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

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-16 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2015-16. In doing so, I seek to avail myself of the practice of speaking widely about the impact of appropriation bills as would apply generally but also specifically in my electorate.

Mr Deputy Speaker—I know you are very much familiar with this—my electorate is the most multicultural electorate in the country. It is very vibrant and very colourful, and we revel in the diversity that that brings. As such, I have the honour of attending many cultural and religious events throughout my diverse community. Recently, I attended—along with you, Mr Deputy Speaker—the Vietnamese Tet festival at Fairfield Showground. Over 10,000 people from all walks of life came together over a weekend to celebrate the lunar new year and welcome in the Year of the Monkey. I certainly commend the tireless efforts of the VCA—the Vietnamese Community in Australia—particularly the president, Dr Thang Ha, and the organising committee of Tania Huynh, Davy Nguyen, Andie Lam, Sydney Nguyen, Tu Le and Thomas Dinh. They all contributed to make this a very special event not only for my region but also for those who came from all over Sydney to attend and celebrate the diversity of this great culture.

I also attended the Phuoc Hue Temple in Wetherill Park, taking part in the midnight countdown to the lunar new year. I certainly thank the venerable monks and nuns not only for what they do in looking after the spiritual welfare of the Vietnamese Buddhist community but also for upholding the traditions, culture, religion and charitable works that are performed throughout our communities. What they do is extraordinary work and it adds to those things we are generally proud of, particularly in Western Sydney.

I would also like to acknowledge the Australian Chinese Buddhist Society. I would like to thank their management committee—which consists of a very good friend of many in this place, Mr James Chan OAM, who is the chair, the president, Vincent Kong, and the members of his executive committee—for all that they do at the Mingyue Lay temple, the Chinese Buddhist temple based in Bonnyrigg. They not only do an extraordinary amount of work providing and caring for the spiritual needs of the Chinese in our community but they do a hell of a lot in respect of aged care, palliative care and the general cultural development of the Chinese members of our community. They are all very senior and accomplished business people in their own right that form these committees, they use their business acumen to ensure that the proper running of their organisation takes place and they are very objective driven in the way that they run their organisations to achieve the needs of the local community. Again, with members here, I congratulate what they do.

There is a measure of disquiet throughout our communities concerning Badgerys Creek airport. This actually remains a tricky issue. It is the second airport in the Sydney basin and residents have mixed feelings. On the one hand, residents have been courted with the idea that this will generate a significant number of jobs, and one thing we do need in Western Sydney is sustainable employment—that is something that people are focused on—but on the other hand, people are concerned about the issue of noise pollution and other deleterious aspects associated with the running of an airport. To date, we have not heard in great detail the make up and the affordability of the necessary infrastructure to underpin the airport plan nor has there been a comprehensive analysis of the proposed development plan presented either to this parliament or, more importantly, to our local communities.

According to the Western Sydney Airport draft environmental impact statement, by 2030, the airport will cater for about 800 domestic flights and 130 international flights per week. Every day there will be approximately 170 passenger planes with 28 freight planes landing or taking off in Western Sydney through Badgerys Creek. For anyone else who does not live out there, it sounds all well and good. But whilst there is an acceptance of the need for a second airport, there remains a significant concern amongst the people of Western Sydney about the health aspects and noise levels above 70 decibels. Even two weeks ago, it was actually acknowledged in the Senate estimates by representatives of Sydney Airport Corporation that, as far as they were concerned, into the foreseeable future, Badgerys Creek will serve as an overflow facility for Kingsford Smith airport.

You see, Kingsford Smith airport has a curfew. You cannot fly there between 11 pm and six am. Government is now saying that, to be viable, Badgerys Creek should not have a curfew; that it should be curfew free. In Western Sydney, we have been saying that that will be an invitation to fly aircraft in and out of Sydney at times when Kingsford Smith will not be operating. That was denied many times by those opposite. As a matter of fact, the Deputy Prime Minister and minister for transport, Warren Truss, made it very clear to us why there will be no curfew at Badgerys Creek. As he said in a statement: the current generation of planes are so much quieter now that you do not need a curfew. Well, Minister, if that is right, if you do not need a curfew because planes are so much quieter then why do you not revise the restrictions that apply currently to Sydney Airport? Because that curfew affects the commerciality of Sydney Airport. It would be able to move more flights per hour and it could have extended times because the planes are quieter now and will not interrupt other people. But the government are not going to do that and there is a good reason why they are not going to do that.

The planes that come in and out of Sydney come in or out over Sutherland Shire—close to where you live, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly—or over North Sydney. So we are going to protect various conservative electorates and not upset people by looking at their curfew but it is okay for the people of Western Sydney because they accept whatever we give them. We have already said they are going to get thousands of jobs. As a matter of fact, when they started planning this airport and talking constructively about this within the community, they said this is going to generate 30,000 jobs. Then it got up to 40,000 jobs. The Sydney Chamber of Commerce got up and talked about 60,000 jobs at Badgerys Creek airport, which is not bad. Sydney Airport now, if you take all the flight operations and everyone who works there—people who refuel aircraft, people who lug the baggage and people who run the duty-free shops—only employs up to 27,000 workers now. So this is going to be one hell of an airport they are going to build in Western Sydney for us and one which is going to operate, according to the government, 24 hours a day.

According to those who are more than likely going to exercise their right for operation of this airport essentially for the foreseeable future, this is going to be an overflow facility which will, in turn, be used to fly planes in and out of Sydney in times which they are prohibited from flying in and out of Mascot. So I think that actually shows that they expect that if you live in Western Sydney to suck it up, just like they expected us to when the Liberal government of New South Wales wanted to move nuclear waste from Hunters Hill to Kemps Creek in the middle of Western Sydney. Again, the people of Western Sydney will cop it. There is no room in this parliament to be referring to people as second-class citizens. We will not cop that.

If Badgerys Creek airport goes ahead, it must go ahead on a proper basis. It must go ahead on the basis of: if there are going to be jobs, what guarantees are going to be put in place so that priority is given to people of Western Sydney? It is all very well to say, as they did before the go-ahead for the airport, that they are going to generate 60,000 jobs. If you are going to generate jobs, we would want to see priority given to people in Western Sydney. If we are going to have an airport that is going to serve the whole of our communities, we want to make sure that we have the benefit of localised employment opportunities, which is a little bit hard to some extent when you think about it.

Whilst we are saying we are going to generate all this skilled employment there on the one hand, on the other hand you have the New South Wales government looking for every opportunity to cut back New South Wales TAFE. I do not know where we are going to actually get all this technical expertise coming in to fill all these jobs. Just like they normally do in Western Sydney, we will probably go and get people on 457 visas. We can bring them in from overseas to take these jobs. That sort of money is not going to go to extending the employment opportunities or the economic opportunities for developing Western Sydney. I think all of us that have the honour of representing people in the west, regardless of our political parties, should hold hands on this issue and ensure that employment opportunities for Western Sydney go to the people of the west.

Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, the recent electoral redistribution that has occurred has seen many changes in your area and mine. The consequence, if I just speak about my own area, is that I get to take in a number of new areas that I now have the honour of representing, principally, the areas of Greenfield Park, Prairiewood, Abbotsbury, Bossley Park, Fairfield East, Chipping Norton and Warwick Farm. In respect of Chipping Norton and Warwick Farm, I know I actually inherit those areas from you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. I have made it known that there will be a continuation, in terms of looking at files and things that can be handed over, and that we will genuinely do our best to look after people out there. Notwithstanding the fact that you are on the other side of politics, I appreciate your cooperation in ensuring that there is some continuity in the way we look after people in those areas and I will respect that.

Fowler, as you and many know, is very colourful and very vibrant. It is the most multicultural community in the country. But, regrettably, it also has significant pockets of disadvantage. We also have a high proportion of migrants, obviously, and a very high proportion of refugees, and we will also receive a significant proportion of the current refugee intake which has been planned by government as a result of what is occurring in the Middle East—principally, in Syria. There are significant pockets of disadvantage in my community. There are many that work very constructively to do something about this and make life better.

One of the things in my community that is certainly moving to enhance the life and development of younger people, so they can exploit their potential in our great nation, is what our schools are doing. That is why it pains me that, whilst our schools are working very hard—particularly to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds—and whilst schools are doing their bit to do that, the government's cutbacks in respect of the final two years of the Gonski funding reforms are certainly going to impact on educational attainment in our area.

St Johns Park High School certainly has a high proportion of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. This school now has a 91 per cent retention rate in year 12, and 146 of its 200 graduates last year received university offers. As the principal, Ms Susan French, says, it is due to the Gonski funding money received by the school over the last three years that the school is able to employ occupational and art therapists, particularly to assist those kids coming from war-torn backgrounds.'

In areas of great need we need to invest in people. Unless we invest in our young people's educational attainment we are jeopardising the future of not only these students but also our nation.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am thrilled to have the opportunity—perhaps it has come a little earlier than I had anticipated, but I am thrilled to do so nonetheless—to speak on these very wide-ranging bills, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2015-2016. They provide an opportunity for me to reflect on the very important policy area of negative gearing and, indeed, on the very poorly constructed policy of those opposite which was announced a week or so ago. As time goes on the tremendous pitfalls involved in this policy become clearer and clearer to the Australian people.

It is important to start out by being very clear about what negative gearing is, because in the commentary around negative gearing there can be a tendency to not focus on the raw simplicity of what negative gearing is. The first point is this is not some special concept that only applies to investment property. Reading some of the commentary and some of the assertions by those opposite, you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps negative gearing was some special thing that had been created for the investment property market, and that is, of course, not at all the case.

Negative gearing is a very simple concept, and the basic concept is: just as businesses have a cost of doing business and are able to deduct those costs in calculating their profitability, people who invest in property can deduct the cost of interest from their investment. Just as you can deduct the cost of renovations, maintenance or whatever it may be on the investment property, you can also deduct the cost of interest. That makes sense, because interest is a cost. Just as maintenance is a cost and renovations are a cost, interest is a cost.

I think that the average Australian business would find it novel in the extreme if they were to be told that there was some threat to their ability to claim interest as a cost in their business. If it were asserted that interest was not a cost, those businesses would say, loud and clear, 'Yes, it is.' Equally, interest clearly is a cost for people who invest in property. It is not a special thing for investment property. It is very important that people understand that. I would encourage all of those who commentate on these issues to reflect on the fact that negative gearing is a very broad based concept in tax law. It applies to investments in shares. It applies to investments in pretty much all investment classes and is not a special thing for investment property.

Then we get to the question of what the Labor Party want to do with respect to negative gearing as it pertains to investment property. To paraphrase their policy as I understand it, it is to say that, to the extent that someone wanted to claim interest—negative gearing, as it is known—on an investment property, that would only apply if it were a brand-new property, and it would not be possible to negatively gear an existing home. That is my understanding of the policy—along with some changes to the rate of capital gains tax that people would be required to pay.

Let us just reflect on that for a moment. That is for every existing home in Australia—by definition, it cannot be a new home if it already exists—and we have, I believe, roughly nine million homes in Australia. Not one of them is a new home, because they already exist. They are not new; therefore, they are existing homes. Therefore it will not be possible to negatively gear an investment in any of those homes once Labor's policy comes into effect for any new investments after—I believe it is—2017. What that means is that, logically, if you are an investor, you will say: 'Hang on, if I invest in a new property or indeed in shares or other asset classes, I'll still be able to claim negatively geared deductions from my interest costs, but if I invest in an existing house I won't. I won't be able to do that. I won't be able to claim the cost of interest from that investment.'

What is the logical consequence? I do not think this is Milton Friedman stuff. This is kind of simple. For every single existing home in Australia, obviously investors are a very significant part of the market at the moment. In the future, what will happen is that none of the new investments in existing homes after 2017 will be able to make use of negative gearing. So, if you are a property investor and an investor generally, you are going to say: 'Hang on, that doesn't sound like such a great deal; therefore, I'm not going to invest in existing property. I'll turn my attention elsewhere.' It might be new homes; it might be other forms of investment. But it is very difficult to see why investors are going to continue to invest in an asset class where they have just basically had the economic rug pulled from under them, in that they can no longer negatively gear those properties.

Research suggests that somewhere around 30 or 33 per cent of investment in the existing-property market is from investors, so it is quite a lot. It is not just one or two per cent. It is not just something that is conducted by excessively wealthy investors. This is a very, very widespread practice in Australia, and something around 30 per cent, or a third, of existing homes are affected by this issue. You will have a situation where, from 2017, that 30-odd per cent of purchasers will pull back, walk away. Why would they continue to invest in the asset class when they cannot claim the cost of interest, when they can in other investments? It is difficult to see why they would do that.

What does that mean? There has been a lot of discussion on this topic about the impact on people who negatively gear. That is an important issue, and I will come back to that in a moment. But the more fundamental issue is not just the impact on somebody who happens to negatively gear but what happens to the house price of the nine million existing homes in Australia. If 30 per cent of the market has just gone, which is what will happen for every one of those homes, as an average, because every one of those homes is existing—this is an important point: no home that exists in Australia today is a new home under Labor's policy, not one. So every single home in Australia as it exists today is an existing home which you will not be allowed to negatively gear post 2017 for new investments. So 30 per cent of the market, of the potential buyers of your home, goes away.

Think about it like this. Imagine a government policy that said: 'You know what we're going to do? We're going to take 30 per cent of the potential buyers of cars out of car yards through our policy.' Imagine that that occurred. Imagine a government policy that said, 'We're going to make it so unattractive for the existing market that 30 per cent of the people who are participating in it won't participate anymore.' That obviously would have a dramatic impact on that industry, and the same thing will happen here with the housing industry with homes because 30 per cent of the investment value of people who are participating in buying existing homes will dry up. It is not possible rationally to assert that that will not have a negative impact on the value of Australians' existing homes.

About 65 per cent, I believe it is, of Australian households own a home, either paid off completely or with a mortgage, so it is a big number. It is millions and millions of Australians. What the Labor Party is saying is that 30 per cent of people who previously participated in the market for existing homes will basically be completely disincentivised to participate in that market, so this is a really big deal. This is not so much about the academic point about negative gearing; this is about the practical impact on ordinary Australian families.

In my electorate, in Sydney, Deputy Speaker Kelly, parts of which you know very well, there are a lot of people who have worked very, very hard to save to buy their homes. ABS figures say that the vast majority of household wealth of Australians is held in real estate. Interestingly, that is particularly the case for middle-wealth households. Very wealthy households have a more diverse range of assets because they are more likely to have invested in shares and so on. Middle-income and middle-wealth households have a very high proportion of their net assets in housing. So this policy from those opposite basically reduces the value of the single most significant asset held by middle-Australian families. That is the practical consequence of this. This is a very significant problem.

There have been a number of reports in recent years that have commented on the fact that Australia has high household wealth relative to other countries in the world. Credit Suisse investment bank and other people have put out reports on this issue. Those reports consistently concluded that Australians have very high median wealth. As much as those opposite might like to say that this is about a small number of wealthy investors, it is not. The median household in Australia has an enormous proportion of its household wealth in housing. We have been so successful as a society in generating wealth that our median household is either the wealthiest or right up at the very top of the list in terms of household wealth in the whole world. The key underpinning foundation of that is housing. So let us be clear: we have an opposition that say, 'Let us put in place a policy to materially reduce the value of the single most important asset that is held by mainstream middle Australia.' That is the consequence.

Think about the big picture in terms of the size of the Australian housing market. CoreLogic RP Data, who do a lot of really good work in this area of housing data and so on, said last year that the value of housing held by Australian households—again the majority of all wealth held by Australian households—is $6 trillion. It is the single biggest thing there is in the Australian economy. So imagine a percentage decline on $6 trillion. You get very quickly into the hundreds of billions of dollars. That is what people in business would call wealth destruction, value destruction. What this is about in more practical terms is reducing the value of people's homes.

In my electorate of Banks in suburbs like Panania, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, which was recently added to my electorate after your tremendous representation of them, the median house price is $900,000, give or take. A lot of people have very high mortgages. They work very hard—they work shift work and have both members of the family working—to pay the mortgage and to build those household assets. This policy goes directly after the single most important asset of those homes. So this is an extraordinary policy.

This came out of the McKell Institute. I had a look at the McKell Institute report on this. I think it was option 4 in its report. It is a Labor aligned think tank I understand. This is a policy that should have stayed in the think tank. This is an academic debate about negative gearing but a policy that will have a very significant impact on ordinary Australian families.

If you were to design something to depress the value of Australian housing, you would say: 'How do we get as many people to leave the market as possible?' We want a lot of people out of the market. Investors are 30 per cent of them, so let us basically completely change the model so that investors do not invest in any existing home in Australia.' If you are actually trying to hurt the asset value of ordinary Australian families, that is what you would do and that is what this policy does. It is a very bad idea. It will have a very significant impact on Australian homes if it is ever implemented. That is why it is so important that those opposite do not ever succeed in becoming the government, because it would result in huge loss of value for Australian families.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the appropriation bills. I will spend a few minutes countering the member for Banks's last contribution, which was a gross mistruth around negative gearing and household investment. It is a pity he is leaving the chamber. He might have received an education about the true state of the Australian investment property market. I will send him a copy of Hansard so at least he has no excuse for peddling untruths in this chamber.

I am pleased to make a contribution on these appropriation bills. I am pleased to confirm that Labor will not be blocking supply—in the finest tradition since 1975. This is a good opportunity to take stock of the current economic debate in the nation. It is clear that there has been a significant deterioration in the Australian economy and the federal budget over the last 2½ years under the Abbott-Turnbull government. In challenging the member for Warringah the current Prime Minister stated, 'Ultimately, the Prime Minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs.' That was absolutely true, but it is also fair to say that five months into his prime ministership the Prime Minister has also failed in his economic leadership test. The facts are absolutely clear: the deficit has blown out, the economy is slowing and government spending has increased.

Under the stewardship of the previous Labor government Australia had one of the best performing economies in the developed world. We were the only developed country not to enter a recession during the global financial crisis, courtesy of strong, well-constructed action by the last government—strong, concerted and decisive action, unlike the coalition, who were literally asleep during the debate. Two and a half years ago the coalition were elected after three years of outrageous rhetoric that we were in a budget emergency and that they were going to revive the Australian economy. The exact opposite has happened, and the economy and the budget have deteriorated on the watch of the coalition. The recent MYEFO clearly identified this deterioration

The Treasurer confirmed that growth is down, investment is down and, at the same time, government spending is up and the deficit has increased—not a great picture by anyone's measurement.

It is disturbing that economic growth is down. In MYEFO growth was downgraded from 2.75 per cent to 2½ per cent, and both Treasury and the Reserve Bank have indicated that 2½ per cent is the new normal. Business investment fell 6.3 per cent in 2014-15. What is most worrying is that the reduction in capex was not limited to the resources sector, where you would expect it to occur; it has occurred in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy. That is very worrying, because today's capex is tomorrow's jobs and income.

Under the Abbott-Turnbull government, spending has increased to 25 per cent of GDP. The member for Warringah last year said the former government were spending like drunken sailors. Actually, the Liberal Party are spending more than the previous government, and the deficit has blown out by $26 billion over the forward estimates. This means a blow-out of $120 million per day between last year's budget and the MYEFO in December. In their 'Real solutions' fairytale booklet, the coalition promised to get the budget back under the control. This is certainly not happening, and in fact the opposite has occurred. And these are not the only disturbing figures. Living standards, as measured by net disposable income per capita, have fallen for six consecutive quarters—we actually have a recession in net disposable income per capita. Capital expenditure is falling, and consumer and business confidence is far lower than when the coalition were elected.

These figures demonstrate that the government is not competent at managing the economy, whether under the member for Warringah or under the current Prime Minister, and the MYEFO was a pathetic admission of this fact. The Treasurer's 46 minutes of waffle at the National Press Club last week demonstrated that. We had allusions to unicorns, to ponies, to used cars and to test matches versus the Big Bash, but we did not have any economic leadership. We had no diagnosis of the problem and no solution. We had a thousand PowerPoint slides but we had no economic leadership, and the Treasurer has failed the test—so much so that his bosom buddy Ray Hadley has criticised his performance, and clearly the Treasurer has now cancelled that spot, because clearly he is getting a harder go even from Ray Hadley.

What did the coalition promise before the last election? They promised:

We will:

What a blatant mistruth! The exact opposite has occurred. The Abbott-Turnbull government has slashed $80 billion from schools and hospitals, and the budget situation has got worse, not better. You cannot deliver better front-line services when you cut $80 billion from schools and hospitals.

We have also seen a very confused debate on taxation. We saw this sort of Dance of the Seven Veils routine around the GST, where it was on the table and off the table; it was not going to happen. Whose fault was it? Apparently, if you asked the current Treasurer, no work was done before September last year. Well, the former Prime Minister was very quick to stomp on that. But, whatever happened, we saw a massive increase in expectations around the GST, and then suddenly the brakes were applied and, in a fit of political courage only matched by his performance around marriage equality and climate change, the Prime Minister welshed on the GST and is now saying it is off the table. Well, I hope it is off the table, because it will hit every single family in this country if it is brought back onto the table. But that was their economic debate: five months of talking about a GST, and then it is canned.

Unlike the coalition, we have been leading a real debate on how we raise revenue in this country; improve the efficiency of this country; get investment that is productive rather than speculative; and use that process to raise revenue to invest in education, health care and innovation, pay down the government debt and improve the productive performance of this country. That is why I am so proud of the Labor Party's announcements around negative gearing and capital gain tax concessions, because that is real economic leadership: identifying a problem, solving it with concrete policy that has been independently costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, and promising it well before an election rather than making promises before an election and then breaking them in the dead of night in your first budget.

Who is undertaking negative gearing and enjoying the capital gains tax concession? Fifty per cent of the gains from negative gearing go to the top 20 per cent of Australian households. It is even more marked in the capital gains taxation concession, where 73 per cent of the benefit from the CGT concession accumulates to the top 20 per cent of families. Clearly these tax expenditures—because that is what they are—are going overwhelmingly to the wealthiest families in this country.

During this debate, we have seen people clinging onto this myth that the vast majority of negative gearers are those taxpayers with income under $80,000. The Housing Industry Association peddles it out, and I am sure, if I were a glutton for punishment and sat through the contributions from every single member opposite during the appropriations debate, a few of them will be coming out with this line. Well, that figure is a massive misnomer. It is a myth. First off, it is net income; it is not gross income. Second, if you look at the figures, of those individuals under $80,000, 74,000 had negative income for the taxation year, and 250,000 had income below $20,000. So, for 324,000 of those individuals, clearly that was not their genuine income level, for a variety of reasons. Either they were part of a two-income household where the investment was in their name rather than someone else's, or they were engaged in tax minimisation—no doubt very legitimate and legal tax minimisation. But to claim that the vast majority of negative gearers are somehow mum and dad investors on less than $80,000 is a complete skewing of figures. The figures show that a big chunk of them have no taxable income or very low taxable income. If you look at the figures, 50 per cent of the benefit of negative gearing goes to the top 20 per cent of wealthy Australians.

Negative gearing by itself, in normal investment activities, is a legitimate strategy. If you have costs of doing business, you should be able to write them off against the costs of that income-production activity. The trouble is that the interaction between negative gearing in the property sector and the capital gains tax concession has led to massive speculation. A range of economists and Treasury itself have testified to this. What happens under this business model is that you negatively gear a property and you enjoy the taxation benefits of reducing tax on your main job, which would be at the top marginal tax rate, with the belief that your property will gain value and those capital gains will be taxed at half their real gain because of the capital gains tax concession. Yes, you can do this in shares as well, but Treasury testified before the House Economics Committee that there is more of a market in housing because you are able to gear and leverage housing investment more than in the share market. Banks will lend you much more and allow you to leverage much more against bricks and mortar investment rather than shares, hence the interaction of these two tax expenditures leads to much greater speculation and impact on the housing market.

The part of this policy that I am especially proud of is the halving of the capital gains tax concession, because there is no economic justification to tax capital gains at half the rate you tax income derived from your labour. Treasury have confirmed this in hearings before the House Economics Committee as well. Before 1985, capital gains were not taxed. Before 1985, if you sold a share or sold an investment property, you paid zero tax on that capital gain, whereas if you were a normal worker, you would be paying tax on your income above the threshold—and, obviously, the marginal tax rates were much higher in that day than they are now. It was the bravery of Paul Keating and Bob Hawke, against the opposition of the coalition, that led to the introduction of capital gains taxation. There is this myth that the golden era of the 1980s was this bipartisan utopia. It was not. These reforms were hard fought. John Howard opposed taxing capital gains because he knew it would hit the big end of town, who were enjoying a tax holiday.

Using the GST debate as cover, Peter Costello introduced the 50 per cent concession, arguing that somehow you would not have to account for the nominal growth in capital gains and that this was a simpler method. It might be a simpler method, but it meant the Commonwealth missed out on massive revenue, because we now live in a low-inflation era where the nominal growth in capital that you are holding is accelerating nowhere near as quickly as it did in the eighties and nineties. Hence, a 50 per cent discount in capital gains is much more significant now, in a low-inflation era, than if it were implemented in the 1980s.

As I said, there is no justification for privileging capital gains over income derived from labour, and interaction between negative gearing and capital gains tax has led to a massive speculative investment that takes away investment in productive activities. That is the real hub of this whole matter. It is a massive distortion in our economy that I am proud that Labor is combating. Incidentally, one-third of property investors do not negatively gear, so they will not be impacted, nor will anyone who has a residential investment property prior to 1 July 2017.

The coalition's response to this announcement has been all at sea. It demonstrates their economic debate so far and the competence of the Treasurer, because his first response was not to criticise it as they are now—that somehow it will impact housing prices or do something else—it was that it did not raise enough revenue. His first criticism was that it would not raise enough revenue, which is an implicit support for a policy but says it has not gone far enough. The only way you raise more revenue by cutting down on negative gearing and our CGT change is either you do not allow grandfathering—therefore, it is retrospective taxation—or you completely abolish the capital gains tax concession. The used car analogy has been a complete embarrassment and has been taken to pieces by many economists today and yesterday.

We are discussing the appropriation bills, which are the supply bills for the budget. It is a good excuse to talk about the economic legacy of this government, because so far it is a shocker. We have debt up, deficits up, growth down, unemployment around six per cent. All we have is hollow rhetoric and not a single plan to put Australia back on track and really build future prosperity in this nation.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016, and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2015-2016. I was born in South Africa into a nation that had a vile racist policy. I fought against this policy when at school and in university. I found reprehensible the various apartheid laws, such as those reserving certain jobs for whites and defining race, the pass laws and so on. But racism, whether positive or negative in intent, is still racism. This brings me to the issue of Indigenous policy.

I will be blunt. In my view, there should be no specific Indigenous policy. There should be no race descriptors. There should be no definition of what it is to be Aboriginal, any more than, say, an Irish-Australian should have a definition and a percentage of Irish blood that he or she should have in order to be described as Irish-Australian. Self-identification is the key to this puzzle. Indeed, the only reason that this is done is due to the racist laws that we have here in Australia. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Alternatively, hell is full of good meanings but heaven is full of good works.

I am particularly disgusted with the headline in Saturday's Weekend Australian, 'Push for Aboriginal ID tests'. This takes me back to various racial identity tests that took place in South Africa. They were absolutely disgraceful. People would have to attend an office, and the authorities would look at their fingernails to determine whether they were blue or pink, because people with some 'black' blood were more likely to have more bluish-tinged fingernails. They would also do a pencil test in their hair, because people with 'black' blood were more likely to have curlier hair, so the pencil was more likely to stick. This sort of disgraceful nonsense ended up with a situation where you could have a brother and sister getting different racial designations, and the one who had the 'white' designation would then have nothing to do with their sibling for fear of being reclassified. This sort of disgraceful thing has got no place in civilised society.

I thought, when I migrated to Australia nearly 35 years ago, that I had left all of that behind. The fact that we are attempting to define what is Aboriginal or not, and what percentage blood makes a person Aboriginal, is racist and it is due to the nature of our laws, where many issues such as benefits, jobs et cetera are defined on the basis of race. I thought I had left behind a situation where certain people, based on race, had a privileged status when it comes to jobs. In South Africa, it was called job reservation. But here we have a situation where certain jobs are reserved for Aboriginals or Torres Strait Islanders. To add insult, many of the advertisements for these jobs say, at the end of the advertisement, that it is a position under the equal employment opportunity act. Really? Talk about Orwellian doublespeak!

Then we allow our Aboriginal Australians to live in situations—and we support these situations financially—that we would support with nobody else. Here I talk of the remote communities and allowance of the lack of attendance of Aboriginal children at school. With any other Australians, we would insist that they attend school and insist that they move to areas where there is the opportunity to find work and for the children to attend school. Racism is racism, whatever the intent. There is an argument about historical disadvantage, and that is true. Australia was invaded over 200 years ago. No Australians, regardless of race, were alive at that time, so none suffered directly as a result of that invasion. What is a stain on Australia is that it took so long, until 1967, for Aborigines to get voting rights and other rights as citizens. That is something I think we can justifiably apologise for as a nation. But you do not correct an injustice by instituting another injustice, however worthy the aim. You do not address inequity by imposing other inequities. We will never close the gap while we have racist and discriminatory policy. We will only do it by making sure that everyone is in the same tent, not some halfway in, halfway out.

We need to have policy to address issues, not race. Very few policy problems are absolutely unique to Aborigines, and even where they do exist they are best addressed in terms of the issue, not the race. So we should not deal with Aboriginal alcoholism, Aboriginal child abuse, Aboriginal incarceration or a whole host of other issues; instead, we should deal with alcoholism, child abuse, incarceration et cetera, wherever we find it. I can already hear the 'but, but, buts'. Here is the question, though: have all those 'but, but, buts' had a real impact? Or would it have been better from the start to have a colour blind policy? An Aborigine with a university degree, working in a high-powered job, has far less in common with some of the disadvantaged Indigenous youth not getting an education and with all sorts of social problems than does some disadvantaged non-Aboriginal youth with no job and little education. As I said, we need to deal with the issue, not the race.

'Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' That was from Albert Einstein. Yet here we are doing precisely that. Martin Luther King dreamed of a time where his four children 'will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character'. Yet today, in Australia, we have a situation where I, for instance, have been castigated by some as being a racist for having the view that we should be colour blind. To quote one such critic: 'To be colour blind is to be racist.' Is that really the way we want our nation to be? That is what we are doing with our policy. The word 'racist' in terms of our policy and legislation is extremely confronting, but it makes it no less true.

We have a 40-year failed experiment in terms of affirmative action and positive discrimination. South Africa, similarly, is disastrously pushing on with its Black Economic Empowerment program, positively discriminating. It is a disaster, and the situation in South Africa, after so much early promise from 1994, is going backwards. Look at Zimbabwe, with their disastrous programs of positive discrimination. They are a basket case, and this previous food bowl is now having problems feeding its own people. Discrimination is still discrimination, whether positive or negative. Indeed, categorising, distinguishing, people and hoping to help them on the basis of discrimination means that negative stereotypes become self-actualising. What a terrible burden to put on people.

I put it to the members of this place that the taxpayers of Australia should not be funding lifestyle choices. Yes, I agree with the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, when he refers to Indigenous Australians' choice to live in remote communities as 'a lifestyle choice'. In essence, if the 'noble savage' lifestyle, a la Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the same one often eulogised, is true, then there is nothing stopping any Indigenous men or women from pursuing such an existence on their own. Just do not expect the taxpayers to subsidise it. My contention is that the ideal of the noble savage may be less sanguine and altogether more Hobbesian: 'nasty, brutish and short'.

Separate to that fact is the intractable predicament of Indigenous positive discrimination programs being anticompetitive and anti-Liberal. The whole founding ethos and values of the Liberal Party were that we seek equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. We seek to bring all the horses to the samestarting position, not to slow down our fastest horse.Robert Menzies would be appalled by what is being prosecuted.

Let me expand on what is broken with our current system and our current way of doing business with Indigenous Australia. I recall going on a trip to Broome , where we were driven around by the local chamber of commerce. We were driven past a region where there were lean-tos and a whole lot of smashed alcohol bottles and so on. The leader of the delegation said: 'The Indigenous elders are extremely disgusted with us. We can't do anything about it because it's native title land. We can only do something about it with caravanning and camping legislation. After three days we can get them to move on, but they just cross to the other side of the road, which is also native title land.' Here was the problem, and here was the question I asked: 'If the Indigenous elders are disgusted by this and it is their native title land, why are they not doing something about it? On one hand we are saying we should not be paternalistic, but on the other hand we are being paternalistic by saying we will fix it and get the council to do it rather than having the owners of that land do something about it.'

There is almost no employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous university graduates. The target to halve the gap in employment by 2018 is not on track. So the question then is: w here is the critical comment? Where are those people demanding better for Indigenous Australians? Tho se polic i es and prescriptions are not wor king and need to be scrapped, and t he victim mentality must end. The gap exists because too many Indigenous people do not participate in the real economy. It will not close unless Indigenous policy shifts from welfare centricity to economic strategy.

Education and employment are the foundations of economic development. Without them, people ca nnot innovate or produce. If governments do not believe we can get Indigenous kids to school and Indigenous adults to work, they should simply abandon Clos e the Gap. Everything else is a waste of time and money because the gap will never close. Between 1990 and 2015 , S ub-Saharan Africa increased school enrolment from 52 per cent to 80 per cent. We need the same focus here. Indigenous adults need to work in real jobs. Nearly 80 per cent of Indigenous people live in urban and regional areas around the eastern and south-western coasts of Australia— areas with viable populations and real economies. Less than 22 per cent of Indigenous Australians live in remote areas. Economies have been built in remote and isolated places before. L ook at Sydney and Melbourne. When Arthur Phillip sailed into Sydney Cove he did not say, ' Th ere are no jobs, let's go home.' But Sydney did no t become a thriving city because of bureaucrats or not-for-profits or welfare or governments.

In Aboriginal affairs , there is a preoccupation with things that do not deliver economic development , such as welfare and government programs , services and grants. All of these centre on government dependency. When they do not work, the typical response is to try more innovative or complicated versions of them, as if government dependency will somehow deliver economic development if you sex it up. Cashless welfare and income management, for example, may tackle social issues but they do not help people to get a job, buy a home or get a loan.

For decades , the central plank of Indigenous employment policy was the Community Development Employment Program , which employed Indigenous people on community projects and paid an income equivalent to welfare payments. Many 'jobs' involved people doing things that they normally do without being paid, such as mowing their own lawn . Giving it a fancy name — Work f or t he Dole — and calling it employment does not make i t a real job. None of these things generate s economic development.

Empowered Communities is another initiative with government dependency at its core. Here 'empowerment' means shifting control of government programs, services and funding to local Indigenous community groups within a complex organisational, governance and legal structure. This is not empowerment. Indigenous people are not empowered if they depend on government for everything, whether administered centrally or locally. Welfare and government dependency do not generate economic development no matter how fancy you make them.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It takes restraint to focus on the appropriations matter after listening to a speech from the member for Tangney, but I will do exactly that. In August, towards the end of last year, the Prime Minister stood about 50 metres from here in the House of Reps courtyard and addressed a press conference that was hastily convened after question time. He advised the press gallery, and Australians through them, that he intended to challenge the Prime Minister for his job. The member for Wentworth, as he then was, said that the government had failed to prosecute an economic agenda—indeed, it did not have a clear story about what it wanted to do for Australia.

That was six months ago, and here we are, less than six months from the next federal election, faced with the same situation. We have a government at war with itself but unable to prosecute a clear economic agenda for the country. We had the ridiculous situation last week where the Treasurer of Australia invited all the senior economics opinion writers in the country to a lunch at the National Press Club. With all those great minds and commentators there, you would expect that he might have had something to say about economic policy and some announcements to make. But no. All we got from the treasurer—and this is a Treasurer who leads this government after 2½ years—was a criticism of the previous Labor government but no policy announcement for the government.

In this situation, we know that Australians are hungry for some leadership on economic matters, so it is a great credit to the Leader of the Opposition and to the shadow Treasurer that they have announced more economic policies in the last six months than any opposition has done in the last two decades. Last week, we announced a plan to put in place new measures to crack down on the excessive and improper use of negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements in the property market. These will yield around $30 billion worth of additional revenue but, importantly, they will also have the additional benefit of rebalancing investment within this country and ensuring that new homeowners, the people who are trying to crack into the first home owner's buyers' market, will be doing it on a level playing field. It has been widely supported by economics opinion leaders in the country, and I suspect it is going to be at the centre of economic debate as we traverse the time between now and the next election.

In the area of superannuation policy, multinational taxation policy is where Labor is leading the economic debate. In fact if you put together all of the announcements we have made, they total up in excess of $80 billion worth of savings or new revenue measures which enable us to pay for the initiatives that Australians expect Labor governments to put in place when we are elected to office.

Appropriations bills—in fact any money bill that comes before the House—are statements of the government's spending priorities. What we find is: only Labor has a plan—a plan which will protect Australian jobs for Australians, create the environment for investment in new economic activity into the future to improve our schools and bring 21st century broadband to households and businesses throughout the country. We have a plan to protect Medicare and to boost spending in renewable energy. This is the package that we will take to the next election.

On the other side of the House, we have a government that is so fixated on the past and so divided amongst themselves that they still do not have a clear economic story for the country.

In the area of schools, what could be more important than a program to ensure that the next generation of Australians that are leaving our schools do so equipped to enter the labour market of the 21st century. So Labor has announced that we will deliver significant improvements in school education in Australia—probably the most significant package for over two generations. We believe that every Australian child should have the same chance of succeeding at school as any other kid in the country no matter what their background, where they live or what type of school they go to.

Ensuring that Australia's workforce is ready for the jobs of the future begins in our schools, and that is at the heart of Labor's 'Your Child. Our Future' program. It will build the education for all of Australia's children. Our plan will see an additional investment in our school education system of over $4.5 billion over the 2018-19 school years. It will see a total provision of over $37.3 billion for the package over the decade.

Our plan will ensure a strong focus on every single child's needs; more individual attention for students; better trained teachers; more targeted resources and better equipped classrooms; and more support for students with special learning needs. With Labor's policy, every Australian school and child will benefit, and we will ensure that we are investing in schools and teaching so that our kids are getting the very best education possible.

In my own electorate, I know that this matters because, under the Liberals, education funding has been slashed compared to what it would have been with an average of $3.2 million per school being slashed from their future budgets. This is the equivalent of slashing one in seven teachers from future employment in those schools.

Over 10 years, Malcolm Turnbull's cuts mean over $9.5 billion is being ripped out of classrooms in New South Wales. Over $391 million is being ripped out of classrooms in the Illawarra region and over $193 million out of classrooms in my electorate of Throsby.

These are the policies of a government that does not have the right priorities. We have been criticised for our education policies by those on the other side, by the Leader of the House—the former education minister—but what he has left behind in his former portfolio is an absolute train wreck, and it will fall to Labor once again to ensure that the Commonwealth government fulfils its proper role in supporting the school system of this country.

You do not need to listen to just Labor spokespeople on this issue; listen to the New South Wales National Party education minister, Mr Adrian Piccoli. He has made it clear that the Commonwealth government's withdrawal of funding from the Gonski negotiated agreements will be a disaster for New South Wales schools. It will be the schools in electorates such as the one he represents in rural and regional Australia and schools that I represent that will suffer the most. We know that it is the schools in the most disadvantaged areas that rely most on the additional funding from the Commonwealth for their special needs.

I want to talk a little about jobs, because they have got to be the first priority of every member who represents and electorate in this place. Last week I stood alongside a group of steelworkers, miners and maritime industry workers at a rally outside Parliament House—in fact, a jobs embassy, and it will be forming outside Parliament House this week as well. I was happy that I was joined by the member for Cunningham, Sharon Bird, and the shadow employment and workplace relations minister, Brendan O'Connor.

We were there for a common cause—that is, to defend Australian jobs, get the Australian government to step up to support Australian workers and the right to work in our own country. I represent an electorate where one in four workers has come to our region from another country for the purpose of working—whether they be in the steelworks, the mines or the manufacturing industry—which has drawn workers from literally over 70 countries around the world.

We have absolutely no problem with people coming to this country and seeking to create a better life, a new life, by working in my region. But, at a time when unemployment is stubbornly rising at two per cent above the national average, we know that we need to turn our priorities to ensure that every person who is currently in Australia is a priority. If there is an Australian worker who is ready, willing and able to fill a position, then we should not be allowing employers to invite overseas workers to come in and take up that job. I think that all Australians would see that that is a reasonable approach to high unemployment in a particular area.

It is against this background that we are scratching our heads and wondering what is going through a government's mind where they can seriously contemplate a situation where they are encouraging employers to sack their Australian workforce and replace them with overseas workers? This is exactly what has happened to a number of workers in my electorate who are working in the maritime industry. They were working on board the MV Portland and were dragged off their boat in the middle of the night, marched down the gangway, and a few weeks later replaced by a foreign crew.

There might be some countries around the world where people are not surprised when that sort of thing happens, but Australia is not one of them. These are the sorts of policies that are being encouraged by those in the government. Every single member of the government who is facing election at the coming election should be standing up and listening to this. I think voters in their electorates would be very concerned to understand that this is what is going on in this country at the moment. It is not just in the maritime industry; it is across other industries as well, and it is something that must stop.

I want to talk a little about health. Jobs, education and health have to be the three pillars that lead to a more civilised country, one that deals with the problems of the growing inequality in this country. We know that the first act of the previous Prime Minister and the previous Treasurer was to rip up the health and hospital agreement that had been painstakingly negotiated with the states—leading to the $57 billion worth of cuts from our state health and hospital system.

In the six months since this Prime Minister and this Treasurer have sat where they sit, we have challenged them week-in week-out to disown the health policies of the former Prime Minister and the former Treasurer. I think it is notable that in the six months that this man has been Prime Minister of this country, he has not made one significant statement in the health portfolio. He has had nothing to say about the importance of Medicare to the future of Australians health. According to the Liberal Premier of New South Wales and conservative premiers from states all around the country, the $57 billion worth of cuts will see the closure of hospital beds and, in some areas, the closure of hospitals. When challenged to disown, to overturn, to rebuke or to refuse these policies, we have heard absolutely nothing from this Prime Minister and this Treasurer.

Well, Labor have a different set of priorities. We stand for Medicare because we know that the people we represent want access to a general practitioner. They want to know that if they need to access an emergency ward, they will be able to be seen within a reasonable time; that if they need to access the services of a public hospital, wherever they live in Australia, they will have access to those services. We know that the people of Australia for whom this is a reality are relying on a Labor government to ensure that we do not let this government continue to dismantle the system and defund it, thus ensuring that only those who have a fat credit card will have access to the health services that they need.

These are the things that are going to make a difference between a civilised and an uncivilised country. These are the measures that will ensure that we can address the growing inequality in this country, where the top 20 per cent own five times more wealth than the bottom 20 per cent. We know the policies that will address the growing inequality in this country, that will ensure we have a decent education system, that will provide jobs for kids to go into when they leave school, that will provide a decent university and TAFE system, that will provide decent hospitals and the safety net of Medicare. These are the priorities that a decent government will be putting before the House.

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

The issue of water security is a state government matter—always has been, always will be. You would think that would mean that a federal government has no role in this vital area of infrastructure, but you would be wrong. That is especially so if you are from the north of this great country. You see, there have been only two dams fully funded by the federal government since Federation—just two. They are the Burdekin Falls Dam and the Ord River Dam. Despite being on opposite sides of the country, they do have a lot in common. Both are north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Both are more than 1,000 kilometres away from their respective capital cities. Both are vital; neither had the crucial backing of any state government to actually be built.

In the south east of my state, the residents there have 10 years water security; 10 years of gravity-fed water supply. In Townsville, we have two years water security. After that, we will have to pump water from the Burdekin Falls Dam at huge expense to the ratepayers. That must be addressed.

Townsville Enterprise submitted a proposal to secure funding to raise the wall of the Burdekin Falls Dam and to establish another dam further up the Burdekin River at Hell's Gate. In the paper commissioned by the previous Labor government into industry in the north of Queensland, water security and its availability was high on the list. Hell's Gate and raising the wall at the Burdekin Falls Dam were listed as prime sites for delivery of water security and as a catalyst for irrigation of crops such as sugarcane and maize for ethanol production. This proposal from Townsville Enterprise has my total support.

We must back our strengths in this area and look to James Cook University and the tropical sciences precinct to ensure we are doing the right thing by the environment, as we strive to meet markets and develop new markets and new customers. On that front, it is often said that we do not want to make the mistakes the southern states did centuries ago. While that is convenient, there is much we can learn from the irrigation in the Burdekin cane-farming areas. The challenges of salinity, pest management and the like are right there for us to research and learn from.

Two organisations based in North Queensland are perfectly placed to do this research and ensure that we get the best all-round result. Damien Burrows' TropWATER and Scott Crawford's NQ Dry Tropics are the kinds of organisations that need to be backed if we are to deliver water security, the industry and the jobs of the future. We must get the science right at the start. If you get the science right at the start, you do not have to pay the big price at the end. We in the North do not ask to be treated any different to the southern states and the rest of the country. Most of the time we would settle for being treated half as well. On the matter of water and energy, we simply cannot be considered as a viable option for investment in new industries and the jobs that will provide if we cannot provide affordable and plentiful water and energy. It is that simple. Science and sustainable development are the building blocks for the development of the North.

I was talking to a fellow MP and he questioned the development of the North. Why should we do this? Why is it important? I asked him in all honesty, 'Where are the bauxite deposits in Victoria?' to which he answered that there were none. I said, 'Then why do you have an aluminium refinery down there?' The answer is cheap electricity. Energy and water are the keys to development of the North. Affordable and plentiful energy and water are the two essential building blocks for the north of the country. It is the reason Victoria is the manufacturing capital. Burning brown coal for electricity is cheap and therefore manufacturing costs are competitive. If we were to have a baseload power station in the North, we could open up all kinds of things.

If we had had the $5 billion concessional loan facility in 2010 when we were talking about the copper string project we would be having a very different conversation today—the ability to bring those things together with the $5 billion loan facility, where we get a baseload power station, where we can use the Clean Energy Fund, Direct Action and all those things to make it ultracritical. There is enough private money out there to build these power stations but, if we can add value to it, we will develop that. The copper string project was a way of making sure that things could connect to the national grid. If we were to get a baseload power station somewhere out in the Galilee Basin, that would open up the area for the Kennedy wind farm, big solar and Tully-Millstream. All those renewable energy projects and the science that goes with them would open up and they could then feed into the national energy market. We can provide over 40 per cent of Australia's renewable energy needs in North Queensland through this project alone, if we get the funding right and we get the new businesses and industries into our region.

There can be no doubt that the top 5 issues in Townsville and our North Queensland region are jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs. As we see the cranes dominate the Brisbane skyline, the wait for investment from our state government in the North grows longer and longer. The recent appointment of administrators to Queensland Nickel has knocked my city around. We are, of course, acutely aware that we are not alone when it comes to job losses in the resources sector. But we saw 237 people lose their jobs when they were made redundant. Then the administrators were appointed and they are still waiting for their entitlements. Those things tend to knock a city around.

How do we generate jobs locally in a place that is 1,400 kilometres away from a capital city? The federal government has spent over $5 billion in the North since 2006. We have to ensure that many jobs are created locally. How do we do that? We make the decision makers allow local contractors to get hold of that money. If we continue to let the large corporations come in and build these things, the profit will continue to leave our city and the investment that goes with that will continue to leave along with it—and we are left standing at the airport waving goodbye as our profit leaves. If we are able to break down the tenders to bite-size chunks, local firms would be able to tender and get that work. It will save the taxpayer money; it will increase competition; and it will ensure that traineeships and apprenticeships are done locally, as opposed to what we see now where there are no apprenticeships with the tier 1 companies. It is about making sure that we progress those things in our city.

One thing that we can do right now is deal with issues around the Federal Safety Commission. In our first repeal day, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, repealed the FSC on the building of defence housing homes. This had a number of great effects. Firstly, it lowered the cost of red tape around building defence homes. It actually lowered the cost to the taxpayer of a defence home by about 15 per cent. That is real money. It also allowed a lot more companies to tender for and build those defence homes. So, again, it is creating more competition and creating more jobs. At the commercial level, the FSC does not kick in until $4 million. Commercially, that does not buy you a lot of office space or a government building. We could benefit if we could raise that to $20 million or $40 million. We are not talking about unsafe workplaces; we are talking about everyone around the country operating under the same safety net. When it comes to federal government stuff, the FSC becomes onerous. It is a difficult process to go through to get compliance and it is costly do to, which just cancels out all your contractors from participating in this area. This means fewer apprenticeships, less work in the regions, less profits staying in the region and fewer jobs in the region.

While I am speaking about jobs, I would just make a personal appeal—an appeal I have tweeted every day to Dr Anthony Lynham, the Queensland Minister for Natural Resources and Mines. Can you just sign the mining lease for the Carmichael Mine, please? Everything is in place. The only thing that has to happen now is for the mining lease to be signed. This will lead to jobs all the way from the Townsville port, across every road and every bridge out to the mine site—there is 150 years' worth of mining out there—and then back along the $2.2 billion railway line to Abbott Point. These are sustainable jobs into the future and coal-fired power for our region to develop. All those things could happen there If Dr Lynham could just do us this one little favour. He has taken his eye completely off the ball with these ridiculous lockout laws. He should be concentrating on his own role here and not the lockout laws. He can get this thing done and make sure that we have this mine operating in North Queensland.

Developing the north is not just about dams and power stations; it is also about lifestyles and sustainable jobs. When Andrew Robb addressed a packed ballroom just before the 2013 election, he stated that, if we were to deliver properly for the north of this country, we would also have to deliver the kinds of experience and social infrastructure that people in the capital cities take for granted. The redevelopment of Townsville CBD and the Ross Creek water precinct should be high on our list. Some of the projects, such as the stadium and convention centre, will not deliver the masses of jobs down the line that some believe they will. But being able to offer a seat in the shade or out of the rain as we watch our Cowboys run around should not be an unreasonable request. Jobs in the short term would be created during construction, but they will turn to lifestyle choice for the long term.

As demographer Bernard Salt observed in his presentation at the recent Redefining Townsville seminar, people are choosing cities and where they live based on lifestyle and on what they have to offer. You need only look at the explosion of the Sunshine Coast and Newcastle to see that people are choosing those sorts of places to make sure they get the quality of life that they want. Townsville offers a great quality of life. If we can provide the facilities that go with that, we will move on and create those jobs that we can take into the future. Make no mistake, the building of the stadium and convention centre is state government infrastructure, and they should be funding it in the same way as they do for everything else in the south-east. But we are used to being treated like second-class citizens in the north. The federal government understands the needs of the people in the north, and I will be doing my best to deliver the lifestyle that we deserve.

One of the things that came up in the Redefining Townsville discussions was the need for regional cities to be able to speak with one voice. We as a city must develop that voice. We as a city have to decide what we want our city to be. Too often, I think, our civic leadership has seen people come in wanting to talk about something else and then we drop everything and go after them as if they have something special for us. We have the something special. My city has the something special. As a city, we have to decide what kind of city we are going to be into the future. We have to decide the links that we will have to make. I would contend that our links to the Asia-Pacific are far more important than our links to Brisbane. We will get far more investment if we drive our relationships into Asia, Papua New Guinea and the Melanesian world. We will get far more investment if we concentrate on our relationship with Indonesia than we will ever get by concentrating on our relationships with the state government.

As a city, we have to decide that we want to be that international city that will provide lifestyle, health, training and education to people from all the Pacific nations. That is the sort of city that we want to be. We are a great services city. When we look at the things that we can provide—our professional services, our defence services, our university and vocational education services—we are right on the cusp of being able to deliver these things. It will take a concerted effort from all levels of government and all civic leadership to say: 'What is our city's mission statement? How do we drive this?' And when someone comes in and offers us something outside that, we need to say: 'No, thank you. That's not where we see ourselves going. We don't want to be in that business because we have a mission, we speak with one voice and we are moving in that area.'

We as Townsvillians, as North Queenslanders, have the ability to drive this nation further and to play our part in making sure that Townsville becomes that fantastic city in the north—the true hub of northern Australia, where we are looking at the emerging capitals of Port Moresby and all the cities in Indonesia and through to Thailand, Vietnam, South-East Asia and China and Japan. We need the connectivity, we need the support, and we have the people to do this. We are a great city. I thank the House.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot begin without paying tribute to the member for Herbert and that contribution. I do not know why we are bothering to engage a Hemsworth to sell this country; we just need to get the member for Herbert out there to sell Townsville to the world.

But I do note a couple of things from that fine speech from the member for Herbert about Townsville—jobs, jobs, jobs. It is a theme across the country. I hear the same thing in Lalor. Also in Lalor, I hear utter sadness in recalling the day that the former Treasurer stood at the dispatch box and we saw the end of the car manufacturing industry in this country. They recall it with sadness because of the number of local jobs that have been lost and will be lost as those things wind back across this country. As empathetic as I am to the member for Herbert, I wonder where he was that day and what conversations he had with the Treasurer about jobs in my electorate, jobs across Melbourne and jobs across Adelaide.

We are supposedly talking tonight about the appropriations bills. But in my office, from where I have been listening, I have heard lectures on the Labor Party's negative gearing policy, which was released, I think, a week ago. I have heard an in-depth discussion about the opposition's policy about negative gearing. I have heard a pitch for Townsville and about an argument Townsville is having with the state government. I have heard very little, however, about MYEFO. I have heard very little about the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook from those opposite in this debate that has ranged for hours. I am not surprised at all that those opposite do not want to mention MYEFO. Our new Prime Minister did not want to come and talk after MYEFO was released either. I think he went into hiding for three or four days around that time.

The reason no-one over on that side wants to talk about MYEFO or wants to talk about the appropriation bills and the spends and the cuts that are in those bills is that it would show up their clear lack of an economic plan. It would show clearly that they are in disarray when it comes to planning for this country's economy, and it would show that this new Prime Minister has a clear penchant for saying one thing and then doing another—on education funding, on marriage equality, on negative gearing, on climate change, on the republic. What this Prime Minister says and what he does are two completely different things. He says one thing and he does another.

These appropriation bills seek to appropriate $2.2 billion in 2015-16, yet I hear very little about what that money will be used for. They reflect the changes to the budget that were shown in the MYEFO which was released by this government on 15 December 2015. It showed a continued deterioration of the budget and the economy under what is now the Abbott-Turnbull government, as well as highlighting the lack of an economic plan. If we have a look at what MYEFO told us, the deficit is higher, a blow-out of $26 billion over the forward estimates. That is $120 million a day between the 2015-16 budget and the 2015-16 MYEFO. Net debt for 2016-17 is nearly $100 billion higher than what was forecast in the 2013 PEFO before these people came into government. I do remember the former Treasurer and how often he said, 'Let me say that number again'. So: $100 billion.

We have gross debt headed to $550 billion by the end of the forward estimates. Economic growth is slashed. And this is on the back of figures that show the deterioration of the economy under this government: living standards, as measured by net disposable income per capita, falling for six consecutive quarters; capital expenditure falling, with a broad-based decline, not just in the mining sector; and consumer and business confidence at levels far lower than what they were when this government took office.

It is a sad state of affairs, so I am not surprised that we have not had a lot of positive contributions on the bills from those opposite. This lack of any kind of economic plan for this country under our new Prime Minister and new Treasurer was also highlighted so dramatically for the Australian public. And the best quote, after last week's Press Club address from Treasurer Morrison—the 46-minute speech at the National Press Club, where most analysts have said very little, if anything at all—came from Laura Tingle's article. She put it this way:

… in his first address to the press club, the Treasurer still seems stuck ... between this reality and the daydream that simply by being in government the Coalition will make things better.

Well, I think it is fair to say that MYEFO has put paid to that. And why has it? Because MYEFO locked in and told us clearly that under Prime Minister Turnbull this government has not changed direction, despite the public completely rejecting the 2014 budget, despite the government's not being able to get most of those measures through the Senate—because they are unfair, because they will send this country backwards, because they will build more inequity and inequality into this country and drain our prosperity at the same time. It locked in $23 billion in cuts to education. It confirmed that the Turnbull government was going to continue down the Abbott road of negating the steps we were taking towards a wonderful education system—the funding that was going to be used to take us back to be leaders internationally in education. It locked those cuts in. It told us clearly and it told the Australian public clearly that despite the review led by David Gonski that said that above all the additional investment needed to implement a schooling resource standard is necessary because without it the high cost of poor educational outcomes will become an even greater drag on Australia's social and economic development in the future. The need for the additional expenditure and the application of what those funds can do is urgent. Australia will only slip further behind unless, as a nation, we act—and we act now.

That was in 2011. It is now 2016, and all we are getting from those opposite is, 'Throwing money at education won't fix it,' dismissing everything that review found. And this government and this Prime Minister and this Treasurer have locked that in. Labor's plan would see us implement, continuing into the future, needs-based funding, evidence-based practices and improvement. On superannuation, again, we have seen a cut to the low-income superannuation contribution that would have given a majority of women and low-income earners a boost to their superannuation. Instead, what do we get this week? We get a kite being flown—I hope it's a kite!—to suggest that this government is going to undermine Australia's superannuation scheme.

Then we had today one after the other in here talking about Labor's negative gearing plan. On this side of the chamber we have over 50 policies on the floor going into this election, and in this chamber today I have not heard anybody stand up on the other side and defend the economic plan of those opposite—because there is no economic plan. Interestingly, while they talk about Labor's negative gearing policy, they forget to mention the grandfathering. They leave that part of the story outside the door. The facts about Labor's negative gearing plan are that it will raise revenue and, at the same time, it will ensure that we get new housing stock without impacting on those who already use those investment practices and negative-gearing practices and without any negative impact on those Australians who are already involved in those ways.

What we have seen from this Prime Minister is simply that there are no new ideas on the table. He talks about everything being on the table but very little is being said about any of those things on the table. And we see a MYEFO that locks in cuts to education. The other thing it locked in was the $57 billion cut to health. In Victoria that means $73 million is ripped away from Victorian public hospital patients on top of the $17.7 billion to the Victorian hospitals over the next 10 years. This is going to impact on people's lives on the ground. What does that translate to for emergency department visits? What impact is that going to have on our hospitals? This is after a failed attempt to undermine Medicare through the GP tax. Of course, still on the table and still being discussed are cuts to Medicare through pathology and imaging.

This is a government that wants to take the shortcuts, the easy ways, to solve what they perceive to be economic problems, but all of their answers come down to dividing this country, to hurting the most vulnerable and to putting more onus on low- and middle-income earners—taxpayers in this country—to do with less, without touching the top-end of town. Australians have seen through this and this debate today has highlighted that for Australians. Yesterday's headlines about the proposition that we could allow low-income earners to opt out of superannuation—well it's a game, isn't it? We have families losing up to $5,000, some more, from the changes this government wants to see in family tax benefits—$100 a week out of your hand but that's okay because we will give you $63 back by saying you can opt out of superannuation. There is a $40 difference between $100 and $60 and, long-term, those low-income workers would see themselves without superannuation into the future.

In my electorate we already have a lot of people in their 50s looking for work. If you project that, a young person today who says, 'I don't want super; I want that $60 in my hand, today,' where will they be when they are 55? A retirement age of 70 and you have lost your job at 55 and you have no superannuation. Where are they going to be? It is short-sighted, it is an easy option, it sounds good on a front page but the bottom line is that this government is too lazy to do the hard work on the economy, to do the hard things in the economy, to find the solutions and to have the real conversation with the Australian public. Instead of that, they say everything is on the table until things become too political or too hard to leave them on the table and then they throw them off the table and come up with something else to put on the table.

We know, and this debate has highlighted it, that this Prime Minister says one thing and does another. We know because he has locked in the $23 billion cuts to education and yet stands at the despatch box day after day and talks about innovation. You cannot have innovation without funding education. It just won't work; it defies logic. We hear words like 'agile'. Well, they are very agile at throwing things off the table when they become politically hard but they are not very agile when it comes to getting together and thinking through hard economic decisions and putting a plan forward. We have a government without a jobs plan, without a plan for this country's economic future, and we have a government that wants to always talk about the past but, conveniently, denies a global financial crisis in that past. We have a government that doubled the deficit, in the first instance, and has wreaked havoc on the economy, since. That is what MYEFO told us. Although Labor will not block supply and will support the appropriation bills, those opposite need to start thinking about what those bills mean.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a mind-boggling address by the previous speaker, the member for Lalor. We get a lecture about the debt of the country and how it needs to be restrained and that it is an issue and the problems with that and, then, we get that nothing should be restrained as far as spending goes. So I do not know quite how that works. I want to make one point about the previous speaker's contribution: we have increased spending on health, we have increased spending on education and we have increased spending on welfare, every year, that we have been in government for the last two or three years. In the forward estimates we are increasing spending as well. Yes, we are not increasing them as much as you and others would like, because of the situation you so eloquently described at the start with our debt-and-deficit issue.

Everyone in this chamber would say that governments need to spend money in areas that promote jobs in our economy, promote growth in our economy, because from that, obviously, you get more tax to collect from a growing economy and people in more jobs. One thing that we have done exceptionally well is target our spending on some very productive and growth and job orientated infrastructure projects. One of them that is especially important to my area and my region is the Pacific Highway. The previous Labor government went to the 2013 election putting $3.5 billion on the table to complete that exceptionally important infrastructure project.

But that was not enough, because they wanted to back out on a deal they had with the previous state Labor government. The federal Labor government was funding this infrastructure project at 80 per cent and the previous state Labor government was funding the project at 20 per cent. But—lo and behold!—when the state Labor government lost office the previous federal Labor government said, 'Well, we don't want to fund it at 80 per cent anymore; we want to fund it at 50 per cent.' That is a very unfortunate and cynical view of a very important infrastructure project.

So with the help and, obviously, with the cooperation of the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Warren Truss, we negotiated that if we were to win government in the 2013 election we would in fact reinstate the 80-20 funding rule on this very important infrastructure project. Madam Deputy Speaker Henderson—and welcome to the chair!—what that meant for this very important infrastructure project was that the funding went back to an 80-20 split, which was very important, but very importantly it meant that the project was now on target to be finished by 2019.

We all know why these things are important. With the dual duplication of the highway between Sydney and Brisbane the primary reason we do that—and I know that you would know this, Madam Deputy Speaker, as a regional MP—is for safety on our roads. The duplication of the highway has already halved fatalities on that highway from what they once were—even though it is not finished, but just with the section that has occurred, and even with the increased traffic and more people driving on the roads. The fatalities have halved because of the section that has been duplicated. We know that when the dual duplication is finished—there are about 155 kilometres of it to go in my electorate, between Woolgoolga to Ballina—fatalities will decrease even further. That meant an extra $2 billion from this federal government over what the Labor government was going to commit to it, and it has seen a lot of work happen on that highway in the last two years.

The other things that we are also doing are through a program that I am very proud of—and that the Nationals, in conjunction with the Liberal Party, are very proud of—the National Stronger Regions Program. Madam Deputy Speaker—again, I know that you would know this as a regional MP—that is delivering and targeting jobs and growth in regional areas. I just want to go through a few projects which were successful in getting up in the last round in my community and region. They are going to be good for jobs and good for growth.

One of them was an upgrade to the local saleyards at the Northern Rivers Livestock Exchange in Casino. That is a $3.5 million investment. This is an exceptionally important piece of infrastructure for our local economy. Casino being the beef capital of Australia, this piece of infrastructure is essential. In fact, across the road from the saleyards is the local Northern Cooperative Meatworks. They are the biggest private employer for hundreds of kilometres. They employ around 1,200 people and, obviously, they need well-resourced saleyards to get the stock and produce through into the abattoir. That was a great announcement, again, to help local jobs and local growth in our economy.

Another one in the most recent round: we all know the importance of the sugar industry. I see the member for Hinkler in here and he would well know, as a very knowledgeable man about the sugar industry in Australia, that the Harwood Mill and Refinery also received $4 million. This was to improve freight and logistics. They are a co-op. The local cane growers association was the entity that put that application in, Assistant Minister Pitt, and that very successful application is helping their freight logistics operations. This will help to lower the price for which they are going to be able to get their product out of their area.

It is not just the 100 or so people who work at the mill. As you would well understand, Madam Deputy President, it is the growers—and there are many of those in the region—the drivers, the carters and the local communities where those workers live. Again, this is all helping job security in my region. It was another very successful application and a great job and growth project for my region.

The other one was a road to Toonumbar Dam. I encourage you to come for a holiday to the Northern Rivers in New South Wales, Madam Deputy Speaker—it is a beautiful area. In fact, I know where you live; you probably should come up in the winter time—

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Corangamite is very beautiful!

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it is very beautiful. I have been there—the Twelve Apostles and the Ocean Road are all lovely. I do not even mind watching Geelong play football, although they are on a bit of a downward spiral! But I encourage you to come up in winter time—it is much warmer! We do not get those bitterly cold southerly winds up there, so I encourage you to visit.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The sun always shines in Corangamite, thank you very much!

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the clouds are there, it is just behind the clouds! Toonumbar Dam is a very important piece of infrastructure for Kyogle. The Toonumbar Dam is absolutely beautiful. It has a gravel road at the moment, but a lot of tourists go out there. It is very popular with campers and families, who go to the dam and, obviously, use it for water recreation sports and other things. In this program we gave Kyogle a million dollars to upgrade that road. It has tourism potential, and we know that when tourists come they spend money. We know that piece of infrastructure is going to be very important to the Kyogle region.

There is more: the Lismore Quadrangle project, which received $2.8 million. It is an old disused secondary school building in the middle of Lismore. It is really looking quite decrepit. It has not been used for many decades and really is a bit of a blight on the landscape. But there is a magnificent plan to completely revitalise that with an art gallery and to revitalise the whole square around it. It adjoins the city library and the conservatorium of music. It is really going to revitalise that section of the CBD of Lismore. Of course, we know that the Margaret Ollie Art Gallery in our local region, further north on the Tweed, has really encouraged a different type of tourist—a different type of person—to visit the region. So there are many exciting things which are going to happen from that.

Lastly, but not least, the other one from the National Stronger Regions Fund is the Ballina Marine Rescue Tower. This is very important for the Richmond River, which meets the Pacific ocean at Ballina—a beautiful part of the world as well. It has a marine rescue tower, manned by volunteers who keep it going. But it is in great disrepair—in fact it had to be closed, and the volunteers have to do their jobs not in that building because it was deemed unsafe. That was not okay. They got $850,000 to completely redo it. Obviously, that will mean a lot for our fishing industry—there is a fleet of trawlers in Ballina—in being able to get out over the bar. The Ballina bar is an exceptionally dangerous bar, so it is an important piece of infrastructure for that industry and also for the tourism industry—obviously, people who want to go boating and those types of things. So it is a great program at the top of things the federal government should do in maintaining infrastructure in job and growth related investments.

The other one—and, again, you would know about this program, Madam Deputy Speaker—is the Bridges Renewal Program. The Bridges Renewal Program is very important to a lot of our local councils, especially in my region. The region is called the Northern Rivers; we get a lot of rain. When you have a lot of rain, you have a lot of creeks, a lot of streams and a lot of rivers. One particular council in my region—Kyogle, which is quite a small council as far as ratepayer base goes—has over 200 wooden bridges, and a lot of them are around 50 or 60 years old. The council does have a maintenance program with them but it is a very stressful program for them to maintain those bridges. The Nationals are very proud with our coalition to put money into this type of infrastructure.

Our Bridges Renewal Program is a new program for this parliament. It was not in existence, and we very strongly lobbied for it. I was delighted to announce just a few weeks ago that in the second round of this program Kyogle put in an application for seven bridges and got approval for them all. The Lions Road is an amazing story. The Lions Road is a shortcut for people to get from Kyogle through to Brisbane. It was built by the community. It was not built by the government or the state government. There is a wonderful family in Kyogle: the Hurleys. Jim Hurley is a legend in that region. They basically said, 'Look, we can take a lot of travel time off getting from Kyogle to Brisbane,' so a number of decades ago they just built it. They got their machinery out, cleared a path and built a road. It was not an easy road to build, because it went up over hills, mountains, creeks and streams. It was a big effort. But obviously some of these bridges are now in need of repair. There are six of them on that road. It is very important for tourism; there are a lot of bike riders, motorbike riders and other tourists who do that trip down through that beautiful region. When you do come, I will point it out to you so you do not miss that bit, and you will admire some new bridges, Madam Deputy Speaker.

There are many others. We have put money into CCTV cameras. From my election promises, I know we have put money into health infrastructure. In fact, the previous member promised some money to an emergency department at the Casino & District Memorial Hospital. I did not. I actually gave some money to the Ballina District Hospital because it needed a new operating theatre and some new imaging equipment. I made a promise for that, and after being successful in the 2013 election the Casino hospital people range me and said, 'Kevin, you haven't promised this one, but come out and have a look.' And I did; I went out and had a look at the emergency department at Casino and saw just how badly needed that piece of infrastructure was. It was a $3 million investment that needed to be made. I approached the then Minister for Health, the member for Dickson, Peter Dutton, and he was very generous and wisely saw the need for that infrastructure spend. We matched that promise even though we had not made it through the election campaign.

Governments have a big responsibility, and appropriation bills are very important. We talk about sustainability when we talk about the environment, ecology, our future, our grandchildren and our children. We talk about the fact that we need to leave things for them, that we are borrowing things on their behalf and are custodians for this. We are custodians for our children's and our grandchildren's finance. With appropriation bills we need to look at the sustainability of our economy and the sustainability of the government's finances. So, yes, as a politician, we love running around handing out money, but we have to be very wise and very prudent with it. We have to give it to projects that are good infrastructure or good jobs- and growth-building projects. But we cannot hand over to our children dirty streams, dirty rivers or land that has been ruined and we cannot hand over to our children or our grandchildren finances that have ruined the country and have put a tax burden on them because of the debt that we have run up and the interest expenses on that. We need to talk much more about sustainability when we talk about appropriation bills and finance. I thank you for the opportunity.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity tonight to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2015-2016. These bills seek to appropriate $2.2 billion in 2015-16, reflecting the changes in the budget that were outlined in the 2015-16 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which was released by the government in December last year. But it is not what is included in these bills that makes them interesting; it is what is missing. Missing from these bills is the same thing that was missing from the Treasurer's address at the National Press Club last Wednesday—the Treasurer's address where we got yet again a lecture, a contextualising, as he called it, another statement on the current state of the economy and the challenges we are facing, as if Australians and Canberrans were not aware of that. We got all that but not much else from the Treasurer at the National Press Club last week. It is the same thing that was missing from the Prime Minister's diatribes in question time today and it is what is missing from this government's rhetoric generally every day. That is vision.

A vision for this country, a vision for our future prosperity is absent. Last week the Treasurer spent, what, 47 minutes at the National Press Club. I think he spent 10 minutes in addition to that time thanking all the people who were involved in the development of what was his speech, although it did just seem like a lecture and a continuation of a conversation that he had been having since September last year. But he did not provide any detail, any vision, any plan for our future prosperity.

There are many question marks. This is the government that actually started the conversation with the nation about the fact that we need innovation, the fact that we need science, the fact that we need to be agile and excited. There are still question marks from this government. Even though they have been carping from the sidelines about what we are doing, there are plenty of question marks about what is going on with the capital gains tax.

We heard from the Prime Minister today on capital gains tax. But what is the government's position on capital gains tax? Are there going to be changes? They have been dangling this tax reform plan for months now, and so far we have zip—zero—in terms of detail. So what is the deal with capital gains tax? Are there going to be changes?

What is the deal with negative gearing? Are there going to be changes? Again, there is plenty of carping from the sidelines by this government about what we are doing in terms of our plans, but what is their plan? What is your plan, Prime Minister? What is your vision for this country? What is your vision for our future prosperity?

What is the plan on superannuation? Are there going to be changes on superannuation? Again, it is one big question mark, as it is with tax reform generally. There is lots of chatter. There are lots of conversations. There is lots of contextualising about the fact that we face a challenge as a nation. Yes, we do; but what is the plan? There are lots of questions being raised. There are lots of problems being put out there, but what is the plan? Where are the solutions? There are none from this government. It has no vision for this country. It has no plan for how it is going to ensure our future prosperity.

Contrast that with Labor. We have outlined a very clear vision for our country—50-plus policies—and a very clear vision that was outlined in our national conference last year. Our vision is one where the government will stand up for middle- and working-class families rather than attack them, which is what this government has done since that cruel budget of 2014, which cut into our social fabric and our DNA. We will stand up for working class families and we will stand up for middle class families, rather than attack them.

A Labor government will put people first; with better pay and protected jobs; with better schools and better teachers; a healthier Australia; a 50 per cent renewable energy target, including driving more solar. Labor has a plan. We have outlined our education policy, 'Your Child. Our Future', making sure a needs based school funding model is here to stay.

We have outlined how we will improve the budget by cracking down on multinational tax avoidance, by cracking down on superannuation tax breaks for the very rich, by abolishing the Abbott-Turnbull government Emissions Reduction Fund. And last week we announced that a Shorten Labor government will deliver the most important structural budget reform in a decade, that will help fund health and education, bring some fairness back into the housing market and underwrite our nation's future. Labor will reform negative gearing and the capital gains tax subsidies to ensure that our tax system is fair and sustainable and to ensure that it targets jobs and growth.

We want to level the playing field so first home owners can compete with investors' housing supply, while creating tens of thousands of new construction jobs. We will limit negative gearing to new housing from 1 July 2017. All current investments and any made before this date will not—and I emphasise that—be affected by this change and will be fully grandfathered. No matter what scare campaigns the government is running on this issue, those investments will not be affected by this change and they will be fully grandfathered.

Labor will halve the capital gains tax subsidy for assets purchased after 1 July 2017, and this will reduce the capital gains tax discount for assets that are held longer than 12 months, from the current 50 per cent to 25 per cent. All investments made before this date will not be affected by this change and will be fully grandfathered, no matter what scare campaign is being run by the government. As I said, all investments made before this date will not be affected by this change and will be fully grandfathered.

In contrast, those opposite have no vision. As I said, it is just lots of contextualising, lots of conversations and lots of waiting with bated breath since September last year—no vision, no clarity. There is lots of outlining of the challenges, but not solutions. Just months out from an election, we have a government with no plan.

Today I want to talk a bit about what this government's lack of plans and lack of vision is doing to my electorate of Canberra. If you surveyed the residents of Tuggeranong in my electorate of Canberra, probably one of their No. 1 frustrations with this government would be the fact that they have no certainty about when the NBN is being rolled out—in fact, I am sure you would get a unanimous response. Particularly in the southern part of the electorate, down in the Tuggeranong Valley, their No. 1 frustration would be having no access to NBN and really poor internet access in terms of availability and speed.

Under Labor, every home in the ACT would have had access to a world-class fibre-to-the-premises version of the NBN. But, under this government—despite being the national capital, despite being home to government, despite being home to Defence, despite being home to world-leading universities, despite being home to cultural and scientific institutions—under this Prime Minister, large parts of Canberra are not even on the NBN rollout map. They are not even there. It is just one big blank page in the southern part of my electorate. They are not even on the NBN rollout map. This is despite the fact that these are suburbs that have the lowest rating in the country for both availability and quality of broadband. It is despite the fact that the now Prime Minister originally promised that all homes and businesses would have the NBN by the end of this year.

It is 2016, and Canberrans cannot even find themselves on the map. They are not even potentially recognised as an option in the near future. They are not even there on the map. Let me tell you that they are very angry, particularly down in the Tuggeranong Valley. They are fed up with this second-rate service. In the last couple of months—particularly since I held a forum on NBN last year—I have been inundated with complaints about the terrible internet service Canberrans are currently receiving.

I have also been inundated in recent weeks about the terrible service that iiNet has been providing to Canberrans. I am putting it on the record now; I am taking a very close look at iiNet because, from what I can gather from people in my electorate, the service that iiNet is providing is suboptimal, to say the least—and that is being diplomatic.

I want to read from what some of my constituents have to say about the NBN. This is from Alan; I got it last week:

… I recently moved house, mind you it was literally across the road … At the old property we would achieve ADSL2+ speeds of a poor 4.8mbps down. Sadly I have not got similar speeds as you would expect at the property across the road. On average we only pull about 0.20mbps down and 0.01 up—

And he has given me a screen shot here.

To rub salt into the wound, VDSL2 is available in Fisher through iiNet (TransACTs network). They have confirmed that there is fibre running through the street our cul-de-sac runs off. They have informed me that I am a little over 200m from their 'super node', which would mean that I would be able to get download speeds of close to 80mbps. Problem—they will not upgrade the network into our cul-de-sac. So for me to get access to reliable internet they have advised me that I can pay for the infrastructure, costing $10,366.35 (ex GST), to have them connect the block of 4 units I live in to VDSL2. Who has a spare $10,366.35 (ex GST) to upgrade the internet to a property they rent? Certainly not us!

…   …   …

This is what the Turnbull Government is leaving Canberrans with. Barely usable broadband on the old outdated copper network and leaving many Canberra residents in the dark ages. On top of this they—

That is, the connecting people—

want to connect us to the antiquated … failing copper network.

…   …   …

Our current connection speed causes us many issues. My Husband is self employed. He is contracted to a major Retailer designing kitchens. Our current connection makes it virtually impossible for him to send and receive the files that he needs to as part of his work. Additionally, he is studying architecture full-time at UC. This means at there are times, even at early hours of the morning, he must drive to the University Campus to access their network to download and send his files. Does Mr Turnbull have to travel at 2 or 3 am in the morning to access reliable internet? I guessing not!

I have also had to delay and withdraw from the University degree I was studying via Distance Education. I commenced a Bachelor of Counter Terrorism Security and Intelligence through Edith Cowan University, Joondalup Campus WA. However, our current speeds prevent me from being able to access my online lectures and tutorials. When I am able to download them, on average it took 2 days to download a single lecture!

Two days! We are talking about the nation's capital here. We are talking about a suburb that is probably 20 minutes from where we are the moment—from Parliament House. It took Alan two days to download a single lecture.

Its time Mr Turnbull realised that he has failed when it comes to the FTTN NBN he is rolling out. His priorities in for the rollout are misplaced. Its an embarrassment for the Nations capital to have speeds such as mine. Why are areas with reliable ADSL being prioritised over areas like Fisher?

There we have one of my constituents talking about the challenges that they and their family are facing with regard to NBN.

Here is another, Melanie:

My family lived in Theodore for 7 years and we now live in Calwell. My 3 children go to the local schools and my husband runs a small business from a home office. I am a public servant, I study part time and I often work from home. Slow Internet has a real impact on our day to day lives, our ability to contribute to the economy and our educations. We are a hard working family and we make a genuine contribution through our taxes. Our lives are increasingly reliant on the internet and three years is too long for us to have to wait to have this fixed.

These are just some of the constituents in my electorate who are suffering, who cannot participate in educational opportunities, who cannot participate in small-business opportunities and who cannot participate in active citizenry because of the fact that they are not even on the map and also because of the second-rate system that they are getting as a result of this government.

It is not only the NBN where this government is letting down the people of my electorate. The Abbott and Turnbull governments have shown complete disdain for our nation's capital. This has been made crystal clear in the few parliamentary sitting weeks we have had, so far, this year. We have seen cuts to our national cultural institutions. Most recently, earlier this month it was announced that 350 more jobs would be slashed at CSIRO over the next two years. These jobs are in the area of climate science, and we have learnt today that these job cuts may mean we are breaching our obligations under the Paris agreement on climate change. Since these cuts were announced we have heard from thousands of scientists pointing out that cutting CSIRO's measuring and monitoring capacity will have a devastating impact on Australia's ability to understand and respond to climate change.

This is the damage that this government has inflicted on Canberra this year alone. So much for innovation. So much for agility. So much for a commitment to science. Since 2013 we have seen 8½ thousand Public Service jobs slashed in Canberra alone. The Abbott-Turnbull government has not just presented no vision for my electorate but it has actively hurt my electorate and my community, time and time again. There is no vision for this community—no vision for Canberra, our nation's capital. In fact, for Canberra it is about cuts and contempt. (Time expired)

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

I like the member for Canberra. She is a good friend of mine even though she represents the wrong side of politics. I just want to give the member for Canberra a bit of hope that there is a vision for this country. It is summed up very succinctly. I know the member for Canberra has a busy schedule so I will get this out of the way quickly, so she can move on to other things.

For this government the vision is about lower taxes, lower spending, economic growth, jobs and innovation. Your vision on the other side is for higher taxes and higher spending. That is what Labor has only ever represented—higher taxes and higher spending. When they were last in government that is all we saw—six years of higher taxes and higher spending. It leaves us—this current government—with the job of fixing the budget. So thank you, member for Canberra, for your contribution to this debate.

Earlier, the member for Lalor, in her contribution, referred to 50 measures that are on the table by those opposite. It is interesting to reflect that most of them are not savings. They are not savings at all. Those opposite have developed this wonderful capacity to turn the term 'savings' into tax increases. They spent six years perfecting that technique and they still roll it out today. They say, 'We're going to make all of these wonderful savings. We're going to improve the budget bottom line.' But the end result for the Australian people is higher taxes and higher spending.

As the member for Page quite rightly pointed out in his contribution, we have a duty—not only for the current generation but for future generations in this country—to leave this country in a sound financial and economic condition. We will leave an inheritance for those future generations. The question is: what is the inheritance that we will leave? Will it be it one that is positive, that allows those future generations to move forward in growing the country and realising the great opportunities this country presents? Or will it be an inheritance that those opposite would like to see, full of debt and deficit and higher spending and higher taxes, which those future generations will have to deal with and pay for?

There is a clear difference between this government and those opposite, in that, as the Australian economy undergoes a transition from the mining and construction boom to an economy that is built on the export of services and agriculture—and agriculture in this country has been an enormous foundation for economic wealth for decades, if not the past hundred years or longer—we are seeking to ensure that our economy, as it becomes more diversified and more innovative, actually has the financial capacity and flexibility to adjust to changing circumstances in a global environment.

In that regard, we have already started to see some of the benefits of the free trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea and, more recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I have seen locally the benefits of positive sentiment. We have seen announcements over the last little while in my electorate of Forde of multimillion dollar investments in our local communities—over $300 million in an integrated residential and commercial centre in Beenleigh, funded entirely by private investment. And there was an announcement prior to Christmas by Zarraffa's. For those of you who do not know Zarraffa's, they make wonderful coffee, so, when you are next in in Queensland and you get the opportunity, grab some great coffee at Zarraffa's. They are looking to move their global headquarters, as well as other parts of their business, to a building in my electorate of Forde, at Eagleby, right next door to the Beenleigh Rum distillery, which is the oldest operating rum distillery in Australia.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, I don't know about that!

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

The member at the table might dispute that, but I have to be partisan and support Beenleigh Rum. Beenleigh Rum has also made an enormous investment, over recent times, in a new visitor information centre and conference centre. All of this investment by private enterprise is actually what drives jobs and growth in our economy. That is the value of what we are seeking to do as a government.

What we are seeking to do as a government is to free our business community from the shackles of red tape and regulation, an inheritance left by six years of those opposite, who introduced some 21,000 new regulations. Yet, when they came to power in 2007, they promised that they would remove one regulation for every new regulation introduced. As you are well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, when you came in in 2010 we heard that ad nauseam, but it did not happen. I think they repealed some 1,000 regulations but they introduced 21,000. So the ratio was actually: for every one they repealed, they introduced 20 new ones. Not only that; they introduced the world's biggest carbon tax, which was a hammer blow to our economy. They introduced a mining tax which did not work. Those opposite were waxing lyrical earlier today about the Henry tax review. The member for Fraser spoke about it. The Henry tax review was this wonderful document that had 135 recommendations, of which they took two and completely stuffed up one of them. They introduced a new tax that raised no revenue, yet they spent billions of dollars in relation to it. Those are the issues that we are dealing with in this budget.

But also it is important to recognise the many achievements of this government to date. If I look at some of the achievements locally in the electorate of Forde, we can see over the last past couple of years some $40 million in Roads to Recovery funding for the Logan and Gold Coast city councils. Logan and Gold Coast city councils are two of the fastest-growing councils in Queensland. It is the growth corridor halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. That Roads to Recovery funding is enormously important to those councils, to ensure that they can fund the upgrades to the local road infrastructure that are required as a result of this continuing growth of population.

We have also provided some $29 million in financial assistance grants to the Logan and Gold Coast city councils. Importantly, we provided $10 million for the upgrading of Exit 54 at Upper Coomera, an interchange that had ground to a halt through the sheer volume of traffic going through it. The Queensland government also contributed to that project, as did private enterprise. That is the value of governments working together, along with private enterprise, to build key community infrastructure requirements. That project is now about halfway to completion. Whilst, as we all know, there come some frustrations at times with roadworks, the community is extraordinarily pleased that this project is actually proceeding. Not only will it create jobs locally during the construction phase; it will also facilitate a significant new large investment by Westfield and QIC in building the Coomera Town Centre, which will be a large new retail space that will create even more job opportunities for local young people, in particular, to gain part-time or casual jobs, and, more importantly, for older people in the community to gain full-time work.

In Beenleigh, through the National Stronger Regions Fund, some $3 million was funded by the federal government to the upgrade of the Beenleigh town square. That has been a fantastic success. With the Eats & Beats festival already there, and a number of other community activities, it has been extraordinarily well received. And currently in the square we have a mobile food van teaching people how to eat and cook healthily, and certainly that is a key issue in my community. Also I want to commend the current state government for the $1.2 million they have put in to upgrade the facade of the Beenleigh courthouse to better link it into the Beenleigh town square.

There are many things that this government has been doing not only on the national level but also in our local communities. I would also like to touch on the $1 million that we have contributed to the local community for the CCTV cameras for the Safer Streets program. That program has been extraordinarily well received. As part of that rollout, Logan City Council invested a very significant amount of money upgrading their CCTV monitoring room so that they can monitor all of the CCTV cameras.

This government is focused on creating the framework and the opportunities for our businesses and communities to grow. Through our innovation strategy announced prior to Christmas we have seen innovative businesses in the electorate of Forde, particularly in the Yatala Enterprise Area where we have a number of terrific innovative businesses, building on their already existing exporting activities to the world. And in that process, as they build their businesses, they are partnering with our local schools to train school based apprentices in the skills they require for their businesses specifically.

This creates the opportunity for these grade 11 and 12 students at our local schools, when they leave school, to have the opportunity to get a job straight off the bat. There is nothing more important than our youth, who are the future business owners and leaders in our communities. It is important that, as they go through the education system and leave school, they have the opportunity to go to university. If they are not inclined towards academic study, it is equally important that those who have a propensity and a love for the trades, whose eyes light up when they have a hammer or a screwdriver in their hand, have their talents recognised. They are equally as important as those that seek to go to university, because the university lecturer or university professor cannot lecture in a lecture hall if we do not have the tradespeople in our community to build those lecture theatres. They build our roads, our infrastructure and our houses, and often we do overlook the value and importance of our tradespeople. It is our tradespeople who actually build this country, and we should recognise and honour their work as much as we recognise and honour the work of our great professors and scientists and others who have been through the university system, our great academics. They too are wonderful people, but it is our tradespeople who actually build this country and build the opportunities for others to do what they are so successful in doing.

It is always a pleasure to speak on appropriation bills and reflect on the importance of ensuring that we have a budget that is sustainable and manageable for the long term for the future benefit of all people in this country, not just for select groups. I commend this bill to the House.

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

I rise to speak in relation to the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2015-2016. These two bills appropriate some $2.2 billion of additional expenditure across a range of portfolios, and we will support these bills because on this side of the chamber we do not block supply. I note the additional $385 million for the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, primarily for the Roads to Recovery program. That program has funded the maintenance and upgrade of many local roads in my electorate. We support it because it provides local jobs and is funded and allocated by an independent process.

In 2012, the Roads to Recovery program provided $1.6 million for the extension of Collingwood Drive, which provides such an important extension and connection between Collingwood Park and Redbank Plains. In 2013, it provided $800,000 towards the rehabilitation of a significant section of the footpath in Yamanto, not far from where I live. And in 2013 it provided $840,000 to construct a 2.1 kilometre bike pathway in Brassall.

I have always worked with the Ipswich City Council to support this particular program, and I am glad Labor supports it because I think it is a good program. I commend the government for putting money towards it. I have worked to ensure that funding has been provided properly and carried out in terms of road construction and maintenance in the council areas that I have had in my electorate and in and around them. This includes Ipswich City Council, the Somerset region, the Lockyer Valley and the Scenic Rim areas, when they were in my electorate. I look forward to Blair receiving its fair share of funding from Roads to Recovery in the future.

I do note in relation to road funding a letter to the editor of The Queensland Times by Mark Bailey, the Queensland Minister for Main Roads, Road Safety and Ports. And I ask the government to look again at the funding it once had on the table, across the forward estimates, for the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway from Darra to Rockley. In every election except the last one, I have fought opponents from the LNP and the Liberals who have always been opposed to the upgraded Ipswich motorway past Dinmore. Labor designed, built and completed the Ipswich Motorway construction, supporting up to 10,000 jobs along the way and funding it at a cost of $2.8 billion. The final section—actually nowhere near my electorate—mainly in the electorate of Moreton and some in Oxley, is absolutely crucial for the people of Ipswich and Brisbane and the whole of south-east Queensland. It is one of the projects that has been identified in the recent Infrastructure Australia report as a priority that needs to be dealt with in the next five years.

I have had some meetings with Mark Bailey and I urge the government to look again at this, because the previous Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Wide Bay, and the previous minister for cities, the member for Mayo, actually had a very different approach to Labor in so far as we supported the Ipswich Motorway upgrade. Speaking in platitudes before the last election that they would support it, they have done nothing about it for 2½ years.

On 21 July last year, the then Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Wide Bay, wrote to Mark Bailey, a Queensland minister, and said that he was directing the department to remove the funding for the project—that is, the Darra to Rocklea section. The $279 million was to kick-start the funding for the construction, particularly necessary for the design—which of course needs to be done first—between the Oxley roundabout and Suscatand Street along the Ipswich Motorway.

I asked the new Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Darren Chester, to have a look at this again—a fresh pair of eyes; I said that in TheQueensland Times. I hope he has a new perspective on this issue, because it is absolutely crucial to south-east Queensland. Infrastructure Australia says it needs to be done.

The budget appropriation bills that are before the chamber do not necessarily tell the whole story about the economy. The bills are notable in that they reflect the Turnbull government's ever-worsening budgetary position. We know that the forecast they made in the budget was laid bare in MYEFO in December last year. Of course MYEFO came three months and one day after the current Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth, offered the following justification for his coup against the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah. He said:

It is clear enough that the government is not successful in providing the economic leadership that we need.

And he added:

We need advocacy, not slogans. We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people.

After the coup, the freshly-minted Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth, said in The Financial Reviewon 14 September 2015:

We need to have in this country and we will have now, an economic vision, a leadership that explains the great challenges and opportunities that we face.

No ambiguity there, but how is that vision thing going, Prime Minister? It does not look very good now.

The new Prime Minister had scolded the former Prime Minister and his Treasurer, Mr Hockey, for their failure to provide economic leadership. He, on the other hand, could do with a good dose of economic leadership and vision. It seems that his advocacy is poor and his sloganeering is exactly the same as the member for Warringah's.

There was a great national sigh of relief when the member for Warringah was removed but, in a matter of months, it would seem that MYEFO torpedoed the fancy claims and sank the economic and fiscal credibility of this government. It exposed in gory detail the continuing deterioration of the Abbott-Turnbull government's budgetary position and that of the Australian economy.

MYEFO spoke the truth: the deficit had blown out by $26 billion across the forward estimates. To put that into perspective, the deficit had increased by $120 million each and every day between the 2015 budget in May and the 2015 MYEFO in December—and this from a government that has never been shy of spruiking its supposed economic credentials.

The 2015 MYEFO also revealed the net debt for 2016-17 was nearly $100 billion higher than forecast in the 2013 pre-election fiscal outlook statement or PEFO—and PEFO is important, because it is the last independent statement on the Australian economy issued by Treasury prior to the election of the Abbott government. The 2013 PEFO is untouched by the incoming government and reports the true state of the Australian economy when the Labor government left office.

The 2015 MYEFO forecast gross debt zoomed to $550 billion by the end of the forward estimates, but the bad news in MYEFO was not limited to the whole economy: in my shadow portfolio areas of Indigenous affairs, through the 2015-16 MYEFO, the Turnbull government found another way to rip even more money from Indigenous programs. Not content with getting rid of $534 million through the Indigenous affairs portfolio across the forward estimates, the government then decided to provide some form of indexation in the budget just to soften people up by saying, 'We are putting money back into Indigenous affairs.' So they put in an indexation provision in the budget which would provide $17.8 million of indexation funding for organisations delivering vital front-line services to Indigenous communities.

So what did the government do? Having ripped $534 million out and saying, 'We'll put $17.8 million back across the forward estimates,' they then took that $17.8 million out again in MYEFO in December. The cruel irony is that this money had been promised to salve the wounds of what had been happening with front-line services and jobs being slashed across the board in Indigenous affairs—services providing help for Indigenous people such as art shows; the Aboriginal and Community Controlled Health Organisations, which copped another cut in the last budget; funding for front-line services; language; culture; and a whole range of programs that were necessary to close the gap. We saw how bad the Closing the Gap outcome was last time parliament met where only two—just maybe—of the targets were being met.

It was in the area of aged care where the Turnbull government was most savage, bringing the total Abbott-Turnbull cuts to a staggering $1.8 billion since they came to power in September 2013. MYEFO cut $472.4 million from aged-care support pay to aged-care providers for complex care needs, including those living with dementia in residential aged-care facilities. Of the people over 65 years of age, we have the situation where only seven per cent have that high-care need and are living in residential facilities. Often they are people with dementia or with really complex issues. The government ripped $472 million out of MYEFO for the aged-care providers who care for those extremely vulnerable people. It is just cruel and heartless what they did in MYEFO.

Then they cut $595 million from the health and aged-care workforce programs. The facts clearly show that those programs were successful. That included the Aged Care Education and Training Incentive Program and the aged-care vocational education and training professional development programs. This is about people upgrading their skills—carers and assistant nurses who want to upgrade their skills to become an enrolled nurse or a registered nurse. These programs were incredibly successful. The take-up rate was very, very high.

The cuts to aged-care workforce development were extremely brutal because they came days after the government released its much delayed stock take of the Commonwealth funded workforce development initiative. After the government got rid of the aged-care workforce supplement, to say they were going to do something about the development of the workforce in aged care, they said, 'We'd better do a stock take of the Commonwealth funded initiatives.' Why they couldn't do that in a matter of days is beyond me. It took them over 500 days to actually get around to doing this. Labor kept asking again and again why they had not released this. Then they decided to say, 'Right, we're releasing this because it will form the basis of a strategy going forward to address the challenge in aged care because we know we are going to have to nearly treble the aged-care workforce in the next few decades.' That was the pretext, the excuse.

What really happened is the stock take provided the premise and the basis for the government to actually cut the funding in MYEFO for the very training programs that it was assessing in the stock take. So through this whole process, the government was deceiving providers, consumers, the opposition—everyone. They were doing the stock take so they could make the cuts. That is what they did.

On top of the $472 million they cut from the residential aged-care providers who care for Australia's most vulnerable and ill people, they decided that they would cut $595 billion and merge the health and aged-care workforce initiative. They cut funding entirely—$595 million. That was the cruellest part of MYEFO. That is what they did. It was deceptive and deceitful what the government did across this area. It showed that the stock take was all about cost cutting and not about a comprehensive strategy to address the workforce crisis. We know this because, in answers at Senate estimates, the government have now backed off the idea of developing a workforce strategy and said that the market will determine it. The market has not worked.

As well, the NACA process has not worked, because the government have not engaged with the providers in the way they need to. They have not engaged the unions, who are so important in the process. They have not engaged COTA or National Seniors. They need to sit down and develop an aged-care workforce strategy. We have an ageing workforce. We have the situation where people who work in residential aged care are paid so much less than those who work in, say, a public hospital. We need to provide an incentive. We need to develop a workforce strategy and it needs to be a collaboration between providers, consumer groups and unions. And we need the government to show the leadership. This government is failing to show leadership. They are making harsh cuts and showing no leadership across this space.

There is a deficit in innovation in the aged-care workforce strategy. The government talks about innovation, but when it comes to this, why won't the government be up-front and honest? Instead, after MYEFO the government labelled the aged-care providers who were delivering the services as rorters. They labelled them as rorters in the national media. These aged-care providers are helping older Australians. The government have a lot to answer for in MYEFO. Once again, it goes to show they have no regard for Indigenous affairs nor for the aged-care workforce strategy, which they needed to undertake.

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

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and cognate bill. These bills seek authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for this financial year. The total of the appropriations being sought through these two bills is just over $2.2 billion. The bills detail pages and pages of expenditure and savings, but there are a number that are particularly relevant to my electorate and I would like to highlight them today.

These bills allocate $60 million over two years for round 2 of the very successful Mobile Black Spot Program—something that was actually cut after Labor came to government in 2007. In Leichhardt, we had a high level of community engagement in round 1 of this program and we were successful in getting $2.19 million for three new or upgraded mobile phone base stations at Speewah, Coen airport and Bamaga Island in the Torres Strait. These three stations alone will boost reception at 19 black spots.

Nominations for black spots under round 2 closed in mid-January and more than 50 submissions have been received. Black spots ranged from areas such as the outer suburbs of Cairns to north of Mossman, particularly the Mossman Daintree Road and north of the Daintree River through to Cape Tribulation and the Lion's Den and Rossville. Mount Carbine was identified again along with the townships of Portland Roads, Aurukun and Weipa. I commend Kylie Fell and the Western Cape Chamber of Commerce for being very active in rallying public support, and I look forward to hearing the outcomes of this round.

The White paper on developing northern Australia was released in June last year, just nine months ago. We have already seen the Office of Northern Australia being set up in Darwin; the appointment of an interim chair, John Wharton AO, to establish the new Co-operative Research Centre for Northern Australia; the strengthening of critical biosecurity measures and Indigenous ranger teams. In addition, we have seen the release of the exposure draft legislation for the $5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility for projects such as the Mt Isa to Tennant Creek railway, Townsville Port expansion, upgrade to Cairns airport and the expansion of the Outback Highway linking Western Australia to Queensland. We also welcomed 350 investors from over 20 countries who came together in Darwin last year to focus on opportunities that we have in northern Australia—40 per cent of Australia's landmass.

There is a renewed focus on tropical health and medicine. The Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine recently opened at the James Cook University campus at Cairns. Plans are being finalised for a feasibility study for key water infrastructure in the north, including the Nullinga Dam proposal outside Cairns and water resource assessments in the Mitchell River catchment. There is also a focus on key transport infrastructure, including a $100 million beef roads program, with forums already held in Rockhampton and Kununurra and a third scheduled for Darwin in March. It is also great to see that water storage at Lakeland is also being considered—something that is very exciting for that area. It will certainly allow them to expand their already extensive agricultural activities in that area. The only thing inhibiting them at this stage is water.

These appropriation bills now secure the $600 million northern Australia roads package, where we will be looking to partner with the three northern state and territory governments to identify and deliver key infrastructure upgrades. They allow for the raising of $17 million over four years by changing visa arrangements to support the northern Australia workforce. Boosting northern Australia's population is absolutely critical to our success in building capacity in northern Australia. These visa changes will help businesses in the North to be a more adaptable and mobile workforce by    allowing work and holiday visa holders to get a second visa if they undertake three months' work in tourism, hospitality or agricultural industries in northern Australia; expanding the seasonal worker program to better respond to industry demand; and enabling working holiday maker visa holders to perform 12 months' work with the same employer in certain industries in northern Australia. A lot of our horticulture industries—even our dairy now—and our tourism industries depend very heavily on this workforce, and it is very important that we are able to accommodate the needs there and make sure that the workforce is available.

Another one that I was very pleased to be associated with was the introduction of the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Bill earlier this month. This bill will see the government establish a Commonwealth licensing scheme to regulate the cultivation of cannabis for medical and scientific use, to be administered by the Department of Health. It will also amend legislation to downgrade cannabis from a schedule 9 substance to a schedule 8 substance to make it easier to access for clinic trials and for therapeutic use. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of Lucy Haslam and her son Dan; Lanai Carter and her son Lindsay; and, in Cairns, the Hickey family and Debbi Cliff for their ongoing advocacy. They have certainly educated me on the real value of medical cannabis and the relief that will be achieved by being able to use these products. I certainly look forward to contributing in the second reading debate of that bill in this place.

Another major policy that was announced in late 2015 was about driving the smart ideas that create business growth, local jobs and global success. These appropriations bills allocate funding for a whole range of measures, including $127 million over three years to provide greater incentives for university researchers to engage with industry; $2.3 billion over 10 years to set up an ongoing research infrastructure funding program; $17 million to enhance linkages between research organisation and businesses; and $90 million over 10 years to CSIRO to support increased commercialisation of research. This year, the government will also establish a Biomedical Translation Fund to invest in promising biomedical discoveries. This fund will complement the Medical Research Future Fund through the commercialisation of health and medical research, and will receive $250 million over two years from government, to be matched by private sector contributions. All of these programs are designed to make sure that Australia is not just doing great research but also getting great outcomes from that research, whether it is to get a commercial end product or to help businesses operate better.

I was very pleased with the government's response to the National Ice Action Taskforce in late 2015. It is comprehensive and addresses prevention right through to treatment. These bills provide $212 million over three years to reduce the harms associated with methamphetamine use in the community through further investment in drug and alcohol treatment services; supporting communities to increase their capacity to address the impact of illicit drugs through implementing and expanding community based programs; establishing a centre of clinical excellence in treatment, research and training development for emerging drugs of concern; and expanding and improving data sources for the analysis of illicit drug trends. There is also $9.1 million to list 15 new items of addiction medicine on the Medicare Benefits Schedule.

This is very important, particularly in relation to ice, as we see the emergence of it into our remoter communities. It is certainly of great concern, and we really need to continue to focus in this area. It is having a huge impact on our communities generally, on our police forces and on our paramedics et cetera, and we have to deal with this problem. I think that any money that we spend in dealing with this is money well spent, particularly in areas where we can start to focus on some of the rehabilitation that is desperately needed for some of these people who have become addicted to this horrible substance. A further $78 million will be redirected from the Indigenous Australian Health Program to support delivery of drug and alcohol strategies in Indigenous communities—it is a major problem there—with a focus on ice. I am looking forward to working with the communities, the police, the youth and health services and the Primary Health Network as we put together a range of local and practical solutions.

In this period of time, we did of course have ChAFTA, the China-Australia free trade agreement. That is having a huge benefit in my region. Again, I would like to acknowledge Minister Robb for the outstanding work that he did in putting that together, along with a number of others.

There are also red-tape measures in this bill that will make life simpler for small to medium sized businesses. The government is progressively implementing Single Touch Payroll, which will streamline the way employers report their Pay As You Go withholding obligations and superannuation contributions to the ATO. I think that is a great initiative. It certainly assists our small businesses.

There is a specific measure in the appropriations that I am disappointed about, however, and that was the decision to scrap the Clinical Training Fund in the MYEFO. It was James Cook University that alerted me to the plans to reallocate funding from the CTF, and I was very quick to contact the Minister for Health and the Minister for Northern Australia to express my concerns. Minister Ley has since written to me to explain that the funding will be redirected to priority areas, including developing a rural training pipeline for new medical graduates and increasing rural, regional and remote clinical training placements. Sandra Harding, the Vice-Chancellor of JCU, said that this would not address the need for Far North Queensland and has proposed a 12-month freeze on the introduction of these measures to give them time to transition. To me, this seems like a sensible proposition. History has shown that the inclusion of medicine and dentistry training is vital to our rural clinical placements. Through placements, community members have been able to access professional, supervised and cost-effective medical and dental treatment. The experience gained through these placements has contributed to a high proportion of students actually continuing their internships or employment outside our metropolitan areas.

Lastly, the great thing about appropriations is that it gives members wide scope to talk about initiatives that they would potentially like to see included in future appropriations bills. There is a Wet Tropics Management Authority proposal seeking $15.19 million over three years from state and federal governments to eradicate yellow crazy ants from areas adjacent to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Areas in my region. Already, we are spending close to $4 million on baiting and controlling these pests, including through funding for six Green Army teams, a grant made by Terrain Natural Resource Management to Kuranda Envirocare and a $1.9 million grant to WTMA that winds up in June 2016. I would particularly like to acknowledge the great work of Scott Buchanan, the Chief Executive of WTMA, together with Lucy Karger of the yellow crazy ant eradication team and local landowner Frank Teodo.

Now we need the state government to come on board. Biosecurity Queensland has done great work with electric ants, which have been already been eradicated. They can transfer that Cairns based team to yellow crazy ants. They have the expertise and all the set-up, so we can easily transition and eradicate yellow crazy ants. Also, $3 million of federal money has been recently allocated to Queensland through the Agricultural competitiveness white paper for biosecurity measures. Queensland needs to allocate this to the eradication of this horrible pest adjacent to the wet tropics and make a matching contribution. It would be a good start towards WTMA achieving what we need for eradication.

I am also looking forward to $10 million going to James Cook University for an innovation centre that they have put up. They are putting in a lot of the money themselves. It would be great to get the money for that. Of course, we are also seeking $10 million for the Cairns Performing Arts Centre. The Cairns Regional Council, under the leadership of Bob Manning, has done an outstanding job in putting up a new performing arts centre. I think a $10 million contribution from the federal government is relatively small in the overall contribution, and I certainly hope that we can do that.

Finally, we are certainly holding our breath waiting for the $2 billion for the Pacific patrol boat tender to come forward. I am sure that the 'Cairns solution'—in particular, Scott Morrison, from Teekay Shipping Australia; Mark Todd, from Damen Shipyards Group; and Justin Parer, from BSE Maritime Solutions—did a great job in making that contribution. I am sure we will be successful.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with a great degree of pride that I stand here tonight as the new Assistant Minister for Defence—

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

Hear, hear!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

supporting Senator Marise Payne, who is doing a wonderful job in that very important and very intricate portfolio. I stand here in the chamber alongside the member for Wannon, who is the newly appointed Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC and Minister for Defence Materiel.

We had an important meeting today to map out our continued vision for the Defence portfolio. Without giving too much away—that is certainly Minister Payne's responsibility—the Defence white paper is being released on Friday. It is a very important document that not only Defence people know but people right across the nation would be aware of. They would certainly be looking forward to seeing the sorts of commitments that our government is not only making but also funding going forward in Defence. The Defence white paper is going to be, as I said, a very important document. It continues our ongoing commitment to what is fundamentally the most important role of the government—that is, to protect its people.

Certainly while we have been in government we have protected our borders. We have that area that is so important and so crucial to national security back under control. We are playing our part in the Middle East. I visited Afghanistan in 2014 as part of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program to see the wonderful work that Australian Defence Force personnel were playing at the time, and continue to play, in that theatre of war.

People often ask me, 'Why are we in Afghanistan?' and I always remind them of the fact that so many more Afghanis are now attending university, so many more Afghanis are now going to school. And when I say 'so many more', most of them are girls, most of them are females, and the participation rate of girls and young women in primary schools, high schools and tertiary education in Afghanistan since the Afghanistan war began and the Taliban were driven back into the hills is really a great sign of the tremendous work that our troops—our Air Force, our Navy—has done in that troubled area.

We know that under this government defence will always be a priority. We saw, in six years under Labor, defence spending fall to 1938 levels, and of course that notion was absolutely pooh-poohed by the other side. They said it was not true, but indeed it is. Fact Check says that in the 2013-14 budget that was brought down under Prime Minister Julia Gillard's government the Labor government planned to spend just 1.59 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the last time this nation spent below that level was in 1938, when Australia spent 1.55 per cent of GDP on defence. And we all know what happened the year after 1938: that was when World War II began. Other members of the opposition had also referred to spending being at its lowest level since 1937, but in 1937 we spent far less, at 1.06 per cent of GDP—this is according to Fact Check. So, it concludes, the 1938 claim is correct. And that is such a shame.

It was necessary, when we took government in September 2013, that we corrected that grave error by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. And when Joe Hockey got to his feet in the House of Representatives to launch the Abbott government's second budget, for 2015-16, shipbuilders were worried—but they need not have been. Certainly in Adelaide we made strong commitments to ensure that we got our defence building program back on track, because we saw it absolutely whittled away under Labor. Labor has not commissioned construction of a major naval vessel in an Australian shipyard since the Anzac-class frigates in 1989, delivered on time and on budget by the Howard government. The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government's only decisions on major vessels were to purchase HMAS Choules and two major customs vessels offshore. They were important projects, no doubt, but Labor cut $16 billion—$16,000 million—from defence, reducing spending as a percentage of GDP to its lowest levels since 1938. In 2012-13 the Labor government's 10.5 per cent cut to defence was the largest single cut since the Korean War. And immediately following its 2009 white paper Labor cut or deferred—and we heard about a lot of deferrals under Labor, including, I might add, school spending, but that is another topic altogether—$16 billion from the defence budget out to 2016-17. Labor's decisions led to 119 defence projects being delayed, 43 projects being reduced, and eight projects cancelled, risking critical capability gaps.

I am the proud member of the only inland city in Australia with all three arms of Defence. We have the Royal Australian Air Force, a very strategic training facility, at Forest Hill, where there is also a Navy presence. The Royal Australian Navy has a very strong contingent at Wagga Wagga, even though we are many hundreds of kilometres from the nearest drop of seawater. Also Wagga Wagga is renowned as being the home of the soldier—Kapooka, where they train more than 5,000 recruits each year. Those brave men and women who are continuing that long line of khaki tradition dating back to Gallipoli all come out of Wagga Wagga. There is nothing that gives me a more patriotic sense of pride than to attend one of the march outs and to see people from all over Australia coming to Wagga Wagga—in fact, it is our best tourist drawcard—to watch their sons and daughters march out in unison, in uniform, from that fine military base.

Over the next few decades the biggest regeneration of the Royal Australian Navy since the Second World War will take place, and that regeneration is the centrepiece of the firstly Abbott and now Turnbull government's fully funded and cost-assured defence white paper. This white paper is to be released on Friday and is setting out the government's plan for the Australian Defence Force as it forges a pathway to meet current and, most importantly, future strategic requirements and challenges. And there is going to be an unprecedented continuous build of surface warships in Australia, meaning that Australia's world-class shipbuilding workforce has been given the certainty that they will be building our future needs—frigates, offshore patrol vessels—for years, I will say decades, to come, and that is a great thing. And having spoken to the Minister for Defence this morning, in conjunction with the minister at the table, about how our government is getting on with the job of securing those shipbuilding jobs, securing Adelaide's future, securing our defence force's strength going forward, I know how committed this government is.

Andrew Bellamy, Chief Executive Officer of Austal, describes our commitment as 'transformative change'. He is not alone in talking up the sort of commitment that we are making in Defence. We have had significant achievements in Defence. We have implemented a continuous building of surface warships in Australia, we are building valuable infrastructure at the dozens of Air Force, Army and Navy bases throughout the country and we are continuing the important work not just in places of conflict but also in peacekeeping operations throughout the world. Australia's reputation, in that regard, is second to none and greatly valued by our American friends, as it should be.

I am also pleased that the National Stronger Regions Fund is delivering, for communities, right across Australia. I was very pleased that in the second round, the last round that has just been held, three significant projects were announced for my electorate. One was a $4.4 million indoor sports stadium and cultural precinct for Wagga Wagga. The Bolton Park Sports Stadium, which has served the city proud—particularly its basketball community of which I was once president—is past its use-by date and it is good that it is being replaced. Temora is a great little town. It prides itself on being the friendliest town in the state and it probably is. Its mayor, Rick Firman, is absolutely chuffed—that would be the word; that is c-h-u-f-f-e-d, member for Griffith—that it is getting a valuable medical precinct. The member for Griffith would know how important that is in a regional community, such as mine.

Gundagai is getting an upgrade to its main street development on Sheridan Street, which is the home of the famous Niagra Cafe. I will give a shout out to Tony Loukissas who owns that wonderful cafe. The member for Kingsford Smith will know that that particular establishment was where Prime Minister Curtin held a wartime cabinet meeting in 1942. It is an absolute Labor stronghold. Gough Whitlam went there and a number of other Labor luminaries have been to the Niagara Cafe in Sheridan Street, Gundagai. I have to report that they proudly, now, put National Party corflutes in their window. They make the best burgers in the south-west.

Tony Loukissas is in a Sydney hospital, as we speak, and is suffering a debilitating condition, which struck suddenly just before Christmas. I do hope that he gets well. He has four young children and our thoughts and prayers are with him. He owns that cafe—along with his mum, Denise, and his sister, Tina—on Sheridan Street, which is a very historic street in a very historic town, nine miles from the tuckerbox. That main street precinct is really important and I am glad that the National Stronger Regions Fund is going to provide a significant amount of money to ensure that it gets the upgrade it needs.

I am also very pleased that the Stronger Communities Program, which my friend, the member for Parkes, initiated with $150,000 to be spent in each electorate, is being rolled out as well. Applications for the second round are open. It provides for the sorts of funding that federal members were not always able to provide for—such as Country Women's Associations and all those important community-minded not-for-profit groups, which really value that sort of money—because it has, generally, been seen as the domain of state parliamentarians. It is good that as a federal member you can provide those little things to scout groups, CWA organisations and rural fire brigades and the like to help them get on with the job of doing the important voluntary work that our communities cannot be without.

Our government is getting on with the job of promoting employment opportunities, particularly in regional areas, of building up our Defence network, of providing the sort of stimulus to create innovation, to foster start-ups and to promote business, to help farmers and to support families. If we go down the track—again—at the next election of the Labor experiment we will be very sorry as a nation.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These appropriation bills seek to appropriate $2.2 billion in the 2015-16 financial year. The additional appropriations reflect changes to the budget made in the 2015-16 Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook released on 15 December 2015. The key expenditures these bills provide for include: $447 million for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection for the onshore immigration detention network; further support for refugee resettlement and additional support for the accommodation and processing of asylum seekers; $108 million for the National Disability Insurance Agency, for the transition to the full National Disability Insurance Scheme, as agreed with New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania; and $385 million for the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, which primarily reflects the additional funding for the Roads to Recovery program that we agreed to with the current government.

Labor will support the passage of these bills. Unlike those opposite, we respect our Constitution and respect the conventions of the Constitution and do not block supply in the Australian parliament. However, the second reading amendment to the bill will seek to highlight this government's complete lack of economic and fiscal credibility and any semblance of an economic plan for our nature's future. When it comes to economic management this government and the Prime Minister are all foam and no beer.

Prior to September 2013, growth and reducing the deficit was all we heard from the other side. We were told ad nauseam that we had to fix a budget emergency and that they were the ones—the only ones—who could fix the budget. Now, after 2½ years and plenty of talk, the Liberal Party has been exposed for the economic failures that they are. Rather than provide the Australian people with sound economic management, the Liberal government has delivered a deficit blow-out of $26 billion over the forward estimates. Debt is at nearly $100 billion—

Debate interrupted.