Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in continuation on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-2018. Yesterday evening I was talking about some of the challenges that we face in the northern capital of Australia, in Darwin, the place that I represent—Darwin and Palmerston. One of the challenges is to do with the population. We have a massive gas project called INPEX, and we've had 9,000 people—many fly-in fly-outs, but also about 3,500 local Territorians—working on that project. This year, that project is going to move out of the construction phase and into the operations phase, which means that we need to retain those people. If we lose those people, it affects our GST. If we lose those people, we won't be able to grow our northern capital.

The Chief Minister mentioned in a speech in Darwin this week that we've also seen a decline in the number of professional women living in Darwin. There are about a third less professional women coming into Darwin and an increase of about a third of professional women leaving Darwin. So that fewer blokes and fewer ladies, and certainly no way to build the population. It is a concern for us because, when we had some military units taken from Darwin and sent to Adelaide and to the east coast, our population dropped by about 1,500 people. That affected our GST revenue, which we're dependent on to provide services across the Northern Territory. We dropped something like $2 billion in revenue over the forward estimates. That's huge for our northern economy. We are trying in every way, but I think it's important, as leaders in our northern community, that we don't just outline the problem but that we also come up with solutions.

With some local businesspeople and some local entrepreneurs in Darwin, I've been very proud to be part of an initiative called Ideas Fest. We had the first one last year, which looked at supporting young entrepreneurs coming up with new business models. We provided mentors to help them to build their businesses. The next thing we did was to really home in on this issue of making Darwin a more attractive place for women, particularly young professional women, to come and live and work. We ran a women's ideas fest—held in a good establishment in Mitchell Street in Darwin which many, who have visited Darwin, may have gone to to have a good time—and we came up with a really great suite of ideas about how we can make our northern capital a more attractive place for professional women to come and live and work, but also to stay and to meet people, raise families and grow our northern capital.

Now we've turned our mind to tourism. The Tourism IdeasFest will be held at the Darwin International Airport on 3 March. The event is obviously sponsored by the airport but also by Tourism Top End and Tourism NT. We're very thankful for their support. The idea of the Tourism IdeasFest is to get ideas from Territorians—not only people in the sector but people outside of the sector who may have had amazing experiences as tourists overseas. We want to see if we can put a Territory spin on those ideas and then attract more and more people to visit and, indeed, put down roots in our northern capital. That's what we want to do: build our northern capital. I congratulate the NT government for their stimulus package for the tourism sector in recent times. I acknowledge that they're doing a lot of work to get the Chinese market happening. Thanks very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Come up and visit the north.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member. I call the member for Gippsland.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to highlight ongoing concerns with the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. I refer to the recent report of the Australian Automobile Association which found that road trauma costs the Australian economy in the order of $30 billion per year. That's the economic cost, but that doesn't tell anywhere near the story when it comes to the social cost of road trauma. Last year, in total, 1,225 Australians lost their lives on our roads. That was an improvement on 2016, when almost 1,300 died on Australian roads. A disproportionate number were on our regional roads. Tens of thousands of people were injured—the walking wounded who will carry the scars of their road crash for the rest of their lives. I believe that we can do better. I simply don't accept that 1,200 to 1,300 Australians have to die on our roads each year.

I believe there's an opportunity, following a very traumatic December across Australia, to capitalise on the renewed community and media focus on road trauma. I think it provides a rare opportunity for the state and federal ministers responsible for road safety to take a more aggressive approach to saving lives and reducing serious injuries. In my time as the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, I attempted to drive a national agenda on road safety, but I must acknowledge that I was often frustrated and disappointed by the timidity of our decision-makers and the public complacency surrounding road trauma. It was as though there was a level of acceptance that, within our bureaucracy and perhaps the wider community, there wasn't much else we could do to improve road safety and we just had to accept that up to 1,300 Australians would die each year and thousands more would be maimed for life.

I have noticed, and you would have too, that the media only sparingly reports on road crashes in the modern era. Unless you're a famous person or someone of some notoriety, you'd hardly get a story in a newspaper, unless it was a particularly spectacular crash. An everyday Australian, perhaps crashing into a tree on a country road, would be lucky to receive a couple of paragraphs in a daily newspaper, yet the effects of that crash ripple right through the community, devastating loved ones and traumatising the first responders at the scene. We had a firsthand experience of this in my home town over the Christmas break. The circumstances surrounding the crash are obviously subject to a coronial investigation, but we had the tragic death of three locals: one boy, whom I coached in under-14 football; a girl who was a friend of my family; and a fellow I didn't know very well—nonetheless, three people were killed in the one crash. That crash obviously impacts people who know the family; it shatters families and friends. The toll on emergency service workers is something that I perhaps didn't understand as much as I should have in my role. I had the opportunity to talk to the police officers who've spent hours at the scene, the SES volunteers and the CFA volunteers, and it gives you an understanding of how a crash like this can ripple right through a community, particularly a small country community. Obviously it affects the families themselves, but it goes right through a community. And it happens 1,300 times across a calendar year in Australia—1,300 individuals killed, but hundreds and thousands more impacted by those crashes.

I contend that road trauma is a public health crisis in our nation. We need sustained help from the media to keep telling the individual stories to humanise this debate beyond mere statistics and a running count in the newspapers. I refuse to use the word 'toll' because a toll suggests it's a price we have to pay to use our roads. We shouldn't use the word 'toll', because it seems to give a level of acceptance, again, to the fact that there are going to be these crashes and serious injuries and deaths every year. But we need to keep learning from every story. Every time this occurs, we need to make sure everyone understands their own responsibilities on the roads and the risks that are involved in using our roads.

Despite my personal and professional frustration with the lack of progress in reducing road trauma in the time I was in the role of minister, there is a lot of research and other activity currently underway at a national level, which we need to continue to promote. While the states have primary responsibility for road safety, over the period of the past 20 months I convened a round table of road trauma experts. I brought senior police together from across the country, and we made road safety a priority item for action at the Transport and Infrastructure Council meeting of state ministers.

I'm pleased to report that the federal government commissioned additional research on mobile phone distraction, which we believe is a significant risk in road crashes in Australia at the moment, and also some research into roadside testing for illicit drug use. Illicit drug use in 2015 in Victoria showed up in road deaths at a higher rate than excessive consumption of alcohol. So, while it appears that we have made great progress in encouraging drivers to not drive when they've been drinking, separating illicit drug use and driving is an emerging problem of great significance in the community. Both mobile phone distraction and illicit drug use were suspected to be major contributing factors to the recent spike we saw in road trauma.

During my role as minister, I wrote to local governments around Australia and provided them with a statement of expectations on how they should use their annual Roads to Recovery funding to target safety on local roads. While there's been a major investment in freeways and duplication of our National Land Transport Network, it's actually those local roads and smaller arterial roads where a lot of crashes are occurring. I encouraged local government to target some of that money provided by the federal government directly at road safety.

I'm also pleased to inform the House that two of Australia's leading road safety experts, Jeremy Woolley and Dr John Crozier, are set to deliver an independent review of the National Road Safety Strategy in the coming weeks, and all of this information—the mobile phone study, the illicit drug use study and the work by these two experts—will be available to the new minister, Barnaby Joyce, as he shapes the latest version of the National Road Safety Action Plan, in partnership with the states.

I'm disappointed to report that we are currently not on target to meet the expectation we set for ourselves through the National Road Safety Strategy. The latest progress report indicates that progress towards the target of reducing fatalities by 30 per cent is poor, and we're not meeting the target of reducing serious injuries either. This is a strategy which has bipartisan support. It started in the Rudd government and was continued by the Turnbull government. We need to redouble our efforts if we're going to achieve the targets we set ourselves through the National Road Safety Strategy.

As I told the TIC meeting in Hobart last year, 'business as usual' won't be good enough. We need to be more ambitious in our efforts, with measurable actions to reduce trauma further. Through my consultation with industry, we're aware that the Safe System approach is the way to deal with this. It's about safer roads, safer drivers and safer vehicles and it's also about safer speeds.

My view is: we need to have a renewed public focus on inappropriate speed in our regional areas, coupled with a major increase in arterial road funding to target high-risk regional corridors which have poor safety features. Through my previous work as a minister, I have publicly spoken about continued investment in black spots, and continued investment in rest areas, duplicating highways and overtaking lanes—all good initiatives—but I believe we need to also develop a roads of strategic importance program to target some of those arterial roads in partnership with the states. Some treatment of networks, rather than individual black spots, will also contribute to reducing road trauma and improving the productivity of our regional communities.

I'd also say that point-to-point speed cameras should be activated for light vehicles as well trucks, and states which fail to comply should have some of their funding withheld until they do. Point-to-point speed cameras are a fair way of measuring inappropriate speed. I have some concerns with the way we use single-point speed cameras. I think sometimes they're deployed by states as revenue-raising devices, and in fact they don't change a driver's behaviour because they don't know that they've even been booked until they get the letter in the mail a couple of weeks later, so they may well just keep on speeding for those couple of weeks. Point-to-point speed cameras I think would have greater acceptance amongst the community and would also be a fairer way of catching people who habitually speed rather than speeding at one small point in time.

The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator has already started introducing more data-gathering cameras to track the rogue operators in the industry, and the good operators in the heavy vehicle industry support the use of more cameras because they know they're being undercut by operators who are acting outside the law. I believe funding needs to be provided to deliver more of this technology, to punish those offenders and to reward those compliant drivers and compliant business operators who say that right now they're being undercut on price by those who do flout the law.

I think there's also an opportunity for the private sector to be involved in the road safety debate. We need to engage with the banking and insurance sectors to make sure they're developing products or incentives for motorists to purchase the safest car they can afford for themselves and their children so that we can capitalise on the safety technology in modern cars. It's a sad fact that, for most of us, the worst car we will ever drive will be our first car and we're at higher risk of having a crash in those first few years of driving. The more we can do to get younger Australians into newer and safer cars, the better they will be, since, if they are unfortunate enough to have a crash, there will be more protection for them, but also the driver-assist technology which is available in modern cars can help them avoid a crash in the first place. So we need to be engaging with the banking and insurance sectors on ways we can incentivise the purchase of safer cars.

Finally—without wishing to pre-empt the work of Woolley and Crozier in their review of the National Road Safety Strategy—I would say we need to get the states actually working together to share best practice in road safety across state borders. Despite some improvements over the last few years, there are still too many discrepancies in legislation across each jurisdiction around training, licensing and road laws, and a lack of data-gathering and sharing. I make the point that, when it comes to getting the states actually working together to share the best practice, if all of the other jurisdictions were able to achieve the Victorian fatality rate of four per 100,000 people, 253 lives could be saved nationally, with 78 in New South Wales, 56 in Western Australia, 51 in Queensland and 32 in South Australia. That is quite remarkable. If everyone could achieve the same standard Victoria achieved, we would see 253 lives saved nationally. As to the Northern Territory—and the member for Lingiari is here today and he would share my concerns—the Territory itself has a real challenge, because of the vast distances, and the standard of the roads and the potential for multiple casualties in one crash. We need to keep working with the Territory to get it down to levels more comparable to the other jurisdictions.

Finally, I would say that, as road users, we all need to take our share of responsibility for road safety. Our police officers, government departments, ministers and road safety experts can only do so much. The government's $75 billion investment in infrastructure over the next 10 years will help. But every time we get behind the wheel, we need to have a safety-first culture and drive to survive the journey ahead. We all know we shouldn't speed. We know we shouldn't drink and drive. We know we shouldn't check our text messages or get behind the wheel when we're fatigued. But too many of us are still doing one or more of these things and putting lives at risk—putting our own lives at risk, putting our families' lives at risk, putting the lives of the driver and the other people in the car coming towards us at risk. We are still doing too many of these things. We are still speeding. We are still drinking and driving. We're still checking our text messages or getting behind the wheel when we're too tired. It has to stop. In an era where it's convenient to always find someone else to blame, the main answer to reducing road trauma is probably looking straight back at us in the rear-view mirror.

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

Can I acknowledge the contribution from the member for Gippsland and say I concur with much of what he said. I do just want to make a couple of comments about his observations about Lingiari. They were accurate, but I want to make the point that part of the problem with the roads in the Northern Territory is the failure of successive governments to invest in those roads to sufficient levels.

One of the matters I was going to refer to later in my contribution to this debate on the appropriation bills was a question I asked the Deputy Prime Minister earlier in the week. I asked him: 'Why do the budget papers show that, of the $80 million allocated to the Northern Australia Beef Roads Program, less than half has actually been invested upgrading the roads the cattle industry rely on? How much of that money was spent in the Northern Territory, and how many kilometres of roads were addressed?' As the record shows, the Deputy Prime Minister, the minister responsible, was unable to tell us and had no idea what moneys had been allocated or spent on these important beef roads.

These roads are important for a range of reasons. They're important for getting cattle to market, obviously. But they're also major access points, particularly for people who live in remote communities and on cattle properties as they travel around. If these roads are in poor condition then, as the member for Gippsland said, they invite accidents. It is therefore very important that we ask the Deputy Prime Minister again: what the hell's going on with the road funding that was previously announced and committed by this government?

There are 9,000 kilometres of unsealed roads serving the cattle industry in remote communities in the Northern Territory. Now, if you were kind, and I'm not—in terms of the Deputy Prime Minister, that is; I'm generally a kind person, I hope. But if you were kind, in the context of the Deputy Prime Minister, you would say: 'Well, $80 million allocated to beef roads; that's terrific.' The reality is that $80 million of money allocated to the beef roads might get you an upgrade of around 160 kilometres of road. That's it. It may be slightly more. Let's be generous and say 200 kilometres. Well, 200 kilometres is a long way short of 9,000 kilometres. So there's a major issue around the failure of government to invest in these roads.

The previous member also talked about a strategic roads program. I recall, prior to the 1999 election—historical as that is—there was a strategic roads program for the Northern Territory. The member referred to one. Almost the first decision taken by the then incoming Howard government was to scrap that strategic roads program. We've been waiting for 19 months now for the Deputy Prime Minister to give us an update on what's happening with that road funding.

The other day I asked, for the benefit of Territorians who travel on those roads, a question about the government's previous commitments to upgrade the Barkly Stock Route and the Tablelands Highway and how many kilometres have been upgraded and sealed. It had no answer. Sadly, that's what we've come to expect from this government.

In that context, I also want to comment on the previous members' exhortation about driver safety and driving safely and stopping the carnage on our roads. I want to thank the current Labor government in the Northern Territory and the Chief Minister, Michael Gunner, for abandoning the stupidity of no speed limits on open roads for sections of the Northern Territory on the Stuart Highway. What an invitation to stupidity by the then Giles government.

I think—and I know that the people of the Northern Territory think—that the Turnbull government is not thinking of them when it makes decisions about funding allocations across the board, whether it's in education, housing or GST funding. Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Hastie, in your case, the Western Australians seem to have pilfered a heap of money out of the pockets of the Commonwealth based on GST revenue. By the way, I should say this, the member opposite, the Attorney-General—thank you for being in the House—might want to explain how Western Australia squandered all the money they earned from the mining boom while he was in the important position, I think, of Treasurer of the Western Australian government. Explain to us why we now have to go back and remediate the stupidity of decisions that were made by him and his government.

The point is I don't want to be too critical of Western Australians—they're wonderful people—but I do want to be critical of the government because amending the GST formula in the way in which it's been proposed will come at a dramatic cost for the people of the Northern Territory. It ought to be clear that giving $3.6 billion of additional GST revenue to the Western Australian government has a direct impact on allocations to others and will cut millions out of the GST revenue into the Northern Territory, which we cannot afford. We have a small tax base and a disproportionate responsibility for closing the gap for Aboriginal people. Almost a third of the Northern Territory's population are Aboriginal people and they have greater needs than almost any other group in the population nationwide. I know that there are Aboriginal populations in Western Australia who also have needs that are similar, in many cases, to those in the Northern Territory. But the point that needs to be made here is that, if you don't understand and appreciate the importance of that principle of horizontal fiscal equalisation and the need to make sure that investments are made to raise the standards for people who live in very remote communities—their education, health and other things—then you're not taking the job seriously and I think you're doing the nation a grave disservice. We know that that's what the people of the Northern Territory currently believe, and I think they're right.

It's not only in the field of GST administration that there is a problem; it's also in education. In 2018, when the school year began, approximately 45,000 Northern Territory students returned to schools across the territory. Despite its protestations, the Turnbull government is cutting $17 billion from Australian schools over the next 10 years. In the Northern Territory, we will lose $71 million of federal government funding over the next two years. In Lingiari, my electorate, which of course covers most of the Northern Territory—I'm not sure what the percentage is, but my electorate is 1.34 million square kilometres and the electorate of Solomon is less than 300 square miles, so work it out—the bottom line is that the cost to Lingiari schools is $37.3 million. That's just not fair. That means cutting teachers from every school, and the most disadvantaged schools in Australia are in these remote parts of the Territory which are part of my electorate. In any allocation on needs based funding you would say the neediest schools in Australia, not just in the Northern Territory, are these remote community schools. So it is really sad that this government hasn't taken this job seriously.

Of course, in higher education we get the same story. The Turnbull government proposal to cap the amount it will contribute to universities for students' enrolments at 2017 levels for the next two years means an effective cut from the Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory of $5.5 million. This is a small regional university, important in providing opportunities, important in educating the next group of leaders to our country and important in educating those people who will be manipulating the levers of the economy. We know that this will have a grave impact upon our community, yet for some reason, the Prime Minister and the government haven't twigged to the impact of these proposed cuts on regional Australia and, in my case in particular, the Northern Territory.

Then, of course, there's housing. This week, we saw the sorry tale of the federal government saying to the Northern Territory government that despite an agreement by the minister responsible for Indigenous affairs in this country, Senator Scullion, of accepting a proposition that they would co-fund housing in the Northern Territory of $1.1 billion over the next decade—because that's what the Northern Territory government would contribute, so it would be an equivalent contribution from the Commonwealth—we now learn that despite that agreement by the senator, he's been overturned because of a cabinet decision, apparently, which has decided the Commonwealth will actually move out of funding these remote area housing schemes, and that in the transition process they've offered the Northern Territory government two years' funding, a proportion of the $1.1 billion. That will have a dramatically negative impact upon the community I live in and upon the most needy of Australians.

We talk in this place about the importance of health care, and we've had glorious speeches given this week about closing the gap. If you want to close the gap in this country, and you understand the needs of remote Australia, as I do—but apparently the Prime Minister and his cabinet don't—then the first thing you would understand is the need to invest in housing. Overcrowded and poor housing means we're going to get a continuation of the chronic diseases which impact on these communities and shorten the lives of Aboriginal people. We have the highest incidence of rheumatic heart disease in the world in my communities, and the highest incidence of diabetes and renal failure, which are mostly preventable diseases and largely attributable to lifestyle. Some are directly attributable to the conditions in which people live, and housing is crucial as a prevention strategy in making sure those diseases are removed.

You cannot accept the proposition that somehow or other the decisions now taken by this government are for the good of the nation, let alone for the good of the Northern Territory or the people who live in it. This is having and will have a dramatic impact, and I say to the Commonwealth government that they ought to be actually thinking, themselves, about what's in the long-term best interests of the nation and understand where the priorities for expenditure should be. I know my good friend sitting on my left understands these priorities because we talk about it all the time. It is important that we do the right thing, and the Commonwealth needs to live up to the expectations that are now upon it as a result of the verbal agreement reached between Minister Scullion and the Northern Territory government—but apparently not. Apparently now, we have the Prime Minister walking away from that agreement just as he walked away from the breakfast the other morning here. His intemperate behaviour this week is mind-boggling. To stand in this chamber, as he has done twice now this week, and try and suggest that a proposal emanating out of the Uluru Statement of the Heartaround the question of a voicemeans there would be a third chamber of the parliament is asinine, ridiculous and deliberately misleading. He is clearly trying to suggest that somehow or other Aboriginal people are wanting to do something which they do not want to do. They have made it very clear that they are after an advisory body. We have plenty of examples, by the way—and the Prime Minister might want to be alive to this—of organisations in this country, Commonwealth institutions, that only have Aboriginal people voting in them. Just look at the statutory land councils in the Northern Territory; they are bound to have elections, and the only people who can vote in those elections are Aboriginal people within the areas in which they live, as traditional owners.

So let's not have this garbage coming from the government that somehow or other it's perverse or stupid to have an Aboriginal-only elected body. We've had one previously which worked quite well, and that was ATSIC. There were difficulties in the end. It never should have been scrapped. But there we had an example of a Commonwealth constructed body that only Aboriginal people could vote for and participate in. Let's not have any more of this damned nonsense coming from the government, particularly this Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues, about what the intention has been around a voice and a statement from the heart. This country deserves better than we're currently getting from this Prime Minister, and the Northern Territory most particularly does. (Time expired)

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

It's always a pleasure to rise in this House and speak about the good story this government is delivering for the Australian people, and it's a pleasure to speak on this appropriation bill. And I thank the member for Lingiari for his contribution. I know he's a passionate advocate for Indigenous people in his home state of the Northern Territory, and we've had many a discussion about those matters. But this coalition government does have a good story to tell. And whilst we know that there are going to be distractions on a daily basis, at the end of the day this government has succeeded in ensuring that there is the confidence in our economy and in the future of our economy, to the extent that we saw 400,000 jobs created in our economy over calendar year 2017—jobs growth at a rate of some 2.8 per cent. For the last few years that has been the focus of this government. It is about building that economic confidence to ensure that the business community and those who employ people in this economy have the confidence to do so.

Under the coalition government some 950,000 jobs have been created in the economy overall, and the participation rate is at its highest in almost seven years. This is thanks to the investment this government makes in the economy. But, importantly, it is also thanks to the investment our business people make every single day, for that investment comes off the back of a confidence that is generated by having a government that is looking to do the right thing and create the right conditions for business to flourish and prosper. That is what this government has been doing over the past few years. It has been aimed at driving investment by business into the economy.

It appears that those on the other side don't understand that very well. They don't understand that, by business investing in growing and by us as a government giving them the confidence to do so, that creates jobs and creates opportunity for Australian people. Jobs create confidence for individuals personally and help improve their family life. Jobs allow them to begin to accumulate wealth, pay off their mortgage—a whole range of things. That is what flows through the economy, by ensuring that people have jobs and opportunity.

In my electorate of Forde I have more than 15,000 small to medium businesses that employ thousands of people. These businesses have benefited directly from decisions made by this government in terms of cutting taxes for small to medium business—the instant asset write-off provisions. These things have given these businesses the confidence to grow and employ people. If they didn't have confidence in the economy in the future, they wouldn't make those necessary investments. But, through the confidence generated, we have seen over 1,000 jobs created a day—and many of those, pleasingly, are in my electorate of Forde.

We see that business confidence is now at one of the highest levels seen under this government and almost double the long-run average. It's only with a strong economy that we can provide the vital government services and the infrastructure investment that Australia needs. The member opposite, in his contribution, talked about the need for investment in housing, roads and infrastructure in his home state of the Northern Territory. He would appreciate the steps that this government has taken to ensure there is confidence in the economy and economic growth, because that actually provides the revenue for government to provide those services—not only revenue for the Commonwealth government but also revenue for the state governments. It seems that those opposite lack the capacity to put those two things together.

I'm proud to say that the government is delivering some $75 billion in infrastructure funding, which again would not be possible without strong economic growth and the improving budget position we are developing. Many of these projects fall in and around my electorate of Forde. Improving important infrastructure is extremely important to the constituents of my electorate. This includes the Brisbane-to-Melbourne inland rail, stage 1 of the M1 upgrade and many other safety improvements to M1 exits and also the Mount Lindesay Highway. We see with infrastructure upgrades—particularly the M1, which is the main highway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast—the importance for commuters, transport businesses and self-employed tradespeople who travel the road every day. There is nothing worse for them than being stuck in traffic jams. It impacts on their productivity and the capacity for them to get work done in a timely manner. They would be able to get more work if they were able to move around.

Also, the government is improving the support for government services that Australians rely on every day. These include services like Medicare, schools and hospitals. Promises don't pay for service funding. Those opposite don't actually have the money for the stuff they're promising. It's all in the never-never. The member for Lingiari, in his contribution, talked about school funding. I'd like to remind the member, even though he's left the chamber, that the money doesn't actually exist. They've never said where they're going to get it from; likewise with their hospital funding promises. But this government has funded what it said it was going to fund. We're delivering record funding for Australian schools over the next 10 years—nearly $250 billion worth. The government has nearly doubled the Commonwealth's investment in schools as a result. Our needs based funding helps schools and teachers to assist every student to achieve their individual potential, including through one-on-one student support, specialist teachers or targeted intervention programs.

The government has guaranteed Medicare, thereby ensuring that our health system continues to be one of the best in the world, where every Australian has access to the best doctors, nurses, hospitals and medicines. In the budget, we committed an additional $145.5 million to our primary healthcare networks, which continue great work with our local communities in helping them to access vital services. This is on top of our nearly $24 billion investment in Medicare. So, while we've seen those opposite cry crocodile tears and cry wolf with false campaigns over Medicare cuts, the important thing for everyday Australian people is that this government is actually getting on with the job of protecting Medicare, guaranteeing it and making sure it remains available to all Australians. It is where the rubber hits the road—actually doing what you say you're going to do. We know we have one of the best health systems in the country, as I said earlier. We are seeking—and we've put the money on the table—to ensure it continues to be so.

One of the issues that's been raised in Queensland of late is hospital funding. Last week's COAG meeting brought together the nation's leaders to focus on delivering these vital services. The government is working with the states to deliver a substantial and generous offer for hospital funding. It will add some $31 billion of Commonwealth support to public hospitals. Once again we see those opposite have nothing to offer. They just whinge, complain, carp and carry on. But it is this government that is actually getting on with the job. We are not only promising to do stuff but actually funding it and delivering it. This guaranteed record funding will support vital services that we need. The best part is that all our funding offers are costed and accounted for. They're not funding figures that have been plucked out of thin air, as those opposite are wont to do, with no way to pay for it.

As I've touched on, we've seen the enterprise tax plan that is delivering the confidence for businesses to grow, develop and invest. Their tax rates have come down, so there is an incentive for them to invest and grow because they're paying less tax at a headline figure. But, in reality, if the businesses grow and develop, even though the tax rate has fallen there is the benefit that, through that growth and development, they will actually pay more tax in total. That's what we want to see, because that will allow us to continue to provide the services that I touched on just previously.

We've also seen the terrific work that the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment has done with our various trade agreements. I see the former Assistant Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment is here, the member for Hinkler, who was also involved in these trade agreements. We know—and the member for Hinkler with the agricultural sector that he has in his electorate knows—how important these trade agreements are to Australian businesses and Australian farmers.

Last week I had the pleasure of moving a motion in the House about the positive impact of our economic agreement with Japan, which has been in place for 60 years. I also spoke about the TPP 11 agreement. These agreements have created significant business opportunities for Australian businesses, particularly businesses in my electorate, as I've touched on previously. The existing free trade agreements have already created new jobs and new opportunities in my electorate of Forde, particularly in areas of manufacturing, exports and services. We see businesses like Oji Paper, Frosty Boy and many others taking advantage of these economic opportunities that have been created by these agreements. The Trans-Pacific Partnership will eliminate more than 98 per cent of tariffs in the trade zone. For Australia, that means, with these new trade agreements, we will have access to countries such as Canada and Mexico and greater access to countries such as Japan, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei. More recently, we saw earlier this week an agreement signed with Peru, which gives us another new market to access.

It is through this government actually taking the time to work out a proper economic plan for the country that we are seeing these terrific results. They are reflected in an improved budget position. They are reflected in improved job outcomes for Australian people. At the end of the day, the best way for people to maintain and build their self-worth and to build their personal family wealth is for them to be gainfully employed. It is through that gainful employment that they build relationships and friendships, with people in the workplace and in the broader community. It provides them with the opportunity for their kids to play in the local sporting club. It provides the opportunity for them to get involved in community organisations. But, importantly, it creates long-term financial stability for their families and allows them to afford to buy a house, to afford to buy a car. All those things allow them to improve the quality and standard of their lifestyle, and that's something we all aspire to: to leave a better future for our kids than we had. That is what this government is doing every single day: working to build that confidence and hope for the future that is allowing that to occur. I commend these appropriation bills to the House.

Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure for me to stand here today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-18, because it really is about priorities and choices. The government has made their choices—the things they think Australians want. And they've set forward in the appropriations and in their budget their priorities—the things they think Australians need. When I look at what these choices and priorities are, I know that Australians do not share those choices and priorities. A $65 billion tax cut for big business is not something people in my electorate of Braddon in north-west and west-coast Tasmania see as a priority. They don't see that the big banks getting a tax cut is something they would be champing for, because it's not going to have any impact on them at all.

The things that are going to have an impact on the people in my electorate are things like health. The member for Forde said earlier that we on this side of the House have been whingeing about all these things—about health and education spending. Well, we're not whinging at all, when we're actually talking about the stories of people who are suffering under these cuts to the budget in areas like health and education. Yesterday in the Federation Chamber I took the opportunity to speak about a lady in my electorate, in my home town of Devonport—Karen. Karen is like many people in my electorate. They're on fixed incomes, they have health issues and they have to travel long distances—hundreds and hundreds of kilometres—to access specialists. Because of this government's Medicare freeze, Karen is now paying more and more out-of-pocket expenses when she goes to see her doctor. I know that the Prime Minister has a lot of loose change. To him, $36 is nothing. But when you're on a fixed income, it's a lot of money. When you have to travel from Devonport to Hobart to see a specialist and you're on a fixed income and you're $100 out of pocket, that is a lot of money. Karen is thankful that she's living in the country that we have, but she is struggling. She's struggling to pay for electricity. She's struggling to put petrol in the car.

The Prime Minister had an opportunity to drop his Medicare freeze at the start of this year but chose not to do so. I think it's about time that we, as Australians, use a very strong voice to tell the Prime Minister about exactly how the Medicare freeze is impacting on us as individuals. It means Karen has to pay more to see her specialists. And from the relatively short period of time that I've been here, I think that this government—day in, day out—is completely out of touch with Australians, because the freeze won't be lifted until 2020.

The Prime Minister has been promising—even before the election—that not one Australian would pay more to see their GP, and that is completely untrue, because we know from statistics, even in my electorate, that the cost to see your GP is increasing and increasing. Nationally, the Prime Minister is cutting $2.2 billion out of Medicare over the next four years, on top of the savings that have already been banked up from the time of that horror budget of 2014. This is not 'Mediscare', as those opposite would like to claim. This is the real impact that is hurting people all over regional Australia in particular, and people in my electorate.

But it's not just the cost of going to see a GP; it's the attitude that the Prime Minister has to the general health care of Australians, and the impact that has had on our hospitals. Already this government has cut more than $1 billion from Tasmanian hospitals. That's in addition to the $210 million cut to Tasmanian hospitals by the Liberal Premier of Tasmania. We are paying an appalling price for these cuts. At the coalface, the effects are enormous. We're seeing ambulance ramping like never before at our major hospitals. Emergency departments are overcrowded, with waiting times way beyond the acceptable time of 30 minutes. We're seeing that beds are not funded. If the beds are not funded, you can't get in there and get the treatment that you need. We're seeing patients getting shipped from hospital to hospital because of a shortage of beds.

There's a story of a man in my electorate who almost lost his foot because the hardworking staff at these local hospitals were under extreme pressure and lacked resources. That's a huge cost to an individual—to nearly lose your foot because you could not get adequate treatment, because there just aren't the resources in that hospital to take care of you. And there's the story of a young woman from my electorate who had to travel interstate, at her family's own cost, for critical surgery to save her sight because she could not get the care she needed in Tasmania. That's not because the care's not there; it's because she couldn't get in, because there weren't the resources for her to see the specialist in time. She nearly lost her sight.

If this weren't enough, the Prime Minister now wants to lock in further cuts to our hospitals for the next seven years. It was pleasing, despite Tasmania being in caretaker mode, that the Tasmanian representative, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, did not take up this offer for our state. This government's total health expenditure continues to reduce as a percentage of the total Commonwealth budget, and it's decreasing even further than when the leadership was under the member for Warringah. The fact is that this Prime Minister doesn't think our public hospitals deserve to be properly funded. This is not us whingeing; this is the true picture of what these cuts do to the people in our communities, and it's about time we talked about it more. Yet it is the priority of this government to underfund our health system.

In Tasmania we've seen considerable underfunding of infrastructure. Over the next four years, there's going to be a 65 per cent reduction in infrastructure funding for Tasmania. There has not been one new project commenced in Tasmania by this coalition government—over nearly five years, not one project. There was $100 million cut from the Midland Highway. There's been no investment in major regional roads, which are carrying increased freight and tourist numbers. We're seeing this tourism boom, but there's no infrastructure spending to assist with it. Despite repeated calls from the community in my electorate for the Bass Highway to be repaired, it's nothing but deaf ears from Canberra. I have tried to work, in a very bipartisan way, with the Tasmanian Liberal senators to try to get some funding for this critical piece of infrastructure, but there is nothing to be heard.

I have to note the response of the new minister for infrastructure, the Deputy Prime Minister, to a question—I think it was on Tuesday—from our shadow minister for infrastructure, the member for Grayndler, who asked him about the decrease in infrastructure spending for Tasmania. The only thing the Deputy Prime Minister could talk about was that he visited a piece of irrigation infrastructure in Tasmania—I think it was in the Southern Midlands—last year as agriculture minister. Every piece of water and irrigation infrastructure in Tasmania was a Labor project, at state level and federally! But then the minister went on to talk about the Inland Rail. I've actually thought, particularly in the last week and a half, that the only project the Deputy Prime Minister, as the new infrastructure minister, seems to know in his portfolio is the Inland Rail, because that's all he could talk about. He actually said it would benefit Tasmania. Now, he would get some credibility from me if he then said, 'We'll build a rail bridge over Bass Strait.' But that's not going to happen, is it? He could not talk about one infrastructure project that he or this government has put in place to benefit Tasmania.

I could go on about the NBN. There will probably be many on this side talking about the NBN. My electorate is predominantly fibre to the node. It hardly works at my house, let alone support the businesses in the central towns of Devonport and Burnie, which are really struggling with an inferior piece of critical infrastructure.

Then we can go to the priorities of the government and its corporate tax cuts. The member for Forde before said, 'We hear the Labor Party whingeing about health and education, but they don't know how they're going to pay for it.' Well, I can tell you how we're going to pay for it, and that is to not give big business a massive tax cut. But this tax cut is not just for the corporate end of town; it is for the banks.

I want to run through something that I found quite astounding. It happened in November last year. The National Australia Bank pays tax. It pays about $2½ billion of tax. I think in 2016 it had a net profit of $5.3 billion. It announced in November that it would cut 6,000 jobs. Can those opposite honestly tell me that if you give the NAB or any other bank a tax cut that they're going to employ more people? I mean, how ridiculous is this! This is why the Australian public do not believe that this government's tax cut to big business is going to trickle down and, all of a sudden, create all these jobs. It's just going to benefit shareholders and the back pockets of those CEOs.

Let's go to some of these CEOs. We had a report the other day that the Prime Minister was derided on the ABC about big companies in Australia not paying any tax. One in five companies are not paying tax, and one of those is Qantas. We all enjoy Qantas. I have to fly Qantas a lot to get here. But Qantas has been tax free for 10 years. It hasn't had to pay any tax. It is planning a $3 billion investment for 2018-19. Great! Excellent! But you look at what's happening at the top of that company: the CEO's salary in 2016 was $12.9 million. Now it is $24.6 million.

Now let's look at the workers. We've got a company not paying any tax, ready to invest lots of money, paying its CEO millions and millions and millions of dollars, but the workers at Qantas have not had an average pay rise that has exceeded inflation. Can those opposite honestly tell me that Qantas, if we give it a tax cut—if it does start paying tax, which, even though it's profitable, will be, I think, in about two years time or whenever it decides to do that—is going to pass that tax cut onto its workers? I don't think so. The banks won't do it, and the big companies will not do it.

So what do we do here? What are the priorities? Certainly for me they are health and education. I think most people on this side have been talking about that. But one very topical issue that has not got any attention in budgets, from this government or at a state level, is biosecurity. Unfortunately, and sadly, the farmers in my electorate have been hit by fruit fly. We've had a million-dollar cut to Biosecurity Tasmania by the Tasmanian Liberals; we've got no checks on things coming through our ports. This is how these things happen. It happens because the resources are not there to prepare Tasmania for an incursion.

What's even more interesting is that the state minister for agriculture and the Deputy Premier of the state, in his own question time brief of May 2015, confirmed that the federal government cut biosecurity funding to Tasmania. This government has put Tasmania at risk of getting incursions of fruit fly. It will devastate our economy. This exposes the failure of this government to protect Tasmanian farmers and our primary industries. This is a state Liberal minister's question time brief. He and his own bureaucracy are blaming the federal government for underfunding biosecurity in Tasmania.

Now we have fruit fly. This will just completely destroy our local economy and our farms. This QTB really hangs the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, who would have been agriculture minister at the time, out to dry. It's an absolute failing of this government. This QTB says that we are now in a fruit fly emergency. What is happening now? Fruit is being dumped. We are locked out of markets. Products need chemical fumigation. These are things we are now experiencing at a huge cost to not only Tasmania's state budget but farmers as well.

Not only that, we got another kick in the teeth from this government, with 1,900 apprenticeships having been lost in Tasmania since the Liberal Party was elected. In my electorate, we've suffered the loss of 704 apprentices, so we're not even trying to give a pathway to people in our communities before they leave school and unfortunately, sadly, find they're out of work. The Commonwealth government and the state Liberal government have had four years to tackle this—four years to fix TAFE; four years to invest in infrastructure and projects in Tasmania to build apprenticeships and give people training—and they have failed year on year. Why we would give them another chance is beyond me.

These are the priorities of my electorate that have been kicked, hammered and thrown away by this government. They don't care about health, they don't care about education and they don't care about the agricultural sector in Tasmania. They certainly don't care about the priorities of the people of Tasmania and the people of my electorate. They would be very pleased to give corporate tax cuts to the big end of town, which will not have any impact on the people in my electorate at all.

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

I thank the honourable member. The question is that these bills be now read a second time. I give the call to the honourable member for Hinkler.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the unexpected opportunity. I'm sure there'll be more speakers in the House in the very near future. I rise to make some comments on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-2018. This gives me the opportunity to discuss the implementation of the cashless debit card. We know that, in the Senate, an amended piece of legislation was passed this week which, in my view, has let down the people of my electorate. We have been in an absolute battle to get the cashless debit card into our electorate for some seven or eight months. Unfortunately, with the politics of the Senate, the reversal of the position of the Labor Party and the position of the crossbench, the extension will go into the Goldfields. I certainly think that is much needed, but the reality is that we need to trial the cashless debit card in other places, particularly in larger locations. In my view, the benefits are enormous.

It's not just me; we've been talking to the community over the last seven or eight months and there have been dozens and dozens of meetings. Some of the criticism from those opposite has been around consultation. They claim that there hasn't been sufficient consultation, but I have yet to see anyone from that side stand up and say what it is they want that would meet their requirements. We sent out over 32,000 direct mail pieces and 5½ thousand emails. We made over 500 direct phone calls from my office to determine whether there was interest and support for the cashless debit card. Then the very professional people from the Public Service rolled out through the Department of Social Services to do their work on the ground, talking in particular to frontline service providers. What those frontline service providers said to them and to us is that it is supported. The reason is straightforward. I must admit, to me the position was a surprise, in terms of the cohort we were looking at. They were concerned about children in the electorate—in particular, that they were not being provided the basics of life. I think the cashless debit card can fill this very particular policy difficulty.

I understand that there are those who are idealistically opposed, and I accept that, but the reality is: what is the alternative? The alternative is that we do nothing. If we do nothing, there will be no change—no change for the people I represent, no change for the kids who are going to school hungry and no change for the people who are finding it difficult in their current circumstances, whether it's with drugs or alcohol or gambling. The reality is that this works.

What we see from those opposite is their position to do nothing. Their position is to stop what we're trying to do. I accept that there will be those who are idealistically opposed, but, if we do not make change and we do not make tough policy decisions, we are letting down a generation of kids in my electorate. It is for them that we are here. We must ensure that they have opportunities. This is not just a one-sided argument. We are looking at a change in policy which affects what people can purchase. Let's be very factual: it only limits the ability to buy drugs, gambling products and takeaway alcohol with cash. It is a visa debit card. It works at every EFTPOS machine, like any other card, unless of course we turn it off for a particular product.

What difference does it make to someone who might be under the age of 30 who uses a card every day? I'm sure you've seen them, Deputy Speaker Hastie. They go out, they use a card and they very rarely use cash. I think it makes very little change to the way they live their lives and what it is they do. The reality is that it stops money being poured down the pokies, it stops the purchase of takeaway alcohol and without cash you cannot buy illicit substances. That is one side of the equation. In the middle, we have a requirement for more drug and alcohol support. There was a commitment, if the cashless debit was rolled out in my electorate, to provide another $1 million for that support into my electorate. That's on top of the services which we already have. That $1 million is absolutely critical when we look at policies like the cashless debit card.

The next point is around jobs and the economy. If you do not have work, then clearly there is a claim that there is nowhere to go. We continue to build the economy and we continue to invest money into the electorate, but the reality is that we do need to do more. What are we doing right now? We have Regional Jobs and Investment Packages—some $20 million committed at the 2016 election, which is available for organisations to apply for, particularly for large infrastructure investments in private organisations. This is a different policy to our position on many, many other types of funds which we use in the electorates. I'm aware of a number of applications. They will add hundreds of jobs into our electorate—not five or 10 jobs, but hundreds of jobs. What I know as someone who comes from business—someone who has actually worked in the workforce for many, many years, has run their own business, has had farms, has had small businesses, has had consulting firms and has had registered training organisations—is that it's business that provides jobs. Government can set the structures to help make them successful, but it is business that provides jobs in our economy. And they are going pretty well at the moment, but it's rocks and diamonds. We have to make sure that we spread the love across the entire nation. Those opportunities are there right now.

Let's look at some of the things which have happened with the Building Better Regions Fund, for example. We funded a project which will be run by an organisation called Pacific Tug at the Bundaberg port. This investment will allow the project to be brought forward. It will create over 100 positions. The proposal from Pacific Tug is that they will provide a maintenance base for that fleet, particularly for barges into the Pacific, and of course to all of those ships under a particular weight limit that run up and down the east coast. The expectation is that they will build a 1,200 tonne ship lift that will provide the capacity into their hardstand to do maintenance on ships up to that weight level. That includes some defence products—and I'm sure you're interested in defence, Mr Deputy Speaker Hastie. I believe you have a very strong background in and a very strong understanding of defence. I think the ability for those ships to stop in a small port in a regional centre like Bundaberg to be restocked and refitted and have their maintenance done and providing all of the things that you need to ensure that those defence assets continue to work for Australia and continue to be absolutely functional while also adding to our economy is in the best interests of all of us. Pacific Tug continues to move forward.

I was down there last week. We're looking at other opportunities around the Bundaberg port. I will say something which I'm sure those opposite will be very surprised at: I congratulate the state Labor government on naming the Bundaberg port area as a state development area. An SDA provides opportunities for people looking to invest, and it is a real economic driver for our region right now. In my view, the potential is there for a container port in one of the last remaining positions on the east coast where we can invest in a large infrastructure facility, because that land is available. There is over 4,000 acres available around the Bundaberg port. We can build that container facility, we can build for something into the future, we can provide that infrastructure which is necessary to build our economy and, of course, we can provide jobs which are desperately needed in what is a pretty tough area for this nation.

The Bundaberg port is just one location where we can actually build our economy locally. One of the others, of course, is around a proposal for a level 5 training hospital. It's something I've spoken about before. Just last week there was a memorandum of understanding signed between the Bundaberg Regional Council, one of the private health providers and the Central Queensland University for a medical precinct opposite the Bundaberg Airport. As we all know, and I'm sure everyone in this chamber has heard before, unfortunately there was a very terrible incident at the Bundaberg Base Hospital involving Dr Jayant Patel some 10 years ago. Now, that has clearly been a very difficult period of time for those people who worked there, but they've worked through it. One of the greatest things that we could provide into that region would be a level 5 training hospital—one with the capacity to attract specialists in many fields; one which will allow the service of a population of some 280,000 people from Rockhampton to Gympie. They could be serviced and get much better benefit for their health from a level 5 training hospital based in Bundaberg.

In the southern end of the electorate, around Hervey Bay, there are tourism opportunities to burn—whether you want to see the whales, whether you want to travel to Fraser Island or whether you just want to come and relax in what is one of the safest locations in Australia on the east coast, because it's protected by the Fraser Coast. One of the things the local council is working on right now is a fishing hall of fame and a museum for HMAS Tobruk. For those who might not know, HMAS Tobruk is being sunk. It'll be scuttled in late June this year around 15 nautical miles off the coast at Woodgate Beach. That will add to our tourism infrastructure. That will provide more opportunities for people to come to our electorate to see this fabulous piece of diving infrastructure. But we need something for the land based tourists as well—for those who might not dive, for family members—and I think that museum will be a unique opportunity for the Fraser Coast Regional Council and of course all the tourism operators on the Fraser Coast. Given that we have more people lined up to talk on the appropriation bill, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak and commend the bill to the House.

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

Almost two years ago the Australian electorate voted for a Turnbull government, and what have we ever got in return? Nothing. Well, actually, no; I'll rethink this—it may even remind some of a movie—because it's not entirely true. What has the Turnbull government ever done for us? Longer Centrelink wait times. Following massive cuts to frontline Centrelink staff by this government, I have received calls from my constituents on nearly a daily basis, often multiple times, complaining that they have spent upwards of 20 minutes, sometimes closer to an hour, waiting to speak to a DHS member on staff. And the experience in-centre is not much different.

Last year senior staff from the Department of Human Services told a Senate estimates hearing that an average time to speak to an operator is 14 minutes and 10 seconds, firmly within their target of 16 minutes. But why is this so different from the experience of so many of my constituents? Well, that's because in the 2015-16 financial year over 42 per cent of calls were blocked. This means that the lines were engaged, so the calls never made it through in the first place. Of those who were lucky enough to make it onto the 'hold' queue, 18 per cent were abandoned, and the caller hung up before the issue was fixed. The crazy thing about all of this is that if you did hang up then of course the department would count the call as—wait for it!—'resolved', regardless of whether it really was or not. And if your call was transferred to another line, the clock would start again, because Centrelink considered the initial inquiry to be, again, 'resolved'. So, it's entirely possible that with a few line transfers you could be on the phone for up to an hour and the phone call would still apparently be well within the department's target.

It's also important to remember that the 14-minute figure I mentioned earlier is just an average. There are plenty of people spending much longer than that stuck on hold, In fact, the average speed to answer youth and employment lines were both over 25 minutes, and for disability phone lines it was close to a 24-minute wait time. So, yes, the Turnbull government gave us that. Come to think of it, they also gave us the robo-debt disaster.

All right, I'll grant you that Centrelink queues and robo-debt are two things that the government has done. But how could I forget the national 'fraudband' network disaster? The NBN is slow. It is unreliable and in some cases life-threatening. Just this week I received an email from John, who lives in the suburb of Mount Nasura in the electorate of Burt—a giant mobile blackspot, another one of the things this government has done for us. He has recently been connected to the NBN, so when there was a power outage on his street he had no way to contact anyone. If his entire street connects to the NBN and his entire street live in a mobile blackspot, then it becomes a very dangerous situation should there be another power outage. I should also point out that this is a highly bushfire-prone area. In his email John says, 'My wife is a type 1 diabetic, and it raised the question: if I am out and we have another power failure, will she be left vulnerable? What is going on with this NBN?'

We also get plenty of constituents who contact us to voice their concerns about the inequality of the government's NBN rollout. Labor had a plan to give all premises, all residents, fibre to the premises, putting everyone on an even playing field. Now Australians are subject to the game of NBN roulette. They might be lucky and have fibre to the premises or maybe even fibre to the kerb. But, in a significant number of cases, they have fibre to the node. This can be slow and unreliable, particularly in older areas, like mine, where the copper wires have not been replaced for some time—and I am talking decades. We are talking close to centuries.

Even worse, you might find yourself in a service class zero home with no internet access, no phone access and no end in sight. For a lot of my constituents, the NBN is so far off that they haven't even had to think about these issues yet. In doing this, the government has created a digital divide. They don't care if you are trying to run a business from home—for all of their talk of small business—or if you telework or if your kids are at school and need access to a stable internet connection, and they really don't seem to care that there are a huge number of people with medical issues who need access to a working phone line in order to feel safe or indeed to be safe. So, yes, obviously the government has given us the NBN. The NBN goes without saying.

But, apart from the long Centrelink wait times, robo-debt, mobile blackspots and the NBN, what has the Turnbull government done for us? Oh, it's given big businesses a tax cut, it's made cuts to Medicare and it's failed to provide a solution to WA's unfair GST distribution. Yes, the government has done all of that. So I guess the government has actually done quite a bit since its election.

But what has the Labor Party ever done for us? Well, we blocked the government's citizenship changes. Before this legislation was even close to being law, the Department of Immigration website was advising citizenship applicants that they would have to comply with a whole new set of criteria, including an additional four-year wait and a university-level English test. When Sandra and her kids moved from the UK to the suburb of Gosnells in 2009, they, of course—expectedly almost—fell in love with the Perth hills, the local bushlands, the friendly people and the not-too-far-away gorgeous beaches. They knew they wanted to become citizens and they knew they'd have a lengthy wait ahead of them. After three years of falling in love with Australia and complying with the strict travel requirements imposed on citizenship applicants, they were disappointed and angered to hear that the government wanted to add another four years to their wait. This meant an eight-year wait all up.

Sandra was also incredibly nervous about sitting an English test with the bar set at university level. Sandra worked in aged care and was good at her job, but she never went to uni and the idea of having to sit an exam absolutely terrified her. If someone from England is nervous about sitting an English test then imagine the impact on those who have come from a non-English speaking background. As anyone who was forced to learn a second language at school will know, it is hard work, it is difficult and it requires a high level of intelligence to become bilingual. Of course we should be encouraging new migrants to learn conversational English, but setting the bar at university level is, quite frankly, elitist and it's out of touch. It sets a double standard. So I was so proud to be able to tell people like Sandra in my electorate, who love Australia and are committed to becoming citizens, that, despite what had been advertised on the department's website, they would no longer have to worry about such a ridiculous requirement that had not actually ever—thanks to the work of Labor—become law.

So the Labor Party blocked the government's proposed citizenship changes. But what else have we done? Well, we've put forward a plan for Western Australia to help it with the problems that it is suffering because of its inadequate distribution of GST, by committing to a $1.6 billion fair go fund for Western Australia. But when we sit down and think, 'What has Labor done for us?' it is much like Monty Python famously set out. I know those on the other side often scratch their head and think, 'What has Labor done for us?' I am sure there might be one person opposite who will think, not only about the sewerage system that Labor governments ensured was delivered into the suburbs of Western Sydney way back in the days of Whitlam, and say: 'Hang on; what else has Labor done?'

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Education.

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

Yes, education. Thank you, Member for Lalor. Imagine that—Labor has properly funded, and has plans to again properly fund, education. What else has Labor done? What has Labor ever done for us? Now that I think about, in addition to sewerage and education, Labor has properly delivered roads. The government often talks NorthLink in Western Australia. Well, guess what? It's a Labor project. What else has Labor ever done for us? Health.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Medicare.

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

Medicare! Labor delivered Medicare—under constant threat by the Liberal Party, but Labor delivered Medicare.

What else has Labor done for us? Well, Labor has done many things. Labor put forward an actual plan for NBN. Labor has put forward actual plans to try and help with housing affordability. Labor has put forward all of these plans even while we're in opposition. Meanwhile, all this government has delivered while it has been in power is a litany of failure. People come into my electorate office or they phone—when their phones are working—to complain about the things that this government is doing.

But Labor has a true track record of delivery. Those on the other side may scratch their heads and think, 'What has Labor ever done for us?' But it is surprising the things that do not occur to them—things like standing up for people's working conditions in their workplaces, making sure that they have safe workplaces, making sure they have things like penalty rates and are able to look after their families, ensuring their kids can get a good public education and that their schools are properly funded, and ensuring that is there is a properly functioning health system in this country that is accessible to all people and is not being consistently undermined by those opposite.

Many times we hear—sometimes in the media and sometimes from people in our communities who may accost us in the streets—people say, 'I don't know what the difference is between the major parties.' If there is anything that is truer and clearer, it is that there are fundamental differences between our parties. The people opposite like to talk about being there, for instance, for small business, as I mentioned before. If there is one way—this is so crystal clear—in which this government is failing small business it is in its failure to deliver a properly-functioning, 21st-century broadband network for this country. But, at the same time, it is also failing small business because, instead of helping small business grow by making sure that Australians are in a position to buy the goods and services that those small businesses sell, this government is taking the money out of the hip pockets of ordinary working Australians on a regular basis, whether through not protecting their penalty rates or through increasing the Medicare levy that will be paid by ordinary Australians. At a time when there is economic fragility around the world, what does this government do? It takes money out of their pockets. And—wait for it—what has this government done for us? Big corporate tax cuts are what it proposes. Their priorities are writ clear every time they open their mouths or introduce legislation into this House. Their priorities are not about ordinary working Australians. The thing that this government has done for us is zilch. The thing that this government has done for ordinary working Australians is nada. It is and always will be only Labor that delivers for ordinary Australians to make sure that ordinary Australians have what they need in their hip pocket to provide for their families, that they get a good education, that they have a health system that will look after them and that there is a properly functioning welfare system to pick them up when they fall down. That is the fundamental difference between the two major parties and the two major groups in Australian politics today, and it is a record of which I am proud, it is a record of which everyone on this side of the chamber is proud and, quite frankly, it's a record that those on the other side should be ashamed of.

Damian Drum (Murray, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to follow on from the last contribution with just a quick note to say: it is the Labor Party that gives us all these amazing things for our community; it's just that they don't pay for any of them! I would like to use this debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 to firstly congratulate our Treasurer and the key financial ministers on their commitment to getting the Australian books back under control. For six years, under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, we saw revenue dry up and spending blow out. As a business, the Australian government—the Australian nation—had been losing $100 million each and every day. So, right through the Gillard-Rudd time, from the time we had to save the nation by spending all the money in the bank, we started losing $100 million a day—$100 million yesterday; $100 million today; $100 million tomorrow—and we kept that mentality up for the six years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. Say we had transferred that philosophy over to any business; there would be members of parliament on both sides of this chamber who would acknowledge that you simply cannot run a business by spending $100 million a day more than you are making without very quickly running that business into a state where you're going to threaten the very viability of that business. In the same way, if we had kept losing $100 million a day as a nation, we would have put the financial viability and the future of our nation at risk.

The ability for us as Australians to pay for an amazing health system, to pay for an amazing education system—an education system that for the first time is going to be truly needs based, is going to be truly equitable across the states, across the sectors, and where the federal government and the state government are finally going to work out who's responsible for what and to what extent—can happen only if we get our books in order. We can pay for these record levels of hospital funding, these record levels of education funding and these record levels of investment in infrastructure projects, and have the most generous welfare and pension system in the world, only if we get our books in order. We just cannot keep losing $100 million a day, which is the Labor way. The Labor way of running the government is to simply put it on the credit card and let somebody else down the track pay for it. We can't do that.

Under Scott Morrison and his team, we have been able to arrest this slide into oblivion, from $100 million a day in 2016-17. That $34 billion lost at the end of the year has been reduced back to $23 billion this financial year, and it will be reduced further next year, getting to the stage where the projected surplus for this nation in 2021 is going to be in the vicinity of $10 billion. We're finally going to have an economic management team that's going to bring this country back to being able to live within its means while maintaining the most generous welfare system in the world, the most generous and most advanced infrastructure spend. We're going to have a world-class health system, a world-class education system—record funding in both of those major portfolios of health and education. But at least we are now going to be able to pay for it, and this is something that is incredibly important for our nation.

Whilst economic management is critical to being able to deliver to the Australian people, one area that is critical to the people of Murray is that of water policy. Last night in the Senate we saw the most horrible betrayal of irrigation and farming communities ever witnessed. The Labor Party decided to abandon irrigation districts and communities by siding with the Greens to vote down the recommendations within the Northern Basin Review. Now, this review was handed down more than 12 months ago, in November 2016. Over that period of 13, 14, or 15 months there have been no negative comments from the Labor Party. This was an independent review conducted by the authority itself. The extent of the review was to look at how the community is handling the fact that they have given up so much prime agricultural water to be delivered for environmental flows.

What has happened to those communities in the time since that water has left the district? The review said that the pain, the hurt and the detriment enforced upon these communities—Dirranbandi, St George, Goondiwindi—had been extreme and had gone too far and that a correction was necessary. The correction was about taking the 390 gigalitres that had been identified, which was going to be taken out of active agricultural production and was going to be put into environmental flows. The independent review recommended that the 390 gigalitres be changed to 320—a correction of 70 gigalitres, to be actually put back into productive agriculture for those communities, which was said to be worth about another 200 jobs for those communities. There are some 700,000 people who live in the region that we call the Northern Basin region. This review was about a correction that was going to see 70 gigalitres returned back to productive agriculture.

So, whilst nothing had been said by the Labor Party for 12 months—nothing untoward, no negative comments about this at all—on the eve of the South Australian election it seems that Penny Wong and her fellow South Australian senators have been able to take Tony Burke and belt him over the ears and into submission, where he is now going to go along with this betrayal of irrigation communities. This is not just going to be pain inflicted on the northern areas of the Murray-Darling Basin. This will now actually impact all of South Australia, all of Victoria and all of New South Wales because we have the key states looking at this betrayal from the federal Labor Party, and the fact that they have now sided with the Greens, to take this water out of active agricultural production. They're taking this water away and they're putting it back down as environmental flows.

The people of the Goulburn-Murray region are looking at these actions from the Labor Party and saying that we cannot even trust them to abide by an independent review of the basin so far. This is an incredible injustice—and, while I'm talking about justice, I cannot let Senator Derryn Hinch from Victoria go unchallenged with his unwitting acceptance of this disallowance. I was in the Senate last night watching Senator Hinch not realising at the time that his vote was going to be crucial but, as it turned out, his vote was crucial. Firstly, he sat against the Labor Party and the Greens, then he moved over to support the Labor and the Greens, and looking at him, he had no idea what he was voting on. My understanding is that people from the Goulburn Valley have actually sat Senator Hinch down and told him about the importance of trying to support the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in its entirety. However, his vote was crucial. The disallowance motion was supported 32-30. Senator Hinch's vote was critical in allowing the Labor Party and the Greens to scuttle the independent review.

What does this mean for the future of the Murray-Darling Basin? This is the plan that the member for Watson, Tony Burke, had a key role in designing and writing. He had a key role, as the minister at the time, when this plan was handed down, and has been integral in his previous utterances that he wanted to see this plan rolled out in its entirety. The review of the Northern Basin was actually written into the plan. If he wants this plan to be carried out in its entirety, he's got to support what it says. He can't be like the member for Maribyrnong, the Leader of the Opposition, who says one thing in one forum and then something totally different in another forum. We expect the opposition water spokesperson to be true to his word and to resist some of the pressure that's coming because of the looming South Australian election. Senator Wong and other senators from South Australia just exert pressure on their water spokesperson, and he buckles at the knees.

For the communities of the Murray-Darling Basin—one of the most productive areas of agriculture in the basin is, in fact, the Goulburn-Murray region that I represent—there's now a whole raft of uncertainty. Whilst we had the plan and we had the states committed to the plan, we had certainty. There was a whole range of unpopular motions within the plan that we had to try and work our way through, negotiate and compromise but, at least, we had certainty. Now that we have the Labor Party betraying all of the irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin, we have the state of New South Wales with Niall Blair, the water minister, threatening to walk away because he had laid this threat down to Tony Burke previously. He made sure that the Labor Party were 100 per cent certain about what was likely to happen if the Labor Party voted in support of the Greens in a disallowance motion on the Northern Basin Review.

Not only have we got Niall Blair from New South Wales threatening to walk away; we've also got the Labor minister from Victoria slamming her federal colleagues in Canberra. We have a Labor minister in Victoria who cannot believe the hypocrisy; she cannot believe the betrayal of her own colleagues in Canberra. Tony Burke and all the other Victorians in the Labor Party are happy to go along and damage every irrigation community in Victoria, and certainly the ones that are attached to the Murray-Darling Basin.

Now that we have uncertainty, if the state of New South Wales walks away and if Daniel Andrews and his water minister cannot get through to the Labor people in Canberra and they walk away, the only course of action left for the federal minister is to enable buybacks. We have seen the damage caused to communities through buybacks because they happen indiscriminately, they happen without strategy and they happen without planning. You have isolated water assets throughout the regions and you have no areas that are dedicated to highly intensive agriculture. You have the patchwork effect of some irrigators who are still committed to their farming. You have higher prices, and it is left to the water authorities to somehow make an ineffective system more effective and therefore more affordable.

The betrayal by the Labor Party, which has effectively come out of nowhere, hangs fairly and squarely on the heads of the leaders. The opposition leader is also from Victoria. I know he doesn't get into the regions at all, I know he doesn't understand irrigation and I know he doesn't understand that water creates wealth. The wealth that is created by the water then swims around in the community. People buy cars, farming equipment, clothes or a new kitchen and they travel overseas. When the water that creates the wealth then swims around in the community, everybody gets a drink. But the Labor Party say one thing in one forum and then go to another forum and say something else. They stay silent for 12 months and, on the eve of a South Australian election, they are belted into submission. It is just so pathetic that they put politics before people and they would take this opportunity to effectively turn their backs in one of the greatest betrayals of agriculture you're ever going to see. They've had 12 months to suggest that maybe this review needs more work, but they have been totally happy with the independence of the review. They've been more than happy with the theory, the data, the structure and the authenticity of the review. There has not been one question about the integrity of the data. There has not been one question about whether it is the right thing to do to return the water back to productive agriculture. It was a fait accompli—it was the right thing to do to support the Northern Basin Review.

And then, on the eve of the South Australian election, we had the greatest backflip of all time. The Labor Party here in Canberra got their senators to turn their backs and abandon every irrigation community on the Murray-Darling Basin. What this shows is that there is nothing of substance to the Labor Party. All they are concerned about is: 'How do we play the politics? How do we play games with people's lives? And, if we can play a big game with the lives of people in irrigation, maybe we could help get a South Australian government re-elected. We'd be happy to sacrifice those lives and those communities so we can win an election in South Australia.'

Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was in the chamber for the member for Burt's impersonation of Monty Python's: 'What have the Romans ever done for us?' I have to say that his version was better. I can't understand why the galleries weren't full to witness his impersonation.

From its bushland to its beaches, Mackellar is truly a remarkable place which I'm proud to call home. On the Northern Beaches, we do not wait around for others to fix our problems. We come together as a community and act. I've stood in this place countless times to highlight and congratulate the many community groups, organisations and individuals who dedicate their time, energy and resources to Mackellar. A Liberal government's message has always been: we will always support the people who put others first. If you get together and make your community a better place, we have your back.

I'm proud to stand here today to offer a status report to my community on the Northern Beaches on what has been achieved so far. With your help, I've worked tirelessly to make sure that you get your fair share. Many of you come to me discontent about the desolate state of the athletics track in Narrabeen. Thousands of you signed my petition, giving weight to our campaign to secure funding for its refurbishment. I was immensely pleased that the New South Wales Liberal government committed $1.2 million to fixing this problem.

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

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Mackellar will be given an opportunity at that time to conclude his contribution.