Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As one of the few senators in this parliament who actually lives and works in rural Australia, I want to thank John Howard and Peter Costello for what they have done for those of us who do live in rural, regional and country Australia—John Howard because he is quite clearly the most popular politician in the bush in Australia and Peter Costello, whilst he is also popular in the bush, perhaps is popular more because of the way that he has managed the economy and given prosperity to all Australians, including those of us who live in country Australia. Peter Costello has been to the bush a number of times—not often enough, I continually remind him. He should go out there more because when he does he makes a huge impact. John Howard regularly visits country Australia and has a very keen and astute understanding of the wishes of country people.

If Mr Beazley has been there in recent times then, as someone who keeps a fair bit of an eye on the news media, I have not been aware of it. I suspect he does not go there because he realises there are no votes for him in the bush and he avoids it like the plague—a bit similar, I might say, to Mr Beattie in our own state of Queensland. He is not terribly interested in what happens in the bush. He will easily give up the jobs of workers in the bush. The AWU would well know about this. I know that they do know and that they have had their fights with Mr Beattie, but to no avail—Mr Beattie will give up jobs in the bush. One instance I can pick off the top of my head is the forestry industry. Mr Beattie will do that because he has to pander to the radical Greens who live in Brisbane. Mr Beattie always thinks he needs their votes. I do not know why he has that view; it has not been necessary in the past couple of elections. It is quite difficult to understand why he does, but he does pander to a certain element of radical Greens in Brisbane and as a result gives away workers’ jobs in the bush.

In Queensland you do have a lot of country areas represented by members of the Liberal and National parties. There are a few currently represented by Labor, although I would suggest that after 9 September that will not continue to happen because I think country people—and, in fact, most Queenslanders—are at last waking up to Mr Beattie. You cannot just smile and say, ‘We’ll fix it,’ when he has had seven, eight or nine years to fix it and has not done a thing about it in that time. Country people do remember those things and they remember that the federal government, John Howard and Peter Costello have been very good to country people over the years.

But in spite of the actions and programs and different things that our government has done for the bush there is still a lot more to be done. It is an incontrovertible fact that in Australia you really do have two classes of people. You have people who live in the capital cities and major provincial cities as one class of people. They are the class of people who have access to very heavily taxpayer subsidised transport facilities: trams, trains and buses. They have access to health in much better ways than country people. They have access to culture, major concerts, major sporting events and infrastructure which is poured into the capital cities and major provincial cities at the taxpayers’ cost. It is a subsidised benefit that those Australians who live in the capital cities principally, and some of the provincial cities, have.

Then you have the other Australians who I think, at times, would feel that they are second-class Australians because they do not have a hospital down the end of the street and they do not have taxis running back and forward. They do not have a public transport system. If they want to get their kids to school very often it requires two or three hours travel or putting the kids into boarding school. If they want to see a specialist it usually involves quite distant travel, and then if you are needing treatment in the health area you need to be away from your home. There are reasons of course for this and I think that, in spite of those difficulties, most people who live in the country would not change their lot even if they had the opportunity.

This last weekend I was invited to the Access to Justice and Pro Bono Conference in Melbourne, organised by people involved with the Law Council. I want to thank Pat Mullins, a solicitor from Brisbane, who invited me along to make a contribution about the difficulty that country people have in accessing justice. By country people I mean not only Indigenous people, who are very deprived when it comes to access to real justice, but also ordinary folk: workers, farmers, bankers, graziers and council employees out in country areas who really find it difficult to get to a lawyer of any sort. This is not a new phenomenon. I remember when I practised law in the country it was always very difficult to get solicitors to come and live in the country areas. That is a fact of life, because why would you do that when the alternative is to live in the city with all the concerts, operas, culture, sporting events, transport and health facilities that you need?

There is a way that we can encourage solicitors, doctors, engineers, administrators and teachers to live in the country, and that is by making it financially viable for them so to do. Years ago we had a zone tax system. We still have it, actually, but when the zone tax system started in 1945 the basic wage was, in today’s terms, about $7.40 per week and a zone allowance was given to people living and working in the country, as the ATO website says, ‘in recognition of the disadvantages that taxpayers are subject to, because of the uncongenial climate conditions, isolation and high cost of living in comparison to other areas of Australia’. At the time that the basic weekly wage was about $7.40, in today’s terms, the allowance that was given was $80 per year—so it was 10 times the average wage. Nowadays, the average wage is around $700 per week. If the zone allowance were 10 times that, it would be in the order of $7,000 to $8,000 a year. That would be an attraction for professionals, skilled people and other workers to live in the bush, with some of the disadvantages that that has, if they had that financial commitment.

What is the zone allowance these days? It is not $7,000 or $8,000. It is $338 per year. I think our government, which does have an interest in country Australia and in people living in remote Australia, needs to have a very serious look at fixing the zone tax rebate scheme so that it does do what it was originally intended to do—and that was to give people who put up with the difficulties of living in the country some financial recompense for that. It is possible. There have been a lot of studies done on it. There has been a lot of thinking by bureaucrats that it is not possible, that it runs into problems with the Constitution—all those sorts of things. I do not think those objections carry weight. And I do not think most Australians would object to country people getting some financial assistance in lieu of the subsidised services they do not get because they do not live in the city. I urge the Treasurer and the government to look at this seriously. (Time expired)