John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

One each, it would seem. They go and build a new classroom for a school that has a total of three students. This is just outrageous.

What annoys me so much is that when I visit places like St Annes Nursing Home up in Broken Hill I find that they do not have enough money to expand their buildings to provide more facilities. They are a really good organisation, and Broken Hill has many people in that age bracket where they are needing care and will need care in the very near future. But we see a new classroom going into a school in western New South Wales that has a total school attendance of just three. So much for the neglect of our aged care and so much for the waste in this program.

Let us move on to the climate change and the ETS. Let us talk about climate change. It is ‘the greatest moral challenge of our age’, but the Prime Minister puts it off until 2013 and blames the opposition for it. The Copenhagen junket in December last year cost $1.5 million, with the Prime Minister and his entourage, and for what result? Nothing. They virtually told the Prime Minister to go away. Yet he is spending millions and millions of dollars advertising to raise awareness of climate change.

Back to the broadband issue. Labor promised broadband $4.7 billion and spent $20 million on a cancelled tender process and another $25 million on consultants to work out if it was viable. The end result is the $43 billion project. But we know who the seven per cent who miss out will be. They will be from regional areas—around one and a half million people.

What about the home insulation program? The government was warned there were problems with this program, but the Prime Minister put his hands over his ears and ordered his environment minister to roll out the program. It was payday for the crooks and conmen out there. It cost $1 billion to fix the home insulation debacle. There were 240,000 dodgy or unsafe installations, 1,500 electrified roofs, 120 house fires and four deaths. That $1 billion could have built 32 cancer clinics. It is $1 billion wasted—not of taxpayers’ money but of borrowed money—that could have built 32 cancer clinics.

And what has happened to those businesses who took the Prime Minister at his word? They ordered in the batts and put on workers and then had the rug pulled out from underneath them. Many legitimate businesses are still owed thousands of dollars by the Rudd government for work done before the program was closed on 19 February. This would have to be the biggest waste of any government program in Australia’s history, and the ‘economic conservative’ is presiding over it.

I want to go on to talk about the buyback of water. The Kahlbetzer family was paid $303 million to buy back their water licences. Two of the rivers—the Gwydir and the Lachlan—do not even run into the Murray. The Gwydir empties out into the Gwydir wetlands. In a once-in-100-years flood, the Lachlan may get to the Murrumbidgee, but it is unlikely. Then we have the Macquarie River going through Dubbo, where a licence was bought back, and it runs out into the Macquarie Marshes. But the Kahlbetzer family said, ‘You buy all or none.’ That is $303 million to let more water go down the Murray, and three of the rivers do not even run into the Murray. The wasteful spending that we are seeing in this whole program is outrageous.

When you look back at the Whitlam era, and the borrowing and waste, this government today makes the Whitlam government look conservative. The wasteful and reckless spending will cause interest rates to rise. That is a big thing about this whole program—the borrowing of money. We had a debt of—what? A couple of days ago it was $140 billion of gross debt. That will run at about $150 billion before the end of this financial year. Add another $41 billion onto that, and that is $191 billion by 30 June 2011. Add another $13 billion after that, and we are looking at about $204 billion gross debt. Even in two years time, that is $6.5 billion to pay the interest alone. Imagine what $6.5 billion could do. We realise there is a global financial crisis and we realise that you need some stimulation, but—