Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What a pity that the 36 of the 38 government members were missing throughout the presentation by the Leader of Democrats on this all-important budget night in reply here in the Senate. This year’s budget is more about greed than green. The Treasurer and the government have a huge ethical responsibility in spending the nation’s money and in ensuring its future. That ethical responsibility was not met in this budget. The massive tax cuts were for spending now. But the government failed in its higher responsibility to tackle the greatest threat to this nation’s future and to the lifestyle of our children and their children: climate change.

The Treasurer began his speech by saying that this country of Australia has changed a lot in the last 10 years. Well, it certainly has. It has got hotter, it has got drier and it has become more threatened by the arrogant failure of this government to address the environmental crises, and to make this country safer, more secure and happier for this generation and for the generations yet to come. The Greens have markedly different values and priorities from the government. The priorities for a Greens budget would include halting climate change, conserving water resources and protecting the environment, ensuring the 650,000 Australians on dental waiting lists receive the care they need, urgently funding measures to reduce the 17-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and of course increasing education funding to meet the OECD average education spending levels—where Australia should be, if not well in advance of that.

On climate change, security analysts from the Pentagon, along with ecologists and the world’s preponderant scientific opinion, know that climate change stalks our global community’s future more fearsomely and less discriminately than terrorism. With Tuesday night’s budget, however, came the dumping not just of Australian’s hopes but of Australian’s expectations that our government would at last tackle that climate change nemesis. The environment budget barely budged—just $281 million more, or two per cent of the unprecedented budget surplus of $15 billion. Yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the same Treasurer and the same government just last week that the world has less than 10 years to turn around the accelerating pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases or we face catastrophic consequent changes for the planet, and that of course means for Australia.

Climate change is not a future event. It is here, now, with a monumental impact. That is why the Howard government budget outlines a $10 billion federal-state rescue plan for the Murray-Darling Basin, including the buyback of overallocated irrigation licences, which have left the rivers run down, incapable and stressed. Seventy per cent of the great red gums lining the river’s banks are suffering, dying or dead. But the Treasurer fails to act. Inexplicably, his plan for buyback of those excessive licences which are sucking the water out of the river systems does not begin until the budget of 2009-10. He has put it off for two more ruinous years. The Greens would immediately fund measures to address overallocation in the Murray-Darling Basin. We know, the farmers know and the public know that this cannot wait another two years.

The Treasurer, however, has decided on an immediate $31 billion in tax cuts over the next four years. This comes after the $25 billion largesse, including tax cuts to the rich, in last year’s budget. This year’s $31 billion, we are told, is for across-the-board cuts for salaried workers. Well, yes, it is, but the board is skewed. Once again, the rich get much richer at everyone else’s expense. In fact, 10½ per cent of people get 44 per cent of the money. Those on over $75,000, get the lion’s share. Those so poor they do not pay tax, including Australia’s 1.2 million pensioners, get a one-off $500 payment, and then after the election nothing. Carers, who save this government billions of dollars, get a meagre $1,000, and then after the election nothing. The budget is top heavy. Far from fostering a fair Australia, the big end of town is once again left clutching a big fistful of dollars. The Greens will support the across-the-board tax cuts, even though they are regressive. Unlike Labor, we will vote against the provisions for huge special cuts—some $10 billion over three years for the highest income earners beginning next year.

With that $10 billion, we would move to make Australia the energy efficient nation. I doubt the Treasurer or the Prime Minister know what energy efficient means. They are so stuck on the much less effective, more expensive, more dangerous and, for now, unavailable option of nuclear reactors. Yet energy efficiency could slash Australia’s coal consumption by a massive 30 per cent. That would mean a rapid cut in greenhouse gas emissions in a way that dangerous nuclear power simply could not emulate. Already, Australia’s 250 biggest corporations, which effectively consume 40 per cent of our electricity, are doing energy audits. We would regulate to require that the audits’ recommendations be implemented. We would extend the auditing to the rest of business in Australia and to Australian homes over the coming years, offering government funding as needed to ensure that audit figures are implemented.

Environment Minister Turnbull’s $8 million allocation to change light bulbs will eventually reduce greenhouse emissions by four million tonnes per year—that is equivalent to taking eight per cent of cars off the roads in Australia. But handing out light bulbs is like handing out sand buckets during a bushfire. It is better than nothing, but it is no substitute for investing in the fire brigade. However, implementing the energy audits of those 250 big companies would save roughly 84 million tonnes, which is more effective than taking every single car, truck and bus off the roads of Australia. In addition, if all of Australia’s 5.5 million homes were fitted with a solar hot-water system, which is one of the cheapest ways most of us can substantially reduce emissions, another 23 million tonnes of emissions would be saved. Solar hot-water systems cost about $3,000 more than the old electric water heaters, but they pay for themselves through lower power bills within five to eight years.

These are just a few of the many untapped energy efficiency opportunities this country has but which are being missed by this government. The Greens want the government to bring in energy-efficient building codes and retrofitting, for example, with insulation of existing buildings for energy efficiency. The government budget allocates just $30 million per annum for solar panels. Look at that on the back of an envelope: $8,000 per roof means that just 3,750 roofs per annum will be fitted with panels—not enough to fit the roofs of Dubbo. So it would take up to 2,000 years to realise the aim of converting every roof in our sunny country to a mini power station. That is Howard hopeless.

The Greens will pursue real national action, not Howard government tokenism. In the absence of government action on energy efficiency, but with the tax cuts, let me give some advice on how Australia’s working families might combine the two. If a householder spends one week’s worth of tax cuts on two compact fluorescent light globes then she or he can convert the $14 into $100 worth of savings, because one compact fluorescent globe saves around $50 to $75 in its lifetime. If a householder takes the $14 worth of tax cuts for two years—that is, $1,500—she or he could spend $150 on a home audit and/or replace all the light globes at home with compact fluorescents, because a pack of five costs $20, and invest in insulation, which costs $1,000 to $2,000 for an average home, or solar hot water, which costs $2,000 to $5,000. This could save around $500 a year—hundreds of dollars off household power bills year after year into the future. So the invested tax cut is repaid to the householder in three years and there is a $500 bonus year after year following that.

The Australian Conservation Foundation is calling for five per cent of homes to be retrofitted for energy efficiency each year, which means that within a generation all Australian homes will be energy smart. This should start with low-income and disadvantaged people and in particular target rental properties, which are usually the least well insulated. It is a proposal that the Greens urge the government—or, if the government cannot do it, the opposition—to take up, work out and implement.

Two other great opportunities would be grasped by the Greens. The first is to end the broad-scale logging and burning of Australia’s old-growth forests. This is destroying the nation’s wildlife and needlessly polluting the atmosphere. There are 1.5 million hectares of plantations in Australia. That is more than enough to supply all of Australia’s wood needs for paper, home building and furniture making. But Prime Minister Howard’s commitment, echoed by opposition leader Rudd, is to keep needlessly cutting and burning Australia’s biggest carbon banks: its old-growth forests. That has to be altered and the logging and burning of forests committed, like whaling, to history. It is extraordinary that the budget has $197 million to begin the task of ending the slash-and-burn logging of the forests of Indonesia, but in the last two years $100 million has been spent on forest intensification, logging and burning, of the great forests of Tasmania to the south. The second opportunity the Greens would grasp is to transform Australia from being road dependent to using rail and sea transport for freight, with fast, clean and efficient public transport systems. One small component would be to abolish the GST on public transport, thereby cutting ticket prices on rail, bus, tram and ferry passenger transport by an immediate 10 per cent.

Summing it up, with good regulation and part of the $10 billion tax cuts for the mega-rich diverted to a national energy efficiency program, Australia could indeed make deep cuts in its infamous greenhouse gas emissions—as much as 30 per cent. We could go from being the worst polluter amongst the developing countries to the most advanced, cleanest, most efficient, most job prospective, most export oriented, resource renewable, energy efficient, ecologically transformed nation.

Contrast that with what the government has proposed. Just yesterday it was joined by Labor in voting down a Greens motion to end the logging and burning of Australia’s old-growth forests and wildlife habitat. Acting Deputy President Troeth, you will remember that this morning both parties voted down Senator Milne’s motion to back global scientific opinion that, to prevent catastrophic climate change, we should aim to keep global temperature rises to two degrees Celsius or less. Into that prescription read: the coal industry, with its puppeting hands over the big parties. We could not even philosophically aim for a target that the world scientists say we must aim for if we are going to avoid catastrophic change. When I say ‘we’ I mean Labor and the coalition. The Greens would put that aim absolutely on centre stage and achieve it in the interests of our children and the grandchildren of Australia.

An unfortunate reality is that there will be more natural disasters in our region. The tsunami in 2004 showed all Australians how vulnerable we are. The scientific consensus is that climate change will result in more, and more destructive, cyclones, bushfires and epidemics. Australia needs to be ready to react more quickly and more effectively to natural and man-made disasters in our region. Tonight I renew the Greens’ call for a disaster relief centre for the nation which has the capacity to deploy people, equipment and aid to those in need inside and outside our country when disaster strikes.

The Japanese had a team of doctors and nurses on the ground in Indonesia within 24 hours of the tsunami. The French had aid in New Orleans within a day of Hurricane Katrina because they had predeployed materials in the Caribbean for exactly that purpose. The one thing preventing Australia from having such an international, regional and domestic relief centre is political will. I am ashamed that, when a ferry sank in neighbouring Indonesia’s waters earlier this year with the catastrophic loss of some 500 lives, this government did not pick up the phone, did not offer assistance. That is something we must redress, and having a national and international relief centre may well do that where that political mind is closed and the political will is missing.

On the topic of our responsibility to the region, the Greens believe that Australia should immediately increase our aid budget to the 0.7 per cent of GDP recommended by the UN. That recommendation, which we agreed to, goes right back to the beginning of the last decade. Australia is a rich country and we can afford to show leadership on such an important humanitarian matter. Instead, the government’s budget affords the poverty-stricken billions of our shared world only half of that target commitment.

The government continues down the path towards an American style two-tiered health system. The Greens would abolish the health insurance rebate scheme and divert that $3 billion into the public health system instead. The current scheme serves the nation so badly that the taxpayer top-up for this private, exclusive system blew out by $283 million last year. That comes from the taxpayers and it is more than the entire extra spending on the government’s environment budget for 2007-08.

The Greens policy is to have a ‘denticare’ system paralleling Medicare. No Australian child or adult—to paraphrase someone else—should live with dental caries by 2010. Yet this government torpedoed the $100 million concession card holders dental care program back in 1996, its first year in office, and now there are an estimated—can you believe this?—650,000 Australians on dental waiting lists. Some elderly or disabled citizens wait two to three years to have their dental problems cared for. That is unforgivably heartless and a dereliction of duty by a government with a $15 billion surplus it has trouble spending.

Childhood obesity is estimated to cost Australia tens of billions of dollars in the coming decades as record rates of diabetes and heart disease debilitate our children and our children as adults down the line. In the Senate right now, the Greens have an amendment to the food standards act that would see all food advertisements banned during children’s viewing hours. However, the government has failed on this issue, and its failure is difficult to fathom. When it comes to the $4,000 that new parents get, young mothers are not allowed to receive the lump sum because it is feared that they might spend it all on televisions and cigarettes. But when it comes to junk food advertising—you have to look for the unseen hand of the big food corporations here—we are told that it would be patronising to suggest that parents are not in a position to decide what to let their children eat. The costs of junk food and obesity, like the costs of climate change, will dominate public debate in the coming decades. If we took decisive action now—and it appears this government will not—we would not just save money; we would save lives and raise the wellbeing of the nation for decades.

Only two years ago, the government was in the midst of another reaction to public fear in the form of bird flu. While the media may have lost interest in bird flu, the world’s epidemiologists have not. The threats to Australia, and to the rest of the world, remain as high as they were in 2005. A recent report from the Lowy Institute found that even a mild pandemic influenza outbreak would have significant consequences for the global economic output. In this scenario, it predicts that there would be 1.4 million deaths and that approximately a third of a trillion US dollars would be shaved off the global economic output. Yet the government has not allocated any new funding measures to this threat in the budget. Where is the public education campaign to sensibly prepare Australia for a bird flu pandemic which could leave not 180 but 180,000 citizens dead? Instead of funding such public preparedness for an epidemic, Mr Howard is infamously diverting up to $60 million to explain his so-called Work Choices backflip. This inverse priority is staggering and politically corrupt.

Aboriginal health and housing is grossly underfunded and misdirected in this year’s budget. It will not go anywhere near far enough to address the 17-year life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. The focus of the government’s budget measures is on regional and remote communities—and no doubt they deserve much more funding. However, the majority of Aboriginal Australians live in urban communities where their life expectancy is just as bad as those in remote communities.

Health experts agree that $500 million per year is required to lift Aboriginal health standards to those of non-Aboriginal Australians. Taking this figure, Tom Calma, the social justice commissioner, has proposed a plan to address the gap in life expectancy within a generation. The Greens back him. It is appalling that rather than $500 million this budget allocates only about $30 million per annum to this nationally urgent responsibility.

A further $2.3 billion is needed to catch up on housing levels, but the Costello budget actually takes money away from Aboriginal housing in urban areas, focusing on remote and regional areas. Having taken the funding from urban Aboriginal housing, the government has done nothing to ease housing affordability, leaving the majority of Aboriginal Australians worse, not better, off. Despite recent international attention on Australia’s record as the worst in the developed world on Indigenous health and development, the government has yet again failed to deliver on meaningful reform. The blinkers are on, the eyes are down and the back is turned on the first Australians.

The Greens’ goal is for public education to become a full-time, not just a pre-election, priority for the federal government. Treasurer Costello’s budget was big on headlines but notably short on a plan to bring public education investment and outcomes up to world’s best standards. That would need $7 billion more in annual spending. The Treasurer’s $5 billion, one-off trust fund for universities will provide less than $400 million per annum—seriously short of 10 per cent of the required investment for Australian education to catch up with that of similar countries around the world.

The Greens call for the needed $7 billion dollar boost in public education from the Commonwealth. It is a national investment plan from preschool to university. It starts with building public preschools, paying preschool teachers a fair wage and guaranteeing two years of free public preschool to every Australian child. That is what is required. That is more than Labor committed to tonight. But let me praise Labor for the commitments made tonight by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rudd, after so many years of serious neglect and decline in the funding of Australian education by the Howard government. There is no single more important and far-reaching education measure that the nation’s government could take than providing much more funding for early childhood education.

The Greens also recognise the vital importance of TAFE not only to the skilling of our nation but also to social and community infrastructure. Not a single extra penny was spent on TAFE in this budget. The Greens would return funding to 1996 levels in real terms, $750 million, and work towards returning TAFE to permanent staffing, so ending this government’s cheap casualisation of the TAFE workforce.

In this week’s budget another step was taken towards the university sector being privatised and Americanised by this government. The Greens would abolish HECS and full-fee degrees, boost core funding for universities per student, and realise the aim of accessible, high-quality, equitable public education for all Australians. This would have been easily achievable had Mr Costello thought education was more important than the $55 billion in tax cuts of the last two years.

The Australian Greens will go to this year’s election offering a much more far-sighted plan for Australia than either the coalition or Labor. Besides our priorities for public health and education, we would keep Australia’s uranium in the ground and not in nuclear reactors in Sydney, Beijing or Mumbai. Unlike Labor and the coalition we would get the chainsaws and firebombers out of Australia’s great wild forests. And, unlike the coalition and Labor, we would prioritise clean energy efficiency over the expansion of coal-fired power stations in Australia and coal exports to the rest of the world. We all share the same atmosphere wherever that coal is burnt.

The Greens would move not just the dollars but the philosophy of this nation. We are the values party and so would implement triple bottom line accounting—budgets measuring and allocating not just the nation’s wealth but also its social and environmental wellbeing.

Prime Minister Howard still thinks politics is a fight between the economy and the environment. It is not. World’s best practice shows that good environmental policy is fundamental to good economic policy. You cannot plan Australia’s future, let alone assure intergenerational equity, if you do not guard its environment. The Greens’ regard for Australia is wider, longer and deeper than this old Howard view.

Ten years ago, coalition senators laughed at me in this chamber when I warned of the dangers of climate change. They are not laughing now. Ten years from now, this nation will be transforming. To do that, it needs a different hand at the helm. My job, our commitment as Greens, is to accelerate that transformation. Long after this week’s tax cuts are forgotten, the program I have outlined tonight on behalf of the Greens will remain part of the prescription for a new, safer, more responsible Australia in the 21st century.