Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Can I start, as I think all of us in this place should, by thanking my electors—the people of the ACT—for their re-endorsement at the election. It is a great honour to be elected to serve the people of the Australian Capital Territory. It is a great honour to serve such a wonderful city, such a wonderful community—the community that I have called my home for all of my 39-odd years. It is a great pleasure, and I thank all of those who gave me their confidence at the election. It was great to see a swing to us here in the Senate in the ACT, and I think that that was the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of people over a long period of time. Certainly I am very grateful for that endorsement, and it is one that I do not take for granted. I want to continue to work very hard to advocate for a great city and a great community. I thank the people of Canberra again for the opportunity to do that over the next three years.

I would like to note also that we did not just have a swing here. Our main rivals, I guess, for the seat in the Senate here in the ACT—the Greens—had a swing against them for a second time in a row, which has put a significant distance between us and them. I think that that is a response to some of the policy offerings of the Greens. Certainly I would hope that it is a response to some of the positive policy offerings and implementations that we have been able to deliver nationally and, of course, for the people of the ACT in particular.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge a couple of our House of Reps candidates and our second Senate candidate here in the ACT. Jessica Adelan-Langford did an outstanding job in the seat of Canberra. She bucked the national trend by a fair way. The swing against the Liberal Party here was about 0.95 per cent, which I think is a very good effort. Jessica is standing in the ACT election as well, and I wish her well. She is one of the 11 female candidates, out of 25, put up by the Liberal Party for the ACT election. That is 44 per cent, without a quota. That is something we are very proud of, and it comes from having a very democratic party, where people from a diverse range of backgrounds feel welcome and feel able to contribute. So I wish Jessica well in the upcoming ACT election, which is a little under five weeks away.

Robert Gunning was our candidate in the seat of Fraser. Robert worked extremely hard and also had a very strong result which bucked the national swing. So congratulations to Robert on an outstanding effort. My second Senate candidate, Jane Hiatt, who is well known, particularly in the south of Canberra, is a small business owner and someone who is particularly involved in her community. Jane is just one of those infectious personalities and everyone who meets her likes her. She is one of those people who does great things wherever she is. She took on the seen-as-unwinnable second Senate seat, but she did not see it in that way. She certainly worked very hard to promote the Liberal cause during the campaign, and I congratulate and thank her for it. In addition, we have some amazing volunteers, led by party president Arthur Potter and so many others. Arthur does an outstanding job leading the ACT Liberal Party, and I congratulate and thank him for his work.

Just briefly, before I go on to some national issues, I would like to talk about a couple of the key policy offerings that we are delivering for the people of the ACT. The $76 million lake clean-up is very, very important. There is no doubt that, as an environment issue, the quality of our waterways here in Canberra leaves a lot to be desired. The $76 million that the coalition is delivering for the clean-up of our waterways is something that I am very, very pleased with. I had significant feedback from the community about the importance of cleaning up Lake Burley Griffin, Lake Tuggeranong, Lake Ginninderra and the waterways, ponds and streams that run into those waterways. These waterways should be a jewel for the ACT. In some cases they are, but there is a long way to go to make them better. This really significant investment from the Commonwealth is something that I think has been very well received.

I would like to also make mention of one of the promises we took to the election, which is that for the first time we will see a Commonwealth government office relocated to Gungahlin—the growing town centre of Canberra. I think this is a great result. This was not delivered by the previous Labor government, even though they occasionally talked about it, and this is something that we intend on delivering on in this term. It will be a great boost for that town centre. It is great to have the, I guess, anchor tenants. That is why it is so important. That is why I worked very hard to make sure that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection stayed in Belconnen and the Department of Social Services, which has a new building being constructed at the moment, stayed in Tuggeranong. Those departments are very important to the town centre model here in the ACT. Economic growth does flow from those areas. It is important for small businesses but it is also important for the liveability of a city. It is great to have job opportunities close to where people live. It certainly fits in very well with our broader cities agenda and what we would like to see nationally, in ensuring that people have genuine, real job opportunities close to where they live and so not everyone has to go to the CBD necessarily. So I think that is a great result.

One final one I would like to mention in speaking on some of the local issues is in relation to the planning reforms which we completed just before the end of the last term. I congratulate Minister Fletcher and his predecessor Minister Briggs in the portfolio for significant planning reform of the National Capital Plan. This is of course the document that governs planning in the ACT and under which the ACT government's rules and the Territory Plan sit. We have cut a lot of duplication and we have opened potential new areas for affordable housing, which I think is critically important. This is, in my opinion, a far better way and a far more sustainable way of dealing with housing affordability than the Labor Party approach, which is to make everyone's asset lower, when it comes to their house, through Labor's proposed negative gearing changes.

The much better response is to actually provide land so that people have the opportunity of an affordable price to buy a home or a rent home in Canberra or anywhere else in the country. That is something that so many state and territory governments, particularly Labor state and territory governments, do not seem to have grasped. Here in Canberra there is a particular problem, where the Labor government are a monopoly provider and developer. They have squeezed land supply to the extent where we are now seeing on the outskirts of Gungahlin, in Throsby, $1,000 a square metre blocks in greenfields developments—$1,000 a square metre. That is not affordable housing, and that is not what you would expect when the ACT government say that part of the reason for them having so much control is so they can deliver affordable housing options. Well, they have not done that. The National Capital Plan changes are a significant push in the right direction and hopefully will lead the way for other responses from the ACT government and other state and territory governments.

There is no doubt that what we saw nationally at this election was a continuation of a massive difference in approach between the coalition and the Labor Party, and I want to go to some of those key differences. It was not that long ago—probably only 15 or 20 years ago—that people used to say, 'There isn't really that much difference between the major parties; they pretty much agree on so many things.' When it came to the economy, we certainly agreed on more when people like Paul Keating were in government. We certainly did not agree on everything, but there was a range of things that we did agree on. Part of that was about the importance of economic growth. That seemed to be bipartisan back then, but it no longer is. The Labor Party have abandoned any pretence that they support policies which lead to economic growth.

The Labor Party's policy platform these days consists of higher taxes on business, higher taxes on individuals, higher taxes on electricity, more regulation through things like a 50 per cent renewable energy target, a tolerance of union corruption in almost whatever form we find it—and certainly in the construction industry. We know the impact that has on our economy. One of our biggest industries, the construction industry, which is about eight per cent of our economy, is weighed down by union corruption. That is something we are seeking to deal with through things like the ABCC, which we took to the election and received an endorsement for, as we were re-elected to government. We are looking forward to the opportunity to bring that reform to the parliament and have it passed by the parliament, because it is a critical reform.

So whether it is the economy, attitudes to small business, attitudes to budget repair, attitudes to union corruption or attitudes and policies on border protection, there is a significant and gaping difference between what the coalition offers and delivers, and what the Labor Party is now offering in its policies. We know what it delivered when it was last in government—massive debt and deficit, open borders, a slowing economy. We have seen it before. We saw what happened. Of course, the Labor Party abolished our union watchdog—our building industry watchdog—and we see what happened on our construction sites. So we see a very clear difference.

I want to go to some of those economic indicators which show that difference. This is a government focused on growing the economy and providing jobs to Australians. We do it in all sorts of ways. We do it by cutting taxes for small business. We do it by cutting red tape. We do it by increasing productivity measures, including things like the ABCC. And we do it through things like free trade agreements, which are a key part of our economic future, as we see the opportunities in our region changing. The opportunities in our region are changing, and we need to be responding to them. People talk about the mining boom being over. That is not quite right, but the mining boom has moved to a new phase. We are seeing a different phase of significant mining exports, but we are not seeing the same sort of construction boom and investment boom that we saw over the past decade or so. But, as we see the transition, that is a reflection that our key trading partners are changing what they are consuming. They have had massive construction phases, particularly in places like China. We are seeing that the massive Chinese middle class, the growing Indian middle class and, of course, the existing strong economies like Korea and Japan have a strong demand for our services, in particular. The free trade agreements go to that point. That is where they are going to be so critical to economic growth.

Just look at the figures. Real GDP grew by 0.50 per cent in the June quarter and a strong 3.3 per cent through the year. This puts us right up near the top of developed economies. That is something we should be very proud of. When we see those kinds of figures and when we see that over 200,000 jobs have been created in Australia over the last year under a strong coalition government, there are hundreds of thousands of stories and hundreds of thousands of individuals. Hundreds of thousands of families have a breadwinner because of strong economic management. If you want to look at the alternative, just look across the chamber or to other parts of the world where they have lost control of their budgets; they have not had ongoing policies that strengthen economic growth and they have not responded to those challenges. When you see unemployment rising in some of those economies and when you see long-term unemployment and long-term welfare dependency, these are not what any leader would ever want to see. It is absolutely devastating for communities when we see stagnant jobs growth or jobs being taken away. What we have been delivering on, and what we intend to continue to deliver on, is a strong economy. You do not do that if you take the Labor Party approach.

Let's take a couple of examples of what the Labor Party offer. I have mentioned the issue of union corruption. They tolerate the kind of behaviour which slows a significant contributor to our economy in our construction industry. That is one Labor policy. Another Labor policy, of course, was to lower the value of people's assets through its negative gearing changes—raise rents and lower asset values. What does that do for confidence as people see their main asset reducing in value? What does that do for investment? What does that do for confidence? If you want people to invest in something less, you tax it more. That is what the Labor Party are proposing on housing. So we see another key difference. They support and tolerate union corruption, they want to see asset values come down and then they refuse to recognise the importance of cutting taxes for small business. They simply refuse to recognise it. They claim it is some sort of handout to lower taxes for small business when they know, and they have said it many times, that, in fact, cutting taxes for small business—well, let's see what they have had to say, because this shows how far away the Labor Party have gone from strong economic management and a focus on growing our economy and growing jobs. Bill Shorten in 2011 knew it. He said:

Cutting the company income tax rate increases domestic productivity and domestic investment. … More capital means higher productivity and economic growth, and leads to more jobs and higher wages.

That was well said in 2011 by Bill Shorten! That was a reasonable summation of what we all know to be true.