Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and cognate bills. Three weeks ago the Rudd government delivered federal Labor’s first budget in 13 years. It was an opportunity for the Rudd government and federal Labor to finally prove they were the economic conservatives they claimed to be in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election. Instead, the Rudd government delivered a stereotypical Labor budget that was high taxing and high spending yet tried to win a few brownie points by playing on the politics of class envy. While campaigning for the votes of working Australians, the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd and his shadow cabinet toured the nation, bestowing various vacant promises upon each electorate visited. The expectations of Australians were raised; the nation was led to believe that, if they voted for Kevin Rudd and Labor, petrol prices would be reduced, inflation would be reduced and grocery prices would be reduced.

The 2008-09 federal budget does nothing to address these three mandates upon which the Rudd government was elected into office. Instead, six months into his term as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd capitulated and announced at a press conference on 22 May 2008 that he has done all that he can to address the problems he promised to fix and that under federal Labor prices will continue to rise. Mr Rudd 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; cost of food, cost of petrol, cost of rents, cost of childcare.

The people in my electorate of Swan in Western Australia were among the many marginal electorates visited by the Rudd spin machine during last year’s campaign. Unfortunately, the people of Swan are also among the many Australian electorates left disappointed. Now that they have tricked their way into government, federal Labor have asserted that what the Australian people believed were promises were instead ‘top priorities’ and that apparently there is a difference between the two. I have since learnt that this difference is basically that if you prove the Rudd government mentioned ‘promise’ or ‘pledge’ in any of their press releases then you have a chance of receiving your funding. If not, then tough luck.

One of these ‘top priorities’ was a Medicare office in the suburb of Belmont, in the north of my electorate. The previous, Labor, member for the seat of Swan had pilloried the coalition government for at least six years due to the lack of a Medicare office in this area. With great fanfare and much publicity the ex-member, Mr Wilkie, and the then shadow minister for health, Nicola Roxon, made an announcement that a Medicare office in Belmont would be a ‘top priority for a Rudd government’. The people of Belmont and the surrounding suburbs welcomed this announcement, which was cleverly designed to give the impression it was a promise. The fact that this announcement was made only four days before the election date of 24 November shows that it was nothing more than a clever stunt to try to swindle votes from the people of Belmont. A media statement released by Nicola Roxon stated:

There are many frail and elderly people in the Belmont area who have difficulty getting to Perth, Midland or Canington to claim their Medicare rebates.

It went on to say:

Its terrific that Federal Labor is prepared to recognise the needs of the community.

It also states that the previous federal member for Swan had:

… been campaigning for a Medicare office in the area since 2000 when he presented a petition in Parliament signed by thousands of local residents calling for improved access to Medicare services.

Again, here are all these wonderful expectations just four days prior to election day. However, the Belmont Medicare spin did not stop with the election. In early May the local newspaper, the Southern Gazette, ran an article saying that a petition signed by 10,000 people at the local shopping centre, Belmont Forum, would be presented to parliament for due consideration. The local state Labor member for Victoria Park joined WA Senator Mark Bishop in supporting this petition because, as Senator Bishop stated:

Access to services is a key focus for the Rudd government.

With all the expectation and excitement surrounding all this spin, the first thing I checked when the budget came out was Budget Paper No. 2. I went straight to page 247 and looked under ‘Human services’. And guess what, Madam Deputy Speaker: I could not see anything about the suburb of Belmont in Western Australia listed anywhere under the Medicare section. I will tell you what was in the Medicare section: a commitment to fund a Medicare office in Emerald. Surprise, surprise—Emerald is in Queensland, the home state of our Prime Minister. To the people of Emerald, I say: good luck to you; I am sure the Medicare office you are going to get will serve your community well. But to the people of Swan in my electorate, and in particular to the frail and elderly that health minister Nicola Roxon was so concerned about four days prior to the election, all I can say is that unfortunately you have now learnt what the Rudd government is about: spin, spin and more spin. The Swan electorate has been forgotten by the Rudd government and it will happen again and again. However, the people of Australia are slowly catching on to the trickery of this government. I will continue to fight for a Medicare office in Belmont and ask that the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, meet the expectations she gave to the people of Belmont for a Medicare office.

While I am on the issue of the elderly, I would also like to say that this budget has failed pensioners in Swan and across the nation, particularly single aged pensioners. The local member for Victoria Park was recently quoted in the Southern Gazette as saying, ‘Time and time again I hear stories of pensioners struggling to pay bills on the current pension rate.’ The Labor MLA prepared a petition in his office to present to the Rudd government, as even he believed the recent budget failed to provide pensioners with suitable remuneration. The Labor MLA went on to say, ‘The federal government is aware that pensioners are at subsistence level.’ He continued with, ‘I strongly believe that pensioners have worked hard for the benefit of the whole community and this should be recognised.’ Here we have a state Labor member who is confirming what we, the opposition, have been saying about the lack of support in this budget for the aged and pensioners.

Another blow to the seat of Swan was given in the Rudd government’s inaugural budget with the axing of the previous coalition government’s Regional Partnerships program. The Rudd government axed this program because, according to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Anthony Albanese, this program was a rort.

One of these so-called rorts is in my electorate of Swan. A local community organisation called Southcare received a grant of $273,350 from the coalition government under the Regional Partnerships program. Southcare is a community group that delivers programs which improve the quality of life for frail aged people, disabled youth and Indigenous people in need of assistance. The Regional Partnerships grant provided to Southcare by the previous coalition government was to help fit out a new building, purchase and install IT equipment, construct a garden store and undertake external works on their new building. As a side note, Lotterywest, who have given fantastic grants to people in Western Australia, must also be guilty of rorting in the eyes of this government, as they also provided $550,000 to Southcare to undertake this project. Unfortunately a couple of weeks ago Southcare was heartlessly informed via letter that the funding it had been allocated had been revoked under the new Rudd government.

It did not take the media or the public long to realise what this government had done. Newspapers and television programs like Channel 7’s Sunrise ran stories about local community organisations that had been thrown into financial difficulties by a callous government wielding its budget axe. Minister Albanese attempted to deflect attention from his terrible mistake by relentlessly claiming that Regional Partnerships was a coalition government rorting program. If he had looked more closely at each of these programs in the first place, he would have realised that they were mainly for non-profit organisations that provide services to the more vulnerable members of our community. If it had not been for the individual community groups, the opposition and the media fighting the scrapping of these Regional Partnerships programs, some invaluable programs such as those provided by Southcare would have been lost to communities across Australia. Thankfully, Minister Albanese has performed a backflip of enormous proportions and has had the common sense to reinstate 86 of the 116 programs he originally scrapped. Still, it remains that Minister Albanese failed in his duty of care and responsibility to properly scrutinise each of these programs before deciding to axe them and causing undue stress to local community groups. His actions were not what one would expect from a cabinet minister and the Commonwealth government. I dare say that Southcare and the many people in the Swan electorate who benefit from their services will welcome this turnaround. I myself welcome the turnaround and look forward to attending the opening day of the new Southcare building and facilities.

Another positive initiative of the previous coalition government which the Rudd government decided to scrap was the Investing in Our Schools Program. Again, the Rudd government used their catch phrase of ‘Howard government rort’ as their reasoning behind axing a program that has delivered benefits to local communities. Many schools in my electorate of Swan benefited greatly under this program, including Queens Park Primary School, Cloverdale Primary School, Kent Street Senior High School, Manning Primary School, Kewdale Primary School—and the list goes on.

The Investing in Our Schools Program provided schools with the opportunity to decide for themselves what it was that their school required, unlike the Rudd government’s uncosted education revolution, which tells the schools what they want. According to Rudd’s revolution, schools do not need new playgrounds to help boost the physical activity of students during lunchtime, they do not need an undercover area to protect our children from harmful UV rays and they do not need reverse cycle airconditioning systems to keep their students warm in winter and cool in summer. According to the Rudd government, what our schools need is computers—just computers. Computers were available under the Investing in Our Schools Program if the individual school community decided that that was what they needed. However, the ridiculousness does not end there. Not long ago we learned that schools not only are to be deprived of funding for necessary projects but also are to have hundreds of computers dumped on their doorsteps.

After getting into office, the Rudd government has now told us that it intends to share the cost of the education revolution with the unsuspecting state governments. We are told that the state governments will have to pay for the installation, maintenance and power costs of each computer. In Western Australia, the Carpenter government has said that it will not share these costs with the Commonwealth, and many other states have followed suit. This is yet another uncosted federal Labor election commitment that has come back to bite the government, and the costs are expected to be picked up by the community.

On another note, yesterday I heard the member for Fremantle speaking on the success of the FuelWatch program in Western Australia. The member lauded the program and stated that the Western Australian members of parliament supported it. I hate to rain on the member for Fremantle’s parade and the government’s apparent enthusiasm for the FuelWatch debacle, but I seriously doubt that this program has provided any major benefits to WA motorists. Any program that is anticompetitive and does not allow the natural pressures of the marketplace to occur is a program that defies the logic of a free trade market that the Rudd government claims to support.

This is a waste of $20.9 million over four years of taxpayers’ money. It is yet another spin program designed to give a warm, fuzzy feeling to the electorate to persuade them to believe the government is putting downward pressure on the price of petrol. But I ask: how can the price of petrol go down if outlets cannot reduce their pricing to compete in the marketplace? If an independent petrol outlet owner gets up on Monday morning and finds that the petrol of one of the large corporate outlets down the road is 10c a litre cheaper than his, he cannot adjust his prices to compete. The independent may as well shut the doors for the day and head home.

This same analogy applies to the proposed ‘grocery watch’ program, except that I am at a loss to understand how this program will actually list the prices of a basket of produce and also take into consideration the quality of the vegetables and fruit. Is the produce fresh? Is it one day old, a week old? Are the bananas yellow or black? How are they going to put this on the website? How are these variances going to be part of the ‘grocery watch’ program? This is yet another example of spin from a government more interested in selling the story than in actually providing anything of real substance to the Australian people by delivering on the expectations it created during the election.

Next we have the change by the Rudd government to the Medicare surcharge levy—another story of spin with no facts. Yesterday in Senate estimates, Treasury department officials confirmed: (1) the government’s modelling understated the impact on public hospitals of the policy change by failing to take into account the children and dependants of members expected to desert private health insurance; (2) Treasury were not asked to consider the impact on state public hospitals from the resulting increases in demand for public hospital services; and (3) the Commonwealth expects to save $300 million overall from the change but has not consulted the states or territories about the impact on them.

Senator Mathias Cormann said that the industry estimates that more than 700,000 people will leave private health insurance as a result of this change. That is clearly well above the Treasury’s own estimates of 484,000 people. The government used this figure from Treasury in its spin but obviously failed to check the figure and do the duty of care by actually getting the facts. Treasury conceded yesterday that they did not even conduct any modelling on the impact on public hospitals, as it was ‘not normal practice’ to assess secondary impacts of federal budget measures. Senator Cormann said, ‘So much for the commitment before the election to pursue a new cooperative federalism on health’. Any economic conservative running any business would know that if you make changes to your business or corporation you have to look at the secondary and even tertiary effects on the decisions you make and at how they impact on your business and all affiliated stakeholders. It is just good business practice.

In the electorate of Swan we have the Perth domestic and international airports. I checked for any funding for Swan with regard to the Australian Noise Exposure Index area around the airport. Unfortunately I again saw nothing in the budget. Hopefully the minister for this area, Mr Albanese, will be able to see past his own electorate and provide funding for noise insulation into the necessary areas as required. The Great Eastern Highway—which again had much fanfare with $225 million of funding committed during the campaign—has been forgotten, with a paltry sum provided in the budget to do a review. That is another review to add to the long list of them.

In summation, it is clear that the Rudd government has failed the Australian people in the 2008-09 budget. With this budget the chance to prove that this government was run by economic conservatives has gone. The chance to give the Australian public some proof that the country is in safe hands has gone. What Mr Rudd fails to understand is that you do not become an economic conservative overnight by calling yourself one. You have to actually be one, and this budget has clearly demonstrated that Mr Rudd is not an economic conservative. You cannot run any business, let alone a trillion-dollar economy, on ideology and spin. The economy has to be run on sound basic fiscal principles.

The more this budget is dissected the more holes appear in it. The Rudd government have failed to deliver on the pre-election promises to lower petrol prices and the cost of groceries. They have failed to keep their promises to individual electorates, including my electorate of Swan, and have only funded those election commitments which they are unable to escape from. It is clear that many of the Rudd government’s pre-election promises were uncosted and economically irresponsible. However, they were still promises made to the people of Australia and in failing to deliver on these promises Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party have failed the very people who voted them into government.

However, what remains is even worse. In order to provide for these campaign commitments the Rudd government appears to be attempting to acquire funds from projects for the more vulnerable members of our community, such as pensioners, who they believe are not strong enough to fight back. The scrapping of many coalition programs, such as the Investing in Our Schools Program and Regional Partnerships, just to create an image of doing something, is disgraceful. The Australian public deserve better.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related bills gives all members an opportunity to speak broadly on subjects of their interest but, sadly, it also gives occasion for members such as the speaker immediately preceding me to repeat the drone of routine political drivel that passes for serious comment on public affairs. It is a great tragedy that we traduce the opportunities that are presented to us in this parliament to really get to grips with the larger national issues and our own local concerns when we waste our time repeating, ad nauseam, the kinds of rote opposition lines that the member delivered unto us in this chamber.

I want to focus on three specific issues which have emerged from this budget and which will benefit my electorate of Denison. The first builds on the work of previous Labor and coalition governments and has seen Hobart effectively the focus of much international work in the southern oceans and Antarctica. Certainly as far as Australia is concerned, Hobart has become the centre of almost all research activity in the southern oceans and Antarctica. And there is a further initiative, cemented in the most recent budget, where Australia will become the home of the secretariat for the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels—the great seabirds that we associate with the southern oceans and whose preservation and support is well supported by many Australians. That will now be cemented, in terms of the architecture of the international community, through this secretariat.

The permanent home of the secretariat will now be Hobart. The government will be providing income tax, customs duty, GST and other Australian government tax relief to this secretariat and the secretariat’s non-Australian staff. That is the same kind of relief that has been granted to other international organisations in Australia, including the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, CCAMLR, which is also in Hobart. I am delighted to recognise that, with the new home of the secretariat for the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels coming together with the work of CCAMLR, the work of the University of Tasmania and the work of the CSIRO, Hobart is very much cemented as the centre for international conservation efforts focusing on the southern oceans and Antarctica. I want to congratulate all who have worked so hard to achieve that end.

The second issue, again, has a conservation bent but is more focused on my own home state with $10 million in funding for Tasmanian devil research over the next five years. I am certain that members from all sides of the House would share my concern about the future of the Tasmanian devil and what that species is facing as it is decimated by rather grotesque facial tumours and about the struggle to find a solution that will enable the species to survive. That will of course be part of a larger program, the Caring for Our Country initiative, which altogether is worth $2.2 billion. The funds will go into research into the facial tumour disease and allow the necessary management actions to be undertaken to save the devil from extinction.

Last week, the Tasmanian devil was recognised as being in danger of extinction; it was declared endangered by the Tasmanian state government. So we need to do all we can to minimise the spread of this disease amongst Tasmanian devils, to try to establish an insurance population and to engage the community in a suite of recovery actions.

There are some promising signs. The most recent research conducted out of the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Research Institute focused on a Tasmanian devil that has been nicknamed Cedric. Cedric is a three-year-old Tasmanian devil. He apparently has a specific genetic make-up which has rendered him immune to the disease that has affected the rest of his community and he has resisted infection even after being injected with the deadly disease. There are apparently a number of other devils which have the same genetic make-up, and tests are now being undertaken to see whether a sufficient number of Cedrics and Cedric’s close genetic relatives will be able to form a population immune from the disease. We do hope that there can be greater resistance. We are certainly continuing to work on immunisation programs. We are trying to do all we can to identify the means by which the disease is transmitted and to build robust survival populations.

The tragedy is that the facial tumour disease is estimated to have already killed almost half of the devils in the wild and has been found in over 60 per cent of Tasmania. Anybody who has seen photographs of Tasmanian devils that have been affected by the facial tumours will see what a cruel and painful disease it must be for those that suffer it, and the suffering of those animals is enough reason for us to take action.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Immediately prior to the division being called, I was mentioning the fate of the Tasmanian devil and the fact that more than 50 per cent of devils in the wild are understood to have died. The cruel and painful way in which that would happen has everyone very concerned. The hope that would be common to all members is that the research that has recently seen a young three-year-old devil, nicknamed Cedric, being able to resist infection proves to be fruitful so that the species has a good chance of survival. Sadly, Cedric’s brother paid a price for that research because, in order to test whether a genetic benefit was able to provide immunity, both Cedric and his brother, who did not have that similar genetic make-up, were injected with the facial tumour disease, and the brother has contracted it. Whilst the researchers are obviously doing all they can to treat that, so far treatment has proved pretty unavailing in most instances, and it may be, in the end, that that is a price that will be paid in that individual case. If it can be established that a genetic group of devils can be found to breed and be immune from the disease, the benefit will be profound; it is something that we all hope can be established.

Finally, I will comment on something that I know all Tasmanians have been very keen to see, and that is the availability in Tasmania of a PET scanner. There are presently about 350 Tasmanians having to travel interstate for specialist diagnostic services. The availability of a positron emission tomography machine at the Royal Hobart Hospital, to provide a nuclear medical imaging technique for three-dimensional imaging of functional processes in the body, is going to be very much appreciated. It is especially useful for cancer diagnosis and treatment, and of course it has been something that my community has been seeking for a long time. I am very pleased to say that this budget has delivered that facility for the people of Hobart, and I look forward to it providing very useful assistance to those in my electorate—and in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom—when they need diagnosis for those measures.

I conclude my remarks there and indicate that I am certain all members of this House will join together at least in appreciation of the two budget measures that I mentioned previously—the Antarctic sea birds, the petrels and the albatrosses, and the Tasmanian devil. Whilst we do have our political differences and our rhetoric sometimes becomes a little inflamed in these kinds of debates, there is no doubt that where we do have common agreement—and we would around the need to do all we can to ensure the survival of petrels and albatrosses in the southern oceans and the survival of the Tasmanian devil—we actually come together as a parliament. Those measures in the budget, whilst monetarily not large perhaps, are going to be very important in terms of our national self-image. I commend those measures to the House.

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

I thank you for your contribution.

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

Australia has about 30,000 wheat growers. On average, 13.4 million hectares of wheat are planted each year. Western Australia is the largest wheat-producing state despite having only 18 per cent of wheat growers. Interestingly, New South Wales and Queensland currently produce only four per cent of the wheat crop despite comprising one-third of all wheat growers. Why is it then that the loudest protest against the scrapping of the single desk is coming from fellow growers in the states which produce the lowest volume of wheat?

Recently, the member for New England, for whom I have a lot of respect, carried out a survey of just over two-thirds of Australian wheat growers—20,000 plus. His press release says that the results of his poll show that only 14 per cent want change from the single desk. Was that 14 per cent of more than 20,000 wheat growers? The answer is no. It was 13.52 per cent of the 2,819 wheat growers who responded to his questionnaire—in other words, 18,026, or the majority of wheat growers from all over Australia whom the member for New England targeted, discarded his very narrow questionnaire into the rubbish bin. Were any of the respondents asked in that survey if they exported wheat? Were they B-class shareholders in AWB or any of its subsidiaries? Or were they simply running a political agenda to support the proponents of the single desk? The obvious answer is no—they were not asked these questions. It was a very subjective use of figures and questions to produce the outcome he wanted. I am bemused as to why the member for New England would undertake an inaccurate representation of export wheat growers in that way, and, listening to him in the chamber this morning, I can only conclude that it was an independent drive for recruitment of disenchanted National Party members.

There are of course a significant number of furphies which the opponents of the single desk for export wheat in this place and in the Senate use to try and protect the status quo. The real agenda on their minds is of course not what is best for the export wheat growers but what is best for their party-political agenda. No wonder they will fight to the death to retain it.

Let me now turn to the mess which you hear pro-single-desk advocates promoting. Classic furphy No. 1: the single desk allows the monopoly exporter—for example, AWB—to extract a price premium. No, it does not. Let me quote a letter from AWB chairman, Brendan Stewart, to the Iraqi minister for trade, his Excellency Mohammed M. Al-Jiboury. It was written on 24 March 2005. The following are some quotations from that letter:

In the spirit of full disclosure I will also provide evidence which demonstrate AWB’s contract prices have, in most cases, been equal to or lower than prices offered by the US. In comparison (with US), not only does AWB wheat exceed the specifications requested by ... (Iraqi Grains Board), it also provides superior milling performance in terms of flour yield.

When all the facts are analysed, it is clear that AWB provides the best quality wheat, delivers it more reliably, provides a valuable package of extra services, and importantly does this at a price that reputable suppliers find difficult to match.

It is clear from the evidence I have disclosed that AWB has consistently provided prices that are either equal to or in most instances lower than supplies of similar quality.

That is all code for saying that, in contrast to rhetoric you hear peddled at grower meetings, it is important to retain the single desk operated by AWB to obtain premium prices and protect Australian growers against the corruption in world markets. AWB was actually providing wheat of a higher quality than requested—that is, not getting the market price—providing services for which it was not charging and undercutting the price of competitors; for example, getting a lower price for Australian wheat than it could have and, indeed, should have obtained for Australian growers.

This is consistent with the complaints that the US agricultural attache, Jim Parker, raised regularly with one of my constituents, with whom he had regular contact in the 1980s—namely, that the US wanted AWB’s powers removed because AWB consistently undercut prices of US suppliers, not that AWB achieved premium prices in the markets in which it competed. Jim Parker also noted to my constituent that Australian growers and their organisations were easily hoodwinked by AWB claims of premiums because they had no way of knowing what prices AWB achieved in world markets and had no way of knowing the cost of operating the pool. They meekly accepted what was left over.

Jim Parker’s views were echoed in the US Wheat Associate’s ‘wheat letter’ of 20 January 2004, in which they complained that AWB:

... set their price by administrative fiat, and the AWB’s ability to work outside the norms of global competition directly and often egregiously undercuts U.S. wheat sales.

The letter went on to say:

“It is terribly frustrating when your competition can underprice you at will,” points out Alan Lee, USW chairman and a wheat grower in North Dakota.

So the evidence tells us that AWB used its single desk status to hide its prices and costs and to sell at prices under the prevailing market value. It is not that we should help the Americans, but, rather, that the assertion that AWB was extracting premiums from the market is rubbish.

There is more evidence, this time from the then Wheat Export Authority, to debunk the assertion of price premiums from the single desk. Comparing container bag exports which are not covered by the single desk monopoly rules, the WEA reported on a price comparison of non-AWB exports with AWB exports and said:

The analysis shows for the 16 countries ... evidence exists that non-AWB(I) exporters gained better prices for container and bag exports than AWB(I) in some of those countries.

That was the Wheat Export Authority addendum to the Growers Report 2006.

There is certainly no independent evidence that compulsory collective marketing extracts premiums from export markets. In principle, the reasons that it is not possible for the single desk—that is, AWB—as a price taker to extract price premiums on export markets are that it cannot: use its monopoly of Australian wheat exports to drive up prices on international markets, where there are many competitive suppliers, by withholding wheat, because potential wheat buyers can source their wheat elsewhere; control sufficient quantities of the world’s wheat to restrict supply to target markets; know the different elasticities of demand—for example, responsiveness to price changes—of each of its target buyers and how these elasticities change over time; and have full knowledge of rival suppliers’ behaviour.

Where increased prices have existed, they have not been premiums due to the single desk. It actually costs wheat growers $10 per tonne, due mainly to higher than necessary supply chain and pool management costs. Various studies—for example, Accenture, 2002; ACIL Tasman, 2005; Allen Consulting Group, 2000; Joint Industry Group, 2000; and GrainCorp, 2006—have estimated increases in net returns of $8 to $10 per tonne, solely due to a reduction in costs if growers were not compelled to deliver export wheat to the AWB.

Furphy No. 2: without the single desk, Australian wheat growers will compete against each other and drive down the price. That is absolute rubbish. This is a variant of the argument that competition equals lower prices. But let us look at the evidence. Decades of experience in the dairy, beef, lamb, wool, barley, canola, sorghum, pulse, wine and horticultural export sectors—all of whom have multiple Australian exporters—shows that growers are better off with several buyers competing for products and offering a range of services for price, delivery, storage and so on. Wheat growers who have diversified into these commodities—and they are in the majority—know that competing exporters do not drive prices down. Competition in these industries drives product innovation and customer service. This adds value to exports and increases growers’ net returns.

Furphy No. 3: the single desk provides wheat growers with a buyer of last resort. There is no buyer of last resort. At best there has only been a receiver of last resort—AWB—but that receiver has no obligation to pay one cent to growers. It took export wheat growers’ wheat provided it met quality specifications, but there has been no protection from the market. The buyer of last resort argument is essentially a demand that some growers of wheat be paid more at the expense of other growers than their wheat is worth in the marketplace. While the Wheat Marketing Act stipulated that the holder of the export licence must receive all grain presented to it, the exporter had the right to accept only the grain that met its receival standards, which were set by AWB Ltd itself. Those receival standards applied across broad quality bands, for which an average price was paid to growers.

The concept of buyer of last resort is, in itself, disingenuous because it implies that without the monopoly market some wheat would be unsaleable at any price. Although that is obviously false, the buyer of last resort creates the impression, which it is designed to do, that in an open market there would be no buyers for some parcels of wheat below the price at which the AWB would have acquired the wheat for the pool. That proposition is of course absurd, because such wheat would never be priced at zero. Rather than some wheat being valued at zero without the so-called buyer of last resort, there is always a market for a very wide range of grain types. What the buyer of last resort argument really amounts to is a plea for AWB to accept wheat into the pool and pay to the grower of that wheat the average pool price, which is above the market value for that wheat.

The proponents of this argument are effectively and knowingly demanding that the market value of all other wheat in the pool be reduced in order to accept their lower valued wheat. The result is that the buyer of last resort culture in the wheat industry creates a situation in which growers who produce good quality grain are subsidising producers of lower quality grain. Under monopolised marketing rules, growers are reliant on a mandated receiver of last resort being supported by those who do not. Also, the industry more broadly is disadvantaged because growers are being encouraged to grow lower quality/higher yielding wheat than they would have if they had received accurate price signals about what the market wanted. Productivity, competitiveness and incomes would improve by replacing buyer of last resort with wheat sold for the best price on offer.

Furphy No. 4: the single desk protects Australian growers from corrupted world markets. This is also false. The argument that the export monopoly provides protection against corrupted world markets relies on the ability of the single desk manager to price discriminate, which in fact is not possible. I refer to my comment on furphy No. 1. A related reason cited in support of the single desk is that, by holding large volumes of Australian wheat, the single desk is a strong negotiator in world markets and can secure access to markets and other non-price outcomes not otherwise available to Australian growers. However, the effect of being the sole marketer of Australian wheat disadvantaged the AWB, as buyers knew that every year AWB must clear most if not all of the wheat it held before the next harvest. In addition to this, domestic consumption in the AWB’s regular markets was well known by most buyers and competitors. In contrast, the competitive market buyers’ and sellers’ stock positions are commercially important items of information that are used as significant negotiation tools. AWB’s negotiating position was further weakened as it had to receive all of the grain that met quality standards offered to it by growers. Also, AWB did not enter into any trade negotiations on behalf of the growers and offered no other counter to subsidies or any other trade distorting policies of competitor nations.

Furphy No. 5: growers need control of the market to protect themselves from other commercial interests. Nonsense! Grower ownership doubles the bet or the risk of the grower since his or her prospects are tied to both the wheat market and the production risk, as is the share price of AWB Ltd. At present, growers provide the capital to grow the grain and, through their shareholding in AWB, finance most of the supply chain as well as the products and services sold back to them. Almost every instance of grower ownership of a commercial company has ended in growers losing considerable money. Two examples are the New South Wales Grains Board, where growers lost $165 million, and the wool stockpile, worth $2 billion, and the industry took at least a decade to recover. At present, AWB Ltd’s grower ownership is only 70 per cent, with institutions making up the rest. Grower ownership creates a serious ambiguity for the directors of the corporation, as they are divided between serving customer and shareholder interests. This reduces the prospect of raising capital from sources other than growers. External investors discount the company because of this ambiguity.

Furphy No. 6: the single desk gives grower protection against fly-by-night traders. Possibly at times, but at a cost. As in every other aspect of their business, growers need to take responsibility for managing their credit exposure and selling only to reputable buyers. As in every other aspect of their business, growers cannot and should not be mollycoddled into looking after their commercial interests. Like most other business people, they should stand by their own decisions and not expect specially legislated privileges. Experience in other grain markets that have been opened to competition shows that growers would retain the option of selling to AWB and would have the additional choice of dealing with the other bulk exporters.

Anecdotal evidence demonstrates that, in deregulated barley markets, new entrants have to gain the confidence of growers before they achieve significant market share. AWB, in its role as operator of the single desk, has cost growers heavily by driving down the domestic price by about $10 per tonne as a result of setting very conservative estimated pool returns, which act as a reference price for wheat on the local market; by allowing bulk-handling transport and loading charges to become higher than competitive rates; by high pool management costs; by high ship chartering costs; and by underselling competitors in export markets. As a result, any protection provided by the single desk against fly-by-night traders has been very expensive, in the order of $15 to $20 per tonne. At the very least, growers should be able to choose if they want that protection and for how much.

What do growers want from the marketing system? The main objective is to maximise net returns to growers at the lowest possible risk. This is achieved by obtaining the best prices and the lowest possible costs; removing constraints on the development of new products and services, which will improve provider choice of marketing options for individual circumstances, including the provision of risk management and financing options; ensuring that prompt and accurate price signals are provided to all players along the marketing chain, allowing growers and others to respond to market trends and improve efficiency; allowing growers to make informed decisions about whom they deal with when selling grain and utilising risk management services; removing the constraints on the development of highly liquid secondary markets that provide efficiency, price discovery and risk management options; and ensuring there is transparency of supply chain costs, operations and services.

How can this be done? Competition between buyers and suppliers of marketing services is the best way. If free to exercise choice, growers will be able to make an assessment of the quality of the product, and the business can choose the one that best satisfies their individual business needs. Each wheat grower will be able to choose with whom he or she deals and the sort of information needed to make that choice. What the single-desk growers who support the status quo will not be able to do is impose, through government legislation, their choice of whom they deliver their wheat to on the 86.48 per cent of growers who decided not to respond to the survey. Growers who sensibly opted to test their options to maximise the profits for their family farming business, by either consigning their wheat to an alternative purchaser, warehousing their grain in a silo while they test their options or retaining it on-farm in their own storage and then making direct sales to flour millers or other offshore buyers, cutting out the middleman, have been the beneficiaries of much better financial returns for their wheat.

The wheat growers of Australia—more specifically, the growers who export wheat—have suffered enough in the way of financial losses by being forced to deal with one government-approved entity. The monopoly system has resulted in high risks, high costs and poor adaptation to market changes. The licensing of accredited exporters will allow wheat growers to exercise their own judgement on how to obtain the best commercial return for their product.

In closing, I point out that the Liberal Party has suggested some common-sense amendments to the Wheat Export Marketing Bill before the Senate, and it is to be hoped that the government will see the merit of these amendments and pass the amended bill in its entirety for the good of wheat growers in the export market.

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget delivers for the workers in Dawson and across the nation. All politics is local. Yes, we delivered tax cuts. We promised them and we delivered them, and we did so more efficiently—not four major tax bands but three tax bands. It is all about local politics. It is all about the family around the kitchen table. It is all about looking after working people and their families, treating them with dignity and respect.

So what does this mean in the seat of Dawson? It means that we are going to deliver on building a multipurpose stadium for the people of Mackay and the region. The previous, National Party member for Dawson went to two elections promising and promising without ever delivering one cent to the rugby league and junior rugby league stadium over 11 years. It is absolutely terrible. The Rudd Labor government has delivered, not what the former member promised, which was $5 million, but $8 million—in full, in the first six months of its term. Yes, all politics is local. We have delivered for the Mackay region.

In this financial year $20 million will be spent on the Townsville Port Access Road. That is part of an overall development of $95 million. We will deliver on basic, essential infrastructure for the people of Dawson. Also, in the sugarcane town of Ayr in the Burdekin shire, the Burdekin Bridge is going to have an upgrade worth $50 million over the next four years, and in this financial year we will deliver $4 million to begin that upgrade. Yes, all politics is local. Yes, the Rudd Labor government is delivering for the people of Ayr and the Burdekin shire. We also believe in delivering skills, training and education for the people of Dawson. Yes, we have delivered again—a $14 million mining technology innovation centre. The first $3.5 million will be delivered in this tax year. Yes, all politics is local. Yes, we are delivering for the people of Dawson.

The previous member for the seat of Dawson promised funding but never delivered one dollar. There has not been one dollar delivered for the Mackay aquatic park facility, which was a joint venture between three levels of government: local government—the Mackay City Council; the state government; and the federal government. Yes, the promise was made, but guess what: not one dollar was delivered. It is left to this government to actually roll out $4 million in this financial year for that. We do deliver. All politics is local and we are delivering for the people of Dawson.

Not only that, we are also delivering $4.8 million in Roads to Recovery funding in this 2008-09 tax year. We have amazing growth in the seat of Dawson due to the ongoing resource mining boom. We have acres and acres of cane fields along the Bruce Highway being converted to industrial estates. Access to the Bruce Highway and the facilitation of the movement of goods and services are vital. I am pleased to say that we are delivering locally for the people of Dawson in helping productivity and in upgrading Connors Road and Farrelleys Lane. We are going to deliver $1.1 million to get that process started to facilitate access to the Bruce Highway. Not only that, we will also be upgrading Farrelleys Lane from Temples Lane through to Boundary Road. Some 3.5 kilometres of road will be upgraded to make the two-lane Bruce Highway into four lanes. The overall cost of that will be $50 million. There is a total of $150 million being spent directly on the Bruce Highway by this Rudd Labor government in the seat of Dawson. How much was delivered in the last 11 years? Guess what: nowhere near $150 million.

We can talk in millions and millions of dollars, and that is great, but what made me so happy was to deliver for the Dolphins Soccer Club in Bucasia, in the northern beaches of Mackay. All that the club had asked for was $112,000. They had been asking other levels of government consistently. They were given lip-service but not one dollar. Guess what: this Rudd Labor government has delivered to the Dolphins Soccer Club $112,000 in this tax year. When I went to the soccer fields and I met Darryl Gibbs, the coach and team manager, and all the young soccer players on a Saturday morning, they were so delighted and so overwhelmed that the big hand of government had come to their little community and given them a helping hand. You should have seen the joy on those kids’ faces. The manager said to me, ‘James, I honestly did not think we were in the frame to get any funding, with all the cuts that were going on.’ And I said, ‘Darryl, nothing pleases me more than to be able to deliver to the grassroots, to the poor kids who need a helping hand.’

That club is going to service an area of northern Mackay which is one of our fastest-growing residential areas due to the resources boom that is taking place. Members would be aware that the Queensland Resources Council has said that by the year 2015 we are going to need an extra 15,000 resource workers in Queensland. And one in four of those jobs will be in the Bowen Basin. The people who work in the Bowen Basin live in the electorate of Dawson. Our government will facilitate the major infrastructure for the Bruce Highway and also deliver socially, for sports; because the people of Dawson love their sport. They work hard and—guess what—they play hard too. We are facilitating not only basic infrastructure but also social activity.

Under the Rudd Labor government three major funds have been established. The first is the education fund. We have clear political determination to deliver for the children across this nation in every single school, regardless of whether they are public or private. We want a smart country. We want smart education infrastructure, and we have made clear decisions to invest in computers and in technical facilities in every school across the country. And that is being facilitated by our education fund—something which was lacking in the last 11 years. Why was it lacking? It was lacking because there was no political determination, no political will and no real vision to make it happen. But this government has made it happen.

The second fund that we have established is the Infrastructure Australia fund. It deals with issues like Roads to Recovery, port access roads and helping the productivity not just of the electorate of Dawson but of the whole nation—helping export productivity through shipping out our resources around the world. That is a very important fund.

Third but not least is the health fund. Again, we have taken it very seriously. We have decided that there is a political determination to invest strongly in elective surgery, to invest and make things happen. An extra 25,000 elective surgery operations will take place because of the political determination of this government to make it happen: political will, political action and a direct result to everyday people.

Of course, we must not forget our seniors. What a fantastic result for them. They are going to be $900 a year better off. The utilities allowance under the previous government was just $107 a year. Now, under the Rudd Labor government, we will be paying out $500 a year, $125 every quarter, and it will be paid quarterly, in time to pay those quarterly utility bills. Why is this? It is because we listen to everyday people. We listened to our seniors, and they said, ‘What is the point of having just $107 paid half now and the other half in six months? We need it in time for the bills when they come.’ This government listened to what everyday seniors were saying, and we have delivered an increase from $107 to $500 per year, paid quarterly. Yes, our seniors are much better off under a Rudd Labor government.

Carers are $2,100 a year better off under the Rudd Labor government. Again, they are better off because we had the political determination, the political will, to make things happen. If we had not made those decisions, our carers, as they were under the previous government, would be $2,100 a year no better off. But under Labor they are better off.

Good news was delivered yesterday by the Reserve Bank of Australia, which chose not to increase interest rates. I believe it is because of the good fiscal management that this government has demonstrated to the people of Australia. The financial markets have responded, and interest rates will not rise—as a result, I believe, of good stewardship of the nation’s money. This is really good news for everyday people paying mortgages. As we know, there have been 12 straight interest rate rises. Well, we have put a stop to it. Yes, there have been cuts, but those cuts and good fiscal management have delivered the largest surplus that this nation has ever known: $22 billion. What a fantastic achievement! Without that surplus, we cannot deliver on the promises to everyday working Australians, families, our seniors and our carers.

I commend the political determination of this government. I commend the budget. It is a fantastic budget that meets so many needs in this nation, whether it is the needs of working people and their families, our seniors and our carers or whether it is the needs of the business community and our international export community. This budget is helping productivity and helping everyday people. It is good for small business, it is good for big business and it is good for everyday people. This is a fantastic budget that delivers for the whole nation.

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and the related bills. The Rudd Labor government’s first budget has been found to be lacking in several areas over the past few weeks. I wish to look at a few of the areas of concern that are of interest to me and my constituents. They include petrol prices and grocery prices, which were also of concern to the Prime Minister after the last election but are particularly of concern to carers and pensioners. I also want to speak about the Northern Territory intervention.

Firstly, I would like to put on record for my constituents that I do not support Fuelwatch. The planned Fuelwatch price monitoring system will fail all families and crush many a small business. You need look no further than the letter from the Minister for Resources and Energy to his colleagues in which he said:

The biggest losers ... would again be working families in places like western Sydney.

I represent a part of south-western Sydney and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to stand up for people in that area, because this government will not. This is a government that took only six months to lose touch with ordinary Australian families. The honeymoon is over, and the division within is becoming public. The Prime Minister has even given up, as we heard from his Adelaide declaration:

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

Well, Prime Minister, there is a chance that Fuelwatch will even increase the cost of petrol. The advice from the Prime Minister’s own department was made public last week. It said:

Econometric modelling undertaken by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ... is somewhat inconclusive with respect to the overall pump price, but indicates that a small overall price increase cannot be ruled out.

The proposed scheme will also result in an increase in the compliance burden in the economy, with treasury estimates indicating that the proposed scheme will result in ongoing increased operating costs of around $4000 per annum to affected small businesses.

This is a real concern to the many small businesses that make up the electorate of Hughes. But the Prime Minister’s department is not the only one against this proposed system. As well as the Minister for Resources and Energy and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, there were others who were against the scheme. These include the Department of Finance and Deregulation, which said:

Finance considers that the introduction of a price commitment rule may result in higher average petrol prices over time ...

Again, the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism said:

The scheme will reduce competition and market flexibility, increase compliance costs, and has more potential to increase prices.

Another important, key department, the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, said that it is concerned about the anticompetitive effects of the proposed Fuelwatch scheme. Other bodies and organisations also listed their concerns regarding petrol prices, which are of main concern to ordinary working Australian families. The RACV said in March this year that it believed that the introduction of a 24-hour rule for petrol pricing, as used by the Western Australian government’s FuelWatch scheme, would be detrimental for motorists and would create higher fuel prices. The RACQ said in April that the government needed independent expert evidence that a Western Australian style FuelWatch scheme would really deliver low prices. Later it said:

The Federal Government’s desire to get fuel prices off the newspapers’ front pages at any cost could be at the expense of most motorists ...

The RAA of South Australia said that most of the experts pushing for the Fuelwatch scheme seemed to be poorly informed.

Looking at some of the recent media reports, I note that it does not get much better for the government. Some of the headlines included: ‘Rudd begs for time as petrol makes us fume’, ‘Fuelwatch to hurt Western Sydney’, ‘Leaky vessel will sail on with Fuelwatch’, ‘Fuel leaks could explode Rudd’s petrol policy’, ‘Cabinet leak leaves Rudd petrol strategy in tatters’, ‘Under the pump’, and ‘Petrol leak rocks Rudd’.

But seriously, looking at the future, economists are telling us that the cost of oil is going to continue to rise. Therefore, more effort needs to be put into finding alternatives. Oil is a precious resource and it is used in the manufacture of polymers and chemicals, yet we burn it for energy. Alternatives at the moment include LPG and hybrid cars. There are also some promising technologies on the horizon with the much hyped Chevy Volt plug-in vehicle. General Motors is set to get the Volt into production by 2010. Looking long term with hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, there is a lot more work to be done, especially with regard to infrastructure. I cannot help thinking that a lot of the great fuel companies have helped to actually engender this scarcity. In the past, where initiatives have been brought to them for biodiesel fuels or other alternatives, many large fuel companies have been known to buy up those copyrights and virtually just sit on them.

Another of Kevin 07’s favourites was grocery prices, but the Prime Minister seems to have gone missing on this issue now that he is in government. We are hearing reports that food prices could double within a few years on the back of global shortages and soaring fuel prices. The drought, a shortage of water in agricultural land, unstable demand from China and India and a lack of investment in research have combined with higher oil prices to create a grim future for Australians and, indeed, members of Third World countries. Australia has had its worst rice crop in more than 80 years, and rice, wheat and corn prices have more than doubled in the past two years.

One of the biggest disappointments in this budget was the treatment of carers and pensioners. Before the budget, the Prime Minister was making comments such as:

There is no way on God’s earth that I will leave pensioners in the lurch.

Also, when on his visit to Honiara, he said:

They are at the forefront of our attention and that will be the case as we frame this budget, and that will be seen on Budget night as well.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister did not deliver. This budget does not include anything at all for carers, especially when it comes to people who require supported accommodation for their adult children with a disability—except, perhaps, to promise yet another review.

In my speech on the budget I would like to raise the matter of the Northern Territory intervention. For several years I have been privileged to be a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and I got to visit and meet many of the people of our remote Indigenous Australia. In my speech on 7 June 2000 on the budget, which was eight years ago, I raised the issue of the abuse of women and children in remote Indigenous communities. It would seem that there are some issues that are a little bit like weeds in the garden—you can spray them with weedicide or even dig them out but they keep coming back—as with the issue of the abuse of women and children in remote Indigenous communities. That was the subject of my speech back in the year 2000 and I also spoke of the impact of the harm that is caused by pornography.

Eight years ago I said that there was a war zone in Australia, that it was more dangerous than any battlefield, and it existed in many of our Indigenous remote communities, particularly in the rural regions of Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. But of course it was not exclusive to those communities. I was actually referring to the findings of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence, which was commissioned by the Queensland government and reported back to the Queensland parliament in the previous December, in 1999. That report was led by Professor Bonnie Robertson of Griffith University, and she was supported by several Indigenous women elders who were then, and are, congratulated for their courage in speaking out about the scourge in their communities—against, I might say, threats and intimidation by many of the male elders.

One of the reasons that I sat up and took notice of the report at that time was that it contained the views of ordinary women and children and even aged Indigenous Australians in those remote communities—people you never hear on television or on the radio and who never write articles. It came from their real-life experiences, and it was undistorted by ideology or political correctness. They spoke about the abuse and the violence perpetrated on innocent Indigenous women, children and older members of their communities. And, as bad as the abuse against the adults was, the worse abuse was the sexual abuse of little children.

Eight years ago it was clear that the type of sexual abuse had become worse because of the widespread introduction and availability of pornographic videos. Indeed, one of the recommendations of Professor Robertson and the Indigenous women elders was that pornographic videos be banned from the remote communities. The task force reported that the incidence of sexual violence was rising and was in direct relationship to the negative and deformed male socialisation that is associated with alcohol and other drug misuse and the prevalence of pornographic videos in many of these remote communities. About six years later, the Little children are sacred report said that pornography, including pay TV porn, was readily available to children and parents in these remote communities and that exposure to pornography played an important role in what is known as grooming children for sexual abuse.

This report, with its identification and condemnation of pornography, was one of the triggers for the Howard government’s intervention in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory in the second half of 2007. Mr Deputy Speaker, as you would be well aware, the federal government was in no position and had no authority to actually intervene in Queensland or any of the other state jurisdictions that reported similar abuse. But the Commonwealth government certainly had jurisdiction to intervene in the Northern Territory—and it did. This was, I believe, one of the most significant achievements of the Howard government, and I am pleased to have been a member of the parliament and of the government that lifted what the task force described as the ‘veil of silence’ and did something resolute about this epidemic. Most importantly, as I think Indigenous people are aware, the intervention had the support and goodwill of many ordinary Australian families. Many ordinary Australian families in mainstream Australia are very concerned about the abuse of women and children.

I take this opportunity to honour the work that was done in this regard by the previous Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the Hon. Mal Brough, and I acknowledge and salute the support that he had from many of the women and children in many of those remote communities that he visited. To its credit, the succeeding Rudd government has continued with the policy of prohibiting the possession, control and supply of pornographic material in prescribed communities, and I thank the opposite side of the House for doing that. But I am concerned that it has gone a little weak in the knees in overturning the Howard government’s restriction on pay TV pornography, which has been masked by an R-rating classification.

This is of real concern to the many disempowered women and children in remote communities, because I understand that the minister responsible has said that he will leave it to those communities to ask for pay TV pornography to be prohibited on an individual community basis. This does not provide for the women in these communities who have been traditionally and historically excluded from such decision-making processes. Just about all the reports that have been handed in on this very sad and tragic issue have identified the prevalence of pornography and its combination with drugs and alcohol as one of the causes of abuse of women and children. I feel it is up to us as a parliament to take that step. Perhaps, if it is felt that the communities themselves should have that choice, the women should also be asked to contribute their point of view and it should be done in a situation where they are not victimised or harassed by the male members of their society. I ask the government to consider that move out of fairness.

I understand that, since the introduction of the 2007 legislation, a large quantity of pornographic material has been collected by police in the Northern Territory. I do not know whether it was collected by the Northern Territory Police or the Australian Federal Police. I understand that only about a dozen members of the AFP have been assigned to the Northern Territory intervention, and it is not widely understood what roles the police forces carry out in relation to each other. My concern is that in the past there have been reports, in the long history of prosecution against illicit drugs, that some of the drugs that were seized by police and other authorities have subsequently disappeared. I am concerned that this could also occur with the seized pornographic materials. I urge the government to ensure that the banned material collected by the police and the authorities has been properly registered and that audited destruction procedures are in place to avoid mishandling and, most particularly, to protect the integrity of the police. It would be a scandal if the pornographic material collected ended up being recycled back into the communities, into either prescribed areas or non-prescribed areas.

I would like to urge the government to introduce and promote in Indigenous communities a voluntary hand-back scheme whereby responsible members of the community could easily dispose of pornographic material in the sure knowledge that it will be destroyed and not be recycled again, endangering the little children of those communities. In fact, this is a scheme that could well be extended to the rest of the Australian community, because we know that the poisonous effect that pornographic material has in the socialisation of males in the Indigenous community is repeated in the deforming effect it has on the wider Australian community. It is well documented that pornographic material is corrosive to all relationships. Similarly, pornographic material has been used to groom Indigenous and non-Indigenous children for premature sexualisation. We have actually seen many reports on that in the newspapers. In the words of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence in Queensland, ‘Silence is the language of complicity,’ so let us speak up against the harm that pornography is known to cause and take further, resolute action to protect all Australian children from this corrosive influence.

Before I leave this matter, I would like to appeal to the creative arts industry to take a good, hard look at itself and what it produces in the name of art. I refer particularly to the Bill Henson images of very young children that received such media attention in the past fortnight. I do agree with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I acknowledge their point of view and the honesty with which they spoke out about the position they took, and I utterly and totally encourage them to maintain that position. There is something strange about a society where art is pursued at the expense of the most vulnerable, through their exploitation. There is something terribly sick in our society if we have people amongst us who say it is okay to exploit a fellow human being. As if that were not bad enough, we have here the exploitation of children who are not in a position to give consent themselves. There are some who have said, ‘Their parents gave consent.’ Well, parents cannot give consent for the abuse and exploitation of their children. Indeed, not only is that not an understanding amongst ordinary, well-reasoned Australians but there is also case law on the matter: no parent can give consent to the abuse and exploitation of their child.

I often wonder if the question here is whether such exploitation even constitutes art. It is exploitation and abuse of the most vulnerable in our society. When our society turns on its most vulnerable members and pretends to call this ‘art’, we clearly know that the people who actually posture in this regard are speaking like the emperor dressed totally in his new clothes, because that is exactly what they are trying to purvey. This particular situation is abhorrent to a civilised society. I applaud the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for their statements, and I join them and add mine.

In conclusion, this is a budget from a shaky Treasurer in which Labor goes out of its way to play a class war. We have seen it before from some sections of Labor with education and health. We on this side strongly support choice, but this government seems to want Australians to have it where there is no other way, whether they can pay for it or not. It is the government that would actually implement issues on health and education, not those Australians who would prefer to have the choice and pay for it themselves. We do need leadership. We do not need spin. The Prime Minister said the buck would stop with him. He will find that, in the future, most Australians will take him at his word and will hold him to it. Having said that, I do otherwise support the appropriation bills and thank the House for the opportunity to address them.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure that I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related bills. This bill certainly does deliver for working families in Holt. It delivers for working Australians and others experiencing financial difficulties in these difficult economic circumstances. The key aspect of this budget that appeals to me and to people in my electorate is that it attempts, in difficult economic circumstances, to reduce cost of living pressures. When you listen to those opposite talk about cost of living pressures, one gets the impression that we are talking about cost of living pressures that manifested themselves on the day of the federal election, when in fact those pressures have been there for some period of time.

Inflation is not created overnight. Cost of living pressures are not created overnight. In fact, when we did a survey in my electorate in June 2006, one of the things that struck me—other than the very large response rate, which was in the order of 25 per cent—was the number of people who wrote back saying that they were struggling under the cost of living pressures. This was June 2006, well before the last federal election. So this momentum, this head of steam in terms of inflation and cost of living pressures, has been building for some period of time. The challenge that our government faces in dealing with these pressures is to produce a budget which provides relief to families but does not do it in a way that stimulates inflation—a budget that eases the financial and cost of living pressures without putting upward pressure on interest rates.

In terms of the Working Families Support Package that was announced in the federal budget, particular measures that resonate with my electorate are the significant family tax relief, the education tax refund to help parents with the cost of education, the increase to the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent and having it paid quarterly, and the dental plan that allows eligible families to claim up to $150 per year for a preventative dental check on each teenage child.

Importantly, particularly in my area, which has the highest mortgages in the country, families are going to have the opportunity to seek more financial counselling. In fact, we have doubled the support for financial support services. Prior to this initiative, in the City of Casey area and in the region, there were two federally funded financial counselling services or providers for a population of 300,000 people. If you are talking about an electorate and a region that disproportionately experience cost of living increases, to have two federally funded financial counsellors is completely inadequate. So I certainly welcome the support that has been provided by the government. These services are needed because there are a lot of families struggling under cost of living pressures.

On top of the financial counselling, in terms of some localised services that are going to be provided, there are two important initiatives. One is the $5 million that the federal government is giving for the Cranbourne Aquatic and Leisure Centre, which is a very innovative project. It basically does not use fresh water. This pool is going to be filled by water harvested off the roofs, so there is no fresh water. Cranbourne is one of the top water-saving areas in the state and in the country. Now they are getting a state-of-the-art pool, and there is nothing like this in the rest of the country. It is a tribute to the people of Cranbourne that have been pushing for this centre and to a particular City of Casey councillor, Councillor Kevin Bradford.

A program that I want to talk about is the Casey Kidz Club. Prior to the election, we had announced a funding commitment of $40,000 per annum for this incredibly innovative program. This Casey Kidz Club is a service that provides respite care for parents with special needs children between the hours of 3 pm and 6 pm. The kids go to a special school and then get a bus to Beaconhills College in Berwick, where they will be between 3 pm and 6 pm. There are very few programs like this being run in the country. It is a very innovative program. The moving spirits behind this program were Kellie Hammerstein and Amanda Stapleton. Amanda Stapleton is the mother of a special needs child called Pete, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting and dealing with for some period of time. I am proud to say that this government has funded this service for $40,000 per year for two years initially, with the expectation of recurrent funding. I went down there recently to meet with the parents and the people involved in this service, and it is a great service. It is such a unique service that I think the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs are looking at it and at some of the good bits and seeing if they can apply those around the rest of the country. I am very proud as the local federal member to be part of a program that provides much needed support for families with special needs children in my area.

I move on to talk about things in a more general sense. I am Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, so I obviously have some dealings with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In my dealings with them I find them to be a very hardworking department with some fantastic public servants. I have certainly had great pleasure in working very closely with them. They do work very hard and very long hours and they are doing a great job. I want to talk about some of the programs they are working on that I have some level of interface with, because they will have some additional portfolio budget statement expenditures over the next five years. One program in particular relates to the social inclusion agenda. The interesting thing about growth corridors, particularly in areas like Melbourne and Sydney, is that we have enormous growth without infrastructure growth and social infrastructure growth to match it. So we have housing estates but, in my view, we do not have the essential social infrastructure to underpin that particular growth.

So I was very pleased to see in this budget that the government is going to provide $14.6 million over five years to establish and resource a social inclusion unit in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In accordance with its election commitment, on 7 December the government established the Social Inclusion Unit in the department. This unit reports to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and it will perform a strategic policy advisory and coordination function across whole of government as a means of pursuing the government’s broader social inclusion agenda. This unit will also provide secretarial support to the Australian Social Inclusion Board, which has just been announced.

The Social Inclusion Unit will work with colleagues in other departments and agencies to take the lead on progressing three of the government’s early priorities for social inclusion—that is, jobless families, children at greatest risk of long-term disadvantage and locational disadvantage. The Social Inclusion Unit will also coordinate the development of a long-term plan for social inclusion in Australia. The funds to be appropriated will provide for salaries and on-costs for Social Inclusion Unit staff, remuneration for members of the Australian Social Inclusion Board, travel and other costs associated with board meetings and board consultations, and will support one-off research projects and/or the requirement for specific expertise as issues emerge.

The government’s social inclusion goals are to ensure that all Australians are able to recognise their full potential, regardless of race, colour or creed, and to ensure full participation in social and economic life. The government believes that, in order to be socially included, all Australians must be given the opportunity to secure a job, access education and services, connect with others, deal with personal crises and have their voices heard. Low levels of social inclusion can lead to a range of problems, such as unemployment, low incomes, poor housing, crime, poor health, disability and family breakdown.

The government’s social inclusion initiatives are not about welfare; they are about investing in all Australians. The government has established the Social Inclusion Board, which brings together community leaders with significant networks, experience and knowledge. Why do we need a social inclusion unit? I have heard some commentary about the fact that we do not actually need it. As part of National Youth Week—and I think this amplifies the reason why we do need this organisation in a section within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet—I had a meeting with 14 young community leaders from a range of schools on Tuesday, 11 April. My electorate is very famous for young people—in particular Corey Worthington. He used to live and go to school in the area of Narre Warren South, so when people talk about youth in my area they talk about Corey Worthington.

In dealing with these young people, I found enormous common sense and leadership. As a tribute to the common sense and very interesting viewpoints that they put forward, I would like to read a little bit about what they discussed, what they want in the area and what their expectations are from government in this region. They represent youth from a spectrum of between 13 and 18 years of age in the region. We basically had a 1½-hour workshop where we discussed some pretty topical and controversial issues. Some of the key issues raised were: young people out of control, depression, family relationships, racism, teenage pregnancy, activities for young people in outer metropolitan areas, hoon driving, road safety, alcoholism and high-risk behaviour. After we talked about those broad areas of concern, we narrowed them down to three key areas: young people out of control, depression and family relationships. I completely appreciated the honesty of these young people. ‘Young people out of control’ was the issue of greatest concern to the group and represented an overarching theme under which depression and family relationship stress fell.

The key points outlined in the discussion surrounding young people out of control included rebellion and attention-seeking behaviour, parents allowing young people too much freedom, family and relationship violence, alcoholism and assistance with facing peer pressure. A point of particular interest was that the group felt—and this is important in terms of the debate that we are having about youth binge drinking, for example—that media organisations influenced young people and their decision-making processes. Issues such as alcohol consumption and, interestingly, the sexualisation of young people through some of the mainstream media outlets were of concern.

The second issue that particularly concerned this group was depression. The group outlined some personal examples of how depression had directly affected them and their relationships with friends and parents. Discussion points included lack of support mechanisms for young people and their families during stressful situations such as divorce, stigmatisation of mental health issues within the school environment, difficulty accessing discreet counselling services and the need for a broad education and public awareness campaign to expand understanding of mental health issues.

The third point was family relationships. Family relationship breakdown within the region was a concern, and it is accelerating as a consequence of families being under financial pressure. A number of the issues were linked closely to the topic of depression. The group’s issues included parents often playing the role of a friend and not a parent, a lack of support mechanisms for families in stressful situations such as divorce and relationship difficulties, and that friends should not have to act as therapists for their friends. The number of children that we spoke to who said that they were actually having to talk to some of their friends and discuss the issue of suicide is amazing. What are we doing as a community when we are not providing appropriate access to support services and when we are having peers counselling some of their peers about not committing suicide? There is something wrong in these outer suburban communities when we do not provide the appropriate social infrastructure to ensure that we provide that support. We are passing the responsibility on to our teenagers, and it is completely unacceptable. It is something that as a government and as a society we have to do something about.

The other issue is education, and understanding that stressful life events and situations for parents and young people are important. Throughout the discussion that became very clear. There has been a lot of discussion about the 2020 Summit and the consultation the Prime Minister is having. These people wanted ongoing dialogue. They appreciated that their views were being heard. One key thing they wanted was a broader preventative program to deal with the three key themes that I have just outlined. It was recommended that, by allowing young people to have a more inclusive role in their community and easier access to support services and by having a wide-ranging education and public awareness campaign on mental health issues, there would be significant changes in attitude within the broader community.

I was very impressed with these people. I will read their names out—and I am aware of the fact that I am running very short on time—Carina Bailey, Hayden Ostrom Brown, Sam Crongaeger, Natalie Heynesbergh, Danielle Kutchell, Teghan McLeod, Sarah Messana, Kate Miles, Dale Patman, Alana Sattler, Stacey Sewell, Reannah Smith, Casey Ward and Jade Wylie. They were very well looked after by Brett Owen, who is the youth resources officer from the Cranbourne police station. I have made them part of a youth reference group that will report to me, and via reporting to me they will report to the Prime Minister.

There is a heck of a lot more that I could say, but knowing that there are other speakers in this debate and the time constraints, I will cease. We have an ambitious agenda. One thing I can say is that, regardless of what side of the political divide you come from, there is an urgent need to address social infrastructure concerns. That is why I am so supportive of the implementation of the Social Inclusion Unit within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. I will be talking more about that and more about the activities of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in the coming weeks.

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

I was about to say it gives me pleasure to speak to this budget but it does not really, because quite frankly I think for regional and rural people it is a dog of a budget, and I think it is a budget that lets Australian families down. It is a typical Labor budget: high taxes, high spending and targeting groups which are not Labor friendly. There is a forecast of 134,000 fewer jobs and no answer to the growing problems of higher grocery and fuel prices. It increases taxes massively, as it does spending. It plays the politics of envy and shows that Labor does not know what it is doing in running our economy, particularly in regional areas.

Over the past fortnight we have seen on television the drama unfolding of the Lake Ellen Regional Partnerships project in Bundaberg. The government was about to axe 116 Regional Partnerships programs on the premise that there were no signed contracts—quite apart from the fact that it breaks a longstanding protocol. When assessed programs are in the pipeline and there is a change of government, in the past it has always been the protocol that those projects were completed—always. I am not talking about flash-in-the-pan ones that come up just prior to elections; I am talking about ones that had been in the pipeline in some cases for up to six or seven years.

Why do I say that? You have 116 projects, 86 of which are community projects. Communities which would not otherwise be able to have these facilities depend on these projects. The government says that contracts were not signed. What is the process? First, applicants have to go to the area consultative committee; secondly, they have to go to the state office of DOTARS; then they have to go to the Canberra office of DOTARS; and then they have to go to the minister for advice. So there were four levels of scrutiny. Even for the ones that have been criticised and that may not have been the most successful projects, there were four levels of scrutiny.

By comparison with that, the minister has lectured the parliament over recent days about the dreadful, shocking conduct of the coalition government in relation to the Regional Partnerships program. But the government itself has named $145 million worth of projects which have not been subjected to any form of scrutiny—not one iota of scrutiny. They are merely election promises, and for some reason they get a tick. Some of them are not even explained.

We have got these big amounts of money like $5.3 million, $14.9 million and $9.8 million for growth corridors, whatever that might mean. I am not against programs that upgrade roads. I tabled a report last year saying that we need to be spending up to $70 million and $80 million around most of our ports. But growth corridors are such an amorphous thing, whereas there are hard-edged projects that communities and councils want, and they want them now. My colleague the member for Herbert would know that. He has been wanting projects completed in the Townsville district.

I will give some history about Lake Ellen. The project has been rigorously looked into for over six or seven years. The site was changed and the project went back to the department for finetuning on a number of occasions. Finally, a decision was made to go ahead with it. It is a very good project. It is based on the edge of what is called the Baldwin Swamp in Bundaberg, which is an environmental heritage area. The project was to establish a playground which picks up the theme of the sugar industry in playground equipment. It is quite innovative. On top of that, it has play areas for disabled kids. It also has a road safety cycle track where kids are taught what is meant by a stop sign, a give-way sign, a roundabout and all those sorts of things that you would probably not learn until you were going to get a drivers licence. Kids are being inducted into road safety and road rules as part of this park. It is set in the surrounds of what is known as Lake Ellen, which is a small lake. In the great scheme of things, it is not a very expensive project—about a million dollars. The state government has contributed generously. Bundaberg City Council has contributed generously. Rotary clubs in particular, Lions clubs and the business community have contributed generously. There was $235,000 to come from the Commonwealth, and what did we do? Pulled it. It was pulled on the spurious grounds that it did not have a contract.

This project has been going backwards and forwards to the department. It had been publicly announced as going ahead. In fact, the Commonwealth plaques were on the fence; the department required that plaques be put on the fence stating it was a Commonwealth program. Even at that late stage, the project was pulled because there was no written contract, but there was certainly a verbal one. One of the reasons that the written contract was held up was that at one stage the department sought of the proponents that they demonstrate they were fit and proper people to administer the project. Guess who the proponents were: the Bundaberg City Council. You would think that would be a given. So we grind through a whole process of bureaucracy to establish whether the Bundaberg City Council is a ‘fit and proper person’ to administer a project. What mindless bureaucracy! Then they said there was no contract signed.

I commend the government for going back to those 80 programs. They are very important and will make a huge difference to regional Australia, both in coalition and Labor electorates. But I make a plea for some of the private schemes—the commercial ones, if you like. The new government seems to be a little ambivalent about this. I encourage my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia, Gary Gray, for whom I have a lot of respect, to also look at industry. One of the great things the Regional Partnerships program did was to encourage industries to locate in regional areas. It was not big spending in the great scheme of things, but grants in the order of $200,000 up to $600,000 could make the difference between an industry locating in a country area and not doing that.

At present there is one in my electorate called AusChilli. AusChilli is the biggest grower and manufacturer of chilli products in Australia, and it is now exporting. Under the Regional Partnerships program, it applied for some very sophisticated equipment from America—for $2 million-plus—that will prolong the shelf life of a number of products, particularly chilli and things like guacamole, based on avocado. It will contribute to import replacement; at present some of these products have to come from Mexico but they can be made in Australia with Australian farm produce. That project was assessed. I saw the sheaf of papers the other day; it is about an inch thick with correspondence and paperwork that has gone backwards and forwards between this company and the department. This was not a flash-in-the-pan project. It is in stage 2—the Commonwealth had previously contributed to stage 1 of this project. The minister at the time, Mark Vaile, went up and actually announced it. There was an expectation in the community that this was going ahead, and equipment was purchased. Now the project is in limbo.

We are not just talking about some community project that could perhaps wait for a year or two. This is a real-life Australian company in the business of creating jobs and selling products here and now. This is a company that wants to get into import replacement. This is a company capable of exporting. This is a company capable of employing people as field workers and factory workers and also employing technical people. We are putting all that at risk because the contract was not signed. It was rigorously assessed; again, there was certainly a verbal contract. I would encourage the government to go back to look at not only the regional community projects but also the commercial ones. I have some fabulous commercial projects in my electorate that came out of this program.

Jabiru Aircraft, the biggest light aircraft manufacturer in Australia, had its international type certification approved under this program. It would never have been able to raise the half a million dollars to do it had it not been for this program. Next-door to them is a company called Microair. They have taken transponders, which in some aircraft used to be a fairly hefty size, and brought them down remarkably in size. It is real cutting-edge stuff. They got a grant under Regional Partnerships. In terms of the environment, we had a scallop replacement project, where you take the spat of the scallop, you breed it in tanks, you take it out to a scallop farm, you distribute it into the ocean and you double or treble your scallop intake for the following year.

These are great, innovative projects. In fact, with the exception of one project in Hervey Bay, which the government demonised—the fisherman’s hall of fame—I have not got a dud in my electorate out of this program. I could proudly take anyone here, coalition or opposition, into my electorate and show them these marvellous projects. Australian Prime Fibre at Childers is building a magnificent factory, a goat factory providing food for the Muslim community and for the frozen food market. There is a whole plethora of these projects. As I said, with the exception of one that was demonised by the government, there has not been one dud in my electorate. I would proudly take any of you there. I would love to take you there, Jennie, to show you—the member for Throsby who has a background in promoting jobs and looking after working people—what can be done. What a huge difference these sorts of projects make to the profile of our communities.

I would like to say a few words about another project that was demonised in the parliament yesterday. It is called the turtle interpretive centre and it is a very good environmental project. It was meant to be an aquarium on the south bank of the Burnett River where the council was doing a big south bank development—environmental, aquatic and various other things. The aquarium was to be a lead-in to a natural hatchery at Mon Repos, one of the few hatcheries in Australia where the flatback turtle comes up and lays eggs. It is a very popular tourist attraction from October to March each year. That project went through a hell of a lot of trouble. It finally got state government funding and council funding, but it fell just a bit short, so they came to the Commonwealth for half a million dollars. A mistake, that we think was departmental, was made and they were paid twice the amount that they had sought. Originally they sought $1 million. When some other state government money—I think it was $700,000—became available, they amended their application to, I think, about $570,000, but do not hold me to that figure. I imagine what happened was that the department mixed up the two applications and paid the earlier one. There was no dishonesty or corruption. There was nothing like that; it was just a simple mistake. The council wrote back to the government and said that they did not need that money. In fact, at an earlier stage in March they wrote to say that they only needed $570,000-odd.

So in the parliament yesterday we had the charade of demonising that project. The mayor, who was quoted yesterday, wanted to step away from the project because the EPA in Queensland would only allow them to put the little hatchling turtles into the tank. No-one is going to come from halfway across Australia to see lots of hatchling turtles in a tank. It is going to be a big aquarium. It should have other fish life in it. It should have full sized turtles. I was down at Darling Harbour just a few weeks ago with my granddaughter. That has a stunning display of sharks, seals and turtles—full-size marine turtles; it is a magnificent display. For some reason, EPA in Queensland said, ‘You can have an aquarium there but you can only have these little baby turtles in it.’ No-one is going to come to Bundaberg to see that. The mayor quite rightly said, ‘If that’s the way you are going to limit it, there is no point in us going on with the project.’ That is the story of what you heard in question time yesterday. That is the background to it. It was never one of the projects that I personally fostered. I did work hard for it, and yet it was heaped onto me yesterday as being something that Paul Neville stuffed up. Well, I didn’t. The history of it is very interesting, too, but I will leave that for another day. I have some very interesting history on this particular project and I think it will be very embarrassing to some of the people who tried to demonise it.

I would like to talk briefly in this particular debate about private health insurance. The government has decided to lift the threshold from $50,000 to $100,000. It will make a loss of $660,000 on one aspect of it and a profit of $960,000 on another, with a net cost on paper of $300 million. But it does not say what the impact will be on our public hospitals. Every public hospital I can think of in Australia has waiting lists for elective surgery and even for emergency surgery—for all forms of hospital service. In fact, the member for Herbert might correct me if I am wrong but I think it was in the last fortnight that Queensland’s waiting list for elective surgery actually slipped. So, on top of that, what are we going to do? We are going to take 700,000 Australians and say, ‘You don’t need to take out private health insurance anymore.’ That might sound very attractive on the surface of things. The government’s estimate is 400,000, I might add, but Treasury and others, and the private sector, seem to think it will be 700,000 or 800,000.

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

They forgot to include young people.

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

I was just about to say that; you are one step ahead of me. There are about 484 dependent spouses and young people. So the figure will be somewhat higher than 700,000 or 800,000, if and when it happens. Regarding the impact on my electorate, I have just under 91,000 people in my electorate, and nearly 37,000 of them have private health insurance—that is 41 per cent. When you add in the dependants and, as the member for Herbert said, the children, it is 49,000. That is over half of my electorate that will be dependent on private health insurance. If you encourage them to go out of that, the impact on our public hospitals is going to be horrendous. I think this will be one of the decisions the government will rue. It is very important for older people—they like private health insurance—and I take some pride in being the one that talked the former Prime Minister into the higher rebate for older people. It is 35 per cent at 65 years, and 40 per cent at 70 years. That has allowed pensioners and people on modest incomes, especially retirees, to stay in the system. It is a very important system for Australia.

What is the government going to replace this with? We are going to have a $5 million superclinic. Why would we want that in Bundaberg? We have got four clinics now, and three of them are eight- or nine-man practices that have only got four or five doctors. We are short of doctors before we even put a Commonwealth facility there. Even the Commonwealth is equivocating now, saying ‘up to $5 million’ and ‘we will renovate a building if a suitable building is available’. There has been so much equivocation that I do not think there will be $5 million superclinics; there will be some compromise. I would urge the government, as part of its budget process, to go back and have a look at the facilities in country towns and take them as the base before they get involved in putting needless superclinics into the process. (Time expired)

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make some comments today about the overall budgetary framework and some of the particular appropriations that are contained in the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and cognate bills. It was just over six months ago that the Australian people decided to change the course of the nation by electing a Labor government—a government that the electorate understood was committed to tackling the long-term challenges facing Australia. We said in our election campaign that we were committed to building a modern Australia capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century. In that regard, we drew constant attention to the fact that the former government had been asleep at the wheel on some very major challenges facing Australia—challenges related to the skills crisis, challenges related to global warming and challenges that related to a government that was really out of touch with the average family struggling under the weight of economic factors that were making it harder for them to reconcile their household budgets at a time of continually rising interest rates.

One thing I think is terrific about the budget is that we are implementing the commitments and promises we made. I think there was a growing cynicism in the community about governments that promised but did not deliver—and, of course, there is the history of core and non-core promises. So I take great pride in the fact that what we said to the nation is in fact what we are intent on delivering. That also goes for specific commitments that were made in the electorate of Throsby. I am very happy to be able to say to the people I represent, ‘We are a government that will do what we say we will do.’

We said that we would be responsible economic managers—in fact, I think the expression ‘fiscal conservatives’ was used on numerous occasions. That is reflected in the overall framework of the budget, which sets aside reasonably large surpluses, in the order of $22 billion, because we understand that, in our first budget, the major imperative is to take the pressure off the possibility of further interest rate rises. So the budget delivers a sensible economic strategy for the short term and the long term.

We said that as a party in government we would be committed to nation building and we would want to continue the fine traditions of Labor in power, which sees the future of the nation beyond the short-term electoral cycle. We have committed this surplus and future surpluses to three major funds. One fund, the Building Australia Fund, with a $20 billion allocation, will ensure that we have the capacity to pay for ongoing and much needed improvements to our roads, railways and ports and, very importantly, for communities like mine that do not have access to high-speed broadband—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

As I was saying before the suspension, I am pleased that the commitments we made in the lead-up to the federal election have been rapidly and enthusiastically embraced by the Rudd Labor government. We are also a government which is planning for the long term. We have committed $20 billion to the Building Australia Fund to pay for ongoing improvements to roads, railways, ports and broadband. In my electorate, broadband is a major issue because so many of my communities lack access to ADSL and high-speed broadband connection. We have also invested $11 billion in the Education Investment Fund. Very importantly, we have made a $10 billion commitment to the health and hospital fund, which will be beneficial in the long term as we face the challenges of an ageing population, the costs of the introduction of new technologies, new medicines and new fields of endeavour and research.

So you can see that not only are we a government addressing the immediate issues but we are planning for the long term. In that regard, my community is very delighted that the Rudd Labor government is tackling the issue of global warming and the impact of dangerous climate change on our continent.

We are committed to building a modern, competitive Australia through a sustained focus on driving strong productivity growth. We see that in the substantial investment that we are making in addressing the skills shortage. Then there is our investment in schools. Next week we will hear more about our computers in schools program. I know the secondary schools in my electorate are very keenly waiting for the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program to come to fruition as well.

But the most important thing in the budget for the people I represent was the very substantial package to look after the interests of working families. Our Working Families Support Package will provide very significant assistance for the average income earner. Often in a family the father is at work full-time and the mum works part-time. This package will address a lot of the pressures that families are facing through increases in rent, petrol or grocery prices.

The former government kept telling us that working families had never been better off, but when you talk to the people in my electorate you hear very clearly about the daily struggles they have to try and make ends meet. In that regard, the tax cuts will be very welcome. We know that for a person on a single income of about $40,000 there is a tax cut of about $20.19 a week. For families on a single income of $80,000 the tax cut is around $21.15 and for families with a combined income of around $100,000 the tax cut is $31.73. In a typical family the father is the primary earner and the mum is usually working on a part-time basis. In that regard, the low-income tax offset will be of particular benefit.

I also want to make particular mention of the education tax refund—a very good innovation that comes with this budget. There is also the childcare tax rebate, which will rise to cover 50 per cent of out-of-pocket expenses. The Fuelwatch system will empower consumers to make informed choices about where they can get the best bargain without the daily fluctuations that we see and which we know are often inexplicable. We are looking into the issue of grocery prices through a comprehensive ACCC inquiry. And, of course, we are not forcing people into private health insurance by setting the levy surcharge at the low level that it was in the past. We are raising the threshold for a single person from $50,000 to $100,000 and for families to $150,000. It will be the case that many will want to retain private health coverage, but I think it also will put pressure on the private health insurance industry to come up with products and packages that speak for themselves in terms of the value that they provide.

As in other electorates, I have some concerns expressed by seniors, but I have assured them that the Prime Minister is very mindful of the financial pressures on seniors, pensioners, carers and people on the disability support pension. They have welcomed the fact that the Henry review will also be looking at the interrelationship between tax, welfare and our retirement income systems. This naturally will include a review of age pensions. That review is due to report in February 2009. We do not want pensioners to feel that their plight is being ignored; it is just that in six months time you cannot reverse the legacy of more than a decade of the former government. We do appreciate the contribution of pensioners and carers. We have increased payments to carers and people on the disability support pension, and I am very confident that we will see more good news in this regard in the months ahead.

In education, in addressing climate change and in improving our public hospital system, I think the government have understood the concerns of the electorate at large. In climate change, for example, we are making up for years and years of inaction and denial about the significant challenges that the economics of climate change as well as the environmental impacts will have on our nation. I know our ministers are working very hard to put together the framework of the emissions trading scheme and are looking at the equity issues that come with that.

In education, I am very delighted that we are investing substantially in the childcare and preschool area, that we are addressing the digital divide that occurs in many areas of secondary education and that we have made a substantial allocation to fixing capital works problems in our universities—and there is more to come, with our investment in the Education Investment Fund.

In conclusion, the budget has delivered on the commitments that the Prime Minister and ministers made nationally. It will deliver substantial benefits to people in my electorate, starting with the commitment to a GP superclinic to address the health workforce shortages that have been so obvious in that area for decades, with little or no attention from the former government. But we are also a party that believes in sensible economic management; we know that it is imperative to keep putting downward pressure on interest rates and inflation. We remember too that we have a particular responsibility to people who work very hard, be it in the paid workforce or in a voluntary capacity in the community. The community of my electorate is greatly relieved that one of the first acts of the Rudd Labor government was to abolish the iniquitous AWA stream, which as we know was having a marked impact on disposable income through the attacks on overtime, penalty and shift loadings.

We are still in uncertain economic times, and I do not think any of us can afford to underestimate the challenges that will face a reforming Labor government at the national level. But I certainly believe—and I think I speak on behalf of the people that raised their concerns through my office—that this budget will provide a strong foundation for assisting those who are doing it tough, working families and the people who have worked but are no longer in the paid workforce but still feel the impact of rising cost-of-living pressures. So we are doing what we can in the short term while at the same time making substantial investments in our nation’s future.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to speak in support of the appropriation bills before the committee today. I specifically wish to put on the record my support for the childcare initiatives that form part of the Rudd Labor government’s budget. The various childcare initiatives are part of an overall childcare strategy to deliver quality child care to working families throughout my electorate and the broader community of Australia. The childcare package delivers an increase in the childcare tax rebate, from 30 to 50 per cent, and will see the rebate paid quarterly instead of annually, which is what previously occurred.

In addition to this initiative, the Rudd Labor government will add to the supply of childcare places through an additional 260 new childcare centres in priority areas. As part of this budget, the government will invest $115 million over four years to build the first 38 centres. These centres will focus on the specific needs of the local communities in which they are situated and can include many other services that support families, such as speech therapy and health services. The centres that I have spoken to in my electorate are also supportive of the government’s investment of $22 million over four years to develop new national quality standards for child care.

Over the next five years, the Rudd Labor government will spend $534 million to provide universal access to a preschool year—15 hours per week for 40 weeks per year for all four-year-olds by 2013. There is also an allocation of $337 million to further improve the quality of and access to early childhood education and care, particularly for disadvantaged children.

These initiatives will collectively deliver long needed improvements and support to working families who access or would like to access childcare services. As a parent who has had two children in child care at the same time and who now accesses before- and after-school care and vacation care, I can certainly empathise with those parents who talk to me about the financial pressures that child care creates. That is why it is my great pleasure to support this legislation, which delivers on the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to comprehensive investment in child care and early childhood education.

Not only does the government, through this bill, deliver financial assistance to parents who access child care; this government will deliver improved compliance and administrative processes for the childcare industry. This is important, as the demand for child care continues to grow. This growth has been occurring over the past two decades and has occurred for many reasons. With changes in work patterns requiring parents to work extended hours, additional demand on childcare places has grown. In addition, the mobility of the workforce around the country has meant that people are moving away from their immediate family circle and support. People are also moving further away from family circles due to the increase in the cost of housing. People are struggling to purchase homes in the area that they grew up in and where their parents live. These changes require alternative care options beyond the primary carer, being the parent or a grandparent. As an answer to the problem that these changes present, families have turned to child care. The difficulty is that not only are everyday costs of living, such as petrol, groceries, rent and mortgages, increasing, but the cost of child care is increasing as well. At the same time, we have seen a decline in the additional services that some childcare centres provide, such as nappies, milk and meals. Although some centres provide these services, they are now in the minority. The reduction in these services means that, on top of the daily childcare fee, there is an additional cost to the parents in providing meals, milk and nappies during the day.

I have personally found that having children has been the most rewarding experience of my life and has assisted in changing my perspective on many issues. Having said this, I also acknowledge the sacrifices that come with having children and the financial pressure that it creates. This does not in any way take away from the pleasure of having children; it simply adds another dynamic to the household and the decisions that parents make in relation to finances and the need or desire to work. It is about trying to get the balance right. Either needing to work for financial reasons or wanting to work, parents must then face the situation of finding the best care available for their children.

Of course, we have seen from much research that it is still female parents who make up the majority of primary carers. As this is the case, it is females who are affected the most by the decisions that couples make about the care of a child or children. An article in this week’s Courier Mail reported on women trading in cash for children states:

A mother who has one child sacrifices more than a third of her lifetime earning potential, which amounts to about $162,000 in after-tax terms, an inquiry into paid maternity leave has been told.

This information forms part of submissions that have been lodged with the Productivity Commission inquiry. The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is quoted as saying that Australian women forgo an estimated $37 billion in earnings each year due to their child-rearing commitments.

What needs to be considered in addition to the loss of income while on maternity leave is the loss of income when the mother returns to the workforce. This loss of income arises from the extra expense of child care. These costs are becoming a significant burden on families. Long day care fees in my electorate of Petrie range from $46.50 per day to $59 per day, with the average across the electorate being $51 per day. This equates to $13,260 per annum. The long day care figures are based on a 2½-year-old in full-time day care, five days a week. The average household income in Petrie is $1,196 per week. This means that, on average, 22 per cent of the household income for families in my electorate is being spent on child care. Many families have said to me that it is not worth working when the bulk of the second parent’s income goes on paying childcare fees. This problem is significantly exacerbated when a family has two children in child care at the same time. This is not uncommon when many families elect to have their children within two to three years of each other.

Once you have two children, the average cost of child care in my electorate becomes $102 per day, or $26,520 per year. Going back to the average income of $1,196 per week in my electorate, we are now talking about 43 per cent of the annual income going to child care. Without financial assistance from the government, this cost is unsustainable. The childcare rebate increase from 30 to 50 per cent will bring financial assistance to families that are already struggling with other costs of living. Equally important as the increase to the childcare rebate is the timing: paying parents the rebate quarterly. To not have to wait until the end of the financial year and instead receive this payment at a time when many other large bills are coming in, such as rates or electricity, will certainly help families.

No parent should ever have to make the choice to stay home or to work simply on the basis of whether they can afford child care. Nor should parents put off having a second child due solely to childcare costs, especially at a time when there is a major skill shortage in this country and we want to encourage people with skills to return to the workforce. As a government we should be assisting those who wish to work. I also remind members of the House that these changes do not just benefit families with children who are not yet at school age. In fact, these changes and this rebate will also benefit those parents who access before- and after-school care and vacation care. We should not undervalue this expanding service to school children. For the same reason stated previously, many parents need to place children in before- or after-school care, or both, or need to access vacation care. This is because most individuals do not have sufficient annual leave to cover all of the school holidays.

Currently, many families receive the childcare benefit and the childcare tax rebate for outside-school-hours care. The CCB and the CCTR assist families juggling the increasing costs of care and the need for care for children not only during the first four to five years of their life but also during their early school years. There is also the possibility of a further increase in demand for child care from families who previously would have chosen to have the child remain at home until school age. Some of this group may in the future choose to send their child to child care to benefit from the Rudd Labor government’s delivery of early childhood education for 15 hours per week, 40 weeks per year. This will give parents the option of accessing early childhood education at a reasonable cost and allow the primary carer to re-enter the workforce on a part-time or full-time basis.

As part of delivering on high-quality child care, the Rudd Labor government will invest $73½ million over four years to provide incentives and opportunities to improve the qualifications of childcare workers to ensure that our children receive expert early learning and care, by supporting 8,000 current and prospective childcare workers each year to gain nationally recognised qualifications by getting rid of TAFE fees for eligible childcare diplomas from 2009; creating additional early childhood education university places each year from 2009; raising the number of commencing students each year to 1,500 by 2011; and paying half the HECS repayments of 10,000 early childhood educators who agree to work in rural and regional areas, Indigenous communities and areas of socioeconomic disadvantage for up to five years, commencing 1 July 2008.

Never before has there been such a comprehensive plan to provide high-quality child care in Australia: more affordable child care through the childcare tax rebate; additional places for 260 new childcare centres; improved early childhood education; and a more highly skilled, quality childcare workforce through our education revolution. This is what a Labor government is all about: not short-term gimmicks but long-term strategies to improve the services so essential to working families throughout Australia and my local community. As a parent and as a federal member, I am extremely proud to support this legislation as part of the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to deliver a responsible budget that delivers for working families and those most in need in our society.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, I am pleased to bring the second reading debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and the cognate bills to a close. The government’s first budget delivers on election commitments to ease pressure on working families by helping them deal with rising living costs. It outlines far-sighted steps to address the long-term challenges for education and skills, infrastructure, health and climate change. We are keeping our election promise to reduce inflationary government spending, by introducing an economically responsible budget. We are delivering a strong surplus of 1.8 per cent of GDP in 2008-09, to put downward pressure on inflation and to help build a strong economy in the face of difficult global financial conditions.

By honouring our election promises, we have kept faith with the Australian people—and this is no minor matter. Over the years, our opponents eroded the trust between electors and their elected representatives with their distinction between ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ election promises. That exercise in bad faith resulted in a certain amount of voter cynicism and alienation from the democratic purpose. It is important, therefore, that we deliver on our election promises in this budget. In doing so, we are helping to restore trust and confidence in Australia’s political processes and institutions.

As the Treasurer explained on budget night, we have delivered a coherent package of reforms based on four principles: delivering for working families, meeting our commitments, investing in the future, and beginning a new era of economic responsibility. The government is delivering on its commitment to help working families to cope with day-to-day cost of living pressures through its Working Families Support Package. This package, costing $55 billion over four years, contains targeted initiatives in tax, child care, education, housing and other essential components of the family budget—and I will go through a number of those.

First, we will be implementing on time and in full our personal income tax cuts, as promised at the election, totalling $47 billion, including increasing the 30 per cent threshold from $30,001 to $34,001 and increasing the low-income tax offset from $750 to $1,200. Second, we are introducing, at a cost of $4.4 billion, the 50 per cent education tax refund, which will help parents invest in their children’s education. The childcare tax rebate will increase from 30 per cent to 50 per cent and will be paid quarterly, at a cost of $1.6 billion. The housing affordability package, costing $2.2 billion, will assist first home buyers and renters and includes enhanced first home saver accounts, the National Rental Affordability Scheme and the Housing Affordability Fund. Further, the Teen Dental Plan will help families meet the cost of dental check-ups for teenage children, and that will cost $490 million.

The government has also proposed an additional $100 million in Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2007-2008 to provide to state and territory governments in 2007-08, the current financial year, under the Commonwealth state/territory disability agreement. This funding will increase the availability of supported accommodation for people with a disability where their carers are ageing.

I now turn to our undertaking to meet our commitments to Australia’s future. The government is meeting its commitments to the country’s future by investing in education and skills, infrastructure, health and hospitals and environmental sustainability to provide practical solutions to immediate problems. The government’s education revolution, costing $5.9 billion over five years, will provide quality learning opportunities for all Australians. It will help boost productivity and participation and reduce entrenched disadvantage.

This is an area where the economy truly meets society, where good economic policy is good social policy. I will go through just a few of those initiatives. Through the budget the government is providing $1.2 billion over five years for the digital education revolution, which will provide up to $1 million per school to deliver computers and communications technologies to all students in years 9 to 12. The budget provides $2.5 billion over 10 years to provide secondary schools with grants between half a million dollars and $1.5 million to build or upgrade trade training facilities to enhance vocational training for students in years 9 to 12. Further, the budget provides $1.9 billion over five years to improve skills by delivering up to 630,000 additional training places in the vocational education and training sector to help address current and future skills shortages. This was the subject of some debate during question time today: the necessity to ease the capacity constraints that were identified again just yesterday by the Reserve Bank and that are causing some of the inflationary problems that we are experiencing in this country.

The budget also provides a $3.2 billion national health and hospitals reform plan which will revitalise the public health system. I will again go through some of the initiatives under this plan. The budget provides up to $600 million over four years to reduce elective surgery waiting lists, including $150 million to conduct 25,000 additional procedures in 2008. The budget also provides $490 million over five years to assist families to cover the cost of an annual preventative dental check-up for eligible teenagers aged between 12 and 17 years. The budget provides $290 million over three years to reduce public dental waiting lists by funding up to one million additional dental consultations with the Commonwealth Dental Health Program. It also provides $275 million over five years for GP superclinics, bringing GPs and allied health professionals together in one place to improve chronic disease management. Also in the health arena, the budget provides $249 million over five years for the government’s comprehensive National Cancer Plan, to foster a holistic approach to tackling the many aspects of this disease. Finally, the budget provides $391 million over five years to invest in upgrading hospital and community health infrastructure and improving access to essential medical equipment.

The government is moving quickly to implement its comprehensive framework for tackling climate change. The 2008-09 budget includes measures costing $2.3 billion over five years, from 2007-08, to help reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to unavoidable climate change and ensure that Australia shows global leadership in the transition to a low-emission economy. I draw the opposition’s attention to the tangible measures that we have announced to modernise the economy for the future and help reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Some of those initiatives are as follows. The budget provides $500 million over eight years for the National Clean Coal Fund, to support projects and activities that accelerate the development and deployment of clean coal and low-emission technologies. The budget also provides $500 million over six years for the Renewable Energy Fund, to accelerate the development and commercialisation of renewable technologies in Australia and support the renewable energy target. Further, the budget provides $150 million over four years for the Energy Innovation Fund, to support the development of clean energy technologies in Australia, including the establishment of the Australian Solar Institute. The budget also provides $240 million over four years to support business in making the transition to a low-carbon economy through the Clean Business Australia program. These initiatives are in addition to other measures, such as green loans, to help families reduce emissions and assist Australian households to take practical action on water and energy efficiency at home, which will cost $300 million over five years.

The effects of climate change mean most Australian cities and towns will have less water, and we cannot rely on rainfall to supply all of our drinking water anymore. National leadership is required to respond to this challenge, and the government is providing that leadership by supporting Australian cities and towns as they seek to diversify their water supply.

The government’s new 10-year, $12.9 billion national water policy framework, Water for the Future, brings a strategic and coordinated approach to address the significant urban and rural water challenges facing the nation. The budget improves Australia’s water security by establishing the $1 billion National Urban Water and Desalination Plan to attract up to $10 billion worth of investment in desalination, water recycling and major stormwater projects. In addition, $255 million will be provided for the National Water Security Plan for Cities and Towns to work in partnership with government and local water authorities to minimise water loss and invest in more efficient water infrastructure.

Australia will be better placed to meet future environmental challenges through the Caring for Our Country program, costing $2.2 billion over five years. This provides further evidence of the government’s commitment to protect Australia’s unique environment through sustainable natural resources management. Caring for Our Country will cut red tape and focus natural resource investment on national priorities. Communities will be empowered to put their energy into practical, on-ground action rather than into filling out forms.

This budget marks the beginning of long-term, responsible planning and investment in Australia. It starts to deal with the big, over-the-horizon issues. The government will establish three new nation-building funds. The first is the Building Australia Fund, to help finance the current shortfall in critical economic infrastructure in transport and communications—such as roads, rail and port facilities—to ease urban congestion and enable growth in trade and broadband internet. The second fund is the Education Investment Fund, which will provide financing for capital investment in higher education and vocational education and training. The third fund is the Health and Hospitals Fund, for capital investment in health facilities, including renewal and refurbishment of hospitals, medical technology equipment and major medical research facilities and projects.

Subject to final budget outcomes, the government intends to make initial contributions to these funds from the 2007-08 and 2008-09 budget surpluses, once realised. Including transfers from the Higher Education Endowment Fund and the Communications Fund, this will provide in the order of $40 billion for future capital investment to modernise and reinvigorate the Australian economy. Contrary to the opposition’s claim that these funds constitute nothing more than an election war chest, all projects financed from the funds will need to satisfy rigorous evaluation criteria and will be assessed by independent bodies. Where funds are used to finance projects with the states, they will be channelled to the states through the new Council of Australian Governments Reform Fund. The COAG Reform Fund will also channel funding provided in future budgets to the states for recurrent expenditure in areas of COAG national reforms through National Partnership payments.

To ensure that total spending from the funds is consistent with the government’s macroeconomic goals, the Loan Council will provide advice to governments on whether the proposed spending envelope from funds each year can be delivered in the prevailing economic conditions without prejudicing the government’s inflation target. The Loan Council will not approve or advise on individual infrastructure projects.

The final principle upon which this budget is based is that it is economically responsible. The budget delivers a strong budget surplus and reprioritises spending to sustain growth in the long term while putting downward pressure on inflation. The opposition has got itself into a muddle—’Malcolm in a muddle’—in its attempts to portray this budget as irresponsible. It would have the Australian people believe the two contradictory propositions that it is putting at the same time. The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer have claimed that the budget is a big-spending budget, while a procession of opposition members have come into this place to catalogue and lament the budget cuts that have been made to their favourite programs. Our opponents cannot have it both ways.

The truth is that the Rudd government’s razor gang has delivered $33 billion in cash savings over four years, including $7.3 billion in 2008-09. These savings will reduce inflationary pressures in the economy by cutting the wasteful, election-driven spending of the previous government. They will also safeguard the fiscal position against economic shocks and allow taxes to remain at levels consistent with supporting long-term economic growth. The 2008-09 underlying cash surplus is the largest budget surplus as a proportion of GDP since 1999-2000 and the second highest in 35 years. On a consistent accounting basis, which includes Future Fund earnings, it is the highest budget surplus as a percentage of GDP since way back in 1970-71. A strong budget surplus ensures fiscal policy is playing its part to take pressure off inflation.

All new policy for 2008-09 announced since the election, including the government’s election commitments, has been more than offset by razor-gang savings. These savings, plus revenue measures, more than offset election commitments and other spending priorities across the forward estimates. Real spending is estimated to grow by only 1.1 per cent in 2008-09. That is a very substantial reduction in real spending growth from the previous year and, indeed, from the previous period from 2000 overall. This reprioritisation of spending in the establishment of the nation-building funds allows us to channel government spending towards those activities that address constraints on the economy—in particular, the areas of infrastructure and human capital.

In conclusion, this is a budget for working families. We are keeping our election commitments to reduce inflationary government spending, while providing tax cuts for working Australians hit hard by rising living costs. We have trimmed the fat from this budget, and we will use the savings to invest in the future—tackling long-term challenges like climate change, infrastructure bottlenecks and skill shortages. This is the end of short-term, irresponsible spending and the beginning of long-term, responsible investment. The Rudd Labor government has delivered a tight, well-managed budget that focuses on practical solutions to immediate problems and on long-term planning and investment for future challenges. I commend the bills to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Debate (on motion by Mr Hayes) adjourned.