Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are probably a lot of people in the gallery today who are wondering what this is all about, so we should cut to the issue. What happened in Queensland is that the Labor government brought in a piece of legislation that was going to put local government officials in fear of criminal prosecution, and possibly jail, if they tried to bring about a democratic reflection of the aspirations of their community. This is what the Labor Party brought about in section 159ZY of the Local Government Act 1993:

(2)

If ... a local government had resolved to conduct a poll the conduct of which is prohibited under subsection (1), the local government—

(a)

must take all necessary action to ensure that the poll is not conducted; and

(b)

must give public notice that the poll is not to proceed—

(i)

by advertisement in a newspaper ... and

(ii)

in any other way that is reasonably appropriate for making the information publicly known.

This also comes from the Labor Party:

(3)

A person who is a councillor of a local government must not take any action for the purpose of the conduct of a poll that the local government is prohibited from conducting under this section.Maximum penalty—15 penalty units.

(4)

All persons who contravene subsection (3) in relation to a particular poll, whether or not they are prosecuted under subsection (3), are jointly and severally liable for the total poll amount, which may be recovered by the State, in action as for a debt for the amount, and reimbursed to the existing local government, or the successor of the existing local government, less the costs of recovering the amount.

That is a piece of legislation passed by a Labor government not in Zimbabwe but in our nation. That was passed by a Labor government in this nation. It is a complete and utter abhorrence to the democratic process. We have heard about being contrived and duplicitous; the approach of the Labor Party on this is both of those.

This is a ridiculous position. We have 59 people from the Labor Party in the state of Queensland who support this sort of legislation, and then we have six people from the state of Queensland in the federal Labor Party, including Mr Kevin Rudd, Mr Wayne Swan, Ms Kirsten Livermore and Mr Ripoll, who apparently do not. Some sort of epiphany happens to them as they go through the lounge at Brisbane Airport and they all of a sudden change their views from those of all their colleagues. And that is supposed to be accepted by the Australian people. This is a duplicitous and contrived position to cover up a complete abomination of the democratic process in our nation.

What is this about? What are we actually trying to do? Council amalgamations are going to destroy the identity of areas and the identity of the state of Queensland. It is arbitrary nastiness to destroy local towns. What happens in these local towns when the council leaves? What is left behind are the people who cannot move because their qualifications or their education are not at a certain level, because their age is beyond when they can go into other parts of society in Brisbane or because their capital base is insufficient. Who are left behind? The most marginalised and the most impoverished are persecuted, left behind in poverty traps throughout the state. And this comes from a Labor government that is supposed to be extolling the virtues of a wider horizon. We have areas where people’s democratic right is going to be removed and where their numbers are going to be completely walked over by incorporation of big regional centres. This situation has come from the Labor Party; the Labor Party have brought this about.

There is another example of the duplicitous nature of the Labor Party—this time, the federal Labor Party. When they moved their amendment to the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Democratic Plebiscites) Bill 2007, they put that the Senate expresses support for ‘a referendum to extend constitutional recognition to local government’. That is probably an admirable cause, but they had to tack on this ridiculous part: that the Senate ‘notes that the Australian Labor Party believes communities are entitled to express a view’—and on they go about nuclear power plants. They have to try to once more pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian people with another contrived, duplicitous amendment that talks about two completely different issues and bangs them together for us to swallow.

I support the idea that in the future we will have to look at the constitutional recognition of local government. When we do, we should be doing that on behalf of the Local Government Association in my state, Queensland, and listening to their recommendations. There is one font of knowledge that you will not be listening to when it comes to the support of local government and that will be the Labor Party, because it is the Labor Party that brought this all about. This is a creature that they have brought into life. The reason they have this duplicitous approach is that they think it might affect them at a federal election. That is the issue. It is a political problem for which there is only a political solution. The political pressure point is the upcoming federal election, and the people of Noosa, of Port Douglas, of Taroom and of Redcliffe know this.