Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to make some remarks in reply to the address given by Her Excellency the Governor-General. The other day when I was listening to the speech that she presented here in the chamber I had this feeling that we were heading down to some sort of nirvana land of political perfection—if you actually believed all the things that were in the speech. One of the things in this new world that we seem to have, with the ‘new paradigm’—as my colleague Senator Moore said yesterday that she was not going to mention it again, that is the one and only time I am going to use the P-word—is the government’s renewed focus, or even new focus, I would call it, on regional Australia. Interestingly, a lot of the people out there that I have been speaking to do not really believe that the government is genuine in its view of regional Australia which has suddenly come tipping to the fore. They are looking at it more as an expression of political expediency rather than as any great, long-term, genuine interest in regional Australia, and that is something I will perhaps explore a little further as we go along.

One area in which there has been a particular lack from this government is regional education. I looked through the Governor-General’s speech in quite a lot of detail, and not once did she use the phrase ‘regional students’—not once. This is from a government that has been telling the Australian people for quite some time that there was going to be an education revolution. I do not see how you can have an education revolution without having regional students as a priority. This has been borne out in some of the government’s actions, and quite a number of the things that I will raise today go to the heart of the fact that the government is not genuine in its belief in the future of regional Australia.

The government certainly do not understand regional students’ needs. You only have to look at the issue of the changes to the independent youth allowance that the government made to realise that they have no understanding whatsoever of the needs of regional students. The changes that they made left thousands of regional students unable to access financial assistance through the independent youth allowance—and that, certainly to this side of the chamber and, I know, to many people across our regional communities, was simply appalling. What the government have done is use some lines on a map to preclude thousands of regional students from being able to access independent youth allowance. We have heard some stories about this. My very good friend and colleague Darren Chester, the member for Gippsland, raised with me the other day a situation in his electorate where there are two students living on either side of the same street: one student can access independent youth allowance; the other cannot. How fair is that? This is a matter of fairness and equity for regional students. If the government are so keen on and so concerned about having an education revolution, there has to be fairness and equity so that regional students are able to access tertiary education.

We know that around 55 per cent of metropolitan students go on to tertiary education, compared to only 33 per cent from regional areas. The evidence shows that that is due to the financial impediment for those students, who have no choice but to relocate to be able to attend a tertiary institution. That is simply appalling. That gap is too great. Now the situation has been made even worse by this Labor government, because it is taking away that avenue, taking away that option—taking away the ability of many of those regional students to access the funding they so desperately need to get a tertiary education.

The coalition have lodged in the House of Representatives a notice of motion calling on the government to reinstate the inner regional zones for eligibility for those students so that they can access independent youth allowance. It is only fair and equitable that we do that. The Prime Minister, when she was the Minister for Education, was responsible for that change. Perhaps she did not realise it was going to have the effect that it did, but she should now realise that it has had an enormous impact on these regional students and she should show leadership and move to fix it—because it is not fair on these students that their pathway should be cut so dramatically by this Labor government.

The government should rise to this challenge, admit their mistake, reverse the decision and include the inner regional areas. It is as simple as including a line in the legislation. It is not arduous. It does come with a financial cost, but that can come from the Education Investment Fund. So it is a simple and straightforward decision for the government to make, to turn around now and make sure that those students are treated fairly and equitably, if in fact they want to prove that they really are serious about making sure that regional education is sustainable.

Interestingly, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee that I chaired held a very detailed inquiry into access to education for our regional students, both secondary and tertiary, last December. We came up with a series of recommendations that had been very thoroughly looked at right across the country. There has been not a word from the government, nothing, no response whatsoever in nine months to the recommendations that the committee, the bipartisan committee, put forward to the government. That does not say to me that this government is taking regional education very seriously at all. There has simply been no response whatsoever—not even a response we did not like; there has been nothing. There has been absolute silence from the government on the issue of the sustainability of regional education for those students. I think that is simply appalling.

One of the other areas that were raised in the Governor-General’s speech was water. Everybody in this chamber would know, or should know, that the Murray-Darling Basin plan guide is due to be released. It was due to be released in the middle of this year, but somehow or other it slipped off the agenda while we went through an election campaign—funny about that! Apparently, it had something to do with ‘caretaker mode’. However, there were a number of things that still went forward while the government was in caretaker mode, so there is a fair bit of scepticism about the fact that the plan did not come out when it was supposed to.

What we have now—and you will love this, colleagues—is that the plan is due to be released at four o’clock next Friday afternoon, in the middle of the school holidays and in the middle of the Commonwealth Games. If that is not a sign that the government is trying to bury the report, I do not know what is. I know that interested groups in the sector have written to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority pointing out the inappropriateness of having a release date of four o’clock next Friday afternoon. One would hope that perhaps it was an oversight. Perhaps I am being a little bit too harsh. Perhaps it was an oversight on behalf of the authority and they will move to release it on a far more appropriate date.

The government has absolutely no idea about the impact of removing water permanently from our regional communities. There has been precious little work done by this government on those socioeconomic impacts. That is neither fair nor appropriate for those people who live in those communities and, indeed, people right across Australia, who benefit from the production capacity of those regions. But, yet, the government has still, willy-nilly, gone down this course without having the appropriate work done. Fortunately, some groups have done some work on this and it really should alert the government to how important it is that we understand the impact that this removal of water is going to have. I simply do not believe that this government does understand that.

There was a report done recently by the Cotton Catchment Communities CRC looking at how the removal of water entitlements in the basin is going to affect basin communities. It was based on eight case studies across New South Wales and it found that a 10 per cent cut in water equates to 6,000 lost jobs, a 25 per cent cut in water equates to 14,000 lost jobs and a 50 per cent cut in water equates to 28,000 lost jobs. These are the types of scenarios that we are going to have to realise are going to occur if the government does not take steps, put measures in place and take the right decisions to ensure that these communities are not belted around the head like these figures show they are going to be. I was encouraged the other day to hear Minister Tony Burke point out that it actually is an issue, that we do have to look at what those social and economic impacts are going to be—talk about a long way down the track for somebody in the government to raise that as an issue, because this is the key issue. This is absolutely the key issue.

One of the things that are of great concern is the fact that the government ministers—previously we had Minister Wong; now we have Minister Burke—are seemingly abrogating their responsibility for the decisions that are going to be made about how this plan is going to work. That is not appropriate. It is not right for those ministers to abrogate their responsibility. The Australian people should be well aware that this is what they are doing. We heard Minister Wong, when she was in the role, saying that she would accept the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s plan. We have subsequently heard from Minister Burke that he is also going to accept the plan from the authority. I will just take the chamber back to the act itself, the Water Act 2007, which states:

(3) Within 30 days after the Authority gives the Minister a version of the Basin Plan under subsection (2), the Minister:

(a) must consider that version of the Basin Plan and the views given to the Minister under subsection (2); and

(b) must either:

(i) adopt, in writing, that version of the Basin Plan; or

(ii) direct the Authority, in writing, to make modifications to that version of the Basin Plan and give it to the Minister for adoption.

The minister has the power here to look at that basin plan and determine whether or not it is appropriate. I think it is entirely wrong to make that decision even before the plan is public. Apparently the ministers have not seen the plan. Maybe they have—who knows? Maybe that is why they are abrogating their responsibility now. One would hope that if they had seen it they would have let the Australian people see it at the same time. But for the ministers to say they are simply going to accept what we will assume at this stage is a sight unseen plan is absolutely abrogating their responsibility to the Australian people. The Australian people, particularly in those regional communities, should be horrified that a minister is going to accept, sight unseen, a plan that is probably going to be one of the key things that has happened in this country for decades. It is going to affect not only those water users and not only those irrigators but whole communities. Remember, irrigators tend to get a pretty hard time out of this. So many of those irrigators live in communities that were put there by government policy. And now government policy is potentially going to tell them, ‘Sorry, we are just going to take your livelihood away.’

Around all that, for the minister to say, ‘Hands off. I’ll leave it up to the authority; I’m not going to have a view on this,’ is absolutely appalling to me. I hope that the Labor Party has not tied the hands of Minister Burke and I hope that he will reverse his decision. Again, maybe I was taking him out of context; I will give him the benefit of the doubt. But I hope he will reverse his decision to accept this plan, sight unseen, after doing absolutely nothing to properly evaluate this plan and without the proper social and economic work being done around it.

The government talk about their support for regional Australia. Let me just run through a few of the things the government have done with regard to regional Australia since they came into government which, to me, have absolutely been in contrast to this new-found professed support for regional Australia. They abolished Land and Water Australia, $12 million was cut out of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, $63 was million taken out of the CSIRO, $22 million was cut out of Farm Help, $42 billion was taken out of the budget from renewable remote power generation and $2 billion was taken from the Telecommunications Fund, which was specifically set up to support telecommunications delivery in regional communities. What did the government do? Snap, bang, gone! That is how much they care about regional communities, and the Australian people should be well aware that what they say about their support for regional communities is completely in contrast to what they do. They need to understand that very clearly. Do not believe the slick words. Do not believe what they say. Do not listen to what they say; look at what they do.

The one thing that really stands out amongst the myriad things being discussed at the moment is the potential carbon tax and the backflip from this government that had promised us before the election that there would not be one. Indeed, Wayne Swan said:

... what we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax ...

The Prime Minister said:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

That went out the window, didn’t it? It absolutely disappeared. How the Australian people can believe anything this Prime Minister and this Labor government say is beyond me.

The carbon tax is going to have a huge impact on this country and on our economy, and there are two key things that the Australian people need to be very, very aware of: it is going to be a massive new tax and it is not going to make the slightest bit of difference to the climate. What do we see now? The government set up their climate change committee with all sorts of hype and hoopla and bells and whistles. What sort of a committee is it that gets set up and only lets people on it that agree to a predetermined outcome? What sort of inquiry can you have if the door is open only for people who want to walk through and sign up and say, ‘Whatever you come up with at the end, yes, I will be agreeing with that because I am on board with all of this’? How stupid is that?

What the government should be doing is just moving towards it. Why do they need the smoke and mirrors of some inquiry, some committee that is going to be set up to look at all of this, when those members who join it have to actually believe what the outcome is in the first place? That is not true representation of the people if that is what the government is trying to do, not by any stretch of the imagination. I want to quote my very good friend and colleague Senator Boswell, who said in this place yesterday:

Australians need to understand that all that the imposition of a carbon tax in Australia, ahead of action by others, will do is destroy our economy by destroying our competitiveness while having absolutely nil effect on global climate.

He is absolutely spot-on. How on earth is a massive new tax going to cool the globe? And my very good friend and colleague sitting here in front of me, Senator Joyce, said:

If taxes were going to cool the climate, this place would be freezing.

That is absolutely true. It is a nonsense. It is a furphy to try to sell to the Australian people the idea that the carbon tax is going to bring down the temperature of the globe. Even if we reduced our greenhouse gas emissions to zero, it would have nil effect on the temperature and climate. And to watch the Australian people being led down this path again by this Labor government is such a significant concern to those of us on this side of the chamber.

How on earth can we believe anything that the government say? You only have to look at their track record and the broken promises down the path during the last period that they were in government. At least they broke those promises halfway through; now we have the Prime Minister actually telling us that she is about to break her promises. This is a whole new concept in government. She did say this about the carbon tax—and I will quote an article from the Age:

Julia Gillard has declared that climate change and some other election promises will not be kept to the letter by her minority government—and ‘people are going to have to get used to it’.

If she could not form a government that was going to be able to deliver on the promises that she made to the Australian people, then perhaps she should not have formed a government in the first place. The Australian people voted for the Prime Minister because they believed her promises. They believed that she would at least embark on the path of trying to implement what she promised, putting in place for the Australian people those things that she promised them. We now have a Prime Minister telling the Australian people within weeks, ‘Forget about that. Those promises—forget those—we are not going to keep them.’ The Australian people have every right to be extremely concerned, very disappointed and very, very sceptical when it comes to this Labor government and what they will deliver. (Time expired)