work in return for welfare. We said that that was not good enough and meant generations of people would be sitting down in the dirt and doing nothing. It sapped their sense of independence and self-esteem. It has emasculated the men and driven the women to despair. I am very disappointed to see that the CDEP program is not going to be abolished and replaced with real job seeker support and employment prospects. I ask that the Labor government rethink that shortsighted and disadvantaging policy that they seem hell-bent on. (Time expired)

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

I am pleased to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009, and related bills, for the first budget of the Rudd Labor government. Let me put on the record my admiration for the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance, the Prime Minister and, of course, the support team behind those people, for the package they presented to this country on 13 May this year. It delivered an excellent Labor budget aimed at addressing Australia’s current economic circumstances, delivering on Labor’s election promises, particularly for those in need, and investing in the future for all Australians. It is a responsible budget that delivers for working people. In this budget we have delivered on our commitment to help working families with the cost of living with a $55 billion family support package. This package delivers on personal income tax cuts that provide incentives for individuals to participate in the workforce. These are important and responsible tax cuts for those who need them most. For low- and middle-income earners in my electorate of Newcastle they will be very welcome. With the average annual income of $43,000 to $44,000, these are people who have waited a long time for some support.

This support package will also provide eligible parents with a 50 per cent education tax refund and a 50 per cent childcare tax rebate. Having the childcare tax rebate paid every three months instead of once a year is also a significant benefit to families. It helps them with the most important task they have: ensuring that their children get the best possible care and education.

Another issue of importance to families is health care. The working families package, which delivered $491 million to the Teen Dental Plan, $220 million to establish GP super clinics and $3.2 billion for health and hospital reform, is one the public of Australia have very much appreciated.

We have delivered on our commitments to make it easier to save, to buy a first home, and to increase the supply of affordable rental housing. We have also expanded the eligibility for the carer payment, the utilities allowance and the $1,000 lump sum bonus. In all, the budget has provided $2.4 billion to Australian seniors and carers, with the seniors bonus, utilities allowance and telephone allowance making pensioners more than $400 better off this year than they would have been. However, we do realise that our pensioners are doing it tough and that is why the adequacy of pensioner and retirement incomes will be thoroughly examined in detail as part of the government’s review of Australia’s tax system. Certainly, one of the main things we can do for pensioners, and indeed for all Australians, is to put downward pressure on inflation. In this budget we are addressing inflation, running at a rate of over four per cent right now, by delivering a strong surplus of 1.8 per cent of GDP. Every dollar of new spending has been more than matched by spending cuts. Growth in real spending will be 1.1 per cent in 2008-09—the lowest rate for nine years. By putting downward pressure on inflation, we put downward pressure, we hope, on prices and interest rates.

We have also established three new nation-building funds: a Building Australia Fund, Education Investment Fund, and a Health and Hospital Fund. These funds will provide around $40 billion for future capital investments, to modernise and reinvigorate the Australian economy, tackling the productivity challenge. For the first time in 13 years, this Labor government has well and truly dealt the Commonwealth back into the nation-building game. After the ‘never, ever’ and the non-core promises of the Howard era, the Rudd government has also got the Commonwealth back in the business of keeping its promises.

In Newcastle those promises are worth a great deal to us. For Newcastle, in the area of climate change it means the budget delivered on the commitment of $100 million for solar research, to be administered by a new Australian Solar Institute, building on the work of the CSIRO in Newcastle. It also means $25 million supporting clean coal and advanced fossil fuel technology development. In Newcastle, the exporter of the largest volumes of coal in the world, we know that getting clean coal and other low-emission technologies right is important—not just for us but for the nation and the world. So I note that the Minister for Resources and Energy has recently released draft legislation for the world’s first carbon capture and storage regime. This is a very positive step towards creating an environment in which industry can confidently invest in CCS projects and support the commercialisation of new technologies that move us closer to our goal of sustainable energy in our region and our nation.

Similarly, the investments we have made in solar research will help to demonstrate solar thermal technology, integrate solar into alternative fuels production, develop solar for hybrid applications and develop other advanced solar technologies. In Newcastle, I am proud to say that we do stand ready, willing and able to play our part in a sustainable energy future.

The budget also delivered on transport and infrastructure for us, with $15.76 million for the Weakleys Drive interchange, helping to finish this vital project in the north-western part of my electorate. There was $15 million to complete planning for a dedicated freight track between Strathfield and Newcastle—extremely important to relieve pressure on the F3 freeway and to get goods quickly to ports. The budget also provides for improved security screening at regional ports, including at Newcastle. In the area of defence, supporting RAAF Base Williamtown in my electorate, the budget set aside $15.4 million for capital works projects.

In education, one of the most significant announcements for us was the $13.7 million grant for the University of Newcastle to improve its infrastructure and facilities, helping it to invest in areas of priority and to further develop its reputation as one of Australia’s most innovative education institutions. I note the positive comments from Newcastle university’s vice-chancellor about this grant and also about other aspects of the government’s higher education package, which certainly does invest in an education revolution for our universities.

In the sport and recreation area, the budget finalised Labor’s commitment in the last election campaign of $10 million to help upgrade EnergyAustralia Stadium. This $10 million provided by the Rudd government, along with an additional $20 million announced today by the New South Wales state government, will allow the absolute completion of the upgrade of our stadium to a world-class 33,000 fixed-seat facility. This is a great outcome for EnergyAustralia Stadium, for our sporting teams and for all their very loyal fans. It is also a great boost for our regional economy, putting us in a position to bring bigger and better events to our region. The Prime Minister has flagged that the federal government will support a 2018 World Cup bid, and the upgrade in Newcastle means that we now have a sporting chance of being a part of the biggest sporting event in the world, and certainly any other international competitions that come our way. I have lobbied hard but I congratulate the people of Newcastle in my electorate. I particularly pay tribute to Ted Atchison and the Hunter International Sports Centre Trust for their ongoing commitment to building the case and the community support for an upgraded stadium.

In the area of health we have not only delivered on our commitment to make the Calvary Mater Hospital’s PET scanner Medicare eligible but also committed $1.5 million in the 2008-09 budget for a one-off grant to support upgraded PET facilities at the Mater. PET is a highly advanced medical imaging technique which produces three-dimensional images of the body. It is particularly useful for designing the best course of treatment for cancer patients and is also used for the assessment of other conditions, such as epilepsy. The government funding will help the Calvary Mater Hospital to buy radiopharmaceuticals, increase radiation shielding, upgrade equipment and buy the new PET scanner. A further $700,000 will fund Medicare rebates for the additional PET services that will be provided by the improved facilities.

This is something that we have lobbied hard for for over three years. At the 2004 election the Labor opposition did pledge to support PET scanners and provide Medicare licensing for them. In 2007 we again made that commitment, dragging the member for Paterson to match that. I am proud to say that the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, has gone far further than just giving a Medicare licence. We will now have an outstanding facility servicing not just the people of Newcastle and the Hunter region but also, of course, the people of the whole North Coast and the New England area. This is a great outcome for patients in Newcastle and in the wider region who travel to the Mater for diagnosis and treatment. We are delighted that health is a very strong commitment for us. We will see two super clinics coming into the region in my colleagues’ electorates. They will certainly assist with the shortage of GPs that we have been experiencing. The budget also secures funding for the GP access after-hours service in our region, one of the first in Australia and certainly a model for the rest of Australia. So it was a great budget for health care needs. I am pleased to see that Newcastle is also receiving funding for a new childcare centre in the Hamilton-Merewether area of my electorate. It is one of the identified areas of need and one of the first of the 38 childcare centres that will be delivered across the country as part of the government’s $114.5 million funding stream.

So for us it was an outstanding budget, one that rewarded Newcastle people for their loyalty but also rewarded their effort in putting forward their regional case and their case as a regional capital for the leadership they provide in so many portfolio areas. This was a great Labor budget that delivered on the commitments we made to the people of Newcastle at last year’s election. It delivers some hope for the big issues and the big projects that we need to keep looking forward to and lobbying for and working hard towards.

In my electorate we are pleased to see that the Health and Hospital Fund for medical research facilities will be a way forward for the Hunter Medical Research Institute to apply for its very much needed funding. The budget also has an allocation for a scoping study for building a Federal Court in Newcastle. That means that we will put in a submission to the 2009-10 budget. We are very much looking forward to support for that submission to build a new Federal Court facility, a 10-court facility. At the moment we have four courts. We are suffering the highest number of security incidents and risks in the country due to the space restrictions and the pressure that puts on the users of our Family Court. Newcastle is a growing city and has a university with a law faculty. The recommendation from the Family Court of Australia is that it be the priority for the next Federal Court of Australia. It is wonderful to have opportunities to support such worthwhile endeavours.

In conclusion, this was a budget that was good for the nation, that was good for Newcastle and that certainly invests in our future. I will keep working with my electorate to deliver the best possible cases to this government. Keeping in mind the tight fiscal environment that we are operating in this year, that we have been able to achieve so much in one budget is something that I think the Australian public, if the opinion polls are to be relied upon, do appreciate. We will keep working on the future and, with a Labor government, I know that future will be much better.

Debate adjourned.