Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to consider the appropriation bills that are before us today. The main purpose of these bills, of course, is to propose appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the ordinary annual services of the government in addition to those provided in the 2010-11 budget. The appropriation being sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 is around $1.4 billion and the total appropriation in Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 is just over $1 billion. These are appropriations required for moneys that were not anticipated at the time of the framing of the budget, so they are overruns or expenses adding up to close to $2½ billion that were not anticipated some eight months ago. In the context of these bills, there are funds being appropriated to support what would appear to be bad management and poor process. In other words, these appropriation bills will become a symbol of the incompetence, the waste and the failure of due process that have come to characterise this administration.

For example, for the Department of Climate Change and Energy, there is an appropriation of $15 million to support functions that were simply transferred from the former Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. Why do you need an extra $15 million for a new bunch of public servants to do exactly what a previous bunch of public servants had to do? Fifteen million dollars rolls easily off the tongue. It is not considered by those on the other side to be of any consequence. But it is a lot of money—a lot of money—and, at a time when households are pulling in their heads to try and make ends meet, to live within their means, we have a government that continues with this approach to public funding and the management of taxpayers’ funds which is unacceptable.

There is $45.6 million for the closure of the Home Insulation Program. Now, the government made provision for this in the last budget. They spent all last year and part of the year before with red faces, apologising, as community resentment built by the day over the total incompetence of the Home Insulation Program. Given the public outcry that occurred with this program, you would have thought that the government would have at least given every consideration to what it was going to cost to mop up the mess—how much it would take to close the damn thing down and how much it was going to cost for public servants and others to do their best to fix the situation and satisfy the literally hundreds of thousands of householders who were dudded under this pathetic and mismanaged program.

Six months later we find another $46 million, more or less, is required for the closure of this program. They still got that wrong. What can they get right in managing taxpayers’ money? This is another example of waste that just keeps on giving. The government seem incapable of taking full responsibility for this program: for the waste, the hurt and the deaths that have occurred. This program has so much against it, yet they are not capable of properly costing even the closure of the program.

In relation to Immigration and Citizenship, of the $2.5 billion nearly $300 million is supplementary funding for operational costs associated with the management of offshore asylum seekers. In the space of six months the government has underestimated the cost of border protection to the tune of $300 million. It shows how out of control this government is when it comes to managing our borders. We now have about 6,000 people on the mainland due to be processed. We have boats arriving almost weekly, even though it is the wrong season. Individuals are putting their lives at great risk, as we saw tragically a few weeks ago. This government provides absolutely no deterrent for people who risk breaking through our borders. It has no control over the borders, which means people have no confidence in the whole immigration program. Is it any wonder that people are concerned more generally about the way this country is being managed and its borders are being protected?

No country has even signed up to the East Timor proposition. The Prime Minister had a thought bubble before the election and put out there as the ultimate solution that there would be a processing centre set up in East Timor. After six months of the most assiduous representations by our departmental officials all over the region, not one country has shown a scintilla of interest in signing up for that program. Yet Nauru is still willing to sign the UN agreements. It is just pure politics that is stopping this government from doing what it has to do. It is letting politics interfere with the cost of running these programs and it is threatening human life because of this lack of deterrent for people who seek to break through our borders.

In the space of six months the government have underestimated the cost of spending on the border protection program to the tune of $300 million. We are now billions of dollars behind what was anticipated in the forward estimates some two or three years ago. This is a symbol of great waste and incompetence. The measures in these appropriation bills are endless symbols of the waste and incompetence by this government. This is a snapshot of some of the activities to be funded through these appropriations. These modest amounts add up to significant sums—in this case, $2.3 billion. The government would say these modest amounts are neither here nor there: ‘What is $15 million here or $300 million there?’

This is why we have a debt heading towards $90 billion. This is why we are aiming at a deficit this year of $40 billion and had one of $57 billion last year—the two worst deficit situations in our history. It has occurred because if you do not look after the pennies you do not look after the pounds. How can you justify a $40 billion deficit? How can you justify a $57 billion deficit and then stand there and say that you are managing this economy? How can you put up appropriations like this that demonstrate enormous incompetence? Overruns on so many programs should have been anticipated but have not been anticipated.

Last night I stood in the main chamber and debated the levy for flood reconstruction. This levy will raise nearly $2 billion. If the government had stuck with its budget of six months ago it would have paid for that levy and more. If the government had shown that it was able to manage this place without further waste, without further overspending—if it could live within its means like every Australian family is being required to do at this point in time, despite massive increases in prices—we would not have to have the levy. It is quite ironic. We have two debates going on almost in tandem that demonstrate that the money was there, is there, to pay for that levy. There was no need for the levy, but of course this is a government whose instinct is to tax, to spend and to borrow.

All the government have done since they arrived is to borrow, tax and spend. Where has there been one hard decision on the fiscal front? Even the measures towards flood reconstruction that they are paying for out of savings were basically all measures that we had identified at the time of the election. This government pilloried us in a political sense for putting up those savings. Now, after we went out and took the heat for those political decisions some months ago, they have taken those savings. Who has bleated about any of those savings? More or less one or two interest groups have, and they have caved in on those. They caved into the Greens. They bought off the Greens and Independents with hundreds of millions of dollars in order to enable their program to go forward. They cannot even make a tough decision and make it stick. They cave in to the political demands of the crossbenchers.

It must be remembered that this government, in the middle of all this, is borrowing $100 million a day. A lot of the interest rate increases are because this government is still borrowing $100 million a day. In other words, every 17 days this government borrows what it is going to collect on the levy. Every 17 days it has borrowed an amount equivalent to the levy. This government is being exposed almost daily for its incompetence and its lack of fiscal rectitude. There is a $45 billion interest bill to be paid over the next four years. This is incompetence in the extreme. There is no plan to address this funding and fiscal situation. The government claims that a surplus will be achieved in 2012-13. It may be manufactured, but what it is not telling you—the dead cat on the table—is the situation with the structural deficit. It is the issue that needs to be explained and it is the issue that the Treasurer has studiously avoided. The blow-out of the underlying structural deficit puts a lie to all the rhetoric we hear about the government having some plan to address our debt and deficit situation.

So what is a structural deficit? A structural deficit represents ongoing spending commitments that are relied on from revenue that will not persist—in this case, the mining boom. It is a bit like a situation where someone who has been achieving, say, $20,000 a year in overtime for the last couple of years then thinks: ‘I’ll take out a mortgage. I can now afford a $500,000 mortgage with my regular pay and overtime.’ The expectation is that the overtime will continue into the future. So the worker takes out a $500,000, 25-year mortgage and then finds out two years later that the overtime has stopped. The excess demand for the products that the company was producing has dried up. He is back on his normal pay. All of a sudden he realises—

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’d fix up the penalty rates.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we are—the incompetence pouring out of those opposite. So you have a situation where this person finds that he now can only afford a mortgage of $300,000 to $350,000 and not $500,000. But he has got a 25-year commitment. He has got a problem. He has to sell the house and get a smaller mortgage. He has to take tough decisions to live within his means. He has a structural deficit. He has long-term commitments, but the income to pay for those long-term commitments has not persisted.

It is the same thing with this country. We have long-term commitments, nearly $100 billion of debt that this government is building up, and we have spending programs that will continue. They are recurrent expenditure. They will come year in, year out as annual commitments that this government is making that have no end, yet they are funding those commitments out of the proceeds of the mining boom. They are wasting the mining boom. There is an illusion about the state of the books of this country. They are going to use the mining boom money to meet current commitments, maybe in 2012-13. But what you find is that, when you allow for the mining boom and commodity prices going back to normal—and they will—there will be a supply response, and the demand will come off at some stage. There are 1,000 mines around the world that are now being put into production. There is infrastructure being built in Mongolia, in South America, in Africa, in Eastern Europe and in North America. There is port infrastructure to take the resources from thousands of mines to meet demand. So the supply response will increase. We think we are awash with gas, and we are, but we have still only got two per cent of the world’s gas reserves. So we will face competition. We will still do well, but the mining boom will come off, and it may come off sooner than we anticipate. It is all right to predict 10 years.

I was in agriculture for 18 years and there were always booms and busts. Every time there was a boom in grain, people would move out of sheep into grain and everyone would always predict a longer boom that what really occurred. Invariably, it was because no-one anticipated the supply response, not only the extra grain production within the country but the extra grain production around the world. Invariably, the price came back. It did not necessarily collapse; it came back to more normal levels because of the supply response. It invariably came back sooner than everyone predicted. There is a sort of boom mentality where people want to make assumptions about how long these things are going to last.

We have those on the other side feeding in 10- and 15-year assumptions about the mining boom. It is unrealistic. It demonstrates their lack of contact with the real world—with the commercial world. We now have a situation where, in the 2009-10 budget papers, the government featured this structural deficit. There had been a small structural deficit beginning at the end of our previous term in office, but it was about $2.5 billion. You know what it is today? It is $50 billion. There is an underlying structural budget deficit that has been identified by Treasury. It was first put in the budget papers of 2009-10. In 2010-11 there is no reference to it; it has disappeared. Six months after last year’s budget, Treasury quietly put out a paper that updated the structural deficit. It showed the structural deficit was growing astronomically—that, instead of coming out of it in 2015-16, we would come out of it in 2020. So we have a structural deficit of a large order.

The reality of the budget as identified by the Treasury, as agreed by the government but never talked about by the government, is that the government have an underlying budget deficit which is going to go through at least to 2020. This means we will not have paid off one cent of debt—you do not pay off debt until you are into a real surplus—until 2020. We will not have paid this debt off until 2030. We are talking 20 years until the debt is paid off.

What an absolute disgrace that this government would put us in such a vulnerable position. We are a small, open economy. If there is a double-dip recession or if there is a serious downturn in any way—instability coming from the Middle East with oil prices going up—then we are vulnerable. This government needs to restore the economic resilience that they inherited and subsequently trashed—that economic resilience that we need as a small country to work our way through things that are outside of our control, and the rest of the world’s control. But no, we go on blindly as though everything is fine. Spending, spending, spending; more commitments, bigger structural deficit, off into the future using all of the mining industry money. What a disgrace. What an absolutely irresponsible, inconsiderate, highly politicised approach to government. They are just looking to save their own jobs every three years. That is the total preoccupation of this government. That motivates all of their major decisions and it is has driven the spending, spending, spending approach of this government. They need to be held to account.

These appropriations are a huge symbol of the waste and incompetence and politicisation of this whole budget process. This is a government which needs to take stock. It needs to do what every family in Australia is doing—that is, seeking to live within its means. For at least 12 months now every family in Australia has delayed incurring expenses they were going to incur and delayed things they were going to purchase because they can no longer afford them; the electricity bills have gone up 35 per cent in three years and interest rates have gone up $6,000 on the average mortgage in the past 12 months. This government’s $100 million a day in the finance market is putting pressure on interest rates. At least half of the interest rate rise is due to the excessive spending of this government. So $3,000 a year is due to the incompetence and politicisation of this government and its spending programs. That is the contribution they have made to average families in Australia, and it is putting enormous pressure on them.

If this government exercised the same fiscal rectitude, if it exercised the same restraint that families who need to live within their means are exercising, then we would find that the economy would start to take some shape. But all we hear is spin and all we see is illusion. They have created the illusion of progress, and it is not there. Look at the structural deficit. Explain the structural deficit. Explain the worsening of the structural deficit. The government tried to say in 2009 it was due to the stimulus spending. What do they say now as it grows and grows and grows in the face of a mining boom of unprecedented proportions? It beggars belief that we are seeing this unfold. An opportunity to set Australia up for the future, to set Australia up to be resilient against any major events outside of our control has been squandered by this government.

We need some checks and balances here. We need a situation where these sorts of things can be exposed. At the present time the government hides behind the so-called independence of the Treasury. Of course it is not independent; it is there to work for the government of the day. Most of the material in the red books and the blue books that came out after the election is blacked out. You could not see what any of the figures were; you could not see the really tough advice that was given to this government. All we ever see from the public service is what the government wants us to see.

We have not got any group that is capable of providing some independent assessment. This is why we put up a proposal for a Parliamentary Budget Office at the last election. We were looking to have an independent and well-resourced statutory authority located in Parliament House, an authority tasked with providing objective and impartial advice and analysis on the Commonwealth budget and the budget cycle, on the medium- and long-term budget projections and on the cost of policy proposals. Look how politicised that was last time. We put up $50 billion of savings and the whole process was politicised by this government. I met with Ken Henry for 3½ hours and, on nearly all of the proposals for which the government subsequently pilloried us, the only difference was assumptions. Even when we put up a case, in most cases the head of the Treasury said, ‘We’ve made our decision.’ Sometimes it was a case of just two per cent—82 per cent versus 84 per cent—in terms of a take-up factor, but when you put that over four years, in a big program, it looks like a $900 million hole. They were simply assumptions and they were very close together. But Ken Henry said: ‘We’ve made our decision. That’s what we’ve put into our model. You can like it or lump it.’ That was the politicisation of this process.

We need to take the politics out of the budget and the campaign process. We need a Parliamentary Budget Office. The government fought this proposal all the way through and denigrated it when we put it forward during the last term, but they accepted it when the Greens and the crossbenchers insisted upon it. But what are we seeing? Nothing as yet. It is our expectation that this office will be three desks in the corner of the library; that is what we will get. It will be another political response to a very legitimate concern. If we were in government we would have to face this scrutiny and objective assessment as well. This is not something put up to advantage us on one side of politics. This is a genuine, legitimate and sensible proposal. We should have an independent body, stationed within Parliament House, that can respond to any member or senator in terms of individual issues, deal with the policy costings of both sides of politics well in advance of an election and find numbers that everyone accepts are the right numbers. We can then have a debate about policy in the election and not some orchestrated political process in a campaign which seeks to denigrate the opposition because the government has numbers and assumptions which may differ from other authorities. This is a really important proposal and it needs to be adequately financed so that we get the politics taken out of this process.

I have another example of the great hypocrisy associated with this government on many issues. If you look at the forward estimates you will find that, in the latter years, the appropriation for natural disasters is the lowest in 10 years. I talked about it being an illusion if we get to a surplus. The government is seeking to manufacture a surplus. The appropriation is $80 million. We have just had to agree to $5.6 billion of expenditure for natural disasters. The government has a provision of $80 million, which is the smallest amount in 10 years. When the Minister for Finance, Senator Wong, was the climate change minister, she warned that:

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including cyclones, storms, droughts, heatwaves bushfires and floods.

The finance minister is on record saying we are going to experience far more natural disasters in the years ahead, because of this government’s belief in the consequences of climate change, yet she has reduced the appropriation for natural disasters to its lowest level in 10 years. What hypocrisy! It just shows that there is an attempt across this government to manufacture a surplus in 2012-13 and ignore the structural deficit. This is politics. This is another example of the hypocrisy of this government in the way in which it is constructing and running the finances of this country.

This government needs to tackle the cost of living. This was its big election pitch in 2007 but it has failed on all counts. There are families around this country who are facing deep financial pressures but living within their means. This government needs to take a leaf out of the book of Australian families and live within its means. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. I have listened very carefully to the member for Goldstein’s appropriation speech and his reference to meeting for three hours with the Treasury secretary. All I can say is that I feel sorry for the Treasury secretary. He had to endure what we have had to endure, which is just a tepid audition by the member for Goldstein to take the member for North Sydney’s job. It is a shockingly transparent attempt to audition for another position within the shadow cabinet. The member for Goldstein talked a bit about the cuts that the opposition are going to make, and I would like to talk about the cuts to foreign aid in particular.

There is in these appropriation bills an appropriation relating to foreign aid, which is a very important part of Australia’s international commitment. Australia has reached arrangements with other countries to provide resources to combat poverty, malaria and other blights on this world. Of course, the coalition parties are proposing to defer, as I understand it, $448 million of foreign aid to Indonesian schools. That might sound good in a One Nation email or when you are shouting it out in a shopping centre or in the front bar of a hotel. No doubt you would get a lot of heads nodding, because it is understandable that people would want to look after their own first. But if you make the counter-argument and say to people, ‘Would you support Australia welshing on its deals, welshing on its words, welshing on its commitment?’ they would probably say no. What if you said to people, ‘Should we invite the Taliban to our doorstep?’ We have to remember that ‘talib’ means student. The Taliban drew their ranks from the schools and from young men who were made refugees by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. We know that schools can produce educated, moderate people who are committed to economic growth and peace and justice in this world, but we know also from the Afghanistan experience that they can produce soldiers and movements and colour a nation’s politics and put the gun into a nation’s politics.

It was John Howard who put the education aid scheme in place. It was not the Labor government; it was John Howard and Alexander Downer. And we know that Alexander Downer does not think much of the coalition’s referrals and does not think much of them walking away from this very important Howard government program. According to the Sydney Morning Herald on 11 February this year, Alexander Downer said it was ‘a filthy proposal’ to defer the assistance that we might provide to Indonesian schools.

We know that his successor in the seat of Mayo, Jamie Briggs—a very able coalition member—called on the party to retain the funding. He broke ranks on ABC radio the day before the funding cut was announced. He said the programs were designed to prevent terrorism and the rise of extremism in Islamic schools in our nearest neighbour. He said that the axing of that program, the cuts that were proposed by Tony Abbott and his shadow cabinet, were a bad idea. They are a terrible idea. The foreign minister has said that the only winner is Abu Bakar Bashir, but I fear that that would be the least of our problems if we allowed schools in our region to be radicalised by extremists, by people who seek to promote extremism. So we know that this was a terrible decision by the coalition. We really cannot believe they would propose it, that they would propose welshing on a deal, that they would take something out of a One Nation email and propose it in the parliament of this country, in the politics of this country. We now know it is all part of a broader strategy to appeal to the darker angels in our nature, to run not so much a dog whistle but a megaphone in the shopping centres and pubs of this country, to say that it is all right to be bigoted, all right to take a short-term view and all right to be reactionary. It is not all right. It is actually against our national interest. It is a terrible blight on our national interest. The coalition should think very carefully about the cuts they proposed and the impact they would have on our national circumstances. I think it is just terrible. They should rethink what they are doing.

Also in this appropriations bill is $10.1 million for the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, which is part of delivering on Labor’s commitment to improving GEERS, increasing redundancy protection to up to four weeks pay per year of service rather than the previous cap of 16 weeks, removing access to financial assistance for company directors or excluded employees and making sure that this scheme is preserved in legislation, as opposed to just being set up under regulations or by government fiat. It is a very important thing. There have been a lot of contests in the community about unpaid entitlements, and I know this from my own experience of meeting with the lead union in this area, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. I have met with John Camillo many times about unpaid entitlements, and I have also met many times with Jon Gee, the secretary of the vehicle division. Jon is a very passionate advocate of making sure that people’s entitlements are secured, a passionate advocate of the car industry in my state and a passionate advocate of the Holden GMH plant at Elizabeth, which of course lies in the heart of my electorate. He came to see me only the other day with Paul Brown, Heinz Joham and other delegates at the plant. They came to meet me, obviously about the future of the car industry. We know that we have the new Holden Cruze coming online, a new car rolling off the line. It is a symbol, I think, just as when Ben Chifley waved the first Holden off the line. It is a symbol of progress, a symbol of our nation’s ability to make things. It is a symbol in these troubled times, when the country is buffeted by the global financial crisis and by the troubles in the international car industry. It is a sign that this plant can prosper and survive in the most difficult of circumstances. Of course, the union, led very ably by John Camillo and Jon Gee, continue in the strongest possible manner to put forward their views about how we might secure even more production at Holden’s Elizabeth plant and in the car industry generally.

We know that it is of tremendous importance to my local community. One in four workers in the city of Playford is a manufacturing worker. We are a city that makes things. We are a town—Elizabeth is still a town—that makes things, and it is important for this country to manufacture and export cars. We know that, despite all the difficulties that we faced through the GFC—and there were many sacrifices made by workers in that plant, sacrifices that they made together to preserve one another’s jobs and to make sure that the plant got through a difficult time in General Motors history—all of those sacrifices were based around the future of the car industry and making sure that Holden is still there in 10, 20 or 30 years time making cars for this nation, making cars for places like Bathurst and the hill.

In the time I have left I want to talk about a couple of events. Recently I attended a family day to welcome 7RAR, some 1,200 troops who were relocating from Darwin down to RAAF Base Edinburgh. It was a terrific day. His Excellency Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce, the Governor of the state of South Australia, attended, along with Kevin Foley, the relevant state minister; Group Captain Reg Carruthers; Michael Callan, Director General of the Defence Community Organisation; and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Garraway, who is the commander of 7RAR. They all attended that day, along with many soldiers and their families. It was a wonderful thing. There was an expo-like feel. Many of the local community organisations turned out to provide their services and to endeavour to encourage the soldiers to join in community life. There is at least one rugby club that is bidding for new players, and I am sure it will find a good pool of new players which will improve rugby in my state. It does need an improvement. We are predominantly an Aussie Rules state, and I am sure we will get a few players there for the local clubs as well. It was terrific to be down there to be part of one of the first events to welcome these soldiers to our local area. I look forward to meeting them again and, in particular, to seeing the improvements that they bring to RAAF Base Edinburgh. We know that the transition has not been entirely without its issues and difficulties, but it is very important both for the country and the defence forces and for 7RAR for that move to occur.

Finally, I want to praise the Nicholls family, who are an absolute institution down at the Elizabeth Vale Soccer Club. More than one generation has participated in the club’s life. The bar in the club is named the Nicholls Bar. I would like to praise David Nicholls in particular, who for the past 45 years has been part of that club and has played 900 games for the division 1 A-grade, reserves, C-grade and the over-35s side. His contribution just in playing football—or soccer, as some would call it—is absolutely unparalleled. It is good to see someone out there playing at that age. It puts some of us, including me, to shame. I think it is an absolutely sterling contribution. Of course, it is not just on the field that he has contributed. He has coached junior teams, reserve sides and the senior women’s side with great success. He has been the chairman of the senior and junior teams committees. I am sure that even though his playing days are now ended he will continue to be a big part of this club, just like his brother Roger Nicholls, who is an absolute stalwart not just of the Elizabeth Vale Soccer Club but of the shop assistants union—a person I have often relied upon for his good judgment and for his counsel not just in union affairs but in my own conduct as the local representative in this parliament. The Nicholls family is one of those families that you are proud of and proud to be associated with, and I would like to congratulate both David Nicholls and Roger Nicholls for being great South Australians.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. The appropriation being sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) is $1.359 billion, and the amount sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 4) is just over $1 billion. Critical in all this is that we have a Gillard Labor government that does not understand the cost of living. We have a Gillard Labor government that is addicted to tax and therefore addicted to increasing the cost of living for everyday Australians. The effects of the Gillard government’s increasing taxes will be felt more in regional and rural Australia than in any other part. The impacts of mining taxes, flood taxes and carbon taxes will be significant.

Not only do we have a Prime Minister who does not understand the effects of rising costs of living on the average Australians; we also have a Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government who does not understand the needs of regional Australia. The minister does not live in regional Australia; he lives in the capital city of Melbourne; therefore he can be partially forgiven for that. But his department should be providing briefings to him to give him a full and detailed understanding of the needs and the concerns of regional Australia. On the ABC’s Insiders program, on 3 October, when questioned about what constituted regional Australia, the minister said:

Every part of this country is constituted within their own region, Barrie. We’ve got a regional development Australia infrastructure that is comprised of 55 geographic regions.

…            …            …

When I talk about regionalism … it is saying all regions in the country, the whole 55 of them …

Therefore it is no surprise that this minister considers capital cities as eligible for funds which should and must be targeted for regional Australia. I put a question on notice to the minister about the eligibility for Labor’s Regional Infrastructure Fund. It took him 90 days to provide a response. I asked the minister whether capital cities will have access to the Regional Infrastructure Fund, and all he could say was that he has not finalised the program guidelines yet, despite Labor having been in government for nearly six months. Minister, if you cannot answer a question about your portfolio, if you cannot rule out capital cities having access to regional funding programs, just what do you do as the minister for regional Australia?

If Labor’s Regional Infrastructure Fund were really about investing in regional Australia, it would have been pretty easy for the minister to rule out capital cities as being eligible for the funds. I have to ask the question, as many people in this House and many people throughout regional Australia have: where will the money from the Regional Infrastructure Fund go? It is no secret that the Gillard Labor government is already taking $480 million out of the Regional Infrastructure Fund for Perth airport. Last time I flew to Perth and last time I looked, Perth was the capital of Western Australia. Perth is a capital city, but here it qualifies for $480 million out of the Regional Infrastructure Fund.

In Senate estimates last night Mr Crean’s representative, Senator Sherry, was questioned whether he considered Perth airport to be a part of regional Australia. He said no. Then when he was questioned about the biggest single allocation under the Regional Infrastructure Fund he was lost for an answer. So what we have here is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. It is no wonder that our 55 Regional Development Australia committees around the country do not know what is happening either. This is an example of a government baffling more in the community by increasing the bureaucracies and the red tape than delivering real action. This government is not delivering action or results for regional Australia. This government is more about rhetoric and spin than results.

I note that in 2010-11 the government will spend some $15 million on administration costs for the 55 Regional Development Australia committees around Australia. I have travelled around Australia, I have met with the RDAs, I have had some confidential discussions, and there is disillusionment in what is happening. They are not being empowered. They cannot make decisions. They are sent forth to consult with the community but nothing is happening. Our communities, our representatives, the people that work on these RDAs, want to be empowered to make decisions that benefit all Australians. Can you imagine how a community struggling for funds feels when they sit there in regional Australia when dollars are tight, when councils have not got much money, when they are ignored by the state Labor governments, and all of a sudden $480 million of their allocated funding is given to a capital city project? The committees have told me they feel bogged down in holding endless community consultations and producing these wonderful, glossy, motherhood-statement brochures, but they are not able to deliver the results for their community because this government clearly has not found its way. Kevin Rudd was sacked as prime minister because it was felt that the Labor government had lost its way. I have to say that our new Prime Minister, the new Julia or the old Julia, neither of those in that split personality have found their way either. There is a difference between the needs of regional Australia and the needs of the capital cities.

I cite an example of the arrogance and lack of understanding of a government about regional Australia. The youth allowance scheme that was put in by this government meant young people in inner regional areas were being forced to work more hours and for longer before being considered independent. Did we hear the minister for regional Australia stand up for these young people? No, he just toed the government line. Yet this bill was also disappointingly killed off with the support of people who also live in regional and rural areas, and there I am referring to Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott in their respective electorates. I think that their constituents will deal with them because they have failed to represent their regions independently.

Another area of great contention for people in my area and people in regional areas across Australia is the lack of broadband. This government under the leadership of Kevin Rudd going into the 2007 election made much of the need to increase broadband speed. This was despite the coalition having a plan, the OPEL plan, at a cost of less than a billion dollars, which would have rolled out wireless infrastructure all across Australia. Today we have an NBN network which is going to cost tens of billions of dollars and I expect that we will be coming back here to visit appropriation bills where more money will need to be provided because it has blown outside the original budget estimates. But in regional and rural Australia there will be many cities that will not have access to this optical fibre, and these communities will only get wireless broadband.

If you had a plan and if you are representing regional Australia, you would have made sure that if you are only going to get wireless transmission—and if a plan that was already there, the OPEL plan, was going to cost less than $1 billion and would have been completed by the middle of 2009—then you would have continued with that plan and expedited it to deliver results. I fear, the community fears, and people in regional Australia fear, that they will be left until the last when their needs should be considered first and foremost because they suffer the tyranny of distance. In fact, at a doorstop interview on 17 February 2011, the minister for regional Australia was asked, ‘What’s actually being done to improve regional development?’ to which he replied, ‘Look, the key infrastructure agenda for the time is the rollout of the NBN broadband.’ More rhetoric, not results, for regional Australia. In fact, in this parliament on 24 November he said:

… we will deliver better services, particularly to people in regional and remote communities.

How is doing nothing delivering for people in regional and remote communities? How is delaying a program, which was to be delivered by mid-2009 across Australia, doing the right thing by people in regional and remote communities? People will miss out, and I welcome the decision by Telstra to roll out their new 4G network. I think it will be good.

This government could have continued that OPEL project for less than $1 billion while it was developing its NBN program. One billion dollars, as against $40 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion, probably $70 billion, $80 billion or $90 billion by the time it is rolled out, is but a drop in the ocean. In 2007, the former coalition government announced the OPEL network, which would have delivered 12 megabits per second wireless broadband to nearly 900,000 households across regional and rural Australia. So here we have it: 18 months have passed since that date when it would have been completed in 2009, and still nothing.

I am sure the member for Newcastle must feel totally embarrassed because she campaigned very heavily in a town called Thornton, a very large town, which, through the development processes at the time, put in the twin pair gain wire. It still only has dial-up speed, yet is a major town. And here we are, nearly four years on, and she has delivered absolutely nothing to those people—apart from rhetoric, more rhetoric and excuses. I say to the minister: now is the time for action. Now is not the time to burden people more and more and more with taxes. Now is the time to start to roll out some of these agendas for regional and rural communities.

In April 2008 the Rudd-Gillard government announced it was abandoning the OPEL networks contract. Yet when Labor cancelled the contract they had absolutely no plan in place to deliver broadband for regional and rural Australia. The Labor minister for broadband, Stephen Conroy, said at the time of cancelling the contract:

The Government will … call for comments on policy and funding initiatives to improve access to affordable broadband in remote areas … into the future.

That was a press release by the Senator Conroy on 2 April 2008. So here we have a government that understands the principles of business—

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

Ms Marino interjecting

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

so he says—but does not understand community needs. And, if it is all truly examined, it does not understand the principles of business either because he cancelled a plan without having a plan to replace it. He cancelled a plan that would have rolled out wireless infrastructure to regional and rural Australia for less than $1 billion under the OPEL contract to pursue a $55 billion flight of fantasy. He is a minister who to date has delivered nothing to those communities four years on. And they suffer the tyranny of distance; they suffer communication blackholes. What we want to see is action.

The issue with this government is the fact that they are not businesspeople; they are not business managers. They have never had true skin in the game. They do not understand risk. They do not understand that when you spend a dollar you need to make a return on that dollar. What we have here is a government who are just prepared to fritter away money and, when times get tough, all they do is revert back to the old Labor mantra—which was reflected in the times of Keating and Hawke and that icon of the Labor Party, Gough Whitlam: let’s just tax. As Tony Abbott said so eloquently this morning in the House, Julia Gillard has never met a tax she did not like or a tax she was not prepared to hike.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was going to start off my contribution by going through some of the good programs that are contained within Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011, but, having sat here and listened to the drivel that I have just listened to, I have to respond. I have to put on record some things in response to what the honourable member was just talking about. First of all, he started talking about regional development. He was saying that the government is not doing anything in regional development. As he was talking, I cast my mind back to 1997, when the coalition were in government, having been elected in 1996. What did they do for regional development? They just axed the department! That is what they did for regional development. That is how much they cared about it. This is the National Party, who say they are the natural party of the bush. They say one thing and do another.

Then the honourable member talked about there being some disillusionment with things in regions and local councils. What did this government do? It funded a Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, which operates through local councils. Local councils put up their priorities, as determined by local communities through the councils, and there is money, real money, in it—hundreds of millions of dollars. In my electorate of Page there are small projects, and some larger ones, all over the electorate—which has five local government areas—where that money is being rolled out. We have a Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, who worked in the area in a previous government. We are rolling the programs out.

Then I listened to the words on the NBN. I heard from the coalition that when they were in government they had the OPEL plan, and had that been implemented all would have been well and we would all have 12 megabits per second of broadband. They had 12 years; they had 18 plans. And what happened? Nothing. So to listen to them is to—

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

We had a signed contract which your government cancelled!

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They had 18 failed plans. Then they flogged off Telstra, without even ensuring proper mobile coverage. That is how much they care about regional Australia. So for me, as I live in regional Australia, sitting here listening to that just gets my goat—just listening to them talk as though they are so fiscally responsible, and talk about how there is nobody on this side who has been in small business and therefore we cannot govern. What an absolute lot of rubbish! The opposition’s approach to the budget is not only reckless; it is incompetent—it does not stand up to scrutiny. A recent example happened just this week: the recklessness with which they treated the Constitution with the student income support legislation—or youth allowance, as we call it—in trying to introduce money bills from the Senate.

The opposition have demonstrated their fiscal recklessness by twice blocking $5 billion in savings measures put forward by this government. This includes the closure of the chronic disease dental scheme. That scheme had significant cost blowouts—an Abbott designed scheme that will cost the budget $3.1 billion over the next four years. I see that having an effect in my electorate. The government is trying to introduce a Commonwealth dental health scheme, which will benefit all in my area. If the resource distribution formula was implemented at its correct rate, we would have an extra $2 million put into my area. That would buy a lot of dentures. I have people waiting for dentures. Who closed the former Commonwealth dental health scheme? The coalition when they were in government. That was another thing that they closed, along with the department of regional development and other things.

Back to fiscal recklessness, the means testing of the private health insurance rebate will cost the budget $2.1 billion over the next four years. And they claim that they are responsible fiscal managers who know who to manage money. There is an additional $5 billion in spending over the next four years as a result of opposition recklessness. They are also in the process of trying to block a further $2 billion in savings to the budget over four years by voting against reforms to the PBS. The opposition have demonstrated time and time again that they are not committed to bringing the budget back to surplus. The say one thing outside the parliament and their actions in the parliament are completely different.

Their plan to pay for flood reconstruction was another debacle and fiasco. After spending weeks of Mr Abbott saying that it would be easy to find savings, what we got was a series of deferrals, double counts and back flips. They double counted $700 million in savings. And while they say that they would use that to fund rebuilding, they have already earmarked those savings to fund other spending measures. You cannot spend it twice on different things.

They also claimed over $100 million in savings from the BER. But that is already allocated to projects that are committed or underway. It is very easy to find out—a simple read—that 99.9 per cent of projects have been completed or commenced. In my area, where I have 96 schools, I have been involved in these projects from day one and have seen them rolled out. Parents, students and teachers are saying that they never would have got these things but for this spending. It has been a one-off opportunity. They think that it is great to have these things done in their area. And it is infrastructure; it is what we need.

We also saw the opposition have a debate about foreign aid, reversing their initial position. I have always been able to talk locally and at other levels about how there is bipartisanship in this area. To get a headline, they dropped that like a hot potato. They reversed their position on foreign aid, taking savings out of a measure that they not only supported in government but introduced. Mr Downer introduced it. At the time, funding schools in Indonesia was seen as a good and sensible thing to do. Then they rolled out Warren Truss and the Nationals, who said they would not support our infrastructure savings. I can remember how well they supported the regional rorts that were damned by the Auditor-General. They are probably missing that.

Who can forget the election cost blow out? Obviously, the coalition opposition do not talk about that. They have conveniently forgotten their shambolic costings release during the election campaign last year. When Treasury and Finance were finally able to take a look, they found that the coalition had a $10.6 billion hole in their budget numbers. These are the parties that claim that they know all about the economy and running businesses. They say that because they have run small businesses they can therefore run a national budget. But the figures just do not add up.

The recklessness continues. I have observed it in the Senate. The Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Amendment (Fair Indexation) Bill 2010 was introduced by Senator Ronaldson. It would have a fiscal cost of $1.7 billion over four years and an underlying cash cost of some $175 million over four years. And it would increase the Commonwealth’s unfunded liabilities by $6.2 billion. That is not small bikkies; not small dollars; not small money. That is reckless. Why are they doing it? It is purely political rhetoric. They are playing politics. Some of these issues are not new issues. They are issues that communities grapple with all the time. During 12 years in government they did not tackle them; they did not even try. And now they do this. It is just reckless behaviour politically and it is also reckless behaviour fiscally.

The opposition preach one thing but their actions prove another. They cannot be trusted with either the budget or the economy. They certainly cannot be trusted with the truth. because I hear what they say, I see what they do—it has always been fuss. They say one thing in the electorate when they are out and about and then do another thing in here. Their election campaign left a $10.6 billion hole. They blocked $5.2 billion of savings in both houses of parliament, and then they say, ‘We have to find savings.’ They have blocked close to $2 billion in savings by opposing the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme reforms in the House of Representatives and they have double-counted $700 million of savings in their flood response. What a mess around the flood response, too, with the flood levy, talking as though a levy was something new, something unusual, something that only Labor does.

The opposition tried to introduce eight levies when they were in government, with Mr Howard as Prime Minister. Six of them went through. They were broadly supported by the parties and by the community. Some of them were not for natural disasters that we have never seen the likes of; some of them were for corporate failure. But we wanted to ensure that workers got their entitlements; we wanted to ensure that we helped the dairy industry. Some levies were for the stevedoring industry. I did not support some of the reforms on the waterfront, particularly the balaclavas and the dogs on the waterfront. Who can forget that? Six levies went through parliament. They were supported and they helped sections of the community. That is what Australians do. We are good at it. We do not object and yet you have the honourable member for Warringah running around, talking as though a levy was something that was invented by the federal Labor Party and that it is something new. People do support it.

The opposition’s budget black hole has blown out to over $18 billion. That is a large amount of money. It is clear that the opposition have no credible plan to bring the budget back to surplus. In contrast, the federal Labor government has a clear budget and a fiscal strategy to return the budget to surplus in 2012-13, comfortably ahead of all major advanced economies. In fact, we are the envy of other major advanced economies in the world.

These appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 seek the authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the consolidated revenue fund in order to meet requirements that have arisen since the last budget. The total appropriation being sought this year through additional estimates bills Nos 3 and 4 is a little over $2.3 billion. The total appropriation being sought through Appropriation Bill (No. 3) is $1.36 billion and the total appropriation being sought through Appropriation Bill (No. 4) is a little over $1 billion. Some of these appropriations are in areas that are of benefit to all Australians and, when I read through them and note the areas in which they are in, I see they are of particular benefit to those in my electorate of Page—for instance, the trade training centres program.

The Labor government has already awarded more than $1 billion for 288 projects, benefiting 927 schools, to create better job pathways for students. What a good thing to do, creating those pathways. Having a job really does mean everything. Having a job is something that we in the federal Labor Party know is important. That is one of the things that marks us out: we understand that. This year, 70 projects have already been completed and are operational, benefiting students at 171 schools. Some are in progress in my area and I can tell you that they are welcome.

What do Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne want to do? They promised to cut $968 million from the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program, robbing more than 1.2 million students and over 800 secondary schools of the opportunity to find better pathways to becoming the next generation of electricians, brickies, hairdressers, chefs, carpenters—people working in trades, working people. That is what we do. We manage the budget responsibly and we have a good fiscal strategy. We have to do that so that people get those jobs. I commend the bills to the House.

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

I am very pleased to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011, which is an actual appropriation bill—as opposed to the youth allowance bill, which we know was not an appropriation bill, despite the government’s attempts to label it as such for the sole purpose of maintaining their discrimination against regional students across Australia, like those in my electorate. In an action that reinforces the absolute contempt this government has for regional areas, the spurious arguments put forward by the Labor Party sacrifice democracy and fairness, a fair go, for students in my electorate simply for political expediency.

Thousands of students arbitrarily classified as ‘inner regional’ by this government have no certainty and no guarantee of being treated equally. What they do have is the promise of another of Labor’s famous reviews that do not deliver. Students who finished year 12 in 2009 and 2010 in particular are in absolute limbo. They are contacting my office on a regular basis. They do not know where they stand and they do not know where they are going to stand after this review or where they will stand in the future. Even under the Rural Tertiary Hardship Fund Scheme, nothing at all has been delivered.

Those who framed the Australian Constitution—including Sir John Forrest, after whom the seat of Forrest is named—envisaged a nation where there was no discrimination against people based on their location. This is seen, for example, in section 51. It states that the Commonwealth has the power to make laws with regard to taxation but, as it says under part (ii), it must do so ‘so as not to discriminate between states or parts of states’. That is exactly what this government has done in relation to youth allowance and it is continuing to do. Our forefathers decried discrimination based on locality—the sort of discrimination the Labor Party has entrenched in legislation.

The government’s handling of the economy is an absolute disgrace, and it will go down as one of the worst in this nation’s history. According to the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the government will run a deficit of $41.5 billion this financial year and a deficit of $12.3 billion next year. Spending by the Gillard government will result in an expected net debt level of $94 billion by 2013—$94 billion. The interest on that will reach nearly $6 billion a year. It is an obscene number, even for this government. Of course, this does not include the government’s NBN investment, which, through an astounding accounting deception, does not actually appear in the forward estimates. There is no doubt, however, that the NBN will have a significant impact on the debt level of the Australian government in the next decade, probably well beyond the $43 billion price tag being bandied about, and that is certainly open to discussion. The ultimate net debt level of $140 billion is the legacy that the Gillard Labor government will leave the people of Australia, long after the stimulus spending is gone and forgotten.

Once again, it will not be a Labor government that repays its own debts; it will no doubt fall to a coalition government to pick up Labor’s financial pieces. This will happen because a coalition government will end the waste, and this is a historically wasteful government. Irresponsibility continues to mark the performance of this Labor government. What about the waste with the BER? No-one can question the waste under the BER or the debacle that was the pink batts program. But, beyond paying back Labor’s debt, a coalition government will need to end Labor’s waste in order to provide the investment needed in regional areas like the south-west of WA. We have seen a neglect of infrastructure in my region, as in a lot of others, and it is an indictment of this government that, four years in, nothing has happened.

Regional Development Australia in my electorate basically has no funds attached to it. It is a toothless tiger, trying with its gums to nut away at the infrastructure needs of the country. It has no capacity to invest. It can only go cap in hand to the government, and unfortunately it seems to be told that the cupboard is bare. The south-west of WA has infrastructure requirements that could have been funded by just one of the billions wasted by this government—and there have been multiple billions of dollars of waste by this government. Just one of those wasted billions could have funded all the infrastructure needs in my electorate. Some of these would be extending the AusLink program to include road and rail transport south of Bunbury; finishing the Bunbury ring road, the port access road and the Preston River realignment; and upgrading the South Western Highway, providing 12 additional overtaking lanes from Yarloop to Waterloo, two from Waterloo to Picton and six from Bunbury to Manjimup. This is what I know needs doing. There is also upgrading of the Coalfields Highway from the Wellington Weir turnoff to Collie, providing additional overtaking lanes between Roelands and Collie, upgrading the Bussell Highway to dual lanes from Bunbury to Margaret River and the construction of the Margaret River perimeter road. Just one billion of this government’s waste would have done all this and more. Some things that could be done is to expand the capacity of the Collie-Brunswick Junction-Port of Bunbury rail network; to upgrade the Vasse Highway; to use the disused rail lines, perhaps south of Bunbury, to expand freight capacity when it becomes feasible; and to upgrade the Busselton airport and its runway. These are some of the things that could have been done with just $1 billion of the waste.

I also bring to the attention of the House the plight of the dairy industry in Australia—and I ask the member opposite to listen to this because I am sure that this is something he may not be aware of. The Australian dairy industry has a long and proud history. When the first fleet landed in 1788 it brought with it one bull, four dairy cows and one calf to supply milk to the new colony. This little herd was the foundation of the original Australian dairy herd. The pioneers, however, were not great stockmen. They managed to lose their cattle. The herd wandered off and was not discovered for seven years—but it had grown to 40 cows, so someone had done their job. Despite the industry now having a couple of million dairy cows, like the early settlers we have lost touch with our dairy herd, our dairy farmers and our dairy industry. The dairy industry in Australia has grown into a significant contributor to the Australian economy, and there is no doubt that Australian dairy farmers are amongst the most efficient in the world. We have the second lowest cost of production anywhere in the world and some of the highest quality milk.

The question I put to this Australian parliament today is: do we actually want to maintain our dairy industry into the future, particularly in a state like Western Australia? Do we want to? What I am hearing is that we do not. According to the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry food stats, Australian milk production in 2007-08 accounted for 13 per cent of all food production and had a gross value of $4.9 billion. Of this, $2.8 billion worth of milk products were exported. But when you scratch beneath the surface there is pain and heartache being felt by dairy farmers, their families and their communities right across Australia. This industry, these families and their communities are hurting. Many are struggling to stay viable, with their incapacity to drive commercial returns. Many dairy farmers have left the industry that has sustained their families and their communities, often for generations. Most of those remaining are using their capital to subsidise their lack of income.

According to ABARES, the proportion of Australian farms with a negative farm business profit hit a peak in 2004-05 of 61 per cent. Of those making a profit, many in the farm sector have incomes equivalent to welfare. In short, many Australian dairy farmers are losing money and many others are making the equivalent of the dole—and we are expecting people to work under these conditions and provide us with a staple food that is the best in the world. The only way many dairy farmers can afford to keep farming is to simply go further into debt or eat into their capital, or both. According to ABARES, in the six years prior to 2008 average farm debt increased from $237,000 to $494,000. At the same time, incomes for dairy farmers have stagnated, averaging over the same period a two per cent return on investment. Who is going to invest for a two per cent return and do the work that is required? Yet we expect them to; we demand that they do.

The return for dairy farmers only reaches levels acceptable to most businesses in Australia by including capital growth in their net return. That is if the price of their land has increased; and when this increase is written in as a cash return annually, the overall return to dairy farmers is 8.2 per cent. However, this level of return requires the farmer to sell their land to access the money. That is what you have to do. Nice if you are ready to sell your farm and retire, but useless if you are not, and hopeless should one of your family want to carry on farming after you. And what about the new farmers who want to start? Where do they start? It costs money to produce milk, and in this debate we must be prepared to acknowledge this. It is an indictment when water in the supermarkets is priced higher than milk. That is just an abomination.

We also have to acknowledge that the farm gate price—the price the farmer actually receives for their product—is impacted, particularly in the liquid milk states, directly by the retail price consumers pay for their milk. Dairy producers are absolute price takers. The negotiations they have with their processors and, by default, supermarkets in a state like WA are extremely one-sided affairs. The processor, via the supermarket or the major retailer, will tell them the price they are going to receive. That is the price that the supermarkets have dictated. In a state like Western Australia, which is a majority liquid milk state, this has a direct impact on the price that is paid to farmers. The price that the supermarkets dictate will govern the price the processor can afford to pay to the grower.

The poor old farmer has just one choice. He has this marvellous product but it is perishable. What does he do with it if he cannot sell it that day? It has to be picked up, it has to be processed and it has to be delivered to the market every day. It is not something we can store. That in itself creates a vulnerability that I do not think many, if any, in this place really understand, but it is one that the supermarkets understand because they certainly take advantage of it. It is ‘take it or leave it’ for the dairy farmer.

It is in this setting that the supermarket chains, led by Coles, have decided to engage in a milk-marketing war using deep discounting to steal market share from each other. The supermarkets have said they will absorb the cost and that farm gate prices will not be affected. Well, if this is true it will be a groundbreaking event because it does not reflect the history of milk pricing since deregulation in 2000. When asked by members of the Senate Economics References Committee in their investigation into the milk industry in May last year, the major supermarket chains denied using milk as a loss leader. However, that is clearly not the case now. I notice, too, that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Joe Ludwig, is coming out in support of Coles in its bid for market dominance. Unfortunately, this demonstrates that the minister does not understand the impact that this type of activity in the market will have on dairy farmers in liquid milk states like Western Australia.

The Senate has instigated another inquiry because it appears that the supermarkets are in fact using milk as a loss leader in the war for a greater share of the market. So how much faith can we put in the responses of those supermarkets in 2010—or was that previous inquiry misled? I hope this next inquiry will look at this, and I would ask how much faith we can have in the answers that will be given by the supermarkets. We will not get to the truth behind this because of the market power and dominance of the supermarkets and because those who could give evidence will be too afraid to do so. They will not do so because they will be out of business if they do and because they are dependent on the supermarkets to sell their products.

The market share and market power of the major supermarkets, their collective buying and selling capacity, also mean that their profits are probably far greater than they will claim. They have the capacity to dictate and dominate. The barrage of lawyers and consultants they employ will ensure that, in spite of all the inquiries that we might have, we will never get to the truth about the contractual issues and product pricing of the supermarkets. I would say to Wesfarmers, who own Coles: change your name. Your genesis was in the rural sector. Your genesis was in farmers. So change your name because your behaviour in this instance does not reflect your history.

In Western Australia since deregulation we have gone from 400-odd farmers down to around 160. We have recently seen a processor go out of business in our state. How are our farmers going to hold on when all of the chains have to meet that same price to be able to sell milk and all those who sell milk have to meet that particular price? It will come back to the dairy farmer. Coles knows this well. They know very well that this will happen but they will say, ‘We will not put the price down but we know the rest of the market will have to react to meet that price,’ and by default that price will come back to the dairy farmer. That is how it will work.

I say once again that the milk price war now threatens the viability of the farmers, their communities and their future. I ask this parliament: ‘Do we actually want a dairy industry in those liquid milk states?’

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

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. I should indicate that Appropriation Bill (No. 3) involves a total appropriation of $1.36 billion and this flows from the changes to the estimate of program expenditures, the timing of payments, forecast increases in program take-ups, and some reclassifications and policy decisions that have been taken by the government since the last budget. Appropriation Bill (No. 4) has a total appropriation of $1.02 billion for numerous departments.

I want to take this opportunity in the debate to address a number of specific issues within that range of policy areas and also address some of the local implications for my electorate. I would like first to address the component that addresses the fair entitlements guarantee to protect employee entitlements when employers enter liquidation. I would indicate that Illawarra workers have been victims over many years now of losing their legal entitlements when companies go broke, starting with the very famous example of Parish meats at Yallah quite a while ago. The lost entitlements often include superannuation. It is a particularly devastating circumstance for workers when this occurs. It is important that the government is committed to protecting workers who lose entitlements through no fault of their own but due to the insolvency of their employer.

The Fair Entitlements Guarantee was announced as part of the government’s Protecting Workers’ Entitlements policy. We will deliver on that commitment. I know it will be very welcome in my area and I am sure in many other areas of the nation—anywhere where this has been the experience of local workers.

The guarantee improves on the existing General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme, known as GEERS. It improves it in two key areas. Firstly, it increases the redundancy protection under the scheme to pay up to four weeks per year of service rather than the previous cap of a total of 16 weeks. It also removes access to financial assistance for company directors or excluded employees and, unlike GEERS, it enshrines the Fair Entitlements Guarantee in legislation. These are important improvements to the protections we provide. They recognise that workers’ superannuation is forgone income serving as an insurance against their long-term wellbeing at retirement age. It is very important to the wellbeing of the people in our community.

These changes will provide certainty to those employees. It will ensure that almost all Australian workers will get all of their redundancy entitlements in these situations. Protecting redundancy entitlements is a priority for the government. Consequently, the increased protection of redundancy entitlements has been implemented through changes to GEERS prior to the Fair Entitlements Guarantee legislation coming into effect. This change applies to cases where an employer enters liquidation or bankruptcy on or after 1 January 2011.

The following entitlements currently covered by GEERS will continue to be protected under the new Fair Entitlements Guarantee and they include up to three months unpaid wages and the amounts deducted from wages such as employee superannuation contributions that are not passed on to a superannuation fund up to three months prior to insolvency. It also includes all unpaid annual leave, all long service leave and up to a maximum of five weeks unpaid payment in lieu of notice. I think this is an important component of the appropriation bills before us and something that will certainly be very welcome in my own electorate.

Within this range of appropriation bills there is also increased funding support for regional development. This is something that, since its election in 2007, this government has put a great deal of focus on, and it is particularly important for regions and their wellbeing both economic and social. Over the long term, regions are the drivers of growth in the Australian economy. So whilst the cities are, if you like, the headline growth drivers of the wellbeing of the nation, if they are doing well but the regions are dying on the vine then overall we are not doing well. So it is important that regional development policy addresses linking regions into growth opportunities and encouraging them beyond that to actually become drivers of innovation, productivity and national growth themselves. The regions are the place where those great opportunities for the nation actually are.

In particular I want to acknowledge in addressing this issue the role that the Regional Development Australia Illawarra branch has played in our region since its establishment after we came to government in 2007. It was a combination of the previous area consultative committees of the federal government and the regional development boards of the state government, so they have been combined into one organisation. I was particularly pleased that the RDA Illawarra attracted to its board a really impressive range of local leaders who have done a tremendous job in progressing issues of regional development for the Illawarra. It is headed up by the chair, Eddy De Gabriele, who is a significant businessman in his own right in our region in the employment sector and also a well-known aficionado and official of the soccer industry. He has a widespread coverage of experience and is a well-known Illawarra person for the variety of roles that he plays. He has headed up the RDA tremendously well, seconded in the deputy position by Roger Summerill, who has a long history in communications—in particular with the ABC management over many years and also WIN TV—and who is somebody who brings a profound understanding of our region to that role. The board more broadly has a good variety of expertise in the business and community sectors.

The board has established a tradition now of what is called the State of the Illawarra Regional Leaders Summit. This is held each year and this summit pushes the region to look at the challenges and opportunities arising over the next 12 months and to come to a consensus view about where the priority efforts of our regional leadership should be placed in progressing the region over those following 12 months. It is really a tremendously useful thing for people like me because, as we would all know in this place, you get lobbied on about 101 ideas in your electorate, with people saying: ‘If only we did this, it would be the thing that would make everything so much better. This would address the unemployment issue. This would progress environmental improvements. This would address social disadvantage.’ Whatever the case may be, there is no lack of great ideas in all of our communities and so the challenge becomes being under the pump to work out which of those can be best utilised and how to best utilise them. The RDA has fulfilled this role really effectively in the Illawarra and encouraged people to bring all those ideas with a good solid plan—what would be required, how much it would cost, what needs to be done—and then leaders from across all sectors go through those and say, ‘We think these have the best leverage opportunity for us all to get behind them.’ That does not mean the other ideas cannot be progressed by their individual organisations and so forth, but we drive the key ones as a region.

It has been a tremendous initiative and most important from my perspective has been the push to have the National Broadband Network rollout extend as quickly as we can get it to do from the Kiama Minnamurra trial site throughout the region. The RDA has put together a clear priority list for major infrastructure which will connect Wollongong and Port Kembla with better road and rail links, so it is also looking at the transport opportunities and challenges. And we currently have the business case for the Maldon-Dombarton rail link underway. It is a $3 million feasibility study and I was very pleased to see in the release yesterday of the National Freight Strategy by Infrastructure Australia a recognition of the port of Port Kembla as a key national part of that task. Certainly we will be progressing the opportunity for that port to take on a greater role—because it drives jobs growth in our region—and to have that linked effectively by road and rail links.

There is $5.9 million in these bills to strengthen local engagement and improve the whole-of-government coordination of policy for regional Australia. I am very encouraged by the minister. I think Minister Crean has been well and truly known for a long time as an advocate of regional responsibility and autonomy, regions understanding what they need and driving that. This funding is in addition to resources that have already been transferred to the Department of Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government; the former Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government; and the Attorney-General’s Department. The recently established Department of Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government is growing by the day and is a dedicated agency which will have responsibility for regional policy and overseeing the rollout of initiatives across other departments. I believe that if we are to achieve real and long-lasting outcomes for communities across this nation then a coordinated approach is needed.

There is an additional $100 million as part of the government’s partnership with local government, which has been an extraordinarily effective local partnership. I indicate that the government will provide $800 million over five years to establish the priority regional infrastructure program. The funding will be allocated following consultation with local governments and Regional Development Australia committees. The funding will be provided for transport infrastructure such as roads and bridge upgrades, community infrastructure projects such as town halls and sporting facilities, and economic infrastructure projects that support regional economies.

I particularly appreciate the importance of regional infrastructure programs because I look at the great success that has occurred in conjunction with Wollongong City Council over a number of projects that have been funded under the previous community infrastructure funding. For example, what is known as the Blue Mile, which is a development of the foreshore of Wollongong from a fairly run-down footpath making it difficult to access part of the foreshore around the harbour and the bathing pavilion and pools, has been upgraded so that people with mobility issues, the aged and the frail are now able to share that beautiful part of our electorate. It has been a truly successful on-budget, on-time project that the council has rolled out. I would acknowledge that there was some criticism of our council getting that funding by the member for Cook, the shadow minister at the time, who thought that because there had been some issues around the governance of Wollongong council we should not have been given that money. But I can say that, as I was sure at the time, the council has provided an excellent outcome in terms of that investment and it is truly valued by the local community.

In the brief time left to me I highlight that the smart infrastructure facility at the University of Wollongong, which is worth $62 million of which the Commonwealth contributed $35 million, is nearly completed. The member for Throsby and I had a look at that only last week. The construction is coupled with two other buildings invested in by the Commonwealth at the University of Wollongong’s innovation campus which have helped support the region’s construction and building industry during the global financial crisis. In March I will also officially open the Wollongong Workers Educational Association’s new vocational training centre. This is a new building worth nearly $2 million and the Commonwealth contribution is $1.3 million. These investments, together with the Building the Education Revolution program which has been so successful in my schools, investments in TAFE facilities including a new engineering building at the TAFE, and the investments outlined at the university, represent nearly $300 million worth of investment in my area’s skills and education. They are particularly important foundations for the long-term future of the region. I have indicated that the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program has been particularly successful. The Blue Mile project of the Wollongong council involved a $5.9 million investment in local infrastructure in my electorate, and I would particularly commend the $836,000 worth of new investments to be made in the bathers pavilion upgrade at north Wollongong—a project that was well and truly welcomed by local people. (Time expired)

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

I am pleased to rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. These bills come forward in the context where we have a government that has shown a proven incapacity to manage the budget in a responsible fashion. We have a government which this year is proposing to spend $354 billion. That is almost $100 million a year more than the federal government was spending only four years ago. We have a government that is rampantly engaging in deficit financing. This year the deficit will be $41 billion. This is a government which is addicted to spending. We hear the assurances: ‘Don’t worry—in three years time we’ll return to surplus.’ You will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I am somewhat sceptical of that claim, because these people have no track record of doing something which they promised they would achieve in three years. When we hear them say, ‘We may have consistently engaged in deficit financing; we may have turned the lever from surplus to deficit the moment we came to government and started spending in a profligate fashion, but don’t worry—we’ll become pure in three years time,’ I am sceptical, as would any objective observer be. The context we face is a government profligate in its spending which has shown a consistent lack of discipline and there is absolutely no reason to be confident that that lack of discipline is going to be corrected.

I want to focus on one area where the lack of discipline in spending is particularly egregious, and that is the National Broadband Network. We have seen a very sorry saga of fiscal ill-discipline since the National Broadband Network was first put on the agenda by the Labor Party in April 2007. When the plan was announced then, Labor was going to spend $4.7 billion of public money, and that was going to be combined with private money. It was going to be a joint venture with the private sector—that is to say, a private sector player would be spending at least as much as the Commonwealth—and it was going to be a much less ambitious and a much less expensive scheme. It was going to be a fibre-to-the-node scheme that would deliver a 12 megabit per second speed to 98 per cent of the population, and it was generally thought to be an incremental improvement on the broadband infrastructure which Australia had at that time.

It transpired, though, that the plan could not be delivered. In a fit of political desperation in April 2009 the previous plan was abandoned, and it now transpires that we were to spend $43 billion—an extraordinary rate of increase in spending—because all of a sudden we were going to be much more visionary, much more grandiose. Part of being visionary, part of getting the political shock and awe effect which was so desperately sought, was to spend more money. But in April 2009 we were told that some of that money would still come from the private sector. We were told that the $43 billion would be the total spent and there would be funding from both the Commonwealth and the private sector.

Some of us, even at that time, were sceptical. Some of us, even at that time, were not drinking the NBN Kool-Aid. But when the implementation study emerged last year, the sad truth became all too apparent: not one dollar was to come from the private sector until the network had been built, until all of the risk had been assumed. And we now know that what is proposed is that there will be a total commitment, a total taxpayer exposure, of $41 billion, including $27 billion in equity, all of which will come from the Commonwealth, all of which will be taxpayers’ money, all of which will be public money put at risk in an unconscionably risky and poorly thought through venture. In addition, there will be $13 billion of debt which taxpayers will also be exposed to; if NBN Co. is unable to repay that, it will be taxpayers who will be on the hook. So we have seen extraordinary ill-discipline.

The second point to make is that the accounting practices which have been followed in relation to the NBN have been dubious in the extreme. The fiction on which this exercise is based is that this is an investment and that, because taxpayers are going to get a return, there is no need to put this on the balance sheet, there is no need to put this on the profit and loss account of the Commonwealth—that is, to put it on the budget. But when we look at the figures which are put forward we learn that, even with the most optimistic massaging of the basic expectations around this business venture, the internal rate of return is going to be barely seven per cent. In the NBN corporate plan, which was published in December last year, we also learnt that the weighted average cost of capital is somewhere over 10 per cent.

Let me make a basic observation about corporate finance. When you work out the net present value of a project, you compare the weighted average cost of capital with the return. In the private sector, in any environment where you do not want to throw your money away, what you want to have is a return which exceeds your cost of capital. Here we have the opposite. The return is seven per cent. The cost of capital, on the admission of NBN Co., is over 10 per cent. The net present value of this project is seriously negative. Public money is being splashed away in this project. This is the same project, I might add, which former Prime Minister Rudd called a first-class investment, and he called on mums and dads to get their money into it as quickly as possible when this project was announced in April 2009. He did not lose his job because of his misunderstanding of accounting and financial practices but, based upon that revelation, he might as well have.

We have seen that a ridiculous and rapidly increasing amount of money is going to be spent and we have seen that the accounting processes underlying this project are very dubious. But the third problem with this plan is that the policy underpinnings of it are thought through in a very poor way. It is far from clear what problem this is designed to solve. Shortly before Christmas the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy issued a media release in which he claimed that the most recent figures issued by the OECD demonstrated the need for the National Broadband Network. He argued that because Australia was ranked 19th in broadband penetration, one place behind New Zealand—and apparently that in itself was a completely shameful thing—that demonstrated the need to spend $41 billion on this project.

There is a clear lack of coherent thinking in the rationale for this project. If our objective is to increase broadband penetration, to get up the broadband penetration rankings—which, according to what Minister Conroy tells us, is our objective—then the most powerful policy lever to pull is to reduce the price that most people pay for broadband, and the best way to do that is to increase competition. The Prime Minister herself told the parliament last year that Australia has very high broadband prices. Australia has the fifth most expensive broadband prices in the OECD.

Let me engage in bipartisanism and agree that Australia does have the fifth most expensive broadband prices in the OECD. What, then, would be a sensible thing to do about that? Would it be a sensible thing to spend $41 billion on a new network, the capital cost of which will need to be recovered, consistent with this government’s promise that it is going to be an investment that will generate a return and therefore will require high prices to be charged to consumers? We know from the corporate plan that the entry level wholesale price will be $24. This will be the foundation on which the retail price will be built—and it will be the retail price that will dictate the number of people who take the broadband service, that will dictate whether we achieve our objective of increasing broadband penetration.

What is the wholesale price that is charged today for the most common product, the unconditioned local loop service, which is the basis through which most people receive competitive DSL services today? The price is set in various bands. The vast majority of people in Australia are in band 2. The unconditioned local loop price today is $16 per month. This will be replaced with a price of $24, which is 50 per cent higher. The wholesale price, the entry level price, is going to be 50 per cent higher. That is before you look at the details of the corporate plan, which makes it clear that NBN Co. intends to ramp up the price which is charged over time. We are going to see prices increase. How that is consistent with an increase in penetration, if that be our policy objective, is very unclear.

The fourth point is the amount of money that is likely to be wasted. So far, I have taken it for granted that the assumptions in the corporate plan are reasonable and credible and therefore the financial projections are credible. There is $41 billion at risk on the proposition that this network will capture 70 per cent penetration, that 70 per cent of homes around Australia will take a service from this network. It is well accepted that the main source of competition is likely to come from wireless services. So we might well ask: what proportion of households take a wireless service today? Today 13 per cent of households take a wireless service. That number is up from three per cent just a few years ago. The corporate plan assumes that that rate will top out at 16 per cent, that it will stay flat at 16 per cent and just will not move. That is certainly a helpful assumption if you are trying to come up with a plan which demonstrates that there is a financial return to be generated—bearing in mind that it is this government’s commitment that it will generate a financial return. But is it a credible assumption?

The only experience I can bring to bear is my 15 years of public policy experience in broadband, including eight years on the senior leadership team of a large telecommunications company, where I was regularly involved in assessing the viability of business cases. Let me say very clearly that anybody who brought forward a business case of this kind in the large telecommunications company I worked in would rapidly have been invited to make alternative career plans. This is not a plan which is financially credible, it is not a plan on which any private sector player would for a second contemplate risking the investment that the Gillard government plans to risk. Indeed, the corporate plan makes that quite explicit on its face. The corporate plan says quite explicitly that these are not returns that would attract a private sector player. Well, isn’t that the truth!

Forty-one billion dollars of public money is at risk on a project which is based upon fuzzy policy assumptions, which is based upon unrealistic projections about take-up and which will have a series of disastrous side-effects, including reducing competition, because it constrains—it seeks to block—anybody else from building a network in competition and it trashes perfectly viable existing infrastructure. There is no dispute that fixed line competition in Australia needs to be improved and the way to do that is to separate Telstra. That is our policy. That is the Labor government’s policy. There is no difference between the parties on that core point. Nor is there any dispute that broadband infrastructure needs to be improved. The dispute is about this particular plan, which is extraordinarily wasteful and profligate and very, very badly thought through.

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

I would like to start my speech in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 by acknowledging the heartbreaking situation that is now developing in New Zealand, our nearest neighbour. Clearly New Zealand has a very special relationship with this country. The word ANZAC means much to many, whether they be young or old. It is a special relationship, but now we see our friends in New Zealand in a very special time of need. My deepest condolences go to the families who have lost a life. To all the workers who are working so tirelessly over there, including a number of Australians who have been sent over there in the last 24 hours: I wish them well in their endeavours and I hope we recover more people and rescue lives as quickly as possible. This is another significant time that we in this parliament should be reflecting on, just as we did on the floods of New Zealand, the bushfires in Victoria and other disasters, because I think the Prime Minister got it right when she said New Zealand is a family to us.

I am happy to participate in this debate. I want to make some comments about being elected as the member for Fowler. As I was just saying to my colleague the member for Parramatta, Fowler is a very new electorate for me. I need to work very hard to ensure that people understand not only that they have access to me but also that I am in tune and responsive to the needs of that particular community. Things which are very striking out there include the strength of community spirit in Fowler, which has been tested many times. There was a threat to local libraries. A council decision aimed to close local libraries. Also, people came together in a very difficult time to raise money for flood victims—and I know you were in the chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I spoke on the condolence motion about the Queensland flood appeal. There is also the spirit I see in the most multicultural electorate in the country—if we can believe the ABS statistics—particularly in various associations for the elderly and others that not only support the preservation of traditions and culture but also have a very clear support for the ongoing education of people in the electorate at large.

It has been a personal objective of mine to provide as much assistance as possible to the community to achieve these goals by providing information, whether it be on funding or grants as they come forward from time to time, using our database for those organisations as opposed to people having to get out there and read the Herald to determine when and where those opportunities lie. I think it is a role for every one of us in this parliament to go out and help those organisations in our communities that do good work in our community, in effect making their work easier by using what facilities we might have. I have always strived to maintain my promise to the electorate, whether that be my former electorate of Werriwa or my current electorate of Fowler, to be as available as possible, particularly for those in most need. I have found it helpful more recently to deliver a permanent outreach program, to complement what we do with mobile offices. I will talk about that a little later.

I have spoken about the threat to such institutions as local libraries. I could not believe this, but it is true—fortunately, we had a debate in private members’ business on this issue only this week: the Liberal and independent councillors on Liverpool City Council took a decision to close local libraries. Local libraries very much go to the cohesion of our community. They are not just repositories of books, they are not just places where you can go to have meetings, where people can gather; but they are places where people can go and use the internet. A lot of people use our library facilities to apply for jobs online. We have a lot of young people, including people like Ian McNamara, who came from Miller, who gained his love of computers at the local library and has gone on to become a computer engineer. It just staggers me that a group of councillors would take a view such that that sort of rationalisation could just go through on a balance sheet, and they could move to close local libraries. It took many months of strong campaigning by local residents—with the support, obviously, of Labor councillors; and I would also pay regard to the state member, Paul Lynch, who supported the local campaign—to have those Liberal councillors revisit their decision on the first council meeting this year. The result, in my humble opinion, was a victory for common sense. It demonstrated what a community can do through cooperation, through commitment and through a genuine belief in common sense itself.

The individual stories that rose out of that battle show the spirit of the community. I commend the members of my community for standing up and fighting this battle, not only for every kid to be able to access books, in an academic and in a social way, but also to have those facilities retained and made available for all members of our community. It is just so essential. We often talk in here about the development of the love of reading, and yet we see that there are bureaucrats out there who think that is something we can trade off. If we are here, and we are committed to advancing our communities into the future, one of the things we should never attack is the library. Interestingly, local libraries were recently aided by the introduction of a new program which is going to help with greater accessibility for the disabled. Again, in Western Sydney we are overly represented—only because of land values—by families with disabilities. I was happy to be able to draw to the attention of not only the Liverpool council but the Fairfield council—and, quite frankly, anyone who wanted to listen—that they could access further Commonwealth moneys to help with the accessibility of their library space for people with disabilities. Again, that goes to what all modern societies should be looking at: a bigger role and greater undertakings with respect to inclusion.

The community of the electorate of Fowler, in recent times, has also confirmed for me a passion for education. Fowler is an outer metropolitan seat. It is the most multicultural seat in the country. We have a very strong enclave of Vietnamese. They have only been here for the last 35 years—since the fall of Saigon. I was very happy to attend the Tet festival, the Vietnamese New Year festival. The highlight of that was making presentations to each of the kids who scored in excess of 99 per cent in the HSC. There were about 35 kids all up. I saw a passion for education and the drive to achieve not only in these commendable young individuals but also in their parents. Some of the parents who I spoke to told me that they work two jobs in order to ensure that their kids had the very best education. That is very positive from a group who would ordinarily be referred to as new Australians. The amount of emphasis that they put on education is because they know that the key to success in our vibrant land is a good education. They are ensuring that their children participate.

The other thing that is pretty interesting, given the demographics of the area that I represent, is that the majority of schools have very active P&Cs. The parents take a very active role in supporting not only their own children’s education but the school and the teachers. That was something that I was very interested to see on display out in Western Sydney. The principals and the teaching staff at those schools are the fundamental learning resources to establish the children’s futures. I know them to be very professional and very committed.

I would like to mention one, Beth Goodwin. She is the principal of Cabramatta High School. She was also named the Fairfield Citizen of the Year. Beth does not live in that municipality—I happen to know where she lives, which is in Campbelltown. I get to see what this woman does at school and at every other form of social event designed to include young people in our vast and changing community. She is in there in many different ways, such as through sponsoring or encouraging the participation of young people, whether through Rotary events or other events to do with social inclusion. She plays an extraordinary role.

I had the opportunity to meet with a couple of young people who recently graduated from university but who had been taught by her. One of the young fellows—and I cannot remember whether he was Vietnamese or Cambodian—said that Miss Goodwin gave him his thirst for education and learning. This young man is going to go on and make a significant positive impact in the world that we live. Those are good stories. We should be celebrating, when we get the opportunity, the people who make a difference in our communities. Beth is one of those, so I very much welcome her being named Citizen of the Year. That recognises her passion for education. She brings the world to her students. She is to be highly commended. It is something that we should be encouraging. This reward is well deserved for her contribution to education and her commitment to the region.

While on that, I would like to mention another prominent person. I know her very well, and I should not to refer to her age. She retired as a teacher many years back, Norma Shelley. She is better known locally as Auntie Norma. She is an Aboriginal elder and former teacher. I see this woman participate in various events, whether they are Aboriginal specific, about inclusion, about education or in the interests of the development of young people in outer metropolitan Sydney. Her hard work in representing and fighting for the rights of the local Aboriginal community is to be commended. Her role in championing the cause of young people has been tremendous. In our community, the pace of life is probably no different than anywhere else. Everyone has other things to do. People need second jobs to pay their mortgages. It is very good to have someone there who has a firm grasp on reality and who, when decisions need to be made, can take the bull by the horns and stand up and make them. I thank Norma for her years. She just demonstrates so much energy and so much commitment. We in the community are very lucky. I understand how lucky I am as a member of parliament to have people like that in my community to help do good work.

The general philosophy I had when I came into this parliament was not to get out there and promise things that you know you cannot deliver or try to be all things to all people. I took the view that I should, in the first instance, identify those people who make a difference in their community and try to work with them to help them do their jobs better. I am very fortunate I have identified two. They make such a tremendous difference themselves, but I know it is only two of many.

My staff will not be happy because, I suspect, that I have departed very much from what they want me to talk about. But I just want to say that, from a local member’s perspective, one of the best things we can do is to go out of our way not only to learn from our communities but to actually understand those people who do make a difference and to spend our time, effort and resources helping them, regardless of politics.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This time last year, when we considered appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4, I stood here and said that the government were going to seek more money for failed policy and they did. They came into this place this time last year and they sought an extra $98 million in the immigration portfolio for offshore asylum seeker management—an extra $98 million. The actual budget for that year was $124, 981,000. They came here in February and asked for almost a doubling of that budget. It did not stop there because, by the end of that year, not only had they spent the $98 million but they had spent an additional $69 million, more than double what they had spent that year. At that time I said that these were the costs of failed policy. At that time, when the government put their first budget together, in 2009-10, the estimated costs for that year were $125 million. At that time, since the failure of the government’s policies, 19 boats and 707 people have arrived.

When I stood in this place in February last year, when the government were asking for more money, around 70 boats had arrived. There is a terrible sense of deja vu here because, here we are again, the government having already budgeted at the beginning of this year for $460 million, they have come back into this place on operating costs alone and they are now asking for another $290 million. And 208 boats have arrived. There is a pattern here of failed policy. The government continue to persist with policies that have failed and they keep coming into this place and asking for more money to pay for those failures. Those are the facts that are before this parliament and that is the question being put to this parliament. The government say, ‘We won’t change the policies, we can’t change our failures, so just give us more money to pay for these failures.’ By the end of this year I guarantee that they will not have spent $760 million which, by the way, is more than seven times the amount the government were spending on this matter when they were first elected. It will be more than that, more boats will come and no changes will be made to policy.

I oppose the government’s policy in this area, because it has failed. It is a policy which I oppose. That opposition will not change until the government changes their policy to things that work. Interestingly, this time last year when I was engaged in this very same debate, when I raised the issues of cost in this chamber, the member for Longman—who, I note, is no longer here—called me a racist. This time last year I raised issues of cost. I find it a chilling echo of a year ago: when I continue to raise issues of cost the government cast all sorts of slurs. My comments on cost continue.

Here we are back at groundhog day, because the cost is not changing and the government’s policies are not changing. Here they find themselves throwing the same old insults without any proof or any ability to substantiate anything they have claimed. Things have been repudiated and here we have a government that are trying to run away from their own failures.

Let us go through those failures. Those failures to date have seen 10,250 people arrive on their watch on 208 boats. Two of those boats included SIEV36, which was set alight and on which people were killed, and SIEV221, which was the most tragic of those cases as it crashed against the rocks of Christmas Island in December last year. There are other boats that have gone missing. In a speech last year I referred to one boat containing over 100 Afghanis who had left in the previous October and their families never heard from them again. At least 220 people, we know, have perished on these voyages. Yet the government still have not changed their policies. The costs continue to rise at all levels both in human terms and in financial terms. I oppose the government on their policies because they are not effective in discouraging people from taking these journeys that lead to their most tragic loss. I oppose the government on these policies because, since the government came to office, the number of special humanitarian visas that have been provided to offshore applicants in our program has fallen from one in three to one in five. That is around 1,500 fewer places for that special humanitarian program in this year alone. These are the impacts of failed policies.

I know the government do not want to focus on their failures. I know the government want to cause every distraction they can because they do not want to sit in this place and hear me remind them on a daily basis of their failures. Their failures in the area of border protection are manifest. They can throw whatever they like at me, but this opposition to their failed policies on border protection will continue. It will continue until they are changed.

As I look at the specific appropriations in these bills, I see that in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 there is $290 million extra for the running costs in the blow-out this year of offshore asylum seeker management. In Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011, there is $152.8 million in additional capital expenditure for the establishment of the Northam detention centre and the Inverbrackie detention centre, which was previously announced by the government.

It is interesting what you find when you do your homework in this place. A statement by Senator Evans—and I will seek to table this document at the end of my remarks—on 8 February 2008 said this:

The Pacific solution was a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise introduced on the eve of a federal election by the Howard government.

This is how much he said the entire program cost—$289 million. That is less than what the government are asking for in this appropriation for their blow-out just this year. This cost that the minister at the time referred to was not just for a six-month period. This cost of $289 million was for between September 2001 and June 2007 to run the Nauru and Manus OPCs. It cost less to run the Pacific solution for almost six years, on the government’s own statement, than what the government are asking for in this appropriation bill to cover the cost of their own policy failures in less than a six-month period. That is an indictment of the government in their own terms. If they think $289 million to put in place a policy that worked is a waste of money, I would like to know what the cost blow-out of the government is in their own terms, using their own criteria.

Let us think about what these have been. In May 2009, in the budget for the following financial year, they estimated forward costs of $124 million for that year, $113 million for the following year, $110 million for the 2011-12 year and $106 million for the 2012-13 year. This is how the record now reads in terms of the most recent additional estimates published by this government: in the year they were going to spend $125 million—that is, last year—they spent $292 million, and in the year they said they were going to spend $113 million—that is, this year—they are going to spend, at this stage, $761 million. But guess what? They say, in their additional estimates, that next year the costs are going to fall by half a billion dollars. This government is saying that next financial year—it is not that far away; it is four months away—the costs in this budget for their failed border protection policies are going to fall by half a billion dollars.

Such is going to be the success of their not changing their policies that they are going to continue to keep costs at that level for the next three years. What that means is that, on their own additional estimates figures, they have already blown out the budget by over $1 billion. If costs stay at least where they are forecast to stay this year, then over the next three years that is going to cost another $1.5 billion—and that is just running costs; I have not even started talking about capital. That is on top of the $290 million they are asking from this parliament today. It is worth observing that that blow-out over the next three years plus the blow-out they are asking for in this document alone are more than the funds they intend to raise from the flood levy through the legislation that they have brought into this parliament.

This is a government whose failings on this level know no parallel. This is a government that does not want to hear and does not want the Australian people to hear the scale of its failures. The Australian people can rely on one thing, and that is that this is an opposition that is not easily intimidated. We have an opposition leader in this country who is not easily intimidated. There is a shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, supported by my colleagues, who will not be intimidated into refraining from holding this government to account for its failures in border protection. This is a government that seems to think it can make decisions that are above public scrutiny. Well, the Australian people do not think that and the opposition does not think that.

As uncomfortable as it is for the government to hear me come into this place day in, day out; week in, week out; month in, month out; and year in, year out, I will be loud and clear in saying that this government’s border protection policies have failed. That failure is on this government’s head. It is there in the costs and it is there in the human tragedy that has occurred as a result of people smugglers that the government has been unable to stop with its own policies. The government’s only reaction is to come into this place and repeat malicious gossip in a way that tries to distract attention from its own failures.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

'ath Yvette (the Deputy Speaker):

Order! The member has the right to be heard in silence.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They can try, but they know I am not going anywhere. They know I am going to be here day in, day out, holding them to account for the sake of the Australian people.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The members opposite say that I should be embarrassed, just like the member for Longman said last year when he called me a racist in this chamber for having this exact same debate on costs. Today, I have the members opposite accusing me again because they do not want to hear the cost.

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

Madam Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: nobody on this side made those remarks. The member for Cook is well and truly extrapolating.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I heard you say ‘embarrassed’.

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

You said we were embarrassed!

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You said I should be embarrassed.

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

Is the member for Parramatta seeking for the comments to be withdrawn?

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

Yes, I am.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have nothing to withdraw, Madam Deputy Speaker D’Ath. Those opposite said I should be embarrassed. If I have misheard that then I have misheard that. If I have misheard that then I withdraw, and I would also ask them to confirm that they do not think I should be embarrassed.

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

I give the call to the member for Cook.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are very touchy on this topic, and they should be touchy on this subject because the costs and the appropriation sought in this bill speak for themselves. They speak of manifest failure. They speak of a government that simply cannot admit the truth of its own failures.

I am going to go back to the issue of the Pacific solution and at the end of my remarks I will also seek leave to table a Senate question of February 2002 that was answered on notice. The answer goes into precise detail of the cost of the Pacific solution. It was part of a report by Senator Cook into these matters some years ago. It shows that the establishment and provision of infrastructure costs at Nauru and Manus Island—the Pacific solution—was a grand total of $20 million. Northam is costing eight times that much.

I have come into this place again today to talk about the failures of this government. I have talked about the cost of the failures of this government. The government refuses to answer to the costs that they have incurred and continue to seek from the Australian people on these matters. This opposition and this shadow minister will not shirk from continuing to hold this government to account on these matters.

I will finish on this remark: one of the reasons we have such a big problem in our detention network—over 6,300 people—is the asylum freeze introduced by this government against Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers and the suspension of their claims. If the government wants to look at a discriminatory policy on immigration, this is the only one I am aware of that has been introduced into this parliament, and it was by this government.

I seek leave to table the documents.

Leave granted.

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

I was going to speak on another matter in relation to the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 but that contribution by the member for Cook has led me in a different direction.

I will start by saying first that I would be delighted if one aspect of what the member for Cook was saying was true, which is, that a country the size of Australia, through its policy on our treatment of asylum seekers, could somehow stop 46 million people from moving around the world—if we were so powerful that our policy in this one area would stop the number of refugees in the world from rising as it has in the last three or four years from 15 million to 46 million. Countries all around the world are experiencing the same surge in arrivals as we are—in fact, greater surges than we are. The US and France and Europe are receiving many more. The surge is far greater there than it is here. If the member for Cook is suggesting that those surges are actually caused by Australia’s policy, that is a very weird assertion.

The idea that Australia’s policy somehow caused the increase in violence that caused massive numbers of people to flee Sri Lanka or massive numbers to flee Afghanistan is quite absurd. If you look at the history of people arriving by boat, consider the Vietnamese, for example, where millions of people fled Vietnam, and around 800,000 are estimated to have drowned fleeing Vietnam. Every country on the way was pushing people back out to sea. They all had policies of pushing the boats back out to sea and yet the people still came because they fled circumstances of certain death. When people flee what they believe is certain death they flee to somewhere. It is really simple. As many as 1.8 million Afghanis have fled into Pakistan, 1.2 million have fled into Syria and three million have fled into Iran. Enormous numbers of people have been displaced and are fleeing what they believe is certain death. So the idea that our policy could somehow stop that is absurd. When people flee certain death they flee to somewhere. We in Australia receive by boat a very, very small number of people relative to those fleeing in the world.

When you look at the cycle of arrivals in Australia, every time there is a great outbreak of war or civil unrest around the world the numbers increase, and they increase here as well. They increased for Vietnam, they increased around the year 2000 with the Afghanistan war and they decreased significantly following the outbreak of what we thought was peace in Afghanistan, all around the world including in Australia. So to assume that somehow, as the member for Cook seems to suggest, Australia with its humane treatment of asylum seekers could actually prevent people from fleeing from certain death is quite absurd.

I want to talk too about the response we saw last week to the government’s decision to fly asylum seekers to the funerals in Sydney, because we have heard some of the comments by the member for Cook and he has not admitted at this stage that he was wrong in those statements, just that he made them on the wrong day. It was an astonishing thing for me, and it showed an extraordinary ignorance of the plight of the people that we are talking about when we are talking about asylum seekers. In Australia, we—many of us gratefully—have never experienced the kinds of life experiences that many of our migrants, particularly our refugees, have experienced. I have a lot of them in my electorate, and the stories I hear are appalling. I have a couple who were forcibly separated from their two-year-old child and do not know where she is. She is in the Congo somewhere. I have a 24-year-old boy who arrived in Australia with his six younger brothers and sisters. He has put them all through university or high school. He is now 24. He never tells me where his parents are, but I assume that somewhere along the way he lost them. They are dreadful stories.

We in Australia saw the plight of a young boy who lost his parents in that dreadful sinking on Christmas Island, and we were rightly moved. But I think what we need to understand as people is that, for every one of those stories that we are now aware of that happened on Christmas Island, there are many, many stories of circumstances and experiences that are appalling and that have occurred before the people came to Australia. That is why they fled. They fled because they had to pick up their sister’s body after she had been tortured and they had to pay for it. They fled because their entire families are dead and they are the only one left—appalling circumstances; things that we do not even want to think about. We know what happened once that young boy reached Australia and we feel for him, but surely we did not need to see him crying at a funeral in order to feel compassion for his plight. Surely we should have felt compassion before that, and surely we should feel some compassion for what people are going through around the world and play our very small part in adhering to our responsibilities under the UN convention.

We take and have been taking around 12,000 or 13,000 people a year under the humanitarian program for quite some time. This is not new. In fact, I think the first time we did it was in about 1958, when we took some refugees from Europe after the Second World War. It was about the same number, about 12,000, and we were a much, much smaller country then. We have been doing it for a long, long time and it has proven to be, I think, a very good thing for us. We have within our community through our refugee program, but also through our large migration program, contact with the world. We actually have the world in us. We have bright, shining threads that link us to cultures that are thousands of years old where people have come to the same conclusions about building better lives, becoming better people and raising families via different paths. This is a remarkable thing that we have in our country.

In my community of Parramatta, I am continually astonished at how I can be talking to a person that I have known for ages—I have not known he was of Hindu faith but have known him for ages; I have worked with him; I have ridden my bike with him—and suddenly I will say something and he will come out with something which philosophically just takes a slightly different angle to get to the same result. I said to someone the other day, ‘Oh, I was terribly weak on my bike this morning,’ and he said, ‘Failure leads to success,’ in a very typically Hindu way, and then three other people came in and said very similar things. It is this absolute delight that I have in my community when I meet people who have lived lives that have run parallel to mine.

One of the great human tragedies, in many ways, is that we can only live one life. I know that some people in my community believe that we can live more than that, but I believe we live one. Maybe, if you are lucky in that life, you can become good at one thing. Maybe you can become knowledgeable at one thing. Maybe you can learn to live within a certain cultural framework or a certain religious framework well in one lifetime. But what a great gift it is that we have in our community people who have experienced those paths from different perspectives.

We, as members of parliament, would all know that we have an opportunity that very few people in Australia have—which is to look in those windows, to be invited into the families, to the weddings, the festivals, the temples and the mosques and to share just a tiny glimpse of the wealth of the world, the philosophy, the approaches to self-improvement and the approach to life ever after. It is all here in our community and it is one of the great things that makes us strong. I wanted when I first came in here today to refer back to something I said in my first speech. I think it is quite topical here today. I said:

One of the great strengths of Parramatta is its rich cultural diversity. Our multicultural society is something to be treasured. Parramatta is home to large Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Korean and Tamil communities, among others, and these communities have added to the economic and social capital of our region. In recent years—

and this was in 2004—

I have noticed a change in the language governments use in relation to multiculturalism, a trend towards the use of the word ‘tolerance’, or ‘tolerating difference’. For me, tolerance is the bare minimum. Tolerance is the level you set for the most racist elements in our society to lift them to the barest acceptable level. For the majority of open-minded, decent Australians, a celebration of diversity is the benchmark.

That was said when I came into parliament and since that time I have had six years of this great gift of being able to celebrate with communities in a way that most people simply do not.

I know there are some people who are afraid that the world might be changing, and I suggest to them that the world that they think is coming, where we have different cultures within us, has actually been here for a long time. You can work alongside a person who might look like she is of Indian origin. She might be Hindu, she might be Buddhist or she might be Muslim, depending on which country she comes from. You probably do not know. I worked with a woman for two years before I knew she was Jewish. I worked with a man for two years before I knew he was a Muslim—he was Bosnian. I just did not know. We had good relationships, we worked well together and we socialised together, but I just did not know. Many Australians do not get to experience the way some of us do the incredible breadth and diversity of our own communities, and that is to be regretted.

I urge my community members, if they feel uncomfortable with a certain group in the community, one group or another, to walk towards them, not away from them. Around 25 per cent of Australians were born overseas. That is the same proportion we had in 1901. It has been constant for 100 years. About 45 per cent of us have one parent born overseas. That has been constant for about 100 years. It goes up and down a little bit, but essentially it is the same. We are an extraordinary example of a country that has taken people in from around the world and built a society that actually works. It has not always been easy. There were times when I was younger where I heard people say some dreadful things. For example, I heard that people in my street had become terribly worried about the Greek Australians because they painted their houses blue and concreted their yards and property prices were going to plummet as a result of those blue houses. I was working in a factory when the Vietnamese boat people first arrived and some of the people in the factory were incredibly worried that these Vietnamese refugees would take over economically because they worked too hard. We have all heard people say that our Chinese migrants’ children are getting too much tutoring. We all hear these fear things.

My Muslim community sometimes asks where the women can swim without the presence of men. In my community, it is not that much of a problem because the leagues club segregates its swimming pool. Parramatta Leagues Club takes women on one day and men on the other. I have told them all this, so a lot of the Muslim women in Parramatta go to the leagues club for their segregated swimming. Again, I suggest to anyone who is criticising the Muslim community for seeking segregation they could perhaps have a go at the Parramatta Leagues Club for doing the same thing. In fact, I know that quite a few leagues clubs do the same thing.

I would say to people who look at what is happening overseas—who look at unrest in one country or another—that we in Australia have lived through this before. We have lived through circumstances where we have had people in Australia who in their homeland might have been in conflict who live together quite peacefully here. In my African community, for example, the women in particular get together on a regular basis across national boundaries, across language groups and across religions. Even where they may have been in conflict between north and south, they are now together and learning to live together in this country in a positive way.

We in Australia will not be defined by what happens overseas. We in this country are defined by the way we treat each other—not by what happens overseas but by the way we treat each other. To pull away from a person because you fear that they might behave in a certain way is very foolish because it causes that person also to respond defensively. I think for our Muslim community the response after 2001 has caused many of them to reaffirm their approach to Islam perhaps even in a more fundamental way than they did in the homeland. I am aware of some girls who were not wearing the veil in their homeland but do now in Australia, largely as a response to that pushing away of that particular community. I again urge all my fellow Australians to have a very good and open look at some of the extraordinary wealth we have in our community and to remember when you see what is happening overseas that it does not happen here and we will be defined by our relationships with each other.

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

I am very pleased to make a contribution to the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. In the same vein as the previous two speakers, the issues I wish to raise are on migration. I spoke earlier in the House today and pointed out how we are dealing with probably the most disorganised and bad government since the Whitlam era. I am going to point out to this House today some examples of why this government is in such a mess. Not only is it in a mess financially and economically on things like the levy but it is in a mess on migration issues. As representatives, as we all are in this place, trying to represent people in our electorates and trying to do our job to help good, decent people wanting to come to this country, we are being thwarted by the dysfunctional, shambolic nature of the Labor Party’s reorganisation of their migration system. For example, since 2010 some of the changes in the ASCO codes to ANZSCO classifications mean a retrospective view of people that have been here on 457 visas, stranded here because of the retrospective changes made on issues such as eligibility of occupations, the IELTS tests on English and not taking into account the nuances of occupations et cetera. As a result we have a whole lot of people here with families, people who have sold up overseas to come here to try and make a contribution to Australia as skilled migrants, and they have been stranded because of the Labor Party’s retrospective application since they have been in government. They are hanging on by their fingernails now and they are still making a mess of their migration system.

One of the clearly and patently crazy and disturbing cases is a case in my electorate, where Vince and Teresa Borrello own a cheese company called Borrello Cheese, a very successful business set up by a couple of Italian migrants who have come here and set up a cheese business. It is a boutique cheese business and they sell bocconcinis around Perth to just about every outlet, because bocconcini is the flavour of the day along with other specialty cheeses. Vince was self-taught and he started up his cheese factory just off Thomas Road in Oakford in my electorate. He and his wife and his family are involved. The business has grown to such an extent that—how dare they?—they try to bring across a qualified and skilled cheese maker from Italy.

Mr Pelati, who they have tried to bring to Australia, is not only qualified but someone who can help and mentor those who are all self-taught in Vince’s cheese factory. That is all fine. He ticks all the boxes. If you think that this is a partisan thing, anyone on the other side, Vince is trying to get help from a former Labor member of parliament, Nick Catania, who is now the mayor of Vincent in Western Australia. Vince is throwing his hands up in the air about the application of the migration rules in this case with Mr Pelati. His qualifications are right and his English is right, not to mention the fact that he is mentoring and training those on the ground. I got contacted by Vince. Vince is an enthusiastic and energetic sort of person. He started yelling down the phone at me one day about the fact that Mr Pelati was going to be thrown out of the country. Why? He had ticked all the boxes, as I said, to do with qualifications. They had advertised throughout Australia for a cheese maker before they went to the huge expense of bringing someone and their family here. They had to pay all the transport, medical and set-up costs for him because he came on a 457 visa. Then they were told that he was going to be thrown out of the country.

When I got involved, the young case officer—I will not mention his name because he was probably only following instructions—had hit him with this letter saying, ‘Unless you deal with this, this man is going to be thrown out.’ So I went to a senior case officer, Mr Robert Hardy, who is very good. Robert drilled down very quickly to what the problem was. Everything was fine except for one thing. The problem was that the Labor Party, because of their exposure to the unions, do not like skilled workers coming here on 457 visas, so they make it as tough as they can.

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

They should join the union.

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

That is stupid. I expect better from you. We know that every Labor member of parliament had to join a union to become a member of the Labor Party. And you are saying that the only way that a skilled worker from another country can advance is if he joins a union. Do not be so stupid. This bears out why this man is in trouble: it is because of your mentality, you cretin. Fancy saying that. I cannot believe that you would go down that track.

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

While I understand the passion, the member will withdraw that comment.

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

I withdraw. At the end of the day, the issue here is that they have said that this company—for whatever reason, and I know that this is happening throughout Australia in other businesses—must pay one per cent of their 2009-10 wages, which in this case is $8,890. This is extortion at its best. They do not need to do this. But somehow the Labor Party, because of influence from the union, have said, ‘We’re going to put a hurdle in front of you, which is that you have to pay one per cent of your wages into a training levy.’

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Rishworth interjecting

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

I would appreciate a bit of support, Deputy Speaker.

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

It is a more robust chamber, but I remind people that if they want to intervene they can rise and ask the member a question. Do not yell out across the chamber.

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

You will have a quorum called on you when you are up—that is what will happen.

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

I have made the point. While it is robust, the member for Kingston should remember that if people want to ask a question they can rise and ask a question of the member. We will not yell at each other across the chamber. The member for Canning has the call.

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

Thank you, Deputy Speaker, for your support. The paying of this one per cent levy on wages is ridiculous. You will see why in a moment. Anyway, he was willing to pay this $8,890 over and above everything else that he has paid to get this cheese maker into Australia. What happened is that Mr Hardy came back to me and said, ‘We can probably get this through if he agrees to pay two per cent.’ So now we have nearly $18,000 that Vincent Borrello has got to pay. When I asked why it was two per cent, they did not have any good reason why. They just said that two per cent might get them out of jail on this issue. So who do they pay it to? Not the immigration department. No, you have to find a registered training organisation to pay your two per cent levy to—that $18,000. Begrudgingly—Vince is filthy about the fact that he has to pay this extra when he had been shown in writing that it is one per cent—he is going to pay it. His business is going well enough to pay two per cent. But he cannot believe this arbitrary hit on him. He then goes out to get a receipt from a registered training organisation after he pays them this two per cent levy. He cannot find a registered training organisation in Australia that does cheese makers. That is the problem. So Vince is still fishing around Australia trying to find a registered training organisation. They think they have found one in Melbourne that he can give the money to. Can you imagine what this registered training organisation in Melbourne is going to say? ‘Why in the hell are we getting a cheque like this from a cheese maker in Western Australia?’ Vince would reply, ‘Oh, it is because that is the extortion I have to pay to get this man into this country under the rules of the Labor Party.’ It is shambolic and it is ridiculous. At the moment he is being held to ransom by this government’s policies. This government’s policies are absolutely out of whack.

We hear a lot from the other side feigning their interest in humanitarian issues. I have a Mr Harati in my electorate, whose daughter, Ms Samira Harati, is stranded in Malaysia. It is a sad story. Mr Harati wants to go on a hunger strike out in front of my office on behalf of his daughter. Mr Harati became an enemy of the state in Iran and as a result he had to leave the country. He came here on a humanitarian visa. His daughter and her husband left Iran with him and they ended up in Malaysia, where they made an offshore application. The Haratis cannot return to Iran. She became pregnant whilst in Malaysia. Her husband absconded with their child back to Iran and left her stranded there. She cannot go back to Iran and she cannot come to Australia. She has no means of support in Malaysia. The Haratis spent much of their time and much of their money going to Malaysia to try to help their daughter. So where is the humanitarianism of this government? I have written to two ministers about the Harati case. No help—‘just get in the queue’. When they came to my office and I told them that the minister said, ‘Just get in the queue,’ Mr Harati then said to me, ‘Well, why don’t I just get on a boat. Why don’t I pay a people smuggler $20,000 and get on a boat because then I will get a visa.’ We know that, of the 10,000 people who have come to this country by boat in the last 12 months or more, all of them bar about 160 have been given a visa—160 out of 10,000 have been sent back. And here we are with Samira Harati stranded in Malaysia. Where is the humanitarianism from this government?

The migration policies of this government are absolutely skewed all over the place. I have a case of a Ms Thivanka Liyanage, a Sri Lankan resident, who is seeking a resident return visa. She was here and went to Murdoch University in Western Australia from where she graduated four years ago with a Bachelor of Commerce. She gained permanent Australian residency soon after that and remained in Australia for approximately six months before returning to Sri Lanka. Why? Because her father was involved in the civil war there. He was one of the special forces commanders. She was there to support her family through that conflict. She tried to return to Australia to re-ignite her residency and they have given her only a three-month visa—and her family is here. Talk about family reunions! It is just crazy. It is another one that has been put the minister and put on the too-hard shelf. To his credit, I had a meeting with the minister and he was very polite to me and said he would do what he could to help. But nothing has eventuated on all these cases that I am raising with you.

There are so many other issues to consider. How about Francesco, an Italian who came out here on a visa with a business that requires his specialist skills. They have changed the ASCO. He has his wife and children here—they go to school—and they want to make Australia their home. They have changed the ASCO codes so that you can no longer have restaurant managers in the codes. Where is the fairness in that for him?

Then there is Nono, a Portuguese man who is in the same position. He is trying to get support but hurdles have been put in front of him. He is a fantastic person but he will probably have to leave this country in about 12 months time because he does not fit the box of the Labor Party’s new policies on migration. I will never know why you are absolutely hell-bent on looking after the rights and the interests of those coming here unlawfully by boat but you ignore decent people who have applied properly through the right means.

I will conclude by mentioning that I caught a taxi in Perth the other day and the driver was a guy called Kenny, a black African from Zimbabwe. Kenny came out here as a person who was involved in the flour-milling industry. He had the skills. He is now actually driving a taxi, and I cannot understand why he would rather drive a taxi than be a skilled flour miller. He said that he is so frustrated because he knows so many people in Zimbabwe who have problems with the Zimbabwe regime and they are in queues—

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

Order! The debate is suspended. If he so wishes, the member will have the right to continue for his remaining time when the debate is resumed.