Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To continue my discussion from last evening on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and related bills, I would like to again alert the House to the fact that the changes the Minister for Health and Ageing is proposing and has deferred for nine months will have a marked and disproportionate impact on regional people. I was speaking last night about the Wagga Wagga community and how health and mental health services currently operate and would operate in most of the major communities across Australia. I have been advised that if you take away the Medicare rebate, the people in community mental health teams will not be able to refer the low-risk clients that I spoke about because they know that those clients will not be able to afford the treatment. Those clients will stay on the books of the community mental health teams but they will be put down as a low priority. The high-priority clients will always receive first preference and the low-priority clients will be put to the bottom of the pile. If the low-priority clients are not given appropriate care, then I think you can assume that many of them will turn into high-priority cases simply because they have not been accessing the appropriate treatment. This, of course, is a vicious circle. The budget paper says, on page 320:

From 1 July 2010, support for allied health workers, such as occupational therapists and social workers, will transfer from the Better Access initiative to the new ATAPS service stream. The new arrangements will provide a more flexible funding pool for care packages, and increase the role of allied health workers in the provision of new care packages for people with severe—

I repeat, severe—

mental illness.

This is where the problem lies. The budget paper goes on to say:

Patients receiving treatment from these providers as at 1 July 2010, will be eligible to complete that course of treatment under ‘no disadvantage’ arrangements.

It talks about using the workforce to ‘support individuals with severe mental illness’, who it says ‘often receive inadequate or fragmented care’. But the early intervention service that had been used for this has obviously been shelved. So those who could benefit greatly from early intervention will certainly now just be part of the new statistics of mental health.

The point is that this will disadvantage rural areas because we have minimal clinical and registered psychologists. People rely on the social workers for the early intervention services. But it appears that, with the changes that the minister has made, the social workers will now be relied on for the acute treatment. This is a difficult and major problem that is confronting us in regional Australia.

I am going to refer to some comments that I have received out of my electorate on this. I will quote from an email without naming the sender, but it is a local provider of service. The provider of the service says:

This is in relation to the proposed cuts to the Better Access to Mental Health Services Medicare rebates.

As of 1 July 2010, Medicare rebates for new clients accessing accredited mental health workers with social work qualifications (and occupational therapy qualifications) will cease. This will severely restrict people’s access to mental health counsellors—particularly rural and regional people. Please could you advocate for current levels of Medicare support to be retained in the interests of all people but particularly for those outside of metropolitan areas? Social workers, as opposed to psychologists, are much more likely to be based in regional/rural areas and your local university is a major player in the education of social workers in Australia as we have one of the largest and most respected social work degrees. Social workers provide high quality, holistic and effective mental health services and it is not sensible to restrict clients access to high quality professionals.

The next letter, again from a person in my local community, says:

As a Social Worker in Wagga Wagga, I ask you consider in the budget estimates the point of retaining the funding of Mental Health Social Workers and Occupational Therapists under the Medicare Better Access scheme as it stands as of today.

Better Access was designed as an early intervention measure to avoid the high ongoing and cyclical cost of mental illness as it worsens. Mental illness also affects family and friends of the individual sufferer and this creates a snowball effect of service provision (e.g. GP, emergency departments, counselling, Centrelink, welfare, education, legal—family law—etc). Under the scheme, people were encouraged to seek help for mental health issues if they were in the early-mid stages of the illness, or if they didn’t fit the current mental health system, if they were not able to access the mental health system due to distance or for financial reasons.

This system was also intended to stop people ending up in hospitals and GP’s and thus draining resources that did not necessarily fix them. Thus, we had persons being provided with inappropriate and inconsistent services. This was also a ‘market driven’ approach in many respects because people sought help when needed and private social workers only got paid upon use of service. This was designed to be targeted and flexible but most importantly early.

I think that is the clear issue here: the early intervention that is required. The letter goes on:

Mental Health social workers undergo a rigorous screening process to ensure that they are able to provide mental health services. It is not a system by which poorly trained people can make lots of money by rorting the system—far from it. Many of the social workers in practice have taken income cuts to practice privately, don’t charge gaps and have many years of clinical experience.

It is painfully clear Nicola Roxon has missed the point when she says: “we must deliver these monies to services for the severely ill” and her way of doing this is to remove social workers out of the early intervention model and put them in situations where they manage severely ill peoples cases.

This does not make sense economically as these people use many resources before they are considered “severely ill” and then become in the revolving door of crisis driven mental health care. It makes sense to retain well trained, private providers who are providing market driven early intervention services to avoid the devastation that occurs when people do become severely mentally ill.

With this in mind I ask you to say no to the proposed changes that will become effective in April 2011, and that you vote in favour of Mental Health Social Workers and Occupational Therapists under the Medicare Better Access scheme as it stands as of today.

That is a cry from providers, but there will also be a cry from the people.

I would like to raise another issue that was in the budget: the cut of $4.5 million overall from the counselling services provided within family relationship centres. Family relationship centres provide family counselling to assist people to resolve their family relationship issues. Sometimes this keeps families together. This service prevents family breakdown and reduces family conflicts, particularly where couples go on to separation. It also helps families to adjust to separation with their children and it does it in the most sensible way to try to give the best outcome for the children of Australia. To cut $4.5 million from this essential program represents a lack of understanding of what is provided and what is required to support families through the trauma of partnership breakdown and to support the children who are the casualties of partnership breakdown. But this is like Tim Shaw: there is more; there is a set of steak knives as well. Not only is there a cut of $4.5 million from this essential program but, in briefings that the sector had with the Attorney-General’s Department, they found out that future cuts of more than $40 million in the next year are flagged. But these cuts do not appear in the 2010 federal budget papers.

I am really concerned that there is a clear lack of understanding of how family relationship centres help deliver better outcomes for the children of Australia. Before they were available in rural and regional Australia we had to contend with many different systems. That leads me to the next problem we have, and that is the Attorney-General’s determination to remove family law from the Federal Magistrates Court. When the former coalition government introduced the Federal Magistrates Court, we were receiving no Family Court circuits in regional Australia—maybe we had one here and one there, but they were very few and far between. For regional Australia it was a most costly process to try and resolve your partnership breakdown issues. We introduced the Federal Magistrates Court, which has been a roaring and raging success. It has 33 regional lists in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania.

What you get in the Federal Magistrates Court that you do not get in the Family Court is that, once you have commenced with a judicial officer, you usually stay with that one officer until the finish. What we have is a user friendly, less adversarial and less legalistic process for families. The protocol of the Family Magistrates Court to deal with family law is a trial within six months and judgment within three months of trial. We have over 86 per cent of our family law cases being resolved within six months of filing. People get access outside court circuit time for recovery orders, injunctions and urgent relocation orders, and there is a customised service to deal with the various issues that arise as a result of partnership breakdown.

The FMC currently does more than 80 per cent of the work of family law. Here we have a very successful process with the ability for regional people to access it. It is much less adversarial and it is much less costly. But this is what the Attorney-General has decided will happen: he will allow the Family Magistrates Court to be retained but he will remove all family law from the Magistrates Court and put it into a Family Court structure. It will be a single court that will deal with all the family law matters. He will have a restructured Family Court, which will have two divisions. There will be a superior division, which will hear all the complex cases, which are about five per cent of cases. They will get 90 per cent of the funding to do about five per cent of the cases—the Family Court is currently the most expensive court. There will also be a general division, which will hear the other 95 per cent of cases—the high volume, less complex family law and child support cases.

The Attorney-General is saying that the federal magistrates who are currently in the Federal Magistrates Court would perhaps come across and do some of this and accept commissions. I say to you that is not what the federal magistrates want. They do not want to come across to the Family Court system; they do not want to come under the administration of the Family Court. We should not have a Federal Magistrates Court just left there to get dual commissions with the Federal Court and the military court—because we will have a military court established now in accordance with chapter III of the Constitution.

Now, this is a travesty. This is devastating for regional families. This is devastating for people who can currently resolve their issues without costly battles. This is devastating for the children of those families who will go on to partnership breakdowns, because they will be stuck in a revolving system that will see mums and dads fighting each other in court for three and four years before decisions are made.

Seriously, when the Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs of which I was chair did the child custody report Every picture tells a story, where we ended up with a bipartisan report, we agreed that the Family Court should be disbanded. The Family Court should be gone. The Family Court is an indictment of the people of Australia. The Family Court does not offer sensible solutions for the Australian children who find themselves caught up in a mess not of their making.

I would urge the Attorney-General to seriously reconsider this. It is the Federal Magistrates Court that should be hearing the family law cases. You should turn it into a district court that enables regional Australia to have access to the most appropriate resolution of partnership breakdowns that will see the least damage done to the children of today and the children of the future. Thank you.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and cognate bills. This budget is a responsible budget which will see us back in surplus in three years time—that is three years early. This is also a budget that further strengthens our economy. It helps families and small businesses and it certainly helps to strengthen the economy. In my electorate of Hindmarsh, it helps the families of Hindmarsh and it helps the small businesses in the electorate of Hindmarsh and all of Australia. It also makes the tax system fairer and simpler and it continues to provide the much-needed health and hospital reforms. It invests in skills training and infrastructure, areas that we saw neglected before this government came in. It invests in a Renewable Energy Future Fund to help tackle climate change. It provides more money to protect our troops and borders, all the while delivering a return to surplus three years ahead of schedule.

This budget carries on much of the vital work begun previously when Australia was going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and which, without early and decisive action by the Rudd Labor government, would have cost many of my constituents in Hindmarsh their jobs. Only the other day I was at the opening of the Glandore Community Centre’s training facility—they were lucky to receive some funding from the Rudd Labor government—and I happened to speak to the builders and the project managers who were there. They were saying how grateful they were for the infrastructure projects which ensured that they took on more employees over the last 18 months. They explained the position they would be in if we had not injected money into the economy, compared to where they are today. They were very grateful that they had been able to continue to win contracts, continue to work and put people into work.

If we look at what was facing us 18 months ago, we would have seen unemployment surge with close to an extra 200,000 jobs lost. In my electorate I have the AAMI Stadium—Football Park—which holds 50,000 people, and I told my constituents that it would have been the AAMI Stadium filled four times with unemployed people. You could see the devastation that would have caused around Australia, the families that would have been hurting, and where we would have been today. But the opposition of course opposed it and continues to oppose it.

There is a stark contrast between our responsible budget and the risky policies of the opposition. Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey opposed, as I said, our actions to support jobs during the global financial crisis and now they will oppose our actions to keep government finances strong. The opposition talks tough about government spending but their blocking of our measures would only make the deficit worse. Despite this display, the Rudd Labor government continues to exercise its fiscal responsibility wisely with high regard for the wellbeing of our whole nation, not just the top end of town and mining companies.

This budget contains a raft of measures which will make Australia more competitive on the world stage and which will provide Australia with a strong foundation on which to grow and prosper over many years. This budget will boost rail productivity, support the growth of responsible aviation, improve safety standards within the region and continue the overhaul of transport regulations including the implementation of an aircraft noise ombudsman, something for which I have been campaigning for a very long time and on which I presented two private member’s bills to this House while in opposition. I am very glad that the minister has seen them having value and has now endorsed them as policy.

In the electorate of Hindmarsh there are many projects which the Rudd Labor government has delivered on since the last budget, and I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of those projects. I would like to ask the opposition: which of these projects will they cut or not go ahead with if they are elected to government? These are the questions that my constituents are asking.

For example, there is the King Street Bridge in my electorate, perhaps one of the most important election commitments which I am very proud to have delivered on. The King Street Bridge is a vital link for the traffic route that parallels Tapleys Hill Road, passing through West Lakes, Grange, Henley Beach, West Beach, along Adelaide’s coastline west of Adelaide airport, connecting the arterial roads and suburbs to the south. The King Street Bridge is a significant piece of infrastructure not only for the people of Glenelg but also for the many thousands of people in South Australia who visit the area. The bridge has been in worsening condition for some time. It has been closed and there have been weight limits imposed on traffic, which have affected the movement of public transport. Last year we also saw buses being stopped from going over the bridge because it was so dangerous. This has of course caused a substantial degree of distress among many local residents of Glenelg and Glenelg North who rely on the bridge to connect them not only to most areas in their own suburb but to the local community, to shopping, transport facilities and other services.

Local residents led by John and Peter Bijok and many other locals in the area campaigned strongly on the need for the bridge and to get the funding it needs to remain open. I recall writing many letters to the former minister for transport asking what funding was available and whether they could please take it into their hearts to feel for the people who live on this peninsula who, without the bridge, would not be able to cross and do their shopping and who would have to divert miles to get to the main centre of Glenelg. Yet it fell on deaf ears continuously whilst we were in opposition and the other lot were in government.

The Rudd government, I am pleased to say, is providing $1.5 million towards this $3 million project to replace the bridge, with the local council providing a matching $1.5 million through the Roads to Recovery program. Today we hear that the opposition, if elected, would look at all the projects including under Roads to Recovery, and I would like to ask: will they prevent the King Street Bridge from being built if they win government? That is a really serious question that needs to be answered. As I said, the $1.5 million in funding will be provided to the City of Holdfast Bay through the Rudd Labor government’s Roads to Recovery program. In 2010-11 in fact, $11.2 million was provided to councils in my electorate of Hindmarsh for Roads to Recovery projects, which has easily eclipsed the $9.9 million spent from 2005-06 to 2008-09. I think that the residents of Hindmarsh deserve to know what the opposition will do if they come to government and whether these projects will be cut.

Another project in my electorate has been the Glenelg to Adelaide Parklands pipeline. South Australians have been desperate for improvements in the coastal waters of Gulf St Vincent, in the diversity of the supply of fresh water to metropolitan Adelaide and in the supply of fresh water to the ecological jewels of the Murray River and adjacent wetlands for a long time—not just for the last couple of years but for many years. This summer we have seen fairly good progress in and around my electorate of Hindmarsh, which we have not seen for many years. I had the pleasure of attending the turning of the tap with the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, Penny Wong, in Adelaide in early January. We opened the Glenelg Waste Water Treatment Plant and turned on the tap to the Adelaide Parklands pipeline. It was funded to the tune of $30 million by the Rudd Labor government, which was matched by the state government.

This will supply billions of litres of recycled water for use between the bay at Glenelg in my electorate and the city. Along the way it will feed water to many of the parks, schools and ovals, including Richmond Oval, which is the great ground of the famous West Adelaide Football Club in my electorate. It will feed off into other areas as well. This is another project I wrote to the former government about many times, asking and pleading with them to look into it and fund it. Again, it fell on deaf ears. It took the Rudd Labor government to fund it, and we have now seen it come to fruition.

Living on the coast, you become acutely aware of both the diversity and importance of our marine life. The Star of the Sea Marine Discovery Centre is an important teaching and learning facility where students can get up close to look at our marine life and learn about ecosystems and the importance of protecting our environment. The last budget delivered $10,000 of additional funding on top of $287,000 which was provided in 2007-08. This enabled the Marine Discovery Centre to upgrade its facilities, which were officially opened just a few months ago by the minister for climate change, Penny Wong, and me.

It was fantastic to see the kids at the school and the joy on their faces. They had clearly put so much effort into the opening and they were so proud of the Marine Discovery Centre. They were dressed in marine creature costumes and they put on a fantastic live performance for the crowd. The Marine Discovery Centre will allow groups of visitors and children from other schools to experience the wonder of our native marine life in the electorate of Hindmarsh and to learn about the importance of protecting our oceans and the marine environment.

The Marine Discovery Centre is situated in one of my local schools, the Star of the Sea School. On top of this funding they have also received $200,000 from the National School Pride Program, under Building the Education Revolution, for refurbishments, a shade structure, an upgraded playground and outdoor areas. Also, they received $3 million from the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program under the Building the Education Revolution program to construct a new library and resource centre. This has commenced and will be completed very soon. On the day I was there I spoke to the parents, the teachers and the principal, and they were all looking forward to these new facilities and the resource centre that they never had before.

The lighting at Richmond Oval is something else that I am very proud of. You may have heard me mention the West Adelaide Football Club earlier. As the No. 1 ticket holder of the West Adelaide Football Club it was a privilege to be able to deliver $92,000 in funding under the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program for the installation of lights at Richmond Oval. I was very proud to attend the very first game under lights just recently at the club—which we won against Norwood. Now we have the ability to host more SANFL games and to see some night football, which makes it more accessible for families who want to attend a footy match on a Friday or Saturday night. I also have the Glenelg Football Club in my electorate at the Glenelg Oval. They also received $70,000 under the program for the upgrade of a stone wall surrounding the oval.

In just over a year, the Rudd Labor government’s Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program has delivered $1 billion to build and renew community facilities across Australia, making it the largest single investment in local infrastructure in this nation’s history. Most importantly, it has created thousands of jobs around the country that kept the economy going and ensured that we did not go into recession.

There are other projects. For example, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing, which I chair, recently conducted an inquiry into obesity. I see that the member for Parkes is here. He was part of our group at the time. One of the most interesting things we discovered is that people are getting bigger because our cities are being designed around cars and not around walkers or bicycle riders et cetera. The government has recognised the importance of both physical activity and sustainable transport and has, in this budget, provided my electorate with $169,000 in new funding for the development of new bike pathways in Hindmarsh, including on Grange Road, Henley Beach Road, Holbrooks Road, Richmond Road, Diagonal Road and Marion Road. This is in addition to funding previously provided by the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, which has already delivered $94,000 for construction of a dual use cyclist and pedestrian pathway in West Lakes.

I spoke briefly about the Building the Education Revolution. Of all the initiatives of the Rudd Labor government’s Nation Building Program, the Building The Education Revolution is the one on which, as I said earlier, teachers, parents, students and principals in Hindmarsh continually congratulate me and the government. Hindmarsh has 112 different projects being funded at a total cost of $80 million as of 11 May 2010. I will mention just some of them here. These are schools that did not previously have any infrastructure that now have infrastructure that was much sought after, that they needed and wanted.

Many of the schools in my electorate held their assemblies in the school quadrangle. They desperately needed this infrastructure. For example, Ascot Park Primary School obtained funding of $125,000 for refurbishment of buildings. That project has been completed. The same school, Ascot Park Primary School, obtained funding of $1.7 million for construction of a new multipurpose hall. That project has commenced. Here is a school which has a large population of close to 800 or 900 students. It is one of the largest schools in the electorate and it had nowhere to have its assemblies. It had a small area where the staff and students would meet for school assemblies, many of which I attended. The assemblies were very crowded and, when the school wanted to put on special days and invite guests, it got extremely crowded. This is something that Ascot Park Primary School desperately needed and I am pleased that it has received the $1.7 million for the construction of the new multipurpose hall. I believe that will be completed soon.

Community and neighbourhood houses and centres in my electorate received funding for a teaching and learning capital fund and for vocational education and training. As I mentioned earlier, I recently attended the Glandore Community Centre, which received $249,845 to enable it to train and educate people so they can gain the skills they need for employment. It was very interesting, as I said, to speak to the builders who completed this project. They were telling me where they were two years ago and where they are today and how they had had to take on extra staff, extra builders, extra bricklayers et cetera because of the projects they had won in and around the electorate of Hindmarsh.

Cowandilla Primary School, the school that I attended many years ago, was successful in gaining $150,000 for refurbishment and building an ICT facility, a shade structure, fencing et cetera and $630,000 for the construction of a new outdoor learning area. It also got $1.8 million for a multipurpose hall through Primary Schools for the 21st Century, part of Building the Education Revolution. Here is another school, an inner western suburbs school in Adelaide with a huge migrant population and special English learning facilities for kids et cetera, that did not have enough room to have its assemblies. It did not have the room to invite parents and have special days. Now it will have the infrastructure in place to be able to do all of that.

Forbes Primary School is another area where $1.5 million was spent on refurbishment of classrooms and construction of a covered outdoor learning area. I can go on and on about the projects in my electorate. We have listed them and there are many. We think of the jobs that were created and then think of the unemployment if we had not gone through with these projects. Of course the schools have gained infrastructure and buildings that will be used well into the future. They will be used well after we are gone and well after most of the people in this place are gone. There will be proper facilities and children will feel absolutely proud about those learning facilities.

Small business tax breaks is another area that I am very proud to speak about. There are no less than 5,340 small businesses in Hindmarsh, many of which are family operations running through several generations. This budget delivers tax cuts to them which will help them compete with larger stores that have the advantage of national distribution networks and enormous marketing budgets. Sole traders, partnerships and incorporated small businesses will be able to instantly deduct the cost of assets valued at up to $5,000. They will also benefit from a reduction in the company tax rate from 30 per cent to 28 per cent from 1 July 2012.

Another area I am very proud of is pension reform. Being the member for an electorate with one of the highest number of people aged over 65 years in Australia—over 20 per cent of my constituents—I have been advocating long and hard for an improvement to the income for pensioners. I know that living on a single age pension is very, very tough. How do I know this? Because my constituents have been telling me this at street corner meetings, at forums, at shopping centres and when I am out and about. They also tell me this at functions and at meetings in my office. They have not been telling me this just since Labor have been in government, they have been telling me this for a long time, way before we were in government. This is not something which has just happened. It has been around for a long time.

I was extremely proud last year when the budget delivered a meaningful increase for the pensioners; the biggest reforms to the pension since it was introduced 100 years ago. All 3.3 million age pensioners, disability pensioners, carers, wife pensioners and veteran income support recipients benefited from these increases in their pension payments. The increase brought the single rate of pension up to two-thirds of the combined couple rate. (Time expired)

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Emerging Trade Markets) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and related bills, following my good friend the member for Hindmarsh, sometimes I think that in this place we wander in parallel universes and only clash when we meet in these halls. The member for Hindmarsh spoke about the wonderful largesse and infrastructure in his electorate, and I think there is a technical term for it—it is known as pork-barrelling. It is important for the member for Hindmarsh and others on the other side of the chamber to know that the funding for this infrastructure came from the folding of the Roads to Recovery fund. Any telecommunications funding came from the folding of the rural telecommunications fund and from the growing regions fund of which over 90 per cent was spent in Labor electorates funding election promises.

Before I get onto what I really want to speak about I think it is important that we acknowledge the massive amount of pork-barrelling that has gone on by this government. It is unprecedented in the history of the Australian parliament. This budget has confirmed what many Australians already suspected—that this government is the most hapless and maladministered since the days of Gough Whitlam, and it is quickly surpassing Gough I would suspect. Its leader Kevin Rudd no longer stands for anything.

The last budget was a big-spending budget to counter the recession we never had. This one is even bigger. This one is an even bigger spending budget, fuelled by taxes on cigarettes and mining. Labor failed to control their spending after the global financial crisis and, as a result, we are now borrowing $100 million a day to fund their reckless spending. While Labor members have been speaking about the wonderful benefits of the stimulus spending in their electorates, it is important to note that in years to come their children and grandchildren will be paying off the debt from the spending spree that was instigated by one quarter of negative growth. That is important. When the member for Solomon is sitting back on the veranda overlooking the crocs gliding into the sunset, or whatever they do in Darwin, his grandchild will ask, ‘Grandad, how come we haven’t got that new road out the front?’ He will say, ‘It’s all about the debt. When we pay off the debt, we will get that road fixed.’ That is the reality of what has happened.

In the response to the stimulus spending, probably the first disastrous message that came through—certainly in my office—was about the Home Insulation Program. I wrote to Minister Garrett in July or August last year when I first started getting representations from people in my electorate about it. The sad reality is that the people who were stung by the Home Insulation Program, to a large degree, were the elderly. They were the ones who were a target for the shonks who hit this business. They did not have the ability to get up into their roof spaces and thoroughly inspect the insulation. Quite often I would be made aware of a problem because a visiting family member or neighbour would get up there and find that less than a quarter of the space had been filled or, worse, recycled paper products had been sprayed over exhaust fans and downlights, creating a huge problem. We have seen this across Australia. Unfortunately, we have had some deaths, house fires and massive rorting. This scheme was not managed. It was money shovelled out the door and it preyed on the very base nature of some people who took advantage of this. And, because of the lack of guidelines, it cost billions of dollars. It is a textbook example of what not to do and how not to run a government program.

However, I do not think the worst example is the Home Insulation Program. It definitely has to be the Building the Education Revolution. I will say on record here that I am not opposed to infrastructure spending in schools. If you go back to my maiden speech you will find that I said that education is the one gift that we can give people not only in Australia but across the world that will remedy a whole range of problems. Education will help remedy poverty, ignorance, conflict and create harmony amongst communities. Education empowers people to take control of their lives and it empowers people who are disadvantaged to know that they are being exploited. Education is the one thing we can give them. We do need to have appropriate infrastructure for this to take place.

My problem with this program, once again, is how it was managed. This government seems to have the idea that everything has to be managed centrally. I was not here during the last government but I was a mayor in a local shire and I saw the great work that was done with the Investing in our Schools Program where a little bit of money coupled with a bit of local knowledge and elbow grease from the local P&C meant they cobbled together from all sorts of things really great value-for-money pieces of infrastructure that they wanted, that they fought for and that they delivered to their local schools for a fraction of the money spent under this BER.

The first alarm bells that sounded for me in my electorate were when the first announcement came of the $1.7 billion overspend. I had been hearing rumours that things were not going very well, but there was intimidation of local school principles. It was made blatantly clear that if they spoke out against this program their jobs were in danger and any chance of advancement through the system would come to a halt. What was the first—in fact, only—running back of this scheme that Minister Gillard did? She cancelled the infrastructure for the central schools. Twenty-three central schools in my electorate had their projects removed. Collarenebri Central School has an Indigenous school population of 87 per cent. It is identified as the third-most disadvantaged school in New South Wales. They have a demountable that is 34 years old for a science lab. It leaks. It is out of date. They had the pegs in the ground for their new science lab. They were very excited to be getting it. Guess what. They came out and pulled the pegs out, saying: ‘Sorry, we’ve had an overspend of 1.7. We’re having cutbacks.’

The large schools in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth are still getting their multipurpose centres, their concert halls, their heated swimming pools or whatever, but Collarenebri, Galagenbone and Binnaway are not getting their science labs. Those were the first alarm bells. But then we started to get reports of what schools were being told they had to have that they did not really want. I went to a wonderful school with three students the other day. They have a whole new classroom. They moved into the new classroom and the other one is a storeroom. Is that a great use of money? But the real heart of this is that the buildings that came on the back of a truck and that with the greatest stretch of imagination may have cost $150,000 were charged out at $300,000 or $400,000. A COLA that would be identical to one the school fundraised for three years ago for $70,000 would then be delivered for $250,000. That is what has people upset. The minister does not seem to realise as she grins and nods, saying, ‘The schools I talked to are happy because they are getting infrastructure.’ Of course they are happy they are getting infrastructure. What they are not happy about is the waste of money.

I do not want to sound like Tim the Tool Man or the Demtel ad, but it gets worse. Several weeks ago I had a phone call from a contractor in Dubbo: Jarrod Kennedy. Jarrod Kennedy, by way of explanation, is a young chap—I am not sure of his age, but he would be in his mid-to-late 30s. Jarrod started his own business, Jarrod Kennedy Welding, with his wife Sandra 15 years ago. He has now built up to where he employs 15 people in Dubbo. He took a contract under the BER program to manufacture and erect the steel frame for a COLA over a playground at a little school called Marra Creek Public School. He also undertook to construct and erect the steelwork for a covered walkway at another little school in my electorate called Corinda State School. Due to a local construction firm in Dubbo going broke—I blame the minister and her department for not having proper scrutiny over the contractors who were allowed to do this program—Jarrod Kennedy was told that he was not going to get paid. So on a Sunday afternoon he took six of his staff and a crane, went out to the school and demolished it. He pulled it down, pulled it apart, put it on the back of a semitrailer and brought it home. He was owed $30,000 for the job at Marra Creek. For the one at Corinda he was also owed $30,000. So here is this young fellow having a go. He is what I presume the Prime Minister at the last election would have called a ‘working Australian’. He is owed $60,000.

Contractors around Dubbo are collectively owed $1.7 million, and the minister is washing her hands of this. Chris McMaster, who owns a farm supplies business in the town of Coolah, supplied $20,000 to the foundations of the classroom at Coolah. He is also showing no signs of getting his money. I understand that some of these contractors have debts of up to $140,000. They are facing severe financial hardship and in some cases bankruptcy. The minister is wiping her hands of this, and grins across the chamber. The people in my electorate who are watching what goes on in this place are seething.

But, in the words of the tool man, there is more. Tottenham school has a wonderful canteen. The canteen at Tottenham is a little old, but it is large and functional. It has a large, fully enclosed veranda so that in hot weather and on the rare occasions that it rains at Tottenham the kids have got somewhere to have their lunch. But the BER program decided they needed a new tuckshop. They constructed an eight-metre by three-metre canteen, which is the size of the average dog kennel that most people have in their backyard. There is no room for a pie warmer and no room for the freezers or the fridge—$610,000. If you want to see what this looks like, on the front lawn of this place tomorrow morning at nine o’clock they will be erecting a replica frame that is the same size as the tuckshop at Tottenham that cost $610,000.

The minister cannot understand what the problem is, but it gets worse. Exactly the same canteen that was built at Tottenham was put in the village of Toomelah. For those of you who do not know, Toomelah is an Aboriginal community on the Queensland border in the northern part of my electorate. In June this year, this government removed the CDEP program. So the only form of employment in the village of Toomelah was removed. The only chance of any dignity that these people had, of having some sort of purposeful working life, was removed. What did they get in response? The same eight-metre by three-metre tuckshop, but by the time it got to Toomelah it was valued $650,000. The elders at Toomelah tell me that that amount of money would have created an employment program for 10 people for a year. They have got a tuckshop that they will probably never use for $650,000. Since June, the elders at Toomelah tell me that there have been more than nine suicide attempts. The level of incarceration has increased. On my numerous visits to Toomelah there has just been a feeling of despair, but my representations to this government have fallen on deaf ears.

This government seems to focus on central control. What has made this country great in the past is giving people control of their own communities. I suspect the best value for money from the whole stimulus program was gained from the money that went to local government for community infrastructure. There was real value for money for the local community. I suggest to the government that, if they had given the management of the Home Insulation Program or even the BER to local government, maybe there would have been value for money and we could have got the same level of stimulus for a fraction of the money.

When a community feels that they have control of their destiny and they are confident about their future, they can actually plan for the future and grow and prosper. What has not been addressed in this budget are real and meaningful pieces of nation-building infrastructure. We talk about population and we now have a minister who is so disinterested in agriculture that they have given him another portfolio in charge of population. But the focus is all about managing the population in the cities. What would it have done to the economy of western New South Wales if just the wastage of the BER had gone to construct a freeway over the Blue Mountains to relieve the pressure from Western Sydney and to grow central western New South Wales?

What if the money wasted on the home insulation had been used to build a railway line from Melbourne to Brisbane? We would have a ‘steel Mississippi’ running down the east coast of Australia and ultimately on to Gladstone, Darwin and Perth. We would be able to build the economies of regional Australia. If we are looking at growing our population, we could put people where they can create decent lives for themselves and contribute to the economy. They could become members of small, vibrant communities and help them to grow. Where is the vision for that?

Where is the vision that would return the control of health to local communities? Where has that gone? We have a plan now that looks like building a federal bureaucracy for health to oversee the state bureaucracies for health—and somewhere down the line a patient might get some of the dollars. Where is the vision that would mean an Aboriginal girl of 17 or 18 years of age living in Bourke would not have to travel five hours to have her baby in Dubbo because there is a lack of midwives? Where is the vision to overcome that?

The frustrating thing about this budget is not so much what it has done as what it has not done. We have a responsibility in this place to empower our constituents to have enough confidence in the future that they will actually get up and do things for themselves. In the last six months, the government has reinforced the stereotype of useless government. In the last six months, the Australian people’s confidence that they will have a government that will look after them, nurture them, encourage them and give them an opportunity to do something for themselves has been lost. That is the real tragedy of what we are seeing here now. While the argy-bargy of question time in this place might be a nice piece of theatre, the people out in my electorate are telling me that they are disgusted with this government for squandering their resources and for not having enough trust in them to manage their own future. They want all of us down here to just get on with the job. So this budget was expected but it is extremely disappointing.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and related bills. The Member of Parkes is a man I have a lot of respect for—because he has been able to drop weight quicker than I have!—and I certainly value his contribution. I agree with him on education but I think we have once again seen a member of the opposition miss an opportunity to talk their electorate up instead of talking it down. Unfortunately, I think we will have a standard type of speech from those opposite for the rest of the year. They will get in the party room and pick out all the bad things. But we have a standard speech in which we talk about the positives, and I am pretty happy to be able to talk about the positives to the good people of Solomon. I have been around and visited probably 25 schools and I have a heap of testimonials that the BER money has been very good. I acknowledge the contribution that the small business community has made. In particular, the builders have been fantastic in what they have delivered for our schools. We even had a father of a student at the Larrakeyah Primary School who is an architect and he did all the drawings for nothing to make sure that the school could stretch their money further. We have had some really good stories.

The member for Parkes also touched on the Indigenous community in his electorate. I am sure that Minister Macklin and Minister Snowdon would be more than happy to discuss those types of issues. The member mentioned suicide and dysfunction. I would encourage him to make contact immediately with the offices of those two ministers and I am sure that they will be more than happy to talk to him.

As a former mayor, the member for Parkes must be absolutely gutted about the position of the Leader of the Opposition on the community infrastructure program. That program has been fantastic in delivering federal money down to the community infrastructure level, basically through working with councils. The member for Parkes would have appreciated in the last 2½ years, as lord mayors in my electorate have, the infrastructure money that has come into communities. He is absolutely right—often we can bypass the state and territory level of bureaucracy and put the money into the community at the grassroots level, at the council level. I know my mayors have been very receptive to being able to get that extra funding. However, I will be pointing out to my mayors in the next three to four months that the sort of money they have received in the past would certainly be under threat from the opposition, should it become the government. There have been significant amounts of money, up around $8 million, for things like streetscapes, bicycle paths, revitalisation of the CBD area of Darwin and Palmerston and for Litchfield Shire Council roads. Councils have benefited for all sorts of stuff under this government and that is all under threat. I know that the member for Parkes would be very disappointed, in his former roles as a mayor and councillor, at that loss.

That brings me to update the House on some of the great stuff we were given in my electorate from the budget last year and that is now on track. I was happy to open the first stage of Tiger Brennan Drive on Saturday, so that is up and going. That is a $74 million commitment from the Commonwealth to end the blame game between the Territory government and the former Howard government about who was going to fund that project. It is now heading in the right direction. The two bridges will be completed by the end of July, and by November we will have a fantastic road that not only relieves the morning peak hour but lets families get home more quickly to their loved ones during the afternoon. It gives a seamless passage from the rural area into the port facilities, and that is all heading nicely in the right direction.

The GP superclinic that was long overdue in Palmerston is all but finished. It is being fitted out and by the end of July will be operational. The cancer care unit that Territorians have waited for for 10 years is now operational, fully staffed and working. People in the Territory are able to stay in the Territory and get cancer treatment and not have to travel interstate. I had the great pleasure of opening it with the Prime Minister. There have been a lot of other projects, as I alluded to, with the city council. We also have a number of defence projects, including major work that has been approved at Robertson Barracks. The member for Groom, who has just entered the chamber, was with me when we approved works for Robertson Barracks, the RAAF base and Tindal. They are all major pieces of infrastructure that we got out of the last budget.

Before I go on to talk about the budget this year, can I say it surprises me when the opposition talks about how poorly the economy is doing and talks about debt and deficit. When you look at what has happened around the world, our fiscal position is the envy of the rest of the world. I have graphs here that show that. One graph shows that our debt compared to GDP is the lowest. When you look at the net debt overall, this graph shows that ours is dramatically lower than that of any other country in the world. And of course our unemployment figures are the envy of the rest of the world. When you look at the figures and how we have come through the global financial crisis, Australia should be very proud of where we are placed. Obviously, as a result of our Treasury working with the government and with the Reserve Bank, we have been able to guide ourselves through a very turbulent time. We came into government with a lot of expectation placed on us and in October 2008 the global financial crisis hit. Other countries sat and waited. We moved quickly and, consequently, we have got through the global financial crisis in better condition than everyone else. When you look at what is happening in southern Europe, that is certainly the case.

We have also moved on in the last couple of weeks in the debate regarding the resource super profits tax. I will briefly touch on that because in my electorate of Solomon and in regional areas right around Australia and as the member for Parkes alluded to, regional Australia is crying out for infrastructure. I am very nervous about the fact that the mining companies are running a big scare campaign against the government and it will be regional and remote parts of Australia that will suffer. It will be us that will suffer if the tax does not go through because we have waited so long. The Tiger Brennan Drive extension, for instance, cost only $74 million and it waited 10 years. An oncology unit waited 10 years. The GP superclinic and the toing and froing between health services in Palmerston went on for eight or nine years.

I worry for the people in my electorate of Solomon because we contribute a fair bit through uranium mining by ERA and the mines that Xstrata have got down in the Borroloola area. We contribute a fair bit to this economy and yet we have not benefited one bit from it in terms of infrastructure. We have a port that needs about $300 million spent on it; we have an airport that needs to be upgraded. We have been able to give schools much needed infrastructure through the stimulus packages.

But I am really worried that should we be removed from office, it is already being made very clear by the shadow finance minister that there will be cuts. The Leader of the Opposition says exactly the same thing that there will be cuts. There will not be cuts in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or South-East Queensland; there will be cuts to the regional parts of Australia where there are fewer votes, fewer people and less political clout. They are going to be the ones that will suffer at the hands of a Liberal coalition. We suffered for 12 years in the Northern Territory. I cannot think of one project that my predecessor actually delivered for the people in the Northern Territory. I cannot think of one.

Senator Ian Macdonald:

Try a LNG plant.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is in Lingiari; I am talking about Solomon. There is not one bit of infrastructure. It is that sort of worry that I have: you are out of sight, you are out of mind and you are up in the Top End. I have worked really hard at getting us on the map. I have been able to get us out there and get the projects that I have committed to. But we have others that are in doubt. The people in my electorate need to know that there is $30 million dedicated to a doctor’s college—a medical school—so that we can actually train our doctors and it is in doubt if the Liberal Party happen to win the next election. There are 50 accommodation units at Royal Darwin Hospital for outpatients in doubt. They are the sorts of things, major pieces of infrastructure, that will not occur under the coalition government.

The other thing obviously is the third round of the BER money—some $20 million—that will be scrapped. The shadow minister for education has already said that the BER will be wound back and the third round will not be funded. For me, as a person from Darwin who is passionate about the Northern Territory, I want to live in the Northern Territory, I want to live in Darwin and Palmerston and I want to enjoy the benefits of what Darwin and Palmerston have to offer.

When it comes to the supertax, all Australians have a stake in that mineral wealth and so it is our right to have a share of that. We have a duty to ourselves and to our children to make sure that we benefit from it. I am really worried that if we do not happen to cash in now with the supertax, we are going to miss our opportunity in this country. After 16 years of a mining boom, really, we have not got enough to show for it. The first thing that happened when we came to government was everyone screamed ‘infrastructure’.

We even heard from the member for Parkes. He stood up and had some great ideas, we will put a railway line here, we will put one over the top of the Blue Mountains and we will shoot a road up there. They were all great ideas but he should have been in this place 10 years ago and he could have put those ideas forward to the former government. Unfortunately he was not here.

I thank the small-to-medium sized businesses in my electorate for their dedication and their courage during the GFC. During that time we put stimulus into the economy. We certainly put more money into training and more money into apprenticeships with the Kickstart program and that has been well received. But small-to-medium sized businesses have really carried us through. Through the mining tax we want to reward them by bringing down the company tax level. We want to reward them for their perseverance and dedication during very tough times.

I think the opposition are still in denial about how tough the times are right around the world. We have been lucky. We are the lucky country, as people say. We are lucky that we have been able to come through the tough times. There are other countries that are looking at 20 per cent unemployment. We have seen what is happening in southern Europe. There is absolute carnage in the economies there and that leads to social carnage such as we have seen in Greece.

This budget invests $661 million to help young people in the Territory get skilled jobs. That is really important. So many of our young people, our best and brightest, leave the Territory to go and look for job opportunities. We have a big focus on Indigenous employment, but we certainly need employment right across the board. We put a lot of money into Indigenous areas, as we do for all Territorians. Those sorts of programs, which are really beneficial, are all at risk. Over the next three months, if I do nothing else, I will make sure the people of Solomon know what a risk a coalition government would be. The people of Solomon need to know that Tony Abbott is not on their side. The Leader of the Opposition does not care about how the Northern Territory progresses. I am going to make sure that the people in my electorate understand that Tony Abbott is not a friend of the Northern Territory.

The value of apprenticeships cannot be underestimated. There will be around 22,500 new apprenticeships through the Kickstart program, which is excellent. As a former Australian Apprentice of the Year, I value apprenticeships. Apprenticeships survive the boom and bust cycle of the mining industry. Tradesmen put something back into the community through training. I think I have trained around 10 apprentices myself. You build communities, social engagement and self-esteem.

I have always been worried about the fly in, fly out mentality of the mining industry. I have quite a few friends who fly in from different places. I have a mate who lives in Geelong and works at Borroloola. I have a mate who lives in Perth and works offshore for Conoco Philips—and he has done it for a long time. A lot of social dysfunction is caused by fly in, fly out. What impact is that having on society going into the future? Do the mining companies have a social responsibility to build infrastructure in towns? My worry is that we will put in a lot of money. What people did not know about is the 40 per cent underwriting of infrastructure for mining projects—and I fully support that. I think the tax gives mining companies a real buy-in in Australia’s future. They will say we need better roads on which to cart materials and we need better and safer ports. All those things give the mining companies a big buy-in.

I acknowledge Andrew Forrest and his efforts on Indigenous employment—the Indigenous covenant. It is a fantastic initiative. He is putting something back into the community. I am gobsmacked. They have made such profits that they should surely know that some of that money now has to come back to build vital infrastructure. Once it is gone it is gone, and it will be regional and remote parts of Australia that will suffer, not Sydney and Melbourne. The pie will not get any smaller for Sydney and Melbourne, because they have their own problems within the western suburbs in particular, where people are spreading out into the urban areas. It will be the people of Solomon, whom I represent, who will suffer. It will be the people of Far North Queensland, the Kimberley and even Perth who will suffer if we do not get this right.

Our commitment to health in this budget is something I am very proud of. We hear the cynical view from those opposite. It is easy to sit back and be cynical about health, but it is such an important part of our whole social fabric, just having the opportunity to live a long and happy life. We see there are problems, but let us be honest about it: everywhere you go, there are problems. There are 770 hospitals; of course there are going to be problems. There are fewer people in private health insurance, because they cannot afford it. More people are dropping out of it, putting more pressure on the public system. We need to train more doctors, and we have made a commitment to do so. The number was capped under the previous government. So we are putting in around $7.3 billion.

Sure, there are often interjections from the other side—I would not expect it from the two gentlemen here but from others sometimes—saying it is just adding another layer of bureaucracy to it. If that is happening, we need to get through that bureaucracy, because health is about getting services on the ground, at the grassroots level, to the people who need them the most.

We have put a lot of time and effort also into preventative health. There will be 5,500 GPs and 680 more specialists. We are looking at 800 allied health professionals. I know that that has been well received by a lot of people, because there are long waiting lists for those types of services. There will also be 4,600 additional nurses.

These are all really positive programs that need to be supported. If the coalition happened to come to power at the next election, I can see that all those programs would be in doubt. So I think that as a hardworking local member I need to make it clear to the people in my electorate of Solomon and to the people in the Northern Territory, where my kids live, that voting the Liberal Party in at the ballot box will jeopardise a lot of the good things that regional Australia—all of regional Australia, not just my area—have been able to enjoy over the last couple of years.

In conclusion, I think that this budget is a budget for its time, one that was needed. Obviously, we have had three years of uncertainty; let us be honest about that. When you see what has happened on the global stage, around the world, we have had uncertainty. It was a difficult time to come into power. The good days of big surpluses are certainly behind us. I doubt that even Peter Costello, who is held in pretty high esteem, or Paul Keating, who is probably the greatest Treasurer we have ever had, could have seen it through as well as Wayne Swan has. He has grown into the job very well. If you look at the figures and the graphs, you cannot argue with how we have come through the global financial crisis. This is a very good budget. I have done very well out of it and I will make sure that the people of Solomon know that this is a good budget for them. I commend the bills to the House. (Time expired)

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is quite an extraordinary budget, as the member for Solomon just said. It is budget like we have never seen before! It is a budget with a $57.1 billion deficit. It is a budget that highlights the fact that this is a tax-spend-borrow, tax-spend-borrow government. They cannot control their spending. They cannot make the decisions that have to be made. They cannot stop the waste in a whole range of programs that are going on. They cannot deliver the programs that they have in front of them. But they have delivered to this country the biggest deficit since World War II. And the member for Solomon has the audacity to say that the Treasurer has done a better job than Peter Costello would have. Let me tell the member for Solomon—

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Paul Keating.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no argument about Paul Keating! Paul Keating as Treasurer managed to rack up $96 billion worth of debt. But Paul Keating at least had the courage of his convictions. He at least understood what reform was. He at least was prepared to do the things that had to be done for this country, and—for the member for Solomon’s benefit, because I know he is only new to this House—the coalition in opposition supported those reforms. What we are seeing from this Treasurer, arguably the worst Treasurer we have seen in this country, although there were some in the Whitlam years that would rival him, is a continuation of the socialist philosophy of spend, spend, spend. As Margaret Thatcher once said, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money to spend. So then we go into a borrow, borrow, borrow program—$700 million a week. I bet that would fund a few projects in the member for Solomon’s seat.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bring them on!

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are not going to bring them on, because we are in opposition to that, as we were in government. We are a responsible money manager, so we are not going to borrow $700 million a week. We are going to make the tough decisions that have to be made. What we are seeing from those who sit opposite is a reckless regard for Australia’s fiscal position, a reckless regard for what wild spending by government will do to interest rates. We have seen a succession of interest rate rises. Thankfully, today we did not see another, but if you talk to economists they will predict that interest rates will continue to rise.

The thing that disturbs me most about the government is that they have no plan on how they are going to rein in their spending. They have no plan on how they are going to reduce the burden that they place on the taxpayers of Australia other than to introduce another tax, a new tax, a $9 billion and growing tax, a tax on the jobs of everyday Australians, a tax on the superannuation of everyday Australians, a tax on the returns of the shareholdings of everyday Australians, a tax on the confidence of the business community, and a tax on the small businesses like the one I named in question time today, Laser-Tech in Toowoomba.

Laser-Tech have had a 90 per cent fall in their income from the mining industry in the last three weeks. I could give the figure but the proprietor has asked me not to. I know the figure. I know the investment that he made in the expectation that the mining industry would lead Australia out into recovery. I know that his business is already feeling the pain of a tax that has been introduced by a government that no longer believes in anything but being re-elected. It is a government that has no core values with a Prime Minister who has no belief in anything. He is someone who will say anything and do anything to maintain his position as Prime Minister. I just say to the Prime Minister: keep looking over your shoulder because your deputy, the minister for education and everything else, is looking at your job very closely. I doubt she wants it right at the moment. I think she thinks that the Prime Minister is getting himself into so much trouble that she will just walk into the job at some point later. But the Prime Minister had better start believing in something.

The member for Solomon, who has now left the chamber, talked about the previous Prime Minister Paul Keating. I knew Paul Keating. I had some time with him when I was the leader of the grain industry in Australia. One thing that Paul Keating did was believe. He believed in what had to be done. He was not right, but he believed in it. He went out after it. He was a true believer.

What we see from this government is that they have nothing to believe in. Their policies are knee-jerk reactions. Their reckless economic mismanagement of this economy is hurting all Australians and Australian families, and this budget reveals the high price all Australians will pay for their spending spree over the past 18 months.

When we left office we left $40 billion in the Future Fund and $20 billion in the university fund, and we left $20 billion in surplus. What a turnaround—a debt in excess of $100 billion! Even I could not believe that they could spend so much money so quickly. We are seeing money wasted in the BER program. It is now estimated that $5 billion will be wasted on the hall program, the school building program. We are seeing private schools, particularly Catholic education schools, producing buildings four times the size of those being produced under the BER in the state school system. This government cannot manage a program properly. This government has no idea how to run a program. So there is $5 billion. Let us go to the insulation program.

The government has not only wasted money but also tragically killed people. There are more at risk. Almost every day we learn of another house fire or another warning from a fire authority about the risks of the insulation program for people who are still waiting as we speak to have their houses assessed for safety. What a tragedy to see four Australian lives lost. What a tragedy to see the wastage that has gone on under that program.

The Minister for Education has failed to deliver on computers in schools. She has delivered about a quarter of the computers that the government promised in its election campaign. This government always promises but it never delivers. It talks the talk but it cannot walk the walk. If we look at its promise to deliver childcare centres, the Minister for Education has wiped that off the list as well. There is a pattern here of waste and mismanagement. It is a pattern of spending, borrowing, spending, borrowing, taxing, spending and borrowing. It goes on and on.

The member for Solomon—I must admit I admire his front—spoke about the new super tax on the mining industry in Australia. One of the states and territories of Australia that requires the mining industry to continue to grow is the Northern Territory, and his seat makes up a fair part of Darwin where a lot of these people live. Yet he does not seem to have any concept of the damage this tax is doing to the mining industry in Australia, to the extent that he quoted Andrew Forrest, the head of Fortescue. Andrew Forrest has cancelled three projects as a result of this tax. Why doesn’t the member for Solomon ask Mr Forrest what he thinks of this super tax? Why doesn’t the member ask Mr Forrest how many Indigenous Australians will lose their jobs as a result of this tax or how many Indigenous Australians will not get a job in regional Australia as a result of this tax? The member should ask Andrew Forrest. Andrew is one of the scathing critics of this scheme because he knows that this tax is going to kill the development of the mining industry in Australia.

The mining industry in Australia has underpinned our economy for decades. Yet this government, in its lust for money and in its desperation to plunder the Treasury, has put a tax on the industry which will make it uncompetitive with the rest of the world. It will tax the mining industry in Australia to a point where future investment will go elsewhere. They are not my words. They are the words of the financial institutions—the banks, the ratings assessment agencies such as Moody’s, and the Citibanks—that have been analysing what this tax is going to do to the Australian mining industry. It is going to destroy its future. Yet those who sit opposite say that this is a good thing.

The member for Solomon also mentioned the 40 per cent rebate on capital investment if a project fails. I know those on that side aim for failure in their projects, and they have got a very good track record in that regard: most of the projects they start fail. I have just mentioned some in the education minister’s portfolio and the environment minister’s portfolio, but there is a whole string of them. You can go across to the Assistant Treasurer and the Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch programs which failed. There is just one after the other—promises that could not be kept and programs that could not be run.

The mining sector does not do projects with the goal of failing. They are not interested in a 40 per cent rebate. They cannot borrow or finance their project if they go to the bank and say, ‘By the way, if I fail the taxpayers are going to cough up 40 per cent of my capital expenditure’. The banks will just put a red line through that application. No-one in the mining industry supports this 40 per cent rebate—not the big miners, not the little miners, not the mid-caps, not the juniors. Not one person has come forward and said this is a good idea. Yet we have the member for Solomon saying that this is a good thing for the Northern Territory.

It would be good for the Northern Territory if this government were not returned and this tax were then rescinded by a Tony Abbott government. That is what would be good for mining development in Australia. That is what would be good for the jobs of Australians. That is what would be good for the superannuation and shareholder returns of the self-funded retirees. That is what would be good for small business in Australia. That is what would be good for the future jobs of young Australians. What would be good would be getting rid of this tax.

The other thing I will talk about on this budget is what is not in this budget. What is not in this budget is a new road across the range at Toowoomba in Queensland to open up the economy of south-east and western Queensland to further development. That range crossing was funded in the 2007 budget with $700 million to start it. It is probably a $1.8 billion to $2 billion project. But in true style and in its city-centric thinking, this government has decided to walk away from that commitment. The people of Toowoomba will not forget them.

There was no money of any significance for any road in my electorate. There was no money of any significance for the electorate of Blair, held by the Labor Party. The road between Toowoomba and Ipswich is a disgrace, and one of the reasons it is a disgrace is because this government will not spend money in regional areas on roads. We have committed ourselves to fund that range crossing. It is in the forward estimates in the out years. We have made a commitment that, if elected to government at the coming election, we will commence that road within 12 months and we will complete it by late 2017. That road would have already been in progress for three years had this government kept its commitment, but, along with all its other failed programs, the government has failed to keep that commitment to the people of Groom.

We need to see a government that cares about all Australians. We need to see a government that cares about ensuring economic development in Australia. We cannot afford to have a continuation of a government that just wastes money and accumulates debt and then has to borrow more money to accumulate more debt. To have a debt that has, in three years, exceeded the debt that was accumulated under the Hawke and Keating governments is an extraordinary effort. It will require an extraordinary effort by the governments that come after this one, by the taxpayers of Australia and by the future generations of Australia to repay that debt.

What we want to see is a government that stops wasting money. Not only do they waste money on their major programs but they waste money in advertising. They are spending $126 million in political print, radio and television advertising. They are spending $30 million on climate change. The last time I looked, this government, despite the fact that the Prime Minister said climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time, had completely abandoned action on climate change. If you talk to the Greens they will say, quite openly, that the only party that has a policy to address the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions is the coalition.

The Labor Party have no policy. They have a policy that they have deferred until 2013. They did not have the guts to take it up in the Senate. They decided to run away from it and make a stream of misleading statements about how they are going to address it in other ways. There are no other ways. You have to have a program. We have set aside billions of dollars to lower greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. All they have done is set aside $30 million to spend on advertising.

Now there is this latest revelation that $38.5 million was allocated a month, we think, before anyone was told about this new supertax on the mining industry. It is $38 million to attack the mining companies that have built Australia. They will be vilified by those who sit opposite as ‘dirty multinationals’. Go and say that to Woodside, a company started in South Australia. Go and say that to Santos—South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search. Ring a bell? They are an Australian company that is going to be hit for six by this tax. They are looking at whether or not they can proceed with their coal seam methane LNG plant in Queensland simply because this government does not understand what it is doing and does not understand the damage it is doing in regard to that industry.

Because the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, and the finance minister are not able to sell their own new tax, they have to borrow some more money, another $38.5 million, to try and sell their idea. We know it is a bad tax. The world knows it is a bad tax. Shareholders know it is a bad tax. If you look at the dip in the value of shares in Australia compared to the dip in the value of shares in Canada, there is a marked difference and that marked difference is due to the new tax. If you look at the fall of the Australian dollar compared to the fall of the Canadian dollar, there is a significantly larger fall in the Australian dollar. That is because of the super tax. It is not just me saying that; it is the rating agencies and the financial institutions. All this government can do is lie about when they decided they were going to have an advertising campaign against the mining industry, an industry that supports people all over Australia.

In the northern part of Tasmania there are companies whose livelihoods depend on the mining sector, yet I wonder if the member for Franklin is going to be standing up for them. Is she going to be standing up for the Caterpillar Elphinstone plant? Is she going to be standing up for the iron ore, nickel, gold and copper mines in Tasmania, or is she just going to say to them: ‘It was nice knowing you. You made a huge contribution but we don’t want you anymore’? This is a budget from a government who have no idea on economic management. This is a government who spend constantly. This is a government who cannot control their addiction to spending money. This is a government who have delivered the biggest peacetime deficit of all time. This is a government who deserve not to be re-elected at the next election.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2010-2011 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011. What we do know about this budget is that it shows the responsible economic management of this government. We will be halving the peak debt and getting the budget back into the black in three years, which is three years early. We have been talking about our early and decisive action in light of the global financial crisis, which has put us in this position where we are able to get the budget back in the black in three years. Our budget also includes the following really important initiatives: new investments in health and hospitals; new investments in skills, training and infrastructure; the Renewable Energy Future Fund to help tackle climate change; tax cuts and less red tape for small business; better superannuation; tax breaks on interest and a boost to national savings; a standard deduction to make tax time easier for working families; a third round of tax cuts for low-income earners, families and seniors; more money to protect our troops and our borders; as well as returning the budget to surplus three years ahead of schedule.

These tax cuts are really important and the superannuation changes are important. We need to not lose sight of the impact the tax breaks we have delivered for the third year in a row—on time every time—are having on ordinary working men and women, seniors and low-income earners in our electorates. We committed to them in the 2007 election and I certainly know that people in my electorate are looking forward to getting their tax cuts on 1 July. We also have our tax cut of two per cent for small businesses, which is what we need, we believe, to allow small businesses to thrive and create more employment opportunities for people in our local communities. The superannuation guarantee, which 8.4 million workers are expected to benefit from—that is, 90 per cent of all full-time workers—will increase the nine per cent to 12 per cent over time. That will increase Australia’s superannuation savings by over $85 billion in 10 years. That is a very significant boost to retirement savings for Australian working families. We have all heard the example of someone aged 30 who will have an extra $100,000 on retirement due to these changes in superannuation.

I want to talk particularly about health because health has certainly been a big issue in my home state of Tasmania. This budget has the government investing around $7.3 billion over five years to create the National Health and Hospitals Network, which is going to provide $417 million for improved after-hours access to GP and primary care services, supported by Medicare Locals; and $355 million to deliver 23 new GP superclinics. I was fortunate enough to get a GP superclinic in my electorate in the first round. Just last Saturday the tenderer for the construction phase of that GP superclinic was announced. It is being built in conjunction with the state government as an integrated care centre. It will mean over $18 million in new, better facilities in the local community near my electorate office, and I know that the local community is very pleased about that investment. That $355 million will also go towards upgrading around 425 GP and primary healthcare clinics across the country. There will be a competitive bid process for existing GP services to upgrade their facilities and technology.

This budget includes a $523 million investment to train and support Australia’s nurses. We all know the vital role that nurses play in our health and hospital system. From travelling around and visiting hospitals that service my electorate and talking to nurses, I know that they are very pleased about this. We all know that the ANF, the Australian Nursing Federation, is very pleased with this investment and has said that it is long overdue.

The budget also includes $467 million to modernise our health and hospital system through personally controlled individual electronic health records for every Australian from 1 July 2012. We have heard that this commitment will be scrapped should the coalition get elected to government. It is really important that this particular measure is not scrapped. We have heard GPs and medical professionals around the country saying that it will save money and improve efficiency in our health system. How can people say that cutting this out of the budget is going to save money when it will improve efficiency and improve savings into the future? I really think it shows short-sightedness and a lack of understanding of our health system to think that cutting this money out is going to be beneficial to the health system.

Medicare Locals is about allowing people access to after-hours GP services. As a parent of small children, I know that children can often require medical attention after hours. When you have to go to the local hospital after hours, you can wait for quite some time. It is really important that families and older people, who may have minor injuries or ailments, are able to access a GP after hours.

We are investing heavily in health. We are investing in more GP training places, more junior doctors and more specialists. This will take some time to come on board but it shows that we are looking at the whole health system as an integrated system. We are looking at funding the infrastructure now. We are looking at funding the nurses, the doctors and the specialists that are required to fix the system after 12 years of neglect. When Tony Abbott was health minister, he ripped a billion dollars out of the health system. We have heard that, in his alternative budget, he intends to cut $800 million out of what we have committed to health. As I said before, that shows a complete lack of understanding of the health system and how it works.

This government is also investing in skills and training, with a $661 million investment to increase our skills base in our workforce and ensure that the training system is responsive to the needs of our local communities. Under Skills for Recovery there will be 39,000 training places. There will also be an extension of the Kickstart initiative. I was pleased to see in my electorate a large increase in the number of apprentices under the Apprentice Kickstart program. I am certainly talking to small businesses and local communities in my electorate about that extension, and I know that some of those businesses are keen to put on apprentices under the extension. Under A Training System for the Future, $242 million will be provided over four years to work with the states to deliver the national entitlement to a training place for young people under the age of 25. That will be a very important initiative to ensure our younger Australians are able to find training places and improve their work skills into the future.

We have seen a lot of commitment from this government. I talked earlier about small business and the small-business tax break. But we are doing more for small business. Sole traders, partnerships and incorporated small businesses will be able to instantly deduct the cost of assets valued at up to $5,000. For example, a restaurant or a cafe that purchases something new at a cost of $4,000 can get an immediate tax deduction of that $4,000 rather than the usual $600 in the first year and so on. We saw how quickly small businesses took up the small-business tax rebate during the global financial crisis and the government’s initiatives there, so I am sure small businesses will also be keen to take up this tax break. We have also talked about cutting the company tax rate.

When those opposite talk about the budget and about the deficit, they seem to have forgotten that the global financial crisis ever happened. It is like they are in a cocoon and nobody mentions it. Last year in this place I spoke on the budget bills and even then they tried to pretend that the global financial crisis had not occurred. We all know that it actually did occur and we all know that Europe is still in trouble when it comes to issues of sovereign debt. We know that Australia has outperformed most of the other OECD countries. In fact, the OECD just last week revised Australia’s growth forecast and expects our GDP to grow by 3.2 per cent in 2010 and by up to 3.6 per cent in 2011. Australia is one of the strongest economies of all the OECD countries, and it is something that those opposite need to accept is due to our stimulus package and our early and decisive action in the face of the global financial crisis.

The OECD also expects Australia’s unemployment rate to fall to 4.8 per cent by the end of 2011. To me it is good news that Australia’s unemployment rate will fall. To me it is good news that the stimulus package saved 200,000 Australians from being unemployed. But those opposite seem to have forgotten that this happened. They seem to be unhappy with the fact that our stimulus packages were successful and what we did with the economy. Australia has one of the lowest levels of net debt. I would like to table a graph—

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Which government delivered that?

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was our government, the Rudd Labor government that delivered that.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you seeking leave to table that?

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to table that graph?

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

Is leave granted?

Leave not granted.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay, I will keep going. I also have a graph that shows the financial position of the Australian economy compared to other economies in terms of the percentage of GDP. I seek leave to table that graph.

Leave granted.

Thank you. That stimulus package certainly worked. As I go around my electorate and talk to small and large businesses and to contractors that are building the social housing in my electorate, they are all saying that the stimulus funding was really important in helping them keep their workers on and in providing ongoing work for them. We need to continue to roll out this stimulus to its completion. The stimulus was designed to peak and then to taper off and that is what it is doing. It is working well in local communities.

I want to touch on some of the things that are happening in my electorate that are in this budget and also some which were funded through the stimulus. It is quite an extensive list. The Kingston bypass is underway in my electorate. Major construction is underway now as we speak. I know that the local community and the Kingston bypass action group are really pleased to see that construction, after 12 years of inaction from those on the other side. It was promised by the Howard government late in the 2007 election and was also committed to by Labor. But it is the Rudd Labor government that have actually gotten on with building this bypass. Those opposite kept promising but we are the ones actually delivering on the ground. I think that is really an important distinction.

We have the Huon Valley regional water scheme, which we hope to be launching in just a few weeks. We have the South East Tasmania Recycled Water Scheme, which is well and truly underway. We have my GP superclinic, which I talked about earlier. We have our green TEA environmental audit program, which has been successful. It was a pilot program for a year and they are looking at extending that now and making it self-sustaining—that is a fantastic program. We have the redevelopment of the Dennes Point community centre, the Cygnet gymnasium, the Kingborough Lions United Soccer Club, the installation of some nets at the Rokeby Cricket Club and the Port Huon Sports Centre, which I visited just recently to see how the $10,000 worth of sports equipment is being used. They all received funds. We have, obviously, the community infrastructure program, which is supporting a lot of smaller community local government sporting facilities and recreational facilities.

Just a few weeks ago I opened the Lymington Walkway at Cygnet in my electorate. We have some defence housing, some social housing and of course the Building the Education Revolution projects in my electorate. I have already been to quite a few openings, and we have some coming up. One which I am particularly looking forward to in just a few weeks is at my children’s school, where they have had an extension to their GP room and library. My son is actually being educated in one of the new classrooms, and I can certainly tell you that the parents at that school do not believe it has been a waste of money at all and are very pleased with their new facilities.

As you can see, there has been a lot of investment and activity in local communities in my electorate of Franklin, as there has been in other electorates around the country. Certainly we have had our fair share of these projects and they are really going down well with the local businesses. The construction industry in my electorate has been doing a great job of delivering these projects on the ground.

One of the things that I am hearing from local businesses is that they are concerned about the economic unrest in Europe and about what might happen should the stimulus funding be withdrawn. They are also concerned about what might happen should an Abbott government get elected. One of the things that they are particularly concerned about in Tasmania is the national broadband rollout. Minister Conroy was in Tasmania today at Midway Point with an announcement in relation to the National Broadband Network rollout. We have people in Tasmania who are extraordinarily concerned that the National Broadband Network rollout will be ceased under an Abbott government. The local community in the 10 suburbs in my electorate that are expecting to get the rollout in stage 3 of the project in Tasmania are very concerned indeed about the National Broadband Network rollout.

The rollout is currently supporting quite a few jobs in Tasmania, and in the next few years it is expected to support thousands more. It is really critical for the Tasmanian economy in terms of jobs now, and obviously in terms of technology and jobs for the future it is really important for Tasmania. I know that Tasmanian businesses, schools, hospitals and mums and dads are concerned about whether or not the National Broadband Network will reach them under an Abbott government, should they get in. It is causing a great lot of concern in my local community.

We also have great unrest in my local community about Abbott’s proposed cuts to the trade training centres. My local community in Huonville and the Huon Valley is down for a round 2 trade training centre of $6.5 million. I talked to people in my local community and to the principal of the school last week and they are very concerned about their trade training centre. They are very concerned that those opposite do not understand how important the trade training centre is to their local community, and they are particularly concerned because this trade training centre was going to incorporate aquaculture. In Tasmania at present there are no students training in aquaculture. In my electorate we have two of the largest aquaculture businesses in Tasmania with Huon Aquaculture and Tassal, who are two very large salmon producers and salmon growers. To not have local young people in the community train in this trade is quite a significant impediment to future workforce needs of those large companies.

I think it is short sighted of those opposite to say that they are going to cut the trade training centres. I would particularly ask them to reconsider cutting the trade training centre in the Huon Valley. I know that the Huon Valley community are very concerned about their trade training centre and they have asked me what they can do about it. I am looking into that to see what we can do for the Huon Valley community to ensure that their trade training centre will be built no matter what, because that is what they are after and that is what they deserve.

I put a lot of time and effort into supporting this application, talking to the local community and talking to the schools in that community about why this trade training centre was needed. I know that the state government also did a lot of work putting together the submission for this trade training centre facility. It is much needed by the local community.

I also want to talk briefly about the computers in schools rollout. In schools that I have visited in my electorate, the computers in schools program has been very well received, although some schools are yet to receive their full complement. They are saying: ‘What will happen? Won’t we get our computers? The schools next to us have all their computers. Won’t we get our fair share of computers?’ I think that those opposite need to revisit their desire to cut this program. It is very popular in schools. The students want those computers and they need them to deal with current technologies and to keep up with what is happening in society. Having access to that type of technology is really important for some of these students.

We heard in the House just yesterday from Minister Gillard about the importance of computers to some students in particular who require them to be able to produce work. I think it is really important and those opposite are completely underestimating the value of the computers in schools program. We also heard about the cuts to the Productivity Places Programs. The cuts just go on and on. They want to cut the Renewable Energy Future Fund and Green Start. They want to cancel the smarter schools teacher quality program. I talked about the GP superclinics and e-health. There is just so much that they want to cut, and it is all because they want to support the mining companies rather than wanting to support Australians getting a fairer share of superprofits from mining companies. I think we really should be explaining to all Australians why they deserve their fairer share. I think that those opposite are again underestimating Australians and their views on whether or not mining companies can afford to contribute more to Australian society and whether it is fairer that they should. I think we need to start having a truthful debate from those opposite about what is actually going on here. These campaigns, particularly some of the comments from the other side, are not completely honest. (Time expired)

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2010-2011. You always hope that in a parliamentary democracy like ours governments of all persuasions will have proper regard for the wellbeing of the people and the country. You hope that a new government will learn from their previous mistakes or inadequacies in office and build on the legacy of the previous government to guide the nation lightly to a better place. Unfortunately, this Rudd Labor government has shown itself to be not fit for office. From the coalition, it inherited a strong economy, with a well-regulated banking sector, with people confident of their futures and investing, with some of the highest workforce participation rates ever and with more women than ever in the workplace being paid more than ever. There were surpluses and future funds designed to ensure the next generation was not made to pay for the profligacy of their parents.

Under Labor we have seen some of the most profoundly and universally held Australian values ignored. These values include the belief that where you are born in this country should not constrain your rights to a decent job, an education, a fair return for a fair days work, access to adequate health services and personal safety. These values include intergenerational caring for the environment and a recognition of the intense and close interrelationship between a healthy viable community and a sustainable environment which the community manages as part of their own lives and the future of their families.

Labor have shifted policy settings and reassigned resources, resulting in an undermining of the viability of too many communities and families, particularly those in rural and remote communities in Australia. They have made it less likely that we will have food security in the future. They have depressed a whole sector of our society whose livelihood depends on their being able to grow food or fibre. They have made it less likely that people can remain independent and live a dignified old age from the earnings of their working lives. I will come back to address the issues which relate in particular to rural and regional families—the sorts of families that I represent as the member for Murray.

Labor has failed to understand that working families need affordable and accessible childcare services if both parents—or a single parent managing a household—are to participate in the workforce. A welfare-dependent family is not a family that can look forward to a life with all the opportunities of others. We know that children who grow up in welfare-dependent households are more likely to be welfare dependent themselves, to have mental health issues, to have law-and-order problems in the future, and to certainly not have the advantages in life that all of us aspire to for our children and grandchildren. When the coalition was in power we were striving to make sure that as many individuals and families as possible were able to be in work, to enjoy the fruit of their labours, and to save for their futures. And we were trying to make sure that there was adequate superannuation for people to use and to be independent in their older age.

One of the critical and key elements for individuals, particularly women, to be able to remain in the workforce or to move in and out of the workforce has been an attitude of acceptance that they need to balance both a career and parenting. This requires affordable, accessible, good-quality child care. The days of having a mother-in-law or a mother next door to look after your children are long gone; although, under Labor’s new regime, there are more grandparents being asked to leave their own employment to look after children, because Labor has systematically reduced the affordability of child care—in particular for regional families but also for families in suburbia and inner metropolitan regions. This is for families with very young or older school-age children as well.

You cannot believe the long list of slashing and cutting of childcare support that Labor has done. Labor has slashed the child care rebate by reducing the cap and indexing for four years. They claimed that they would improve cash flow by paying the childcare rebate fortnightly to parents, but, like so many of Labor’s promises, nothing has happened there. In reducing the childcare rebate they claimed that they were simply attacking ‘rich’ families—a three per cent who had far too much money. Middle-class welfare is one of their favourite mantras. We know that if you have a younger child in child care for more than two or three days per week, you very quickly hit that $7,500 or—what it was—the $7,700 cap and then you are in great strife if you are not earning more than the minimum wage or, indeed, the average wage in Australia.

Labor has taken away the $1,500 family day care start-up grant and the $5,000 start-up grant for remote family day care. This directly attacks the capacity of women to start up professional care in their homes for children, because they often need to modify their home and pay to have their household made appropriate for child care. Labor has refused to give any certainty to the part-time long day care centres in remote or small communities, like Darkan and Corrigin in Western Australia. They are now to receive only six months accreditation, because the minister thinks that since they are smaller and do not have enough children to be open seven days or five days week, they are at higher risk of closing. Hence they receive accreditation for just six months at a time. No-one can employ professional staff on that basis. One thing is for sure: these places will close without ongoing accreditation, or with the stop-start, piecemeal attention the minister is paying to them. They must have access to federal support through accreditation. Doesn’t Labor realise that small communities also need professional, accessible, affordable child care? In our drought stressed country, or our flood stressed country today, too many farms can only survive with off-farm income from either the mother or the father. Mothers and mothers-in-law, as I said before, do not live next door any more often in a remote or rural community than they do in suburbia.

There is also the issue of isolation of children, which is very often the case in remoter parts of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland. Those children are now to be denied access to playgroups because occasional care funding has been slashed by $12.6 million over four years, a slashing by Labor. This means that a woman needing to have her child experience some playgroup activity or a woman needing to attend a medical appointment or to deal with some other emergency will no longer have that occasional care option in her community. In Victoria, for example, there were 97 of these occasional care programs, and they were 48 per cent funded by the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth have said: ‘No, we’re not interested. We’re not going to fund this anymore.’

Labor has also defunded the Active After-school Communities program, which served 150,000 children in 3,250 programs right across the country. Where are these families now to go for their after-school care for their children? Where else will these children have safe, active, interactive team-building activities after school? I do not think Labor knows; it has simply defunded them, but I also suspect that Labor does not care.

The Labor government said they would build 260 multipurpose childcare centres on school campuses to stop the need for the double drop-off. That promise went like the rest. They are now down to just funding 38, and we will see them if we are lucky, I would suggest.

We also have their shameful Paid Parental Leave scheme now on the table. It does not offer superannuation to those taking the leave. It is only paid at the minimum wage. There is a very strong likelihood that the majority of mothers will be better off staying on the baby bonus in terms of their financial support, but that denies them the special leave they need to recover from a pregnancy and to bond with their newborn. It is a shameful Paid Parental Leave scheme. Of course, we have committed to changing it to world best practice when we are in government.

Then there is the gender pay gap in Australia. It has been around for quite a while, but who would be surprised that the pay differences for men and women doing the same work or work of equal value have actually got bigger under Labor? Why? Because Labor has paid no attention to the workforce needs, particularly in the industry sectors where most women work. Labor has locked into the future age-old practices where women in hospitality, in tourism, in part-time work and in casual employment are now struggling even harder to get decent employment. The three-hour-minimum rule that has now been inflicted on a lot of sectors where women mostly work means that women in particular are being put off. Where before they enjoyed having a two-hour work stint either before or after their schoolchildren’s hours or perhaps at a time that they could fit in with their caring responsibilities, they no longer have those options. Take, for example, the milking work that women often did in my dairy sector. Women—and men—can no longer be employed in those sectors because it is not a three-hour shift; it is a two-hour shift, and those farmers cannot afford to pay someone for three hours when they have worked only two.

This is the sort of thing that Labor have done to this economy, and I think it is a disgrace and a shame when they get up, as they did in parliament yesterday, and ask us to celebrate the improvement of the economic circumstances of women under Labor. I thought that was the most extraordinary invitation for us to debate such a topic.

In the area of early childhood education, we had the promise from Labor of universal access for 15 hours of early childhood education with a qualified teacher in an accredited centre each week. The average Australian citizen would presume that ‘universal access’ meant free, mandated education and a place for every preschool-age child—in other words, a child in the year before they commence primary schooling. No, sadly it does not mean that at all. There are numbers of early childhood centres—often called kindergartens—in the state of Victoria, in the rural areas in particular, which have now closed because parents cannot afford the fees. Those parents, of course, are drought stressed or they are working in sectors—for example, the dairying or fruit-growing sectors—where they have been paid for too long below the cost of production.

Where those small towns have lost the capacity to fund their kindergartens, or early childhood education centres, have Labor marched up and said, ‘That’s okay; we’ll fund those places for those students; we’ll keep your centre open because we’ve promised universal access to every child in the year before they go to school’? No, Labor are not doing that. Labor have walked away. Universal access does not mean mandated, free, early childhood education for every child. It is a disgrace and it is a con, and everybody knows it.

Obviously there are so many families in Australia now who cannot wait until there is a change of government so that they can once again have their children experience the early childhood education they know they need if they are to have a flying start in their primary school days. Already, what we call in Victoria preparatory school grade teachers are telling me that in some places 30 per cent of their children have not had preschooling, so they begin way behind the eight ball. That is not fair to a four- or five-year-old, but that is what this government has ushered in as the experience of too many families who have been too financially stressed and cannot afford the preschool fees.

Let me turn to irrigated agriculture. I am, of course, the member for Murray and proud to be that. My area used to be called ‘the food bowl of Australia’. We have experienced nine or 10 years of drought now, but it is not the drought that is the problem for irrigated agricultural production or even dryland production in my electorate. The problem is federal government policy—policy which, if it were designed by madmen, could not have been worse in terms of the destruction of accessible or reliable water supply, or water security, for irrigated agriculture. And that is combined with the state Labor Party’s policies. They have piped the irrigation water supply out of the Murray-Darling Basin from the Goulburn River system to Melbourne, across the Great Dividing Range—where of course they need to use fossil fuel produced energy to do that pumping. They are taking 75 gigalitres of water out of the Goulburn River, which once served the food bowl. That water is going to a city which does not recycle water, which does not have stormwater harvesting and which is still wondering about its desalinisation works. Therefore we are now beggared in terms of our capacity to grow food sustainably and with security in the Murray and Goulburn valleys. We are seeing our dairy industry and our factories, close. We are seeing our fruit production contract because we do not have the water. Melbourne has options, but it was a cheap and politically easy option for the Brumby Labor government to join with the Rudd Labor government federally to raid our water supply.

How cruel to put over $3 billion on the table and say to my drought stressed farmers, ‘If you’re willing, sell your water.’ I am sorry; my farmers have never been willing because they know that selling their water is the same as selling their dairy cows, if they are in the dairy sector: you are selling your means of production. When you have sold your water, you have still remaining on your dried-off property things like a water delivery share, for which you have to pay thousands of dollars each year to the state owned Goulburn-Murray Water authority. That is a completely inefficient authority now. It has been put under the charge of the Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project, whose mandate is to shut down and transfer 60 per cent of the water management to the main channels. That is code for: ‘Let’s take 60 per cent of the irrigation system out of future water-carrying capacity.’

What other country that has been able to feed itself would have such a policy of shutting down an irrigation system and doing it in such an ad hoc way that you have stranded assets right across your thousands of hectares? This was once a thriving economy dependent at the base on food production, moving through to food manufacturing, the transport sector, the food-marketing sector, innovation and research—all of that was there. It has now been destroyed by the Victorian state government, which is desperate to get out of the business of irrigation management but not aware of how to do it. It is simply waiting till farmers are forced to sell their water and so it can then say: ‘Well, you’ve sold two, three or four farms worth of water off that six-farm spur. It’s all over for you. Here’s a few thousand dollars. We’ll shut down your water spur. Why don’t you relax and look at the burrs out the window, look at the dust blowing and think to yourself that you’re in retirement?’

That is not the way we want to live in northern Victoria. We are proud to be food and fibre producers. We were the food bowl of Australia and we can still be that. But we need a government that understands the connection between the economy and water policy, that understands how efficient irrigation systems can run—like those at Coleambally or at Harvey in Western Australia. If state governments cannot manage irrigation systems they should get out of that business.

This, of course, was what was agreed by COAG back in 1994. Unfortunately, the Victorian government changed the Victorian state constitution in 2004-05, saying that only they, the state, could ever run irrigation water supply systems into the future. Don’t we all regret that! We have to come up with alternatives for northern Victoria, because it is not just that communities are being destroyed, lives are being lost and whole generations are seeing investment blow away. It is not just all of that that is breaking the hearts of communities and families in northern Victoria; it is the cost to the economy. Surely that must be a concern. Two point five million hectares of Australia, 0.5 per cent of arable land, is under irrigation. It produces 30 per cent of the farm gate value of agriculture, and 50 per cent of the economic value of agricultural production comes out of irrigated agriculture. This government seems more than happy to let it literally blow away.

Good farmers manage the environment very effectively. It is in their commercial interests to do so. We now have more water from our area given back to the environment through good farming practice than Penny Wong will ever see through simply trying to buy off drought stressed and bank pressed farmers. I beg Penny Wong to come and look carefully at what she and the Rudd Labor government have done to northern Victoria. She will be shocked and saddened, I am sure, but she needs to spend more time there than she does now, when she rushes past saying: ‘No, I won’t answer questions; I won’t talk to the media. Just show me a state public servant.’ We are disgusted and dismayed—and afraid. We are afraid about our future. Too much has gone into our more than 100 years of irrigated agriculture in northern Victoria to see it all blown away by a government that either does not care or does not know how to do things properly. It is time for the Rudd Labor government to move on so that the coalition can get back into business and literally save the country. (Time expired)

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The background to this budget, which the opposition would seek to forget or to deny, is the reality of the economic crisis the world has faced over the last two years, created of course by subprime lending, housing speculation, inflow of credit in the United States, exploitative lending, easy credit and the complexity of financial products. That was the environment internationally. That was the situation that had impacts on this country. That is what the opposition would like to pretend to the Australian electorate never occurred. That is what they would try to persuade people the government did not have to correct and act upon.

We can make various comparisons at various points in time during that period as to the unemployment situation. If we look at the point at which Australia’s unemployment rate was 5.8 per cent—and this figure has not been plucked deliberately; the same pattern can be found at many stages—in Spain it was 9.3 per cent, in the United States it was 10.2 per cent, in Ireland it was 12.8 per cent, in Germany it was 7.5 per cent and in France it was 10.1 per cent. That was what was happening internationally.

We can obviously say that a significant part of Australia’s success relates to the continued demand from China and, to a lesser extent, from India for raw materials. There is no denying that—though, equally, we would ask that the opposition, when they talk about the state in which they had left the Australian economy when Labor came to power, admit the key, fundamental contribution of raw materials sales in the period of the Howard government. That was the international environment that was impacting on this country. Even though China, through a major injection of capital in its own economy and through wider government measures, managed to limit the crisis and thereby help Australia, the fact is that we faced the threat of significant unemployment in this country.

My electorate would be particularly interested in this because, with the presence of a lot of brick kilns from the 19th century and the fact that it is on the western fringe of Sydney, there was massive land redevelopment in the 1950s, particularly housing commission constructions in Granville, Guildford, Wentworthville et cetera. For all of those reasons the building sector is especially crucial in my electorate and a few surrounding seats. It is also an electorate with a high presence of Lebanese Maronites, who essentially dominate the flat development sector in Sydney.

For those reasons, housing is crucial. Construction is important. What we saw was a significant effort by this government to make sure that those companies were kept afloat—that they could pay bills, keep employees on and continue to train people; that the building supplies sector would survive; and that companies such as Hardies and Australian Gypsum, and the paint industry, the timber sector, hardware et cetera could basically sustain their existence through that crisis. This is something that was renowned around the world. This is a policy position that has been commented upon favourably by international financial institutions. It has been commented upon by the US government. To say that all is not perfect in this budget is to basically try to ignore this reality.

We know that the member for North Sydney had a very unfortunate experience down at the National Press Club a week or two ago, but let us put that to one side. Let us look at his other comments. Last year we had histrionics from him in this parliament about the government’s predictions of what would occur in the Australian economic climate over the approaching year. He said that we were far too optimistic, that we were cooking the books and that the projections were not going to occur. Now that most of those predictions have eventuated in an even more positive fashion, he says this year that we were too pessimistic—we should not have had those projections last year.

This is the same person who goes on national television trying to put a major hurdle there—a major barrier, to his mind—that we could hit the surplus in three years. He said he would like the government to try and accomplish that, feeling that it would not happen. Now we find, in half the expected time, that has occurred. It will occur in three years. So the man who said it was so difficult, that it was beyond this government, now knows that in reality it has occurred. He should give credit where it is due, that this has been the reality.

An article in the Canberra Times of 27 May reported the OECD’s comments on the experience in this country. The article states that the OECD:

… was optimistic about Australia’s future, upgrading its forecasts for economic growth to 3.25 per cent this year and 3.6 per cent next year.

More importantly, as far as I am concerned, the OECD is reported as saying:

The unemployment rate is expected to fall below 5 per cent by the end of 2011, in a context of moderate inflation.

Managing the exit strategy from the crisis is less problematic in Australia than in most OECD countries. The current tightening of monetary and fiscal policy is welcome given the rebound in activity.

So there we have the OECD congratulating the government of this country—the Rudd Labor government—for actually weathering the storm, not by sitting on its backside, not by going for a holiday, but by acting in regard to construction.

In the electorate of Reid we have seen very worthwhile projects occurring as a result of this initiative. There is a school across the road from me at Granville East. I hear that the Deputy Prime Minister has not gone to some school in South Australia, that she did not make sure that a few trees were not chopped down, or that a building was a few metres out of line at Drummoyne et cetera. We know that there is a multitude of attempts by the opposition to come up with every problem in the construction scheme. Come election day, I have a distinct feeling that those people who will be more affected by this debate will not be the people who are going to listen to speculation about the overall mistakes in the system; they will be the people who have got kids in schools and they will be the parents who have seen what has been accomplished. I have had teachers—not Teachers Federation activists—and people in the school system who are not even on my side of politics say that it is the best thing that has happened in four decades in New South Wales. It is worth while for the kids in schools, it is worthwhile for education, and, as I say, it has been crucially important in regard to keeping the Australian economy going and keeping people employed.

Through this government’s measures I have also seen a number of significant projects coming into Reid. There was the massive reconstruction on South Street in Granville which has essentially rejuvenated that shopping centre. There was the upgrade of the Harris Park town centre and the construction of an off-road dual-use pathway in Granville. The funding for the Granville Youth and Recreation Centre is something which I am very proud of as a member of the local resident committee. It provides a lot of activities and is a meeting place for young people in particular. You see them to all hours of the night playing basketball, particularly the local African youth. That has been helped by this government.

Similarly, in Auburn there was a major refit of the former Auburn Bowling Club as a community centre and, once again, it involved widespread consultation with the people in the electorate. Similarly, a few railway stations away at Regents Park, we saw a major facility being introduced which is available to a large number of local organisations. From recollection, there are about 15 local groups that are going to have access to meeting rooms there. As I say, we are seeing very worthwhile initiatives that have the dual outcomes of keeping people employed and bringing in worthwhile ventures.

One thing I was very pleased with in this budget was the money going to community legal centres. Of course, the Macquarie Legal Centre is based in my region and the region of the member for Parramatta, Julie Owens. The Women’s Legal Centre is also based in our region. Although it is not connected with those two existing services, I also commend the very enthusiastic committee around Susai Benjamin which established the Toongabbie Legal Centre from scratch in the last two years. They are an up-and-coming organisation in our region. I am hopeful that the federal government will be extremely positive about their funding in future years and I hope that they are accepted into the state organisation of legal centres.

Whilst we have moved to counter this international phenomenon, it is not to say that there are not regions of our country which have a higher than average unemployment rate. I refer to a number of them in my region. The last available small district figures are, unfortunately, only those from the December quarter. They noted that, whilst Australia had a 5.3 per cent unemployment rate, Campbelltown’s two subregions had rates of 8.5 and 8.7 per cent. Holroyd, currently in my electorate of Reid, had a 9.5 per cent rate. The two Liverpool subdistricts were roughly at the national average. Parramatta south, which is basically Gilford and South Granville, had a 14.7 per cent rate and Auburn had a 12.4 per cent rate. That is related to a high NESB, newly arrived migrant population, but in parts of Werriwa it is related to the distance from the city and transport issues. The cross-city transport patterns of Sydney, under Labor or Liberal, have been a significant factor against employment for decades.

Whilst I am very proud of this government’s action in construction and in injecting money into the economy, it is also especially pleasing in the context of those figures about higher than average unemployment in Western Sydney that the government in this budget is taking initiatives in skills and training. We see the investment of $660 million in training, apprenticeships and adult literacy and numeracy to ensure that we have the skills we need for a growing economy. That consists of 39,000 additional training places in sectors facing high skill demands through a $200 million investment in a new critical skills investment fund, support for 22,500 new apprenticeship commencements and the offer to states and territories to provide a guaranteed entitlement to a training place for all Australians under the age of 25. There is better training for the 1.7 million people in vocational training and, importantly, there are numeracy, literacy and language courses for up to 140,000 Australians to improve their quality of life.

On that front, I was very impressed by the paper produced by the local employment coordinator for our region, because it mentions issues such as the numeracy problems in the region which includes Reid. It notes that in the 2006 census over 60 per cent of residents within a priority employment area had not undertaken any tertiary studies; that people are concentrated in part-time employment, working a large number of casual jobs to support their families; and that a large proportion of the students going to the University of Western Sydney are the first in their families to attend tertiary studies. On this last point, an Australian Industry Group survey of members who are employers in the region suggests that as much as 40 per cent of the manufacturing workforce has relatively low levels of literacy and numeracy.

So I am indeed pleased that the government is still acting in regard to apprenticeships, employment and retraining. The budget as a whole provided $53½ million for the National Entitlement to a Quality Training Place program. Thereby, all Australians under 25 will have guaranteed access to a course to gain a qualification or increase their skills. This is of great importance. I note that the member for Werriwa has also been extremely interested in this, because his electorate and mine are affected by similar issues. We note that this will assist 364,000 young people who lack year 12 or certificate II qualifications. So there is action there to make sure that people are trained. People are getting numeracy skills.

I also note comments by the Deputy Prime Minister on another front in regard to measures that are being speculated upon and pushed by the opposition. I note the article in the Australian Financial Review of 27 May which talks about a KPMG Econtech study suggesting that the current government’s policy to create half a million jobs a year and boost annual growth to $100 billion by 2040 would occur because of measures such as the devotion of funds to school based trade training centres. We know that one of the announcements of the opposition has been that they would scrap them—they would abolish them. They would ignore that independent survey by KPMG Econtech, which says that there is great value in this. The Deputy Prime Minister went on to release a list of school based training centres by electorate, saying that 181 schools, several of which are in marginal coalition seats, would be denied a trade training centre under a coalition government.

On another front, she was equally correct in her point about the threat to 21st century education in this country from the coalition proposal to essentially scrap the computers in schools process. We know that under this government over 30 per cent of machines have made it into students’ hands already, with about 260,000 delivered, as the Australian reported on 25 May. The article commented:

Cutting the program, should the Coalition win the next federal election, would create serious inequity among high-school students.

That is, between those that have had them delivered and those that will not receive them. Of course, the situation is that we are facing a very serious deterioration of availability of those computers to people, particularly in more socially and economically deprived areas, if the coalition get away with abolishing this system.

Talking more broadly, we have the budget proposal that small businesses will have a tax reduction from 30 to 28 per cent, in advance of the rest of the corporate sector. We have the instant write-off for assets under $5,000; a 50 per cent tax discount for the first $1,000 of interest deposits, whether in banks, credit unions or building societies; and the introduction of a standard tax deduction scheme to make it more simple for the average taxpayer. Most importantly, there is a significant improvement in superannuation earnings in the long term for Australians, with estimates that a 30-year-old will gain an extra $100,000 by this change. These measures, of course, cannot be funded unless there is the successful introduction of the proposed resources tax.

It is 30 years since the courts in this country decided that offshore property belonged to the Commonwealth and not to the states. That court case is a reminder to us that these materials belong to the Australian people, the Australian taxpayers. It is also a reminder to us that these mining companies will exploit the most available resources in the first period. Those that are less available will be looked at later. We are now in the most productive and profitable time for some of these mines. The time is now for the Australian people to claim a reasonable return with regard to the extraction of this resource that is owned by them.

I want, finally, to turn to the question of health. It is worth noting another initiative by the opposition—the abolition of e-health. It was very interesting to note on 25 May the response of the Minister for Health and Ageing in the House noting that the current Leader of the Opposition as far back as 2003 made the monumentally heroic comment that it would be an indictment against everyone in the health system, including the then existing coalition government, if e-health systems were not introduced in this country. Back in 2007, he thought it would be an indictment if it were not accomplished; now he seeks to abolish it. In the interim, the then health minister made a comment in August 2007:

… my first scripted speech—

I do not know if ‘scripted’ is actually gospel or whether it falls in the middle—

as Health Minister concerned e-health. I stated that an electronic health record, communicated electronically among health care providers, would mean safer, better, more convenient and more efficient health care.

He noted that it was fundamentally important. He said it would be an indictment if it did not happen under his watch. It has not happened. It did not matter, again, that his replacement from the opposition in that portfolio had given the government a commitment that he was in accord and on board to promote the same program. The replacement initially said that it was a very poor reflection on the previous decade—and that included Mr Abbott’s reign—that it had not been accomplished then. Now we see it being abolished despite the fact that it is estimated that two per cent to three per cent of hospital admissions in Australia are linked to medication errors, equating to 190,000 admissions each year, as the minister noted, and costing the Australian taxpayer—when people are so worried about them—in the area of $660 million a year. I commend the budget both on the national front and in regard to what has been accomplished in the electorate of Reid.

Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2010-2011. The assumptions and hopes in these bills are built, you might say, on a house of cards. They fail to invest for the future of Australia, proposing new taxes that will be spent on locking Australia into borrowing $100 million a day to meet the cost of Labor’s reckless spending. Despite the rhetoric, false promises and hope that the Prime Minister and his Labor government have put into this document, all Australians know that this Rudd Labor government is a high-taxing, high-spending, highly reckless Labor government. Their efforts would put the Whitlam government to shame. Today I would like to speak about the impact of this year’s budget on my community—the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains. I will also address some of the key issues in the budget facing Australia’s veteran community in my capacity as shadow minister for veterans’ affairs.

Firstly, can I say how disappointed I am by some of the measures in the budget. The resource super profits tax is a huge imposition on the industry and the sector which kept Australia out of recession. Whilst the Prime Minister and the Treasurer would have you believe that this new tax is aimed squarely at the big end of town, it is not. In my own community, small quarry operators will feel the effects of the tax on their profits. Small family businesses employing local people will have to pay the price for Mr Rudd’s attack on miners. I fully support the Leader of the Opposition’s promise to oppose this tax now or, if necessary, to repeal it when in government.

This tax will affect the everyday cost of living for all Australians. In my community, the increased cost of living is already being felt. Electricity prices continue to rise and gas and petrol prices are up. Despite the Prime Minister’s hollow call to reduce the cost of living at the last election, Australians are now feeling the pinch from higher interest rates, reduced growth in real wages and, in some cases, reduced working hours, combined with increasing inflation as a result of higher government borrowing. The people in my community are wondering just what the Prime Minister really meant before the last election.

Because of Labor’s reckless spending, local Landcare operators will face a further funding cut. This government, which promised big things on the environment, has cut $10.9 million from the Landcare program. In my local community, an area of exceptional environmental diversity and sensitivity, local Landcare volunteers and workers are being told to do more with less by the Rudd Labor government. Their Caring for our Country program has not delivered since it was introduced after the election. Landcare funding is provided through that vehicle. Despite all the loud rhetoric on the environment before the election, there has been little action since.

This also goes for the Hawkesbury River, which is an area of extreme environmental sensitivity. Whilst we have had a wet autumn in the region, the river continues to be choked by weeds. The Hawkesbury is a natural icon for my region and for Sydney as a whole. The good health of the river is critical to the health of farmers, small family business operators and tourist providers in the region.

What strikes me as odd is the $18 million environmental bureaucracy that the Prime Minister is creating in this budget. Now it seems that the government is more concerned with collecting data to work out what it should be doing, but there will not be any money for direct action—again: spin, no action. When it comes to waste and mismanagement I have spoken previously in this place about projects in my electorate which have pushed the credibility test, from the failed BER program, with an example which made page 3 of the Australian earlier this year, to the failures in health and hospitals by the combined effort of 15 years of state Labor and three years of Rudd Labor. This government’s enormous failings have touched every corner of this nation.

While road funding across the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury has maintained parity with the record spending under the previous coalition government, the $650,000 in Roads to Recovery funding for this year for the Blue Mountains City Council is a drop in the ocean. As we all know, Labor’s reckless spending is jeopardising the ability of future governments to meet infrastructure challenges.

In our region, of course, the geography of the Blue Mountains presents a very real challenge to the movement of people and goods from the central western plains to the ports of Sydney. This year, of course, marks 200 years since the arrival of Lachlan Macquarie in Sydney as New South Wales Governor. Macquarie dispatched explorers Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth to find a suitable crossing of the mountains. Their track remains largely the route of the highway today. I am very mindful of the need to balance all the interests in planning for improved roads across the mountains. Equally, I want to fully explore all options, including the increased use of rail instead of overcongested roads.

The coalition is of the view that an efficient freight route from the west to the port is an important way to encourage economic growth outside the Sydney Basin, and that it is a piece of infrastructure that is needed in the long term. Across Sydney, and particularly in our region, protecting our way of life by reducing time stuck in traffic and enabling more time to be spent with family is critical. Spending two hours a day in a car to travel 50 kilometres is not a good use of time. We cannot undo the mistakes of poor planning over 200 hundred years in an instant. We have to deal with these challenges now, and learn the lessons for the future. Planning for roads and for infrastructure does not simply mean bigger roads; it means improved road safety, integration with rail and other public transport and investigating new ways to move freight efficiently. I will continue to fight for improved road safety for the Great Western Highway, for Richmond Road and the river crossing to North Richmond—critical infrastructure projects for the future of our region.

Turning to my responsibility as shadow minister for veterans’ affairs, I would like to comment on some of the initiatives in the budget. The budget finally responded to the Clarke review with—you guessed it—another review. Veterans of British nuclear testing in the Australian outback will welcome the adoption of the initial recommendations of the Clarke review, which will now reclassify their service to equivalent hazardous non-warlike service. Submariners involved in special operations missions will also welcome the reclassification of their service and the potential for them to gain access to entitlements under the Veterans’ Entitlements Act 1986.

RAAF personnel who served at RAAF Ubon in Thailand between 31 May 1962 and 27 July 1962 have also had their service reclassified, potentially opening the way for access to further entitlements. But 2,700 veterans of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces, BCOF, are incredibly disappointed, and will have to wait for further review into their service to see whether they will be able to access anything. After all, it was the Rudd Labor government which promised action in this area at the last election. After 30 months of waiting, BCOF veterans have every right to feel betrayed by this Rudd Labor government. As the daughter of a late BCOF veteran, I understand their frustration.

The Rudd Labor government also used the budget to reply formally to the findings of a parliamentary inquiry into the F111 reseal-deseal program. The package of some $55 million will provide further assistance to personnel affected by this program operated by the RAAF between 1973 and 2000. Recently, I met with the F111 Deseal/Reseal Support Group, known amongst other things as the Goop Troop. They feel incredibly let down by the response to the review. They have asked me to make further inquiries with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs about a number of the initiatives proposed. They are concerned that there was no compensation as part of the scheme and are disappointed that the strong rhetoric from the Rudd Labor government before the election has not been followed through in the response to the issues raised in the inquiry. Whilst the coalition is pleased that the parliament’s inquiry has finally been responded to after nearly 12 months of inaction and delay, we are determined to ensure the response is as comprehensive as the government’s spin would have us believe.

The Rudd Labor government proposes the removal of an entitlement from Australia’s war widows, which the government says is about closing a loophole. I plan to speak in greater detail about this measure when it is debated in another bill later this week. However, in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 May, the day after the budget, journalist Damien Murphy wrote:

This year the government has turned its hardened eye on merry war widows, widowers and the partner swapping that we understand is apparently rife in retirement homes.

It plans to remove eligibility for some pensions if war widows or widowers enter de facto relationships following the death of their veteran partners.

This change in entitlements will affect future war widows—the spouses of current serving personnel—from conflicts like the Gulf War and East Timor.

Another measure in the budget is the Preventable Admissions and Improved Community Care Program. Whilst it is not clear whether this is new money or reallocated funds shifted around between different programs and departments, it is nevertheless a step in the direction of improving access to care for our veterans and their families. I have stated elsewhere that, notwithstanding initiatives such as this, the best outcome for veterans and their families must always be put first. This program must allow the veteran and their doctor the necessary flexibility to tailor medical treatment to suit the needs of the veteran as well as those of their family.

Beyond the initiatives mentioned in the budget, the document is otherwise remarkable for what it does not say. There is no mention, for example, of the review of DVA funded ESO advocacy and welfare services, despite the review having been completed and sitting on the minister’s desk. There is no indication of a timetable for the completion of the review of military compensation arrangements, which was initially due for completion in March. This is an important review. We need to get it right, but it surely cannot be completely open-ended. The veteran and ex-service community needs some indication of when it can expect to be discussing changes to the system.

The other phantom item in this year’s budget is the long-awaited and still not quite delivered review of war caused disabilities and pharmaceutical costs. Whilst the minister released a 14-page discussion paper on 7 May, the document contained no detailed costings or statistics. The budget gives no clearer indication of this either. Will the costs of the options listed in the minister’s paper be met with new funds or from existing funding? If the latter, where will the funds be taken from? What will veterans lose on one hand to possibly gain with the other? Moreover, the discussion paper deals only with disabled veterans with qualifying service. This immediately discounts thousands of peacekeepers whose service does not carry the qualifying service declaration. Despite some 800 of them currently accessing disability pensions, they would not be eligible for assistance under the minister’s two options, which require a disability pensioner also to have qualifying service in order to access the out-of-pocket pharmaceutical expenses refund. I intend also to ask further questions about this scheme when the opportunity arises. I have already been consulting with the ex-service community on this discussion paper and encourage further feedback from other stakeholders.

We are currently engaged in RSL congress season, and I have already spoken at the congresses of the Tasmanian and the New South Wales branches of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia. At these events I am taking the opportunity to flag five principles for veterans affairs under a coalition government. These principles have guided the development of policy in the area of veterans affairs by the coalition. They are not an end in themselves but they are a solid foundation upon which the coalition will develop credible alternative policies for the next election.

The first principle is to build a stronger economy to provide the assistance our veterans and their families deserve. The second principle is to improve the way we provide support, advice and assistance to veterans’ families. The third principle is to reduce the number of reviews of primary claims by improving the processing of claims—getting it right the first time. The fourth principle is to enhance service delivery for our younger veterans and ensure our older veterans have help when they need it. The fifth principle is to increase Australia’s understanding of the service of defence personnel in humanitarian and peacekeeping roles. I look forward to expanding on these points further in coming weeks and months.

For my community in the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains this budget is a disappointing final step in Labor’s path to economic wrack and ruin. My community has watched this government spend money, stunned at the waste and mismanagement in programs like Building the Education Revolution and the pink batts scheme. Labor will spend $1 billion fixing up their border protection failures, yet the Rudd Labor government expects us to believe that their $1 billion surplus—a surplus that might appear in three years time—is a panacea to the debt crisis they have left Australia in.

My community understands that, when a government borrows money, it is directly competing with mums and dads wanting to borrow money to buy a house, to provide a stable, secure environment to raise their family in. This government borrowing $100 million a day is pushing interest rates and inflation even higher. This can only stop by changing the government at the next election. This house-of-cards budget is a final straw for many working families in my community who believed that Labor would do a better job. They have been proved wrong. Labor has failed the test of economic responsibility, and this budget only proves this point. This budget affects too many people and relies on too many assumptions to be a reliable document for our future.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2010-2011. This is the 21st budget that I have had the opportunity to witness in this place since I was first elected on 24 March 1990. Indeed, my first speech in this place was on an appropriation bill and was given on 11 September 1990.

I am pleased to rise in support of the budget, because I think it is a responsible budget and it is a budget that shows that the government has been acting in a responsible way both economically and for the safety and protection of our community. We now know that during the global financial crisis this government created some 225,000 jobs. The prediction at the beginning of the crisis was that 200,000 jobs would be lost. That has not happened. We are the best-performing economy in the Western world. That means that many hundreds of thousands of families—many hundreds of thousands of people—are better off. We have protected our human capital.

Those opposite were arguing at the beginning of the economic crisis to do nothing or to give tax cuts to the rich. The only criticism I have of this government is that we have not gone out and told the electorate often enough and loud enough what we have achieved. The average punter in the street does not believe it, or does not think that it was going to be as bad as what was predicted. But they only have to look at the rest of the world—or just in England and America—to see what happened.

I know what the stimulus did in my community, where some $90 million has been committed to skills. I was at a function on Friday night with a number of builders, and they told me that, for their firms, it meant the continuation of work, the retention of existing employees and the putting on of new employees. We should not take that for granted.

Both sides of the House should be looking after our human capital. I can understand why those opposite want higher unemployment: it means that they can push the price of wages down and attack conditions. We now know that we are going to get a reintroduction of Work Choices should the opposition win the next election.

In relation to this budget, there have been a couple of measures that the government has announced for which there is a campaign, and it is a campaign that I do not think we should be giving in to. Last Thursday in a doorstop, when asked about the resource super profits tax, I said that there was ‘no doubt the tax would be sorted, even if it took some time,’ and I also said: ‘What you need is a proper compromise for the Australian people. I don’t want a quick-fix—I want a solution that is in the interests of Australia.’ That is what we should be looking for. I note that the Prime Minister, in his press conference today with the Treasurer and the Minister for Resources and Energy, had this to say:

… we do not expect to land any agreement with the mining industry any time soon. Anyone out there expecting that there’ll be some magic deal at midnight tomorrow night is wrong. That’s not how it’s going to be. Furthermore, this is going to be quite a long and protracted negotiation over quite a long period of time. And there I speak of weeks, at least, if not beyond.

The Minister for Resources and Energy reminded us that it was a tax on profits; it was not a tax on extraction. The Prime Minister also said:

… the Government is entirely prepared for the sorts of scare campaigns that we’ve seen in times past. We saw it with the introduction of the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, we saw it over Mabo, we’ve seen it in relation to industrial relations …

I was here when we saw the initial scare campaign by the mining industry over Mabo. You would have thought that the sky was going to fall in. It did not. The then government was confronted with a High Court decision and we took the view that we would respect that High Court decision and attempt to create certainty in the marketplace. There were many that wanted the government to extinguish native title and acquire the property rights of Indigenous Australians. They argued that it would be the end of the world as we know it. The government at the time came up with a balanced act. The land rights act—which was initially an act of the former Whitlam government but which did not get through prior to the dismissal in ‘75—was enacted by the Fraser government and has a veto. The Native Title Act has a right to negotiate, a right to be consulted. There is no right to veto. The Native Title Act was an alternative to common-law litigation. It was an act that was to help miners to sit down and talk with Aboriginal people.

To their credit, when the Wik decision was handed down the mining community did not go berserk. It was the farming community, because they had expected that a lease would extinguish native title. But the miners acted responsibly. I myself dealt with Rio Tinto, as they then were, in relation to what they wanted to do with the proposed Century Zinc mine. The reason I refer to that is that it is an example of how you reach an agreement that becomes a long-term agreement. Originally Rio Tinto were asking for the state government and the federal government to introduce special legislation, because they had been negotiating outside the Native Title Act. They had some time lines in relation to that mine under which they needed an agreement.

When we were approached as an opposition I met with the then Managing Director of Rio Tinto, Ian Williams, who said, ‘Our commitment is to work with the community to create opportunities to spend money on training.’ That is a quote from an AIATSIS document. My advice to the company back then was: ‘Withdraw your request for special legislation and operate within the Native Title Act and you will have a title within 12 months.’ The company did that, and the state and federal government were not all that impressed. As it turned out there was an agreement reached within 11 months. As a result of that agreement, there was a $60 million compensation package, with $45 million dedicated to creating job opportunities. Out of what the company perceived was a crisis came a long-term arrangement with Aboriginal people that turned into a win-win situation. The government at the time was left floundering because they did not want an agreement; they actually wanted to heighten tensions over the Century Zinc mine. The benefit that Rio Tinto had was that every other Aboriginal community in the country wanted to deal with them in relation to mining because they had shown respect for Aboriginal people in the Century Zinc project.

I think the same thing needs to happen here in terms of some of the government’s initiatives, particularly the resources super profits tax in this budget. If the opposition are saying that mining companies can basically blackmail the government through $100 million of advertising and force concessions out of the government that are not in the national interest, then they are kidding themselves. That is no way to do business. I do not have expertise in all the intricacies of mining tax and all that. I leave that to others. All I will say is that it is not appropriate for this stoush to be going on in a public forum when $100 million or more of company advertising is being used to try to suborn the government into submission. That is not the way to do business.

It is not the intention of this government to stop mining in this nation. The history of this government and of key individuals in this government has been one of assistance to the mining sector. And we know from the submissions to the Henry review that such a tax was contemplated. But can you really say it is good public policy when the loudest section of the community can run advertising campaigns to basically drive the government into concessions that are not in the national interest? It is madness.

I can understand why Mr Palmer is putting the boot in—because he is a member of the Liberal-National Party. He sees that it is in his political interests and probably in his financial interests to undermine the government’s position. My problem is that, at the same time that these companies might be doing this, they are the ones that are creating a problem on the Stock Exchange for their shareholders, yet they are blaming the government for it. And we know that some of the problems in relation to the Stock Exchange have to do with Europe and Greece.

But what does the government want to do through the resources tax? It is a tax on profits. If it needs to be rejigged in some respects, I am not here to argue—other than what is on the public record—the niceties of that particular formula or what concessions should be or need to be taken into consideration. What I have heard is that one in three dollars was being paid by mining companies 10 years ago and it is now one in seven. This is a national resource that is owned by the people, so what the budget is attempting to do—and I heard the minister for resources in the press conference—is come forward with a position that in effect sees us through good times and bad times.

I think the opposition are not doing themselves any favours by just jumping on the miners’ bandwagon. That is why I talked about native title and those other matters in the past where we were told by the mining sector that the sky was going to fall in. It is not going to fall in. If it were going to fall in and you could demonstrate it to the government during detailed negotiations, I am sure that the government would make the necessary adjustments. I do not believe that the government is acting in bad faith or wants to see mining companies fail. There might be some in the opposition who, in the lead-up to an election, would like to run that argument. Is that how we are going to run, in effect, a tax policy? This is different from the GST. The GST was an ideological argument about whether you have a tax on consumption, and I note that even in relation to that tax the former government made concessions to the Democrats to get their legislation through. Their initial, pure position in terms of food was not maintained.

I think the average member of the electorate will agree that the resource super profits tax, when it is explained to them, is a fair thing. What are the offsets? We have a superannuation guarantee increase from nine per cent to 12 per cent. We have some other superannuation measures. Small business has simpler, lower tax. There is a two per cent cut in company tax. There is an infrastructure fund. All of these things are offsets. I am quite amazed that the Minerals Council of Australia, having first submitted to the Henry review their support to such a concept, have now gone feral. The other thing that is staggering is that this tax is not due to come in until 1 July 2012. There is no legislation before the parliament. The government has allowed time for consultation, for the necessary discussions to take place and for the legislation to be formulated for a start-up date on 1 July 2012, yet we have the opposition wanting to abandon the proposition without even following it through. I think that is bad public policy on the part of the opposition. It will not augur well for them if the community has to reach a judgment on it.

My own personal view, as I said earlier, is that there should be a proper compromise for the Australian people. The government, in conjunction with the relevant stakeholders, should sit down, work it through and seek to reach agreement. If the mining companies think that it is a good thing to take the government on during an election, that might be right—if you have got blinkers on. What happens if you lose the election? What if the government, in conjunction with the Greens, has control of the new Senate from 1 July 2011? What does that do for your investors? If there is no agreement, it is not something I am frightened to go to an election with. I am quite prepared to go to an election with it and get a mandate from the people. I am sure the opposition are prepared to go to an election with it, too, because they think it will help them in Queensland and Western Australia. But is that the way to run a tax policy for a sector of the community that is vital to the Australian economy?

My advice to the mining companies when I was shadow minister for Aboriginal affairs was not to rely on politicians to deliver you certainty but to go out and achieve it with Indigenous communities and other stakeholders. The smart mining companies did that after Mabo. I pay tribute to the leaders of the mining sector because not just in Australia do they have to negotiate with Indigenous people but they have to do it around the world. Rio Tinto has arrangements around the world with Indigenous people. There is an example where the mining companies learnt from being burnt in the Mabo situation where they were not at the table. In the end they were hostile to the government and they lost, and it did not get picked up after Wik. I say to the mining sector that the way to sort this out is not to have it as the subject of an election between us and the opposition. What you want is long-term certainty. If you have got a case, then argue the case at the appropriate table. What precedent is it for those of us in political life if we are going to decide policy on the size of a public relations campaign that a section of the community is prepared to run? I know what my view is. I am prepared to lose on it. I am prepared to lose on it because that is not the way to do business. In the Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, the resources sector has a champion. I know it and they know it. They can get in his door any time they want to put their case. It should be the same with the Treasury on this.

As I said, it is the principles I am interested in here. I am not going to have an argument on the detail, because that is not my area of expertise. My area of expertise is settling disputes as a lawyer. When I was a lawyer I learnt very early on to cut a deal with the prosecution if you could; that you only relied on a tribunal when it was a hopeless case.

In this budget—and no-one has run through these figures and exposed them as being faulty—we are bringing the budget back into the black three years earlier. That is another demonstration of the responsibility of this government. At the end of the day, since the budget was delivered till now, I have not heard anyone say, on the assumptions that we have made—which are conservative assumptions—that what we have said will not happen.

I know the opposition are wounded and they are looking for a fight, but this is not the sort of fight—

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wounded?

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are wounded because they lost the last election. I am not particularly worried about the polls because the body language of a lot of people in the opposition is not that of people who think they are going to win the next election—but that is a matter for the punters to decide. I will say that if you were a shareholder and your shares relied on the result of an election that even on the current polls will be tight, then it would be pretty dumb if your directors relied on an election to sort out the problem rather than on negotiation with the government. That is jeopardising shareholders’ money, if you ask me. That is playing games with shareholders, if you ask me. That is playing games with good public policy.

I have great pleasure in rising to support this budget. I think it is a good budget. It is a budget that exposes the opposition, because I am still looking for something positive from them. All I have heard in two-and-a-bit years is negative, negative, negative. They are a bunch of knockers. What do they stand for? We will soon see. This budget stands for a better Australia and I commend it to the House. (Time expired)

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget is a debt and deficit budget. It is a window-dressing budget which is presented in a deeply misleading way. It is a budget from a government which has misdiagnosed the economic challenges facing Australia and is consequently following the wrong strategy. And it is a budget of missed opportunities.

It is, first of all, a debt and deficit budget. It continues the tawdry pattern of deficit that we have seen for the last three years: a $27 billion deficit in 2008-09, a $57 billion deficit in 2009-10, and now $41 billion in 2010-11. It is the second biggest in dollar terms ever. We are borrowing $700 million a week, $100 million a day, just to keep the doors of the operation opened, just to engage in business as usual. And, of course, it stands in very stark contrast to the pattern of surplus after surplus after surplus that we saw under the Howard government. Even worse, it is a budget which maintains the debt until 2018. Net public debt will peak at $94 billion in 2012-13—$9,000 for each of Australia’s 10 million households, and that is before the $26 billion which is to be borrowed to fund the National Broadband Network. That debt burden will of itself generate an interest expenditure at its peak of around $7 billion a year.

This is a budget which shows absolutely no spending discipline. We have seen increase after increase after increase from this government. In four years we have gone from an expenditure of $253 billion to an expenditure of $352 billion. That is an increase of almost $100 billion in just four years. And it is not about to stop. In fact, over the next four years spending will increase by another $51 billion.

The spending increases are actually getting worse. On a quick calculation, this year’s budget is a 1.8 per cent increase on last year’s; the following year it is expected to be a 2.9 per cent increase; and the year after that, a 5.3 per cent increase. So the growth is actually increasing. We are not seeing the kind of discipline that Australians have the right to expect from a government facing the challenges that Australia presently faces.

What is more, we have heard an enormous amount about returning to surplus within three years. But, frankly, this is a window-dressing budget, because to talk about what will happen in three years is a complete red herring. ‘What is happening this year?’ is the question we need to ask. If you turn up at home one day and say to your wife, ‘I know it’s our anniversary but I’m not getting you a present this year; I’m giving you a present in three years time,’ you will get very short shrift. Equally, the Australian people ought to give very short shrift to a government that says, ‘Don’t worry about this year because we will be back in balance in three years time.’ What is more, that forecast about being in balance in three years time is essentially meaningless, as Ross Gittins argued in the Sydney Morning Herald. He points out quite correctly that Treasury has great difficulty forecasting what will happen in a month, let alone in three years. That is no criticism of them; it is simply a recognition of the state of economic science. So to forecast that in three years you will have a surplus of $1 billion against a total forecast expenditure of $378 billion is essentially meaningless. It erroneously claims a degree of precision in forecasting which is 10 times or 100 times greater than can actually be achieved.

There is, I am sorry to say, another reason why this is a window-dressing budget. There is a highly misleading chart on page 2-23 of Budget Paper No. 1 which purports to show that countries with big stimuluses, including Australia, had much larger variations on the budget outcome which the IMF forecast for them than countries which did not have big stimuluses—in other words, attempting to substantiate this argument that the stimulus spending is what has delivered the goods over the past few years. Treasury comments, in its narrative on this chart:

The relationship shown is highly statistically significant, with a t-statistic on the slope coefficient of 3.3.

The independent work which has been done to assess this chart makes the point that it purports to compare countries in the OECD but in fact it does not take the full sample of 19 observations, the 19 countries excluding the EU which are included. When you rerun the work with all 19, you find out that the statistical relationship is essentially non-existent. The t-statistic is only 0.5. For those of you who did not fritter away their university years studying economics, that is, as Professor Sinclair Davidson, who did this work, has commented:

… well below the generally accepted levels for a t-stat to indicate statistical significance.

So the statistical work in the charts which Treasury is trying to use to argue that there is some statistical support for the purported relationship between the size of the stimulus and the result in terms of growth, unfortunately, on close analysis, simply does not stand up.

The other point about this being a window-dressing budget is a very fundamental one. Even the claimed return to surplus in three years is to be achieved in a very disappointing way. It is to be achieved by gaining extra revenue through imposing new taxes rather than by taking tough, necessary decisions. This Labor government has taken the easy way out by introducing new taxes rather than by getting control of spending and introducing discipline.

This budget is one framed by a government which has misdiagnosed the economic challenge facing Australia and which is consequently responding in the wrong way. There was a financial crisis in the North Atlantic and the Rudd Labor government panicked and overreacted. Certainly the coalition agreed that some response was necessary and we supported the first stimulus package of around $10 billion. But it was quite clear early on that Australia was going to be significantly quarantined from what was occurring in the North Atlantic and, even so, the Labor government could not resist splashing the cash around and going for a $42 billion stimulus in February 2009. I just note parenthetically that there seems to be something about numbers in the $40 billion range which particularly attracts the most irresponsible instincts of this government. This year we have got a deficit of $41 billion; we had a stimulus of $42 billion early last year; and of course we have got the National Broadband Network, which is $43 billion. There is something about that magic range of $40 billion which really gets those native spending instincts fired up.

Who could forget the analysis written by our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, about 18 months ago, in which he said:

From time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next, when one orthodoxy is overthrown and another takes its place.

Even by his standards it is remarkably hyperbolic language. But it is an insight into why this government has misdiagnosed the present economic situation of Australia. Anybody who sees what is occurring as a massive turning point in history is naturally going to be tempted to spend furiously. But when you engage in even the briefest analysis of the thesis that was put forward in that article you quickly see that it is riddled with logical errors and inconsistencies.

It is unclear, for example, whether Mr Rudd thinks that expansionary monetary policy is a good thing or a bad thing. At one point in this article he criticises the Reagan administration and its response to the stagflation of the seventies. That response, of course, was centred on the tight monetary policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Volcker. Later on in his piece he criticises the loose monetary policies of a subsequent Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, and later on again he lauds his own government’s monetary stimulus, saying:

To encourage liquidity, the government legislated to increase by $25 billion the maximum value of government bonds that can be issued at any one time.

In other words, he presents a fundamental premise which is confused and incorrect, a fundamental premise which seeks to force-feed Australian history into a framework which asserts that there has been a neoliberal consensus around the world, a thesis which attempts to argue, for example, that Australian banking regulation is identical to that in other advanced nations when, as we well know, thanks to the prescient work of Treasurer Costello and Prime Minister Howard, Australian banking regulation stood this country in very good stead in responding to the financial crisis.

The relevance of all of this for the present budget is that today we have the wrong settings in this budget. The budget papers themselves say that we are approaching full employment and the implication of that quite clearly is that we are potentially facing inflationary pressures. Yet we have a highly stimulatory budget spending without restraint.

An even more significant consequence of this spending without restraint is that we have a government which is continuing to wantonly pile on debt when the biggest challenge facing advanced economies around the world is the sovereign debt crisis. Budget Paper No. 1 makes this very point on pages 2-12 and 2-14. It is very instructive to have a look at what another Labour government did in a jurisdiction that we often look to, the UK. In 1997, at the time that the Blair government took office, the debt to GDP ratio in the UK was 43 per cent. Today it is 62 per cent. Over a decade of Labour has seen spending discipline go out the window, deficit year after year and, as a consequence, a country which has its strategic economic options severely limited. This year, in fact, the deficit to GDP ratio in the UK is 13 per cent, worse even than Greece, the country which is on the brink of a financial precipice.

The important point for Australia is that it is clearly accepted that, as your debt to GDP ratio rises, you constrain your national economic options and you expose yourself to very serious threat. Studies by the IMF and by the US economist Kenneth Rogoff, amongst others, show that once a country’s debt to GDP ratio reaches the range above 60 per cent there is a tipping point. You are paying so much interest on your debt and taxes are so high that it is virtually impossible to get out of that black hole.

The Labor government would no doubt make the point that our debt to GDP ratio is well below these levels. We are very fortunate that it is, because of the wise stewardship of the Howard government for over 10 years. But the only way you get your debt to GDP ratio under control is by year after year of discipline, year after year of hard work. Let me read the deficit to GDP ratios in Australia from 1997 to 2007. In 1997 there was deficit of minus 0.7 per cent. Following that it was 1.6 per cent, two per cent and 0.9 per cent. There was a slight dip in 2001 to minus 0.1 per cent, but then it was 1.3 per cent, 1.8 per cent, 1.1 per cent, 1.5 per cent, 1.5 per cent and 1.6 per cent—every one of those positive. That is a roll of honour, a decade of fiscal discipline. It is because of that decade that we are as well positioned as we are today.

But that discipline has been shredded under the Rudd government. We are now in their third year of exceptionally high deficits, and the debt is starting to mount. The debt train has left the station. It is now projected to peak at $94 billion, and that is only if the government show discipline after this year. We have been told, ‘We’re not quite ready to be disciplined this year, but believe us—after this year it is going to get better.’ I do not believe them. The opposition does not believe them. The Australian people do not believe them. There is one thing we know from painful experience about Labor: they love spending money and they just cannot exercise fiscal discipline. Time after time one thing has to happen—that is, the coalition, the Liberal and National parties, need to get back in power so that we can get the economy back on track, we can get the spending discipline in place and we can get out of the mess of debt that Labor inevitably run up.

The final point I wish to make about this budget is that it is a budget of tragically missed opportunities. It is a complacent budget which fails to take hard decisions. It is a budget which assumes that ‘she’ll be right’. It is a budget which continues to rack up deficit and debt. It is a missed opportunity to reduce the stimulus spending much more quickly than the Labor government has chosen to do. The only responsible party here is the coalition. We have put forward a series of spending cuts. That takes political courage. It takes discipline. It takes determination. We have been prepared to do that because we know that is the responsible course. The government is asleep at the wheel, not prepared to take any responsible decisions.

This budget is a missed opportunity to wind back taxation levels. Instead we have seen new taxes: the cigarette excise and a new tax on the mining industry, the so-called resource super profits tax. We hear constantly this argument that, because the company tax rate is going to be reduced somewhat, that more than compensates for the increased taxes from the resource super profits tax and the cigarettes tax excise. That is just a ludicrously innumerate claim, as the quickest look at the budget papers reveals. The total amount that will be raised from those two taxes, once they are in full swing, is around $10 billion a year. What is being given back under the company tax reduction is $4 billion a year, once in full swing. So the claim that one makes up for the other just makes no sense at all. And, of course, it just means more complexity and going in the direction opposite to that of simplicity and tax reduction, which is what we ought to see.

This budget is also a failed opportunity for reform. There was so much promise about the Henry tax review. It was going to be the root and branch reform. And then, of the 138 recommendations, we saw just two. We have a government that loves to talk about spending and loves to increase taxes. Here on this side of the House, we stand for discipline and responsibility and we know that everything that is spent has to be paid for.

In my electorate of Bradfield, tax office statistics show that we make up 0.8 per cent of the population but we pay 1.8 per cent of personal income tax. So, in my electorate of Bradfield and in electorates around the country, Australians are rightly concerned about their tax burden and they are rightly concerned about the amount of money this government is spending. They know that the only way to get the tax they pay under control is to get government spending under control. They also know that the only way to get government spending under control is to get a government in place which has a track record of, and a commitment to, fiscal discipline and which does not measure its success based upon being able to quote massive expenditure dollars. They know we need a government which measures its success based upon a responsible and measured approach to expenditure and government revenue and which seeks to achieve budget settings which make the structural and strategic changes that Australia needs to be competitive, efficient and productive in this very large and not necessarily friendly world that we live in.

This budget is, at base, a debt and deficit budget. It is a window-dressing budget which does not do what it claims. It is a budget from a government which has misdiagnosed Australia’s economic challenges and it is a budget of tragically missed opportunities. All Australians will be the poorer for the decisions this government has failed to take.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Western and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2010-2011 and related budget bills. It is not possible to speak on these budget bills as a Western Australian and not address the resource super profits tax. There has been too much anger, too much self-interest and too much overblown rhetoric about this tax. We have heard too much self-interest masquerading as concern for the national interest. At a time when we want apprentices and workers to look to the mining sector for careers, we hear rhetoric that destroys public, employee and investor confidence in the sector. That is irresponsible.

It has been claimed that this tax is a 70 per cent tax on company earnings. It is not. It has been said that every element of this tax is set in stone. It is not. It has been said that this tax will be imposed on top of royalties. It will not. And it has been said that it will be imposed on top of company tax. It will not. Royalties will be refunded, and the resource tax will be deductible against company tax. It is the case that a project earning less than the uplift factor, the long-term bond rate, will pay significantly less tax. The tax will replace royalties and, where royalty payments are greater than the tax, firms will get a rebate for the difference. The tax will replace multiple royalty regimes which do not optimise investment. Mining companies will not pay the proposed tax on top of royalties. They will pay it instead on royalties and then only when they make above threshold profits. It has been said that every dollar of return above the long-term bond rate, currently about six per cent, will be taxed. It will not be.

For 40 or 50 years, Australia’s mining towns have been company towns. In the 1960s, concessional royalty rates were created recognising the cost of provision of social infrastructure. Companies did not pay local government rates but they did pay for local social infrastructure such as power and housing in mining towns. Swimming pools, cinemas, community halls and even hospitals in the Pilbara were provided by miners, and miners benefited from concessional royalties. In their own tax returns, mining companies wrote off the social investments as depreciating assets.

However, by the 1990s, without local government rates being paid and with dwindling social investment by miners, our mining towns were being strangled. Mining towns can be hard places to live in, hard places to get houses in and hard places to raise families and children in. They are hard places because by the 1990s mining companies were banking the concessional royalties and sending the cost directly to mining families. Mining companies stepped down support for mining communities. The Pilbara Regional Council reflected on this practice five years ago by referring to it as a form of cost shifting from the large companies to local governments and families in remote and regional communities. The Pilbara Regional Council at that time made the observation that they genuinely felt companies should either be subject to increased royalties or pay local government rates. The new tax will change this. It will fund community infrastructure in regional resource communities.

I know the importance of this. I grew up in a company mining town—Whyalla in South Australia. This debate is not trivial and its purpose is not to be ignored. We can have a better tax for miners. We can have better sustainable returns for Australians living in regional mining communities. We can have better mining communities with infrastructure funded by these tax measures. Think about the benefit to regional Australia in years to come. We can and we will get this tax right. The process of diligent engagement by the mining community with the resource tax consultation panel is a good one. It is one that will better shape and inform the implementation of this tax. Although the principles of this tax are set in stone, the detail of this tax is not set in stone. Australia’s resource sector deserves the best tax, the best environment, the best occupational health and safety, and the best regulatory framework in the world. That is what I am committed to. It is what the government is committed to. The ultimate detail of this tax is currently being built through the process of engagement with the resource companies, directed by the Treasurer. Revenues from the tax will cut company tax rates for all businesses and fund community infrastructure, providing amenities for years to come.

It has been said that the announcement of this tax caused the stock market to fall, superannuation accounts to collapse and the dollar to crash. It is true that the value of stocks in Australia have fallen since early April, it is true that the value of the Australian dollar relative to the US dollar has fallen and it is true that the prices of mining stocks have fallen, as have all stocks and shares around the world. It is too great a logical leap to blame all of the international and domestic share activity on the RSPT. The falling domestic share market has many drivers.

In recent weeks, tensions on the Korean peninsula have dominated regional geopolitics. Instability in Greece has seen financial shock waves travel around the world, pushing up the US dollar and depressing the euro. These factors have combined to cause disruption to world currency markets, and yet today the Australian dollar is trading at around 83c against the US dollar, similar to what it was two years ago, at about 85c. The fact remains that stock and currency markets do move up and down. That is why Peter Dutton, a Liberal MP, bought BHP shares—and good on him. It shows confidence in our mining sector. Revenues from this tax will go to sustainable investments like the superannuation accounts of 8.4 million Australians, lifting contributions from nine per cent to 12 per cent on average weekly earnings.

The opposition says that the RSPT is a damaging tax for superannuation returns; however, the superannuation industry does not support these claims. David Whiteley, chief executive of the Industry Super Network, has said:

Asserting mining stocks have plunged as a direct result of the RSPT when all stocks have fallen to a similar if not greater degree is plainly deceitful.

The former leader of the New South Wales Liberals, John Brogden, has also refuted the claims of the opposition. He does not think the argument that the mining tax has erased superannuation is correct and that the argument does not hold up:

It doesn’t hold up in the short term; it won’t hold up in the long term.

Those opposite are claiming that low-margin commodities like limestone, clay, aggregates, quarry materials and gravel will have to put prices up because of the RSPT. They have said that it will add an additional $20,000 to the cost of building a house. This is simply unsustainable logic. In fact, low-value commodities like limestone, clay, aggregates, quarry materials, sand and gravel may benefit from the RSPT. They will have low RSPT liabilities, whilst their royalties will be refunded under the proposed model.

Those opposite are also claiming that the cost of living will increase for Australian families. This does not stand scrutiny either. Details of this tax are not set in stone, but we can be definitive about a few things. The modelling done by KPMG estimates that prices will fall, including transportation costs down by 1.7 per cent, footwear costs down by 1.3 per cent, household contents and services down by 1.1 per cent and food costs down by almost one per cent. Why? Because cuts to the corporate tax rate from 30 to 28 per cent flow into lower prices for domestically produced goods and services.

I have worked in the resources industry, and I have great respect for the long-term commitment to resource issues. I respect friends and people who have accomplished great deeds through mining; they built great businesses and employed hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of people. Miners like Andrew Forrest, Reg Howard-Smith of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in Western Australia, Michael Roche of the Queensland Resources Council, David Flanagan at Atlas Iron, George Jones at Gindalbie, Barry Cusack, Alan Cransberg, Neil Hamilton, Sam Walsh at Rio Tinto and, of course, my old mates John Akehurst, formerly of Woodside Petroleum, Don Voelte, currently at Woodside Petroleum and Keith Spence, formerly of Woodside Petroleum. They are all friends whom I know and value. But for a month my door has been open to dozens of Western Australia’s finest business leaders and entrepreneurs. We must keep talking to ensure that we get the tax implementation right. I know that this has been a hard time, but we will get the tax right—we have to.

Earlier this year I spoke about the East Kimberley Development Package, and I would like to update the House on the progress of the package. It is an excellent example of all levels of government working together to benefit communities in northern Australia. To date we have partnered with the Western Australian government, the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley and Indigenous bodies to increase housing, employment and health services in the East Kimberley. The East Kimberley Development Package has been rephased, and $78 million will now be spent in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 financial years. The change is testimony to the benefit the projects are delivering to the north. Let me remind the House that the East Kimberley Development Package commits $195 million through to 2001-12 by investing $50 million in health, $64 million in education and training, $50 million in housing, $15.4 million in transport and $15.6 million in community infrastructure.

The investment is significant. Direct investment in the Kimberley is the right thing to do. It will mean long-term benefits in the East Kimberley region. So far we have approved 29 project plans worth $95.6 million, and transferred the funds to the Western Australian government, the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley and two Indigenous corporations. From sound community based consultation and engagement the projects are progressing quickly. The people of Wyndham are already benefiting from the completed community swimming pool, hospital refurbishment and an expanded residential rehabilitation facility.

In Kununurra on the weekend, I saw that the patient transfer facility at the airport is now well advanced. Soon, and for the first time, there will be a place to care for sick patients before they are moved by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to a larger hospital in Perth or Darwin. This is an important development for residents and visitors to the region, who are the mainstay of the local economy. Twenty-three of the hundred dwellings funded by the package are currently under construction in Wyndham and Kununurra. The rest will be completed by December 2011. This will mean more housing for the region for mums, dads and their children who are currently doing it tough due to overcrowding.

The WA government is currently assessing tenders for work on the larger, more complex health and education projects which will start later this year. Delivering a package of this dimension in a location as remote as the East Kimberley was always going to be challenging, but it is being done. It is only with hard work at all levels of government and the close involvement of the community that the East Kimberley Development Package can be a success. It is to be applauded. While we are keen to see projects completed as quickly as possible, there are social outcomes, like community engagement, training and jobs, which also need to be met. We are working towards these, and I congratulate community leaders and the government for their hard work.

During the development of these project plans, I worked closely with WA Minister for Regional Development Brendon Grylls; Minister for Health Kim Hames; Minister for Education Liz Constable; Fred Mills, mayor of the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley; and Jeff Gooding of the Kimberley Development Commission. We worked together to make sure the project outcomes meet community needs. I thank them for the spirit in which they have engaged on these projects. The Office of Northern Australia and the Western Australian Department of State Development have engaged community members and organisations to deliver services while the projects are fleshed out. We now have detailed plans, with a demanding work program that matches what the region really needs. Scheduling the work, and finding the people to do it, taking into account the weather, the need to keep schools and hospitals open and the need to keep the Wyndham port and Kununurra airport operating has not been easy.

The delivery of the package will rely on local businesses and local workers, as well as bringing in major contractors who have experience in the East Kimberley. There is a focus on maximising employment for Indigenous people, including an apprenticeship program established in partnership with the Western Australian government. Working with local businesses and contractors gives us the best chance of efficiently completing our projects and to increase training and job opportunities for local people. To support the Indigenous employment effort, the Commonwealth and the state of Western Australia are appointing local employment coordinators to work with job service agencies, trainer groups, Indigenous organisations and employers to link job seekers with real jobs and to make sure that the support is there to keep locals working.

Long-term benefit is a key principle of the East Kimberley Development Package. The development of transitional housing is a great example of the government working with East Kimberly organisations like the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley, the Wunan Foundation and local Indigenous traditional owner groups Mirrawong Gadjurong and the Gelganyem Trust to look at different ways to engage Indigenous people in training and employment and to keep them working.

Of the 100 houses to be constructed under the East Kimberley Development Package, 50 will be earmarked for transitional housing. This is for Indigenous people who no longer qualify for social housing because they are working but who will still need support before entering the private rental market. Over the past year, all levels of government have looked at different ways to manage social housing. We have looked, and we are still looking, at how we can do things better. The Western Australian government has specifically examined different models for social housing management in the region, which include greater community participation in decision-making through a full community management model. I must acknowledge Peter Stubbs and former Western Australian Treasurer Troy Buswell for their cooperation and support and, in the case of Peter, inspiration with this work.

We are listening to the people in communities in Northern Australia and working in partnership to deliver on their expectations and to achieve common goals. This way of doing business in Northern Australia provides a model that could be extended to other communities, and no doubt we will continue to learn from this experience about how to do it better. I will continue to work with the Office of Northern Australia and my Western Australian government colleagues to see that the project is complete and that the benefits of the package continue. I commend the bills to the House.

Debate (on motion by Mr Hawke) adjourned.