Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These three appropriation bills deal with significant sums of money in relation to the government's budget, and so I will speak widely and, hopefully, wisely as well in relation to all of the changes that have been made. So much has happened since these bills were initially brought before the House. So much has happened in the last couple of months—the government's MYEFO or minibudget, the machinery-of-government changes, a ministerial reshuffle and an attempted leadership coup with a leadership spill attempt in the Liberal Party. So much has happened. Many barnacles have been removed and much water has passed under the bridge. When these pieces of legislation were put before the chamber seems like another time.

We have seen the Prime Minister dump his $7 GP tax, replacing it with a GP tax of $5. That will supposedly go today. I am still not quite sure whether that will actually happen, but we will wait for question time to see what the Prime Minister has to say about that. His then health minister, the member for Dickson, then announced a $20 cut to the Medicare rebate for a short consultation when a person saw their doctor, which caused much angst in the local community across my area and across other parts of Australia. Later, the Prime Minister would describe the $20 Medicare rebate cut as a 'tough' but necessary decision—just 24 hours later recalling his newly reshuffled health minister from a cruise boat so she could dump the policy.

Around the same time, we had the education minister's ideological changes to Americanise our universities and usher in $100,000 degrees started unravelling in the Senate, declaring that parliament would 'inevitably' support his radical higher education agenda. The minister scrubbed a few nasties from the rejected bill, reintroduced it to the House the next day, and then he interpreted the Australian public's antipathy towards these higher education changes as not a failure of policy but a failure of marketing. So many of the Abbott government's problems they allege to be a failure to communicate, when in fact the Australian public is onto them with respect to the unfairness of their budget. Of course, these appropriations bills feed into the budgetary process of the Abbott government.

Indeed, the Abbott government's position when failing to win public support for their policies seem to always be: 'Our policies are perfect. If you're unhappy with our policies, you just haven't understood them.' That seems to be the rhetoric there. The education minister found himself in that dilemma last year with his higher education proposals. He could not understand why the Australian public rejected them and kept telling the public these reforms were 'inevitable', but the public remained unconvinced. Since then, the minister has decided that Australia has not understood his agenda—again, a market failure. We have seen that minister, the Leader of the House, cost the taxpayer $15 million in a marketing attempt to convince the Australian public, then claim that Senator Madigan actually supported this and urged him to do it—something that Senator Madigan rejected.

So the Abbott government had a lot on its hands in December. Elsewhere in Australia, Campbell Newman was still the Premier of Queensland, and thank goodness he is gone—as a Queenslander, I can say that. Who knows, perhaps the Prime Minister has been contemplating a relaxing summer break or autumn break in the future. Prince Philip had yet to be knighted of course, and that was an important step back in January.

All of these things happened in the context of these appropriations bills. So much has taken place, and in the middle of all this, the 2014 MYEFO detonated like a grenade. It hammered the final nail into the Treasurer's budget, and it shredded the government's economic credentials. It also busted the myth that this Liberal-National Party government are a low-taxing, low-spending government. Many of those opposite would have you believe they are members of a frugal government. In fact, really, they are Tea Partyists. They claim that they want to bring down small government and get government off the back of people. In reality, the exact opposite is what happens. The government's claim to be a small-government government is in fact a myth—it is rubbish.

In terms of government spending, according to the respected economist Stephen Koukoulas, Managing Director of Market Economics, the December MYEFO revealed that the Abbott government is a big spender, spending at about 25.9 per cent of GDP in 2014-15. He went on to say:

In the final full year of Labor … this ratio was 24.1 per cent and the average for the Labor government as a whole was 24.9 per cent of GDP. This included the stimulus measures associated with the GFC. According to Treasurer Hockey's MYEFO, in no year including into the forward estimates to 2017-18 will government spending be below the average of the previous Labor government. The Abbott government is a big spending government. Fact.

In terms of taxation, Mr Koukoulas states that the average tax to GDP ratio of the former Labor government was 20.8 per cent, reaching down, at the height of the global financial crisis, to 19.9 per cent—its lowest for 40 years.

As for the Abbot government, he says:

Mr. Hockey's MYEFO document confirms that the tax to GDP ratio under the Abbott Government will, in every year, be above the average of the previous Labor government … hitting a peak of 23.1 per cent of GDP in 2017-18. Only the Howard government had an average higher tax to GDP ratio.

Remember, this is the Treasurer's own MYEFO—the figures that I am eliciting here.

Aside from busting the myth that the Abbott government is a low-taxing, low-spending government, MYEFO lays out the truth about the escalation and acceleration of debt and deficit under the Abbott government. MYEFO reveals that the Abbott government has overseen a $16.4 billion blow-out in the deficit in 2014-15 since its election. We know this because we can compare the 2014 MYEFO to the independent 2013 Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, known as PEFO. Under the PEFO 2014-15, the deficit was to be $24.0 billion. Under the Treasurer's MYEFO it is $40.4 billion—a startling increase of nearly 70 per cent. The Treasurer's MYEFO also reveals a $44 billion blow-out in the budget deficit over the forward estimates compared with 2014-15. So we have got a $16.4 billion blow-out in the 2014-15 deficit and a $44 billion blow-out of the deficit over the forward estimates. This from a government that promised to improve the budget bottom line—and these are appropriations bills before the chamber. This from the Treasurer who pledged before the last election that a coalition government would:

… achieve a surplus in our first year of office and we will achieve a cash surplus in every year in our first term.

I wonder where that promise went? That is just the considering the deficit, and I thought it appropriate to put that on the public record.

The Treasurer's MYEFO also revealed a worse debt position than that predicted in the 2014-15 budget. Under PEFO, net debt for 2014-15 was $212.1 billion. Under the Treasurer's MYEFO, net debt is $224.8 billion, an increase of over 15 per cent. Department of Finance figures at the end of February 2015 show government debt was $252 billion in January 2015, 40 per cent more than at the end of 2013, when this government was in office. These figures give the lie to the claims of the Abbott government, including its Prime Minister and Treasurer, that they would reduce debt and deficit when they came to office and, in fact, that they would bring in a surplus every year that they were in power.

We do not hear this rhetoric very much anymore. Now they are all talking about the good times. They are all talking about how well the economy is going. But, with this mob opposite on the treasury benches, debt and deficit continue to climb. It is a matter of choosing how you spend the money. What this government has done is attacked working families, middle-class families, the poor, the vulnerable, the disabled the disadvantaged, the Indigenous, older Australians and pensioners. We have seen cuts to pension indexation that would make a pensioner $80 worse off in 10 years time; cuts to family payments; the GP tax; and $100,000 degrees.

Lest anyone think this is all academic, I give you a few figures that I have obtained from my electorate in South-East Queensland, based on Ipswich and the Somerset region. The 12,779 families in Blair who rely on family tax benefit worry they will not be able to manage once their payments are cut off after the youngest child turns six. The 4,920 families in Blair who rely on childcare benefit fear the $1 billion that the Prime Minister wants to rip from child care, including the $235 million cut to the targeted childcare benefit that helps low- and middle-income families. The 14,512 families in Blair who rely on the schoolkids bonus know they will soon be $410 a year worse off for every primary school child and $820 a year worse off for every high-school child—about $15,000 worse off for a family with two children across the school education of their children. The government needs to reverse these cuts, because its priorities are wrong. There is $5.5 billion of cuts to families and over $1 billion worth of cuts to child care. The budget should be re-looked at by this government.

We have seen unemployment rise during the tenure of this government. Under PEFO when Labor was still in government, unemployment was forecast to peak at 6.25 per cent. Under the current Treasurer's December MYEFO, it is forecast to rise to 6.5 per cent. The unemployment rate now sits at 6.4 per cent. There are 100,000 more Australians who are unemployed since the election of the Abbott government. This is the highest number of unemployed since 1994, and the unemployment rate is close to the highest it has been since 2002. To put it into context, that is higher than when Labor was successfully negotiating us through the global financial crisis.

But this is not just happening nationally. Back in my home state, under the former Labor government, the unemployment rate was 5.5 per cent. After Campbell Newman came to power, he sacked about 24,000 public servants and trashed business confidence, and unemployment skyrocketed to 6.5 per cent in January 2015, in the last month of that government. Queensland has turfed them out, and Campbell Newman lost his own seat of Ashgrove. His government cut the Skilling Queenslanders for Work program, which Deloitte Access Economics said got 50,000 Queenslanders into jobs, including 8,000 long-term unemployed. I look forward to the new Annastacia Palaszczuk Labor government bringing back Skilling Queenslanders for Work, because in my electorate the unemployment rate is currently at nine per cent. What is worse, in Blair the youth unemployment rate is a staggering 19.1 per cent. Nationally, 14.2 per cent of 15- to 24-year-olds are unable to find work; in Blair, almost one in five young people in Ipswich and the Somerset region cannot get jobs—and the Abbott government seems blissfully unaware of that.

In my shadow portfolio areas of Indigenous affairs and ageing, the government have simply made cuts. They cut $534 million from Indigenous programs. On top of that, they cut the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, leaving the whole community sector, whether people are in remote areas or in urban areas, up in arms. They still do not know the future of funding for family violence prevention legal centres, employment programs, assistance and emergency relief and a whole bunch of areas where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves provide wonderful services, whether it is in places like Utopia, the Kimberley and the Pilbara or in big urban centres like Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. This is a government which seems intent on creating chaos and uncertainty across the Indigenous affairs portfolio and intent on thinking it can cut its way to closing the gap, when you simply cannot do so.

Indeed, in this legislation before the chamber, there is some funding that is being rolled out under the MUNS program, which is the funding going to areas where there is actually incapacity for sewerage, road maintenance and other things in remote communities. But the government has put no conditionality on that, and we see the Western Australian government talking about closing 150 remote communities because the minister has failed to put any conditionality on rolling out $90 million, including the money under this legislation. There is no conditionality on the Western Australian government's doing the right thing by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote communities.

This is a government of failure, of unemployment, who said one thing before the election and has done another once in government.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on these appropriation bills and acknowledge the coalition government's commitment to rewarding and recognising pioneering visionaries. In a recent address to the Harvard Club in New York, our foreign minister Julie Bishop outlined who we are as Australians—why and how we are innovators. She mentioned some of the bright young minds making their mark in New York. She spoke of the way Australians embrace every opportunity and are always looking for a way to do something different to get ahead, to inspire, to motivate, to do.

No-one can dispute the fact that Australians are doers. We take every opportunity given to us and do not believe in the word impossible. There is something about Australian minds. We think like no others, possibly because we have always had to be inventive. When white settlers first came to this land they found everything to be a struggle. European crops were not suitable; the weather vastly different. Everything was different, even the homes we lived in, but we found ways to survive. We used ingenuity and developed the strong work ethic Australians are known for today. People continue to come to Australia to make new lives for themselves. The Australian story is an inspiring story and it attracts people from all over the world. Australia is known as a country of opportunity.

If our ancestors managed to make better lives in a distant and isolated land, it should come as no surprise that nothing is beyond the ability of Australian inventors. That is why some of the most remarkable and beneficial inventions in the past century have been created by Australians. Let me start with something less serious but nonetheless innovative: Felix the cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat. Felix was a marketing phenomenon years before Mickey Mouse and his friend Walt Disney arrived on the scene and was for a time the most popular cartoon character in the world. The producer behind the animated cartoon was Australian Pat Sullivan. It seems surprising that it was an Australian, not an American, who was responsible for this Hollywood success story, but Australian ingenuity has a very long history. In the 1850s, James Harrison was the first person to invent and patent a mechanical machine for making ice. He invented the refrigerator, in Geelong. The inventions kept coming: solar hot water, the black box, Google maps, spray-on skin, the electronic pacemaker, the ultrasound.

Medical innovation seems to be a particular speciality for Australian minds. In the 1940s Howard Florey, from Adelaide, developed a way for penicillin to be manufactured and processed so it could be used to treat infections in humans. The ultrasound scanner, invented by Australians David Robinson and George Kossoff in the 1960s, has helped ease the anxiety of so many expectant parents. The cochlear implant, invented by Professor Graeme Clark in the 1970s, has made a difference to so many lives.

Australians as a whole are inventive people; Queenslanders also often lead the way. I have the privilege of being the member for the electorate of Ryan. My electorate is not only home to some amazing minds but also a hub for research and development in many different specialties. The innovations developed in Ryan in just the past few decades have changed the lives of literally millions of people all over the world. Ryan is home to the University of Queensland, CSIRO's Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies, the cooperative research centres for ore and mining, and Life Sciences Queensland. All of these facilities contribute to the advancements in science and technology we are seeing every day.

I am very proud of the achievements of the University of Queensland. Not only is it ranked No. 85 in the top universities in the world but it produces and supports some of the best scientists, researchers and academics. This includes 2006 Australian of the Year and inventor of the cervical cancer vaccine, Professor Ian Frazer. Professor Frazer began research for the vaccine Gardasil in the mid-eighties and by 2006 it was made available worldwide. Since then, Gardasil has been used to vaccinate millions of women in 120 countries against the human papillomavirus, HPV, that causes cervical cancer. Cervical cancer kills more than 275,000 women a year and is the second-most common cause of cancer in women. Thanks to Professor Frazer and his team, this will not be the case for future generations. Professor Frazer, originally from Scotland, called Australia the land of opportunity. He said of his decision to come to Brisbane in the early eighties: 'Brisbane was a growing city with a growing opportunity to conduct medical research. I've not been disappointed over the last 25 years.' He is currently conducting phase 2 trials for a herpes simplex vaccine and developing a skin cancer vaccine.

The University of Queensland continues to attract great minds. One of the more recent inventions is the Nanopatch. Developed by Professor Mark Kendall, Nanopatch technology for vaccine delivery is undergoing clinical trials this year. The technology, smaller than the size of a postage stamp, is needle-free and painless. It will be invaluable to the health of people all over the world, particularly in Third World countries, as it is easily transportable and requires no refrigeration. It is also far more cost effective than traditional syringe methods, as there is no need for expensive disposal. Professor Brian Lovell and his team have created the world's first real-time facial recognition software. It is being used in security, military and immigration areas internationally. He is currently working to implement software for the bionic eye. Professor Maree Smith's pain relief research has seen her develop patented novel analgesics to target neuropathic pain, which is a type of nerve pain that affects more than 1.5 million people worldwide. These are just a few of the innovators, inventors and creators who are working on remarkable inventions and making incredible discoveries at the University of Queensland. I know that due to the solid reputation and record of the University of Queensland there will be much more to come.

The people in my electorate of Ryan are looking for a hand up, not a hand out. That is why our government has given the University of Queensland more than half a billion dollars in funding to make sure that ingenuity and innovation can continue to be fostered. This funding is not just aimed at the university itself. Developing great minds takes special teachers, so we contributed $75,000 to the Australian Awards for University Teaching to help recognise these exceptional educators. We also gave up to $141,000 towards Endeavour scholarships, so that Australians can acquire a broad depth of knowledge from all over the world. The Australian Research Council provided more than $67 million to the University of Queensland to help fund research and development; Professor Kendall was a beneficiary for his Nanopatch technology among other research programs. In 2013, the University of Queensland received more Australian Research Council funding than any other Australian university or research body.

However, at the University of Queensland they do not rely purely on government funding. They also source their own funding from private donors and attract the attention of international investors. Their reputation precedes them and draws in international sponsors who respect their work. In 2009, philanthropist Chuck Feeney donated $102 million dollars for Queensland medical research. The University of Queensland was one of the beneficiaries. This was the largest single donation ever made in Australia. In fact, Mr Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies has donated more than $100 million towards research at the University of Queensland since 1998. This funding has gone towards establishing the Queensland Brain Institute, the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research. Another one of the University of Queensland's major donors is Wotif founder Graeme Wood. Graham donated $15 million towards UQ's Global Change Institute in 2011. The $32 million, six-green-star Living Building, a 'flagship for sustainability', is naturally ventilated, has solar panels, stores up to 60 thousand litres of rainwater and generates more energy than it consumes.

There are many more outstanding projects I could speak about, with the $44 million in philanthropic funding they received last year alone, but there is much more in the electorate of Ryan. CSIRO's Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies is situated in Ryan and some of the research and development coming out of there is truly remarkable. It is Australia's largest integrated research and development precinct and research covers robotics, automation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, casting processes, mining science and engineering, and improvement of iron ore processing. The Cooperative Research Centre for Ore and the Cooperative Research Centre for Mining, based in Pinjarra Hills, have developed a water powered drill that will revolutionise the way we can mine coal seam gas. Ultimately, this drill will eliminate fracking.

Another organisation committed to developing and supporting science and research in my electorate is Life Sciences Queensland. The organisation provide leadership, organisation and growth opportunities for their members, enabling them to work together and complement each other—important in the fields of research and development. Their members come from all aspects of the life sciences, including human health, animal health and agriculture, and environmental, industrial and marine biotechnology.

These examples of innovation and leading-edge organisations in Ryan give just a small snapshot of the way Australians are making their mark on the world. We are creating, designing and inventing and, in the process, changing the world. Because of an Australian, cervical cancer will no longer be the huge killer it is today. Because of an Australian, those who were born without hearing will grow up surrounded by noise. Because of an Australian, an infection does not mean death.

As a government it is our job to encourage these innovations—to foster and support these great minds. I want to recognise the Minister for Education, the Hon. Christopher Pyne, for acknowledging and rewarding these amazing minds through grants and funding, and also for working towards creating a future that will facilitate more competitive and comprehensive universities, to allow Australians to aim even higher and achieve even better outcomes. I also want to acknowledge the Minister for Industry and Science, the Hon. Ian Macfarlane, not only for the more than $7 billion worth of industry program grants distributed in just the past year in Ryan but also for taking the time to actually come out and meet with these organisations face to face and, importantly, for his ongoing support.

The coalition government is dedicated to maintaining Australia's reputation as a country of innovators. We have cut red tape. We have provided billions of dollars in funding. We are determined to promote and encourage these great minds. We want to build on their passion to make a difference in the world. These Australians are not only leading world innovators but inspiring others to do the same. As an isolated and relatively young country, we are batting above our weight and standing out as intelligent and savvy innovators who are contributing to the technological and scientific advancements of the world.

The coalition government wants to ensure support for these innovators. We do not believe in stifling creativity. We want to reward ingenuity. That is why we are focused on cutting red tape. Repeal days are about ensuring these creative minds are never held back because of minor restrictions or paperwork. It is evident our government is doing everything possible to foster and support our great minds. I am proud of our government's commitment to supporting the advancements I have spoken of today. These appropriation bills are about funding for a strong and stable government. We need the best minds possible to ensure our future as a leading country, and this can be achieved by continuing to support these visionaries, who provide life-changing and life-saving innovations.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the story of this government comes to be written, and when we look back on how it unravelled so quickly and in such spectacular fashion, the budget whose appropriation bills we are debating today will feature very heavily. Because the budget represented such a fundamental betrayal of this government's commitments to voters, it immediately poisoned any goodwill it might have expected from the electorate and set the course for the debacle that we now witness on the government benches.

'No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, no changes to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS'—we all heard the Prime Minister pledge the night before the election that that is what he would deliver. But, instead of a policy platform, we soon learnt that this in fact was the Prime Minister's platform of platitudes; a shopping list of all the promises he planned to break. Nowhere has that deceit been greater than in the one area that matters most to Australians: our healthcare system. 'No cuts to health and no new taxes'—it barely survived the first 100 days before the cuts to hospitals commenced in the mid-year review and the government started softening us up for its GP tax.

It is worth documenting again in this debate just how widespread the government's cuts in health policy have been, across every single element of health policy. Fifty seven billion dollars has been cut from public hospitals. They tried to cut $3.5 billion out of primary care and we are in the middle of a fierce debate about that today. They shut all 61 Medicare Locals, to transition to Primary Health Networks, at a cost of some $200 million already. There is their $5 hike in the price of every prescription, and they have made it harder to reach the PBS safety net—$1.3 billion cut out of the pockets of people trying to access medicines. That measure is still blocked by Labor in the Senate. They are cutting $368 million out of preventative health programs, which states were relying on to tackle obesity and reduce smoking and alcohol use. They have cut more than $650 million out of dental funding, including $229 million out of dental clinics and $391 million from adult public dental programs, which will see public dental waiting lists blow out—$200 million has been cut this financial year, a decision that will restrict access and blow out dental waiting times. They have cut $3 million from the National Tobacco Campaign, $54 million from the Partners in Recovery Campaign and abolished Health Workforce Australia, which included a cut of $142 million in funding which sees the Commonwealth with little or no role in planning and resourcing Australia's future health workforce. And, of course, they have cut $264 million of priority health initiatives, things like Westmead Hospital; Millennium institute at Westmead, Children's Medical Research Institute, Nepean Hospital, St George Hospital, the MRI at Mt Druitt, Queensland Cancer Package, Biala health service, Flinders neonatal unit, the WA cancer team and stroke coordinators across the country—that is how extensive this government's cuts to health have been.

It was not until the budget, which we are now debating here again today, that the full extent of that deceit became apparent. It was a budget that destroyed the electorate's trust of the government, a budget the government had no mandate for and a budget which all the evidence shows will be bad for health, bad for patients, bad for doctors and bad for the budget. None of this, understanding what it was going to do to the healthcare system, has caused the Prime Minister to abandon his GP tax. The health experts have all been telling him what a disaster this policy actually is. We think we will know today, we think, what they are planning to do with the GP tax when the Minister for Health makes her press statement at 1.30.

It has not been the patients and doctors deluging the government with petitions and warnings about what a disaster this plan is. We have had 10 months of a government with no health policy at all, at war with doctors and at war with patients. Patients are already starting to be charged different fees within doctor's surgeries. It has not been the state governments telling him how this plan would deluge our emergency departments with patients and destroy the public hospital system. It has only been when his own party has moved against him that the Prime Minister has had to throw everything overboard to keep his own leadership afloat. And finally—we think, finally, today—he claims to be junking his GP tax. Well, let us see. There are $2 billion of cuts to primary care, to general practice, are still sitting on the table.

If he dumps the $5 GP co-payment—the GP tax—today that is one element. There are still $1.3 billion of cuts on the table to primary care that will be passed on to every single patient trying to see a general practitioner. Let us see how meaningful their actual changes are. He is not doing it for the health of patients; he is doing it for the health of his numbers in the party room, to try to stave off another challenge. It is also important to note, maybe when that challenge comes, that this was not about the Prime Minister's health budget, because as the finance minister has assured us just last month, not a single member of cabinet ever raised any concerns about how deeply unfair this budget is—not the Prime Minister, not the Treasurer and certainly not the communications minister or the foreign minister.

We know on this occasion, at least, he is telling us the truth, because in June last year the member for Wentworth was asked by Ben Fordham, 'Do you support the $7 GP co-payment aimed at reducing doctor visits and improving the bottom line?' The member for Wentworth's answer was unequivocal: 'I certainly do support it. I support all of the budget.' Of course such candour has not always been a feature of this government's health policies. When news broke during the Griffith by-election, for example, in January last year when asked about whether the government was in fact considering a GP tax at all, the foreign minister said that there was no plan for co-payments and the GP tax was just Labor's scaremongering. She said any suggestion was nonsense that Labor had mischievously and dishonestly attributed to the government.

So, here we are, some 10 months later, with several iterations—I think we are up to our third GP tax. The Prime Minister asked us to support a $7 GP tax, then a GP tax that would have seen $20 extra added to patient visits to doctors. We then had the $5 GP tax and the four-year freeze on indexation, which potentially will see patients being forced to pay for some consultations up to $100 up-front before they even get in the door of the doctor's surgery. We have had that many iterations of this GP tax—and this was the GP tax that the foreign minister, at the time of the Griffith by-election, said was Labor's scaremongering.

So while Liberal MPs squabble over who should be their next leader, the sad truth for Australia is that regardless of whoever eventually comes out on top nothing will change. It does not matter. They all support the destruction of Medicare. They have all got their hands dirty with trying to see our universal health insurance scheme destroyed in this country, because the truth is they have never believed in fairness, just like they have never believed in Medicare. They have all endorsed this budget, and at the heart of this budget is a proposal to destroy something Australians hold very dear and that has provided Australia with some of the best health outcomes in the OECD. It is a proposal to end universal access to health care and to make the treatment you receive dependent not on the basis of need but on the basis of your ability to pay. It is a proposal to end bulk-billing and to make bulk-billing only available to concessional patients and nobody else. This fails to recognise that there are many patients who are not eligible for concession cards, such as self-funded retirees on a fixed income, a very small fixed income, whose healthcare needs are increasing and who will have to pay more to go and see the doctor; and people who have chronic conditions, who are struggling—the working poor—to continue to be able to work but who need access primary care to do that.

This government will see a collapse in bulk-billing rates. When we left office they were at 82.3 per cent. We know that the last time they were really low was when this Prime Minister was health minister, when they sat at around 60 per cent. Because we ran a very successful campaign to try to get bulk-billing rates lifted, they had to come in and do something, and we are reaping the rewards of that today. Bulk-billing also is good for the health budget because it keeps GP fees low and it makes sure that general practice continues to be accessible. We already have a problem with bulk-billing not being accessible across the country.

In different parts of the country, it is very difficult to access a bulk-billing doctor at all. Often it is those areas where people are the most vulnerable and are on the lowest incomes, or they are in areas where there are massive GP shortages. Out in some of the mining communities, people already have to pay substantial amounts of money to access general practice. Instead of dealing with these issues, trying to look at how to deal with the spread of general practice, how to make sure people are accessing primary care in a better way, how to make sure people get a good experience and a quality experience out of general practice and how to support doctors, this government has been at war with them for the past 18 months, and health policy has suffered as a result. That is what is at the heart of this government's budget when it comes to health—the end of universal access to health care and making the treatment you receive dependent not on the basis of your health care need but on the basis of your ability to pay. That is a proposal which all of the evidence shows is based on an entirely false premise—that somehow Medicare, the MBS, are unsustainable and must be denied to as many people as possible.

Just last month, again this dishonesty was shown by the government's own Department of Health. In a damning admission to the Senate Select Committee on Health, senior officials from the department admitted they were 'unaware of any substantive work in Australia specifically about the impact of something like the Medicare co-payment and reduction in rebate'. We know that the reason they did not do any 'substantive research' was that it would have told them that the GP tax was built on a lie.

As the Productivity Commission confirmed, Commonwealth spending on health is at the lowest level since the commission began compiling its statistics. The report found that, in 2012-13, the Commonwealth's share of total health expenditure actually fell, and spending on the target of the GP tax—primary health care—has been effectively unchanged for a decade. But, at the same time, the report reveals 4.9 per cent of Australians are deferring visits to a GP and 7.6 per cent are missing prescriptions because of out-of-pocket costs, figures that will only worsen as a result of this deeply unfair budget. So the GP tax, and indeed the entire health budget, is built on a lie, a lie the entire cabinet has been complicit in. As the finance minister assures us, not one single member of cabinet has ever argued this deeply regressive attack on the sick is unfair, and, as the member for Wentworth has assured us, it is policy that has his full support.

The health minister might have changed, and the Prime Minister may soon change, but one thing we can be absolutely certain will not change is this government's deep antipathy toward Medicare. Two health ministers have now publicly committed to the GP tax. Let's see what they do in just under an hour's time. What sort of health minister decides, in the face of all the evidence from the experts and professionals alike, that a price signal is the most important thing to pursue in health policy? What sort of health minister thinks that a price signal is good health policy? Where are you talking about the importance of quality general practice? It is a Liberal minister that thinks that that is the best thing you can do. Now, and only now, when the Prime Minister's job is on life support, does this commitment to the GP tax change. The names on the door may change, but nothing, it seems, changes the Liberal Party's determination to end bulk-billing and to destroy Medicare.

Labor do not regard health as set in cement, where nothing can ever change. We of course made significant savings when we were in government. Private health insurance rebate means-testing was a very difficult thing to do—something this government says it is going to reverse. I am interested in where they are going to find the $600-plus million that is required to do that. There were the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme changes. Again, a very fierce campaign was run by community pharmacy against those changes to the agreement with Medicines Australia, but those changes have meant that we have realised savings in the PBS which will allow the listing of new and improved medicines—a very important change. Again, that is something that this government, in opposition, used as a campaigning opportunity.

I am going to listen very carefully to what the minister has to say shortly. But be in no doubt that, with these bills, what they have done in the totality of health has been a fundamental attack on our Medicare system and a fundamental attack on patients and doctors in this country, and they should be ashamed of themselves for it.

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

The thing about being the member for Herbert is that I rarely use the word 'Herbert'. Wherever possible, I use my city's name, Townsville. I do not officially represent all the city, but I do have the bits where most of the jobs in the economy are sustained and grown. I use the word 'Townsville' because it is my home and it is the city I represent, officially or not.

The city of Townsville also represents the greatest and richest region in our country. North Queensland has it all—tourism, professional services, education, defence and defence services, mining and mining services, agriculture and agricultural services, retail, manufacturing, arts and culture. And Townsville is at the heart of the region of North Queensland.

Unemployment figures fluctuate every month, and more so in regional areas. There can be no doubt, however, that underemployment is high. The number of people dropping off seeking employment is on the rise, and small business does not seem to have the confidence to hire. This is a major concern for me but more so for the people who are looking for work themselves or trying to find a position for their son, daughter, mother or father. Unemployment figures quoted to me recently for North Queensland showed a rate of 9.4 per cent. This figure should not be viewed as the decimation of our workforce, because the figures fluctuate. But, if the overall rate of unemployment is 9.4 per cent, then youth and senior rates would be significantly higher than that. Again, this is a major concern not just to me but to everyone in our city and region.

What we need to find out is why business is not hiring. There are many theories out there and there is much finger-pointing about what government should spend and how much more we should spend on whatever area of self-interest people may have, but that does not answer the question of why business is not hiring. I do not have an answer as to why, when someone leaves a small business, they are not replaced. I do not have an answer as to why small business will not trial a young person with no experience who just wants to work. I do not have an answer as to why business will not access the pool of talent in the over-50s, who would bring a proven work ethic and the stability of future, where they have decided they want to stay in our city. I do not have an answer as to why, when our markets demand our hospitality and retail services remain open for longer and longer, our businesses are employing fewer and fewer people. Sure, the cost of employment is cited as a reason here, but we have always been a high-wage country. We have always, as a city and as a country, been highly productive to counter that.

The issue, to me, always seems to be industrial relations reform. Every article and book I read points to the dropping of our productivity, and the slowing pace of reform in this area. But please do not confuse this with a statement which may link up the Productivity Commission's upcoming report into penalty rates and minimum wages. I want to know which of the government regulations and laws that are preventing people from getting a chance to secure a job can be removed.

I am currently reading Paul Kelly's Triumph and Demise. In that book he takes a swipe at both sides of this parliament. He says that the reforms of the Hawke and Keating era and early Howard era were productivity driven. But, when the boom arrived—and it was sustained for so long—reform dropped as we in this place stood back and watched our economy and our wealth grow without any effort. We, in this place, had become complacent on productivity. We, in this place, must share the blame and correct these errors.

One of the biggest issues is replacement employment. Too often I find employers in small business telling me they simply do not replace people when they leave because either the training is too hard or they do the work themselves to save money as they fight the internet sales. I am an auctioneer by trade, and you do not have to have an economics degree to get that licence. I worked through the Keating recession and I have seen a fair bit of insolvency in my time. These things I know to be true: a business intent on survival only will fail; a business looking only to lower costs will not expand; and a business seeking only to look after their existing customers will not find new ones—and the existing ones will eventually leave. Business must be brave and must look to grow and must look to opportunities to get better at every opportunity. We simply cannot afford to be negative.

Much like Minister Scott Morrison said last week on social security—and what I hope will be a purposeful conversation when the Treasurer releases the Intergenerational report this week—we need to have an open and honest conversation regarding employment in this country. It must include the small business people who carry the risk and do the paperwork. If it is a regulatory issue, then let us work on breaking down those barriers. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Christian Porter, is keen to fight for small business and grow our economy. If it is an issue around opening times, security levels, banking conditions, penalty rates, transport, attitude, education, training, social security, racism, cronyism, being overqualified or underqualified, drivers licences, local government, state government, taxation, indexation, bracket creep, or a combination of all these things, we need to get working on it.

I was listening to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Defence, Darren Chester, speak yesterday about the scourge of methamphetamine. He was able to tell this place that he did not have the answer. What he did say was that he knew there was a problem and he was willing to work with any stakeholder to get the answer which works for them. That is the truth of it. The answer must be the one that works for them. For me, it comes down to flexibility and fairness. It must come down to the employee recognising that the employer is the one with the risks and is paying the bills. That must have some weight in the discussion. The employer must recognise that the employee may have a completely different motivation for turning up to work. That must be okay. Neither must abuse their position.

One suggestion that was made to me shows my region's perspective. While I know this cannot work in a commercial world, it is a glimpse of how my region feels left out and vulnerable. Its intentions are pure, so to speak. If a government road or construction tender is awarded to a large contractor from out of town, then the local subcontractors want and need some of that work. If that local council, or some other body, were able to break up that tender and hand the work to local subcontractors, keeping it under the winning tender price, then that money would wash through our local economies more than once and money would stay in our local communities. I know there are many impracticalities with this idea and it could never work in any real commercial sense, but my community continues to see work handed to large contractors and out-of-town subcontractors, and locals are not getting a lick on the way through. It frustrates the living daylights out of my community, and I know that many communities throughout this country feel exactly the same way.

I have said it before in this House, and I will say it again: government does not create wealth; business creates wealth. Government can only set the scene, lay out the parameters and let business get on with it. When wealth is created people get employed, and further wealth is created. As Minister Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, have all said: the best form of social security that can be provided is a job. My city is focused on an answer. We, as a country, must be focused on finding the answers which will work best in each region. We must be prepared to get them to work for them and not tie them up in red and green tape.

That brings me to the second part of my contribution on these bills. It has to do with Townsville's future health needs and, in many ways, it works hand in glove with the first part of my speech. I have spoken often about our Defence Force and their efforts in places such as Timor Leste, Iraq and Afghanistan. I have also spoken of the ADF personnel who did not make it home. Each of us here carries with them a great amount of respect for our service personnel. Each of us is very aware of the issues surrounding PTSD in service ranks. But it is also prevalent in our day-to-day society. It is said that one in five of us will have a mental health episode in our lifetime. Depression and anxiety are with our families and our communities constantly. Often it is the police, ambulance and fire department who have to deal with the outcomes when things get out of hand. Our hospital in Townsville is a great and modern facility and filled with people and professionals who care a lot about what they do. But when it comes to mental health, there is a void.

Our hardworking nurses and doctors at the Townsville Hospital do not have a facility where patients can be housed long enough to get their heads right and get back to their family and their friends and get on with their lives. Our hospital only has an acute ward where the meds are issued and the patient stabilised. They are then released into the community, sometimes without a home to go, and then they become the police service's problem. They end up in the criminal legal system. They end up, in many instances, in jail or, worse, dead. If they want to get access to a mental health facility where they can really deal with their illness, they have to travel to Brisbane. That causes separation from family, and that is certainly not good enough—and it is not a good outcome. We have to be near our loved ones. Often, when mental illness strikes, we take it out on the people we know will cop it—our families. When that reaches breaking point, there is a wound that must be healed. It cannot be properly healed from 1,400 kilometres away—not properly and not holistically.

Townsville needs a dedicated mental health facility where our people, be they ADF personnel, police, ambos, teachers, check-out chicks or MPs, can go and get themselves right. They need to have quality treatment in our part of the world. We need to tie it in to the teaching side of our university, James Cook University, and the Townsville Hospital's teaching efforts. If we do that, we can drive our tax dollar further, with quality treatment and observations driven by students ensuring that the government spend is washed through our economy more than once. That is a side benefit of the training in a controlled environment. The real benefit is to the people with an illness treated close to home and close to loved ones to a standard where they can once again cope and succeed in their lives.

Mental health is—if you watch the ads—costing our economy over $10 billion a year. It wrecks lives and it ends in death, at its worst. At the other end is a bunch of people who deal with their issues and get on with their lives. I have always said that, when you have an episode with your mental health, there is a tunnel through which you travel and not a cave in which you dwell.

North Queensland has a growing population. We have a large number of defence personnel, and we are proud of them and their families. We are a retirement destination of choice for many defence personnel and their families. They live and work alongside us every day. We are one community with a single goal when it comes to mental health: that we get the treatment we need in an environment which is most conducive to good results. I have lost three friends to suicide. I have also had two mates die in single car accidents on straight stretches of road. Townsville has seen young people with great promise take their own lives—and very recently. We must do better in this space; we simply must.

I know funds are tight and I know that the issue was not an election commitment from my side. But I want my electorate and my city to know that we are more than roads and dams; we need the social infrastructure as well. My government is a government which knows this and will work with any community prepared to have a go. If you have a plan, we have a way to get a result. But we have to work hard, and my community is prepared to do that. The Minister for Health, Sussan Ley, comes from regional Australia and has seen these things in her role as a member of her community. We have a Prime Minister who brought mental health into the sunshine when he was Minister for Health. We have a Minister for Education who, along with the Prime Minister, was instrumental in creating Headspace and rolling out that vital program of early intervention. I am however putting this government on notice as to what my city needs to cope with mental health issues. We need a hand up to get it off the ground. We need to build this facility and we need to get on with it. So I will be calling on all my ministers to make sure that happens. The good thing about it, though, it that I have ministers who are prepared to listen to us, who will come to our communities and sit down with us as stakeholders and have those conversations.

I support these bills but will not be supporting the amendment proposed by the member for Watson. I stand by what this government is trying to do in this space. We must live within our means and we are going about our business the way we should. I thank the House.

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

On 6 August 2013 the member for North Sydney, now the Treasurer, said:

I'm not afraid to accept responsibility and I am not afraid to be accountable. We will own it from day one … We will be responsible for the Australian economy.

What Australian economy was it that the government inherited? That is outlined in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook is not a creature of the Labor Party. It is indeed a creation of Peter Costello, through the Charter of Budget Honesty. It ensures that governments can no longer pretend when they win office that they were unaware of the state of the books. Prepared independently by the secretaries of Treasury and Finance, it makes absolutely clear the state of the books when a government takes office. The member for Cook understands this. He said at the despatch box opposite that the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook reflects the true state of the economy when the government takes over. Perhaps that is why so many pundits are suggesting that the member for Cook will be Treasurer before the year is out.

In the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook a range of forecasts were made. The deficit in 2014-15 was going to be $24 billion; net debt $212 billion; unemployment forecast to peak at 6.25 per cent; consumer confidence well above average levels; and growing wages. Since this government took office we have seen a significant increase in the deficit for 2014-15, a significant increase in net debt for 2014-15, unemployment higher than was forecast in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook and consumer confidence in the doldrums.

We have seen real wages stagnating. So much for Senator Abetz's claim that there is a wages breakout—in fact, we are getting some of the most sluggish wages growth that Australia has seen in 20 years. And this is off the back of a significant rise in inequality, where wages growth for those in the top 10th has been three times faster than wages growth for those in the bottom 10th. From the period 1975 to 2014, real wages growth is 72 per cent for the top 10th and just 23 per cent for the bottom 10th. If cleaners and checkout workers had enjoyed the same proportionate wage gains as financial dealers and anaesthetists, they would be $16,000 a year better off today. So stagnant wage growth hurts those at the bottom of the distribution.

What is also hurting Australia is the fact that the Treasurer is in breach of the law. The Treasurer is in breach of a law brought into this parliament by Peter Costello called the Charter of Budget Honesty. He is refusing to table the Intergenerational report within five years, as the Charter of Budget Honesty requires. This is the first Treasurer in Australian history to breach this provision of the Charter of Budget Honesty—to be in breach of the law. Not only is this Treasurer breaching the Charter of Budget Honesty provisions on releasing the Intergenerational report but he is also refusing to acknowledge what Peter Costello laid down in the Charter of Budget Honesty.

What every independent commentator recognises and what the member for Cook—possibly the next Treasurer of Australia—recognises is that the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook is the independent state of the books when the government takes office. Asked whether PEFO was wrong, Mr Hockey said:

Yes it was, because it didn’t properly account for various losses that needed to be addressed and various capital replenishments such as the Reserve Bank that needed to be addressed.

This is simply not right. The Pre-election economic and fiscal outlook is an accurate statement of the state of the books when this government took over, and it does not include decisions that the government has made since coming to office, like giving $9 billion to the Reserve Bank, with no evidence that the Reserve Bank asked for or needed that money; like giving $1 billion back to multibillion-dollar firms who need a tax handout from this government like Prince Philip needs a knighthood; like making decisions to put in place a gold-plated paid parental leave scheme that gives five times as much to those at the top than those at the bottom. Decisions like this have cost the government bottom line.

In addition to that, we have the government's decision to hand over $3 billion of public money for the East West Link without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Auditor-General, Ian McPhee, is now pursuing that issue in a formal investigation. He has made preliminary inquiries with Infrastructure Australia and the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development. In a letter to the member for Grayndler, he said that his audit will examine whether the commitment of $3 billion of public money had been informed by 'appropriate advice' and 'sound governance arrangements'. That audit will be an interesting assessment as to this government's commitment to fiscal prudence. How can it be fiscally prudent to give money to a state government before they need to pay the money—to give two $1.5 billion cheques to the Napthine government in advance payments in June 2014? As a sideline, it also breached a federal coalition promise made before the 2013 election that there would be no infrastructure projects of more than $100 million made without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

The Australian economy faces some serious challenges. The Reserve Bank has made clear its views about economic growth, showing that growth is continuing at a below-trend pace, with 'domestic demand growth overall quite weak'. We have unemployment worse than it was at the peak of the global financial crisis. As Peter Martin pointed out in a column on 10 February, if you look at the total number of hours worked per month, it has scarcely moved since the end of 2011. We have had significant population growth over that period and new workers joining the labour market, and yet the total number of hours has not budged. That reflects the growing trend towards part-time work. Under-utilisation is a serious problem in the Australian labour market and it is rising under this government's watch. This government is trying to hide facts from the Australian people. They not only hid the Intergenerational report, breaking the law that requires them to bring it out, but have withheld from the budget the family impact statement. We know from freedom of information requests that they were prepared by Treasury and given to the government, but then the government failed to include them in the budget.

We have a Treasurer who seems to get so many fundamental facts wrong. He thinks fuel excise is progressive, but then, when faced with the evidence, refuses to acknowledge that it is a regressive tax. He says that poor people do not drive cars, when in fact his own data shows that the majority of people in the bottom 10th of the distribution do drive cars. He says his electorate in North Sydney has 'one of the highest bulk-billing rates in Australia', but it has one of the lowest in all of Sydney. And he has claimed—and this is a real corker—that Australians are working half the year for the government, that the income tax burden is requiring Australians to work half the year for the government. But, as everyone knows, you put all the taxes together—look at local, state and federal government as a share of GDP—and it is a third, not a half. If you look at income tax—the tax that the Treasurer was referring to—the average tax rate is about 19 per cent, not 50 per cent. That is an error showing that the Treasurer is out by more than a factor of two. I do not know who he talks to—who is paying half their income in tax—but I do know that, if you want to find somebody whose average tax rate is close to 50 per cent, you need to find someone with a $10 million income. Maybe they are the kinds of people who are informing the Treasurer's thinking. It might explain why the Treasurer brought down a budget which takes $1 in every $10 from the pockets of the poorest single parents while making rich singles better off.

This would be the wrong decision for Australia at any time, but particularly after the vast rise in inequality that Australia has seen over the past generation. As Peter Martin wrote in his column:

Specific businesses are at a standstill. Universities don't know what fees they will be allowed to charge, students enrolling don't know what fees they will eventually be asked to pay, doctors don't know what will happen to their incomes, electricity generators don't know what will happen to the renewable energy target, big businesses don't know whether they will be hit with the 1.5 per cent paid parental leave levy and what it will be used for.

That is why business confidence is in the doldrums. The recent National Australia Bank survey found a broad sense of unease across the community. ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence shows, as chief economist, Warren Hogan, says, 'a disappointing lack of momentum'. He said:

… households are clearly concerned about the economic outlook and job security …

NAB's chief economist, Alan Oster, said:

The trend in business conditions has lost momentum.

When we look at the ACCI survey which measures confidence of chief executives, it has the worst results in the 23 year history of the survey. ACCI chief executive, Kate Carnell, said:

Business owners are feeling pretty grim at the moment after a fairly bleak Christmas period …

We saw a glimmer of hope in the middle of the year with a slight upturn in conditions, but that has now been reversed.

She goes on to say:

Generally speaking, the climate for investment is terrible at present and businesses don’t see much need to expand their capacity.

So much for the shot of adrenaline that this government was going to bring to Australian business confidence.

The lack of confidence among Australia's business community may come because of the decidedly mixed signals the coalition is sending on foreign investment. Labor supports increased transparency for Australia's foreign investment regime, but what we do not support are measures which will be a red-tape nightmare for potential investors and which will drive investors in agricultural land elsewhere at a time when our agricultural sector is hungry for capital. Without foreign investment in Australian agriculture, there would be fewer jobs and those that exist would be worse paid. Yet, knowing this, one of the Treasurer's first decisions was to knock off American firm Archer Daniel Midlands' bid for GrainCorp—the first time a Treasurer of Australia has knocked off a significant United States foreign investment bid. It happened under this so-called open-for-business government.

The flip-flopping on policy issues was best illustrated in a column by Peter Costello on 3 February in the Daily Telegraph. I do not often agree with Peter Costello but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. He was talking about the parental leave scheme, which he called a 'regressive' scheme that was 'not a Liberal policy', which 'Australia could not afford', and it was 'a bad policy'. He went on to talk about the way in which that policy and its backflip were articulated. He said:

The ambitious woodchucks eager for promotion who have been extolling its virtues to the public now say it is right to drop it. It's one thing to change your mind on principle. It's another to spin on the head of a coin for the sake of advancement. Respect is hard won but easily lost in politics.

I suspect we are going to see some more of that spinning on the head of a coin for the sake of advancement from many members of the Abbott government over coming weeks.

Having gone uphill and down dale to tell Australians why they should pay more to go to the doctor, the government is now telling us why GPs should be listened to. The fact is: if this government were serious about listening to GPs, then it would have acted to drop its GP tax many months ago. I held a roundtable with general practitioners in my office recently and I would hear stories from GP after GP about the early detection of problems when people come to their and thus saving the health system money—catching the problem at the early primary health care end rather than the later, much more expensive hospital end.

We have a budget that the government thinks can be solved by marketing—just by getting the Australian people to pay a bit more, to spruke the Intergenerational Report. But this problem is not the marketing, it is the product. This government's economic policy is the Ford Edsel, the Betamax video tape, the Spork of budgets. This government's last budget is a product that the Australian people do not need and comes at a price that our community cannot afford. Australia needs a fair set of solutions that deal honestly with our challenges. Labor has contributed, as the shadow Treasurer has pointed out, the first salvo in the battle of ideas this week. We will continue to come forward with positive ideas to make Australia great again.

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

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill No. 3 2014-15 and related bills. These appropriation bills authorise approximately $1.74 billion in additional expenditure for the 2014-15 budget and onwards. They provide for the ordinary annual capital works and services of government; they provide payments to states, territories and local government authorities; and they fund the services of parliamentary departments. They are measures to save money for the Commonwealth, but at the same time judiciously they fund those initiatives which become an integral part of any community across this nation. My electorate of Hasluck understands that we need to pay down Labor's debt, but I am disappointed at the position we have been left in. Contrary to the previous member's comments that governments knowing full well what the books look like and what the Treasury shelves contain in the way of funding key initiatives, every government I have ever known or worked for, whenever there has been a change, has had the challenge of ascertaining what is currently within the Treasury coffers and what is not available for some of the commitments they have made.

I am disappointed that the number of measures that would benefit our community are now not within reach. I am disappointed every time I get a call from a community organisation because I have to advise them that they may have fewer resources in the future. These organisations play a significant role in the way they help families who struggle financially and who at times get themselves into a situation where the advice from these organisations makes an incredible difference. The coordination they do in referring people to the right agencies, solving problems as well as working through with the family measures they can undertake in order to get themselves out of the situation that they are in. I think of some of the community facilities that local governments, organisations and groups of people have raised with me. There are those who have retired from the workforce and who want to build a new centre to replace the existing ageing one, and I indicate to them that I will certainly go into bat for them. I tell them I would certainly be approaching the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance to look at the possibility of funding being in the pipeline of forward estimates, while also indicating to them, because of the economic circumstances that we find ourselves in, that it may not be possible to fund them within the next two years. I think too about playing grounds that are associated with those community facilities; they provide a place for mothers with children to come together and spend time in the centre. Such engagement is an important part of belonging. When they ask you whether there is a possibility for the funding of replacement playground equipment, it is challenging; again you have to deliver some hope and aspiration but at the same time indicating the reality.

In my electorate I have a number of men's sheds, and the number has grown substantially. They are great initiatives that bring those who have retired out of their homes to connect with other men, to talk about some of the challenges that they experience, to learn new skills and to enjoy the comradery of other men who have retired. Again, they want to expand the Kalamunda Men's Shed would like to build another section to have a metalwork component to what they do. But at the moment that is not feasible, although there are opportunities of looking at Lotterywest and other charitable organisations to assist.

In my electorate, I have worked with a group of women to create the powder room. They came to me with a concept about the number of fly-in fly-out wives who do not have an adult conversation at night, or who do not have adult connection, and the need for women to support each other. In working together we acquired a building from the Shire of Kalamunda, who were generous in giving a peppercorn rental. The shire came to the party and refurbished the building so that it could be used by the women. They would like to have it operating full-time, but there is no capacity. Again, this is because the financial avenues that were open to them previously cannot support what they hoped to do. Nevertheless, I continue to work with them to make sure that women who play an important part within their families, and within the community, have a centre they can go to and share experiences, thoughts and ideas and look at some enterprising activities that they can do together. The spin-off of that is their teenage daughters have also asked if they can become part of the powder room. It is a great concept, and they are going to have the support of the men's clubs.

I look at these sporting and recreational facilities that do not exist within my electorate. It is a challenging area when you think of the socioeconomic dynamics. The three local governments that I meet with regularly talk to me about key initiatives that they would like to undertake not only out of the ratepayers funds that come in to them, but also the opportunity of some shared arrangements with the Commonwealth and states, including Lotterywest, again in Western Australia, to provide the best possible facilities that engage and support the people that they represent within their local government catchment areas. It is disappointing when you see great ideas that are not going to be able to be supported to the extent that they should. But it does not mean that they have not accessed some Commonwealth funding. At least their planning and the work that they do are developed in phases. So they still bring to the community those things that are important, but it would be better still if there were the immediacy of funding.

Within the Shire of Kalamunda, the rugby union club that we have is quite a strong club, connecting some 400 players and families. They would love a new clubroom and facilities that would enable them to host the east metropolitan competition and engage clubs across the metropolitan area from Guildford through to Armadale. They need lighting that allows them to have night games and so be part of the night competition, but there is no funding for that at the moment. They will continue to have that aspiration and continue to work together to get that in the ultimate future. The Kalamunda union league club have a similar issue with a ground that is on an old rubbish site. They have had to develop facilities. The Shire of Kalamunda have built the ground up so that it is not sinking. Again, it is a club that would like to have facilities that meet the needs of their growing numbers of players who are part of that community. Kostera oval, where there is the AFL component of the football codes, also has the same challenge. They need an improvement in the quality and the size of the grounds. Again, this is through the process of finding that we do not have the level of funding that was there when the Howard government left office—in the Future Fund and in other funds. That is not an avenue through which they can reach.

There are unmet mental health needs within my electorate. I have had forums on the issues that face families who are confronted with challenges around somebody whom they love and care for having a mental health problem. It would be good to access a raft of programs that are localised and available. I think of the unmet aged care needs in my electorate. At the moment I am chairing a working group with a number of key leaders, including Sue Bilich, from the Shire of Kalamunda, where we are looking at sites within the Shire of Kalamunda. At the moment, if you become old and you need aged care then there is nowhere for you to stay within Kalamunda. The waiting lists for the existing facilities are substantial. So you have families taking their mother or their father down to Rockingham or to Salter Point or to Joondalup. The public transport on a weekend to these facilities is not brilliant, so if they have an aged husband or wife, we are, in a sense, separating partnerships of a husband-wife combination by putting them into facilities where they are distant to each other. The appropriation processes are absolutely critical in the minds of constituents, because they look to Commonwealth governments to fund a number of these initiatives, but because of the squandering over the last six years that capacity is not there.

I have within my electorate the Perth Heat baseball club. It is an incredible club that has had outstanding achievements over the last five years, including four national titles. They have a ground where the facilities need upgrading. If there were the opportunity to upgrade these facilities then I know from their discussions with me that they would like to be part of an Asian competition for baseball. This would grow the interest of competition between our Asian neighbours and create the opportunity for Perth to become a key, central point for national baseball in the way in which we compete on the international level. Their ambition also is to have a test series between Australia, New Zealand, England and South Africa. The other stage they would like to move to is bringing American baseball teams down here to play in Australia so that we get exposed to some of the players that we often hear about, who are iconic within American society. But it is only a small amount and part of the challenge is that I, along with every other member, compete for what is left within the available funding. The challenge is in the way in which we have to consider providing limited resources.

I have a strong Arabic community that would like a facility of their own—a hall—which they do not have to hire in which they can come together and where the representatives of Arab nations that live within my electorate can—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue his remarks at that time.