Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in continuation in the address-in-reply debate on the very important matter of the carers bonus. I note that in the last 24 hours there has been a major development which is the confirmation that the Rudd government has done a backflip over the plan to axe the $1,600 annual bonus to carers. In my view that is a great win for Australian carers, their families and their loved ones. It is an enormous relief. There was a lot of anxiety, stress and indeed distress in the community. In fact, the level of anxiety had hit the roof. I know that from the feedback that many coalition members and senators across Australia received—and I am sure there would have been government members and senators who would have received that feedback as well. The government have finally listened but it has taken nearly a week for the government to do a backflip and to say that the bonus will remain.

I want to say congratulations to Pat and Harry Stafford in particular. They have been married for 60 years and they came out with me on Saturday morning in Launceston to stand up for the carers in Tasmania. Pat Stafford has motor neurone disease and she has had it for 15 years. She is in a wheelchair. They wanted to stand up for all those who are vulnerable, who need their help and assistance, and to say that any possible intention on the Labor government’s behalf to remove that $1,600 annual bonus is totally unacceptable. I want to say congratulations to Pat and Harry Stafford. They are part of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, which meets monthly. They are wonderful supporters of not only their family and friends but other people and other families with motor neurone disease and other people with disabilities. I say congratulations to them.

I want to congratulate and say thank you to Bev and Jim Barnard from Launceston, in fact from Youngtown. Jim Barnard has Parkinson’s disease. I spoke to Bev Barnard personally and they were willing to put their names forward in a big story in the Examiner with a photo on Sunday, 9 March. I want to read this article, and to acknowledge and thank the Examiner for promoting this very important issue. I thank Fran Voss, who did the report. It says a little bit about Bev and Jim and their situation and I would like to refer to it:

Bev Barnard of Youngtown is one of 400000 primary carers around Australia stunned by the news that the Federal Government is considering axing the annual $1,600 carer bonus. There are just under 16,000 primary carers in Tasmania. Mrs Barnard, 64, cares for her husband Jim, 68, who has suffered Parkinson’s disease for 15 years and her 30-year-old visually impaired daughter. Mr Barnard was diagnosed when he was 53 and is now totally dependent on his wife.

What a situation for them. What a difficulty. It continues:

Their daughter, Kayleen, has been visually impaired since she suffered a brain haemorrhage at four days old. Both Kayleen and Jim also suffer depression and other health issues. The $1,600 annual bonus enables Mrs Barnard to buy medications, replacement items for the house like a new washing machine, transport her husband and daughter to medical appointments and pay for respite care to allow her some time off.

I had a talk to Bev Barnard and she was very, very upset and stressed. She said, ‘I’m not doing it for us, I’m doing it for the vulnerable, for the disabled and for the people who need it in Tasmania and across the country.’ I want to say thank you to them on the public record.

Thank you to Pat and Harry Stafford for what they have done. I remind the Senate and indeed the public what Pat Stafford said on Saturday when she made that bold announcement to the public. She said that the lump sum payment was a wonderful help. She said, ‘This enables us to keep our 25-year-old car.’ It is a Mitsubishi car, I saw it and the wheelchair goes on the back. It is quite a contraption to get it all to work together, but it is an excellent vehicle for their needs and with a wheelchair on the back it is well put together. She said that it is their only means of transport to keep them on the road. She said ‘The lump sum also allows us to pay the winter heating bills and this payment gives us a quality of life.’ She talked about the need for a kettle and other miscellaneous items in the house particularly during the wintertime. The lump sum payment was particularly appreciated. Her husband, Harry Stafford, said that without this help Pat would end up in an institution.

This is what we are facing and this government has been dillydallying around with weasel words for the last six days trying to fob off this issue. This is an important issue for the 400,000 carers and their families throughout Australia. Harry Stafford and indeed Pat Stafford have summed it up. On Saturday Pat said that John Howard was the quiet achiever but Kevin Rudd was the quiet deceiver. She said that she knew nothing about this before the election.

Of course they worried. There was no comment; there was no discussion about it before the election. And we have had this issue running for nearly a week in the public arena without the government saying anything about there being an ironclad guarantee that this bonus payment would not be removed. So they have stood up on behalf of their community—and I say, ‘Congratulations and well done,’ on behalf of all Tasmanians, who I know are very proud of them for doing that.

I want to thank Mrs Kimberley Ware. She rang my office and we spoke together. She has two autistic boys, one aged 16 and one aged 7. The eldest boy will soon be 17. She cannot work. She is there by herself 24/7 looking after these boys, and surviving is very tough. She told me about concerns, about what she has to put up with and about the meagre funds that she has to do it with. I say ‘thank you’ to her, and I also note that she contacted the office of her local member, Jodie Campbell, and had no assistance provided to her.

This brings into focus the role of the local federal member, the member for Bass, Jodie Campbell. What has she done? Did she stand up? What has she said about it? I know what she said on Saturday, because we debated this issue publicly and it was reported publicly. She said that this payment was a one-off. The fact is that the payment had been paid for four years in a row—every year for four years. It was not a one-off; that is one thing it was not. So why did Ms Campbell not stand up for and on behalf of her local community, for and on behalf of the carers and those who are vulnerable—the people with disabilities in her local community?

We had 150 Centrelink call centre jobs in Launceston axed by the Rudd Labor government, and Ms Campbell failed at that first test to stand up for her local community. What we need in Tasmania and around the country are people who are willing to stand up. Both on the call centre and the carer issue, Ms Campbell has been willing to be Mr Rudd’s co-conspirator. She has not met the major test. She should be defending her region and taking on the ministers in Canberra and any of the Canberra bureaucrats who are not acting in the best interests of her community. She will simply be regarded as a Labor lackey if she is not willing to stand up.

I want to pay tribute not only to Pat and Harry Stafford and Jim and Bev Barnard but to Janis McKenna of Carers Tasmania. Carers Tasmania have been strong advocates for the people of Tasmania who need their support and advocacy. Janis has been fantastic. She has been on the radio and in the news and other media doing the job that she has to do. Her objective is to care for and stand up for the carers of Tasmania. So, thank you, Janis McKenna. It has been a pleasure working with you and your organisation to see if we could get some reality injected into the Rudd Labor government so that they removed all doubt entirely.

I notice that there was some news today. In fact, it was not clarified until after the TV news went to bed last night. I say that it is not good enough for the backdown by the Rudd Labor government to be dribbled out to the media via what was quoted as being a ‘Rudd spokesperson’ after the nightly news on Tuesday evening. The Prime Minister should have taken the medicine and had the courage to announce it himself. So we had some news later today that the Rudd Labor government has confirmed that the carers and seniors bonus will be paid as a lump sum payment by the end of June. There is enormous relief in the community now about that.

I want to particularly thank Brendan Nelson for taking a lead on this issue at a national level and calling the government to account. I want to thank Tony Abbott for his strong advocacy for the 400,000 carers and I also want to thank Margaret May, who has been a staunch advocate on behalf of those carers in and around Australia. In Tasmania, we have over 69,000 carers, and we have 16,000 primary family carers. They really deserve support, and it is very important.

To the unsung heroes in our community, it is a great relief today to hear the news that the bonus payment will be made, and I hope that the Rudd Labor government has learnt its lesson. It has been caught out, and I think the Pat Stafford quote is appropriate. I have said it once and will conclude with it:

John Howard was the quiet achiever but Kevin Rudd has turned out to be the quiet deceiver. We knew nothing about this before the election.

So the good news is that there is relief today. The anxiety levels have hit the roof for nearly one week, but there is enormous relief today and I congratulate those carers who are willing to stand up on behalf of their local communities.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is indeed a pleasure to join in the address-in-reply to His Excellency the Governor-General’s speech to parliament of what is now some weeks ago. In extending my best wishes to the Governor-General, can I say what a magnificent job he has done as Australia’s leader over a long period of time. I particularly want to thank him for the very visible visit he made to Townsville recently—principally to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Royal Australian Regiment, of which he was a distinguished leader at one stage in his military career. I thank him for the way he interacted with the Townsville community. He attended a youth forum that the Mayor of Thuringowa, Councillor Les Tyrell, put on; and I certainly hope that Councillor Les Tyrell is the new mayor of Townsville City after next Saturday. The Governor-General and his wife were very gracious visitors to that North Queensland city and demonstrated the sort of interest the Governor-General has taken in Australia since becoming our leader.

The Governor-General delivered a speech, which of course was written by the current government, and I want to refer to some aspects of that speech and some aspects of the program that the new government raised in that speech. The new government made a great virtue of attacking inflation. Not only did Mr Rudd pinch all of the coalition policies when he was opposition, but having gained government he seemed to again be following what our government did in 1996. In 1996 our government came in with a $96 billion debt confronting it. There was a $10 billion annual deficit and there were huge problems in the economy created by the Labor Party. We rightly pointed out that we had this huge government debt to address.

Mr Rudd, thinking of those times, thought he had to try and find something he could blame on the coalition and blame his inexperience on as he got into more and more trouble. He anticipated he would need a peg to hang his hat on in relation to blame. Having promised, of course, that he was finishing the blame game—a promise that was as shallow as most of Mr Rudd’s other original promises—he then picked on inflation. With the help of a very compliant media, he has raised the issue of inflation in the attention of the Australian public. However, what he has forgotten to mention, of course, is that the last Labor government that we had had inflation running at 10 per cent—double-digit figures—when we came into government 11 or 12 years ago. Labor simply cannot be trusted with management, as shown by their record over the last term of the Labor government, with huge interest rates—up to 17½ per cent. I carry my bank statement with me because younger people these days do not believe me when I say that I was paying 17½ per cent on my housing loan, but I have got the bank statement to prove it.

So Mr Rudd picked on this fictitious claim about inflation running out of control. Inflation is an issue—it is one of the issues that the Howard government addressed and one of those that would have been carefully handled had we retained office. But Mr Rudd will really need to think of another blame game issue rather than the inflation one, because we know from Labor’s last experience in government that they will be looking at inflation in the double-digit area and thinking of it as normal.

The government’s comments about economic reform are a lot of fluff. I think it has been clearly demonstrated over the last 100 days that to be a fiscal conservative you have to do more than just mouth the words. The new government has become, I think, quite well recognised in the first 100 days as being good on the rhetoric but finding it a lot more difficult to put that rhetoric into action. As Senator Barnett mentioned in the speech before mine, the government’s comments about work and family in the address by the Governor-General are clearly easily forgotten by the government as it sets out to penalise those who are more vulnerable in our society, the carers and the elderly. I am delighted that Brendan Nelson has led a campaign that has reversed the decision of the Labor government to slash payments to carers and the elderly.

With education—and a lot was made of this in the Governor-General’s speech—we see that rather than assisting with education the new government seems to have gone out of its way to attack education. The very popular—and not only popular but very useful—Investing in Our Schools Program has been slashed by this government. One wonders what those state schools, Catholic schools and independent schools are going to do for the assistance they needed, which was not being provided by the state governments—who do have primary responsibility for education. In the health area there were a lot of promises by the Labor government. There was a health ministers’ get-together—a bit of a powwow; a bit of a chat—a week or so ago. What came out of it? Nothing except the chat. They agreed to have another chat at some time in the future to see if they could address the problems.

A lot was made, in the government’s speech, of climate change and water. As I have mentioned in this chamber previously, Australia produces less than 1.4 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. If you shut Australia down tomorrow, it would not make one iota of difference to the changing world climate. We are part of the globe, and Australia’s miniscule emissions will have no impact on the changing climate of the globe. What we have to do to address that, and what the previous government was doing, is to show leadership, as demonstrated at APEC, where we got the big emitters to the table and made sure that they started thinking about it—because only by getting the big emitters to the table and getting them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions will we have any chance of changing the dilemma that we are looking at with world climate change.

The Governor-General’s speech on behalf of the new government mentioned a lot about social inclusion and Indigenous policy. Well, we see that the best thing that could have happened to Indigenous people, the intervention in the Northern Territory, is already being wound back by this government. I simply cannot understand that except by thinking that the government is being pressured by certain forces inside the Labor Party to take action which is really not in the best interests of our Indigenous brothers and sisters in Australia.

In relation to that, Mr Rudd was very keen to talk about the forcibly separated Indigenous children. As it turned out, there are other, non-Indigenous Australians who were also forcibly separated from their parents in the prewar and early war years—60,000 of them, the subject of a very good Senate report a couple of years ago. I have written to Mr Rudd and asked him when he is going to apologise to those non-Indigenous Australians who were forcibly separated from their parents and when he is going to consider compensation for those people. I have had a most dismissive letter—not from the Prime Minister, to whom I wrote, but from one of his parliamentary secretaries—arguing about whether an adviser had committed to doing something about this some time ago. That is an issue which must be addressed by the new government, and I will certainly be working with the Care Leavers Australia Network to try and get something done to acknowledge the hurt of those forcibly separated Australians who were not Indigenous people. Mr Rudd seems to have one set of policies for one lot of Australians and a different set for another lot. Perhaps it is an issue of which one might get him the best publicity at any particular time.

Governance and transparency were highlighted by the Governor-General on behalf of the new government. We heard a bit about the 2020 Summit that Mr Rudd is convening. Before the election, apart from pinching all of the coalition government’s policies, Mr Rudd also indicated he had a plan for Australia. We knew he was going to set up a lot of reviews, committees, task forces, boards and inquiries, but we did actually believe him, most Australians believed him, when he said he had a plan. We now find out that he had no plan at all and that he is going to get together a group of Australian people—the ‘best and brightest minds’, he says—to provide this plan for him.

In doing this, Mr Rudd has selected a steering committee that comprises a group of academics from the ‘golden triangle’ of Canberra-Sydney-Melbourne, with the exception of the Hon. Tim Fischer, who will bring some sense and a different perspective to the organisation of that conference. But there is no-one from the minor states on the steering committee, no-one at all from Northern Australia and, apart from Mr Fischer, no-one from rural and regional Australia. So this think tank of 1,000 ‘best and brightest minds’ obviously means the best and brightest minds that happen to live in the golden triangle of Canberra-Sydney-Melbourne.

To make sure that no-one from the north of Australia can get to the summit, we find that the initial advice—this is probably going to change, like most other things with Mr Rudd—is that there will be no expenses provided and no attendance fees paid. So that is great if you happen to head a major company, be a university academic, be one of Mr Rudd’s mates from business or be someone like Mr Rudd with millions of dollars behind him who can travel around Australia without assistance. But for ordinary people from Northern Australia being able to get to this conference would be just impossible. Mr Rudd probably does not know, because when he goes north he flies in a taxpayer funded government jet, that ordinary people have to drive for many hours to get to an airport, then they have to change aircraft three or four times, and they have to be away from their work for three or four days, to put in a couple of days attendance at any conference in Canberra, Sydney or Melbourne. These things were not considered, of course, because this conference is going to be for the golden triangle elite that Mr Rudd will be looking to to give him the plan that he did not have.

All in all, quite contrary to the Governor-General’s speech, which indicated that this new government was committed to bringing a fresh approach, committed to being a government that listens to the Australian people and committed to being a government with a vision for Australia’s long-term future, none of those urgings are in fact at all accurate. This is a government with no plan, little interest in Australia’s future unless you happen to live in Sydney, Melbourne or Canberra, and it is certainly not a government that is bringing fresh ideas to the table. The only new idea so far seems to be great slashes in funding to the most vulnerable in our society. I hope that the first 100 days are not the benchmark by which this government will be judged.

Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to respond to the Governor-General’s speech in the address-in-reply debate, the first that I have taken part in where there is a Labor government in office. It was the focus in the speech on the future that particularly struck me. There was a focus on the future in both a social dimension and an economic dimension. I am very pleased that we now have a government which is looking to the future and which does in fact have a plan, and a plan on two fronts: to prepare for the future growth of Australia and to prepare for any future shocks to Australia’s economy. This mirrors a lot of what was done by the previous Labor governments under Hawke and Keating, where necessary restructuring and modernisation of the country took place in order to prepare the country for the future.

There were of course a number of social platforms in the speech, but today I specifically want to address some of the economic initiatives that it covered. I want to reiterate that they prepare us for future growth in Australia through innovation, productivity, research and development, and also prepare us for any future shocks to the economy, one of which we are only just beginning to feel, I suspect—that of inflation. But currently we are also feeling tremors through the world’s financial markets and it is difficult, I think, at this stage to tell how far those tremors will go.

In talking about the economy, I want to focus on the manufacturing sector, because it is of great importance to my state of South Australia and because, during the election campaign, the future Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, expressed a great deal of support for the manufacturing industry in Australia—support that was expressed in emphatic terms that have not been heard from an Australian leader for some time and that was, fortunately, also backed up by comprehensive campaign commitments to ensure that the manufacturing sector does continue in Australia and can look forward to growth, change and development.

Before I address some of the promises within the campaign and then the measures that were addressed in the Governor-General’s speech, I would like to talk a bit about a particular example of manufacturing in South Australia. It was recently announced that Mitsubishi’s factory in Adelaide would in fact be closed—that the Mitsubishi company would no longer support vehicle manufacturing in Australia. That was indeed something that had been speculated about for some time and did not, in that sense, come as a shock to us in South Australia. Nevertheless, it was very bad news for the workers in that plant especially and for the economy of South Australia in general, although it was probably not as bad an economic shock as it might have been had it happened some time earlier.

For those who are not really aware of the development of the Mitsubishi factory, I can tell you that Mitsubishi’s Tonsley Park plant was opened in 1964 as the Australian manufacturing plant for Chrysler Australia. Chrysler then opened an engine manufacturing plant south of Adelaide in Lonsdale in 1968 to provide engines for the models being assembled at Tonsley Park. Then in 1980 the Tonsley Park plant was sold to Mitsubishi Motors Corporation and a new subsidiary, Mitshubishi Motors Australia Ltd, was formed to run the plant. At that time it produced the very popular Colt and Sigma range of vehicles, and they continued under the Mitsubishi range until the late 1980s, when production switched to the larger Magna and, later, Verada motor vehicles.

In the year 2000, Mitsubishi employed around 4,000 employees across the Lonsdale and Tonsley Park sites but by the early 2000s it was clear that the Magna/Verada line had aged considerably and approval for construction of a new vehicle was gained from Mitsubishi. A new car was engineered, and the Mitsubishi 380 was delivered to the market in 2005. In 2004, 670 workers at the Lonsdale engine plant and 350 at the Tonsley Park site were made redundant in response to a downturn in sales.

The car that arose out of the construction of the new vehicle, the Mitsubishi 380, did not achieve the success that was hoped for and has sold relatively poorly since its introduction in late 2005—down to as few as 50 cars a day. Finally, as I said, on 5 February this year it was announced that Mitsubishi would cease production of the 380 at Tonsley Park, effective at the end of this month. As a result, 930 direct jobs will be lost, and up to 2,000 jobs will be lost in industries supporting Mitsubishi’s manufacturing operations. Fortunately, the South Australian and federal governments have pledged $50 million towards retraining, Job Search and investment attraction.

I think one of the reasons that the unfortunate loss of the Mitsubishi plant is not as devastating as might be expected is that governments in South Australia and federally were acutely aware that there were a number of spin-off industries out of the motor manufacturing industry—a number of small to medium enterprises that relied on motor vehicle manufacturing in South Australia, in both the Mitsubishi and Holden plants. Fortunately a number of those smaller manufacturing industries have found other markets in other parts of the world and are successfully exporting to those markets. So although many people in those support industries will lose their jobs there will be some who will go on and continue to thrive.

I spoke at another time about the clusters project in northern Adelaide. That has been one of the reasons that some of these smaller plants have gone on to develop technologies that have enabled them to continue to manufacture well and innovatively, and to produce exports to the rest of the world. I am pleased to say that part of the Labor government’s plan is to assist that kind of manufacturing success story. As part of Labor’s $200 million Enterprise Connect initiative, $1.5 million has been committed to fund a Mapping the Connection project in the northern part of Adelaide. The idea is to examine the supply chain relationship between companies in northern Adelaide, as well as nationally and internationally, and then go on to develop strategies and programs to connect companies with one another and improve the supply chain opportunities.

That has already been successful, in a couple of instances, in a pilot project that was established in the northern suburbs. Those kinds of industry clusters have proved to be a magnet for direct foreign investment in Australia. An industry cluster has become a group of independent companies and associated institutions, including universities, that can both collaborate and compete. They do not necessarily need to be geographically concentrated but are linked by common technologies and skills, and some kind of governance or management arrangement is put in place.

That is one of the ways that the Labor government is looking to support innovation and exports in the manufacturing area. Another relatively small but significant program of the new Labor government will be retooling for climate change. There will be $75 million in grants which will particularly help small- to medium-sized companies meet the costs of such things as energy and water efficiency. This will be of great assistance to small to medium companies in the new era when companies need to be much more aware of environment change. Another program which will assist the northern suburbs is a $20 million grant to establish a manufacturing centre in Mawson Lakes in northern Adelaide. This is part of the larger manufacturing network program in which Labor will invest up to $100 million. This centre will work directly with manufacturing businesses to help them improve innovative capacity and will provide hands-on support for things such as benchmarking and managing the challenges of small business in that transitional growth period.

These are small but significant ways to allow businesses to cope with change in the manufacturing industry and to give them a bit of a lift-off to compete in a global market, which is becoming increasingly common. It is now becoming much more difficult to concentrate on just the domestic industry. Companies are beginning to understand that an export focus does assist them to grow and compete in today’s world. In the northern suburbs of Adelaide, an area where we are well poised to develop the kind of hub that will make an ideal manufacturing stronghold, we have widespread capabilities in ICT, defence, the automotive industry I have just discussed, electronics, mineral processing and food and wine. Many of those are growth areas and I expect, with a little bit of help, that those industries will grow and develop and will make the northern suburbs of Adelaide an even stronger manufacturing centre.

I briefly mentioned innovation and research and development, but that is not to say that I do not think that that is all important in developing an industry in Australia. I think we are beyond the phase when we can just stay with our current range of expertise. In fact, I think Australia, in its own borders, congratulates itself for its ability to innovate and develop good technologies and new processes that are practical and assist significant gains in the industry. But I think we have seen a slowdown in that in the past decade, because research and development was not a priority of the Howard government. It will be a great priority for the current government. The previous federal government cut the R&D tax concession, for example, from 150 per cent to 125 per cent. When you compare it to other areas, you see what a difference that kind of concession can make. The European benchmark is 150 per cent. In Malaysia, it is about 200 per cent. Across the European Union as a whole, there is also a 150 per cent R&D tax concession for science and innovation, as well as a €46 billion innovation and competitive program. Many of the major industrial companies around the world fund these kinds of programs. It is very important that the Rudd Labor government has adopted that with great enthusiasm and is determined to promote innovation and research and development.

We have the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in the chamber at the moment. He has sent out the message, very loud and clear, that we, as a government, are wanting innovative research in all our tertiary institutions and that we expect much of that will feed back into our economy and businesses to enable Australia to once again position itself at the forefront of change and innovation and find itself new directions in the changing world. I am very excited about the direction that we are taking in industry, particularly, in my home state of South Australia. I commend the new government for the approach they have taken to that.

In the last few minutes that I have available I want to move slightly away from industry and talk about the changes to industrial relations that were mentioned in the Governor-General’s speech. It is a great relief for all of us in the Labor movement in Australia that we will see an end to Work Choices and the scrapping of that legislation and a relief to see the determination by our new Labor government to bring about changes to industrial relations legislation. Those of us who were out on the ground when campaigning hard all through last year heard story after story when we spoke to many people who were adversely affected by the Work Choices legislation. It was not just employees; it was also employers who had great difficulty coping with the red tape, the confusion and the conflict created by the Work Choices legislation. It was a divisive and difficult piece of legislation that did no good whatsoever for businesses and employees in Australia.

I am pleased that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has moved as swiftly as he said he would before the election to change that Work Choices legislation. I, and many people I know, look forward to seeing a more just and fair industrial relations system developed as a result of that. Of course, most employers want the best for their employees, but the Work Choices legislation too often opened loopholes that many unscrupulous employers used to screw down workers’ rights, pay and conditions.

The most glaring example I had when I was campaigning was a man who went to work for a printer in the northern suburbs. He had worked for that printer for three months and the printer asked to take him on permanently. The man asked if he could vary his hours by 15 minutes, starting 15 minutes earlier and finishing 15 minutes earlier, in order to pick up his child from school. That was refused and the man was sacked. He was not only sacked but refused his last two weeks wages on the grounds that he had not given proper notice. That man went through the Work Choices system trying to find some redress and was given none until the intervention of my office. That is the kind of unfair practice that was promoted under the Work Choices legislation that I very much look forward to seeing changed under this new government. The opposition has indicated that it will support that legislation, and I look forward to seeing that facilitated through the parliament in the next few weeks.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to reply to the Governor-General’s speech, I would like to acknowledge the great respect that I have for His Excellency and the manner in which he has served our nation as our leader. I think he has at all times conducted himself with great dignity and probity and brought a great deal of respect to the office, and I am sure that he will continue to make an outstanding contribution to Australian public life in the future. During His Excellency’s speech, he outlined a number of initiatives that the Rudd government is intending to pursue. These were detailed in the context of a new government coming into office. He said:

As one of the world’s oldest democracies, it is easy for us to take elections for granted and to fail to appreciate how fortunate we are, to live in a nation where governments change hands peacefully, as a result of the free expression of the will of the people.

Nothing could express the benefits of living in Australia more succinctly than what has been put there.

But what concerned me in His Excellency’s speech was the plan for realigning and reforming our federation in line with the Rudd government’s plans for an Oceania almost, an East Asia or a Eurasia, as have been outlined in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. His Excellency said that Mr Rudd has:

... a plan of reforming the Federation by forming partnerships with the States and Territories to tackle the legitimate demands of working families for the delivery of better services from all levels of government ...

We do not need to reform the federation in order to get better outcomes and delivery of services for working families; we need state Labor governments to step up to the plate. It is not the responsibility of the federal government to interfere in service delivery, except where there has been a grotesque failure. And that is the challenge that the former government had to deal with for 11½ long years. We should not be messing with our federation. We should not be messing with our Constitution or even suggesting that we do so; it has stood the test of time for over 100 years. It was designed and developed to divide powers between the state and federal governments for the proper government of the country.

Mr Rudd, through his statements of reforming the federation, indicates that he wants to recast it in his image. He said that he wants to end the blame game. The blame game is simply the responsibility game—the responsibility that is spelt out so clearly in our Constitution. Mr Rudd has once again put forward more spin. He has put forward no real substance. He has created a very tight sound bite built around George Orwell’s Oceania where he will play the great oligarch of the party, as it was described, intent on having an all-conquering new order interfering in the everyday lives of Australians.

This contravenes the very nature of our country. It is one of the world’s most successful democracies, as acknowledged in the same process. It has been successful because there has been a very clear division of powers. That is not to suggest there are not areas in which it could improve. Of course there are areas in which it can improve, and the reason it needs to improve is that we have state governments that have been awash in money and spending it most unwisely, ignoring the important things that are meant to go on.

But Mr Rudd has started his prime ministership by trying to redefine the past. By redefining the past, he is casting doubt upon the economic and financial acumen of the previous government—a government that delivered 11½ years of sustained growth, delivered enormous budget surpluses, paid back $96 billion worth of Labor debt and maintained home mortgage interest rates at a lower level than they ever were under a previous Labor government and, indeed, lower than they ever have been under the present government. Mr Rudd has once again borrowed from George Orwell’s novel:

‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

Mr Rudd is simply seeking to reinvent the past so he can frame his future around a need for drastic measures to sustain Australia’s prosperity. There are drastic measures needed to sustain Australia’s prosperity, but they involve a change of government, and that is going to be at least two or three years away.

We should not be changing our Constitution. Mr Rudd said he has a plan to change the federation. I ask: what plan is this? Have the Australian people been notified of or consulted about these changes that may affect our Constitution or, indeed, the way our federation functions? Simply because state Labor governments cannot fulfil their obligations—or will not fulfil their obligations, I should say—and are neglecting their responsibilities, constitutional change is not necessitated.

During the years of the Howard government, it became very clear that the Labor governments—states and territories—were incapable of properly delivering the services their constituents required, and that is why the federal government had no choice but to step in on multiple occasions and accept further responsibility in order to ensure that the people of Australia were not disadvantaged. But in this brave new world of cooperative federalism, Mr Rudd should be ensuring that the state Labor governments will fulfil their obligations to our broader community.

Rather than constitutional reform, Mr Rudd should be advocating a stronger system for ensuring that the state governments are picking up the areas that they are meant to have picked up. I am not a constitutional lawyer, but certainly I accept the fact that government should have a limited role in people’s lives. I also support the fact that our federation is the best means of ensuring that both service delivery and the national interest are represented at once.

Section 51 of the Australian Constitution highlights the important roles and responsibilities of the federal government. These go to core national issues like defence, marriage, foreign affairs, trade, taxation, communications, quarantine, fisheries and immigration. These are important issues for the government to fulfil to the very best of its ability. Outside of this, the residual powers that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution reside with the states. I do not believe that this government should overstep the federal-state boundaries and try to stretch the Commonwealth’s powers beyond what is prescribed in our Constitution. Although I am not a constitutional lawyer, I believe that there are circumstances where it will be necessary to intervene in some particular areas. We can take legal advice on it and, indeed, the High Court has made rulings in this respect before.

Before we take the bold step of deciding to relieve the states of any of their burdens or of proposing a recasting of our federation, we have to ensure that we are not making state governments less and less accountable and less and less significant, lest they disappear altogether. Perhaps the ultimate aim of the campaign is to see the disappearance of state governments. But I have this view, which is rather old fashioned in some quarters, that state governments are better placed for service delivery because they are closer to the provision of services and to the needs of the community than the federal government can be.

It is interesting that as the state governments have received more and more funding over the course of the years they have been seen to be more and more wasteful in their use of this money. In my own state of South Australia, they once budgeted for an increase in public servants of some 600 people but ended up putting 6,000 people on the payroll. You cannot just have an oversight and add 10 times the number of people to the public payroll and then expect your books to balance. Indeed, it is an unfortunate state of being that the books no longer do balance.

State governments have incurred some $40 billion worth of debt and expect it to rise to over $80 billion over the course of the next few years. Why are they doing this? Because they know that the public do not hold them accountable; they hold the federal government accountable. We need to ensure that the public recognise which responsibilities lie with state governments and that the Commonwealth should not be picking up the tab simply because it is in the too-hard basket for them. Over the last decade we have seen the inadequate delivery of services at the state level until the Commonwealth has stepped in. Record tax windfalls have been going to state governments and yet they still squander these abundant resources. Mr Rudd has an obligation not to recast the federation and not to blur the lines of where responsibilities lie between federal and state governments but to make the state governments account for what they are doing and hold them to it.

It would make more sense to reform the federation from a regulatory sense rather than simply stepping in to the service delivery area. Reducing some areas of conflict between state governments would, I am sure, meet with a wide measure of support because what is good for people in one state is usually good for people in other states. Let me give you an example. Occupational health and safety is designed to protect workers and to provide safe working conditions. Why should the occupational health and safety regulations in South Australia be different from those in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia or anywhere else in Australia? The intention of these laws is to protect workers. The provision of a national regulatory regime would ensure that businesses could easily work across borders. It would ensure that there would be increased competition because people could transfer their labour and their skills across borders—business people could do that with their own staff. It would also ensure that we have a nationally compliant scheme in which changes could be effected very easily.

There are any number of regulatory areas where this would make very good sense. Another one would be consumer credit laws. I gave a speech in this place last year about—

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a very good speech.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Abetz. I gave a speech about how consumer credit laws vary according to each state. In some states you can charge 48 per cent annual interest. In other states there are no caps on interest rate payments charged by short-term money lenders. In fact, you can roll additional fees into it, which means that some people are paying thousands of percentage points in interest per annum for short-term money.

These sorts of things need a national regulatory environment to protect consumers and ensure that there is standardisation across our country. Our country is simply too big and at the same time too small in population to have different regulations in each of our states across areas that have a commonality of interest. I suggest that that is where the focus of any reform should be. We should not be looking at replacing the service delivery obligations of the states. We should not be looking at reforming the role of our Constitution, which has supplied enormous stability and contributed to one of the world’s longest standing democracies and, I have to say, one of the greatest democracies anywhere in the world.

We need to have a consistent approach to this. We do not want to have Mr Rudd controlling the thought processes of all the state governments. We do not want to see George Orwell’s ultimate party solution coming forward. We want to see that anyone who has a voice and an opinion in this place will have it honoured and respected. Some of the early signs are very concerning. One of these of course has been the complete lack of commitment until last night about the future of the carers allowance, and there are still questions that need to be answered in this regard.

More disturbing was something that was brought to my attention earlier today. I am a very proud member of the parliamentary sports club. It is a bipartisan affair. It is an organisation which is committed to sport, to health and to ensuring that many of us will get out and be active and be good role models for the public. It is also designed to get our pollies healthier and fitter so that we can do our jobs even better than we currently do. It has met with great success in the five years or so that it has been established. It has raised about $100,000 for charitable purposes. It displays a sense of bipartisanship which fosters stronger relationships amongst our parliamentarians both domestically and internationally.

My concerns relate to a trip which was to be privately funded by our members of parliament individually and was scheduled to not only take a business delegation to England and France during the break but also engage with members of parliament in other countries both on the sporting field and outside the sporting field. No taxpayer funds, I understand, were going to be used for this. Yet when Mr Rudd’s office was advised that this trip was going to take place, I am told that the message that came back from his chief of staff, Mr Epstein, was that any Labor member who wanted a future in the Rudd government would not be going on this trip.

This is a despicable act by someone who is clearly prepared to rule the roost as some sort of oligarch. This is a problem for democracy in our system, and also for the charities that were going to be the beneficiaries of the $100,000 or so that was expected to be raised. This was a bipartisan delegation which has enjoyed wide support in the engagement with our international compatriots.

It is very disappointing and a very clear indication of how Mr Rudd intends to run his government and ultimately how he is going to ride roughshod over the states. I would hope that this is not the case but time will tell. I would only say to the people who are listening to this broadcast that we on the coalition side will continue to ensure that the states bear up to their responsibilities. We will do this through the state Liberal oppositions and through the federal coalition in this chamber as well, and I hope that we will return to a more balanced environment across Australia’s political system.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to join the address-in-reply to make a contribution on a very important issue, which is the wheat industry. ‘Working families’ was the mantra used by this Labor government to get elected. Now that it is in office, it emerges that families who work on the land are not included. I refer specifically to the thousands of wheat growers across Australia, who face the most radical overhaul of their structure in its history. They face the dismantling of over 60 years of marketing systems that were built around them and for them. Wheat growers who sow their crops today do not know what tomorrow will bring.

They will no longer have a buyer of last resort to purchase their wheat. They will no longer have a national pool or an estimated pool return which their bankers rely on to fund cropping and harvesting operations. They will not know whether they will get paid for their wheat when they do sell. They will not know whether or not to build storage facilities. They will not know whether their buyers will be able to transport their wheat to a port or whether there will be a ship to take it to its market.

They will not know how to be players in an international market characterised by foreign subsidies and sophisticated financial instruments. They no longer have any say in a market dominated by international multinational corporations responsible to their shareholders. Australian wheat growers no longer face a market where they command a guaranteed quality premium. They will be picked off by large grain traders and will experience larger price fluctuations and lower returns than they have experienced for generations.

The impact of this will be a marked increase in instability in the wheat industry in Australia. That means thousands of growers and their families, suppliers and local communities face a future of uncertainty and greatly increased risk to their livelihoods. This issue has not gained a lot of attention in the day-to-day world of politics. Believe me, there is nothing more serious to hundreds of thousands of Australians reliant on the wheat industry than the impending extinction of the single desk marketing arrangements for wheat exports.

These changes are going to be implemented without the government doing its homework on what will happen as a result. If the government does not know what is going to happen, how on earth can wheat growers be expected to judge their position? We know that the government has done nothing in this regard because we were told so in the estimates committee. In the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport estimates, I specifically asked whether the department had done any work, research studies or modelling on the effects of all this wheat hitting the market at one time. The answer came straight back from the department representative, who said, ‘No, we haven’t.’ I made the point that there is a great concern out there that if the wheat comes off quickly and all goes to the ports at one time there will be total confusion and chaos. I was told that I had identified a serious issue and that the minister is aware in broad terms of the issues around grain transport.

Growers are also concerned about whether their premium price for quality wheat would be maintained in the absence of a single desk for exports. People were prepared to buy Australian wheat at a premium because the quality standards were high and they were prepared to go that little extra way. So I asked at estimates: who will now be in charge of guaranteeing the high standards of Australian wheat if three, four or 10 people have licences to sell? Who is going to be responsible for guaranteeing the high standard of wheat exports? The answer to that was that part of the government’s policy commitment on wheat marketing is to establish an industry expert group to advise on a range of issues around the implementation of the new policy. I think that it would be a good thing to get the answers from that committee before we implemented this brave new world.

That is all very well, but it is too late. That sort of information analysis should have been done before the government committed to a policy that they obviously have not thought through. They should know what the policy is before inflicting general mayhem on such an important national industry. The government does not even know how wheat quality will be tested under the new regime. As a department official told me in estimates,

... we do not know what the details of that will be at this point, but the minister has established an industry expert group to give him advice ...

I also asked a question on the handling infrastructure of the wharves. There will be increased pressure on those as everyone tries to get the wheat out at the highest possible price and at the earliest possible time. I asked whether there had been any modelling done on that. ‘Not that I am aware of,’ was the answer from the department. I pushed further. There will be increased cost with the pressure on port facilities. I asked whether the minister had been advised of those likely increased costs. I was told:

It is not at all clear what might be the outcome for bulk handlers, in terms of costs or otherwise, of the new wheat marketing arrangements. At this stage, we are keeping a watch on that issue ...

…            …            …

We cannot say anything definitive about what might be put in place at this stage because no decisions have been taken. It is an issue that we are aware of and we are certainly keeping under scrutiny the development of the new arrangements.

I tried to make it clearer for the people charged with inflicting this policy on wheat growers. I asked:

Has the department advised the minister that there will be considerable problems when a grower rocks up to the bank manager and says, ‘I want $200,000 to put the crop in,’ and the bank manager says, ‘Well, how much are you going to get?’ He says, ‘Well, I don’t know, because there’s no export pool returns.’ Is the minister aware of that?

In return, I was given a lecture on how:

... all growers have access to all the information that is necessary for them to make a reasonable estimate of the price. They have access over the internet to the Chicago and Kansas boards of trade figures on a daily basis and they can work back through the freight and other issues to work out a price.

So the government expects every wheat grower to do for himself what the Australian Wheat Board has been doing with an army of experts for him over 60 years.

The obvious question for the government is: if the department does not know what the effect of deregulation will be on the price, transport costs and availability, how on earth does it expect the wheat grower and his local bank manager to figure it out? I asked this question:

... is the minister aware of the problems of not having estimated pool returns? You say that a farmer may be skilled and he may even be able to employ someone, if he has a huge farm, to advise him. But the average guy that has 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 acres is not going to be able to estimate what the price will be—and even if he does, it will be a wild guess. The bank manager is not going to be interested in his estimations. He wants to know what price he—

the farmer—

is going to get. If he does not know what price he is going to get, he will not lend him money. I ask you whether you have advised—as you should have—the problems of not having a pool will cause?

As everyone in the industry knows, if the pool goes, it will undermine the domestic return. Once the pool goes, the domestic market will probably go down with it. But no-one from the government could give me an answer. Once again, if the industry basically operates from a widely accepted yardstick, which is the estimated pool return, how does the market work without it? How does the bank manager know what to lend? How does the grower work out how much he needs to plant and to borrow for the planting? How does he know the transport costs or when he will get paid? How does he know if there is a ship waiting to take his wheat or a truck ready to deliver it to the port? All of these things have been in place for 60 years. All of a sudden, he has to face a scorched earth policy when it comes to getting his wheat to market. And the government that has put him in that position cannot give him any advice as to what will happen.

At estimates, I asked:

What is going to happen if we get a bumper crop, say 24 million tonnes or 25 million tonnes, and we do not have the capacity to get that wheat out, we do not have the infrastructure? In previous terms, that wheat was sent out over 12 or 18 months. Have you advised the minister what would happen in a situation of oversupply with no buyer of last resort?

I was merely told that the minister was aware of the issue. So I tried again. I said:

Let me put this to you: you have a 25 million tonne crop and facilities to get rid of 12 million tonnes or 18 million tonnes, and quite a lot of it is under canvas, under cover—who is going to buy it? You cannot sell it because you cannot get it out. The domestic market is full. It is sitting there under canvas. Who goes out and buys that wheat?

I was told:

... growers do not necessarily have to sell or price their wheat at the price that is pertaining at harvest time. They can store the wheat.

So I asked the obvious follow-up question:

How do they store it if all the facilities are full and it is under canvas? ... A lot of them do not have a lot of storage facilities; most of them do not.

I explained:

In the event of a bumper crop ... no-one is going to wait for a better price when every silo is full, every railway carriage is full and every wharf is under strain. No-one is going to be able to sell it for a reasonable price, because the price will go down. ... Surely, as a competent department, you would have done modelling to show the best possible scenario and the worst possible scenario. ... I imagine that some modelling would have been done.

But the response was:

I will not make any comment on that; it would be improper for me to do so. All I will say is that the department is simply implementing the government’s policy commitments consistent with that.

This dialogue reveals what little thought has been invested in Labor’s policy, what little professional analysis has gone into it as well as the lack of input from the growers. It is alarming that this industry has been subject to a major upheaval with so many key questions unanswered.

The government has thrown the industry up in the air like a pack of cards and no-one knows where they will land, least of all the poor wheat grower who has to make decisions now about how much to plant. This is a major industry whose future is at stake.

After the dismal performance of the government at estimates hearings, I placed further questions on notice, which of course have yet to be answered. They provide a good summary of the unknowns afflicting the growers as they prepare to sow this next season’s crop, which I believe is being planted at the moment. My questions on notice were:

Can the department advise whether the minister will be in a position to inform Australian wheat growers how the new export wheat marketing arrangements will affect them?

Has the department provided advice to the minister on how growers will be affected if the government-accredited exporter fails to pay growers?

What safeguards or protections for growers has the department investigated, should government-accredited exporters fail to pay or delay to pay their wheat suppliers?

What measures are being considered to provide assistance for the comprehensive education of wheat growers in the world of international trading, hedging, futures contracts and associated financial dealings to prepare growers faced for the first time with these decisions under new marketing arrangements?

Has the department considered and provided advice to the minister of the ramifications of growers not having a guaranteed buyer for the wheat crop for the first time in over 60 years?

Has the department taken steps to advise the minister of the great uncertainty for, and marketing vulnerability of, growers as they sow the 2008 crop without any explanation about the proposed new marketing program that will apply for the sale of that crop?

Has the department evaluated the government’s proposed wheat marketing policy in terms of its impact on working family growers?

Has the department investigated whether Australia’s wheat growers will be forced into absorbing added biosecurity risk management costs with the introduction of multiple sellers likely to lead to a breakdown in current grain hygiene controls and established systems of grain handling and transport?

Has the department advised the minister of the financial and moral impact on working family growers of the present two to six years of drought?

Has the department assessed the impact on farm family income in a deregulated wheat export market dominated by international corporations seeking to maximise returns to foreign shareholders rather than Australian working family growers?

Has the department assessed the advantages and disadvantages of removing the strict controls over the AWB group that is set out in the Wheat Marketing Act?

Has the department sought to consult the Australian Bankers Association on the financial implications for Australian wheat growers under the government’s proposal to repeal the current Wheat Marketing Act?

Has the department sought input from the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and/or his department on wheat growers’ concerns that under the government’s proposed wheat marketing arrangements there would be serious issues of road safety, more rail closures, greater port congestion and higher transport carbon emissions?

Has the department done any work to assess how a majority of export growers will receive cash flow when their grain is no longer taken up by the national pool? Is it true that traditionally some 30 per cent of the export remains unsold on the international market 12 to 18 months after harvest with the unsold wheat being rolled into the succeeding pool and growers always assured of receiving cash flow by way of pool distributions or by entering into harvest loans based on their tonnage delivery and the estimated pool return? How is this matter being addressed in the government’s wheat policy?

Unfortunately, all we have are questions, questions and more questions. The government has no answers. This is a very unhealthy climate in which to implement radical structural change to a market where Australia has historically performed well. This is not the way to help working families in wheat districts; this is the way to chaos in a major market with ramifications not only for the nation’s wheat growers but also for the nation’s transport infrastructure and export performance sectors. I urge the Rudd Labor government to pull back from implementing such widespread change without getting some, at least some, of these answers in place.

I conclude by quoting the words of wheat growers themselves through the Wheat Export Marketing Alliance:

The government has no marketing plan or understanding of how to deal with the inequities and problems that will arise from its legislation. ... Managing this rushed transition will be immensely difficult, particularly for wheat growers who are being forced into planning for their future in an information vacuum at the grower level.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This address-in-reply debate presents an opportunity to reflect on the remarkable level of activity of the Rudd government to date. I would like to begin by reflecting on what was the extraordinary opening week of the 42nd Parliament, with the historic apology and acknowledgement of the sorrow we all express to Indigenous people on behalf of the Australian parliament for the stolen generation.

It was quite an emotional day for many people, but for my part it was something that was long overdue. There was a sense in the Canberra community that at last a great wrong was set right and that it was the beginning of an extensive program of public policy to try and rectify the injustices and inequities that still exist with respect to the Indigenous peoples of Australia.

I would also like to mention the significance of the welcome to country that occurred in the Members’ Hall of Parliament House on that day. It has been a feature of many a state and territory government, but I particularly acknowledge the efforts of the Stanhope Labor government here in the ACT and their welcome to country and acknowledgement of the Ngunawal elders. To see our very dear friend Matilda House participate in this very formal way in the opening of parliament was a wonderful moment, and one that I found very moving.

Members of the Rudd Labor government are all committed to make sure that the apology was the beginning of a fresh start. It is about forging a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and a very specific strategy to close the gap on key health, education and employment differentials that exist. I also acknowledge the bipartisan nature of the commitments made on the day of the national apology, and look forward to working constructively with all parties represented in both houses of parliament to make this fresh start a reality.

Along with the other ACT senator, Senator Humphries, and my colleagues in the other place, it is a privilege to represent the Australian Capital Territory and the nation’s capital. With only five years to go until the centenary of the national capital it is appropriate to reflect upon some of the principles and efforts made that led to the creation of Canberra. One of the motivations was to resolve, once and for all, some of the historic rivalries between the states and create a national capital so that Australians could feel that there was once place that was truly representative of them all. Obviously, the parliament is the greatest symbol of our democracy in that regard, but its home here in Canberra is a very tangible symbol of what it is to be a Commonwealth—a federated democracy. The privilege we have in representing this particular constituency is something that is not lost on me, nor on my colleagues. Back then, Canberra very much represented a fresh start and there is some relationship with the fresh start that we all felt and participated in at the beginning of this 42nd Parliament—embarking on a concerted effort to resolve those inequities that exist with our Indigenous population.

Reflecting on the last 11 years, one negative was the sore point for many Canberrans that the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, chose not to live in Canberra. This is something that echoed back to me throughout the 11½ years that they were in government: people here in Canberra, and elsewhere, took personal offence to this. Whatever justifications the Prime Minister may have had at the beginning, they were certainly not the same justifications he could rely upon at the end of his term. That continuing, very powerful symbolic rejection of Canberra as the personal home of the Prime Minister and the home of our federated democracy really delved its way deeply into the psyche of many Canberrans and also people beyond our borders.

I was extremely thrilled and proud to see that there were no such inhibitions on behalf of Mr Rudd, our Prime Minister, and his family. I have enjoyed the commentary about their settling into Canberra as their home and know the excitement of many Canberrans on seeing the Rudds or the Prime Minister out and about on our streets. It is something that we are really lucky to have as a community. It is part and parcel of the wonderful combination of being such a diverse and vibrant community in our own right and yet having this very grave and important responsibility of being the national capital.

The Rudd Labor government has hit the ground running, working hard to take on the challenges left to us by what can only be described as a lazy and complacent government. There are very specific issues of neglect which I will comment on in due course. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge some of the initiatives that have been taken by the Rudd government in the first 100 days.

I have already mentioned the primary importance of the national apology, and another very important first step was to ratify the Kyoto protocol. It was just yesterday that the 90 days ticked over and we are formally part of the global community working together to fight the particular challenge of global warming and climate change. Finally, we are part of that movement and we, as a government, recognise the need for very specific and decisive action at all levels, even at the very micro level of households and communities. Every sphere of government has a role to play. Local government has, in many respects, driven a lot of the community based initiatives with respect to managing energy consumption, waste management and design of more energy efficient communities. State governments have led the way in committing to the specific goals with respect to energy conservation and climate change. Now, finally, that national sentiment is wrapped up and reflected in the policies of the federal government—the Rudd Labor government, post their election in 2007.

Not least of the Rudd government’s initiatives is the introduction into the federal parliament of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, through which the government is replacing the unfair Work Choices laws with a new workplace relations system that delivers fairness for employees, flexibility for employers and long-term productivity growth for our economy. I will come back to the issue of productivity growth shortly. But I would like to take this opportunity to say to all those working Australians who found it within their hearts and minds to focus on the issue of workplace relations leading up to the last election that it was without doubt a significant factor in the outcome of the election. The line had been crossed on what most Australians considered to be a fair and sensible balance in our workplace and industrial relations system. I think the outcome of the election showed that, in the minds of most Australians, the Howard government had crossed the line for what was acceptable. It has been quite fascinating to watch some of the convolutions of the opposition since this bill has been in parliament over how they will respond to it. I think they know, deep down in their hearts, that their policy was extreme. It frightened people. It was excessive. It was ideological. And it certainly had no place in the practical, good operation of a healthy and growing economy in the 21st century.

When the Rudd government won office it inherited inflation at its highest level in 16 years and interest rates at the second highest level amongst advanced economies. We now know that, while the Howard government was asleep at the wheel, our productivity growth was falling and, slowly but steadily, inflation was again let loose in the Australian economy, resulting in numbers for Australia that are significantly above those for most OECD economies. So it is not surprising that the Rudd government moved immediately to make fighting inflation an absolute priority. We are now implementing a five-point plan on inflation, designed very specifically to put downward pressure on interest rates. I will run through those points briefly: strong budget surpluses achieved by reducing waste in government spending, encouraging private savings, tackling skills shortages and infrastructure bottlenecks, and lifting productivity and workforce participation. All of these strategies require a great deal of diligence and focus, and that is what they will get from the Rudd government.

The inflation problem we are facing did not emerge overnight; it has been building for some time. For 1½ years underlying inflation had been running at around the upper end of the Reserve Bank’s two to three per cent inflation target band. So it is a fact that the inflation challenge we face today is a direct consequence of policy neglect in the past. The Howard government fuelled inflationary pressures in the economy by feeding demand with massive and unproductive spending bribes during the election period, and in the period leading up to that, whilst ignoring the growing infrastructure bottlenecks and, very importantly, the growing skills shortages which had the effect of choking capacity in the economy. For over a decade, spending was not directed to the challenges on the horizon or to boosting the productive capacity of our economy. I recall that even in the late 90s, in the first two terms of the Howard government, the need to invest in the skills that would drive our economic growth in the future was a raging issue. So this is not an issue that the former government, now the opposition, can say snuck up on them. On the Labor side we had a consistent commentary right through the period of the Howard government about the need to invest in skills, in trades, in education and higher education in order to set ourselves up to make the most of the economic growth opportunities that would present themselves in the global economy in the 21st century. But the then government’s spending was not directed to those urgent needs and priorities. They presided over an unprecedented boom off the back of record terms of trade but failed to make those critical investments in skills, as I have mentioned, and also in infrastructure.

We know that with an economy operating at close to full capacity the only way we will be able to achieve sustained improvement in incomes over time is to direct our policy efforts towards expanding the productive capacity of the economy. A decade of neglect of the twin investment deficits, in infrastructure and in skills, has meant that our economy has been ill-prepared to deal with the demand surge flowing from the terms of trade boom. The best platform for economic prosperity in the long term is a well-educated population and a skilled workforce. We know that, and that is why the Rudd government has begun implementing its program for an education revolution—from early learning in schools, to primary and high school education, to tech colleges and universities, to research and development and innovation policy. It is part of the urgent needs of this country that we were talking about back when I was involved in the Knowledge Nation investigations under a previous leader of Labor—

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Noodle nation!

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can ridicule Knowledge Nation all you like. I think it is a testimony to the credibility of Labor’s education revolution that we have been focused consistently over many years on the need for investment in education at all levels. It has been the Howard government that has scoffed at and ridiculed the need for this kind of investment—to our peril as a nation, and obviously exacerbating the very specific economic challenges that we now face as a country.

The Rudd Labor government, with all of the initiatives that I have outlined and the pressing economic priorities facing us, particularly that of reducing inflation, have a tough challenge ahead of us. But the Rudd Labor government’s agenda to date and our performance in the first 100 days of government will inspire and fill with confidence the people of Australia that at last they have a government that understands the true nature of what stands before us.

Prior to a Rudd Labor government, the people of Australia were faced with a series of obfuscations and misleading and manipulative policy statements, which fuelled inflationary pressures and sought to inflame growing problems, not fix them. Fortunately for all of us, with the solid foundations of a very conservative fiscal approach to managing our economy, the Rudd Labor government has come through with the right mix of policy solutions across a vast range of portfolios to start setting things right.

Our Prime Minister is the first one to say that this is not going to be easy. The depth of the challenge that faces our economy in dealing with infrastructure, skills shortages and in placing downward pressure on inflation is profound. But I think it is true to say that Labor will face a tougher test in the minds of many on how we perform in these difficult circumstances. I certainly think that the tough test will be passed with flying colours, as once again it is a federal Labor government that does the truly hard yards when it comes to managing Australia’s economy, not the easy pickings riding on reforms of the previous Labor government that we saw from the Howard government and not the consummate neglect that we experienced for the last 11 years which hark right back to some of those early budgets in 1996 and 1997. I am showing my age now, but I remember how research and development and innovation funding was slashed to the very bone in the 1996, 1997 and 1998 budgets and how difficult it was at the time to sustain any hope that the then government, the Howard government, had any eye to the future whatsoever about preparing us for the challenges of a global economy in the 21st century.

All I can say is that I have complete confidence in my colleagues to manage the agenda. We are focused on the industries of the future. We are focused on fixing the problems of the past. I am very proud to stand here as part of the Rudd Labor government and to be part of this forward agenda because it is one that will change the shape of Australia. It will inspire confidence amongst all of the people of Australia that we have a plan. It is a positive plan, it is a plan that is going to be accountable and that fully engages with people, and it is starting right now with the performance of our first 100 days. I look forward to the ongoing activities of a truly inspiring government that has everyone talking positively about the prospects for Australia’s future in the global economy and society of the 21st century.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listened to a few speeches today and I must say that there is a common thread coming through from the Labor government. They have all been picking up on their leader’s, the Prime Minister’s, style of speaking. It is just so full of rhetoric. The previous speaker, Senator Lundy, who is well known in that department, surpassed herself today. She filled in her last five minutes with circular praise of her own government. It was all full of rhetoric. I beg the government, conceding that you won the last election: get down and govern and stop the rhetoric and the commissions and the new statutory authorities and the committees. Just get down and govern. You do not need the rhetoric anymore. You can leave that to oppositions, if you like. There is a definite common thread. Not from you, Senator Sherry, because you have served in previous governments. You get down to the nitty-gritty. You are that sort of person. I do not like to eat into my own time because I do have a set speech here, but I had to make the point on air to anyone listening to the previous speaker that Labor government speakers have got up one after another and just simply espoused rhetoric that their own leader would be proud of. I make that point.

In my address to the Senate today, I would like to say that it is now some five years to the month since a coalition of the willing led by the United States armed forces, in which Australia was of course included, began an offensive into Iraq with the aim of toppling the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. This pre-emptive strike in March 2003 against a regime which not only had harboured terrorists but had involved itself in terrorist activity was undertaken in the height of the atmosphere of the early days of the war on terror. The Senate will clearly recall the shock of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre where some 3,000 people were killed in the most horrifying circumstances, Australians included. And of course there were the October 2002 Bali bombings where some 202 lives were lost. The majority of those were Australian.

It is true to say that the war on terror is now receiving less media attention and that there is less social angst here in Australia and even fewer successful terrorist attacks in Indonesia where we suffered our worst attack against Australians predominantly because of the policy of pre-emption against terrorist activities and cells and of course the laws that were put in place that have armed our security forces to act in the interests of our citizens.

Ironically, though, it is fair to say that while all this has occurred—and it is a very good place to be—nevertheless the war is no weaker in its intensity and purpose. Ironically, the level of combat in Afghanistan today is as great and as precarious as it was at the beginning, in 2001, when the offensive was led against the Taliban regime. In the other theatre of war, Iraq, it is true to say that the stakes have always been very high in winning that war and establishing a free and democratic nation. The former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, put it succinctly in 2006:

... global terrorism is so anxious to stop us in Iraq and Afghanistan—because if they succeed in that then they stop the possibility of democracy taking the place of religious fanaticism in these countries. Whereas if we succeed and if democracy takes root in Iraq and Afghanistan then I think, after that, global terrorism is on a downhill path.

Further, the consequences of a democratic Iraq will mean democracy does work in the Arab world and it will set undercurrents throughout the whole of the Middle East for greater freedoms and fair democratic elections in a region ruled by oppressors and dictators.

It has been in this time of democratic transition that the insurgents have most fanatically tried to whip up a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites to head off the path of democracy. But no fear, no threat and no bloodshed has halted the people of Iraq’s desire for democracy. Just look how far the people of Iraq have come. In around January 2005, 8.5 million Iraqis, under the serious threat of violence, came out to vote for an interim government. Some 10 months later, 10 million people took part in a vote on a referendum. Several months later, 12 million people, or 75 per cent of the eligible voters, came out to vote for a national assembly—a parliament. In that span of 12 months there had been three elections, each one bigger than the one before, and there can be no doubt of the Iraqi people’s rejection of the insurgents’ mad ideology. They want to win against the insurgents and the terrorists.

While there have been many dim days, particularly in the latter part of 2005 and in 2006, when it seemed that the terrorists were unstoppable and were really doing serious damage against the fledgling democracy in Iraq, it is now true to say that the worst periods of blood and terror in Iraq seem to be over, at least in terms of frequency. But we are quite often reminded of the depths of evil that the terrorists will stoop to. Just one month ago or thereabouts we all saw on the news services the marketplace that was bombed in one of the worst killing sprees in Iraq. Hundreds of women and children were gathered there and some 100-plus were killed. Two mentally disabled women—they had Down syndrome—had bombs strapped to them, probably unbeknownst to them, because the bombs were triggered from afar. That is the depth that terrorists will go to—to use people in such a way in a terrorist act and indiscriminately blow up marketplaces.

Nevertheless the worst may well be behind the country. The progress can be measured in three benchmarks: firstly, the strengthening of the democratic processes; secondly, security of the Iraqi people; and, thirdly, the diminishing activity of the terrorists. Without doubt, the tactical change in combating the insurgents, called the ‘surge’, which commenced in full in June 2007, where extra United States troops—I believe around 30,000—were sent to Iraq to quell the increase in terrorist attacks, has been the turning point from those very dark days of late 2005 and 2006. Stability is now within reach; security in the worst areas like Baghdad has improved greatly. According to US military figures, monthly attacks have decreased by 60 per cent since June 2007 and are now at the same levels as they were in around 2004. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 per cent since a year ago. From January to December 2007 sectarian attacks decreased some 90 per cent in the Baghdad districts. Over the past year thousands of extremists in Iraq have been captured or killed, including hundreds of al-Qaeda leaders and operatives.

So it is worth noting that the improved security situation in Iraq has come not just from the surge provided by the United States but from a growing Iraqi security force that grew by over 100,000 in 2007 and now stands at half a million. As never before, concerned locals citizen groups have sprung up in the neighbourhoods volunteering to support security. There are some 80,000 members of this semi-militia group. But, along with these security improvements, equally encouraging, if not inspiring, to this step forward in security are the parliamentary improvements—the democratic improvements.

In a recent report Condoleezza Rice said:

In Iraq, the presence and role of the US and our coalition partners have been authorised by UN resolutions. The current UN authorisation expires at the end of this year, and Iraq has indicated that it will not seek an extension. It would rather have an arrangement more in line with what typically governs the relationships between two sovereign nations.

She went on to say:

There is little doubt that 2008 will be a year of critical transition in Iraq as our force levels continue to come down, as our mission changes and as Iraqis continue to assert their sovereignty. But to continue the success we have seen in recent months, the Iraqi people and government will continue to need our help. Iraqis have requested a normalized relationship with us, and such a relationship will be part of a foundation of success in Iraq—a foundation upon which future U.S. administrations can build.

Australia has been at the forefront of building that success. Australia has contributed in a most valuable fashion. Around 1,000 Australian Defence Force personnel have carried out, and are still carrying out, vital activities in Iraq. They are engaged in coalition efforts to train the Iraqi army and coastal defence forces; ADF air traffic controllers support coalition air operations; reconnaissance and transport aircraft further support coalition tasks; and our Navy continues to patrol the waters around Iraq. ADF personnel also guard the Australian representative office in Baghdad, thereby allowing our diplomats to carry out vital duties.

This is the report card on Iraq. It is very encouraging. The part played by our armed forces is a proud achievement. It is indeed a proud achievement for our country to believe in a cause and to meet and fight the terrorists front-on, to help establish democracy and to help a people who want democracy established. It has not been easy; it has been testing, but we have stayed the course. Having said that—having heard the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, in the House the other day trumpeting and smarting on the recent announcement of pulling out some 515 troops from the Overwatch Battle Group—the grounds on which it was announced that the troops were pulling out are disappointing and even shameful.

We all know that that particular battle group of personnel had in fact done their job and reached a point where a decision had to be made. There were several options: to redeploy, to redeploy some of them, or to bring them all home. The point I want to make is that, while any government would have confronted that decision, the foreign minister smarted on the reasons they should come home: that they should never really have gone, it was never a just cause and they should not even be there helping the Iraqi people establish a democracy. That is basically what he was trumpeting. In his view, the purpose in the beginning, and the end, was never justified. I would say to the new government that they have let down the very service personnel who were sent to serve there—who sought to do their job for a good cause and who have had to put themselves in harm’s way—by totally belittling the reason they were there in the first place. Those that served are entitled to better. They are entitled to better from a foreign minister, a position that requires smart words not a belittling of the force.

This has similarities to the Vietnam pullout—I will not say it is as bad or as dramatic, but all the trumpeting and smarting of why our troops ought to be pulled off the front line are still there and still deep rooted in the Labor Party. They have never understood what is going on in Iraq. I have just given you a report card on the Iraqi situation and it is a growing success. As a country, we ought to be proud of it and we ought not to belittle those that have served there. Instead, the government has reinforced all the prejudices that the Labor Party bring to making decisions in regard to our defence forces and all the suspicions that they cannot stay the course, will not stay the course, on the war on terror. They have completely missed the point.

Debate interrupted.