Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017 and related bills, but also for the opportunity to follow an outstanding new colleague, the member for Herbert, one of a number of terrific first speeches in this place today on our side—the members for Wills, Fremantle, Lindsay and Cowan, as well as the member for Herbert. It is one of the great days in this parliament when you get to hear about people's backgrounds and the motivations that brought them here. It applies to both sides of the House. So, to the member for Herbert and all the colleagues on both sides, congratulations on such terrific speeches.

We are dealing now with the appropriation bills. These bills are required to ensure the funding of the ordinary functions of government, but they go to broader issues in our economy and especially in relation to the government's mismanagement of the budget and also, to an extent, to the approach that both sides are taking to the current omnibus bills.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I ask the clerks to reset the clock.

Mr Thistlethwaite interjecting—

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting—

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks, though. Thanks for your concern.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hughes for pointing that out to me—that he does have unlimited time. I know you will use it wisely.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks very much, Deputy Speaker, and thanks to the member for Kingsford Smith for making a good point on the way past as well. As I was saying before I was so kindly interrupted by the member, these bills are all about ensuring the funding of the ordinary functions of government, but they do go to some of the broader issues about the management of the budget, the management of the economy and also more specifically to the approach that both sides of the House are taking to the omnibus bills which will come to us later in the week.

The truth is that when debt has blown out and is blowing out, when the deficit has tripled since those opposite handed down the 2014 budget and with the AAA credit rating at real risk, we do need budget repair and both sides agree on that. But that budget repair needs to be fair and it needs to invest in the drivers of growth and productivity and employment, not hollow out the future or ask the most vulnerable people in our society to carry the heaviest burden. These are the challenges before us as we go about managing the budget, and to compound these fiscal challenges we unfortunately have a government which is divided, dysfunctional and deluded: divided on superannuation reform, a key part of the fiscal repair task, but not just super reform but right across the budget; dysfunctional on the omnibus bill, which shrank by more than $500 million in a space of a week, and that is before the Treasurer had to kind of skulk in here last week and admit that there was a $107 million hole in his numbers; and deluded about the nature of the mess that the budget is in, its causes and consequences, and the government's own culpability in that situation.

We need those opposite to take responsibility for the deterioration in the budget on their watch and to work with us—to work with people of goodwill in all corners of the parliament—to fix the budget. And for our part we will continue to be constructive; we will continue to seek common ground; we will continue to propose improvements to the budget and to do the right thing. That will guide our approach to these bills. It will also guide our approach to the omnibus bills and other bills as well.

That responsible approach begins with these appropriations. The three bills before the House today are required to ensure that the ordinary functions of government, as I said, continue for the remainder of the 2016-17 year. The package of bills appropriate about $58 billion this financial year, and that of course is in addition to the $41 billion which was appropriated in that quite unusual period, that uncertain period where the government was moving around the timing of the budget and where the government was seeking the double dissolution election. And so it was quite an unusual way to do it in two hits, but for our part we will respond to the appropriation bills in the usual way, and that of course is to not block supply.

But I do want to spend a few minutes putting these bills into their broader economic and fiscal context, because when it comes to the economy, despite that quite impressive 3.3 per cent GDP growth figure headline, it masks some fairly serious and fairly pressing challenges in the economy. We have a problem with investment in this country despite record low interest rates. We have mining investment collapsing and other sectors not quite ready to pick up the slack. Total private investment has plummeted 14.7 per cent over the last 12 months alone, the worst yearly drop in nearly 16 years. GDP growth for the June quarter was entirely driven by the government sectors, so, if you think about that, underneath that 3.3 per cent growth figure for the year in the last quarter, were it not for the contribution made by government spending—ironically when you consider some of the arguments made by those opposite—growth would have been negative in the most recent quarter. Real national disposable income per capita, which is a measure of living standards, grew by 0.2 per cent in the June quarter, but living standards still remain 1.9 per cent below the level at the 2013 election. This is a factual reflection of the fact that people have gone backwards under this government as measured by the most credible measure of living standards. Wages growth, related to that point, is the slowest on record. We have unemployment at or near the same level as during the global financial crisis, quite remarkably. And we have more than a million Australians who cannot get the hours that they want or need at work.

All of that combined means that despite that headline number, as I said, the experience for people right around the country—in my electorate, the member for Griffith's electorate, the member for Eden Monaro's electorate, the member for Oxley's electorate and the member for Werriwa's electorate—is that they hear the Prime Minister talking about how spectacularly well things are going but their experience when it comes to wages and living standards is entirely different to the one that they are lectured about by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer.

And so, with these challenges and despite things like the nominal growth figure recovering in those last national accounts, it still remains the case—and this is important for the budget—that government revenue will remain under pressure for the foreseeable future. We have an issue in this country when it comes to the revenue coming into the budget—the revenue we need to fund important public services, to invest in infrastructure, to invest in clean energy and all of those sorts of things. So we have these ongoing budget deficits—of course, the ones that were supposed to miraculously disappear when government changed hands in 2013—and we have this trajectory of debt, which is unsustainable.

We have had debt to GDP, which is the most reliable measure of a country's position, rising faster than most other advanced economies since 2012. The solution has to be a mix of changes to spending but also to revenue. The Treasurer has spent a long time saying that there is no revenue issue. And then finally, just before parliament came back, he gave a speech about how we do not have a revenue problem, we have got an earnings problem, which was his way of saying that he was right all along, when in reality he has been wrong all along. If we are going to repair the budget in a fair way, we need a mix of revenue measures—things like negative gearing and capital gains, multinational and tobacco tax—combined with spending cuts—things like the new baby bonus et cetera. That is what we need in this country.

However you want to look at it, whatever facts you want to dig out, it is undeniable factually that the budget, according to the government's own budget papers, is in a worse shape today than when Labor left office. In their own budget papers—let me give you a couple of examples, Deputy Speaker—net debt has blown out by well over $100 billion in just over one parliamentary term. That deficit has tripled from the disastrous 2014 budget. The expected deficit for 2016-17 was $10.6 billion; now it will be $37 billion. It has more than tripled between the 2014 budget and now. Tax has been higher as a share of the economy every year under the Liberals than it was under every Labor budget. Government spending is higher now than at any point since the peak of the global financial crisis. Spending as a percentage of GDP is higher under this government than under Labor. When you think about those facts together and about all the bluff and bluster that we get from those opposite about how responsible they are, all of those measures—and they are not cherrypicked measures; they are all credible measures for a government's position and how a government is managing the budget or, in this case, mismanaging the budget—really do put some perspective on the sort of rubbish that we hear from those opposite.

When you have a set of numbers like that, an awful set of numbers like that, it is little wonder that the ratings agencies are starting to pay the wrong kind of attention to our budget and to our country. When it comes to rating sovereigns, rating countries, they have started to indicate that our AAA credit rating—which was won by the previous Labor government during the global financial crisis because of the good work of people like former Prime Ministers Rudd and Gillard and former Treasurer Swan—is at risk. What we saw during the GFC was ratings agencies paying the right kind of attention to our country. They looked at Australia and said, 'Those guys know what they're doing. We're going to give to them for the first time in their history'—not under Costello, not even under Keating—'three AAA positive outlook credit ratings for the country.' That was a hard-won outcome for Australia. It was a good outcome for Australia. Now that is at risk.

For people who tune into politics sparingly, understandably, who do not quite understand what the AAA credit rating means for us, when you have a AAA credit rating the money that you borrow is cheaper. So when you lose that AAA credit rating, money becomes more expensive for governments but it is also passed on in terms of mortgages. It means that money at the national level that could go towards vital infrastructure, schools, services or repairing the bottom line will instead be needed for ever higher interest repayments. It means higher borrowing costs will be passed on to consumers; mortgages and other loans will cost more. I think it is shameful that at a time like this, with the AAA credit rating at risk, the only contribution that the Treasurer has made to that so far is to say that it would all be Labor's fault if we lost that AAA credit rating. We all know—and I think if people around the country were asked to judge they would also think—it is entirely reasonable that, after more than three years of government, those opposite should take some responsibility for the budget position and the fact that that AAA credit rating is at risk. No matter how hard they try and pretend that it is somebody else's fault, they cannot pretend that they have not been in government for the last three-plus years.

The reason that people have so little faith in the government's ability to fix the budget is, I believe, that since the election it has been stumbling from one stuff-up to the next. Time does not permit me to go through all of them—the royal commission, the census—

Ms Butler interjecting—

I am sure the member for Griffith has a long list that she could rattle off, but let me just focus on two. The first one is this omnibus bill, or what people have come to know as the 'omni shambles'. We had the finance minister stand up at the Sydney Institute and say that there is an omnibus bill that is going to have $6.5 billion worth of savings. Within the next week, the Treasurer said, 'Actually, it is $6.1 billion.' We had a bill that was supposed to have 21 measures in it; it has 24 measures in it. Then, as I said before, the Treasurer had to admit to that humiliating error—that $107 million black hole—where he could not even add up the sums on page 5 of his explanatory memorandum. Of course, he blamed Treasury for that, because that is how he rolls, but the responsibility for an error like that rests with the Treasurer. We were able to find that error in two days. The Treasurer could not find it in two weeks.

Ms Henderson interjecting—

The member for Corangamite can chirp all she likes about this. It is a $107 million hole. If the member for Corangamite is so confident of these matters perhaps she could help out poor old Scott Morrison when it comes to his sums.

The second one is superannuation. The reality is that there is in-fighting on that side of the House about this. While they demand consistency and urgency from us on the omnibus bill, they have a superannuation policy which is being shredded by their backbench and so it still has some time away. We had the member for Warringah shirt-front the Treasurer in a meeting about those superannuation changes. We had the Treasurer release half a bill, not the whole bill, because some members of the backbench have not finished dictating to him what the other half will contain. There is no end in sight when it comes to this embarrassing impasse. That is why we doubt the government's ability to fix the budget.

No matter what happens with the other bills, the omnibus bills and all of that, we doubt the government's capacity not just to repair the budget but to repair the budget in a fair way. They don't just have form when it comes to this; they have cuts still on the table from that 2014 budget and subsequent budgets. Whether it be the $30 billion cut from schools, the expensive university degrees, the medicine price hikes—tinkering with the PBS—raising the pension age to 70, which will be the world's oldest retirement age, or cuts to the pension and the like, those measures are still on the table. No matter what happens with the omnibus bill in the next little while, if people want to know how the government approaches budget repair they need to look at some of those cuts to health, education, pensions and changes to the retirement age.

The fact that these cuts survived a change of prime minister a year ago shows that the member for Wentworth has brought none of the new direction or leadership that he promised. Even his own side of politics has struggled to point to a single tangible achievement in the past year. I was very interested to see that, when Jeff Kennett was asked if he could name a single achievement of the Turnbull government over the last year, he said: 'No, not at the moment.' He could not identify a single thing—a former conservative premier of Victoria could not nominate a single thing. I was also very interested to see when the member for Warringah's former chief of staff was asked on TV to name a specific policy achievement, she responded: 'Oh, look, Andrew, I'm pressed.' She could not name a single achievement. That same source, Peta Credlin, in The Australian during this week also wrote:

For a guy with so much promise to start with, the reality of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister has been a bitter disappointment. Once so loved in the seats that don't determine elections, he's now reviled in those that do.

That is a very interesting reflection, and not just from Peta Credlin but Jeff Kennett and others. I was very interested to see in the Financial Review on the weekend a piece about evaluating the first year in office. The headline is 'D+' and the article begins:

After one year as prime minister, the verdict on Malcolm Turnbull's performance is in: D+.

I was also very interested to see Warwick Smith, a former Liberal member of this place, was asked about Malcolm Turnbull's performance and he said:

He is in danger of being seen as a total fizzer.

When asked to nominate Turnbull's greatest success, Smith said:

The search continues!

That is really a reflection on how those opposite are going; and it does reflect on their ability to solve some of these budget challenges.

One of the reasons he is in such a weakened position—so incapable of fixing the budget in a decisive way—is that he has sold his soul to the extreme right in his party. He has thrown his principles out the window when it comes to climate change or marriage equality—the list goes on. What is very revealing is not necessarily the things he has given away in this one-man job policy of his—not just the things he has sold his soul on—but the things he really digs in on that say the most about him. There are really only three things. He says he is flexible and agile and nimble and he has to keep people happy, but the three things he has dug in on are: his refusal to back a royal commission into the financial services industry; the $50 billion gift to big business; and high-end personal income tax cuts. He is flexible on all the stuff that might be seen as a bit of a fairer version of what is being proposed. He is flexible on all that—that can all go out the window; that is easily traded away—but, when it comes to these other things, he digs in. I think that says it all about the government's approach to the budget.

Imagine how much better off this country would be if he showed that same willingness to dig in on things like schools or Medicare or fairer budget repair. When he was in China and elsewhere in the region last week and again when he was at the dispatch box today, he talked about populism and protectionism. He said that populism and protectionism is a shovel that digs us deeper into a hole. What I find really disturbing about that approach is that the Prime Minister fails to understand that, when it comes to these populist protectionist urges, he is not the solution to these issues—he is the problem. If he were serious about these challenges—the sorts of feelings and emotions which are leading people to Hanson or to Trump or to Corbyn or to Brexit—the absolutely last thing he would do would be to hollow out services in Medicare, schools and the like and to give $50 billion to the biggest multinational corporations in this country.

As the member for Lilley, the member for Scullin and others have pointed out in this place, if you are serious about warding off the kind of division that poisons democracy, the last thing you want to do is feed that division with a policy agenda that says to most people, 'We are going to take money out of your hospitals and schools and we are going to give it to the biggest companies in Australia.' The nerve of the Prime Minister to lecture us about the moral challenge of fixing the budget while at the same time not fessing up to his core agenda, which is to take money off battlers and the most vulnerable people—out of their hospitals, out of their schools, out of their pensions—and give it to the biggest companies. That is really quite an offensive thing: to be lectured about the moral challenge of fixing a budget while that kind of stuff is going on. You can see that his divisive attitude affects the whole show.

The other day the Treasurer talked about 'the taxed and the taxed nots'. It was an imitation of another expression that went so well for Joe Hockey—the lifters and leaners. You get the sense that, if you really care about division or populism and protectionism, what those on that side are doing will not fix the problem; it will be part of the problem. That is a big part of what we are talking about here—budget repair that is fair.

We will continue to play a constructive role in fixing the budget. We have led the conversation. We have already demonstrated our bona fides. We have put solutions on the table on superannuation; we have offered the Treasurer a way out of the superannuation mess. We have put all sorts of constructive proposals on the table—more than any opposition in the 20 years I have been in the Labor Party. We have put so much on the table and said, 'Look, if you want to pick that up and run with it, go for it. If you want to take the credit for this good idea of how to get out of this superannuation mess, go for it.' That is how we have approached the task of budget repair. We put on the table at the Press Club, via Bill Shorten, $8 billion in savings over the forward estimates and $80 billion over the medium term with some very sensible proposals. As I said, we offered the government a way out of the superannuation mess to make the retrospective part of it prospective, to make it fairer and to save more money. Nobody here would be able to suggest to me that the first act of an opposition in a new term should be to propose a saving of the magnitude that we have proposed on superannuation. We have made it fairer and we have made it better for the bottom line in the budget. The government should keep that up and run with it, instead of letting the backbench shred their superannuation policy. We have put on the table a way forward, and they are welcome to it.

All up, we have committed to $130 billion in budget improvements over the next 10 years and we have done that in a way that does not ask the most vulnerable people to do the heaviest lifting. We are guided by fair principles that reflect our Labor values. Fiscal policy has to suit the times, and times change. We do not cut the budget for the sake of it; we make good decisions even when they are difficult. We are open to ideas about better budgeting and forecasting and more transparency and forward-looking ways to borrow cheaply to invest in infrastructure. We understand the transformative possibilities of big data, targeted service delivery and technological progress, not just to improve the bottom line but to improve lives. Above all else, we think that budgets must underpin economic growth that is inclusive, that creates jobs and that attacks inequality and social immobility in this country.

As I have said, whether it is our approach to this bill, the omnibus bill or the other bills, budget repair must be responsible and fair. Our careful and cautious approach has been justified by the discovery of some of the errors in the omnibus bill. But we want to continue to play that constructive role. We want to continue to talk with stakeholders and other people affected by the changes in the budget and changes in the economy to make sure that we are relying on the lived experience of people, whose lives are touched when we change budget settings. We will do all of this, adhering to those Labor values that I have spoken about.

To be clear, we will support these appropriation bills. Obviously, we will not block supply. We will continue to play a constructive role, we will continue to lead the conversation, we will continue to propose responsible ways to repair the budget and we will continue to prioritise budget repair that is fair—in this bill, in the omnibus bill and in all the bills that come before this House in the 45th Parliament.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure this evening to speak on appropriation bills Nos 1 and 2 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1). I would like to start off by asking a question that the member for Rankin so kindly asked at the dispatch box. He asked: 'What was the biggest single achievement of the coalition over the last 12 months?' The answer to that is very simple: it was keeping the Labor Party off the treasury bench. That is what we have done. It may have been narrow, but our biggest achievement has been making sure that that mob that sit over there are not sitting on this side of the parliament. The speech by the member for Rankin is a perfect example of why the best thing that the coalition can do is to keep Labor—with their reckless and wasteful spending, their history of mismanagement of this economy—away from the treasury bench.

I also thought the member for Rankin was making a bit of a comedy statement there. In his speech, he talked about the 'good work' of the former Treasurer, Wayne Swan, the member for Lilley—that he knew what he was doing. And I note the member for Lilley is in the chamber. The member for Rankin said the former Treasurer knew what he was doing. I have here the former Treasurer's budget speech, delivered on 8 May 2012. It says:

The four years of surpluses I announce tonight are a powerful endorsement of the strength of our economy, resilience of our people, and success of our policies. …

This budget delivers a surplus this coming year, on time, as promised, and surpluses each year after that, strengthening over time.

If ever there was a Treasurer that did not know what he was doing, it was the member for Lilley when he was standing at the dispatch box and he read out that speech. Yet we have the member for Rankin coming in here and saying the former Treasurer knew what he was doing. It is another perfect example of why the greatest achievement of this coalition government was to make sure that Labor are not sitting on this side of the chamber.

There are a couple of other things the member for Rankin raised. He talked about his great policy of a royal commission into financial services. That is simply a chance to give tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees to lawyers for achieving nothing. A royal commission will tell us nothing that we do not know. There are issues in the banking industry; they are issues that we should be working on across the chamber. I believe that there is a strong argument that we should act on penalty fees for late credit card payments following the High Court decision. That is something we know mutually that we should work on across the chamber and try and come up with something.

The real concern that I had with the member for Rankin's speech was how he perceived that the reduction in the rate of company tax was somehow taking money away from other people. This is the fundamental flaw that we see with Labor time after time. They see the size of the economy as a fixed pie, and it is just a matter of arguing how you cut it up. We see that in a completely different way. We understand that our goal is to grow the size of the pie to make sure that everyone's slice of the pie is larger. Let us just have a look at the recent history of the corporate tax rate to show exactly how that is done. I hope members on the other side are actually listening. They might learn something from this.

Back in 1986-87 and 1987-88, we had a corporate rate of tax in this country of 49 per cent, and we lowered that. Up until recently, the last reduction was in the year 2001, when we reduced it to 30 per cent. Now, what do you think would happen, Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton, if the corporate tax rate was 49 per cent and you lowered it to 30 per cent? If you follow the logic of the opposition, that would mean giving all that money to big businesses. But look at what actually happened, Mr Deputy Speaker. When the corporate tax rate was at 49 per cent, we were getting 2.4 per cent as a percentage of GDP in 1986-87, and 2.7 per cent in the following year. So an average of around 2.5 or 2.6 per cent of GDP was the corporate tax that we were taking in for the Treasury to pay for all those schools, hospitals, aged care, kids with disabilities and for all the things we want to do in this parliament. So, what actually happened? In dollar numbers in 1987-88, we were collecting $8.8 billion in company tax. Then we lowered that rate down to 30 per cent. What happened to the tax that we were getting as a percentage of GDP? If you believe what Labor are telling us, there would have been a reduction. But, remarkably, exactly the opposite thing happened.

We know that over the previous decade, from 2000 to 2010, when we had a corporate tax rate of 30 per cent, as a percentage of GDP we were getting double. At a lower corporate rate of tax, we were getting double what we were getting when it was 49 per cent. It has happened throughout the last 30 years, under both the Labor governments of Keating and Hawke and the Liberal government of Howard and Costello. Every time we have lowered the rate of company tax we have got more tax.

Mr Swan interjecting—

I hear the former treasurer laughing over there. I would encourage you, former treasurer, to go and get the numbers and have a look. You might learn something and understand why the policy that you bought here for six years was so disastrous and sent this economy backwards so much.

If we lower the corporate tax rate again, will exactly the same thing happen? No-one has a crystal ball to tell what the future is. There is an argument that company tax is already about 4½ to five per cent of GDP, which is already one of the highest in the world. There is an argument that it is harder to push it any higher than that. That is a legitimate argument. But we are not hearing that from the Labor Party. What we are hearing is, 'If you decrease the corporate tax rate, that simply takes money off someone else.' What a flawed economic argument that is! When it is explained to the former treasurer he laughs. Is it any wonder that the way this country was run was such a mess during the previous years of the Labor government?

Getting back to some of the overall numbers, as we are talking about appropriation bills, it is always important to know where we came from. If we go back to 1996, we know that this country was $96 billion in debt from accumulated deficits of the previous government. Over the term of the Howard-Costello government, each year they whittled that debt away. They achieved a surplus; they put that surplus into reducing the debt; and they paid back that $96 billion. What gets forgotten is that not only did they pay back the $96 billion, but along the way there was an interest bill of $54 billion that had to be paid. So they paid the $96 billion and the $54 billion in interest, and then they put another $40 billion in the bank. That was $200 billion that had to be taken out of the economy to retire debt and pay interest, that could otherwise have been spent on the things that we all hold dearer.

Then we had what was called the global financial crisis. There was an argument then that the country should go into debt and borrow money, but the argument at the time was that that borrowing and debt were to be short term and temporary. In 2008-09 we borrowed $31 billion. The accumulated surpluses and savings had disappeared. If it had been just that year, we could explain that to future generations of Australians. But what happened? The following year we borrowed $56 billion. The next year, in 2010-11, we borrowed another $51 billion. In 2011-12 we borrowed another $47 billion. There was nothing temporary about this. It was because Labor was great at spending the money and giving the money away. We saw it with the school halls, the pink batts and waste after waste after waste. We have very little to show for it apart from a big pile of debt. Because the Senate has been controlled by the Greens, Labor and the Independents, every time we have tried to take some of the hard decisions, the hard decisions that are difficult but responsible to try and wind that debt back, we get blocked.

So this year, today, we will borrow another $100 million, which will go on to our debt and will simply mean that our children and grandchildren will have higher taxes and fewer government services. Already, this coming year, we are going to have to pay the interest bill. The interest bill is over $12 billion. That is a billion dollars every month that goes out the door in interest payments, all because both sides of this parliament could not control their expenditure, could not wind it back and could not live within our means. It should be incumbent upon both sides of this House to work together to do everything we possibly can to bring the budget back to a balance and then start paying the debt off. But instead, we have speeches like that from the member for Rankin, whingeing about illusory cuts that do not exist, whingeing about all the hard decisions that we have to make as the coalition. The Australian people deserve better than that.

One of the other concerns that I have, which we need to drive home and emphasise, is that if we are going to increase the living standards of Australians we have to become more productive and more efficient. We have to discover new products, new ways of doing things, new methods of production, new distribution channels. The only way that can be achieved is that people in the private sector take risks with their ideas. But if we have a corporate tax rate that is much higher than many places in the rest of the world—if the rate of corporate tax is 30 per cent in Australia, but 15 and 17 per cent in Hong Kong and Singapore and 20 per cent in the UK—we will not get that innovation. We will not get that risk taking and that improvement in our living standards. That is what our coalition policies are about: increasing the productivity, the innovation and the risk taking in this nation, so we can become more productive and more efficient, so we can grow our living standards and grow the size of the economic pie so we have all the more of the things that really count.

I would like to finish my 15 minutes with a quote from Deirdre McCloskey, who wrote in The New York Times:

… by the standard of basic comfort in essentials, the poorest people on the planet have gained the most. In places like Ireland, Singapore, Finland and Italy, even people who are relatively poor have adequate food, education, lodging and medical care — none of which their ancestors had. Not remotely.

…   …   …

In the last 40 years, the World Bank estimates, the proportion of the population living on an appalling $1 or $2 a day has halved. Paul Collier, an Oxford economist, urges us to help the "bottom billion" of the more than seven billion people on earth. Of course. It is our duty. But he notes that 50 years ago, four billion out of five billion people lived in such miserable conditions.

…   …   …

What, then, caused this Great Enrichment?

Not exploitation of the poor, not investment, not existing institutions, but a mere idea, which the philosopher and economist Adam Smith called "the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice." … Give masses of ordinary people equality before the law and equality of social dignity, and leave them alone, and it turns out that they become extraordinarily creative and energetic.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I firstly want to thank the electors of Lilley for re-electing me for another term in parliament. It is a job I enjoy. I am humbled by their support and the honour of representing the community for a further term in parliament. I want to say to them that I will not let them down.

These appropriation bills implement Malcolm Turnbull's trickle-down economic strategy—and we heard some more of it then from the member for Hughes. I will not respond to all of his inaccuracies, but I would make this point: during my time as Treasurer, nearly six years, the Australian economy grew by 15 per cent, at the height of the most difficult time in the global economy since the Great Depression. The 'Great Recession' did not impact on this country like it impacted on so many others. So, at the most difficult time in the global economy, our economy grew by 15 per cent, as others shrank and went into recession. During that time, we created over one million jobs, and, at the end of that period, we had a AAA credit rating from the three major rating agencies.

The member for Hughes has had a lot to say about tax, and that is good, because I want to say a lot about tax tonight as well. One of the reasons that, under his government, deficits are now three times what they were when Labor was in government and that debt is substantially higher—by about a third—is precisely that tax revenues are down dramatically. He might believe in a Laffer curve and that there is some magic growth which spurts forward from a cut in taxes across the board, but that is not how economies work anywhere else in the world, and they do not work like that here.

At the heart of these appropriation bills is, as I said before, the Prime Minister's determination to implement what is a pretty extreme program of trickle-down economics. What do I mean by that? The notion that if you give more to the rich—either individuals or wealthy corporates—they will somehow take that money, wisely invest it and create greater growth which will sprinkle down on everybody else. Of course, it has been trickle-down economics of the variety espoused by the member for Hughes that has produced such a tragic outcome in the greatest democracy of them all, which in the last 30 years has seen a hollowing-out of the middle class and the creation of a great army of working poor. Thankfully that did not happen in this country during that 30-year period, half of which was presided over by Labor governments. And it most certainly did not happen in this country during the 'Great Recession', which sent other countries into recession, smashed their labour markets and destroyed the capital basis of those economies, to the point that many of them are still recovering. Our structural intervention meant that we secured our economy, we secured our people and, as a consequence of that, we can have a conversation about a healthy economy and how we might like to reform it. No other developed economy in the world can begin to have that conversation.

All of these matters were not addressed by the Prime Minister on the night of the election. I would have thought that, by the time he got to the Sofitel on election night, he might have been able to think of some uplifting words he could have said to the nation. After all, Australia's longest election campaign had been all his idea and his alone, and at the core of that campaign was a commitment to a $50 billion unfunded corporate tax rate cut. He had a long time that night to think of a few fine and inspiring words he might have said to the Australian people. He is claimed to be one of the most polished and accomplished speakers in the country. By the time he got to the stage, in the wee hours of 3 July, his speech was about as appetising as the cold spring rolls and the stale champagne that had been circulating in the Sofitel ballroom for about five hours.

That speech by the Prime Minister that night will go down as one of the worst speeches in history by a leader of any major political party in this country. He commenced by comparing the election outcome to the 1998 election. I thought that was a good idea. In the 1998 election John Howard lost 18 seats and received the minority of the vote but won the majority of the seats and became the Prime Minister. In 1998, then Leader of the Opposition Kim Beazley delivered what I would regard as one of the great speeches in history, a very generous speech, despite the fact he had received the majority of the vote and lost. This is what Mr Beazley said, in uplifting words, to the people of Australia back in 1998:

We must, as a people, … turn to each other and not on each other and against each other.

By contrast, about two-thirds of Prime Minister Turnbull's speech that night only 2½ months ago was spent attacking the Labor Party and all of the people who supported it. He effectively accused 49.64 per cent of the electorate who voted Labor of being involved in 'a pretty shameful episode in Australia's history', and said that 'more than a few people were misled' by 'systematic, well-funded lies'. Whack, whack, to 49 per cent of the Australian electorate.

As I watched this tantrum unfold—and I had just got home from my own election function—I could not believe what I was seeing. I was reminded of an old comic strip where the lord of the manor is speaking to one of his servants, and the servant says, 'Sire, the peasants are revolting,' and the lord of the manor replies, 'Yes, they are, aren't they.' That is the attitude of our Prime Minister. He thinks that he is here to rule over the peasantry. That is what he thinks. He wanted to blame the people of Australia for not having the brilliance to understand what an important politician he was. Of course, that is why we do call him the 'prince from Point Piper'. He is little different from Mitt Romney in the United States, the last Republican candidate for the presidency of that country, who spoke about the 47 per cent of voters who would never support him, 'because they thought government has a responsibility to take care of them.' Where does that take us? That really takes us back to the attitude of the modern Liberal Party, which has been radicalised and taken over by these United States Tea Party type people. I know the Nationals understand that—they spent a lot of time fighting it.

Only a Tea Partier could have gone to the election expecting the Australian people to support a $50 billion unfunded corporate tax cut—truly spectacular. Of course, that is because—and we heard it from the member for Hughes—their storyline is all Ayn Rand. The whole world just consists of the 'lifters and the leaners', and now it is the 'taxed and the taxed nots'. It is so stupid you could not make it up, but that is the world that these people live in these days—these radicalised, extreme Tea Partiers who are now running the government's economic policy.

I know the Prime Minister probably does not understand it, because in his world—as he spoke to the people during the campaign, as he stood on his balcony there at Point Piper and looked across at the four wealthiest electorates in the country—he does not really walk in the same shopping aisles as the average Australian. Therefore he does not get the very basis of why his message is so unappealing at the grassroots level. In his world people just go to the doctor because it is free, not because they need to go there. In his world workers' wages are always too high. In his world business regulation is simply out of control—we should not have any more—and the taxed nots out there are dragging down everybody else, unless they are big multinational companies who are evading tax and do not pay anything at all.

For this Prime Minister to come into this House and lecture people in here and in the community about the moral challenges that we face, the moral challenges of debt, when he is giving a $50 billion unfunded tax cut to some of the wealthiest companies in the world—who are not going to change their behaviour and take the gift and come back and reinvest here and drive jobs and growth—and for him to lecture Australians and the Labor Party on moral cowardice like that is simply breathtaking.

A corporate tax cut of this magnitude is not even in the 10 most important actions you would take if you were really trying to power jobs and growth in the circumstances we are in here, in Australia, given the context of the international economy. I wish the member for Hughes would stay because I want to demonstrate why it is such an act of stupidity—an act of wealth concentration, not an act of wealth creation—to offer a $50 billion unfunded tax cut of that nature.

Thankfully, one of Labor's last acts in office was to put in place tax transparency legislation, which forced the corporates to publish total income, taxable income and total tax paid. So now we know what is going on in that area, and, of course, the average effective rate of tax paid in Australia is not 30 per cent. It is 24 per cent. If you are a private company, not a public company, it is actually 19 per cent. So forget all this rubbish about 30 per cent and somehow they are 12 here and 15 there—we do not pay 30 per cent in this country. There are some valid reasons for it and there are some very, very squalid explanations for it for many of our large corporates. So why would cutting the corporate rate from 30 per cent to 25 per cent work in an environment where they are paying an effective rate on average of 24 per cent? It is just stupid. Dumb. Which is why it does not have support. It is not seen by bodies such as the IMF and many other international organisations as a rational choice at all. Will all of those companies be suddenly inspired to create more jobs?

One-in-three private companies in Australia now pay no tax—did you get that; one-in-three—and one-in-four public companies pay no tax. How are they going to be inspired to invest more when they are not paying anything now at all? Which is yet another demonstration of how absurd this policy is, and why, really, the government is being controlled by a pack of zealots who are simply interested in providing a huge gift to a few of their mates at the top end of town. Meanwhile, the average member of the public can see through this. They can see through it thanks to our tax transparency legislation. Everyday workers do not have access to Panamanian tax shelters or tax havens or corporate minimisation opportunities, so how dare these workers challenge the Prime Minister on election night, and say: 'No thanks. We don't think it's a great idea.' How can anyone have faith in a leader who professes to believe in equality of opportunity but leads a government that has opposed strong measures to stamp out tax evasion?

He can lecture all he likes about the moral challenges. He is a fully paid-up member of the Cayman Islands club. He has got a capital fund growing there under the palm trees. How is he in a position to lecture Australians about their moral priorities? If he was a leader who had faith in his leadership, if he was a leader who had faith in his Treasurer, then he would be investing his money first and foremost here. The truth is this: the use of tax havens by wealthy corporates and wealthy individuals is destroying progressive taxation as we know it. It is a very significant factor, not just in growing inequality of wealth and income globally but also as a significant factor in the loss of trust across the world by individuals in their democracies. It is also a substantial factor leading to weaker and anaemic growth and lower living standards across both the developed and the developing world. You do not go to a tax haven unless you are intending either to avoid tax, either in countries where you live or you are based, or to use it as an end-point for tax minimisation. The fact is, and the public know it, that strong action against tax havens will never be taken by public officials who use them.

In question time today we once again had lecture from the Prime Minister about culture. He decided he was going to lecture the Labor Party about culture. So I have a question for him: what kind of Prime Minister puts his fortune in a tax haven? What sort of cultural implications does that have for our country and for moral leadership? So in this environment you can be absolutely certain that the public are indeed very sceptical when the government says it is committed to Medicare, that they do not have an agenda to privatise it, which we know they do—and, by the way, which is still being implemented behind the scenes, I am sure their backbenchers will be shocked to know.

We in Australia have an opportunity to have a debate about what the drivers are of growth with equity. This is why we in the Labor Party have produced the report I am holding here. This shows the way. We have reached a fork in the road in the economic debate. We can grow inclusively, and if we are growing fairly we will grow more strongly. If we are growing unfairly we will have weaker growth. This is the way ahead, not the government's trickle-down economics. (Time expired)

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

First, let me take this opportunity to congratulate you, Deputy Speaker Coulton, on your election to the deputy speakership. I rise today to speak in support of the appropriation bills that have been presented to the House. It is always interesting to speak after former Treasurer Swan. I always value his contribution, but, as usual with the Labor Party, they like to rewrite history. I think it is worth reflecting—and I was asked this question on the weekend by somebody: over the past 12 months what is one of the achievements of the government? My answer to them was this: our primary responsibility as a government is to govern the country well. If you have a look at our track record for the past 12 months, and prior to that, we have not had a pink batts debacle, we have not had a 'cash for clunkers' debacle and all manner of debacles that we saw under the previous Labor government. So, I think the first and most important measure is that as a government we have governed the country well. That is about ensuring that the programs we are looking to put in place for the current and future benefit of Australians are being well run and, importantly, are being funded. That is what we are consistently looking to achieve.

The previous speaker spoke about the issues of fairness and equality. But, interestingly, they actually never define what fairness and equality are all about. They never define it and instead just make these giant motherhood statements, expecting everybody to nod in agreement that fairness and equality are great ideas. But they never actually define what they are. We should be very proud as a nation that we provide the social service net that Australians enjoy today across a wide variety of payments, whether it be our age pension system, our welfare and support payments for middle-class Australians, for those who are unemployed, for those who are finding life difficult and, for those who have a disability, now through the NDIS and the programs we are running there. The responsibility of government is to provide and continue to provide these services and support, to ensure we remain a well-functioning first-class nation. I think, overall, we have done a great job in that over the past 12 months.

But I want to remind the House that it is important for us to have these debates about what governments can and cannot do. Over the past 30 or 40 years I think we have seen that maybe governments have made promises—and both sides of politics have done this, I might add—and now that the time is coming to pay those bills we are discovering it is much more difficult to pay the bills than we originally envisaged. I will quote a passage I have previously quoted in the House that I think bears repeating in the context of some of the points raised by the previous speaker on the notion of fairness and equity. This is from an author, Tom G Palmer, writing about the risks of the welfare state, if we do not manage it properly. He uses this analogy:

The welfare state has something in common with fishing. If no one owns and is responsible for the fish in the lake, but one does own all the fish he or she can catch and pull out of the lake, everyone tries to catch the most fish. Each reasons that 'if I don't catch the fish, someone else will.' Each of us may know that catching lots of fish now means that the lake will be fished out, but so long as others can catch whatever I don't catch, none of us have an incentive to limit our fishing and let the fish population replenish itself. Fish are caught faster than they can breed; the waters are fished out; and in the end everyone is worse off.

We have a system today where 50 per cent of Australians pay no net tax. By the time they pay their income taxes and receive benefits back through middle-class welfare they pay no net tax. The question is: how long can this situation continue? Environmentalists, economists and political scientists call the analogy I have just spoken about 'the tragedy of the commons'. It is a very serious problem, because it goes to the heart of my earlier comment about governments making promises that ultimately they cannot deliver. It is the root cause of many of the crises we are facing globally today, whether they be depleted ocean fisheries, air or water pollution, or other problems. But it is not limited to those; it also affects how welfare states operate. The tragedy is facing countries across the world today. In this country we are in a fortunate position, in that we had a period from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s when successive governments of both political persuasions sought to open up our economy, relax regulation and give Australians the opportunity to do what they do best, which is to grow businesses and build wealth. Whether they were small, medium-sized or large businesses, they were all given that opportunity. That is what we, as a government, want to present to the Australian community again: an opportunity for them to succeed and do what they do best.

Now, back to the analogy! In modern welfare states, everybody has an incentive to act like the irresponsible fishermen who fished out the lake—and it is not only individuals; interestingly, we also see it in the various incentives that get paid to the business and corporate sector—except the resource we are plundering is each other. At the end of the day, the revenue that government receives comes from Australian taxpayers. It is not money that governments receive through magnanimity or create out of thin air; it is money received from Australian taxpayers. Each person seeks to get as much as he can from his neighbours, but at the same time his neighbours are trying to get as much as they can from him. The welfare state institutionalises what French economist Frederic Bastiat called 'reciprocal plunder'.

We heard that earlier from the member for Lilley. There is a notion among members on the other side that we can continue to tax those who have wealth and resources because it does not matter how much we tax them as long as we can redistribute it somewhere else. That does not work in the long run, because the people who have those resources will eventually try to do something with their resources to protect what they have. The risk is that they will take away their knowledge, wealth, skills and intellect—maybe to set up their businesses offshore in a foreign country—not only robbing the Australian economy of finance and resources but robbing the Australian economy and Australian people of jobs. That is why it is so important, as a government, to ensure that our taxation and regulatory systems create incentives not only for existing businesses to grow and prosper but for people to take the risk and start new businesses, because frequently it is the new businesses that come up with new ideas and innovations.

In this country we have a history of being creative and inventive and of solving problems. Australia's history is replete with examples, such as the black box flight recorder, the Hills hoist, the combine harvester—to name a few. We should be seeking to encourage and facilitate the modern-day versions of those businesses in this country, because they are the businesses that will create the opportunities and wealth for the future, not only for the owners of those businesses but for their employees. We know that when people are employed they have better self-esteem and the ability to provide for their families. Nobody wants to see people survive on welfare. We want people to have jobs, because that is the best form of wealth creation there is. It gets people out of their homes every day, doing something constructive and productive. Interestingly, it is employees in the small and medium-sized businesses around this country who sometimes come up with the best ideas about how those businesses can grow and develop.

That is what this government is looking to do in its agenda going forward, but I also want to touch on a couple of things I have achieved over the past three years in the electorate of Forde. Again, I take this opportunity to thank the community of Forde for re-electing me for another term. This government and the previous government have delivered on all of the commitments we took to the 2013 election for the electorate of Forde. Whether it was funding for the Beenleigh town centre project, funding for safer streets through the use of CCTV, continued funding to our councils for Roads to Recovery or funding to our councils for the bridges to recovery program, there have been many, many projects that this government have funded over the past three years in the electorate of Forde. We will continue to do so through the commitments we have made for the forthcoming term of parliament.

In addition, we are seeing more and more areas of the electorate receiving NBN as the rollout gathers pace. I know there are those who would like to see it happen more quickly, but in the electorate of Forde it is happening far quicker now than it would have under the previous Labor government.

Every single commitment I made at the 2013 election has been delivered, and I have every intention of continuing that record by funding the commitments we made at the 2016 election. We have committed $350,000 to the Loganholme football club to upgrade its clubhouse. The Loganholme football club—or Loganholme Lightning, as it is known—is a fantastic local club that is growing and becoming one of the major clubs in our area. It enjoys tremendous support from its members, players and supporters. We also announced $100,000 to install lighting at the Ormeau Bulldogs Junior AFL Club so they have the capacity to train at night, not just in the afternoons.

Beenleigh Senior Citizens Club will receive $90,000 to upgrade their kitchen facilities. The kitchen is not only used by the seniors citizens club but also used by our local Meals on Wheels. Given that we recently celebrated National Meals on Wheels Day, can I just say what an amazing job our Meals on Wheels friends do. I am very pleased that they will also benefit from the upgrade to this kitchen.

We have committed a further $525,000 through our Safer Communities program to fund the installation of new CCTV cameras around Logan. Through our Solar Communities program, we have allocated $100,000 to a number of local organisations to assist them install solar to offset some of their electricity costs. We have also announced a major Green Army project on the Logan River for $200,000 to improve water quality and protect waterways through revegetation.

The achievements of this government over the past term and the achievements that we foresee over the coming term will stand the electorate of Forde in good stead. I am extremely proud to be part of the Turnbull government and look forward to a productive three years to come as we continue to build a future for Australia. (Time expired)

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was sitting in the parliament in question time this week and I came to the conclusion that, strangely enough, the government were trying to Photoshop out the 44th Parliament—that somehow we have miraculously gone from the 43rd Parliament to, tada, the 45th Parliament. No matter what question—

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It never happened!

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes—it never happened. Exactly—it never happened. Nothing to see there. No matter what question we asked about what the government was doing about anything, they immediately went back to the 43rd Parliament and what Labor did or did not do. It is as if three years of government and all the things they could have done in those three years were gone. Out came the metaphorical paintbrush and off it went. The 44th Parliament—gone. The whole Abbott-Turnbull horrible mess disappeared completely. But I looked at these appropriation bills over the weekend, and what do you know—here it is, back again in all its glory. These appropriation bills contain all of the zombie measures from 2014 budget, all of those that were still there in the 2015 budget and still there in the 2016 budget, and here they are. So, in spite of all their efforts today to Photoshop it out, to pretend it did not happen, here it is, back in the 45th Parliament in all its glory. The zombie measures are here. The zombie measures are back. We heard in the election campaign Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, saying that if he won the election it would give him a mandate to impose these on the Australian people, and here he is again trying to do it, and here we are again—in 2014, 2015 and again in 2016—stopping them from ripping the guts out of support for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

So let's look at what this budget actually locks in. Let's pull the 44th Parliament back out of the cupboard and have a good look at what they tried to do then and what they are still trying to do. The budget locks in family tax benefit cuts to 1.5 million families; cuts to paid parental leave for 80,000 new mums every year, leaving some $11,800 worse off; cuts to 330,000 part pensioners; increasing the pension age to 70; cuts to young job seekers that will force them to live off nothing for a month; cutting $30 billion from schools; $100,000 university degrees for Australian students; a plan to increase the cost of medicines for everyone by increasing the co-payment as part of the PBS, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme; cutting bulk-billing incentives for diagnostic imaging and pathology services; cutting the pension to 190,000 pensioners through the plan to limit overseas travel for Australian pensioners. That is a particularly nasty budget measure that hits people in my community very hard. And of course it also locks in a new one, which is the $50 billion tax cut to some of the biggest businesses in the country, flowing through eventually to any business with a turnover of less than a billion dollars. That pretty much sums up the whole 44th Parliament, I think: cuts to the most vulnerable and giving the benefits of those cuts to the big end of town. The 44th Parliament is alive and well. I expect them to still try to Photoshop it out tomorrow, but with these appropriation bills before the House they are just not going to be able to do that.

When the Prime Minister rolled previous Prime Minister Abbott, the country breathed a sigh of relief, and I have to say that so did I. Even though I and probably the entire country thought that the deposing of Prime Minister Abbott and the replacement with Prime Minister Turnbull meant that we did not have a chance of winning the next election, I still breathed a sigh of relief because we could not continue down the path we were going. We had been a country with a finger on the pause button for nearly two years. There were all of the things that needed to be done—the massive changes taking place in the world, the investment boom in mining coming to an end—and we had a government that was essentially sitting on its hands when it came to addressing the future. They were very good at repealing things, they were very good at cutting support for the most vulnerable in our society, but, when it came to putting anything forward which actually generated growth, when it came to doing anything which might position our country for the next decade or the decade after that or the decade after that, there was nothing. So we all breathed a sigh of relief and what a disappointment.

It is a year tomorrow since Prime Minister Turnbull deposed Tony Abbott and it has been a year of more of the same or, rather, nothing. It has been another year of nothing. Today, in question time, when we asked the Prime Minister to name his achievements, once again he could not. The only achievement he managed to come up with today was the NBN.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't go there!

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know. Exactly. The only 'achievement', and I am using quotation marks, in a whole year of being Prime Minister—this man who desperately wanted the job, who angled for it, who manoeuvred, who manipulated, who stabbed people in the back and did whatever he needed to get this position, and he has had it for a year—was the NBN. We have moved from 30th to 60th in the world in terms of internet speed in the last year, and it is now twice as expensive and it will not be delivered anywhere near on time. If that is the achievement of this gentleman while he been Prime Minister, heaven help us if he gets another three years in the job.

The phrase that the Prime Minister uses a lot and used today—and we hear it over and over again—is 'jobs and growth'. In spite of having no achievements for the last year, apart from the NBN, and in spite of being a government that had their fingers on the pause button for three years in the 44th Parliament, they keep repeating over and over again 'jobs and growth' as if just repeating the words will cause it to happen. You say, 'What's your strategy?' 'Jobs and growth.' 'What are you trying to achieve?' 'Jobs and growth.' That is fair enough because one should try and achieve jobs and growth, but usually if you are in government you actually have to do something, have a policy, have a strategy which generates those jobs and that growth. The strategy you should not have is the one we saw in the last term, and which we are starting to see again now, which is to assume you can cut the things that cause growth and then wait for the growth so that you can fund the things that cause growth again—so you cut all of the things that cause growth in order to have growth. It makes no sense at all.

Let us look at the things that this government has cut, because there are a lot of them—in fact, virtually every element of an economy that causes growth has been cut. There is the NBN for a start. It has cost more money, but it is not the infrastructure that we need to grow this economy in this decade, let alone in 2030 and 2050—and it should be. An investment of that magnitude should be an investment in infrastructure that will last us 80 to 100 years. Under Labor's plan it would have been. The government has ripped the guts out of the most essential infrastructure that will grow our economy. It is gone.

They cut $30 billion out of education and they are ripping the guts out of funding for universities. How extraordinary. How are we supposed to have the knowledge workers of the future if you cut the guts out of education? They cut the guts out of science—they did not even have a science minister initially; at least we have one now—and even with the small amounts of money the government is now so proudly putting back into the CSIRO, hundreds of staff have left that organisation. They cut support for renewables. When they abolished the price on carbon, they pretty much drove Australia's move towards a clean economy into reverse. There were incredible reductions in the amount of investment into renewables. Renewables is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world and we, as a nation, walked away from it. We had incredible support for coal, now a sector in decline, but none for renewables. We have a government that cancelled most of the infrastructure in our major cities. All of the infrastructure that assisted our cities to be more productive is gone—some of it is coming back, but most of it has gone.

The approach that this government has of trying to generate jobs and growth by cutting the very things that generate growth is bizarre to say the least. You can see already, after three years of this government, the effect their strategies are having on the community—on families, workers and small business. You can see the effect it is starting to have. 'Jobs' and 'growth' are just two words until you consider which jobs and which growth: where is the growth, who benefits from that growth and where are the jobs. If you look at Australia at the moment from that prism, rather than just the mantra of 'jobs and growth', you will see that there are many, many areas where a considerable amount of work has to be done. Two-thirds of Australia's annual growth, for example, comes from the contribution of net exports and we all know that a significant part of that is still mining—that is a good thing. But the mining sector only employs about two per cent of total employment. So if that sector is going well, it is good for government coffers and it is good for big business profits. But in terms of jobs coming out of that sector—not a great deal. Private investment is incredibly important if you want to stimulate jobs and growth, but we have just seen the largest decline in private investment in 16 years. This is not a good sign for jobs and growth. The words 'jobs and growth' are not enough. What is the government doing about it? Well, they are repeating the words a lot.

Consumption growth halved in the June quarter. It is hard to see where the jobs and growth are going to come from if that is actually happening. From the local business perspective, having customers who are prepared to spend their money—customers who feel confident, who are out there buying the services of local businesses—is one of the most important things you can have, and yet consumption growth halved in the June quarter. There is no doubt whatsoever that ordinary Australians are well and truly feeling the pinch because living standards have fallen two per cent since the Liberals came to office. This is devastating for local families. And while the government are creating jobs—220,000 jobs created in the past year; a reasonable number of jobs—what are those jobs? Only 30,000 of them are full time. Only 30,000 of those 220,000 jobs are full time, while nine out of 10 of those jobs were part time.

I understand the argument that has been put by the other side that a lot of people want part-time jobs—yes, a lot of people do—but a lot of other people want full-time work. They want some sense of security so that they can invest in their own futures, buy a house and consider where their children are going to go to school. They can make the decisions that families make and they can invest in their own futures. For business too, it is worthwhile understanding that full-time, secure work in your community is like ballast—it has its good and its bad—but if there are a large proportion of people in your community who have secure work and who feel secure, then they ease the effect of volatile markets. They stop spending later and they start spending earlier. They continue to buy because they feel safe. As the market moves around a little, full permanent employment is an incredibly important stabilising influence.

Underemployment is at near record levels. Jobs and growth? Great words, but the reality is that underemployment for women aged between 35 and 44 is more than double the rate for men of the same age and at record levels. The rate of working-age men who are not in the labour force—men who have given up looking for work altogether—is higher than it was during the global financial crisis. This is not a government that for ordinary families living out there in the suburbs is generating this jobs and growth success story. In fact, it is quite the contrary.

Australians who have become unemployed are taking much longer to find their next job than they did even in 2013. In fact, the average length of unemployment has increased by eight weeks. That is not a sign of this great jobs and growth mantra flowing down to average families. Over the next 12 months we are going to see the great achievement of the 44th Parliament: the closing of our car industry, one of the first achievements of the Hockey-Abbott partnership, goading our car manufacturers to leave the country, and they are. We will see anywhere between 28,000 and 40,000 jobs lost—good, high-skill jobs that provide the basis for a whole range of new manufacturing jobs, jobs that stimulate university study and build engineers and expertise across the full range of manufacturing, gone from our economy. They are jobs that we will not be able to replace.

So I say to the government: please let us know what your strategy is. Jobs and growth are two words. Unless you have strategies to achieve them, you will not and you are not.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to be again re-elected by the good people of La Trobe, and I thank them very much. It is also fantastic to be sitting beside the new member for Dunkley. Today he gave a fantastic maiden speech and should be very proud of his achievement. I also listened to all the new members' maiden speeches in recent weeks. They show the quality of new members who have entered the House on both sides of parliament.

During the election campaign I had a number of people raise with me the issues of crime. One person at the Berwick train station advised me how his wife was involved in an attempted carjacking at one of the local shopping centres. I had not actually heard of that happening in the local area before. Then I had two or three other people straight after the campaign let me know that they had been subjected to a run-through of their premises. From the knowledge we gathered, it was actually the Apex gang involved in entering houses. One time it was four in the morning and was done with the view of stealing some car keys. They actually came back three times.

I previously raised this issue after the Moomba festival, when the Apex gang actually did a run-through of the Melbourne CBD, which horrified Melburnians. That is when I first really became aware of the Apex gang. The Apex name actually comes from a street in Dandenong the founders of the gang decided to name their gang after. I did warn it is going to get worse, and it actually has got worse. Sadly, in recent times we have seen this incredible situation where we have police cars being rammed by offenders, and I have never seen that before. As a former police officer, I am greatly concerned to see this occurring. Recently, one of the members of Victoria Police actually had to shoot an offender. The offender was killed during the incident.

I have previously called and will continue to call. No. 1, there is a severe lack of police numbers in the City of Casey and surrounds. In my time as a police officer, when you used to work an afternoon shift at, say, in Boronia or the Melbourne CBD you would normally have maybe two divisional vans on the road and a car at the same time. I am hearing that down at Narre Warren they have only got one car or one van on in the afternoon shift, and the same goes with Pakenham. Endeavour Hills's police station has been cut back on the weekend. With the growth of City of Casey and Cardinia, this is just a ridiculous situation, and the state Labor government must get serious about getting on top of this gang violence.

I have called for and continued to call for the National Anti-Gangs Squad to get involved. That is joint AFP and state police. When they team up together, they have been very effective on the outlaw motorcycle gang members, but they now need to focus on violent gangs such as the Apex gang. They are not a street gang. Someone breaking into your house at three in the morning and terrorising your entire family is not a street gang.

This brings me to a community crime prevention info forum we had on the weekend. I congratulate Andrew Hartley for arranging this at Sweeney Reserve. We also thank the rapid-response team for providing food. We probably had 300 members of the public turn up, which is very significant. They were all concerned about the crime occurring in their area. I was speaking to a gentleman by the name of Craig who was telling me that, last Sunday or the Sunday before, he was having dinner at home at seven o'clock at night with the family. Lo and behold, he heard some noise in the garage, walked through the kitchen, realised someone had stolen the car keys and was endeavouring to steal the car. He disturbed them and they left.

There is a lot of work to do in this area. Once you get a gang of 300 or 400 members, it is at a tipping point where, sadly, because of the state Labor government, even though they have very hardworking detectives and police working on this, they need extra resources. That is where again I say to my own government that we need to help out simply because the state Labor government has completely failed.

At this forum on the weekend I also said to the residents that we do actually live in a great place in La Trobe—in this case, the City of Casey—and talked about a project called Bunjil Place. I congratulate again the City of Casey. It is a $125 million project involving performing arts, visual arts, a library and a civic centre there. The quality will be state of the art. It will be good enough, for example, for the Russian ballet to come over or for an international art exhibition to show their works there. This is the great thing about where we actually live. It has been a focus of the coalition. Obviously, the Labor Party gets all uppity-uppity over jobs and growth, but that is simply what we are trying to do—we are trying to create jobs and growth.

That brings me to some other great announcements we had during the election campaign. This is one of my favourites and this is something which I was looking at a number of years ago. I always thought it would be a great idea to restore one of the old red rattler trains, which as a child I used to catch to school. I must admit that 35 years ago we all hated them, but now we have become nostalgic and we all love the old red rattler trains. For those who are listening who do not know what I am talking about, if you look at the Harry Potter movies that is pretty much what a red rattler looks like. We are planning to restore a red rattler train. I thank John Robinson, the CEO of Puffing Billy, for getting behind the project; Adrian, who has been a great supporter; and also the Clark brothers, who have dedicated pretty much their whole life to restoring these old trains. Sadly, a number of years ago, one which had nearly been fully restored in the Melbourne depot in Williamstown was destroyed by an arsonist, which was truly a tragic event.

Under the Turnbull government we have committed $1 million for the restoration and we very much look forward to seeing one of these red rattler trains leaving the Melbourne CBD and going along the Belgrave train line with both interstate and international tourists. Remember that Puffing Billy has over 400,000 tourists each year. The only issue is that on a wet day in winter if you catch Puffing Billy and get off at Emerald Lake Park there is really not much to do apart from walk around the lake in the wet. It is great in summer but not that much fun in winter. John Robinson and his team have put together a $12 million proposal for an Emerald discovery centre looking at the history of Puffing Billy and also, as I discussed with them, looking at the overall history of the Dandenong Ranges and capturing our history. Again this is a great tourist opportunity which will create jobs in the area.

Whilst we are talking about things up in Emerald, we have also committed $1 million towards a walk—actually the missing link—from Cockatoo to Gembrook. This will be used by horse riders, cyclists and walkers. Again, it is something that will be very good for tourists and also for the local residents, who are very excited about this.

We come back to the other side of the Dandenong Ranges. I have the firm view that, if we can get more people to work locally and use the Dandenong Ranges for its beauty in the tourism area, we will get fewer people driving on the Monash, which we know is a nightmare. One of the projects there is called the Ridge Walk, but I call it the heritage walk. It is going to be 14 kilometres of walking paths from Upwey right across to Montrose, connecting all our historic little townships there. It will be great for traders, great for walkers and great for tourists.

I thank very much Ali Wastie from the Yarra Ranges Council, who has worked on another project with me. I had previously applied for National Heritage Listing of the Dandenong Ranges based on our famous landscape artists. For example, we have Horatio's house on Blackwood Street, Tecoma. For those who do not know, Horatio was a First World War veteran. In actual fact, Horatio was engaged to Caroline Hearst, whose father was the richest man in America, but they actually called off the engagement because he suffered injuries during the war. He ended up building this house out of kerosene tins. The Heidelberg Artists Society would come and visit. Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Sir Arthur Boyd would come and create some of their masterpieces there. Also, CJ Dennis wrote The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke in the electorate of La Trobe, and Indigenous artist Lin Onus created so many great works there. So it is unique. With the Yarra Ranges Council we want to apply again for National Heritage of the Dandenong Ranges and to link it with these 14 kilometres of walks, which I am very excited about.

There is also the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road. We have had a number of issues with cyclists using the road. After Cadel Evans won the Tour de France the Dandenong Ranges have never been the same because every weekend we have countless cyclists coming up. They have the right to go up there, but it has also become exceptionally dangerous for cyclists and for local residents. So we have $10 million to actually address the safety issues for the cyclists and assist the locals. I very much thank Minister Paul Fletcher for getting behind that project.

Now I know the member for Aston will nearly fall out of his seat when I talk about this: the 1,000 Steps drinking taps. I do not actually know when the 1,000 Steps were constructed, but I assume it must have been in the 1920s. They go from the base of the Upper Ferntree Gully National Park up to One Tree Hill. Whoever built these stairs had a fantastic sense of humour because the last 40 or 50 stairs are at least four feet apart and on a very steep angle. It is an absolute fitness test. Because of this we have so many people regularly coming up. I know the member for Aston loves going up there and getting on the stairs. We committed $50,000 towards this project. The reason is, sadly, a lot of people leave their drinking bottles around there, and the park rangers have much better things to do than go around picking up bottles which people have left behind. So we are looking at installing three drinking taps. We obviously will need to work with the state Labor government on this issue. Again, this is something I am very proud we got behind and supported.

In the last couple of minutes I would like to talk about another very important issue, and that is the Monash Freeway. We have a billion-dollar plan for the Monash, and I thank the Prime Minister for that plan. Our plan is actually an extra lane from Warrigal Road right up to Cardinia Road. The state Labor government and the federal Labor opposition cannot see the value of actually extending the extra lane on the Monash from Clyde Road out to Cardinia Road.

The growth figures out in the suburbs like Officer, Beaconsfield and Cranbourne are just horrendous. Even in the next three years I know there are probably going to be another 30,000 residents moving into that area. Everyone always blames government for not having the vision. Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, they should try having a vision here and actually take this road right out to Cardinia—an extra lane there. And to be on the safe side it is probably going to need another extra lane in the future even after that. The opposition leader and the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, have to realise that they have to get behind this project. They need to support it.

Also part of our commitment are the on-off ramps at the Beaconsfield Exchange, which will greatly improve traffic, and extending O'Shea Road from Eden Rise shopping centre to the Beaconsfield Exchange, which will finally give a focus to the portion of the land there to be used for innovation and advanced manufacturing. We want to see the tourist jobs in the Dandenong Ranges and we want to see the innovation and advanced manufacturing jobs in the south of the electorate, and take pressure off the Monash. This is where the Prime Minister's vision for innovation and advanced manufacturing will be what we are doing in La Trobe. That is what we are going to achieve, and this should be rolling out in the next couple of years.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, firstly, before I begin my contribution, I want to congratulate you on your elevation to that august position. I know that in your role as whip you have been very successful in applying your skills at counting sheep, and now you get to herd them in your new role. I certainly wish you all the best. I enjoy a very good working relationship with you and the approach that you bring to bear on your role. It is not surprising that a Labor member would speak more highly of a National Party member than a Liberal any day of the week!

However, I want to start my contribution on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017 with this revelation—a second revelation, if I may, and that is: I agree with the Treasurer. I agree with the Treasurer. I think it is important in the context of the bills that we are considering, the appropriation bills, that we are pressed by a challenge—a fiscal challenge that does need to be addressed, and addressed thoroughly. It will require a lot of people to drop their ideological positions, their opposition, the views that they have had in the past and the views that they champion now in the interests of reform.

I think, when we look at the stats, it is very compelling. In fact, the member for Rankin today walked us through the economic picture that is confronting the country and that I think needs to be considered in this debate. For example, our debt has blown out and is blowing out, and the deficit has tripled since those opposite have come to power and handed down their first budget. The AAA credit rating is now actually being spoken about as being at risk and that it is vulnerable. So we do need to undertake budget repair.

The member for Rankin, the shadow minister for finance, also outlined at a few other stats that I think are very sobering. For example, he outlined that while there is strong headline economic growth, or GDP growth, of 3.3 per cent there are still some challenges that sit in the background. Despite low interest rates, investment is falling. Mining investment has collapsed and while other sectors might be picking up some slack, not all the slack is being picked up. Total private investment has plummeted nearly 15 per cent in just 12 months—15 per cent in just 12 months! For those who are interested, this is the worst yearly drop in nearly 16 years. GDP growth for the June quarter was driven entirely by the government sector, and if that had not been there growth would have been negative.

Real net national disposable income per capita grew by 0.2 per cent in the June quarter, but living standards remain nearly two per cent below the level at the 2013 election. Wages growth is the slowest on record—a number of us have been raising this concern for some time; it is why families feel under the pinch and very concerned about their personal financial situation. So, the outlook remains considerably uncertain. As a result of all this, government revenue will remain under pressure as well. Ongoing budget deficits and the trajectory of the debt simply are unsustainable, with debt to GDP rising faster than most other advanced economies.

There is going to have to be a broad solution. We cannot simply cut our way out of this; we are going to need to look at spending measures, or cutting spending, at the same time as looking at increasing revenue in other places. Even the Treasurer is conceding that this is probably something that will need to happen.

The budget itself is in worse shape than when we last left office in 2013. Net debt is out by over $100 billion and the deficit, as I said earlier, has tripled. The coalition's first budget in 2014 predicted that in 2016-17—so, this financial year—we would have a deficit of $10.6 billion, and now it will rise to $37.1 billion this year. Taxation is higher every year under the Liberals than any Labor budget. Government spending, at 25.8 per cent of GDP, is higher now than at any point since the peak of the global financial crisis. And bear in mind that when Labor was in office we constantly got from the other side how high the spending had been while they airbrushed the actual event of the GFC itself. Clearly, these are things that need to be addressed.

So I come back to my point said earlier, and that is that I agree with the Treasurer. We have to listen to him and work together. We need to be less divided. When I said we need people to work together, I, and many Australians, want those who stand in the way of budget repair to drop their opposition, to drop the ideology and to unite. And so I think a number of us in this place will be urging that the people who need to get on board are the coalition backbench, because we get told all the time by the Treasurer that Labor has to work with it. But the issue is that Labor has said, and not just said but outlined, ways in which we can actually deliver budget repair.

As the member for Rankin rightly observed today, there are not many oppositions who, within the first few weeks of a new parliament, can outline a better trajectory of savings than the government. And that is what we did. In the first few weeks, we outlined $8 billion of measures that we think can improve the budget bottom line. And they are things that have to be looked at. But they will not be looked at. Why? Because the coalition backbench is standing in the way and refusing to allow the government to concede, to consider, to think about, to even scope out whether, for example, there could be reform of negative gearing in this country. They will not allow them to do it.

In fact, we had the extraordinary revelation that on a key piece of economic reform, on a measure being considered by cabinet, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—and bear in mind that the Treasurer acknowledged there were excesses in negative gearing and suggested that we needed to address this—got rolled by opposition, led within the cabinet, to that move. It is extraordinary that a Prime Minister and a Treasurer would be rolled on an economic measure. But voices within the federal government know they are backed up by a backbench that will not accept this change.

As much as people say that the Senate is divided, riven, fractured, let us just check out how many leaders of political movements are in this place. You have a leader of the Liberal Party. You have a leader of the National Party. You have a leader of the Labor Party. You have a Greens representative. You have the leader of the Bob Katter Party. You have a Nick Xenophon member. You have a score of independents. And you have a second 'leader of the opposition' in the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott. He stands as the second leader of the opposition in this place, arguing within the coalition against any moves being considered by the Turnbull government. Everyone is wondering why Malcolm will not be Malcolm. Well, he will not be because he is not allowed to be. He is always looking over his shoulder. He does not look forward; he is always walking with a look over his shoulder, trying to fathom whether he will be rolled by his backbench, led by the second leader of the opposition in this place, the member for Warringah—and doesn't he love that role! He is the best opposition leader on either this side of the place or on that side of the place, and he is always urging for his view to be the most dominant one.

We get a lot of lectures about 'respecting mandates'. In fact, in the whole debate about marriage equality and the plebiscite, we were told that the coalition is prepared to spend $160 million on a plebiscite and has a mandate. But what happens when we look at, for example, a budget measure introduced in haste this year on superannuation? What happens with that? We do not have a mandate. We had Senator Sinodinos say that, if the coalition won the election, they would have a mandate for the superannuation policies that they took to the election. They cannot change their position on marriage equality—because they have a mandate and they took that promise to the election. But what we got now on superannuation? We have the Treasurer having to negotiate not with Labor but with his own backbench on a key policy measure that was announced in the budget. It had supposedly received a mandate but it now has to be negotiated with the backbench.

On top of that, we had a former leader on their side of politics—the second opposition leader of this country—go to a briefing led by the Treasurer and attended by the Minister for Revenue and criticise them both on the policy that has been put forward. Newspaper accounts suggest that he just flicked the policy document aside—as we know, the member for Warringah is not necessarily a person who is encumbered by detail—and castigated both the Treasurer and the Minister for Revenue on the policy that is being announced on superannuation reform by those people and others. So this is what we have got.

In trying to address budget repair, it is not the Labor Party that those opposite should be looking at; if anything, the coalition frontbench should be entering into a union with the Labor Party to get budget repair done. If the coalition frontbench are stuck with trying to negotiate with the coalition backbench, we will get nowhere because they are not prepared to concede from their ideological position about what should happen. It is not like the coalition Liberals can turn to the National Party, their supposed coalition partners. These are not agrarian socialists; these are agrarian Trots who would just love to see the Liberal Party fail so that they can take more positions within the cabinet. You could see the contest in the election; they were more than willing to contest against Liberal Party members. Whenever you talk to a National Party member in this place, it does not take them long to reveal their disdain for the Liberal Party.

And look what happens on economic policy. We have a situation in this country where one state is arguing for an increase in mining royalties. The WA Nationals are arguing for an increase in royalties, an increase in imposts. That side of politics championed a reduction in the impost on the mining sector. The Prime Minister says this is troublesome. And what do we get out of the Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the National Party in this place? A nod and a slow wink to his colleagues in WA, suggesting it is okay to increase taxes. This comes from the party whose raison d'etre, their whole reason for being elected, was to remove the mining tax. They are now arguing for it and sending out the signal that that is okay, while back in Canberra they will not even countenance changes to revenue. So what is going on? There is no unity on that side.

Given the economic challenges the government faces, and given the impact that that puts on the fiscal and budget repair that is supposed to be at the heart of this bill, you need that side, we need that side, the country needs that side to be united and actually get their act together. But they are not, and they will not.

And this is just going to get worse. The division we have seen is just going to get worse. And we saw it on display last week when the second leader of the opposition, in the absence of the Prime Minister, decided he would float a number of things. Amazingly, the person who had been reluctant on electoral donation reform decided he would now champion it by effectively picking up every idea in the public space, claiming it as his own and going out there and talking about it. The week before, we saw him go and meet with the leader of One Nation. It was not a sanctioned visit. He decided to go and have a cup of tea—and then he put it in a video, mind you!

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Awkward.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was very awkward, member for Brand, indeed! It was a cringe-worthy effort. But what was even more unsettling is the fact that you have the second Leader of the Opposition in this place attempting to destabilise—it is clear, everyone can read it; people in this place who have been familiar with politics can see it—and trying to undermine the Prime Minister—undermine the Prime Minister when he is here; undermine the Prime Minister when he is at the G20—and not allow for a unity of purpose when it comes to running government. And we simply cannot afford that, and the budget cannot afford that. If we are to encourage those types of savings and changes to go through, we simply cannot have a situation where the second Leader of the Opposition is fighting and leading a rearguard action against the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. And those reports actually get out into the public. We find out about it quickly. Any time that a decision is made on that side of this place, we find out in the media today—be it the introduction of the Christopher Pyne border patrol, or border force, in this place, spying on their own people, or be it some of the meetings that they are having about economic policy. It is simply unacceptable. As I said, I agree with the Treasurer: we need unity, we need bipartisanship, and we need the backbench to actually work with the front bench of the coalition to make that happen—otherwise we are going to be in a way worse spot. And the country cannot afford the division and dysfunction.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill be now read a second time. I call the Chief Government Whip.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and congratulations on your new role. I am sure you will bring great distinction to this.

I rise to speak about something that is particularly important: the crisis in the dairy industry in Western Australia today. As of 1 October—that is in just 18 days' time—four of our dairy farmers, my fellow dairy farmers, in Western Australia will have no home at all for their milk. They have been told by their processor that their contract will not be renewed from this date. And no other processor has agreed or will agree to taking on these farmers' milk supplies. One of these dairy farmers is a new young farmer, Clayton Minson, who has only just recently bought his dairy farm. He has taken the risk, he and his wife have invested and they are having a go—and yet in 18 days' time, they will have no home for their milk. Another one is Graham Manning—both ends of the spectrum: the Manning family were actually pioneers of dairy farming in Western Australia, and Graham has produced some of the best quality milk in Australia throughout his time as a dairy farmer. In fact, for the last 16 years his milk has been in the top five per cent in Australia for quality. Yet he will have no home for this top-quality milk in 18 days. This also sees him—and us as an industry—losing decades and decades of breeding, and decades and decades of knowledge. And there are others: Dale and Leanne Hanks and Tony and Tina Ferraro and their families; they are the others of the four who will see no home for their milk in 18 days' time.

How does anybody think these farmers are feeling today? What do they do with their cows in 18 days' time? What do they do with their milk in 18 days' time?. If that was you, how would you be feeling? But it does not stop there. In Western Australia, a further five dairy farmers will have no home for their milk from 1 January, and they supply a different processor altogether. All of these dairy farmers are extremely vulnerable because they have a perishable product, one that has to be refrigerated and processed on a daily basis. They cannot store it, they cannot put it away, they cannot put it in a warehouse; it has to be manufactured on a daily basis. But they also have to supply these contracts until that very last day. And as for cows, Mr Deputy Speaker—I know you are aware—you cannot simply flick a switch and turn off the udder of a dairy cow. It does not work like that. As you know, it is a long-term investment, when you become a dairy farmer, and with each set of cows that you raise. It takes 2½ years from the time a heifer calf is born until she comes into the dairy as a milker. It is a two-and-a-half-year turnaround for that one animal. It is a long-term plan and a long-term investment by dairy farmers.

Given that the majority of milk in Western Australia is used in the domestic market, concerns have constantly been raised with me that the market dominance of the two leading grocery retailers is having a major impact on farmgate milk prices. And of course, what really concerns me with $1 milk is the value that consumers then place on that product. To think of what goes into the production, the processing and the delivery of milk—and to think that it is cheaper than water! When you consider the time, the effort, the expertise and the excellence that goes into producing milk around Australia, to see the value go out of this product—in my mind, it is just appalling. The problem arises from market dominance, whether it is in grocery sales or in any other marketplace. It is that processers and producers cannot negotiate a fair price or terms and conditions for their goods. That is what happens. Processers and producers who are unable to make sufficient returns on capital simply cannot make the necessary investments or maintain their businesses. That is it in a nutshell. An additional undesirable outcome is the reduction—often—of the number of branded products, as well as where they are placed on the shelves. We all know that milk and dairy products in effect lead the consumer through a store to the very back—that is where the refrigerated section is. What else will a consumer pick up, along the way to pick up their milk and their dairy products when they go into to a supermarket?

The crisis in the WA dairy industry was highlighted by the Western Australia Farmers Federation dairy representatives at the dairy symposium held in Melbourne recently. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, Barnaby Joyce, for convening this symposium, because the issue facing Western Australia had not been raised at a national level. The amount of people in that room who had no idea that we had these nine farmers who would have no home for their milk in a short amount of time was borne out. I also want to acknowledge the work of the dairy section president, the newly elected Michael Partridge, who actually ran the debate for Western Australia at that symposium. It was an opportunity to facilitate an industry-led discussion, and this is needed to better manage the risk—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I ask the members at the table to be quieter please.

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

Thanks, Mr Deputy Speaker. Obviously the plight of my dairy farmers and industry is not necessarily an issue for those on the opposite side.

We need to better manage the risk along the dairy supply chain, given the vulnerability, the perishability and especially the effects of world dairy prices. This meeting saw producers from many states raise concerns about the way milk is sold and the management of processing and marketing. Fairer contract terms were discussed and there was a strong desire to see the processing sector work cooperatively with farmers to agree to better bargaining and contracting conditions.

In my view the long-term outlook for the dairy industry in WA is positive. We know that global dairy consumption is growing by around 2.2 per cent a year. We just have to keep our critical mass in Western Australia. I think we are down to around 145 dairy farmers, yet Western Australia is so well geographically located to supply quality product to developing countries. Our WA processors have an important role and a vested interest in ensuring local milk production capacity is retained for that inevitable time when domestic consumption once again outpaces supply and, of course, for additional export opportunities ahead.

As a dairy farmer myself, I knew we had a problem when Fonterra sold the profitable brands and therefore reduced the manufacturing opportunities in WA—for instance, Lady Borden ice-cream. You are well aware that the dairy industry underpins small towns and local economies. For many years in this country dairy has been rock-solid in the way it contributes to small towns, particularly through my south-west. Australian dairy is a $13 billion farm, manufacturing and export industry. It is not a small player. We look at all of the careers not just on-farm that go with cows: in the food service sector, in research and development, in the vet industry, in herd recording and right through to in manufacturing and the creation of new products. There is career after career. Many of those, as you would know, are city based. So there are some very genuine reasons that this industry is so important in Australia.

The government has commissioned and announced a review by the ACCC. An in-depth and independent inquiry by the ACCC is probably the only way to uncover inefficiencies and inequities that our farmers face and to identify a way forward—as long as those in the supply chain can give their evidence in confidence without the prospect of retaliation from powerful organisations further along the chain. This has been a problem historically. It was a problem when I was working for the industry with Dairy Western Australia. The very nature of the evidence, in such a small market, naturally identifies its source and, because there are limited outlets for the product, that evidence can put you out of business. I had a personal experience of this some years ago when I was given evidence of four potential breaches of the act to pass on to the ACCC. The individual concerned would only meet me to pass on this evidence in a car park in Perth where there were no cameras.

The ACCC inquiry that we have announced will begin in November. It will investigate the sharing of risk along the supply chain, supply agreements and contracts, competition, bargaining and trading practices in the industry, and the effect of world and retail prices on profitability. It will release an issues paper and engage with stakeholders through public and private hearings and will finally report to government in the second half of 2017.

The ACCC's agricultural unit, which was established through an $11.4 million commitment by the coalition government in the Agricultural competitiveness white paper, will lead the inquiry. I would suggest that a starting point for the review should be the examination of similar legislation in other countries, including the USA, UK and EU. Of course, we need to discover whether the practices currently found in the Australian grocery sector could potentially breach the laws as they apply in those countries. The review needs to consider whether the current law and competition policy reduce incentives for processors and producers to invest and innovate because they are subject to unduly harsh bargaining practices from big players. It needs to consider whether the remuneration structure for buyers and the dominant grocery retailers drive unreasonably aggressive bargaining practices.

I want to finish this particular speech by recognising where those four dairy farmers find themselves. I spoke about it earlier on and I know how they are feeling. I know how the five and their families, who are yet to have their contracts not renewed in January, are feeling. I also know how strongly they feel about their cattle, their farms and the dairy industry. All of these people have spent decades and decades refining their craft and contributing not just to the industry but to their communities. I want to thank them very much for what they have done. It is an appalling situation that they find themselves in. I hope that everybody in this House acknowledges their vulnerability and commitment to the industry over so many years.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I begin to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017, I would like to assure the member for Forrest that while there was a bit of chat around the desk it was not in regard to her constituents. We, indeed I, have constituents who are dairy farmers. We all know the great amount of time, energy, money and heart they invest into their farms and businesses. We all look aghast, I think, at some of the situations that have been caused by the deregulation of the dairy industry. That was led by Victorian farmers, I might note, and the consequences are still being felt now.

Here we are on the appropriation bill, and I can talk about anything, so I am going to talk about the first anniversary. It seems like yesterday that I was standing just at this box. I remember standing here—it was in the triumphant period—

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Basking!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They were basking. Thank you, Member for Chifley. In fact, you could not stand at this box without getting the warm glow off the then member for—what was he member for, Longman? Was that Wyatt Roy? There is a blast from the past—

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't think this is relevant.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is it relevant to this government's budget? Too right it is. All that plotting put you off course, so of course it is—

Mr Tudge interjecting—

You've got to stand at the box if you are going to make a point of order, Minister.

An honourable member interjecting—

You are going to enjoy every second of it.

Mr Husic interjecting—

Yes, that's right, the outback tour with Tony Abbott. That must have been a hell of a tour, and he stole all your media.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The mobile pub tour!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wouldn't you be upset—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind members that the member will be heard in silence—on both sides of the table.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed! Thank you for your protection, Deputy Speaker Coulton, I do appreciate it. I was talking about the basking that took place last year. I remember getting up here and saying, 'I don't think this will end that well.' I was making a point about the Westminster tradition, that if you are a minister in a cabinet and you are serving a Prime Minister you owe your first loyalty to him, and that if you engage in plotting out there in Queanbeyan—that is where it was, wasn't it? There are not too many of them left in the House, now. One? Two? There are some who do not own up to being there, and they are still here. You see them mentioned in the paper every now and again.

One year on, it does not look quite as good. Today, in fact, in The Australian, hardly an organ of socialism and progress, we had Phillip Hudson: 'One year on, what is the point of Turnbull as PM?'

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You sound like Tony Abbott, asking that question!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It could be. What I like is that there are quotes in the article from Jeff Kennett and Peta Credlin.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

More friends.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are all friends. This is a quote from Kennett:

Kennett's cruel response that he could not name one achievement "at the moment'—

'at the moment' is in inverted commas—

when asked in a television interview last week is a gift to Labor from a leading Liberal.

Turnbull would expect Credlin, as the former chief of staff to the man he tore down a year ago this week, to be a critic but her analysis that he has a "skinny tally of wins" is as biting as her three word put-down during the election that he was "Mr Harbourside Mansion".

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a highlight!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a highlight! It is his first anniversary. We have words such as 'pointless' being used. It is not really basking in the warm inner glow.

I saw the member for Rankin in here before. He was talking about the appropriations bill and numbers, and how those opposite are $100 million out.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dim Sim Jim, you're talking about; Chinese Chalmers!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He can count, though. That is a big step up over your Treasurer—he can count!

Mr Tudge interjecting—

That's not good politics! Talking about people who can count, the Financial Review can count.

Mr Husic interjecting—

They are on the conservative side, Member for Chifley. Thank you for pointing that out.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the member for Chifley that he does not have the call, and the member for Wakefield can make his speech by himself.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He has been interrupting me—and bullying me, I might add—since the Young Labor conferences of the early nineties.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Forceful guidance.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Forceful guidance, he says. The Financial Review also celebrated the first anniversary. Their article is entitled 'Experts give Malcolm Turnbull a D-plus for first year as PM.' What confused me is they called it a pass mark. What confused me is they called it a pass mark—it said 'barely got a pass mark'—but in my day a D wasn't a pass mark. I thought that was a C-minus, but maybe things have changed—grade deflation—to make sure he gets in under the bar. That was '50 business leaders, former Liberal politicians, academics, economists, administrators, lawyers and lobbyists who graded the PM for AFR Weekend.' The article says:

Not a single person awarded Turnbull an A and 50 per cent rated him D, E or F. Turnbull only narrowly avoided a fail.

It is a tough crowd. I was stunned by some of the things that were said. Warwick Smith, a former Liberal MP, who now works for a media baron and as a banker for Macquarie Group—he was the member for Bass, I think; they lost the seat of Bass in the last election—said, ' He is in danger of being seen as a total fizzer.' A bit harsh. A bit rough. If was one year into the job, I don't know if I could bear this sort of criticism. I was reading and reading and highlighting bits and pieces, and then, a bit further on, I really liked this one—

Mr Husic interjecting—

Even I was a bit like: I wouldn't be this harsh on the Prime Minister on his first anniversary. I know he has to be dealt with with kid gloves, because he his delicate. An ANU economist, Mr Martin Richardson, said in relation to the Prime Minister's leadership:

What's the Latin for 'I came, I did nothing, I stuck around?' I'm sure Mr Turnbull would know.

That is brutal. My mother-in-law is a Latin teacher. Sadly, she was unavailable. You cannot really translate that into Latin. We tried with—

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'I came. I saw. I did nothing.'

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You cannot actually translate 'I came, I did nothing, I stuck around.' Tragically you just cannot translate that into Latin, but I did use the internet for this.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank God for the internet.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank God for the internet. There are a couple of things. There is 'causa perduta'. That is 'lost cause'.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you translate that, it's 'Malcom Turnbull'.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right. Translate back.

A government member interjecting—

Yes, generally, but I am referring to the appropriation bill and the budget and stuff like that. I am not sure if I am pronouncing this right, 'qua de causa', which is 'for which reason'. This is the first year of government and it started so well! It started with such a glow, such a basking sort of—

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Self-administered sunshine basking!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Self-administered! It was the tanning salon of governments. And now we see them—Deputy Speaker Kelly is in the chair. He was giving a fine speech before, as he always does. He talks a lot about corporate tax rates. He always neglects to mention fringe benefits tax and capital gains tax, which are also implemented. And he leaves a few things out about the eighties.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It just gets in the way of a good argument.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does get in the way of a good argument. But he, in his speech, singled out the one single achievement of this government, which was to keep Labor out of government.

Mr Husic interjecting—

Of all the conservative causes. Normally they dress it up a bit, but they are really reaching into the bottom tray of achievements: 'We'll just keep the other guys out. Stop the other guys doing stuff—advancing the nation.' And given where we are with the world economy, our own national economy and all these debates, that is not really good enough. Non-thinking conservatism is not really good enough.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's a tautology!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right. A tautology. Thanks for the feedback, Ed; I do appreciate it.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am helping you and Hansard.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I agree. I will take all of your interjections. I also love the Prime Minister and his own words. When asked to describe his own first year in power, he said, 'So far, so good.' I mean, I do not really want to harp on it, but remember the thought bubbles that came through about the GST? There was all this chest thumping and you could see all these conservative commentators getting excited and the business lobby was getting going, and the backbenchers. He marched them all up to the top of the hill—and then straight back down again. And then we had the bizarre notion of the state income tax: getting the premiers to set your income tax.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is the future.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I have been reading a bit about Jack Curtin and his time as Prime Minister. Interestingly enough, they finished those debates then with a referendum. It was unbelievable. I have got some very conservative people in my electorate, very conservative farmers, and it tried even their patience for the conservative cause. They did not want Jay Weatherill setting the income tax rate. I think the thought quite horrified them. I would not include myself in that club of course, but anyway.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let us know how this speech goes with them.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right. I am known for pleasing people with my speeches. Anyway, 'So far, so good.' That is how the Prime Minister judges his own year. Look, let us be perfectly and utterly honest about it in this great appropriations debate. We are here and the government has got nothing to say in the Senate. They have got barely any legislation in the House. They are clinging to a compromise on same-sex marriage which pleases nobody, because, at the end of the day, when the Australian people actually vote for it, the government will not be such fans of the plebiscite then. They will want to come back here and have a parliamentary vote. That will destroy the Prime Minister's government. Talk about 'be careful what you wish for'. If they get the plebiscite, it will be Malcolm Turnbull's Brexit moment. If they test this question with all of its consequences for the Australian people out there, he will then face an affirmative vote and he will have to come back in here and legislate it.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It should be interesting.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That will be interesting. His prime ministership will fail on it. I would put money on it, the same way I put money on it when I got up here a year ago and ripped into the government for their terrible judgement. The best you can say about this Prime Minister is that he saved Australians making a judgement on Tony Abbott—on Tony Abbott's government, its conduct and its budgets.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It saved Tony Abbott too.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Saved Tony Abbott? Well, it absolutely saved him. That is why Tony Abbott can now do the doors. I saw him this morning.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Second opposition leader.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. The second opposition leader. It is what he was always built to do: be in opposition. So now he is in opposition to the Prime Minister. When he went on the tour with Mr Tudge in Mr Tudge's office—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Wakefield well knows that he should address members of parliament by their correct title. I would instruct him to continue his speech doing so within those rules.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister went on a tour with the second opposition leader and it did not go so well. He stole all of the media. It must have been very frustrating.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh no.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That would have driven him crazy. So what we have here is a government that is divided fundamentally on not just personality but policy. The reason they cannot do anything is they cannot agree on anything. Everybody in this building knows that only the Nationals have really got a policy agenda, and that is to send some poor vets down to—where are they going? I cannot remember, but they are being sent to the four ends of the earth. Let us hope that Norfolk Island is not transferred into the member for New England's electorate, otherwise people are going to get a very rude shock. This government is completely at war with itself, and it will not last the distance.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party, Assistant Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As one of the people who just sat through the ramblings of the member for Wakefield for the past 15 minutes I am pleased it has come to an end! Certainly, I think the people of Australia would be out there building bronze statues to anyone who has kept to Bill Shorten and the Labor Party away from the Australian Treasury. That is the reality.

But the people of my electorate want to hear what we are doing, and the most important thing for them is creating jobs, so we will continue to do things as a government to ensure there are more jobs in my electorate of Hinkler and across the nation. I know I sound like a broken record, but I want to talk about ex-HMAS Tobruk. I know the Minister for Defence is sick of hearing from me and I know the staff of the Minister for Defence are sick of hearing from me. Certainly, a number of people are sick of hearing from me about ex-HMAS Tobruk. For three years we have been fighting to bring a military dive wreck into the electorate of Hinkler, to be parked in some 30 metres of water between Bundaberg and Harvey Bay, directly off Burrum Heads.

I am pleased to report we are finally seeing some progress. I have to say—and this is not something I would do often—that I congratulate the Queensland Labor government. They have finally got on board. The state government has listed an expression of interest, which was submitted to the Department of Defence. I want to take the opportunity to thank the Queensland tourism minister, state Labor minister Kate Jones, for her support for the project and for the work she has done to progress the proposal, because where I come from we fight for what is best for our people and we try to deliver for them, regardless of who is in opposition or what position they might hold.

The state government has called for expressions of interest from local councils across Queensland to use ex-HMAS Tobruk as a military dive wreck. Since this announcement they have come out of the woodwork. Like rats off a sinking ship, they have come from everywhere. Every coastal council in Queensland seems to think that it needs a military dive wreck and has the capacity and infrastructure to actually use it. And why wouldn't they? A project like this demonstrates how much potential it has to build local regional economies.

Unlike some of those areas, I have two councils, the Fraser Coast Regional Council and the Bundaberg Regional Council, which have committed $1 million each towards this project. They are willing to work together. I know, Deputy Speaker Kelly, that you have a lot of experience in this place and I am sure that it would be very rare for you to see councils working together on a project like this. They tend to box into their corners. But, as I have said many times, this is a unique opportunity to bring a tourism venture to the Hinkler region to add to additional tourism infrastructure. It will bring a much needed boost to the local economy and it will create jobs, as it has done in other places. The increased tourism numbers to the region have a flow-on effect, of course—increased spending in local restaurants, in local shops and with local businesses. There are small-scale dive operators already in my electorate, at each end. They customarily service locals and backpackers. And thanks of course to the whale and turtle markets Harvey Bay and Bundaberg already have the capability, the capacity and the infrastructure needed to support a substantial dive tourism industry.

Ecotourism, retail and hospitality and accommodation businesses do need another attraction to boost visitor numbers, particularly in the months when the whales and turtles are not in season. That infrastructure is already there—some 26 whale boats in Harvey Bay. Ex-HMAS Tobruk has the potential to contribute somewhere between $1 million and $4 million to our local economy, on estimates, for the next 50 years, with growth.

A report by the Centre for Conservation Geography into the economic impact of the scuba dive industry in Australia estimates that dive related spending in Australia is $2.2 billion a year. We want our fair share of that I must say. In Queensland, dive related spending is potentially as much is $950 million a year. This demonstrates that there are real economic benefits from the project, if we are successful in the local bid. This could bring literally thousands of divers to the regions.

Here are some examples. HMAS Adelaide, in New South Wales, already attracts 5,000 divers a year, with at least 90 per cent of those coming from outside the region and at least 20 per cent from overseas. Just recently, a dive operator on the Sunshine Coast said that his business increased by 1,500 per cent since HMAS Brisbane was sunk 10 years ago. How would you like that on your bottom line? They are the sort of numbers we are talking about. And, of course, people would flock to the region to see the actual scuttling take place. When ex-HMAS Adelaide was scuttled it attracted 30,000 visitors to see the ship sunk. HMAS Tobruk is a unique ship and we in the electorate of Hinkler will take great care of it and treat it with the respect it deserves.

Work to prepare the Tobruk for scuttling could also be carried out locally at the Bundaberg port, in the northern end of my electorate, which will provide more jobs—another $5 million to $7 million project. So, I will continue to fight for this project, because it has multiple benefits.

On the topic of big ships, earlier this year Fraser Island was host to the P&O cruise ship Pacific Aria, which is the first time a ship of this size has navigated the Great Sandy Strait. Fraser Island is in my neighbouring electorate of Wide Bay. Can I just take this moment to congratulate Llew O'Brien, the new member for Wide Bay, replacing long-term member and former Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss. There is no doubt that the flow-on effects into Hinkler are plentiful. There are many individuals in many local organisations who have made this historic event a reality. I congratulate Fraser Coast Opportunities, Tourism and Events Queensland, as well as the Fraser Coast Regional Council, P&O Cruises and Kingfisher Bay Resort. I think this will be the first of many cruise ships. The next cruise is scheduled to be there in December. I thank the passengers of Pacific Aria for showing an interest in the Fraser Coast, but why wouldn't you? It is a fabulous place to visit and has some wonderful attractions. I say to any of the passengers on future voyages, don't just go to Fraser Island. Have a look at Harvey Bay and Maryborough, in the neighbouring electorate of Wide Bay. You can get a hold of the local seafood—the Harvey Bay sea scallops; the Ocean King prawns; and all of the good fish—or you can explore the wonderful rich history that Maryborough has to offer, such as Portside, which has a collection of heritage-listed buildings that are now museums, restaurants and galleries. It is the electorate of Wide Bay, so I recognise my colleague Llew O'Brien. There is also the statue of the author of Mary Poppins, Pamela Travers.

We are talking about 1,500 passengers. Can you imagine the injection into the local economy from 1,500 passengers being offloaded for the day. They can visit the Fraser Coast and it is a wonderful opportunity to us to showcase what we have. So, when these opportunities come up, we should grab them with both hands and absolutely use them to the fullest advantage.

Whilst on the subject of tourism, I would also like to say what a great honour it was to be appointed the Assistant Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. My electorate, like many others in regional Australia, has enormous potential for trade, tourism and investment. I look forward to promoting not only my own patch but other areas across this wonderful country. I have had the opportunity already to visit Port Moresby to discuss with ministers and business leaders in PNG ways that we can enhance our significant trade and investment links. In 2015 Australian investment in PNG was some $18.4 billion, with two-way trade totalling $4.7 billion, and there are more opportunities.

Australia's economic relationship with PNG has tremendous growth potential and can drive job creation in both countries. There are significant opportunities for Australian companies in PNG, including in the mining and energy, agriculture, construction and tourism sectors. I have had the great advantage of attending a number of events recently, including Corroboree Asia 2016, where over 300 qualified travel agents from across Asia, including from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Korea, India and Indonesia, came to get some more training. Would you believe, Mr Deputy Speaker, they call these tourism operators the Aussie specialists. They are trained specifically for Australia. I called them the 'James Bonds', the 007s that Australia has placed in these countries. The joke fell a bit flat. Perhaps I should have gone with someone more local, like Jackie Chan.

This is the first opportunity I have had to speak in this place since the election and I want to thank the voters of Hinkler. They put their trust in me to be their advocate in Canberra for another three years. It has been a very humbling experience to be re-elected as their representative, particularly as it is the electorate I call home, the electorate where I was born and where I have lived most of my life. I also want to thank all the volunteers and supporters who gave their time so willingly, because it is not a one-person effort; it is a team effort that gets you elected. I would like to thank the local members: Ted Sorensen in Hervey Bay, Stephen Bennett in Burnett, Ken and Christine Tyson, Peter Carey and everyone else—the hundreds of people who turn out for an election. And they do it the right way: with integrity. As many of my colleagues would no doubt agree, the campaign was a bit long, but it is great to have the support of the people that I represent. I will do my utmost to represent them and to spend the next three years kicking goals for them. They are the ones who sent me here and I will always act in their interest, as I did in the previous term.

Throughout the election campaign I spoke about what the coalition government can deliver, because this is about delivery. It is not about rhetoric, not about social licence; it is about what you can deliver for your people. We have made a number of commitments, and we will ensure that each of those commitments is delivered, just as I delivered those from the 2013 campaign.

The $20 million Wide Bay Burnett jobs package is an enormous announcement for our region. For somewhere that has had high unemployment for a long time, anything that can help build the local economy will be of great value. This package will give local businesses the confidence to invest and grow further. It will attract matching funding from participating businesses, resulting in a minimum package of $40 million. If I know one thing about the people I represent, I know they are frugal. They know how to get the best out of every single dollar. We will do our utmost to make those dollars extend as far as possible. These grants will assist existing local businesses to grow and also offer incentives for metropolitan based companies to expand their businesses into the Wide Bay Burnett region. They are about creating new, sustainable, long-term jobs. We have businesses located in Bundaberg, Childers, Hervey Bay—right across the electorate—that will be eligible to apply for this funding. Local communities will be involved by assessing their region's economic opportunities and developing tailored, forward-looking local investment plans. This is a key difference: they are local investment plans using local knowledge, local experience and local people who know their region best. It will create a community-driven investment partnership between the coalition government, business and local communities. Local knowledge will be a vital component.

We need to continue to develop skills, upgrade local infrastructure and provide business innovation grants, because we do not want to see our talented people continue to leave the electorate. I went to the former Deputy Prime Minister's valedictory dinner in Queensland a few weeks ago. One of the things from Warren Truss's speech that really stuck with me was that his great regret, in all the infrastructure that he provided over 26 years in parliament—the billions of dollars of improvements to roads and telecommunications, including the NBN—was that unfortunately those roads became roads out of town. We need to ensure, in whatever we do, that we continue to support our regional communities.

Another project which will underpin local jobs is the multiplex project, put up by Bundaberg Regional Council, to which the federal government has committed $5 million for stage 2. This will provide a civic hall, community function rooms, and a commercial kitchen and cafe—more job-creating projects with the capacity to bring in more investment. It is the missing element that will attract community events, business conferences and major sporting events to Bundaberg.

An extension of a busy road into an industrial area of Bundaberg will not only direct traffic away from one of the largest high schools in the district but allow easier access for 25-metre B-doubles. This government has committed $1.4 million to extending Kay McDuff Drive to the Bundaberg ring road, which is something I have advocated very strongly for here in Canberra. More than 6,200 vehicles, including 320 heavy vehicles, use the current route every day. This extension will make the roads safer for the 1,500 students of the nearby school and provide direct access to the freight network.

Many of the election commitments will not only provide jobs but enhance our communities. In Burrum Heads we have committed to a new bike path, for use by pedestrians, cyclists and parents with children, which will be accessible all year round. It is known locally as 'the missing link'. As a community infrastructure project, it will have positive flow-on effects, providing Burrum Heads families and individuals with more facilities to get active.

Childers residents will benefit from a new hydrotherapy pool, which has been high on the wish list for many years in the community. My electorate has an older than average population, and this investment will have obvious benefits for the aging and senior residents in Childers.

Pacific Haven and Redridge will receive a much needed boost to mobile phone coverage under the Mobile Black Spot Program. The coalition government has committed an additional $60 million on top of the $160 million already invested in mobile black spots, bringing the total investment to $220 million. I met with Redridge residents John Hunter and Jennifer Symons last year to discuss their concerns that areas surrounding Childers did not even have SOS phone coverage. They organised a petition, which I tabled in this place in November, with 606 signatures from residents in Doolbi, Horton, Abington, Goodwood, North Isis and Redridge. I congratulate them on fighting for improvements to mobile coverage and, of course, being successful. We will deliver that coverage.

I will briefly mention Hervey Bay's AFL team, Bay Power, who have been training in the dark. We have provided some funding for lighting, which will make things much easier for them. Not only will they be able to play night games; they will be able to train after the sun goes down—can you believe it, Mr Deputy Speaker?—in regional Australia. That is a substantial investment for us.

There will also be money for Bundaberg Netball, which will provide additional courts and shaded grandstands. The building could attract a state carnival of 500 teams, bringing some 10,000 people to the region.

Everything we do is about creating jobs and building stronger regional economies, ensuring we get the budget under control whilst continuing to have strong economic growth. That has been demonstrated by the last quarter's figures of just over three per cent. I look forward to providing for the people of Hinkler for the next three years.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have better things to do with my time than attack other members, but I cannot help but comment. The member's electorate is based upon Bundaberg, which is a leading sugar producing area. Our sugar farmers get, on average, for the last 10 or 15 years, $340 a tonne. We do not have ethanol in this country. Our competitors, Brazil, get $420 a tonne. So, whilst there have been 300 sugar mills built in the world, we are actually closing our sugar mills in Australia.

That brings me to what I would like to talk about tonight. An infamous man in Australian history—and this is how history books will treat Paul Keating—said that we were going to have the freest economy on earth, and I think he went a long way to achieving that. What he did not achieve was achieved by Peter Costello. What does a free economy mean? When we are young, we get an inoculation to protect us from disease. A lot of our taxes pay for an army to protect us against invasion. We have locks on our doors and windows to protect us in our homes. So we have this thing called protection, and we had economic protection against people who will subsidise their product and will cheat and get advantages for their people over the free market system, but we removed all of our protection.

If you have a look at the protection registers in the world, there are only two countries that removed their protection: Australia and New Zealand. If you want to include a third country, the third country would be Canada. It is very hard to see that the pockmarks are flashing here; the colonial pockmarks are flashing in neon lights. We as a nation simply have not grown up. We wanted to be the teacher's pet, the good boys in the playground, whilst everyone else was playing Marquess of Queensberry rules. Let me be very specific. If you remove protection from manufacturing, you are competing against people who work for $4,000 a year. Our wage structures at the time were $60,000 a year. Their wage structures were $4,000 a year. Is it any surprise that we have closed down all of our manufacturing industries? You cannot buy a light bulb. You cannot buy a motor car tyre. Next year you will not be able to buy a car. You cannot buy a whitegood. The last whitegoods factory closed in Orange last year.

You can quantify these figures in agriculture. The OECD put out a report some years ago on agriculture and it said that a farmer on earth gets 41 per cent of his income from the government. If you are a farmer in Australia you only get 5.6 per cent of your income from the government. I just did a short ethanol tour and I would not be backing us against the Americans in beef, I can tell you, and I would not be backing us against the Brazilians in sugar, I can tell you. Even off a level playing field we would find it difficult. Giving our competitors a 36 per cent flying start and then thinking that we are going to have some agriculture? Within 10 or 15 years this country will be a net importer of food. Within 20 to 25 years, we will be a net importer in agriculture. The biggest export item that this country had for its entire history was wool, until 1990 when the world's cleverest Treasurer—and the rest of the world thought Mr Keating was bloody marvellous. He was the greatest gift that they ever had, outside of Mr Costello probably. But he deregulated the wool industry. The honourable government whip is sitting over here and her family are from the dairy industry. I represented the biggest dairy area probably in Australia; most certainly one of the biggest in Australia—past tense. We had over 240 dairy farms before the wonders of deregulation hit us. We now have 38 dairy farmers. That is all that is left.

As far as the wool industry goes, it was a bigger export item—and my party proudly, the Country Party, put that scheme together—than coal in 1990. It is not ancient history. In 1990 wool was our biggest export item. Sixty-two per cent of our sheep herd is gone. This is the industry that carried Australia for its entire history, for 200 years—gone; destroyed by the free marketeers in this place. The manufacturing industries were destroyed by the free marketeers in this place.

You can say it has not affected mining. Like hell it has not. I am from the mining industry. I am a mining man. All my life before I went into parliament was committed to mining, starting as a labourer and then working in my own mines. In the end I floated my own companies before the crash in mining came. We have to process our metals. We cannot sell them overseas unprocessed. You cannot sell copper, which is seven per cent, and send 93 per cent Australian earth over to Japan or to China or to America. You have to send the copper. You have to process it. What you need to process it is electricity. Ah, the free market. The free market came in in electricity. We had a 10 per cent increase through the 1980s. Through the 1990s we had 10 per cent. Through the 2000s we had 10 per cent. And then we hit the wonders of deregulation and it went up 300 per cent in nine years, which knocks us out of the ball game. We have the copper smelter half closed; we have the nickel plant closed; we have the zinc plant, which wanted to double in size but cannot because of the cost of electricity; we have the aluminium industry now under a cloud because of the cost of electricity. In Queensland, when I handed over to the socialists the electricity industry in Queensland, we had the cheapest power in the world, because we were no free marketeers. We had a reserve resource policy. We took the coal for free. If you turned your lights on in Queensland, the lights were turned on by free coal because of brilliance and aggression. There was no free marketeering here; we were out to win. We had the cheapest electricity in the world. That is how the aluminium industry in Queensland got to be the third biggest industry in the state and one of the biggest in the nation.

The other thing it did was cut the capital base out from under us. When I had an insurance agency selling insurance, 60 per cent of all superannuation went into government securities. There were two reasons for this. One was that people in their retirement deserved security. They deserved the security of government securities. Now, of course, nothing goes into government securities. It is invested in real estate, in probably the most inflated real estate market in the world. The average price of a house in the greater Sydney area is $980,000. One-fifth of Australia's population lives in that area, where it is $980,000 for a house and the average income is $70,000. And we say we do not need an inquiry into the banks who have financed house prices up to $980,000 and forced average families out of their houses? How can they possibly afford to service a debt of $980,000?

That brings me to the unfairness of the tax system in Australia. When we were young, my wife and I had five children. We paid virtually no tax because of the deductions for children in those days. A family with three kids now pays, on average, $20,000 for accommodation, $25,000 for food—it is a bit low, but that is the figure for a family with three kids—and tax of $22,000. If you take that $67,000 away from the average income of $75,000, it leaves you with $8,000 of disposable income for five people—$2,000 each. Of course, if you are a DINK—dual income, no kids—accommodation is still $20,000, food is a bit less at around $15,000 and you are taxed a hell of a lot more, so you end up paying out $79,000 on an income of $150,000 because of the double income. If you divide $71,000 by two, you have a disposable income of $35,000. So the question is this: do you want a disposable income of $2,000 or a disposable income of $35,000? Needless to say, Australians are not having children, except down at the welfare end of the spectrum—God bless them for having children. But do we help them? Do we help the middle-income earners, the wage earners, to have children? No. The tax regime penalises them to a dramatic extent. It says that people on $150,000 should pay the same tax as people on $70,000 with five kids, dividing it five ways.

If the government are fair dinkum, then they are going to give us some capital expenditure to develop the resources of this nation. The country is going broke at 100 miles per hour. In the last three years, the trade deficit has gone from $10 billion to $29 billion—these are average figures; it looks a lot worse if I use the specific numbers for the three years—and the balance on the current account has gone from $54 billion to $85 billion. And while we did not hear much about foreign debt in the last election, the Liberals have taken it from $750 billion to $1,028 billion. How much longer do you think that can go on?

Well, the party is now over. We have only got two sources of income: iron ore and coal. These are hardly a staple diet for a country. Nearly half of our entire income in this nation is now down to two items: iron ore and coal. If you give us a railway line into the Galilee, a lousy little 320-kilometre line—as a government, for nearly 20 years we were laying 360 kilometres every year out of the public purse, but there has not been a single kilometre by the ALP, the workers' friend. They have not laid a single kilometre of railway line for most of the last 30 years in Queensland. And, of course, for the Liberals it is against their principles, their philosophy and their religion to expend public moneys on developmental infrastructure. They will spend it on hurdy-gurdies, merry-go-rounds, function centres in the big cities and football stadiums to win votes. But will they spend it on a railway line so that we can open up the Galilee coalfields? No! What is that worth to the Australian economy? It is worth $16 billion a year. That is the immediate income from the Galilee.

You build Hells Gate, you get $2 billion a year. You give us that little bit of on-farm irrigation that we need on each cattle station and give the First Australians title deeds, and we will give you $5 billion extra in cattle income. You give us a tiny little canal to get our phosphate fertiliser out, we will give you $4 billion. With these things, and with title deeds for our First Australians, we will give you $5 billion in silicone and $2 billion or $3 billion in prawn and fish production. But, no, the government of Australia thinks it is better to spend $25 billion a year to buy oil from the Middle East instead of producing that oil ourselves—oil called ethanol. And who is going to pay the piper as the country goes broke? The elderly will, with extra tax on superannuation and reductions in their benefits.

If we had stayed owning 83 per cent of our mineral resources, as we did 25 years ago—the six major mining companies were all Australian owned: BHP, MIM, Western Mining Corporation, Rio Tinto Australia and Robert de Crespigny's company—the $30 or $40 billion a year that is coming into the coal seam gas industry would be going into Australian pockets instead of into the pockets of foreigners. (Time expired)

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government has introduced an omnibus bill which puts together all the government's savings measures and which we hope and fervently believe Labor will support to help us with the amount of debt repair this nation needs to do not just for people enjoying the benefits of a great Australian lifestyle now but for their kids and their grandkids. The budget bottom line that Labor outlined during the recent election campaign relied on more than $6 billion in coalition savings that they have not reversed, including $3 billion in measures that the Labor Party previously opposed. This follows Labor's backflips on the pension assets test and on the schoolkids bonus. This side of parliament is prepared to work constructively with Labor and the crossbenches to pass these necessary measures.

The Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017 is important. Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, says he wants to work together in the parliament. He said on the first day that he wants it to be a more conciliatory parliament. We have not seen that yet. The test will be whether he supports the measures bills that we are putting forward or whether he just keeps on playing political games, keeps on with the stunts.

The government is taking action to necessarily repair the budget by progressing $40 billion worth of unlegislative saves from the previous terms, including revenue increases. The passage of these measures is an absolute legislative and economic priority. The budget savings omnibus bill includes more than $6 billion of these measures, including five from this year's budget. The omnibus bill takes steps towards demonstrating immediate and tangible progress towards, as I said before, absolute, imperative and necessary fiscal repair. Unlegislative measures are obscuring the challenge facing the nation. They represent an important opportunity to get the debt back in control. Parliament has to demonstrate it is willing to take immediate, necessary and, importantly, tangible steps towards this repair work.

Repairing the budget is challenging but necessary. We cannot go on just having populist policies and making sure that everybody is placated. We have to take some tough measures. Ratings agencies have stated that the AAA credit rating is at risk, and we all know what happens if that AAA credit rating is lowered. The downgrade would have flow-on consequences for the entire economy.

There has been much said about our jobs and growth strategy during the election campaign. I cannot understand why Labor continues to mock and to knock the jobs and growth. They say it is a three-word slogan, but we have to have jobs. As we heard in question time today, we have improved the employment prospects for many. There were more than 200,000 jobs created, the Prime Minister said, in a very short space of time. He mentioned that the unemployment rate was down to 5.7 per cent. He said that this was too high—it is—but we are working towards getting that down even further.

And growth. Of course we have had a growth strategy which has been, I have to say, enhanced by the defence industry white paper announced in February this year. I am pleased that the Minister for Defence Industry is in the chamber. The white paper has an unprecedented investment in Australia's defence capability of about $195 billion over the next decade. My electorate benefited to the tune of almost $1 billion from that. There are important upgrades for the Army recruit training centre at Army Recruit Training Centre Kapooka, where every soldier goes and does their basic training. That important facility is going to benefit considerably by more than $400 million worth of investment. The outgoing commandant, Colonel Steve Jobson, is delighted, was delighted, will continue to be delighted by that investment. There is the Royal Australian Air Force base at Forest Hill. If you spend any amount of time in the blue uniform in Australia, you will end up at that important strategic training base. It is going to benefit to the tune of $440 million over the next decade and beyond.

I am delighted that inland rail is going ahead in the budget. Treasurer Scott Morrison announced that $594 million was going to go towards securing the important rail corridor with some land acquisition that is important as well as with some preconstruction works to extend that railway all the way from Melbourne to Brisbane. That is going to be so vital for the farmers I represent.

When we talk of achievements—and I am proud to be the 17th small business minister of this nation—this government is supporting small business with the $5.5 billion growing jobs and small business package, the biggest ever. It was in the 2015-16 budget. It is fixing competition laws to help small businesses compete with large businesses and extending consumer unfair contract term protections to small business. It is establishing the first Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman—and isn't Kate Carnell doing a wonderful job? It is growing export opportunities through preferential trade agreements with China, South Korea and Japan. So many of my small businesses in the Riverina electorate and in the Murrumbidgee irrigation area now represented by Sussan Ley, the member for Farrer, following a boundary redistribution, as well as in the Coleambally irrigation area have tapped into those markets already. There are so many export opportunities for them. The government is also getting on with the job of reducing red tape and government regulations, which is worth $4.8 billion to the economic bottom line. That work was started by the member for Kooyong and is now being continued through a series of ministers. It is a great thing.

Key small business measures include cutting company tax rates to 27½ per cent, further reducing to 25 per cent over the next decade. In our recently introduced 10-year enterprise tax plan we introduced an immediate deductibility on every asset costing less than $20,000 purchased by small businesses from the 2015 budget until the end of June 2017. What a great thing that is. What a great initiative that has been for small businesses right throughout this nation. We are looking at section 46 to help small business to compete on a level playing field with big business. There are 2.1 million small businesses in Australia, they employ 4.7 million Australians and they generate $340 billion for our economic good each and every year. That is tremendous.

There is so much more we are doing in the small business space. There is $1.372 million for training providers to help small and medium businesses access those groundbreaking trade agreements that we have been able to forge. We have made it easier for small businesses to access export loans up to $250,000 with EficDirect online. There is capital gains tax rollover relief when small businesses change their legal structures but keep the same owners. There is so much more.

We abolished the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, saving the jobs of 62,000 owner-drivers in the transport industry. Whilst I am speaking of that, I would just like to refer to a couple of the comments that were made by those truckies—those great people who keep this nation moving—when that dreadful RSRT was in place. Alan Shearer from Shearer's Road Freight, whose depot is on Blaxland Road in East Wagga Wagga, said that from his personal perspective he saw it as discrimination against small businesses that totally involve family ownership and/or family members being employed by that entity. He said it was a restriction of free trade and that there was a total lack of understanding of how the transport industry is structured and runs. The inference is that contractor-drivers are the major source of road safety problems—we know that is not true.

Clayton and Naomi Thomas are owner-directors of Thomas' International Transport Services on Neeld Street in Wyalong. Clayton said that the order which came into effect on 4 April 2016 set up an unworkable system of minimum payments that did not allow owner-drivers to compete on a fair market basis with fleet operators. Of course, he is right. He said that it was his considered position that the alleged linking of remuneration under this order to the objects of the Road Safety Remuneration Act 2012 was strongly disputed and not supported by readily available statistical data on the real causes of the majority of heavy vehicle accidents. It is the same sort of thing that Mr Shearer said, and of course he is right.

Wayne Lewis from Coolamon said:

Speaking of the TWU, I cannot really believe that an organisation such as theirs could hate a group of people, owner-drivers and their families, so much that they could instigate something as woeful as this. If they are trying to get owner-drivers on-side, I suggest they go back to the drawing board because this type of bullying will never make me want to be part of their little gang. How do I explain to a hirer that, instead of a tonnage rate or a cubic rate which they now pay, they are going to have to pay a kilometre rate and an hourly rate as well? What happens on a journey if the truck is held up through no fault of the driver, for example, for a flood, roadworks, accident or even law enforcement officers? Does this mean that I have to go back to the hirer and say to them that they owe me more money because the trip took longer because of these unforeseen circumstances?

Of course, he is right.

I have to say that one of the good initiatives that the government has and will continue to have is decentralisation. It is so important. Just last Friday I went to the Australian Taxation Office. They were having a digital platform regional workshop in Albury. They were celebrating—and I do mean the word 'celebrating'—40 years of the ATO being in Albury. The ATO used to have this facade of a sort of Big Brother. You could see the pinstriped, grey-headed fellow—like me really—with a big stick whacking people if they did not pay their tax on time. That facade has gone. These are young, tech-savvy people who want to actually help in a friendly way small business to meet their tax obligations. The new portal that the ATO has put up is tremendous. They have Alex the tax assistant. I have Alex the tax assistant at home—my tax advisor is my son, who is a tax accountant. Alex the tax assistant is an online portal for help which is there for small businesses to be able to meet their tax obligations.

As I say, it was 40 years they were celebrating. They had this regional workshop and 80 small business owner-operators from Albury-Wodonga came. They were baristas and they were plumbers—they were good people wanting to meet their tax obligations. They came to this meeting at the ATO high-rise office in Smollett Street to learn how they could do that. The ATO is doing that in a friendly, helpful way. Well done, Judy O'Connell and her staff, for organising it.

With decentralisation the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority is heading to Armidale. That is a good thing. The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation is heading to Wagga Wagga. It is going to be chaired by my predecessor, Kay Hull. That is a good thing. The Grains Research and Development Corporation is going to have a new hub-and-spoke model. It is going to have a presence in Toowoomba in Queensland, as well as branches and depots in Dubbo and in Western Australia. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority is also on the move. All of these organisations are in Canberra at the moment. I have to say that it is good that they are going to be decentralising. That is a push by the Nationals in government, and it is a good push.

We saw the success of the ATO when it moved to Albury—40 years of success. They have such a great presence there. They build direct and indirect wealth through helping small businesses and bringing people to fine regional centres such as Albury. I am sure the APVMA will do just the same in Armidale. Never mind what the member for Hunter thinks about opposing this all the way. He purports to be from country Labor. He should show a little bit more generosity towards country people and certainly towards country areas. I ask him to get on board with the APVMA moving to Armidale. It is a good decentralisation move. The RIRDC moving to Wagga Wagga is a sensible decision. The GRDC going to regional centres, such as Toowoomba and Dubbo, which is in the fine member for Parkes's electorate, is a good thing.

The Murray-Darling Basin belongs in regional Australia, out where the irrigation is—out where they can do really important field work and certainly be a part of the communities that they serve. They rely on irrigation, water being the lifeblood of all the things that we grow.

To help foster those wonderful preferential trade agreements, I urge that the parliament get on board with the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017. It is important, and certainly small business is also the lifeblood of this nation. Thank you.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, congratulations on your job. I am just wondering what the Leader of the House is doing—has he lost his office? Perhaps he is nervous, wondering if there may be a vote?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Haven't you got anything to say?

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

I wonder what is going on here, Chris? I wonder what is going on—here he is, actually working in the chamber. I have never seen it before! He brought—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wanted to hear your speech! You obviously don't have any material!

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

a whole bucket of files here—

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just to keep—

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

Just to keep an eye on the adjournment! Well done, Chris!

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just for you!

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

I am so pleased—I hope you are here every night!

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Only if you're here every night!

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

No, no—you need to be here every night just prior to the adjournment to make sure everyone is here as they should be. We don't want things happening which you don't have control over. Put your staff on the doors, make sure they are not leaving the place—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's time you went out to pasture, Warren! Get on with your speech!

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

It's okay, and I just—

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've been in the parliament for the same length of time, haven't you?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have!

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

It's great, isn't it really? Just watching him!

But I wanted to make a contribution which in part celebrates a very important thing, and that is the election of the Labor government in the Northern Territory. It has a particular interest in looking at the budget I might say—particularly the proposals by the Prime Minister. Another spur of the moment thing, you know? The lights are on—I am not sure who is at home. But, nevertheless, he pledged to introduce a GST floor—a threshold to ensure that no state receives less than a certain share of revenue from the tax.

That is going to be of particular interest to people in the Northern Territory, and no doubt the new Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Michael Gunner, will have a particular interest, as will his Treasurer. The new Treasurer for the Northern Territory is Nicole Manison MLA.

I wanted to talk briefly about this election, not to gloat so much—although I would like to—but just to make the observation that—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Go on, gloat!

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

it is a very rare occasion—in fact, I think this is unique in Australian history—that we have seen the major opposition party in a parliamentary forum in Australia be reduced to two. To two! So there are now only two CLP members in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. The former Chief Minister, Mr Giles, who was the member for Braitling in my own town of Alice Springs—a blue ribbon Liberal seat—is gone. He is no longer there. In fact, he packed up so quickly you couldn't see him for dust. He has gone from town and 'we don't know where he are'. But we have a fair idea where he is not going to be: we know he will not be in the Legislative Assembly.

But there are a number of things that are important to note. Of course, all the new members on the Labor side and particularly, I might say, Dale Wakefield, who took over his seat of Braitling, and another really unique win—the first time in the Northern Territory's history that Labor has ever won the seat of Katherine. Sandra Nelson, a formidable candidate, defeated a former aspirant to the Chief Minister's position in the Northern Territory.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who's that? I thought they all wanted to be Chief Minister.

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

Willem Westera van Holthe. Do you remember the midnight coup? He turned up in the middle of the night and said, 'I've got the numbers. I'm going to be taking over as the Chief Minister this morning.' By 10 o'clock the following morning, what happened?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Didn't they all have a go? I think they all had a go, Warren!

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

They are your mates, mate! They are your mates—they are your kith and kin! So understand who we are talking about here!

But I just want to make the observation that this parliament is unique: 60 per cent of the cabinet positions are being held by women. So there are historical firsts of great proportion really: firstly, only two CLP members left in the place; secondly, we have seen the incumbent Chief Minister knocked off his own seat and the seat of Katherine fall to Labor for the first time ever; and we now have a significant majority of women in the ministry, and that is a very important thing. It is good for us, good for the Labor Party and good for Australia, and an indication to our friends opposite that it is okay to preselect women. It is okay to preselect women, and you could do a better job of it! You might try a bit harder to preselect more women so we can see a greater representation of women on the conservative side of politics in this country.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

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

I am pleased that the Leader of the House agrees with me.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We do need more women on this side of the House.

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

Good, good—why don't you do something about it?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm trying to do something about it!

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

I might just make the observation—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you want me to retire, Warren? Trying to get rid of me already! I've only been here 23 years!

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

No, stay as long as you like, son! But just make sure that you find a way to get more women into the parliament.

Mr Deputy Speaker—Mr Speaker, I beg your pardon. Congratulations, by the way! So it is a great moment in Australian history, this election. I have observed Territory politics for almost four decades, and the last government was the worst I had ever seen. There is no question about that, and the new government in the Northern Territory has a real challenge ahead of it because of the state that the Northern Territory was left in by the previous government—not the least of which is confidence in the government, because they were so adrift, so far removed, from the concerns of the Territory community—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I need a desk!

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

Bring your desk next time!

They were so adrift from the concerns of the Northern Territory community that they just had no respect for the community or, indeed, each other. I think that means that Labor in the Northern Territory, under the leadership of Michael Gunner, has a significant task ahead of it to again win the confidence of the community about what good government is and to understand that it is possible to have a good government—a responsible government and one which will look after the interests of the community.

I understand that the adjournment is about to begin and I look forward to continuing at some later stage—with you here with me, Chris! I do hope you are here!