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

It is Groundhog Day. It is February, appropriation bills are back before the House and once again the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has been standing before the parliament and asking for more money. The minister for immigration is indeed the Oliver Twist of Australian politics. Every year he turns up and says, 'Please, sir, can I have some more?' And this time he is asking again for more. This year the ask is $330 million. Last year, on recurrent, the ask was $295 million and with capital included it was $511 million and the year before that it was $85.7 million. Every February this government, despite revealing blow-outs in budget year after year after year—so even after those blow-outs—has to come back and ask for yet more funds time and time again.

The blow-out this year in the appropriation bills is intended to deal with two principal problems. The first one is a further blow-out in the 2011-12 budget, which was already blown out at the time of the original budget to the tune of over a billion dollars a year from less than $100 million a year for asylum seeker costs when the Howard government left office. But it is also to deal with a further blow-out last year. So not only did they get this year's budget wrong yet again and have had to ask for more money; they have even had a blow-out in the expenses from last year of over $100 million. So once again this minister has come to this House and said, 'Please, sir, can I have some more?'

Well, as is the practice with money bills, I suppose the government is going to get what it wants yet again and once again taxpayers are going to have to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for this government's border protection failures. This is a government that has blown out the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's budget to record levels. This is a government that in 2011-12 will cost taxpayers, for that department, $2.73 billion. That is the bill for expenses for this year for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. This is a billion dollars more than the $1.69 billion it cost in 2007-08. That is why the government is asking for more money today as part of the debate on these bills. Also, DIAC's annual reports show that not only has there been this increase in cost but there has been a very significant increase in the size of the department itself. As to the number of permanent staff employed by DIAC between 2007 and 30 June 2011, there were 1,192 additional staff. So that is 1,192 additional officers within DIAC since this government came to office—an increase of 15 per cent over the last four years. During the same period the number of the highest paid senior executives, so the SE Service within DIAC, had also increased by 24 per cent. The median income for these positions in 2011 was between $180,000 and $210,000. This is a department that has gone completely out of control with costs and with the size of government. There is one simple reason for this: four years ago the government abolished the proven measures of the Howard government on border protection. Let us go through what the result has been. The minister has questioned figures relating to the blow-outs in the government's costs on border protection. I am happy to inform the minister by quoting from the government's own budget papers. Three years ago, in the budget estimates of 2009-10 and the additional estimates of 2009-10, there was a $207.5 million increase—a blow-out of the estimates of 2009-10 over the original budget of 2009-10. In the following year, in the 2010-11 budget they were $793.5 million over what they had said in the previous additional estimates, and when the next additional estimates came around the blow-out from the previous statement was $472 million. But they were just getting warmed up.

Strangely enough, after the election the additional estimates in 2010-11 showed a further blow-out over the budget estimates of 2010-11 of $1.5 billion. But they are still going, because in the additional estimates released last week the additional cost for asylum seeker management, netting off what they returned to the budget after the failed Malaysian people swap—so after they had put all that money back—was $866 million. That is a blow-out over the course of these last three years, from statement to statement, of $3.868 billion. That is the cost of this government's border protection failure—just under $3.9 billion.

When Senate estimates convened this week there were a lot of questions asked about the government decision to abolish the Pacific solution and temporary protection visas. The departmental secretary was asked whether he had advised the government of the potential cost implications of what he later described in his evidence as a major shift in policy. Once again, the secretary declined to answer this question. The only thing we can draw from the experience of the last three years is that the cost implications of that change in policy have so far been $3.9 billion.

This is a direct result of the change in government policy. In evidence, the secretary made it very clear that the reason for the blow-out in their total costs was the massive increase in costs related to the arrival of illegal boats to Australia. That is not in dispute. Under further questioning, Senator Lundy finally admitted that the increase in costs was a result of the change in policy. She coughed that up.

Mr Husic interjecting—

She was so keen to interject during Senate estimates with Senator Cash that she finally admitted what everybody in this country knows—

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

Order! The member for Chifley needs to remember my hearing is in question here. The more you yell, the louder he gets. The member for Cook has the call.

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

What everyone now knows—the Labor Party and the government have finally admitted it—is that the decision to get rid of the Howard government's proven border protection policies has cost Australian taxpayers dearly. It is revealed here in the government's own figures—almost $4 billion in total. I am quite sure they are going to eclipse that $4 billion mark by the time we get to May because, as surely as night follows day, this minister for immigration always turns up asking for more money. When we left office there were just four people in detention who had arrived in Australia illegally by boat. Today that figure is more than 6,000. Back in 2007, early 2008, either the government completely ignored the advice of the secretary of the department of immigration that this significant change in policy would have these consequences or, frankly, the secretary never gave that advice. I do not know what is worse. This government is always parading itself around saying it always takes advice. Well, either the department of immigration did not advise this, and have been proved to be hopelessly wrong on the experience of these figures, or the advice was ignored by the minister at the time and by Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Gillard following that. The Prime Minister has completed the job of removing every brick in the wall that John Howard built for border protection in this country. They have removed every brick in the wall. They either ignored that advice or that advice was never given. What it shows is that we have a crisis on our borders that this government is incapable of solving.

The government are not upfront about these costs. At the end of November last year they said the change in the forward estimates would be $197 million. After all the changes that they talked about, when their people-swap fell over through their own incompetence—when it fell over in the High Court, when it fell over in the parliament—and when they embraced the policies of the Greens and rejected the proven policies of the coalition, they said that the net impact of all of this to the budget would be $197 million. That is what the Treasurer told the country and that is what the minister for immigration told the country. Yet in these figures today we see that the actual net cost over the forward estimates is $750 million plus. In just 2½ months this mob blew out their own budget and their own estimates by almost 300 per cent. They cannot keep up with their border blowouts. They cannot possibly keep up with them because they have no idea what is happening out there on our borders and the costs just keep mounting up and up.

There are 6½ thousand more beds in our detention network today, announced by this government over the last four years, than there were four years ago. This government has spent more money on putting more beds in detention centres than they have on putting beds in public hospitals. On a day where this parliament is going to drive more people into public hospitals, this government's only record on putting beds in place in this country is in detention centres, at a cost of almost $500 million in capital over the last four years.

This government has a record of deceit when it comes to this issue also, because before the last election they said they were not going to expand the detention network in Australia. When they were challenged on that they said they were not going to expand it. What does the record show? Since the last election they have announced more than 4½ thousand beds in our detention network. Their budget has blown out in this area by $2.9 billion since the last election.

The government want to be trusted now that next year they are going to achieve $400 million in savings in this area, when every single time they have presented a budget and at additional estimates the costs have just gone up and up and up. Now they want the Australian people to believe it is all going to be fixed next year, despite the fact that by the end of next financial year, according to their own evidence at estimates, another 7½ thousand people will have turned up in boats and there will be just under 6,000 people in the detention network.

To achieve the figures in their budget they have to do the following—and they know this: they will have to visa out of the system by the end of next year another 5,000 people with permanent protection visas. They will have to grant another 5,000 permanent protection visas. That will reduce the number of visas given to offshore humanitarian entrants and refugee entrants by that amount—by another 5,000. That is going to be the humanitarian cost of this government's border protection failures. Those who are duly awaiting their time and their place will lose that opportunity because 5,000 people who turn up in a boat over the next 18 months are going to get their visa. In addition to that, they have to issue another 1,800 bridging visas for people who they expect to be in the system. We will see how that goes. That is what their figures rely on; they will not meet them and we will be back in this place a year from now. The only plan of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, who today wants to be the Treasurer—that is his exit plan from this portfolio—is not to stop the boats; it is to make Kevin Rudd Prime Minister so he can be Treasurer. And, based on these figures, if he does to our finances what he has done to the immigration portfolio heaven help us! Our finances will be in a worse state than our borders if this minister for immigration ever becomes Treasurer, which is his ambition.

This is a government that has no plan on this issue other than to blame the opposition, embrace the Greens and reject the proven policies of the coalition. That is its plan. Its plan is simply to blame the opposition for its own failures, which have delivered almost $4 billion in budget blowouts, have resulted in more than 15,000 people turning up on its watch and have seen our immigration network go from just four people in detention—you could almost put them in a phone box—to over 6,000 people, who are now costing taxpayers around $1.2 billion every single year.

I think that there is no issue that says more about this government's incompetence and their denial than this issue. This is a government that has completely lost the plot on this issue. They have no plan to fix it other than simply to blame the opposition and to carp and whinge. Today this government could implement Nauru. It could be done at a fraction of the cost of what the government says. (Time expired)

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

I rise this morning to support the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012, because they will provide funding over four years to establish a Clean Energy Regulator to administer the carbon-pricing mechanism. The regulatory functions under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System, the renewable energy target and the Carbon Farming Initiative will also be brought under the Clean Energy Regulator.

The responsibilities of the regulator will include assessing emissions data to determine each entity's liability; operating the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units; monitoring, facilitating and enforcing compliance with the carbon-pricing mechanism; allocating fixed-price and auction permits; applying legislative rules to determine eligibility for assistance in the form of freely allocated permits; and providing education on the carbon-pricing mechanism. And as you know, Deputy Speaker, the government will also provide further funding over four years for the Department of Finance and Deregulation to conduct gateway reviews of the establishment and operation of the regulator.

The bills also provide funds to the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities to support the management of extractive industry activities, especially coal seam gas and major coalmining developments. These initiatives aim to build scientific evidence and understanding of the impacts on water resources of coal seam gas extraction and large coalmines.

The New South Wales government has already taken the scientific evidence for granted on coal seam gas extraction but, like its Liberal counterpart in Victoria, seems intent on standing in the way of businesspeople who want to develop wind power to feed into the electricity grid. Despite the lack of any evidence to support any harmful effects of wind farming, the New South Wales government has given the power of veto to anyone living within two kilometres of a proposed wind farm. These governments seem to have been unduly influenced by climate change deniers and sceptics, in particular the Australian Landscape Guardians, whose stated philosophy is to safeguard the landscape from 'inappropriate development'.

In an article published on the Independent Australia website on 24 July last year, investigative journalist Sandi Keane assembled some of the publicly available information on the opaque Landscape Guardians. They are modelled on the British Coastal Guardians and Country Guardians, who are associated with the nuclear power industry in the United Kingdom. In their opposition to wind farms, the Landscape Guardians do not mention the landscape but have discovered a previously unheard of medical condition that they call 'wind turbine syndrome'. They claim that wind farms cause sleep problems, headaches, dizziness, nausea, exhaustion, anxiety, anger, irritability, depression, tinnitus and concentration problems, and, astonishingly, they cause children to refuse to go to school. It's the truth!

The Landscape Guardians have set up a front called the Waubra Foundation, which is not based at Waubra but opposes the Waubra wind farm. Its so-called medical director, Sarah Laurie, a non-practising, unregistered doctor living in South Australia, claims that infrasound from wind turbines causes these problems. Most of my constituents at times suffer from almost all of these symptoms, although there is no wind farm anywhere near my inner-city electorate. Simon Chapman, Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney, says that these symptoms are experienced by millions of Australians.

It is important to note that the Waubra Foundation is a powerful, well-resourced and growing anti-wind-power lobby group. Peter Mitchell, founder and Chairman of the Waubra Foundation, helped set up and fund the Australian Landscape Guardians. He is also spokesman for the Western Plains Landscape Guardians. Another director, Kathy Russell, is Vice-President of the Australian Landscape Guardians, Vice-President of the Victorian Landscape Guardians and spokesperson for the Western Plains, Mount Pollock Landscape Guardians and the Barrabool Hills Landscape Guardians. Yet another director, tycoon Tony Hodgson—as the Murdoch press calls him—helped fund the campaign against the Collector wind farm in New South Wales, just up the road from Canberra, and he is involved with the Booroowa Landscape Guardians to stop a $400 million wind farm proposed near Rugby and Booroowa in the south of the state. The Hon. Dr Michael Wooldridge, the former Howard government minister, is also a director.

Sandi Keane found that the foundation has no physical address in Waubra and indeed appears to have no local Waubra residents on its board. The address is a post-office box in South Melbourne, the same address as that of the Australian Landscape Guardians and Peter Mitchell.

The Landscape Guardians are well-known climate sceptics and deniers linked to the Liberal Party and the Institute of Public Affairs. They have a particularly close association with the IPA's Australian Environment Foundation, which is more interested in logging trees than conserving them. The Institute of Public Affairs has been giving its opinion on climate change for decades now on behalf of its supporters—Billiton; Western Mining; Caltex; Esso Australia, a subsidiary of Exxon; Shell; and Woodside Petroleum—and it also receives funding from Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd.

While the Waubra Foundation appears unconcerned about the landscape of wind farms, its only agenda is the so-called 'infrasound problems' caused by wind turbines. Peter Mitchell successfully objected to the number of turbines proposed for the Stockyard Hill wind farm near Beaufort in Victoria. He also successfully had them removed from the ridge that he could see from his property. Sandi Keane found also that Peter Mitchell has interests in the fossil fuel industry. These include as founding chairman of the Moonie Oil Company Ltd and chairman or director of similar companies including Clyde Petroleum plc, Avalon Energy Inc., North Flinders Mines Ltd and Paringa Mining & Exploration plc, most now delisted on the Australian Stock Exchange.

According to Lowell Resources Funds Management Pty Ltd, Mitchell's experience is derived from over 25 years involvement in companies that explored for, developed and financed gold, uranium, coal and base metal mines, oil and gas fields and pipeline systems in Australia and overseas. He has been chairman of Lowell Pty Ltd, the ultimate parent company of both Lowell Capital Ltd and Lowell Resources Funds Management Pty Ltd, a specialist fund investing in emerging mining and energy companies, since taken over by Future Corporation Australia Ltd.

Paul Miskelly, who represents both the Australian Landscape Guardians and the Taralga Landscape Guardians, worked for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO, for 32 years and gives talks on nuclear power. Climate scepticism is the stock in trade of the Landscape Guardians. Randall Bell, president of the Victorian Landscape Guardians, said in the Melbourne Age on 3 July 2010 that claims the earth is warming are scientifically unreliable and that the idea of man-made climate change is headed for the Y2K dustbin. But we do not see the Landscape Guardians campaigning alongside Lock the Gate, the New South Wales Farmers Federation and the Greens to halt the destruction of some of the best agricultural land in New South Wales and Queensland by coal seam gas miners. We do not see them campaigning in Victoria against Premier Ted Baillieu's decision to reopen Victoria to brown coal mining. Farmers on the best agricultural land in Gippsland now face losing their farms to dirty, inefficient brown coal mining. Is an open-cut mine a preferable landscape to a wind farm, where food can continue to be grown?

As with the Landscape Guardians, there is no information about funding or sponsorship of the Waubra Foundation. Yet money seems to be no object for its websites, campaigners, advertising, travel and media monitoring.

As I said earlier, in the Boorowa area a $300 million wind farm is being proposed. At Rye Park the Epuron energy company wants to build 80 to 110 turbines, which will generate power for 90,000 homes. But, as Sandi Keane found, there is someone with a property near Yass whose influence on governments and public opinion is huge. Besieged media boss Rupert Murdoch owns Cavan, a substantial rural property in the grazing country nearby. No other media group in Australia has run a more distorted and dishonest scare campaign about wind farms than the Murdoch group. The district of Yass has in the planning stages a larger proportion of wind farms than elsewhere in Australia. These are planned at Bango, 25 km north of Yass; Birrema, 30 km west of Yass; Rye Park, 25 km north-east of Yass; and the Yass Valley itself. There are wind farms at Caroll's Ridge, Conroy's Gap, Coppabella Hills and Marilba Hills.

In 2010 Family First's own climate change sceptic, Senator Steve Fielding, initiated a Senate inquiry into so-called turbine sickness. The report was released last year. The Senate inquiry found no proof of a direct link between wind farms and the so-called wind turbine syndrome. The submission of the National Health and Medical Research Council concluded that there is no published scientific evidence to support adverse effects of wind turbines on health.

Professor Peter Seligman of the Melbourne Energy Institute also gave evidence to the inquiry. Professor Seligman spent most of his working life working on the cochlear implant. He has a PhD in electronic engineering. He understands infrasound better than most. He told Sandi Keane that the level of infrasound at the beach is far higher than that from wind farms. Beyond 360 metres the level of infrasound emitted from a wind farm, typically between one and 20 cycles per second, is below the ambient levels near a beach and below that in the central business district of any city. On the other hand, we are all subjected to far higher internally self-generated natural infrasound levels, which clearly are not a problem.

The Victorian Department of Health indicated that it had examined both peer-reviewed and validated scientific research and concluded that 'the weight of evidence indicated that there are no direct health effects from noise.'

Dr Sarah Laurie's evidence included evidence from Nina Pierpont, an American general practitioner who claims to be an authority on wind turbine syndrome. Pierpont is the author of a self-published book containing descriptions of the health problems of merely 10 families—that is, 38 people—in five different countries who once lived near wind turbines and who are convinced that turbines made them sick. Medical experts in Australia have said that, given that there are about 100,000 turbines around the world, her sample is too small to have any scientific value. There were no scientific controls, and the symptoms described were common in any community. Dr Laurie also tried to appeal against a proposed wind farm at Allandale East in South Australia. Her appeal failed on the basis of the same evidence from the medical community. Gary Wittert, a professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide, said there was no credible evidence that wind turbines have adverse effects on health. A recent parliamentary inquiry into wind farms in New South Wales dismissed Pierpoint's study, particularly since her findings were not published in a peer reviewed journal. In its submission to the Senate inquiry the group Doctors for the Environment also agreed 'there is no convincing evidence in the scientific literature of direct physiological effects occurring at sound levels commonly associated with modern wind turbines'. The building of the Waubra wind farm provided an injection of $58.4 million to the local economy through the economic activity associated with 160 local jobs. Ongoing employment from those jobs at Waubra adds a further $7.79 million each year to the local economy. These figures have been generated by the City of Ballarat using REMPLAN modelling.

Kate Redwood, a director of Hepburn Wind, said the strategy used to get community support in Daylesford included monitoring noise at those houses within two kilometres of the turbines. This successful strategy has led to the formation of a new organisation called Embark, which offers advice on the management of community projects. As a result of the Senate inquiry, public health authorities will keep up the monitoring and the wind industry will continue to improve its modelling and community relations. I commend the bills to the House.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, and congratulations on your elevation to the panel. I see a great career there for you! I welcome the opportunity to speak on the appropriation bills. There are a wide range of things in Townsville that I think the government should be looking at. I would like to start with education. I declare an interest in that my wife is an early childhood teacher. Nonetheless, I feel that my comments will be very pertinent.

When it comes to education we must make sure that the foundation and the building blocks are there. When you build a house you do not start with the roof; you start with the foundations. Early childhood education is where we should be spending the money. Too often we see aid time being taken away from teachers and actual teaching time being reduced. We should be making sure that children have activity based education with outcomes as opposed to desk learning. Funds should be allocated so that the teachers can teach and are taught what to do.

One thing I will say—and this will be a common theme—is that I have a forklift drivers licence but you certainly would not want me loading your truck. There is a difference between having a qualification and being qualified. There is a difference between having a degree in education and being a teacher. A friend of mine, Pat Ernst, is a very good rugby league coach. He says the longest distance any coach will ever see is that between the coach's lips and the players ears and into his brain so that he understand it. Therefore it goes with teaching that, if we can get these building blocks in, if we can get the play based mechanisms through and concentrate on early childhood, the rest will come.

I worry a great deal about the money being spent on NAPLAN and the My School website. After an initial burst of glory the My School website is now something that is not going to be referred to. I worry that, with NAPLAN, we are seeing teachers in the grades that are not subject to those tests practising for the next year's tests. I worry about what is happening in primary schools and high schools. Where are sport, art, music, play and everything else? I would like to see teachers given the opportunity to use their environment and their resources as best fits them. Teaching arithmetic in Mt Isa can be very different from teaching arithmetic in the inner suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne. They should be allowed to do that. So long as the outcome is that two plus two equals four in every instance, we should be okay with that.

On higher education and research, I am very lucky to have in my electorate James Cook University, the only university in Australia which has higher education in a tropical environment at its core. One of the projects about which I would question this government's support for renewable energy is the James Cook University algae project. With this algae project it is completely feasible that we could have a coal fired power station with zero emissions by integrating an algae plant into the design of a world's best practice coal fired power station. Therefore, we would have the cheapest form of power available, being a coal fired power station, and zero emissions. I just cannot see the downside to it. In the Galilee Basin you would be able to build something like this at places like Prairie or Torrens Creek, which would feed into the north-west minerals province and allow things like the Kennedy wind farm, which I will touch on later, to feed into a national grid. Remember that the national grid only goes to Woodstock, which is basically 50 kilometres away from Townsville. That is the extent of the national grid into western Queensland.

The CSIRO scientists at the ATSIP building in Townsville are looking into the science of using fresh water. If we are to make the north-west province of Queensland—the Mitchell grass plains west of Townsville—the food bowl, we must listen to the science. I was happy in the end that our scientists were given their 3½ per cent pay rise, but it was disappointing that they had to go cap in hand to stop-work meetings to make a point that this research is valuable. If we are to be the smart generation and tap into this Asian century, it must be driven by the science. Places like James Cook University and CSIRO are exactly the places we should be focusing on.

Our medical school is turning out first-class medical graduates. Tropical medical training is taking people with a degree and turning them into general practitioners. I would like to congratulate the government on the funding that they have provided to tropical medical training. In the future as this program and this organisation become even more important, with the numbers coming through, I do believe that more money and attention should be given, especially in regional Australia, to the training and assistance given to international medical graduates, as they still make up a large number of our medical practitioners. They should be helped as they play such a key role in places where Australian GPs do not go.

In relation to James Cook University I would like to push the government even further. They have not committed to the Australian institute of tropical health and medicine. This is a vital piece of infrastructure in the tropical world. Papua New Guinea is just at the top of Australia—it is a short boat ride. We have a ward at the Thursday Island Hospital dedicated to people with drug resistant tuberculosis and malaria. From there it is only a quick trip to the mainland of Australia. We saw our first Australians become the most susceptible to the H1N1 or bird flu viruses. Once these things come to the mainland we may see catastrophic events. Let us hope the situation is under control in Papua New Guinea. But if there were to be a breakdown of law and order we would see a great influx of people coming across the Torres Strait into Australia, and with that will come the need for health care. There are things we have to do for the tropical world. With around half the population living in the tropical world, the work that this organisation should be doing should be supported.

I would also like to push the government to support Youth with a Mission. Ken Mulligan has been in this House and spoken to members on both sides. YWAM take a boat as far as they can into the remote provinces of Papua New Guinea, where they provide quality dental care, eye surgery, GP visits for people who have never seen a doctor and dental visits for people who have never seen a dentist. That should be supported.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science has been granted great funding to produce an ocean simulator. This will be world-leading research. It is not in my electorate but it all goes through Townsville. We will have PhD students and researchers coming from all over the world to use this fantastic facility. The Australian Institute of Marine Science is also leading the world in farming and breeding lobsters. This is an incredibly difficult thing. We now have them up to wriggler stage and we are seeing the fruits of that. When we are talking about food security, especially in the tropical world, where we are seeing seas being fished out, this must be supported.

Ian Poiner, the recent CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, organised the first-ever audit of Australia's fish stocks, and he still thinks we only know about 10 to 20 per cent of what is in our seas. John Gunn is the new CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. We are talking about letters, and other members of this House will have received these, in relation to protecting the Coral Sea and making it a marine park. It takes 38 hours from Townsville, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, under full steam to get to this place in the world that they want to turn into a park. But the operational funding for the Australian Institute of Marine Science continues to shrink. So if we want this research done and if we want these things protected we must make sure the operational funding is connected.

Townsville is a very proud defence city. We have now welcomed 3RAR to Townsville, making the readily-deployable forces even greater in Townsville. Berth 10 at Townsville port is under construction. There is bipartisan support for berthing of the landing helicopter dock vessel and for readily-deployables in times of emergency. We saw during last year's Cyclone Yasi that roads were cut and the naval fleet was out of order and we could not get troops quickly enough to places like Tully and Cardwell, which were severely affected. I would like to see an LHD there—and we are getting two, one based in Townsville permanently and one based in Exmouth permanently—and in that way it is at the pointy end of where we can organise all these things to be. It would also give Townsville properly the perfect three-force representation. With the air force facility at Garbutt I would like to see an increased presence and training opportunities there. We have the MHR90 simulator going in there. But there are real problems there and I would like the defence department and the ministers involved in defence to look at the structure of payments here. I have been contacted by the guys at Kookaburra Concrete. They have done the flooring for this, for an organisation that won the tender and is based in South Australia. This organisation has gone into administration over a failed project in South Australia, leaving our guys, our subcontractors in Townsville, very exposed. We all know when it comes to the administration and liquidation of companies that there are real issues. We do have to make sure that these people are taken care of.

As for renewable energy, the Kennedy wind farm, outside Richmond and Hughenden along the Flinders Highway, will bring good power at around $45 per megawatt hour—but they will produce this power and there is nowhere for it to go. I would like to see support for a powerline, be it by CopperString or somebody else, for something like this, which is about renewable energy, to feed into a national grid.

I would like to restate for the record the coalition's support for fair indexation for DFRDB pensions. It is our policy now, it was our policy leading up to 2010 and it is our policy going into the future. I would like to call on the government to recognise the folly of this and that it has gone on since the Whitlam era. We have had more than enough time to fix this, and we have not addressed it. They are not asking for anything extra. They are asking for what is fair.

I would also like to come out and state very clearly for the record that I support the National Disability Insurance Scheme. But we must make sure of how we are going to pay for it. It may get me in trouble with Scott Stidson and Garth Brimelow at home and all the people at Cootharinga in Townsville but we have to get it right and we cannot afford to have people fall through the gaps because we have acted too quickly. Therefore I would like to see as much bipartisanship on this as possible, working towards making sure that everyone will be covered by this so that everyone is brought along and, more importantly than that, so that we are bringing along people who are not actually affected by it at the moment to make them understand what we are trying to do. If someone has a work accident and is put in a wheelchair, as Garth has been, that person is covered, but if you are driving on the weekend and you have an accident—or if you fall off your own balcony—and you are then in a wheelchair for the rest of your life you get nothing. That is what we are trying to cover. These are the sorts of things that we must do. It must be paid for and it must have broad community support. The Every Person Counts campaign is just the start of the conversation. We have to explain to everyone what we are trying to do and why it matters.

I would like to echo the statements in the House today about closing the gap and I would like to echo the words of the Leader of the Opposition in the main chamber this morning. In my electorate is the community of Palm Island, where we have 95 per cent unemployment, yet QBuild, the Queensland government organisation, send tradesmen over to build small houses. The houses are poorly built and poorly designed, and they do not care. We have tradesmen on Palm Island who cannot get jobs. We have 95 per cent unemployment and it has been that way all the way through.

Truancy are education are major issues on Palm Island. If they do not learn to read and write, they will be doomed to repeat the cycle of poor outcomes we are currently experiencing. Too many young people are in jail now because they started as a 16- or 17-year-old driving unlicensed cars and they could not pass the test. They become part of the system and get arrested; sooner or later they are going to end up in jail. If they do not want to do this, if they do not want to end up there, parental and personal responsibility is required to make sure that they do get to school. As the Leader of the Opposition said this morning, truancy is a real issue and we have to make sure that these people are going to school. I have spoken at schools to Indigenous groups and Indigenous students and quite often they say they were not at school that day or that week when they were asked if they had a question for me. This cannot be let go.

Education is the key to everything. I never want to try to simplify the situation. It is a very deep and complicated issue, but we have to know that education is the key. I would like to really push it on everyone, especially on Palm Island, that getting your kids to school—from the mayor's children down, whoever the mayor should be after the last next election—is the key to everyone having a better outcome on Palm Island and in Townsville.

Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to speak on the appropriations legislation before us today because this legislation is a very clear way of seeing what the priorities of the government are and what they have been since coming to office. It is particularly important to look at the appropriations that we are considering today, and those that have been made since the government came to office, in the context of the very many challenges that the Australian nation has faced during that time and the way that the government has navigated the nation through them. The spending priorities that are set are a pretty clear reflection of the kinds of priorities a government has for the nation.

It is very interesting in that context to reflect on some of the contributions made by members in this debate, and in broader debates throughout this place, particularly since the commencement of this parliamentary year. I am thinking particularly of those opposite who have contributed to the debate and have largely forgotten, it seems, about two of the very significant things that have impacted upon our economic circumstances and our fortunes generally, namely, the global financial crisis and the significant natural disasters that our country has faced. In the midst of all of these very difficult circumstances for individuals and for our country, this government has consistently shown that it prioritises jobs and that it will support the kinds of social reforms that Labor has always stood for. This includes things like supporting people on a pension, ensuring that families have an opportunity to get a decent level of financial support to be able to look after their children well and provide for their futures and ensuring that our country gets the kind of health and education commitments that it needs in order to become a better country and that its citizens need so that they have a very good quality of life and good prospects in the future. It is extraordinary that some of the comments of those opposite have revealed how little regard they have for such very significant events as the global financial crisis. Indeed, as recently as yesterday, we heard the member for Goldstein speaking in the House during the matter of public importance and mentioning the GFC as some sort of by-line, some sort of anecdote in history, just a blip—

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

The Asian economic crisis was more important apparently.

Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed. He has actually referred to the government's response as 'a panic reaction to the global financial crisis'. This is understating something that the world is continuing to deal with the aftermath of on a daily basis. A panic reaction! So, while this government was committing funding and making appropriations for the protection of jobs in our country, while this government was committing funds to a stimulus package which has been lauded around the world by countries which would far prefer to be in our circumstances today, we see the economic luminaries of the Liberal Party referring to the government's stimulus spend as a panic reaction to the global financial crisis. It really is quite extraordinary. It comes in the context of all of these 'woulda, shoulda, coulda' commitments that we hear from the Liberals so very regularly. If these guys had been in government, quite clearly our unemployment figures would be double what they are now, quite clearly we would be facing extraordinarily dark financial circumstances. I realise that those members opposite continue to look incredulous about the global financial crisis because it is, in their view, a mere byway in history. But we take it seriously and, strangely enough, economists around the world take it quite seriously and I imagine they would not refer to our response to it as a panic reaction.

Once again, appropriations—what you choose as a government to commit the Australian people's resources to—really do reflect one's priorities, and there could not be a starker example of our priorities for jobs, for the growth of this country, for economic stability and economic security than our response to the global financial crisis. So it bears repeating, and repeat it I certainly will, happily.

We do not hear quite so much from those opposite about the detail of what they might have done had they been in office. There are many reasons for that. One is that they are still not entirely sure about where they would take the country on the question of the surplus, should they ever get the opportunity to come to office. So in the context of an appropriations debate it is very interesting to think about what their priorities might be. It is in fact difficult to get a read on most of them because we do not know day to day what any member of their frontbench and all the people behind them might think about a surplus, might think about our future economic prosperity. We still do not have a complete figure on the extent of the black hole. We think it is about $70 billion, but again that changes depending on who you are speaking to and who has pulled out the abacus on any given day on the opposition benches. Most recently and most pertinently in the context of the current debate on the private health insurance rebate means test, we are still not clear what they are intending to do on that—they might repeal it, they might wind it back—or whether their words on this are as hollow as their words on every other significant debate in this country, whether they will actually stand by their bluff and bluster or whether they are just going to go very quietly on it after the debate has concluded in this place.

It has been very interesting to reflect on some of the things that have come up in the context of this appropriations debate and other significant economic debates which occasionally those opposite choose to engage in, depending on their feel at the time. But the things that we are seeking to get on with and the things that we have made appropriations for and will continue to make appropriations for are around the education of our nation, the development of skills and training for young people in our nation, to provide for lifelong learning, to ensure that our children have the skills that they need for future career development but also to ensure the future economic prosperity of our country. I was delighted at the end of last year to have announced in my electorate a commitment by this government to two new trade training centres. We know that, when we came to government, those opposite had so badly underfunded skills and training in this country that electorates like mine really had very little in the way of skills and infrastructure investment. It was enormously pleasing to have been able to visit both of the schools that will be sites for the trade training centres. The first of the schools that I visited was Belgrave Heights Christian College, which has been given a commitment of $1.2 million for a new trade training centre to be built there. That will enable children and young adults from the area to develop skills in hospitality. This is a facility that is going to be able to be used—and I know that the school is very willing for it to be made available for this—by students from right around the hills area. In the hills area there is a great deal of interest in this trade training facility.

The reason this government has committed money to this—the reason we have committed so much to skills and training in electorates such as mine—is we know that a person who leaves school before finishing year 12 will earn around 20 per cent below average earnings. That is the reason this government, through its appropriations and through its policy approach since coming to office, has invested and is investing in trade training. It is for the future.

Unfortunately, we tend not to see terribly much from those opposite on this. We know that they defunded skills and training while they were in office. Belgrave Heights Christian College was also the beneficiary of a very significant BER investment. They are delighted with this government's investment in the school and the benefit for the surrounding community. The principal, Andy Callow, was incredibly enthusiastic about the opportunities available to students at his school. He very generously has extended those opportunities to students at other schools in the area.

The second of the trade training centres—which are, as all of us on this side know, part of a national program to invest in trade training right around the country—to be established in my electorate will be at Hillcrest Christian College at the southern end of my electorate. This will benefit students from areas such as Clyde, Officer, Berwick, Beaconsfield and surrounding areas in the south-east of Melbourne. I was delighted to be able to visit that school. The centre is going to provide skills in the equine industry and that is particularly appropriate for the part of the world in which it is located. I was pleased to be able to speak to the principal, Daniel Pampuch, to get a very good understanding of the kinds of skills that will be on offer for students right around the southern part of my electorate.

These are serious and practical commitments, things that stand to benefit many students into the future. They are just two of the commitments that I could mention. Approximately 61 schools in my electorate have benefited from the BER program. Around 118 projects have been completed or are underway. Those projects involve the commitment of around $110 million in my electorate alone. Schools know the priority that this government puts on education. They know that there are practical and real commitments being made, commitments that were never made under the 'woulda, shoulda, coulda' years of the Howard government. We hear the revisionist commitment to education that those opposite supposedly now have, but we all know better. Virtually all of my schools, it is fair to say, also know better.

These are the things that we are doing in education. We have made very significant commitments to things like the National Solar Schools Program, which schools in my electorate have benefited from. There is an enormous range of things happening right around the country and in my electorate in education that I have mentioned in this place previously and that I will continue to extol the virtues of both here and elsewhere.

Government investment in another key areas has, as so many Australians know, created enormous practical changes, and that is the commitment of this government in health. My electorate has been the beneficiary of some of the appropriations made by this government in health in each year it has been in office. Nationally, the government's commitment to hospital funding has seen an increase of $20 billion since 2008. That is no mean feat, and it is certainly no mean feat in the context of an opposition which maintains its commitment to cut spending in health on things like GP superclinics and a whole variety of other things that this government has done to make practical health improvements for a constituency such as mine. We know that when those opposite were in office they slashed the health budget by $1 billion. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition was principally responsible for that piece of policy work.

In my electorate, I want to focus on the commitment to mental health investment that this government has made. Nationally, this government has committed to $2.2 billion in early intervention and care in mental health. I am very pleased to say that my electorate will be the beneficiary of a regional headspace unit, which will offer support and assistance to so many young people in what is one of the fastest growing areas of Melbourne and one of the fastest growing areas of our country.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11:01 to 11 : 39

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No.3) 2011-12 and Appropriation Bill (No.4) 20011-12. I am particularly concerned because the purpose of these bills is to continue to raise additional revenue. We see major blow-outs in a broad range of areas. I think immigration is a classic example, where there is an additional $330 million to cover last year's underestimations. We are now looking at a $1 billion fee in relation to a failed policy. Prior to 2007 this issue had been comprehensively addressed by a government that I was very proud to be in.

I do apologise for my tardiness. My legs slowed me down a little. We have just come back from a vote in the House and in my view we are going to see a very significant winding back of private health insurance in this country. That in itself is going to force a lot more people to either exit private health insurance because it will become unaffordable or, at the very least, reduce their cover. In doing so, it is going to put a massive impost on regional hospitals. As I spoke about last night, in Cairns they are already bursting at the seams and do not have the capacity because of underfunding and gross mismanagement by the state government and the politicisation of the health bureaucracy, which has seen some appalling decisions. It is struggling to cope. When you have a look at that and then you have a look at the money that has been squandered over the last few years, you have to despair at the money that was lost—$2.4 billion on pink batts—and at the lives that were lost, including one up in my region. We are familiar with the other fiascos. The school building program up in our area was a joke quite frankly.

But there are other impacts. Last year I raised the issue of the flooding of six communities in the outer islands of the Torres Strait. After not getting any satisfaction or any interest from the government, I made a decision to put up a private member's motion. As that private member's motion was going through, I was a little surprised but also pleased that I was approached by Simon Crean's office asking me to delay the voting until August. From the advice I received from his office, the government was of the view that they would support the building of these walls with a $22 million investment. Rather than play politics with it, I agreed to hold it over. His problem was that he did not want to take the money out of the Regional Development Australia Fund. He wanted to find, in their words, another bucket of money. I agreed to that in the interests of having the matter resolved, appreciating that about a third of the Saibai Island cemetery had already been washed out into the sea, that there was $1 billion worth of infrastructure on these six islands that needed to be protected and that there were some serious health risks in relation to the inundation of water during the king tide period.

The vote eventually went through in August and I wrote a letter to Minister Crean thanking him for his cooperation and consideration with regard to the urgent needs of the Torres Strait Island communities and asking if he could give me a time frame for when the money would be available to start addressing these concerns. I should have been suspicious when there was a delay in his response. Eventually I got that response. I got it just before the Christmas break. I had gone around and seen the minister. At that point, he started umming and ahing—he was surrounded by department officials—and he said he would have a letter to me shortly.

Just before Christmas, I got a Christmas present from Simon Crean. Basically, he wrote to me and said: 'This is not a problem of the government; this is something that has to go back to local government. It's a state government, local government problem. We give financial assistance grants to the Torres Strait council for $6 million a year. Let them fix the problem.' This is in direct contradiction to the commitment that was given. I actually have an email from one of his senior staff members apologising to me for the deceit and for the misleading arrangement that they made. At every opportunity I get, I will continue to remind the Torres Strait Islander people of the deceit by Minister Crean—I think it was him more than his office because I actually have an apology from one of his former staff.

Sadly, because of that deceit, we have now seen the king tides hit again. We have seen more of the cemeteries—people's families—being washed out to sea, never to be recovered. I was amazed to find that this same government, at the same time, committed $328.2 million to micro Pacific nations to assist them in dealing with climate change. That money goes through the UN. Guess what that is going for? We see all of the problem at the moment about leadership. This is buying a position through the UN for none other than Mr K Rudd. They do not realise that the islands in the Torres Strait are in the Pacific. They do not realise that the islands in the Torres Strait are actually part of Australia. And these islands are having massive damage every year in king tides. It is totally fixable. They could do it over two years with $22 million.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

22?

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

22. Do you know what the problem with the Torres Strait Islanders is? They do not have a vote on the UN. We wonder, if we were to get them a vote, how quickly the government would be racing out there to get things fixed. You know: another vote with the UN; another way of getting rid of a thorn in the side of this government.

At every opportunity, I will continue to raise this. I think it is absolutely appalling that $328 million of taxpayers' money can go over to those microcountries but we cannot afford to save Australian communities suffering from the same challenges. It is just absolutely appalling.

While I am on that subject, I will talk about some other issues that we are facing too. We remember quite clearly the building revolution that we had in the stimulus package. How great was that? That was going to really make things happen. Of course, it was another example of wasted opportunities and a continued, building deficit, which facilitates the requirement that we have now for raising more money to pay for misjudgments or miscalculations in funding. In spending the money on those school halls, they had another layer of bureaucracy. They should have invested in more practical infrastructure.

In my electorate of Leichhardt, for example, schools are notoriously lacking in basic facilities. I am not referring to schools in remote communities here, which have been traditionally neglected by state governments, or even city schools. In some cases, only the threat of strike action by teachers and protests by parents have forced the issue of funding. Trinity Beach State School, which is in the northern suburbs in Cairns, was so run down that parents threatened to take their kids out of school unless basic issues such as covered play areas, rusted gutters, drainpipes, poor drainage and leaky, smelly toilet blocks were fixed. The state government only started to put money into those after parents shamed them into doing it.

The sad part about it is that the stimulus packages that we have heard so much about in recent years certainly failed to equip schools with much-needed facilities. I think that, again, it is another indictment of seriously failed policies, which at some stage we are going to have to address. Another area I would like to mention is our banks. There have been a lot of issues about banks in recent times and a lot of concerns about the dominance of the major four. Recently we had the decision from ANZ to independently raise interest rates. And, of course, the others all followed because they are very keen to get their snouts in the trough and take as much as they can from their mortgage holders. The greed of these banks, in their pursuit of increased profits at the expense of their customers, is most evident.

Another thing the big four banks are doing is changing their loan-to-valuation ratios. In my area, where we have been doing it tough for the last four or five years, they have been adjusting their loan-to-valuation ratios. They used to be around 70 to 80 per cent but they are now dropping them to around 60 to 65 per cent. At the expense of their borrowers, the banks are getting their valuers to go in and revalue the properties. The banks are telling the valuers what price they expect and they are bringing the value down by about 20 per cent. The valuers have got no choice; if they do not do it they have got no work. So they are doing this. And the borrowers are charged for the privilege. The banks come back to the borrower and say: 'Your valuation has dropped by 20 per cent and we've adjusted the loan-to-valuation ratio. We know you've made every payment that has ever been required of you but you now need to put in X amount of dollars to fix that adjustment. If you don't, you must sell any other real estate or property you have or we're going to come in and take back your property.' This is the sort of thing that is happening. It puts huge pressure on many businesses in the area. It is quite frightening to see and I think we need to be very vigilant with this. I think it is about time we had some sort of inquiry into the practices of the big banks.

But there is an alternative. There is a little bank in Cairns that has been going for 112 years. It is called the Cairns Penny Savings and Loans. I declare an interest here. I actually use it as my preferred bank. It is totally based in Cairns. We have got Peter Phillips and his team. They are all local people in that bank. There is a local board with all local people. The bank was originally established in 1899 by a group of locals who noted that banking in those days was aimed at the more lucrative trading cycles and tended to overlook the needs of local residents. What has changed in 112 years!

This bank has been an outstanding success in our region. Not only are their interest rates very competitive but they have the trust of the customers. You can walk in and talk to them anytime. They do not have all these undisclosed fees for services that continue to escalate in the big banks. They have not had to wind back these fees—as we see some of the big banks doing because they have been subject to a whole range of criticism because people just cannot afford it anymore—as they have never had them in the first place.

The Treasurer says you can walk away from the big banks. But we need to be looking at ways we can establish more of these wonderful little institutions like the Penny Savings and Loans. That will be real competition to the greedy big four and it will get community banking, and trust, back into our communities. That is the sort of thing that will actually make a difference. With all these inquiries and everything, the big fellas will still find ways around it. But if we find ways of making it easier to establish these little community banks I think you will find it will make a profound difference for our communities. (Time expired)

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about investment, something that the Gillard Labor government is not afraid to make—particularly when it comes to Canberra and the people here who strive to make this town the best capital city in the world. The government is committed to delivering a strong clean energy future for Australia, improving our economy and returning the budget to surplus in 2012-13.

The 2011-12 budget delivered some great things for Canberra. Our nation's capital saw investment of $82.2 million for roads, $30.6 million for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, $33.9 million for the Australian War Memorial and $1.7 million for a new exhibition on World War I, $6.1 million in base funding for the High Court, $2 million for the completion of the National Gallery of Australia building and $2.1 million for Australian Disability Enterprises to support the work of Koomarri.

Koomarri is based in my electorate. It provides a great service to disabled Canberrans and to the carers and parents of those disabled Canberrans. I attended an event late last year where I met with a number of carers and their disabled children, some of whom are quite profoundly disabled. One of the key or fundamental messages I got from the conversations I had with those parents—who were quite often in tears and very distressed and concerned about what is going to happen to their children if they pass on or if they become ill at some stage—was, 'Bring on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.' These people want the National Disability Insurance Scheme. They see the value of it, and the sooner they can get it the better. It was very strong and profound message. Many of these parents were in tears because they are terribly worried about what is going to happen to their children. Some of the children were in their early 20s. Their parents were a bit older—in their late 50s and 60s—and they were concerned about what is going to happen to their children if they get ill and eventually do pass away. The message from them was, 'Please—we love the National Disability Insurance Scheme and we want it to come along as soon as possible.'

Canberra, and the indeed the nation, has also undoubtedly benefited from a range of investments in health, training, infrastructure, small business and families. I would like to outline some of the achievements we have made in those areas today. Better health and a better health system will always be a Labor priority. We were the ones who introduced Medicare. A universal health system is in the Labor DNA. It is fundamental to Labor's identity. In the ACT, the federal government has invested $67 million in a range of health reforms, including $8.3 million to expand the capacity of public hospital emergency departments, $26 million in capital and recurrent funding to deliver 21 subacute beds, $6.8 million to boost elective surgery capacity at the Canberra Hospital and $7.5 million in flexible capital funding.

In the past 12 months I have been out to the Canberra Hospital on a number of occasions with the former minister for health and the ACT Chief Minister, and had a number of tours of the great new facilities that are being built and expanded out there. The Canberra Hospital in Woden, which is in my electorate, is a great institution and very much loved by Canberrans. Canberrans have a great sense of ownership of the Canberra Hospital. They also have a very keen interest in its future. The Canberra Hospital services about 30 per cent of the region—so it is not just a hospital for Canberra, it is a hospital for the capital region. Through our investments, and also the investments of the ACT government, we are seeing it ever expanding, ever growing, and ever providing better health services for the people of Canberra.

Among the funding that we have provided to the Canberra Hospital and to health in the region is funding for 24 regional cancer centres around Australia to bring services closer to patients. I was pleased last year to be joined by the previous minister, Nicola Roxon, to turn the first sod on a fantastic new regional cancer centre to support and treat people from the ACT and our region—that 30 per cent in the region that are battling cancer. This centre will provide support to half a million people in the region. It will be a wonderful support to them and their families, and I am very much looking forward to watching this cancer centre being built over the next 12 months and coming years. It will provide a much needed facility to Canberrans and also to people in the region. It will also provide an opportunity for people in the region to stay in Canberra to get the support that they need when they are battling cancer or coming up to be diagnosed with potential cancer. As we all know from our own personal experiences and the experiences of people in our electorates, it can be very challenging and confronting if you are diagnosed with cancer and then to have to go through that journey of travelling interstate or intraregion to get your treatment can also be very challenging and often quite lonely. This cancer centre will provide much needed support and respite for those cancer sufferers and for their families. It is a very welcome initiative. I was proud that the Gillard government contributed some $30 million to this $46 million project.

But Labor's investment in health goes beyond Canberra. For a start, we have invested $2.2 billion in mental health, which includes 30 new headspace centres to bring the national total to 90 and provide nationwide coverage, up to 12 additional youth psychosis centres, 40 more family support services, 425 more personal helpers and mentors, and $344 million for new support services for the severely mentally ill and the National Mental Health Commission. I am very much looking forward to speaking tonight in the adjournment debate on post-traumatic stress disorder and what is happening in this space and the range of support mechanisms that are set up to deal with this disorder. It is one of those things that does afflict many people and can often be quite invisible. So I am looking forward to bringing people's attention to that in the adjournment debate tonight. There is also another $3 billion to improve hospitals and cancer facilities throughout Australia. I mentioned what was happening in Canberra but that applies right across the nation.

The Gillard Labor government is also investing $53 million to help improve access to public dental services. This investment is important because in 2007 Labor inherited a health shambles: six in 10 Australians were living with doctor shortages, public hospitals were run into the ground and bulkbilling was in national decline. Since then, Labor has worked to turn this Liberal shambles around. We increased capital works with $1.8 billion to build and rebuild 63 hospitals and health centres. We funded more doctors and nurses and boosted Medicare rebates to help bulkbilling grow. We delivered national health reform one year ago this week, ending the state and federal blame game in health. We have delivered more money, more beds, less waste and less waiting for public hospitals nationwide. There has also been our investment in nurses. We are training an extra 1,000 nurses every year and an extra 5,500 doctors over 10 years. We have increased public hospital funding by 50 per cent and reached agreement with states and territories on funding future public hospital growth via an extra 1,300 federally funded hospital beds and a further 13,000 residential aged care places. We are doing more to ensure there is fairness in our health system. This will be done through a means test of the private health insurance rebate, which looks on track. It has been passed today. So a household on $1,000 does not subsidise the insurance of one on $500,000.

The Gillard Labor government's commitment to health just goes on and on. We are also equipping 120 hospitals with new elective surgery equipment and/or operating theatres. We are investing in new community health programs, including plain packaging of tobacco products, tough new restrictions on tobacco advertising and subsidised nicotine replacement therapies. We are investing in the after-hours GP helpline for 24-hour day access to expert health advice. These are just some of the latest investments in health. This is because only Labor cares about delivering world-class health care for all Australians and only Labor can be trusted to keep our health and our public hospital system strong. I look forward to seeing even more investment in the health services that will be possible with the introduction of the means test for the private health insurance rebate.

I turn now to infrastructure, which is a fundamental framework for us to enhance productivity and to grow this nation. In terms of infrastructure, the Gillard Labor government has invested $1.1 million to fix local black spots on top of the $82 million for road infrastructure this financial year—this is just in the Canberra context. There was also the announcement by Minister Albanese of $144 million in funding for the Majura Parkway. That is perhaps the most welcome announcement of all, as it delivers something that has been needed for many years. The ACT government will co-fund that. It is very welcome news. We have the Tuggeranong Parkway and Gungahlin Drive linking one side of the city from north to south. But we now need to have the other side of the city linked from north to south, and the Majura Parkway will allow that to happen.

Investment in infrastructure and roads in Canberra has included $200 million for new roads and for the maintenance of Edison and Glebe Parks. We have had $32,000 for signage and line-marking improvements in Tuggeranong in my electorate. We have had over $240,000 for signage and intersection improvements for the intersections of Mugga Lane and Long Gully Road in Symonston.

In addition to that, we have made an $18.5 million investment in the Monaro Highway. The ACT government has also provided about $2 million for that. I am very much looking forward to that coming on line. That will finally, after 40 years, make the Monaro Highway a dual carriageway the whole way. We have been waiting 40 years for this to happen. At the moment, the upgrade is causing a bit of inconvenience for my constituents who work in Fyshwick. But it is a welcome development. I am very much looking forward to going out there and getting an update on progress in the near future. Thanks to both federal and ACT Labor we are seeing that huge enhancement occur after waiting for 40 years. It is a great development.

I could go on and on about the support that is being delivered to community organisations. I would just like to mention one, though—the investment that we have made in the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre, which last year received more calls than ever before. The Rape Crisis Centre is in my electorate and it does incredibly important work. I am a very strong supporter of it. Last year, we had Minister Ellis out there speaking to the workers, who do a fantastic job in providing support to men and women in Canberra. The Governor-General officially opened their beautiful new premises in Weston Creek. I am very proud of that investment and very proud of the fabulous work that the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre does.

When it comes to skills training, we have also made record investments in that area. The dignity of work is something that our government wants to help all Australians realise. I know that there are many employment initiatives in electorates across the country to get people into work and help them stay there. Better education, training and infrastructure are top priorities for the Gillard Labor government. I am always proud to tell my constituents how we have doubled investment in school education, upgraded facilities at every school and provided more information for parents than ever before. I mentioned this last night. I have nearly finished all the official openings of the projects funded through our significant Building the Education Revolution investment.

Each primary school across my electorate received between $1.5 million and about $3.5 million and all the parents, students and staff in those school communities are absolutely overjoyed at the investment that we have made. In many ways, they cannot believe their luck in many ways, because they would never have been able to raise that sort of money through sausage sizzles or fetes. It would not have been possible. It is beyond their wildest dreams. Not one person I have met at those schools does not think that the BER is the greatest of investments.

We have also created 130,000 new training places and are encouraging apprentices to stay in their training and to get a skilled job by investing $100 million in a mentoring program, $100 million in new apprenticeship models that deliver high-quality skills quickly and $30 million to help mature age workers formalise their trade skills.

The Gillard Labor government has made significant investments in Canberra in education, health, infrastructure and community organisations—the list goes on and on. I am particularly proud of what we are doing here in Canberra. The feedback that I am getting from the community is that they love what we are doing here. I am very proud to represent the Gillard Labor government in Canberra and am very proud of the investment that we are making. (Time expired)

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012. When talking about the overall economic performance of the Gillard government there are three issues that come top of mind. The first one is the issue of trust and credibility—the issue of the truth. The second one is waste—and we have seen a lot of waste. The third one is the carbon tax and what it is going to do to the already increasing cost of living being felt in communities across the country.

Trust in government is vital and trust in the Prime Minister is vital. Yet sadly what we are seeing day by day is that our Prime Minister cannot be trusted. We saw it with the promise that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led, which was made before the last election and then was immediately disavowed after the election. We have seen it rear its ugly head with what happened on Australia Day. As 7.30 highlighted last night, we now once again cannot believe the version of events that we are getting from the Prime Minister on this issue. We have seen it with the private health insurance bills, the commitments that were made before the 2007 election and what was done immediately after to renege on those commitments.

Trust in government is very important for overall economic health. If you cannot trust what the Prime Minister and the government are saying then the overall sovereign risk increases. We now have companies, small businesses and individuals—farmers and manufacturers; people in all sectors of our economy—unable to believe what this government tells them. That means that the investment decisions that they would like to make are being put off, because they do not know whether this government will go back on its word and make a decision that will harm that long-term investment if they go forward with those investment decisions.

The best thing that we can do to improve sovereign risk in this country is to go to an election. People are fed up with their being told one thing and then the government doing another. It has got to the stage where lack of trust is eroding people's confidence in this government. It is time for the government to recognise this and to realise that it is damaging the nation and increasing sovereign risk, meaning that investment in all sectors across the country is being curtailed. No-one has the confidence to believe what the government is saying, even when it is looking them in the eye. They are worried that it will do something else. That is sad.

This was personified in the Prime Minister's appearance on Four Corners. I do not think that we have ever seen anything shiftier in political history in Australia than her answers to the two questions that were put to her about whether she had seen the polling that was being handed around to destabilise Kevin Rudd and whether a speech was being prepared in her office two weeks before Kevin Rudd was rolled. If you cannot have confidence in the words of the Prime Minister, it harms in every way people's ability to look and say, 'Okay, what is the level of sovereign risk in this country?' Australia has always been seen as a safe place to put investment.

I now turn to the question of waste. You have all seen today just another example of how this government treats the taxpayer with utter contempt. On the front page of today's Australianwe have the $700 Labor Party set-top box. We then have the $19 set-top box, which you can get down at your local discount store. The $19 set-top box versus the $700 Labor set-top box. On the front page of the Australianis pictured one of my constituents, who made this very valid comment which I think stands true for a lot of the spending problems this government has. She said:

I think their idea might have been well intended, but you wonder if they thought it through.

I will just repeat that, because I am hoping that the Labor members who are here today might just take this into account the next time they think of one of their wonderful ideas: 'I think their idea might have been well intended, but you wonder if they thought it through.' That is the $700 Labor set-top box versus the $19 set-top box that you can get from your local discount store. It is gross waste.

Let us turn to the BER. Once again it would be fair to say that the idea might have been well intended, but you wonder if they thought it through. Sadly, they did not. I have seen in my electorate example after example of waste and more waste. There is a little school, which I will not name because the school is still dealing with the BER issue, in one of the areas of socioeconomic disadvantage in my electorate. There is a school principal who is doing outstanding work in trying to educate those students. They had a roof which needed replacing because it was leaking. An amount of $1.2 million was spent on giving the school a new roof. The first time that it rained, the principal had to get up with a hammer because the rain was pouring so badly into one of the classrooms. She had to get up on a ladder herself and get a hammer and fix a hole in the roof to make sure that damage was not done to all the inside carpet and from rain running down the walls and ripping all the paint off the walls. So it was $1.2 million to fix the problem and the problem was made worse.

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

Whose fault's that?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, whose problem was that? It had nothing to do with the federal government that allocated the money! No; you just gave the money and then you wiped your hands. You do not care what happens to that taxpayers' money.

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

Oh, rubbish; that's nonsense.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why are you laughing then?

Mr Neumann interjecting—

You are laughing at this; you do not care what happens to the—

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

Order! The member for Wannon will not respond to the interjections, and the member for Blair will desist from interjecting.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What happened in that school is an absolute disgrace. You should come down and talk to the principal about it, and then you would see firsthand what happened to that $1.2 million. That program was rushed out. I go back to my constituent who was on the front page of the Australian today, who said, 'I think their idea might have been well intended, but you wonder if they thought it through.' And they did not.

Just think about what could have been done with the money that was wasted. When we talk about employment, when we talk about job creation, think about what could have been done with that money. For instance, what about if you had thought: 'Okay, we've got a couple of billion dollars here; maybe we should go to state governments. One idea which might be quite a good one is, ''Let's work towards the reduction of payroll tax.''' If you understand business in the community, you will understand that payroll tax is one of the biggest disincentives to employing people. That would have been a very constructive way, a way which structurally would have changed the employment market in this country and led to more job creation. That is just one idea. The member for Blair asked me for one—there it is, right on the plate. Think about it; it would be a very good way to go about it.

The third issue is one that is about to hit the community and businesses across my electorate and across the country. It will add to the cost of living. It is the carbon tax. It is not too late to say that the carbon tax is the wrong policy at the wrong time. If you will face up to that you can save this country from immeasurable damage from this insidious tax.

I have an aluminium smelter in Portland in my electorate. It is a very good investment by Alcoa. It provides incredibly important jobs and, not only that, those jobs feed into the local community and provide jobs there as well. The carbon tax will add a $40 million cost to smeltering for Alcoa in the state of Victoria. That is the figure that was announced by the company in Senate estimates. At this time, when a review has just been announced of the 600 workers' jobs at Point Henry, and the company has come out and stated that the carbon tax is going to be a $40 million hit to its bottom line, why would you progress with it? Surely you would step back and say, given the climate for manufacturing at the moment, that this is not the right tax for the right time. You would admit, 'We got it wrong.' I would go back to my constituents and say, 'Maybe the idea was well intended, but I wonder whether we have thought this through properly.'

It is not just big manufacturing; it is small manufacturing. With a company like Gason in my electorate, which manufactures equipment which leads to a reduction in carbon emissions from soy, what are they getting for producing this equipment?

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

Carbon farming!

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Carbon farming does nothing for them. Understand the issue—they are a manufacturer. Carbon farming does nothing for them. You do not understand your issue. What do they get for producing carbon-reduction equipment? They get a carbon tax. How is that fair? The carbon tax will add to the cost of living, and understand that the cost of living is increasing. We see it with insurance premiums, with people's electricity bills and with the cost of child care—another policy where once again this government's intentions might have been okay but they did not think through what the ultimate result of their policy would be.

I welcome the opportunity today to talk on these two appropriation bills and to raise the three key points that I have raised. The first was about the issue of trust and, sadly—I know the members sitting opposite saw it—that Four Corners show once and for all detailed that we have a Prime Minister and therefore a government which cannot be trusted. The second point I have highlighted is that we continue to see waste upon waste upon waste. Labor's $700 set-top box is just another example of this, especially when you realise that for $19 at the local discount store you can get a set-top box. The third issue is what the carbon tax is going to do to manufacturing—both small and large—in this country and, also, to the cost of living, to what it is going to do to increase people's electricity bills and to what it is going to do to a range of issues in driving up overall costs. It is an insidious tax and the government should just admit that it was an idea that might have been well intended but they never thought it through. (Time expired)

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

This government's record on economic management has resulted in lower taxes, stronger growth, lower interest rates, lower unemployment and inflation in a low band. This government's economic management is the envy of the OECD. This government's economic management has seen a stimulus which has retained jobs. About 250,000 people would have been thrown on the scrap heap if those opposite had followed what they thought was the New Zealand model, and we would have seen unemployment rates in excess of seven per cent in this country. The rate is about 5.2 per cent.

Those opposite have said no to my electorate and no to the country—no to Blair, no to Ipswich and no to Somerset. There is not a road-funding bill that has been passed through this House in the last four years since I have been elected that those opposite have not opposed. There has not been a health-funding bill that those opposite have opposed that has not made an impact on my electorate. There has not been a bill in relation to education that has made a positive impact on my electorate that those opposite have not opposed. There has not been a regional development infrastructure funding commitment and execution in my electorate that those opposite have not opposed. Time and again they have opposed every single thing. They say no to Ipswich, no to Somerset and no to Queensland.

What we have done with respect to road funding in my home state, doubling the funding to $8.5 billion, those opposite failed to do. We have increased the funding for rail 10 times and doubled the road funding—$36 billion for road, rail and ports. Those opposite should stand condemned with respect to road funding in South-East Queensland in particular.

They have opposed, for three elections in a row, the most important road-funding commitment that this government has made, the Ipswich Motorway. It will be completed by the middle of or late this year. The Ipswich Motorway links Brisbane to Ipswich and goes on, linking from there to the Warrego and Cunningham highways, to western Queensland, Toowoomba, the Darling Downs, the Lockyer Valley, the Brisbane Valley et cetera. That is where we get the minerals through—on those roads. That is where farmers take their produce to the Rocklea markets and on to the ports. That is where mums and dads drive through. We have done the Ipswich Motorway against the opposition of those opposite. All the mayors in South-East Queensland supported it. Even Campbell Newman, the alternative Premier of Queensland, supported it. Those opposite opposed it.

They opposed the funding for the Blacksoil Interchange—again, one of the magnificent seven projects that we were urged to do by the mayors of South-East Queensland. We put in $54 million, and the state Labor government has just closed the tender. Those opposite opposed it for 11½ years. They opposed the Dinmore to Goodna section of the Ipswich Motorway, doing nothing on the Blacksoil Interchange for 11½ years.

Let us look at road funding. Those opposite gave such little amounts. For example, let us talk about the Somerset Regional Council. Under Roads to Recovery from 2005-06 to 2008-09, the total amount that the Somerset Regional Council received under those opposite—and this is the local council with the largest area in South-East Queensland—was only $714,468. That council has the largest area of the councils in South-East Queensland, and it got $714,000. We increased it to $3.266 million in local road funding from 2009-10 to 2013-14.

For Ipswich City Council again we did that. We increased it from $5.9 million to $6.55 million. Even in the electorate of the member for Groom, the road funding increased from $3.9 million to $14.9 million, with those opposite opposing all funding for roads. Brisbane City Council got the same. Road funding was massively increased for South-East Queensland, with those opposite opposing it time and time again.

The member for Wannon talks about waste. Is the road funding in South-East Queensland a waste? One in seven Australians lives in South-East Queensland. Is that a waste? Yet they opposed the funding for it. They should stand condemned for that. It is ridiculous to oppose that

What about regional infrastructure in that area? They opposed all the regional infrastructure in that area in my electorate. They opposed the funding for the Ipswich civic centre upgrade. They opposed the funding for the Ipswich Baptist Church community hall upgrade. They opposed the funding for the aquatic facilities and also for the River Heart Parklands on the Bremer River in my electorate. They opposed the corporate centre in the north Ipswich football area, where the Ipswich Jets play every week. They opposed the funding for the Fernvale Indoor Sports Centre, the skate parks at Esk and the skate part at Kilcoy. They opposed the funding for the Somerset Civic Centre—$2 million under Regional Development Australia funding. They say no to every regional infrastructure fund in my electorate. They also opposed the road funding.

Let's talk about health funding. They opposed the GP superclinic in Ipswich, which was so influential and helpful during the flood. They opposed the funding of the Medicare Locals program and for the health and hospital networks. They also opposed the funding we put into the Ipswich general hospital and they opposed the rehabilitation, geriatric and palliative care funding that we provided.

They opposed the BER in my electorate. The member for Wannon talks about the BER and that it is all a waste. Tell the people of Esk, the people of Fernvale and the people of Patrick Estate in my electorate who used those BER halls and sheds as the place they went to to shelter from the flood. That helped them to rebuild their homes and their communities. Those opposite say that is a waste. The BER projects provided jobs and vital infrastructure. In my seat, I cannot find one community that does not think the BER was a good thing for their school community. BER has been so important.

They opposed the trade training centres. They opposed the Ipswich trade training centre at St Edmund's. They have a fantastic facility there that is linked to Ipswich Girls Grammar School and Ipswich Grammar School. That project was $3 million. Those opposite also opposed all the computers in schools. They would rip up that program. They criticised us for not delivering them fast enough and then went to the last election with a policy opposed to it. They opposed the funding for the trade training centre at St Peter Claver College. They opposed the funding for the trade training centre at Ipswich State High School which is linked to other schools in Ipswich and the lower Somerset. They opposed the language learning centres and the science laboratories at places like St Peter Claver College and Ipswich State High School.

They cannot find a school funding project that they would not oppose in the BER. The Leader of the Opposition actually belled the cat on this because he does not want certain people to be educated well. He only wants the right people to be educated well. That is what he said: only the right people. They opposed all the BER funding. Those opposite do not want to fund areas of social and economic disadvantage. Only Labor governments provide for the Ipswich and Somerset region. Only Labor governments provide the road funding in that area.

Think of all the national school partnerships. Think of all the things in the 20 schools in the Ipswich and the Somerset region that are taking part. I have seen the advantage that has been provided in real working-class areas like One Mile and Leichhardt. I have seen the pride in the schools there and their pride in the extra facilities they have received. I have seen the improvements in literacy and numeracy in those schools. To have seen the great things that have been done in those schools is fantastic. I have 64 schools in my electorate and five more have recently opened. We have invested in those schools. Also, we have provided additional funding for chaplains in those schools. They helped so much during the flood. We are rolling out more chaplaincy services in those areas and I know that they will be warmly appreciated.

With respect to funding in my electorate, all those opposite can do is say no. On this side, we know how important these projects are. I was not intending to do this, but I want to go through this because the member for Wannon talked about waste and the BER. When I got elected in 2007, I was approached by the community at Brassall State School, the third biggest primary school in my electorate, about the need for a new school hall. The P&C president, Shelly McDonald, came and talked to me about it. She said that the previous member for Blair could not get them funding. They kept on asking for it all the time. We rolled out that funding under the BER and the Prime Minister was with me when we opened that school hall at Brassall State School on 21 July last year. Peter Doyle was the principal then. That school lost all of its computers owing to flooding. It had buildings demolished because they were flooded. There was not a piece of paper left as a result of the flood. It was entirely trashed. All credit goes to Peter Doyle and the whole school community for rebuilding the school and having the kids back on time. That school hall was a symbol of the pride of that school. They were so happy that day to see that school hall officially opened by the Prime Minister. Does the member for Wannon think that was a waste?

What about the new facilities for St Joseph's? St Joseph's Primary School in North Ipswich was the flood evacuation centre for the people of Brassall and North Ipswich during the flood in January 2011. I was there and opened the new facilities at that school. They received $2.625 million for a new library, new classrooms and other improvements. The people of Brassall and North Ipswich suffered in the flood. I saw the happiness, the joy, the enthusiasm, the pride and the self-respect of the people and the whole Catholic community in North Ipswich and Brassall on the day that was opened. Does the member for Wannon think that was a waste? I do not think it was.

What about Esk? That was where the SES and the rural fire brigade stayed. That is where people bunked as the waters from Redbank Creek flooded through the CBD of Esk and through people's houses. Esk Caravan Park was destroyed. People went to that hall. Without that hall there was nothing in Esk and no place to go. Was that a waste of money? Do not tell the people of Esk that was a waste of money because it certainly was not. The new library and the new hall are an important part of the education of the children there.

What about the heritage in my home city of Ipswich? We have seen refurbishments, a new multipurpose hall and a new gym, in one of the oldest schools in Ipswich, Ipswich Central State School—my dad's old school. It got $3.2 million. I know that is one of Ipswich's oldest schools and it is important. What about poor Karalee, where hundreds and hundreds of homes were flooded in January 2011? A grant of $3 million effectively gave them their own civic centre at the Karalee State School—a new performing arts and resources centre. I know that is so important for that area. I saw the happiness on the young people's faces as they performed on that Saturday afternoon when we opened it. Karalee was badly hit during the flood. Was the funding there wasted? I say it was not.

What about the new kitchen gardens at WoodLinks State School and Lowood State School? We gave them $60,000 grants under the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. Was that a waste? I think not, and the people do not believe that either. What about Claremont Special School and Ipswich West Special School? After I got elected Ipswich West Special School approached me because they needed a hydrotherapy complex—a pool for their kids with severe disabilities. They had not been able to get the money under the coalition. For over 20 years Peter Davis was the principal there and he could not convince coalition members in the federal government to give him the money. They would not do it. We provided that funding. We did it for them and now they have got a hydrotherapy complex there under the BER. Was that waste? I think not.

I could go on and on and on. Those opposite stand condemned for their refusal to invest in health, education, community and road infrastructure in South-East Queensland. They say one thing down here and they visit all those schools and facilities back in their electorates and want to take the credit for it. We have seen their websites and their newsletters.

This appropriation bill is in the spirit of this Labor government. It wants to make a difference in the lives of people through the length and breadth of this country. I commend the legislation to the House.

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

My contribution today is about Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012. They represent an implementation of the MYEFO—the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook—adjustments that were made in a few short months after the government laid out its 2011-2012 budget. It is interesting that the shelf life of that budget was so short and that we are here discussing substantial variations in the form of these appropriation bills.

I will not itemise all the areas of expenditure, other than to note that some of the leading items include a substantial amount of money related to the carbon tax: funds that are aiming to soften the impact, to ease the burden and to relieve some of the pain that is inherently acknowledged in these budget appropriations. All those adjustments, the soft landing and making sure that the hurt is a little bit less would not be necessary if it were not for the implementation of the carbon tax. That is the one that was promised not to happen. This would not be a discussion that we had to have if the Prime Minister had honoured her undertaking: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.'

So in these appropriations across a number of portfolios there is a substantial amount of money to deal with transitional assistance for the carbon price and the job support package, recognising the vulnerability, the risk and the harm to important sectors of our economy. There is also some money that is designed to help households to meet the additional costs of the carbon tax, and money for setting up the bureaucratic infrastructure that sits around the measure that the government promised it would not implement but now is.

It is an interesting document in that it says a lot about where the government is, but it also gives us an insight into what is actually going on at the moment. There is quite a remarkable political Ponzi scheme being played out in this nation's parliament. You have heard government members talk about what a fantastic job they do in spending bucketloads of money. No-one is saying that they cannot spend money. I have not heard anybody that I have met suggest that this government cannot spend money. It knows how to spend money like no other government before. It knows how to spray it around and defer the responsibility for financing that spending onto subsequent generations.

In the few short years since the Rudd-Gillard government was elected, the Commonwealth outlays have grown by almost $100 billion. In the last year of the Howard government, if my recollection serves me well, I think the federal budget was about $270 billion. It is now up at $360 billion. That is an incredible uplift in government expenditure. Then the government has the hide to come out and say, 'Oh, but we are not the highest-taxing government,' on a very spurious set of data analysis. What it does not talk about is the deferred tax that is debt. Debt is simply tax deferred for subsequent generations to pay. Again, just as no-one contests the ability of this Labor government to spend money, it is unrivalled in its ability to accumulate debt and to record record deficits.

But the political Ponzi scheme sees the economic harm and the financial responsibility transferred on to subsequent years and to subsequent generations, as if it does not matter. It is an intergenerational theft of their opportunities to choose the priorities and the expenditure profile when it comes time for the subsequent generation to manage and to lead this nation and to shape its economy. In effect, it is actually stealing those opportunities, claiming them today and then being able to come into this chamber, as we have heard Labor members do, spruiking about all the money they have sprayed around everywhere. There is an infinite number of worthwhile things that you can do with other people's money, and the government has proven its capacity to make some inroads into that infinite range of possibilities. But there comes a day when you have to account for it. I have touched on how this political Ponzi scheme is sucking resources out of current and future generations to finance this extraordinary expenditure. Today, we as a nation will borrow another $100 million dollars, and this is at a time when the government boasts about the economy being at trend growth and the terms of trade being as good as they have been for a century and half. Yet we are still proving to be incapable of paying our way.

If, under the Gillard and Rudd administrations, the Commonwealth of Australia were a corporation, Gillard and Rudd would have lots of 'please explain's from the economic regulators in Australia. They would have lots of calls from ASIC to explain how their accounting tricks could be justified against the prudent and good practice that the corporate world needs to meet, but because they are the government they are not held to that same level of account. If the Stock Exchange were a corporate entity, it would be wondering how some of the assertions that have been put out into the marketplace could be made at all, given there is no evidence to substantiate those claims. We see this in the way that the government, after having accumulated extraordinary deficits, has almost overnight contrived a surplus for political advantage. It has been engineered for one budget, one year. Expenditure has been pulled forward into this financial year and then pushed back outside the target year to create a wafer-thin surplus for 2012-13. So we see how in this budget and in these appropriation bills the already enormous deficit which was going to be inflicted on this nation is getting worse. Where expenditure can be pulled forward into this financial year it has been and where other expenditures have been able to be deferred they have been put out past 2012-13. And this is while the government seeks to achieve some kind of political goal that it has set itself in light of the fact that the broader Australian public is quite dubious about this government's economic management, competence and capability.

So these additional expenditures come on the back of quite an extraordinary series of deficits. These are the four biggest deficits in our nation's history. Remember: these deficits have been arrived at—and I am drawing from the Labor government's own rhetoric—at a time when the economy seems to be going well. Any hardship is dismissed as growing pains and the trend growth that we are on now should enable us to pay our way, but we are failing miserably as a nation to fund our expenditures. The four biggest deficits in Australian history have a cumulative total of $167 billion, and that is supposed to be praiseworthy in the eyes of the Labor government and its members.

If the Prime Minister were the chief executive officer of a corporation and she received a bonus—whether it be a substantial payment or some political kudos—derived from a contrived financial outcome, everyone would look quite curiously at that. In fact, if the government were in the corporate world, the corporate world would be highly critical that high-flying executives were manipulating the fortunes of its company and massaging its finances to create some arithmetic outcome for which they would hope to be rewarded. If that happened in the corporate world there would be outrage.

When this government was going through its post-neoliberalism, former Prime Minister Rudd was trying to say that all things that had helped make this country great and grow our economy were all of sudden quite evil and that we needed a bigger government in every boardroom, in every economic decision and in every household of the country. One of the things he said at that time was that corporate executives were running companies to try to achieve certain financial KPIs so that they would be highly rewarded. Isn't it odd that here we are some years down the track—we no longer have Prime Minister Rudd; we have Prime Minister Gillard—and Prime Minister Gillard is presiding over a Commonwealth corporation, the Commonwealth of Australia, and is doing the very things that former Prime Minister Rudd was so highly critical of when he was Prime Minister. We have a contrived financial picture. We have a completely incredible set of assertions sitting behind one year's financial outcome where the CEO—in this case, the Prime Minister—wants to be lauded and praised for this contrived one-year financial outcome. I am not certain it will even happen, despite all the fiscal gymnastics, transactional shuffling and political Ponzi arrangements that the government is overseeing. We are still yet to see whether there will be a surplus as the Prime Minister and Treasurer have promised on the back of, dare I say, some very poor form. If past performance is a guide to future performance then it is very hard to believe the government will actually create a surplus, even as it creates this cynical fiscal strategy to contrive a budget outcome for 2012-13. There has been no discussion about how it will unwind these Ponzi arrangements that impose cost vulnerability on subsequent generations just so the government can try to look good in the short term.

The shadow finance minister has quite rightly touched on one of the glaring problems with the budget strategy that the government is proposing—and that is the imposition of a carbon tax. It is a particular gift to impose a new tax and have a net detrimental impact on the budget position, but that is what the government has done as it tries to massage the introduction of this tax. This tax is not only causing direct costs, which are canvassed in these bills; it is also causing enormous concern in the business community. You wonder where this trend of growth that the government relies upon to have some kind of credibility, albeit fairly spurious, with these numbers will end up after the carbon tax is introduced.

I sought to ask the Prime Minister about the concerns that are widely held in the business community, particularly in the small business community, about the impact of the carbon tax. She dismissed that concern and that question. She dismissed the anxiety and the fear that is out there amongst the business community, where they know that this is going to be detrimental to their interests, to the interests of employees and to the prosperity they bring to their communities. She tried to suggest that it was somehow a contrivance of the opposition, which I found quite remarkable. In survey after survey the message is consistent. In your great state of Queensland, Mr Deputy Speaker, just a couple of days ago the Chamber of Commerce and Industry released its report. Almost without exception across every region in Queensland the carbon tax was either No. 1 or No. 2 on the list of big concerns. Regionally, it was a concern. The carbon tax was only ever displaced by concerns about energy costs, which of course will go up with the carbon tax. So those interwoven concerns are the pinnacle of the anxieties, uncertainties and lack of confidence in the business community, and yet the government tries to talk it away as if it does not matter. If you look across the survey results, it does not even matter what size the business is: carbon tax concerns or concerns about the cost of energy are still at the pinnacle of concerns. Yet the government tries to swat this away as if it does not matter.

I am genuinely concerned because I look into the eyes of people in small business and family enterprises who are contending with a very difficult economic climate, despite the boast to the contrary of the government. I feel their concerns because I am there with them as they express very sincerely their anxieties about the future. They know cost-of-living pressures mean that consumers are not interested in price increases. They see that their input costs, not only their direct energy costs but all of the other input costs in their business, that have carbon costs embedded in them will be pushing up the cost of doing business. But there is no customer appetite to see those costs passed on. Whenever these issues get raised, Minister Combet, such as in his Press Club speech, swats them away with arrogant indifference—'You cannot get your car serviced in India, and you cannot get your dry-cleaning done in China.' That is of no comfort whatsoever to the small business community. In the communities that I represent, the mechanics are saying that people are not getting their regular scheduled service; they are only coming in when there is a need for a repair. The drycleaners are saying that people are less inclined to make use of their services. They have less frequent dry-cleaning of the articles that require it, and consumers are looking at other options for how to keep their clothing clean, such as washing by hand and the like.

This carbon tax hangs as a dagger over the small business community and it is eating away at the credibility of the budget and the economic scenario in this country. That is why these measures and the carbon tax should be deferred until the Australian public have a chance to cast their vote on just how well things are going for our nation.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:56 to 16:00