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

I rise today to give my address-in-reply to the speech by Governor-General Michael Jeffery AC, CVO, MC and to bring up a couple of issues that I think we can go further with. I think health issues in Australia, especially in regional areas, can be addressed in a more dynamic manner than how we are currently dealing with them. We still have cases in Australia where towns such as Cunnamulla, Thargaminda and even Pittsworth, near Toowoomba, are without a doctor. It is not a case of having the right standard of medical care; there is no doctor in the town. We should have the capacity to be more dynamic in our thinking about how we can fill these gaps. We have obviously had some major problems in Queensland with the Dr Patel issue. This is a case of not doing our homework prior to Dr Patel turning up and it is also a cover-up by the people who vouched for his credentials. Those credentials were not apparent. In fact, he had an extremely chequered history.

Be that as it may, we should make sure that those problems are dealt with—and I implore the state Labor government in Queensland to be more effective in its role of government and to cover those issues. However, we must not close our eyes to the fact that a lot of our problems, especially in regional areas, can be fixed with doctors from overseas. We should be more streamlined and more proactive in how we source these doctors.

I have been lucky enough to have delegations come to me from Brazil, where there are approximately 350,000 doctors—they say an oversupply. A lot of them are from extremely competent universities recognised internationally, recognised by the Royal College of Physicians, and they would quite happily take the opportunity to move to Australia but, unfortunately, this process is stymied. We must have the capacity to attract workers from countries such as Brazil—there is a good experience with Brazilian workers coming in on 457 visas, especially for such things as meatworks; they fit into the community and work well and everybody is happy—and to use those countries as a source of other professions, especially doctors and dentists. There should be a proactive move to encourage those who wish to move to Australia, to fix our problems when they have an abundance and we are lacking. If they are willing to come and to try to effect that process then this is something that could become a constructive policy of a government. It could bring a result in areas where currently communities, especially some of the Indigenous communities in the west of my state and also communities in general, are lacking dentists and doctors.

If we cannot fill positions with doctors, if we have an inability or if people are unwilling, we are going to have to look at the role extension of nurses. There will have to be a recognition that it is no good to say, ‘A nurse is not as good as a doctor,’ if you cannot get a doctor to turn up at all. This area of policy has to be addressed by the government in the coming term. They cannot just discuss the problem; they must come up with concrete solutions and I have laid one on the table.

With respect to the Governor-General’s reference to economics, I have serious concerns about the capacity of the current government to ardently deal with the issue of a US recession. I have been scrolling through the results produced by a search engine to find any statements by the current Treasurer as to how he intends to deal with the fact that the US, from Mr Greenspan on, has foreshadowed a recession and is now moving into a recession. We in Australia, whether or not we like it, cannot believe in the myth of decoupling. We will be, unfortunately, part of that process.

It is a cyclical thing and the previous government, especially with Peter Costello, did an exceptional job of riding the wave of prosperity in its best possible form to leave our nation in the strongest possible position. To suggest otherwise is a myth. But now the world is turning and we will need the current Treasurer to be competent in his management of what will be a precarious position. It is no good for him to continually point his finger over his shoulder and say, ‘This is nothing to do with me.’ He is now the Treasurer; therefore he has to deal with it.

One of the most dire things that we are looking at at the moment is that oil has now gone through the $110 a barrel mark with an exchange rate of 90c. If we have a recession and a loss of desire by the Americans to purchase Chinese products and therefore a loss of the Chinese desire, to the extent that it is currently there, to consume Australian resources and we have the devaluation of the Australian dollar, we are going to have an absolute economic catastrophe in the suburbs of our major capitals. The price of fuel will go through the roof. Rather than being a Jonah or a harbinger of dire times I have spoken about this a number of times. We have to come up with an alternative policy to deal with the issues that have come about because of our total reliance on an oil based fuel for the internal combustion engine.

Families will not be able to afford fuel at $3 a litre and that is where it will be heading. It will not be possible to get a 60-litre tank filled for $180 and just take it out of the budget every week. That effect will go right to the sense, style and quality of life of so many working families, especially in our suburbs. It will make the economics of transport and the economics of people in regional areas immensely difficult. This cost overlay will filter into every section of our economy. On this issue, which is coming to our horizon, we have not seen one policy by the Treasurer or the current government as to how they are going to manage it. How high do we need the price of fuel to go before it becomes a requirement of the government to start dealing with the issue? It is the No. 1 consumer item of concern today. The Australian people rightly have an inherent fear of how they are going to manage this increase in fuel prices.

I do not know whether it is a panacea but we have always put on the table biofuel, not because of any particular reason but at least as a move towards a solution. I do not for one moment say it is a solution to everything, but at least it is a step in a suite of possibilities that we need to take on board if we are going to maintain the quality of life as expected now by people who see a motor vehicle as part of the expression of their economic freedom.

Climate change is another issue. I refer also to one of the issues that Senator Heffernan brought up. We have to be more proactive in how we develop new areas of this nation to produce food for the nation if you truly believe climate change is what is occurring. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say: ‘You’re a sceptic; you don’t believe in climate change. However, we’re not going to propose any concrete and definitive plan for how to deal with it, especially in how we feed ourselves.’ If climate change is happening—and I believe that climate changes all the time; it is obviously changing—then where is our plan for the development of the north? Why does this get compartmentalised as an issue that is not of concern? We cannot go on with a total reliance on the Murray-Darling Basin scheme if the capacity for it to produce food is diminished. We must find the next step. It must be in the development of the north and it is going to require changes to federal policy and to state government policy, especially tree-clearing guidelines, wild rivers legislation and these things that really we have to have another look at if we are serious about this problem.

A final issue that I want to briefly touch on is the concern I have when people start talking about reforming the federation. For me, reforming the federation is a key to centralisation. I have a concern that what we are seeing now with the current government is that it will be operated out of one office and that is Mr Rudd’s. It will be a government which will be completely centralist and socialist in its application of how it deals with the Australian people. It will be a government that does not espouse any adherence to the belief, to the idea, that people in certain parts of the nation have a different outlook on life. We are starting to see it already. There is a move towards the centralising of the bureaucracy, the centralising of control. It is manifestly growing and it will grow in the same form as the way Mr Rudd operated when he was in Queensland. It is about to be levelled at us here.

That is especially pertinent in this chamber because as senators it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we keep the aspect of decentralisation—that protection of a second chamber and that protection of the review and amendment of decisions. We need to make sure that the parliamentary process, which is always the best mechanism of democracy and freedom for a nation, remains sacrosanct. I implore all senators to remember that when they came to this chamber they swore an oath of office that they would uphold the Constitution. To my Labor colleagues I say that that will mean that at times you have to have the capacity and the desire to challenge even your own government.