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

It is sometimes mistakenly said that money is the root of all evil, but the real question we should concentrate on in this parliament is: what is the root of all money? There are many here in this parliament who think money simply grows on trees—that it comes from anywhere; we just spend what we want. There are others who think we can just make money by borrowing it, without realising that the consequences will be higher taxes and fewer government services for future generations of Australians, plus the obligation of future governments to continue to pay the interest bill. Our interest bill is now running at over $1 billion every month. That is money we have to divert from this parliament, money that could otherwise have been spent on health, child care, education, aged care, pensions and kids with disabilities. A billion dollars every month gets diverted just to pay that interest bill.

When we ask the question, 'What is the root of all money?' there is an answer, and it is value added production. As Ayn Rand wrote, wealth is not static; it is not there 'to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained by favour'. We can actually, in our society, make money and create wealth. That is what I believe this parliament needs to focus on more. We hear so much in our debates about taking wealth from one group and giving it to another group, thinking of wealth as static. We need to refocus our attention on our job in this parliament, which is to allow the citizens of this country to get out there and create wealth, to make money. If we do that then we will be able to have more money to pay for all those things in our electorates—road networks, our kids with disabilities, aged care, schooling—that so many of us see the need to invest in. We all want to see more money put into those areas, and the best way to do that is not to quibble over who gets what but to grow the economy to allow wealth to be created.

When it comes to creating wealth, what is at the root of all wealth creation? I say it is two things. Firstly, it is human ingenuity and entrepreneurialism—people willing to try new ideas and have a go. Secondly, and most importantly, it is low-cost and affordable energy. Energy is the lifeblood of every single thing that is important in our society. It is the combination of those two things—energy and human ingenuity—that creates all the wealth in our country, so our job as parliamentarians should be to do everything we can to increase human ingenuity, increase entrepreneurship and make sure, above all, that we have low-cost and affordable energy.

I look around me, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everything that I see here in front of me, from the leather in the chairs to the timber in the lectern and the metal in the speakers, has needed electricity in its production. As I speak, it is electricity that is driving the cameras, the microphones, the lights on the ceiling. Every single thing that we touch on a daily basis involves electricity, yet we have had policies in this country that have not only driven up the cost of electricity, making it unaffordable for many in our society, but made it unreliable.

If we look back over the last decade and look at all the misguided—though well-intentioned—policies that have backfired and have cost this economy wealth, we need look no further than the policies that we have had on energy. I will just give a few examples. The Grattan Institute's report Sundown, sunrise: how Australia can finally get solar power right, by Tony Wood and David Blowers, says in the overview:

But lavish government subsidies plus the structure of electricity network tariffs means that the cost of solar PV take-up has outweighed the benefits by almost $10 billion.

By the time the subsidies finally run out, households and businesses that have not installed solar PV will have spent more than $14 billion subsidising households that have.

So it has been nothing other than a massive wealth transfer from those who have not been able to put solar panels on the roof—often the most less fortunate in our community—to those who have been able to. It has been a $14 billion wealth transfer, with a net cost to the economy of $10 billion. Their report concludes:

Governments have created a policy mess that should never be repeated.

But it is locked in. And there is another one that we can look at to see the damage that we have done to ourselves, another one which has prevented us from creating wealth. A recent report from BAEconomics on electricity production in Australia details the annual—every single year—cost of the renewable energy mandates. The total cost of the renewable energy mandates this year are $2 billion. It is actually $2,073,000. Then you have the feed-in tariff schemes. That is another $772 million. When you add up all those subsidies, this year alone it amounts to $3 billion. Yet next week we will see the closure of the Hazelwood power station, the generator that provides 20 per cent of Victoria's electricity production and five per cent of our nation's electricity production.

In a war, the first thing that you would target is your enemy's electricity grid and their power stations. We saw that in the Second World War, the conflicts in the Gulf and even in the NATO attack on Serbia. The first thing they did was to take our the power stations. So, if our nation was at war, the first thing an enemy would target—if they had a list of priorities of what they would target to damage our country and prevent our country from creating wealth—would be Hazelwood power station. That is the first thing they would bomb. But the Victorian government, with their policies, are doing exactly the same thing.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

Members opposite laugh, but I would like to see if you are still laughing when people start getting their electricity bills next year and start seeing that 10 per cent increase. I want to see if you guys are still laughing next year when, because of the closure of Hazelwood, there will be a 75 per cent chance of blackouts in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. I would like the Hansard to record that members of the Labor Party here in this chamber are laughing at that prospect. When people are trapped in lifts, let us see who is laughing then. When the traffic lights go out at a major dangerous intersection, let us see who is laughing then. When people have to cancel their operations because the electricity has gone out in the hospital, let us see who is laughing then. When millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of food is wasted because people cannot keep their refrigerators on because there is no electricity, let us see who is laughing then. And let us see who is laughing when jobs are lost in this country because of the high cost of electricity.

Competitive electricity costs are one of the most important things that we should safeguard. Anyone who has had to work in private business knows that if you get a competitive advantage in any area you guard it with your life, because it is your competitive advantage that enables you to maintain and protect your lifestyle. The competitive advantage that our nation used to have was our low-cost electricity, but we have surrendered that. In an act of vandalism and sabotage, we have surrendered our competitive advantage in electricity. You only have to look at some of the comparisons. Someone living in Australia pays double or even triple the prices paid in the US or Canada. In fact, in South Australia, as compared to Vancouver, they are, incredibly, paying four times the price. How can anyone run a business paying four times the price for such an important business input as electricity? This is what is preventing us from creating wealth in this country.

The real risk, as I have mentioned before, is the risk of the power going out next year. We only have to look at the mess that we have seen in South Australia. Let us have a quick look at the numbers. When the power went out earlier this year in South Australia, they needed around 3,300 megawatts of electricity generation. From gas, they were able to get just over 2,000. They have a total gas installation of 2,600 megawatts, but that is spread over about 20 different power stations. You are always going to expect that, of your 20 different power stations, some will be out for repair, some will be out for maintenance and some will be down. So they had just over 2,000 megawatts from gas and they also have a diesel capacity of around another 100 megawatts. That took them to about 2,200 megawatts.

They also have an installed wind capacity of around 1,600 megawatts, but the problem is that, when the wind does not blow, the power does not flow So, whatever investment you spend on wind turbines and solar, you have to back those up almost 100 per cent with some other type of on-demand electricity generation, which can be hydro, gas or coal in this country. South Australia were also relying on the capacity of 800 megawatts through their interconnector—800 megawatts through to those brown coal stations in Victoria. So they needed another 200 megawatts of electricity to cover the gap.

But the real question is: what happens if they cannot get any power through the interconnector from Victoria? This is what happens: they will have an 800 megawatt shortfall. This is where it comes back to the closure of Hazelwood. The closure of Hazelwood will make Victoria a net importer of electricity. So, by definition, there will be times when the amount of power that Victoria has available to export will be zero. Where will South Australia get their electricity supplies if they cannot get a single megawatt of power through the interconnector from Victoria?

We have seen the effect on the South Australian economy of this policy. We have seen businesses leaving and companies abandoning the state. But the real damage is the damage that we do not see. The damage that we do not see is the decision that is made in company boardrooms around this nation and overseas when a proposal comes up: 'Should we invest our capital in South Australia to create jobs and wealth in South Australia?' When they look at the disaster that the South Australian government has imposed upon that state and they look at how the South Australian government is in complete and utter denial over the problem, they will probably laugh and say, 'We are not putting our shareholders' money in that.' That is what is not seen, but that is what is going to happen in South Australia, which already has one of the highest unemployment rates in this nation, and it will get even worse. We are facing a crisis in this nation, and yet we have the Labor Party wanting to copy the exact same policy of a 50 per cent renewable energy target for this nation. I call on you to abandon that policy. (Time expired)

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

It is not my intention to spend too much time on the diatribe we have just heard, but I would just make the obvious point that is being made by all informed commentators around the country, which is that the reason we have a crisis in energy policy in this place is that there is no national energy policy. There is no coherent national climate policy. There is a reluctance to adopt what almost all informed observers want, and that is a price on carbon. The government will not do it because they are ideologically opposed. So, instead of the claptrap that we have just heard, let's have a discussion around coherent national policy and understand entirely that this government have been at the wheel for four years and have done absolutely nothing. I do not want to say any more about that, because I think the member's contribution spoke for itself, and it was not that flash!

I am actually a little sad today; sad and disappointed that we are now seeing, through this government's policy, a narrative that is clearly articulated around attacking the most vulnerable, the poorest, the sickest and those least able to defend themselves in our community. The government are doing this because they want to redirect money to big business that might otherwise be spent on the welfare of ordinary Australians. We have seen the Prime Minister, in my view, make an absolute clown of himself in successive question times by avoiding the real questions here, just as we heard him avoid the real questions about 18C—another disappointing approach to public policy. What is it that he wants to be able to be said that cannot be said by people in this country? Why would he be appealing to the worst of the demons in our community for their support, at the expense of the interest of the majority of Australians? Why would he be doing this?

And so it is that we are seeing exactly the same thing in economic policy. Sadly, last night, the Senate passed legislation that will have the effect of cutting $1.4 billion from Australian families. This, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, was a budget measure from 2014—that horrid budget. The reward for the then Treasurer was to become Ambassador to the United States. The then Prime Minister is, of course, no longer Prime Minister; he paid the real price. He paid the price by losing the prime ministership of this country while his Treasurer gets, one might say, rewarded for leaving the parliament by being offered the job in Washington. No doubt he is doing his best—I do not know what that will be, but nevertheless he is no doubt doing his best.

This is a budget measure which was made in 2014 and they have regurgitated it in this current budget round by freezing family tax benefit rates for two years. One point five million families will be worse off, more than two million children will be worse off, and a significant proportion of these families are on the maximum rate of FTB A, which means their household income is less than $52,000 a year. These are unfair cuts and, again, they are made on the weakest, poorest, sickest and most vulnerable in our community, deliberately made by a Prime Minister and a government who believe, somehow or another, that it is okay to do this. Remember: this is the same Prime Minister who, while attacking Labor's opposition to the Fair Work Commission's penalty rate decision, is effectively abandoning 700,000 Australians and making sure, inevitably, that their incomes will fall. These are not people who, I might say, can afford to have their incomes drop.

We do not see the Prime Minister suggesting that members of parliament, for example, should take a 10 per cent or 15 per cent pay cut, but that is the effect of what he is doing by endorsing the Fair Work Commission's penalty rate decision. Instead of coming out to defend the interests of Australian workers and their families, he is more intent on attacking the opposition for not supporting the Fair Work decision. It is entirely appropriate for us to disagree with the decision made by the Fair Work Commission, just as it is entirely appropriate for the Prime Minister to do the same, and to make representations to the Fair Work Commission, which the government did not do in the first instance—they did not bother putting in a submission—to look after the interests of the Australians who rely on these penalty rates for their income. So it is us. They are attacking the poorest working Australians who are in jobs. They have their penalty rates reduced and have their incomes fall at a time when wage growth is at an all-time low, and he expects us all to support the idea that we should give the top end of town a tax cut. Well, whoopee.

Why are we so disappointed in this man? He purports to represent the interests of all Australians. He does not. He is captive to the reactionaries in his own party and the top end of town. He has not lived the experience of these people who will suffer as a result of the cuts to FTB. He has no lived experience of people surviving on $30,000 or $40,000 a year, working Saturdays and Sundays. He has no lived experience. He does not understand the cost pressures upon these families and what it means in terms of providing an opportunity for young people in this country, for families to have the confidence that not only can they provide housing for their children and themselves in a safe and secure environment but they can actually put food on the table, send the children to school, occasionally with a new pair of shoes, and maybe, just maybe, have a motor vehicle and can put petrol in it, but they have no time for luxuries. These are poor Australians that this man is attacking.

Last night I heard the Minister for Finance say that no-one is going to lose any money as a result of these changes to FTB. Of course, we know that is just nonsense. Failure to index means a real cut to their income. We are not stupid, and the finance minister will soon learn that the Australian people are not stupid. You cannot have it both ways here. You are either in this job to look after the interests of all Australians, or you are in it to look after your mates, and he is in it to look after his mates. That is obvious to all of us. The Prime Minister can parade around the dispatch box, as he does—turning red, bleating and moaning, insulting—but what he is doing is attacking the very heart of the Australian people. He can try and deny what the impact of these policy changes will be, but it cannot be clearer. It cannot be clearer. These policies will have a devastating effect on Australian families, just as the penalty rate decision will have a devastating effect on many Australian workers.

There is a whole panoply of areas where these attacks are taking place. One of these is an area which I have raised in this place before, and that is the cuts being made to community legal centres, particularly local women's legal services in my own electorate. These legal services are there to protect the interests and the rights of the most vulnerable in our community—women who have been the subject of family violence. You can hear the Prime Minister all the time as he parades around talking about advancing the interests of Australian women, looking after the interests of the community. But he and his government are endorsing cuts to community legal services which will effectively mean that the people who have been the subject of wicked attacks may not have representation. How could he possibly do this? How can he possibly stand up in the parliament and defend these cuts?

We know that the Attorney-General, who we think is bound for overseas—another person getting a reward for doing an asinine job—is the person responsible for implementing these proposals. He is cutting the funding to the Central Australian Women's Legal Service, for example, the Katherine Women's Information and Legal Service, the North Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Service, the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council Domestic and Family Violence Service and the Central Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Unit. All of these will have their funds cut. You can tell by the descriptors who their clients are, but no matter—inevitably, these will be many of the same people who will be affected by the FTB cuts.

So the Prime Minister is not only walking away from his responsibilities to protect their incomes; he is also walking away from his responsibilities to protect their legal rights. That is not what a responsible Prime Minister does. He can hurl as many insults, personal invective and all that sort of rubbish as he likes. But, at the end of the day, the Australian people are not fools, and they have found him out. We know by the decisions he has taken in his own party that he has been beholden to a right-wing rump, that he is no longer the man we all thought he was when he first got the job. He has changed his policy decisions on almost every conceivable area and he has made himself beholden to stupidity. That does not make him a good Prime Minister; that makes him as weak as water. I see him stand up there at the dispatch box, opening his mouth and letting the wind blow his tongue around, but he makes no sense. What he is doing is insulting the intelligence of the Australian community, and they will not tolerate such stupidity.

A final issue that I want to raise very quickly is that the bill that passed through the Senate last night would also freeze for three years the income-free areas for all working age and student payments. What is going on in this country? What is going on in this country? This would mean that, for three years, the income tests applying to payments for single parents, jobseekers and students will not keep pace with the cost of living. These people are not earning high incomes. What if they are living in a city like Sydney or Melbourne? Perhaps they are a student from Alice Springs who has to leave to get an education, who comes from a family that cannot support them, so they have to support themselves. They have to work. What we are seeing now is another effective cut to their income. This will affect 204,000 Australians on the lowest incomes. It is just ridiculous! I am almost lost for words—and that is very hard for me—in describing the disdain I feel for the Prime Minister and this government and for the attacks that they are making on Australian families and on Australian workers. They are indefensible. They are absolutely indefensible. Many of them emanate from that stupid, absurd 2014 budget. We are seeing that reflected in proposals coming before us again now in the parliament. We expect a lot more from our government. We expect a lot more from the Prime Minister. He is not doing the right thing by any of us.

Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-2017, and today I want to focus my comments on our environmental commitments, our achievements and future considerations. I find it remarkable, even today, that I was the only candidate in Brisbane in last year's election who made local environmental commitments. There was a Labor candidate; there was a Greens candidate. But I was the only candidate, it seemed, who had thought deeply about the local environment, who had considered local environmental priorities and who had successfully lobbied my party and my minister, seeking resources to make local environmental commitments.

It was my strong belief then and it remains the case now that, while some inner-city Brisbane residents may not immediately be conscious of our significant local environmental concerns, in fact, right there under our noses, is the Brisbane River connecting the Brisbane River catchment, which contains most of the green space in South East Queensland, with the vitally important Moreton Bay. The Brisbane River, its catchment and Moreton Bay are without doubt our biggest and most significant local environmental assets. The river is also culturally important to our people. It is significant to our traditional owners of the land, and every day, subconsciously or consciously, it forms a backdrop to the lives of local residents going about their business. The Brisbane River and Moreton Bay, incidentally, are also economically important. Some estimates of the economic activity around the Moreton Bay and catchment rival the total economic activity and value of the Great Barrier Reef. But back to its environmental significance.

The Brisbane River catchment obviously contains most of South East Queensland's fresh water. It links many of our important parks and forests, and it also contains most of our iconic and endemic species. Moreton Bay itself includes a Ramsar site of international significance for dozens of bird species, including some of those famous migratory species that Attenborough documentaries showcase travelling such tremendous distances all around the globe. It supports iconic and threatened species, including three species of large turtles, and it is also one of the top 10 habitats in Queensland for the dugong. I conclude that all of these factors mean that the Brisbane River and its catchment are a logical place for policymakers to start when we consider the priorities for our local environment and when we consider the opportunities and the strategies for protecting and growing the resilience of the local environment right across South East Queensland.

Following my advocacy, informed as it was then by my work with Seqwater and my tree planting and catchment activities over many years, this government has committed over three-quarters of a million dollars to projects that will protect and improve the environmental condition of the Brisbane River and its catchment. The projects include $80,000 for water-smart street trees, rain gardens and other water-sensitive urban design to reduce stormwater and road run-off into the catchment; $70,000 to tackle sediment run-offs, specifically at Tenerife Park; $360,000—over a third of a million dollars—towards riparian planting and erosion control projects for tributaries into the Brisbane River, including around the Enoggera Creek; and $50,000 to support the waterways clean up program to directly remove litter from the river. The commitments also include a Green Army project, which will enhance the local Brisbane River riparian areas to improve water quality and species retention, to protect and improve habitat, working in conjunction with the other elements of the local plan, and looking at rejuvenating the local environment through the removal and the control of invasive species and replanting with native species. These projects, in conjunction with projects being delivered by others, such as the Brisbane City Council, have been prioritised and chosen in consultation with groups like SEQ Catchments and other catchment groups, and they should help to improve the environmental condition of the Brisbane River, in line with the priorities and the challenges and opportunities outlined in Healthy Waterways's annual report on the condition of our catchment areas all along South-East Queensland.

While I represent the mostly inner-urban seat of Brisbane, the Brisbane River catchment is obviously a much broader environmental asset, and I want to encourage my colleagues right across South-East Queensland and right across all three levels of government to work together to consider regional priorities. Yesterday the South-East Queensland Council of Mayors was here in Canberra, and I spoke to some of their representatives about these issues. We discussed, actually, the South-East Queensland Resilient Rivers Initiative, a document that I am very familiar with because it has formed a part of my discussions as I have been seeking out and meeting with all of the different stakeholders and leaders in the environmental space across South-East Queensland. The Resilient Rivers Initiative is a good document. It is an important vision. The costs of implementing this vision are not insignificant, but the potential benefits are also substantial, and the vision, I believe, is a commendable one, considering the conclusions that I have just outlined about the central role of the Brisbane River and its catchment and how they play out in terms of habitat conservation, biodiversity and environmental management across South-East Queensland.

I understand that some of the biggest opportunities for environmental work in some of the locations where the condition of the Brisbane River catchment is most challenged mean that the responsibility could fall disproportionately and unrealistically on some of the areas least equipped and least able to afford to contribute to such a vision. I accept that, in some cases, the residents of Brisbane will be better equipped and better placed, and possibly also very willing, to contribute and to lead in terms of the holistic approach that may be required.

The South-East Queensland area is characterised by a fairly contiguous and mostly coastal urban footprint, stretching right from the New South Wales border up to the Sunshine Coast. Some say that that urban sprawl is reaching its natural limits, and others say that further steps need to be taken to limit that urban sprawl. While inner-city development certainly causes challenges for those of us who represent inner-city areas, in terms of managing the strain on the local services and amenities, it is also the case that inner-city residential development has lower environmental impact, if the alternative is bulldozing bushland and commuting from the fringes.

Either way, though, it strikes me as a sound observation that South-East Queensland already has the makings of a natural green belt around it, if you consider the Border Ranges and Lamington national parks down south around the Gold Coast, heading up through the main ranges and state forests at the end of the Scenic Rim and around the Darling Downs, to Brisbane Forest Park, Wivenhoe, Somerset and the D'Aguilar National Park and forests, up to Jimna, Imbil and all the state forests around the Sunshine Coast, leading up to the Great Sandy National Park and Fraser Island. The rough semicircle created by these parks and forests, incidentally, holds a significant proportion of Australia's native species. I wanted to be a zookeeper when I was a kid, and here I am now in this house of animals! And when I was a kid, at every Christmas and every birthday, and on every trip to the library, I wanted to get my hands on books describing our native species, showing their photos, their habitat and their distribution. When you look at those texts, it does not matter whether you look at bird species, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish—you name it—a disproportionate number of Australia's native species seem to fall within the semicircle created by the parks and forests surrounding South-East Queensland. We are talking thousands of species, actually, of native fauna and flora, some of which are found nowhere else in the world. My best research indicates that there are about 4,000 plant species and about 800 freshwater and terrestrial vertebrates native to the region and distributed across our mountain ranges, hills, valleys, rivers, lakes, flood plains and islands.

When we consider how we balance population growth and productive development, along with the need to conserve and protect native species and habitats, it is a good start, I feel, that we have the makings of this green belt around South-East Queensland. Yet I am also coming to the conclusion, following my discussions with stakeholders in this space, that there is no comprehensively planned approach to the management of these areas or specifically looking at how we could take advantage of the opportunities that they present.

There are some very good initiatives and programs at all three levels of government as well as projects led by corporations and not-for-profit organisations, but I am seeing evidence that these projects could be better coordinated. Specifically, by way of example, some of the initiatives aimed at tree-planting, reforestation, carbon sinks and habitat corridors do not seem to be led or guide by any South-East Queensland wide strategy that could help to direct their proponents to the best locations to carry out those endeavours. Not all habitat corridors, for instance, are equal. Some initiatives are being taken in areas where there is possibly marginal benefit compared to other potential projects which would be of much greater significance to the local environment.

When you think about what the underpinnings of a good strategy might look like and where it would start, I think we will find ourselves looking very closely at river catchments, given how they spread right across the region and link so many of our existing green spaces, parks and forests, and can act as natural corridors for wildlife. The Resilient Rivers Initiative is probably the closest thing that we have to that strategy, along with the priorities and the projects that are being prioritised and worked on by groups like Healthy Waterways. I have already spoken to a number of stakeholders about these issues, about the local priorities and the opportunities for us to take a more coordinated regional approach to the environment in South-East Queensland, and I certainly invite other interested parties to contact me with their thoughts and their ideas.

I just want to make two points here in passing. Firstly, I am not proposing that it should be a priority of any government to fight over access or rights to productive land. I want our farmers, our industrialists and our developers to be more gainfully productive, not less. I observe that the places around the world that are doing the best environmental work today are the societies most able to afford meaningful environmental investments. Our environmental work here in Australia, and all the funding that underpins it, is probably most threatened whenever our economy is threatened.

Everything that I have seen so far in terms of practical and local environmental achievement, makes me a big believer in mixed-land use solutions. As a policymaker in a past life, my experience is that blanket bans are generally a terrible and clunky first response to most policy problems. I am realistic about the history that we inherit. South-East Queensland is not one of those Northern Hemisphere sort of alpine glacial waterways where the terrain prevented human activity. We are working with what we have. It is already a mixed-use catchment. That is an unavoidable fact. So I consider that some of the most productive and gainful steps that we can take will not necessarily involve locking up land presently being used for various purposes. Rather, the quickest and the most critical environmental wins in front of us in South-East Queensland are likely to come from working cooperatively with landowners, farmers and businesses.

By way of a quick example from a former life of mine: half a million dollars might have bought Seqwater a block of land near Wyaralong Dam, for instance, so that they could lock it into a catchment and it might provide some marginal future gains in terms of water quality and environmental habitat, and that would come at the cost of a farmer's livelihood. But that same half a million dollars could be used to work with up to 10 farmers, say, to encourage them to plant quite widely for kilometres and kilometres along a creek or a river that flows into the Brisbane River and ultimately into Moreton Bay—so the same half a million dollars but very different impacts for the environment and for the productive capacity of our region and very different forward management costs to continue to manage those outcomes.

That brings me to my second point. My experience already as a new MP is that there are, unfortunately, some groups and bodies in the environmental space that I feel do their members and their supporters a disservice by their approach to government and to politics. I want to remind everybody that it was a Liberal government that declared the Great Barrier Reef a marine park. It was a Liberal government that banned whaling in Australian waters. It was a Liberal government that placed the Great Barrier Reef on the World Heritage List—and Kokoda, Willandra Lakes, Lord Howe Island and South-West Tasmania. And, when the Great Barrier Reef was, sadly, recently listed on the World Heritage Committee watch list, because of how the former Labor government planned five massive dredge disposal projects, it was this Liberal government that took the action to stop those dredge projects and followed that step up by now being the government that is making the biggest investments—more than any government ever before—in measures to protect the Great Barrier Reef. I encourage stakeholders to engage with me and with the party that has this strong record of environmental achievement. Achievements matter more than words and promises, and I consider conservation actually to be an inherently conservative thing. We are probably the party who are best placed to work constructively with farmers, industrialists and business interests to make many projects a reality through collaboration.

In closing, I want to refer to one more significant Liberal environmental achievement that ties everything together. When the Howard government made what was then the biggest investment ever in Australia's environment by setting up the Natural Heritage Trust, they established the NRMs, the natural resource management bodies, and these have become the managers of our nation's river catchments—managers including SEQ Catchments, which has just merged with Healthy Waterways in Brisbane. When we consider the future challenges and opportunities for environmental conservation—for instance, when I talk about the significance of the Brisbane River—we are predominantly working with and following, today, the great work that was done by the NRMs set up by a Liberal government. I encourage feedback on the projects I have discussed today and I encourage interested parties to contact me with their thoughts and contributions. (Time expired)

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-2017 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-2017 affords members the opportunity to speak in the parliament about a broad range of topics of import to an MP. However, for my contribution to this debate, it is actually fitting that we are debating the appropriation of funding across government, because it is the concept of 'cross-government' that is my area of concern. For decades now there has been debate and discussion about the importance of joined-up government: working across government and removing and dealing with silos within government. While it can never be said that the great reforms have all been accomplished, we are clearly in a space where great reforms involve greater and greater complexity, difficulty and political risk. Great reforms are indeed, as Sir Humphrey Appleby would describe them, 'courageous'.

One of the great challenges for government, and for us as legislators today, is what we can do to improve economic growth and productivity and, at the same time, reduce inequality. It is important to note that right now in Australia economic growth is anaemic. Wage growth is negligible and the gap between the wealthy and poor, between the haves and the have-nots, is increasing at a faster and faster rate. This means that more than ever we have a need for joined-up, cross-agency solutions to the complex needs of our community as a whole and the individual Australians who make up that community—solutions between agencies at federal, state and local government levels and, just as importantly, between agencies at each of those levels. For example, there is a particularly high correlation at state level of people who have access to services such as police, hospitals and health services, mental health services, public and community housing, education department behavioural programs, justice and corrective services, and child protection and family services, as well as the court system. Similarly, such people with complex needs are often also reliant on Centrelink payments at a federal level and have many interactions—or, rather, difficulties in interacting—with Centrelink, to name just one federal agency. Then there are the myriad local government services of various sizes, with coverage and service levels that differ from council to council. There is also the not-for-profit sector, which provides many other services that are often partly funded by government at various levels.

The grim reality is that it can be difficult to navigate each of these services on its own, let alone when there are multiple services. Of course, some processes—such as those involving the police, courts or corrective services—have a high degree of compulsion about them. Being able to properly respond to, deal with and navigate such processes to best effect and in the best interests of the individual and the community is exceptionally difficult. Such difficulties are further compounded in services and systems that involve a more voluntary participation element and where people who need to access such services do not know how to access them or, worse, are unaware of the service's existence in the first place.

This is the task of joined-up government: assisting individuals with complex needs to access and navigate government and not-for-profit services at all levels. A key issue that stands out is the degree of buck-passing that can be involved. So often we hear stories of people who require the assistance or engagement of multiple agencies and are told: 'We cannot help you. You have'—a particular issue—'therefore you need to speak to this other agency.' At such point, for many in our community, the lack of awareness of how to deal with that other agency or how it acts is a very real barrier to accessing the required assistance. But, worse, even when such a service may be accessed, those with complex needs may well be told that they should have been serviced by the original agency that they had approached in the first place or that they need to go see a third service, erecting further barriers in their way. In truth, those with complex needs either fall in a crack between services or genuinely do need the assistance of multiple agencies. Even where the services of multiple agencies are engaged, coordination and consistency of approach is, of course, vital and, all too often, not provided. Part of the key difficulty here is that such coordination is not anyone's job.

What many complex-needs individuals or families require is someone to assist in the access and navigation of all required services. A stark example of this can be seen in our lower courts. As a junior prosecutor, I spent many hours in the magistrates courts of Perth. Dealing with my own matters and observing many other police matters, it was clear to me, as it was clear to the police and the magistrates, that many of the difficulties that had led to individuals appearing on charges before the courts had, in part, arisen due to their inability to access and properly navigate government and community services. If they had, they would likely not have ended up where they now stood. The real shame of it all was knowing that there are solutions but that they had not been available for these people and they need not have found themselves in this position.

Now, such an example cannot be made without pointing out just how disadvantaged such a person would find themselves when dealing just with the courts. Even as an experienced lawyer, the court system can appear impregnable. However, some of the most experienced people working in that area are those that work in legal aid and legal assistance services as they are able to provide better outcomes for not only those finding themselves in courts but also the community as a whole.

I could go on for another whole speech about the need for properly funded legal aid—no doubt, I will do so before not too much longer in this parliament—but let me just say this: there can be no doubt that our entire community is disadvantaged by the chronic underfunding of legal aid and legal assistance services in this nation. This has always been difficult, but it was made catastrophic by the severe cuts to legal aid funding by the Howard government in 1996—cuts from which legal aid funding has never recovered. This also demonstrates the need for coordination in funding between the Commonwealth and the states, because the states have also been cutting such funding. Then, of course, we have the community legal centre sector, which this government has completely gutted, with 20 per cent funding cuts about to come into effect. Now, some will say that there is a tight budget situation and that everyone has to tighten their belts, but what the government continues to ignore is the fact that this sector has already been running on the smell of an oily rag. That said, the key point is that the government maintains its funding-cut line in the face of a recommendation by the Productivity Commission—hardly some lefty, socially-progressive, artsy-type organisation—that the government should actually increase funding to the legal assistance sector by some $200 million.

The real point that I wanted to get to with this example is that, as well as having the great assistance of a duty lawyer from legal aid—now, unfortunately, withdrawn from so many magistrates courts recently—many of those appearing in the courts would be greatly assisted by a duty social worker. Come to the court, see the duty lawyer, deal with your matter and then see the duty social worker. Have someone sit down and look at what and where those other issues are that the person is having to deal with: how can this person be assisted to make sure that they do not find themselves in the situation again?

Duty social workers are seen as more money, but, actually, it is money better spent. It is money spent on helping those people with complex needs, which saves money by them not having to come back to the court on other matters. It saves police time and it saves the many lost hours of agency time trying to track down people or false starts in the wrong services. The reality, of course, is that a duty social worker is only the start. They are only the person who provides initial direction. But what then? We need to redeploy our community services in a way where they all work together, in a coordinated fashion, to meet the real needs of our communities and, particularly, the needs of each individual. That means tailored and flexible service delivery. It also means, where there are inevitably multiple agencies and services involved, that someone, anyone, is responsible for the access and navigation of those services for the person requiring assistance.

As a brief example: how on earth do you expect someone with a learning difficulty—functional illiteracy or similar—to be able to fill in forms to get assistance from Centrelink to get money so that they are able to pay their rent, navigate the minefield of mental health services or even know that, if they can find a bulk-billing GP, they can get a referral for psychological assistance that they may be in need of?

If, instead of being turned away and referred elsewhere, complex needs were recognised and put into pathways for enhanced assistance, many, many Australians who currently find themselves bounced around services, unable to access community housing, not getting the mental health assistance they need and needlessly in situations bringing them to the attention of the police, courts and correctional services, would instead be turning their lives around. They would be accessing the assistance they need; they would be able to move from welfare to work; they would be better able to contribute to our community as a whole. They would indeed, dare I say, become taxpayers. The broader community benefits from such an approach are huge and I believe they would pay for themselves.

This is not just a theory—an idea—it is something that is being demonstrated in my part of the world, in Armadale, in the electorate of Burt, through a partnership project, the Armadale Youth Intervention Partnership. This is a more focused program than what I am talking about broadly, but it is a proof of concept that, if you intensively assist someone with complex needs—in this case, those that are at risk of criminal behaviour and detention—you can help them turn their lives around and become contributors, even mentors to others. The amazing thing is that you can do this—you can change their story—in 12 short months. As a back-of-the-envelope sort of calculation for everyone to bear in mind, it costs over $350,000 per annum to keep one young person in juvenile detention in Western Australia. Where a program like AYIP results in just one person changing their story so that they do not find themselves sentenced but rather are contributing to society, that is a huge saving to make. And, of course, it is not just one person that has benefited from this program; there are many and all of those around them.

The work of the Armadale partnership project, and the Armadale Youth Intervention Program in particular, is actually amazing as a proof of concept, but it is only a proof of concept. The point is that it has provided that proof and we should be taking this approach and expanding it to assist people with many different complex needs. We need to do this not only because it is the right thing to do for those individuals but because it will make our whole community better when done right. It will mean that our scarce government and community resources are better targeted, used more effectively and efficiently, and result in better outcomes for all of our lives because they will become less difficult and less complex—because all of our lives are becoming more difficult and complex.

This should be a no-brainer, quite frankly, and I urge the federal, state and local governments to work together to get the framework, the funding and the service provision right so that people no longer fall through the cracks and that no Australian is left behind.

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

The Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-2017 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-2017 are required to ensure the ordinary functions of government continue for the remainder of the 2016-17 financial year. As Labor has already stated, we will not block supply—we are still smarting from what happened in the seventies. What we will do is work constructively on budget repair that is fair, supporting what we can, opposing what we must and proposing alternative savings of our own. We will not support policies that are not in keeping with Labor values, that cut into our social fabric or that target low- and middle-income earners and the most vulnerable in our community. We have worked with the government to secure $6.3 billion in budget savings so far. That is more than what the government proposed in its first omnibus bill. By working this way, Labor was able to protect vulnerable people who had been targeted by cuts and save the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Labor is continuing its fight. Last year's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook showed that this government was still committed to the unfair measures introduced in the Abbott-Hockey 2014 budget—that hideous budget. I remember doorknocking in one of my suburbs just after that hideous budget. I had people on their doorsteps in tears. I had mothers terrified about what was going to happen to their children. Single mothers, wondering whether they could educate their children, were running down the street in tears as a result of that hideous, cruel 2014 budget where we saw the increase of the pension age to 70 and the Medicare freeze.

Unfortunately, since then nothing much has changed. The government continues to set its sights on families, treating them as the enemy. More than one million families are worse off with the late-night deal in the Senate last night, and we have all heard about that. More than one million families are now worse off as a result of what happened in the Senate last night. While Labor puts people before politics, the smaller parties side with the Turnbull government, which puts multinational corporations and big banks first. The government does deals in the Senate late at night to increase the burden on families and makes cuts to pensions and parental leave, cuts of $30 million to the funding of community legal centres, and cuts to Australian Federal Police pay and conditions. These are servants of democracy. These are protectors of our community, defenders of our nation, and here is the government proposing to cut the pay and conditions of 280 AFP officers. Those AFP officers protect the Prime Minister and those AFP officers protect the Governor-General.

It is endless. We have the $30 million of cuts to community legal centres. Community legal centres provide services to victims of domestic violence and those who are very disadvantaged and cannot access legal aid. These are centres that work with the most vulnerable to give them the basic of human rights, and that is access to legal services and access to justice. This government is proposing a $50 billion tax cut for big business and the big end of town and the big four banks, and yet is cutting $30 million to community legal centres that already run on the smell of an oily rag and already have volunteers because they cannot afford to pay wages. Many volunteers help out and give back to their community—they are helping the most vulnerable in the community—and this government is targeting them. On top of that we have the cuts of $30 billion to schools. The government is doing all this—cuts to families, cuts to pensions, cuts to parental leave, cuts to community legal services, cuts to AFP pay and conditions and cuts to schools—to provide a $50 billion tax cut to the big end of town.

Last night's deal in the Senate to freeze the family tax benefit rates for two years cuts $1.4 billion from Australian families. The Liberals, The Nationals, One Nation and Nick Xenophon have all bandied together to vote to cut family payments to 1.5 million Australian families. That is what they did last night. That is straight out of that horror 2014 budget. It is 2014 all over again. The families affected by this freeze are those who receive the maximum rate of family tax benefit part A. These are families with a household income of less than $52,000 a year. That is whom the government and One Nation and The Nationals and Nick Xenophon are targeting. The government says the freeze will be in place for two years, but isn't that what the government said about the Medicare freeze? In my electorate of Canberra, there are many families already doing it tough. The freeze will affect more than 10,000 families in Canberra who are currently receiving the family tax benefit. This will have a real detrimental impact on families in my electorate and right across Australia.

Like many other harsh and unfair treatments meted out by this government, they are cutting the living standards of Australians. That is just one way the government are cutting the living standards of Australians. The penalty rate decision will affect more than 13,000 people in my electorate. That is one in eight workers. They work in the retail, food and accommodation industries and will be affected by the penalty rate decision and could lose up to $77 a week. For many of these people it is the difference between putting petrol in the tank, being able to purchase a weekly bus ticket or putting food on the table or not doing those things. This latest pay cut is even more bad news and cuts a living standards of Canberra workers and their families.

You have to really ask the question. We have the deal that was done last night with The Nationals, One Nation and Nick Xenophon on the family tax benefit. Then you have the penalty rate decision. What sort of government sets about reducing the living standards of Australians, reducing the living standards of its community, rather than increasing them?

Isn't it the aspiration of all of us in this place to improve the lives of our community, to improve the lives of Australians and to contribute to our growth and prosperity? Here is a government that is actually reducing living standards through the family tax benefit cuts and through the penalty rate cuts. It just beggars belief. What is this government's agenda? What is this government's vision for the Australian people and our community?

While this government is campaigning for the Fair Work Commission to cut penalty rates, at the same time—these cuts and these attacks are just endless—we have seen the absolutely abysmal, blatant pork-barrelling that the cabinet has been doing with the relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority from Canberra to Armidale, to the Deputy Prime Minister's electorate of New England. This is a government that is targeting low- and middle income families, the most vulnerable in our community, and reducing the living standards of many Australians while at the same time commissioning a cost-benefit analysis, costing $272,000, that showed there is not going to be any benefit as a result of this relocation—no benefit whatsoever. It is going to be all cost and no benefit. What sort of cost we are talking about here? Initially, there were figures of about $23 million, and now that has crept up to $26 million. And here is this government, slashing these community legal services to the tune of $30 million—one-third of each of those community legal services' budgets. This is what it is doing to those community legal services, and yet it is investing this ridiculous amount of money on this blatant, shameless pork-barrelling exercise to win votes for the Deputy Prime Minister.

As I stated in my submission to the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee's inquiry into the relocation order, an absolutely outrageous order, the relocation underscores this government's complete and utter contempt and disdain for Canberra, for our servants of democracy—our public servants—and for Sir Robert Menzies's vision and legacy for this city. The relocation has placed the 175 staff members of the APVMA and their families under considerable stress and strain. Eighty-five per cent of them do not want to move. They do not want to be uprooted from their lives here in the ACT. Eighty-five per cent of them do not want their children's education interrupted or their partners to lose their jobs.

If the Turnbull government does not care about the welfare of these Canberrans, about the welfare of these staff members and their families—and it obviously does not really care much about Canberrans, given the cuts that have gone on with this coalition government since it was elected in 2013—it could spare a thought for the impact of this morale-sapping relocation on the productivity of the authority and the productivity of the agriculture industry. Ironically, this order, which is already having a significant hit on the productivity of the authority, is an order that has been instigated by the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources. It is just breathtaking. Here he is in question time, going on about the fantastic bumper crops and bumper sales figures for cattle this year, and here he is going on about the significant contribution that agriculture makes to the Australian GDP—and it does; it makes a significant contribution. So why would you in any way want to have a hit on that productivity and that growth by affecting the productivity of the authority that regulates so much of the pesticides and veterinary medicines that are used by the industry?

Despite the fact that we have had this cost-benefit analysis that showed that this ludicrous idea is all cost and no benefit, despite the fact that 85 per cent of the authority does not want to move, despite the fact that we are already seeing an impact on the productivity of the authority as a result of the morale-sapping plan to move it to Armidale—despite all of this—the most insulting aspect of this relocation, apart from the fact that it is going to have a huge hit on the bottom line and have a significant impact on members of my community, is the fact that they are forcing a relocation to Armidale, which 85 per cent of the staff oppose, and they do not even have an office for these people to move into. An office is proposed in the next few years, in that there is a greenfield site. At estimates, we found out that APVMA staff members are working from McDonald's to access wifi, because they do not have any accommodation. And the greenfield office development is years away—it just beggars belief. It is staggeringly shocking that the government should waste so much money on this blatant pork-barrel exercise, to demand that these people move up to Armidale, essentially just so that the Deputy Prime Minister could win some votes at the last election. The government demands that they move up there—and it does not even have anywhere for them to go! They are sitting in the McCafe using the wifi, trying to access their work. The fact that there is no plan for this relocation, even though it has been mandated by an order—it is just breathtaking.

This government has until 1 July. The planning is still underway, and this government still has until 1 July to reverse this ridiculous decision. I am going to continue to campaign, calling on the government to reverse this ridiculous, blatant, shameless pork barrel, which is a complete and utter waste of money and which is destroying the productivity of the authority—an authority that is meant to improve the productivity of the agricultural sector. This decision is destroying the productivity of a very important industry, and it is sapping the morale of my constituents. I will campaign until the end, in an attempt to reverse this outrageous decision and the outrageous cuts which I have mentioned today.

This government is breathtakingly ordinary. We have a prime minister who treats the job as a hobby. Everywhere I go, Canberrans tell me that he is just one big disappointment. We have a government with no agenda. We have a government with no vision. We have a government with no plan. We have a government that is looking for savings but just targets the low- and middle-income earners in this community—the most vulnerable in our community—while at the same time having the audacity to promise a $50 billion tax cut to the big end of town—big business and big banks. It is outrageous and shameful. I will continue to campaign against this government's cuts.

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

As a federal Labor MP from Western Australia, it was pleasing to see our great state turn red once again at last Saturday's state election on 11 March. Western Australia has for a number of years now been considered a fortress for the Liberal Party, a dependable state on which to rely when the going gets tough, and a refuge and a safe haven for what we call the blue team.

Beginning at the federal election last July and continuing until last Saturday at a state level, WA is starting to show the rest of the country that this is now assuredly not the case. Western Australians overwhelmingly rejected the Barnett Liberal government in a pointed 41-seat reminder that the Liberal party does not have a monopoly on Western Australian politics. Nor does it have a monopoly on vision or ideas for the future of Western Australia. Since 2008 up until its demise last week, the state Liberal government had enjoyed what could politely be described as a fractious relationship with their federal counterparts in Canberra. With the change of federal government in 2013, Western Australians could have been forgiven for thinking that, with the coalition in power at both levels, they could enjoy more successful outcomes for the state of WA, particularly when many of the senior cabinet ministers in the Abbott and Turnbull governments reside on that side of the Nullarbor. But that was not to be, and we have all seen what has happened. The construction boom has ended, unemployment has risen, funding has been cut, and wealth- and job-generating infrastructure projects have gone out the window in favour of vanity monuments, and a road to nowhere, and a hospital with asbestos in the roof and lead in the water. The Liberals hounded each other across the great divide, each blaming their opposite number for WA's woes. While that went on, our share of the GST revenue continued to decline, along with voter patience for the Barnett government.

In the last weeks of the recent campaign in Western Australia we saw some extraordinary scenes as the state Liberals frantically tried to distance themselves from the Prime Minister in the face of an incoming backlash against his comments on the GST floor, on penalty rates and his lack of commitment to public transport—a fact you would not believe if you looked at all the selfies on the trams and trains over the years from our Prime Minister.

On 11 March, Western Australians went to the polls and voted for change. They voted for a grown-up government, not tantrums and the blame games. They voted for a sensible and measured approach, not fear and division. They voted for responsible financial management, not a bandaid fix. On 11 March, Western Australians voted for a Labor state government that they believe will do a better job representing their interests to the rest of the country. I am a Western Australian and I am a committed federalist. I believe in the Federation of Australia, and I believe it is time for a new approach to Commonwealth-state relations for Western Australia.

The principle of fiscal equalisation of the Commonwealth grants process and GST distribution is important for the ongoing prosperity of all Australians. The fiscal equalisation policy exists because each state has a different capacity to raise revenue at different times in their economic development. This is due to population and demographic issues, and the ability to exploit natural resources, among many other things. It is important for all Australians to recognise that the purpose of the equalisation process is to ensure that each state is able to provide comparable infrastructure and services to people in Australia, regardless of where they live. For instance, if you live in Warnbro in Western Australia and have an accident while on holiday visiting family, say, in Darwin, you would quite rightly expect the same level of health care in the Darwin hospital as you would receive in the Rockingham hospital or the Fiona Stanley Hospital. This is the type of thing that fiscal equalisation seeks to achieve. This is a simple example of the objectives of the highly complex and complicated Commonwealth grants processes that distribute the goods and services tax. There is no doubt that this process needs modernising to reflect modern Australia for the benefit of all Australians today.

Screaming from the rooftops about WA's GST share has got Western Australia nowhere with this government. A new approach to Commonwealth-state relations for Western Australia means having a constructive discussion on a modern and sensible model of GST distribution, with both the federal government and our interstate colleagues and friends, to ensure that future GST revenue distribution does not unduly disadvantage individual states when going through periods of difficult transition. This also means presenting the best case from Western Australia to the federal government to provide us with the funds necessary to address areas of greatest need and to create large, sustainable areas of employment—areas such as public transport to help ease the population growing pains that WA has experienced over the past decade.

As is now clear to planners and analysts state-wide, we have grown rapidly with insufficient planning and core infrastructure to meet the challenges Western Australia now faces. WA Labor's transport plan, METRONET, still represents the best opportunity for WA to make real inroads into the way we approach the critical issue of transport in WA.

The $1.2 billion in federal funding earmarked for the failed Perth Freight Link should now be redirected into job-creating, congestion-busting projects such as METRONET, whereby we increase the scope of rail infrastructure in WA and make public transport more interconnected and more attractive to the public as a whole. We must change the way Australians approach transport infrastructure in this country, and I am confident the McGowan Labor government will become a great example of exactly that.

Projects like METRONET are not just good steps in changing transport culture and fixing congestion; they are also significant investments in job creation. At this critical time in the history of my state, we must diversify from an economy reliant on the resources industry. Since the end of the construction boom and the mining industry, unemployment has steadily risen as the investment phase has ended and the production phase continues. In my own electorate of Brand, an area that has traditionally been reliant on the economic sectors of manufacturing, production and defence, we are seeing unemployment rise to unacceptable levels as many struggle to meet the changing needs of the state. In the south of my electorate, the suburb of Port Kennedy has experienced a rise in unemployment from 6.4 per cent in the December quarter of 2015 to 7.5 per cent in the December quarter of 2016. In the west of my electorate, the suburb of Rockingham experienced a rise in unemployment from 10.8 per cent in December 2015 to 12.9 per cent in the recent December quarter, according to 2016 figures. That is nearly double the state average. In the north of Brand the suburb of Parmelia, in Kwinana, where I was born, has experienced a rise in unemployment from an already unacceptable and shocking level of 15.2 per cent in the December quarter of 2015 to 17.7 per cent in the December quarter of 2016—a massive increase of 2.5 per cent in a single year from an already high level of unemployment.

The changes that come with such dramatic increases in unemployment do not limit themselves solely to putting strain on the labour market—Centrelink queues become longer; waiting times on the phone increase; community agencies and departments that assist with mental health and welfare and community legal services push back against an exponential increase in downward pressure. Both the Kwinana and Rockingham suburbs within my electorate of Brand are now in the top six local government areas ranked by increase in welfare recipients, with a 34 per cent increase in jobseekers on welfare being recorded in Kwinana and a 39.5 per cent increase in Rockingham.

This challenge that we are facing in Western Australia, while daunting, is not insurmountable. It will require careful and considered placement of public funds to help stimulate the economy and a patience and resolve that resides inside every Western Australian, especially in my electorate, to see out this critical challenge. I am extremely pleased, of course, to see that many senior members of the new McGowan Labor government have their state electorates inside the federal electorate of Brand and will be able to share their expertise, experience and ideas as we begin to rebuild WA over the next four years.

I look forward to working with Reece Whitby, MLA for Baldivis, in his role as parliamentary secretary for support in areas such as disability services, the environment and finance. I look forward to continuing to work with Paul Papalia, MLA for Warnbro and our new minister for tourism, small business and defence—industries that desperately need an injection of optimism in my electorate. I am confident that under Paul's leadership we are in for a period of expansion and growth in these areas as we diversify the WA economy.

I look forward to continuing to work with Roger Cook, MLA for Kwinana, Deputy Premier and Minister for Health and Mental Health. In times like these it is of the utmost importance that we continue to maintain the integrity of our health system and make improvements to reduce waiting times and ensure crucial infrastructure is built to meet the growing needs of an ageing population. It is my belief that health in WA is in safe hands under the Deputy Premier, my friend, Roger Cook. And, of course, I am certainly looking forward to working with the new Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, MLA for Rockingham. Throughout the last four years in opposition Mark has presented a clear vision for WA, an approach to governance that is both consultative in its actions with the community and the stakeholders and refreshing and bold in its ideas to make WA flourish once again.

WA Labor certainly has a task on their great collective hands; that much is true. However, I am confident in the vision of the future that Premier McGowan and WA Labor presents. I wish the Premier and the rest of his team all the best for the parliamentary term ahead. I also especially want to add my congratulations and best wishes to the new Treasurer of Western Australia, Mr Ben Wyatt. Ben Wyatt and I studied together at the University of Western Australia in the nineties, and I wish him all the best on this amazing journey he is about to undertake as the first Indigenous Treasurer in an Australian government system.

However, success for Western Australia is not possible if we cannot have an environment that is conducive to job creation and the standards of practice that encourage employers and employees alike to work and be paid fairly. The controversy surrounding penalty rates continues to play havoc with people around the country, including those constituents in my electorate. Almost 10,000 people in Brand stand to take a substantial pay cut from the industries in retail and accommodation. It is important that this government protects and does not penalise those who take time out of their weekends to provide the services and amenities the rest of us take for granted. Failure to do so will only increase unemployment and pile more pressure on those who already struggle to make ends meet. I call on the federal government of Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, to work together with the McGowan Labor government to commit existing federal funding to infrastructure projects put forward by the McGowan Labor government, such as METRONET, and to defend the working rights of my constituents in Brand, who deserve a fair wage for working on the weekend.

I would also like to take this opportunity to reflect for a moment on the Turnbull government's determination to weaken the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act—those provisions that protect the people in this country from serious incidents that offend and insult them because of their race. The arguments peddled by the government and The Australian newspaper at all times ignore the thousands of victims of racism in this country. Absolutely no consideration is given to the victims that suffer real and long-lasting harm from racism. Not a word has been said about the thousands of victims of racism who suffer on a daily basis. I think this is unacceptable and should not continue.

There are thousands of incidents everyday in this country that could constitute a legitimate complaint of racial discrimination under the existing act, and I would also say under any changes the government is proposing. But these incidents are not reported, because victims of racism are usually voiceless, marginalised and without power, forgotten utterly in this senseless crusade of this Turnbull Liberal government to change the definitions in 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. These are the people who we should be talking about and protecting. Their right to live free from racial discrimination is of equal importance to the freedom of speech, yet their experiences—the many sad experiences of racial discrimination—are being utterly ignored.

I call on the government to stop this harmful action and its utter disregard for the victims of racism in this country, and I hope in its continued prosecution of its case that it sometime might choose to reflect on the people in this country that it is now ignoring. There are people in this country who do suffer from racism. It is not something that we can continue to ignore. It is certainly not something my Labor colleagues and I ignore. My colleagues and I sat on the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into the freedom of speech and we spent many days and hours listening to victims of racial discrimination and racial harm. These people have been forgotten by the current government, and I do hope the government might reflect on this—perhaps even read some of their statements and submissions—and get a grip on the reality of racism in this country. Thank you.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on these two appropriation bills, the Appropriation Bill 2016-17 No. 3 and Appropriation Bill 2016-17 No. 4. We know on this side that this package of bills is necessary to ensure the ordinary functions of government continue for the remainder of the 2016-17 financial year. We understand that, and we are a responsible opposition. However, the members on this side, as we always have, will continue to call out any unfair policies and any unfair decisions that are made by this government, and I have to say there are many.

Make no mistake: the current government remains committed to many of those unfair Abbott-Hockey decisions from that era, and those measures that were made back then, which are still on the table for this particular government. Some of those nasties that we saw are still there. For example, we know they want to increase the pension age for hardworking Australians right through to 70-years-old, the oldest pension age in the developed world. There is no other nation in the developed world where people retire at the age of 70.

They want to abolish the energy supplement for millions of pensioners, families, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients—something that will actually affect their hip pocket. It will affect people when they are budgeting for their weekly bills and for their food. When you take away that energy supplement, those people will suffer, and it will make a real difference to them.

Something that is affecting my electorate quite a bit—and I am sure the member for Parramatta would agree with me on this one—is the cut to the age pension for pensioners born overseas when they spend an extended period of time visiting their family and friends overseas. This is something that is very wrong. When you are retired and a pensioner and you decide to move to Queensland for a holiday, where it is a bit warmer in the middle of winter, that is fine. That is great—and rightly so: people should be allowed to do these things. But, if you are, for example, of Italian or Vietnamese origin and you want to go for a bit of extended holiday when you have retired and you are a pensioner, we are saying: 'No, you can't. You can't do that. You can't go and visit family and friends' or 'You can't escape the very cold winter months to go and spend a few weeks or months—maybe even two months—in the northern hemisphere.' These people should be allowed to do that. They have worked all their lives and they have paid their taxes here, yet we are punishing them, and it is very wrong. I am being approached every single day by people in my electorate who are outraged by this particular measure of this government. It is wrong and it should not be taking place. People should have the right when they are retired and on a pension to be able to spend as much time as they like in any part of the world.

This government also wants to scrap the pension education supplement and the education entry payment. We have also seen that they have yet to reverse the Medicare freeze. It is obvious they do not want to reverse that freeze, which will put pressure on people seeing their doctors. We have heard about the $30 billion Gonski cuts, which are there for our students and for our young people to ensure that they are given a really good foundation in education, so they are able to go on and meet the high-tech jobs that will be there in the future. The government will cut family payments, leaving one million families worse off once these cuts take effect, and will also cut parental leave for around 70,000 new mums.

All of these cuts will have detrimental effects on people in my electorate and on people in every electorate in the country. We know that budgets are about priorities, but the Turnbull government has made it extremely clear where its priorities lie. Their priorities lie in giving a $50 billion tax cut to the wealthiest people in Australia while at the same time making all of those cuts that I have just mentioned. They side with the multinational corporations and the big banks who have been making billions of dollars in profits. They offer big business $50 billion in tax cuts while making Newstart recipients wait weeks before they can access payments. This is just wrong.

In the recent energy debate, as we have heard a lot in my state of South Australia, and in some of the debates that have been taking place, the government has absolutely shown that South Australia is not their priority. The Prime Minister has repeatedly mocked and ridiculed my state over blackouts without offering any solutions whatsoever. It is one thing to be critical of a particular policy, but you also have to back it up with what your plans are. In this case we have not seen a single plan from the federal government or the Prime Minister. All they have been doing is repeatedly mocking South Australia.

They have got in for SA. We saw it in the lead up to the 2013 election, and then straight after when they chased Holden out of the state. We then saw them continuously back down on a promise on the 12 submarines to be made in South Australia. It was only when the member for Sturt's job was at risk that they then came on board. I do not know why they have got it in for South Australia, but here is another example. It was only after the Premier of South Australia announced an outstanding policy to provide SA with energy security that the Prime Minister was compelled to make an announcement—without any backing; just something in 10 years that may or may not take place.

This is a lack of regard for my state of South Australia. It is also reflected in the decline in road funding that our state receives. This means that many important road projects in my state are not getting funded. In this respect, the government needs to restore the financial assistance grants indexation and restore a fair share of local roads funding for South Australia. Financial assistance grants are a vital payment from the Commonwealth to local councils; in fact, they make up part of the revenue base of all councils. These untied payments are essential and allow local councils to provide a reasonable level of service to local residents. These funds are used to maintain a range of different infrastructure projects, including local roads, bridges, parks, swimming pools and libraries.

In 2010 we were very successful in my electorate under the then Gillard government in getting a $6.5 million grant for the King Street Bridge—a brand new bridge. The old bridge had what was then called 'concrete cancer' and had been shut down. The residents could not get any funding for it for many years under the Howard government. They tried and tried, but it took a Labor government to get the funding for that particular bridge. As well as roads and bridges, community halls that service young people, pensioners and elderly community groups are funded by these grants.

The federal government decided in the 2014-15 budget to freeze the indexation of the financial assistance grants for three years. Over this time, almost $1 billion will be taken out of Australian communities, and the total grant space will be reduced by about 13 per cent. This has had a dire impact on my community. Metropolitan councils are also affected, albeit not to the same extent as regional communities. For example, in 2014-15 and 2016-17, four councils within my electorate of Hindmarsh—Holdfast Bay, West Torrens, Charles Sturt and Marion—face a combined loss of $700,000 to $800,000. This is a lot of money for councils. The government has so far been silent on whether it would respect the implied agreement, that the freeze would end after three years, and whether we will see the indexation recommence in 2017-18. We are yet to hear and that worries me.

I am calling on the government to come clean about whether it will restore the indexations as indicated in the budget papers. This will go some way to addressing the discrepancy in the share of the local roads funding component of the financial assistance grants that South Australian councils receive. For years SA has received less road funding than any other state. This is manifestly very unfair and means that important road improvement projects cannot be carried out. The disadvantage was recognised in 2003 by a House of Representatives standing committee which agreed that the historical funding formula lacked transparency. It was rectified by successive federal governments via an annual supplementary payment to South Australia. However, this was discontinued in 2015, having a detrimental effect on South Australia and bringing South Australia back to the bottom of the pile. Not only has this decision not been explained satisfactorily by the Turnbull government but also they have not offered an alternative solution to the problem.

Together with local councils in my electorate, I am calling on the Turnbull government to re-establish a fairer share of local road funding for South Australia, indexed annually and funded via a top-up to the total grants pool. This would allow councils to access vital funding to carry out important road upgrades. Many road upgrades are needed. One that is needed more than anything in my electorate is the West Beach Road in West Beach, west of the airport. Together with local residents of West Beach and councils, I have been calling for the problems along West Beach Road to be addressed. Applications for funding have been repeatedly ignored by this government since 2014 and, since then, the problems just keep getting worse. West Beach Road has become a high-traffic thoroughfare connecting the beach and major sporting and retail facilities, the airport and a whole range of other areas. Recent improvements include the construction of a new adventure park at West Beach. The Adelaide Shores Caravan Park at West Beach means more motorists travel along this road more often. In addition, the West Beach boat ramp is one of the only facilities boat users can launch their craft from in the metropolitan area, the construction of Harbour Town, airport retail precincts and an increase in passenger traffic at Adelaide airport have contributed, and more nonlocal motorists use West Beach Road to avoid traffic congestion on Tapleys Hill Road.

West Beach Road was built for low volumes of traffic to serve the local residents, not as a major thoroughfare to avoid arterial roads which are designed to keep high volumes of traffic moving. As a consequence, I have received numerous complaints from concerned residents, and rightly so, about the congestion. We surveyed the local residents and the main concerns raised included limited visibility when the traffic is bumper to bumper, speeding and poor road conditions. Specifically, residents reported a high number of accidents, car damage and near accidents. For example, residents reported extreme difficulty seeing traffic coming down West Beach Road when exiting driveways or turning from side streets due to the number of cars parked along the road. There have been numerous serious near misses as a result of drivers driving on the wrong side of the road. They think the road is a dual carriageway and swerve at the last minute from oncoming traffic. Increased use of the road is causing significant damage to the road's surface, adding to the likelihood of potential accidents. These are things that the financial assistance grants could help with. This is not just a group of residents complaining; this is a serious road safety issue for those residents. The major sporting and tourist facilities mean that many families, children, the elderly and visitors use the road. Buses drive along the road and cyclists face a dangerous commute.

I have long advocated for an upgrade to West Beach Road, but I feel the situation has become very, very serious over the last three years. West Beach Road needs to be upgraded urgently and it needs to be upgraded now to keep up with the significant changes and growth in the area. This includes, for example, improved and safer access, safety for the residents along West Beach Road, a review of the parking arrangements on both sides of West Beach Road, and improved walking and cycling routes. The City of West Torrens and City of Charles Sturt councils share the responsibility of the road—the border is in the middle of the road—and have previously made applications for federal funding to upgrade it urgently. Unfortunately, these requests have been denied; they have fallen on deaf ears. It is time that the federal government turns its attention to this area and funds this road.

I welcome the commitment by the federal government to making $500 million available for the Black Spot Programs. They have also made an additional $200 million available from 2015-16 to combat the rising national road toll, under the National Road Safety Strategy and its action plan. I am hoping that some of this funding will be directed to improve the conditions of West Beach Road, to make the lives of those who live along West Beach Road and around West Beach Road a bit easier, and that safety is improved on that road to ensure that people are safe when they are coming out of their driveways, heading back home or using West Beach Road.

This is just one example of many projects that could be undertaken for the betterment of local residents if the Turnbull government restores the indexation of the Financial Assistance Grants, and addresses the unfair allocation of road funding to South Australia. But we have come to expect nothing else from this government, a government that has completely lost its way. The government could have improved the budget and locked in Australia's prized AAA credit rating at MYEFO by doing two things: abandoning its $50 billion tax giveaway to the biggest businesses and banks in Australia, and adopting Labor's sensible proposals to reform negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks.

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

This is an appropriations bill so I am allowed to speak on anything I want, but I am going to speak about money today; in fact, almost entirely about money—because where you put it and where you get it from tells more about your priorities and values than the words that you speak. That has never been truer than for this government. When I go out into my community, when I meet with business groups, and when I meet with associations all around the country, I feel their growing sense of frustration: while the government talks about jobs and growth, it has been four years now with the government—in the most generous description—with their finger on the pause button or, in many areas, they are well into reverse.

I have said in this House before that when Tony Abbott was first rolled, even though I thought it would not be good for Labor, I felt a sense of optimism because I did not believe it could go on the way it was—I did not believe, at that time of extraordinary change, where the whole world was facing something as profound as we were, that you could continue governing with your finger on the pause button. So I welcomed the change of leader. But in the last two years, I have to say that my frustration and, at times, my depression have grown almost to the extent that I am really hoping that the government gets its act together. I really am. It is unusual for a member on the Labor side to say that but—quite frankly—at the moment, getting the government back on track and getting the nation back on track has to be our priority. I genuinely wish the government well in trying to get its act together, because we cannot continue the way we are.

The world faces an extraordinary range of challenges, and so does this country. We do not talk much about the fourth industrial revolution, but we all know that it is going to be as profound as the first one. It will see massive change. It will see the number of full-time jobs dramatically decrease. It will see the whole way that we manage things within structure—where structure does the work—change to a completely different way: where cooperation, rather than competition, drives prosperity. The world is going to change in ways that we cannot imagine yet. In that change, there will be losers in very large numbers around the world, and in this country if we do not act. We are facing environmental degradation. We have seen species extinction at rates we have never seen before. We have seen several species of bees go on the endangered list in the last few weeks alone. We have seen kilometres of mangroves die completely, up on Cape York. We have seen large sections of the Reef dead beyond recovery. We are seeing rising temperatures through carbon emissions. We know, as a result of that, that we are also going to have water and food shortages. We are going to see a dramatic reduction in the number of full-time jobs and an increase in casualisation, even within the next 10 to 15 years.

We are going to see large numbers of jobless—in numbers that we really have not encountered for a couple of centuries. We are seeing in our communities the rising cost of housing. We are seeing around the world the rapid development of high-speed internet, with Australia slipping down the rankings seemingly every month. We are seeing the emergence of data as the new oil. We do not really know what that is going to look like yet, but we know that data itself is going to change the way things are done and is going to become a major determinant of prosperity.

So there is stuff to be done in looking at how Australia positions itself in this world. Every year we leave it, other places around the world are getting further ahead and we get further and further behind. In a world where cooperation actually drives prosperity, the places in the world where that cooperation is taking place are accelerating far faster than those that do not—and every month we delay we get further and further behind and we lose some of our best people.

I would not say that I am a glass-half-full person. I look at a glass half full and think, 'Oh, goodness; there is room for more.' So I am kind of at the extreme end. I see a glass half full as an opportunity to put more in. So, when I see these massive problems, I actually see possibilities in them. For me, sometimes, economically at least, the problem is the answer. That is what business does. Business sees a problem and solves it. So, when there are these massive challenges facing the world, it is an opportunity for this country to be in there driving its business to solve them and grow because of them. Every problem, every single one, becomes a possibility for business—purely in economic terms. I am not denying that they are terrible problems but, in purely economic terms, every problem is the answer—every single one. If you see a river you cannot cross, someone builds a bridge. If the banks are not lending, FinTec emerges. If the power networks keep upping the fixed costs in the power bill—their Kodak moment will come—batteries will grow so fast they will not know what hit them. Every challenge becomes the answer if you are prepared to think that way—and we as a nation and we in this place have to do that.

I take solar as an example. Two years ago when we first started having our really, really hot summers, someone said, 'It is all that sun beaming down on the western roof,' and I said, 'You've got to be kidding; that is the answer.' If the sun is beaming down on your city and making the city hot and you think that is a problem, it is also the answer. The answer and the problem are the same thing. The situation at the time, though, was that our feed-in tariffs assumed that it was more profitable to put your solar panels north. But the answer was right there. Since that time, we have seen the emergence of green-tech, with several companies investigating peer-to-peer power, where, instead of selling it to the power company for six cents a kilowatt hour and they sell it to your neighbour for 26c, you sell it for that. The New South Wales government has said that it will allow it. There are at least six companies that I can find in a quick Google that are already working on that. It is a massive opportunity. There are a few other places in the world, but we can be the first there. We can become the expert. We can actually develop the platform that does that.

We are good at this. Australia is a great creative nation. Our greatest asset is actually in our minds, not in the ground. We are incredibly good at this stuff and we should be all over it. With renewables generally, we should be all over it. We have better natural assets for renewables than perhaps any other country in the world. We led the world in solar power—before the Howard government was so slow on emissions trading, back in its time. We had 12 per cent of the world market in solar panels, and we lost it—we gave it away, just by doing nothing and by not recognising the opportunity that was there.

Then there is the loss of full-time work. If you take the human aspect out of it, you can explain it in terms that, in the industrial age, where we built factories, a full-time job was the logical economic model. But, in the new cooperative style of businesses that will develop, it is not as logical to have full-time work. So we will see a loss of full-time work and a move towards part-time work. But the reality for communities is that, while the full-time work was incredibly good, the by-product of it was actually the baby. The full-time work was, if you like, the bath and the by-product was the baby. It was the social cohesion of knowing your neighbours, living and working in the same suburb and the financial security that allowed families to have one working person and the other one working on all the social relationships which created the safety net in the community. That social cohesion—knowing your neighbours, feeling financially secure—is the baby that we are going to lose when we start to lose full-time jobs.

Around the world now, in academic institutions, social enterprises and financial investment companies looking at impact investing, there are people trying to work out how you commercialise that baby—how you make social good for a community profitable. When we have been in a market where profit comes from one-on-one interactions, how do you turn social good or community good back into an economically viable product so you can scale it? All of the work on impact investing, social impact bonds, social enterprises, benefit corporations and a whole range of other things go back to how you regrow the baby, how you grow the things of value that we will lose when we change from one use of capital to another.

This is incredibly important. Billions of dollars are sitting in funds around the world—and there have been billions of dollars for quiet some time. There is a task force in the Prime Minister's office that has been there for quite some time. Where is the action that says that we can be leaders in this? The world money for this flows across international borders, and there are hundreds of billions of dollars from financiers looking for projects that they can scale worldwide. They are looking for it—and where are we? We are talking about 18C. We are talking about cutting the take-home pay of some of the most vulnerable families in Australia. We are talking about ripping the spending capacity out of our communities in every way the government can think of—whether it is cutting family payments, reducing the energy supplement or refusing to deal with the cut in take-home pay for hospitality workers. That is what this government is doing. It is not growing anything. It is cutting the spending capacity of a community, but it is the spending capacity of a community that makes the community grow. Customers make you rich. You do not cut the spending capacity of your customers unless you are crazy, and that is what this government is doing.

We have the rising cost of housing. We know with recent research—but it does not take research; you just know—that, if you increase the cost of housing so that you price the majority of people out of the housing market, you increase your pension costs down the track and you increase homelessness because of the vulnerability of people who do not have that housing security. Almost every solution that we hear either improves the capacity of a person to pay for the higher cost of housing, which will just drive up prices, or reduces the size of the land by rezoning for high-rise. If you rezone for high-rise, every block of land gets the developer price and the house prices in the area go up—not down. If you rezone for smaller blocks, like they are doing in WA, then you will not be able to afford a block that is any more than 110 square metres because the development price will go into the block.

It seems that every solution we have drives prices up, but there are solutions around the world. The whole world is dealing with this. Where are we? Why is it that when we talk about housing affordability and I Google or do some research—or get the library to do research—on what the great approaches are around the world, I do not find them in Australia? I find them elsewhere. I find them in Europe. I find them in some states of the US. There are incredibly innovative, creative ways of getting people into housing. When was the last time this government got a group of potential customers in a room and found out what they would go for? When was the last time they did anything other than talk to the banks and big developers about this? It is about what a customer will take. It is about what a person in the community—what a young person, a casual cleaner, a fireman, a nurse, a teacher—wants to live in and what they are prepared to do, because they are walking away from the current housing market in droves.

We have regtech. I love regtech; I have been talking about it for a while. This is a new form of technology where companies are looking to use software to reduce regulation. A simple example is, if you break down in the middle of nowhere and a windscreen repairer comes to repair your windscreen, he types your mobile phone number and your credit card number into his mobile phone, pushes send and the bank sends you an invoice instantly. And that invoice has everything that you need for your BAS—you do not have staff; it is already there. So why doesn't the act of paying it generate the BAS? For that matter, why doesn't the act of paying a staff member generated the deferred payment for super and the deferred payment for PAYG and all the paperwork? The technology is there. But, instead of putting small business to work on this, we have a government that thinks that big business and big departments are the answer.

We see some incredible failures by the government. At a time when data is about to become incredibly valuable, this government gives stuff away just before it becomes valuable: 'Data is about to become valuable, so we are going to privatise a bit of it here and privatise a bit of it there, wipe out the public sector's capacity to manage it, and weaken our skill level'. As a result, we have seen the census fail; the National Disability Insurance Agency unable to process some paperwork for a year—we had kids waiting for up to a year for an assessment; we have also had the robo-debt debacle; we have had crashes of the ATO system—that was down sometimes for a couple of days each week for a couple of weeks; we have had the privatisation of data; and we have had the extraordinary failure of the NBN.

We have also had the weakening of the capacity of the public sector. One of the by-products of a public sector is this incredible body of knowledge—who did what when, whether it worked, the connections that they have as a by-product of their job. And when you sack them, you cannot replace that. That is gone. And there is no other source for that—not in academia, not in business. It is the only place where that overview actually exists. We can see the loss of what is going to be incredibly valuable, and we have just given it away. There is much to be done: I really urge the government to get on with it. (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.