Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this House on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2008-2009 on a day when there has been very important debate on the future direction of this country and the financial measures which will set this country up for a strong and prosperous future in the face of some very significant challenges. We have already seen the initial response by this government to the challenges that are faced by this nation with the $10.4 billion Economic Security Strategy, which is something of a misnomer. Is it secure? Is it a strategy? I think not. It was more akin to a one-off Christmas bonus to sweeten up the voters coming into Christmas shopping time. It was not thought through. It was more like an attempt to grab the headlines. No-one was going to argue with plenty of extra cash for Christmas. We saw big flashing signs out at the front of shops saying, ‘Spend your Ruddbucks here!’ The question we need to ask as responsible members of this House is: was that the best use of the funds? Did that package achieve what it set out to do? When one gets out on the streets one finds some people who say, ‘I welcomed those funds and put them to good use.’ But many people saved the money, so the stimulus did not occur to the extent that was intended.

We have seen $10.4 billion of expenditure, which is in the order of half of the budget surplus that was bequeathed to the incoming government, and it went in one hit. Now that we have had the sugar fix and the Christmas shopping spree, to the extent that it occurred, that money is gone. When we look around we can see very little to show for it, and today we saw a new package introduced into this House and being put before the members of this House. We quite rightly ask the question: has this package been well thought through? Is this package going to achieve what it sets out to do?

When you look at the previous $10.4 billion package, you can see signs right throughout that it is not well thought through. One of my constituents came and raised a concern about it with me. She worked voluntarily for a charity but managed to secure one or two days work in the fortnight which became the basis for the Economic Security Strategy. As a result of working a couple of days in one particular fortnight she was disenfranchised of the opportunity to receive that funding. Clearly it was not intended that a person doing a very rare day or two of work—helping out a charity organisation with a very modest amount of employment—be prevented from getting the package. That was not the intention at all, but that in fact was the effect. Because this government had not thought through the technical problems that might arise, that person missed out on what she should have been entitled to receive. Once again we see the Rudd government falling short on the detail—big on the rhetoric, big on the huff and puff and big on the hot air, but found lacking on the detail. And now we have the $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan—but more on that later.

Let us remember where all this money is coming from. Where is the money that this government has to spend to get this package enacted? Some of it is coming from debt—we know that there is going to be debt. Again, we have Labor in power and we have got deficits; the two run hand-in-hand. So we know we are going to get a deficit. Part of the funding comes from the surplus that was bequeathed to Labor by the coalition government. This was a surplus generated after paying off $96 billion of Labor debt. At their first budget they talked about the surplus that they had built—the surplus that was allegedly built by the Labor government is almost an Orwellian concept. More correctly, it was the surplus that was bequeathed to the new, incoming government, and at the end of their first year they have turned surplus into deficit.

The Prime Minister conveniently forgets about the record of economic management of the previous coalition government. He is also keen to talk about the fact that our banks are riding out the subprime crisis quite well. They are riding out the subprime crisis because they have been well regulated. We have a solid banking system. But do we have a solid banking system because of the legislation enacted by Labor, this government? No, we do not. We have a strong and secure banking sector because the previous coalition government ensured over its term that the settings, the policies and the legislation were in place to protect our banking system and to ensure that it was strong.

But this government does not want to give credit where credit is due. It would rather chase a headline or a 10-second sound bite. It tries to gloss over the fact that much of the prosperity we have enjoyed up until this point, and much of the strength of the banking system, is directly related to decisions made by the previous coalition government. When we look at the decisions taken by this government since then, there are some very stark contrasts indeed. We have policy on the run. We have the ill-conceived guarantee—a guarantee that had a dramatic effect on people right around this country, a guarantee which had the intent of doing good in the financial sector but in fact caused a run on many other financial institutions. This was a guarantee that was introduced without proper consultation and without taking the right advice. Then we saw the government having to back-pedal and reduce the unlimited guarantee to a guarantee of $1 million dollars—too little, too late.

Investors had already seen their funds frozen because this government and this Prime Minister did not take the time to get the detail right. He did not take the time to consult. Why would any Prime Minister not consult the Reserve Bank before enacting such an important piece of policy? He was not big enough to admit that the proposal by the Leader of the Opposition for a $100,000 cap would have done the job without the dislocation caused by Labor’s policy on the run. He did not seek the best advice—he was more intent on meeting the media cycle. He was more intent on getting that sound grab for the six o’clock news, so he rushed, he did not take advice and thousands of investors around the country paid the price.

More recently, we see our Prime Minister being critical about the right-wing free marketeers—this crusade against neo-liberalism. The free market has delivered benefits to people right around the world. The actions of the free market have lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty over the last 30 years but—conveniently—this Prime Minister seeks to deny that. He is in denial on the impact of the free market and he has almost become some sort of left-wing feral, one might say, in this matter. He has changed his stripes and he has certainly changed tack. It is quite curious that you can deny the growth that has happened over such a long period of time and deny the effectiveness of the free market in delivering wealth and growth to economies, purely because it is expedient. It suits the Labor rhetoric to suddenly wind back their support for the free market.

It was the free marketeers—the coalition—who paid back Labor’s $96 billion of debt. It was the free marketeers who delivered to this incoming government a $22 billion surplus, which they claim was a surplus that they built. They have a hide! But what did they do with their $22 billion surplus? They converted it into a deficit of a similar magnitude. After only a year in the job, we see surplus turned to deficit.

Earlier today, speaking of the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, the Prime Minister said the alternative was to do nothing. One alternative is running deficits—running this particular package of expenditure and, if you listen to the Prime Minister’s rhetoric, only this particular set of initiatives will deliver the benefits. Another package of initiatives apparently would not be as effective, if you believe their rhetoric. But he said the alternative to this package is to do nothing. He sounds eerily like another free marketeer, Margaret Thatcher, when she announced, ‘There is no alternative.’ I would like to remind the Prime Minister that it was the members of Baroness Thatcher’s own party who decided that there was indeed an alternative to the programs that she was putting forward and they deposed her. I would remind him that there is an alternative to his blanket guarantee on deposits: he should have listened to the Reserve Bank; he should have initiated a guarantee more in the order of $100,000 as recommended by the opposition leader—there was an alternative to that policy. But he did not heed the advice of the opposition leader and he did not take the advice from the Reserve Bank to come up with an outcome that was going to provide stability in the financial system. Rather, he came up with an outcome that caused chaos.

We have another interesting program, and no doubt the Prime Minister will say that there is no alternative to it—that is, Ruddbank, a program that will allegedly create thousands upon thousands of jobs. We do not know where, we do not know when and we do not know how, but allegedly Ruddbank will create jobs. It begs the question: if the value of a particular commercial property or commercial property portfolio were to fall, how does preventing that fall in value create a job? A particular property’s value fluctuates in the market. How does interfering in the market fluctuation in the value of a building create jobs? New construction will not necessarily be created through Ruddbank. It may fund the rollover of a particular package of financing for a commercial property or the completion of projects which may be nearing completion, so the labour content may be very low. In providing a benefit, if you like, to the big banks, rather than providing a benefit to deliver jobs down on Main Street, how is this new program, Ruddbank, going to create jobs? The Prime Minister has not answered that. He cannot answer it, because he knows it will not create jobs. He is actually misleading the Australian people. He is trying to get the spin machine to cover up for his policy flaws. We have had the flawed scheme in relation to the bank guarantee. We have an equally flawed scheme in Ruddbank.

The Prime Minister also mentioned the special meeting of COAG later this week. He is looking to the states for effective delivery of his new plan. I can tell you that the residents of New South Wales know that there is one government which you do not look to for the effective delivery of goods and services and a plan, and that is the New South Wales state government. If you want to take on a partner to deliver outcomes, there is no organisation you would venture further from than the New South Wales state government. It has a tragic track record: a failed health system, a failed public transport system and a failed budget. The New South Wales state government is a disaster, and Kevin Rudd, through his plan for the future of this nation, is taking the New South Wales government on board as his partner—as his legs on the ground in New South Wales.

Look at health, for instance. Look at the patients at Dubbo hospital, who are not getting painkillers because the state government has not paid the bills. There are patients not receiving proper medical care because the state government has not paid the bills. Kevin Rudd said that, on health, the buck stopped with him. He was unequivocal in that claim. He said: ‘On health, the buck stops with me. I am going to end the blame game. I am going to fix up health.’ You have to look no further than Dubbo hospital and New South Wales Health to know that he has not fixed anything. We have a health service not paying its bills, and as a result the people who are serviced by that health service are going without proper care.

If you want to stimulate an economy, make sure that jobs are secure and, as a bonus, create better health services and make sure that the health service is paying its bills. Quite clearly, for the small businesses—and the large businesses, for that matter—that are contracting to the New South Wales Department of Health through the local Greater Western Area Health Service, if the cash is not flowing in that area, there are jobs being either put at risk or lost by virtue of the fact that the government is not providing its side of the commercial deal by paying within 30 days. The government should be paying its bills on time. It is inexcusable. So let us not talk about big picture stimulus packages and so on and so forth. Let us have a good look at the basics as well, and let us make sure that the New South Wales state government and other state governments are paying their bills on time to ensure that small business has the cash flow to keep on employing and to secure jobs. At Dubbo hospital they cannot turn on the air conditioning because they cannot afford to pay to have it repaired. They cannot afford the repair bill for the air-conditioning system at the hospital. Staff and patients are sweltering in heatwave conditions because the New South Wales government cannot get its act together and because the local health service is not paying its bills. Local businesses are suffering, jobs are potentially suffering, and patients are certainly suffering.

In Coffs Harbour, in my electorate, we have a firm that prints temperature charts, pregnancy care and patient admission forms. It is not being paid. It is a local printing firm not being paid for the products that it is providing to the health service. We have that health service also trying to get rid of staff. It is a health service already stretched to the limit, but it is not paying its bills and it is looking to downsize the staff at a time when the staff are stressed. Kempsey hospital is in desperate need of redevelopment and funds. This hospital does not really date back to the last century; it very much dates back to the century before, such is its infrastructure. It is old, out of date and unsuitable for 21st century medicine. It is a hospital where the staff do great work. They do their best to provide the services in a substandard environment, and we have Premier Nathan Rees running to the Prime Minister and asking for $2.4 billion to bail out his failed health service.

I hope that the Prime Minister ensures that the funding delivered to New South Wales is spent wisely and that the local area health service pays its bills so that small business gets paid on time. I hope that he ensures that health services are delivered as they should be. We also depend on Premier Rees and his mates to deliver 21st century libraries in every school. If you look at their performance in health and their current performance in delivering to schools within the state, the ability of the New South Wales government to deliver quality libraries within a sensible time frame is highly dubious. In fact, the time period of mid-2010 to have a lot of this work completed, I think, is one of the great leaps of optimism that we have seen in this parliament. That the New South Wales government could do anything on time or efficiently really would be a proposition questioned by the people of New South Wales, because the New South Wales government has form. If the government wants to help small and medium-sized firms through hard times and protect jobs, it should ensure that the state government is paying its bills.

The opposition is of the view that everything that government does must focus on jobs: on creating jobs, on protecting jobs and on giving employers the confidence to employ. The year 2009 is the year of focus on jobs, jobs, jobs. It is vital that we maintain employment. In my own electorate, the labour market figures tell a very worrying story. You need look no further than your local area to see that, even before the financial crisis built up the huge momentum it now has, unemployment was already on the rise. The latest labour market figures in my electorate relate to the September quarter last year. In Bellingen, the unemployment rate is at 7.7 per cent. It went up almost half of one per cent from the previous quarter. In Coffs Harbour, unemployment is around 7.2 per cent, which is up about half of one per cent from the previous quarter. In Grafton, unemployment is at 6.8 per cent, which is up about half of one per cent from the previous quarter. In Kempsey—an area of substantial disadvantage with a large Indigenous population and urgently in need of government assistance to ensure that employment is maintained—unemployment went up 0.7 per cent, according to the labour market figures. In Maclean, unemployment rose during that quarter by 0.7 per cent. In Nambucca, another area of severe disadvantage, unemployment did not go up by 0.5 per cent or by 0.7 per cent; unemployment rose by 0.9 per cent in one quarter—and this was back in September last year. We are not talking about early 2009. These figures have undoubtedly become worse since then. It is vital that the government focus on jobs. It is vital that every dollar spent be well thought through so that the people of the state of New South Wales and the people of Australia generally will get the maximum benefit from the money expended.

The Prime Minister talks of a national economic emergency, but he tries to shut down debate by saying that the alternative is to do nothing. There are many alternatives. There are a hundred different ways this package could be structured, and one of the alternatives is, quite clearly, tax cuts. Broad-ranging tax cuts are an alternative which could be put forward. Another alternative is requiring the states to pay their bills on time. That is another important strategy. The Prime Minister accuses the coalition of playing the blame game, but when we look at Labor’s policies we see fiasco after fiasco. You do not have to look far to see Fuelwatch. Fuelwatch was going to save us a fortune on our petrol; it was going to make the sun shine every day. Fuelwatch was a disaster. Then we had the GROCERYchoice website, which is costing $4 million a year and provides no useful information to consumers—another fiasco. We had the bungled bank guarantee. And what about computers in schools? Costings were way out. Only the basic infrastructure was costed, not all of the supporting costs for providing laptops to young people in schools. It was another bungled program; it was a program that was designed for the 10-second sound bite. It was intended to be seen as a good thing by the electorate if no-one thought too hard about it. But, when the rubber hit the road and Labor moved from opposition into government and actually had to provide those laptops, they thought: ‘Gee whiz. We will need power. We will need computer support. We will need air conditioning in the classrooms because of the heat the computers give out. Are the power systems at the schools able to support the extra demand that these computers would place on the school system?’ None of these things was thought through. It was all about making Kevin Rudd look good. It was all about the 10-second sound bite. It was a ‘make the claim now, worry about the detail later’ sort of approach.

When we look at what the results will be of what has been announced today, we see a massive deficit confronting the people of Australia. This is not a debt that will be paid back by the members of the Labor Party. This is not a debt that will be paid back by the people who sit opposite. It is a debt that every man, woman and child will have to pay. Our children and our grandchildren may pay back this debt. The coalition had to pay back a $96 billion debt that it was given by the previous Labor administration. This Labor administration is working towards what it calls a ‘temporary deficit’—an undefined concept. What is a temporary deficit? The Prime Minister will not say whether ‘temporary’ is two years or three years or five years. It may be a debt that will never be paid back. What are the consequences of that debt? The consequences are real. They are not consequences that can be dispensed with in a 10-second sound bite. They are not consequences that can be swept under the carpet. This is a debt that will have to be repaid through, for example, higher interest payments for future taxpayers and through lesser services for those same taxpayers and for the people of Australia. What it really means is that future taxpayers will be footing the bill for the policies that are being discussed in this House today. That is of great concern. It will mean that future taxpayers and the people of Australia may have to accept a lower level of services than they would otherwise have been entitled to, because of the decisions of those opposite.

When the Prime Minister says, ‘There is no alternative,’ be very clear: there are a range of alternatives. This opposition will be scrutinising this package very carefully. This opposition will be taking the time to ensure that, to the maximum extent possible given the very tight time frame that we have to look at this, there are no unintended consequences of the government’s haste—as we saw with the previous stimulus package and with the bank guarantee. There are some real concerns about this package, and the opposition will certainly be looking at it carefully.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and related bill. Being a fellow motorcyclist, I actually have a lot of time for the member for Cowper, but I have to say that his deliberation on the world economy and where Australia fits within it leaves a little bit to be desired. He seems to level an accusation against the government that the government is not prepared to do anything. That is certainly not the indication I had this morning. It is certainly not the indication that we received to the statement to the parliament today of the $42 billion second stimulus being introduced and it is certainly not the indication that I have had from my electorate. I am not sure about the member for Cowper but, in terms of the $10.4 billion stimulus that was payable to eligible people from 8 December, I certainly did not receive any complaint in my electorate about that. In my electorate, which includes some 92,000 voters, some 38,000 families benefited from that first economic stimulus.

I think most people would regard the Rudd Labor government as a government that is taking decisions, is being decisive and is not afraid of taking action. I think it is worth casting your mind back a little way—and do not forget that it is only a little over 12 months now since the Rudd Labor government came into office—to, for instance, March last year. In March last year the Reserve Bank of Australia had just made its 10th successive interest rate increase. Interest rates at that stage were at 7.25 per cent. We felt those interest rate increases in our electorates. We felt those increases, particularly in the south-west of Sydney. I am in a mortgage belt, as is the member for Lindsay, and we know what people went through at that time. We know what the repossession rates in our electorates were. Those rate rises were critical points of contest as we went to the last election. It is good to see the Minister for Housing at the table, because I know how passionate she was throughout the whole period leading up to the election in putting forward—and, since, implementing—a genuine policy in relation to homelessness. Homelessness is a blight on our society but it is an issue that we as a government are determined to do something about. And I will say a little more about that as I go on.

As I said, in March last year, interest rates were increased to 7.25 per cent—the 10th successive interest rate rise. Come September last year, we had that much-cited bank failure of Lehman Brothers in the United States. We all recall the amount of media transmission that went on about Lehman Brothers looking for a financial bailout. We all recall the debates that took place in the congress and the presidential comments at that stage. We know what the free marketeers thought about it. It was not a matter of looking at bailouts. At that stage people were talking about it being market forces at play. Essentially, what started in September was not just market forces at play; we found that there were a whole lot of things at play—which shows how totally deregulated the market forces really were. I think even the opposition must give credit to the successive governments in this country that have sponsored proper prudential regulation, although the current opposition opposed issues relating to bank deposit insurances over the past 10 or so years. But, quite frankly, prudential regulation is something that has stood this country in very good stead.

Since September last year we have had five interest rate reductions. We saw interest rates fall again today by another one per cent—another significant decrease. That brought the total cash rate down to 3.25 per cent—a very low rate. For people in my electorate with an average mortgage, that works out to a reduction of in excess of $200 on their mortgage payments since August last year. So we are talking significant figures here.

In September last year, some were talking about Lehman Brothers as being a bit of bad luck or being due to bad investments, that it was the market at play—the rise and fall of the market—and that there were winners and losers, and certainly Lehman were one of the losers and they did not get their bailout. What it showed to the world at large—and rattled off everybody’s tongue, though I do not think anyone understood it—was the American subprime market. I freely admit that the subprime market did not mean all that much to me. Perhaps I had the view that it was a little akin to our low-doc loans, which used to be heavily sponsored in this country—loans which were a bit more risky, ones that you could apply for if you did not quite make the lending criteria for the banks and other building societies. Other than that, I probably did not think much more of it.

I suppose whenever I thought about mortgage borrowings and loans given for house mortgages—even on an overseas basis, not that you apply the same regulatory standards as set by APRA in Australia—I assumed that there would be proper financial regulation at play when we were talking about such important things to everyday people as loans on their houses. I think we have been shown that it is foolish to just make those assumptions because, quite frankly, what occurred in the United States really was the market at play—an unregulated market. People were making money hand over fist by signing new mortgages. It did not matter whether or not there was a capacity to pay; provided they got the signature on the dotted line and sold the mortgage, that was all that counted to get paid commissions. That is how the system was working in the United States. In addition to that, those who were selling the loans were on-selling them in a process of securitisation not only to other financial houses in the United States but also on the open market. Unfortunately, that meant a number of Australian banks, a lot of Australian superannuation companies and other investment houses. Indeed, I know a number of local governments in New South Wales that invested in these United States subprime investments.

Local government in New South Wales is a particularly good example. It is restricted under state law; it cannot invest anywhere that is not AAA rated. And, wouldn’t you know it, in the United States, Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and our eight rating agencies responsible for determining the level of capitalisation—determining whether something is a reasonable investment or not—actually rated these loans as AAA. As a consequence they were marketed right around the world. What it appears the rating agencies did not understand is that, whilst they were technically bad debts—they were insolvent; people who had these loans did not have the capacity to pay—they systematically got rolled over. Because they systematically got rolled over and rolled over again and again, they technically never became a bad debt. As a consequence of that, Australian superannuation funds, Australian financial business houses, Australian banks and mums and dads invested in these, based on the understanding that these were AAA-rated loans. They were going to get in on a piece of the action. That is probably the difference between us and our colleagues on the other side of the chamber at this stage. They are talking about simply having an unrestrained market—what was planned in the United States—and we have now seen across the world how it has affected us.

I read an article in the Economist online. It said:

Few now doubt that the world economy is in its most parlous state since the 1930s. Demand is slumping across the globe as firms and consumers are battered by a pernicious, self-reinforcing bombardment of dysfunctional financial markets, falling wealth, higher unemployment and rampant fear. The IMF’s latest forecasts, published on Wednesday January 28th, suggest 2009 will bring the deepest global recession in the post-war era.

They are not my words; they are the words of the Economist, looking across the world. This is not something that you should look at, as the opposition would, just to see how it is affecting us here in this country. It is absolutely clear that we are very clearly impacted in the world financial crisis. It requires us to start looking domestically at what we can do, what makes us different and how we would approach it differently in at least redressing those issues as they apply in the Australian market.

As I said at the outset, we are somewhat fortunate insofar as we do have a proper prudential system in this country. It is certainly one that needs to be strengthened from time to time, and this government is not shy of taking those steps. It is proper that governments have the ability to ensure that fair play takes place. It is not proper that we have a situation where the subprime markets in the United States can be marketed around the world for mums and dads to invest in, only to find that their investments were, right from day one, illusionary. There was never, ever going to be anything coming back from it. People did not care, because they had already got their money; they got it on commission. Then they got another commission because they onsold those debts to others. Now in the United States they are having to address centrally how they buy out these bad debts to take that liability off the banking system—and similarly in Britain. I was reading only the other day—and, six months ago, who would have thought that we would see this—about the British government almost renationalising one of the biggest banks in the world, the Bank of Scotland. The situation requires the public to move in directly to buy that bank to ensure its liquidity is in order to keep it operating.

There was a little bit of controversy in this place when the Rudd government decided to give a guarantee for bank deposits. I think the position of those opposite was that that should have been left to the marketplace. It is audacious of the other side to come in here today and say that what they stand for is jobs, jobs and jobs—particularly with them being the party of Work Choices—after their position on bank deposits. If it were not for the action of this government looking at deposits, in our banks, and the other financial institutions that are regulated by APRA, to secure those deposits then we would have seen the flight of capital out of those institutions. Banks would have been left in a position of not being able to borrow. Without that, all our small businesses would not have been in a position to secure their ongoing financial assistance and, as a consequence, that would have certainly impacted to a greater extent on jobs in our communities. That is just a fact of life.

As I just quoted from the Economist, this is the most parlous set of figures in terms of the world economy since the 1930s, and yet people want to come in here and remonstrate about whether or not they have had time to consider this package. I would have thought, quite frankly, that perhaps they could have reflected over the Christmas break, over the whole summer, on where we sit in terms of the economy. This does require action. This is not a time for navel gazing; it is a time for being decisive. We make no apology for that. It is a period that requires leadership to ensure further investment in this country. I do not see too many businesses out there—certainly not in my electorate—opposing the first round of the financial stimulus package. I have not spoken to them in the last couple of hours, but I would strongly doubt there would be any local businesses  in my electorate which would be going to protest the next round. Why would they?

There are a couple of key aspects that will flow through in this second round. I really welcome these, particularly in relation to schools. This $42 billion package will provide for the construction of new buildings. It will build jobs. There is no doubt about that. I have two sons—I have a daughter too, who works in a school as a teacher, but I want to talk about my sons at the moment on the basis that they are both tradesmen. I know what is happening out in the building sector at the moment. One son is an electrician and the other is a carpenter. New jobs for them are becoming less frequent. All the jobs have to go to tender. They depend on people winning contracts, and that is becoming harder and harder. The trouble is that, if apprentices are not being engaged, we will once again see a decline in our building industries. This government’s plan will do something about it and at the same time build upon our education revolution. Imagine committing to building and constructing science and language blocks. Imagine every primary school in every electorate of the 150 members in this House getting access to funds of up to $200,000 for construction work. Imagine schools being able to address things such as maintenance where the funding is highly contestable. This will make it easier for schools so they do not have to put things on the backburner.

Who is going to get those jobs? It will be local contractors. That is why back in December this government brought together in Canberra all the mayors and shire presidents from around the country. Apart from building better partnerships between federal and local government, it was about setting local infrastructure projects that would be federally funded. If anyone wants to go back and read about what occurred in the Great Depression in the thirties, they will find that one of the ways out of that was when the federal government started investing in local government and local projects. The consequence was local employment for local tradespeople and labourers. That is what this is about.

In my electorate I have three councils. Campbelltown City Council, I think, got $1.7 million. Liverpool City Council got $1.3 million. Camden Council got $606,000. All of that money is to be committed to construction work to be completed by September this year. That is for local projects. The average size of projects, I think, is in the vicinity of about $75,000. The work will go to local tradespeople and local contractors. That is the simple reality of the distribution of the money. That is very important in an electorate such as mine.

I go back to where I started. This is a serious economic situation we are facing. This is not simply a point of debate across the chamber. This is something we need to stay focused upon if we are serious about addressing this situation. If we can maintain the provision of long-term infrastructure and build on our education revolution and the health of our society, it is far better that we create jobs at the same time. This government is committed to jobs and fairness within our society, but it is absolutely determined to take the action now, not in the never-never or after the group think tank has applied itself to the situation.

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

We have been given tantalising excerpts in the last week of a new term paper, or maybe we should call it a magnum opus, by the Prime Minister and company, laying out in his usual clear and self-effacing style what is wrong with the global economy and how he can fix it, with apologies to Bob the Builder. It also has great green credentials, basically being a recycling of the old, tired class war anticapitalism rhetoric of his ‘Brutopia’ article of 2006 and containing the usual equal parts: vanity and venom. Even though I have seen only part of this latest article, it fits perfectly with a man we have grown to know over the last couple of years. This article should be read in conjunction with his earlier epistle.

Rewind a couple of years to the then opposition leader’s opinion piece lashing John Howard for ‘unrestrained market capitalism’. He did this by outlining a totally laissez-faire economic picture and by saying that this was the Howard government’s modus operandi. I suspect that may be because he thought that was all that John Howard and Peter Costello had done for 10 years: sat back with their feet on the desk watching the taxpayers’ dollars roll in—a bit like a kid watching dad driving and thinking that all you had to do was turn the steering wheel occasionally. How envious that must have made him. Howard and Costello had it so easy! One could tell how that hurt by the plethora of pejoratives in the article, which took the place of factual arguments.

Apparently, it is free market fundamentalism of Howard, Bush and Thatcher and other targets of the left-wing hate which has caused this current crisis—in other words, the usual suspects. This is a manifestly ridiculous view. It was the policies of Reagan, Bush, Thatcher, Howard and Costello which created their wealth. It was the social capitalism of the Democrats in the US which laid the foundations of the current crisis. Let us take industrial relations. The coalition somehow deregulated it by centralising it. Interesting. I can still remember the first decision made by the Fair Pay Commissioner. The utter dismay on the faces of those opposite was comical to behold. They and the ACTU bosses had been working themselves into a frenzy of faux concern and then, dammit, the then Prime Minister did exactly what he had promised: he delivered a fair outcome for workers. What really hurt Labor was that this outcome was achieved without workers having to pay union fees, go on strike or suffer any of the downsides of the old, outdated adversarial IR system so beloved of the ACTU and militants. How unfair that a coalition government had delivered economic sanity and social justice.

I return to the Prime Minister’s catalogue of coalition calumny. We should remember that it is never enough for Labor to win elections. They must traduce the coalition’s track records, demonise its leaders and demolish the structures put in place for a successful country. The Prime Minister still likes to portray anyone to his right as robber barons who still send children down coalmines. He actually had the gall to do a critique of the Howard government, saying that it did not fit with the philosophy of Menzies. Let us compare and contrast records.

Howard was a Christian who never attacked Christians who voted Labor. Meanwhile, Howard-supporting Christians were automatically ‘fundamentalists’. Very Christian of you, Prime Minister! Howard gave workers the power to think and decide for themselves what was best for them and their families, instead of being told what was best for them by union bosses. Labor and the AEU have always attacked the coalition’s funding of non-government schools. All John Howard did was give parents choice without an unfair financial burden, especially as many of these families were ordinary ‘working families’. The coalition philosophy was to provide the environment in which people could fulfil their ambitions. You can do that in a sensibly regulated market economy with hard work and ingenuity or by taking financial risks which pay dividends later. Under socialism, the only way up is by cronyism or slavish obedience to dogma. The Howard government was supportive of workers gaining more skills to take advantage of the low unemployment levels, hence the policy of increasing the number of TAFE colleges. This was in contrast with the elitist middle-class Left, who were obsessed with school retention rates and university places mainly because they tacitly looked down on anyone without a degree.

So was the Howard government so at odds with Menzies? In Menzies House in Perth there is a photograph of Sir Robert, and underneath are written the essential freedoms as he saw them: the freedom to worship—presumably without attracting the epithet ‘fundamentalist’—the freedom to think, the freedom to speak, the freedom to choose, the freedom to be ambitious and industrious and the freedom to be independent and acquire skills. Clearly, despite the desperate attempt at revisionism, John Howard and his government were worthy successors to Menzies.

The Prime Minister seems to have an unhealthy obsession with this imaginary completely ‘unrestrained market capitalism’. One wonders what so many governments spent their energies on if they had nothing to regulate. The free market ‘brutopia’ the Prime Minister wrote about is as real as the Walt Disney original he uses as his economic touchstone. This alleged support of free market fundamentalism by the coalition is merely a chimera used by Labor to show how much more caring and compassionate they are than their flint-hearted opponents.

Of course, if one totally suspends disbelief and assumes that the Prime Minister actually believes this potential and perfect political Xanadu of social capitalism, we must surely be able to see this philosophy writ large in current social capitalist economies such as those of most of the Australian Labor state governments. Clearly, unless they too are governed by the dastardly free marketeers or, alternatively, by the most incompetent governments imaginable, the people of Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are living in an Eden of equality, well served by, to quote the PM, ‘public goods such as education and health’. Under social capitalism in those states, no doubt public transport is of such high quality that cars are a most undesirable alternative. There can surely be no hospital waiting lists, and schools are surpassing the benchmarks for the literacy and numeracy skills of their fortunate students. I am sure the residents of those states wish to thank the Prime Minister’s state Labor social capitalists for transporting them to such a socially and economically equitable nirvana. The truth of course is quite the reverse. While the nasty capitalists were screwing the country so badly that billions of dollars flowed into the treasuries of those states, which were then topped up by the GST, the social capitalist governments still managed to waste this bonanza, with little benefit to taxpayers.

The GST is the best illustration of the total disingenuousness of the Prime Minister’s claim about the economic reality of the Howard years. For decades, the Left had been complaining about how rich people avoided income and company tax while the workers were left to shoulder this burden. To a certain extent they were correct. The crazy-paving system of taxation made it easier for those with the wherewithal and inclination to pay less than their fair share. That is why a consumption tax was an article of faith for many on the Left, a sure way to plug the avoidance loopholes. If you spent your ill-gotten capitalist gains, at least you would pay tax. I seem to remember the Hawke Labor government having a tax summit in 1984. I guess it was a sort of 2020 Summit for economists. Paul Keating suggested a consumption tax would be part of tax reform and that he would forgo it ‘over his dead body’. Sadly for the country, Bob Hawke did not trust the Australian people enough to make such a bold reform. Howard and Costello did. Even former Labor Minister for Finance Peter Walsh acknowledged that a GST, as with the gun restriction laws the Howard government introduced after Port Arthur, was a longstanding shibboleth of the Left. Australians can judge different governments not by their words but by their deeds.

The coalition government, unlike the flint-hearted, unrestrained free marketeers cartoonishly depicted by the Prime Minister, understood that the best way to help someone is to give them an opportunity to work, to earn their own money and to have self-respect. It believed that the cruellest policy is to deny someone the right to work, to reduce a person to being merely a welfare recipient. Thus coalition policy was to ensure that everyone who wanted a job would have one. And, as the Demtel man said, ‘Wait, there’s more.’ To be fair to the taxpayers of this country, the coalition also put policies in place to ensure that even those who had not wanted to work should now have to pay their own way, with the Welfare to Work program. Thus everyone would be doing their fair share. That also freed up badly needed funding for those who did need assistance.

As John Howard outlined in his response to the then opposition leader’s criticism in 2006, the coalition worked with both the private sector and community groups in tackling issues such as youth homelessness, early childhood education and drug abuse. That is hardly indicative of a total preoccupation with unrestrained market capitalism.

Many groups in my electorate of Tangney benefited from excellent coalition government programs such as the Volunteer Small Equipment Grants. Local schools welcomed the funding made available by the coalition government under the Investing in Our Schools Program, which was only necessary because of the lamentable shortfalls in funding from the caring and sharing socially responsible state Labor governments.

According to the Prime Minister, in his ‘Brutopia’ jeremiad, this callous coalition government was only successful because of a calculated campaign of conscious exacerbation of fear, anxiety and uncertainty. That is especially specious given the ACTU’s long and inglorious track record of just that. The campaign on so-called workers’ rights which ran for a year before the 2007 federal election at first featured real-life examples of supposedly exploited workers. When the few real-life examples of this treatment quickly ran out, actors were used to engender a feeling of fear in the community. This can be traced back to at least 1996, when there was evidence of the use of ‘fear and loathing’ campaigns against John Howard, which was a specific Labor-ACTU election campaign strategy. As Chris White, then Assistant Secretary of the South Australian trades hall, wrote in a letter dated 15 November 1995:

If we are to run with a ‘fear and loathing’ campaign on individual contracts then we must define the scope of the message very clearly and stick to it.

They did and, 12 long years later, it finally succeeded.  The only reason that capitalist economies have failed to deliver in recent years is that left-wing governments got their hands on them—WA Inc., the Bank of South Australia and the Victorian version of WA Inc. They were all under Labor governments in the 1980s.

The worst example, and one of the reasons for the current economic crisis, is the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the United States because of the so-called subprime lending regime. This came about because social engineers thought it unfair that people with limited financial resources should be denied the right to have their own home. So, instead of providing public housing with a buyback arrangement so that lower paid Americans could ultimately own their own homes, they allowed banks to lend to people who had no hope of repaying their mortgages. They were certainly helped in this economically irresponsible exercise by some in the banking industry who were unscrupulous enough to go along with this idea knowing full well that, sooner or later, the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. This can be described as socialised banking. In essence, the banks were told to forgo their previous practices of lending only to those who should have the ability to repay loans and instead lend money to those people clearly unable to repay loans—that is, subprime lending. This is not unfettered capitalism but fraud, under the sanctimonious guise of helping the poor and disadvantaged, with an unhealthy dose of the politics of envy thrown in for good measure. The Community Reinvestment Act was a centrepiece of this sort of twisted social capitalism.

Returning to Australia, who is the evildoer who Mr Rudd accuses of deregulating our financial system? Of course, the man who gives himself all the credit for deregulating the Australian banking system is Paul Keating. Will the Prime Minister attack him, as he has done John Howard, or is he too afraid of Mr Keating’s infamous tongue?

So we see that, far from being the panacea of the world’s economic ills, what the Prime Minister suggests was part of the cause of those ills. Apparently, the Prime Minister’s article does not actually provide any specific measure to fix the mess caused by socialised banking in the US. This is because the very philosophy he is championing could cause the same problems here. Why don’t we currently have those same problems here? If you believe the Prime Minister, we suffer from a lack of financial regulation: ‘unrestrained market capitalism’. But how can that be? While the Prime Minister was penning his DIY economic nostrum, his deputy was at the World Economic Forum. She had faithfully taken the Prime Minister’s very own hubris-laden brand of know-it-all-ism to the world’s economic leaders. In direct contradiction of the disingenuous claims about the lack of regulation made by the Prime Minister, she said she believed that other countries could learn from Australia’s regulations—which she described as being among the best in the world—which had stopped the country experiencing the kinds of problems in its housing market that had been seen in the US. In one refreshing piece of honesty the Deputy Prime Minister had blown the Prime Minister’s assertions about the Howard and Costello economic legacy clean out of the water.

It is interesting to note how many millionaires there are on that side of the House—not that we on this side do not support the ability of people to increase their wealth, because we always have. But how supremely hypocritical of those opposite who are wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, compared to most of their constituents, to condemn the very system which permitted them to become millionaires. This is a real Michael Moore moment. And for the Prime Minister to attack the Howard government’s record is so breathtaking in its historical revisionism that it would make an old-fashioned unreconstructed Stalinist blanch.

The Prime Minister’s conversion from a hater of free markets in 2006 to ‘economic conservative’ when he was in election mode, reverting to ‘social capitalist’ in 2009 is breathtaking in its intellectual turpitude. Being a ‘social capitalist’ makes as much sense as being a Christian atheist or a meat-eating vegetarian.

I challenge the Prime Minister to turn soothing words of caring and compassion into reality. Send a representative over to WA and negotiate a way with the Disabled Workers Union to reclaim the funding that was provided under the coalition to enable it to continue helping the most disadvantaged and vulnerable Australians in our society. And, while you are at it, provide some funding for Dr George O’Neil, so that he can continue to provide the successful and life-saving services in his naltrexone clinic and counselling program.

Perhaps I can finish with a few well-chosen words on the subject of socialism. Sir Winston Churchill said:

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

The last word should go to former British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, who observed about Labour, when she addressed the Conservative Party’s convention in October 1975:

They have the usual socialist disease; they have run out of other people’s money.

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

Today, Australia’s Climate Action Summit launched its national campaign at Parliament House, forming a human chain around the House. Australia’s Climate Action Summit is a national grassroots network of climate action groups across Australia, including the CERES Climate Action Group from my own electorate of Wills. Several of my constituents, including Ellen Roberts and Daniel McIntyre, have come to Canberra to participate in a summit over the weekend and to speak with members of parliament today. The summit involved 500 members of 160 climate action groups, representing people of all ages and from all walks of life. It met to establish a united plan to, in its own words: ‘get real action on climate change before it’s too late’.

The summit found that climate change is happening faster and at lower levels of CO2 than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been predicting. It says that Arctic ice is predicted to disappear five years ahead of IPCC forecasts. It also expresses concern for millions of people dependent on the Himalayan icesheet, which is now melting, and the implications for the six rivers which provide the lion’s share of water for the people of India, China and South-East Asia. The summit argues that in the climate change talks which will be held in Copenhagen in December—talks which are unquestionably critical for the future of this planet—Australia needs to take a leadership position.

It is deeply appropriate that this civic-minded group should be in Canberra today. As a resident of Melbourne, I can report to the House that, in January, we experienced a very uncomfortable foretaste of things to come under climate change. We had the second driest January ever, with negligible rainfall—0.8 millimetres for the entire month—further extending our already stretched water supplies. To make matters worse, in the last week of January we had day after day of 40-degree-plus temperatures. We got the hottest day we have ever had, of over 45 degrees Celsius, and we had three days in a row of temperatures exceeding 110 degrees in the old Fahrenheit scale.

I am aware that it is not only Melbourne which experienced extraordinarily hot and dry weather. Adelaide and much of South Australia, Victoria and the ACT were similarly afflicted. People died in the heat. Power systems failed. Public transport systems failed. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the shape of things to come in south-eastern Australia, and it underscores the seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis. Al Gore said in December in Poznan:

We, the human species, have arrived at a moment of fateful decision. … our home, Earth, is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is of course not the planet itself but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

He talked about the melting glaciers, the Alps, the Andes, the Rockies, the Himalayas. The Tibetan plateau feeds the great rivers of Asia: the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Salween, the Irrawaddy, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the Yellow. One-point-four billion people depend for more than half of their drinking water on the rivers and spring systems that flow from the ice of the Tibetan plateau, which is now melting at an alarming rate. Sadly, melting glaciers are only one facet of this many faceted, Hydra-headed monster. Drying lakes, acidification of the oceans through the dumping of 25 million tonnes of CO2 into our oceans every day; stronger typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes; massive flooding; heatwaves and more bushfires—all of this we have in store.

America’s new President, Barack Obama, is onto the magnitude of the change. To watch President Obama being sworn in was a spine-tingling moment for me. To be reminded of Martin Luther King’s speech comparing life on the mountain top with life in the valley underscored what a monumental, inspirational achievement Barack Obama has accomplished. To see a black man storming the citadel, the ultimate citadel of world power, was incredibly emotional, and to describe this as a historic moment a massive understatement. To see a moment when the American people said, ‘We are ready to have a black man lead us,’ was a mighty thing and it is impossible to overestimate its significance.

I have written a letter to Barack Obama congratulating him on his election. I do not expect he will get to read it, but I expect someone will, and I regard the letter as part of my obligations as a global citizen and as the representative of the people of Wills. In that letter, I urged President Obama to turn his attention to climate change, to global warming. I said:

The United States is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Regrettably, your predecessor, President Bush, did not set targets to cut carbon emissions, and constantly frustrated and undermined attempts by others to take international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

I further said in my letter:

You can show real leadership, and change the course of world history, away from one of more droughts, more bushfires, more floods and more storms, by taking strong action, both in the United States and at the world climate change talks at the end of this year in Copenhagen, to stabilise the amount of carbon in the atmosphere as soon as possible. Reputable scientific opinion is that it would be dangerous to allow the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to exceed 450 parts per million. You have a once in a lifetime opportunity to lead the world away from that precipice.

Having written that letter, and because I regard climate change as the issue of our time, the issue which will define our success or otherwise as policymakers, I was therefore delighted to hear President Obama say:

Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

That is exactly right. He further said that there has been a collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. He said:

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.

He also said that they would roll back the spectre of a warming planet. He is right in that action is needed. I know there are people who are saying that the global financial crisis means that now is not the time to tackle global warming. I suspect that many of these claims are not made in good faith. They are made by and large by the same people who have never supported action to tackle global warming. More importantly, we need to remember the words of World Bank economist Nicholas Stern when he said that the costs of inaction on global warming will exceed the costs of action.

The point is that, whatever the state of the economy at any given moment, it is in our economic interests—to say nothing of the interests of the planet—to act now and not have more delay. The problems we are experiencing as a result of unregulated credit will not be ameliorated by continuing unregulated carbon. They will be made worse. At the same time as we move to tackle the global financial crisis we must also move to tackle the climate crisis. We must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Other countries have moved to introduce green economic stimulus packages, and I congratulate the government on the bold initiatives it has announced today to introduce free insulation to over two million Australian homes and to increase the solar hot water rebate from $1,000 to $1,600.

As well as some people saying that the government is going too far in tackling climate change, there are people saying that it is not going far enough. Complaints principally relate to two issues: the 2020 targets the government has foreshadowed and the detail of the emissions trading regime, known as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In relation to the issue of targets, I absolutely agree that we need the strongest possible carbon production outcomes from Copenhagen. I think, however, that we need to have some bargaining capacity when we go there, something to bargain with. That is simply the reality of international negotiations. Furthermore, the five to 15 per cent target by 2020, announced by the government, is significantly more onerous than it sounds. Some may not understand what a significant turnaround it would represent from the legacy Labor inherited from the Howard government. It might illustrate the point if I were to propose that Australia now reduce its emissions by 80 per cent over the next 40 years. If we were to endeavour to stabilise our carbon emissions by the end of 2010 and try to cut our emissions by two per cent every year after that, by 2050 we would be 80 per cent below where we are now. I think that is a bold and challenging target, and I think that most people in the community and most environmental groups would instantly recognise it as such. And yet such a target is not markedly more onerous than the very targets the government has announced both for 2020 and for 2050.

Let me say in response to the criticisms of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that it needs to be recalled that this is only one of a large suite of measures the government has developed to tackle global warming. I am a particularly strong supporter of the national renewable energy target, the plan to increase renewable energy’s share of the market to 20 per cent by the year 2020. Like Barack Obama, we will harness the sun, we will harness the wind, and we will harness geothermal energy and other renewable sources to power our nation. I do want to respond to those who seek to undermine the renewable energy target. As an example, let me comment on the Business Council of Australia, which has issued a critique of renewable energy targets based on work by Port Jackson Partners.

Firstly, let me observe that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme provides very substantial transitional assistance to incumbent power generators and certain industries. I never hear the Business Council complain that such assistance represents a market distortion, yet it complains that the renewable energy target is a market distortion. Both the assistance for the electricity generators and the renewable energy target are industry-specific initiatives that distort the market and seek a specific outcome: the reduction of greenhouse gases. Why does the Business Council attack one but not the other? Does the Business Council believe that market distortions are acceptable for incumbent, well-established industries but not acceptable for new and emerging industries like renewable energy?

Secondly, the renewable energy target is an essential part of Australia meeting its carbon reduction targets. The federal Department of Climate Change has reported that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 will be substantially lower—that is, 120 per cent above 1990 levels, as opposed to 127 per cent above 1990 levels—because of the introduction of the renewable energy target. This is a very significant benefit but it is one which will only grow over time. Building a solar PV industry, building a wind industry and building geothermal projects are an essential part of Australia tackling climate change. The Business Council report says that post 2020 there should be more technologies available to reach more aggressive reduction targets in the electricity and other sectors. Indeed. But how on earth can we expect that those technologies will be available, will be commercially viable, if we do not put in place the policies that will develop them? It is simply not good enough to leave it to the market and hope. We need to act to ensure that we have those industries, and we need to act to ensure that we have those technologies. The technologies that will be vital to achieving reduction targets post 2020 need to be nurtured over the coming decade.

One of the technologies that I believe has a big future is solar photovoltaic, solar PV, and I think that we need to encourage individual homes, factories and building sites to become mini power plants, meeting their own power needs through the production of renewable energy which does not emit carbon. We need a vision of communities where energy production is distributed rather than centralised and is therefore genuinely sustainable indefinitely. I support what is called a feed-in tariff, which will encourage localised distributed energy systems. That involves paying a premium to electricity consumers who generate their own electricity through, for example, a solar photovoltaic system on their roof.

Feed-in tariffs can reflect the real cost of carbon. They also build community awareness. They answer the question that so many families ask, which is: what can I do? They drive the cost of solar PV down. Solar photovoltaic generates power when it is most needed. It evens out the power load. It reduces the extreme peaks of the hot summers, and output over summer peak load weeks has been shown to correspond well to system load at regional nodes in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales. Solar PV also avoids transmission losses and avoids the need for poles-and-wires infrastructure.

There is information from the Electricity Supply Association that $24 billion of electricity network and generation infrastructure is required to meet Australia’s growing power needs over the next five years. Anything that we can do to reduce the need for infrastructure being driven by the need to meet demand peaks is worth doing. And, given that, I think a lot of the talk about need for baseload electricity is misleading. We need to provide economically rational signals to customers, and sometimes that does not happen. For example, I saw Queensland government estimates that for every air conditioner installed the electricity industry has to spend an additional $13,000 on more poles and wires to manage the load. Clearly, we can and need to do better than that.

Feed-in tariffs also generate jobs. Ten years ago Germany had a solar PV industry of a similar scale to Australia’s. Now Germany has an industry of 110,000 jobs generating 15,000 megawatts of solar PV power. Australia has fallen behind. It is estimated that the solar PV industry here is responsible for just 1,300 jobs. If we move to a national gross feed-in tariff, we could have a solar PV industry as big as or even bigger than that of Germany. We have more sun than they have for starters. If I return to the situation in Melbourne last week, we could have coped far better if we had had solar PV installed on our roofs, and people who say that solar and wind power do not provide baseload power are missing the point. By meeting the peak demand we experienced last week, solar PV has the potential to play an incredibly important role in meeting our energy needs. It also has great potential to give us energy security.

I return to some of the comments made by Al Gore in December of last year. He said:

In the midst of this synchronised global recession, there is an emerging consensus…that…the only way to effectively combat the recession is with a synchronised global stimulus and in nation after nation, leaders have concluded that they must design a green stimulus and build the infrastructure for renewable sources of energy and put people to work retro-fitting homes and buildings with CO2 reducing insulation and windows and lighting and more efficient technologies.

He noted:

China…has announced a green stimulus of $600 billion over the next two years. Chinese leaders are mobilising a national effort to introduce CO2 reduction initiatives and have already begun the largest tree planting program the world has ever seen.

He also made reference to some of President Barack Obama’s public statements since the election, and I quote Barack Obama:

…the time for delay is over. The time for denial is over. We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That’s what I intend my administration to do.

And in another statement, President Obama said:

The science is beyond dispute. The facts are clear…Washington has failed to show leadership. That will change when I take office…That will start with a Federal cap and trade system…It will not only help us bring about a clean energy future saving our planet, it will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis…

Finally, Al Gore said:

Very simply put, it is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every future generation.

…            …            …

They deserve better than politicians who sit on their hands and do nothing to confront the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced. This crisis does offer us the chance to experience what few generations have had the privilege of experiencing, a generational mission, a compelling moral purpose, a shared cause and the opportunity to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and narrower concerns to embrace a genuine moral generational mission.

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

Tonight I would like to make a contribution to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2008-2009. It is vitally important that no government uses the present challenging circumstances to relax the rules by which taxpayers’ contributions to government are spent. It is particularly appropriate in these days that rules and regulations are followed. The government’s budget is now in the red, and accountability is more important than ever. All of the Costello surplus has now gone, and the $10.4 billion of one-off handouts is now a memory. I hear the Victorian gambling revenues had a good bounce in December—a tragic reminder that some Australians now place their faith in the institutions of luck and superstition where before it may have been placed in a well-led and managed government.

Similarly, the New Zealand economy was buoyed when a mother I know of recently left her kids with relatives and used the several thousand dollars of the one-off payment to holiday offshore—hopefully an example of a small minority that will probably never have its priorities in the right place. Yet that is always the way it seems to go in these matters. Some people just cannot manage money. In fact, they can take money and, without any budgetary regulation, spend it all within a period of time and go into the red, which sounds somewhat familiar. The focus has to be on jobs and incentives for businesses that will create jobs whilst at the same time enabling upgrades or improvements to businesses that enable them to comply with other regulations and also recognise efficiencies or savings. That is what the plan of the Leader of the Opposition is fundamentally about.

Let me return to the first point that I made about the need for rules and regulations to be followed. Perhaps I should say that, beyond the rules, conventions should also be adhered to. That is why I am concerned by new terms under Appropriation Bill (No. 4) in schedule 8 such as ‘new administered expenses’. We are provided with an explanatory memorandum that points us to the definition of this term, but I remain uneasy about it, and I will say why. The term ‘new administered expenses’ applies for an outcome of an agency. We are therefore to be reassured about specific outcomes because in theory each appropriated amount can have its success measured. But clearly this assessment of expenses versus outcomes would struggle when we consider another form of one-off payment—namely, those handed out to local government authorities late last year. One such local government authority told me last week how the money, while clearly welcome and of value, could have been more appropriately spent. The conditions in its case were that the money had to be spent within three to four months. Spending the better part of three-quarters of a million dollars within that period completely ruled out any opportunities for building or construction projects, as the preparation and implementation of such projects would take close to six months. This sort of thinking stifles the creation of jobs rather than embracing employment creation as an avenue for stimulating the economy. Instead of construction, the money was spent on play equipment and road resurfacing, which were only possible because of the existence of standing contracts. I would therefore comment that the ability to achieve a wider stimulation of local economies through these sorts of handouts is limited because it is in effect a continuation of existing works. Compare that with a longer spending time frame of, say, six months, which would allow new capital works to be considered, creating wider downstream effects across a greater number of businesses and areas.

Returning to the concept of outcomes in Appropriation Bill (No. 4), I wonder how an outcome would be assigned should local government authorities again receive such a handout. I say that with a great deal of interest, because I look forward to seeing local government authorities’ outcomes published in the future. A key indicator of the success of handouts must relate directly back to job creation, be supported by a cost-benefit analysis and include achieving value for money.

It is worth noting that the last significant construction project for local government in the electorate of Cowan was the Ocean Reef Road extension that the Howard government initiated with a contribution of $7 million to the $10 million required for the project. That project is going to be great when it opens, stretching from the Wangara light industrial area to near the intersection of Alexander Drive and Gnangara Road. It will make that road a lot safer for locals, particularly in the residential suburbs of Landsdale and Darch. This project is basically the last significant construction project that the federal government has contributed to in the electorate of Cowan, so it is clear that the previous government had a good record of working with local governments to achieve effective local infrastructure projects.

The next area of Appropriation Bill (No. 4) that I will address is clause 10, which includes terms such as ‘equity injections’ and ‘loans’, which are always concerning, given the Western Australian experience, and in my opinion are in need of rigorous scrutiny to ensure deliverables are provided. Nevertheless, in reading the explanatory memorandum I worry about what tolerances and liberties will exist for agencies. Accountability for money spent is critical. The concept of ‘expected returns for efficiency savings’ is a case in point. Agencies should expect intense critical analysis of plans provided for under clause 10, but I do not see that stated in the bill. Once again, it must be shown that jobs are being created. Areas within the bill regarding expected returns for efficiency savings are another example of where jobs should be created and sustainable benefits targeted and met.

It is right and appropriate for me to now make comment on some of the current issues and commentaries that are being put about by the government. I refer firstly to the false and political lines that we have heard about the management of the economy by the Howard government. I want the government to know that, although it seems a very long time ago that the Howard-Costello team was running the nation, it was not so long ago that Australians do not remember it. That was the time when this nation’s government had finances in the black. It was the period when good management created jobs and removed the failed, ineffective and anachronistic class warfare concepts that had always provided the divisions in this country that Labor seemed to benefit from.

For a while the current Prime Minister’s claims about being an economic conservative, whilst politically opportune in the last election campaign, seemed to signal a new direction for Labor. That, of course, has all come to an end with the Prime Minister’s attempt to scapegoat so-called neoliberals with responsibility for the current financial situation. I wonder about that term. In the US the Left attempts to denigrate conservatives by calling them neoconservatives. In the readings that I have seen, such attacks in the US even show an anti-Semitic vein. I cannot help but feel that the Prime Minister and whoever writes his lines choose ‘neoliberals’ for two reasons: firstly, the term ‘neoconservative’ is possibly a little too close to the ‘economic conservative’ claim that proved so politically perfect for him and, secondly, the term attempts to lay responsibility for the current economic problems at our feet on this side of the House. What a stretch of credibility that is! It is so incredible and false that the huge salaries paid in the Prime Minister’s office to his principal advisers are clearly unwarranted. If the government looked back at the origins of this international financial challenge it would see that Bill Clinton, that president of high moral standing and integrity, encouraged and, according to what I have read, in fact forced some lenders to offer loans to those who could not afford them. The Prime Minister should confront the reality and look at his own ideological icons when looking to attribute responsibility.

There are very big differences between the two parties in Australia. Of all the countries in the developed world, Australia is in the best position to weather these circumstances, for one reason: the Liberal Party has always embraced constructive reform, whether in opposition or in government. That is in direct contrast to Labor, which has always opposed reforms when in opposition. We supported those reforms of the government before John Howard’s government, and went further forward when we were last in government. The lending practices of the banks and lenders in Australia were never the same as those in the United States, and the difference was due to the attitudes of governments. Our regulations have been better, our attitudes have been better and our commitment to saving for the future has been better—all in direct contrast to Labor, who opposed all the reforms of the previous government. The Labor Party even opposed the paying off of the $96 billion debt and the measures that were required to pay off that debt.

Today we had the announcement of another vast spending outlay by the government, following on from the $10.4 billion of late last year. Of course, the $10.4 billion was to assist the economy. I recall that it was to create 75,000 jobs, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, who now—as some have said—is called the ‘minister for unemployment’. But where are those jobs? The government said $10.4 billion would create 75,000 jobs. The Australian people want to know where they are. The people in my electorate of Cowan and I would like to know how many of these new jobs are going to be in businesses in Gnangara, Landsdale, Wangara or Malaga—all within Cowan. How many are there in every electorate? Is it too much to ask for even a hint of where they are going to be?

If the aim was jobs—and this had top billing—the government should be able to say where the jobs are or where they are going to be. There certainly should be some by now. Given the amount of money that was sent to overseas residents, it would be interesting to know how that money sent and spent overseas supported the economy and jobs in Australia. It would be interesting to know how the economy would have benefited if those who had been given one-off cash payments had been given a debit card, for instance—and it had been given only to those who live in Australia. That would have made an interesting comparison with the figures.

I note that today’s $42 billion has been committed at the same time that unemployment is forecast to rise to seven per cent. What guarantees will be put on this set of payments? What is the economic modelling and what will be the outcomes that we can expect? What is the government expecting to achieve? In fact, where is the economic modelling? It is hard to be confident about the future direction of this government when they are secretive about the evidence behind their decisions to outlay this huge amount of money.

It is also worth noting that the government have admitted that their forecasts show unemployment rising to seven per cent in these challenging times. That is a very serious business, because this government should and will be judged on stopping that from happening. It is an interesting point that, when we took office back in 1996, unemployment was 8.5 per cent. Maybe that is a good point for perspective in this matter.

I have covered a number of different points tonight with regard to the government’s spending and plans to spend, yet it would be wrong of me not to cover at least one of the outlays listed in Appropriation Bill (No. 3). I note that there is included some $13.95 million for advertising to raise public awareness of climate change. While I personally would prefer that such funds actually went into climate research, such as the great work being done by Dr Clive McAlpine at the University of Queensland—a man who is researching reforestation and its effect on rain and climate—I hope that in this case the minister is very careful about the claims and implications made in the advertising. The last lot of advertising last year clearly implied that the drought was entirely due to man-made climate change.

These bills will be supported, but I have taken the opportunity to speak on a number of important issues related to government expenditure. The parliament has a responsibility, or rather the opposition has a responsibility, to provide an appropriate level of scrutiny on the government’s spending of the taxpayers’ money and, as we know now, the government’s borrowing and debt plans. It would be wrong to sit idly by and just accept that the government is right in everything it does.

While that course of action may suit the government’s political agenda, we have a job to do and we will do it. Today the government and the minister trotted out the view of the head of Centrelink that the latest spending round needs to be passed this week. I think that such an act, using a public servant in such a political way, was very unprofessional. The government should have briefed the opposition well in advance if they wanted the new $42 billion in the bills passed so quickly. Clearly, the government should have done better, again.

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

I rise today to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2008-2009. These additional estimates bills are presented during a crisis that is unprecedented in our lifetime—not just in scale but due to the global nature of the modern economic system. The macroeconomic imbalances that built up prior to the middle of last year are being painfully corrected around the world, causing disruption to financial markets, export markets and Australian households and businesses. Australia is not immune from this crisis.

Governments have a responsibility to respond in a timely, targeted and efficient manner during economic crises. They have a critical role to play in restoring confidence in financial markets, in stimulating demand through encouraging consumption and investment and in ensuring that our regulatory framework is appropriately calibrated to the proper functioning of globalised, deep and liquid financial markets. That is precisely what this government is doing.

It has become evident that financial markets will not self-correct without causing enormous damage to businesses and to Australian families. It has therefore become critically important to stabilise financial markets and in particular the banking sector. This government has done this through the guarantee of deposits and of wholesale funding of authorised deposit-taking institutions. The government has purchased $8 billion in residential mortgage backed securities and has established the Australian Business Investment Partnership to ensure the strength of the commercial property market.

During a period such as this it is not sufficient to rely on automatic stabilisers or monetary policy to stimulate demand. The circumstances that we face, with the loss of confidence in financial markets and consequently among families and among businesses, make it vital that the government use the full weight of measures at its disposal, including fiscal policy. Permanent across-the-board tax cuts, which the opposition has advocated, simply do not meet the criteria for stimulating the economy. This sort of move—the most base, senseless, conservative reaction to a crisis such as this—would not generate the economic stimulus that is required as four of the five largest economies fall into recession.

Any stimulus package must be targeted to boost consumption and investment. We have boosted consumption through the Economic Security Strategy announced on 4 October last year—through $4.9 billion in assistance to pensioners, $3.9 billion in assistance to low- and middle-income families, $1.5 billion to first home buyers to help them purchase a home and $187 million to create 56,000 training places. People in my electorate have told me almost every day since this package was announced, and most particularly since the start of December last year, how much they appreciated the assistance that came on or around 8 December. They have told me that they spent that assistance on major purchases such as a new stove, essential repairs or purchasing Christmas presents.

As part of the government’s response to the global economic crisis there has also been established the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, which was announced at the Australian local government conference held in this building in November last year. I attended the conference with the mayors of Frankston and Kingston and also the Chief Executive Officer of the City of Greater Dandenong. I can say from the reactions of the mayors and local councillors in my electorate, and indeed from the reactions of the hundreds of local government officers, councillors and mayors who attended the local government conference here last year, how much the conference was appreciated by those attending from the local government area as an opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister, to meet with other ministers and to have direct contact with the federal government of our country.

In part, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2008-2009 appropriates $300 million for the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, and members will recall that some $250 million of that $300 million was directly allocated to individual councils in accordance, essentially, with a needs based formula and that the remaining $50 million was to be allocated to larger scale projects. So there were grants of $250 million going directly to local councils straight away and the possibility of bidding for appropriate larger-scale local projects which were to have been allocated from that $50 million. It has, of course, been announced by the Prime Minister today that this amount will be increased to $500 million.

This program will not only help restore national economic growth but also, particularly in our area, help restore the regional economy in south-east Melbourne. The City of Frankston, the City of Greater Dandenong and the City of Kingston have all determined how to spend the money which was already allocated to them at the November conference on useful local projects. I would like to take the opportunity to express my support for the three projects being proposed in my electorate as larger-scale local projects under the additional funding. As I mentioned, this is, of course, the additional funding that is to be increased as announced today, which will make it more likely that these well-thought-out local projects can in fact be funded.

The City of Greater Dandenong has applied for funding to help redevelop the Noble Park Swim Centre, which is an ageing but essential community facility. This redevelopment focuses on rebuilding the swim centre to meet community needs both for the short term and into the future. The proposed redevelopment would see a new 50-metre swimming pool installed, the construction of a new learn-to-swim pool, new change rooms, a new cafe, a multipurpose function room, shade protection and more trees, as well as the incorporation of water and energy saving measures. This year Noble Park is celebrating its centenary, and I can think of no better way to celebrate the commencement of the next hundred years of Noble Park than a major redevelopment of the Noble Park Swim Centre. The City of Greater Dandenong estimates that construction would require more than 70 people to be employed and, in addition, to help address some of the employment difficulties that are being experienced in the local community, the City of Greater Dandenong has proposed that the successful contractor would be required to engage two apprentices from the local area.

The City of Kingston, another of the major municipalities in my electorate, has applied for funding to redevelop Kingston Heath Reserve into the Kingston Heath regional soccer facility. The proposal has the support of the neighbouring Bayside City Council and also the Football Federation Victoria and Sport and Recreation Victoria, the state government body charged with developing sport and facilities in Victoria. The kinds of capital works that are proposed under this project are an upgrade which would see two new synthetic pitches installed, training lights installed, a cosmetic upgrade of the existing pavilion, construction of a new car park, water storage tanks for future irrigation needs, two new electronic scoreboards and two new coaches’ boxes.

The third of the large-scale local infrastructure projects that are being proposed in my electorate is Frankston City Council’s proposal for funding to restore the historic Frankston Mechanics Institute, which was built in 1880 and was upgraded in 1957 but has since fallen into poor condition, with major renovations required. The proposed restoration would see hazardous materials removed from the site, new administration space built and new rooms constructed.

I have met with each of the three councils to discuss these proposals in detail. They are proposals which are ‘spade ready’—a phrase that I think was used earlier today—or ready to go, and construction can commence very soon if approval can be given to them. These are local capital works, decided on by local people, which will bring local investment and jobs. Each of these three projects is a worthy project which I fully support, and I hope that they will be favourably considered for funding under this program. Indeed, I have made representations to relevant ministers in respect of these three proposed large-scale projects in the electorate.

The actions that this government is taking stand in stark contrast to the failures of the previous government and the continued failure of the opposition to have any coherent input into the problems that beset the nation. In their final years in government, they blew the years of prosperity that had been created by the economic reforms undertaken during the Hawke and Keating governments. They were unable to manage the economy for long-term economic prosperity rather than for their short-term political expediency. The former government, the Howard government, pursued procyclical fiscal policies. They pump-primed the economy at the height of a resources boom, fuelling inflation that resulted in interest rate rise after interest rate rise. When it came to using the level of fiscal policy, they acted in an irresponsible and counterproductive manner, leaving the Reserve Bank to keep inflation under control with one arm tied behind its back.

Under their watch, investment in infrastructure stalled. The former government’s failure reduced our nation’s ability to reach its potential and to take full advantage of the global demand for Australian resources at the height of the boom. Under their watch, productivity growth flatlined. Under their watch, the current account deficit blew out while Australia had the best terms of trade in a generation. It needs to be borne in mind that this was the government of the Liberal Party which ran around the country with a so-called ‘debt truck’ during the 1996 election, at a time when the current account deficit was some $200 billion. When the Liberal Party left office at the end of 2007, the foreign debt was in excess of $600 billion, and that is the economic legacy of the Howard government.

In opposition, nothing has changed. They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. They are incorrigible, they are incoherent and they are incompetent. The Leader of the Opposition has said that the opposition want to cooperate with the government. I would suggest that, first, those opposite might start cooperating with themselves. I would suggest that, to get this process underway, they could start by at least agreeing to be wrong in the same way, rather than in several different and contradictory ways, which would be an improvement on their current position.

I was listening earlier to the contribution to the debate made by the member for Cowper, who had the extraordinary hide—which would not be too strong a word—to say that the former government ‘bequeathed’ a surplus to the nation. It is an interesting word to choose, because the only time you bequeath anything is when you are dead. So perhaps the member for Cowper is saying that the Liberal Party and the National Party are dead, and that is why they left this bequest to the people of Australia. I would perhaps not go quite so far as the member for Cowper, but I would agree with him that the Liberal Party and the National Party are dead in at least one sense—that is, intellectually dead. ‘Bequeath’, which was the member for Cowper’s choice of word, also betrays a deep-seated false attitude that those opposite have to the government of this country. It suggests that the Liberal Party and the National Party own the government of Australia—that the government of Australia is their property and theirs to bequeath. Those on this side of the House know full well that the government of Australia belongs only to the people of Australia and that, when you occupy the government benches, you hold the government in trust for the people of Australia.

The kinds of attitudes that we have heard from those opposite during this debate and, indeed, over the last several months show that the opposition have been unable to craft any coherent response to this economic crisis. They have departed the playing field of ideas—as I said a moment ago, they are intellectually dead—and instead are choosing to carp from the sidelines. They have no answers to the key questions that face our nation in this global crisis—questions like: how do we stabilise and restore confidence in our financial system? How do we encourage consumption and investment and maintain employment? How do we reform and rebuild the global regulatory framework for financial markets in the post-crisis economy? What policy action should we undertake to maintain Australia as a dynamic, open and internationally competitive economy which will provide high-skill, high-wage jobs for Australian workers?

The Rudd government will continue the education revolution, as we demonstrated again today with the announcement of $14.7 billion to rebuild primary school infrastructure, science laboratories and language learning centres in schools. The Rudd government will continue with the program of tax reform that was commenced in the 2008 budget. The Rudd government will continue to take the steps necessary to lift productivity growth to ensure our future prosperity. The Rudd government is taking action to ensure that Australia is prepared for a low-pollution, carbon-efficient future, as the member for Wills demonstrated in his speech in this debate. The Rudd government has shown its commitment to ensuring that fiscal policy and monetary policy work in tandem, supporting each other in controlling inflation while maintaining employment as the need arises. Not for us, and not for Australia, the reckless approach that the Howard government took to fiscal policy.

The Rudd government will continue to engage with other nations and multilateral economic institutions, because Australia must not turn away from the global economy. Countries must not resurrect tariff walls that offer false promise but which will only deepen the pain felt by all. Instead, we must be engaged in helping to shape the global economic order that arises out of this crisis. We heard from the speeches and participation of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Trade in Davos in the last week immediately before parliament recommenced the contribution that Australia is seeking to make to the development of a new world economic architecture and the contribution that Australia is attempting to make through the encouragement of trade in every sense and the discouragement of the building of tariff walls and of protectionism. The Rudd government, through participation in these international forums, is showing its consistent policy of the encouragement of trade. Australia needs to work with other nations to fashion a system of global financial regulation that reflects the globalised nature of the financial sector, and we must continue to pursue multilateral trade liberalisation that will strengthen our economy and create more opportunities for our highly skilled workforce.

This legislation also appropriates $2.5 million for the Department of the Treasury to ensure that Australia’s regulatory environment becomes world’s best practice and to pursue reform of the global financial architecture. It is the case that Australia’s financial system is well regulated when one compares it to many other countries around the world, but it is also painfully clear that there has been a failure of regulation in many senses in this country—inadequacies of regulation which the former government was not prepared to attend to, which have been identified not merely in this country but also in other countries throughout the Western world and which right-thinking governments are now attending to. It has been squarely recognised that there is a need to improve regulation of the financial sector, and that task of improving regulation in the financial sector is a task that the Rudd government will not shirk. This crisis has presented our nation with monumental challenges in the short term. The government is taking the decisive action to meet these challenges. In the long term, we will have the opportunity to build a dynamic, open economy—and, unlike those opposite, this government will make the most of that opportunity. I commend the bills to the House.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2008-2009 and to discuss a number of issues that are of great concern to the constituents of the Paterson electorate. As I am the member for Paterson, keeping in touch with local issues is very important to me, as I campaign for the rights of those individuals who elected me to represent them in this federal parliament. It has been over 14 months since the Rudd Labor government won the last election and apparently took control of Australian federal politics. During that time, Australia’s economy has spiralled out of control and the Prime Minister has been—to use his own party’s words—spending like a drunken sailor ever since. It is a fact that after only 14 months in government Australia is less prosperous, our economy is rapidly getting weaker and the outlook for Australian families and businesses is more uncertain than ever before. It would appear that the Prime Minister, Treasurer and finance minister, in talking down the economy straight after the election as prophets of doom and gloom, have accelerated our approach towards recession. This is not simply a coincidence; this is a result of the Prime Minister and the Rudd Labor government proving that they are unable to meet the challenges facing Australia and to make the decisions and instil the confidence necessary to keep Australia growing.

During their reign, the Rudd Labor government have failed to uphold the legacy of the former Howard government. Over the past 14 months, I have been inundated with correspondence from constituents in the Paterson electorate who continue to inform me of the day-to-day struggles that they are facing, such as the deterioration of roads in the region, increased hospital waiting lists, worsening crime, the declining state of our environment, insufficient pension rates, fears over their job security and a fear of losing their family home. The people of Paterson care little about which level of government has the responsibility; they believed the Prime Minister when he said, ‘The buck stops with me.’ It is evident that the Prime Minister and Labor are bogged down in bureaucracy and have no consistent, long-term strategy. In the lead-up to the last election, the Labor Party promised a national plan for Australia’s future. However, instead all we have seen is government by review—including at least 168 reviews, committees and inquiries—and a Prime Minister vying for headlines. This is not Big Brother, Prime Minister. You may have your 15 minutes of fame, but at what cost for Australia’s future?

My constituents and I demand to know whether it was a part of Labor’s national plan to ignore the needs of Paterson constituents—or are they just the innocent victims of a crusade being led by a Prime Minister who is all about spin and is not interested in substance? In 2007 the Prime Minister told Australians that he would take responsibility for fixing our hospital system and that the buck would stop with him. If this is the case, Prime Minister, please tell me why healthcare facilities in Paterson are still not up to par. As a case in point, why did it take residents of Maitland and its surrounds over a year to gain local access to a Medicare funded MRI scanner,14 months after it was promised to them by the Rudd Labor government, who had a ‘national plan’?

Back in September 2007 the coalition put out a tender for an MRI licence covering the areas of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. It seemed that the Labor Party supported this notion—at least on paper, anyhow. A press release put out before the 2007 election by the then shadow minister for health, the member for Hunter, the member for Newcastle, the member for Shortland, Paterson’s Labor candidate and the Labor candidate for Charlton outlined their health policies. They said of the MRI for Maitland:

… Labor supports the provision of Medicare funding for an MRI machine in Maitland.

But what did we see after that? We saw the tender recalled and not issued for many months. That tender recall was to insert the word ‘Maitland’. Maitland has always been in the Hunter region. The Rudd Labor government happily ignored the cries of constituents for over 14 months and left seriously ill people in the lurch. If the coalition had been re-elected, this licence would have been in operation for over a year now, benefiting the entire community. It is a disgrace that Paterson residents were disadvantaged and inconvenienced by not having local access to the promised Medicare funded MRI scanner sooner simply because the Rudd Labor government bungled the tender process.

The Maitland healthcare system has also received much coverage recently, due to the unfortunate incidents leading up to a 30-year-old Paterson constituent miscarrying at the Maitland Hospital, where she was simply directed to go to the hospital’s public toilet. Out of respect for the woman and her family, I will not go into the finer details of the circumstances surrounding the event, except to say that protocols and resources should have been put in place to allow hospital staff to handle the situation better. I ask the Prime Minister to answer the question: what protocol is he putting in place to prevent this from ever happening again? In the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, the Prime Minister said:

I have a long term plan to fix our nation’s hospitals. I will be responsible for implementing my plan, and I state this with absolute clarity: the buck will stop with me.

So, Prime Minister, Paterson constituents and I are waiting, and not very patiently, for you to unroll this national plan immediately. What happened is simply unacceptable, and I demand to know what plans you are putting in place to ensure that there are enough resources in hospitals to ensure that such incidents will never happen again.

Continuing on the issue of health, how can the Prime Minister justify attempting to axe the Medicare chronic disease dental scheme? This scheme, introduced by the former Howard government in 2007, was created to allow chronically ill people who are being managed by their GP under an enhanced primary care plan, access to Medicare rebates for dental services. Yet, despite the scheme’s huge success in treating thousands of people with poor dental health who would otherwise have had to go without, the Rudd Labor government planned to axe the scheme. This revolutionary funding, which allowed people with complex dental health problems to access private dental procedures to a value of up to $4,250 over two years, had the advantage of shortening public waiting lists and enhancing the wellbeing of many. If it had not been for the coalition’s tireless fight to retain this scheme, people like Janet Grant in my electorate would have continued to suffer excruciating dental pain as a result of chronic dental illness, as the current pension allocation is simply not enough to cover such costs. Realising how important this scheme was to the people of Paterson, I was determined to ensure that it was not axed. The efforts paid off. Comments made by people like Janet Grant, who proclaimed that the dental procedure changed her life, continue to drive me to hold the Rudd Labor government to account.

However, it is not just health care that the Rudd Labor government seems to have missed the mark on. At the end of 2008, as part of the national economic stimulus support package, the Labor government announced a one-off round of payments for Australia’s four million pensioners, a move which the coalition openly supported. However, the Prime Minister has refused and continues to refuse to increase the base pension rate permanently, which is of grave concern to the coalition and to pensioners in the Paterson electorate alike. I, along with my colleagues, have called for an increase of $30 a week to the single age pension, but the Prime Minister and Treasurer continue to deny our seniors this increase, despite admitting that they themselves could not afford to live off the basic pension rate of $273 per week. Each and every week, pensioners call and tell me that $273 is not sufficient for them to live off either, but, unfortunately, the government continues to ignore the coalition and the community’s push, on behalf of pensioners across the country, to increase this allowance by $30 a week. In addition, under the Rudd Labor government 22,000 senior Australians are expected to lose their entitlements through Mr Rudd’s plans to tighten the eligibility test for superannuation co-contributions. To strip senior pensioners of an allowance is possibly as low as you can stoop.

Furthermore, the government’s attempt to lessen the impact of looming recession on home soil by injecting one-off funds into the wallets of many low-income Australians has done little to stimulate the Australian economy. In fact, Harvey Norman chairman Gerry Harvey said the effects of the cash handouts may have already worn off for the retail sector. Harvey’s comments reinforce the coalition’s argument that the money would have been better spent on increasing the single rate of pension by $30 a week. In fact, it would seem that the only big winners were club and pub proprietors and the state governments, who reaped the rewards from increased profit margins directly after a large portion of the stimulus was poured into the pockets of low-income Australians. The Herald Sun article in Melbourne on 24 January 2009 supports this notion in their finding:

THE Rudd Government’s taxpayer funded Christmas bonus is lining the pockets of pokies kings after punters blew a record $250 million last month.

That was just in the state of Victoria, but it is an echo heard in states across the country.

As we begin to hear leaks of information about looming announcements of the second stimulus package, I suggest to the Prime Minister that he should invest in projects which will result in improved infrastructure and increased job security for all Australians. The Paterson electorate would reap much reward from having such funding directly injected into our local economy. I have been campaigning tirelessly for safer roads in the Paterson electorate for over a year now under this new government, but to no avail. Rather than investing in short-term, vote-grabbing cash handouts, the Rudd Labor government should invest in strategic infrastructure building that will increase job security, community wellbeing and bring about market confidence.

Last year I rose in this parliament to present a petition signed by 1,200 Paterson constituents who are concerned about the current state of Bucketts Way, one of the most significant roads in the Hunter region, connecting the rural communities of Raymond Terrace, Gloucester, Wingham and Taree. The petition, which is over 64-pages long, refers to the urgency of the Rudd Labor government matching a re-elected coalition government’s commitment of $12 million to develop passing lanes on Bucketts Way or risk more tragic accidents due to unsafe driving conditions. In its present state, Bucketts Way is essentially a country road without passing lanes. It is not adequately equipped to handle the traffic conditions it currently experiences. Stimulus support for such projects would provide a flow-on effect for the entire community. Lives would not be risked due to unsafe driving conditions, workers would have job security and interstate travel would remain constant.

The next 12 months will be a testing time for Australia, as the full effects of the economic storm take hold. It is time for the Prime Minister and Labor to finally set out a clear strategy to keep Australia strong and secure. Working from the ground up, by setting aside provisions which will give confidence to the job market and improve local infrastructure, is essential to ensuring Australia’s long-term prosperity. The government cannot deny that since they came to power in November 2007 more people are out of work and many more are working less than they would like. Many constituents come into my electorate office seeking assistance in finding work, as Paterson is suffering heavily from the effects of a poorly managed national economy.

Last year, the Rudd Labor government provided just $2.3 million in funding for local governments in the Paterson electorate. This is simply not enough to fix the local infrastructure; it is merely a drop in the ocean. When you consider that the Paterson electorate requires over $20 million just to make essential improvements in numerous roads in the region, including the Bucketts Way, Lakes Way, the Nelson Bay bypass to Shoal Bay, and main roads in the Dungog shire, does the Prime Minister believe that $2.3 million in funding is really going to suffice to help rebuild local governments?

Prime Minister and Treasurer, please do the figures and consider what funding will work towards creating Australian jobs, developing local infrastructure and boosting the local economy and what will be sent overseas in the form of cash handouts being spent on cheap imports. However, it is not just the looming recession that is putting a strain on the constituents in the Paterson electorate. Upon coming to government, Labor used its first budget to slash funding for Tourism Australia by $5.9 million in real terms. Not only this but it also introduced nearly $1 billion of new tourism taxes, crippling Australia’s tourism industry at the very worst time. Despite promises from the current Prime Minister in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election that more would be done to improve tourism marketing, the Rudd Labor government went ahead and introduced nearly $1 billion of new tourism taxes and drastically slashed funding. Not surprisingly, the Tourism Forecasting Committee have slashed their expectations for inbound tourism growth for 2008 to zero.

Australia is a country that depends heavily on the tourist dollar. The Paterson electorate also relies heavily on the tourist dollar. I ask the Rudd Labor government to consider what effect this drastic reduction in funding will have on a national scale as well as on small businesses that are struggling to survive in the current economic downturn without any endorsement from its government. I have spoken with countless constituents in the Paterson electorate who work in the retail, hospitality and tourism industries about their concerns over this government’s decision to decrease their financial support for the tourism industry. All those I have spoken with share my concerns about the Rudd Labor government’s mismanagement of the economy and how it will affect their bottom line.

Alan Ray, a constituent and small business owner in the Paterson electorate and former president of the Hunter Regional Tourism Organisation shared with me his serious concerns about how the combination of the government’s decision to cut tourism funding and the party’s inadequate response to the economic downturn will have dire consequences for local business. Paterson is a region that boasts many tourism hot spots. From the golden beaches of Forster-Tuncurry and Port Stephens to the rich and diverse cultural heritage of the Barrington Tops wilderness area and its surrounds, the Paterson electorate is truly an incredible part of Australia. However, despite this, Mr Ray said:

It is my fear that if the Government continues to ignore the tourism industry and doesn’t utilise a second stimulus package to create more jobs within Australia then it will cause devastating impacts on local businesses for years to come. If there is no job security, there will be no confidence in the market and people will remain stationary. This will have a carry on effect, harming countless industries and townships dependent on the tourist dollar.

Mr Ray is not far off the mark with these concerns. After 14 months of Labor, Australian businesses will enter 2009 with the worst business conditions for many years. While the global financial crisis has played its part, actions by the Rudd government have made things worse for many industries, including the tourism sector. Small business and consumer confidence has plummeted to its lowest levels since Paul Keating’s ‘recession we had to have’, and this is simply unacceptable.

Speaking of unacceptable, Prime Minister, why have you spent 25 per cent of your time as Prime Minister overseas? How can the leader of Australia have a thorough understanding of the issues faced by the nation if you are never here to witness what is going on? On behalf of my constituents and all Australians, we must continue to hold the Rudd Labor government to account. When Labor are not busy conducting reviews, they are often making rash decisions, which are made in a state of panic and are poorly thought through. Consequently, the Rudd Labor government also wastes much of its time and taxpayers’ money on coming up with a never-ending list of excuses to justify a string of broken election promises.

I demand more for the constituents of Paterson and will be continuing my public battle with the Prime Minister and all of his mates to ensure that Australia remains the prosperous nation that it was prior to the Rudd Labor government taking over. The Rudd Labor government have failed Australia. We all know this. They have failed to deliver on promises to strengthen our economy, fix our hospitals, revolutionise our schools, provide us with greater access to broadband services and improve Australian tourism. In addition, the Labor Party have also shown little support for small business, are doing very little to help our farmers stay afloat and have introduced new taxes for university students. The list goes on. What Paterson needs and what Australia needs is a Prime Minister who will inspire confidence in the market, create greater job security and pave the way for more Australian jobs. The looming economic recession can be overcome if we unite and come up with real, long-term solutions rather than cash flashes. We need to stop focusing on the possible doom and gloom and, whilst remaining realistic, look towards a prosperous future for our nation that is rich in productivity and properly equipped with essential resources and national services.

As the Prime Minister is showing few signs of responsible and strong leadership, I suggest the Prime Minister embrace the Leader of the Opposition’s offer to sit down together to see if we can bring all our talents together and come up with measures that will assist in creating a more prosperous future for Australia. To get through this economic downturn we must create jobs, jobs, jobs on a national and local scale. We need to stimulate the economy to ensure electorates like Paterson do not buckle under the pressure of the looming recession and guarantee that essential services such as schools and hospitals remain up to par. We need to act and we need to act now. We need to act to restore the confidence that is needed in our community, and on that front, Prime Minister, you have failed and failed miserably.

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

I thank the member for Paterson. While this is an appropriation debate and I allowed a full-ranging speech, it would have been appropriate to refer at some stage to the specific appropriation before the chair. As I say, it was an appropriation speech.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Baldwin interjecting

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

I am not going to enter into debate. You do not have the call. It is an appropriation debate and you did not mention one appropriation. I am not going to enter into debate.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. You have made an assertion which is absolutely incorrect, with all due respect.

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

I made a suggestion at the end of your speech. There is no ruling. I will not take the point of order.

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

I think it is remarkable that the opposition’s shadow defence minister could not mention one of the items of defence expenditure on these appropriation bills. He could not stand up at the dispatch box and say, ‘I support $87.8 million to reimburse defence for additional costs in Iraq.’ He could not say that he supported $307 million for salaries for the other ranks—for graded other ranks pay structure review, superannuation, rental allowance and higher fuel costs. He could not say for the ordinary serving men and women and the NCOs that he supported this $307 million expenditure. He could not say that he supported the $153 million additional costs arising from movements in the exchange rate that defence have suffered. He could not say that he supported the $29.4 million to cover unavoidable overspends in operations in the financial year which was funded by the government on a no-win, no-loss basis. It is extraordinary in an appropriations debate that a senior shadow defence minister—Defence arguably being one of the most important portfolios in the country—does not utter one word about the expenditure of defence dollars in these appropriation bills.

Debate interrupted.