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

I rise to speak on the address-in-reply. The Tuesday the 44th Parliament was opened was another historic day for this nation. The opening of the 44th Parliament is another milestone for the wonderful democracy in which we live. I am sure the other 75 senators in this place feel honoured and privileged to represent the people of the states and territories, along with the 150 members of the House of Representatives who were elected on 7 September. The privilege of representing our people is a tremendous honour, especially in this 44th Parliament where the laws of the land and the direction of our nation are set.

As we approach the end of 2013, Australians are looking optimistically to the future. They made it clear on 7 September that they were sick of the infighting and self-centredness of the previous government. They have given an outstanding vote of confidence in the Abbott-Truss government—the coalition government—to guide our nation in future years. Our government is about making decisions for the betterment of our nation.

On the carbon tax, this afternoon I will table the report of the Senate inquiry into the legislation coming forward to the Senate on that very issue. We hear from the opposition that they may well oppose the abolition of the carbon tax in the Senate. I find that quite amazing given that, when the Rudd government was elected in 2007, the mantle they ran under was the abolishing of Work Choices and when that legislation came here into the Senate we simply sat here quietly, respected their mandate and allowed the Fair Work Australia bills to pass. I question whether the Senate will now do the same—will they respect the will of the people of this nation?

The Australian Labor Party goes back a long time. It is the oldest party in our nation, along with the National Party which was formed shortly afterwards—the Country Party, as it was then. On 7 September, the Australian Labor Party received its lowest primary vote in 110 years. This was due to the carbon tax which was never going to be introduced. You will remember former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, along with former Treasurer Wayne Swan, said before the 2010 election that there would be no carbon tax. Well, there is a carbon tax, and the fact is they gave a commitment not to introduce it. We have given a commitment to abolish it. We know the cost to business, and I will talk more about that when we get to the carbon tax repeal bills which will be in this chamber very soon. It is amazing that when I asked the Department of the Environment, during our inquiry, about the government's plans for the carbon tax they advised that our emissions will not go down; in fact, they will go up. So there will be no reduction in emissions except for a crazy scheme to buy permits overseas later on—which I have said all along will simply open up a world of fraud and allow the siphoning of taxpayers' money.

Another clear commitment of the Abbott-Truss government, when in opposition, was the abolishing of the mining tax. You will recall, I am sure, that in June 2010 the elected Prime Minister of the time, one Mr Kevin Rudd, was removed from the prime minister's position. He was planning a super profits tax and the new Prime Minister, Ms Julia Gillard, said, 'We need to clean this up.' So who did she meet with? She met with representatives of Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata—the three biggest mining companies in our nation. They came to an agreement. It is amazing how, when it came to collecting that tax, those three big companies paid little or none. That is smart business, in my opinion. It is smart business if you can set up a plan with the government of the day and dodge a bullet yourself. You are being very clever. Of course, it was the small miners that faced the tax. None of us would argue that the Australian people do not deserve a fair share of the minerals in the ground. That is why we have state royalties. It is a simple case of allowing states to raise their royalties or put them in proportion with the price of the commodities so that when the price of the commodities goes up, a bigger return goes to the states and hence to the people.

The third big issue was asylum seekers. This is a tragic issue. I think it was in October 2008 when the former Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd abolished the regulations and laws that were put in place by the Howard government. We saw the opening up of a people-smuggling industry, and more than 50,000 people arrived here in boats. Sadly, more than 1,100 lost their lives in that process. A few months ago there was an absolute tragedy when bodies were floating in the ocean and an Australian boat had to go past those bodies to try to save more people after another boat had gone down. It is a very sad affair when you are in a boat and you must simply pass by those bodies floating in the water. That was just one of the many tragedies that have happened. And of course they have cost the Australian taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. It is good to see now that those numbers of people are shrinking.

Red and green tape: it is a sad fact that in just 15 months Labor had five ministers for small business—that is an average stay of three months. The small business minister in the Labor Party was never in the cabinet. Small business is the backbone of our nation—the biggest employer. There was hardly enough time to get the title on the door, that is how often small business ministers' names changed. This is the disregard the previous government had for our small business sector which, as I said, is one that employs half of all industry employees in this nation.

Already, the small business sector has reacted to the election of the Abbott-Truss government. CPA Australia's fifth annual Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey shows around one in five Australian small businesses expects to employ more people in 2014, and a significant proportion expects to invest in new assets over the next 12 months. This is in stark contrast to what we saw under Labor when 412,000 jobs in small businesses were lost, while the number of employing small businesses declined by 3,000.

For too long business, and particularly small business, has been strangled by red and green tape. Time and time again business people tell me of the endless paperwork they have to complete just to open their doors. We will identify where this burden can be taken off them. The first act will be to remove the carbon tax, and this will be a huge relief for all small businesses, particularly those heavy users of electricity such as butcher shops, corner stores and supermarkets. Our government will ensure that the Board of Taxation, the ACCC and the Fair Work Commission will have small business expertise.

Our recent Senate inquiry was amazing. I know a person who owns an IGA supermarket. It is a pretty tough game to be in when you are competing against Coles and Woolworths. He had to repair a gas leak in one of his large refrigeration units. He had to replace 65 kilograms of refrigerant, which would have cost $26 a kilogram before the carbon tax but cost $150 a kilogram because of the carbon tax. A thing that should have cost around $1,950 was $9,750—more than $8,000 above the cost for 65 kilograms of refrigerant gas because of the carbon tax. What does the IGA owner do? He must increase the price, up the margin, to pay for it. This is what the carbon tax did to businesses, especially the small businesses that find it hard to compete.

Rural and regional Australia will be well looked after by the Abbott-Truss government. I know that the Australian population lives around the seaboard and is crammed into the big cities. I think the real heart of Australia is in our farming families and our regional businesses. It might be the local milk vendor or the agricultural machinery dealer, the local hardware store or the dress shop. They are all an integral part of the economy. Our dairy farmers, cattle producers, wool growers, vegetable growers and egg producers work seven days a week against the elements to provide food and fibre for our nation and for export. One can only imagine what would happen to us if they were to down tools tomorrow.

We are investing in the future. We will increase the contribution to resource development by $100 million. We will commit $20 million to strengthen biosecurity and quarantine, establish a biosecurity flying squad for the first-response units and create a first-response biosecurity and container fund to tackle alien pest and disease incursions. This is very important; we are an island nation. One of the great selling assets we have in exporting our food is our clean, green image. We must see that that clean, green image is maintained, that diseases and pests are not brought into this country.

We will commit $15 million in the form of rebates to small exporters for export certification registration costs. We will provide $8 million towards minor new chemical permits to increase access to new technology and safe, effective pest and disease control, and $2 million will be provided over four years to assist the integration of agriculture into school curriculums.

But this is what the Abbott-Truss government will not do: we will not react to a TV program and shut down Australia's live export trade. This was a disgraceful decision and the ramifications and negative effects on the beef industry were huge. When the previous Gillard government cut live exports to Indonesia, it did absolutely nothing for our friendship with our closest neighbour, a big trading partner, and, of course, the price of cattle simply went down and down. Those cattle, when exported live, cannot exceed 350 kilos live weight. The delay in those exports meant a lot of those cattle exceeded 350 kilograms of live weight. Jobs were lost—people who fly helicopters to do the mustering, people at the waterfront; truckies and their road trains who carry the stuff had their trucks lying idle until some months later when those cattle trucks transported many of them south.

The town where I live were very proud and very pleased they had Bindaree Beef, an export abattoir. Truckies were bringing cattle from the top of Western Australia to northern New South Wales, because they could not market them, at a cost of $200 a head freight. What was left for the beef producers? So we are certainly not going down that way of cutting off food supplies to our nearest neighbour.

GrainCorp: just last Friday Treasurer Joe Hockey took a courageous decision and rejected an application by Archer Daniels Midland to take over GrainCorp. It was an important day for Australian agriculture and we listened to the people whose future depends on the success of GrainCorp and those who are grain producers. I did not have one wheat farmer call my office or speak to me to say it would be a good thing for Australian wheat growers, especially on the eastern seaboard, to sell off GrainCorp.

Established in 1916 by the New South Wales Government, GrainCorp is already a monopoly, and to have it sold off to a multinational company—this was a courageous decision by Treasurer Joe Hockey. Some have said we are not open for investment, we are not open for business, but that is not the case. The Treasurer made it quite clear that of 131 applications he looked at, he rejected one out of 131. I find it amazing that the Foreign Investment Review Board were not unanimous in their recommendations. That says it all in itself. When it comes to rural Australia and selling off farms and agribusinesses, what I have seen of the Foreign Investment Review Board is that it is a rubberstamping factory to sell off rural Australia.

Obviously, someone at the board gave this serious thought. The problem was the vertical integration of Archer Daniels Midland. They would have sold the chemicals and fertiliser to the farms. They would have bought the grain and put it in their silos for storage and charged a fee if it was going to be warehoused. They would have put it on their rail and taken it taken to their facility at the waterfront. Then because of the 16 per cent ownership of Wilmar International Limited they would have put it on their ships and taken it to China, where they have built their new flour mills, and processed the wheat into flour with very cheap labour and very cheap electricity, then put the flour on their ships and brought it back to Australia.

What would that have done to great companies like Dick Honan and the Manildra Group? How could they have survived when we have the cost of labour, the cost of electricity, the cost of energy and the cost of processing in Australia? We have already seen too many industries close down in this country from value adding. That would have led to more monopoly for Archer Daniels Midlands, who operate in more than 140 countries around the world. We would have only been four per cent of their business, but they could have added through their value-adding chain through the very clever way they have set up their facilities and their processing in countries with cheap energy and cheap labour. They could have made it very hard for Australian processors to complete.

Look at the canola industry. They would have done the same with that. How could the processing of our processing canola oil survive? That is why I believe Treasurer Hockey has made a very courageous and wise decision. Archer Daniels Midland already has almost 20 per cent share in GrainCorp. That can be raised to about 24 per cent. But I know GrainCorp will grow. They started as a small New South Wales business almost 100 years ago. They have grown to what they are today and they will continue to grow.

I am very pleased to see the increase in the Nationals representation in the 44th Parliament. Already the new member for New England, Mr Barnaby Joyce, who is the Minister for Agriculture, has hit the ground running, meeting farming groups, looking at drought and disease issues and generally engaging with farming communities. This is in stark contrast to what happened in the portfolio in the preceding six years. I welcome the member for Lyne, and the member for Page into our National Party room, David Gillespie and Kevin Hogan respectively. I have known David Gillespie for many years. He is a doctor, a gastroenterologist. He set up his business and knows what small business is about. He is a father, a husband—just like Kevin Hogan—and it is great to have these people in this part of our party room working in conjunction with the Liberal Party and a strong coalition.

There is a lot to be done. There are things I have worked on since I have been in this place, like the changes to the registration of liquidators, where we launched an inquiry. The previous government did nothing. We met a situation where a rogue liquidator got into a business called CarLovers Carwash. It cost CarLovers $1.8 million in legal fees to have that rogue removed. You cannot have a system like that. ASIC needs more powers.

I look forward to our inquiry into ASIC, and to knowing why it took them so long to act on Commonwealth financial planners when they were tipped off by the whistleblowers when people lost their life's earnings. You see it over life. You see a young couple meet—they get married at, say, 27. They go and take out a big mortgage to buy the house, to fulfil the Australian dream. They have two or three children, they rear the kids and educate the kids. The kids grow up get educated, get a job. Mum and dad put a little nest egg away, their life earnings, and it might be at the age of 55 or 65 they find some rogue comes in and gambles with that money, like putting it on a racehorse. ASIC needs to lift its game. I look forward to that part of the inquiry, we need a strong, active corporate watchdog.

There are many things that need to be done. We need to get the budget in order. Already AIFM's figures last Friday were over $300 billion. We cannot go on mortgaging our kids' futures way. There are going to be hard decisions to be made and, as I said, Treasurer Joe Hockey has the worst job in Australia. He will deliver his budget next May, and in the meantime we are still working on the previous government's budget. That is why the debt is still going up. I think this is of greatest concern, especially if the world economy slows down more. We have seen the recessions in Europe. Japan has a huge government debt. America is the same, breaching their cap and political wars putting the scares right through international financial markets. We need stability in Australia, but we need to get our debt under control. I will support tough decisions by Treasurer Joe Hockey to do exactly that. I think it is a case where we need to look after our country for future generations.

We look back at what our ancestors did. They built our nation, our farmers. Those remarks of AWU boss Paul Howes, that the ma and pa farmers are gone—what a disgrace! The generation of farmers are the ones who know the land, have conserved the land, have preserved the land, have looked after the land and have helped build this nation. Mr Howes, stick to your union job and stay out of the rural Australia. You do not understand it. I do understand a bit about shearing sheds. I spent 27 years of my life in them. I was actually a member of the AWU for 12 months but I did not buy a ticket and got kicked out of the shed under compulsory unionism days.

So, there is a tough job ahead for the government, and many tough decisions to be made. But I know under the leadership of Mr Tony Abbott and Mr Warren Truss and the careful guidance of Treasurer Joe Hockey and the team around them—that is what I like about the Prime Minister so much, and my Leader of the Nationals, Mr Warren Truss: they get on so well—we have a great coalition, and I look forward to doing the best for our nation in the future years.