Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my last opportunity before the May budget, I urge the Rudd government, in its search for savings, not to squib out of its responsibility to provide a pension increase for Australia’s pensioners. My party’s former leader, Brendan Nelson, and the Liberal-National Party have been very active in emphasising the need for a pension increase, and I urge the Rudd government to do the right thing and to provide that increase in the upcoming budget.

I also think there is a serious need to examine the plight of self-funded retirees. There is a lot of talk in these circles, in this building and by government representatives about urging banks to pass official cuts to interest rates announced by the Reserve Bank on to mortgage holders and the like, but there is also a need for the government to pass on those interest rate cuts more quickly by adjusting the deeming rate for self-funded retirees. If interest rate reductions are something that needs to be passed on quickly by banks, the government should act more decisively in passing on those very same interest rate reductions—and the impact on investments and on income streams—to self-funded retirees by a more rapid and responsive adjustment to deeming rates. The question of frozen assets facing many self-funded retirees still haunts many people in my community as they plan to access, say, the capital or the nest egg that they had invested for home improvements or for other requirements such as the payment of rates, which can be a very substantial impost on people and well outside their regular income stream. Self-funded retirees need to be taken into account.

From the jobs forums I have conducted in Dunkley, I hear the small business community are being done over by the banks. They have lines of credit that they may have secured on reasonable terms on which they might not have exercised the overdraft that is available to them but, because of that, the banks are saying, ‘Give it back. Give back those financing facilities.’ They are made to give back the very thing that gives comfort to very anxious small businesses and self-employed and independent contractors. Those people do not become unemployed—they just do not have enough work. They need to have the comfort of these resources, which they were provided with and had planned for, under the terms and conditions which the banks offered them. They do not need to have some big bank heavy them into surrendering those attractive financing facilities and then tell them that they are unilaterally going to re-rate the risk of their business and have them pay one to 1.4 per cent more for small business financing. That is not what should be happening at the moment. With all the support that is being provided to the banking sector we deserve much better, much more thoughtful behaviour by banks towards those who are very exposed and very anxious at this time.

In the few minutes that are left I want to touch on some ongoing and compelling transport issues in the Dunkley community. I have spoken countless times about the need for the Frankston bypass and the bottleneck that has been created at the end of the Frankston Freeway with the opening at EastLink. Everybody could see this coming except VicRoads and the state Labor government, but now they are coming around. We need to get on with that process. The EES hearings are underway, panel submissions are being discussed and considered. The bandicoot has been considered. I am a friend of the bandicoot, and we have the area covered if a new colony of bandicoots can be established. The former government have invested in it. Let’s get on with it.

If you want to add something to the project, add a public transport connection. Extend the Frankston rail line, electrify it down to Baxter, a perfect place for a park-and-ride facility to interconnect pavement or freeway based transport with rail based public transport and other bus opportunities. It is something that should happen. But, as if that frustration is not enough, we then have the sound barriers. So loud is the noise that people are hearing from the EastLink extra traffic on the Frankston Freeway, and so difficult is an opportunity for good sleep, that the noise must be affecting people at VicRoads. They cannot hear the cries of the local residents who want something done about the noise nuisance and the noise pollution in their neighbourhoods. We can put money into faux hotels as public art along freeways—that is terrific and we all get a giggle out of it—but let’s pick up one of those artworks and park it on its side near the homes of these communities that would just like a decent night’s sleep. It cannot be that hard.

Finally, if you thought it could not get any worse—I did not think it could but it has—we now have the P-turn proposition for Frankston where, to turn right off McMahons Road onto Cranbourne Road, you actually have to turn left. We are pretty good at hook turns in our city of Melbourne, but having a hook turn on steroids in Frankston is no answer to a serious traffic problem. The exit to Clarendon Street has then been closed to force people to drive down the back streets—Lawrey Street, Allenby Street and Melvin Street—onto Birdwood Street to get from Cranbourne Road to the medical clinics in Clarendon Street. Who thought of this idea? Who possibly thought of the traffic congestion in local streets? (Time expired)