Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think my view on the Constitution Alteration (Local Government) 2013 bill was perhaps brought into stark reality a number of years ago when the shire engineer for what was then the Dalby shire and the shire engineer for the Wambo Shire Council—two councils which have now been merged—said: 'The Howard government's Roads to Recovery program is the best thing a federal government has ever done for us. If you give the money to George Street—meaning to the state government—they spend half of it on meetings, analysis and commissions for their input. If you give the money straight to us 95 per cent of it goes on to our roads.' Roads to Recovery highlighted the efficiency and the need for some avenue of direct funding outside the grants program to local government. It is a damning indictment and a damning example of this government's ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory that we now have so much opposition to this referendum at this time, as well as just a general opposition to the referendum.

I suppose the genesis of this bill and this particular referendum go back to about 2006, when both houses of parliament passed a motion recognising the place and value that local government has in Australian society. The motion said:

That the House/Senate:

(a) recognises that local government is part of the governance of Australia, serving communities through locally-elected councils;

(b) values the rich diversity of councils around Australia, reflecting the varied communities they serve;

(c) acknowledges the role of local government in governance, advocacy, the provision of infrastructure, service delivery, planning, community development and regulation;

(d) acknowledges the importance of cooperating and consulting with local government on the priorities of their local communities;

(e) acknowledges the significant Australian Government funding that is provided to local government to spend on locally determined priorities, such as roads and other local government services; and

(f) commends local government elected officials who give their time to serve their communities.

That I think was the beginning of this genesis of the referendum bill and it is certainly the third genesis that the bill has had.

The coalition continues to hold the view of supporting a minimalist approach to putting local government into the constitution, but it is only the process that this government is capable of. It now has got us to the situation where almost everyone outside the Local Government Association has deep concerns about the way this bill is proposed and the way this referendum is going. An expert panel under Mr Justice Spigelman was set up in August 2011 and it looked at four types of recognition: symbolic recognition, democratic recognition, financial recognition and recognition through federal cooperation. The government dropped symbolic recognition and recognition through federal cooperation via a preamble. It then looked at the others, did some polling, took a lot of evidence right round the country and acknowledged the general historical reluctance of Australians to change the constitution.

There have only been eight out of 44 referenda that have succeeded in Australia. We need to keep in mind that in many cases those referenda were supported by both major parties and by the majority of states—that is, the yes case was supported by a majority of states and by the major parties—and still they failed. It is incredible that this could happen. There are a number of conditions that I would have thought this government was well and truly aware needed to be undertaken before getting to the situation of putting a referendum forward.

The expert panel sought two extra conditions for the referendum's success. The first was that the Commonwealth negotiate with the states to achieve their support for the financial recognition option. The second was that the Commonwealth adopt steps suggested by the ALGA necessary to achieve informed, positive public engagement on the issue. Neither of these outcomes has been achieved by this government. A number of state governments are energetically opposed to this referendum. I think that is a short-sighted view to take; nevertheless, there is not even support for it coming from the majority of states. Whilst funding has gone to the ALGA to establish informed and positive public engagement on the issue, it is certainly not resonating out on the streets. This might be partly because of the other diabolical political stories that are dominating the media—certainly, this issue has not come out there.

When you look at the way that the government has gone about the recognition of Indigenous people in the Constitution—starting now on a referendum to occur in at least a year's time, with publicity and with major and important functions to highlight the development of the campaign for a yes vote on the recognition of Indigenous people in our Constitution—it is completely different from the way that the government has gone about this referendum. Many people were surprised when the Prime Minister said, almost as an afterthought, when she announced the longest election campaign in history: 'Oh, and by the way, we're going to have a referendum on local government as well.' It was a surprise to so many people. It was announced long before the wording for it became available. The wording for it was not even known then.

It is interesting to look at the comments made by so many groups. Queensland, I would suggest, has the strongest, most mature and best developed local government system in Australia. It certainly appears that way to me. Having lived in three states at various times, it appears to me that the local government councils in Queensland are taken more seriously and are more professionally run. I do not want to criticise the abilities or capacities of people in the councils of other states when I say that Queensland councils are 'more professionally run'. I simply think that they take on a larger task. They tend to be run more by full-time people than do some of the councils that I have seen in other states. Naturally, Queensland is strongly committed to supporting the referendum and to supporting the recognition of local government within our Constitution, but this federal Labor government has somehow managed to even muck up this.

Queensland, my home state, was the only state to come out in support of the referendum before the bill for it was introduced—in other words, before they had the wording for it. It was in early 2013 that Queensland Premier Campbell Newman wrote to all the other states, urging them to support the referendum. He wrote to the Prime Minister, supporting the changes that were being proposed—but they were only the changes that were being proposed. He also supported holding the referendum during the election or on a fixed date in 2014. It would be my contention that that might be a far better way to go about it. At the time, Premier Newman said:

It is the Queensland Government’s view that constitutional recognition that does not diminish the State’s primary constitutional responsibility for local government is appropriate given the breadth of interaction over recent decades between the Commonwealth and councils, and the legal uncertainty about funding that has arisen from the decisions of the High Court in the Pape and Williams cases in recent years.

By 5 June 2013 the Queensland government had taken some legal advice and had begun to have concerns about the insertion that would go into the Constitution. They even proposed changing the wording of the bill because of their concerns. That would seem to suggest that Prime Minister Gillard had not quite managed to fulfil the condition set by the Spigelman report that the federal government should have the support of the state governments before they went ahead. So she could not get it right, even for the strongest proponent, Queensland, with a Premier who was previously the lord mayor of the largest council in Australia. Premier Newman, in a letter sent on 5 June 2013, said:

The Queensland government has consistently supported constitutional recognition of local government on the basis that any amendment allowed the commonwealth government to directly fund local government without diminishing the role of the state government. We have taken advice in relation to the matter. In our opinion, having considered the matter further, the amendment in its current form does not achieve this result. Accordingly, our support for the proposed amendment is subject to the inclusion of additional wording in the bill.

They propose that the wording should be:

During a period of ten years after the establishment of the Commonwealth and thereafter until the Parliament otherwise provides, the Parliament may grant financial assistance to any State, or to any local government body formed by a law of a State, on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit.

That is what the bill currently proposes. Queensland would then add:

The terms and conditions of a grant of financial assistance to a state or to a local government body formed by a law of a state are subject to the laws of the state.

It is quite clear that the Queensland government is trying to ensure that the problems that are raised by some of the doomsayers, some of the critics, some of the opponents of this referendum, are put forward, which include that this will just be a backdoor way for the federal government to ignore state governments and pour money into local councils, to use this for pork barrelling to buy the support of local councils. That is what the amendment proposed by Queensland would overcome.

The bill has been through the House of Representatives and is now before us, and we have a situation where once again this government gets lost in the detail; it cannot do the process properly. It is interesting that Queensland local government minister David Crisafulli, himself a former deputy mayor on the Townsville council, said:

We don't want to be spoilers but we can't accept the language that's been put forward. We want to find a way to make this a yes vote but that can only be done if the commonwealth spells out that it only wants to fund local government, not control it. This process should be about strengthening the role of local councils, not binding them to the whims of the federal government by stealth.

That suggests a less than wholehearted support for this referendum from the state supporting it most strongly, Queensland. South Australia and Western Australia have supported it, New South Wales said, 'We're not sure' and Victoria said it was opposed to the terms of the referendum. So in the current situation we do not have anything like agreement from the states on undertaking this referendum.

On the topic of the referendum being publicly supported, with an educated public looking at this question, I did something of a straw poll while talking to constituents at the weekend at a number of campaign functions that were being conduct. The vast majority of people on the street said to me, 'What referendum?' That was their answer: 'What referendum?' They did not know it was happening—and, as we have proved a thousand times over, irrespective of the support of the parties, state governments and the like, if people do not understand the issue, they will not support it at a referendum. Australians have proved that so many times.

In terms of support for this move, I would like to commend the Local Government Association of Queensland, under Councillor Paul Bell, who was the state president, and has been the national president and one of the drivers of this. Councillor Bell is a member of the Emerald Shire Council. As President of the Local Government Association of Queensland, and of Australia, he has done an excellent job in pushing this matter forward. But I would suggest that some of the other state local government organisations may not have worked as hard as they could have on this move. It seems to me that there is, in some states, even a lack of understanding of how to go about advocacy. I was surprised that there was the sense that somehow the duty of the major parties, or the government, to convince people to vote for this. In fact, the local councillors are the people who are closest to the constituents—they are the people who could have driven this, so that everyone in Australia knew what we were talking about and knew the issues, had they put energy into it at a grass-roots level. That did not happen.

I must also admit, talking about how the public become aware of this, that I was gobsmacked and amazed by the funding proposals that the Labor government put through, as was our leader Mr Tony Abbott. He was so shocked by this that he wrote to the Prime Minister saying that the fact that this government chose to give $10 million to the 'yes' case and half a million dollars to the 'no' case just beggars belief. It is undemocratic; it is unfair. Even though I support the 'yes' case strongly, I also believe that it is beyond embarrassing, beyond any knowledge of corporate governance or any other vestige of honesty, that a government would propose that the funding be based on the number of votes. At the last referendum the money was fifty-fifty—and that is the only way that the Australian public are going to buy a referendum. They only have to hear that the 'no' case got a twentieth of what the 'yes' case got and you have already lost the referendum, irrespective of the topic—because fairness is the first thing that an Australian voter will be looking for. I very much share the view of Mr Tony Abbott when he said it is very disappointing that public funding has been allocated so disproportionately. It is the first time that any notion of funding based on parliamentary votes has ever been raised with the coalition or the public. So, once again, we have poor process leading to defeat and mess. (Time expired)