Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is it.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm going to leave you.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't leave me! Goodness, no, don't leave me! But it does give me an opportunity to talk about the high farce in talking about the address-in-reply to the Governor-General. As we have seen in the last 24 hours, the outcome of yesterday was, I think, to treat the Australian community with absolute contempt. We saw an absolute abuse of process by the government. They asked the Governor-General firstly to prorogue the parliament and then to come to the Senate yesterday, explaining why he prorogued the parliament and the importance of that prorogation and then why he recalled the parliament. Significantly, of course, he recalled the parliament based on the same reasons that were used post the 2013 election, when the then Governor-General spoke for and on behalf of the then government, led by Prime Minister Abbott.

As we saw yesterday, as the Governor-General repeated yesterday, he recalled the parliament to enable us to discuss two pieces of legislation: the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation and the bill to improve the governance and transparency of registered organisations. He quoted the speech by Dame Quentin Bryce, the former Governor-General, in which she said, in part:

The law will be changed so that registered organisations and their officials are held to the same rules and standards as companies and their directors.

So we were called back to the parliament at great cost to the Australian taxpayer for the purpose of debating two pieces of legislation—not the legislation which we did debate yesterday, to do with the trucking industry, or indeed the legislation we have just passed through the parliament, to do with the Northern Australia infrastructure fund.

We were invited here yesterday, requested to be here yesterday, told we had to be here yesterday, for the reconvening of parliament to talk about those two pieces of legislation I spoke about earlier. Not only did we in this chamber not address those pieces of legislation but the piece of legislation dealing with registered organisations was not even debated in the Senate. Yet we are told now that the business of the government is over, that we can all go home. Never mind the fact that we have flown from all over the country representing our constituents, doing the bidding of this government. Fancy proroguing the parliament on Friday and bringing us back here on Monday, talking about two pieces of legislation which we will not even discuss! It makes a mockery of the process.

It is an absolute abuse of the process, and the Prime Minister should be ashamed of himself. He is a person who came into this place, into this job, as someone who purported to represent the greater interests of the Australian community. He was not going to be following the course of his predecessor, Mr Abbott. But in fact he used as the basis of his prorogation of the parliament and bringing us back here two pieces of legislation from the Abbott government. And we know that this is the case across a whole range of policy areas. The government is just readopting the policies of the former Abbott government.

The Prime Minister, who came into this place with the hope of the world on his shoulders, has diminished himself substantially by his actions over the last week and, as a result, has diminished the parliament. We should not be here as political playthings of the government—any government—yet that is precisely what we have seen here in the last 36 hours. What will the Prime Minister say to the Australian community now, having brought us here for the purpose that the Governor-General said in his speech yesterday, when they say to him: 'Why didn't you even debate that legislation? What was so important about getting rid of the tribunal yesterday?' Of course, the Prime Minister only found out about the tribunal a fortnight ago. Before that the word 'truckie' had never passed his lips. Yet yesterday we had a piece of legislation abolishing the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, along with other legislation to defer its orders. Having done that, he has put nothing in its stead—another thought bubble without thinking about the consequences of his actions. This exercise in bringing the parliament back for dodgy reasons will be seen as dodgy by the Australian population, and the community will mark the Prime Minister and his government down—as they should, because this is an absolute abuse of process.

Then he tells us, of course, that we now have a 74-day election campaign. I am looking forward to the opportunity post the next election, when we come to debate the address-in-reply to the Governor-General's speech, to talk about the things that happened during the campaign. We will be able to talk about the government policies that have been put up for us to debate today and what they mean for the Australian community. We will be able to tell people what we said to the Australian community about education, for example. We will be able to say—and I will be saying this, most assuredly—that we have a government here in Canberra, under Mr Turnbull, that has taken the decision, and believes it is okay, for the Commonwealth government not to fund government schools.

We know that in many parts of Australia schools are already in crisis. That the federal government would walk away from funding public education demonstrates to the Australian community how aloof, detached and out of contact the Prime Minister really is. He cannot comprehend the fact that the Australian community would see it as treacherous by any government not to fund government schools. We know that the policies that exist currently have already meant a great loss in support for government schools. I refer to an article in the NT News on Saturday, 18 April 2016, which says:

The Northern Territory public education system will lose the equivalent of 200 teachers and $309 million under a new federal funding arrangement to come into effect in 2017/18.

The poorest constituency in terms of educational outcomes in this country is mine. There is one private school and there are a number of Catholic schools, but there is no private education system to speak of. The community relies on public education and public funding of education. We have heard the Prime Minister, in the policies they have already announced, tell the people of the Northern Territory that the government are going to take $300 million out of the public education system for the people of the Northern Territory, which will mean the loss of up to 200 teachers.

Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, think about the context in which we are having this discussion. Around 40 per cent of the population of my electorate are Aboriginal people living in remote communities. They have the poorest educational outcomes in the country. They require a massive investment if we are ever to allow them to reach the standards that we want them to meet. We need additional teacher resources—specialist resources. We need to address issues like fetal alcohol syndrome and what it means in the classroom, as well as the broad range of other issues that confront young people, many of whom suffer from trauma. This federal government says: 'We are prepared to walk away from that. We do not want to fund public education. That is your job, states and territories. What is more, we are saying to you that we would like you to raise your own taxes to pay for those services.' Let me make this very clear: about 80 per cent of revenue for the Northern Territory's budget comes from the Commonwealth. Can you imagine what would happen if the Northern Territory government were required to raise enough revenue from personal income tax in the Northern Territory to pay for services such as education, whether or not it was in remote communities, or health, whether it was in remote communities or in the towns and cities? There is not the population base, let alone the income base, to raise sufficient taxes for those purposes. We would be massively disadvantaged.

This is another idea that the Prime Minister is taking to this election; yet 48 hours after he made the initial announcement, this great change in the Federation, at the Penrith leagues club it was dismissed, as you would expect, by the state premiers—apart from the Western Australian Premier; God knows what he was eating that morning! Let's be very clear: the people I represent understand what this would mean to them. It would mean a massive erosion of services. It would mean that people who currently get access to educational facilities would not. It would mean clinics potentially closing because they would not have the revenue base to pay for their services. Yet this is seriously what this government thinks.

I spoke at the beginning about the Prime Minister being out of touch. What better evidence is there of how out of touch he is with what real Australia thinks and needs than those two absurd proposals: that the Commonwealth should walk away from public education and that states should raise their own income tax? Not only will the states raise their own income tax but it will also be a massive example of double taxation. It might be all right in the leafy suburbs surrounding Sydney Harbour to make these sorts of silly statements, but it is absolutely absurd to believe that that sort of proposition is going to have any legs or any support anywhere in the real Australia. It certainly won't in the bush.

We say to Prime Minister: you think carefully about what you say. What we know now is that what is on the public record will haunt you throughout this 74-day election campaign, and I will make sure that I prosecute this argument across the length and breadth of my electorate, letting every person know the intentions of this government in relation to education and health. We will talk about other matters as well as education and health. We know, you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, and the whole community knows that if we want to improve the life outcomes of all Australians, we have to guarantee them access to a world-class healthcare system and a great education system. A child born today needs to be given an absolute assurance that the state will provide for them in education and health. But this is not what this government are saying; quite the opposite in fact. They are saying they are prepared to walk away. We are not prepared to walk away, and, as the Leader of the Opposition has said many times, as has our relevant shadow spokesman, our policies are out there. It is very clear where we are heading. We have good education policies, great health policies, and they are things that we know most of the Australian population will support.

There are other particular issues that I will prosecute in this election. One of them is the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. As a result of a stupid decision by the former Abbott government to place Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs policy and the administration of services within the Prime Minister's department, they put out this Indigenous Advancement Strategy, which was a bid based process for funding. Not surprisingly, a large number of the people who made applications for funding, who hitherto were funded by the Commonwealth government, lost their funding. Organisations closed; organisations delivering vital services to Aboriginal communities throughout my electorate were forced to think, 'How the hell are we going to pay for our services?'

People are not silly. They understand what has gone on here, and they understand that the decisions taken by the government came largely at the hands of the minister, Senator Scullion. The decisions taken to fund or not fund organisations, he admits, almost were his alone. That is something that we cannot accept, and we should not accept, and I know the community of the Northern Territory do not accept. I say to the Commonwealth government: if you are really deadly serious about effecting change in this community, you will not head down this course. Instead, you will do something reasonable and push the policy areas back into their relevant agencies: the health matters that are now administered from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet should be pushed back immediately to the Department of Health, and education issues should go back to the education department. That is what needs to happen.

The other area I am going to be very concerned about during this 74-day election campaign is talking about jobs and development. We just had pass through here in a matter of some minutes—although, as we have said, there were some moments of high farce involved—a piece of legislation to do with northern Australia. Let me make it very clear: there are job issues in the north of Australia, and there is a need for massive investment in roads and other infrastructure. There is a need for massive investment in housing. What we need to do is assure the Australian community, but particularly those people who live in northern Australia—people actually invest in what works. We will not create these pie-in-the-sky ideas about dams all over the north of Australia, because they will not happen. What we should do is accept the reality that people are doing damn good work at the moment and producing solid outcomes, and we should build on that work.

I will give you one example. The Ord River currently produces around $50 million or $60 million worth of agricultural product each year. It is not commonly understood that around the Northern Territory we have producers—mostly in the Top End, from Katherine heading up north, but also there are some products produced around Alice Springs, Ti Tree and Ali-Curung—currently producing $200 million worth of agricultural product. What we should be doing is building on those successes, learning from what has been happening with those particular investors—people who have taken a risk with minimal government support and who are doing a great deal of good work for the Australian community in providing product and providing education.

But we have to be rational about what we do. We have a current issue to do with temporary workers coming into the horticulture industry in particular. The rules that currently apply just do not make sense; they are not logical. We need to do a great deal more about effecting change in that area. I want to support the views being expressed by the horticulture industry in the Northern Territory, particularly those people in the mango-growing industry. They only require labour for about six months of the year but if they cannot get a reliable labour source then their product will rot and they will lose massive amounts of money. So it is very important, when we are talking about developing northern Australia, that we understand the implication of decisions taken on areas such as that. I could also talk about a range of other areas, like the pastoral industry and the massive amount of work they are currently doing, the live cattle exporting trade, the tourism industry, and the growing aquaculture industry in the north of Australia that we need to continue to support. But we will not be able to do this with a government that acts so irrationally.

As I said at the outset, there have been moments of high farce here in the past 36 hours, and responding, as I am, to the Governor-General's speech, it makes you wonder what he is thinking, sitting over there in Yarralumla. He came into the parliament yesterday and gave a speech, partly repeating a speech given by his predecessor, that talked about two items that needed to be addressed in this parliament. One of them was passed through the Senate yesterday, the other was not. It did not even make a debate in this chamber. It just dropped off the Notice Paper. And we are back here today with nothing to do, so we have this masquerade of a debate in the Governor-General's address-in-reply. Australians are not fools and they understand when a stunt is being pulled. They will understand absolutely what this Prime Minister is up to. He will be marked down, and I am looking forward very much to this 74-day election campaign so that on every street corner I can tell every person I see about the way they have been treated with such contempt by this Prime Minister and this government.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the Governor-General in recalling us for the second session of the 44th Parliament, because it has been very worthwhile. We had the RSRT—the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal—legislation to repeal, and that has now been achieved. That in itself has been worth the trip back to Canberra. As the member for Lingiari alleged, I would like to refute that it was not anything dodgy; it was diabolical. What tribunal has the right to incarcerate someone for six months if they do not turn up to a hearing? What tribunal has the right to fine someone who does an uncommercial enforced haulage rate that sends him out of business, or has the right to charge them $58,000 in fines? It has now been abolished, and that is such a good outcome.

Two hundred-plus trucks came to Canberra with the mum-and-dad operators for a reason. There were many more that came through Canberra over the last couple of days—they honked their horns several times as I was walking to work this morning. But it was diabolical. It was sending mum-and-dad small business people to the wall. Contracts from their prime contractors had been drying up in the preceding months, and bank credit was drying up as well. Fake hearings were being held by the tribunal where people were given 18 hours notice to turn up and threatened with six months jail if they did not come and give a deposition, only to be harangued in the gallery by a bunch of aggressive union members. So that is a good outcome but, now that the ABCC legislation has been rejected yet again, it demonstrates how much the other side is dependent upon and does the bidding of their union masters.

In one of my last opportunities before the budget, which is what we are really focusing on now, I would like to point out that we are back to getting a budget together to direct the economic fortunes of Australia. That is what this government is focusing on and that is what the Treasurer, the finance minister and the Assistant Treasurer, along with PM&C and all of the ministry, are focusing on. Before we go on to question time, I would like to highlight how the Australian government achieves value for money in their procurement processes. The Australian government regularly procures about $40 billion worth of goods and services in any one financial year, but with the biggest infrastructure budget that has ever been rolled out being rolled out in this term of government it is even more important. With our Defence contracts just being let for shipbuilding for the next five to 10 years for a continuous ship build and beyond and with the upcoming submarine contracts, the concept of getting value for money, as well as quality products, for the Australian taxpayer is paramount.

Any time there is a $40 billion spend happening those contracts have massive effects on whatever market they are applying in, but every year the federal government spends about $40 billion—and that is not counting state and local government procurement contracts. I want to point out a critical thing: when the government is doing business with business it is quite a different situation from when a business is doing business with another business, because the government gets a refund when they purchase services from Australian companies. It is like the Coke bottle with no refund and the Pepsi bottle with a $10 refund—if the one with the refund costs you three or four cents more but you get a 10c refund, what are you going to call the better deal? The one with the refund.

Long-term government contracts put a floor under a lot of industries. We cannot let them get a contract by any means just because they are Australian but, when one purchases a product from an Australian manufacturer and you are the Australian government purchasing it, there is a knock-on benefit downstream. Too many of the decisions are made in a silo by departments that are not connected to the Treasury or not connected to Finance or to Social Services, which has to supply unemployment benefits, or to Industry to do retraining programs. What is entirely sensible in business when your business does not run the Treasury or does not have the responsibility for unemployment or for retraining schemes or incentives to build up new industries, is that it is a different mathematical equation.

When a federal, state or local government purchases goods from a genuine domestic based producer, treasuries in state and federal departments will receive a rebate down the track of up to 40c in the dollar. First up they get PAYE tax, then they get Medicare levies, they get company tax and they get GST payments. As well, all the local suppliers do that all over again on a different level—that is, the so-called local economic multiplier. Local governments benefit from Australian producers running their businesses in their local government areas, and there are many knock-on employers. As I mentioned, the Department of Social Services misses out on having to pay unemployment benefits when the government contracts with an Australian producer.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.