Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Three months since the election and what we have seen in that time is a coalition, despite promises of unity, that can only be described as chaotic, rudderless and deeply divided. Whether privatising Medicare payments, the backpackers tax or superannuation, what is clear is that this is a government that believes it can say anything to the Australian voters before an election and do the complete opposite after it. The Australian people were promised innovation and agility, but what they have received is more of the same. I want to talk about the electorate of McEwen, which I have been re-elected to represent. I have been entrusted by the many towns and communities across the big and beautiful seat of McEwen and I am incredibly proud to be given this opportunity, for the third time, to continue building on the community cohesion and the legacy of Labor values in our communities, as did the late Peter Cleeland.

As we all know, election campaigns are not a sole endeavour and I would like to thank some people who made it possible for me. First, to my ever supportive family, all of them, thank you. From my partner, the ever patient Lisa, and her siblings to my mum and my siblings—each and every one of you gave your all to help me continue the fight for our communities. To my staff during the election—the calm, the considered Adam Mara; Jeni Emmins; Gareth Jones; Renee Pope-Munro; Hailey Emmins; Gemma Saccasan; and Catherine Campbell—the clock never stopped and neither did you. With your passion, your humour and a team spirit, you kept me going. I value the intelligence and the care that you showed not just during the campaign but each and every day.

I would like to pay tribute to some Labor branch members and supporters in the McEwen team: my brother Santo Spinello, an amazing man; Mr Craigieburn himself, Spiro Pastras; Oscar Goodwin; Brad Stewart; Jamie Mileto; Sam Lynch; Jordan Casey; Emilia Sterjova; Jan Maplestone; Mikaela Sadkiewicz; Parvinder Sarwara; Jasvinder Sidhu; Nariner Garg; Cassandra Devine; Josh Raymond; Kylie Spencer; Sasha Nacovski; Cameron Moir; Sharon Wallace-Storm; Casey Nunn; Terry Larkins; and, of course, Big Andy. And there was the support from someone who has been a wonderful friend and always answers the call: Carmel Barrott and her family, thank you. We could not have done it without you. These are just some of the people. It is not an exhaustive list but an example and a testament to the team effort of our whole campaign—people who stepped up not just once but each and every day. In a long-winded campaign, they were there in numbers—rain, hail, sleet and sometimes almost snow.

I would especially like to thank the 300 volunteers who helped us throughout the election on election day. They took the time out of their own lives to talk to their friends, neighbours and fellow community members about why this election mattered, and I am so grateful and say thank you. We received the largest swing to a sitting member in Victoria and that is a great achievement and a testament to their work. I will continue to work tirelessly for the communities in McEwen, ensuring that the trust and the faith they have, again, placed in me will be justified.

The people of McEwen re-elected me as their voice and I will continue to ensure that that voice is heard. Yesterday, I spoke about the coalition government's burning desire to look after big business. It has shown the Australian people that it is full of rhetoric and empty slogans. Promises of innovation are just repackaged support for the big end of town, while the people of McEwen get left behind. Our communities have been hit hard by the policies and the budgets of the coalition government. This has left people concerned about the future of the local workforce, about access to quality schools and hospitals and about the lack of commitment to serving the expanding communities in the growing north. Since removing the member for Warringah, the current Prime Minister has made many empty promises about a change in direction. This talk has been shown to be cheap. Actions show us that nothing has changed within this government other than the messenger. We have seen course corrections, backflips, thought bubbles and gaffes, but very, very few substantive policies that will actually make a positive difference to the lives of most Australians.

The people in McEwen come from communities that span new suburbs and well-established rural communities, and their needs are just unique. Since the creation of the seat in 1984, it has maintained the status of a barometer, swinging between the two major parties and showing us the constant importance of having a deep understanding of the many communities it encompasses. We have always been a very marginal seat, due to the wide-ranging demographics. I am proud that at the election the people of McEwen saw fit to recognise my efforts in understanding the unique needs of our many communities and returned me to this House with the largest margin in the seat's history.

While taking in many rural communities such as Kilmore and Seymour, we are also home to some of the fastest-growing communities in Australia such as Craigieburn, Wallan, Sunbury and Mernda. That mix of rural and urban living means we have a community of over 130,000 who have seen firsthand the difference between a Turnbull government that talks and a Labor government that delivers. Under Labor, our communities saw community-building investment in health care, education, jobs, communications, infrastructure and community facilities. But it was clear during this year's election that the coalition government had no interest in continuing Labor's legacy of prioritising our communities.

Prior to the coalition forming government in 2013, Labor provided almost $30 million in funding for hospitals, health clinics and local health practices, directly improving the lives of the people in our communities. I have worked hard to advocate for local projects, and I am proud of our successes in projects like a proper NBN, with NBN fixed wireless being rolled out for small regional communities, and the Reedy Creek mobile phone tower, $800,000. That has been delayed by 12 months now due to the government's bumbling. Another fire season will go past and the people in these communities will not have mobile reception. We saw a $46,000 upgrade to the Sankey Reserve in Gisborne. Four hundred million dollars was invested for a national post-entry quarantine facility, including hundreds of ongoing jobs. There was funding for the Hanson Road traffic lights, $612,000; the roundabout at Oaklands Junction, $965,000; safety barriers on Oaklands Road, $935,000; Whittlesea Tennis Club lighting upgrade projects, $64,000; and roundabouts and guard rails on Yan Yean Road and Jorgensen Avenue, $1 million. I am proud of these many commitments to our community that we were able to secure, through important consultation with the community itself.

Commitments that we made during the recent election were: $90 million for the Bridge Inn Road duplication from Epping Road through to Yan Yean Road in Mernda-Doreen; $20 million for the Craigieburn Road duplication; $67 million for the O'Herns Road-Hume Freeway interchange; $900,000 for traffic lights in Whittlesea; $2 million for the much-needed global learning centre in Sunbury; $2 million for the Sunbury child health hub; and $1.4 million for Gisborne Oaks aged care. My commitment now to the people in McEwen is that I will continue to fight for these projects, as they are so important and their importance should never be contingent on having a Labor victory. It will be no mean feat, since, as I mentioned, this government has already demonstrated its ability to disregard its own promises and walk away from the people of Australia.

I would love also to hold this government to account for the promises it made to the people of McEwen via its candidate. Sadly its lack of concern and conviction was evident throughout the campaign this year, as it was at the last election. It was no more evident than when we looked at the funding commitment to the seat of McEwen by the coalition: $150,000 for the Sunbury Memorial Hall to be repainted. That was the entire commitment that we saw directly for the seat of McEwen. For an electorate like McEwen, which is experiencing so much rapid growth, to have been so roundly ignored by this government is a slap in the face.

The announcement by Senator Ryan was also the only time a senior Liberal member came to visit the electorate. Many drove through, but they never stopped. Such was the coalition's lack of interest in our community. I have had assurances from Senator Ryan that he has been in contact with another minister, although he did not name them, to discuss the implementation of this promise. I hope we are not seeing yet another delaying tactic. This is not an unreasonable concern for us given the complete disregard shown during the previous term of parliament to honouring commitments. The Sunbury community was hit hard by this government's hollow promises—broken promises to Sunbury like the Solar Cities program, a $300,000 promise that was never delivered, and the removal of $40,000 which forced the closure of the Sunbury PCYC, which was doing excellent work for our kids.

I have written to several members of the Turnbull government to ensure that they are held accountable for the promises made, that they give our commitments due consideration and that they consider the impacts of their decisions through these bills and what they mean for families. These include cuts to family payments, mortgage stress and the pricing out of families, and the impact of the failure of the NBN rollout. Even today we have seen examples in Wallan, where effectively everything that was put down has to be ripped up again because the copper wiring cannot deal with something called the weather. So when it is wet the NBN does not work. I have spoken many times about mobile phone blackspots and this government's failure to deliver mobile phone reception across communities which exceed all of the government's criteria. We see impacts on our communities due to Medicare privatisation and lack of funding commitments prioritising the northern growth corridor. The government should consider the coming impact of the closure of Ford and the lack of a succession plan for our workforces, with the impact on the 10,000-plus residents reliant on manufacturing and satellite industries. The government should protect rates of pay and liveable wages for our communities and ensure that banks are held to account for their unscrupulous decisions, which cost people their life savings.

We went to the election with positive plans and positive ideas. We put people first. As I said earlier, I am humbled and honoured to be re-elected as the member for McEwen. I said that I am here for our community, and I am. I am not going to stand by as the Turnbull government try to walk away from delivering for the people of McEwen. Even though it was a measly promise that they made, they owe it to the community to actually deliver. We cannot continue to see backflip after backflip by this government. It is time they stood up and delivered properly for the people of McEwen and kept their promises to all Australians.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017 and about the need for the Turnbull government as part of the budget process to fully commit and invest in the outer suburbs of Australia's major cities, like in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne and in my electorate of Holt. To put this in context, according to the National Growth Areas Alliance, Australia's fastest-growing suburbs are home to five million people. The Casey region, in my electorate of Holt, is home to the fastest-growing suburb in the country, which is Cranbourne East. There is rapid population growth occurring in other suburbs, but the key challenge is that infrastructure—roads, schools, jobs and services—and then social infrastructure are failing to keep up with that population growth. Research commissioned by the NGAA shows that there is a $50 billion backlog in infrastructure for fast-growing outer suburbs and, unless it is seriously addressed now, that figure will grow to about $73 billion in the next 15 years. By then, the population in these areas is expected to reach 7.5 million.

One suggestion was put to me with respect to that, and I encourage the Turnbull government to contemplate this to speed up the backlog in infrastructure: there needs to be consideration given to setting up a specialised fund for the outer suburbs in the same way that rural and regional areas have a dedicated fund. It really is only fair that growing outer suburbs are treated equally and get their fair share of infrastructure funding—because a view that a lot of people have is that they do not get their fair share.

The key priorities for the Casey region during the 45th Parliament should be to provide more funding and more support for community safety and more support for Casey's youth, roads, education, hospitals, NBN and mental health services, as well as having a plan—and this is quite vital—to improve government services, create new manufacturing jobs for the south-east, turn the Fountain Gate precinct into a new mini outer suburban CBD and continue to invest in areas where extra investment is required, like Doveton, Hampton Park and such areas.

One of the key issues that came up in my constituency during the 2016 federal election campaign was the issue of community safety. It was not something that, then, a lot of people were paying attention to, but it was an issue—particularly when we were speaking to people in the community and even doorknocking, when people were too afraid to answer their doors because of the substantial increase in the space of home invasions, car thefts, assaults and carjackings—that we needed to address.

It is quite interesting that initially when I put that on the public record—there was an article written by Ellen Whinnett about it in the Herald Sunthe local Liberals, shall we say, were quite perplexed about why I would do something like that, and I could not say they were really supportive. It did not come up on my discussions with them, but it was an absolutely key element of my speaking to the community, notwithstanding a lot of the other broader macro issues that we discussed in the campaign, like the assault on Medicare. And you can see that in subsequent reporting in our Victorian papers. There is a substantial rise in home invasions and car thefts. It has been a common theme in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, including in the city of Casey and, particularly, in my electorate of Holt.

The issue is lack of police resources, and we are not here to allocate blame, as others have, but to basically, positively address this particular issue, because as Melbourne grows by 100,000 people per year the demands on social infrastructure are going to occur. The Andrews Labor government has been made fully aware of these ongoing challenges and is keen to increase police numbers across the state. In the state budget Premier Andrews made a commitment for an extra 406 sworn police and 52 support personnel, which includes 20 much-needed extra police for the Casey region in our local area. Over the coming years, the Police Association of Victoria believe an extra 189 police will be needed in Casey by 2022, and with such rapid population growth it is vital that we deliver the required resources to the Casey region over the coming years.

It certainly was a substantial issue, and I would like to thank the Kerala community in particular for conducting a community safety forum with the Victorian police to amplify their concerns. As a consequence of their lobbying, I believe that the state government has responded with much-needed additional resources where there is a federal overlay with this. I think the member for La Trobe has spoken about a joint gang task force. I think that is one suggestion that is noted, but I do think that we need to have more concerted ongoing attention, and possibly the legislation, to disrupt and degrade these gangs. I will be pursuing that in other fora and possibly through other committees.

I also wanted to ensure—and there is an overlay with the federal government here as well—increased CCTV resources. I note that the Minister for Justice, Michael Keenan, has mooted a potential expenditure in the Hampton Park area, which is one of the key areas where the so-called Apex gang congregate. I would commend the minister for that, welcome that and look forward to working with him to deliver that, but there is much more that needs to be done. I will be flagging with the minister that I will be seeking much more extra funding for CCTV cameras for local shopping centres, community centres, churches and mosques.

Also, in my role as deputy chair, there is one issue that I have some measure of concern about, and that is the issue of countering violent extremism projects. What we have, Deputy Speaker, is an issue that you may or may not be aware of, with the difficulties that we have with radicalised youth in our region which resulted in the Endeavour Hills police incident on 23 September 2014 and also the thwarted Anzac Day plots in April 2015.

We conducted consultations with the federal government, federal government agencies, the Attorney-General's office, the Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police. One of the key issues that arose in the consultations with the key stakeholders that were worried from the affected communities was meaningful federal government funding going to projects that could help them in terms of the prevention of radicalisation of youth. Now, I am not here to criticise the programs, but one of the difficulties, and I have raised this concern with the Attorney-General's Department directly, is that we need to fund projects—even if it is through that particular funding or if we segregate the CVE funding from the Attorney-General's Department and call it community capacity building funding—where good community groups, such as Afghan community groups as an example, can build the youth community facilities that they actually need. The difficulty is that, because they are not getting this federal government support and funding, we are facing a challenge where those whom we are quite worried about do not have access to this funding to provide the facilities which would act as an attractor to those that we worry about in our community.

In discussing this appropriation bill, my request is not to criticise the existing funding, but I do believe that it could be targeted. The communities at risk—and there are several—that I have dealt with do in fact need targeted funding to provide the resourcing that they need. I will certainly be continuing to raise this with the Attorney-General's office and, as I said, I have worked very closely with them. There are a couple of examples. For example, there is a gentleman that I know named Peter Aguto from the Sudanese community. Funding could help him run his Road to Therapy program, which moves young Sudanese youth away from acts of crime to become active members in the community. There is another very interesting program, called the Raqib Task Force, which was created by Anooshe Mushtaq and Hussain Nadim, which is a counterextremism initiative led by the Muslim communities. They are based in Sydney.

We want to make these people stakeholders in the process of reducing acts of crime and terrorist threats in this country. That is not to say that I—as you may be aware, Deputy Speaker—say that those who commit those crimes should not meet the full force of the law, and we will flag that we will continue to be giving our security agencies the powers that they need to address those particular concerns, but the intelligence agencies tell me that it would be much better, as you would know, to be dealing with these threats or to see them mitigated rather than having to deal with the endpoint. Had some of the foreshadowed threat of the Anzac Day terror plots occurred and not been thwarted by the excellent work of our intelligence agencies and the security community, God knows what would have happened in our community. We commend the intelligence community for their work, but we must do everything in our power to ensure that that does not happen. I think more appropriate targeting of the countering violent extremism funding is one way of doing that.

In the same vein, I am also committed to campaigning for additional resources for Casey's youth. In the Casey region we have about 60,000 people, but, because they live on the outer suburbs of Melbourne, they do not have the same opportunities as those in the inner city. As a result, I have continued to be keen to support their youth in the best way I can and to provide them with world-class experiences. For example, Google and Facebook—and hopefully Twitter, if this actually occurs—are coming down to my constituency at some stage in the next month or two to talk about the youths' concerns about cyberbullying, social media challenges and extremism and how we could, collectively, combat those. I would like to commend them for doing that. That is bringing them out to the outer suburbs to actually assist in terms of the issue that the youth are dealing with.

It is pertinent because the Fountain Gate area in the Casey area, for example, has the second-highest uptake of mobile phone appliances in the country. It is not as though there is not a demand for something like this to be happening. If you said 'Fountain Gate shopping centre'—besides people automatically jumping up and talking about Kath and Kimit is, as I said, one of the fastest growing areas in the country. The shopping centre is the second largest shopping centre in Australia. The diversification of the community is proceeding at an amazing pace, and so we need to act in accordance with that in the services that we provide, and we are just not getting those services. We are not getting the funding that we need.

I spoke before in this place about mental health funding. We were very worried about the two headspaces that had been funded, and I think the member for Cowan was talking about suicide prevention or World Mental Health Day just before I spoke. The difficulty with these transitioning arrangements was that the ongoing future of those two headspaces was not guaranteed until fairly recently. The problem with that uncertainty is that you lose qualified staff. I hope this matter has been resolved. I was listening carefully to what the health minister said with respect to this issue today. I hope that she is now in the process of allocating that additional funding for early psychosis prevention services. I think the minister spoke about the 12 suicide prevention services, but that should be just on top of the existing early psychosis programs that are being run, which do a lot of the suicide prevention work.

One of the key problems that we had prior to the last election was that funding for a very key early psychosis service was going to be taken away. There would be 75 per cent funding the first year and 25 per cent the next year. As a consequence of lobbying by a lot of young people and by Professor Patrick McGorry and others—and probably by some on your side of politics too, Mr Deputy Speaker—that funding is being reinstated. But the difficulty with the contracts that need to be renewed is that the funding actually has to be allocated, and it has not been allocated yet. I would urge the health minister to do so so we can keep those world-class services up and running, on top of the delivery of the 12 suicide prevention special projects.

Roads are obviously a key issue. I am running out of time, but I could talk a lot more about that issue, particularly with respect to Thompsons Road and the commitment that we made to it. We made an $85 million commitment to assist in the widening of Thompsons Road, which would duplicate high-volume sections to six lanes, build a full-grade separation over the Western Port Highway intersection and upgrade intersections to the Frankston-Dandenong Road and the Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road. That would be very good. That was a commitment that we made, so I certainly welcome the Turnbull government's commitment with respect to the Monash Freeway and some elements of Thompsons Road. But this money is required for the completion of the project, so I will certainly be writing to the Prime Minister to ask respectfully that he ensure that that happens.

In finishing, people in the outer suburbs often feel like they have been taken for granted. They provide so much of the industry and the resources and so many of the bright young people for our country, and they create the future that we want for our country. But they often feel like they do not have respect or resources. I spoke about Kath and Kim, and I say that because they feel like they are disparaged every time that term is used, and they are right. This is the future of our country, all dotted in the outer suburban areas in this country. I would urge the government to recognise that. I will continue to work with them to ensure that they get the appropriate resources that they need in this area.

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

A few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon 20 people at the National Gallery of Australia were given some really bad news. They were told that their jobs had been cut and that they were out of a job as of Monday. You can imagine those 20 people going home to their families that Friday night, looking forward to the weekend, to spending some time with their kids, to going to sport on the weekend, to perhaps catching up with friends over a dinner party. You can imagine how they felt about the fact that they had lost their jobs as of Monday and about going home to their families with that heavy heart and that fear to announce the news. You can imagine how the news was received when they got home and the uncertainty that it created amongst their children: 'Will it mean that we have to move from Canberra? Will it mean that I have to leave my school? Will it mean that I have to leave my local community and my local sporting club?' Imagine their partners thinking, 'Will I have to leave Canberra? Will I have to leave my job? What does this mean in terms of my future and my career?' And imagine what they were also thinking in terms of, 'What is my future? What is my career? Here I am.'

I met two of them on the Saturday morning, and they were still in shock, but they had at the front of their mind: 'Well, how am I going to pay the mortgage? What is going to be my future? I am an expert in my field. I have spent decades building up my skills in a very highly technical and expert area. What sort of job—what sort of future—is there for me? Here I am in my mid-40s or my mid-50s, facing this fear of not being able to pay the mortgage and possibly having to relocate—having to relocate my children, relocate my partner and relocate my partner—to get another job. Who knows—given that I am 45 or 50—what opportunities will be there for the future?'

So that was a grim day a few weeks ago at our National Gallery of Australia for those 20 people and those 20 families. But the cuts to jobs throughout our national institutions have not been isolated to those 20 people at the National Gallery and their families. These cuts have been taking place since this government was elected in 2013. Since this government was elected in 2013, there has been cut after cut after cut at our national institutions. It has been sustained. At the National Archives of Australia, 39 people have lost their jobs. At the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, 47 people have lost their jobs. At the National Gallery of Australia, I mentioned those 20, who are among 28 who have lost their jobs. At the National Library of Australia, 41 people have lost their jobs; at the National Museum of Australia, five people; at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, 11 people; and at Old Parliament House, the great old Wedding Cake, two people. At the Australian War Memorial, which protects and preserves the memories of those who have sacrificed their lives in the service of this nation to defend this nation, 61 people have lost their jobs since this government was elected; at the Royal Australian Mint, 26 people; at the High Court of Australia, 10 people; at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, three people; and, at the Australian Institute of Sport, 114 people. That is hundreds and hundreds of people who have lost their jobs in our national institutions and our sporting institutions since this government was elected, and that means there are hundreds and hundreds fewer people who are looking after, preserving, curating and conserving our national collection. These are hundreds and hundreds of people who are now not doing that anymore.

I am very concerned about what that means for our national collection. We have many millions of dollars invested in our art collection at the National Gallery. We have our war history and memories of those thousands and thousands of lives that were sacrificed in war. There are fewer people now looking after, conserving and preserving those memories. At the National Library of Australia, where we have every edition of every book that has been produced by an Australian in this country—including first editions of Blinky Bill and The Magic Puddingtheir preservation, conservation and ability to tell those wonderful stories for generations to come are potentially being compromised as a result of 41 people at the National Library having lost their jobs since this government was elected. There are 41 fewer people being able to conduct that work.

What this means, in terms of actual numbers, is not just the hundreds and hundreds of jobs—all those hundreds and hundreds of people and the hundreds and hundreds of families that have been affected. We are talking here about one in 10 staff at the national institutions. Ten per cent of the staff at the national institutions have lost their jobs since this government was elected. When you broaden it out to a number of other national organisations, we are looking at one in eight, or 12 per cent of people, who have lost their jobs and whose families have been affected as a result of job cuts under this government.

As I said, that means we have hundreds and hundreds fewer people looking after our national collection: the Brett Whiteleys, the Margaret Prestons and the much-derided—recently by one senator—and much-loved Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock, a definite and iconic piece in his life's work. The Americans are very envious that we have that piece in Australia. Despite the fact that it was lambasted when the late, great Gough Whitlam bought it, that piece is one of Jackson Pollock's most iconic works, if not his most iconic work. But with hundreds and hundreds fewer people looking after those works now, what does it mean for their conservation and their preservation and for their ability to tell our national story in the future?

Phar Lap's heart is at the National Museum. Since the government was elected there are five fewer people at the National Museum looking after the collection, including Phar Lap's heart, which I remember seeing is a child at the National Museum of Victoria. Now it has come up to our great national capital.

I know a number of people outside Canberra would say, 'Why should I care? These are Canberra institutions; these are Canberra jobs. This has no impact on me.' I would say to them: 'This does have a significant impact on you and will have on your children and their children. It will have a significant impact on future generations.' It has a significant impact because the fewer the people who are conserving, preserving and curating our national collection, the greater the potential for that collection to be killed. There is significant potential that the collection will not be able to tell our national story to future generations. There is significant potential for the National Library to be no longer able to tell our national story, for the National Gallery to be no longer able to tell our national story through art and for the War Memorial to be no longer able to tell our story about the great sacrifices that have been made to defend our nation in the name of democracy and peace. It means that the story about our democracy at Old Parliament House could be affected by the job cuts. The story of our culture that is so brilliantly told at the National Museum could be affected by these job cuts. The National Film and Sound Archive has had significant job cuts—47 since this government was elected. The Film and Sound Archive has the first edition of Ned Kelly, that crazy black and white thing that we have all seen snippets of. It has that in its collection. That could potentially be affected by these job cuts.

That is why I say this is not just a Canberra story. Canberra is our nation's capital. Canberra draws a thread through every state and territory to our nation and it tells our national story. It is also the seat of our great democracy. I say to everyone in Australia: you do need to take notice of this. You do need to fight these cuts to these national institutions, because they are affecting your story, your nation's capital, your national collection, your national literature, your national film, your national war memorial and your national sports institutions. The cuts are affecting your story.

I encourage all Australians to take an interest in this. They should write to their local member and let them know that we can no longer sustain these cuts to our national institutions and our national collection. Everyone knows that national institutions are lean organisations. Everyone knows that arts institutions, be they in regional Australia or in the major cities in Australia, are pretty mean and lean outfits. We are not cutting into flesh with these cuts. We are not cutting into bone with these cuts. We are cutting into vital organs with these cuts, and it is affecting our national story. In my view, these cuts have the potential to kill or have a significant impact on our national story.

So I say again to all Australians: write to your local member and let them know that we can no longer sustain these cuts. Enough is enough. You do not want our national story killed. You do not want our national collection affected anymore; you do not want it compromised anymore. Because you cannot preserve a national collection of art, of literature, of film, of war artefacts, of sporting icons and of cultural icons if you do not have the skilled experts to do so.

As I said, we have people at the National Gallery who have been in these jobs for decades. They have spent decades building up those skills. They are rare beasts in Australia. These are people we should be valuing. We should not be telling them on Friday afternoon that—after all their decades of service to our nation, to our democracy, to our national story—essentially, 'Your job on Monday is gone'. They deserve more dignity than this. They deserve more respect than this. You are 45-years-old; you are 55-years-old; you have a very highly specialised skill. That is what those 20 people at the National Gallery had to face a few weeks ago.

This is not just a unique story to the National Gallery. These are stories that have been played out since 2013, when this Liberal government was elected. These stories have played out around kitchen tables and in living rooms, in tearful scenes in carparks. These stories have played out right across Canberra for the last four years. All these experts and all these highly skilled staff—in our National Archives, in our National Film And Sound Archive and in the National Library, these stories have played out right across our national institutions, right across Canberra. That is why I call on an end to this.

Morale is at rock bottom in many of our national institutions. They are trying to make do. They are trying to do their job; to preserve, to protect, to curate, to continue to tell our national story. They are doing their best to do that, but they are doing it with very limited resources, and those resources are becoming fewer and fewer.

So I say to all Australians: this is your nation's capital; these are your national institutions. If you value them, if you want your grandchildren to see Phar Lap's heart, if you want your grandchildren to see the first edition of Blinky Bill or the first edition of The Magic Pudding, if you want your grandchildren to see the first edition of Ned Kelly—if you want your grandchildren to stand in the entry foyer of the National Gallery of Australia and see those fabulous iconic Indigenous pieces that have been collected over the years, highly treasured and much loved by Canberrans and all Australians who go into that foyer in the National Gallery—then I encourage you to write to your local member and tell them enough is enough. We can no longer afford these cuts. We can no longer sustain these cuts. It is killing our national story.

We are cutting not into flesh; we are cutting not into bone; we are cutting into vital organs. And, once you start doing that, you have the potential for things to end, for our national story to be killed. So, please, Australians, write to your local member and let them know enough is enough.

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and congratulations on your appointment as Deputy Speaker.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you.

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is lovely to have you here. In speaking in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017, I would like to pay particular attention to the impacts on rural and regional Australia. In opening my comments, I would also like to welcome to the parliament and to this chamber two wonderful women from my electorate, Francine and Polly. Thanks for coming. Thanks for your work. I really appreciate your contribution to my office as volunteers, but particularly the work you do in your own communities to make them a safe place. So thank you for being here.

Tonight I want to put a challenge to the government. I want to put a challenge to the Prime Minister. During the campaign, he was very proud and very loud in telling the people of Australia that the Liberal and National Parties have a plan for jobs and growth. I am really pleased to hear it. But there is a bit of the plan that really confuses me. When I worked through all the publicity—and I read the detail really closely—I said, 'But where's the plan for rural and regional Australia in the plan for jobs and growth?' I got further into it. In my electorate of Indi during the campaign, there was a National Party candidate standing. I went to his material to see what he was standing for. What was the National Party saying about jobs and growth in rural and regional Australia?

It almost made me cry with frustration. There was nothing there about rural and regional Australia. There was nothing there. I could not find the term mentioned once. There was no regional development plan and no sense of what the vision was for rural and regional Australia.

The National Party had a statement, 'Our Plan for a Strong New Economy.' I went onto the web page and had a really good look. Again, there was not a single mention of rural and regional Australia in their subsections about jobs and families. It was not that they were talking about the city either. It was this nondescript sense of all of Australia being the same. There was some sense that, by just using the words, things would work. All of us know that that is not the case for rural and regional Australia.

There was one thing on the National Party web page that I looked at that was called 'Supporting Australia's Farmers and Exporters.' I had a closer look and thought, 'Maybe this is where I will find out about regional development.' But no, it was not there. It was about agriculture, which I have to say I was really pleased to see. But there was no sense at all that agriculture exists within a context of community, a context of small business and a context of education and all the services we need. It just was not there. Similarly with small business, I went on there and thought, 'What is the government going to do about small business in rural and regional Australia?' Zilch, nada, nothing.

In my role tonight, as a member for rural and regional Australia, I want to really speak up for us. I want to talk about the role of the budget as one of the key policy documents for this government to pay attention to rural and regional Australia. As taxpayers in rural and regional Australia, we want to see our dollars coming back to us—not just as trickle-down or by the way. We want to see services come to our community that address our needs, that are specifically designed for the group of people who live in the country, because we all know, as you do, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz, that it is different to the city. What I want to say tonight is that, sadly, when I see the budget papers, I see no vision for rural and regional Australia. I think there is an assumption that one size will fit everything. There is an assumption that trickle-down might work. There is maybe even an assumption that a rising tide lifts all boats. If we know anything about rural and regional Australia, we know it just does not happen.

What I wanted to say tonight was that it is not that the government do not know how to do it. If we look closely at some of the government's other programs, we can see that they do know how to plan and they do know how to do sectoral planning. One of the really good examples of this is the northern Australian plan. It shows clearly that the government, when they put their mind to it, can actually do whole-of-region, integrated, strategic, long-term sustainable development. I love reading the northern Australian plan, but every time I see it, I think, 'But what about the rest of us? What about north-east Victoria? What about southern New South Wales? What about a strategic approach to how our community is going to reach its potential?'

The second example I see when I read the government's papers about its ability to plan—and I just love this example—is the work it has done on developing its national defence plan. I looked at that document and I thought, 'Ah, here the plan is.' I just love listening to the Prime Minister speak about it. The Prime Minister said, 'We want to use defence industries to grow innovation, to grow creativity, to grow jobs, to grow our exports, and we will wrap it all together around a 20-year, multimillion-dollar defence plan.' I think, 'Great, but why can't we take that logic and that thinking to rural and regional Australia? Why can't we take that thinking to agriculture and all the surrounding bits of agribusiness? Why can't we have our budget papers do that sort of thinking for us?' That is the major point that I want to make tonight. I want to really set on the agenda that, over the next three years, I am going to be working with the government about putting rural and regional Australia at the front. I am going to be saying to the government, 'Let's talk about infrastructure. Let's talk about how the money is invested in rural and regional Australia to do what we need to do.'

I am going to talk about the National Stronger Regions Fund. That is where the main money is spent at the moment. I looked at the national regional funding program, and it is good with what it does, but clearly there is not nearly enough money there. The actual applications far outweigh the government's ability to fund it, so you get caught in this terrible competitive tension—of politics, of demand, of a good submission—that is not based on need and is not based on a strategic approach to advance the national economy. I know the minister is going to be looking at that program to come up with something different, but I am saying that you cannot have a plan for spending if you have not got a national vision. It is not much good saying, 'We'll give this money for this and give this money for that,' if it does not fit into a whole. I think that whole budget process lacks vision. It lacks clarity about what we are trying to achieve.

When I am talking about this I go and look at the budget papers and I say, 'Where could we get some better input into this?' My research has shown me that there is a process in the cabinet submission process, which reads:

A Cabinet Submission that has a positive or negative impact on Australia's regions must include a Regional Australia Impact Statement (RAIS). The role of the RAIS is to provide a complete and accurate assessment of the effects (positive or negative) that a policy proposal will have on regional Australia. The RAIS helps to ensure that regional impacts are made visible to Cabinet Ministers, to inform their decision making.

Where the regional impacts of the policy proposal are significant, they should be analysed in the body of the Cabinet Submission and summarised in the RAIS, including references to the relevant sections of the Cabinet Submission.

The idea is there, but I think it fails in its implementation. To follow this through a little bit, a question was asked of the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, in Senate estimates in 2015. He was asked if a cabinet impact statement had been prepared by a certain program—in this case it was the Australia Council. He said, 'No, that is not the way the budget process works.' This suggests to me that regional impact statements may be a part of cabinet process but they are not part of budget process. That is a problem. Cabinet may be thinking about rural and regional Australia, but when we come to do the budget it is not there.

What is the answer to this? What hope have we got to get the budget process thinking about those of us who live in the regions—those who live in rural areas and those who live in more isolated areas? It seems to me that one of the things we could do is call on the government to have these budget impact statements made public twice a year—with the budget and also with the mid-year economic report. In 2014 I introduced into parliament a private member's bill calling on the government to do this. It was the Charter of Budget Honesty Amendment (Regional Australia Statements) Bill. I think I am going to have to reintroduce it in this session of parliament because, clearly, in all of the words of the Prime Minister, in all the words of the minister and in all the words of the whole election campaign, there was no sense at all that anybody in the government actually gets that rural and regional Australia is different from the cities. We have to design our policy and our funding processes to meet the needs.

But it is not enough just to do the design and to do the funding. I know that you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz, that government can put a whole lot of money into something and it makes absolutely no difference at all. What we have to do is say, 'Here's the intended outcomes that we want.' Then we have to measure the outcomes and go, 'Yes, here's the planning, here's the budget, here's the delivery mechanism, here's the outcomes we want and here, really importantly, is the review mechanism,' so we can go back and say, 'Yes, that money worked. We've solved that problem, but next time we've got to do XYZ.' I just do not see that process when government makes its budget submissions, so of course we do not get the outcome we want, because it is not designed into the process that we are looking for.

In bringing my comments to a close tonight, I put a challenge up there, not only to the public service that advises the government—from PM&C to the ag department, the Department of Regional Development and the Minister for Infrastructure—but to the whole of the parliament. We should be saying, 'Here's the outcome we want.' We should not just be saying, 'Here's money to be spent.' And we need to match the outcome we want against our vision of what we are trying to achieve for the nation.

In bringing my comments to a close, I want to put on record my enormous disappointment in the National Stronger Regions Fund program and its failure to fund major infrastructure in my electorate. I wonder how and where the money is going to come from without a commitment by the government to actually fund infrastructure in regional Australia. Wodonga council's Baranduda Fields sporting complex is a great initiative, it is a great idea and it really needs to be funded. The Mount Buller-Mount Stirling water storage project is, again, really important infrastructure that really needs to be funded. The tourism links project that links Mount Buller Resort, Mansfield and the Alpine National Park is really important infrastructure that must be funded. The Wangaratta council's Wangaratta aquatics plan is to fund an aquatics centre in Wangaratta that creates a regional centre of excellence around swimming for all north-east Victoria. It is obviously needed and is well supported. It cannot be done by the local council—we just do not have the money—but how can it be done nationally? How can we get the funding in the system to build the infrastructure we need? I can only see it happening by government making a commitment to actually do for rural and regional Australia what needs to be done.

In setting up an agenda for my work in the next three years, I call on the government to actually stand up for rural and regional Australia, particularly for the Nationals to do something about regional policy. How can they have a web page that does not talk about regional Australia? How can they have a web page that does not talk about regional education? How can they have a web page that does not talk about regional health? How can they have a web page that actually does not talk about how it all comes together? It is so lacking. To my Nationals colleagues in particular: have courage, have a vision, develop some policies, have some deliverables and then work on some outcomes.

My hope is that in 50 year's time from having this discussion, we can look back and see that we actually have a balanced development agenda in Australia, that we have ended this huge investment in the infrastructure of the cities. And that we have said as a nation, 'We have got a lot of country so we need to have some decentralisation; some large regional hubs; we need to have really good transport linking them; we need really good internet connecting us up; we need really good health facilities, education facilities, quality first-class facilities and they happen to be in the country.'

I am hoping that my speech tonight is the beginning of that sense of turning around the idea that all Australia is is an urban fringe and that the jobs and growth plan is for the urbanites; we need it for the whole country. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight, and I look forward to coming into this place often and developing these ideas further.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise this evening to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-17. Elections and governments are indeed all about choices, and you can tell a lot about a government's priorities by the way it sets its budget and the choices it makes. I wish tonight in my contribution to this debate to reflect on some of the challenges that I see before the current parliament. But before doing so, I would like to spend a moment reflecting on something that I think is a quite worrying aspect with regards to the current gender representation in the Australian parliament. I think that of the 150 members elected into the lower house, the House of Representatives, during the last election, we now just have 43 women—that is, less than one-third. Indeed in the other house, there are just 30 women out of the total of 76 senators. Overall that means that this 45th Parliament is comprised of just 32 per cent of women. In a society that is pretty evenly split fifty-fifty, this parliament is clearly not being reflective of the communities that we represent.

From the major party perspective, Labor, while it is not perfect, certainly continues to set the example in this regard—an example that the coalition government really should take heed of and learn some lessons from. Labor's overall representation of women is now 44 per cent. That is well above the parliamentary average and exceeds the current targets on gender inequality that we set for ourselves within the Labor Party. I am very thankful that the Labor Party chose at our national conference last year to extend that quota through to 50 per cent.

Our increase in women representatives has been steady over the last two decades since those targets and quotas were first introduced. They were introduced quite deliberately to address the issue of gender representation gaps.

Whilst Labor sets targets, and indeed meets and continues to exceed those targets, the coalition continues to really struggle to make very significant progress on this front at all. In this parliament the coalition is represented by just 21 women out of 106 members and senators—that is 19 per cent of their representation. Less than one in five members and senators are women. When John Howard was first elected Prime Minister, some 20 years ago, there were more women in the Liberal Party ranks than there are today. The Liberal Party's steadfast objection to the notion of quotas and targets for women is very telling. We often hear their argument that promotion should always be based on merit, but that clearly flies in the face of some other conservative principles that are followed in this place. I would suggest that that is certainly the case with regard to Liberal-National representation on the front bench, which once described by John Howard, and reinforced recently by the Deputy Prime Minister, I understand, being calculated on the basis of the iron laws of arithmetic.

It seems like a fairly simple argument, as I understand it. The higher the percentage of Nationals who are elected into coalition government, the more positions of power they are allocated. That is, regardless of any discussions around capability, experience or, dare I say, merit, there would always be a certain number of Nationals on the front bench based on those numbers. I ask: if this simple arithmetic is accepted when it comes to coalition membership and the breakdown of party positions, why can it not be applied when it comes to women on the front bench or more broadly in the preselection of candidates in winning seats? As journalist, academic and formal Liberal staffer Peter van Onselen observed when evaluating the situation:

The government’s failure to attract, preselect and promote women has become a national embarrassment.

I agree.

Let me take some moments now to reflect on what I think are some of the additional challenges that sit before the 45th Parliament. Over the term of this parliament there will be many challenges, and some of those can be and have been foretold. Others will, I anticipate, emerge over the coming weeks and months. I would like to reflect on some of those now. During the election campaign we were often asked why we wanted to become members of parliament, why we work late nights, why we give up weekends, friends, hobbies, a sense of privacy—all those things—to spend 20-odd weeks a year in Canberra and every spare moment living and breathing politics. The major driver for me is the ongoing struggle around equality and how we address what has been a widening gap in inequality in Australia. I have spent much of my life fighting discrimination in all its forms, and this is how I view most issues. This is the prism through which I view most issues. Man, woman, heterosexual, gay, Indigenous, non-Indigenous, born here into wealth and success, born into poverty or struggle, disabled or abled, it should not matter and it must not matter. In our work in this place, we must focus on establishing legislation that ensures equality for all, legislation that does not discriminate. That struggle for equality will be front and centre of this parliament—gender representation in this place, as I have just outlined, but also more broadly around a lot of other issues to do with representation.

The issue at the forefront of all our minds right now is marriage equality. When last in government, Labor changed 85 separate pieces of legislation to remove discrimination against gay men, lesbians and same-sex couples. Regrettably, there was one major piece of unfinished business, and that was this issue of marriage equality. It certainly is time for marriage equality in Australia. Indeed, it is long overdue. I am especially proud of our party's stance today against supporting a hurtful and divisive plebiscite in our nation. I would like to share with the House today a message I received earlier in the day from a dear friend and colleague and his partner, who thanked the Labor Party and, indeed, me as their representative here in the Australian parliament for not supporting the plebiscite and not proceeding with a bill that they thought would subject them to having their relationship litigated publicly. That is one of very many messages I have received today from people who are grateful to be spared—or hoping that they will be spared—from what might be a very hurtful and divisive debate in the Australian body politic.

It is, however, certainly time for marriage equality in Australia. It is time that we just got this done and brought the Australian parliament into line with the Australian community and into the 21st century. It is time we all stood up for respect of love in all its forms in Australia. Recent analysis of the new parliament identifies that, if a conscience vote was granted on marriage equality today, it would pass both houses of parliament. The Prime Minister should scrap his plans for an expensive, divisive, non-binding plebiscite and have a vote in this parliament today. We are elected to make decisions and we should do so on marriage equality. There was not a plebiscite when John Howard changed the Marriage Act to discriminate against same-sex couples back in 2004 and we do not need a plebiscite now to right this discriminatory law on our statute books.

The other matter that is certainly worrying for many Novocastrians and the people I represent in the good electorate of Newcastle is access to affordable quality health care. Time and time again, the Liberal Party—I suggest dominated by a few in the far Right—has shown its ideological opposition to Medicare. Since the days of Whitlam's Medibank, the Liberals have always railed against the principles of universal health care. Whether in the form of privatisation, a co-payment, cuts to bulk-billing or the Medicare freeze, the Abbott-Turnbull approach to health care has consistently been characterised by attempts to undermine the universality of our health care system. Medicare is at the centre of the Australian social contract. People love it, they are proud of it and they rely on it. Cost already deters one in 12 Australians from seeing a specialist, and this is only set to increase as this government creates new up-front expenses for vital services such as blood tests and X-rays. This government spent its first three years trying to push the price of health care back onto Australian families and then has the gall to call us deceitful when we pull it up for it. I mean, give me a break. The government must heed the calls of the AMA, Labor and others to remove the ongoing Medicare rebate freeze. Price hikes to prescription medicines and pathology costs should be abandoned, and the hospital funding crisis faced following the Abbott-Hockey 2014 funding cuts needs to be addressed.

One of the other issues that continues to get bandied around when I think about trying to take a stand on issues of equality and discrimination is section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which Labor introduced—more than two decades ago now—to protect against offence, insult, humiliation and intimidation based on race, colour, nationality or ethnic origin. Section 18C has served Australia well and protected our rich, vibrant and successful multicultural society. There are, however, some members in this place who are intent on seeing 18C watered down, arguing it should be amended or indeed repealed altogether. I call on the Prime Minister to show some strength here to ensure that these calls for repealing 18C are not allowed to rear their ugly head again. Every Australian deserves the right to live free from racial and ethnic vilification. The only outcome from repealing 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act would be more hate speech, and this is an unacceptable premise for any civil society. Any plans to repeal 18C should be permanently shelved.

One of the other issues that certainly is at the forefront of my thinking, and one of the many challenges for people in my communities in the electorate of Newcastle, is housing affordability. The provision of safe, affordable housing is a basic human right and the absence of such becomes a huge cost for all our communities.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 17 : 42 to 17 : 57

The issues of housing stress and homelessness are certainly varied and complex. Whilst no government gets to resolve all the issues being experienced by people in our communities, leadership, adequate policy and funding must be delivered by the Commonwealth as a solid platform to address these challenges.

Finally, I would like to touch on another area of concern—that is, the cuts to community legal centres. The flow-on effects of these cuts and the further 30 per cent cuts that the community legal centres will face in 2017 are having massive impacts in my communities. They are also hurting their women's services and shelters, the disability advocacy groups and the homelessness services because they are a very complex ecosystem in our community. I urge the government to match Labor's commitment of $43 million in to these services over the next three years. We need ongoing access to justice for the vulnerable people in our communities.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On this side of the House, Labor have said we will support the appropriation bills, although we have raised many issues and concerns about various government policies. Today, I intend to also raise my concerns, particularly in the context of the election. I start by saying what an honour it is to have been re-elected as the member for Richmond. I would like to thank all of my constituents. It is a real privilege to serve in our federal parliament and represent their interests here. Richmond is a remarkable and fantastic electorate. It is a very diverse electorate with many people from different backgrounds—something we should always acknowledge and always celebrate. It is the most beautiful part of Australia and a unique area.

In terms of the election, it really is an honour to have been returned with an increased majority. As I have said to many locals, whether you voted for me or not, my door is always open to help anyone with any issues they may have. I thank all of those who assisted with the campaign. This election was essentially a comparison, if you like, between the Liberal-National Party, which was looking after big business and multimillionaires, and the Labor Party, which was looking after everyday people. That was really highlighted in my electorate and was certainly reflected in the comments that people were making to me about the election. In terms of the election itself, there were a variety of issues that were brought up, particularly saving Medicare—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 18 : 01 to 18 : 30

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

It being 6.30, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.