Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To go on from where I left off: the government has also committed to a $20 million jobs, infrastructure and training package for the Upper Spencer Gulf. At the same time, we have committed to a long-term naval shipbuilding industry based in Adelaide, and this will present a huge range of opportunities to the Whyalla works over the extended period. These commitments have helped make the Whyalla assets more marketable, and the administrators, Korda Mentha, have been working hard to bring about a sale to somebody who wants to keep the assets producing and is prepared to invest to bring the plant up to world's best practice. It has also not gone unnoticed that the workers in the steel plant in Whyalla have after reconsideration agreed to accept a 10 per cent wage cut.

I pay tribute here to Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Greg Hunt, who has made the future of Whyalla his No. 1 priority from the day he was promoted to the position just after the election. He has visited Whyalla, talked regularly with the SA state government and, importantly, provided a letter of comfort to any potential new buyers, setting out the areas in which the federal government may be able to provide further assistance.

I was very pleased three weeks ago, I think it was now—perhaps it was two—when the minister rang me from a train in Korea to report on the very positive meeting he had held earlier in the day with POSCO. The great news, of course, is that, while there has been some excitement about POSCO's interest, they are not the only parties that see value in Arrium's assets. Last Friday I had the privilege of meeting with Sanjeev Gupta, from Liberty House Group, who was visiting Whyalla on the Saturday. I met with him in Adelaide on the Friday night to discuss the possibility of Liberty House becoming an investor in the Whyalla and Arrium operation more widely. Let me say about the company Liberty House that they have a long track record—over 20 years—of investing in steel production plants that have been run down or gone broke, reinvesting, reinvigorating their management structures and making a success out of those particular business. Over that time, they have not sold any businesses; they have kept them all going. That is the kind of positive news that we need along with POSCO's genuine interest. I expect at least another two prospective buyers to come to Whyalla over the next few weeks to have a look at what is on offer there.

All in all, I feel very confident about the future, but we cannot stop, and nothing is delivered until the ink is dry.

On other fronts, I believe the government is making great strides as well. Only three weeks ago I opened the new Port Augusta drug and alcohol treatment centre, a never-delivered dream from the Rudd-Gillard years that Liberal Party commitment delivered well within the time frames of its first term in office. I also attended and opened the Lucky Bay Harbour extension, and am looking forward to the establishment of a grain export facility there.

The last two rounds of the Stronger Regions grants have been very generous to Grey, and even though we can always find new projects within our community that we would like to get off the ground with a little assistance, I am very pleased with those results. The last around saw an allocation of almost $9 million to the Peterborough community, a town with the lowest socioeconomic outcomes in the electorate of Grey. The town has relied on a septic tank and soakage systems in the past. The infrastructure is old and crumbling, and I have been very concerned about the health risk that has been escalating.

Further south, the Gulf St Vincent community was thrilled to learn of the Commonwealth's commitment of $1 million towards a $3 million project to build a new artificial reef, and that investment is enough to tip the balance and bring that project forward. Certainly the declarations of 19 near-coast marine parks by the state government—virtually all in the waters adjacent to the electorate of Grey—have caused great concern to the commercial and recreational fishers alike, and there will be a need to further invest in projects which will expand the biomass.

In the earlier rounds of the Stronger Regions grants, $5 million was allocated towards the Port Pirie sporting precinct, and I saw the finished plan just the other day. Almost $5 million was allocated to refurbish the Copper Coast sporting complex, $1 million to the Barunga nursing home at Port Broughton, and almost $5 million for a fish unloader at Thevenard.

In other action, ARENA has backed the establishment of a $20 million solar-wind project with batteries and diesel backup at Coober Pedy. Coober Pedy—I have told the House on many occasions—has an off-grid electrical system and so, of course, anything that can provide sustainable, long-term electricity becomes much more viable in a place like Coober Pedy. I think this should be a good project for the future of the town even though there are some issues around pricing would which are still causing some concern in the community.

I look forward to the construction of the passing lanes between Port Augusta and Whyalla, with the federal government contributing 80 per cent of the construction costs. At the moment, the program is in the hands of the state government and I am very hopeful—indeed, quite anxious—that they will start soon, but I can assure the electorate that the funding is locked in. To the north of the state, the Commonwealth is investing $85 million bringing the main road accessing the APY Lands to first-class standard.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it demonstrates that the seat of Grey is attracting the kind of support that we need to lift our economic performance to the top shelf. In fact, I would go so far as to say that South Australia desperately needs Grey to lead it out of its economic doldrums. While economic opportunities arise all around the electorate in the form of agriculture, resources, fishing, aquaculture and tourism, there is a significant shadow hanging over all of South Australia—that is, the penalties that are now being inflicted upon our economy by electricity prices.

Since the closure of the coal-fired power station at Port Augusta in May, the South Australian wholesale price for electricity has doubled. Unfortunately, this outcome was predictable, perhaps even inevitable, because of the rush in South Australia to renewable electricity without the accompanying planning and strategic investment to ensure that the state had a base-load capacity of around 25 per cent of the grid demand. There is no greater supporter of renewable energy than me but, in this, the transition period, it is important that as well as delivering renewable electricity, it is also reliable and competitive. In South Australia, unfortunately, it is neither. I have been saying for quite some time that if South Australia is to pursue a fast transition to renewable electricity, it must be accompanied by appropriate amounts of storage—in other words, capable of providing base-load electricity. On that basis, I say there should be no new renewable projects approved in South Australia unless they have storage.

It is a great concern to me that the state government pays no heed to these calls and continues to approve new wind farm developments in our state without insisting on that storage—it is just so important that we get this right. There are some very significant lessons to be learned for the rest of the world and for the rest of Australia from what has happened in South Australia. It is causing great anxiety amongst our business community, our large consumers—those people that actually employ people in their economy at the moment. It is, I think, the No. 1 issue facing our state at the moment. We need some quick traction on some possible solutions. At this stage, it seems unlikely that the coal-fired power station will be fired up again even temporarily, but it is very important that somebody, some organisation—and I suggest that could be led by the state government—should place a long-term order for electricity with some of the generators that have spare capacity in their gas turbines. This, in turn, would enable those generators to actually go into the gas market and tie up those long-term gas supply contracts, which they need to be able to substantiate that supply. It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but it is really the most important economic issue facing South Australia at the moment.

We cannot afford to have the most expensive electricity in the world. Quite simply, we need to compete not only with overseas products; we also need to compete with the eastern states. There are those who speak of building a new interconnector through to New South Wales. I understand how this might alleviate the problem, but it does actually beg the question, then, that if we have moved in South Australia to support renewable energy in order to shut down our CO2 emissions, to shut down our coal-fired power station, that at the first sign of difficulty of power supply we would build a billion-dollar interconnector to New South Wales so that we could access their coal-fired power stations. It does seem to be something of an anomaly—one of those things that was not clearly thought out before.

I suspect that the answer lies within South Australia, and we need to support that generation capacity that can provide base-load electricity. That can be renewable, but it can also be gas. That is the task that is in front of us now. But overall, I must say that I am very pleased with the government's efforts within my electorate. Certainly my No.1 issue, like Greg Hunt's, is the sale of Arrium and I apply myself to that virtually every day in this job. I believe we will get there and then, of course, we need to fix these electricity issues in South Australia. Thank you very much.

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

In speaking on the address-in-reply, I want to address the government's industrial relations agenda in particular, which it is still trying to get through the parliament. At the core of this agenda are two bills: the registered organisations bill and the ABCC bill. The government says it is all about cleaning up corruption in Australia. They say it is all about making building and construction more efficient. But I say it is about the Liberals' signature policy; I say it is really about Work Choices.

The Australian labour movement was the only thing standing between Australian working families and Work Choices in 2007, and it, along with the Fair Work Act, is the only thing standing between them now. These bills are all about crushing the labour movement. On the other side of this chamber, they have clearly not forgotten 2007. So it is not about a union watchdog; it is about letting the dogs loose on workers' conditions, across the entire Australian workforce.

These bills are about smashing our trade unions. These bills are about lifting the profit share even higher. These bills are about trying to further drive down the wage share of our national income. This is a recipe for weaker growth, precisely at a time when the global economy is the most vulnerable it has been since 2008-09. These bills are part of the Liberal Party's economic approach that will lead to further wealth concentration, not wealth creation.

The IMF rejects the trickle-down economics which are embraced by these bills. What do I mean by 'trickle down'? The notion that if you give more resources to the rich, the benefits will simply trickle down and, magically, we will all be better off. It is a notion that is disproved by our experience, across the developed world, of concentrated incomes at the top; hollowed out middle classes, particularly in the United States; and armies of working poor. If you ask any person in the street about the registered organisations bill or the ABCC bill, they would not be able to tell you much. But if you ask them about the Panama papers, they might have something to say about that.

So these bills say a lot about the government's priorities. This is the government's spiteful vengeance writ large. In effect, those opposite took our nation to an early and expensive double-dissolution election over something that was not an issue on the street.

The issues on the street are entirely different. Families are asking how on earth they can juggle the strain of wages that have actually gone backwards over the last year. They are asking how they can absorb this government's hit on the social wage by cuts to Medicare that directly impact on family health costs. Expectant mothers are asking how they cope with cuts to paid parental leave. Students are asking about the explosive increase in the cost of university degrees. And of course all are asking about the threat of penalty rates they earn from an out-of-hours or weekend job. If they are a family with kids, they are asking serious questions about the future of education in this country. In Lilley, over 40 schools will lose an average $3.2 million—the equivalent of sacking one in seven teachers.

So this government's agenda fails what I call the motivation test. In public life, it is not just what you do; it is all about the way you do it and it is all about why you do it. LNP governments never find their policy priorities in the daily struggles of middle-income Australians; they find them in the musty boardrooms of corporate Australia and the mouldy hallways of the Institute of Public Affairs. And what are they doing? What they are doing is attacking the labour movement. It goes to the very core of their being.

It is ironic that we went to an election over productivity on building sites at a time when the ABS data clearly shows that productivity in the construction industry has been surging since 2011. It is equally telling that, at a time when corporate tax evasion is rampant and the Panama papers have disclosed corporate transactions that are questionable, the government's IR bills contain higher penalties for civil contraventions by union officials than apply in the Corporations Act for directors of companies. What is truly alarming is: construction workers will be investigated by the ABCC and will be denied the most fundamental and basic legal rights—the right to a lawyer of their choice as well as the right to remain silent. Everyone in this House should just dwell on that and reflect on that. The Prime Minister simply has not told the whole truth. He wants to take away the legal rights of trade unions but leave them in place for his corporate high-flyer mates.

This is the ugly hand of greed and class politics at its worst, and the Prime Minister has his fingerprints all over it. While the Australian people are worrying about jobs, working conditions and attacks on the social wage, their Prime Minister is working to crush the very organisations that are the last line of defence against growing wealth and income inequality. So there is a stench of dishonesty about this government—a stench of dishonesty about their agenda, their motives and their foul propaganda. They are all the same, no matter who leads them. Tony Abbott's baton has simply passed to the next runner. People hoped that Mr Turnbull might not have been the same. He was a little smoother and more polished. But scratch the surface and he is just the same. Turnbull and Abbott both fail the motivation test. The Liberal and National parties have simply replaced someone who would say and do anything to be Prime Minister with someone who would say and do anything to be Prime Minister. The election result proved that Australians are doubly disillusioned with Mr Turnbull.

Make no mistake: just as they are hiding a workplace agenda behind sloganeering against trade unions, they are also hiding the truth about their fiscal policy behind deceptive slogans. They say: 'We are not spending like Labor,' when the reality is that they are almost two percentage points of GDP higher than Labor. 'We are not taxing like Labor,' they say, when the reality is that, as a proportion of GDP, taxes are higher, consistently, under the Liberals. 'It's Labor's debt,' they say, when the reality is that Turnbull and Abbott have tripled the deficit. And the list goes on.

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

Order! The member will refer to members by their—

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

Certainly. Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott say, 'We need a company tax cut to generate growth and jobs,' when the reality is that the ATO data shows that private companies in Australia pay, on average, a tax rate of only 19 per cent when weighted for company size and before taking into account deductions, deferred losses, minimisation and evasion.

Who could forget that they have managed to spend $80 million on a trumped-up royal commission into trade unions but have dragged their feet and doing anything about multinational tax evasion, including voting against every measure Labor introduced in this area whilst we were in government. But courtesy of Labor's transparency legislation, which the Liberals voted against but which was passed in 2013, we now know that over a third of all public companies paid no tax in 2013-14. We know that half of all foreign companies in Australia paid no tax. We know that one in three private corporations paid no tax. We know that 55 millionaires paid no tax. And we now know through the Panama papers that around 800 high-net-worth individuals have connections to activities in tax havens.

In the face of this evidence, it is farcical and tragic that the Prime Minister and his ministers can keep a straight face and claim Australia has a spending problem and not a revenue problem, and continue to lay at the feet of trade unions the blame for their economic mismanagement. The Panama papers revealed that the increasing use of tax havens by multinationals and high-wealth individuals has reached epidemic proportions. Some of Australia's largest global companies have been exposed. When global companies operate in a cavalier way, it normalises this behaviour and gives the green light for everybody else to have a go. Tax havens are used by individuals and corporates to keep their activities in the shadows.

For years, Australians have watched the Liberals pander to corporate and media interests. Now, in a world where inequality is rampant, how could anyone have any faith in a leader who professes to believe in equality of opportunity but leads a government that has opposed strong measures to stamp out multinational tax evasion and has voted in this parliament against those measures? And all the while he was doing this he was a fully paid-up member of the Cayman Islands club, watching his capital fund grow under the palm trees. If this was a leader with faith in his leadership, faith in his Treasurer and faith in his country, he would put his money here, not in the Cayman Islands.

The use of tax havens by wealthy individuals and corporates is destroying progressive taxation right across the developed world. The principal reason for using a tax haven like the Cayman Islands is to avoid tax, either in countries where they live or are based or to act as an end point for tax minimisation. Strong actions against tax havens will never be taken by public officials who use them. That much is very clear.

Tax avoidance and evasion is a huge part of the trashing of public faith in democratic legitimacy right around the world. We are seeing it play out across country after country. Everyday workers have a sense that the economy is an inside-outside game in which the wealthy play by different rules and everyone else is denied opportunity.

It is clear, for example, that over a decade there has been a culture of tax avoidance and evasion at BHP, as they plan to evade tax on $5.7 billion held in their Singapore tax shield. Not only have they flouted federal tax law but they have also behaved disgracefully in seeking to avoid state royalty payments. No wonder there is a revolt going on in Western Australia when you look at what the have been up to with transfer pricing. Transfer pricing is exploited when a company sells a product between two arms of its operation in order to book its profits into a lower tax jurisdiction. The BHP tax shield in Singapore is used to smuggle profits out of Australia. Mr Beavan, BHP's chief financial officer, may choose to cutely describe aggressive transfer pricing as a 'valuation dispute'. But, in a world in which we all live, it is evasion.

We have still yet to hear from the BHP board any cogent defence of its actions despite these matters being raised with it by the media and others at its recent meeting in London and its meeting only last week in Brisbane. BHP does have an experienced board, but this board, individually and collectively, has questions which need to be answered—very serious questions. The board has not been true to the values that it espouses in its charter of corporate responsibility.

It is very disappointing that when they were in Brisbane they did not provide any defence of the fact that they have diddled the people of Queensland of very substantial amounts of money through transfer pricing on loyalties to the extent that, from the Queensland revenue office, they now have a bill for $300 million. It is not clear how much they may owe to the same revenue office in the state of Western Australia, but it could be substantial. The governments of Western Australia and Queensland have been treated very, very badly by the big Australian, because the evidence against them is damning. Over a decade BHP has ramped up its Singapore marketing hub to camouflage aggressive transfer pricing which has cost Australia taxpayers at least $1 billion. Historically, BHP has wrapped itself in the Australian flag, but this sort of behaviour would indicate that it is simply a meaningless gesture.

In the face of all the international evidence—when we would put together what has been going on in the government's actions against the trade union movement, its attempts to provide unfunded tax cuts to multinational companies, the farce of its jobs-and-growth slogans—one thing is clear in the international economic debate. We need a fairer distribution of income and wealth to drive economic growth. The increasing concentrations of wealth and income is a handbrake on global growth, holding back the global economy. The only answer our government has is a 1980s trickle-down Reaganomics-type agenda, where workers have fewer rights and lower wages, and companies enjoy lower tax and lower regulation.

There is only one problem with that formula—it suppresses demand. Demand is what is seriously lacking across the global economy and seriously lacking even in our own. You do not solve that problem by needlessly and stupidly attacking workers rights and workers conditions—attacking the minimum wage and attacking penalty rates. In this world, it is okay for Malcolm Turnbull to attack Bill Shorten—

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

Order!

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

and other Labor MPs for being former union officials, but, apparently, it is not okay—in fact, it is class war if anyone mentions that Turnbull is a multi-millionaire advocating policies—

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

Order! The member will refer to members by their titles.

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

It is okay if people are attacked on our side of the House for defending workers' rights and standing up for decent wages, but, if anyone mentions the Prime Minister is a multimillionaire advocating policies that will benefit people like him, they scream 'class warfare'. They had no trouble rustling up $80 million of taxpayers' money to fund a royal commission into the trade union movement, but they refused to hold a royal commission into banking and financial sector practices or to deal with the 800 individuals the Panama Papers have disclosed as tax avoiders. There is a fundamental intent on that side of the House to break unions—and when you break unions inequality inevitably follows.

This is the story of what has occurred in the United States over the last 30 years, as the wage share has gone down, the profit share has gone up and their economy has struggled. They have a hollowed-out middle class, an even bigger army of working poor and an obscenely low minimum wage. That great country has been crippled by trickle-down economics, it has smashed its middle class and now it is busily smashing its society and the cohesion that is so essential. If people in a country cannot have an expectation that growth will deliver for them and their living standards in the future and they have no faith that their kids will have an opportunity and living standards in the future, the optimism so essential to the working of a healthy capitalist economy disappears—and, when that disappears, social cohesion goes with it.

The fundamental attempt embodied in the government's economic agenda really comes back to three bills: the two industrial relations bills on the one hand and the tax bill to give a $50 billion unfunded tax cut, mainly to multinational companies, on the other. It screams out as being an extreme trickle-down agenda, directly the opposite of what responsible organisations like the IMF are now recommending to developed economies around the world. To cover up for its wealth concentration agenda and to pretend it is somehow a wealth creation agenda, the government goes out there and ramps up its attacks on unions, Medicare, the NDIS, public schools and the public sector generally. There is story after story in the papers—you can set your watch by them. On a Sunday, there will be another story about how the tax system is carried by a few, how most of the people getting benefits are bludgers and should be knocked off, how the NDIS is simply unaffordable and how the welfare system is an unsustainable burden. Despite the fact that we have one of the most targeted, efficient welfare systems in the world, this diet of propaganda comes out to camouflage the government's real intent.

That is why I believe there is a rapidly growing divide between the government and the people in this country. I also believe that this divide has the potential to severely disrupt our political system, across the whole political spectrum. There is a wealth divide that is getting more obscene. The power divide is growing day by day as, in particular, the government sets out to silence the voice of working people. The drive from the government and its sponsors is simply to do one thing: increase the profit share in the economy and decrease the wage share in the economy. As I have said before, this is self-defeating economic policy that the IMF tells us will lead inevitably to weaker growth, not stronger growth. I have a fervent hope that there are some responsible voices somewhere out there in the business community—obviously not in the Business Council of Australia—who will speak out about how lopsided and self-defeating the government's agenda is. I know there are many that oppose it, but we do not hear their voices. What it is leading to is not only wealth and income inequality but increased political polarisation—and it all flows from the survival-of-the-fittest mentality at the top of this government, whoever leads it.

I believe that all Australians create wealth, from the cleaners here in Parliament House through to the executives who run the largest companies in the land. Everybody is a wealth creator and all Australians deserve a voice in our economic debate and a stake in our economic prosperity. On this side of the House, we will fight for that voice. (Time expired)

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am honoured to have received a vote of confidence from the people of Bennelong and been returned to this parliament with an increased majority. In fact, despite my party suffering from some turbulent results across the country, the voters of Bennelong delivered the biggest swing towards the Liberal Party in all of New South Wales. The seat of Bennelong was held by Labor just six years ago; now, we fell just a few hundred votes short of attaining a 10 per cent margin, the AEC's marker for a safe seat. This was the best result for the Liberal Party in Bennelong since John Howard led us to government in 1996—and at that time his electorate boundaries included the traditionally stronger Liberal areas of Hunters Hill and Lane Cove. This is a result that reflects years of hard work from my office and all of my team. Despite increasing our margin at each election in which I have been a candidate, we have never treated Bennelong as a safe seat and never will; nor have we prioritised support for constituents based on who they declare their loyalty to. I take very seriously my role as the representative of all people of Bennelong, not just the 59.7 per cent of people who gave me their preference.

This election result in Bennelong was only possible because of the hundreds of volunteers who came out to help at dozens of street stalls, train stations and other campaign events in the lead-up to 2 July and, of course, on election day itself. At every election, I am amazed by the demands a campaign makes of its volunteers; yet, at every election, volunteers enthusiastically rise to the task and exceed expectations. Our team stood out for its unity, efficiency and productivity throughout the campaign. I am sincerely grateful to every one for their commitment and work both on election day and on the weeks leading up to 2 July.

It is impossible to name everyone who helped, but I would like to name a certain few people: the FEC president, my friend Mr Artin Etmekdjian, the former mayor of Ryde; and Sarkis Yedelian, the treasurer. They are Armenian, and I have become very aware of Armenia and their great community. Also, there is the wider FEC membership, including Hazel Myers, who has been with us for all six years; Margaret Gibbons; Michael Brereton; my dearest friend Michael Zakka, whom I picked up from outside his flat each morning for train stations; Harry Moskovian and Jerry Yessaeian—a great team of mates; and Daniel Severino, who manned the prepolling station every single day—what a great young man. He was supported by other Young Libs, including Jordan Lane, Tim Burnley-Gibson, Eiofe Hogan, Liam Hawke and the three Davids—David Hogan, David Tregenza and David Yao. Also there is, Hugh Lee, who formed a great friendship with me some six years ago and was one of the great supporters of the Bennelong Cup, using sport to unite our community; Austin Kim; and Craig Chung, who was booth captain at Eastwood, which had the largest swing of any individual booth in New South Wales—an amazing 12.9 per cent increase in support, taking our two-party-preference result from 50.3 per cent in 2013 to an astronomic 63.2 per cent. Craig ran as councillor in the Sydney council elections on 10 September, for which we congratulate him on his election to that important institution.

Also, there is our office team: Nisha de Alwis, Ursula Melhem, Jacob Masina, Simone Stark and Frances Lofgren—our cement. Jonathon Ward organised every train station, every shopping centre stall and blew up every balloon personally it seemed. Josh Bihary, whom I have been with for more than six years, is my campaign manager and long-serving chief of staff; a special thanks goes to your family, Josh—wife Karen and daughters, Maya and Viola—for giving up their husband and their father for much of the time during the campaign.

There is my family, including my daughter, Emily; her mother, Rosemary; her husband, Chris—it's complicated—my partner, Deb; her daughters, Amanda and Nicky; and my cousins—Adam Oakes; my favourite cousin Louise Crisp; my favourite cousins Penny and Warwick Coombes; I have a lot of favourite cousins; my favourite cousins Susan and Robert Alexander; Peter Alexander; Phil Crealy, my first doubles partner, and his wife, Christine, and their son, Philip—a great family of support. These people, along with hundreds of others, were essential to achieving our result. Considering that the seat was in the hands of the Labor Party just six years ago, we have a great deal to be proud of in the work that we have done in Bennelong and the broader Liberal cause now and we will into the future.

There are many possible reasons why we achieved this excellent result. The wonderful volunteers were essential, but I also feel it was the manner that everyone brought to this contest. We engaged with our fellow candidates and our fellow volunteers. It was civil at all times. It was as friendly and as engaging as it could have been in any contest. The atmosphere between the parties was congenial and friendly, and I thank all candidates and all their volunteers for being of a like mind—a great culture. Whenever we met each other at stations or stalls, we would always join in. We assisted each other when things were dropped, as they often are. We would help them pick it up, and they helped us pick up things. When there were shortages of little pieces that were needed, they were given freely.

The debate in Bennelong was a contest of ideas as much as ideology. Conversations invariably strayed from the central issues of the day. We discussed homeownership. We discussed housing supply. We discussed the funding of infrastructure through value capture. The first promise I made six years ago was to listen, and the second promise I made and learnt to keep was to listen, again. A good conversation is one where you listen, you seek to understand, you ask questions and you consider before making any comment.

People love to be engaged. They love to be heard. They love to have their ideas taken on board. As a result, I have gathered many thoughts, many concerns and many ideas, and from those concerns I have sought to hold inquiries. We have held inquiries into homeownership. We have held inquiries into the funding of infrastructure through value capture. In this way, these public inquiries allow us to gather evidence and to gather the facts from which to build recommendations and then for each party to build their policies to take to the next election. I think that this exercise is most worthwhile. We look forward to a continuation of the contest of ideas in this place and to painting the important issues so that we can serve our electorates better in the future.

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

I would like to speak on this address-in-reply with regard to La Trobe and a lot of our election commitments. La Trobe is a fantastic electorate. It covers the areas of the south from Berwick to Beaconsfield to Officer, right across the Dandenong Ranges.

A number of the commitments include closed-circuit TV cameras for Beaconsfield community sporting clubs. That was a $10,000 grant. What does that mean for the Beaconsfield football club? It means that they can have a lot more safety and security when it comes to their clubrooms. Everyone knows, including members of parliament and community groups—I know my friend here the member for Dunkley would be very aware—that when a club gets broken into, it actually puts the club under huge pressure. It puts it under financial pressure, but then there are insurance issues and also that basic community lack of respect. The closed-circuit TV cameras did two things. Firstly, it gives that extra bit of protection as a deterrent and, secondly, if there is an event that takes place, the police have a start to go after the offenders.

We also announced solar and battery storage funding for nine community groups and sporting clubs in the area. I went up to the Emerald Community House and made an announcement there, and they were very excited. It does make a big difference to many clubs, including the Upper Ferntree Gully Football Club. Solar panels help a club from having to pay huge electricity bills. It takes a bit of pressure off the club and its committee members.

This is one of my favourite ones to announce. We gave a $50,000 grant for installing water fountains—three in total—at the 1000 Steps. I know, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, you would be very excited about the 1000 Steps in my electorate of La Trobe. For people interstate, the 1000 Steps is based on the Kokoda Trail. As I speak, there are people going up the 1000 Steps in Melbourne. Each weekend there will be maybe 4,000 people doing the stairs. That is about 30,000 per month.

The annoying thing is, the park's rangers—Matt and the other guys down there—spend so much time picking up discarded plastic bottles. It is a lack of respect for the forest and fellow users of the track. A number of coffee cups have been discarded their too. So I say to people, if you take your drink containers there please take them out again. This is a beautiful part of the Dandenong Ranges. It is a major tourist attraction and people should pay a lot more respect to it.

Another big issue is car parking at the base of 1000 Steps. Each weekend the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road has people parked right up to Devils Elbow. Before people trek up the 1000 Steps they, pretty much, walk a kilometre to get there. The problem is in summer. I know there are fires in Victoria today up in Swan Hill and in my electorate all the CFA members will be gearing up for a big fire season. There would not be another electorate in the country where nearly every suburb has a CFA member going from Upper Ferntree Gully right across to Emerald. It is just one of those things in the La Trobe community. Everybody gets involved in the CFA.

The problem when people park their cars at the base of Mount Dandenong Tourist Road is with the CFA trucks. If one goes in each direction, they cannot pass. So it becomes of great concern. We have committed $100,000 to see if we can find a better solution to that car-parking mess down at the bottom. There is also $200,000 to go towards the Upper Ferntree Gully township to see if we can better connect the township to the 1000 Steps. It will also help the traders down there get a lot more business.

Renovations to the Narre Warren North Scout Hall were a $50,000 election commitment. We have already given money to the Narre Warren scouts under other Turnbull government programs. As a former Queen's Scout I always encourage parents to keep their children in the scouting movement or guides—or if they are thinking about joining, just join. It is a fantastic way of having your child learn leadership skills and be involved in a team and in helping each other out—and, at the same time, having a lot of fun. The Upper Ferntree Gully Football Club president, Peter Hards, is doing a fantastic job. We have committed $80,000 to the club for lights. Every club needs good lights. Closed-circuit TV cameras go to the Belgrave Tecoma shopping area to tackle local crime. Crime in La Trobe is bad and closed-circuit TV cameras are a deterrent. Interestingly, we gave Belgrave township closed-circuit TV cameras under the Howard government. We are now going for the upgraded version.

The Basin Football Club has $150,000 for new scoreboards and cricket pitches. Ferny Creek Scout Hall—my old scout hall—gets $200,000 to renovate the two halls. The completion of stage 2 ROC reserve pavilion has $500,000 and the completion of Holm Park recreation reserve and skateboard park has $500,000. So we can have money there for sealing the car park but also for a skate park, which is vital for young people.

There is a multi-use trail link between Emerald and Gembrook. This is something the Cardinia Shire really wanted. It is expanding recreational options. The land or track will be used by horse riders, cyclists, mountain bike riders and walkers. It is going to be great for that area, so we have provided $1 million for that program. Also $1 million went to Gembrook Cockatoo Football Netball Club. I would like to mention Marcus, from the committee, and Damian, the president, because they put a first-class application together. I am very proud of that announcement. They felt a bit left out because we had previously committed $500,000 to the Emerald sporting club down the road, and it is looking absolutely magnificent, what they have done with that money. When government money goes to a sporting group they spend it wisely, as Emerald has done. So many of the players are carpenters or plasterers and they do so much work for free.

We committed $2.5 million to the Dandenong Ranges Ridge Walk. That is a project conducted or managed by the shire rangers and would be over $7 million. The walk goes from Upwey to Montrose. I am really looking forward to certain parts of the forest having boardwalks. Everyone who lives in Victoria loves Victoria, but in winter some of those walking tracks through the Dandenong Ranges get very muddy, and we want to attract more tourism through the hills. That is something I am very excited about.

We are also going to put in a National Heritage application for the Dandenong Ranges, based on our famous landscape artist Tom Roberts and Eugene von Guerard, a Dutch artist. If you go into the gallery in Canberra you will see his works there. There is also Lin Onus, an Indigenous artist. We have a great connection in the electorate to the arts and we want to showcase this along the walk. The council will also undertake work and consultation with the community to put in this application.

As part of our tourism package, the Prime Minister came out during the election and announced $6.5 million to build a discovery centre at Emerald for Puffing Billy. The issue we have at the moment is that when you get off Puffing Billy at Emerald Lake Park on a cold, wet day you pretty much just stand in the rain. It is not much fun. As John Robinson, the CEO, says, we need a first-class facility. Over 400,000 tourists go there each year, and we want to showcase the history of Puffing Billy and of the area.

We have committed $1 million to restoring an old red rattler train—a bit like the Harry Potter train. When I was young, we used to catch them on the Belgrave train line to go into the CBD. At the time, we did not like them; we hated them. But now we have become nostalgic and we want to have them repaired and give them a new lease on life. We want bring international and interstate tourists from the CBD. I would like to acknowledge the Clark twins. These twins have worked on these carriages for so long. Sadly, a few years back, an arsonist destroyed one of the carriages after they had been working on it for three years and only two weeks before the train would have been on the tracks. They are very excited about this million dollars and what it is going to do.

There is also $10 million for the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road, in particular for addressing the concerns of cyclists. Cadel Evans won the Tour de France and, since then, every single weekend we are inundated with cyclists going up and down the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road. This sounds fantastic, but if you are a local resident and you get stuck behind them in a car—Robyn the Clerk is looking up at me; he is a keen cyclist—they do cause a lot of problems. What we want to do is encourage the cyclists, but do it in a way that is actually safe for all. That is a $10 million package, and we will be working with the state government to ensure that is delivered.

Another issue is the widening of the Monash Freeway. We announced very early that we have a billion-dollar plan. I see the member for Aston, who is very passionate about the Monash upgrade, as is my friend the member for Dunkley. This billion-dollar plan will see an extra lane from Warrigal Road right out to Cardinia Road. Why is it so important to go out to Cardinia Road when the state Labor government said to only go to Clyde Road? The simple reason is the growth in suburbs like Officer and Cranbourne North, which is just outside my electorate. It is the fastest-growing suburb in the country. Members of parliament and politicians always get blamed for not having a vision. Well, we need to have this vision. We need to get both of these lanes of the Monash up and going, right from Warrigal Road to Cardinia Road. We also plan to put in the missing on- and off-ramps at the Beaconsfield interchange and extend O'Shea Road from Clyde Road to the interchange. That will relieve congestion on Clyde Road, because every morning and every evening at the moment everyone is getting stuck in traffic around Clyde Road.

The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, made a big commitment to ensure that we could actually do something about the Monash Freeway traffic. I know the member for Narre Warren North, Luke Donnellan, the state minister for roads when we announced our initial plan, said it was a 'bird brain idea', yet he has now come along. He has obviously had a bit of birdseed himself and realised that this is actually a good idea because, at the state Labor level, he has now committed $400 million towards the Monash. They have now agreed to a business plan to look at our billion-dollar approach. Getting people moving again is so vitally important. That is what the Turnbull government is doing. We do need the state Labor government to get on board.

Those are our election commitments at a local level. The other commitment we had, on a national scale, was to have a ban on cosmetics testing on animals by July 2017. That means that new products can no longer be imported into Australia if they have been tested on animals. Existing products will not be taken off the shelves. Also, in Australia, there will be no testing on animals. This is a very progressive move by the Turnbull government. It is something I am very proud to get involved in. I thank those from Be Cruelty-Free Australia and the RSPCA, who got involved in this campaign, as did the Animal Justice Party, who were very supportive with some facts and figures. With that, I will conclude.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The address-in-reply is an opportunity to look back on the election campaign and the foundation that it laid for the coming parliament. Reflecting on the Prime Minister's leadership over the last 12 months does feel a little bit like speaking into a void, because we do have a leadership void in Australian politics today on the conservative side. This is a Prime Minister who showed, during the last election campaign, that he could not sell a coffee on Collins Street. His message of jobs and growth sounded appealing to the population, until you scratched the surface and saw what was underneath it.

What we have been seeing since the election campaign is an iron-clad rule of politics making itself felt, and that is that politics abhors a power vacuum. Unsurprisingly, in the void left by the Prime Minister a rogues' gallery of ideological extremists have set up shop. Both inside and outside the coalition party room, power sits not with the sensible centre that was promoted by the Prime Minister but with the seriously unhinged. The coalition, and this government, have been taken over by extremists. The Australian public cannot get a look-in in the coalition party room. All the coalition are interested in is their own ideological obsessions. They are obsessed with internal power plays and tilting at ideological windmills.

The Turnbull-Hanson government—the Liberal-National-One Nation government—has utterly decoupled itself from the interests of the Australian public. It is being led by the nose by the extremist end of Australian politics. We know that the Prime Minister is being led by the extremists in his party room instead of leading them. Indeed, the sexual tension between the extreme right of the Liberal Party and One Nation grew significantly after the first week in parliament.

We saw the member for Dawson state that One Nation '... were not looking at ousting an MP who was advocating the same sort of views espoused by One Nation. That was his explanation for why One Nation did not contest his seat. And further: 'The views of One Nation to a degree are the views of many in the rank and file of the Liberal-National Party.' Again, there was no rebuke from the Prime Minister, no ideological correction, no leadership to say that the party that he leads is not the party of the views of One Nation. The Prime Minister remained mute. With no rebuke from the Prime Minister, Senator Bernardi even went so far as to suggest:

One Nation and others who are saying the things that I think the Liberal Party should be saying, with a bit more nuance and maybe a little bit more delicacy.

This is Malcolm Turnbull's Liberal National party, a party of MPs proudly proclaiming that they are: '…advocating the same sort of views espoused by One Nation' and that they 'should be saying the same things as One Nation' but maybe with a little bit more spin and a little bit more political sophistication glossed over the top. That would be perfect for the leadership of this Prime Minister.

Again, the Prime Minister has been absent from the field and the void has been filled. We saw this particularly on the issue of asylum seekers in the last federal election. The last federal election will be remembered by future generations as the election that brought One Nation and its brand of politics back into this place. They came in through a door left open by this Prime Minister, a Prime Minister who allowed his immigration minister to claim that 'illiterate and innumerate' refugees would both 'take Australian jobs' and 'languish on the dole' without rebuke and in fact with endorsement. Indeed the Prime Minister barely paused to wipe the immigration minister's saliva from the dog whistle before giving it a blast himself.

The Prime Minister allowed the member for Dawson to publicly oppose the resettlement of any Muslim refugees in his electorate because: 'These refugees will either fill jobs Australian workers can do or they will be on welfare, paid for by more taxes from Australian workers.' Again, it was without rebuke. This is a Prime Minister being led by the nose by extremists both inside and outside the parliament. It has continued after the election of course.

We have endured the farce of the PM and the immigration minister engaging in the pantomime of demanding that Labor commit to supporting extraordinary legislation sight unseen that would ban asylum seekers from Australia permanently regardless of whether they had been resettled in a third country—United States, Canada, wherever—indeed, regardless of whether they had received citizenship of another country. Without briefing or explanation, they demanded that Labor support the legislation. They clearly did not even brief their own ministers on what the legislation would do as the health minister managed to quickly contradict the Prime Minister on the scope of its application. Whatever else may be said about the legislation, it was clearly a transparent political stunt—a stunt that uses some of the world's most vulnerable people as political boogie men.

Unlike the Prime Minister, the Labor party does not run when called to heel by extremists. We engage with issues on their merits guided by our principles with the objective of discharging Australia's international obligations while at the same time sending a clear message to those considering risking their own lives or the lives of their children by coming to Australia by boat, not to bother.

We see the same pattern with the government's obsession with section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. For most Australians, the 'right to be a bigot' as the Attorney General famously put it, is not a bbq stopper. We are comfortable living in the most successful multicultural nation on earth and we understand that some minor restraints on more extreme expressions of racial abuse have helped to strengthen our community's social cohesion. But this is not the case inside coalition party rooms that have been taken over by glibertarian extremists with a very narrow obsession about one specific limited restraint on speech.

The mere mention of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in coalition circles is like adding a drop of blood into shark infested waters. It produces a frothing, churning beneath the water's surface in the bowels of the coalition party room. Coalition MPs take complete leave of their senses when they are asked to consider limits on racist hate speech. Whether it is through ignorance or ill-intent, their public comments reflect no understanding of how section 18C actually operates. Like excited undergraduates, they see the section and they shout, 'This is a restriction on free speech. I have identified it!' They are completely incapable of considering how we might go about balancing competing public interests in this space. They carry on as though the threshold for contravening the section is a trivial question of whether the speech 'offends' or insults', ignoring the body of case law that has made it clear that the section does not extend to speech that constitutes 'mere slights' but instead requires 'profound and serious effects'. They act like any unsuspecting member of the public engaging in good faith political debate could be caught by the provision, ignoring utterly section 18D of the act that contains exemptions designed to protect exactly this behaviour and protecting from the reach of the act artistic works, scientific debate and fair comment on matters of public interest.

They say that 'the process is the punishment' as though a complaint to the Human Rights Commission under section 18C triggers some kind of modern star chamber. The reality is far from it. The Human Rights Commission's focus is on resolving disputes so parties can avoid court proceedings. Of complaints where conciliation was attempted, 76 per cent were successfully resolved in 2015-16. In the 2015-16 reporting year the average time it took the commission to finalise a complaint through conciliation was three months. In that same reporting year 94 per cent of surveyed parties said that they were satisfied with the commission's service. To be blunt, the process under 18C is far better than what a respondent would confront in a defamation proceeding. They have built the biggest strawman since, well, Burning Man, and they dance around their creation in fervours of ideological rapture. As they saying goes, you should dance like no-one's watching, and coalition MPs dance around section 18C without a care for what anyone in the Australian public watching them might think.

Indeed, in the very first week of this parliament, before the Governor-General's speech had even been delivered all but one of the coalition Senate backbench joined with One Nation to sign a notice of motion to gut section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. This extraordinary policy intervention did not appear in the Governor-General's speech. Why? Because this was an agenda being imposed on this Prime Minister by the extremists in his party room. They were willing to utterly humiliate their supposed leader, the Prime Minister, in the first week after his first election in the name of this 18C strawman. Why is it racist speech that gets the coalition going?

Why were the party room dissidents not barking when Malcolm Turnbull's former chief of staff launched defamation proceedings over an insulting televised comedy act?

They lay doggo when the member for Warringah and Peter Costello sued an Australian author for writing offensive falsehoods about their wives. The guard dogs of free speech were silent when the former Treasurer Joe Hockey sued The Sydney Morning Herald for its reporting on his fundraising activities. Where were the full-page newspaper ads from the IPA during any of these restraints on free speech? No-one has suggested dismantling the law of defamation every time a defamation plaintiff loses a case. Not even when a bloke sues a newspaper over the depiction of his mullet—

Debate interrupted.