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

I'm tempted to call 'Sweet Rain', but instead I'll call the member for Melbourne Ports.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for using my Korean name, Mr Deputy Speaker Hogan. It was a fine night at the Korean embassy last night.

Last Thursday, The Guardian reported that Assistant Secretary Narelle Clegg of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources broke down during a Senate estimates hearing while describing the conditions on live sheep export ships that led to the death of 2,400 sheep on one of those voyages. Many have seen the footage of the live sheep export ships that leave Fremantle on their way to the Middle East, and there is outrage in the Australian community. I don't think I have to explain that to any member of this parliament. All of us have received hundreds, indeed thousands, of genuine emails from local people who are outraged at this brutality. According to Meat & Livestock Australia, close to two million sheep are put on these ships from Australian ports every year. The live sheep export industry, according to the MLA, is worth $249 million. By comparison, in 2016, according to the MLA, the total export of red meat was $12.1 billion. This puts the export of live sheep at around two per cent of the bigger red-meat export market.

As I said, last week we saw the impact of the cruelty on a senior department official months after the footage was seen. Last year, Labor's agriculture spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, put out a plan about what Labor would be doing. He spoke very eloquently and passionately at a public forum that we held. It's not often that we have the agriculture spokesman speak in an inner city electorate, but he was very good at it. We were putting the deep ethical concerns I've had about animal welfare for a long time.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources seem to have backed the industry over public concern and have vowed to continue the live export of sheep, despite the meat and livestock association's being unable to offer any guarantee that the type of cruelty witnessed will not occur again. By contrast, Labor has made a commitment to phase out the live export of sheep. Both the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, and the agriculture spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, have committed to immediately ceasing the live export of sheep during the coming Middle Eastern summer and phasing it out over five years. Joel Fitzgibbon discussed on radio FIVEAA how the Turnbull government is not only refusing to act but actually injuring efforts to investigate industry failings, after the Western Australian regulator was forced to make an FOI request to obtain information from the Commonwealth regulator. In comparing Minister Littleproud's words and actions, Joel Fitzgibbon, the member for Hunter, said that Mr Littleproud says he is 'going to hunt down the bad guys and put them in jail' et cetera. That's Mr Littleproud's rhetoric. But now, when the Western Australian government is attempting to pursue rogue operators, the Commonwealth is not interested in lending it any assistance. There is a clear difference: Labor plans to act and the Turnbull government's plan thus far is to evade responsibilities as far as this disgraceful cruelty on live sheep export ships is concerned.

All politics are local. People expect action from MPs even if they are not in areas of federal responsibility. They expect us to support state governments like the Victorian government, who were acting on issues of housing affordability with vacant properties. According to the 2016 census, 13.7 per cent of homes in Melbourne Ports are unoccupied, which is much higher than the national average of 11.2. It's clear that Labor's state plan to work on a vacant property tax would help free up supply. It's clear we have an affordability issue hitting younger people all around the country. I know I have extensively Facebooked and written people, and I've had a direct mail campaign and gotten very positive feedback to it.

I want to draw attention to the difference between this government's plans and the opposition's plans on negative gearing. Many people have attacked the Leader of the Opposition in a very unfair way over the years, but no-one can say he lacks policy courage. It was widely considered that negative gearing was an untouchable policy area, but now it's time for a more level field for first home buyers. It's clear that the Turnbull government doesn't understand the depth of the problem or the potential role of our federal tax system in levelling the playing field. Treasurer Morrison decided to criticise the states instead. At the Urban Development Institute of Australia in Sydney in 2016 he boiled the housing affordability crisis down to a supply issue, and he's since has said very little. This is despite the analysis from the Australian National University last year that we have an undersupply of 164,000 dwellings. Australia's banking regulator, APRA, are applying restrictions to investor financing in a bid to level the playing field, obviously due to government inaction on the issue.

Labor has a reasonable and, indeed, sensible approach to this matter. We want to reform our federal tax system, not in a bid to reduce investment in the housing market but in a bid to make the current level of investment work better, and to help increase supply by allowing negative gearing on new homes only. The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that 93 per cent of new investment loans go to people purchasing existing housing stocks. This means that the vast bulk of investment in the housing market does not increase supply or boost jobs; all it does is increase demand and the price of existing homes, allowing investors to use tax subsidies to outbid owner-occupiers and first home buyers for existing properties, locking young people out of the housing market. There is a serious policy difference between the two parties on this issue, which affects a fundamental issue of equity in our society, particularly as far as it affects younger people.

Let me turn to the area of education. Labor obviously supports funding of the government school sector and would see that the Gonski projections and plans would be carried out so that the government school sector would continue to flourish in a way that I would say exceeds the current government. I want to particularly focus on data that I have from the Parliamentary Budget Office and the National Catholic Education Commission. Remember, under a Labor government, Catholic schools would receive an extra $250 million in funding compared to under this government.

The Catholic schools claim they have been unfairly targeted by the Gonski 2.0 school funding policy. Funding for over 600 Catholic systemic schools—over one-third of the Catholic system—has been cut under the Turnbull government, largely as a result of the removal of systemic funding arrangements. The Catholic Education Commission in Victoria claims these cuts will amount to an average of nearly $600,000 per school or just under $2,000 per student. Catholic schools across the country are forced to increase their fees as a result. I saw that some in regional New South Wales were forced to do that. The local Catholic schools are complaining very bitterly about it. The Australian reported in October 2017:

The National Catholic Education Commission has warned that fee rises are being considered for 766,000 students under changes also questioned by Lutheran Education and the Victorian Ecumenical System of Schools.

The principal of Emmaus College in East Melbourne said that his Catholic school stood to lose $982,000, or $773 per student in next year's funding and would have to decide whether to increase school fees or cut programs.

The working poor, some of whom attend the Catholic school system, are the people who are particularly going to be under severe financial strain as a result of this. Catholic Education Victoria states its aim:

Catholic education aspires to provide a low-fee, modest, faith-based, inclusive schooling option for all families who seek one.

Cuts in federal funding put the low-fee model at risk. Labor is committed to ensuring, just as with the government school system, the sustainability of the Catholic education model without the need to push up fees.

Gonski 2.0 limited the Catholic education system's autonomy to distribute funds according to its own assessment of local school needs, and I can tell you they are very different according to each school. I know some of my local parish schools such as St Aloysius, St Joe's and St Columbus are very worried about these changes and the effect of fees on their parents. They take people from large families. They take the families of recent refugees and they make no bones about being inclusive in taking everyone even though they are a fee-paying system. They often have people in apparently wealthy postcodes like Elwood or Caulfield who are lower down the socioeconomic ladder. So it's very difficult imposing hard and fast models on parochial schools which are inclusive and take everyone and not necessarily the wealthiest people from that suburb.

There have been reports claiming that the government is considering giving the Catholic sector an additional $1 billion to make up for the inequities in the socioeconomic status system that I just described and which was introduced by Minister Birmingham. However, this admission of a failed funding model has not been backed up by anything in the 2018-19 budge, and as of yet the government has failed to release its own review of its funding methodology and its effect on these poorer parish schools. According to The Weekend Australian in May 2018, the Catholic Church believes it needs $3 billion for its schools over the next decade to make up for these inequities.

I want to end on something a bit mischievous. Recently the ABC has been complaining about funding cuts. I was very aggrieved at the cancellation of Lateline, the once highly valued program which would often set out the agenda for the following day's news. In my view, the cut backs to PM to half an hour, the cut of Lateline and some changes to Melbourne morning radio and not the kind of changes that serious listeners to the ABC want. The ABC announced in February that Lateline's audience was steadily declining. In 2017 it had an average audience of about 185,000, whereas the ABC news channel had a figure of was 239,000 in 2014-15. The program's demise came after frequent changing of presenters and changing formats. When it was in its prime it had such presenters such as Kerry O'Brien and Maxine McKew, each of whom held the role for six or more years. Between 2007 and 2017 the show went through four hosts, and this is likely to have put off viewers. With few exceptions—perhaps 7.30the public is left with pay TV as a main option for political discussion. This is failing on the part of the national broadcaster, whose role is to provide balanced and unbiased journalistic debate on serious issues of current affairs.

In February the ABC stated in its annual public hearing:

The program's resources have been better utilised by being reinvested into the ABC Investigations team, the Specialist Reporting Team, and new programs Matter of Fact, National Wrap and a 10.30pm news bulletin.

I've seen as a Matter of Fact with Stan Grant. That's a valuable addition. That's actually making up for some of the absence of Lateline. But I must say that I don't understand why so many ABC current affairs programs had to be liquidated in order to provide money for the so-called ABC investigations unit, headed by the empire-building John Lyons and his offsider, with whom he has decided political views, Sophie McNeill, whom he brought back from the Middle East. I don't understand why we're all suffering from a lack of current affairs in order that one faction of the ABC should be funded more. The public benefit was in an hour-long PM program and a Lateline program.

I'm glad the new chairman of the ABC and its new executive director, Michelle Guthrie, are being more sensitive in issuing apologies. There was an apology issued to the ECAJ for a disgracefully bigoted broadcast that was broadcast on Radio National. I commend the ABC for doing that. But I can't understand their priorities as far as current affairs are concerned. A public face, with more PMand more Lateline, is the way I would go, with fewer invisible investigations units.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank all members who contributed to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2018-19 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2018-19. These budget appropriation bills seek authority from the parliament for the expenditure of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the 2018-19 financial year. In introducing the bills, the government has already highlighted some of the more significant items provided for in these bills. The total of the appropriations sought through these three appropriation bills is just under $108.5 billion.

I would also like to thank all members who contributed to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2017-18 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2017-18. These supplementary additional estimates appropriation bills seek authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for this financial year. In introducing the bills, the government has already highlighted some of the more significant items provided for in these bills. Most importantly, the bills will provide approximately $6.5 billion to the Department of the Environment and Energy, including approximately $6 billion to facilitate the Australian government's purchase of the New South Wales and Victorian governments' shares in Snowy Hydro Limited, and just under $435 million to continue to deliver the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan. The total of the appropriations sought through these two appropriation bills is just under $8 billion.

Once again, I thank all members for their contributions and commend these bills to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move:

That consideration in detail of the bill be made an order of the day for a later hour this day.

Question agreed to.