Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to stand to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills that support the budget 2009-10. When you judge a budget it is not just about what is in it or what is not in it but how effective it is for the circumstances that the nation faces at the time, and we do live in interesting times. The world has gone from the biggest global boom that we can recall to the worst global recession in 75 years over about a 12-month period, and governments all over the world have changed tack in response. That is all you can do in government: you look at the circumstances that the nation faces and you respond decisively to maximise the opportunity and minimise the downside for the nation. In the circumstances that the world faces, governments everywhere have gone from paying down debt to spending to stimulate their economies. That is absolutely the right thing to do.

This is a good budget, not just because of what is in it but because it is a budget for its time. If we delayed action on the global recession for even one year and delivered this kind of budget next year, the damage to our economy would already have been done. We would have seen significantly more job losses, family financial stress and the loss of previously viable businesses. Now is the time for this budget, particularly building, as it does, on the first two stimulus packages and the bank guarantee. It is a timely and responsible response to the worst global financial crisis in 75 years. Faced with that crisis, we are building for the future. We are stimulating the economy to help cushion Australia from the full impact of the global recession while investing in national infrastructure that we need for tomorrow.

The opposition would have us all believe that we the Labor government actually caused this recession. But we are just not that powerful. We did not all sneak off to the US, infiltrate financial companies and give out subprime loans. We did not do that. We did not cause it. It began in the US financial markets. It spread throughout the world and it moved into the real economies around the globe. The impact has been devastating. In fact, it is the deepest global recession since the Great Depression. The world economy is set to contract by 1½ per cent in 2009 and our major trading partners to contract by two per cent, which is a worse outcome than during the Asian financial crisis. Eight of our top 10 trading partners are expected to contract in 2009 and advanced economies in deep recession are expected to contract by between three and 3¾ per cent this year.

Because so much of the boom in Australia was the result of growth elsewhere over the last 15 years—and iron ore, coal and bauxite being sucked out of the resource rich states into China and India—we were particularly susceptible to global downturn as other economies that had been buying our commodities to fuel their own growth came to a grinding halt. They stopped buying the coal and the iron ore and so profit projections for companies fell. As a result of that, revenue forecasts for the government—in particular how much tax we would collect—collapsed as well. In fact, they collapsed by a lot.

The deficit is a direct consequence of the global recession, with projected revenue downgrades wiping out around $210 billion from revenues over the forward estimates—$23 billion in 2008-09, $49 billion in 2009-10, $55 billion in 2010-11 and $47 billion in 2011-12. These are substantial write-downs of revenue for Australia. But at the same time, of course, the government is committed to paying out on pensions, on the Department of Defence, on schools and on three- and five-year funding agreements. In other words, while our revenue collapses quite easily, the expenditure side of the budget is much more difficult to alter. When the tax base collapses, those costs remain and you get a shortfall; you get a deficit.

The alternatives here are to raise taxes and cut spending—in this case a lot of spending: $49 billion in the next financial year and $55 billion in the year after that. Of course you do not do that. No government has done that. If you did that, you would put further downward pressure on the economy, slowing it down even further and introducing much more pain at the individual level—higher unemployment and forced sales. Instead, you do something which some people find counterintuitive but, again, is the common response, and the recommended response, around the world. You step in to cushion families and business from the impact. You stimulate activity in the economy to support jobs. If you have to do that, and we do, then the way that you go about it, if you are a responsible government, is to invest in infrastructure that leaves behind valuable assets to support us in the future. You stimulate the economy by building schools, roads, rail, ports, local community infrastructure, hospitals, research centres or things that will make a difference in our battle against climate change. Seventy per cent of the government’s stimulus measures are going on just those things—on infrastructure. Those projects support jobs and small business today and invest in the infrastructure that we need for tomorrow.

The Rudd government’s response to the worst global recession in 75 years is the right one and it is fast enough and executed well enough to make a difference. The national accounts that came out yesterday support that view. The national accounts show that the Australian economy outperformed every other advanced economy in the March quarter, recording positive growth in the face of savage global recession. GDP rose by 0.4 per cent in the March quarter to be 0.4 per cent higher through the year, boosted by early and substantial policy action by the Rudd government and the Reserve Bank. Of the other 22 OECD economies that have reported March quarter outcomes, 20 have contracted. G7 economies contracted by an average of 2.2 per cent in the March quarter. Crucially, the Treasury estimates that Australia’s economy would have contracted in the March quarter by around 0.2 per cent without the government’s stimulus strategy.

What are we building in this nation-building exercise? What are we doing that is helping Australian businesses to keep their heads above water? The nation building in this budget builds on the first two stimulus phases. The first phase, in December last year, was in the form of much-overdue and much-needed cash payments to pensioners and a boost to the first home buyers grant. Both were immediate boosts, and the first one in particular helped to hold up retail spending over the Christmas period and held our national account in good stead in the final quarter of last year. Phase 2, which was announced earlier this year, was the shovel-ready infrastructure—schools, insulation, hot water tanks and social housing. These are projects of incredible value to our local communities and could be rolled out quickly so that money and jobs would flow through the communities over the 18-month period we are currently in.

The opposition takes the nice political line that it is all cash. And there was actually cash; it helped keep retail sales moving through December, which showed in the national account figures for the last quarter. But 70 per cent of it is nation-building infrastructure—those 35,000 construction jobs around the country which we hear talked about in parliament, extra Black Spot funding, rail crossings and council projects. This was all important work that we knew could be rolled out very quickly to support local jobs. Speed is very important in circumstances like these. Wealth may trickle down, but there is no doubt whatsoever that in hard times poverty creeps up. As a business goes under, it takes the families of its staff with it. They spend less in the local community and other businesses are, therefore, damaged. There are forced sales and that drives down prices. The last thing we want is for the recession to take hold so we acted fast. The first phases were cash, and then we moved to smaller-scale infrastructure projects that put jobs on the ground immediately. Those projects in schools and public housing estates and suburban soccer fields will roll out over the next 18 months.

Phase 3, which is delivered in this budget, is for larger-scale infrastructure, which takes time to plan and roll out. Fortunately the government started reviewing infrastructure needs as soon as we were elected. Infrastructure Australia was well established and the review, much maligned by the opposition, had been undertaken. They had already identified key issues in infrastructure. We had also been working with the states on health planning, the pension review had been completed and the Productivity Commission had reported on parental leave. We had basically been getting on and doing the work, and that work put us in a very good position to respond very quickly to best stimulate the economy while building for the future.

People in my electorate have asked me why we did not do health and roads in the first and second stimulus packages. The answer is quite simple: you cannot get projects of that size up quickly. So I am incredibly grateful that the government began the planning for these major projects early in our term so that we were ready to roll out these large projects much earlier than we otherwise might have been. We are building what the country needs and we are supporting jobs on the way.

Talking about infrastructure for a moment, we would all remember that we had a backlog in infrastructure towards the end of the term of the last government. We would all remember the Reserve Bank warnings about infrastructure bottlenecks, particularly in physical infrastructure and skills, and the impact that was having on rising inflation and rising interest rates. We all remember the 12 back-to-back interest rate rises. I think we are starting to forget exactly how much pain families were in in late 2007 because of rising prices and rising interest rates. I know that many in my electorate had their noses just above the water and repossession rates had doubled in some suburbs in the first half of 2007, and did so again in the six months leading up to the election.

So I am very pleased to see these major infrastructure projects supported in the budget. There is $4.6 billion for metropolitan rail networks, and I have to say that it is very good to see the federal government back into suburban and city based infrastructure after a decade of absence. We will be building more efficient metro rail networks to deliver economic and social benefits through faster travel times, less road congestion and lower greenhouse gas emissions. There are projects in Melbourne and the Gold Coast, there is the Gawler rail line and there is the Northridge rail line in Perth. There is also $91 million for the West Metro preconstruction work for a line that will run from Central to Westmead, in my electorate. That project is much needed and we welcome that $91 million.

There is $3.4 billion for the Network 1 road freight corridor. I have enough freight companies in and around Parramatta to know that this has been extremely well received. Network 1 is Australia’s largest freight route. It links Melbourne and Cairns. Upgrading the route will allow faster transit times, lower transportation costs and greater safety and ensure that Australian businesses remain globally competitive. There is also $380 million for port infrastructure in the crucial area of Western Australia. That will drive the recovery as our major trading partners recover.

Members will probably remember the deficit we had in skills. In fact, we were one of the few OECD countries whose expenditure on education actually went backwards over the last 10 years. That is an extraordinary fact given that education is one of the greatest drivers of growth in the long term. We were well and truly running up against our limits with the skill shortages towards the end of the previous government’s term. There was no support from the government for the skills and infrastructure that we needed to support the growth that was driven by the global boom and that was costing us all through rising prices and interest rates.

Now that the world economy has come to a halt some of the pressure has temporarily been taken off the skills and infrastructure crisis. That is not actually a good thing; it is actually a rather sad thing because it is reflected in the unemployment figures. Those structural problems will return. As the economy begins to grow again we will very quickly come up against the same infrastructure constraints that we had in the boom time unless we act very quickly. I am very pleased to see that we are delivering in this budget by investing in education and the skills of our people.

There is $2.6 billion over six years for infrastructure projects, including $613 million to fund 11 higher education and 12 vocational education and training projects as part of the second round of the Education Investment Fund. That fund was created in the last budget. Again we have brought forward some of the spending because of the circumstances. We are fortunate that the work was done last year and we can roll it out very quickly now. There will be $1.2 billion from that same fund for 30 priority research infrastructure projects, including $901 million for the Super Science initiative to build Australia’s capacity in areas such as astronomy, marine and climate science, and future industries. Having come from a creative industry, I am delighted to see the investment in innovation and R&D. We are an incredibly talented country when it comes to ideas. It is a part of our character which has been neglected for quite some time.

There is also $1.5 billion in recurrent funding for universities. This is incredibly important because it provides $491 million over four years to uncap the number of public university places from 2012. So if you are eligible for a place you will get a place. In my area of Western Sydney university enrolment rates are really quite low when compared to those for the rest of Sydney. We enrol at the rate of three per cent and the rest of Sydney enrols at the rate of 5.2 per cent. That is an underperformance which I am determined to turn around. This funding will go a long way towards achieving that. The budget also provides $394 million of new funding over four years to encourage greater participation of low-income students in higher education.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to go through all of the measures. If I did, I would be here for several hours. I strongly suggest that anyone interested in education have a look at what is in this budget in detail and the responses of the university sector to the work of the government. There is also greater support for lower income students funded by the savings from the tightening of the definition of ‘independent’ for the purposes of the Youth Allowance. That will see a far greater number of young people in my electorate receiving assistance from the government for their studies.

While Australia is doing well relative to the world and our national accounts are on the right side and we still have a AAA credit rating and we are still not in technical recession—in other words, relative to the rest of the world, things are looking for the moment quite optimistic—we still expect that unemployment will rise, because growth projections are not high enough to accommodate the number of people entering the workforce. We have measures in the budget that cushion that effect through the building of infrastructure, but we are also improving the safety net for those who do lose their jobs during this global recession. We have $1.5 billion over five years in the jobs and training compact to support young Australians, retrenched workers and local communities to get back to work, add to skills or learn the new skills required to obtain jobs. We have a $277 million compact with young Australians, guaranteeing an education or training place for every person under 25 who wishes to upskill.

We have also made quite significant changes to the support offered to retrenched workers. These have assisted the people from Pacific Brands in my electorate quite considerably. We have $299 million in the budget to give retrenched workers immediate access to intensive employment services. That is something that they previously had to wait several weeks for. We have doubled the safety net for the liquid assets test thresholds, meaning that rather than having to spend your savings down to $5,000 you are now eligible for Centrelink assistance at the $10,000 mark. That is a temporary measure to see us through, but it is a substantial contribution to people in these more difficult times.

I also want to talk very briefly about assistance to small business, because the best thing that you can do in a local community is to keep people employed in the first place. There are substantial benefits to small business in the budget. I am working very hard to make sure that my local businesses know about them. One of the important ones is the 50 per cent tax rebate for small businesses. It is up from the 30 per cent that we announced for the end of this financial year. It is now 50 per cent for eligible assets acquired between 13 December last year and 31 December 2009. There are many businesses in my electorate that install refrigeration equipment or counters that are telling me that the last few months have really been quite good for them because of that cash rebate.

We have also increased the pension. Wasn’t that needed, after 11 years of neglect? There is an increase of $32.49 per week for single full rate pensioners and an increase of $10.14 per week for couples from 20 September 2009. There are also some other changes that will see more security and certainty for pensioners, such as combining a number of payments into one and paying them weekly.

My time is running out, but I want to reinforce how proud that I am of this budget. It is budget of its time. It leaves us still with the lowest debt levels of the OECD. We have been in the bottom eight for the last 25 years, by the way; we have not had high debt levels relative to the rest of the OECD in the last 30 years. This budget leaves us in very good position to withstand these troubled financial times.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the words of the World War II song, Labor’s budget leaves Australia on a wing and a prayer. Not since the Whitlam days have we witnessed such a reckless spending spree, which is built on the heroic assumption that all will come good, beginning next year. Let us consider some of the facts of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and the related bills. Labor is proposing a deficit of $58 billion in the first year alone, the largest in modern Australian history. There are deficits amounting to $220 billion over the next five years. The Commonwealth debt will rise to $188 billion by 2012 and up to $315 billion in total. That is $9,000 worth of debt for every man, woman and child in Australia. And that does not take into account the additional state debt of many states in this country—$75 billion worth in Queensland, for example. Billions of dollars will be required each year to pay the interest alone on this debt. Labor does not envisage a return to surplus until 2015-16. This is based on the fanciful assumption that growth will rebound to 4.5 per cent in two years time and on the heroic assumption that Australia will have six successive years of four per cent plus growth, something that has not occurred in the last 30 years, despite boom times in Australia. And even then, even after all of this, the country will still be paying off debt for who knows how long—certainly the government does not know.

Labor is simply winging it with this budget. At least a million people will lose their jobs. Labor wants us to believe that this is all due to the global recession. But two-thirds of the $188 billion debt is due to Labor’s own spending since the last election. More money has been thrown away in handouts and projects, with little economic return, than on essential infrastructure. And, even then, half the nation-building infrastructure is money that had been set aside by the Howard government in the higher education and communications fund. The coalition opposes Mr Rudd’s spendthrift and undisciplined response to the financial crisis.

When thrift and careful economic management is required, Mr Rudd says, ‘Spend.’ When effort should be rewarded, Mr Rudd says, ‘The government will provide.’ And, when business needs capital to stabilise and rebuild, Mr Rudd borrows it all. That is why we reject Labor’s spendthrift ways. When the government steps in with the promise of providing for all our needs, it scorns the individual effort required for recovery. When the enterprise of individuals and business is corroded, it chokes off and delays prosperity. And, when economic liberty is rejected by an all-knowing government, it ultimately endangers the employment and prosperity of Australians.

This is why we reject Mr Rudd’s big-government mantra—not because government has no place to play in the economy but because we all know that debt is easy to create and very difficult to extinguish. This is something, indeed, which the Chairman of the Federal Reserve warned the Obama administration about, just overnight, in the United States.

We all know the harsh reality that it took a decade to pay off Paul Keating’s debt, and yet Kevin Rudd’s debt is growing bigger by the day. But when the Prime Minister is asked, ‘What is the size of the debt?’ or ‘Where is the money coming from?’ he refuses to answer. When the Australian people ask these questions, Mr Rudd gives them slogans. When the media asks for substance, Mr Rudd replies with spin. When we seek an assurance that this growing mountain of debt will not burden our children and stifle our recovery, Mr Rudd is silent. And, when we insist that we should not be heavily indebted to overseas nations, Mr Rudd does not answer.

So the coalition will continue to ask these questions: ‘Where is the money coming from?’ and ‘How, when and in what time frame will it be repaid?’ We will point out those proposals which penalise effort and initiative, such as the decimation of employee share ownership. We do not want more gobbledegook and vague assurances—the Prime Minister must come clean with the Australian people. Australians know that somebody has to repay this debt. They are increasingly concerned that there is no plan and that they and their children will be left worse off.

Yesterday’s national accounts did very little to change this situation. Indeed, it was not all this spending by the government—if you look at the detail of the national accounts—that kept us out of a technical recession. It was the unexpected surge in exports in the previous quarter—which the national accounts mark—that actually kept us out of a technical recession. Yet every economic commentator, regardless of their stance, their political views or their philosophy, basically says, ‘We are, for all but technical reasons, in a recession in Australia.’

So this great spendthrift approach, with billions of dollars of money being spent, had very little impact at all on the national accounts. As I said, if it was not for that unexpected surge in exports in the first quarter of this year then we would not only be in what people regard generally as a recession; we would, indeed, be in a technical recession today. If you break it down by state then you can see a diminution in growth in many of the states of Australia over the first three months of this year and, indeed, on all accounts, recessions in states such as New South Wales and Queensland.

The recovery requires the confidence of business to invest and grow. It requires the confidence to keep workers on, knowing that the economy will improve. It requires a government that will do things to help business, not to throw away money in the hope that some of it might land in the right place. It requires a government to trust in the enterprise of Australians, not to borrow all of the funds much needed by business to survive and employ workers. It requires reward for the thrift, the effort and the initiative that has made this nation prosperous in the past. The sad reality is that Labor has raided our savings, borrowed billions and has no plans for recovery other than to suggest that the good times are just around the corner. Something more than a wing and a prayer is required to ensure future prosperity. Sadly, Labor’s budget reveals no understanding of what is required today and in the future.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2009-2010 and the related bill. The Rudd government acknowledges that these are complex times, and the 2009-10 budget reflects these complex times. As we all know, the world’s major economies have gone into recession. Other nations have been overwhelmed and unprepared for the scope and sheer ferocity of the biggest global downturn since the Great Depression. Australia’s economy is well placed above those of other nations. This budget will see Australia emerging more productive than before. This budget’s task is one of nation building—nation building for recovery.

The opposition would like to talk down the economy and this budget, yet they talk about the lack of infrastructure in their own electorates. For 12 years they could have put in place the infrastructure that was needed, but they did not. In fact, they still refuse to recognise the Rudd government’s strategy in these times of need. The economic circumstances that we find confronting ourselves are so severe that we need a strategy that is going to take us forward and help us recover in the future.

In the electorate of Forde there was previously a severe gap in infrastructure rollout, and I do not think anyone in this House needs to be reminded of the disastrous Beaudesert rail project under the former flawed Regional Partnerships program, a program that put money into the community but that was unsuccessful, with major losses to government and to many private providers. However, in the real infrastructure rollout, particularly in the seat of Forde, the Rudd government has committed to a $55 million upgrade for the rail line from Acacia Ridge through to Bromelton which has recently been announced. Added to that is another $45 million for a project across the state border in New South Wales, through the area known as the Kyogle loop. This is a $100 million investment in rail infrastructure.

The Rudd government talks about Nation Building for Recovery, about road, rail and even our shipping networks and about how we build our productivity for the future. In fact, 70 per cent of this budget is about infrastructure investment. A large amount of funds, as we know, are going into the stimulus package of cash payments to people, essentially to stimulate the economy while we prepare ourselves for the rollout of infrastructure.

A large part of the infrastructure will go to schools. In fact, all the schools in my electorate welcomed this funding for nation building. I have met with many principals since the Building the Education Revolution program was announced and they are happy that the funding is finally coming to their schools and to the region. The electorate of Forde, as I have said many times in this House, was certainly not on the map in the past. The former federal member for Forde, a great member, was also frustrated about her own government and its inability to provide essential funding for some of the basic infrastructure needs. If you look at the building and infrastructure projects in my electorate, they are much larger than in the other electorates around it, simply because Forde missed out on basic funding for such a long time.

In the first round of funding for Primary Schools for the 21st Century, there are 20 schools in my electorate that are recipients. There is almost $30 million being injected into schools in the Forde electorate. The previous government did not invest well in education or in facilities, and it is the Rudd government that believes that if we as a nation are to prosper we need to invest in our future, and education is a significant part of that future.

This will see building sites at every school in my electorate. I have had many people contact my office asking how to get work on these projects and as a strategy recently—in fact the week after the budget—I, the member for Bonner and the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy, who is the member for Rankin, held a forum for independent contractors, a tradies forum. This was very much to inform tradies of the tender process and how they could engage with government to get the benefits of our stimulus package through the building program.

However, the opposition would like to blame state governments for all the problems of the past. In fact, I was intrigued when I heard the member for Menzies mention Queensland and excessive borrowings. On other occasions in this House I have spoken about the Queensland government’s understanding some time ago that infrastructure was very important, to the point that the Queensland government took on a lot of debt in recent years to fund infrastructure, which goes well now with the federal money as the state government have their projects lined up and they will certainly involve direct funding as to infrastructure programs. That gets away from what we always knew in Queensland as the Howard government’s cost shifting. This has meant that as a community and as a state—and certainly for the electorate of Forde—the nation-building program can continue. When you start to coordinate and put together all of the projects and when you look at the business community being involved and how we roll out private sector investment, it all fits very well for my electorate. As I have said in this House before, the development of areas of Bromelton will see the largest inland port in this country when it is finally established.

Social infrastructure and social inclusion is also a major plank of this budget. The government recognises that carers play an important part in our society. I was pleased to see that carers as well as pensioners would see significant changes through this year’s budget. In fact, I spoke in this chamber only a couple of weeks ago about the report on carers by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family, Community, Housing and Youth called Who cares…? After 12 months and 1,200 submissions we finally identified some major issues, issues that we were largely aware of but which we were able to get documentation on from the evidence that we took at that inquiry. We understand that carers do it very hard.

We understand the carer’s job being a tough job. If you are caring for a family member it is even tougher. Many people who care for their children do it voluntarily. There are also a substantial number of people who care for many other family members or friends of family. Carers wear many hats. Some are mothers, some have full-time or part-time work and some are young people who are still at high school. In fact, one of the people we interviewed at our inquiry was 15 years of age and looking after a parent. It was a quite amazing story, particularly when you understand about the people in our community who have that caring role.

The Rudd government, through this budget, has recognised the need to help and look after carers. The Treasurer announced a supplement of $600 for carer payment recipients. Recipients of carer allowance will also receive $600 per person they are caring for. Carers Australia’s CEO said that the $600 per year supplement for those receiving the carer payment and the $600 per year in carer allowance per eligible recipient were ‘very welcome’ because their status was assured in future budgets. I have mentioned the issue of pensioners. There is the fact that we have finally been able to index pensioner payments at 27 per cent of average male weekly earnings, a great initiative. After 100 years of benefits to age pension recipients we have finally been able to index something that will keep up with the current costs of living.

In my electorate of Forde we have identified over 3½ thousand carers. Those who receive the carer payment will also receive a pension increase of $32.49 a week for singles on a full pension rate. As well, a permanent carer supplement of $600 a year will be introduced for carer payment recipients, with an extra $600 a year for carer allowance recipients for each person they care for. This supplement will replace the government’s one-off bonuses. The first payment to carers will be made at the end of June this year.

Unfortunately, the opposition seems to be stuck in the past, certainly as to the rollout of infrastructure and the concerns about borrowings. We have explained many times in these chambers of the House of Representatives, particularly in question time, the strategy of the Rudd government and why we are investing so heavily through this current budget. As the seat of Forde is considered to take in the Gold Coast Hinterland, it does have a number of coalition seats that touch its borders. It is very interesting that, as I said before, some of the coalition members lacked major infrastructure in their regions. In fact, they find it almost unbelievable that a government could consider such a major investment in a region like the Gold Coast. As I have said in this chamber, people consider that the Gold Coast is a very prosperous region, and generally it is, during good times, but it is heavily dependent on tourism and construction. So it is an area that, in a time of slowdown, really does feel the full brunt.

I will give you an example of one of the major manufacturing sectors—the marine sector. The Gold Coast produces and manufactures over 80 per cent of the boats that are made in Australia, and sold in Australia and overseas. The effect of the global financial crisis means that in that industry alone there have been nearly 2,000 job losses. People consider the Gold Coast is rather prosperous yet those areas of construction and manufacturing are hard hit. So it always amazes me to hear opposition to the government putting so much money into building infrastructure and stimulating job growth within the region. In fact, I will quote an opposition member who said:

A lot has been said by Mr Rudd about our bottom line compared to the rest of the world. When the coalition were in government we made it our aim to be the best in the world. World leaders show the others how it is done, as the coalition did in the past … and Mr Rudd and Mr Swan, the Treasurer, have squandered the hard work of the coalition under John Howard and Peter Costello.

Those are very bold words, of course, but the reality is that although the opposition talk about squandering we have a government that has been presented with unprecedented global economic issues. Yet, when we had money coming into this economy through the resources boom—in the Treasurer’s words, ‘when it was raining gold bars’—that money was squandered. There were no significant pieces of infrastructure or outcomes from that era, particularly in regions like the Gold Coast.

For those who are not aware of the Gold Coast and the lack of infrastructure there I will give you an idea. We have a city that developed very much as a tourist location. When I was a child, housing prices in the Gold Coast were half of that of Brisbane; it was where the holiday villages and weekenders were. It is a city that has grown in an ad hoc fashion. It is a city that had no major infrastructure for transport.

There was an announcement made just recently of funding of $365 million to put in a light rail transit system, in cooperation with the state government. We are talking currently in this House about carbon reduction. To give you an idea of how beneficial infrastructure investment is, I can tell you that this piece of infrastructure will not only create lots of jobs but, when this project is completed, take 40,000 cars a day off the roads of the Gold Coast. So it really does amaze me that coalition members would be so against the budget. In fact, I do not know whether they are necessarily against the spending of the money or whether they cannot believe that the government would invest in an area like the Gold Coast to that level.

This government is investing in infrastructure. We are investing in jobs and investing in education. In fact, on the Gold Coast there are equity arrangements with the private sector, and a particular member said that it was a smoke and mirrors announcement. On the reasoning of this particular member, the announcement would mean a further equity contribution and the private sector would have to get involved. Isn’t that amazing? Essentially, that is what we are saying: whatever the rollout is, public and private partnerships are certainly a way we can pull together. Government resources—state and federal—and the private sector can pull together. The private sector need to be major players in any of this investment.

I mentioned earlier in this speech that the area of Bromelton is a major development area, with 8,000 jobs within 10 years. It is an area that will be developed by federal and state governments and the private sector. It is an area that will roll out jobs and opportunities for the future and that will bring productivity to the electorate of Forde.

It was interesting to hear the opposition say that the government is about smoke and mirrors. We are putting money on the table at great expense. That has been stated over and over by the coalition. My interests over many years have been many and varied but property development has been an area of interest to me personally. Consider the example of what we are doing as a government. Every now and then in the property market a developer has to come along, take the risk and invest. And as those developments go ahead you have property managers who come along and manage those properties—considering the sinking funds, the maintenance and a whole lot of ongoing expenditure. But it is the initial investment that is the risk.

That is essentially what the current Rudd government is about: it is about taking that risk and investing. The previous coalition government, during some very good times financially, were able to be the property managers. It was commonly said—certainly when I was at university—about the economic periods of the past that the Menzies era was an era of great results for this country, albeit on the back of primary industries. The Prime Minister could look out the window and say, ‘The economy’s going well; we don’t really need to do anything.’ Things have changed significantly.

The member for Menzies mentioned in his speech the great years of Howard. It was an interesting period. We all know and can talk about many things that occurred during that period of time. But when I was a young businessman back in 1980-81 and Howard was Treasurer I was paying 22 per cent interest for business loans. The economy got worse for me as a small businessman in the manufacturing sector. I had to deal with financial issues and the inability to employ people simply because the economy had fallen so much that I had to pay a horrendously high rate of 22 per cent. And we had a Treasurer who did not have the solutions. That Treasurer was Treasurer Howard, who later became the Prime Minister. The Howard years can be recorded as an era of great revenue streams for this country. But, as I said earlier in this speech, that money was squandered. There are no major pieces of infrastructure that we can point to and say, ‘That was a major project rolled out by that previous government.’

I will mention the Gold Coast. It is part of my region, and I have taken a certain level of responsibility for it. Not only did we get announcements on the light rail but those people who are involved with the Australian Football League will know that there has been an announcement that there will be an AFL stadium built on the Gold Coast, because there will be a new Gold Coast team.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Secker interjecting

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not quite hear the member’s interjection, but I think that he said that he is not an AFL supporter but supports the Blues. The Blues were defeated last night—

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Crows!

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Crows—sorry. The area of Karara has been long touted as the location for a Gold Coast AFL team. We know of the announcement that the federal government, in cooperation with the state government, will build a stadium. That is another $36 million that is being invested by this government in not only a sporting facility but the game of AFL, which is a very popular game. In Queensland, it has grown from strength to strength. It is important because of the jobs that it will bring to a region like the Gold Coast, a region that is set up for tourism and which can accommodate and cater for that sort of development.

The Gold Coast will see many benefits. There has been discussion that once the stadium has been built there will be 9,000 jobs created within that region because of sporting tourism. Quite often infrastructure, if it is chosen correctly, it can benefit many people. In this case, those who are sporting minded and those who are in the tourism industry will benefit from that major piece of infrastructure. There will be other benefits from it being an events venue.

There were 12 years of neglect of infrastructure by the previous government. I have heard arguments about this in this House. I can give examples on the ground of where the electorate of Forde missed out. As I continue to see, it was somewhere in a black hole. No-one seemed to care; no-one in government seemed to understand that a very vital part of South-East Queensland was being neglected.

The business sector is a major partner in what we do as a government. They are the people at the front line when it comes to the security of the future. Without business, we do not have jobs. Potentially, the sector hardest hit will be small business. But as a government we have invested in small business. The government has announced that it will provide additional immediate assistance by increasing the small business and general tax break to 50 per cent for eligible assets that are ordered and in place between December 2008 and December 2009. This allows small businesses to invest in the equipment that they need. For example, a construction company needs to invest in equipment to fulfil the demand for the construction of new homes due to the extension of the first home owners boost and for numerous infrastructure projects that the Rudd government is rolling out across the country. Not only are we giving the incentives for people to go and invest and purchase homes in this case but we are also providing the tools by way of tax incentives to small business, which enables them to be a major beneficiary.

Councils are another issue. The area of Forde has three councils: the Gold Coast, the Scenic Rim Regional Council and Logan—all areas that benefit greatly from the rollout of our community infrastructure money. The Rudd government will support jobs right now by building the infrastructure we need for tomorrow. I congratulate the Treasurer for having the foresight to invest in our nation’s future.

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

I thank the previous speaker, the member for Forde, for his contribution in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and associated bills. It is always good to see someone who appreciates good budgets. Unfortunately, our friends in the opposition do not appear to be so supportive—which is a shame, given that this budget is about protecting jobs and providing opportunities for business in our communities.

Through this budget, the government has a massive national infrastructure spending program that delivers for regional Australians and, indeed, all Australians into the future. My electorate is the seat of Lingiari, which is, as I have explained on a number of occasions in this place—too many to remember even—1.34 million square kilometres. The government is delivering new and improved community health and education facilities and programs for the families in electorates across regional and remote Australia. My electorate of Lingiari is vast and has a population that is very widely dispersed. There is expenditure in this budget that goes to schools. There are 123 primary schools in my electorate. We have diverse population centres. The major population centre is Alice Springs, which is where I live. Thankfully, the investment in the Northern Territory will go to address many of the needs that we have for physical infrastructure—most notably, in dealing with the issues of those most marginalised of all Australians, Indigenous Australians who live in remote communities. I will come to a lot of the detail of that later on.

The expenditure in the Northern Territory, and in Lingiari, in particular, will have a tremendous impact on those communities—on all communities—not only in terms of providing infrastructure but also in providing job and business opportunities. I have visited a number of schools over recent weeks and I have spoken to a number of small business people. It is very clear that, whilst many parts of Australia have been experiencing issues to do with increased unemployment and problems with business viability, that is certainly not the case where I live. That is largely as a result of a very vibrant Northern Territory economy, which is underpinned by Commonwealth government outlays.

Whilst the Northern Territory general budget gets around 80 per cent of its revenue directly from the Commonwealth government, the items in this budget provide enormous additional stimulus to that economy. They also provide the sort of infrastructure that will assist the further development of business and allow the further exploitation of our resources, particularly in the mining and pastoral industries, while at the same time providing the social infrastructure that the community most needs.

A very good example of this sort of investment is the investment in the port of Darwin. The government has made an announcement of $50 million to be spent on the Darwin port. This will allow major expansion of the port’s capacity, including new berthing and ship-loading facilities. We already know that resource and live cattle exports through the port are growing rapidly. There is growth of iron exports from Territory Resources’ Frances Creek mine near Pine Creek. Bootu Creek manganese also continues to be exported through the Darwin port and the huge Wonarah phosphates deposits east of Tennant Creek are also likely to go through the bulk loading facility at the port. That is an enormous opportunity. It will provide ongoing investment opportunity for small business and jobs for Territorians and others, who are increasingly travelling to the Northern Territory looking for opportunities.

I will not go into detail of the road expenditure in the Northern Territory, but it is significant. We continue to have an obligation to invest in our national highway system. That is carried through in this budget. The main transport links into and across the Northern Territory are the Stuart Highway, north and south, and the Barkly Highway, east and west—east from the Stuart Highway just north of Tennant Creek and west from Katherine. There is also the Victoria River Highway. They are the major highway arterials and they carry the bulk of the cattle which traverse the Northern Territory to eastern markets and to the Darwin wharf to become live cattle exports. It is important that those opportunities remain. They will only remain whilst ever we have the transport infrastructure that meets their needs—hence the importance of the expenditure on roads.

There is quite a deal of money allocated in this budget not only for those major highways but also for significant arterial roads which have previously not been funded significantly enough. The Tanami Road, for example, is but one and the Plenty Highway is another. The Plenty Highway, which travels east from the Stuart Highway just north of Alice Springs across to close to Boulia, provides an opportunity for people travelling into and out of the Northern Territory and provides significant potential for the pastoral industry.

In this budget, the Rudd government continues to focus on improving health outcomes for the Territory. Some very, very important investments have been made as a result of this budget. The Menzies School of Health Research is the only Australian health and medical research institution with a primary focus on the health of people living in tropical parts of the country. They, like me, welcome the government’s $34 million investment in the school, providing a solid foundation for significantly improved long-term health outcomes for those Australians living north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

Just as important for Northern Territorians, and indeed all Australians living in remote and rural areas of the country, is the great news that the Australian government will develop a new medical school at Charles Darwin University. This is absolutely imperative. It is important in making sure that we not only attract young people into the medical profession but at the same time give them an opportunity to train in the north of Australia in remote communities. Then, hopefully—and I am sure this will happen as an outcome—young doctors who would otherwise not be thinking about a career in the north will actually stay in the north.

Charles Darwin will work in close collaboration with James Cook University in North Queensland and Flinders University in South Australia. The upshot, of course, is that many more students will be acculturated into the ways of the north. This will hopefully attract them to stay there and further their careers.

One of the most significant investments that I am really pleased about is in my home community of Alice Springs, where there will be a $13.6 million investment to build a new emergency department at the hospital, including 35 treatment cubicles, a 10-bed short-stay unit, paediatric and psychiatric assessment areas as well as isolation and procedure rooms. This will also provide an opportunity I think to develop a purpose-designed surgery for ophthalmic surgery, which is obviously very important in terms of eye health in and around remote parts of the Northern Territory but most importantly around Central Australia. This facility is long overdue.

The Australian government will also, as result of this budget, fund a new 50-unit accommodation complex in Darwin that will help house those remote Territorians who need to accompany family members who have serious medical problems. The complex will also house recovering patients still too ill to return home. This $18.6 million investment will seriously reduce bed-block at Royal Darwin Hospital. We need to understand how important this is. The investment in this hospital infrastructure in Alice Springs and Darwin services remote parts of the Northern Territory, and many of the clients that will be using this new facility at the Darwin Hospital will be constituents of mine. They will not be residents of Darwin; they will be people who live outside of Darwin in the seat of Lingiari, primarily Indigenous people, who suffer acute health problems, as we know. The treatment is available for them at these two hospitals, Darwin and Alice Springs, and they do a very good job. But, importantly, one of the ongoing issues has been accommodation for people travelling into these major centres for health reasons.

Education has been a major beneficiary, as we know, from this Rudd budget. In the case of Charles Darwin University, it has been the beneficiary of $30.65 million allocated for the establishment of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Knowledge. A total of $191 million over four years, including $102 million this financial year, has been allocated for education infrastructure in the Northern Territory.

I have said on many occasions in this place how important education is to alleviating the poverty that many of my constituents experience. The investment which the Rudd government has made in school infrastructure alone will have a tremendous impact on the opportunities for young Territorians, but of course young Australians generally around the nation. But in my own case, where we have very low levels of educational attainment and very poor educational outcomes, not only do we need the opportunities provided by new infrastructure but we also need more engagement with the education profession to ensure that we get the best possible people teaching our kids in the bush.

Interestingly, as part of an election commitment, the government has already provided additional money for an additional 200 teachers in the Northern Territory. That will have a measurable outcome in terms of improving the educational status of many Aboriginal Territorians who live in remote communities. As I have said on many occasions in this place, the key to unlocking the opportunities for Indigenous Australians is through education. In remote communities, this is particularly so. If we are to address poverty, then we must be dedicated to the expenditure that the government has made in this regard.

Unfortunately, and sadly in my view, the expenditure has been opposed by our opponents. It is a bit of a shame, really. They could not see the wood for the trees—political expediency and opportunism defeated the need for a higher moral vision about what is good for Australia, and what is good for Australia is this investment in education. I applaud the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister as well as the Treasurer and the other cabinet members who are responsible for determining these outcomes, because they will have, as I have said earlier, a measurable impact, a significant impact, on schools and students across the Northern Territory.

As I have visited schools, there is no doubt about the delight there is about the infrastructure investment. But in this budget not only are we talking about school investment; we are also talking about VET opportunities. Remote VET students will benefit from a $7.89 million investment in fitting out two road trains to act as mobile trade training facilities to take VET training to wherever there are students in the Northern Territory. That is a significant opportunity. People who currently have to travel away to get educational opportunities will now in many instances see an opportunity to be trained in their home communities. And that is what we should be looking for.

As I have said previously in this place, people in these remote communities in particular do not want to relocate if they can avoid it; they would rather see the service in their home communities. There are opportunities in these communities—real opportunities. Unfortunately, people do not have the skills that are normally required to take advantage of these opportunities. This investment, as well as the other investments in education that I have spoken about, will have a significant impact in that regard. As we know, the government has separately invested $807 million in closing the gap. That money alone is very important, but it will not work without the cooperation of the Northern Territory government and the communities whose needs this investment is designed to address. I am pleased to say that there has been a great deal of cooperation not only from the Northern Territory government but also from the communities. It is significant that one of the positive outcomes of the Commonwealth intervention in the Northern Territory has been the increasing number of policing and substitute programs which now operate. This budget will provide $156.6 million for the training of new police, five permanent police stations and the continued operation of 10 existing remote police stations.

Primary health care in Indigenous communities will be boosted by $131 million over four years. In addition to targeted prevention activities, this will assist in reducing the burden of chronic disease and provide greater access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. These are features of the Closing the Gap in Indigenous Health Outcomes National Partnership.

Significantly, $45 million in this budget has been allocated to assist the delivery of literacy and numeracy programs in Indigenous schools to augment the investment that I spoke about previously. Also, $11 million has been provided for an additional 22 houses for teachers. One of the issues which I think escapes many people who do not know this part of Australia is that they think that you get a school, you put it in place and, presto, you have educational outcomes. It does not work like that. What you need to do is make sure that people are being looked after, that there is proper primary health care, that public health issues such as housing are properly addressed and that the educational infrastructure provides those professionals who want to teach in these communities with appropriate accommodation. Frankly, in the past, this has not been the case. As I have said on numerous occasions in this place, this has not been the case because successive Northern Territory governments have failed in their obligations to invest in the provision of educational opportunities for Indigenous Australians. We now have to redress that. Closing the gap is part of that but, importantly, that will take a long time. In my view, it will be a generation before we see really positive outcomes.

At least two generations of Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory have suffered because of disinvestment in educational, housing and transport infrastructure—you name it—in these communities. Now we are left with the burden. It is now up to us, in this government, to redress this very poor outcome. It has been a real shame that the previous administration in this country, the Howard government, did not do this job properly. Cheap politics was what they were about—not actually listening, talking and working in partnership with communities to get the outcomes that these communities needed to make sure that all citizens in Australia got a real opportunity for education and jobs. As I said earlier, the Northern Territory is largely immune from the current financial crisis, except people in these bush communities. The employment market in Darwin and Alice Springs is buoyant; but, if you are an Indigenous person without skills, you have got next to no hope of getting a job. That is why this investment is so important.

I could go on and on and on about the importance of this budget for the Northern Territory, but my time is about up. I see an aspirant sitting over here. The member for Eden-Monaro is a colleague of mine and he is very keen to speak on the bills. However, before I finish, I want to highlight one measure which is very important to the town of Katherine. Through the Community Infrastructure Program, we have allocated $3 million towards the $7.8 million Katherine Regional Cultural Precinct. The precinct will provide Katherine with a quality regional facility to hold conferences, functions, exhibitions, performing arts events and ceremonies. It needs to be understood that this is a true partnership—a partnership with the local Indigenous community, the Katherine Town Council, the Northern Territory government and the Commonwealth. If we work collaboratively like this, we will get the outcomes that we all need. I am sure that if we see the positive opportunities that exist in this budget do exactly that then all Australians will benefit.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills and to follow my good friend and colleague from the Defence portfolio who shares many of the benefits of this budget in a regional context. This is a budget for the times. It is a budget that is about jobs, prosperity for the future and setting a clear path back to surplus. It reflects the Rudd government’s strategic and decisive approach to the economic crisis that has been unveiled over a period of time. It is a strategic approach that is characterised effectively by three phases. The first phase was a stimulation to demand and consumer activity through injecting cash into the economy, which has certainly had a tremendous effect in electorates such as mine. My electorate has a cross-section of the Australian community, and it really does demonstrate the value of that strategy. I will come back to illustrate that point later. The second phase, short-term shovel-ready infrastructure investment, is definitely holding up the labour market at the present time and helping us to support, as Treasury indicated, approximately 210,000 jobs. This feeds into the third phase of the strategy, the long-term strategic infrastructure investment that this country so sorely needs. That investment in long-term infrastructure is what will help to turbo-charge the economy when we start moving into the recovery phase, which in turn will help us to move more quickly back to the surplus that we will need to have as we move into the great economic challenges of the future.

The budget, at the same time as working on the current challenges—incredible deficit issues that we face and stripping out of government revenue—has managed to tackle some major social and productivity goals by delivering on pension reform, which is something that has been a long-held concern for both sides of politics but which we have now actually delivered on to the great benefit of so many people in my electorate. We have also delivered on parental leave into the future, which is not only a great social good but also something that will aid productivity as we move forward to a recovering economy.

The $22 billion investment in infrastructure is something that I am particularly pleased to see. I think we will all recall the images during the boom years where we saw up to 65 vessels sitting idly off ports, and there was the problem of the burden on our road and rail infrastructure which was really holding back the economy—sclerotic arteries if you like—at a time when we really needed to move forward to take advantage of the specific surpluses and investment opportunities that those boom years gave us.

Apart from that important tackling of our strategic infrastructure issues, what we are now seeing is the tackling of our climate change issues, particularly the investment—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

It is quite appropriate that we were interrupted during a speech in relation to passing the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation. I was just about to move on to the aspect of the budget that has very importantly moved the ball forward on our climate change challenge and also met some deeply held concerns by my community. In Eden-Monaro we are home to the Clean Energy for Eternity movement, which has garnered widespread support throughout the community not only for its concern over climate change but also for mobilising individual effort on tackling the challenge and doing what they can as individuals to move the ball forward. They will be greatly heartened and pleased to see the $4.5 billion worth of investment in tackling climate change and moving clean energy forward. In particular, there is $2 billion for carbon capture and storage, which is so important to enabling us to transport that technology to deal with the issues arising from the dependence on that energy source by China and India. There is $1.3 billion for four large solar electric generation projects, which will give us 1,000 megawatts of electricity—the equivalent of a coal-fired power station. That was particularly well received in my electorate. There is $465 million to establish Renewables Australia, an independent body to support leading-edge renewable technology research and development. Earlier, we saw a massive investment in the 2.7 million homes that will benefit from the ceiling insulation program, not only creating local jobs but making a real and practical contribution to reducing our carbon emissions, equivalent to taking one million cars off the road. I can assure you that that was very well received in my electorate.

I was also very pleased to see that we tackled the key issues that are facing Defence in this budget. We have seen some significant legacy issues left to us and now we are moving forward with a strategic reform program that will deliver $20 billion in savings. More pleasing to me is the fact that at the same time we are directing $30 billion towards remediation of so many hollow gaps in our capability and addressing deficiencies in investment in our infrastructure. As I have responsibility for the Defence estate this is a matter of particular concern to me. We saw that after 1996 the investment in the Defence estate dropped by $200 million from the $600 million that was being spent under the Hawke-Keating government down to $400 million. That continued throughout the Howard years from 1999 onwards, leaving a huge problem for us to redress. So I am very pleased to see $30 billion being dedicated to remediating those deficiencies.

Also, we are moving to the new budget mechanism for Defence of commitment to the three per cent real growth to 2017-18, 2.2 per cent to 2030 and a 2.5 per cent fixed indexation mechanism from 2009 to 2030 to get away from the deficiencies of the non-farm deflator mechanism, which was so uncertain and variable. The investment that we will be making through the Defence white paper process will create 5,000 new jobs in defence related industries in this country at the same time as helping to transfer skills and technology. I am really pleased to have been a part of that and to see us moving forward now to put our Defence budget on a sound basis.

Particularly important also is the investment we see in this budget in education. Education for a country like ours is absolutely critical. It really is distressing for me to see someone like the shadow Treasurer and the member for Warringah claiming that this is poor-quality spending. I think they should take a trip through the schools in my region. I have met on several occasions now with large groups of principals and the community and they certainly do not share that view. I am sure you might have had similar comments passed to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz, from the principals, parents and teachers in your electorate. This is an investment as much as it is creating a short-term stimulus. In small country towns, as I know you will appreciate—a town of 3,000 or 7,000 people—doing this building work on our local schools really has an amazing ripple effect. It is extremely important. But, as I said, most importantly it is an investment in the future.

We cannot participate in a race to the bottom on wages with India and China. That is just simply out of the question for us. So how do we equip our kids to meet the challenges of the future? Last December I was in Israel. They have a similar issue there—they are a small population and they cannot compete on low wages—but their economy had a growth rate of 4.1 per cent in 2008 and five per cent in previous years. At the moment they are looking at a growth rate of 1.5 per cent in 2009. It is amazing to see there how many of the headquarters of major technology companies are based in Israel. I drilled down to find out why this was so, why they were able to attract these companies and maintain this growth rate, and it was based purely on a skilled workforce—the investment that they have made in skilling and educating their workforce. It is a fact that although you will have IT workers in India, what you have in Israel because of this investment in their education is an innovative workforce. For this reason the Israeli worker is in effect 12 times more productive than an Indian IT worker.

So the investment that we are making in the Building the Education Revolution and in our tertiary education is money extremely well spent for the future of our economy. So I would beg to differ with the comments that it is a low-quality spend. It just shows the lack of understanding of what is required for the economic management of this country. Associated with that of course will be the National Broadband Network, the $43 billion scheme that is going to be of such vital interest to rural and regional Australia. It will help us to get over the tyranny of distance. It will ensure that our schools in rural and regional Australia will be able to attain the same level of quality as schools in the cities. We will be able to have virtual classrooms so that kids who are in a classroom in Moruya or Jindabyne will be able to get language training from a teacher in Sydney through a hook-up. This is training that they cannot get now because those resources are not available in the bush. So there is enormous potential in education and in medicine, but in particular this will be the spine that will aid small and medium enterprises that are distant from the city to compete and prosper. This is effectively the Adelaide to Darwin telegraph scheme of our times, and that visionary project in the 1870s has enabled Australia to participate in the world economy by engaging in international trade more effectively. It took a visionary government and governments at that time to understand that they had to step in where private industry just could not because of the problems of geography and the population scale. So it is a very similar dynamic and similar scale of economy that we are talking about with the NBN plan and it is very welcome to see that investment move forward.

Similarly, health has been such a critical issue in the bush. It is great to see the increasing investment, to cover the 12 years of neglect from the Howard government, where the contribution dropped by a $1.5 billion because it let its contributions slip to only 40 per cent of the requirement. With $64 billion going into the system—an increase of $20 billion, which is 50 per cent more than we had seen under the previous Australian healthcare agreements—help will really be delivered to our health system.

In particular, in this budget, we have seen the injection of $134 million to boost medical support to the bush. That money will go towards reforming and enhancing incentives to encourage doctors to go to rural and remote communities. This is fantastic news that was very well received in Eden-Monaro.

Specifically, I would like to turn to Eden-Monaro to illustrate the impact of the budget in terms of the stimulus, the strategy and the effectiveness of it. There have been a lot of comments about the cash handouts—the so-called cash splash. There is absolutely no question that that stimulus measure delivered to Eden-Monaro the best summer holiday season that we have seen in many, many years. That holiday season carried through to Easter, as well. Our small to medium enterprises often survive from summer to summer through the strength of those tourism seasons. So you can see the time that that has bought us, and the stimulus and the impact of that cannot be understated.

The First Home Owner Grant scheme has really boosted our timber industry—our region is heavily dependent on our saw mills and our timber industry—and keeping up those construction levels has really helped. The pension measures and the measures to support our carers have assisted roughly 32,000 people in Eden-Monaro. The investment in our 62 primary schools and 19 high schools has been enormous. I note that the up-to-date statistics that I have are that 82 of my schools so far have had 109 projects approved, totalling $26.2 million worth of investment. Overall, of course, across the electorate, with the investment in the community infrastructure programs and working with our local councils, we have seen 533 projects, totalling $43 million. This is having an enormous impact.

To support our local medical services, we have seen the investments in our rural medical practices, through the Rural and Remote Health Infrastructure program, so that $274,000 has gone to the Bega Valley Private Hospital, $550,000 to the Bombala Street Surgery in Cooma and $270,000 to the mobile podiatry service for the south-west slopes. This is having a tremendous impact, particularly with the Bombala Street Surgery, which is able to act as an incubator to get medical students and doctors out into the region. One of the most important of all, though, was $260,000 that was delivered for the Bombala Surgery, finally rescuing poor old Dr Colin Pate there. He was really suffering badly as the one-armed paper-hanger, trying to deal with that huge area all the way across the Victorian border up to Cooma. With the death of Dr Jamieson in Delegate, he was really at his wits end, preparing to leave had we not been able to deliver support. With that $260,000 investment, we have been able to attract another doctor to the area. We got a bit of a two-for-one deal there because her husband is a radiographer, and that has proved a very successful injection of support for rural and regional Australia.

Roads investment is certainly critical. The Bega bypass will deliver great economic benefits. Right now, you have trucks and B-doubles that you have to uncouple and couple on the outskirts of town. When you add that up over time, it is a significant economic impost. It is also a major safety problem for the region as well. All of these things will be greatly received. The investment that we will see in clean energy will also be well received.

This is about getting jobs into rural and regional Australia. We are actually seeing that have an effect. The capital wind farm at Lake George that I know my friends in the ACT will know all about is providing jobs for people in and around Bungendore. Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz, you will appreciate the $220 million injection into your local economy as well, with a 63-turbine wind farm. We also have the potential of Boco Rock, a 127-turbine wind farm in the Nimmitabel area, which will be a huge investment. We have seen companies like Dyesol and Lloyd Energy coming into the region. There are solar farm projects that we have planned for Bega, biogas pilot projects and biomass for using the woody waste from the timber industry, and of course the wave energy projects we will be exploring for Eden. That has all been well received, as has the 50 per cent small business tax break for eligible assets and e-business. These are enormous benefits to the community.

The statistics show that the strategy is working. We have seen retail sales figures 4.8 per cent above levels for November last year, whereas they have fallen by 1.1 per cent across major advanced economies. ABS building approvals data for April showed a rise of 5.1 per cent. We have seen the lowest current account deficit as a proportion of GDP since the September quarter of 2001 and an increase in the trade surplus. The level of net foreign debt declined compared to the coalition’s record. After the coalition claimed that they would reduce it, it rose by 200 per cent. We all remember the famous debt truck, which was purely focused on that issue. So there was total and abject failure in that respect, but we are moving forward. In the last 24 hours we have seen the incredible news that we have done very well in the face of the global economic recession, achieving growth of 0.4 per cent. This has kept us out of technical recession. While we still face incredible challenges, it does show that the strategy is working and that we have managed to cushion some of the impact of this incredible challenge that we face.

The coalition is addicted to scaremongering. They did it with refugees, unionists and China and they have now moved on to debt—probably the most dishonest of their campaigns. But the public is finally treating them as the boy who cried wolf and has moved on from being concerned about this scaremongering. What was the contribution of the coalition in the course of this crisis? Last year they suggested a fuel excise cut of 5c a litre. What a great measure that would have been—how that would have helped us to tackle this crisis! That would have gouged $22 billion in revenue, without any plan to compensate. Then we saw the member for Curtin, as shadow Treasurer, talk about a wonderful measure to raise revenue, being to cut taxes. This seem to be the cure for everything—cutting taxes—but I do not think that that would have assisted us in the current crisis, and they have had nothing positive to offer this time around.

The key to considering this debt is, firstly, the strategy of spending, which I have outlined; and, secondly, the proportion of GDP. Net debt as a share of GDP is expected to rise to 74.9 per cent in the Euro area, 83 per cent in the UK, 83.4 per cent in the US and 136.3 per cent in Japan. Here, net debt is forecast to peak at 13.8 per cent of GDP in 2013-14, so it is important to keep that in perspective.

The Rudd government’s spending is a sensible response to the current situation as endorsed by the OECD and IMF. It is also an investment in our future. We have been doing well in this crisis relative to the rest of the world because of the team effort involving the states, territories, local government, communities and business. Conspicuously absent from that team effort has been the coalition. The coalition have nothing to contribute but putting on the bogeyman mask. They are a policy-free zone. They refuse to recognise what is going on around us internationally and will not lift a finger to help the nation in this challenging time. In other words, they have brought a new twist to an old adage in that their philosophy is to deny globally and wreck locally.

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

It is a pleasure to follow my colleague the member for Eden-Monaro. Since he has held that position it has been very rewarding for those of us working here in the ACT to be able to work with him on regional initiatives and issues of concern to people spilling over the border from the ACT into Queanbeyan and the surrounding areas. I welcome the opportunity to follow him and endorse the remarks he has had to make about the regionally significant initiatives in the budget.

In the time available I want briefly to say something about the macroeconomic situation, talk about some issues of significance locally—both local and national issues of particular interest to constituents in my area—and then in the remaining time available to make some general marks about the development assistance budget. One of the privileges of the position I hold is the opportunity to attend some international conferences representing Australia, which I did recently. One of the regular aspects of commentary around the edges of those conferences is global recognition of the appropriateness of the shape and scale of the economic response of the Australian government to the global downturn, both in terms of what we have done domestically and in terms of our advocacy and leadership internationally. What I find strange is that in Australia and in the Australian parliament we have people arguing positions about the appropriate response that are economically far to the right of the IMF, far to the right of the World Bank, far to the right of the US Federal Reserve and far to the right of the Reserve Bank of Australia. If the IMF is not conservative enough for your economics, you had better re-examine your position. I am a great fan of the work of the IMF; I think it should be conservative. I am a conservative about the IMF. I have more dramatic views about the need for change in the World Bank, but I think the IMF plays its role appropriately, but it is very much the advocate of economic orthodoxy, and its position is that Australia’s response is appropriate in its shape and its scale. So I think macroeconomically, the package that this government has brought down, in its interim measures and in the budget, positions us as well as is possible in the face of a very serious global economic situation, which is affecting all of the developed countries but particularly is having devastating ramifications in the developing countries.

Let me talk more broadly about the budget as it relates to the ACT and the people I represent. I want first briefly to acknowledge two issues of fundamental importance that have been raised in community meetings that I hold around the electorate regularly and that will come to fruition as a consequence of this budget. That is the question of paid parental leave and the question of the increase in the age pension. I do not have time to speak at length about those, and I do not have anything unique or original to say. They are things I have spoken about in the past in the constituency and I am just so pleased to see them in this budget. They are the sorts of measures that, once put in, will never be taken out. It has taken a long time to come, but once it is introduced it will be there forever. For pensioners and families with children these are fundamental reforms.

In terms of the budget for the ACT I had the opportunity on Wednesday morning at the traditional Chamber of Commerce and Industry breakfast to speak at length about the implications of the budget for the ACT. I will not repeat that here. I just want to say that it is very good news for the ACT mainly because we are part of Australia and it is good news for Australia, but it does have some specific measures that I want to refer to. Everybody sees Canberra as a Public Service town, and of course the Public Service is very important and I am proud to represent all those people. Contrary to the expectation, this is a budget that has positive things to say about Public Service numbers.

But what is underestimated about the ACT, and particularly about my electorate of Fraser, is that it is a university city. A very significant driver of the economy of the ACT and the economy of the electorate of Fraser is tertiary education, science and research. This has been a fantastic budget for universities, long term and in the short term, and a great budget for science and research—long-term reforms of funding formulae that will transform the sector and capital injections.

I want to draw attention to two capital injections into the ANU. I did say at the breakfast I spoke at on Wednesday morning that I wanted an inquiry into my suspicion that my good friend the Vice-Chancellor of the ANU, Ian Chubb, had hacked into the Treasury computer and typed a couple of paragraphs in. Because it is such a good budget for the ANU, I thought he must have put in his private wish list.

There are two things that are of long-term significance to the nation, the university and the region. One is the establishment of an ANU chemical sciences hub. It is immediately valuable because of the $90 million injection, but in the long term it is going to create for the region and the nation a focal point for modern, 21st century chemical science expertise. It is going to create a centre of excellence of global significance.

The second thing is something I have been campaigning on for a long time—stage 3 of the John Curtin School of Medical Research. I have been talking to the leadership of the John Curtin school for more than a decade about the three stages of the transformation. I congratulate Professor Whitworth for the foresight and persistence she has had. When we started talking about it and she outlined the ambitious plans she had, I thought they were terrific but heroic. I was pessimistic about mobilising the resources, but in this budget we see stage 3 coming to fruition. It will have immediate employment consequences because the contract is ready to go. It will also be a great basis for modern medical research in Australia. The John Curtin school has produced Nobel prize winners and remarkable world-leading medical research. Stage 3 is a very exciting initiative for me and the region.

I briefly thank also the Minister for Health and Ageing for the ACT cancer centre initiative. That is something I have been talking about for a long time.

It might seem strange that the next thing I am going to talk about is of interest to my constituents, because it does not have any economic relevance to the ACT. As I go around parts of my electorate people consistently raise concerns about the future of the ABC, its long-term decline and funding for it to be able to participate in the increasingly competitive television market. In this budget there is $150 million over three years to enable the ABC to do a number of things, but I particularly want to focus on increasing the level of Australian drama content on the ABC. There is a similar $20 million increase for SBS.

This will transform the television industry. It will create enormous opportunities for Australian actors, writers, musicians and technical workers. It will increase significantly the volume of work for those people. Culturally I find that so rewarding and enhancing. I know that there will be people in Canberra, particularly, of course, the Friends of the ABC, who will be very excited about this initiative. I am delighted to welcome it. I congratulate the government on it.

In my remaining time I want to say a few things about the development assistance budget. I am not going to go through it chapter and verse. The parameters and framework of the development assistance budget are set out in great detail in what we call the blue book that is published with each budget. Standing here and reading that into the record will not add any information for anybody. I want to talk about some of the big-picture questions around it. Why is it as it is? If people want a description of how it stands, they should look at the blue book and read both the framework statement in the beginning and the detailed outline. I want to talk for a few minutes about why the development assistance budget looks like it does.

The fundamental driver is the commitment that we made in opposition, which we have honoured in good times and now in tough times, to regularly increase the aid budget to achieve 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015. That is not an easy commitment to maintain in a budget like this. I congratulate the Treasurer and the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the work they did to maintain that commitment. The budget shows us getting to 0.4 per cent by the end of the forward estimates period and being on track for our 0.5 per cent commitment.

People are entitled to say that 0.5 per cent does not meet the international standard—that we should be aiming for 0.7 per cent. In the long term that is our aspirational goal. But one of the realities of public life is that you cannot start from where you want to be; you have to start from where you are. And where we were was at 0.3 per cent. To get to 0.5 per cent by 2015 is going to be a major effort. The interesting thing in the data is that there is a little phrase in the budget papers that says that the 0.34 per cent level that we have achieved in this budget is the highest achieved since 1995-96. I would just ask people to think about that for a moment. That means that it is the highest since the last Labor budget of 1995-96. It has taken us two budgets to get back to where the Hawke-Keating government was. It has taken us two budgets to repair all that damage—and we have further to go. That is the first thing that defines the character of it: it is the 0.5 per cent commitment.

The second is it reflects the reason we made that commitment. There is a dual track. One is a humanitarian obligation to fight global poverty—and I am delighted to see the enthusiasm of so many young Australians to support that commitment—but parallel to that is just a clear-eyed recognition of Australia’s shared interest in a peaceful, prosperous region and globe. I am unashamed about saying that part of the reason we do this is our self-interest. To be able to do a thing which has a humanitarian purpose and outcome and unashamedly say, ‘I support it secondarily because it is in our national interest to live in a peaceful, prosperous globe,’ I do not apologise for. That is a legitimate reason to spend Australian taxpayers’ money.

There are a lot of particular initiatives in this budget that I could refer to, but they are outlined in detail in the budget papers. I want to mention two things. One very briefly, but I am proud of it, is in the framework statement at the beginning of the blue book, which is the outline by this government—by the foreign minister, by my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs and me—of why we are doing what we are doing. We talk about education as the flagship of this government’s development assistance. I am very committed to that. It is a priority that we will continue and pursue.

The other is the initiative about food—about agricultural development and food in developing countries. I just want to take a minute on this because there has been some criticism that we are spending money on helping people in Africa, the Pacific and Asia—but the criticism has been particularly with regard to Africa—to grow food at a time when it is difficult for our farmers in Australia. I want to confront that argument head-on. I am not the slightest bit defensive. When Australians see starving children on television, they are wonderfully generous people. The statistics show that they are almost the most generous people in the world in terms of their response in donations to international NGOs. If we are going to be generous in response to that crisis—and we are and we should be—surely it makes sense to try and stop them starving in the first place. That is what this is about. People can come up with very complex, convoluted arguments, but in the end you have got to distil it down to its essence. What we are trying to do is say, ‘Let’s not have appeals to feed starving children; let’s stop them starving.’ That does not seem like a bad principle to me.

If people think we should not be investing money in that, I am happy to have that debate in any forum, anytime, any day. It is in fact the case that the character of some of our investment in the agricultural research conducted by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research benefits Australian farmers as well, from research into production in semi-arid areas to fighting some of the diseases of crops and animals that occur in Africa and in Australia. I welcome that. That is a very good thing. But I am happy to just defend it straight on the basis that we are trying to contribute to stopping the children starving in the first place, because we have a long-term global food crisis.

Economic history tells us that this global economic crisis will pass. It is difficult; it is tough; and it is going to last longer than any of us would like, but like all economics crises it will pass. When it finishes, we will still have a global food crisis because the drivers of the imbalance between supply and demand will continue. I do not have time to talk about them but they will continue, and so the global food crisis will be with us when the global economic crisis passes. I want to see us focusing on that. I want to see us looking at the things that Australia can do as a great agricultural nation and as a great humanitarian nation and to combine our skills and resources to focus on agriculture.

Before I conclude I want to quote one statistic. In 2005-06, 16 per cent of the people of the Asia-Pacific region were hungry in terms of having consumption below the minimum dietary energy requirement of 1,800 calories per day set by the FAO. That percentage represents 542 million people going hungry in our region. With the increase in food prices as a result of the global food crisis in 2007, that figure increased to 582 million—another 40 million people were going hungry in our area. That is what we are trying to confront—and this issue is even more dramatic in other parts the world.

So I am proud to be associated with and to be contributing to the development assistance program. I am proud to work with the Australian people who are working inside AusAID, NGOs and international organisations and who are contributing as individuals and as part of the global movement in trying to fight poverty and to ease hunger in the world. We are trying to deal with the fact that we do not want to have to dig into our pockets to save starving children; we want to feed them, give them a chance for a decent future, an education and health system that enables them to make the full use of their talents.

I am proud to support the budget as a citizen looking at the macroeconomics of it and as a representative of this region because of the initiatives within it that will enable worthwhile things to be done, jobs to be created and future opportunities for our children here. I am also proud of the budget because of what it does for our culture and because of its development assistance approach, which creates a framework that I am proud to represent and that I think will stand Australia in good stead in our region and globally into the future. I support the bills.

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

It is with some degree of appropriateness that I follow the member for Canberra, the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, because he has encapsulated the core sets of values and overarching principles that motivate and activate our engagement with the global community in the struggle to provide an effective response to the millennium development challenges. More particularly in our region, he made reference to our self-interest because, with respect to the Pacific Island region, it is simply impossible to separate our interests as a neighbour, our strategic interests and our economic interests, with those that relate to international development assistance. In my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, I work very closely with the member for Canberra, and I put on record my appreciation of the very effective partnership that has evolved in that regard.

Because this particular forum will come to a close in about six minutes, I will use the opportunity I have today to address some of the more specific Australian issues, as well as some of my own electorate related issues, and return to the larger issues for which I have portfolio responsibilities, together with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, when I have the opportunity and parliament resumes after this coming break. I put on record now some general remarks about the budget context and the circumstances that confront me as a member of an electorate in the state of Tasmania and representing very proudly the people of its capital city, Hobart, as well as Glenorchy and now parts of Kingborough.

In the BBC program Yes, Prime Minister, the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister often confronts the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, with the proposition that something would be a courageous decision, and that is seen as code for a decision which is likely to create political controversy and to be resisted if the party in government is to not face some difficulties. But true courage in politics is actually about facing up to the realities that a community has to confront, doing things in anticipation of what is required and taking the necessary consequences that can be easily criticised. When this government made the decision in the teeth of the global economic crisis to make large expenditures to insulate, as best they could, Australia from the global recession and to play its part as a nation in a response that prevents what is a global recession becoming a global depression, that was truly a courageous decision. It was a courageous decision because it has been traduced consistently by the opposition, which is not willing to grapple with the huge complexities which the global community confronts, simply parroting phrases about debt.

You have to understand that when the world last faced consequences of the kind that it faced at the threshold of the great global recession that we have confronted, the world plunged into not a recession but a depression in the 1930s. This is the worst set of economic circumstances facing the globe since that time. At that time, leaders who did not have the benefit of the experience that we now have took measures that actually exacerbated the Great Depression. They retreated into isolation; they retreated into protectionism; they did not make large expenditure into infrastructure; they did not make the kind of spending commitments that the G20 has committed itself to; and as a result we faced a long and prolonged depression, with 20 per cent of people out of work in most of the developed world economies.

I do not pretend in any way to suggest that we are out of the woods in the difficulties facing Australia as a result of what is still a very deep global recession—those risks still remain—but we would have the best possible chance because this government took courageous decisions to inject funds into the community early and make infrastructure commitments that will have long-lasting benefit for all Australians in order to prevent that kind of consequence. We play our part both as a global participant in a larger set of decisions and domestically in a way which protects our community from the worst-case scenarios.

I look to my own electorate very briefly in the couple of minutes that remain. Since the Rudd government was elected, the seat of Denison has benefited from something approaching half a billion dollars. Of that I can identify $168 million in direct stimulus infrastructure funding in Denison alone to date. Some of the highlights include school upgrades—more than $7 million for much needed repairs and maintenance in 49 local schools. Ten of our primary schools have already been allocated $19 million to build new multipurpose halls and libraries, while the remaining local primary school upgrades will be announced in future rounds. Twenty-three new social houses, dealing with the very great scourge of homelessness, will be built locally and 36 dwellings are undergoing repairs and maintenance in our community. Three local councils, Hobart, Glenorchy and Kingborough, have received a total of $1.2 million to build local infrastructure.

Very large investments in our future in science have also been made. In research infrastructure, there is more than $52 million for the Integrated Marine Observing System hosted by the University of Tasmania; $45 million for the university’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies; and more than $44 million for stage 2 of the Menzies centre development. That is $168 million in direct stimulus infrastructure funding so far. In addition, the surrounding region has benefited from $164 million in federal government support for the Brighton bypass currently under construction and for the Kingston bypass. We are also getting large expenditure of $120 million for the replacement of the Southern Surveyor, the vessel that the CSIRO operates—making Hobart the centre of Antarctic and Southern Ocean science in Australia—with $29 million committed to Australia’s Marine National Facility to maintain the operations of the vessel pending its replacement. Small businesses and the all the community benefit—

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

I hate to interrupt the member, but it being 12.30—there is one final thing you want to put on the record?

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

I acknowledged before that this speech would have to be interrupted, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just want to say that I will return to those larger issues about Australia’s responsibilities in the Pacific, but I thought it was important to also put the contribution the budget has made to my own electorate and to acknowledge that on the record because they are such important expenditures in the interests of the people of Hobart and they have failed to be properly acknowledged.

Debate interrupted.