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

I rise today to speak on appropriation bills 3 and 4 of 2011-12. These bills support government funding commitments and variations outlined in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The total appropriations that are being sought are $3.1 billion, which includes $2.82 billion through Appropriation Bill (No. 3) across 19 portfolios and $341.1 million through Appropriation Bill (No. 4) across 13 portfolios.

These bills form part of the government's quite cynical fiscal strategy to create a budget surplus in 2012-13. These bills shine a very clear light on the fact that the government are embarking on a quite sophisticated and orchestrated attempt to manufacture, if they can, a surplus, whether it is a dollar or $1 billion, in 2012-13 for political gain. Yet in the process this government is hiding the true nature of its spending patterns—the reckless spending that has occurred and continues to occur. It is a strategy which in many ways disguises the true vulnerability that is now starting to characterise so much of this government's budgetary process and is evidenced by the fact that not one new job was created last year for the first time in 20 years. If that is not evidence that we have problems, what is?

It is a strategy that includes pushing spending outside of 2012-13 and, in several instances, bringing forward into this financial year expenditure that would typically fall in 2012-13. In other cases substantial funds are allocated for programs in 2011-12 and 2013-14, but not in 2012-13. What a coincidence! In many respects, if the 2012-13 foreshadowed surplus is consistent with the wafer-thin number, the $1.4 billion pencilled in to this MYEFO, it will be illusionary; it will be a totally manufactured surplus. Despite all of the nonsense about fiscal consolidation, this is a very big-spending government. It is now spending virtually $100 billion a year more compared to the last year of the Howard government, an increase of some 37 per cent.

You might say that there was fiscal stimulus during the global financial crisis. Let us assume that the 16 per cent increase in spending in 2008-09—the fiscal stimulus in the form of $900 cheques and the gross waste of money on school halls and pink batts, the latter featuring in the MYEFO and appearing to be never ending—was justified and essential despite the fact that the economy they inherited in 2007 was by far the best in the world. But let us assume that 16 per cent was necessary, that massive $87 billion spike was essential, you would expect the year after the spike that government spending would return to somewhere near the long-term trend. You would know, Madam Deputy Speaker, with your own household expenditure, that if you and your husband decide to put on extensions this year, you have a spike—you have a stimulus to family spending for one year. You have your household expenditure and you have the spike, and you get something for it. The next year you should probably return to your long-term spending pattern, because that reflects your income and your way of life.

But not with this government; not on your nelly. They had a long-term trend of spending. They had a spike of $87 billion and then they had another spike, greater than $87 billion, and another one. In fact, the $87 billion has now become a permanent feature of government spending. They never had any downturn in expenditure, despite the biggest spike in spending by any government in our country's history. The following year they spent more money again, and this year they are spending more money again. According to MYEFO, that $100 billion will continue to be a permanent feature of government spending. It is an increase of nearly 40 per cent in four years. Yet in that period of time inflation rates were nothing like that, just a minor fraction. And there has been a permanent 40 per cent increase in government spending. It makes a nonsense of all this talk of fiscal consolidation. Of course the rate of increase on top of that would have to be smaller than you would expect, because they have already incorporated an extra $100 billion within the body of every annual budget, and they pretend that they have some fiscal rectitude. It is just an illusion and a deception, and it needs to be fingered. This is a government that blew out spending by more than 16 per cent over two budgets and has not stopped since.

This government has, for these reasons, proved quite incapable of living within its means. It took over a budget that had absolutely no debt, and $70 billion in reserves. Sure, they had a fiscal stimulus—$87 billion—one year. But they have had the highest terms of trade in 140 years. This is a long and protracted mining boom, which we more than any other country are enjoying the benefit of. That is going on and on and on. They had no debt. They had $70 billion in the bank, and they have spent $87 billion. Yet we now see a debt of $136 billion. We have now seen the four biggest deficits in our history, a total of $167 billion. Not only that, but they have also funded a raft of things off budget—which, again, is borrowings—such as the $50 billion NBN white elephant.

Even worse is the environmental slush fund that has been created—the Bob Brown bank—and the skulduggery in the middle of the night to get the carbon tax through. What does another $10 billion here or there matter? That fund is almost identical to other funds within the current budget of this government—funds that companies can apply for to undertake renewable energy projects. This extra $10 billion is absolutely no different. People will apply, they will be assessed, they will be given money and they will seek to undertake a renewable energy project. They will do all that, and yet it is off budget. One program is on budget and the next is off budget. It is just a convenience to hide another $10 billion worth of debt and not have it on the balance sheet. It is a deception; that is all it is. It is like someone with 10 credit cards. They have debt on this one, debt on that one and debt on the other one. They have an overdraft at the bank and they have a mortgage. They are hiding funds everywhere. Lift up the mattress; there is probably something hidden away. This is a government that will pull any trick in the book to deceive and mislead. But people are not misled. Households on average have been saving 13 per cent of their disposable income over the last year. This is unprecedented saving by households. Households have a sense that something is wrong; they have a sense that there is a vulnerability. They had a sense 12 months ago that their jobs were suspect. Dick Warburton is a man who has been employed by both sides of politics to assist them with major policy projects over recent decades. He is a man of great manufacturing experience and he still has his finger on the pulse as executive chairman of Manufacturing Australia. He said today that we could expect up to 400,000 Australians to be in danger of losing their jobs this year. What a chilling warning. People smelt this 12 months ago. The average mum and dad out there smelt this; they sensed it. Yet the Treasurer said today that the economy walks tall. That was said with a sense of complacency born out of ignorance and deception. People face the prospect of another 400,000 jobs going, and not one new job was created last year. Yet the Treasurer is saying our economy walks tall and the Prime Minister says this is all just 'growing pains'. This is the ignorance or arrogance, or both, of the two people who are leading this government. No wonder people are confused. No wonder they feel a crisis of confidence. No wonder they are saving 13 per cent. Here is a government that is spending as if there is no tomorrow and not living within its means, yet we have every household living within its means. They are doing the responsible thing and taking responsibility for their lives in the areas they can influence.

We have businesses not investing. There is money on balance sheets; a lot of businesses are cashed up. So why are they not spending? It is because they have a crisis of confidence. Much of that is born out of the government's lack of direction, lack of conviction, lack of competency, lack of understanding and preoccupation with the Prime Minister's job, not other people's jobs. They see it all. They feel that the Treasurer, in particular, and the Prime Minister are both out of their depth. They are. You see it on the faces of their colleagues behind them every day in this House. They see that lack of confidence; everyone has it. In fact, from the time this Prime Minister took over, there has not been a sense in the eyes of the people behind her that she is giving them confidence in where she wants to take the economy and where it is going.

There is no story. There is no capacity to tell a story, because they have not got one. Jobs are going left, right and centre. We are in the middle of the biggest mining boom in our history. They inherited an economy which, compared to the rest of the world, was in unbelievable shape. They have wasted it all. They have wasted a mining boom. They are still wasting a mining boom. There are still pressures. There are still people waking up at night wondering how they are going to pay the bills if they lose their job. There is no peace of mind. You have oldies, grandparents, sensing the disquiet among their own children and grandchildren. You have businesses expressing warnings to their staff about the difficult times.

It is all because there is no vision, no competence, no attention and no focus. This is a government which is derelict. It is totally preoccupied with internecine disputes. There is no sense of teamwork going on. The Treasurer cannot even sit next to the foreign minister in the cabinet. This beggars belief. This is an appalling statement about this government. The Prime Minister cannot talk to the foreign minister. These are the heads of Australia's government! The relationships have totally collapsed. People sense this; they know this. It causes enormous disquiet. And what is happening? All that happens is we get abused by the Prime Minister, day in and day out, rather than her doing something constructive. There is a total preoccupation with their internal wrangles, with the Prime Minister's job and the Treasurer's job. In boardrooms throughout this country, no-one has any respect for this Treasurer. He is seen as a total lightweight. He is seen as a treasurer who is out of his depth. He is seen as a hapless treasurer. He is seen as a treasurer who is totally captive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Treasury. Whatever they say goes. They have an important view, but it is not the only view. As the Treasurer and the Prime Minister, you need to balance all points of view. You need to take everything into account, listen and have some capacity. But all we hear is class warfare, a sense of resentment and jealousy about anything to do with wealth.

Increasingly in that chamber all we hear is something I have not heard for 20 years, a growing sense that there are great divisions within our community and that there is something wrong with anyone who is creating wealth or creating jobs. It is thought that they are doing something inherently distrustful or dishonest and that they deserve to be brought down a peg or two. It is a very nasty development. It is a cultural change. It is a reversion to 40 or 50 years ago. It smacks of the old union. You can see the BLF coming up through the CFMEU, and now they are dominating this government. They are pulling the strings in this dirty culture, grubby culture, unfortunate culture associated with a government that is now starting to sow the seeds of significant class division for political capital. It is pathetic. It is dangerous. It is unnecessary. It underscores the need for an election in this country right here and now, because people are suffering. Those who are suffering are the 22 million Australians watching a pantomime played out by this Labor Party government. It has to be fixed.

This MYEFO is just another characterisation of it. We have this tricky strategy to try and pull money forward and push money back, so that in 2012-13 there is some manufactured surplus. There is some sense that everything is fine. As he said: 'Our economy walks tall; there is no vulnerability. The prices of commodities are going to keep going at 140-year highs forever. We're okay.' There is a complacency, because they do not know what to do. Nothing real is happening. What has happened to productivity? The front pages of today's papers are full of business people, people who normally do not speak out, decrying the fact that there is no productivity in this country. They are spending billions and billions, borrowing hundreds of billions, and yet there is no productivity improvement. We are not seeing any gain out of this wasteful expenditure.

Waste, waste, waste and debt and deficit and new taxes, that is what we are seeing. That is the characterisation, the legacy that this government will leave. It will leave a lack of peace of mind for Australians all over this country. It will leave businesses bewildered and going offshore. Listening in the chamber, you would think all was well, that there were opportunities and we are such a blessed country. We are in the middle of the biggest mining boom. We are in Asia and it is going to be the century of food security. It is going to be the century of opportunity for us, with education, with agricultural output and with mining. We have it all. What has happened with agriculture? The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has been stripped. This budget takes $100 million off R&D in agriculture, in the century of food security. What vision! They have no sense of what is going on out there in the bush or in Asia.

They tell us about Asia and new economies. It will be agriculture. The thing the Americans feel is most likely to cause international disputes in this century is a lack of food. We have an opportunity with millions of hectares of black soil across the north and 76 per cent of our water falling above the line from Broome through to Townsville. It all falls in three months and we capture about half a percent of it. The Greens have a veto over any development in this country. I have been all over the country with my dams committee. There has not been a dam in 30 years. People have got their heads down, because everywhere you say, 'That's a good project. You've spent thousands of dollars coming up with that thought, that proposal. You know your local area. You know the hydrology of this. You know the opportunity. Why aren't you going ahead with it?', they put their heads down and they say: 'It is the Greens. You can't get it through.' We have this enormous opportunity in the north of Australia. It just reeks of opportunity, and we are doing nothing with it.

This government is visionless. It has no strategy and no sense of where this century is going. We are sitting there in a time warp and now we are culturally going back to snarling at one another about who has money and who has not and who is ripping off the system and all the small-business people working their 20-hour days are all 'crooks' according to this government. They do not like it. They do not understand growth; they are all about redistribution. You have to grow the cake; then we can redistribute.

Real wages increased through the Howard term by 22½ per cent. Look at the Keating-Hawke years. What happened there? A negative-1.2 per cent increase in real wages over 13 years of office. Twenty-two per cent increase in real wages is money people's pockets. That is mums and dads who want to send their kids to school and go and have holidays and make a go of their lives.

This MYEFO document is just a charade. It is another piece of evidence that we can put on the table. We have a debt ceiling. Look at all the trickiness that is in these things. On the other side of the building, the minister for finance, the person responsible for this appropriation bill, is sitting up there in Senate estimates and in response to every question about the debt, she says: 'Not my responsibility, no. That is Treasury.' She is very quick, a lawyer practised at saying nothing, a lawyer practised at getting out of every proposition. This finance minister has done nothing except pour scorn over us in 85 per cent of her press releases. That is all she does.

Today, when asked about the debt again and again, she says, 'That is Treasury.' Yet her appropriation bill at the last budget sought to increase the debt ceiling—in the depths of night—to $250 billion, a quarter of a trillion dollars. That was her responsibility and now she is saying she has nothing to do with debt, as they climb towards that quarter of a trillion dollars. They will be back again asking for permission to increase it, so they can keep going with their debt binge, so they can keep creating the vulnerability and just waste what was a magnificent opportunity—the blessings this country has.

We have had deficit after deficit after deficit. All this spending that I have talked about, this wanton spending, has increased interest rates. They have been in the market and they are still in the market for $100 million a day every day. They have pushed up the price of money because of that demand, and that has meant that many small and medium-sized businesses who are trying to refinance are unable to get money at any price. Doors have closed. In Moorabbin I am on the doorstep of the biggest mid-tier manufacturing community in Australia. Really good healthy businesses that have been long-term family businesses just cannot get the finances to refinance their mortgage. Mortgages average $800,000 across that whole precinct. Yet they are closing because they cannot get the money or they are paying very high rates.

They are pushing up interest rates and that is pushing up the exchange rate. A lot of other factors affect the exchange rate, but when money is coming out of the US, when people feel some confidence about the US, immediately money starts to look for more opportunistic opportunities and it goes where the highest interest rate is. The gap between our interest rate, our cash rate and the cash rate of other developed countries has grown through the term of this government. That is because they are spending like there is no tomorrow. It is because they are in the market for $100 million every day. It is because they are competing. They put pressure on the exchange rate yet the Prime Minister comes in here in her ignorance and talks about the exchange rate being just a function of how strong we are. With 400,000 jobs being threatened this year—all these vulnerabilities.

It is because the fast money is chasing high interest rates. If the government spent less, there would be lower interest rates and the exchange rate would be down—if it was only two or three points, it would be down, and that would be a big help. But, no, they are blind to all of that; they are blind to doing anything. We have this enormous mismatch between fiscal and monetary policy.

You have people out there now confused. The government spent two weeks talking up the banks and trying to bully the banks into reducing interest rates. We have had two weeks of the Treasurer saying, 'There's room, there's room.' You have to see there is room; they are making lots of profits. There is room for the banks to bring down interest rates. He has been verballing the banks for two weeks. People believe that the government knows what it is doing. They think he was competent. They assume that the Reserve Bank is going to listen. What has happened? Interest rates have gone up, not down. Now you have families out there anxious the government really does not know what to do, so much so that the Reserve Bank does not listen to them anymore and the banks do not listen to them anymore. Interest rates are going up and they do not feel any sense of control over their situation.

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

You can bleat on over there, but the fact of the matter is that there are hundreds of thousands of people potentially losing jobs this year. Interest rates are going up. You go and pay their bills! The government is spending so much money. Why doesn't this government do something? There is a mismatch between monetary and fiscal policy. They have left all the hard yards and heavy lifting to the Reserve Bank, and they done nothing but borrow, spend and create new taxes. This is a government that needs to be ashamed of what it is doing.

On top of all this, you have a carbon tax. Can you believe it? After all the things I have talked about, I have not talked about the carbon tax yet. Here we are, with all that vulnerability, all that opportunity, and we are going to introduce a carbon tax and go it alone. I had climate change for nearly two years. I got sick of being lectured about how we had to be part of a global scheme 'because nothing else made any sense'. I got lectured endlessly, and now we are the only ones in. Here we have mountains of expenditure, hundreds of millions of dollars, to create this massive bureaucracy, to churn this money and to redistribute income. This is a government that is introducing a tax at the absolute worst time. People are confused. There is no confidence in the community or in the business sector. They scratch their heads and say: 'What the hell is this government doing? Why would they introduce a tax when this vulnerability exists? Why would they introduce a tax when manufacturing is on its knees? Why would they introduce a tax when we are trying to maximise the market share from the mining boom while we can and take every advantage?' No. Instead, the government says: 'Let's put two taxes on—not just a carbon tax but a mining tax too. Let's put a lead weight around our best player.' They are running out into the grand final—the mining boom—with a lead weight on the captain. This stupidity is profound.

I had a lot more to say here, but I think you have the gist of it. This document is another sad piece of evidence that what we need in this country is a government which will help people get ahead and help get things back on track. We need a government that will live within its means, end the waste, reduce the debt and the deficit and stop the new taxes. It is not hard. If you stop spending and if you start living within your means like every household in this country—saving on average 13 per cent of their income—you start to see some confidence grow. People would feel that there was a government that had some empathy with the problems they face and with the circumstances we face in the world, and the opportunities we face in the world. They despair at the waste. They despair at the cynicism. They despair at the focus on one person's job—the Prime Minister's—and not on every Australian's job. There is great despair about this government, a lack of confidence, and it needs to be addressed. In that sense, I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House is of the view that, in light of global economic uncertainty and existing pressures on Australian industry and jobs, the Government should not appropriate funds for measures associated with the introduction of a carbon tax to allow for the postponement of introduction of the tax until after elections have been held for the 44th Parliament and the Parliament has met.”

I rest my case.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Alex Somlyay (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment.

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

I too wish to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012. I rise in support of the appropriation bills before the House. These bills are important as they ensure funding in a number of significant areas, including, as the member for Goldstein has indicated, the clean energy future—and particularly, which he did not happen to indicate, and most importantly, the level of household assistance. I am sure that members in his electorate, as in mine, are very keen to see the development of that.

One thing my colleagues have not raised is anything associated with the global financial crisis. They are three words that seem to be relegated to history, but the fact is that the global financial crisis tested the strength of some of the largest economies around the globe. The effects are still reverberating throughout the US, Great Britain, Japan and most European states. Australia came through the global financial crisis relatively unscathed with comparatively low unemployment of 5.2 per cent, and new jobs are being created. In fact, over that period, in the vicinity of up to 700 jobs have been created alone. This did not occur by chance but through the response of the federal Labor government to stimulate the economy and generate jobs. Even the Leader of the Opposition—and regrettably he is not here—in addressing commentators in London, compared the most developed countries and said that our economic circumstances are enviable.

I know you would not get that by listening to the last speech, but we are getting on with the job. We are building better schools. We have doubled our spend on education. My electorate alone had $108 million spent on school development, which those opposite would ridicule as being just another school hall program. But let me tell you that science blocks and language laboratories are the things that are going to be important for advancing young people and equipping them with skills for the future, and that is what we were doing. We are certainly tackling the issue of the challenge of climate change, introducing for the very first time paid paternity leave, and delivering the first pension rise in 12 years. I am not sure what they were doing on the other side when they were in government but the Howard-Costello government were certainly not looking after pensioners.

I now turn to mining tax. I know this was fought tooth and nail by those on the other side. It is true that we did support and implement a minerals rent resource tax in the midst of a mining boom to spread the value of it across the whole economy—to fund tax cuts to small business, to increase superannuation from nine per cent to 12 per cent and to increase the level of spending which was neglected by the former government on roads, bridges and other vital pieces of infrastructure. We are getting on with the job. In respect of all those matters, all those responses to the global financial crisis, just look at the record. Go back to the history books of a couple of years ago and find out how many of those initiatives were supported by the other side of politics. You would not have to go too far because it is almost a big, fat zero. As you will be aware, since the last election I have been the member for Fowler. It is the most multicultural electorate in the whole country. It is also the second most disadvantaged electorate, according to the ABS. It is ranked second lowest in terms of socioeconomic disadvantage in this country. In other words, there are a number of challenges there. When I was first elected one of the publications in the area put to me: 'What are your priorities? Don't give us your party line. Don't give us a flowery speech. We just want to know your personal priorities. You're somebody who is coming into this electorate anew. We want to see what you stand for. Nominate five things you think are a priority for you personally.'

I will just take the House through what I nominated as those five things. I said to the people concerned that I am happy to be judged on those. The first is availability. I gave a commitment to make my electorate office more available. Ever since coming to the parliament, first as the member for Werriwa, I have had an open-door policy when it comes to dealing with constituents. In my move to Fowler we commissioned a number of pieces of research to find out, quite frankly, whereabouts the most people were affected and would need the assistance of a federal member. As a consequence, we moved the office into the middle of Cabramatta itself. The vast majority of Cabramatta is Vietnamese. That in itself caused me to do a number of other things, including engaging Vietnamese speakers on staff.

Not only have I had the opportunity, since moving there, to engage Vietnamese speakers; I have also employed a Chinese speaker on staff. We take very seriously our responsibility to constituents. We do not simply go through an interpretive service but try to show real service and get involved. We are not simply the conduit for problem solving but actually try to be a part of resolving problems directly on behalf of the constituents. I am very fortunate to have retained the services of a graduate who speaks Serbian, another important community in my electorate. It is important for me not only to have access to those language skills but also, as someone new to this electorate, to have a very clear understanding of traditions and culture. I am indebted to those young people. They are very hardworking. Judging by the increased numbers of people who are now presenting at my office, I am sure most of the community feel the same way.

I also continue my practice of conducting a mobile office on Saturday mornings, as do most members. That has proven to be an invaluable opportunity to get out and see people and to have my finger on the pulse of the electorate. I am very fortunate that five of the 40 people who have been selected to be appointed as People of Australia Ambassadors are from my electorate. Again, this probably reflects the fact that it is a multicultural electorate. I congratulate people such as Jenny Tew, Ricci Bartels, Carmen Lazar, Dr Tien Nguyen OAM and Samir Yousif on their appointments. These people will make a great contribution, and I intend to work very hard with them as we mutually go about our business of looking after the community and making sure that there is a real voice for positive multiculturalism, particularly in my electorate in Western Sydney.

The second issue I raised as being a priority for me personally is disability. For many years now I have had a commitment to the disabled, those who are disadvantaged and the elderly. I continue that commitment in this electorate. I find that my electorate now is over represented with people with disabilities. It is certainly not the water we drink; it is more the fact that the home prices are lower. Families who live with a child with a disability know that the cost of raising a child with a disability is very expensive. Comprises need to be made and housing is one of them. We are over represented with disabilities, particularly with autism. Within a radius of almost 25 kilometres of Liverpool CBD there is about 52 per cent of all families who live with autism in New South Wales, which is the very reason we were successful in attracting one of the six nationally funded autism learning centres in Liverpool.

Dealing with families with autism is not a matter of trying to work out whether their problem comes under the federal government, or our Constitution or somewhere else. If parents have a child with autism or with any disability my view—and it has always been my view—is that we should be working pretty hard. They have a hard enough job themselves. We do not need to be pointing them to other people and referring them to state or local governments. We should actually get in and do what we can to assist them. Most members here know that people do not read the Constitution and work out who is responsible. When you are living with a disability, you just need help, and I think that is what we should be there to do.

Last year I held a forum for people with disabilities. One of the big things that came out of that was the absolute need for a national disability insurance scheme. I am very happy that the government is progressing with that. It is going to be huge and it will make monumental progress in respect to disabilities and is something that I am personally proud of, and the House should be proud of it. It is going to make a huge difference in the lives of the families as their kids grow up and move into adulthood.

Another issue I raised as a priority was the level of employment. There are many things in my electorate that I am very proud of and multiculturalism is certainly one of them. One of the things I am far less proud of is the level of youth unemployment in the south-west of Sydney. Last year I moved a private member's motion that drew attention to the alarming level of youth unemployment rates in my electorate. The national rate of youth unemployment for persons 15 to 19 looking for full-time work is 24.2 per cent. In my electorate it is 33.5 per cent. That is certainly a major concern. Young people should have the opportunity to be at school studying or be in employment. Having that proportion of people in that age group looking for jobs presents the community with very significant problems. There are a number of things that we are doing—one of them is a job forum and we are also working very closely with the principals of the high schools in my electorate.

Another matter that I list as a personal priority is the level of domestic violence. I am alarmed at the level of violence that does occur throughout the community, but particularly when it comes to domestic violence it is something that causes me great concern. I am a White Ribbon Day ambassador. Each year on 25 November we have White Ribbon Day and are reminded of the statistics that one in three women in our country is likely to experience physical violence and one in five will experience sexual violence. As a father, as a grandfather, I find that thoroughly reprehensible. The tragic thing is that there is very strong evidence that the cycle is repetitive. Fifty per cent of young women who have grown up in an abusive household are likely to take an abuser as a partner. Sixty per cent of young men who grow up in abusive households are likely to become abusers themselves.

We need to take a very solid stand on this. Last year I engaged a young women, Zara Maxwell Smith, from the Australian National University to write a report about domestic violence in my electorate. She drew upon issues of the levels of multiculturalism, some of the issues associated with that and how we should better direct some of our funding, particularly through the migrant resource centres. We need to actually communicate to people that violence against women is completely unacceptable in this country. We should be encouraging people to report such violence but, more importantly, we should be saying to the perpetrators and potential perpetrators that this is just unacceptable in Australian culture. That leads me on to the final thing that I list as a personal priority. It probably comes as no surprise to members of the House that it is in respect of police and policing. As you know, I have had a long involvement in law enforcement, not only as the son of a police officer but through my involvement with police associations in the country for many years. I have nothing but admiration for the work that the police do in protecting our community. I know a lot of it is quite thankless, but what they do is essential. I am committed to working as closely as I can with my local area commanders in Liverpool, Fairfield, Green Valley and Cabramatta to ensure that, at least when it comes to issues of law enforcement, we do not play politics and we put the community first. Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to discuss these matters.

One final thing I would like to submit—and it probably applies to other areas—is that we should be doing all that we can in respect of law enforcement, particularly in relation to drug related crime. One of the things that are proving a very significant deterrent and moving crime on is the provision of strategically located closed-circuit television. That is an area where I would like to see government becoming more involved in assisting in those developments. (Time expired)

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

I am very pleased to rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012. In the time available to me I want to offer some observations on this government's track record of budgetary discipline and management, which is a poor one. Sadly, the poverty of its approach is all too clear in these appropriations bills, seeking as they do permission from the parliament to spend more money than had originally been proposed for the current financial year.

I want to make three points in the brief time available to me. Firstly, the bills before the House demonstrate that there has been a huge blow-out halfway through the year in expenditure by this government. That is what we see from the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Secondly, unfortunately, that is simply the continuation of a trend which has characterised the approach of the Rudd-Gillard government to financial management. We have seen consistent lack of discipline and a consistent poor approach to budgetary management, and what we are seeing in the bills before the House this afternoon is simply a continuation of that most unfortunate trend. Thirdly, against that backdrop, it really is extraordinary that Labor Party members of this House would think that there was some mileage to be gained in talking about what they persist in describing quite inaccurately as a $70 billion black hole.

Let me turn to the first point: that what we are seeing in the legislation which is before the House this afternoon is evidence of a very serious blow-out in Australia's public finances in just the six or seven months between the time that the 2011-12 budget was brought down and the time that the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook was published. We were told in May 2011 that the outcome that the government was budgeting for in the underlying cash balance would be a deficit of $22.6 billion. By December 2011, a mere seven months later, that deficit had blown out to the figure of $37.1 billion—in other words, almost $15 billion worse in a mere seven months.

What was put to the parliament, and to the people of Australia, in the budget of 2011-12 was by any standards of fiscal management underwhelming and unimpressive. This government was proposing that the 2011-12 year would see spending of $362 billion, revenue at a mere $342 billion and, as I have mentioned, an underlying cash balance deficit of $22.6 billion. But a mere seven months later we learnt that things had got materially worse. Spending was going to increase from $362 billion to $370 billion and there would be softness on the revenue side with revenue down from the originally proposed $342 billion to $336 million.

How is it possible to achieve such a remarkable deterioration in the fiscal position in such a short period of time? How can this be possible? What is it that has driven this very serious deterioration? If you look through the budget papers, you will see, sadly, in area after area, evidence of profligacy, mismanagement and spending for clearly political objectives. For example, in the area of climate and energy efficiency, we learn that an extra $1 billion of spending has been agreed to in just the six or seven months between the budget and the MYEFO. In the area of families we see an extra $1.5 billion, essentially as part of the taxation and compensation package linked with the carbon tax; indeed, it forms part of what we are told is a $14.3 billion package to help households meet increased costs under the carbon tax.

That is how it is described by this government, but seasoned observers of this government know well that you are naive in the extreme to take this government's explanations at face value. What we really have under the carbon tax arrangements, what we really have reflected in the budget deterioration which is documented in the legislation before the House this afternoon, is the use of the carbon tax package as a disguised means of offering benefits to particular groups of stakeholders in the community. This is a deeply political package which has been specifically targeted to particular groups as a means of furthering the Labor Party's political objectives.

Remarkably enough, the figures which are contained in the budget, the figures which go to make up the underlying cash balance, do not tell the full sorry story of the financial deterioration which is occurring under this government. The Rudd-Gillard government has been an enthusiastic user of accounting tricks designed to keep expenditure out of the headline number, which is generally referred to as the budget deficit—that is, the underlying cash balance. They have done that through a range of approaches which are designed to make the underlying cash balance smaller than it otherwise would be.

For example, if you look at the treatment in 2011-12 budget paper No. 2 of the $108 million Renewable Energy Venture Capital Fund, which we are told will support the development and commercialisation of renewable energy technologies by making early stage equity investments, that $108 million was included in the bottom line and in the forward estimates. That is the appropriate accounting treatment—expenditure to be incurred is included in the underlying cash balance. However, when we turn to the much larger $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, that number is not included in the budget bottom line; it is not included in the forward estimates. The rationale for that treatment by the finance minister, Senator Wong, when speaking to Senate estimates some months ago, was that this is not necessary because the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is 'undertaking investments to make a return'. The fiction inherent in that is obvious from the fact that the Renewable Energy Venture Capital Fund, which I have just described, is included in the underlying cash balance and is included in the budget bottom line. Yet the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which does just about exactly the same thing as the Renewable Energy Venture Capital Fund, is not included in the budget bottom line because the government has taken a highly optimistic, and on any objective view a heroic, interpretation of the accounting standards to reach the conclusion that the bulk of this $10 billion does not need to be included in the underlying cash balance. The reality is this: whether those numbers are included in the underlying cash balance or not, it is money that will be spent by this government. It is money that needs to be borrowed and it is money that will have to be repaid by Australian taxpayers.

This is not a one-off. This is not the only time this government has used this accounting trick—far from it. The National Broadband Network comprises $18.2 billion of spending over the four years to 2014-15. None of that is included in the underlying cash balance, again on the fiction that this is an investment and that, in some way, we are going to get a return. I say this to any taxpayer who is patiently awaiting a return of his or her money that is being thrown into this yawning, gaping chasm of waste: do not be too optimistic. Do not spend much time thinking about what you are going to do with the return on that investment, because you will almost certainly never seen any of that money again. So far, NBN Co. has racked up accumulated losses of $400 million. Yet this completely unsuccessful venture is the subject of spending of $18.2 billion, and this government has the hide to claim that it is an investment and that, therefore, the money does not need to be included in the underlying cash balance.

The range of areas in which this accounting technique has been used goes on and on. When it comes to Railtrack, for example, $1.2 billion has been invested in Railtrack on the same basis. In fact, when you add up the three ventures I have talked about—that is, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the National Broadband Network and Railtrack—over the next six years beginning in 2011-12, the federal government, the Gillard government, is planning to spend over $5 billion per year which is not included in the budget bottom line.

I have spoken about the blow-out that we have seen in expenditure by this government, and I have made the point that the true situation is even worse than the figures put before the parliament and the people of Australia in the underlying cash balance because there is an additional amount exceeding $5 billion a year being spent, using heroic accounting treatment which assumes the money is an investment because there will be some kind of return. Anybody who expects a return is, frankly, naive.

Let me turn to the second point I want to make in the time I have available. The deterioration we are seeing in the middle of this year is consistent with the hopeless and ongoing deterioration in Australia's fiscal position that has characterised every step taken by the Rudd and Gillard governments. We hear frequently that there was a global financial crisis and that that excuses all spending. There is nothing that a Labor government enjoys more than a rolled gold excuse to turn on the spending taps. There is nothing they like more than being able to say: 'Oh, well, we were going to be fiscal conservatives. Kevin Rudd did talk briefly about being a fiscal conservative, but circumstances have changed, so let's rub our hands together with glee; it's spend, spend, spend.'

Even if we were to take at face value, just for a moment, this government's claim that unusual spending was required to respond to the global financial crisis, it does not explain why spending rose in the 2008-09 year to $316 billion, up from $272 billion in the previous year—that is to say, well over $40 billion in increase. It does not explain why with that increase having reached that new baseline, justified we are told as a response to the global financial crisis and as a requirement to stimulate demand, when we got to the next year we did not return spending to normal levels. Of course, we did not. What happened under this government was that spending just exploded. The so-called peak requirement to meet the global financial crisis became, I am sorry to say, under this government the new normal, and $316 billion became $337 billion, which became $349 billion, which became $362 billion, which became $372 billion—spend, spend, spend.

This government has the hide—I say in making my third point—to claim that the opposition is in some way in fiscal trouble because of this alleged $70 billion black hole. Let me contrast that with Labor's proven record of black holes year after year—a $27 billion deficit, a $55 billion deficit, a $48 billion deficit and a $37 billion deficit. This government is not in a black hole; it is in a black universe, and it is not coming out. It just loves spending. There is a massive difference between this government's proven track record of fiscal failure and what we see on the part of the opposition, which is a forward-looking policy process in which you identify possible gaps and then set about doing something to correct them. That is the fundamental difference between our approach to fiscal policy and Labor's approach to fiscal policy: when we see gaps, we set about trying to correct them. If you doubt that, look at the proud record of the Howard-Costello government over more than a decade—surplus after surplus after surplus. The only way we will get back to surplus is to get back to a coalition government.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a great pleasure to enter a debate after the member for Bradfield, who in some parts of his speech today gives new meaning to the expression 'talking under wet cement'. We have heard a description that these guys are the 'star tracks' of political and economic policy, sailing through the political universe in search of black holes, without a clue in the world about how to fill them.

We are here to debate Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012. It is worthwhile as we engage in this debate around these important bills, an instrument of economic management, that we reflect on where we have come from, where we are and where we are going in terms of our economic management. There is one thing to be certain of: we did not land in this position that we are in through pure accident. The position I am talking about is having the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio of any country in the Western world and the lowest unemployment of any comparable country in the world. We have unemployment which has been consistently around five per cent for the last 18 months, contrasted with unemployment in Europe and the US which hovers around the low double figures.

We have heard a lot from the other side about interest rates, but what they do not say is that interest rates are lower now than at any time since they were in office. In fact, interest rates would have to go up 10 times before they reach the levels they were at when we took office in 2007. For all the hue and cry that we hear from the member for Bradfield, what you will not hear him say is that interest rates not only are lower now than they were when the Liberal-National Party left office in 2007 but would have to go up 10 times before they reached those levels. That makes an enormous difference not only to households in electorates like mine and yours, Mr Deputy Speaker Murphy, but also to the small business sector, which relies on a line of credit to meet the bills and pay for the capital that keeps its doors open and its businesses running.

It was not all easy when we took office. There were enormous challenges that we had to meet. There was a long-running deficit in infrastructure spending that we had to fill. You talk about black holes. The mob on the other side like to talk about black holes.

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

That is right—$100 million—

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

Billion.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

$100 billion in deficit in infrastructure spending around this country. We are doing our darnedest to ensure that over the next few years we backfill that deficit through road projects and rail projects. We have rebuilt well over half the national rail network. We have spent more money on urban rail than any other government since Federation. We continue our commitment to rebuild and renew our national road network. And that is before we start to talk about the investment we have put into ports and, of course, the National Broadband Network, which is popular everywhere except on the other side of the House—that is, when they are here in Canberra. When they go back to their electorates they are sending letters to the minister saying: 'Please, Minister Conroy, how soon can we get the NBN into our backyard? We think it is the best thing since sliced cheese.'

Some of the measures contained within the bills before us, which are a part of our forward-looking economic plan for the next 12 months, relate to the government's clean energy package, including transitional assistance to highly emissions-intensive coal fired power stations in the form of cash assistance in the financial year 2011-12 and a limited allocation of free permits thereafter until 2016-17. This is important because this is going to help those regions, and particularly those power facilities, to make the transition that is sorely needed in this country and by the rest of the globe. We also provide loans to emissions-intensive coal fired power stations to provide additional working capital for the purchase of future vintage carbon permits at advance auctions. On the advice of the energy security councils, loans will be made to emissions-intensive coal fired power stations for the refinancing of existing debt where finance is unable to be obtained from the market on reasonable terms. The bills also provide for the governance arrangements around the establishment of the Clean Energy Regulator.

Importantly for jobs in our mining sector, the bill will also enable the government to provide funds over six years to assist the most emissions intensive coalmines to transition to the carbon pricing. I need to say a little about this particular measure. Since the introduction of the Clean Energy Future package of bills, which I know you are a very big advocate of, Mr Deputy Speaker Murphy, we have heard all sorts of outlandish claims made by those opposite about how it was going to affect mining and in particular coalmining, and in particular coalmining in regions like mine, in the Illawarra on the South Coast of New South Wales. We saw the Leader of the Opposition don a hard hat and make a dash down a mine in the neighbouring electorate held by the member for Cunningham for a photo shoot where he could utter the words, 'This mine is going to be closed down if the clean energy future legislation is passed.' Not only do the measures within this bill support jobs and investments in the coal industry in the Illawarra, not only do they facilitate the purchase of permits, they also facilitate investment in coalmining abatement technology through the Coalmining Abatement Technology Support Package to support research, development and deployment of abatement technologies in the coal industry.

There is no surer sign that the mining industry has got a very positive outlook on the future of mining in a particular district than what they are doing around investment and what they are doing around employment. On both of these measures coalmining in the Illawarra region is going gangbusters. We have seen a recent report published by the Illawarra Regional Information Service, which publishes an excellent quarterly report on labour market and economic indicators in the Illawarra, which has shown that coalmining employment, far from following the pessimistic curve of the leader of the 'noalition', has actually increased and is expected to increase further over future quarters. It is doing that because mine operators in the Illawarra are expanding their mines. The reason they are doing that is that we have some of the finest metallurgical coal to be found anywhere on the eastern seaboard. We have got overseas investors coming into the Illawarra setting up new mines and reopening old mines that had been decommissioned, because they see a real future in this area. High-quality coking coal is exported to the powerhouses of India and China to fuel the development that is going on in the urban sector of those two countries.

There are additional measures in this bill that I would like to address because I know they have been controversial in my electorate. I would like to talk a little bit about the issue of coal seam gas. The mining and extraction of coal seam gas is an issue of great concern and controversy to areas in the northern parts of the Illawarra and the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. This is particularly of concern when we see the sudden expansion or the potential expansion of coal seam gas mining around sensitive national park areas and high-quality rural lands and the potential for coal seam gas to interfere with important aquifer and water tables.

I welcome very much the fact that within this package of bills there have been funds set aside to ensure that the Commonwealth plays its role in what is essentially a state government matter for regulation. The Commonwealth is playing its role to ensure that we have expert scientific evidence and that we know more about the impact of coal seam gas extraction on water tables, on aquifers and on the environment in which these activities are being carried out. Only with this information at hand can the residents and the landholders in regions such as mine be confident that any expansion of the coal seam gas industry is not going to be at the expense of existing land use, existing land values and at the expense of our critical aquifers and water tables.

I am pleased that within the measures of these bills we have the establishment of the Independent Expert Scientific Committee to advise on research priorities, to commission and coordinate research and to engage with relevant stakeholders on coal seam gas and large coal mines. A national partnership agreement with the states and territories will improve regulations and standards relating to coal seam gas and large coal mines. It is absolutely critical and will be welcomed by those in my electorate who have a concern about this issue.

In the time I have left I would like to say a few things in response to some of the comments that have been made by speakers from the opposition parties and a few things about the trends in economic management that we would see if they were ever to occupy the treasury bench. I would like to make some observations about the concern about the budget and a fetish with surplus. The Labor government has committed to returning the budget to surplus by 2011-12 or 2012-13 and we will do this because it is the right thing to do. We will do this because, on current economic settings, it is the right economic thing to do and it does make sense.

If you were to listen to the speakers on the benches opposite you would think that there is some inherent beauty, some inherent wisdom, some inherent virtue in governments running a surplus irrespective of what the economic conditions provide. One can only conclude from this view that they see some inherent virtue in governments continually taxing the corporations and citizens of this country more than is actually needed to meet the revenue needs of the Commonwealth now and into the future. That is the absurdity of the position that they put: that there is some inherent virtue in Commonwealth governments always running surplus budgets irrespective of the economic conditions. We know, and everybody who has studied the most basic level of economics knows, that is complete bunkum. It is the obligation and responsibility of the government in an advanced economy to ensure that when the economy is in downturn or at risk of going through a downturn that we can, through strategic and targeted missions, put more money into the economy to stimulate demand and economic activity. The way the Gillard government has done that, and the Rudd government before, is to ensure that through targeted spending measures—particularly in the area of infrastructure, and particularly in the area of education infrastructure, but also in projects like the National Broadband Network and our ports, our rail and our road projects—we are not only stimulating demand in sectors that are going through difficult times but also leaving a lasting benefit behind. There would be none of that if we were to follow the economic prescription of those opposite.

But they want to do worse than that. They are seriously proposing to reverse the legislation that has been put through the House in relation to getting a better return from the mining boom for all Australians. They are seriously proposing, instead of providing tax cuts for small businesses and other businesses throughout the country, to jack those taxes up again. They would seriously claw back or refuse to give superannuation increases to ordinary Australian workers, and they would not be spending on the necessary infrastructure in the way we were. Not only would they do that, but they seriously propose to reverse the tax cuts we are giving to ordinary Australians. We are going to be effectively ensuring that nobody earning under $18,600 a year in this country pays any tax. They are going to reverse that. They are going to reverse the pension increases. And they are going to do all of this because they have some ideological obsession or some requirement to pay back their mates. They seriously want to give a tax cut to the big mining companies and make the pensioners, the superannuants, the ordinary working people and the small businesses of this country pay for this ideological obsession. I commend the legislation to the House. (Time expired)

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These appropriation bills are a further monument to Labor's waste and mismanagement. They pick up some more of the unpaid bill for failed programs, such as the home insulation scheme and the failed asylum seeker plans, and of course some compensation for those damaged by Labor's mismanagement of the live cattle export industry.

These bills also help prepare the way to manipulate a budget surplus for 2012-13—a cynical strategy premised on pushing spending outside of the 2012-13 financial year and in several instances bringing forward funding into the 2011-12 financial year. A classic example of that funding being brought forward is in my own portfolio of infrastructure and transport: $1.2 billion worth of road funding, which is equivalent to almost the entire projected surplus, has been brought forward into the 2011-12 year, even though that will not result in any new roads being built any sooner. The money is simply being shuffled out to the states, where it will sit in their treasuries and be spent on precisely the same projects and on precisely the same time schedule as originally planned. It is simply a manipulation to try to develop an artificial surplus in 2012-13. The 2012-13 surplus of $1.4 billion has been pencilled into MYEFO and will clearly be a fraud. The government uses words like 'fiscal consolidation', but in the meantime they have been out spending money at an alarming rate. Labor is right now spending $100 billion a year more than was spent in the last year of the Howard government—an increase of some 37 per cent. Labor has presided over a spending blowout of more than 16 per cent in real terms over just two budgets. MYEFO reveals that spending under this government, as a percentage of GDP, has been markedly higher every year than in the last two years of the Howard government—and the projections are that it will stay that way at least until 2014-15.

Maybe that would not matter if so much of the money that had been spent had not been wasted. So much of the money has not been put to productive purposes. This government's reckless borrowing and spending—and borrowing again—has placed this nation in a vulnerable position. Believe it or not, despite the best terms of trade in 140 years, Australia's structural budget deficit is more than twice that of Germany and almost double that of Italy. Any superficial surplus this government manages to cobble together will not disguise this reality. The Rudd-Gillard governments have been totally incapable of living within their means. Had they not panicked and spent $87 billion on stimulus, they could have had a budget surplus right now. They are spending a further $10 billion on stimulus this financial year in response to a global financial downturn four years ago. The government have taken a $20 billion inherited surplus and delivered the four biggest budget deficits in Australia's history, with a cumulative total of $167 billion. Is it any wonder that the Treasurer was labelled the world's greatest Treasurer when he is certainly the world's greatest spender? He has delivered no sound economic management and has no credible strategy for the future.

Labor's last 10 budgets have been in deficit. The last time they delivered a surplus was in 1989-90. MYEFO confirmed that, in the space of just 12 months, Labor's estimated deficit for 2011-12 blew out from $12 billion to $23 billion and then to $37 billion. And Labor want a debate on the economy! You would think they would have some record or some performance to defend. In reality, any debate on the economy will demonstrate that this government are incapable of managing our nation's economy.

On the other hand, this side of the House delivered 10 surpluses from 12 budgets, and that was after inheriting an $11 billion deficit and a $96 billion debt from Labor's last stint in office. We have seen the $70 billion in net assets left by the coalition government turned into $133 billion in net debt. There is no doubt that interest rates are higher today than they would be if this government's excessive spending and borrowing had been kept under control. The fact that the government are out borrowing in the marketplace is putting substantial upward pressure on interest rates, and higher interest rates increase our exchange rate. That does not seem to me to be a very logical policy for any sensible government to follow.

These bills remind us of the enormous amount of waste and mismanagement we have seen under this government. Appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 are a continuation of taxpayer bailouts from failed Labor policy—for instance, the home insulation program. In these bills, there is another $106 million to continue roof inspections and help fix the damage caused by the pink batts debacle—a $2.4 billion program that was full of waste and mismanagement. Over 200 house fires have been linked to the program and there is still a threat that a quarter of a million dodgy roofs might spontaneously combust at some time in the future. This program resulted in not only four deaths but an insulation industry that is in tatters with its reputation ruined. Insulation manufacturing plants have closed and hundreds are out of work—an example of disgraceful management.

Also in these bills are two allocations for support of the Tasmanian forestry industry workers—people put out of work by this government's mismanagement of that industry at a time when Tasmania's legislative councillors are saying, 'Enough is enough.' They are sick of deals with Bob Brown that destroy Tasmanian jobs and destroy the Tasmanian economy. This government also have blood on their hands in that regard because they have been a partner to many of these packages designed to close down productive industry in Tasmania.

There is another $330 million to help fund Labor's failed asylum seeker policies. Their border protection policies have failed and the smugglers are running a closing down sale because they know that this government's life is limited and that, after that, free entry into Australia will come to a halt. There is another $330 million in these bills and there will be much more to come, as Labor have no idea how to resolve the issue.

There is $24 million to provide assistance to support businesses affected by the live cattle ban—compensation for the people who were affected by policy mismanagement on a grand scale. Labor have damaged the Northern Australian economy with this attack on its second-biggest industry. They have insulted Indonesia and damaged Australia's reputation as a reliable supplier. Indonesia has responded by slashing the live animal quota and also given the lie to those who say that, if we do not export live animals to countries like Indonesia, they will buy more meat. The reality is that they have also reduced their meat purchases from Australia. This has been mismanaged in a way which will leave lasting damage. The amount of compensation that is being provided will not be adequate to make up for the damage that is being done. It is just another illustration of policy mismanaged.

I notice there is $10 million to strengthen incentives for parents to have their children immunised. Again, Labor's policies had allowed immunisation levels in this country to collapse. So now they are introducing another spending program to try to recover the damage that was done.

In reality, the largest component of the appropriations is for measures supporting the introduction of a carbon tax in July—$1.3 billion to support a clean energy future for Australia including cash payments to coal fired power stations, which are described as 'to assist the transition' to a carbon price. It is to close down power stations so that jobs will be lost and Australia's low-cost electricity industry destroyed. There is $222 million for the coal sector jobs package, compensation for jobs lost as a result of the carbon tax on our mining industry. There is $36 million to facilitate payments to assist households in meeting additional costs associated with the carbon tax. You would not need the compensation if you did not have the tax. The tax delivers pain and hardship to families and even this amount of compensation will be inadequate for the long-lasting impact on family budgets.

Then there is the $37 million to establish a clean energy regulator and a further $30 million for capital funding for the extra bureaucracy, a bureaucracy you have simply would not need if you did not have the tax that the Australian people do not want. Then there is the $9 million to assist industry transition to a low-carbon economy. Transition to a low-carbon economy means 'close down' and many manufacturing industries will simply close and jobs will be lost, and Labor just dismisses all this as 'growing pains' and chucks $9 million of petty change to them as some kind of a compensation package. There is $6 million to inform the business community about the impact of the carbon tax, a tax they do not want to be informed about because they do not want the tax.

This is not the right time for a carbon tax. It is the worst possible time with our economy in the state that it is in to inflict self-harm like this. It confirms that the government has no idea how to manage the economy. At a time when the government should be looking to back our strengths to help us get through these difficult times, they are undermining them. Our advantage was low-cost electricity, but we are going to close down our power stations. Our advantage was to have an educated and productive workforce, but Fair Work and the other policies of this government have turned us into a high-cost, low-productivity nation according to today's Financial Review. And of course our abundant natural resources, another natural advantage, are now to be subjected to a mining super tax, fuel tax, carbon tax and a whole range of other taxes to make them less competitive.

Labor is also trying to deceive the public into believing that there are going to be tax cuts for small business. That is simply not true. Most small businesses will not get these tax cuts, and around 400,000, in fact, face major tax increases. The government is proposing to cut the company tax rate, but two-thirds of small businesses are not companies so they get no benefits from Labor's proposed tax cuts. Four hundred thousand of Australia's smallest businesses are going to be affected by the abolition of the entrepreneurs' tax offset. These are the smallest businesses in Australia, and yet Labor is taking away from them the tax benefit that they have had. Labor have already introduced at least 20 new taxes, and these new measures will do nothing whatever to ease the pain or to take away from small business the high taxation burden that Labor has placed upon them. Let me get back finally to the point that I made early in my remarks, which was that Labor is seeking to manipulate payments so that they can artificially develop a budget surplus for 2012-12. Let me cite a few examples. Labor's energy security and transformation spending will be just over $1 billion in 2011-12—that is this year. It will also be $1 billion in 2013-14. But in 2012-13, the middle year, it will only be $1 million. So they will spend $1 billion either side and $1 million in the middle—a deliberate attempt to manipulate the budget bottom line.

Labor's Coal Sector Jobs Package provides $220 million this financial year, zero in 2012-12 and in the year after it is back to $230 million. They are bringing forward $2 billion in revenue from advanced carbon tax permit sales to boost the revenue side in 2012-13. But they are making the compensation payments for the carbon tax in 2011-12, before the tax even starts—a multimillion dollar falsification of the true budget situation in 2012-13. They are not spending money in the so-called surplus year but in the two years on either side. When it comes to the critical year, they manipulate the figures to create an illusion of a surplus—and the list goes on.

At least on this occasion they are not trying to bury a proposal to raise the Commonwealth debt ceiling beyond $250 billion. But with gross debt at $224 billion as of last Friday, there is a very real prospect that the government will again bust its limit and come back to the parliament to deal with this issue. Is it any wonder that Labor ministers get so touchy when debt is mentioned? By Australian standards, what we have now is without precedent. These bills prove that Labor cannot be trusted with money, let alone with the nation's purse strings. We need better managers and we need them soon.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first week of the parliament has made it plain that the Liberal opposition is clueless on the key economic questions confronting Australia. The first giveaway was their reluctance to talk about the economy in question time. They wanted to talk about the events of Australia Day or the Fair Work Australia investigation into my namesake, the member for Dobell. They did not want to talk about the economy. That is not surprising. Inflation is now lower than Labor inherited from the Liberal government. Unemployment is now around five per cent. The average during the Howard years was 6.4 per cent. I heard the Leader of the Nationals criticising the stimulus spending. If we had not implemented the stimulus measures that we did during the global financial crisis—measures opposed by the opposition—unemployment today would be 200,000 higher than it is now. We would have unemployment and social problems of European proportions. Interest rates are lower than they were under the Liberal government. A family with a $300,000 home loan is paying $3,000 a year less in interest payments than it was at the time of the change government.

Furthermore, when the opposition is asked about the big economic policy questions facing Australia today they are all over the place. On the issue of whether and when and how they would balance the budget, they have as many positions as they have economic spokespersons. The poor old voter does not have a clue about what their budget strategy might be. On the question of support for manufacturing industry, they have said that they will take $500 million out of the support that government provides to the car industry. But this policy is supported by some frontbenchers and opposed by others and is apparently under review. With apologies to Jack Nicholson, they want an election but they are not ready for an election.

Given this background, people ask why the government is behind in the polls. Part of the problem is that we are not using the right performance indicators. Two of the key performance indicators that we use are, firstly, how Australia compares with other countries and, secondly, economic growth. It is true that Australia's economy is substantially outperforming other OECD countries and that people in other countries would love to be in our shoes. But the problem with comparing ourselves with other countries is that it is not really how Australians experience life. The way in which people experience life is much more to compare things with how they used to be. Are we better off or worse off than we used to be? Is it easier to get a job? Do we have to work harder or longer? Is it harder to make ends meet? Viewed from that perspective, the picture is much murkier and it also explains why both major parties, who have between us been in government for Australia's entire post war history, have lost significant public support. I believe people notice not only immediate changes in their circumstances and life chances and the world around them but also long-term changes. It is striking for those of us who are old enough to remember that the Whitlam government was tossed out of office unceremoniously on the grounds that it was a poor economic manager, yet its economic figures look great by modern yardsticks—an average of 3.3 per cent unemployment compared with an average five per cent unemployment under the present government and 6.4 per cent under the Howard Liberal government. National savings as a percentage of GDP were 14 per cent and the household savings ratio was 18.9 per cent, which declined to six per cent and 2.2 per cent under the Howard government, now lifted somewhat to 6.7 per cent and 8.4 per cent but still well below the Whitlam years. In the Whitlam years, real wages increased an average of 4.5 per cent per annum. In the Howard years, they were 1.9 per cent per annum. They are now increasing by 0.1 per cent per annum.

The current account deficit increased from 0.7 per cent of GDP under Whitlam to 4.6 per cent of GDP in the Howard years. It has reduced to 3.9 per cent during Labor's term. Net foreign debt has risen sharply from 2.2 per cent of GDP during the Whitlam years to be averaging 51.9 per cent now. Taxes are higher now than they were under Gough Whitlam and housing affordability has deteriorated. So, when people think about how they are going and compare it with the way things used to be, often they are not happy and overseas comparisons will only take us so far.

Then there is our obsession with economic growth using GDP as a performance indicator. Using economic growth as a performance indicator sucks us into a number of traps, most notably inevitably luring us into policies to promote population growth. It is a quick and easy way to boost the GDP number. Of course, it is dodgy. If more people come and live in your street, an economist will do the sums and say your street is wealthier. However, it does not make you any better off. Indeed, population growth makes people's lives harder. There is more competition for jobs, more competition for housing, more competition for space on the roads and a spot on the bus et cetera. It brings with it rising cost of living, more people out of work, traffic congestion, declining housing affordability and environmental damage.

Joseph Stiglitz and his fellow Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen said in 2009 that the shortcomings of GDP as a measurement were one of the causes of the global financial crisis. The deficiencies helped portray the US economy and the global economy as being in better shape than they actually were before the credit crisis hit. Stiglitz said:

In a performance oriented society, what you measure affects what you do. If you have the wrong measures, you can wind up doing the wrong thing.

Stiglitz said a key problem was that non-existent profits were factored into GDP calculations. For example, 41 per cent of all corporate profits in 2007 were generated in the financial sector and tied to debt. In other words, the gains were 'borrowed from the future'.

The massive subprime related losses that financial institutions booked in 2008 wiped out not only the profits from 2007 but also those from the preceding five years. Stiglitz said, 'They were not really profits, but we recorded them as fantastic years.' Furthermore, during the bubble based run-up to the economic crisis, prices of output or capital were much higher than they should have been. They were 30 per cent or more higher in the case of real estate. So the value of all goods and services being used to calculate the GDP 'overestimated output', Stiglitz said.

GDP does not take into account anything where money is not involved. Accordingly, it does not say anything about the contribution made by households or community volunteers. This leads to transparent anomalies. If we paid our neighbours to do our housework and they paid us to do theirs, the GDP would boom and politicians and economists would be delighted. It is hard to see, however, precisely how we would all be better off under such an arrangement. More seriously, a whole realm of essential work caring for our children and caring for our older people goes uncounted. But just because this work does not have a dollar value does not mean it has no value at all. On the contrary, it is and always has been an essential part of the richness of our society. Take out the volunteer work, the community work, the work we do maintaining our houses and our society would soon fall over. Moreover, it can hardly be right that work such as child care, or the housekeeping in the earlier example, has value if money changes hands and no value if it does not. So, as a celebrated article on this topic way back in 1995 pointed out, GDP rises by cannibalising the family and community realms:

Parenting becomes child care, visits on the porch become psychiatry and VCRs, the watchful eyes of neighbours become alarm systems and police officers, the kitchen table becomes McDonalds—up and down the line, the things people used to do for and with one another turn into things they have to buy.

The GDP compounds the sin by adding in the expense which arises from neglecting the non-market realm, such as the cost of prisons, social work, psychological counselling and drug abuse.

Then there is the question of the environment. In a GDP based accounting system, the environment is treated as having no value, or as capable of indefinite renewal. This runs counter to the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and, indeed, violates basic accounting principles by portraying the depletion of natural capital as current income rather than as the depreciation of an asset. As the former World Bank economist Herman Daly puts it, 'The current national accounting system treats the earth as a business in liquidation.' If you go back to the 1992 report of the Bush Administration's Council on Environmental Quality, it made the same point:

Accounting systems used to estimate GDP do not reflect depletion or degradation of the natural resources used to produce goods and services.

Not only does depleting natural resources show up as a gain rather than a loss; activity which generates pollution adds still further to the GDP because of the cost of clean-up. So pollution gets counted twice as a benefit to the economy. Oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez disaster and the like lead to an increase in GDP. I believe we should ditch GDP as a key performance indicator. We certainly need to continue to have measures of economic performance, but we need to give equal billing to environmental indicators, health indicators, education indicators and social justice indicators.

In relation to economic performance, we should treat GDP and economic growth as a by-product, not as an objective. The important economic indicators are employment, inflation, interest rates and a balanced budget. These things really do matter. We want full employment, or as close to it as we can possibly get. We want low inflation, keeping prices as stable as we possibly can. We want low interest rates; we do not want people in debt and going broke. And we want balanced budgets; we do not want countries in debt and going broke. Full employment, low inflation, low interest rates and balanced budgets—these are the important economic indicators.

There are, of course, many possible different environmental indicators of performance, but I think that three need special attention. The first is stopping the decline in numbers of birds, plants and animals, and the habitat destruction which is the biggest driver of this. The second is cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, preferably globally by 60 per cent over the next 40 years to head off dangerous climate change. And, because of the numerous adverse environmental impact of population growth, the third important indicator is how countries are going in stabilising their populations. We need health indicators, like life expectancy and how our rates of obesity and diabetes are moving. We need education indicators, such as English literacy standards and post-secondary education outcomes. And we need social justice indicators. What is happening to the gap between rich and poor? What about fairness in the workplace? How are we treating our students, our older people, people with a disability and our Indigenous people? These are the things that really matter. These are the things that we should be putting real effort into measuring and even more effort into achieving. If we adopted these indicators, it would become blindingly obvious that our migration level is too high and, in particular, that our skilled migration level is too high. It strikes at the heart of our ability to deliver these indicators.

There has been a really interesting debate around the Labor Party in recent times about the unemployment benefit. Some people say the unemployment benefit, or Newstart allowance, is too low, that it is a recipe for real hardship and that we should lift it. Others say that we cannot afford to do that and that in any event the solution to disadvantage is not to increase the benefit but to get people a job. Some say there is no 'magic bullet' to reduce unemployment and others say that five per cent unemployment is pretty much full employment and that we are actually short of workers. First of all, I emphatically disagree with the latter view. In addition to the 630,000 unemployed we have over 800,000 people on disability support payments, some of whom, with proper training and incentives, could rejoin the workforce. In Broadmeadows, next to my electorate, there is 13 per cent unemployment. In Preston, a suburb also neighbouring my electorate, the local newspaper reported that an engineer from Colombia, who came to Australia as a skilled migrant, was working as a cleaner after applying 17 times in four months for engineering work without getting so much as an interview. We are not short of workers and potential workers. I do not agree with those who are pessimistic and say there is no magic bullet. When we had a lower rate of unemployment in the 1970s, we had much lower net overseas migration. In 1977 it was 58,000; in 1978 it was 63,000; and in 1979 it was 55,000. By 2009 it was over five times as high, nearly 300,000. If we return to a net migration level of 70,000, it would open up opportunities for people who are presently locked out.

I strongly agree with the Prime Minister's support for the manufacturing industry and for the car industry. I strongly agree with her agenda of increased workforce participation and of building research, development and skills, but I think the high migration load—high skilled migration, high subclass 457 visas and high overseas student numbers—completely undermines this worthy and important agenda.

We need to use performance indicators that will help us to focus in on groups who are entitled to our support: workers, students, pensioners, small business, those concerned about the environment and those for whom there is clearly scope to lift our support.

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to talk on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012, I was reminded of the fact that the total additional appropriation being sought is a little over $3.1 billion. The other interesting element to this was the re-appropriation that is occurring between a number of agencies. I am a firm believer in small government with Australia's legislators creating an environment that allows for small business to grow and for its people to take more responsibility for their own decisions. Too much interference from big government confuses the commercial sector and creates an atmosphere where people increasingly rely on guidelines for where to live, how to shop and even how to think. An example of this is that the Gillard-Greens government have introduced nearly 20 new taxes and the multiple layers of red tape that our families and small businesses and the manufacturing sector have been facing since 2008.

I propose direct investment into critical projects, less bureaucracy and reducing duplication of projects, building on the purpose of Federation, where the Commonwealth has a lesser role in managing the states and territories than it does now. That is why I am calling on the government to fund the following projects and initiatives within Hasluck that help provide the conditions for sustainable growth not only in Hasluck but, more importantly, in Western Australia. At the heart of these projects is laying down the infrastructure for growth to occur.

An important area that needs federal funding is the Nicholson Road-Garden Street intersection. This is a massive issue for the people in the south of Hasluck. Southern River, Gosnells, Thornlie and Huntingdale are the growth areas of the south-east. In these areas, the number of new housing estates over the past several years has been escalating and commercial premises have opened as a result. Unfortunately, the transport infrastructure has not kept pace with this growth. This is not news to the Labor government. They have known about this issue for several years. What needs to happen here is an injection of federal funding to create a rail grade separation and additional lanes to be added to the current road structure.

Let me acknowledge the WA member for Southern River, Peter Abetz MLA, who has been campaigning for these upgrades since 2008. Since my election to Hasluck, I have joined Mr Abetz in his fight and we will advocate at the state and federal level for this issue to be progressed. I would also like to acknowledge the Premier, Mr Colin Barnett, and the transport minister, Troy Buswell, who have injected $500,000 into planning works in the cities of Canning and Gosnells, which also committed three quarters of a million dollars into the planning phase. However, the councillors of the city of Canning are holding up the work, and I call on the Mayor of Canning to ensure that work is started to support this critical piece of local infrastructure. I also call on the Gillard Labor government to fund the completion of this project. In addition, the Berkshire Road-Roe Highway intersection in High Wycombe is equally important. A recent truck rollover and lane closures highlighted the urgency of this upgrade, and a substantial injection of federal funds in concert with state funds will allow this to occur. It is something that I have been tirelessly working for behind the scenes since my election. The WA government certainly has a role to play in this, as does Main Roads, and I have met with all parties several times to try and bring the issue to the front of the planning queue.

The mining boom in WA offers both reward for effort and opportunity to workers, but also places a strain on existing infrastructure. Heavy haulage vehicles that come from Hazelmere, Gosnells, Forrestfield, Maddington and Kewdale and head north on the Roe Highway carrying freight, heavy mining equipment, housing and specialised units put pressure on existing road infrastructure. I am constantly approached by businesses, families and individual residents about this issue.

I want to emphasise the fact that Western Australia is responsible for producing a disproportionate amount of Australia's wealth but gets little in return from the government. Instead, Western Australia's taxes are used to support the south-eastern region of Australia and WA receives little in return. This puts incredible pressure on the state government to maintain existing government services, provide the infrastructure required for Western Australia and deliver a better way of life for all Western Australians. I am not proposing cost shifting but am arguing that, where there are successful industries, Commonwealth governments have a responsibility to provide a commitment to the development of infrastructure and ensure that commercial opportunities are realised and supported. In developing the economic base of any country it is important that Commonwealth governments of all persuasions focus on the fostering of economic opportunities that will benefit Australia and position us as a strong trade nation within the global economy. Governments of the past have been bold enough to invest in Australia's major infrastructure needs such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the Ord River Dam and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I challenge the current Gillard government to have the gumption to support the development of the northern regions of Australia rather than hinder through their short-sighted policies.

I want to turn to Midland and in particular the extension of Lloyd Street in Midland. This passes through the residential and commercial precincts on Morrison Road and ends at Clayton Street just short of the Hazelmere industrial area. This creates challenges for local industry and businesses. Obviously federal funds will be required to make this a reality and lay the foundations for further growth in the Midland-Hazelmere region. This issue is well known to both the state and City of Swan, who have worked together to plan the grade separation of the heavily used freight rail line and the road, allowing easier access for emergency vehicles to the future Midland Health Campus. Let me congratulate Alyssa Hayden, a member of the Legislative Council, and the CEO of the Swan Chamber of Commerce, Mrs Sandra Wallis, for their continued advocacy on this and on many other issues of importance through the City of Swan.

At the other end of the electorate pensioners and young families in Gosnells forgo a doctor's appointment due to waiting lists, the expense and the lack of bulk-billing. If you think that this is over-reacting, I have direct quotes from three people in Gosnells who I spoke to when doorknocking. One said:

I can no longer afford to go to the doctor because I can't get in to see one that bulk bills.

Then there was a quote from a young mum on Corfield Street:

If I need medical advice I speak to my chemist.

The next quote is the most damning of all and does not come from someone in a developing nation but from a pensioner in Gosnells, just 30 minutes from the Perth CBD:

I can't afford to see my doctor when I need a new script for my medication, that's why I ration my medicine or take it every second day.

This is disgraceful and highlights the need for better access to primary health care in Gosnells. The City of Gosnells recognises this increasing issue and is fully supportive of every effort to improve health services in the area. There are good GPs and facilities in Gosnells, but not enough to cater for the booming population of new Australians that increasingly call Gosnells home, and there are certainly not enough GPs that bulk-bill. There are over 90 different language groups in Gosnells, which brings additional demands to the local area. Prime Minister, funding is need to give battling families in my electorate better access to affordable primary healthcare services.

Still inside the City of Gosnells, the Richard Rushton Community Centre is in desperate need of refurbishment or replacement. It is currently used by several community groups, the local primary school and private citizens, but years of heavy use have taken their toll on the building. The Richard Rushton Community Centre is rapidly deteriorating and this could result in its decommissioning. This would be a blow to the local community of Gosnells and it is critical that it be repaired. The City of Gosnells has this on its 10-year plan but cannot afford to repair it at the present due to the extreme load it is bearing with the rapid growth in the area. Ask the teachers, students and parents at Wirrabirra Primary School how important this facility is to their community and what it would mean to them if it were forced to close. A relatively small injection of funds from the government would have a major positive impact on the families of Gosnells and the surrounding areas of Thornlie and Huntingdale. I am sure there are hundreds of similar facilities across the country in desperate need of an upgrade, and it is hard to imagine how much better the social fabric of the country would be if federal money were spent wisely on projects such as this.

A key area in my electorate that needs attention is disability services and cutting the red tape for people accessing Centrelink. For the families of people with disabilities, life is hard enough without putting further obstacles in the way. One of the first things I did when I was elected was to initiate Hasluck's Disability Advisory Group, where stakeholders and families in the electorate meet with me regularly to discuss the issues of importance around disability. A major issue that needs urgent federal attention is the endless red tape that faces people living with and caring for someone with permanent disability. The biggest frustration of families who have a member with a permanent disability is the requirement to fill out multiple forms on an annual basis to prove their disability, even though it has not and will not change. This requirement, if not followed, can result in ineligibility for benefits from the government. That is not only discriminatory but degrading and embarrassing for the carer and the person with a disability to have to front up every year and prove their disability to receive their benefit. This highlights the inefficiency of the excessive red tape requirements, and I call on this government to invest in cutting red tape for people living with permanent disability.

One resident approached me in Forestfield shopping centre. She is incapacitated and relies on wheelchair mobility every waking hour of her life. It was clear from talking to her for a moment that her disability is severe and permanent. But she is required to attend a meeting every year to prove this. She expressed her absolute frustration at the annual ritual. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the coalition to cut the level of red tape for people with a permanent disability, and I call on the federal government to spend more time solving this issue for people in my electorate and across Australia.

The Gillard government proudly promotes the NBN as the silver bullet solution to the internet problems faced by everyday Australians. I notice that in the appropriation bills there is an increase in funding, and supporting broadband and better access to better services is of critical importance to the people of Hasluck and, in particular, to those in the Southern River area in the south-east region of Perth. I have received numerous calls, letters and emails from residents in the communities of Southern River, Huntingdale, Martin, Kalamunda and Gooseberry Hill concerning their inability to access broadband internet services. Many residents in Hasluck still do not have access to dial-up internet. When these residents have phoned Telstra to inquire or complain, many are told they will have to wait up to seven years before they will get faster broadband services due to the protracted rollout of the NBN. Seven years—longer than the Second World War but probably shorter than the time it has taken and will take for the Craig Thomson investigation to be finalised. How is small business supposed to flourish in the digital age when many still resort to using dial-up internet, a technology that was outdated for many a decade ago? Once again, the state member for Southern River, Mr Peter Abetz MLA, has been very vocal on this issue, and I join his efforts to improve the situation and call on the federal government to make this rollout in Hasluck a greater priority for the NBN Co. I cannot accept that in 2012 people in large parts of my electorate are living with this outdated technology. The issues I have raised today are not exhaustive of what needs urgent federal attention and funding in my electorate, but they provide a snapshot of what is going on and the neglect that areas of Western Australia face from the east-coast-centric Gillard-Greens alliance.

I call on the Prime Minister to urgently make funds available for these upgrades and projects in my electorate of Hasluck and give greater attention to the needs of all Western Australians. I think that within the appropriation of $3.1 billion, and certainly with underspends within Commonwealth budgets and realignment of funding within the budgetary processes, attention should be given to the needs of those battling families we all talk about within this chamber and within the main chamber.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I rise today to speak on these appropriation bills—important legislation to support the reforms that this government is implementing. The Gillard government's economic reforms take place in a context in which the performance of Australia's economy among the best in the world. Jorg Decressin of the IMF said last month:

There is no advanced economy—or maybe there are one or two—that is as well placed as Australia in order to combat a deeper slow down, were such a slowdown to materialise, and that's because you still have room to cut interest rates if that was necessary and you also have a very strong fiscal position.

Anoop Singh of the IMF said, on 2 February 2012, that 'despite the global slowdown, Australia is facing good times'. The IMF's article IV analysis of Australia in October 2011 described our performance since the onset of the global financial crisis as enviable.

Australia's fiscal position is no accident. It is the result of a timely, targeted and temporary response to the global financial downturn—a response that is very different from what those opposite would have put in place. Those opposite have been very clear over recent weeks that they would not have allowed the Commonwealth budget to go into deficit when the global financial downturn hit.

So we are talking about two very different perspectives. Ours is that it was appropriate to take on a small debt load. Less than 10 per cent is where Australia's debt will peak—about the amount a typical household would take on to buy a small car, for example. But those opposite would not have taken on that debt. Those opposite are of the firm view that they would not have allowed the Commonwealth budget to go into deficit. That would have meant that as the revenues fell—and let us remember that the main reason for the Commonwealth debt is revenue downgrades, not spending increases—those opposite would have cut government spending. While our fiscal stimulus saved a couple of hundred thousand jobs and tens of thousands of small businesses, those opposite not only would have failed to put a stimulus in place but also would have instituted cuts. We have a precedent for that. It is what Herbert Hoover did in the teeth of the Great Depression. It is what caused the Great Depression to take a decade rather than a couple of years. And that is the economic recipe of those opposite.

Those opposite continue to maintain their policy of economic vandalism. They oppose a carbon price and suggest again a policy of direct action, a policy that finds no support among a single credible economist in Australia. Their policy of direct action will amount to a new tax—$1,300 a household—that goes straight for polluters. Under our scheme, nine out of 10 families will get assistance; under theirs there will be no assistance for households. Theirs is of course a non-market-based scheme, one of picking winners and in which there are no incentives for innovation. Ours is a market based scheme, because that is what the experts tell us is going to be the most effective and efficient way of reducing Australia's carbon pollution. It will achieve the targets, cutting carbon pollution by five per cent by 2020 and achieving an 80 per cent cut by 2050. Those opposite have an expensive and inefficient scheme, with no idea of what they will do past 2020.

At the same time, we on this side of the House are continuing to invest in the productivity-boosting reforms that are essential for Australia's future prosperity. Productivity is an ugly word, but ultimately that is what underlines increases in living standards. It is why Australian's real living standards have more than doubled since I was born, and I hope will more than double again in the generation to come. Those productivity-enhancing investments are things like more education and higher quality education. Our investments in schools, backed by the transparency of the My School website, My School 2.0, now opposed by those opposite, will ensure that Australian kids learn more in every year of school.

We are building trades training centres, which will ensure that when children are at high school, looking and casting around and thinking about maybe taking on a trade, they can dip their toe in the water. They can engage in trades training within the comfort of the school environment. We are investing also in universities. More Australians are attending university this year than ever in the history of this great nation. We are doing that because the one certainty of the labour market of the future is that is going to be different from the labour market of today. The right investments in productivity are investments in the human capital of future generations. They are investments that ensure that young Australians have the skills to adapt to a changing labour market. This is recognised by the IMF article IV analysis of Australia. They have recognised Labor's investment in skills and participation.

At the same time we are investing in infrastructure. We have doubled the roads budget and increased tenfold the rail budget. We have put more into urban public transport than all the other federal governments since Federation put together. We are building a National Broadband Network. I noticed the member for Hasluck has one complaint about the National Broadband Network, and that is because it is not happening fast enough. I understand that objection. That is an objection that I hear in my mobile offices and community forums. My constituents in the electorate of Fraser want the NBN. I do not blame them for wanting it faster. But it is pretty rich for those opposite to walk in here with their string and tin cans alternative to the NBN, suggesting that the Labor government is somehow to blame for not bringing on the NBN fast enough.

In schools, we have invested in the Building the Education Revolution program. It is a program which is not just about providing better school halls—although they are sometimes needed—but is about providing better classrooms too. Amaroo Primary School, in my electorate of Fraser, now has classrooms with dividers that can be opened up between them that allow teachers to team teach together. You can have a teacher who is great at literacy paired with a teacher who is great at numeracy. They can learn from one another. I have seen a new school hall in Black Mountain Special School in my electorate. It now has ramps that lead up to the stage that allow children who are in wheelchairs to go up on the stage and receive their awards in the same place as students who are not in wheelchairs.

In speaking to the appropriations legislation, I do want to rebut some suggestions that have been made by the member for Goldstein in this parliament and which have been announced over recent weeks. The member for Goldstein suggested that government accruing very low net debt—as I have mentioned, it will peak at less than 10 per cent of GDP; that is less than a tenth of the average of major advanced economies—will influence the interest rate that Australian businesses pay. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Those opposite are now denying this suggestion? That is interesting. If those opposite would like to stand up and rebut the member for Goldstein, you would be more than welcome to. God knows, there have been plenty of your colleagues that have disagreed with the member for Goldstein. Indeed, the member for North Sydney has disagreed many a time with the member for Goldstein on the issue of the coalition's black hole. But let me take him to task on this issue of interest rates. It is simply not the case that government borrowing in Australia drives up the interest rate. The interest rate is set by a combination of factors including the world interest rate. In a small, open economy we typically think of world savings as driving the price of funds and it being driven by the independent central bank. But the suggestion that a modest level of government borrowing affects the interest rate for small businesses is wrong and scurrilous, and it continues as part of a scare campaign run by those opposite.

Those opposite seem to be happiest when they are talking down the Australian economy, when they are trying to reduce consumer confidence in this country. But they cannot change the simple facts. In Australia unemployment is 5.2 per cent, in the US it is 8.3 per cent and in Europe it is now over 10 per cent. Our economy has grown to seven per cent since the GFC. Others have just recovered, lost ground or are struggling to recover.

I notice that members opposite would like to make comparisons with the past. Well, let us do so. When we came to office we faced higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher income taxes than we have today, but we now have a gold plated AAA credit rating from all three major agencies.

Mr Baldwin interjecting—

And, yes, we have debt, because we know the alternative to taking on debt. The alternative to taking on that debt would have meant hundreds of thousands of Australians thrown on the scrap heap of unemployment. We on this side of the House know what unemployment means, and we will fight to prevent that unemployment. You on that side of the House are clearly happy to have more unemployment in Australia if it means that you can refuse to take on a skerrick of debt. Those on the other side of the House are like a family who, as the floodwaters are rising, say, 'Oh, no, we couldn't possibly put a lifeboat on the credit card; we don't want to take up any credit card debt; let's just let the floodwaters rise.'

When the Leader of the Opposition went to London, he said, 'Australia has serious bragging rights. Compared to most developed countries, our economic circumstances are enviable.' If you want to hear from a more economically literate member of the opposition team, you could have the member for Wentworth speaking to a Liberal Party convention about 'the current success and strength of our economy against the troubles of so many others'. Our economy stands head and shoulders above other developed countries, and it is about time that those opposite stop trash-talking the Australian economy and began to speak honestly with the Australian people about the strength of the Australian economy. It is about time they began to speak honestly about the benefits for Australians and about good economic policies like a profits based tax on mining. A profits based tax on mining is economically sensible, because it recognises that, as mineral prices rise, mining companies ought to be able to afford more taxes going back to the people of Australia. Those mining resources can be dug up only once, and the Australian people are right to demand their fair share of the mineral resources that are theirs. So, yes, we are putting in place a profits based tax on minerals and we are putting in place a price on carbon pollution. These are key economic reforms laying the foundation for Australia's prosperity.

We are raising the compulsory superannuation contribution rate from nine per cent to 12 per cent. Those opposite are going to vote against it, as they voted against the introduction of compulsory superannuation. History proved them wrong then; history will prove them wrong again. At least they have a sense that they are going to be on the wrong side of history with this one, because they have said they will not try to wind it back if they were to win office. They have admitted that the increase in compulsory superannuation is good for Australian workers. It recognises that more Australians should be able to retire in dignity, and higher compulsory superannuation will allow them to do so. These appropriation bills are good economic management, part of the strong economic management that is the hallmark of this government.

In closing, I am pleased to note that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics yesterday discharged the reference of the appropriation bills to our committee, an utterly bizarre reference. I am not sure, in the history of this parliament, whether the appropriation bills have ever been referred to the House economics committee, but those opposite decided that they wanted to play their political games, and the House economics committee has sent back that reference. What would an inquiry look like? Perhaps the member for Wright can enlighten us as to what such an inquiry would have looked like if the coalition had gone ahead with it. Thankfully, cooler heads have prevailed. I commend the bills to the House.

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

According to Wikipedia there are around 150 recognised big things of Australia. The big things have become something of a cult phenomenon and are sometimes used as an excuse on a road trip where many or all big things are visited and used as a backdrop for group photographs. Many of the big things are considered works of folk art and are being heritage listed. Tony Abbott was spotted in the lead-up to Australia Day near the Big Golden Guitar at Tamworth for the 40th Tamworth Country Music Festival. That was, of course, the day before the actions of the Prime Minister's office brought the world some delightful antitourism footage of the Australia Day riots. According to the Australian newspaper's travel writer Peter Needham, perhaps it is time to build more big things. Whether eyesores or artistic installations, the sight of giant gumboots, lawnmowers or potatoes livens up a car journey and brings a smile to many. The somewhat bizarre website bigthings.com.au tells us we have about 6.7 things per million people. The figures show that for every million people somewhere between three and 11 big things will be built—that is, a big thing is built for every 90,900 to 330,000 people.

While it is well beyond our capacity to pay, the government is proceeding with plans to build a big thing for every tourist, inbound or domestic. But instead of announcing practical measures that the tourism sector wants, like incentives to build new accommodation stock, Labor will stick a great big new tax at every tourism pit stop around the country. Instead of sensible, practical policies and milestones measuring how Labor is helping tourism move forward, enough policy failures litter the roadside to make Ian Kiernan cry. Since Tourism Research Australia has been eerily silent on the carbon tax since it was absorbed into the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, it seems that every major transport and tourism operator I speak to is doing their own modelling on the impact of the carbon tax. Even ATEC has announced $20,000 for a project to look at how ever-growing passenger movement charges are impacting the costs of holidays.

Last week Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told a Senate committee that about an extra $6.80 would be added to a flight between Perth and Sydney. If the same passenger flew to Bali, they would get an extra discount without having to pay any carbon tax. 'So what?' you might say. If $6.80 were your only expense on a holiday, nobody should care. But what is really in store for a typical family on a road trip holiday—let us say from Hobart to Sydney and back? The family would pay extra for fuel used by the Spirit of Tasmania to ferry their car across Bass Strait according to CEO Charles Griplas, who told a government business hearing that its fuel supplier, Shell, is yet to determine new prices under the tax. Fuel makes up a quarter of TT-Line's costs. Mr Griplas says his company is investigating several strategies to minimise the impact on fares. This month I am expecting to hear the results of this modelling. Mr Griplas has told the parliament that TT-Line's vessels go into dry dock to receive a superpolymer paint which ensures a better glide on the vessel, which in turn will reduce emissions. Super-polishing propellers is a similar measure. No doubt TT-Line will be seeking the sort of compensation package that Wayne Swan was embarrassed into providing to Quicksilver Group in the last fortnight, and it has every right to do so.

The Prime Minister made no effort to respond to the question in question time last Thursday on the Quicksilver Group's increased fuel cost. This company will pay an additional $250,000 per annum, which puts pressure on the 450 local employees, to mention but one operator in Cairns, let alone across the country as a whole. It proves she does not understand her own policies and the impact on the Australians she is supposed to lead in their interests. This 6.2c-per-litre impact on marine tourism operators around the country, like whale and dolphin watch operators, ferry operators and fishing charter operators, will have a significant impact on the adventure tourism industry right around Australia—indeed, all tourism operators. But, after the Cairns Post ran a damning article about the carbon tax and the impacts on the Cairns Marine Park tourism operators, the Treasurer announced a reduction in the environmental management charge, or EMC, of $2.50 per reef visitor to offset the impacts of the carbon tax. This serves to acknowledge (1) the huge impact of the carbon tax and (2) that Labor has begun to pick winners. Things get messy, complex and unfair when the government starts picking winners in this way.

I am glad of this assistance to reef tourism operators. As someone who ran adventure tourism businesses in my own right involving the diving and fishing industry, I know how tough it is and how fine the profit margins are. But what will the government do for Port Stephens whale-watching marine tour operators? Where does it leave the Spirit of Tasmania ferry operating between Tasmania and Victoria? What will it do for fishing charter operators, not to mention those who rely on fuel for remote electricity generation? What about those land-based tourism and regional aviation companies not compensated? Will they be left high and dry?

The government's attempts to link the carbon tax to temperature increases and reef impacts only serve to highlight the strengths of the coalition's approach. The Liberal and National parties' focus on reducing run-off and limiting fertiliser types would have helped to contain the latest outbreak of crown-of-thorns starfish impacting the reef, whereas the carbon tax will serve no environmental benefit. Furthermore, it is the marine park tourism operators themselves that have joined in the massive effort to contain the outbreak and eradicate the crown-of-thorns starfish—the same operators whose jobs are being put at risk by Labor's carbon tax. This Labor government seems to hide the fact that some $650 billion will be spent by 2050 buying offshore carbon credits, not spent addressing environmental needs here in Australia that would make a substantial and real difference.

Once our Tasmanian family drive their car off the Spirit of Tasmania to begin their road trip on the mainland, they can look forward to paying the carbon tax on fuel after 2014. At the TTF leadership summit in Canberra last year, the member for Lyons stressed that the exemption for private vehicle fuel only has his support for now. Transport accounts for some 14.6 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, and 90 per cent of that is private vehicles, so we can expect that the Greens will force Labor to remove this exemption.

If part of a holiday includes regional aviation, the carbon tax is more problematic for those businesses than for the larger operators like Qantas and Virgin. Regional aviation contributes only 0.4 per cent of carbon emissions according to the Brindabella Airlines CEO. They will pass on their $600,000 to $700,000 costs to their customers through a ticket price increase of $6 or $7. They might levy a further $12 to $20 per passenger to cover the cost that Tamworth Regional Council will impose for building new baggage-screening facilities. Sadly, they are also set to lose the en-route subsidy scheme and will continue to pay the cost of sponsoring new pilots from South Africa due to local crew shortages. Brindabella applied a special levy to bring in their last pilot. You cannot endlessly add to the cost of the ticket without affecting demand. This government does not understand that tourism in particular is a price-point-sensitive market. If Tourism Research Australia were allowed by the government to investigate the tourism impacts of a carbon tax, research would tell us that Brindabella Airlines' main competitor on the Newcastle-Sydney leg is private vehicles driving up and down the Federal Highway. Labor's carbon tax on regional aviation encourages the use of private motor vehicles, which for now are exempt. You will get the picture.

Tonight, for good measure, Senator Bushby will ask in estimates for modelling on the carbon tax impact on the tourism sector. I expect the government will, for the third estimates in a row now, avoid tabling research they have held onto since before the clean energy bills were debated. With accommodation providers, tourism transport operators, adventure tourism businesses, restaurants and others releasing information on how much more expensive holidays will be under the carbon tax, I would be surprised if before 1 July we do not see a sample holiday itinerary published with each carbon tax payment totalled with the standard one-week holiday. It is surprisingly complex. If Labor were genuinely worried about the unscrupulous operators using the carbon tax as an excuse to fleece customers, they would publish a sample itinerary. But the government instead have threatened the tourism businesses with ACCC action if they feel profiteering occurs. Faced with this threat, the sector needs the government to explain what costs can be reasonably passed on to its customers. For example, a restaurant meal would cost more because of electricity business input costs; groceries, including supermarket, transport and refrigeration costs; cooking appliances; lighting; vacuum cleaning; restaurant till; and computers. They will all go up. It is therefore entirely baffling that Tourism Research Australia has not researched the most significant financial challenges facing tourism businesses at the moment. Pressure can only grow over the coming months for a guide on holiday costs and by the next election the one million people employed in Australian tourism and hospitality, and anyone planning a domestic holiday, will have a clear choice to make. If elected, the coalition will not proceed with the damaging carbon tax that only advantages overseas airlines and forces small and medium businesses, and in fact all Australian restaurants, hotels and other tourism businesses to pay more for electricity, gas and transport, that will result in job losses.

When the carbon tax was first announced, the Tourism and Transport Forum produced a report that highlighted 6,400 job losses industry wide and agreed to support the carbon tax on the condition of an adequate compensation package for the tourism sector—assistance that never eventuated. In the same report the TTF stated that the net revenue loss for Australian tourism businesses after the imposition of the carbon tax will be $731 million. In a low-margin, labour-intensive sector this will prove to be a significant impost.

The coalition will rescind the carbon tax which will only add costs to the Australian tourism industry and discourage Australian holidaymakers by adding to their household budgets. Sure, Labor says that household budget impacts on the poorest people will attract compensation, yet the Australian Hotels Association doubts—and I share their doubt—that the recipients are those people who support accommodation hotels by vacationing—again, modelling TRA should be doing.

When asked at additional estimates on 19 October whether TRA has approached Treasury to access its carbon tax model so that TRA can better understand the impact of the carbon tax on the industry, the department answered no. When asked whether TRA had asked Treasury to undertake any modelling on the impact of the carbon tax on tourism industry, the department also answered no. This week, Senator Bushby will ask whether this is still the case or whether the department has begun to show an interest in the effect of carbon tax on the tourism industry.

At the last estimates officers from TRA mentioned the impact that changes in discretionary spending would have on the tourism sector and said that, because there was not going to be a large change in discretionary spending, there would not be a change for the sector. That is quite a claim. What modelling has been undertaken to support this assumption? How can TRA make this claim when it has done no modelling on the impact of the carbon tax and has admitted that it has not even sought advice from Treasury? The sector needs answers urgently on both household budgets of Australian holidaymakers and the cumulative business costs impacting restaurants, hotels, airlines, attractions, adventure tourism operators and other businesses involved in tourism.

Anyone reading media reports will sense the sector's growing frustration. Take those comments by John Lee, CEO of the Tourism and Transport Forum in his media release, 'Tourism envies support for car industry':

Tourism’s GVA is $31.5 billion a year, compared to $4.5 billion for the car industry, while tourism exports are $23.7 billion a year, compared to $3.6 billion.

The car industry has received more than $12 billion in government support over the past decade and this week has received significant additional funding.

At the same time, Australian tourism is facing the same global challenges as all other industry sectors and tourism remains our only export which is subject to the GST.

And now the government has begun the process of picking winners by paying off the steel industry with a carbon tax assistance package of $300 million—double the Tourism Australia budget—and, through sneaky backroom payments, by lifting the Great Barrier Reef visitor levy. This is 'game on' for any tourism business expecting some relief.

This government does not understand the effects of its own policy and what the impact will be on any of the one million people employed in the hospitality and tourism sector. There are more employees in this sector than in any other sector in Australia, but instead of getting any financial support, any encouragement, any relief, in fact this government has reduced the funding for Tourism Australia—which already has a low budget. As I said in my speech earlier, the steel industry will get a $300 million carbon tax adjustment package. Tourism Australia's budget is less than $150 million and they received under MYEFO a $6 million cut in their funding. This government talks about saving and sustaining jobs. When you have one million people employed in the tourism and hospitality sector, cutting the budget of the very thing that produces interest and therefore product to Australia does not make common sense. In other words, this government is nothing more than a slave to some of the faceless men in grey suits who dictate who the Prime Minister will be, not those workers out there in the Australian workforce who demand the support of their government. This government provides no support. We hear all the excuses from members opposite, but we hear of no supportive actions for the tourism or hospitality industry in Australia.

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to be able to take part in this appropriation debate. Can I say from the outset that the second reading amendment moved by the member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb, of course does not have my support and it actually gives us the clue to what the coalition sees as important. The member for Paterson in his contribution talked about the carbon tax and the fact that a coalition government, if elected, would repeal it. What a nonsense. What a silly statement from the coalition. I just remind them: if they think that they are going to repeal the carbon tax legislation they will not be able to do it before July 2014. So what they are telling us is that a piece of legislation will come into play in the middle of this year but they are going to say to Australian businesses, 'Live with the uncertainty for the next two years in doing your business.' What a nonsense. Even if a House of Representatives election was held on Saturday, the point is that they would not have the numbers in the Senate until the new Senate is elected and takes its place in mid-2014—and, even then, do they really expect to have control of the Senate?

I highlight this because of my concern about the level of debate that we have seen in this place since the last election. We have an opposition that cannot come to grips with living in a world where there is a minority government in this place that is getting on with the job, that is passing legislation and doing the job. The member for Goldstein's contribution as the lead speaker on the resumption of this appropriation debate was all about negatives, talking down the economy, absolutely distorting facts about the way in which this economy is in a very good state and the way in which this government does have a handle on the economic levers—and that can be seen in any fair critique. It is a waste of a half-hour contribution in this sort of debate for a senior member of the coalition to talk in the way in which the member for Goldstein spoke.

Before returning to the economy I wish to take the opportunity of this appropriation speech to talk about the work of this parliament. I think from time to time we have to remind ourselves that, no matter what people see through the prism of the argy-bargy of question time, there are very many things that take place around this parliament where there is a great degree of cooperation in the national interest. I picked up the December edition of About the House and it is replete with articles about the work of House committees that are very positive and that should make those that send us to this place have some confidence that we know we are here to work in the nation's interest. The member for Moreton mentions the front-page article 'Muddied waters: insurance without assurance'. And the member for Wright, as a Queenslander, understands that these are issues that in the aftermath of the Queensland floods are still on people's minds. It is up to us, through the opportunities that we get to debate and through the opportunities that we get to do good work on committees, to make sure that people know we see these things as being important. In About the House we have articles to do with the House environment committee's inquiry into boosting protection for the Antarctic and the audit of Australia's diplomatic service that one of these subcommittees of the joint foreign affairs, defence and trade committee is doing. There is a major article about the problems of flood insurance, previously identified in an earlier report, which have really come home to those who have suffered losses through the floods. I say to members that what we really need to do is see this type of work has been very important and something that we can say to people it is appropriate for the House to do.

The only other inquiry I wish to mention, because it is in the context of yesterday when we celebrated the fourth anniversary of the apology, is the House Indigenous affairs committee's inquiry into Indigenous languages. This is a very important inquiry because language is so important to Indigenous culture. It is the way in which the stories have gone down through time—the dreamtime stories, the association with place. So anything we as legislators can do to ensure Indigenous languages are a protected is important.

On this side I follow the member for Fraser in this debate. The member for Fraser has been celebrated as an acknowledged economist throughout the world. I am pleased to be able to enter into this debate. He made the valid point that the strength of the Australian economy is acknowledged throughout the world. Yet if you sit in this place and listen to question time and contributions to a debate like this, the coalition have not got it in them to acknowledge that. Instead we have silly stunts that try to emphasise things that are out in the media and say these are distractions to the government. If the government were as distracted as people believe, we would not be having the economic results that we see in Australia.

Mr Deputy Speaker, as you are so aware, the strength of the Australian economy was shown in our performance through the global financial crisis that became a global economic crisis. I refer to table 8.1 entitled 'Total Economic Growth' from the Parliamentary Library's monthly series that is now available as an e-table. I seek leave to have this table incorporated in Hansard. I spoke to the person on duty for the opposition previously and I hope that I am able to get leave.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is leave granted?

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

Out of respect for the former Speaker and his previous role, I accept it. But in my four years here I cannot recall this courtesy having been extended to a member of the opposition.

Leave granted.

The graph read as follows—

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What this graph shows clearly—and this is why I have asked that it be incorporated in Hansard so people can look at it—is that Australia did not go into recession but performed well. The graph compares Australia to the OECD average and the EU average, which, as we can see from the graph, troughed out. The other thing I want to emphasise is that if this had simply been a result of things that the coalition had done, and those things alone, that does not explain the different performance of the Australian economy compared to those other two sets of data. There is similarity in the run-up to the global economic situation and a completely different performance afterwards.

If those opposite are concerned, I place on record and have said in the opportunities that I had over the last four years, not in this place, that our performance during the global economic crisis was as a result of decisions of three governments: the Hawke-Keating years that took hard decisions; the Howard-Costello years, when—I might be described as being mealy-mouthed to say they could have made even more decisions—they were the stewards of the economy; and then, it has to be recognised, under Prime Ministers Rudd and Gillard and Treasurer Swan. It is not as if a government does not do anything that affects the economy, so I think we should give credit when a government can see those types of indicators of the performance of our economy.

Much can be said about these macrofigures and they are very important. We should look at them. We should analyse what it means. If we look at the performance of household savings that are now creeping back up, if we look at the ratios of household debt, which increased dramatically over the years from the late 1980s through to about 2004 and have now plateaued, we see a steadying out such that people can have confidence in the way they have control over their household economies. We should not look to the naysayers who say, 'Well, during the term of this government everything has gone awry.' If you look, for instance, at the Parliamentary Library's graph on household debt ratio you will see that it increased throughout the Howard-Costello years.

If these things are important for the confidence that people have in their economy, we should be talking about them. I have looked at the unemployment figures in the electorate of Scullin over the four years of Labor governments since 2007. In September 2007, in the three statistical local areas, unemployment in Whittlesea South was 5.1 per cent, in Banyule North it was 2.7 per cent and in Nillumbik South West it was 1.8 per cent. Now, for the September 2011 quarter, Nillumbik South West is still at 1.8 per cent and Banyule North has decreased to 2.6 per cent. Whittlesea South SLA has been replaced by Whittlesea South East, which is at 3.6 per cent, and Whittlesea South West, which is at 7.6 per cent.

That is what people in their day-to-day lives are looking for—the type of leadership that the government has shown to keep people in jobs, to increase the number of jobs as population increases, and to ensure that everybody throughout Australia has access to the things that make the economy tick over. Mr I am proud that I can stand in this place as somebody who has the great honour to represent what is described as a safe Labor seat and say that, over the last four years, the electorate of Scullin has got its fair share of federal programs. The federal programs have been above board, they have been transparent and they have given all areas of Australia the opportunity to put their hand up. Those that are going to be in partnership with us, whether they are non-government organisations or local government, also have the opportunity to do that.

To have $101 million allocated to 89 projects in education facilities in the electorate of Scullin is really big. Some of those schools had not had anything done to them in a major fashion since the seventies. When you go to those schools, they know the mealy mouthed criticism of a school halls program is hollow. They know the importance to the opportunities that their kids will get by the way in which the federal Labor governments under Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Gillard have given opportunity to all Australians in education and by the way in which we have indiscriminately made sure that everybody gets an opportunity to share that benefit. I say to members that the appropriation bills should be passed without amendment. (Time expired)

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I speak at length about appropriation bills 3 and 4, you may recall that earlier the member for Fraser asked a question as to why the bills were referred to the economics committee. I, being a lowly rank backbencher, am not privy to those conversations in Cabinet or wherever they come from as to why the bills were sent to economics committee. But I can only assume that potentially maybe it was a trust issue? I think that last session the appropriation bills 3 and 4 were a vehicle to lift that debt ceiling from 200 to 250, buried deep in the documents. Maybe their logic in sending them to us was to highlight the amount of money that is going towards the clean energy bill. There is a substantial amount of funds allocated to that in the bills in those line items. Maybe it was a vehicle to highlight to the nation bills that we oppose—just how much this thing is going to cost. But without being privy to those discussions higher than I, I can only hypothesise.

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) and Appropriation Bill (No. 4). The first point I feel I ought to make is that these appropriations are perfect examples of the sort of creative accounting that the government uses to protect its estimates for a surplus in 2012-13. Earlier this year, I wrote an op-ed about the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, in which I discussed the highly questionable practices of hiding funding for government projects off budget. I confess that when I first heard the phrase, I did not know what it meant. How can something be off budget? I run a sizable transport interest in Queensland and it was not a practice known to me with our internal accounting procedures. I sat on a number of boards, and off-budget practices were not something that I saw in the corporate boardrooms. I was a corporate banker and specialised in agri-finance. I had a little knowledge of what an off-budget expenditure was. I find it hard, even today, so that is why I wrote about. How can you tip $18 billion into the NBN and another $10 billion in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and not have to account for it in a budget just because you have got a hunch that it might make a return on an investment one day?

Every investment property in this country was purchased because someone hoped that they would make a return on their investment one day. You just cannot exclude the mortgage from your budget because you reckon the prices are going to go up. You just cannot disregard the payments on a wish and a prayer. The debt is there. The debt really counts. It will be a fact when it comes time to borrow again, hunch or no punch in the family budget. We have seen how much that hunch looks. In the case of the NBN, the company had such strong fundamentals that the government had to force any potential competitor to rip their cables out of the ground. What a great investment it must be and how excited we should all be to be part of it. 'Meet the NBN' is giggled at around the world with its costings per head. It is extremely expensive when it comes to world standards.

But getting back to my concept of spending off budget: how many mums and dads out there do you reckon would be able to keep huge chunks of their debt off their ledger? How many businesses do you think out there would be able to keep huge parts of their debt off their ledger?

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

We cannot.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot. No. Imagine taking the theory to your bank manager and saying, 'Well, I will borrow a huge pile of money and I am going to buy a race car, but I do not really consider it a debt because in a number of years my child is going to make millions of dollars as a race car driver. So it does not sit as a debt on my ledger.' How do you reckon that would go down?

The important thing to remember is that, if it were not for the neat accounting trick of hiding stuff 'off budget,' there would be no real surplus.

The second thing that this bill does is to provide clear evidence of Labor's lack of understanding regarding its debt problems, and it highlights the need for greater due diligence in relation to government spending. Of the $3.1 billion being sought across the bill a full $1 billion is going to the department of climate change to provide cash payments to coal fired power stations to assist in transition to the carbon tax. I could go on about the carbon tax, but I will not because I do not want to get it confused with this appropriations bill. The carbon tax spending could not come at a worse time. It will exacerbate recent blowouts in the government's budget deficit estimates and net debt.

How do you think other countries—America and the European Union—got into trouble in the first place? There is a common thread that they all got themselves into. It was basically too much debt. There have been comments made in this chamber that our debt ratio is only eight per cent. It could be whatever figure you want. The theory is that debt is relevant to your capacity to repay. At the moment there is no capacity for this government to service that mere eight per cent. Testament to that are the structural deficits. The important thing about a surplus is that the money you make in the surplus can actually go to paying wealth debt. In 2008-09 there was $27 billion deficit. In the 2009-10 period there was $54 billion. In the 2010-11 period there was $47 billion. The government is $167 billion in deficit.

Last week the gross debt increased by $3 billion bringing the total market value of Australia's debt to $224 billion with the current debt ceiling being set at a face value of $250 billion. The government needs to commit to bringing any further debt limit increase to the parliament for frank and open debate. I do not think that pushing through appropriation bills for increases in the debt ceiling will be a practice that will be encouraged in the future. I mention this because, when it comes to hiding increases to the debt limit, this government has got form. Last year they snuck an increase to the debt ceiling into the middle of the budget appropriations, as I mentioned earlier, thereby preventing debate. I cannot imagine why they would be scared of this debate unless it is because they know that, when it comes to matters of money and matters of debt, they have no credibility.

When it comes to credibility, as leaders in this room, the Australian people need to believe what we say. We continually erode the Australian public's capacity to have faith in politicians when we have comments from the Treasurer of our nation talking before the election about commitment to the carbon tax. On 12 August on the 7.30 Report the Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan was asked about the issue of carbon tax and his response was:

We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.

They said one thing and did another thing. It comes back to credibility. On 15 August on Meet the Press on Channel 10 the journalist asked Wayne Swan:

Can you tell us exactly when Labor will apply a price to carbon?

Wayne Swan's response was:

Well, certainly what we rejected is this hysterical allegation somehow that we are moving towards a carbon tax ... we certainly reject that.

You cannot interpret that any other way. Those comments affect the government's credibility.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Cunningham.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to ask a question of the member.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member wish to answer a question?

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sure.

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

I would seek an indication from the member if he has heard the term 'core and non-core promises'?

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sure. You will get a time to speak in a moment and then you can go home. I have not finished talking about credible comments. Julia Gillard in 2004 said of the health insurance reforms that are on the table at the moment:

Labor is committed to the maintenance of this rebate and I have given an iron clad guarantee of that on a number of occasions.

She also said in 2004:

I grow tired of saying this—Labor is committed to the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate.

At the moment we are debating that very thing on the floor of the House. I have had a quick look through the 2010 policy on health. There is nothing there that speaks about the Labor Party's walking away from its commitment to health reform. So I must admit I was astonished when the Prime Minister said that she wanted to make this year about the economy because you would think that she would have tried to shift the conversation to an area of strength, not to where we are at the moment.

On the subject of economic credibility, there is no better example of Labor's wrongheaded approach to economic policy than the Infrastructure Employment Projects Program job fund. It was set up more than 12 months ago at a cost of $150 million and it has not created a single job. In fact, for the first time in 20 years last year there was no jobs growth in Australia at all. Last week, when the Leader of the Opposition asked simple questions about aluminium jobs, the response of the Prime Minister was, 'Well, we've got a $3½ billion fund.' This goes to the heart of Labor's problems on economic policy. There is no point racking up record debt or implementing record levels of taxation if you are just going to tip it into poorly thought out funds and do not deliver on the stated objectives. You might as well pour water onto sand.

Trying to boost the economy with billions of dollars of debt is like trying to jumpstart your billycart. The billycart does not need electricity; it needs momentum. The same applies to the economy and the best way to get momentum into the economy is to create conditions of prosperity. That means growing the economy. It means giving employers an incentive to make money and, therefore, to spend money and to continue to grow. This creates jobs. That creates growth. That creates prosperity. We know about this sort of stuff because we have done it before. When we left office in 2007, unemployment was at four per cent and we had a budget surplus. Labor is now revelling in a 5.2 per cent unemployment rate because we are better off than the Greeks, the Irish and the Spaniards.

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

And the Americans and the French.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And the Americans. I am glad you raised that. What is the point of comparing yourself to the slowest runner in the race? We have heard a lot about the Asian century, so let us compare ourselves to those economies. Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are not our competitors. We do not trade with them. The only reason to compare ourselves with them is that it makes us look good. Now that Tiger Woods has gone off the boil, you do not think that he is suddenly comparing himself with guys on the feeder circuit. No, he still compares himself with the elite players so that he can lift himself up. That is what people do when they want to improve.

This government is taking the approach with economic rationalism that it is fine to wake up in the morning and drink a tallie of beer because other nations are waking up in the morning and drinking a bottle of scotch. Both of them are wrong. The trajectory levels of debt cannot be sustained. They are at eight per cent at the moment. The real question has to go to curbing expenditure. The simple fact of the matter is that Labor's track record on the economy is appalling. Just have a look at its current deficit estimates.

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

AAA rating.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We were meant to have a $12 billion deficit and then a $22 billion deficit just after six months and then to turn it into a $37 billion deficit. Labor has managed to preside over a $15 billion blow-out in the last six months.

I take that interjection that referred to our credit rating. I loved that. To have that AAA credit rating is a good thing. However, I think it is a big call for the government to be making these assumptions that it is due to fiscal responsibility, fiscal prudence. Do you think that 100-year terms of trade and the demand out of China for our resources—our coal on the east coast and our iron ore—might have something to do with the strength of the economy?

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

So nothing good is our responsibility but everything bad is?

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I give some credit to the government for some of the stuff. If you are going to take anything constructive out of this, take away the fact that there needs to be some curvature in the expenditure. There is a lot of waste and a lot of mismanagement out there. If you are genuinely impressed about the economy, get in and tidy it up while you have the opportunity, because with the way the polls are I do not know how long the Labor government is going to be there for.

I did have some other points here that I want to speak to with reference to how this affects the man on the street, but I can leave you with a closing comment. It is from a bloke that employs 80 people in my electorate. His comment to me the other day about the economy was, 'Scotty, it is tough out there and I have never seen it as tough.'

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

Can I open by thanking the member for Wright for his goodwill in taking my question. He did not answer it, but I will let that pass. I definitely remember terms like, 'Well, that was a core or non-core promise.' I remember terms like, 'Do not believe anything unless I have written it down.' So it is interesting that he placed so much emphasis in his speech on the reliability of people's words before and after elections. A bit of history would not go astray there. Certainly I think the member raised his genuine concern about debt and the ongoing issue of debt in the economy, so I would seriously encourage him to have a good chat with his leader and his shadow Treasurer, because they are running it up much faster than we are. So he might want to take those concerns to them as well.

I rise to support Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012. Appropriation Bill (No. 3) seeks to appropriate $2,828 million to a particular range of projects from the budget and the MYEFO, and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) appropriates $341 million, again to go towards a number of projects. I want to briefly cover the programs that those appropriations are covering, but I will use most of the time to talk about a particular one of them and the importance of it to my local area.

These measures are to fund a range of initiatives, particularly around the clean energy initiatives of the government. We will be using part of the funding for the energy security fund. This is transitional assistance to highly emissions-intensive coal-fired power stations. That is the cash assistance allocated through free permits. The government will provide loans to these emissions-intensive coal-fired power stations to provide additional working capital for the future vintage carbon permits at advance auctions.

Some of it is also going towards the Clean Energy Regulator. This is funding over four years to establish a Clean Energy Regulator, with the task of administering the carbon pricing mechanism. The regulatory functions will be under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System, the renewable energy target and the Carbon Farming Initiative, which are all to be brought under that particular regulator.

The third Clean Energy Future component that these appropriation bills will cover is the one that I want to come back to. It is to do with supporting jobs in the coalmining industry, an issue of particular importance to my own region. I will deal with that in a little more detail. The fourth initiative is the Biodiversity Fund, which is creating opportunities on the land under a clean energy future. This is funding over six years to establish the Biodiversity Fund. It will support the establishment, restoration, protection and management of biodiverse carbon stores and is an important part of the overall Clean Energy Future package.

There is also funding under these appropriation bills for extractive industry activities. In particular, there is funding for five years to support the management of extractive industry activities, particularly—as will be of interest to people in the current circumstance—coal seam gas and major coalmining developments. I note today that there are some pleasing announcements about progress on a national position on coal seam gas, made by our minister. This measure will aim to build scientific evidence and understanding of the impacts on water resources from coal seam gas extraction and large coalmines, an issue of particular interest to communities at this time.

There is also funding for official development assistance, through Australia's contribution to the Horn of Africa drought and famine. I know many members of this House on both sides have spoken on the importance of our contribution to addressing the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. This is additional assistance for the 2011-12 year to that particular effort by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program. It is predominantly in the form of food rations and shelter.

There is a further contribution under official development assistance for the Mining for Development initiative of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. This is appropriation for four years to establish an international Mining for Development centre. It will provide scholarships through the Australian Mining Prospect Awards program and build regulatory and administrative capacity in Africa. It is a new example of a long and excellent tradition of developed nations using scholarships to provide a form of interrelationship between developing and developed nations—a very good initiative.

Under the 'helping households' component of the Clean Energy Future initiative the government will provide, through these bills, assistance to households to meet the additional costs associated with the carbon price. This is in the form of payments to families with children, to aged and other pensioners and to people with a disability. Also of current significance to many people, as many of us have seen in emails from our electorates, there will be business assistance under the live animal exports component. The government intends to support eligible businesses affected by the temporary suspension of live cattle exports to Indonesia and to improve animal welfare outcomes. The assistance package provides a range of incentives to provide support and assistance to businesses in that particular situation.

It is important to note that the government will also provide assistance over four years to improve animal welfare outcomes in the official development-assistance-eligible countries. So there are some important initiatives in that area as well. I also want to acknowledge that there are a range of other initiatives. I do not want to go into detail on them all. One initiative relates to the Tasmanian forestry industry, although I would acknowledge that it is not something I am particularly familiar with. That industry is of significance to people from Tasmania and to the nation more broadly. There will also be some emergency assistance for Norfolk Island.

The reason I particularly wanted to support these bills is that these appropriations cover the initiatives under the Coal Sector Jobs Package. The Coal Sector Jobs Package is part of the government's Clean Energy Future plan. The package provides assistance to existing coal mines that had fugitive emissions intensity above 0.1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent per tonne of saleable coal in 2008-09. Members who are familiar with the industry would appreciate that in the Illawarra this covers a vast number of coal mines. They are all underground mines and all affected by fugitive emissions. Assistance will be based on the levels of an emissions intensity of production. Payments will be subject to a cap and based on production levels, the higher of 2007-08 and 2008-09 levels. A Coal Mining Abatement Technology Support Package is also being introduced to support research and development and the deployment of abatement technologies in the coal industry. The package is expected to assist coalmines in Queensland, the Hunter and the Illawarra and will be funded over six years.

The Illawarra coal industry, according to the New South Wales Minerals Council's key industry statistics for 2011, employs 5,638 people across our local region. That represents an increase of nearly 1,000 miners compared with the 2010 figures and nearly 2,000 additional jobs in the industry compared with the 2009 figures. The Illawarra region operates eight coalmines, most of which operate in my electorate and that of my colleague the member for Throsby and employ people from across our region. Most of the coal produced in the Illawarra is used at BlueScope Steel at Port Kembla, which is also located in my electorate, and the rest is exported through the port of Port Kembla. Illawarra Coal, the biggest coal producer in the Illawarra, have recruited 160 graduates and apprentices over the last six years who have been offered training and development through those programs. More than 300 Illawarra businesses supply products and services to Illawarra Coal. They generate up to $350 million in local household income. It should be acknowledged that last year the company played an important role in helping retrenched employees following the BlueScope Steel decision to restructure its operations. Illawarra Coal, like all the other coal producers in my region, have very strong community links, and I am pleased to say that they are making those even stronger.

According to figures compiled by the Illawarra Regional Information Service, IRIS, in its December 2011 quarterly profile of the Illawarra, production in coalmines increased from 12.9 million tonnes to 14.8 million tonnes—that is, a 15.3 per cent increase. IRIS has also predicted that as part of the regional investment pipeline, worth nearly $3 billion, mining investment was worth $500 million of that. The feasibility study into the completion of the Maldon-Dombarton rail link, in which this government has invested $25.5 million, is in its engineering stage. It relies on the production of coal to help make the project viable.

There are many in the clean energy debate who wish to dismiss coal as not being part of the future. We do not see that to be the case. Coal has a part in the future because it will remain a chief source of energy supply, particularly in the developing world. More importantly, technology and innovation should be deployed to ensure that coal is used more efficiently. That is what the Coal Sector Jobs Package is about, and that is why it is important to a region like mine.

It should also be acknowledged that the coal industry in the Illawarra is of significant importance in the production of steel and that it retains an important role into the future for our region. It is a significant and important employer, a significant and important part of our history and, I believe, part of our future. This appropriation bill seeks to provide that assistance through the Coal Sector Jobs Package. It is an important part of our Clean Energy Future package. Moreover, it is an important part of that package for our region. For that reason, as well as the many other important initiatives I outlined under the appropriation bills, I would encourage members of the House to support the passage of both of these bills.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

May I at the outset take issue with the member for Cunningham, who talked of the assistance package for those in the live cattle export industry which is part of these appropriation bills. The assistance would not have been necessary had the Prime Minister not, in a knee-jerk reaction, shut down the industry in the first place. Nothing will reimburse the people—those hardworking people in Western Australia and the Northern Territory—for what they lost when the Prime Minister had that knee-jerk reaction. Nothing will put the industry back to where it was before this dreadful, stupid decision was made on the whim of a television program which was dubious at best. No-one wants to see animal cruelty, but no-one wants to see an entire industry brought to its knees to appease the sensibilities of the noisy minority.

One way—the best way—to describe Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012 is 'money bills to fix up Labor's mess'. This is what these bills represent: a request by the government to draw down funds on the public account. The front page heading on the Australian newspaper said it all yesterday: 'PM losing battle over economy'. Yet, while the economy falters, businesses close, farmers struggle and regional towns die due to this government's ineptitude, what does Labor do? It ramps up the attack on the coalition in an internet advertisement, using selective quotes and more political spin, rather than doing what a government ought to be doing—governing for the good of the nation and the good of its people. How much did that ad cost? Who is paying? Probably hardworking union members whose fees should be spent on something more worthwhile than Labor propaganda.

This government has failed to ease financial pressures on Australian families. Every day, in every way, this Labor government has let people down and let them down badly—very badly. It will continue to let people down for as long as it ploughs ahead with policies which hit the hip pockets of ordinary, everyday Australians: Mr and Mrs Average. This is a government which continually talks about economic credibility. This is a government which drones on about its jobs record. Labor cannot, however, justify any claim whatsoever to sound economic management. Its fiscal record is poor—pathetically poor.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

The member for Moreton can complain all he likes but he knows as well as anybody on his side how poor Labor's record is when it comes to handling the economy. As the opposition leader pointed out on the first day of parliament this year during the matter of public importance debate, Labor inherited $70 billion worth of Commonwealth assets and a $20 billion surplus and yet has produced the four biggest deficits in Australia's history. Yet last September, the same Treasurer who oversaw those four deficits was named world's best Treasurer by Euromoney magazine. What a farce! Even allowing for the global financial crisis—which, granted, did sap economic confidence the world over—Labor has failed miserably.

Labor inherited a government with no debt. In fact it actually had $70 billion in net assets. This government's wasteful and reckless spending has now racked up a record debt of $200 billion and it is paying nearly $20 million a day in interest. The result of this mismanagement is increased taxes, cuts to family benefits and a lack of business and community confidence. This is certainly so in regional Australia.

In Senate estimates yesterday the government admitted that Kevin Rudd's decision to abolish the Pacific solution and temporary protection visas has increased costs to taxpayers, with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's budget blowing out by more than $1 billion a year since Labor was elected. The costs of running the department of immigration were $1.6 billion in the last year of the Howard government. Now, under Labor, these have grown to more than $2.7 billion. It is not surprising to learn that department officials reported that the key reason for this increase was the growth in cost for managing asylum seekers. Across the entire immigration portfolio, and not including last year's blowout, the increase for the four years to 2014-15 is $759 million. This is $559 million, or almost three times more than the $197 million the Treasurer and the immigration minister told taxpayers the bill would be for immigration when they released the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2011-12 for this period just last November.

How can Labor be so laissez-faire with taxpayers' money? They have blown out their estimates in just two months by almost $560 million. If—and it is a big if—Labor's immigration policies were working, you could almost be forgiven for saying, 'Oh well, keeping our borders protected is an expensive operation.' But, when the Howard government left office, there were just four illegal boat arrivals, all adults, in detention—just four people. As at 31 January 2012, there are 4,783 in detention and 1,600 in the community. That is Labor policy at its unworkable worst. A government's first priority is to protect its borders, protect its people. Labor has failed to do so and will continue to fail unless the Prime Minister acknowledges that the Howard government policies worked and implements the Nauru solution.

Labor has also wasted more than $1 million of taxpayers' money with department of climate change officials revealing the government has paid a consultancy firm to provide public feedback on the carbon tax. Good money, I suppose, if you can get it. This absolute waste of taxpayers' money on market research is almost unbelievable; except that we know how out of touch Labor is with the Australian public.

First and foremost, the Prime Minister promised that there would be no carbon tax under the government she led. Therefore, it must come as no surprise that the Australian public does not want this tax. There is certainly no need to have spent $1 million finding this out. Labor should have listened to the public from the start. But 'Labor' and 'listening' are two words which do not belong in the same sentence; unless of course the quasi-Prime Minister, Greens leader Senator Bob Brown, is doing the talking and has the ear of Julia Gillard.

It is not just the public that Labor is not hearing. Labor has also ignored warnings from its own climate experts that Labor's Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute is an unnecessary waste of money. It has been reported that Peter Cook, the recently retired head of the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies said in a 2008 letter to then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute was a mistake, unnecessary and that the money could be saved by building on existing organisations. This is $315 million of taxpayers' money being thrown away against expert advice. This blatant disregard for unnecessary spending only serves to highlight the Labor government's complete vanity project—which has been ignored by every other country—and its desire to pat itself or Senator Bob Brown undeservingly on the back.

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has also been splashing out on consultants. In particular, $77,627 was spent on consultants to inform the department how to remove the agricultural sector's aspirations and needs from the department's mission statement. Can you believe that? The department now has a mission statement which is so pathetically politically correct that it does not resonate with the sector it is supposed to protect. This almost $80,000 identity-branding exercise resulted in the department being left with no distinct identity at all.

As a country, our identity is sculpted from the agricultural sector. To remove this department's identity is like removing who we are as Australians and where we have come from. But this is hardly surprising. A government without a cabinet minister living in regional Australia—real Australia—is a government with no concept of the throb and the pulse of the nation. Regional Australia is the lifeblood of this country. It nurtures the nation. It sustains it, keeps it fed. That being so, the agricultural sector is not even on Labor's radar—unless it is cutbacks, of course.

It would seem that a number of departments are having identity issues. The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency is also shelling out big bucks for consultants to help the department with its brand identity—more tealeaf readers. It is questionable why the department is undertaking a new branding exercise; but even more questionable is why the contract, which runs from 30 November 2011 to 30 June 2012, has blown out from $41,167.50 to $200,000. It seems highly plausible that this is another Labor backdoor attempt to have the public fund its desperate advertising attempt to sell the unwanted carbon tax. This is advertising which the Auditor-General has been highly critical of—spin, spin and more unnecessary spin.

The Building the Education Revolution projects are yet another scheme which appeared to be of benefit to schools and students, but in true Labor style has resulted in more waste, more mismanagement, rorting and price gouging. In my electorate of the Riverina, $280,000 was spent on a library for Mangoplah Public School, which was completed last year. However, with no enrolments for 2012, the school is in mothballs, and sitting on the site is $280,000 which could have and should have been used elsewhere.

Private schools which managed their own BER finances built value-for-money multipurpose centres and the like, using local tradesmen; whereas local schools had to make do with a one-size-fits-all approach, with outside contractors and projects with price tags which were unrealistic. Little wonder many people in my electorate refer to the BER as the 'builders' early retirement'. What it did do, however, was widen the gap between private and public schools. Parents of children in public schools drive past big new rinky-dink multipurpose halls at, for example, Catholic schools, and look on with envy, then drop off their kids at their local public school, which has a project which might have cost more yet pales into insignificance by comparison. Maybe that is what Labor wanted.

Just like the misnamed Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives Bill—class warfare by any other name. Labor purports to be robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. But they are no Robin Hood; let me assure you. Robbin' by hoods is more to the point. The BER is yet another example of this government's complete incompetence with finances.

The absolute tangle of red tape and bureaucratic waste is highlighted in the government's administration of the set-top box program. Almost a quarter of the $308 million to put set-top boxes in pensioners' homes was spent on administration. Can you believe that? The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy received $24.5 million for the extremely vague 'department costs' and to manage the program. Centrelink received $42.2 million to assist in administering the household assistance program. All up, the government is having set-top boxes installed for $350 each. But I made a phone call tonight to Harvey Norman at Wagga Wagga, and they can do the same thing for just $99. That is $49 for the converter and $50 to have someone go around to the person's house to set it up. Therefore, Harvey Norman can install three for less than the price of one of the government's.

In yet another blunder by Labor, taxpayers are still owed millions of dollars from the disastrous $2.5 billion Home Insulation Program linked to at least four deaths and more than 200 house fires—as tragic as that is. As Senator Simon Birmingham stated last year, this was clearly an 'unmitigated disaster'. The government ignored countless warnings.

The Green Start program, another abandoned Labor scheme, has also left the taxpayer footing a $30 million bill. It is a disgrace. By abandoning the scheme, Labor had to compensate 10,000 assessors who were left without work or had undertaken training to do a job which no longer existed. Just when it seems that Labor's spending could not get more frivolous, we learn that AusAID has spent more than $110,000 for foreign aid workers to learn, wait for it—martial arts. The justification being that it allows workers to perform duties safely while working abroad. It also appears that Labor has been using taxpayers' money to assist its friends in the unions; probably no surprises there. In recent federal budgets, Labor has granted $20 million to the unions. In the 2010-11 budget, $10 million was given for a Trade Union Education Foundation grant; in the 2011-12 budget, $10 million was granted for educational resources to membership.

This is simply unacceptable. Taxpayers' money should not be handed over so freely to the unions, especially when it appears that there is no accountability over the funds being used as directed. Labor is spending money at an unprecedented rate and its economic malaise is hurting Australia. It is hurting families and hurting Australian workers. Instead of curbing its spending by cutting back some of the wasteful schemes, or the kung fu lessons, Labor is instead passing on the cost to the Australian people in the form of taxes or by taking away private health insurance rebates. Labor's mismanagement is costing Australians now and it will continue to cost Australians for generations to come.

What Labor could do is actually roll out some of the $5.8 billion set aside by the coalition for water savings infrastructure. So far, this money has been drip-fed to people and to irrigation corporations who could really utilise it to make the sort of water savings that could help the environment. We all want a healthy river system, and no-one wants a healthy river system in the Murray-Darling Basin more than the farmers who help sustain this nation, who grow the food to feed this nation. Our farmers in Australia are the best in the world, make no mistake. Labor might not recognise that, because the Prime Minister does not ever mention the word 'farmer' in question time, in matters of public importance or in any of her speeches. She never mentions the word 'farmer'. But they are important and they need water to grow the food to feed this nation and, more importantly, to feed other nations which do not have the resources and the wherewithal to grow food to feed their people. We have a responsibility as a nation in the Pacific to do that for them. But, so far, only several million dollars has been spent out of this $5.8 billion set aside for valuable water saving infrastructure which could be used to help on-farm and off-farm water savings, which could then go into the river system and provide the sort of water that could help the environment. But that is not being done. Labor needs to roll out the money and it needs to roll it out now.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak tonight about a range of issues. I particularly want to bring forward a positive approach on some of the really great things about Australia, about the Australian economy, Australian people and Australian business and about the way that Australians generally conduct themselves not only in the domestic market but also in the international markets. I think there is a great story to tell and everyone in this place has some responsibility to remind Australians just how lucky we are. This really truly is the lucky country.

There is no era that best demonstrates the luckiness that I am talking about than this era. I firmly believe that, not since the 1950s, the golden era of riding on the sheep's back, have Australians been in a better position. When you compare us internationally, when you look at all our competitors and at our region, when you look at any other comparable economy you can see just how lucky we are. Sometimes that can be lost on people because you hear so much negativity. You hear so much of the bad news that sometimes you forget that there is actually some good news out there and good things.

Tonight I want to talk about that positive agenda. I also want to talk about the good work of the Gillard government, in particular the work we have done over the past four years since we won government in 2007 to help drive the Australian economy and keep people in jobs. I want to talk about how we managed to do that through the global financial crisis and some of the most critical economic conditions that the planet has seen probably ever, historically. I want to talk about how Australia has managed to not only keep its head above water but keep its head well above water and actually do well.

I think the hallmark of any modern economy can probably be found in a whole range of things but, for me, it is two very important things: productivity and innovation. I think those two things really are the central pieces of the economic puzzle that drives any country. Much has been said in Australia about the mining boom and its effect on the Australian economy. I just want to remind people that, while mining is very important in terms of our exports and a whole range of things for our economy, it is not the only part of the economy. To some people that might come as a surprise. As an example, as an employer the mining sector employs only 1.5 per cent of Australians. Where are all the other Australians employed?

They are employed in manufacturing and retail and key sectors of the economy. There are more people employed in the financial services sector than in all the mining, energy and resources sector—oil, gas, coal, iron ore and so forth. So there is a great story to be told about the Australian economy apart from just mining and those things.

The task of any good government, any prudent government, particularly in terms of economic management, is to nurture and ensure that the nation is well placed to take advantage of boom periods such as we now have in mining and resources. But how do we go beyond that? How do we ensure that jobs in the Australian economy are future proofed? How do we ensure that people will have an opportunity to get jobs in what we are calling the new economy? The reality is that the new economy is also part of the old economy; it is where all of those people are working today. It is people in the manufacturing sector, in the automotive industry, in the production sector and in the retail sector. The new and old economies are the same economies. What they are about is the transition. When we talk about the new economy we are really talking about that transition. Where is Australia today and where do we want to be in 25 years time? That is the key issue that should drive any government and it is exactly the issue that drives this government.

A recent global survey of business executives found that 92 per cent of them believe innovation is the main lever for a more competitive economy. I agree with them. Eighty-six per cent of them believe innovation is the best way to create jobs. I agree with them. I think that is the best way to do it. Eighty-five per cent of them believe innovation is the main lever to create a green economy. I agree with them. In fact, so does this government; in everything we have been doing we are in sync with what the business community believes.

But how do we rank compared to other nations? It is no good just to say that you are doing it—how do you compare to your competitors? Recently the Milken Institute, an independent economics firm, released the Milken Institute Innovation Report. The report provides a global analysis of the environment supporting innovation in 22 different countries. The report was prepared for GE—no small company and, for that matter, no small feat—and it ranks countries on seven different indicators. The indicators are industry-university collaboration in R? venture capital deals; gross expenditure on R? high-tech exports; utility patents; science, technology, engineering and maths education; and, lastly, business environment.

So how did Australia perform compared to its competitors? We performed extremely well. And you should not expect anything different because, do not forget, we are an innovative nation. We are a nation that has always ridden the wave of innovation because we are remote and we are outside of a domestic economy and we are part of the trading world. We are trading nation and we always have been. The findings for each of those categories for Australia go something like this. Australia is leading in the area of industry-university collaboration. Our innovation policy has seven priorities, two of which are aimed at facilitating greater collaboration. And we do very well. So far, this government has committed about $3½ billion to establishing 44 cooperative research centres—government working with universities working with industry. Each of these government sponsored organisations partners a public research facility with an end user and encourages end user driven research.

When it comes to venture capital deals, we scored above average. Australia does better than most. Australia may not be the leader in this area but we are attracting venture capital and we still rate well above average in this area. That is good news. When it comes to gross expenditure on R&D, Australia is a global leader. The government is spending at least 2.2 per cent of GDP on R&D. That is not enough; it is something we need to do more work on. But we certainly do well.

When it comes to high-tech exports we are above average. Again, we do well. High-tech exports account for slightly more than 13 per cent of Australia's total exports. It is another area I think we could focus and do more on but we still do above average. When it comes to utility patents, we are leading against those 22 countries. When it comes to science, technology, education and maths, we are leading the world.

When it comes to the business environment—the regulation business climate and red tape—believe it or not, for all the complaints you hear, we are leading. This is a country that is good for business. That is why we have so much inflow of capital. That is why people want to invest in Australia. That is reflected in why Australia's currency is so popular. Why is Australia's currency hovering at above 106c to 107c to the US dollar? It is because people have confidence in our economy, confidence in this government and confidence in where our currency sits, and they invest in that currency. Unfortunately there is a downside to that, of course: that makes our exports more expensive. But it does demonstrate the point I am trying to make here tonight.

It goes on in a whole range of areas, demonstrating just how much Australia either does well above average, punches above its weight or actually leads the world. This can be demonstrated not only in the work that was done for the Milken report but also by the way that for most people the global financial crisis was something that they read about in newspapers. It happened in another country or was a far distant thing, because for a lot of people and a lot of businesses it just did not happen in Australia. But the reality is that it did not happen because there was enormous government intervention. Government intervened. What we did was put forward an enormous stimulus package to make sure that people kept their jobs, to make sure that Australian business not only survived but thrived, to make sure that the economy remained strong and to make sure that for all intents and purposes people felt as little impact as possible. Often you will hear people skate over the issue. In Australia, they may well do that. They may skate over the issue, because we did not really feel the full impact. If you compare us to Europe then it is a different story. All you need to do is look at any European country and just see the mess that some of the countries are in right now compared to where we are.

After four years of a good Labor government and a re-election, you can see the impact and the effect of good management, including good economic management, and it is there not in rhetoric but in the numbers. It is there in the data and in all the evidence: nearly record and very, very low unemployment rates not just compared to the rest of the world but compared to any time anywhere—certainly compared even to domestic rates in Australia. We have managed to do these things through good, sound management and good, sound policies. This government has a great story to tell.

There is nowhere near enough time for me to go through all of the great stories tonight, but I do want to take you through some of them, because I think some of them stand out a lot more than others. When it comes to education reform, when it comes to assisting schools and assisting communities, when it comes to the environment, when it comes to managing the economy in particular and in a whole range of other areas, Australia does well domestically and does very well internationally. That is because we are actually focused on these issues.

As I said, the Gillard government recognises the importance of innovation. We have a clear innovation agenda that responds to the needs of business. In December, a new $249 million industrial transformation research grant was announced. This will help stimulate links between university research and business innovation. This is the core of how you actually create jobs. This is how an economy continues to grow and continues to provide for its citizens. The government's R&D tax incentive is also encouraging companies to undertake genuine research and development by doubling assistance rates for small to medium enterprises and increasing assistance to large enterprises by a third. Already 8,500 companies have registered to take assistance out of this program.

I talked earlier about productivity and why that is so important. Any measure of a good economy in the end has to measure productivity also. Simply put, we have to do more with less. That is the reality of any economy: each year you have to just do a little bit better. It does not necessarily mean working harder; it just means working a little bit smarter. If we are to compete, it is a truism. We will never compete against some of our neighbours on labour costs. For anyone who thinks that somehow there is some magic wand so that we can compete in that area, I am sorry to have to tell you this, but you are just wrong. The only way that we are going to compete is on technology, on innovation, on using our smarts, on using natural advantages or on taking advantage of the things that are right here in this country, including really good, skilled people. This is where we have advantage, whether it is locality, skills, innovation, venture capital, good governance or actually the systems that we have in place. Innovation and productivity go hand in hand. They are linked and, in my view, are inseparable. Productivity is actually a measure of economic output relative to inputs. The most straightforward way of measuring it is labour productivity—that is, the total output of the economy, real GDP, divided by the number of workers or number of hours worked. Increasing productivity is the main way that society can improve its standard of living. The evidence of that can be seen across any country or economy, but there is a slight distortion in Australia which sometimes gives you a false impression of where our productivity is. Often you will read in media reports that we are losing the productivity battle and that it is actually going down. Again, it depends on which figures you look at.

Productivity measured in Australia is skewed by Western Australian wages in particular, because of the mining boom and what is happening in Western Australia, and to some extent also by the data that is coming out of Queensland. But if you take that into account and normalise it across the economy, it gives you a different picture. It actually shows that Australia is not only innovative but is increasing productivity year on year. It is a small increase, but it is an increase. That is the secret, if you look behind the data, of why we are still doing so well. Why did we manage through the GFC? Why did our economy get through that? Why do we still have people in jobs? Why are so many jobs being created? Why is the economy so strong? If you have a look behind all of that, you will see that that is the reason.

According to the ABS, the annual productivity growth fell from 2.1 per cent in the 1990s to just 1.5 per cent in the 2000s. The reason will not be lost on anyone if they have a look at who might have been running the country between those good years and the not-so-good years—I think it might just be a little bit obvious. There are a number of factors that may have contributed to this fall compared to the slowdown in other OECD nations, but Australia has certainly maintained its productivity. While slightly lagging the United States in the 2000s, it was at a higher rate than in the rest of the OECD nations. So Australia has worked hard.

I will finish on a simple note. It is a note of caution, a note of attention as to what is happening in this economy. We can easily be blinded by the mining boom. I do not know how long the mining boom will go on. I hope it goes on forever—for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. Let the mining boom reign in this economy, but at the same time this is our opportunity to do the right thing by every Australian and get benefit out of the mining boom, to tax the mining industry properly and make sure that we account for the future and future jobs. (Time expired)

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012 and specifically to raise several issues of concern within my electorate of McPherson. This evening there are four issues I would like to speak about: firstly, transport infrastructure and the upgrade to the M1; secondly, an instrument landing system for the Gold Coast airport; thirdly, unemployment; and, fourthly, border protection. I will deal with each issue in turn, starting with the M1.

In particular, I would like to speak about the section of the M1 through the southern part of the Gold Coast that continues to be plagued by traffic and congestion issues. Almost that entire section of the M1 is located within my electorate and it is in desperate need of an upgrade. Congestion causes significant and ongoing issues for local residents getting to and from work and dropping kids off at school and also tourists as they travel through the Gold Coast. It also means that the M1 cannot perform its primary function, which is as a major arterial road from New South Wales to Queensland that should have the capacity to handle large volumes of passenger and freight vehicles.

As part of the federal government's election commitment in 2007, $455 million was allocated to upgrade the M1 at Logan and on the Gold Coast. The federal funding contribution was matched by the state, I understand, to a total of $420 million. While I understand the upgrade and widening of the M1 through to the New South Wales border is now unlikely to happen as one continuous upgrade, as originally proposed, the upgrade still desperately needs to happen. Staged upgrades of distinct sections of the M1 are therefore a viable and sensible alternative. The M1 between Worongary and Tugun is seriously affected by congestion and the sections between Robina and Varsity Lakes particularly so, where traffic regularly queues back to the Mudgeeraba interchange. Approximately 950 vehicles per hour exit the M1 at Mudgeeraba in the morning peak and 1,300 vehicles per hour in the evening peak period. There are expected to be major benefits in extending the six lanes to Mudgeeraba with through motorway volumes reducing on the Mudgeeraba to Robina section.

As I have already indicated, the efficiency of not only commuter but also freight movements is being affected by the ongoing congestion problems and these problems are exacerbated by increased numbers of heavy vehicles using the M1. I am advised that there is currently a project proposal report, or PPR, with the Department of Infrastructure and Transport to upgrade the M1 to six lanes between exit 77 and exit 79, but to date there has not been a response to the proposal. I have recently written to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport regarding this issue and raised my concerns with him. I have sought information on three issues: firstly, the status of the upgrade of the MI between Nerang and Tugun and specifically the section of the motorway between exit 77, which is Gooding Drive, and exit 79, which is Mudgeeraba; secondly, the time frame for approval of the project proposal report, and when works are anticipated to commence and complete; and, thirdly the time frames, if any, for further upgrades through to Tugun.

The need for an upgrade of the M1 on the southern Gold Coast should not be underestimated. The MI. must have sufficient capacity so that vehicles, both passenger and freight, can flow freely. This is not the case now and it needs to be addressed as a priority. I look forward to the minister's response to my letter on this issue and to the government delivering on its 2007 election commitment so that we can ensure the M1 on the southern Gold Coast gets its much-needed upgrade as a priority.

The second issue I wish to speak on today is the need for an instrument landing system, or ILS, at Gold Coast Airport. I had the opportunity to raise this issue in this place very briefly last week; however, I would like to discuss several points in further detail. An ILS is an aviation tool that provides pilots with a variety of visual and non-visual tools to assist them in landing planes in low visibility conditions. Where an instrument landing system is not installed, pilots have to rely upon non-precision approach procedures that require high levels of visibility. In recent weeks there have been various news reports about the lack of an ILS at Gold Coast Airport, with unhappy members of the aviation community questioning why such an important piece of equipment is missing from one of Australia's largest airports. Gold Coast Airport is the sixth largest airport in Australia, and despite airports in capital cities and some smaller regional airports having an ILS, including Townsville and Cairns, the Gold Coast Airport does not.

The situation has been highlighted in recent weeks where inclement weather and poor visibility have resulted in a number of aircraft go-arounds, holding patterns, aborted landings and diversions to other airports. As I said in this place last week, there is obviously a safety concern as well as risk to aircraft and a significant cost burden to operators. I understand that discussions are already underway between Gold Coast Airport and Airservices Australia, and I call on the government to fast-track the installation and commissioning of an instrument landing system at Gold Coast Airport.

The third issue I would like to speak on today that directly impacts my electorate of McPherson and the Gold Coast as a whole is unemployment. Later this week the ABS labour force figures for January are scheduled to be released, and hopefully we will see an improvement in unemployment numbers. However, the release of the ABS labour force figures show that no jobs have been created over the past year—Australia's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.2 per cent in December 2011. What is concerning is that these figures do not include the latest round of pending job cuts announced by some of Australia's largest employers; nor do they include the impact of Labor's job-destroying carbon and mining taxes. The Gillard government has again proved that it is without a clue on how to halt the slide in Australia's job market and a faltering local economy. During a recent interview on Radio National, the Treasurer talked up Australia's economy against a flailing European market, only to admit that his May 2011 forecast of 500,000 new jobs in two years was utter nonsense. The interview ran:

Fran Kelly: In terms of the positives though, the government positively forecast half a million new jobs over the next two years to be created. Given the zero jobs growth last year, are you still confident that figure holds? That (it) can be achieved?

Wayne Swan: Certainly we will do less than that.

This is another example to add to the ever-growing list of broken promises: the carbon tax, the tax summit and the private health insurance rebate.

I have mentioned in this place before the difficult situation the Gold Coast faces with unemployment, as we are a region that depends heavily on the tourism and construction industries. Unfortunately, these two industries are the hardest hit in a global economic downturn—and the GFC certainly hit the Gold Coast hard. Despite these downturns, however, the southern Gold Coast has fared better than its northern counterparts in the recently released regional labour force statistics for the period ending December 2011. Not only is the southern Gold Coast region blessed with beautiful beaches and rolling hills but it is also managing to keep its unemployment rate relatively low.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A good Labor state government.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

About to be changed. According to detailed figures taken from the labour force statistics, the long-term unemployment rate for the southern Gold Coast, measured over a four-year average, is 5.4 per cent. This compares favourably with the central Gold Coast at 5.5 per cent and the northern Gold Coast at 6.3 per cent. The unemployment rate for women on the southern Gold Coast is steady at 5.6 percent. This beats both the central Gold Coast at 5.8 per cent and the northern Gold Coast at 7.3 per cent.

These figures, however, do not mean that there is time for complacency. The best result for the southern Gold Coast occurred way back in January 2008, when the lowest figure—just 2.2 per cent unemployment—came directly off the Howard government. More recently the 12-month average unemployment has risen to 6.4 per cent, indicating that the southern Gold Coast economy is hurting. It also indicates that there is a substantial pool of unused capacity in the official unemployment results.

From conversations I have had with local businesses, I have gathered that these figures mask the reality of the situation: the greater problem is the underemployment of labour capacity. While estimating underemployment in the southern Gold Coast regional area is difficult, locals point to a rate of underemployment which could be twice the official rate of unemployment. Clearly we need to get the economy of the southern Gold Coast moving again. It is important that we prevent the cost-of-living pressures from continuing to rise and that we ensure that our unemployment rate on the southern Gold Coast is pushed down again. I repeat: this is not a time for complacency on the issue of unemployment. The coalition will ensure that cost-of-living pressures are kept to an absolute minimum. We will deliver transparency and accountability and restore trust in government.

The final issue I will speak about today is Australia's current border protection policies and the associated cost blowouts. These issues are consistently raised with me by the people of McPherson, who are concerned about the number of illegal boat arrivals and what this means for our nation's border protection. The number of boat arrivals since the Labor government unwound the coalition's strong border protection policies is undeniably significant. The total number of arrivals since August 2008 is 15,089, and the total number of boats that have arrived in this time is 278. Since polling day on 21 August 2010, 123 boats and 7,740 people have arrived. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship costs an extra $1 billion a year to run compared with the costs when Labor was first elected.

These are yet more costs to taxpayers for border protection policies by this government which have failed. The government should restore the successful border protection policies of the Howard government. They should, firstly, restore temporary protection visas; secondly, reopen the processing centre on Nauru; and, thirdly, turn back the boats when it is safe to do so. These are the coalition's commitments, and I can assure the people of McPherson that I am fighting to ensure these policies are restored.

As I have highlighted today there are a variety of important issues facing the southern Gold Coast that I will continue to raise and fight for. Upgrading the M1 is important to local Gold Coasters as well as the tourism industry. The implementation of an instrument landing system at Gold Coast Airport will improve the efficiency of flights into the local region. Unemployment on the southern Gold Coast is not as high as elsewhere. However, we cannot become complacent on this issue. Finally, border protection issues and their associated cost blowouts are of serious concern to my electorate. They are concerned about the uncertainty of cost-of-living pressures and they do not want to see their tax dollars wasted any further.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak in relation to the appropriations bills because when you look at what we have been able to achieve in terms of our economic performance and where we are headed, particularly relative to overseas economies, we have a fantastic story to tell. In relation to net debt and its peaks in 2011-12, we see it is 8.9 per cent of GDP—less than a 10th of average major advanced economies. If you look at any of the headline indicators, we see growth at trend—others would love to have the growth that we are experiencing here; 700,000 jobs created at a time when 30 million were being cut out of most advanced economies; and unemployment at 5.2 per cent.

Compare that to what is going on in the Euro zone, where unemployment is at 10.4 per cent. The member for McPherson was talking about jobs and the importance of economic growth and employment growth. We are still able to beat overseas unemployment rates, particularly in terms of the Euro zone, where it is nudging 10.4 per cent, and the US, where it is eight per cent. Then we turn to interest rates. If you have got a $300,000 mortgage, you are paying $3,000 a year less as a result of interest rates coming down—and I have spoken publicly about the need for interest rates to keep coming down.

In terms of the appropriations bills, we are looking at our fiscal consolidation being the strongest that it has been in four decades—at a time when we have had $140 billion cut out of revenues, particularly due to the GFC and its aftermath—and we are one of just 12 countries that have a AAA rating from all three ratings agencies. These are spectacular figures when you look at our overall economic performance and compare what other people are experiencing.

On the other side of politics, they talk tough about, for example, what they are able to do in relation to cutting spending and they keep railing about waste and mismanagement. Yet where are they when they have an opportunity to step up and do what we have done? I mentioned earlier in terms of fiscal consolidation the amount we have been able to cut out of the budget and the fact that we are able to point to where we are headed in relation to bringing the budget into surplus.

In the past week the opposition have taken four steps back from a commitment of being able to even demonstrate whether or not they would be able to get to surplus—not when, but whether they would. On 6 February the member for Goldstein said, 'Well, it just depends. As I say, there is so much uncertainty around the numbers.' The next day the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said, 'Well, before the coalition is called to account for a surplus, the government has to deliver a surplus'—not on their own wherewithal and their own ability to find the savings so that they could demonstrate how they could go to a surplus; they are pinning it on whether or not we will be able to do it. On the same day the member for North Sydney said, 'We'll do it as soon as possible,' and then a day later the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Warringah, said, 'What I am saying is that we'll get back to surplus as quickly as possible.' So there is this march back from being able to even point to when they will be able to reach surplus.

Another interesting interview was last week. Emma Alberici on Lateline, who I have to say is certainly carving a reputation for herself as a tough interviewer, had the member for North Sydney on the program and basically put to him a series of questions about at what point the opposition would be able to demonstrate their capacity to get to a surplus. Bearing in mind, as I have said, the degree to which we have been able to cut spending and the degree to which we have experienced fiscal consolidation in the course of the last year in particular, Emma Alberici said to the member for North Sydney:

Well the Government says, just like you do, that it will run a surplus next year. They have mapped out how they intend to achieve that. You've said you want to introduce paid parental leave at a cost of $6.3 billion over two years, that you want to deliver dental help through Medicare at around $4 billion a year; you're happy to announce where you want to give people things, but—

this was the killer quote that Ms Alberici put to the member for North Sydney—

you're not particularly inclined to tell everyone where you want to cut things.

That is the problem, because the opposition talk tough about being able to, as they say, cut waste and mismanagement—I note that the member for Higgins is here, and I had the opportunity to read her contribution in relation to what we are proposing with the private health insurance; she too, in her contribution yesterday, indicated the need to cut waste and mismanagement—but whenever there is an opportunity to do so they walk away from it. It is worth noting that last year, for example, when we summoned up the response to the Queensland floods, we obviously committed our support to the Queensland state government. I note that the member for Oxley is here. His electorate in particular, amongst others, suffered extremely hard as a result of those floods. We committed spending, but we also said that we needed to pitch in via the levy. The opposition said, 'We can do that. We can commit to the repair work, but we'll find the savings.' They were unable to find close to $6 billion in savings and, when they were pressed, outsourced their economic advice to One Nation, who suggested that one of the things they could do was cut a program that the Howard government initiated, supported by us, that provides support to the Indonesian government for education and support to schools in Indonesia. So the best they could do was rely upon One Nation and its type of economic extremism to find savings. They were unable to find savings of their own. It will be interesting to see whether or not they hit the $70 billion that they claim that they can find in terms of savings.

Ms O'Dwyer interjecting—

The member for Higgins interjects. I note that, as I said earlier, she was railing against the initiatives and the reforms that we are trying to bring in to make private healthcare insurance fairer so that the constituents I represent are not cross-subsidising residents in electorates that have the capacity to pay. She pointed out that we should find ways of cutting waste and mismanagement. But, whenever we stump up with savings, such as the $2.4 billion in terms of private health care, we have the member for Higgins, the member for Kooyong and the member for Mayo, the members who have formed this Society of Modest Members—so modest that we never hear any actual firm proposals out of them about what they intend to do in terms of economic reform.

When we do put reforms on the table, they are unable to actually support the cutting of government spending or the redirection of spending in terms of the private healthcare rebate, and they cannot bring themselves to either find savings of their own or fight us on savings, while at the same time they say, 'There is waste and mismanagement to be cut.' In the course of the last week, they walked away from their commitment as to when they deliver a surplus, and they are unable to identify the savings. They are unable to show us where they might be able to bring us into surplus.

Of course, I mentioned earlier that they had outsourced their economic thinking to the extreme elements like One Nation. We had the member for McPherson talking about border control and border protection and the types of things that needed to be reined in. When we said to them: 'You reckon that you can, for example, open up detention facilities on Nauru,' we found out who they have turned to to help them provide support—because they disputed the costings in relation to setting up facilities on Nauru, or reopening them. We found out they have turned to a catering company to provide some sort of thorough costings about how government spending would be directed to establish detention facilities on Nauru.

We should not be surprised at the inability of the opposition to find savings. Frankly, you can go back to their performance when in government. They look to the glory days of the Howard government, but it is worth noting that others, including me, have reflected on that in this place. There are others like, for example, Malcolm Farr in The Punch who identified that, in the 11 years of the Howard government, real government expenditure grew. They are lecturing us on cutting spending. The member for Higgins was associated with the former government as an adviser. We have been told that they have been able to find savings. The member for Higgins was associated with the former government, and spending grew by four per cent in the last five years. Every year, it grew by four per cent.

Those opposite point to our deficits and like to airbrush the fact that the GFC occurred. I would ask the member for Higgins, or those opposite, to indicate at some point whether or not, when the economy was freezing up, when banks were unprepared to lend, when construction projects were falling over for lack of finance and when people were concerned about their jobs and economic growth, they would have been prepared to go into deficit to ensure that the economy continued to function, we would get to the other side of the GFC and we would have the types of growth rates that we are experiencing now.

They keep railing against deficits and spending, but in fact we know what the Leader of the Opposition said in February 2010 when he was criticising the work that we did to save the economy through the GFC: 'We shouldn't be spending that much. We should do what New Zealand did.' When you look at New Zealand's performance through the GFC and compare it to ours, they had slower growth. They were not able to save jobs to the same extent that we were able to. That is what they are asking us to follow. They are asking us to follow what they did in their time in government, when spending always grew and inflation was higher. People are saving compared to what the coalition left us with in terms of interest rates. As I quoted earlier, on a $300,000 mortgage you are saving $3,000 a year under the interest rates that people are paying now compared to what the coalition left us with. During their time in government—even when the challenge was put to them about what they would do through the GFC or when they were asked to identify savings—they have been unable to match us. Again, it is worth quoting: the inflation rate in late 2007 was under four per cent; last year it was below three per cent.

When the member for Higgins was advising the former government, the tax take was higher as a proportion of GDP than it is now. What was it then?

Ms O'Dwyer interjecting—

The member for Higgins interjects, but what was the tax take back then? The tax take gobbled up over 24 per cent of GDP at its peak under the coalition. It is heading for 21 per cent now. There was higher taxing on the other side of the political fence than what we have as a proportion of the GDP. We had revenues hit by the GFC, but we still managed the fastest fiscal consolidation. Those opposite are still having problems identifying how to respond to the Queensland floods. They say they can save $6 billion. They cannot even find the money for that. While we are again going through the fastest rate of fiscal consolidation in four decades, they have a $70 billion target that they want to cut, and they cannot even crack it in terms of $6 billion.

What is interesting is that, on the weekend, the columnist Laurie Oakes outlined where the $70 billion came from. I notice that the member for Goldstein today was talking about a crisis of confidence. If there is a crisis of confidence, it is between the member for North Sydney and the member for Goldstein, because it is clear from Laurie Oakes's article that the $70 billion was deliberately put out there as a way in which to track leakers in the opposition ministry. It is clear that there is a falling out or a lack of confidence between the shadow Treasurer and the shadow finance minister in key economic portfolios where they are supposed to be able to demonstrate how they can get to surplus, but they have been walking away from that in the last week. They have been unable in the past, either in government or in opposition, to show what they can do to rectify or be able to cut out what they identify as waste and mismanagement.

Yesterday the member for Higgins was railing against our efforts to make the private health insurance rebate fairer. The opposition are unable to come up with savings. The member for Higgins—the next pillar of economic support or advice for the coalition!—and her colleagues the member for Kooyong and the member for Mayo are unable to find those savings or give any economic backbone to the opposition. As I said, we have the runs on the board. We have been able to achieve growth, to protect jobs, to lower inflation, to lower interest rates and to be the envy of the advanced economies of the world, who would love to be able to emulate our situation. The other side cannot even get the arithmetic right.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was very entertaining listening to that speech by the member for Chifley. He would make a very good fiction writer, because so much of what came out of his mouth this evening was just that—fiction. If you look at the facts and at the economic record of this government, you see that it is very damning. When you consider this legislation, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012, the contrast between the Labor government's record—or, to state it more correctly, the Labor-Greens alliance government—and the coalition's record is stark. We were able to repay Labor's debt of $96 billion and to deliver a surplus of $20 billion. They have delivered a net debt of over $133 billion. They have delivered four deficits of an accumulated amount of $167 billion. They have needed to lift the gross debt ceiling from $75 billion to $250 billion. They have sought to increase taxes and to introduce 19 new taxes, and they have had significant cost blow-outs in the various programs, including the most famous program of all when you talk about bad economic management, where you do not even have a cost-benefit analysis of something as supposedly significant as the NBN project, which is starting at $27 billion but will go so much higher than that.

This government have increased spending; they have not decreased spending. For all their talk about decreasing spending, the government have increased spending by over $100 billion and that is now going to be part of the structural deficit built into this budget. Every man, woman and child in this country, because of the government's borrowings, is owing $6,000. If you ask Australians whether they are better off because of the economic management of the government, they will say a resounding no to that question.

Today I came into this chamber to talk about an issue that is concerning to the people of my electorate—that is, the review of school funding. As we are aware, the Gonski review has now been completed and we are all waiting to see how the government will respond to the review's recommendations. It is very important, because this review goes to the heart of how our schools operate. It goes to the heart of school funding. As such, its recommendations and how the government respond to those recommendations will shape not only the funding agreements for non-government schools post 2013 but the educational options and outcomes available to Australian families for many more school generations to come.

The government have spoken a great deal in this place about education and revolution: Building the Education Revolution or the Digital Educational Revolution. However, the Australian people should not be in any doubt that the Gillard government's response to the Gonski review will have at its heart the real revolution that this government wants to see in education.

While we are yet to see the review recommendations, as the member for Higgins I am already deeply concerned about the Gillard government's rhetoric and indeed their real agenda on the issue of school funding—and I am not alone. I received a letter only the other day from the principal of one of the schools in my electorate. It read:

The parents and families of the 500-plus students attending our school have begun a new school year with excitement.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Name the school!

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very happy to ask this question directly of the Prime Minister. The letter goes on:

But there is a dark cloud of uncertainty about future funding for our school. Parents are worried that the Gillard government will use the review of funding for schooling to disadvantage their children. Much of the public discussion regarding school funding is based on misunderstandings and misinformation, impairing sensible and productive discussion. In their even louder public campaign, opponents of the independent sector claim that non-government schools receive more government funding than government schools. This is wrong.

Governments in Australia spend significantly more on students at government schools than those attending non-government schools. In Victoria 31 per cent of schools are non-government, educating almost 37 per cent of Victorian students. But these schools receive only 22.5 per cent of government funding for Victorian students. Families making an educational investment in non-government schools save Victorian taxpayers more than $1.85 billion per annum.

The Prime Minister and the minister for schooling have both said that no school will lose a single dollar per student, but there is no guarantee that funding will be indexed to reflect cost increases. In effect, this would be a funding cut. Despite our best efforts to economise there would be considerable pressure on school fees. Some parents may have to consider placing their children in government schools, thus increasing the burden on the government system.

That is a letter from just one of the school principals in my electorate. He is very, very concerned.

In the real world, beyond this place, school funding has a real impact on real Australians. In my electorate of Higgins, there is only one government school, and it is a selective school: Melbourne High School. Every other secondary school in my electorate is from the independent sector. It is therefore of little surprise that school funding beyond 2013 is an area of very great interest to many families and indeed to all of the secondary schools within my electorate. As the shadow minister for education, apprenticeships and training has said:

… Labor appears reluctant to guarantee the future of funding to non-government schools in real terms.

What does this mean? Peter Garrett, the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, has said that non-government schools will not lose a single dollar per student as a result of the Gonski review. However, what he has failed to say on many occasions is the word 'real'—that no school will lose a single dollar in real terms. School funding is currently indexed so that the real value of the funding keeps abreast in monetary terms with the cost of living.

The government tries to make very light of this indexation question, but in my electorate of Higgins the impact of the loss of indexation would be enormous. Within my electorate alone there are 22 schools that will have a shortfall of more than $29 million if the indexation of school funding is discontinued. If this occurs it will be a very bad news day for the families of those students.

The schools in my electorate that will be affected by a failure by this government to provide future funding indexation are the Currajong School, Holy Eucharist School, Korowa Anglican Girls' School, Lauriston Girls' School, Loreto Mandeville Hall, Our Lady of Lourdes School, Presentation College, St Anthony's Primary School, St Catherine's School, St Cecilia's Parish School, St Joseph's Primary School, St Mary's School, St Roch's Catholic Parish Primary School, Geelong Grammar School Glamorgan, the King David School, Sacre Coeur, De La Salle College, St Kevin's College, St Michael's Primary School, Oakleigh Greek Orthodox College, Melbourne Girls Grammar and Caulfield Grammar School.

Any funding reduction to the non-government school sector will have a direct impact on choice for parents and choice for students. There are a number of school principals who have advised me that they would be forced to close their doors or to radically alter their fees—and therefore their student selection—if the current funding arrangements were to change significantly. I think it is important to put on the record clearly that non-government schools are not all the same. They are not simply, as this government would have you believe, a bunch of 'wealthy' schools. Since becoming the member for Higgins I have made it a priority to visit as many of the 39 schools in my electorate as I can. The schools within Higgins are all very significantly different—as, I expect, are the schools across the country. They charge different fees, have students from varied backgrounds and offer different scholarship programs. If anyone has any doubt about this, I suggest they visit one of the schools in my electorate, Presentation College, which is in Melbourne's inner south-eastern suburb of Windsor. Presentation College is the second oldest girls Catholic school in Victoria. It serves an area that has some of the wealthiest and some of the poorest members of our community. Throughout its proud history, Presentation has made it a stated priority to welcome families from diverse backgrounds and to ensure that its fees are accessible to middle and lower income families. In fact, in 2009 nearly 17 per cent of its students received the educational maintenance allowance.

What will happen if government funding to schools like Presentation college, and many others, is reduced? Across Australia, if just 10 per cent of existing non-government students switch to government education, 120,000 students will have to be immediately accommodated. This will have an impact on class sizes, staff and facilities in our existing government schools. This will prove to be a logistical and financial nightmare for our government schools and, if anything, will reduce the quality of education on offer.

In addition, as I have stated before, there is no years 7 to 12 non-selective government school in my electorate. If funding to schools is reduced, fees will invariably increase. Some families will decide that non-government education is no longer affordable for them—which leads me to question whether the Minister for School Education and Minister for Early Childhood and Youth will actually put a government school in the electorate of Higgins. What will he say to the parents who can no longer afford to send their children to an independent school? What are the government plans? Has a new site even been selected for a government school in my electorate?

This is a real issue for the people of Higgins and indeed all Australians. Across this country, one-third of all students attend non-government schools—nearly half of the secondary sector. I am very concerned that this government is more focused on undermining the non-government school sector—for dubious reasons and questionable benefits—than on improving our government schools. While I am concerned about the government's response to the Gonski review, I am of course left in no doubt of the position of the Greens. Their stated policy is that funding to non-government schools should be reduced to 2003-04 levels. The result of this would be that 90 schools in Victoria alone would struggle to remain open. The coalition remains the only political party that unequivocally supports choice in education. We have consistently argued that the amount of funds under any new model adopted as a result of the Gonski review must be maintained, including indexation. Furthermore, we believe that, since all parents pay taxes, they are entitled to assistance with their children's education, irrespective of whether they choose a government or a non-government school.

The quantum and method of government funding, federal and state, is where this debate gets complicated. As a result, the matter of school funding is often misrepresented by those who have an ideological agenda to push. Let us, though, be very clear: while the federal-state mix does vary, government schools receive the overwhelming majority of total recurrent government funding. Indeed, data provided by the Parliamentary Library states that, in 2007-08, per-student recurrent expenditure at government schools was $12,639, while at non-government schools it was $6,607—nearly half. So the students who attend non-government schools receive half the government subsidy that students attending a government school receive. This means that for every child who switches from a non-government school to a government school, taxpayers will have to find double the funds to educate the child. And of course this does not take into account the capital costs that will invariably arise out of the need for new buildings and new facilities.

And here we get to the heart of the issue: Labor—and to a greater extent the Greens—have an ideological opposition to Australian families investing their own money into their children's education, into their children's future. This ideological obsession of this government is one that has been with it since the Prime Minister was the shadow minister for education. Who can forget that she drew up the hit list of schools? We will most probably see that hit list revived.

We need to ensure that all students have an opportunity to receive the very best education they can and that we retain choice in education. What is wrong with choice? What is wrong with investing in education? This is at the heart of the issue that is before us and the people of Higgins today. In my role as the member for Higgins I believe that every Australian child deserves a quality education that enables them to develop the skills necessary to fulfil their potential. As such, I want every child within my electorate to have a range of schools from which their family can choose. I will continue to defend choice and diversity in education. I will continue to fight the Labor-Greens agenda. I will continue to fight their hit list on schools. If the federal government fails to ensure that non-government school funding stays at real levels beyond 2013, the standard of educational outcomes will suffer in both the government and the non-government sectors not just in Higgins but across Australia. That will be the horrible legacy that this Labor-Greens government will leave us for generations to come.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the appropriation bills that are before the Main Committee. These bills reflect the government's commitment to delivering on responsible budgets that strengthen our economy. We are focused on bringing the budget back into surplus in 2012-13, in contrast with the opposition's $70 billion black hole. The break in the parliamentary sitting calendar over the last few months has been a great opportunity for me to spend time at home with families throughout my own electorate, and there have been some constant messages as I have spent time with them. Local families want a government that will, first and foremost, support the Australian economy and support jobs. They want a government that understands the cost-of-living pressures faced by families across the economy. Families want a government that invests in health, education and infrastructure for all Australians, not just those who live in wealthy electorates.

When it comes to the Australian economy, supporting jobs, addressing cost-of-living pressures and investing in health, education and our nation's infrastructure, the government is delivering. It is important to remember where we were four years ago and the challenge former Prime Minister John Howard left us. In terms of jobs, who could forget the legacy of Work Choices, the Liberal Party's policy that left over four million Australians without basic protection in the workplace? That is a policy we know members opposite are working to reintroduce at the next election.

Ms O'Dwyer interjecting—

I note that the contribution of the member for Higgins during the course of this debate was very much focused on, again, engendering fear in the community about an issue that has not even been decided on or released. I would say to the member for Higgins, as she is a relatively new member in this place, that interjections do not actually make up for substance and good policy development.

In terms of jobs, who could forget the legacy of Work Choices? The Liberal Party's policy did leave over four million Australian workers without basic protection in the workplace. While those opposite continue to support Work Choices, the government continues to stand up for working Australians and their entitlements in the workplace. Our focus has always been on supporting jobs. One of the first things we did was to abolish Work Choices and its anti-worker provisions. Members on this side have been firmly focused on jobs. Our response to the global financial crisis was all about keeping people in work, and our upcoming budget will once again will be focused on supporting our nation's economy and employment for Australian families.

Since Labor came to office, around 700,000 more Australians are in work. A Liberal-National government on the other hand, who opposed our global financial crisis stimulus package which created 200,000 jobs, would not have seen that number of jobs created. Members opposite voted against supporting jobs during the global financial crisis. Only last year, the Prime Minister visited my electorate to turn the first sod at the new Manufacturing Technology Training Centre in Ballarat. In my own electorate that is a very important initiative. We have provided over $18 million through our Education Investment Fund to support the future of Ballarat's economy and its economy in manufacturing. This centre will accommodate around 100 more apprentices in manufacturing, which is very important for the skills development of our local economy. It is good for industry, it is good for jobs and it will be good for the Ballarat economy. Our record on jobs and our record on the economy continue to be the envy of the Western world. In Australia our unemployment rate is 5.3 per cent, comparable with 8.5 per cent in the US and 8.3 per cent in the UK. Our interest rates are 2.5 points lower than when the Liberals lost office—4.25 per cent now compared with 6.75 per cent in November 2007. But we understand that, although our economic record is the envy of the world, there is still a lot more to be done. One thing that distinguishes members on this side from those opposite is our support for hardworking and struggling families to assist with the cost of living and to support their quality of life. In July this year, low-income earners will benefit from an increase in the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to $18,200. This means less tax will be paid by those on low incomes and for over one million Australians there will be no need to lodge a tax return. Our income tax cuts mean that a person earning $50,000 a year now pays $1,750 less in tax than they did in 2007.

We have assisted parents by increasing the childcare rebate to 50 per cent, providing families up to $7,500 per child per year. It has now been over one year since Australian families began taking advantage of our nation's first Paid Parental Leave program—over 125,000 Australians so far. This is giving parents the opportunity to spend those important early months of their baby's life together.

Two years ago it was a Labor government that delivered the most significant reforms to the age pension in its 100-year history. Our reforms have delivered increases to the maximum pension of around $148 per fortnight for singles and $146 per fortnight for couples combined. The Labor government will deliver pensioners a net increase in their pension over and above any impact on the carbon price, whereas under the Liberals 3.4 million pensioners will lose about $338 per year for singles and $510 per year for couples combined. We have also helped by expanding the education tax refund to include school uniforms from 1 July 2011. I know a 50 per cent refund on education expenses goes a long way for parents in my electorate. Over $5 million was paid out to over 8,780 families in my electorate as part of the education tax refund in the 2009-10 financial year alone. That was $5 million back into the pockets of Ballarat families.

For working families faced with cost-of-living pressures, we are delivering tax cuts, education tax refunds, childcare rebates, paid parental leave and increases in the pension. Also, through our appropriations we have focused on addressing the Howard government's lack of investment in education. Many schools across my electorate never thought they would have the opportunity to upgrade their old buildings that were in desperate need of investment. Students were learning in 19th century classrooms and facilities in the 21st century. One of the key elements of our economic stimulus plan was the $16.2 billion investment in Building the Education Revolution. This has funded some 24,000 infrastructure projects in 9½ thousand schools across the country. Across my own electorate, 85 schools have benefited from almost $116 million—168 projects in total. I have been out and seen the majority of the completed BER projects, and many of the school principals, staff and school councils I have spoken with have said these new facilities would never have been built without the Gillard government. Students now have access to 21st century learning spaces. We have invested in schools and transformed them. These are learning spaces that were built during the global financial crisis and supported local jobs and these projects have transformed regional and rural schools in particular.

Let me be clear: under an Abbott-led government, these schools would not have seen a cent. There would have been no new buildings in schools and no local jobs supported—nothing. Our commitment to education does not end with Building the Education Revolution. Under our Digital Education Revolution, every Australian student in years 9 to 12 now will have access to a computer, with over 750,000 computers being delivered under the program. We are continuing our hard work to transition Australian schools to be the best that they can. We have improved transparency in our schooling system with the introduction of My School. We are implementing the first ever national curriculum. It is under our government that schools have received record investment—over $64.9 billion over four years, almost double the investment that schools received from those opposite.

The Gillard government support for education continues through to higher education. At the University of Ballarat, we have not only funded the manufacturing technology centre but we have also funded many other projects: the science and engineering precinct, the equestrian centre at Mount Rowan, the primary industries training facility, and a new childcare centre that we are soon to open at the SMB TAFE campus.

Ballarat and regional students will be able to access independent youth allowance in the same way as students from outer regional remote and very remote areas under our new legislation. That means that more students in my electorate have access to youth allowance. This is especially important for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

In addition to giving more regional students access to youth allowance, the Gillard government has removed the restrictions on the number of places available at universities. That means that more students have access to universities than ever before. We saw university offers up by more than four per cent at the beginning of 2012 and an additional 100,000 students are now attending university compared with 2007.

In health, for over a decade under the Howard government families across Australia experienced a lack of investment. Sixty per cent of Australians lived in areas with doctor shortages. Those opposite failed to end the blame game between states and territories and the Commonwealth, they ripped funding out of hospitals and they failed to address those 88,000 Australians waiting far too long for elective surgery. The Gillard government has started to turn this around. We are investing to support the Australian people by building a better health system. The Gillard government is investing heavily in our health system through the Health and Hospitals Fund and we are seeing record investment in my own electorate in vital infrastructure projects, such as the Ballarat Regional Integrated Cancer Centre, the Ballarat Dental Clinic and the Ballarat Central Primary Care Facility—not to mention a number of GP practices and the GP superclinic in Ballan, which has been a very important facility.

Under this government we have seen Australia's largest ever mental health package. We have appointed our country's first ever mental health minister. And we are investing $2.2 billion over five years to ensure that mental health is a key health priority. Under our mental health package we are seeing real examples across Australia through the establishment of headspace centres. Back in October last year I had the pleasure of announcing that my electorate was successful in its campaign to have the Ballarat region listed as a location for a new headspace centre. The government has also been building the GP superclinics, one of which, as I mentioned, is in the Ballan. The Ballan GP Superclinic has been up and running for some time now and have really transformed health services in that small rural community.

Members on this side of the House have shown their strong support for private health insurance, and we are supporting a private health insurance rebate that is fairer. Why should low- and middle-income families subsidise health insurance for those households earning over a quarter of a million dollars a year? With our reforms we are bringing fairness back into our health system.

Mr Haase interjecting—

I do not think you get it, actually. I do not think you actually get it at all. Certainly, in terms of the private health insurance rebate, we are making it fairer. We are making sure that low- and middle-income families are not subsidising the health insurance of people like myself whose combined family income is over $250,000.

Mr Haase interjecting—

I actually do have private health insurance; thank you very much. But, anyway, we will leave that interjection aside. I am quite happy to lose my rebate. Why should I get a rebate when someone in my electorate earning $50,000 is subsidising me? Why should I get a rebate? I should not. This is all about entrenching privilege again. In the area of private health insurance we are making it fairer. Our reforms are bringing fairness back into our health insurance rebate scheme. And that money is important. It is important to spend on other health priorities, like dental. I would much rather that money go into assisting low-income people who have chronic dental conditions and are in desperate, desperate need. You only have to look at the dental issues for some of the people in my electorate—which is an area where we have not had fluoride in the water for a long, long time—and what that actually means in terms of their health outcomes. It is a significant issue.

One of the other significant investments that the Gillard Labor government is making across this country is our investment in the National Broadband Network. On Monday I spoke in this House of the great benefits that the NBN will deliver to businesses and families across the Ballarat electorate. Our current telecommunications network has served us well for the past 100 years. But that is exactly what it is—it is 100 years old—and it is going to strangle our economy if we do not change it. If we do not invest in this infrastructure today, it will cause us significant economic problems into the future.

Ballarat Central and Bacchus Marsh residents are awaiting the early rollout of fibre to their homes, which is starting to occur in Bacchus Marsh, and business owners well know the benefits of fast broadband access in today's digital economy and are keen to be part of this new network. The NBN is yet another measure the government is taking to set up our economy for our future. While those opposite have outlined over 20 failed broadband plans, the Gillard government has got on with the job of building this nation's largest single infrastructure project. While we support farmers, business, families and our education and health systems by providing access to the NBN for all Australians, the Liberals would cancel the NBN and cost Australian jobs. Unlike the attempt to create a patchwork solution to our slow broadband speeds that the opposition had in terms of their OPAL solution, which in essence would have, as the member at the table said, almost result in regional and rural people having to be communicate by carrier pigeon, the NBN will have a significant impact, particularly for regional and rural Australians.

There are a number of other things I want to mention in this debate. One of the things I am most proud of is our contribution to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I ask to make an intervention, for the opportunity to ask a question of the speaker.

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

Will the member take a question?

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I have little time left.

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

The member for Durack will resume his seat. The member for Ballarat.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I always find it amazing that those members opposite do not want to hear about any of the achievements. What they want to do is spread fear in the community. They want to tell mistruths about what the government is actually doing. The National Disability Insurance Scheme will be a significant initiative of this government and will leave a very important legacy for those people who have been struggling with disability services for such a long time.

I am very proud of the achievements of this government since 2007: abolishing Work Choices, paid parental leave, the National Broadband Network, the clean energy package, the National Disability Insurance Scheme—very important initiatives. (Time expired)

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise this evening to address Appropriation Bills 3 and 4 of 2011-12. Might I remind members that 7 February was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. All will be familiar with the Dickens novel Oliver Twist. After a tortuous three months of slow starvation, Oliver worked up the courage to ask for more gruel. For this simple question, perhaps a matter of life and death, he was ordered into instant confinement and a notice was next morning placed on the outside of the parish gate offering a reward of five pounds to anyone who would take the boy off the hands of the parish.

If only this government were Oliver Twist. Then the people of Australia could banish them when they ask for more money to fund their failed asylum seeker policy. The costs of running the immigration department have leapt from $1.6 billion in the last year of the Howard government to now more than $2.7 billion a year. In the 2009-10 budget the government provided less than $500 million over the entire forward estimates to manage asylum seekers. But the direct cost for this period alone has hit $3.4 billion, without adding the cost of building and expanding detention centres. Labor are now spending in just five months on boat arrivals what they said they would spend in four years after abolishing the Pacific solution and temporary protection visas. So they are going back to parliament asking for another $330 million. Last year they asked for another $295 million and the year before an additional $120 million. In the last year of the Howard government, the cost of running the department of immigration was $1.6 billion. Senate estimates figures released last week show the cost of running the department of immigration is now more than $2.7 billion with the key reason for this increase the growth in costs for managing asylum seekers—no justification of any kind for the almost $700 million cost blow-out in its contract with Serco for immigration detention centres. As at 9 February almost 100 letters to questions on notice from the October 2011 supplementary budget estimates hearings for immigration and citizenship portfolio are still outstanding. This is all indicative of an incompetent minister and an incompetent government.

Now for some shocking details of the incompetence. I apologise in advance for perhaps boring you with this litany of complex figures. The additional estimates released by the government this week show a further budget blow-out in asylum seeker costs of $866 million, or more than 25 per cent. As a result, the government will go back to parliament this week and ask for an immediate $330 million to cover the shortfall in last year's costs and the expected increase for this year. Across the entire immigration portfolio, not including last year's blow-out, the increase for the four years to 2014-15 is $759 million. It is an increase in the amount they are asking. This is $559 million, or almost three times as much as the $197 million the Treasurer and Mr Bowen told taxpayers the bill would be for immigration when they released the midyear economic forecasts for this period last November. In just two months, the government appear to have blown out their estimates by almost $560 million.

In 2011-12, the immigration budget will cost $2.73 billion. This is $1 billion more than the $1.69 billion it cost in 2007-08. It is also $330 million, or 14 per cent, more than the now estimated $2.4 billion it cost to run last year. According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's annual reports, the number of permanent staff employed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship between 2007 and 2011 has increased by 1,192, or 15 per cent. During the same period, the number of the highest paying Senior Executive Service positions has increased by 24 per cent. The median income for these positions in 2011 was $180,000 to $210,000. Asylum seeker management costs have been revised to $1.2 billion for the 2011-12 year, up from the revised figure of $880 million for last year. In 2007-08, asylum seeker management costs were less than $100 million. That is the cost for asylum seeker management, not the cost of the department, of course.

The blow-out revealed in these latest estimates takes the total budget blow-out from Labor's border protection failures over the last three years—that is, since the 2009-10 budget—to $3.9 billion. Prior to the release of these figures, the running total on asylum seeker budget blow-outs since the 2009-10 budget was $3 billion—that is not the cost; that is the blow-out—comprising $2.6 billion in recurrent expenditure and the balance on capital costs of new building and expansion works for detention facilities.

This week the parliament will debate two additional appropriation bills seeking parliament's approval to provide the Department of Immigration and Citizenship with an additional $330 million. These funds are needed to make up for a further blow-out in last year's costs and a further increase for 2011-12. These new immigration cost blow-outs will also come under scrutiny at the Senate estimates and did so last Monday. On Thursday, Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten introduced the bills and made no mention of these further and significant blow-outs in immigration costs. It was a reminder of his effort after the last budget, when we snuck into the dispatch box to raise the government's borrowing limit.

Analysis of the additional estimates shows that the largest increase in costs for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship was in managing asylum seekers, with the additional funding required to cover a further $116 million blow-out in expenses last year and an expected further blow-out of $120 million this year, or $102 million after taking account of the savings from not proceeding with the Malaysian people swap in other programs. The further blowout revealed for 2010-11 follows an earlier blowout of $291 million which was the subject of an additional appropriation this time last year. The original 2010-11 budget was just $471.2 million for these expenses The final cost has now been revealed as $879 million, which is an 87 per cent or $407 million increase on what the Treasurer told Australians in the budget before the last election.

The further revision of last year's figures, up by more than $100 million, seven months after the year ended raises questions about the government's trying to backdate budget blowouts to minimise the impact on this year's budget figures. In addition the government has increased funding over the forward estimates for asylum seeker management in 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 by a further $648 million. Once again, this takes into account savings from not proceeding with the failed Malaysian people-swap deal.

The total blowout for asylum seeker management revealed in the initial estimates from 2010-11 and over the forward estimates to 2014-15 is $866 million. This represents a blowout of more than 25 per cent on the cost revealed in the budget in May last year. This happened well after the government had ruined the border protection policies of the Howard government. In the November mid-year economic forecast statement, the government said that the net impact on the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's budget over the four forward year estimates would be $197 million. These latest estimates now put this cost at $756 million—almost four times the original amount—of which $750 million is due to the blowout in asylum seeker management.

We are talking about approximately $1 billion-plus. What could we do with funds of that magnitude? In my own electorate of Durack, $1 billion would address so many of the existing inequities which have been created by the fact that the Durack population basically occupies rural and remote Western Australia. What comes to mind is a hospital. A fully equipped medium-sized hospital in any one of my regional centres could be built for $1 billion—and what an asset that would be. In all of the Durack electorate there are no private beds in a hospital. All of my Durack constituents take up private health insurance knowing that they are contributing to the health system costs by making their own contribution. If they need hospital coverage because they are taking a trip to hospital, they go to Perth, to which they have the enormous costs of transporting themselves. But at least they will not be making an impost on the public health system.

What could we do with $1 billion about the costs of remote living? We could afford to bring the taxation zone rebate into the 21st century. We could compensate people for the high costs of living in remote and regional areas in Australia—and certainly all of my electorate of Durack is in the category of remote.

What could we do for the tertiary education of the children of couples living in my electorate of Durack? What could we do to create a level playing field so that my tertiary students would be on something like an equal footing with metropolitan tertiary students and could live at home with mum and dad, borrow the family car, live off the smell of a greasy rag, move on to tertiary education with their cohort of high-school friends and be familiar with the whole environment? With $1 billion I could really create a level playing field by paying for a tertiary access allowance which would make the cost of living in the Durack electorate akin to the cost of living in metropolitan areas. What could we do with $1 billion? The mind boggles. What is currently being done with this $1 billion—dragged out of the pockets of the unsuspecting taxpayers of Australia by this government—is that it is being blown on a policy of border protection that is as good as useless. In fact, the government's border protection policy today amounts to advertising to the would-be people smugglers and emigres of this world, 'Come on down, because we will give you everything you have ever dreamt of.' When it comes to border protection policies, the current government of Australia has not got a clue.

In fact, so blind were the government to the realities that they cancelled a border protection policy that was put in place by Prime Minister John Howard that was absolutely effective and reduced the flow of personnel and boats to an absolute trickle. Yet, in his arrogance or ignorance, Prime Minister Rudd struck out that policy, gave permanent instead of temporary protection visas, trashed the Pacific offshore processing process and gave to the taxpayers of Australia an additional bill of $1 billion.

Tonight thousands of homeless people across Australia will be sleeping rough. What could we do with $1 billion to ease their plight? What could we do for a process of caring for those less fortunate Australians right across the nation? Today I had the good fortune of looking at a program that brought humour into aged care facilities. They do not want anything like $1 billion, but that is what we are wasting on the immigration policy today.

Look no further than the immigration policy when it comes to the follies of this government. They have trashed the good governance that was in place and replaced it with absolute folly—yet another foundation reason for the voters of this country to discharge this government.

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

Before I start, I would like to pass on my best wishes to the town of St George in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, and hope that everyone is recovering, especially the occupants of those 60 or so houses that went under water.

I rise to support the two bills currently before the House, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012, which will appropriate $2.8 billion and $341 million respectively. These bills authorise funding for measures outlined in the 2011-12 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The Gillard government is shaping a strong economy, protecting jobs and delivering the services Australians want and deserve now and for the future. The Gillard Labor government has helped keep our economy strong with a record of fiscal discipline. With continuing global economic unrest, particularly in Europe, now more than ever Australia needs a responsible pair of hands on the economy. Treasurer Wayne Swan—the world's No. 1 Treasurer—has shown how to navigate our economy through global uncertainty. As the Treasurer says, 'Our economy walks tall in the world'—and other political leaders say that as well. I note the Leader of the Opposition said, in his address to the Policy Exchange in London on 10 November last year:

This year, Australia's economic growth is expected to be one and three quarters per cent; our unemployment rate—

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek intervention and the opportunity to ask a question of the speaker.

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

Will the member for Moreton take a question?

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

No.

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

The member for Durack will resume his seat.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. To continue that quote:

… our unemployment rate about five and a quarter per cent; our net government debt, Commonwealth and state, about eight per cent of GDP, the envy of the world;

As stated by Mr Abbott:

… our collective budget deficits just under four per cent of GDP and net interest payments just under two per cent of government outlays.

He went on to say:

Australia has serious bragging rights. Compared to most developed countries, our economic circumstances are enviable.

So here in Australia we hear those opposite bombastically declaring doom and gloom and dole queue schadenfreude, but overseas their leader tells a completely different story—such hypocrisy.

Nevertheless, we have solid growth. We have contained inflation. We have a huge investment pipeline, as anyone in regional Australia would know—$455 billion worth of projects in the pipeline—and the lowest net debt of all advanced economies. Of 200 countries in the world only eight have a AAA rating, and we are lucky enough to be one of them. Most economies are still trying to make up the ground they lost during the global financial crisis. We are seeing that in Greece and in other countries, and even Canada, which is easily compared with Australia, they have problems. But, here in Australia, because of our solid economic management, as those opposite gladly acknowledge, we have a AAA rated economy which is now seven per cent larger than before the GFC. In fact, all three credit agencies have awarded Australia a AAA rating. There are 192 other countries around the world that do not have a AAA rating from all the rating agencies, and some are a long way south of it.

This did not happen by accident but through a broad based plan to manage our economy and boost productivity. It also reflects this government's courage to make the tough decisions for our future. This is the Labor story: we do the heavy lifting and the nation-building changes and those opposite reap the benefits. There is not a lot of policy ticker to be seen over there at the moment. The easy, popular decision would have been to avoid major reforms like introducing a carbon price, a massive economic reform that will cut pollution, cut taxes and increase the pension. It is a faithful investment in the children who will be born this year and beyond. I particularly note that my brother Tim and his wife, Katie, are expecting a boy in the next month or so, and I think of the economy that boy will face in the many years to come. Good luck to Tim and Katie.

We could have sat back and watched the mining boom plunder our finite resources—and I stress 'our finite resources'—and only line the pockets of wealthy mining executives. But Labor did not. We acknowledge obviously the contribution of Gina and Clive and the CEOs of other companies in helping to dig out and sell our minerals, but the national interest obviously extends beyond Gina and Clive. We introduced the mining tax to ensure that the benefits were shared with all Australians, delivering a boost to retirement savings, tax breaks for small business and a company tax cut to benefit the 2½ million companies throughout Australia, the small businesses that are doing it tough. We are rolling out affordable high-speed broadband to all Australians and investing in productivity. As all sensible people know, the productivity reading is not going in the direction we need. That means we need better education, better health care and faster and more convenient access for all Australian businesses, and that is what the NBN will deliver.

We are not in government to simply warm the benches and tinker at the edges of legislation. We are here to deliver lasting and real change for a better Australia, for today, for tomorrow—in fact, 'for infinity and beyond'. That is a quote from the movie Toy Story. I was disgusted to see former prime minister John Howard endorsing the opposition leader's oppose everything approach to populist politics. The Hon. John Howard should be better than that. It was beneath someone who worked for the national interest at the highest level of Australian politics for nearly 12 years. Surely where we share common ground and common purpose agreement can be reached, as stated so eloquently earlier in the evening by the member for Scullin. The negativity of the opposition leader may enthuse the rank and file of the Liberal and National parties but it does little towards making us a better Australia. It is certainly not befitting of the alternative Prime Minister and neither is his talking down of our economy when he is not back in front of his birthplace.

The Gillard Labor government have been working hard to protect Australian jobs in these tough times. We have created more than 700,000 new jobs in just four years, but I would be the first to admit that more needs to be done in this area. At a time when the opposition were urging us to sit on our hands and do nothing, in fact some of them even slept through votes on things like the steel industry protection package, we instead moved quickly to protect Australian jobs from the fallout of the GFC. All I hear from the opposition are plans to cut jobs and bash Australian industry, plans to slash $1.5 billion in government support for the auto sector and to cut public service jobs.

With a thriving manufacturing hub in the Moreton electorate, I am concerned about the impact that slowing world growth and the high Australian dollar are having on my local businesses. That is why the Gillard Labor government are working closely with the manufacturing industry to support innovation, increase productivity and to improve our international competitiveness. We must continue to work to protect jobs. However, we should be proud that our unemployment rate remains in the low fives, which is lower than that of almost every other major advanced economy. Still, we must be vigilant.

The Building the Education Revolution program was another fine example of this government's commitment to jobs during the global financial crisis. I am disappointed that tomorrow, because of my commitments here in parliament, I will miss the blessing and opening of St Pius X Catholic Primary School in Salisbury. I wish them well with their new multipurpose hall and council rooms. Those facilities are a fine example of what local schools can accomplish when governments provide the money they need to deliver the education facilities that our students deserve.

Of course, the BER program was not just about better education facilities; it also ensured that our building industry stayed strong beyond the uncertainty of the global financial crisis. So many of the builders, the painters, the carpenters and the electricians in my local area are thankful for the injection of funds and work provided by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. The BER program builds on the Gillard government's record investment in education and skills. It fits hand in glove with our other education investments in innovation—for example, computers in schools and the national curriculum. These two initiatives are complemented by the NBN, which will be a step towards our bigger program of improving productivity. I am not taking away from the 3,000 flagpoles of those opposite—they were important—but 3,000 libraries are a much better contribution. I love our flag, but I love our kids too, and I think that libraries are the greater contribution.

We have doubled investment in school education. We have upgraded facilities at every school—all 9,800 of them—and created 130,000 training places. We are also working to protect Australia's most vulnerable people. This work is at the heart of the Labor cause. We have delivered an historic increase to the pension, and we are working to improve the aged-care system. We have to look after those who are nearing retirement—not that there is anyone in this room approaching that age!

We have to get on with our commitment to introduce the nation's first ever National Disability Insurance Scheme. We have secured $5.8 billion to help rebuild flood affected regions in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. As a Queenslander I was little bit disappointed in those opposite, who voted against this helping hand in our time of devastation. The modest flood levy and our tough budget savings enabled us to direct the necessary resources to communities doing it tough after our summer of disaster.

This government's record of service delivery and economic management is noteworthy. As the Leader of the Opposition said, we should have 'serious bragging rights'. But that is not my style; let us just get on with the business of helping industry and reaching out a hand to those who are doing it tough or who have not yet found the opportunity that awaits them. I am proud to be part of a Labor government which is making life better for all Australians, and I look forward to doing more to help the good citizens of Morton. I commend the appropriation bill to the House.

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

Australia is a great country with a bad coach. Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 is about appropriation: the expenditure of money raised by men and women working on the floors of factories, in shops, in butchers, as plumbers and as nurses. This bill is about how their money is spent, so this is an appropriate time to consider the great issue of the project of the Left versus the project of the Right.

The project of the Left, of course, places the government at the centre of everything—it is underpinned by the notion of the benevolent autocrat giving from above—whereas the project of the Right is based on a sense of nobility and possibility and respecting the aspiration of each person to achieve their best self in an environment which encourages and supports the ability of people to prosper through their own activities.

Against this background, let us look globally at the project of the Left and the project of the Right. What we see at the moment when we look around Europe is a very simple proposition: so many countries have lived beyond their means that Europe has a fundamental issue with repaying its debt. It is that distinction of living within your means, recognising that the debt of today must be repaid by the generation of tomorrow, that defines the two approaches.

When you look around the world, the 20th century was the great century of liberalism, of the open society and of the open economy. The first wave of liberalism gave people the opportunity to strive, to seek and—to paraphrase Tennyson—to find their own lives. The second wave of liberalism was about the great privatisations and the great process of government moving out of the business which can ordinarily be done by individuals and by private firms. The third wave of liberalism, which is to come and of which we are at the cusp now, is about the radical simplification of government and using the extraordinary opportunities of the communications age to enable single-entry governance for firms and individuals and to enable the streamlining rather than the proliferation of processes—a simple society with a simple engagement in government rather than the multiplication of activities which can ultimately crush the ability of individuals to find their way through the thicket and which can crush the ability of those who would create to do so without an unfair and inappropriate burden.

Let me try to put some figures around this and look at the contemporary Australian context. It is rewarding to look at economic history, and the last 21 years are an exemplary case in point. Over those 21 years we have had nine consecutive Labor deficits either side of the coalition's 10 surpluses out of 12 budgets. So the Centre Left has delivered not just nine deficits but nine deficits of over two per cent each. The Centre Right has delivered 10 surpluses out of 12 budgets, and the first of its budgets halved the deficit. Then, during the middle of the tech wreck at the commencement of the last decade, there was one deficit of 0.1 per cent of GDP, or $1 billion. So over that period, without accounting for the return of capital to the budget to pay down debt, there was an operating surplus of $97 billion. That in itself paid off the $96 billion of debt. But, because of capital appreciation from the sale of assets such as Telstra, a national nest egg—a national asset—was created.

It repays one to look at this sequence of deficit, surplus and deficit. The last five budgets of the previous Labor administration delivered deficits of $12 billion, $18 billion, $18 billion, $14 billion and $11 billion. Then, miraculously, there were 10 Liberal surpluses out of 12 budgets, not just paying down the $96 billion of debt with $97 billion of annual operating surplus but also adding to the national nest egg through a Future Fund and through sinking funds for both hospitals and higher education, each of which has been raided by the current regime. At the end of those 10 surpluses out of 12 budgets, all of a sudden we saw an immediate return to deficit. We have seen deficits of $27 billion, $54 billion, $48 billion and, this year, $37 billion at the last count—the four largest deficits in Australian history and the four greatest burdens on future generations in Australian history. That came after a golden 12 years. That is economic history. That is the reality of the way both sides approach government. Events are the pretext; they are the precursor; they are the basis for a reversion to the pathology which is in the DNA of each of these two major political movements. On the Centre Left, the ALP has produced nine out of nine consecutive deficits greater than two per cent. Nobody can explain that and nobody can provide a reasonable rationale, because there is none that is justifiable. Economic history shows that, over the last 21 years, the ALP has been the party of deficit. Statistically, factually and historically that is unarguable and it is true. There is no escaping the figures. The coalition has been the movement of surplus, of accumulating assets for future generations. The measure of a great generation in government, as opposed to a profligate generation, is whether resources are paid into the account and assets developed or future generations are robbed for conspicuous consumption now.

That brings me to the issue of waste under the current government. It is a sad tale in my own portfolio alone. Over the last few days we have had Senate estimates and we have been reminded that the Home Insulation Program continues to run, the pain continues to be felt and the disasters continue to be with us. This is a program which, all up, has cost taxpayers over $2 billion when you take into account the expenditure and the process of fixing the roofs. That process of fixing the roofs continues. We see that there are still at least $18 million of debts that have never been recovered from the dodgy dealers that we warned about at the time—and, I hazard to say, they will never be recovered because many of those involved have fled overseas. There should be no surprise about this, because we were warning about it in August, September, October and November of 2009 on radio virtually every day and through the newspapers. There has been no shortage of coverage, but this program is an example of a government which ran to the tune of, 'Let us spend and the money will take care of itself.'

And it was not just wasted money; it was a program which did untold damage. We have had insulation removed from over 50,000 roofs and we have had over 200 house fires. Of course, the greatest tragedy of all, an irrecoverable tragedy, was the loss of four young lives associated with the program. The warnings were there before the first tragedy. We wrote to the Attorney-General in August 2009, before the first tragedy, warning of the risk to life and limb, not to mention the waste. We warned of the looming tragedies to come; so did the National Electrical and Communications Association; so did Master Electricians Australia; so did the various state governments, including the Controller-General of South Australia; and so did the unions. There was no shortage of warnings on a program that was designed with a dark secret—it would not work, it would waste money and it would put the lives and safety of people at risk. But the government ploughed on, because all that mattered was spending money. This program is an exemplar of the way expenditure has been an end in itself under the current regime and under the previous regime. The notion that to spend is good is ingrained in the project of the Left.

This brings me to the current challenge we face in relation to the carbon tax. This issue has been well elevated. I am one who is deeply, clearly and absolutely of the view that we have a challenge in terms of climate change and that we should take practical steps which produce real actions. But this government has not created a system which will produce real actions; it has created a system which will see Australia's emissions increase from 578 million tonnes in 2010 to 621 million tonnes in 2020, or almost two tonnes more emissions per person between now and 2020. That is hardly a functioning and effective system; that is real Australian emissions in this country. Instead, what we will be spending is $3½ billion on purchasing foreign carbon credits from Hungarian Ponzi schemes, Chinese phantom HFC credits or Norwegian VAT avoidance scams. These are the real schemes that are out there now which have been rorted to the tune not of tens of millions of dollars, not of hundreds of millions of dollars but of billions of dollars today.

So, 60 per cent of the so-called emissions reduction will occur overseas. Only one quarter of any reduction as against trend will come from the carbon tax itself. That is because the carbon tax is an electricity tax. It is a tax designed to drive up the cost of living. It is designed, it is intended and it is constructed to close down blue-collar operations—to close down manufacturing. That is the only way it works. Unfortunately, all of the evidence is that it will have virtually zero impact on consumption of electricity by individuals but it will have an impact on trade-exposed firms.

This brings me to the destructive intent, without achieving any environmental gain because of course, where aluminium closes down it is still consumed in Australia and internationally. It is just that productivity and production are transferred to China, to India and to Indonesia. So against that background, what is it that we have seen in aluminium production? Alcoa's submission to the Senate on 29 April last year made it absolutely clear that their two Victorian plants would receive an annual impairment under the carbon tax—net of everything else—of $40 million. That figure from 2020 would continue to rise significantly, each and every year. Alcoa made it absolutely clear in numerous submissions that this would affect 'the financial viability' of the plants in question.

My best advice from within the aluminium industry is that within 12 months we will face a situation where two out of six aluminium smelters may well have closure plans. They will not have closed overnight: they will have phase-down plans towards a permanent closure. And those jobs will all be tragic losses because they are the lives and livelihoods of families.

They will also have domino effects in local communities, and the simple testimony to this is that the government's own modelling at table 5.7 of the Treasury modelling says that the difference between a carbon tax and no carbon tax is a 61 per cent decrease in aluminium production. Nothing could be a greater example of the folly of the project of the Left in this country and the destruction of the aluminium industry.

Debate adjourned.