Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the honourable member for Werriwa.

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

Before the debate was adjourned, I was explaining to the House the significance of the Liverpool GP superclinic and the specialised early childhood centre for children with autism, which is also located in Liverpool. These local solutions have been tailored to meet local needs, and I am very proud to be associated with them. They will go a long way to assisting families in my electorate.

I would now like to focus on another issue—one which really requires great and clear national leadership. I am talking here about climate change. When preparing this speech, I had a look at what I said about climate change in a contribution I made in 2008. I said:

It is time that we started taking responsibility not just for the problem but for actually developing solutions.

The need to develop and implement solutions to address climate change and to enhance activities that are already going on in so many households, businesses and enterprises throughout the land not only present us with challenges but, quite clearly, also open up opportunities for us. I know there will be difficulties in commercialising supportive technologies—particularly renewable energy technologies—unless there is an effective price on carbon emissions.

Drawing upon my experiences and background in working with organisations, particularly in the renewable and sustainable energy sector, I believe that the best way of addressing climate change is through an emissions trading system, and I do not say this simply because the member for Wentworth is sitting at the table! I think his views in respect of an effective measure for addressing climate change are well known to this House and are respected. I believe that an emissions trading scheme would provide the necessary balance between developing a sustainable economic position and making clear the development aspects of addressing serious environmental impacts, which must be confronted—not in the future, it must be confronted now.

One thing that is certain is that the cost for not taking action on greenhouse gas emissions far outweighs the cost of taking action to protect our environment, to support our future and, clearly, to develop long-term economic sustainability. These are fundamental and they are things that members of this place cannot walk away from. We are in a unique position in time where we are confronted with the opportunity to make decisions to redress these matters. With these sentiments in mind, I warmly welcomed the establishment of the multiparty climate change committee earlier this week. I hope that it will build on consensus and how this country will move to tackle the issue of climate change.

Another matter I would like to briefly speak about is the very different situation we find ourselves in today. Many people in this country, along with various social commentators, thought that a hung parliament would lead to a new spirit of cooperation between the major parties. Indeed, a hung parliament has led to the historic agreement on parliamentary reform and the amendments to standing orders that were passed only yesterday. However, the opposition’s decision to renege on part of that parliamentary reform, particularly in respect of pairing of the Speaker, is a disappointment not only to me but to most people. It appears that one thing that remains certain is that the opposition will put political point scoring ahead of good governance, such is their conviction for their right to rule. The focus on wrecking government, traducing honoured parliamentary traditions and walking away from agreements—signed agreements at that—all indicate one thing: the opposition will maintain a position of opposition for opposition’s sake. I would have thought that the Australian people deserved better. It will remain the position of this government, however, to always act responsibly and work in goodwill with our partners to deliver effective government to all Australians.

There are matters that we raise in this place that are important to parliamentarians and not just to do with whether or not we are supporting or opposing legislative proposals. Over the years I have lobbied for the greater recognition of two commemorative days which I am very passionate about, the first being the National Police Remembrance Day, which was held yesterday. I had the opportunity to speak on that matter last night during the adjournment debate. The other matter concerns White Ribbon Day. I am very privileged to be an ambassador to White Ribbon Day, which is an international day for the elimination of violence against women. The white ribbon campaign is led by men who are willing to take a stand and be positive role models to other men in the community. Violence against women is one of the most widespread human rights abuses in the world today. Every day, thousands of women and girls are abused in their own homes. We all share a responsibility for effectively addressing this sad reflection of modern day society. Remembering our fallen police officers and trying to prevent violence against women are two issues that I will continue to advocate in this parliament as long as I have the opportunity to do so.

It also goes without saying that we would not be in this House without our having the confidence and trust of our electorates. We would also not have our success here without the support of our respective parties and campaign teams. To that end I would like to pay regard, in my case, to the ALP members in Fowler. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the various members and supporters who worked so tirelessly on my campaign and everyone who helped work for the one goal we had in mind, which was the election of a Gillard government. They supported the election of a government that had fairness at its heart and a positive vision for this country’s future. In particular, I would like to give my thanks to my campaign director, Mel Atlee, who regrettably has just resigned from my employ to take up other opportunities. I wish her well. She was backed by Gai Coghlan, Alicia Bowie, TK Ly, Huy Tran, Tri Vo, Renata Cekic, Tania Huynh and Casey Tran. They all worked very diligently on my behalf. I would like to particularly mention James Chan, who deserves specific recognition, together with his wife, Jenny. They have befriended me over the last five years and their support for me has been extremely humbling.

To all the branch members of Fowler I offer my sincere thanks for their support. I look forward to working with each and every one of them over the coming term of this parliament to have greater Labor successes throughout the south-west of Sydney. I would specifically like to mention Dave Saliba, Ian McNamara, Frank Carbone, Brad Parker, Chris Dunn, Sharyn Henry, Misha Karajcic, Adrian Wong and the great Dr Ali Saffraz, who seems to be at every multicultural event I turn up to in my electorate. All of those people played an important role in Labor’s success in Fowler. I would finally like to thank my wife, Bernadette, and my whole family. I am indebted to all of those who came from distant parts of the state to man my booths and I will try to catch up with many of them over the course of the next few weeks at a family reunion.

I would like to conclude by reiterating the comments I made earlier on my fundamental commitment to the people of Fowler—that is, I will ensure that the voice of south-west Sydney is heard and that the people of Fowler will be represented strongly in this place. That is my pledge and that is what I am committed to.

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

I thank the honourable member. Before I call the honourable member for Flinders, I would like to apologise for referring to the honourable member for Fowler by his prior manifestation as the honourable member for Werriwa.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all come to this place with different hats. First, we come as local members and in my own case, other than the agreement of my wife, Paula, to take my hand, being the local member for Flinders has been the great honour of my life. Second, if we are so fortunate, we come to have portfolio responsibility. Third, we come as national legislators, irrespective of our party and irrespective of our origin. It is in that third capacity that I wish to address and respond to the Governor-General’s address-in-reply today. I will have ample opportunity elsewhere to set down the local agenda for Flinders and the portfolio agenda in the area of environment and climate change. This is the one chance to set out in this particular, unique parliament the three primary legislative agendas I have as an individual member of parliament on a non-partisan basis for this coming term.

Let me begin first with my own family situation. The last time I saw my mother before she passed was in a mental health institution in Goulburn. She suffered from a form of bipolar related to manic depression. It is not something about which I have talked much. I do not want to overstate the circumstances. Her condition was not permanently debilitating but it was significant. The final occasion on which I saw her was in the institution in Goulburn and it was a shock. I mean no disrespect to those of good faith who served that institution, but it was a difficult circumstance. It has stayed with me ever since I saw her for the last time in 1992. When she passed away subsequently, I was overseas and she was living at home.

As a consequence of that fact, I was approached recently by the Satellite Foundation. The Satellite Foundation is an organisation dedicated to assisting the children of mental health patients or mental health sufferers. There has been much good work done over recent years in this parliament about the issue of mental health, work done on both sides of the chamber, but it is unfinished business. One element, however, which I believe to be entirely inadequate is the subject of the work of the Satellite Foundation—that is, the care, protection, development and maintenance of those children of mental health sufferers, those children who have parents with much greater debilities than that of my own mother, Kathinka Hunt. It is a need that is profound and significant in the cases of many children throughout Australia today. So the first legislative goal which I will pursue as a member of this parliament, not as a member of either party, and on which I will seek bipartisan support is to work with the Satellite Foundation to establish a national program for the children of mental health patients.

I would like to see two elements to this program agreed upon during the course of this parliament. First, that there should be a national program of camps for young people under the age of 24, not just under the age of 18, who are the children of mental health sufferers. This is a way of providing them with respite, a way of providing them with support, a way of providing them with joy, a way of providing them with a sense that they are not alone and that there is a way forward. The second element of this program is that there should be a permanent national counselling regime set in place across state and territory borders, which will give these young people a way forward during the course of their life and a sense that there is national support, state support, local support, and above all else community support to make sure that they do not walk this journey alone. It is important; it is profound; and this notion of a national program for the care, protection, development and maintenance of children of mental health sufferers, is a goal to which I am committed and for which I will seek to work with members of both sides of this House over the course of this term. I will not rest until we have a program for the care and protection of children of mental health sufferers, which is an unintentionally neglected part of the mental health program that needs to be addressed.

The second program which I want to deal with as a member of parliament rather than as somebody who is partisan either way—so working with members on both sides—involves a very simple task—that is, to establish a school to give parents of vision impaired children in Victoria the choice as to whether or not there will be specialist education for blind and vision impaired children. The genesis of this program came from Alan Lachman and his wife, Maria. They have a beautiful daughter whom I have met. She attends Pearcedale Primary School. This beautiful girl has profound blindness but does not have access to specialist care. By my understanding, there are over 80 specialist schools that do magnificent work in Victoria. It is an unacceptable situation that not one of these schools is dedicated to assisting vision impaired children. That must end and I have made a commitment to Alan Lachman to work with both sides of this chamber to ensure that that opportunity as to vision impairment is provided for children throughout Victoria. I would like to see this occur so there is at least one school set aside throughout each state in Australia for vision impaired children so parents may have a choice as to whether or not to mainstream such children.

The third of the personal goals which I will work towards with both sides of this House is a national Indigenous blindness program for the eradication of avoidable Indigenous blindness in Australia. The inspiration for this has been Professor Hugh Taylor. Professor Taylor is the Harold Mitchell Chair of Indigenous Eye Health at the Melbourne School of Population at the University of Melbourne. In brief, the facts are these. There are 1,400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are needlessly vision impaired from diabetes. I take this from an article of Professor Taylor’s in the Canberra Times on 6 August this year. There are 3,000 Indigenous people who have lost vision from avoidable cataract blindness and that is 12 times more than the national average. In addition, what we hear from Professor Taylor is the belief that 94 per cent of vision loss in Indigenous Australia is avoidable. We must set the task together, as members of this parliament, to seek to eradicate avoidable Indigenous blindness in Australia and during the course of this term I will work with both sides to ensure that there is a program or a practice, with legislation if necessary, to guarantee that a national initiative to eradicate avoidable Indigenous blindness is in place.

They are three simple goals: firstly, care and protection for the children of mental health patients; secondly, a school for the blind in Victoria so as to give parents choice, not obligation; and, thirdly, a genuine national Indigenous blindness initiative to eradicate avoidable Indigenous blindness in this case. There will be many opportunities for partisan issues and for grievances across the chamber, but with respect to my mother for the first time in this House I acknowledge the conditions she suffered and I hope to be able to do some good work for others in that space. I will cut this speech short in respect of the historic opportunity for the member for Melbourne to give his maiden speech in representation of his party.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member seeking to continue his remarks later?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, Mr Deputy Speaker.

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

Order! Before I call the honourable member for Melbourne, I remind the House that this is the honourable member’s first speech. I therefore ask the House to extend to him the usual courtesies.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am enormously thrilled and proud to be here as the first member of the Australian Greens elected at a general election and especially to be representing the electorate of Melbourne. I spent the first 10 years of my life in South Australia, in Whyalla and Adelaide, and the next 13 in Perth and Fremantle. But the longest stint of the next 15 years has been spent in the electorate of Melbourne.

Melbourne is an amazing place. It has the highest proportion of young people and tertiary students in the country, bristling with creativity and a desire for a better world. It is the electorate with the most public housing dwellings and also one of the highest number of professionals. It has one of the highest concentrations of research, educational, sporting and cultural institutions. It is the new home of many recently arrived refugees, and now the much older home of many others who have raised one or two generations since their arrival. And Melbourne is home to many people who share a growing feeling that the way we were doing things in the 20th century simply is not sustainable environmentally, economically or socially.

As human beings we have an amazing capacity to interact with our natural environment. But we have also sought to tame and master it, and now we have learned that in the long run such a relationship is unsustainable. Our actions in heating the planet have led us to a very real climate emergency. In 2007, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, said, ‘This is an emergency, and for emergency situations we need emergency action’. In recent congressional testimony in the US, the NASA climate scientist, James Hansen, warned:

We have reached a point of planetary emergency … climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a perfect storm, a global cataclysm, are assembled.

We would not get on an airplane if it had a 50 per cent risk of crashing or even a 15 or a five per cent risk. Yet these are precisely the kinds of risks we seem prepared to take with the planet and all its inhabitants. Accepting the science means accepting the science, not what we would like the science to say. Their consensus is a heart-rending cry for urgent action, imploring us to cut greenhouse gas emissions massively within a decade, after which it may be too late. The scientists have spoken; it is now over to politics to craft solutions. We urgently now need to master our relationship with the natural world, not the natural world itself.

Real sustainability means thinking again about how we live every aspect of our lives. Many people for many years have been leading the way, showing us that a green life is a healthier, happier and more secure one, where a global outlook means that the bonds of the local community are strengthened. Now these ideas are well and truly breaking out of the private realm and are taking their place firmly on the national political stage.

A sustainable future means rethinking our infrastructure priorities, industry policy and the regulation of energy supply. Maybe it is something in the water in the electorate of Melbourne that makes its member think about revenue and finance, but urgently in need of review is the allocation of public spending: every dollar that goes to backing losers in the fossil fuel industry is a dollar that is not creating a clean energy future. The former member for this electorate, Lindsay Tanner, for whom I have great respect, also said that he thought a key question for us is: ‘What will Australia sell the world in 15 years time?’ A good question, but on current policy settings it seems the answer is coal, with us on track to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest carbon exporter in the next 15 years. This is not global leadership on climate, but failure.

We will also be required to tackle head on that brand of economics that prioritises endless growth over sustainability and that leads to economic crisis, for if there is one lesson from the recent financial crisis it is that things have not changed. Our economy continues to lurch from boom to bust and history repeats itself repeatedly, rarely as farce and almost always as tragedy. Our world has become more unequal over time. And in a replay of past economic crises those who preached free markets and deregulation during boom times were the first to come cap in hand for public support and intervention when they were in trouble.

I am not advocating any simple nostalgia, suggesting we go back to some mythical time when we had the balance right. Nor can we simply presume government intervention and regulation will solve all social ills. Indeed, in many areas—like our rapidly growing communications technologies—we are now so globally interconnected that the last thing we need is government seeking to regulate what we can and cannot do as new global citizens.

My experience representing power workers in the Latrobe Valley in the aftermath of privatisation has taught me that governments need to provide real assistance in times of transition so that as governments close polluting power stations like Hazelwood we never forget there are real workers and families involved to whom we have a responsibility as we move to a clean energy future.

Imagine if we reacted to the financial crisis in the same way as the climate crisis, with global meetings deferred for years at a time. Perhaps if the planet were a merchant bank, we might see the speedy, internationally coordinated and massive government activity we saw during the financial crisis. Keeping Australia out of recession and avoiding double digit unemployment is of course the right thing to do. I simply hope our institutions of government here and abroad will extend to the planet the same courtesy that they do to the finance sector.

Equality is more important now than ever. As neoliberalism and the ideology of market dominance have defined the social and economic polices of successive governments led by each of the old parties, and sometimes ripped apart local communities, devastated small producers and prioritised free trade at the cost of fairness, so has the idea of full substantive equality receded from public life.

In our new times, chance has replaced equal entitlement, opportunity has replaced equal right. Worse, we now do not even blink at treating some people as less equal than others. There are so many exceptions to the principle of full equality that the exception is becoming the rule. We all have the right to get married, unless your partner is of the same gender. We pride ourselves on our great sovereign nation and then excise parts of it as being not really Australia for the purposes of migration. We say human rights are indivisible and then we suspend them for Indigenous Australians.

Having spent many years standing up for the rights of workers and their unions, I know that equality should not stop at the office door, that democracy should not disappear at the factory gate. The name ‘The Greens’ has its origins in the activism of community members and workers who in the 1970s joined together to prevent the destruction of important parts of our built and natural environment. Petra Kelly, visiting Australia at the time, was so impressed by the ‘green bans’ imposed by unions and the community that she took it back with her to Germany where they founded Die Grunen—The Greens.

Anyone who took such a stand today for green bans would face the Australian Building and Construction Commission, would be denied the right to silence, interrogated in secret and exposed to threats of imprisonment and fines. When members of one section of our work force have not just fewer rights than other workers but, indeed, fewer rights than accused criminals, we cannot say that we are all truly equal before the law.

I join those who want to put compassion back on the agenda. If you ask most Australians, they will have a positive story to tell of a co-worker, friend or extended family member who came to this country as a refugee or whose parents or grandparents did. Yet, instead of seeking to fan this positive sentiment, politics has tended to play to the worst in us.

If fear and suspicion are the organising principles of our approach to fellow human beings who come here from other places, then we are condemning ourselves to revisiting this issue election after election and setting ourselves up for an isolationist and dark future. Ironically, it is usually those who want the fewest barriers for money to move across borders who want to build the strongest walls to stop people doing the same. But when we lock asylum seekers and refugees up indefinitely, in city and desert prisons, we have more than enough evidence that we destroy their lives and the lives of their families.

There is a palpable hypocrisy in saying that the threat is so dire that we must send our soldiers to fight in places like Afghanistan, yet when people flee that threat we close the door to them. Until we bring compassion and practicality to the fore, we will be taking some of the world’s most vulnerable people, who are fleeing persecution, war and hardship, and simply subjecting them to torture of a different kind.

While elections have often played to the worst in us, politics can also have a much more hopeful, optimistic future, for there is another side to humanity: one that sees someone in trouble and extends a helping hand; one that says we need more love, not less; one that offers hospitality even when times are tight; and one that says it is better to live within the limits of the planet rather than putting everything on the never-never and leaving our children and grandchildren to pay the debt.

These values of sustainability, compassion and equality that will form the foundation for tackling 21st century problems are, of course, not new. Many people have known them for quite some time. They are the campaigners in the forests and at the coal and uranium mines. They are the scientists who fearlessly tell us the truth about climate change. They are the first Australians who have never given up their sovereignty and who rightfully still seek a treaty. They are the innovators whose creative labours at home, at work and in the globally interconnected public sphere are forging new, exciting and sustainable ways of living our lives. They are the workers who will stand on picket lines to advance principles that are bigger and deeper than any one individual. They are the people who have helped our cause in the ways they can, from handing out how-to-votes to attending rallies. They are the Greens members of the local councils and the state and federal parliaments, who have advanced beliefs and put them into practice. All these people and many, many more are the ones on whose shoulders I stand here today. I hope that I can do justice to you.

To every supporter of the Melbourne campaign: you have done amazing things; you have made history. I want to single out a few for special mention. Rohan, Damien, Lucie, Sharif, Kajute, Jake, Olivia, as well as many others, worked their guts out in the Brunswick Street office. Kathleen, Brian and Cyndi: it is a delight to work with you and I hope I can do more of it after November. To Nick, Jarrah, Lily, Sofia and all your team: your advice and work was invaluable. In particular to all those people in Melbourne who have come here recently or who came here some time ago from Africa and surrounds: your work is truly inspirational. To our state MLCs, Greg, Sue and Colleen, to senator-elect Richard and to all my Senate colleagues, Bob Brown and Sarah Hanson-Young in particular: thank you for throwing so much support behind our campaign in Melbourne.

To those unions I have worked with over many years, but especially those who took a big leap to support me and the Greens: your commitment to principle and to real change for the benefit of your members is humbling. Along the way as an industrial lawyer representing you I have learned much, most importantly that, while sometimes cutting a deal is the best thing to do, at other times there is much more to be gained by taking a strong stand and having the courage of your convictions. In particular, I want to thank Peter Marshall from the United Firefighters Union for his support and wisdom over many years. And I thank you, Peter, and Mick Farrell for coming here today. To Rosemary Kelly and the Medical Scientists Association, who were prepared to objectively analyse the policies of the parties, including ours, and put that information in front of their members: I thank you. And to Dean Mighell and the State Council of the Electrical Trades Union: your strong support was so valuable and your willingness to stick your necks out in the interests of your members inspirational. To Len Cooper, Joan Doyle and their respective colleagues at the CEPU, and to Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers: your support was greatly welcomed. It is with great interest that we are witnessing the development of unions prepared no longer to automatically support one party but instead to assess parties and candidates on their merits and support the one that is best going to represent their members, which I think is of great merit for Australian democracy and for the cause of unionism and workers in general.

To my beautiful partner, Claudia, whose advice, support and humour have made this possible: a deep thanks and love. And to my parents, Moira and Allan: your beliefs in social justice and lived environmentalism, and the amazing parts of Australia and the world that you have shown me, have helped bring me here. I am so happy that the three of you are all here today.

We all have a very short period of time in which to respond to the climate emergency facing us, to this planet’s rapidly dwindling condition and to the nagging feeling many of us share that this way of life simply is not sustainable. We are all in this together but we should never forget the amazing things humans are capable of when our creative labours are unleashed. We chose to go to the moon—and we made it. To quote Jodi Dean, the Apollo project boldly predicted the ‘we’ of a common humanity aspiring to break the bonds of particularity and reach beyond our imaginations.

It is that commons that we can find again. It is with dreams of great proportions that we will solve our current crises. It is around the core values of sustainability, compassion and equality that we can forge a politics for the 21st century and create a new community. I know that this desire is shared by many in this country. Indeed, Mr Speaker and fellow members, although one might not know it looking around at the composition of this chamber, at this election around the country more than one in nine people voted for the Greens. If this chamber proportionately represented the views of the Australian people, there would be at least 17 Greens MPs sitting here. Whilst I might be only one member in this parliament, I hope it is also appreciated that the values I am representing here are supported by a much bigger proportion of the population right around this country.

But it is the people of Melbourne who have seen fit to elevate these values to the national stage by electing the first Greens member to the House of Representatives at a general election. To everyone in Melbourne who exercised their powerful votes and put me here: I am grateful and humbled. You should know that your votes have already had an impact. It is a joy to be here on your behalf and I hope that I can do justice to you, the people of Melbourne, as your first Greens representative.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I firstly congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on the position you now hold. I am sure this House will be particularly well served with you in the Speaker’s role.

I would like to thank the people in the Forrest electorate who supported my re-election as their federal representative for another term. It is certainly an honour and a privilege to serve the people in my electorate. I am absolutely committed to working on their behalf both within the electorate and here in Canberra.

My constituents continue to raise a number of concerns that I will continue to work hard on: the areas of health and aged care, education, infrastructure, environment and law and order, as well as issues affecting our agricultural and food producers. Forrest is, as we know, a rapidly growing regional and rural electorate with some areas amongst the fastest growing in Australia. It is an area with an over $11 billion GDP based on mining, resources, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tourism and various forms of commerce. The rapidly expanding and ageing population inevitably means that we must address shortages in our medical workforce, continue to improve community health services and provide additional aged-care services and facilities. More specialist services are needed in the south-west so that residents can be treated closer to home and to minimise their need to travel to Perth, which is not only costly but also affects people’s capacity to manage and recover from illness or injury.

Unfortunately the high standard of health care in the South West was undermined by an incoming Labor government in 2001 when it scrapped local health boards. Local hospitals in the South West had local boards made up of community leaders who were looking after the health interests of their communities. The Labor Party dumped them and centralised the administration, which meant that local people no longer had any say.

Recently the federal Labor government has also taken measures that will seriously impact on the quality of health provided for my constituents. The government has made a decision to withdraw the Greater Bunbury region in my electorate from the District of Workforce Shortage register. This is very serious for the people in the region who need to see a GP and are already on long waiting lists. My office is receiving many calls from those in the South West medical industry, as well as calls from very concerned residents asking why the Labor government has done this. I do not have an answer. It is completely illogical in an area with serious shortages of GPs. I understand that some of the international doctors being sought for the Commonwealth funded after-hours practice in Bunbury would have come as a result of this registration and without these practitioners the Commonwealth strategy may not progress.

I have written to the minister to provide answers to the following questions. Why was Bunbury removed from the register? Why was the WA Country Health Service not consulted or notified of the register changes by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing? Given that the Western Australian state Liberal government currently classifies the Greater Bunbury area as a medical area of unmet need and there is currently a ratio of over 1,500 residents to one doctor in the region, will the minister reconsider the recent review of the register and re-include Bunbury in the District of Workforce Shortage register? Will the Medicare provider number of overseas doctors currently working in the Greater Bunbury region still be valid under the changing of the register? I have also sought a meeting with the minister as in my electorate we have a shortage of at least 11 GPs. Recent figures in a local newspaper now put the doctor to patient ratio at one to 1,684.

I also intend to keep working on mental health issues with over 15 different service providers, who are committed to delivering a headspace service for young people in the South West. The headspace model, which was introduced by the coalition government, provides a one-stop shop for young people aged 12 to 25, covering the areas of general health, mental health and counselling, education, employment and of course alcohol and other drugs services. I was really pleased when our Liberal Party gave a very serious commitment to the headspace program during the election campaign. No-one is more aware of the importance of education, I would suggest, than people in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia. We are very directly aware of how and why it provides almost any opportunity in life not only for a young person but also for mature age people through lifetime learning. This is why I will keep working constantly on the youth allowance issues facing students in the South West.

I was simply appalled for the young people in my electorate who are being disenfranchised in their tertiary education opportunities by the changes introduced by the Labor government in the May 2009 budget. Those on a gap year would have totally missed out on youth allowance support if it were not for the pressure we and our constituents applied. And now students are being seriously disadvantaged by the Labor ruling which defines most of the South West as an inner regional area, forcing students who have no choice but to move away from home to pursue their tertiary education to have to work an average of 30 hours per week for 18 months out of two years to qualify for the independent rate of youth allowance.

Anyone who understands regional areas will know that this is very difficult and sometimes downright impossible. Students have far fewer employment opportunities to start with. Many live in very small towns or on farms and have distances to travel to find employment. In some areas there is no regular employment and when you are dealing with seasonality in agriculture, with tourism and hospitality it is very difficult for young people. I will not give up on this issue.

The tertiary education opportunities for young people in my electorate are just too important. This issue is raised with me constantly out in the community and I constantly receive phone calls and emails from students who are concerned about their future plans, from parents who are uncertain whether they can afford to send their children to tertiary education, from families who cannot support more than one child at university and from families who will have to leave our South West to move to the city simply so that their children can live at home—otherwise the family can simply not afford for their child or children to access the territory education. What a drain on a regional area.

The Labor government claims in the Governor-General’s speech that it ‘will continue to improve standards and quality, to increase transparency and to modernise infrastructure’; yet, the Labor government’s changes to youth allowance hinder the higher education prospects for many of our regional and rural students. I have fought and I will continue to fight in the federal parliament and in my electorate for students, parents and families. I cannot believe that these changes were introduced by the Prime Minister of this nation, who simply refuses to understand the issues affecting young people out in our regional areas. People in Forrest should also have access to lifetime learning opportunities, education and training programs. During the election, the Liberal Party committed to $15,000 to the Shire of Busselton to fund a higher education forum and our $1 billion regional education fund would have also seen benefits being delivered into the South West.

With a mining resource rent tax, which the WA Treasury estimates will take $7 billion out of Western Australia, I wonder just how much of that will come back to regional areas like Forrest. I call on this Labor government to deliver significant infrastructure to the South West from their new tax on Western Australia. According to its agenda for this term, ‘the government is investing $37 billion on transport infrastructure’. I call on the Labor government to invest in road, rail, and in the Bunbury port. We certainly need an extension to the Nation Building Program to include road transport routes south of Bunbury such as upgrading the Bussell Highway, a very important coastal route which runs from Bunbury to Augusta and services major population areas of Capel, Busselton and Margaret River. It also links some of the iconic tourist destinations that many of you would understand when I mention Margaret River, and it provides a freight corridor for wine, agriculture, forestry and manufacturing industries. It needs dual lanes from Bunbury to Margaret River and expanding to Augusta over time.

The South West Highway also needs significant upgrades. It is the same with the Coalfields Highway. I was very pleased that it has taken a state Liberal government to achieve a further $14 million commitment to the Coalfields Highway. Finishing the Bunbury Outer Ring Road is also an important infrastructure project in my area. The port of Bunbury has major movements with alumina, woodchips and minerals sands but does not have a container handling facility.

In 2005 the state Labor government committed $60 million to the port of Bunbury, but unfortunately the money was never delivered. The existing rail system in the South West is under significant pressure, particularly in freight transport. The Collie-Brunswick Junction-Bunbury port transport triangle is the key hub of freight in the region with very serious capacity constraints. Recent estimates put the cost of the required rail expansion at around $63 million, which was highlighted in a submission by the WA state government to Infrastructure Australia for funding to duplicate the line in that area to increase capacity.

The additional capacity will be required on the Collie to Brunswick Junction line, especially with the expansion of the Worsley alumina facility. I also have in my part of the world disused lines and rail reserves that still exist south of Bunbury and they provide a potential asset for future development of rail services, freight and transport opportunities throughout the South West.

The government’s announcement of ‘$800 million in a new priority regional infrastructure program’ for projects identified by local communities must also fund significant investment in the South West region. As we know—and perhaps some of my fellow members, the newer ones, may not know—the South West of Western Australia is one of the world’s recognised biodiversity hot spots, the only one in Australia.

There are many issues impacting on the environmental health of the South West. Given the community’s concerns over the oil and gas leases off the Mentelle Basin—the Labor government has released the oil and gas leases off the Mentelle Basin—I have called on the Minister for Resources and Energy to release the report on the Montara oil spill and to come to the electorate to meet concerned local people. I have also written to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities regarding a proposed coal mine in Margaret River and my concern about the aquifers and the effects on the critically endangered hairy marron, and the interface of this classification with the EPBC Act.

My region continues to face very serious challenges, as many do around Australia, in balancing planning, development and conservation. While I could list the number of ecological threats today, and bring many of them to the attention of the House during the next three years, I would really like to raise one now that I am sure Judi Moylan will understand—that is, the threat of dieback, Phytophthora cinnamomi, an insidious disease killing native trees as well as a number of imported garden species. It is an environmental cancer spreading at an alarming rate.

I will be looking very seriously at the government’s programs to find funding that will be needed for further comprehensive mapping of the South West land division including both state-held and private land. The mapping process must identify dieback-infected areas, free areas, and areas at specific risk. Only then can we mount a proper and effective response involving the whole community. That would build on the significant work done by the South Coast Natural Resource Management Group. I could not believe it when the Labor government cut funding to vital community groups such as the South West NRM, making their work far more difficult to complete.

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

Disgraceful.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just disgraceful, as the member says. I could see this particular process leading to the development of a dieback planning and management toolbox that would tell all landholders how to manage and reduce the spread of dieback in their specific area. It would also provide the information needed to include dieback in planning for any variety of future developments. I want any landowner in the South West to be able to look up their property on a map and print off a set of dieback guidelines for their area, as well as engaging in direct action on dieback control.

Currently the use of phosphite injection is the only effective means of controlling dieback and limiting its spread. There is no effective means of eradicating dieback from infected forests. There should continue to be strategic phosphite programs managed locally and planned at a state level as well. But we also need to join the international science community and invest in research to find new and better control mechanisms, including a treatment that can eliminate dieback from infected plants.

A further priority of mine—as it is for the members in this chamber—is local law and order issues. We need to ensure that people feel safe and secure in their homes and communities. It is a very clear priority. Local crime prevention is traditionally the responsibility of the states and territories, and I am extremely supportive of the WA Liberal government’s tough on crime approach. We are constantly told this when we are out and about. I recently held a series of meetings with young people throughout my electorate to find out from them which areas need safety upgrades. Where do they not feel safe? This gave me vital information that I used to shape my election commitment of a $1 million law and order package for lighting and security measures throughout the Forrest electorate. That was something that young people strongly supported.

I will continue to meet regularly with local police officers, councils and the state government to work on collaborative strategies to fight crime and antisocial behaviour. I will also continue to work for the farmers and producers on food security issues and the viability of those who produce food and fibre for all of us. I strongly believe that so many people in Australia take for granted the quality and access that they have to some of the best quality food produced in the world, and that is food produced by growers in Australia. It is a very genuine commitment that I have, and will have ongoing, to those who produce the food for this nation.

In conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am absolutely committed to ensuring that the voices of the people of Forrest are heard here in federal parliament. Thank you.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Before I call the honourable member for Denison, I remind the House that this is the honourable member’s first speech. I therefore ask that the usual courtesies be extended to him.

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

May I start by saying that I am intensely proud to stand here as the new member for Denison, one of the five Tasmanian electorates and the one which hugs the eastern side of magnificent Mount Wellington and takes in the cities of Hobart and Glenorchy. It is a diverse electorate that takes in just about every sort of Australian and where someone somewhere is affected directly by the work we do in this place. I commit to represent each and every one of them to the very best of my ability.

Politics for me is rooted in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At the time, I was working in the Office of National Assessments, and from where I sat it was clear that the Howard government’s official case for war was fraudulent, that the weapons of mass destruction argument was grossly exaggerated while the Iraq al-Qaeda terrorism claim was pure fantasy. The government was lying about going to war and should forever stand condemned for that misconduct.

So I resigned my intelligence post about a week before the invasion and went to the media to explain how the Howard government had consistently spun, skewed, fabricated and cherry picked the intelligence to prop up their case for war. In response the government vilified me, more intent on silencing dissent than coming clean.

If only the architects of the Iraq war—those who mourned United Nations Special Envoy Sergio de Mello, who died when the UN’s Baghdad compound was bombed—had cared as much for every other casualty, perhaps there would have been fewer body bags and coffins. But they did not. The bloodstained pages of history are filled with such people—men and women with no understanding of the real risks and costs of aggression or care for the consequences. There is no chance of them or any of their loved ones lying in the chill desert night air paralysed with fear, being gutted alive by razor-sharp shrapnel, losing a foot or worse from a mine or cluster bomblet or having the flesh burned from their bones as they sit trapped in their blazing vehicle.

There were always other ways to deal with the odious Saddam Hussein, but the US, the UK and Australia raced to a war which has killed 5,000 US and Allied troops and somewhere between 100,000 and 1.5 million Iraqis. Even now, 50,000 US troops remain in the country, the violence continues and Iraqis keep dying. We must learn from this and commit to never making the same mistake again.

My Iraq whistleblower experience was hard for me, but it has a happy ending. More often, however, whistleblowers end up on a heap having lost everything, including their job, their family and friends, their life savings and even their life. Yet a succession of federal governments has dodged the self-evident imperative for legislation, preferring instead the status quo where those who try and tell truth to power are regarded as troublemakers or criminals. The exceptions are the Rudd government, which finally started the process of developing whistleblower legislation, and now the Prime Minister, who has agreed with me to introduce a bill to protect whistleblowers and have such legislation passed into law by 30 June 2011.

The counterpart to the whistleblower legislation will be the ‘Evidence Amendment (Journalists’ Privilege) Act’, which will strengthen the protection provided to journalists and their sources. This so-called ‘shield law’ will put the onus on the authorities to prove there is a genuine public interest in forcing a journalist to disclose his or her source. I have given notice to introduce the bill into the parliament and hope to do so during the next sitting week. Finally, Australia is on the cusp of having a framework to protect the men and women who risk all to reveal official misconduct. This is a remarkable development.

The focus of Australia’s war fighting has shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan, where the international community, including Australia, confronts a dreadful dilemma: it could walk away from the seemingly inevitable disaster that would unfold or it can stay and fight, as it plans to, in the hope of somehow avoiding a different but equally inevitable disaster. It did not need to be like this, because the defeat of the Taliban in 2001 created an unprecedented opportunity. But security collapsed when the United States virtually withdrew in 2002 to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. Much of the promised foreign aid never materialised, and the new administration in Kabul has turned out to be a deeply incompetent and corrupt mob with next to no power outside of the capital.

The one bright spot—that Afghanistan is no longer an exporter of Islamic extremism—is dulled by the fact that extremists have migrated across the border to nuclear-armed and unstable Pakistan, and in any case the global Islamic terrorist threat morphed years ago into a global network independent of any one leader or safe haven. That we must stay in Afghanistan to protect Australia from terrorism is a great lie peddled by both the government and the opposition.

The only way to turn Afghanistan around now is to immediately stabilise the security situation and hastily rebuild the governance, infrastructure, services and jobs which give people hope and underpin long-term peace. But this appears increasingly unachievable because the foreign troops who anchor such a solution are now seen by many Afghans as the problem. Moreover, the resultant nationalism is fuelling the rapid Taliban resurgence. In short, there can be no hope of enduring peace until foreign troops are withdrawn.

The government and the opposition seem to think Australia’s ongoing involvement is somehow a measure of the strength of our relationship with the US. The same misplaced sentiment explained John Howard’s determination to join the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Neither seems to understand that Canberra would be at less risk of being taken for granted in Washington if sometimes we just said no. No-one should be fooled by the periodic Australian government efforts to tinker around the edges of Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan. The reality is that the best plan the Australian government has been able to come up with so far is simply to continue to support whatever the US government comes up with, and that alone is no plan. It is just reinforcing failure. I deeply welcome the government’s decision to have an informed political debate about the issue.

Afghanistan also remains a significant source of asylum seekers, and this is another area in which I want to see reform. My stance has nothing to do with being hard or soft on asylum seekers; it simply has to do with meeting our obligations as a signatory of the United Nations Refugee Convention. That means doing what we can to stabilise source countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to reduce the flow of asylum seekers. It means helping countries of first asylum like Iran and Pakistan to cope with the millions of refugees they host. And it means working effectively with transit countries like Indonesia to crack down on the only people who are doing anything illegal here: the people smugglers.

In other words, we need a more sophisticated solution for something that is much more complex than border security. Offshore processing, the excision of islands and even mandatory detention need not be part of the solution. One part of our asylum seeker policy should logically include a recommitment to meeting our millennium goal of paying 0.7 of one per cent of gross national income to foreign aid. We are still only half way to that goal, and many Australians find that unacceptable. If our economy is a world leader, as the government tells us at every turn, then by implication there is no excuse for us lagging behind other developed countries, as we do, when it comes to foreign aid.

Closer to home, the Iraq War was for me as much about poor governance as it was about the unwarranted invasion of a country for fraudulent reasons.

The more I have immersed myself in politics, the more I have learned about the opportunities missed in Australia and about the countless people not so much having fallen through the cracks as having been shoved through them—for example, problem gamblers. Let me introduce Steve, a pokies addict for more than 30 years who lives in my electorate of Denison. He has racked up some eight years behind bars on account of pokies related crime, costing taxpayers somewhere between $0.5 and $1 million. Even more important are the opportunities lost for this good and highly intelligent man who struggles to overcome his addictions.

Then there is the man now serving time in Risdon Prison in Tasmania for murder. His victim, carrying her purse, was unfortunate to have crossed the path of the desperate man after he had lost all his cash during a pokies binge earlier that day. The elderly woman never stood a chance. Or the couple who explained to me how they had been bankrupted by a dishonest employee who, over a couple of years, stole so much money from the till to pay for her pokies addiction that the business went to the wall and they lost the lot. And there are the parents who wrote to me recently to explain that their disabled daughter had only recently become hooked on pokies and was already losing virtually her entire pension on the day she received it. Their email pleaded for me to keep fighting for reform of poker machine legislation, and I will.

These are not uncommon stories, because about 100,000 pokies players are believed to be problem gamblers while hundreds of thousands more are said to be at risk. Add to those figures the five to 10 people adversely affected by every problem gambler, and the total number of people touched by problem gamblers is huge. Every one is someone’s mother, father, son, daughter, brother or sister. The Productivity Commission reports that 15 per cent of Australia’s 600,000 regular poker machine players have a gambling problem, and they lose an astonishing 40 per cent or more of the money lost on poker machines. So those in the poker machine and hospitality industry who argue against any harm minimisation measure which significantly reduces cash flow are really saying that they should be allowed to continue to trade on the misery of problem gamblers. I will not allow them to do that, and I applaud the Prime Minister for agreeing to expedite the Productivity Commission’s recommendations, including the implementation of a uniform and full pre-commitment system by 2014. The industry needs to see the sense of this, or at least get out of the way so well-meaning people can get on with the job.

There is one further issue that I cannot help but raise today in some detail. During my campaign for election I was emailed by a couple who invited me to their home for a cup of tea. They had sparked my interest with an email expressing concern with mental health care in Australia. I went to their home, and they told me of their daughter who had suffered a severe bipolar disorder for decades and who eventually could not stand it any longer and took her own life. They asked me to do something to improve the lives and chances of people like their daughter, who fall through the cracks of an overloaded health system designed mainly to deal with physical ailments—do something, they urged, to ensure mental health is accorded the same priority for funding as GP and hospital services. If only each and every member had sat with me that day. Many of us would have cried together and then got on and together achieved what no government of any persuasion has achieved yet. Twenty per cent of Australians suffer a mental illness every year. It costs lives, it costs money. Mental illness needs to be genuinely brought into the health mainstream. The challenge is ours.

I went into the election hoping for success but expecting success to be limited by the seemingly inevitable Labor or coalition stranglehold on the Treasury bench. Yes I would have done my very best to represent the good people of Denison, and yes Denison would have been important enough for the government to have felt the need to pay an insurance premium in the form of occasional largesse. But such windfalls would obviously have been limited by the reality of politics, and in particular by the government’s perceived need to shovel as much money as possible into the marginal electorates elsewhere. In other words, an Independent member of the House was always going to be good for Denison but the advantage was going to have its limits. No-one really expected a hung parliament or the need for Independents to take sides. But that obviously did come to pass, and with it came the invidious need for all the Independents to put supply and confidence behind either Labor or the coalition. In my case, this was an obscenely difficult choice, if only because my political support came from right across the political spectrum and whatever decision I made was set to trouble a not insignificant number of Denison voters.

In an unfortunate twist, I needed to cater to the public interest in stable government by backing one party or the other, at the expense of my political self-interest—and I have copped quite a bit of criticism for seemingly having given up my independence. On a positive note, however, by doing so I have been able to raise the profile of Denison and southern Tasmania in ways probably not seen for 20 years or more. Already there is a commitment from government to open up a new round of funding from the Health and Hospitals Fund, which will release some $1.8 billion for health related capital works nationally, including $340 million for the rebuilding of the Royal Hobart Hospital. And, finally, some federal government interest seems to be being shown in the nationally significant Jordan River Levee Aboriginal heritage site.

Much more remains to be done, of course, and the government has been made well aware of some 20 priorities I hope to see some progress on during the life of this parliament—for example, the need to withdraw all federal government approvals for Gunns’ Tamar River pulp mill and focus instead on a raft of pressing infrastructure and community needs in and around Denison.

More broadly, there must be urgent action on climate change, including a price on carbon; incorporation of dental care in Medicare; funding for schools according to need; increased government pensions and enhancement of the method of indexation; a conscience vote on same-sex marriage; increased funding of aged-care facilities; and the introduction of a national disability insurance scheme.

Yes, this is a long list because it has been a long time since southern Tasmania, and Denison in particular, had a fair go from Canberra. More broadly, a succession of federal governments should hang their heads in shame because decades have passed, including some of the richest years in this nation’s history, but still school classes are overcrowded and teachers stressed, people of all ages live with rotting teeth in their mouths, older Australians cannot afford to heat their homes and they live on dog food, legislated discrimination treats lovers as second-class citizens just because of the people they want to marry, and people we love throw themselves off bridges for want of decent mental health care.

But every parliament is another opportunity to discard political self-interest in favour of the public interest. As one of the richest countries in the world, surely we have the capacity to solve the problems I have described. And as one with a now unusually rich political mix, where the government and the coalition both have it in their power to work with the crossbenchers to progress good legislation, surely the possibilities would only be limited by a lack of vision.

Before I finish I would like to thank all of those who are part of my story and, in particular, my wonderful wife, Kate, our daughters Olive and Rose, and our extended families. I would also like to thank the hundreds of people who have supported my candidatures in a number of elections.

And finally, thank you, Denison, for putting your trust in me. I know some of us will disagree from time to time, but I do hope we will always agree that I am doing my best job for you and your interests.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, I would like to congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your elevation into a second term as Speaker in this parliament. It is well deserved. I would like to congratulate the member for Denison on his maiden speech and for his election to this House. This is the fourth term that I have been elected to parliament as the member for Canning. Some will know that I was elected as the member for Swan. I am one of the fortunate people who have been elected to this place five times. I am honoured and privileged, and I never underestimate the honour that it is to represent my electorate in this House.

There is a raft of people who helped me retain Canning at the election on 21 August. There are far too many to name individually, but I just want to make special mention of a couple of people. First of all, I want to congratulate the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, on the magnificent campaign that he ran and I thank him for visiting my electorate. I would also like to thank Senator David Johnston, as my duty senator, on the fantastic job that he did. He is not only a great friend but a great supporter. I also thank the member of Curtin, Julie Bishop, and the member for Mackellar, Bronwyn Bishop, for visiting my electorate and supporting us.

I would particularly like to thank my staff. I am one of the fortunate people who had really good staff with very little turnover in my office. An outstanding person who helped drive my campaign and who was my not-so-secret weapon was Jocelen Griffiths. We are going to miss you, Jocelen. She is not only highly talented and intelligent but one of the nicest people I have met. Her ability to strategically run a campaign, to work with so many people and to be so organised has been recognised by many, and that is why her future prospects are very bright. I thank Jess Finlay for the outstanding job she has done over the number of the years I have had her. I also thank Michael Storozhev and Sam Holly, in my office. As I said, there were many young people who helped in my office and they are just too numerous to mention. They know who they are. I think it is quite fortunate to have young people in your campaign. It sends a very good message. The enthusiasm that they brought to the campaign we just had in Canning was one of the reasons we did well in the election.

There is obviously a whole raft of people who helped us in the campaign, including those who waved those corflutes in the cold morning. The many people who helped stuff envelopes in my office know who they are. There were also hundreds of people on election day who handed out how-to-vote cards in the 48 polling booths in Canning. My thanks also go to the many people who donated to my campaign, especially the pensioners who sent in their five and ten dollars. We were just blown away by the amount of support we had financially from the mums and dads in the electorate who wanted to see us win. I took that as a sign of support and I was quite grateful for that.

Of course, there were people who put signs in their front yards and who wanted me to do well and offered me so much advice. But, most of all, I want to thank the electors of Canning who have continued to show their strong support and have again put their faith in me by re-electing me to this seat.

I would like to put on record some of the details associated with this election. Many will know that at the last election this was one of the higher profile electoral contests in the country, because the candidate that I had as my opponent, Alannah MacTieman, was a formidable opponent. She is sharp and fearless and, even if this made her divisive, she is well respected in the constituency as an undeniable fighter. She had been the state member for Armadale for some 17 years, but even though it was a clever stroke by the Labor Party to select a former state minister who was popular with the media and popular in the electorate that she represented there was more to the election, as I have pointed out to many people since the election, than just the state seat of Armadale. I saw it as a strategic mistake that she and her campaign team made.

Her announcement in August 2009, almost 12 months before the election, that she would resign from state politics to contest Canning came as no surprise to me and those around me. There was a lot of speculation that she would jump ship because she had lost hope of leading the state Labor Party as many in the state Labor organisation had decided they were basically ‘off’ Allanah and did not want her to continue in such a high-profile role. Dare I say that Joe Bullock may have been one of those people. But she was the darling of the media, particularly the sisterhood in the media, and some of the middle aged journalists that seemed to have some morbid fascination with her never stopped writing about her. That profiling certainly did not hurt her during the campaign.

Canning was under the media microscope for more than 12 months and it was a battle royale as people wanted a real fight in this campaign. As I was out doorknocking one day, a gentleman in his front yard—before I was able to stop his dog from grabbing me by the leg—rose up from his front lawn and said, ‘Do you know what I want to see in this campaign? I want to see you two have a really good blue.’ I was not going to accommodate him. The fact is that I was running on the issues as the incumbent member and realistically that is what the campaign was about. It was not about personalities and personal differences. It really was about representing the people in the electorate.

I understand from media reports that my opponent was seduced by the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. While sitting on the balcony in Kirribilli, she was promised the sun, moon and stars if she would be the candidate in Canning to help ‘knock off Randall’. After the promises made by the former Prime Minister, some of that seemed to evaporate and she was left hanging for a time. This seemed at the time to be a good strategy. Labor has a history of trying to parachute in high- profile candidates to win seats. Sometimes it works; sometimes it does not work. For example, the member for Kingsford Smith is one of those celebrity candidates who was parachuted in and I wonder whether the Labor Party now thinks it was such a great idea, given his track record. This was seen in Western Australia when the state division of the Labor Party tried to parachute in Reece Whitby, a Channel 7 journalist, into the safe seat of Morley—and that came to grief.

I have faced a long, hard fought and expensive campaign and, as I have said, I am honoured to have been returned. Going into this election following the redistribution, Canning’s margin was 4.3 per cent notionally. After 21 August there was a 2.3 per cent swing against me, leaving me with a margin of 2.14 per cent. As an interesting fact, 2.14 per cent was exactly the swing against the coalition in Western Australia after the 2007 election. That might set some context. This is a result which I am proud of and it would not have been possible without a disciplined and targeted campaign. As I have said to many since, I consider the Canning campaign—from our point of view—to have been a model campaign and if I was to run it again I would not do anything different. We were disciplined, we were organised and we made sure that we ticked all the boxes to make this happen.

In the Canning booths covering Ms MacTieman’s state seat of Armadale, the results were a testament to the heavyweight battle of two well-known identities. Despite Alannah’s popularity in the Labor area, the Liberal Party’s two-party preferred vote was 42.4 per cent, up 7.4 per cent on the 2008 Liberal state election win which covered the same booths. So we were able, in some respects, to deal with the strategy of the Labor Party of parachuting in the popular local state member and minister to try to gain the seat of Canning by winning it alone on the state seat of Armadale.

Even the Labor candidate herself declared that the ALP campaign was dysfunctional. There is a whole ream of quotes from her after the election. In fact, she said that the campaign in her seat and in Western Australia generally was ‘a rerun of the disastrous 2008 state election’. She really gave a few people a slap after the election. From every angle it appeared to be disorganised, haphazard and ill informed, and initially it was poorly funded. Labor gave up on Western Australia a long time ago and, after Mr Rudd was knifed, and Alannah was on her own without a factional base. In fact, she did not even have a campaign office and a lot of the campaign did seem to lack direction. We were continually being fed information about the shambolic campaign that was being run. Nobody discredits how hard she worked. However, you can work as hard as you like, but if you get the strategy wrong then it is all to no avail.

For example, there was no critical analysis of where the limited resources would be best placed. People in Waroona in my electorate were telling me the ALP had not bothered visiting their shire at all. The Shire of Boddington was taken aback when the candidate invited herself to a lunch with councillors. And Mandurah, where half of the Canning population resides, was largely ignored until it was too late. For 12 months Ms MacTiernan served two masters, using her leverage and resources as a state member to seek federal office. In other words, she would not get out of the state parliament until the election was called, which again was a strategic flaw in her campaign.

Polling day was another disaster for Labor. Expecting a full onslaught from the Labor army, we were instead taken aback by the shambolic management of polling booths and the sheer lack of manpower on the booths. Whereas in 2007 the Transport Workers Union and the AWU waged a strong campaign against me, this time the ALP was faced with lengthy industrial action by Alcoa workers, resulting in a lack of interest and coordination in the federal campaign. Manning the booths last month were non-local ALP members who had simply been seconded to fill a gap. People on my campaign were telling me that there were well-meaning ladies from the leafy suburbs such as Dalkeith handing out how-to-vote cards for the Labor Party who did not really know what they were doing. In fact, in the Pinjarra booth I heard that one ALP helper who tried to hand out a how-to-vote card to Ms MacTiernan was quickly scolded for not knowing who the candidate was. Whereas the union support might not have been there, in the latter stages of the campaign there was financial support from industry and prominent Perth people. One particular Perth real estate agent really shovelled some money into her campaign. They were quick to change allegiances and hedge their bets, expecting to see me defeated, which I can assure you I have taken account of.

I will take the opportunity to congratulate my Western Australian colleagues and the state director, Ben Morton, on a strongly fought and a WA-specific election campaign. We have been really lucky to have Ben as our state director because he has brought a real freshness and enthusiasm to campaigning in Western Australia—not only in the federal election. You saw the results in the state election, electing the Barnett coalition. The results speak for themselves, with the coalition holding 12 of 15 seats in Western Australia. Overall, the Liberal Party’s two-party preferred vote in Western Australia was 55.1 per cent, up 1.9 per cent on the 2007 result, making it the best result since 1977. While the swing towards the coalition in WA at the recent election was less that in Queensland or New South Wales, it is important to remember that at the 2007 election the swing against the Howard government was only 2.1 per cent in Western Australia, less than half the national swing of 5.6 per cent and well behind the 7.9 per cent swing in Queensland.

I want to welcome Ken Wyatt as the new member for Hasluck and first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives. He represents the Hasluck electorate, a neighbour of Canning, and I look forward to working closely with Ken over the coming term. Ken’s wealth of experience and cultural background will be a valuable addition to this parliament and to his electors in Hasluck. I also welcome back my colleagues Warren Entsch, the member for Leichhardt, and Teresa Gambaro, now the member for Brisbane. They were part of the class of 1996. There are 10 of us left, and it is great to see them come back and help swell our ranks. I know firsthand what it is like to lose a seat and have to fight to get it back and re-enter the parliament. If there is one thing I have learned during my time in parliament it is never to take anything for granted. My campaign for re-election started on 22 August and will continue up till the date of the next election. You cannot serve your electorate well if you only serve it in the 33 days before the election every three years. As John Howard used to say, you cannot fatten the pig on market day.

I say a few fond and sad farewell words to my long-term colleague ‘Iron Bar’ Wilson Tuckey, the former member for O’Connor. Wilson is somebody that I liked and he is a friend of mine. Wilson was an interesting character. The first time I really had much to do with Wilson was when he was trying to explain in the 1993 election campaign about a lump of steel and how the GST would affect you turning it into something. He lost everybody but he was enthusiastic! I also met Wilson when I used to train racehorses semi-professionally down at the Ascot Racecourse and Wilson was dragging a horse around. He gave me a bit of advice on how to become a candidate and get involved in the Liberal Party, before he got involved in an altercation with one of the other trainers, who happened to be the tough man on the course. Wilson stood there chesting him and I thought, ‘Wilson, don’t go there, because Colin Clune will pick you up and throw you away.’ But he seemed to get away with it all the time—that was Wilson. He was a very interesting character and we are going to miss him here after 30 years in the federal parliament.

Of course, a special mention must go to my Western Australian colleagues the member for Cowan, Luke Simpkins; the member for Swan, Steve Irons; and the member for Stirling, Michael Keenan. They all managed to turn their wafer thin margins into safer seats. As a former member for Swan, I take a special interest in the seat and congratulate Steve Irons, the current member, on increasing the margin there to around two per cent. In fact, I think his margin is greater than mine, and that is a credit to him for his hard work and dedication.

There were a number of interesting trends in this election to do with Indigenous voting. Certain trends jump out at elections and one worth mentioning is the Indigenous vote. Labor has taken Indigenous Australians for granted. That was confirmed to me only recently by talking to Norman Fry, the former head of the Northern Territory Land Council. The Labor Party offered them only symbolic gestures and there was a backlash against the ALP at polling booths. It is the coalition that has provided the first Indigenous senator and now the first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives. The 2010 results show that the Indigenous vote is no longer owned by the ALP, or at least that this vote is up for grabs when the ALP takes it for granted.

Durack is an interesting case. Booths in Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek, Wyndham and Roebourne had swings of 20 per cent against Labor. In all these booths the Liberal Party polled well in front of the Nationals and received a strong run of National Party preferences. Overall there was a swing in Durack of more than six per cent. Indigenous voters in Lingiari turned against Labor, and Labor lost six of the 19 remote polling booths, with swings of up to 45 per cent in some cases. The sitting member suffered a 13 per cent overall swing against his primary vote and saw his margin more than halved. Leichhardt, Warren Entsch’s seat, has one of the highest proportions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voters in Australia, at about 15 per cent. He had Indigenous people running his polling booths for him. That is testament to him. As I said, Indigenous people are suddenly starting to realise that it is this side of the House that is actually interested in seeing them go forward rather than being kept on welfare and kept on the camps by being drip-fed welfare rather than having real jobs and a meaningful way of going ahead.

There is much more I could say in this speech, but I am out of time. What I want to say is that being re-elected as the member for Canning in Western Australia is something that I am going to cherish. Let us hope that during this term we can change sides; there is a good opportunity to do so given the delicate balance of this House. As I say, we are only one death, one desertion or one sickness away from having the ability to change the composition of this House, and we will be doing our best to hold this government to account. If that opportunity arises it will be fantastic to see this high-spending government taken away. This government has not changed, it cannot stop the debt, it cannot stop the refugees and now it wants to form an alliance with the Greens, which would see this country head further to the left and into economic malaise. Western Australia is an icon; it is the way to go, because it has a Liberal state government.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and congratulations—you are looking good up there! It is good to be back in Canberra; it is good to be back in Parliament House. I suspect that towards the end of the last session most of us were looking forward to getting out of Canberra. But for quite a while now I have been looking forward to getting back here and working in this new parliament. I enjoyed watching the process of the formation of government over the 17-day period in which that occurred. Once I separated my own circumstances from that process, I found that it was an incredibly interesting path that the nation took over that period of time. I think we are entering a very good time, because there is work to be done in government—and I am looking forward to getting on with that—but also because a parliament that is put together in the way the Australian people have put this one together brings new possibilities that could be good for the nation if we let them be and if we work to make it so.

Most members of the House would know that I have a bit of a background in business, and I have always believed that, to do well in the long term, cycles can actually be quite good for you—not aggressive cycles but moderate cycles of good and leaner times. In good times you can explore, you can harvest, you can prepare, and in tougher times you pare back to your core activities—you focus on the essentials, you remove the fat, you go back to basics and you question the trends, habits, assumptions and shortcuts that grow so easily in good times. You question the things that you can sometimes get away with when times are good and resources are plentiful. As a government I think we are in many ways in one of those leaner times. It is a very good opportunity for us all in this House to question those trends, habits, assumptions and shortcuts that have grown up over what is now 60 years or more of majority government and to focus our attention on priorities, the things that actually matter and the purpose of being in this House.

I am going to refer to two of my colleagues—Brendan O’Connor and Bob McMullan. Brendan, who is a minister now, and Bob, who is retired, are probably wondering, with some trepidation, what I am going to say. In my first months as a member of parliament, both of those gentlemen said things to me that I carry now that I think are particularly pertinent to the situation that we find ourselves in. The Hon. Bob McMullan said to me: ‘We can only move as fast as the people move. We have to take the people with us. You cannot get ahead of the community—you can lead them, but you must bring them with you.’ I think there is a very important lesson for us all in that. I suspect that, in times of majority governments, we on both sides have come to believe that we can do things in this House without fully bringing the people with us, because the majority gives us that power. We are of course, in that sense, in a different paradigm. I do not think it is this parliament which tells us that; it is the decision that the people made to create this parliament.

We are very much at a time when the community is powerfully divided on a number of key issues that this nation needs to address. The issue of climate change is one where we have very strong views at both ends of the opinion bell curve. The issue of asylum seekers is another where the community is incredibly strongly divided. This is a time for us as a nation to acknowledge that moving forward in whatever direction we choose requires absolutely that we take the community with us.  For this reason I was very pleased to hear the Prime Minister, prior to the election and since, talking about the need to build consensus on these issues. That is an incredibly important function—a function that is not just the responsibility of government. Community, too, has a responsibility to engage in the debate and to talk more broadly on these issues.

Brendan O’Connor is probably thinking, ‘What the hell did I say back then?’ He said something to me on a number of occasions which I also heard him say to a number of others when we were wondering about our roles on committees and what we were doing. He said to me quite clearly one day, ‘Julie, you have to decide whether you care about getting it done or you care about getting the credit.’ It was a particular circumstance in which, when in opposition, as member of a committee I was able to make a substantial change to policy which I felt was very important, but I clearly was not going to get any credit for it. He said that to me on that day and I have heard him say it to others. It stuck with me. I think it is a lesson that we should all keep in mind—that we are essentially here to get things done, not for the credit. Of course, you have to get the credit at some point or you do not get to stay and do more and you do not get to stay and follow through. So there needs to be a balance, and we all know that. But the first thing we are here for is to get it done. The credit is simply a mechanism to ensure that you can follow through. That priority, for each of us, is one that we need to reinforce in the make-up of this House. There will be things that we pass as a House that some of us may have had passionate views about for years, and we will watch someone else stand up and take the running and make it happen. But what matters in this House is that we actually get things done for the good of the nation.

We have very much the parliament that people gave us. This is democracy at work. People accuse us sometimes of being poll-driven. Well, the mighty poll which is election day has made the decisions for us again at this time, and we have absolutely the parliament that the people gave us. It is an interesting time. In some ways it is different from what we are used to and in other ways it is actually quite the same. When members of the House of Representatives have been talking about this new paradigm, some of my Senate colleagues have said: ‘What new paradigm? The Senate has been operating under those sorts of constraints for a long time.’ In Australia, that is true. The Australian people have a habit of choosing one party in a state, one party in the federal sphere and a third party in the Senate to ensure that we as governments negotiate our way through. I think it has served the Australian people very well. It has given us stability in government. It has generally prevented us from swinging wildly from one side of politics to another as elections unfold. It tends to push us into the middle. Some of us do not like that. There are times when each side would like to be further in whatever direction they choose. But the system that the Australian people have chosen for us for decades causes us to have to negotiate our path with people who do not share our views. And it has been very effective. We are going to do it now in the House of Representatives as well as in the Senate.

If you look at the negotiation process that occurs over ideas through to bills that go through both houses of parliament, there have been many times when governments on both sides have lost the argument. It was interesting to see the media yesterday making such a big deal of a loss. It does not happen often in this House, but in the last term at least 15 per cent of legislation was blocked at some point on that path. So this is not new. It is new in this House, but that negotiation process is part of political life. It is going to be very interesting for the House of Representatives to play a much more active part in what has been one of the great strengths of Australian democracy over decades. It is not so unusual.

There are some unusual things, though. With majority governments, even with a minority in the Senate, traditionally it has been only the government that has been able to get bills passed. Only the government had the potential to follow through on its commitments at an election campaign. That is not the case here. Both the government and the opposition have 72 seats in the House of Representatives and each of us can negotiate with the Independents up to 75. So, extremely unusually in Australian politics, the role of opposition is different to the one that it has been. I would ask the opposition to consider that the answers that they found to the question of what opposition is when there was a clear majority government are quite different in a hung parliament. I would encourage the opposition to explore the fact that they are in a position as an opposition to constructively engage in policy development, not just the criticism of policy, which is the traditional role of an opposition. We are in that sense in a very interesting time.

We are also in an interesting time in terms of the procedures of the House. I chaired the Procedures Committee in the last parliament, so I watched with great interest some of the recommendations of that committee be accepted by the House yesterday, plus some new ones that came from the Independents. I suspect, though, that one of the greatest changes in the behaviour of parliament will not be so much in the rules themselves—I have always said that you do not stop rule breaking with rules; people who break rules will break rules. If you introduce new ones, they will break those. The real change here is that the consequences for breaking the rules are more dire. I suspect that we would not see such a profound change if it was still possible for people to be ejected from the House. That would have a profound impact now, of course. So I wonder whether it is the rule change that will make the difference or the consequences of breaking the rules that will make the difference.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have just been told by one of my colleagues that it is the strength and gravitas of the Deputy Speaker that is controlling the House and causing people to obey the rules. Congratulations, Mr Deputy Speaker. I suspect, though, that the decision of the people to make us so finely balanced will have a far greater impact on behaviour in the House than any rules that we might introduce. That also is an extremely interesting turn of events.

We are as a nation incredibly innovative. We adopt new technology very early and we adopt ideas very early. There are technology companies that come to Australia to test their new products because they move so quickly through the Australian market. This is probably the last thing that I am going to say about this, but it is interesting to contrast what is perhaps a natural talent for change with a decision by the Australian people over and over again to build protections into our democratic system that slow down the implementation of change and force us to negotiate a common path.

I notice that the Leader of the Opposition is now calling himself the leader of the coalition, as if the Leader of the Opposition position no longer exists. Every time he says that, I insert ‘Leader of the Opposition’.

Both the government and the opposition made commitments prior to the election. It interests me that the opposition is so critical that a government would consider the make-up of the parliament. I urge the opposition to consider that it too has the potential to honour its election commitments on the same basis as the government can. It has 72 votes. It has the potential to choose its priority projects, as I am sure that it will. We are in for very interesting times.

As those 17 days progressed, I was able to reduce the elements of government policy to the matters that I profoundly care about. There are many issues that I profoundly care about, but it was interesting to watch over the 17 days which programs of government came to the surface as the ones that I would be most regretful of losing if we did not gain government. I was surprised that some of the ones that emerged were not the ones that I expected to emerge. The one that came up first was education, and not so much the answers that we have put forward—such as the computers in schools program, for example, which I am a great fan of—but the policy direction that underpinned the answers that the Labor government had put forward. I live in an extremely diverse electorate. There is an extremely flat bell curve in terms of demographics and socioeconomic status. There are large pockets of poverty; there are also substantial pockets of comfort.

We have in Western Sydney a number of longstanding issues, and previous governments did not work strongly to address them—certainly the immediate prior government, the Howard government, did not. We had retention rates that peaked at about 70 per cent just prior to the Howard government’s election, and the high school retention rate stagnated over the next 12 years. In Western Sydney those retention rates are lower. In some areas they are quite low. They are particularly bad for boys in Western Sydney and substantially better for girls. So we have a situation in Western Sydney where large numbers of our young people are essentially opting to limit their future prospects. That situation was relatively stable for the 12 years prior to the election of the Rudd government in 2007.

The Rudd government and the Gillard government introduced a number of programs to try to address the stagnation of the high school retention rate, set some very substantial targets to improve it and began work on that. That included increasing budgets for education, including for trade centres, the My School website and a whole range of elements which were designed to improve the retention rates in high schools. That is an important matter for the Australian economy as a whole and, for those individual young people who leave school, it is perhaps one of the most important things that will happen at this time in their lives to impact on their future. It was something of great distress to me that we could actually have gone back to that stagnation if we had lost government. That is something that I am really pleased to be standing for here on this side of the House.

I was also incredibly pleased to hear during the election campaign a commitment to increase the family tax payment once a child turns 16. Currently the situation is that when a child turns 16 the maximum payment rate of family tax benefit part A reduces by about $150 a fortnight whether they are in school or not. The election commitment reverses that and increases the family support by up to $4,000 a year per teenager. That was an incredibly important but relatively small announcement that did not get a lot of attention during the election campaign. But I knew that that was going to make a profound difference in my electorate for families for whom keeping a child in school was not necessarily financially possible. I come from a region where, when I was in school, bright, intelligent kids got permission to leave school before the age of 15 because their parents simply could not afford to keep them there. That is something I think is long overdue and which I am incredibly pleased to be able to implement in government.

I was also concerned very much by the potential winding back of the BER in particular. There are currently 1,800 people in my electorate of Parramatta who are employed on Building the Education Revolution projects, plus about 200 employed on social housing and 425 employed on apprenticeships, thanks to the Apprentice Kickstart program. If you add that up it is about three per cent of my workforce. That is a substantial number of people who are working because of the way the stimulus program was designed. Unemployment in Parramatta is already seven per cent. It is higher than the national average and in some areas of my electorate, in the south, it is up around 12 per cent. An increase of three per cent in unemployment would be a substantial blow to my local community. I am incredibly pleased to see those 425 young people on apprenticeships. It is a very good start to life. It is an incredibly successful program. Again, I am unbelievably pleased to be on this side of the House so that I do not see those important programs dismantled.

The environment is probably the last issue I am going to get to talk on today. Again, I am incredibly pleased that we have the opportunity in this parliament to move on climate change. I believe that we need to, and I believe that we need to put a price on carbon. We obviously need to do it for the good of the environment and the way in which we live in it but also because as a nation we have a great talent for innovation. We have an opportunity, if we get in early enough, to move beyond the carbon age and to use our talent for creativity and innovation to build a place for ourselves and to build our economy in the modern world. Again, this is our talent. We used to lead the world on solar technology. We no longer do. We can again. We have in our land all of the things we need—the wind, the waves, the hot rocks and the sun. We have an extraordinary natural resource when it comes to building a world beyond the carbon age and a human capacity to explore those potentials and build ourselves a very strong economic future. The longer we delay, the less opportunity there will be for us to build a place for ourselves in that world. So I am very pleased that the government, the Independents and the Greens have decided to work together to try to find a path through what is a very fraught issue for our community. We need to build a consensus. We need to find a way through. We need to act for the sake of our economy and our quality of life. I am very pleased that the government will be able to do that.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I acknowledge your elevation to a presiding officer role and I extend my best wishes for your important responsibilities in that role. It is indeed an honour and a pleasure after being re-elected for the Dunkley electorate to be able to speak for the sixth time in address in reply to the Governor-General’s speech.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It might be your last!

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the interjection that it might be my last. I thank the Labor Party for their perpetual optimism about my future political prospects. But I will also use that interjection to characterise the nature of the contest in the Dunkley electorate. Time and time again the Dunkley campaign were saying, ‘Billson, we don’t know why you’re here; this is a Labor seat. Our polling says you’re gone, mate.’ There were all these kinds of comments going around.

What that underlined to me and many of the Dunkley voters is the comment made, way back in 1996 when I was first elected, by my predecessor the then Labor member for Dunkley, who, quite openly in a moment of honest reflection, said that Labor had forgotten about the Dunkley community. The attitude in the more recent campaign seems to show they have not learnt much, either. This presumption that Dunkley voters will support the Labor Party seems to have blended its way into the behaviour, comments and attitude of Labor candidates displayed earlier in this chamber. It contrasts vividly with my approach, which is that every day is an opportunity to do something worth while for the Dunkley community. Having grown up in that community, where Dunkley actually runs through my veins, having been a part of it for all of my adult life and all of my education, I have a very strong affinity with the Dunkley community and revel in its diversity. There are areas of good fortune and those are often pointed to and, electorally, are quite helpful. There are areas where prospects are not so bright and good fortune does not automatically rain on some communities within Dunkley. My job is to be there as an advocate and an ally for those people.

I came into public life with one simple inspiration, and that is your postcode does not determine your potential. Right across the Dunkley community there are citizens able and willing to apply their skills and knowledge—young people who are able to learn as well as anybody, who should be able to make this world of delicious possibilities their own. My job is to try to make those connections, to support all individuals in Dunkley in fulfilling their potential. I thank the electors of Dunkley for giving me the honour and opportunity to represent our community for a sixth term. But it is not just that inspiration, motivation and positive, passionate and persistent approach to representing the community that makes it happen; it is the team that puts their support and belief in you.

I am truly blessed by a committed, supportive and very politically astute wife, my sweetheart Kate. I have a very early photo of her when she was only a few years old wearing an ‘I’m a Liberal lover’ T-shirt as she was out with her father, Arthur, helping with the late Philip Lynch’s campaign. She is very sound in her political pedigree and very passionate about the value and benefits to the Australian public and our community of Liberal representation. Her support and inspiration and the encouragement of my children, particularly my eldest two, who were more involved in this campaign because they are now aged 12 and 10, were a tonic, a nourishment for those arctic mornings at Seaford Railway Station where you just stood outside, experiencing a natural exfoliation as the weather pounded its way through. They were great support. Family support is so crucial. I always honour and respect that support, because public life is perhaps not of their choosing. The elected member may feel more potently many of the ups than the family but the downs are moments that are seemingly shared quite equally across the broader family.

I was also very fortunate to have the most incredible dynamic duo in the form of Robert and Linda Hicks spearheading the campaign. They are two dear friends, both incredibly able and also well schooled in electioneering. Some years ago Robert was the Liberal candidate taking on Simon Crean in what was a fortress electorate, so he knows his way around a political campaign. That kind of experience and Linda’s attentiveness and thoughtfulness guiding our efforts were truly valued and incredibly beneficial to all of our work.

With regard to the campaign team, the visual merchandising efforts of Arthur Ranken, my indefatigable father-in-law, are renowned in the electorate. He was a great inspiration and an incredible contributor. The contribution of Cyrus Alyari and Horacio Diaz in pounding the pavements is truly valued. To the campaign team: Tony Conabere, Greg Dixon, Colin and Dawn Fisher, Michael Fraser, Marshall Hughes, and Graeme and Marita Johnson in their first campaign—their energy and insight were truly valuable. The kind of support from Robert and Joan Garnett and the broader Liberal family, including the dear mates who come out to help their buddy on election day, was really encouraging. To Greg and Virginia Sugars and John Catto-Smith, Tamme Klaster, Bob and Carole Ford, Bill Beaglehole, David and Melissa and all the Ritter family, thank you. There are so many to mention, including on polling day the likes of Janice Dupuy. They are all stalwarts of the party who do an incredible job.

We were fortunate this year to have some new talent come in: Reagan Barry and Zoe Nottas were two young people whom I met—one at a railway station. Their energy and enthusiasm were infectious. I am very optimistic about the contribution they can make to the future. It is important to acknowledge that team: Geoff Shaw, Robert Latimer, Declan Stephenson, Ted Galloway, Paul and Pam Amos, my mate Tim Smith and Barry MacMillan—and too many more to name—who just kept contributing day in and day out, whether it was at arctic dawns at railway stations through to the slog of letterboxing with a campaign that needed to be quite resourceful, given the funds available.

I also want to thank my dear friend and parliamentary colleague Bronwyn Bishop, who is here at the table, for her visit to my electorate. I said, very fondly, that Bronwyn is the Britney Spears of a particular generation. To see the way in which people respond and react to your presence, Bronwyn, is truly an inspiration. There is much love for you, ma’am. To see the way that people in the electorate of Dunkley respond—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Perrett interjecting

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and even the way members opposite respond in that Britney Spearsesque way is just terrific. I also thank my dear friend and, in some respects, mentor, Andrew Robb.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just like to remind the member for Dunkley of standing order 64—

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, sir. I thought you would do that. I was trying to remember the names of everyone’s electorate. If I can backfill at some point I will, but I acknowledge that I did not mention those fine individuals by their electorates. I trust that you may cut me some grace on this occasion.

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

I did.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The campaign itself was quite interesting. I have always believed in putting forward a positive agenda. It was quite vivid how the only candidate in the Dunkley campaign putting forward a positive agenda was me. Time after time, positive announcements, commitments to address serious, genuinely held concerns or interest amongst our community was met by a wall of silence from the Labor Party, the Labor political machine and others contesting the election.

In fact, the only real voice from the Labor campaign was to claim that what Labor calls the trade training centre was at risk in the electorate. It was so blatantly dishonest to make that claim when it had been made clear time and time again that there was no risk to that facility—and why would there be a risk to that facility when I had applied so many years of effort to have the Greater Frankston area positioned to receive an Australian technical college under the former government? That could not proceed because the Labor government junked that program, a program of great importance and great appeal to my community. I then worked with the local community to persuade the Labor Party to change its policy—not to sprinkle a little bit of money around every secondary college and really deliver no net increase in learning and teaching capability—persuading it that it should go with a facility-specific, purpose-built skills and vocational training facility, and Labor ultimately agreed to follow the vision that we had outlined as a community. To then have the Labor campaign accuse me of somehow being anti that project was the most distasteful and dishonest element of that campaign.

All the way through to election day itself, people were arriving at secondary colleges and being met by banners saying that a trade training centre at that secondary college was at risk if you voted for the coalition team. Not only was that not accurate and honest; there was no such proposal to have trade training centres sprinkled around secondary colleges, because we had persuaded the Labor government that that was not the best outcome for our community. The location of the trade training facility—which is the badging Labor chooses to give to a project whose genesis was many years before Labor was even interested—was not at any of those secondary colleges, but that did not stop the fraud and the dishonesty of the campaigning on election day. Many parents had contacted me over the course of the campaign about the whispering campaign that the Labor machine had put into our secondary schools about facilities and projects already underway that somehow were at risk if the coalition were elected.

It is the sad aspect of campaigning these days that the fear and anxiety mischievously created by the Labor campaign were all they had to campaign on. There was nothing new, nothing positive, nothing responsive to the local concerns, no honest account of what the community needed and then a thoughtful response; just this bile and nonsense about what was supposedly at risk when it actually was not at risk at all. In fact, the coalition had championed that project. I personally had pursued it with great vigour and I will continue to work to make sure that it delivers what our community needs.

The irony also was that, right throughout the campaign, the local Frankston City Council had been urging people to ‘put their heart into Frankston’. This was a campaign the council had put forward urging certain commitments from those who were candidates in the campaign. Not a single commitment that they were looking for was made by Labor—not one. There was barely an acknowledgement that there was a need to respond to that campaign. There was a line or two in the local press about how the Heart of Frankston campaign mattered but no follow-through and no commitment.

It is not surprising, then, that on election day the Labor vote went nowhere. But the Greens vote did increase. And discussing with the very genuine and committed Greens candidate the decision the Greens had made—a decision made not by him but somewhere else—to preference Labor without any key performance test about that allocation of preferences essentially characterised what happened in the election: a growth in the Greens vote, a strong preference flow to Labor, and my modest margin finishing near microscopic. But that was the story.

There was no positive response from the Greens or from Labor about our three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar Dunkley drought-proofing investment, another initiative that I had championed and that Labor was silent on and then begrudgingly had to turn its mind to as some stimulus money was made available some years ago. There was no commitment to extend the recycled water that would otherwise run out into Gunnamatta along the pipeline and make it available to ensure that sporting facilities, school grounds and other heavy water users had a non-drinking-water option to meet their needs. There was not a word from the Labor Party, but I will continue to pursue that drought-proofing initiative.

There was no acknowledgement about the concerns about the atmosphere, tone and episodes of antisocial behaviour around Langwarrin, challenges that we as a community have been facing for some time, challenges that the coalition responded to by a commitment to establish a youth focused facility in Langwarrin. There was not a word from the Labor Party, not a word from the incumbent government and, again, not a matching commitment to be seen anywhere from those seeking to earn the support of the local community. That challenge remains and action is still required.

Even in areas around community safety in the CCTV extended rollout that I had committed to—again, more projects that the Labor Party seemed uninterested in and needed to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to attend to—there was an opportunity to match the commitments of the coalition, an opportunity again forgone by Labor. It was as if they were hoping to run on the sisterhood ticket of a Victorian based female Prime Minister and a female Labor candidate, as if that were all that mattered, as if gender were the only thing that would sway people’s votes, not a sense of the important commitments that needed to be made and the forward positive agenda that the city and the community were looking for.

Even in our main population centre of Frankston, a city that has so much going for it, we are not without our challenges, but the opportunities and the potential far exceed any challenges or obstacles we may face. But we need to craft and commit to a vision for that city. The Heart of Frankston campaign was about that, and I was keen to put the heart and the mind into that campaign, the mind being a clear sense of shared purpose about the destiny and the future of that city. We need that for a number of reasons. Frankston has long been recognised by the state government as a central activities district—great on the announcement but no follow-through. The identification of those central activities districts across Greater Melbourne has seen enormous sums of money go into other areas. Dandenong has received $290 million from the state government in support of that designation of a central activities district; $80 million has gone into Broadmeadows. Frankston has received $16 million. These guys are not for real. It is a further example of Labor forgetting our city.

Presented with a chance to make a commitment, to tackle that extraordinary imbalance and to address the fact that there are only about 80,000 jobs within half an hour of Frankston, where we need to grow the job opportunities so that there are opportunities for employment, economic wellbeing and a full life within reasonable reach of our community, the Labor Party squibbed it. There was no commitment, no recognition of the work that needs to be done.

There is no acknowledgement of some of the transport challenges that we face, such as an opportunity to accelerate the rail service between Frankston and the CBD; the implications the port of Hastings may have for our passenger rail system to maybe carry freight from Westernport to other destinations, further making greater challenges for passenger rail services to the city; the opportunity with the Frankston bypass for park-and-ride; and even the prospects and the case and the analytical argument to invest in extending the rail line down to Baxter so that it passes Monash, so that it services those growing communities, to do that analytical work to build the business case, to nurture a shared sense of purpose about our city. Where was Labor? Nowhere to be seen. Despite Labor claiming over and over again that the Dunkley electorate should be Labor, this is why it is not. Labor does not turn up, they are not committed, they are not serious and they never address the substantial issues that our community face. That is why, despite claims by the Labor Party that it should be their seat, it is not.

When you look at those projects and how to optimise the benefit from them, the Scoresby Freeway was committed to by the coalition. Labor was dragged kicking and screaming to finally put some money in and then slapped a toll on it. The Frankston bypass is another project that Labor said was not needed, not necessary. Finally they got on board to be involved with it. Why is it that every time these major challenges are before our community we have to drag Labor kicking and screaming to them? I believe it is because they take this community for granted. We need to make sure that the Labor Party understand that Frankston is no easy pushover for Labor. It should not be because Labor has not earned the reputation and respect to make it that way.

In the few minutes left to me I want to touch on a couple of other issues. One of them relates to the number of jobs available within our community. Bar a couple of examples, overwhelmingly public or health related services, employment in our community is through small business. Yet in the Governor-General’s address—and I am not critical of her, because this is scripted for her by the government—you would not even know that small business existed. There is no mention of any substantive measure. That follows what happened during the election campaign. Labor failed to release any kind of positive, comprehensive small business policy, settling only for some sort of record of what it said it had done in its first term and how it would do more of the same if re-elected. Well, more of the same is not what the small-business community want. In the first 2½ years of this Labor government some 300,000 jobs were lost in small business—300,000 fewer people are employed in small business. When Labor was elected more than 52 per cent of the employment in Australia was in small business; now it is 48 per cent.

This trend has to stop. The big end of town might love a government that loves doing big deals and big spending and they can get into the trough to get their share of the taxpayers’ money. But what about the small businesses and family enterprises that used to represent more than half of the employment opportunities in our country but that are now less than half, that now provide 300,000 fewer jobs than they did when Labor was elected? And Labor promised more of the same. It is little wonder the small-business community believes Labor is not committed to them, nor should the small-business community and family enterprise people be committed to Labor. The coalition outlined a comprehensive strategy that amounted to a microeconomic reform agenda to put the ‘business’ back into small business. Why? Because it needs to happen. For outer metropolitan, rural and regional communities, communities like Dunkley, if the small-business sector is not enjoying some vitality, some prosperity and some prospects for a brighter future, that damages the prospects of the communities they support and the jobs they seek to offer. I commit to keep working for small-business people in Australia. (Time expired)

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great privilege to be here in the house of the people. To be re-elected to represent an electorate in the House of Representatives is a great honour. It shows trust, it shows commitment and it shows that the people of the electorate of Blair have put their faith in a Labor representative and in the Gillard Labor government. I thank the people of Blair for this responsibility and I commit myself once again to discharge those duties with diligence and that responsibility with determination. I thank my wife, Carolyn, and my daughters, Alex and Jacqui, for their wonderful support in this campaign, my campaign director Peter Johnstone, my chief of staff Jennifer Howard, and my 2IC and staff member Kylie Stoneman. I went into this campaign, my third campaign, with a Labor Party membership ticket in one hand and with a union ticket in the other. I ran what Dennis Atkins in the Courier-Mail described as a maverick campaign. I stood up for the people of my electorate. I stood up for the working people whose representatives are the trade union movement, who have for the whole history of this country stood up for working people in the electorate of Blair, in Ipswich and in rural areas. I want to thank my union, the Australian Services Union, the BLF, the Plumbers Union, the CWU, the AWU, the ETU, the CFMEU and the Queensland Teachers Union for their muscle on the ground, their financial support and their longstanding commitment to my candidacy.

I was born in Ipswich and have lived there all my life. My family has lived in the Ipswich and West Moreton community for generation after generation. I have a longstanding commitment to my community. The Blair electorate covers 6,400 square kilometres in South-East Queensland. It is a regional and rural seat. It is based on the city of Ipswich, about 70 per cent of it, and the rural area known as the Somerset Regional Council. But 60 per cent of Ipswich is indeed rural. Ipswich is the fastest growing city in South-East Queensland. It grew, according to the ABS data, by five per cent last year. The Somerset region grew the third fastest in South-East Queensland at 4.5 per cent. With that growth comes great challenge. The South-East Queensland infrastructure plan and program for 2010 to 2031 talks about the need for $134 billion in investment in infrastructure. This will support 930,000 jobs in South-East Queensland. One in seven people in the country live in South-East Queensland. South-East Queensland’s population will grow from 2.8 million in 2006 to 4.4 million by 2031. The area from Noosa through to Coolangatta and out to Toowoomba is indeed the fastest growing area in the country. That poses the problems of a sustainable future, addressing climate change, protecting regional landscapes, supporting rural production and lifestyle and managing the growth in what is known as the Western Corridor.

Improving infrastructure and services and supporting healthy and strong communities is vital for South-East Queensland and vital for my electorate of Blair. As previous terms in this parliament show, the re-election of the federal Labor government will assist, particularly in the areas of roads, schools, health and hospital services. Indeed the $1.75 billion for the Roads to Recovery across the forward estimates to 2014 will assist as well, particularly in local roads in the fast-growing regions of Blair. I congratulate the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and my fellow Queenslander the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, Wayne Swan, on their success. A re-elected federal Labor government was the only hope for the people of Blair. Eleven and a half years of the Howard coalition government gave us nothing in my electorate. The coalition’s attitude to the people of Ipswich was to punish the workers, ignore the commuters, neglect the schools and disinvest in health and hospital services.

The worst travesty of the Howard coalition government was its refusal to upgrade the Ipswich Motorway, the vital link between Brisbane and Ipswich, which is important for farmers, small business, commuters, children and families. Between 90,000 and 100,000 vehicles a day travel on this road. It is appalling that the coalition refused to upgrade it. The Howard coalition government’s attitude to my region is categorised by ignorance, inertia and inaction. Only the election of a federal Labor government in 2007 saw the investment of $1.95 billion to upgrade the Dinmore to Goodna section of the Ipswich Motorway to six lanes and to bring in service roads that will take 20 per cent of the commuting traffic off the Ipswich Motorway. That project will be completed by 2012. The member for Oxley, Bernie Ripoll, and I campaigned for this for many years against the opposition of my predecessor and against the opposition of the Howard coalition government. And what was their attitude to this in the last term? They voted against the funding for the Ipswich Motorway, and in October 2009 the leader of the Nationals in this place, the shadow roads minister, stood up here and said he would stop construction on the Ipswich Motorway. This is a project in South-East Queensland on which up to 10,000 workers have worked over the years. The opposition would stop construction of the Ipswich Motorway. That was their policy and that was their attitude for 11½ years, and if they had won they would have stopped construction of the Ipswich Motorway, which would have affected my community. Only the re-election of a federal Labor government ensured that construction of the Ipswich Motorway between Dinmore and Goodna would continue.

And it was not just in this area. They also voted against the nation-building bills, the $22 billion in regional and rural roads, rail and port and $37 billion in nation-building funds, a lot of which was in South-East Queensland. What did we hear about this from the member for Groom, my LNP opponent, and the LNP candidate, who is now the member for Wright? What did we hear about this from the shadow spokesperson for roads? We heard nothing but opposition to the nation-building and stimulus package and opposition to vital road funding in my community. He had no commitment to vital nation building. We are the ones who upgraded the Warrego Highway. There was $30 million of federal government money, and the coalition opposed it. But the state government is putting $40 million into the Warrego Highway, which is important for farmers, businesses, schoolchildren and residents.

The member for Grayndler, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, came to my electorate during the federal election campaign and made a $54 million commitment to upgrade the Blacksoil Interchange with a flyover, linking the Warrego Highway and the Brisbane Valley Highway. There was $16 million on the table from the Queensland Labor government. They put the proposal and a business case to us in early May 2010, but what did we hear from the coalition during the whole campaign in relation to that project? There was silence from them. There was no commitment at all to do that, when it is important for Toowoomba, it is important for the Lockyer Valley, it is important for the Somerset region, it is important for Ipswich and it is important for Brisbane. That is the extent of their commitment to vital infrastructure in South-East Queensland—none at all. The LNP in Queensland pose, preen and posture as supporters of regional and rural Queensland, but their record does not bear it out. Their record shows that they would disinvest in those areas. That is what happened when it came to road infrastructure in South-East Queensland in my electorate of Blair.

It is the same thing with respect to schools. They opposed the $108 million for local schools in Blair. From Mount Kilcoy to Toogoolawah to Linville to Springfield, the coalition in the last term opposed every last dollar and every last cent spent on school infrastructure in my electorate. Only the re-election of the federal Labor government will ensure that spending continues. Again, they opposed the computers in schools program. Two hundred thousand computers were rolled out across the country, and that is important as well.

When it came to nearly $14 million of community infrastructure in my electorate, the coalition opposed it. My LNP opponent, the Deputy Mayor of the Somerset Regional Council, voted in his council for all of it. He voted in favour of building the Fernvale indoor sports centre. It was on the record in the Gatton Star, where he said how wonderful these sorts of projects are, but then he stood for a party that opposed every last dollar that went into this community. We had coalition people posing, preening and posturing in South-East Queensland, saying they supported these types of programs, but in fact they opposed them. They say one thing down here then they go back to their electorates and say the other. That is the truth.

I am pleased to see that the state Labor government in Queensland is building new schools in my electorate. In Springfield we are of course seeing a new school, the Springfield Central State School. I was pleased to recently meet Angela Gooley, the new principal. That school will open in 2011 to cater for the rapidly growing Springfield area in the Grand Avenue development. Springfield Lakes, which borders Blair and Oxley, will see the rollout of the National Broadband Network, which is important for that area.

We are seeing projects all through my electorate being brought forward by the federal Labor government—everything from the Springfield Central Parklands, which border Oxley and Blair, through to the upgrade of the Ipswich Civic Centre and the Ipswich CBD. Of course, there are also projects like the Fernvale indoor sports centre, which will open in the next few months. These projects are creating jobs and vital community infrastructure, supporting sports, the arts and families as well as providing amenities.

In housing, which is so important in my electorate, the coalition failed. You only have to talk to Queensland public works minister Robert Schwarten to know the trouble he had for many years—he is a longstanding minister in the state Labor government—with successive coalition housing ministers. Their idea of social housing was to disinvest. In my electorate, we are seeing $66.5 million injected into social housing and defence housing under the nation-building stimulus fund. What does the coalition say about that? The coalition voted against every last cent for that. Jobs are being created in my community. There are 111 defence houses being created for the rapidly expanding RAAF base at Amberley. This is occurring in the same suburb that I live in. Many of these defence houses have been created and built in Flinders View in the southern part of Ipswich. The coalition opposed $21.5 million worth of construction. That is why it is important to have a federal Labor representative in Blair and that is why it is also important to have a federal Labor government.

In health and hospital reform, the Gillard Labor government has and will make a difference in my electorate. In the next couple of months, we will see the opening of the Ipswich GP superclinic at the University of Queensland Ipswich campus. I thank the Minister for Health and Ageing for the commitment in that regard. We will see an injection of $7.3 billion over five years into health—more than double the coalition’s commitment to health and hospital funding. We will see funding for 3,000 new nurses and 1,300 GPs over the next three years. We will see a focus on a national health and hospital system, which will be funded nationally and run locally. I look forward to working with the division of general practice locally as it is rebadged into a Medicare local. I also look forward to seeing the Ipswich General Hospital form the hub of what will clearly be a hub-and-spoke model for the health and hospital network.

The Ipswich GP superclinic will be located at the University of Queensland. I have inspected it a number of times, including with then regional health minister, Warren Snowdon, recently. The division of general practice is running the federally funded psychology clinic at the University of Queensland. It now has a very strong focus on health education, particularly with doctors and nurses being trained there. I want to assure the people of Ipswich in the Brisbane Valley and the old Kilcoy shire that I have a strong commitment to health. I have had such a commitment prior to my election in 2007. I practised as a lawyer for many years—in fact, I was a senior partner of a Brisbane CBD law firm, even though I lived in Ipswich—and I have had a longstanding commitment through the health council in the Brisbane Valley and Ipswich and also through the running of aged-care facilities in the Ipswich and west Moreton areas. So I am strongly committed to seeing good health services and good aged-care facilities in our region. We have seen the upgrade of the Cabanda Aged Care in Rosewood—an election commitment of $1.5 million that I secured in 2007. We have seen an interest free loan to the RSL for the Milford Grange project in Ipswich—a $5 million project. I have seen a lot of money poured into my community, and for that I am very grateful.

On 7 July this year, Minister Snowdon came to my electorate and visited Esk. There is a wonderful hospital in Esk; it has been there for a very long time. Brenda Maloney does a fantastic job as the person in charge there. We held a health forum in Esk because the coalition was claiming falsely that that hospital and other regional hospitals in the Ipswich and West Moreton areas, including Gatton, Laidley and Boonah et cetera, were going to be at risk of closing down—simply blatant nonsense. We assured the people of the Brisbane Valley that the Esk hospital would continue. We then held a forum at the Kambu Medical Centre, which is a wonderful Indigenous medical centre in Ipswich that is federally funded. I thank the people there for their hospitality and warmth and for their commitment to the very large Indigenous community in my area. I do pay respects to the Indigenous peoples of Ipswich in the West Moreton area for their custodianship and stewardship of the land which I have the privilege of representing in this place. I am pleased that we have supported regional and rural areas in health funding. We have massively increased funding for rural health by 65 per cent. In the current budget, $795 million is targeted at rural and regional health.

Perhaps it is the National Broadband Network which demonstrates the great difference between the coalition and federal Labor. The fibre-to-the-premises rollout will not only cover Ipswich but 93 per cent of Australia. It will go to country towns in my electorate like Marburg, Rosewood and Walloon, and, in the Brisbane Valley, places like Minden, Fernvale, Esk, Coominya, Toogoolawah, Lowood and up in the old Kilcoy shire, Kilcoy itself. This will make a big difference to the farming communities. This will make a difference to the small business operators in this area. It will make sure that a kid who lives in Toogoolawah will have the same opportunities as a kid who lives in Toorak. It is extremely important, and the coalition opposed it.

Indeed, my LNP opponent, as the deputy mayor of Somerset Regional Council, was privy to the western corridor submission by the councils of Somerset, Ipswich, Scenic Rim and Toowoomba, which were advocating how important the national broadband rollout would be for the whole region in the western corridor and how important it would be for those particular council areas to receive the National Broadband Network delivered early across the region. But during the campaign he said nothing about it; indeed, he campaigned for a party that would oppose and destroy the National Broadband Network. The National Broadband Network is extremely important. The coalition would have left Ipswich and the Somerset region a broadband backwater in terms of take-up speeds and prices.

During their 11½ years and since that time, the coalition have proposed about 19 plans but they have never been able to get it right, and the people of my region will judge them harshly. There were 25,000 jobs at risk from the coalition’s policy. But do not take my word for it; take the word of a local operator, Paul Heymans. Paul runs Paul Computers and he is a well-known businessman in the Somerset region. He has advocated strongly that the National Broadband Network was vital for our region. Paul is not a member or supporter of any particular party, but this is what he said:

What we need in our region is a major telecommunications upgrade. Somerset Region is a water catchment area for the Brisbane water supply, so there are environmental restrictions on the type of industries that can be developed. Improved broadband services will enable the greener industries that are required; it will boost employment opportunities, reduce emissions by providing better facilities for telecommuting, improve education and medical services, boost the local economy and enable local businesses to compete in national and international markets.

He wrote that in an article that was published in the Somerset newspaper on 18 August 2010. He outlined in that article why this was necessary and how the coalition had left us in a broadband backwater.

It is a privilege and honour and a great responsibility to be here as the member for Blair. I will discharge those responsibilities with commitment, determination and rigour for the next three years. I thank the people of Blair for entrusting me with the opportunity to represent them once again in this place. I will argue, agitate and if necessary annoy people for funding for my electorate.

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

May I start off by congratulating you, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, on your re-election to your esteemed position. I certainly look forward to working with you and taking direction from you over the coming parliamentary term. I also congratulate all the new members of parliament and the re-elected members. I think we have seen quite a change in this parliament, and it is, I think, a change for the better, not just because there are more coalition members but for the fact that we have the first Aboriginal member of the House of Representatives and also our first Muslim inducted into this parliament. That is good because it shows that this parliament is here for all Australians.

I rise to speak today about the important issues facing my constituency in Barker. I have to say that I was very pleased with the result I received from the electors of Barker. The swing against the coalition in our state was actually negative by about one per cent, but I was very pleased to have a swing towards me of somewhere between 3.5 and four per cent. So I am very pleased indeed that people saw me as working for the constituents, and I will continue to do that. That is my job and it is a job I am very pleased to do.

Some of the issues are very important to me. I found this to be particularly so in the contribution from the member for Blair, who talked about the NBN and how important it is to rural areas. The first point I would like to make is that, at the cost that the government is suggesting, which is $43 billion—I have no doubt it will be a lot more than that—it will cost of $2,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia. That is the cost whether you use it or not. Even going by the Labor government’s own figures, where they are suggesting that 93 per cent of people will be covered—I do not think that will be the case—guess where the seven per cent who are not covered come from? They come from seats like mine and your seat, Mr Deputy Speaker, which will not benefit from it but will still be paying for it. They will still be paying the $2,000 for every man, woman and child whether they use it or not. Already, people in Australia are choosing to go wireless for the flexibility. Five to one are using wireless versus a fixed line. So I think we are creating a huge costly white elephant that will probably be overridden and by-passed by technology before it is even built.

The Murray River is in my electorate and I have the honour of representing all of the Murray River area in South Australia and half of the lower lakes—half of Lake Alexandrina and all of Lake Albert—which are very important parts of my electorate. During the campaign I was often asked what the most important issue in my electorate was. I said that the three most important issues are water, water and water—a huge issue in South Australia. In the last couple of weeks the Murray in South Australia is certainly looking a lot better than it was. I do not think any politician can lay claim for that; it is a fact that we have had good rains in the southern Murray-Darling Basin and good inflows. As a result, areas that had dropped by a metre below Lock 1 have now risen back to their normal levels. We have now got water flowing over the barrages and that is going to help some inflows into the Coorong, which again is very important. But we still have a long way to go until I feel comfortable saying that the river has returned to health and basin communities are having their needs met without restrictions.

Those that rely on the river will be quick to tell you that it does not just take a couple of good rains to fix everything; it takes ongoing management and proper infrastructure. The coalition went to the election with a Murray-Darling Basin policy based very much on the original Howard $10 billion plan, which was to ensure that the basin and the communities that rely on it have water security now and in the future. The Labor government did not really have a policy or a plan and I am disappointed at their lack of care for something so huge and so important to Australia. If Labor continues to neglect the basin, the long-term effects will be devastating. The government needs to act now to put measures in place like re-plumbing and re-engineering the Medindie Lakes. South Australia is already using great technology, which means they use less water. The rest of the system needs to follow. Labor have assigned the water portfolio to Tony Burke. I have heard the minister speak about ensuring that there is consultation into the impacts of water reform on basin communities, and I hope that is correct. I hope the Labor government understand the effects on these communities. I also hope they understand why infrastructure is so important and that they direct more funding and effort towards it.

I now want to speak about an issue facing the Murray River that I do not believe has ever been raised in this parliament before. It is potentially very dangerous for river users and detrimental to the health of the river. I am talking about Canadian pondweed and hydrilla, both of which are river weeds that are choking up the river. Hydrilla is a native species but it is the main culprit at the moment. The Canadian pondweed is also causing a lot of concern, but it is mainly the hydrilla that is in abundance.

These weeds sweep across the river surface and tangle down under the water like a net, catching unsuspecting victims by wrapping around and around them until they are caught. I recently travelled down the river from Waikerie in a boat to see firsthand the problems this weed can cause and the expansive area that it is covering. I saw a river that was covered from bank to bank in some places with weed that tangles down below the surface, making it nearly impossible for boats and houseboats to weave their way through. The boat I was travelling in had to stop several times so we could untangle the weeds from the propellers, which was quite some process.

I also saw dead animals caught up in the weed. The problem with this weed is that the more you thrash about and fight it, the more it wraps around you and drags you under. For water sport participants, this could prove deadly. If a skier comes off their skis or a child on a kneeboard falls off, they might become entangled in the large areas of weed and drown. It is really quite a scary thought, especially when you see firsthand a full-size kangaroo wrapped up in the weed in the middle of the river that obviously drowned trying to fight its way out of the weeds.

The state government is aware of these weeds, but because some are native and some are introduced species they actually have different departments handling them. There are a few options on how to deal with the problem, including using large harvesting machines or ‘munchers’, which although costly can turn the weed into a mulch that can be distributed on the banks of the river or perhaps even sold. There are other options such as introducing the Chinese grass fish, which apparently does very well at controlling it, but I know Australia would be very wary about introducing species. We all remember the cane toad. There are chemical ways of doing it, but because the river supplies water for many communities and for the capital city, Adelaide, that would have to be looked at very carefully.

The recent increased flows have been a bit successful in breaking some of the weed up, which is great, but there is certainly still a lot of weed out there that needs dealing with. It is important to note that the warmer water in summer will spread its growth again. If you compare what it was like in August this year with August last year, there is definitely a lot more of that weed around. This is a problem that needs the cooperation of the state and federal governments to make sure these weeds do not claim victims with the warm weather approaching.

I would now like to speak about an issue that I have been inundated with at my office—that is, the failings of the Labor government’s BER program. For example, Meningie is a small township located on the Lower Lakes that has been plagued with its own set of problems due to the lack of water, but recently the town was hit with another huge problem—another BER disaster. The school in Meningie was granted BER money and was to have some work done on its hall. However, halfway through the works, which I must add were delayed to the point where students were practising their debutante dances out on the oval in the rain, the school was told that $500,000 more was needed to finish the hall. Why didn’t they get this right in the first place? This township was already devastated by the lack of water. How were they expected to raise the extra money? Meanwhile the students had no sports hall, no music room and very compromised canteen facilities. In fact, because it is a small township, this hall was the main hall of the Meningie community and it had been unusable for six months. I was outraged by this and after much media coverage the government and builders were embarrassed into covering the extra cost. Where was the minister though when this school was in its hour of need? Where was the minister responsible for the failed BER program? The minister was missing in action.

I now have another school that has very serious concerns about their BER project. Soil left lying around contains dangerous asbestos and arsenic, exposing the students and residents living nearby to the poison. Builders walked off the job in June—and we are now near the end of September—leaving the soil out in the wind. They made no attempt to cover the toxic soil, which could potentially blow on students and contaminate them. The site is not even adequately fenced off from the kindergarten and primary school students. I have had many calls from concerned parents, residents and school council members who want this problem fixed. I have brought this serious problem to the attention of the minister. The Labor government must take action for the sake of Tintinara students and staff, and the residents of the local community. The mismanagement of the BER program is astounding. The Labor government must act now. I am calling on the government to admit their program is a complete failure in many areas and to fix the serious problems it is leaving behind.

Another matter I would like to raise in the House are the issues with services in the township of Keith, which I might add is my home town. Keith has been in the spotlight a bit of late as they have lost their childcare facilities. Now the hospital has been told its state government funding will be cut by 60 per cent. I want to start with the childcare centre though. Keith has been really struggling without any childcare facilities for five months now. I have raised this issue with the media and I spoke about it quite a lot before the election. I have called on the minister, Kate Ellis, several times to take action and there was some talk that funding might be available. I stand here today to ask the minister again because no action has been taken. So I am asking the minister to make sure action is taken in Keith and to make sure they do not go without child care.

The other huge issue now facing the township is that the state government has said it will cut the funding for the hospital by 60 per cent. It is almost as if Labor has it in for the township of Keith. All of us in this place can understand that when you need to get to hospital you want to get there as quickly as you can to get treatment. If a family member or friend is in the hospital you want to be able to support them, visit them and be close to them. If this funding cut goes ahead, the hospital will last only for nine months as the situation is unsustainable. It will close its doors, meaning local residents will travel 50 kilometres or more for treatment. Having to travel as many as 100 kilometres, for example, to the nearest hospital will be a real burden on the Keith community. Also, it could be a matter of life or death—one that residents do not want to be considering as they already have a perfectly good hospital in the township.

The federal government has invested quite heavily in this local community hospital. Both the Howard government and, recently, the Labor government have given funding totalling about $1.3 million for capital works—and it has been a great job. If this hospital were to close it doors, not only would that funding be wasted but it would be absolutely devastating for the local township. That is especially as federal governments of both persuasions have seen the need for investing in its infrastructure.

I heard the minister for health speak yesterday in the House about how important health services are. I believe that regional health services are equally as important and that having services in rural and regional Australia is imperative. Residents should not have to travel to the city to receive all their treatment. Frankly, the Labor state government is ripping out regional Australia’s basic services while the federal Labor government are trying to go the other way because of the promise they have made to the Independents to look after regional Australia.

I am calling on the Labor government to look at the situation in Keith and make a responsible decision about the hospital, one that is best for the residents, best for the workers and best for regional Australia. If this hospital closes that will cost taxpayers more. At the moment it is considered to be a private hospital. It is the state government minister’s argument that ‘it is only a private hospital and why should we be funding a private hospital?’ But it is not a private hospital in that way. It is actually a local community hospital that refused 30 years ago to be stuck in the state government health system, and as a result it is dealing with a real problem now. I think it is really interesting that there is another so-called private hospital in South Australia that is getting funding of more than three times that of Keith hospital’s. Why? Because it is in a Labor marginal seat. It is getting the funding but Keith hospital is not because it is not in a Labor seat.

Whilst on the subject of regional Australia, I also want to speak about the suggestion made by the Productivity Commission late last week to cut agriculture R&D funding. I was very disappointed to hear this, especially as I have a lot of time for the Productivity Commission and as I worked hard to increase R&D funding and was very pleased when the coalition included more funding in their election policy. The Labor government must not cut more funding to this important area. As we all know, food security is threatened in Australia and I do not want—and I am sure no-one else wants—to be forced to buy food from overseas. That is what will happen if we do not look after agriculture and water security and ensure we have sustainable food security into the future. A huge cut to R&D slicing away at Australia’s food security would certainly be a bad move. I do not want to see this and I certainly believe regional and rural Australia does not too.

Another issue which is of great importance to me is roads, and I note that during the election the minister for transport went on one of the local programs in my area and suggested that we were not committing to funding for the Dukes Highway. The Dukes Highway is the main highway from Adelaide to Melbourne. It is the busiest highway in South Australia. I have been able to get funding in the past for passing lanes and for rumble strips on the side. But the area really is in need of a dual-lane highway from Tailem Bend to the state border with Victoria as the road is that important. We have too many deaths on that road and we need to ensure that we have a busy but safe thoroughfare in the Dukes Highway. I know that you cannot just snap your fingers and say, ‘You’re going to get funding for the Dukes Highway tomorrow.’ I know that Australian road funding is fully committed to the end of 2014. But what I and the coalition are saying is that, if you want this road funded for completion of dual lanes by 2020, you have got to start the work now. You have got to make the commitment to go out there and do the engineering and planning studies so that it can be put on the list for AusLink III.

I know that. The Labor government know that but they have not made any commitment to that, whereas the coalition have made a commitment to do that very necessary engineering and planning studies so that it can be put into AusLink III and so that at least in 10 years time we will have a completed dual-lane highway. I cannot do that while in opposition. I know that this federal government have refused to do it and that if you do not start now a 2020 completion date is not going to be possible under the existing circumstances. We need more funding, especially road funding, for the Greater Green Triangle. We have an important forestry industry there for both blue gums and pines that will need that extra funding. Our people went to see the minister and he said, ‘Come back in 2014.’ It is a pretty sorry state of affairs for a minister to say that. (Time expired)

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I honour the traditional owners of the country upon which we meet, acknowledge the elders past and present and celebrate our Indigenous peoples. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I also congratulate you on your re-election as Second Deputy Speaker, and I also take this opportunity to congratulate the member for Scullin on his re-election as the Speaker of the House of Representatives and my friend and colleague the member for Fisher on his election—

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Danby interjecting

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

an extraordinary election, as the member for Melbourne Ports said—as Deputy Speaker of this place. I know that each and every one of you will uphold the best traditions of the occupier of that chair.

I thank the people of Reid for putting their trust in me to represent them. It is a great honour and privilege to be re-elected to this place. My sincere thanks also goes to the many true believers in my local ALP branches, to my dedicated and hardworking staff and to all of my supporters for the great job they did to secure my re-election. I also acknowledge the support provided to me by the trade union movement, particularly by Andrew Ferguson and the CFMEU, who never let me down. I also thank my wife, Adriana, for her love and support. As I said in my first speech in this place: Honey, I could not have done it without you!

As all of us elected to this place understand and appreciate, it is the hard work of so many that makes for a successful campaign. I have been elected and re-elected to this House on five occasions, but this is the first time I have been elected as the member for Reid. By way of background, following the Electoral Commission’s redistribution in New South Wales last year there were extensive boundary changes. In short, the AEC abolished the old seat of Reid and proposed to rename my former seat of Lowe as ‘McMahon’. Following 77 letters of protest in relation to the proposed name change, the AEC subsequently announced that the proposed seat of McMahon would be renamed ‘Reid’, and rightly so. I should record that the long-serving former member for Lowe and Prime Minister, Sir William McMahon, never lived in the electorate when he was the member.

Whilst the changes to my electorate undoubtedly gave rise to considerable confusion for the people in my electorate, I am very pleased to represent new communities—namely, Newington, Wentworth Point, Lidcombe, Auburn, Homebush Bay, Sydney Olympic Park, Silverwater and part of Berala. Reid also includes the largest cemetery in the southern hemisphere, Rookwood Cemetery, and the Silverwater detention centre. The new boundaries stretch from the natural boundary of Duck River in Silverwater in the west and go along the northern border of the Parramatta River to Drummoyne in the east. The southern boundary runs along the train line through parts of Croydon, Burwood and Strathfield. Inside these new boundaries is the thriving and vibrant community, rich with cultural diversity, that I am so honoured to represent.

The Leader of the House pointed out that the parliament now includes the first Indigenous member of federal parliament and the first member of the Islamic faith. I congratulate the new member for Hasluck and acknowledge his inspirational and sensitive first speech, and I look forward to the first speech of the new member for Chifley. This parliament now includes representatives that better reflect the composition of our society, and this is a great leap forward for our country.

My former electorate of Lowe was also multicultural. However, the inclusion of suburbs such as Auburn, Lidcombe and Berala now make my electorate one of the most culturally diverse in the country. Information from the 2006 census indicates that almost 50 per cent of the people in my electorate, based on the 2009 boundary changes, speak a language other than English. Reid has the fifth highest proportion of persons speaking a language other than English in Australia. It is a large melting pot of Chinese, Turkish, Lebanese, Indian, Italian, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Filipino, English, African, Korean and many more migrants who have chosen to call Reid their home. Needless to say, the government’s second term agenda to improve social inclusiveness is a welcome announcement that will undoubtedly assist many of my constituents in overcoming social disadvantage, and I will come back to that point later in my speech. I was heartened by the very warm welcome I received from the schools, community organisations, community leaders and state and local representatives in the new part of my electorate. I look forward to working with them in the coming term.

Historically, Reid has had strong representation. My electorate is named after Australia’s fourth Prime Minister, Sir George Reid, who lived from 1845 to 1918. He was one of the framers of the constitution, Premier of New South Wales from 1894 to 1899 and Prime Minister of Australia from 1904 to 1905. Esteemed Labor members who have gone before me to represent Reid include Jack Lang, Tom Uren and Laurie Ferguson, all towering figures in the Labor movement.

It will be a challenge for me to fill the very big shoes of the Hon. Laurie Ferguson, and I am pleased I sit beside Laurie in this parliament. Laurie’s hard work as the member for Reid for 20 years ensured the ALP brand remained strong, and I thank him for that. From the many people with whom I met and spoke, it was evident that the former Member for Reid is very respected for the commitment and unfailing efforts he made within the community. I assure him that I am committed to building on his great record. I am also very pleased to note that Mr Ferguson was also elected to the 43rd parliament as the member for Werriwa. I congratulate Mr Ferguson on his re-election. I know he will be an outstanding representative for the people of Werriwa.

The 2010 federal election was indeed historic and has already brought much change for the better. We now experience our first hung parliament in 70 years, we have our first female Prime Minister leading our great country and we look forward to the reforms that will take place in this parliament. The results of the election provide a sobering reminder that nothing can be taken for granted. There was nothing more sobering for me than, when I first came into this chamber on Tuesday to be sworn in, to look across to the other side of the chamber and see that those opposite outnumbered us—that is, the Labor Party.

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

Sobering indeed!

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is in the forefront of my mind, for the benefit of my friend the member for Hinkler. I know that my electorate of Reid has sent a clear message about the need for the government to act on climate change. The significant increase in the number of votes for the Greens in my electorate highlights that the people I represent expect more from our government in addressing the challenges posed by climate change. I have spoken for many years on climate change. I realise that time is going to beat me today, but I will continue to speak out when I get the opportunity to resume.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In fact it has! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The member will have an opportunity to continue his remarks in the debate, which may be resumed at a later  hour this day.