Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

While the government seeks to respond to Senator Abetz’s question on this matter, I might use the occasion of the committee stage to reflect on some comments that I did not have the opportunity to address earlier. Senator Abetz has raised a question which we dealt with during the committee hearing stage, so I know the information will shortly be available to him. Rather than waste the Senate’s time, I think this is probably a good opportunity for me to make some general comments in relation to the overall package.

Firstly, I would like to take a brief moment to reflect on the situation in Victoria and the disaster that has occurred there, which is, I am sure, dampening the mood of all senators in this place, particularly those, like me, from Victoria. The tragedies that have occurred have touched many, if not almost all, of us who know people who have been involved. The circumstances around the crisis and the issues that government faces in managing the crisis into the future are another significant challenge for us, in connection with the issues that we are dealing with here as well. The Prime Minister made it clear overnight that the federal government is looking at, quite aside from this stimulus package, arrangements to help rebuild Victoria, along with the Victorian government. I applaud those efforts. The general stimulus that the federal government is looking at for the country as a whole will also be a useful vehicle. But, as the Prime Minister made clear overnight, a response to the Victorian situation is a very important and critical matter that the federal government will be dealing with quite separately.

I want in this discussion to go back to the broad framework of what we are dealing with in the stimulus package. Sitting here listening to Senator Boyce and some of the other opposition speeches in the second reading debate, I became quite concerned that a number of senators in this place really do not seem to comprehend the broader context of what we face. That was certainly the case in discussions about the debt situation with respect to this package. There was a lack of understanding of where Australia sits in the global environment in terms of the debt that is being managed in this process. There were also a range of other elements mentioned that I will take the opportunity to deal with now.

Senator Coonan, in our committee hearings, went to what has been called the ‘three Ts’. I think they are a very helpful summary of what we are dealing with. I could spend several minutes on them now, but I might deal with them a little bit later and, firstly, go through why we have this stimulus package, this urgent and very significant need to act. Indeed, Senator Polley highlighted some of those issues in her comments earlier. We cannot afford not to act and not to act very quickly. That is mainstream international economic advice. You would be struggling very seriously to find someone who does not agree that that is what we need to do. That is the first point.

Going back to the three Ts, let us flesh them out a little bit further, even going back to Senator Boyce’s points. When you go back and reflect on those three Ts, you understand why the package has been designed as it has been. The first of them is: timely. During discussion in the committee hearings we had a lot of reflection on the sorts of delivery mechanisms that were being used, that one-off payments were being used and that there might be more effective ways of generating consumption. There were a whole range of issues raised that seemed to miss one critical point: what we are doing now must be immediate. It needs to be immediate. The tax bonuses and the payments based on family tax benefit A and family tax benefit B are our delivery mechanisms to ensure that that boost to consumption can happen now. It is our most effective, most efficient way of dealing with the next T, which is: targeted. This is targeted to those households that we know will principally consume the payments.

Before I move on to the second T in detail, I will talk about the other elements of ‘timely’. We have been asked questions such as: why are we looking at social infrastructure rather than what is termed economic infrastructure? Why are we looking at schools as opposed to railways, road projects and suchlike? That is not to deny that we do have road projects that will be carried out through the local government arrangements in this package. But the point that seems to have been missed by a number of senators is that these social infrastructure projects are the ones that we are most likely to be able to get out quickly. The term ‘shovel-ready’ has been used. But it is not just the shovel-ready aspect that helps us get these projects out quickly; it is because they are already in the community. They can activate the community and they are more likely to be labour intensive and generate those jobs that we know we will need.

Going to the points on jobs, I despair at the level of semantics that has occurred in the discussion on this package to date. We listen to the economists trying to predict how many jobs will be created by various measures. Probably no-one knows the full scope of the unemployment that we are going to confront. We are focused on injecting into the economy measures that will best support people currently in employment and on developing projects that will employ more people, pick up those who end up being displaced or prevent people being displaced at all. Any attempt to encapsulate that in an estimate of numbers is a very, very risky exercise. There are assumptions that various economists make and models that they use, and I think most of us understand there are probably more than a handful of different ways to estimate some of these things. But if you go back to the basics, which is what this package is designed to do, they are about what we can do now which will be timely, targeted and temporary. And that third point—temporary—is because we are mindful of the debt situation. We want to give the economy a boost, but we do not want it to be done in such a way that we carry the burden into the future. That is the point about being temporary. That is why the one-off payments have been made. That is why we are putting them out as quickly as we possibly can. And it is those payments which we anticipate will boost the economy and help Australia through this global financial crisis.

I was astounded to hear some of the opposition speeches in the second reading debate suggesting that we are in this mess because of the current Labor government. I do not know how any opposition senator can plausibly suggest such a thing. Are they in absolute denial? As well as climate change sceptic, should we now coin the description of ‘global financial crisis sceptic’? The content of the opposition speeches on this package really left me astounded. Even in this committee stage debate, we heard the suggestion from Senator Boyce that the government needs to talk to the opposition because they are the ones with the ideas. Anyone who listened to the second reading discussion on this bill knows the nature of those ideas. As I said, the suggestion that we are in this mess because we have a Labor government is incredible. I suspect opposition senators might want to reconsider the rhetoric that they pump into this debate. Fortunately, the Senate has responded appropriately to the circumstances that currently face us because of the natural disasters. Perhaps opposition senators should take stock and reflect more seriously about the global financial crisis and what some of their speeches or contributions will look like in six months time.

Let us apply some of that to some of the other issues that have been raised during the course of the committee consideration. The scope of the individual payments was an issue that was canvassed. Senator Fielding, for instance, came forth with a range of stories of people who will miss out. Unfortunately, in the delivery of social payments, benefits and bonuses there will always be what economists call outliers. No delivery mechanism is perfect. We know that. In much the same way, we know there will always be some level—hopefully, a very small level—of misuse in the delivery of services. Senator Boyce talked about the potential misuse of the insulation arrangements. We know these things occur. The job of government is to manage those and make them as minimal as possible. And we know that, because of the urgency of this matter, we are yet to develop some of the guidelines for the implementation of some of these schemes. But I have confidence that the relevant Commonwealth departments that are dealing with these matters will be very mindful of the sorts of concerns that Senator Boyce expressed.

As an aside, because I also got the email about insulation from the curtain maker, I would say that perhaps an education program might not hurt as part of improving people’s domestic energy consumption and response to heat. When Senator Boyce was talking about insulation I reflected that not only had I received the same email but that on the day of the disaster in Victoria I was home and my husband put two thick blankets and doonas over our reasonably thick curtains in the one main room of our house that was not well cooled. It is amazing how you can improvise if you have the basic knowledge about what works effectively. I also reflected that we have heard in discussions on the radio that wall insulation is often quite helpful as well—something I think I aspire to for the second storey in our house. But the basic facts about the insulation package are that it will help support Australian jobs—we know that—and that it is targeted at those Australian households that lack ceiling insulation, which is a pretty critical point. If you are going to have a program that targets the most basic need for energy efficient homes, what would be one of the most critical issues for energy efficiency and managing extremes in the climate? Certainly there are other measures you can take, but the most basic of considerations is ceiling insulation.

Senator Boyce says there are other things we should consider and other things we should do. There is absolutely no doubt about that. But at some point you have to accept that we need to act quickly, act immediately, act now. We cannot afford the time involved for the opposition to get their act together and make sensible proposals here. If the opposition had a serious plan that outlined their claim—and that is all it is at this stage: a claim—that there is a better way, then that might be worthy of some general public consideration. But there is no opposition plan about a better way to achieve what this package does. This package will deliver the boost to our economy in a timely, targeted and temporary fashion. (Time expired)