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

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

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great honour that I stand before this House today as the member for Forde. Forde is an electorate that has changed significantly since the 2007 election result, as a result of the redistribution in Queensland in 2009. Forde is an electorate that is located halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and covers an area of approximately 419 square kilometres—from Shailor Park to the north, to the south in Upper Coomera and Wongawallen, Carbrook in the east to Boronia Heights in the west. The seat also covers two local council areas: Logan City Council—the heart of the great south-east—and the Gold Coast City Council.

It is a seat that was named after Michael Francis Forde, who served as Prime Minister for a total of eight days in July 1945. The seat was created in 1984 and has traditionally been held by a member of the government of the day. It is testament to the hard work of a great campaign team and many volunteers that I am the first member to hold this seat who is not sitting on the government benches.

I am the proud son of immigrants from the Netherlands. My parents, Bob and Cornelia, came to Australia in the mid-sixties and I was born in Brisbane in 1965. At an early age my family moved to Waterford and, together with my brothers Peter, Robert and Douglas and my sister Cathryn, we enjoyed a fun-filled childhood swimming and fishing in the Logan River and the Tygum Lagoon. We even created our own sports field at the back of our property, which was used by local kids to play soccer, cricket or any other sport we decided was relevant at the time.

I went to school at Waterford and Waterford West primary schools and at Kingston State High where I graduated in 1982. My wife, Judi, too grew up in the electorate, in Beenleigh and Carbrook. We bought our first home in Loganlea. Judi and I were married in Beenleigh in October 1987. We recently celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary. We are blessed with two wonderful sons, Zac and Josh, who are here with us in the gallery today.

I have strong Christian ethics and values, and these guide my life. I am an active member of my local church, and I am on the board of our bible college, Dunamis International College of Ministries. I am regularly involved in our men’s mentoring and leadership programs. My wife Judi is also on the board of Daughters of Promise, a mentoring and leadership program for young women.

I am an avid sportsman, and I enjoy soccer, cricket and golf—none of which I have enough time to play at the moment. In both soccer and cricket, I have been involved with teams that have won premierships and I have received a number of individual awards along the way. I also represented Queensland at state schoolboy level in soccer. I now enjoy helping with the coaching of my sons’ soccer teams and watching them play. It is through playing team sports that I have learnt the value of playing in a team. It is possible within a team environment to display your talents and abilities, but important to direct those energies towards the success of the team; however, you can still achieve individual success through the success of the team.

My first job was pumping petrol, checking the oil and cleaning the windscreens of cars at the local Caltex service station, which is still there today. I also worked with my father during school holidays. He was a ceramic tiler and I discovered that it was not the job for me. Professionally, I have spent 27 years in the financial services sector. I worked for 15 years for one of our major banks and for the past 12 years Judi and I have been building our own financial services business. Having experience as a small business owner, husband and father during one of the greatest financial crises of recent times, I have a particular interest in encouraging small business to grow and profit, thereby creating local employment and family security.

In that vein, I wish for Forde to be a place where people can live locally, work locally, retire locally and have fun in their local community. Forde will be a safe, family focused community where children learn, play and grow in a secure environment. Forde is a rapidly growing area that is suffering from many of the issues that other members in this House have touched on. Issues such as infrastructure failing to keep pace with growth, loss of housing affordability, increasing costs of living and lack of services are just some of the major problems for my electorate.

There are infrastructure projects such as the M1 from Loganholme to Eight Mile Plains. The Howard government committed approximately $500 million per annum for 10 years to have this important infrastructure project completed. The current government has withdrawn this commitment and the previous Labor member stated shortly before polling day that the government had no intention of funding the project. He said they considered the Ml to be a freight route between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and of no economic benefit to Logan City or the electorate. This attitude underscores the government’s lack of understanding of the economic loss incurred by many in the electorate who have to sit in the daily traffic crawl to get to work or conduct business.

The next stage of the Mt Lindesay Highway, in the western part of the electorate, and duplication and upgrade of the interstate rail line to a passenger line to cater for the planned new cities of Flagstone and Yarrabilba to the south and the growth of the Park Ridge area are vital. Further upgrade to the Gold Coast to Brisbane rail line to cater for more trains for the ever-growing corridor between Beenleigh and the Gold Coast is also a key infrastructure upgrade.

But probably the biggest issue in the electorate is the cost of living. The current government’s spending, both in its first term and on an ongoing basis, continues to contribute to this issue. The constant borrowing by the current government is increasing inflationary pressures and putting upward pressure on interest rates, which is in turn hurting family budgets. Now we have a government that is willing to further increase people’s cost of living by introducing a carbon tax and may well destroy our food production capacity through its poor management of the Murray-Darling Basin.

This problem further exacerbates the unspoken issue of underemployment. This is a far greater issue than many acknowledge, as it does not show up in official statistics and yet is a direct result of the issues facing small to medium sized businesses, issues which were created by the government’s poor fiscal management. It is estimated by the ABS that 300,000 jobs have been lost from the small business sector in the first 2½ years of the Gillard-Rudd government. I know from talking to small businesses in my electorate that that is a huge issue. It is always interesting to note that the very people that Labor purports to assist—the poor, the disadvantaged and the workers—are actually the people it hurts most through its economic policies.

Small business is the core employer in my electorate and is finding it costly and difficult to access new capital to grow and expand, or just get through the present difficult trading conditions. This is in part reflected in the underemployment issue I noted earlier, as employers seek to retain staff but reduce working hours. This also results in a fall in national productivity—an issue which the government apparently wishes to improve. This is where the initial and subsequent stimulus packages were misdirected and show a lack of understanding by the government about the causes of recession in Australia.

Phil Ruthven from Access Economics noted in a presentation earlier this year that the primary driver of recessions in Australia is not a fall in consumer spending but a loss by business of access to capital for continued growth and development. The issue arises due to the fact that the government continues to borrow at a rate of $100 million per day, which means there is $100 million per day less in the capital markets available for business. This capital would be far better allocated and utilised by businesses, as they will seek to utilise that capital productively to employ staff, manufacture goods and generate profits.

The community of Forde is also rightly concerned about environmental issues and recognises that we need to better look after our environment, with many people now actively talking about practical measures. But they recognise the folly of an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax. They recognise that these are really just big new taxes that will not make one bit of difference to dealing with on-the-ground environmental issues such as the restoration of water quality in the Logan and Albert rivers, which both ultimately flow into RAMSAR listed Moreton Bay.

In 2009, the Department of Environment and Resource Management in Queensland issued a report which rated the lower reaches of both rivers with a grade of poor or fail for a number of areas including water quality. The current government during the election campaign made a commitment to provide funding for the commencement of restoring water quality, and I call on the government to honour that commitment. I will continue to hold the government to account for this promise to the people of Forde.

There are also issues with the protection of high quality remnant rainforest flora and fauna from proposed residential developments in Bahrs Scrub to a proposed quarry in Ormeau. Community organisations such as the Bahrs Scrub Alliance, Stop the Quarry Action Group and VETO are putting in significant resources to fight these and other projects that will adversely affect our community. The electorate also contains a number of significant, federally and internationally recognised wetland areas in Carbrook, Eagleby and Cornubia that connect to the Logan and Albert rivers. As part of our election campaign we announced a couple of Green Army projects for a few of those wetland areas.

In Forde we are blessed with a wide range of strong and active community and sporting groups such as Rotary, Lions, Soroptimist International and Quota, Loganholme Soccer Club, Park Ridge Pirates AFL Club, Beenleigh Logan Cutters Cricket Club and Coomera Hockey Club. We have strong and active chambers of commerce in Logan at Beenleigh Yatala, Coomera, Ormeau, Park Ridge and Browns Plains. These organisations and their members work tirelessly to promote local business and represent the interests of local business to all levels of government.

There are many people in Forde who choose to be involved in voluntary work and activities to give back to their community. This electorate is blessed with groups such as MAD, Mothers Against Drugs, established in 1981 and run by June Hintze, who recently received a Pride of Australia Medal for community spirit. MAD aims to help children and young people who are at risk because they are in an environment of drug and/or alcohol abuse. Nightlight Outreach was founded by John and Michaela Porter after their eyes were opened to the number of homeless and disadvantaged people in Brisbane and the surrounding areas. Ron and Debbie Hill from Lighthouse Calvary Care provide food parcels and low-cost but quality food for the community. Their work was recently the subject of a feature story ‘The $20 trolley’ on Today Tonight and they are now receiving requests to extend the range of their work. These are but a small sample of the wonderful community focused people we have in Forde.

There are many people who deserve thanks and recognition for assisting me to become the member for Forde. I would like to thank the constituents of Forde, who have placed their faith and confidence in me to represent them. I acknowledge that I have been elected to represent all of the constituents of Forde and my team and I will do so to the best of our ability. I am absolutely committed to the people, communities and businesses in my electorate.

Winning this seat was achieved by having a tremendous team behind me during the campaign. I would first like to acknowledge and thank my wife, Judi, for her tireless efforts during the campaign. Her assistance and encouragement are the main reasons for me being able to pursue my goal and for me being here today. Judi, you and I make an awesome team and I love you for that and for all the other blessings you bring to me in my life. I also acknowledge and thank our two sons, Zac and Josh, who have both shown tremendous maturity and forbearance with both Judi’s and my absences during the campaign. Thank you, boys, you are a blessing and you are my champion sons.

To my campaign team: I wish to thank John Broadhurst, my campaign manager, for the outstanding work he did. He was a great source of advice, and as a friend he encouraged me and kept me going for the nine months of the campaign. Also thank you to Helen, his wife, for allowing John to be part of the team. I want to express my thanks to Jeff and Cathy Charlesworth for their tireless hard work organising signs, volunteers, polling booth rosters and many other things. Jeff, just remember that this all started with a discussion that we had about four years ago in Perth at 11 o’clock on a Friday night—and, no, there wasn’t any alcohol involved. Jeff and Cathy, your wise words, counsel and friendship mean so much to Judi and me. Thank you to all the wonderful members of the Dunamis Christian Centre for their outstanding support with booth work, letterbox drops and many other things. I would like to especially thank my good friend Senior Pastor Shaun Hansen and his ministry team and leadership team for their encouragement, support and prayers throughout.

To my mother, Cornelia, I am so indebted to you. You believed in me and knew I could achieve my goal of being a member of parliament. Thank you to my brothers, Peter and Robert, who encouraged and supported me throughout the nine-month long campaign. May we continue to have many more of our family political discussions in the future. To my mother-in-law, Ailsa, who took five weeks out of her life to come and live with us during the campaign. Not only did she care for our sons and cook meals but she also came and worked in the campaign office. Thank you to everyone.

To my friends and mentors Shane Weaver, John Murray, Colin Street, John Jolly, Phil Colburn and Andrew Hamman, thank you for support and friendship. Thank you to Fraser Stephens, Sue Lipp and Deb Kirk for their invaluable advice, support and tireless efforts during the last months of the campaign.

Lastly, I also wish to thank my patron senator, Senator George Brandis, and Senator Russell Trood and Tony Abbott and the members of the team that visited the electorate during the campaign and gave us valuable advice and assistance. I thank also the members of the Forde FDC, LNP headquarters and the campaign team, in particular James McGrath, for their support throughout.

I feel passionately about Australia and our position in the world. I believe that we live in the best country in the world. As a nation we are blessed with many things: abundant natural wealth; sporting talent and opportunity; an attitude which looks for a solution to a problem rather than to simply whinge about the problem; and a spiritual heritage that we should not dismiss and in these uncertain times should look to for wisdom and guidance. It is the foundation upon which our nation was built, and no amount of progressive thinking can or should change that.

I believe that it is this foundation of Judeo-Christian principles upon which our nation was built that will also allow it to continue to grow and prosper, and I also believe we ignore those at our peril. I feel not only humble but also seriously committed to my obligations as a member of the House of Representatives. My energies will be directed into making Forde a better place to live, work, raise a family and retire. I will also work for the betterment of the country, for our children and for future generations of Australians to come.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I join my colleagues in congratulating you on your return to that important position in what will be an interesting and I hope productive time in this place. I return to parliament with the renewed privilege of representing the people of the Fremantle electorate. It is an enormous honour and also a heavy responsibility that comes with representative politics, for each of us elected to this place is charged with the task of making a difference for our own communities and for Australia as a whole. I said in my first speech that politics is about service, and that this service is both to the communities that we represent and to the set of ideals and values that draw us to this vocation. I have certainly reflected on that over the last three years and, as a federal member, I have done my best to come to grips with the difficulties involved in trying to give that service effectively and across as many areas as one would like. Not surprisingly the doing is inevitably harder and more complicated than the saying, and one of the most straightforward difficulties is choosing how to give priority to the literally hundreds of issues that arise in this work.

I reflected on the twin notions of service I have spoken about in the aftermath of the recent campaign, when some chose to make use of Edmund Burke’s formulation of the duty representatives owe to their electorates in order to argue for one kind of minority government over another. The statement relied upon spoke about the bond of trust that exists between constituents and their representative. Burke said:

Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.

But Edmund Burke knew there were limits to what might be called the purely delegate view of representative politics. He went on to say:

But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

The exclusive use of male pronouns aside, this is a well-expressed argument for the application of values and the primacy of disinterested judgment in preference to the potentially fickle influence of popular opinion or ad hoc representations. It is a statement in support of guiding principles as an essential part of the decision-making framework and against the purely delegate view. There is a fine balance, then, in politics and in life between the need to hear and sometimes accept views that are different from one’s own and the value of conviction that remains steadfast in the face of opposition or unpopularity. Listening to others and being prepared to put aside your view has a value, but so does the act of persuading others to take a new approach to an intractable problem or to changing circumstances. For all those reasons I will continue to take guidance from the idea of service to both the community I represent and to the set of values that underpin my capacity to make judgments on the issues I confront.

As someone who has been re-elected for the first time I have now experienced the benefit of the cycle in which representatives are judged and tested, and I can see the value of a cycle that allows one to reflect on the things that have been achieved and the things that remain to be done. Today I intend to talk about the matters large and small and local and national that I regard as areas of particular interest or focus, the matters and issues on which I will seek to make some meaningful contribution in this term.

The Fremantle electorate has as its natural focus the beautiful and vibrant port city of Fremantle. The significance of the city as a regional centre and its location in the north-west corner of the electorate can tend to obscure the fact that the eastern and south-eastern parts of the Fremantle electorate are experiencing the fastest growth and development. I have always been very much aware of this and I have spoken in this place on a number of occasions about the strengths, challenges and needs of this area of my electorate. It is a part of the Perth south metro region that is flourishing through its access to the coast at Coogee and Jervoise Bay and as a result of the extension of the rail line from Perth to Mandurah by the Gallop-Carpenter Labor government. That is, of course, in addition to the proactive work of the City of Cockburn, the South West Group and, most importantly of all, the energy, entrepreneurship and strong community spirit of individuals, families and businesses in the area.

The Perth metro area south of the river is served by the train line from Perth to Fremantle and by the newer inland Perth-Mandurah train line, which in my electorate runs through the suburbs of North Lake, South Lake, Jandakot, Atwell, Success and Aubin Grove. But, as I have mentioned, there is enormous scope for development in the central and coastal south metro corridors, and it is logical that this area be encouraged and supported by the provision of appropriate infrastructure. It is for that reason that I have worked particularly hard to argue for community facilities, such as the new fire and emergency services headquarters in Jandakot, near Cockburn central, to which the government has now committed $1.5 million.

I also hope the Western Australian government can soon adopt a transport plan for the south metro region that includes a strategic and forward-looking commitment to a second tier public transport network like light rail. Such a plan is necessary and it should be developed as a priority in order to complement the current and planned residential expansion along the Cockburn coast in particular. Unfortunately, the current state government’s principal transport planning initiative is to pursue the outdated and hugely damaging Roe Highway stage 8. This road will have an unnecessary and unacceptable impact on another of the critical north-south features of the Fremantle electorate—namely, the string of lakes and wetlands that form the spine of the Beeliar Regional Park. This is an internationally significant ecosystem. It is enormously significant to local Aboriginal people, represented by elder Patrick Hume, for its archaeological and mythological heritage sites. It is one of the great environmental and community assets in the metropolitan area south of the Swan River. I will continue to support an approach to transport planning in metropolitan Western Australia that looks beyond the tired and reflexive decision to keep building further huge expensive roads in a network that already provides more kilometres per capita than almost anywhere else in the world. There are better solutions for reducing road congestion and the impact of road freight, not least in properly supporting rail freight—an initiative which the current WA government has flagrantly abandoned.

I have noted before in this place that the Fremantle electorate is a leader in urban sustainability and there have been a number of achievements in the last year that bear this out. Western Australia is well placed to be a major participant in renewable energy development and I am keen to ensure that WA is seen not just in terms of its mining strength but also in terms of its potential for innovation and expansion when it comes to renewables like solar, solar thermal, wave, geothermal and wind power. It is hard sometimes not to feel that WA’s capacity in this area is overlooked, perhaps because of its obvious strength in traditional energy resources. I am resolved to advocate on behalf of renewable energy and other emission reduction or carbon abatement initiatives in my electorate and in my state.

In addition to my work in the Fremantle electorate and my work in this place as a representative of Fremantle and of Western Australia, there are several matters of national importance that I intend to pursue. In the area of health, I have already signalled my interest in seeing a small but important change to the Patents Act 1990 that will prevent the patenting of genetic material or sequences and therefore stop the private and commercial exploitation of what is our most fundamental common property and common wealth. I draw members’ attention to my notice of motion relating to gene patents that was debated on Monday night, 18 October, and I encourage interested parliamentarians and members of the public to consider the discussion and inform themselves on the issue.

It is also clear that Australia needs to quicken the pace and expand the scope of national health reform as a whole, in particular in the area of preventative health. That is a project that this government is well placed to advance, partly because the sound underlying structure of the national health system was built by Labor governments of the past and partly because this government has already made progress in the area of health reform. I commend the incredible work done by the Minister for Health and Ageing in this area to date, and I look forward to being part of a Labor government that continues to shape a sustainable and effective national health system. This includes being prepared to take hard decisions to ensure that health funding is applied as effectively as it can be—as in the case of our preparedness to direct government support on the basis of need to those who take out private health insurance.

The issue of care, both for the elderly and for people with disability, is of enormous significance. I look forward to the Productivity Commission’s examination of a national disability insurance scheme, for there can be few areas of policy that present such enormous potential to improve the quality of Australian life for the millions of people who live with disability or care for those who do. On that front, I welcome the creation of the special disability trust, which allows parents of children with disability to make provision for their care. This reform is one of those small but important improvements that occur through government without ever intruding into the wider public awareness. I am aware that further improvements to the operation of those trusts have been introduced in a bill today, and I look forward to their becoming law. I want to make special mention of Ray Walter and his wife and their son Glenn—an indefatigable Western Australian family who have campaigned on this issue for years. I am one of several WA parliamentarians to have had the benefit of Ray’s tireless advocacy on this issue, and I want to particularly acknowledge the passionate concern of the member for Pearce, who had a notice of motion on this subject on Monday.

When it comes to aged care, I am strongly in favour of considering new and further approaches to support elderly Australians and their families in circumstances where an elderly couple or an individual wants to continue to live independently but needs assistance to do so. There is scope to explore both existing and innovative means of providing care in the home, which I believe will have benefits for elderly Australians and their families, in addition to cost savings. There is also no doubt that we need to focus efforts and resources on residential aged-care capacity, service and consistency right now if we are to avoid a crisis in the near future. I support calls for further funding and attention to be given to this sector and I look forward to welcoming the new Minister for Mental Health and Ageing to Fremantle to meet with aged-care providers and workers. Of course, the quality of aged and disability care depends more than anything on the people who directly provide that care and on the proper staff-patient ratios that allow care workers to do what they do best—in appropriate working conditions. Due to the strength of the resources sector, WA has particular difficulties when it comes to retaining workers in the aged-care sector. I support a proportion of increased funding being ring-fenced for the improvement of wages to care workers.

Finally, on the health topic, can I say how welcome it was that the recent election drew public and media attention to the issue of mental health. This is a matter of great concern in my electorate, and while Fremantle has been fortunate to benefit from one of the new headspace centres I also look forward to the implementation of the government’s further initiatives in the area of suicide prevention.

In the area of governance and ethics, I intend to further pursue a number of issues. I believe that our system of government should operate to ensure that the decision to commit Australian troops overseas to war is subject to full parliamentary consideration, debate, and approval—rather than being a matter for the executive alone. This week we are debating our commitment in Afghanistan, and so it is timely that we extrapolate from those circumstances to consider the process by which we come to make these commitments in the first place. It is inevitable that we will have to make similar decisions in the future and I believe there are compelling reasons—most vividly illustrated by the Howard government’s decision to go to war in Iraq—to provide greater scrutiny of the decision to commit troops to war through a process which requires parliamentary consideration and consent.

I remain committed to the good sense and necessity of a human rights act and I reject wholeheartedly the idea that this question has been resolved or that a human rights act is some kind of high-flown, marginal reform. In fact, such an act not only would incorporate domestically Australia’s international commitments under human rights treaties but would enshrine the very Australian notion of a fair go within our legal system because it would empower ordinary Australians against the excesses of the executive. You have only to reflect on the tragic WA case of Mr Ward, who died in the back of a prison van in January 2008, whose agonising death was described by the coroner as wholly unnecessary and avoidable. No person or body—not the drivers of the prison van; not the company, G4S, running the prisoner transport services on behalf of the government; not the police or the justice of the peace; not the Department of Corrective Services or the Department of the Attorney General—has been held accountable, and nor are they likely to be. The treatment of Aboriginal people in WA’s justice system was unacceptable in 1901, when the Labor member for Coolgardie, Hugh Mahon, moved a motion calling for a royal commission into the matter, and it is unacceptable in modern Australia. The deplorable police tasering incidents that have recently come to light only add weight to this.

In the area of international engagement, I will renew my efforts to be part of the worldwide push to end the use of the death penalty. The death penalty is anathema to civilised human society. As I have said before in this place on more than one occasion, it is wrong, dangerous and immoral for the state to put a citizen to death. It demeans us all and it should be stopped.

I join with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in believing that Australia has a role to play in helping to keep the Millennium Development Goals on track. Progress has been made in some areas, but the 2015 targets are likely to be missed, particularly those relating to maternal and child health, unless the international community increases its efforts in this regard. In my view, we must never stop striving to end the obscenity of two billion of our fellow human beings living and dying in extreme poverty. I can confidently say that the electorate I represent wants Australia to play a meaningful role when it comes to global efforts to reduce poverty, disadvantage and suffering.

When we look to characterise the nature of Australia’s outlook on the world, it is hard not to be struck by our record of deep generosity and compassion in relation to events like the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the floods in Bangladesh and the earthquake in Haiti. That outward-looking concern for our fellow human beings, and especially for those who live in less secure or well-off circumstances than we do, is an extension of our openness and sense of fairness. It is fitting, therefore, that I finish this speech by making mention of a fundraising concert I attended in Fremantle on Saturday. This event, titled simply ‘Concert for Pakistan’, was organised by a group of Fremantle people, from the local Oxfam group and including other community members, who recognised that the flood disaster in Pakistan had not registered as strongly on the public consciousness as the scale of the catastrophe demands. I suspect that one of the contributing reasons for its lack of profile was the federal election and its aftermath, which dominated the media and public focus at the time.

In any case, the Concert for Pakistan involved a large number of people from across the greater Fremantle community who gave their time and resources to raise money for the ongoing effort to deal with the terrible impact of the floods in that country. I was very happy to be there to introduce a couple of the bands who donated their performances on Saturday, and it always lifts the heart to be in a group of people—men, women, and children—who come together to contribute their time, money and good wishes for men, women and children who are just like them but who, by fate and circumstance, are suffering terrible privation.

I would particularly like to recognise the work of Jon Strachan, who until recently was a councillor in the City of Fremantle. He continues his longstanding efforts as an environmental and social campaigner and he certainly lives by the motto ‘Think global, act local’, or to borrow a mantra from Mahatma Gandhi ‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world’.

That is the principle on which I am happy to conclude my speech at the commencement of the 43rd Parliament. It is a principle that applies to some of the greatest challenges we face in Australia, and as a global community. It applies to climate change, it applies to the finite and dwindling supply of hydrocarbons that dominate our current energy-use profile, it applies to the issue of global poverty and the insecurity and conflict that flows from desperation; and it flows from the disparity between those who have and those who have not.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s delivery of the agenda for this parliament I want to highlight one of the key issues. It is an extraordinary admission that this government occupies the benches and Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, occupies the Lodge on the basis of their being able to convince a number of people that they would offer regional Australia the very best chances of a more sustainable future. So today I hold up some recent headlines that relate to an extraordinarily important plan that has just been delivered for the Murray-Darling Basin. This is a plan that has been three years in gestation and which cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It is a plan that we have to presume the Prime Minister knew about, because she put it off—she did not want anyone to see it immediately before the election. Just a few short days ago this plan was dropped onto the basin communities. The headings include: ‘The scary plan’, ‘Plan will leave communities fighting for survival’, ‘Basin plan will devastate towns’, ‘War over water inevitable’ and ‘Plan anger grows’. Protesters in a photo on the front page of the Weekly Times held signs reading ‘8000 jobs down the drain’, ‘Irrigation feeds a nation’, ‘Frogs don’t feed us’ and ‘City 4 sale BYO H2O’, and so it goes on.

As we speak, a town meeting is taking place in Narrabri, a very important part of the Murray-Darling Basin. We know that at the next meetings, to make up the 23 that are being offered in the basin, the anger, frustration and disappointment will be palpable. When the coalition was in government we understood very much that there had been governance failure over the basin for decades. Four or five jurisdictions are all carving up and taking responsibility for water law and managing different water law entitlements in what is the biggest and driest basin in the world. The coalition set about putting things to rights by introducing the National Water Initiative, which was agreed by COAG in 2004. In 2007, we introduced legislation which had embedded in it the need to produce a plan that would make sure there was both a sustainable environmental future for the basin and a sustainable future for the food and fibre producers, who have also played a part and continue to play a part in ensuring that the ecosystems that they, of course, depend on are sustainable into the future.

What we have got instead is a travesty and a sham. I am ashamed to think that the plan that Australian government officials produced is so poor and has produced such anxiety in our communities. The first public meeting was held in the city of Shepparton—in fact, there were two meetings: one was held in the morning and one was held in the afternoon—just one working day after this plan was released, and the people who went to those meetings, over 1,000 of them, went in a dignified and carefully respecting way. They wanted to hear every word that was going to be explained to them about the content of this plan because it was about their future.

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

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Murray will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.