Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to give my address-in-reply to the speech by Governor-General Michael Jeffery AC, CVO, MC and to bring up a couple of issues that I think we can go further with. I think health issues in Australia, especially in regional areas, can be addressed in a more dynamic manner than how we are currently dealing with them. We still have cases in Australia where towns such as Cunnamulla, Thargaminda and even Pittsworth, near Toowoomba, are without a doctor. It is not a case of having the right standard of medical care; there is no doctor in the town. We should have the capacity to be more dynamic in our thinking about how we can fill these gaps. We have obviously had some major problems in Queensland with the Dr Patel issue. This is a case of not doing our homework prior to Dr Patel turning up and it is also a cover-up by the people who vouched for his credentials. Those credentials were not apparent. In fact, he had an extremely chequered history.

Be that as it may, we should make sure that those problems are dealt with—and I implore the state Labor government in Queensland to be more effective in its role of government and to cover those issues. However, we must not close our eyes to the fact that a lot of our problems, especially in regional areas, can be fixed with doctors from overseas. We should be more streamlined and more proactive in how we source these doctors.

I have been lucky enough to have delegations come to me from Brazil, where there are approximately 350,000 doctors—they say an oversupply. A lot of them are from extremely competent universities recognised internationally, recognised by the Royal College of Physicians, and they would quite happily take the opportunity to move to Australia but, unfortunately, this process is stymied. We must have the capacity to attract workers from countries such as Brazil—there is a good experience with Brazilian workers coming in on 457 visas, especially for such things as meatworks; they fit into the community and work well and everybody is happy—and to use those countries as a source of other professions, especially doctors and dentists. There should be a proactive move to encourage those who wish to move to Australia, to fix our problems when they have an abundance and we are lacking. If they are willing to come and to try to effect that process then this is something that could become a constructive policy of a government. It could bring a result in areas where currently communities, especially some of the Indigenous communities in the west of my state and also communities in general, are lacking dentists and doctors.

If we cannot fill positions with doctors, if we have an inability or if people are unwilling, we are going to have to look at the role extension of nurses. There will have to be a recognition that it is no good to say, ‘A nurse is not as good as a doctor,’ if you cannot get a doctor to turn up at all. This area of policy has to be addressed by the government in the coming term. They cannot just discuss the problem; they must come up with concrete solutions and I have laid one on the table.

With respect to the Governor-General’s reference to economics, I have serious concerns about the capacity of the current government to ardently deal with the issue of a US recession. I have been scrolling through the results produced by a search engine to find any statements by the current Treasurer as to how he intends to deal with the fact that the US, from Mr Greenspan on, has foreshadowed a recession and is now moving into a recession. We in Australia, whether or not we like it, cannot believe in the myth of decoupling. We will be, unfortunately, part of that process.

It is a cyclical thing and the previous government, especially with Peter Costello, did an exceptional job of riding the wave of prosperity in its best possible form to leave our nation in the strongest possible position. To suggest otherwise is a myth. But now the world is turning and we will need the current Treasurer to be competent in his management of what will be a precarious position. It is no good for him to continually point his finger over his shoulder and say, ‘This is nothing to do with me.’ He is now the Treasurer; therefore he has to deal with it.

One of the most dire things that we are looking at at the moment is that oil has now gone through the $110 a barrel mark with an exchange rate of 90c. If we have a recession and a loss of desire by the Americans to purchase Chinese products and therefore a loss of the Chinese desire, to the extent that it is currently there, to consume Australian resources and we have the devaluation of the Australian dollar, we are going to have an absolute economic catastrophe in the suburbs of our major capitals. The price of fuel will go through the roof. Rather than being a Jonah or a harbinger of dire times I have spoken about this a number of times. We have to come up with an alternative policy to deal with the issues that have come about because of our total reliance on an oil based fuel for the internal combustion engine.

Families will not be able to afford fuel at $3 a litre and that is where it will be heading. It will not be possible to get a 60-litre tank filled for $180 and just take it out of the budget every week. That effect will go right to the sense, style and quality of life of so many working families, especially in our suburbs. It will make the economics of transport and the economics of people in regional areas immensely difficult. This cost overlay will filter into every section of our economy. On this issue, which is coming to our horizon, we have not seen one policy by the Treasurer or the current government as to how they are going to manage it. How high do we need the price of fuel to go before it becomes a requirement of the government to start dealing with the issue? It is the No. 1 consumer item of concern today. The Australian people rightly have an inherent fear of how they are going to manage this increase in fuel prices.

I do not know whether it is a panacea but we have always put on the table biofuel, not because of any particular reason but at least as a move towards a solution. I do not for one moment say it is a solution to everything, but at least it is a step in a suite of possibilities that we need to take on board if we are going to maintain the quality of life as expected now by people who see a motor vehicle as part of the expression of their economic freedom.

Climate change is another issue. I refer also to one of the issues that Senator Heffernan brought up. We have to be more proactive in how we develop new areas of this nation to produce food for the nation if you truly believe climate change is what is occurring. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say: ‘You’re a sceptic; you don’t believe in climate change. However, we’re not going to propose any concrete and definitive plan for how to deal with it, especially in how we feed ourselves.’ If climate change is happening—and I believe that climate changes all the time; it is obviously changing—then where is our plan for the development of the north? Why does this get compartmentalised as an issue that is not of concern? We cannot go on with a total reliance on the Murray-Darling Basin scheme if the capacity for it to produce food is diminished. We must find the next step. It must be in the development of the north and it is going to require changes to federal policy and to state government policy, especially tree-clearing guidelines, wild rivers legislation and these things that really we have to have another look at if we are serious about this problem.

A final issue that I want to briefly touch on is the concern I have when people start talking about reforming the federation. For me, reforming the federation is a key to centralisation. I have a concern that what we are seeing now with the current government is that it will be operated out of one office and that is Mr Rudd’s. It will be a government which will be completely centralist and socialist in its application of how it deals with the Australian people. It will be a government that does not espouse any adherence to the belief, to the idea, that people in certain parts of the nation have a different outlook on life. We are starting to see it already. There is a move towards the centralising of the bureaucracy, the centralising of control. It is manifestly growing and it will grow in the same form as the way Mr Rudd operated when he was in Queensland. It is about to be levelled at us here.

That is especially pertinent in this chamber because as senators it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we keep the aspect of decentralisation—that protection of a second chamber and that protection of the review and amendment of decisions. We need to make sure that the parliamentary process, which is always the best mechanism of democracy and freedom for a nation, remains sacrosanct. I implore all senators to remember that when they came to this chamber they swore an oath of office that they would uphold the Constitution. To my Labor colleagues I say that that will mean that at times you have to have the capacity and the desire to challenge even your own government.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to rise to speak on the address-in-reply to the Governor-General and to do so at this first occasion for many years on which we have seen a change in government in Australia. With that I think it is important to look at the type of country the new government has inherited, the type of country the previous government left and indeed the changes that the previous government made over that time as well as the challenges that we face into the future. I believe quite strongly that the previous government, led by John Howard and Peter Costello for the last 11½ years, left a much better country than the one which it inherited back in 1996. It left a country where people enjoy the aspirations of life and confidence in the future and where, I believe, young people look forward to having jobs and opportunity both here in Australia and around the world in a far more outward-looking sense than was the case in 1996 when the Howard government came to office fresh on the back of economic recession and troubled times.

One need only look at the statistics and influences over that time to see the strength of the Australian nation that the new government has been fortunate enough to inherit. We can look at the economic growth of the nation over the last 11½ years, averaging some 3.6 per cent per annum. There was extremely strong growth throughout that period of time—extremely strong growth for an already developed country—averaging some one per cent above the OECD average during that period. It is a record of which the former government should be proud. Economic growth in and of itself is not the end you desire; what it drives though are factors such as employment. We see the government enjoying the fact that when it came to office there were 10½ million Australians enjoying jobs and the opportunities of employment in Australia. There was growth of some 2.2 million jobs over the preceding 11½ years, which is an outstanding record, ensuring that Australians of all ages and backgrounds have the opportunity of those jobs, some 60 per cent of which were full-time employment opportunities.

Commensurate with the growth in employment comes the fall in unemployment. The government is indeed very fortunate to have inherited an unemployment rate of some 4½ per cent. That is nearly half of the rate that the Labor Party left the previous government in 1996. We saw a near halving of unemployment during those 11½ years. Nothing is more important to Australians and Australian working families, as the government is fond of recalling, than the opportunity to have a job and an income to put food on the table. We have, of course, declining unemployment. This is not declining for the wrong reasons; it is declining for the right reasons, because the labour market during this time was also growing. In November last year the participation rate stood at 65.3 per cent. It was nearly two per cent up over the life of the previous government and at a near record high for the participation rate in Australia. So we have more Australians in the labour market and more of those people in the market in jobs than ever before.

With a very strong track record of strong real wages growth, people are also earning more money than ever before. There was a 2½ per cent growth in real wages over the 11½ years of the Howard-Costello government compared with a 1.8 per cent reduction in real wages under the previous Hawke-Keating government. On top of all this economic growth, jobs and opportunity, the government has been fortunate to inherit a debt-free government. The Howard-Costello years saw the elimination of some $96 billion in government debt, saving on average $8.6 billion in interest payments, and investment in the Future Fund and the Communications Fund, which the new government has already set about raiding and destroying. Investments from those savings in debt repayments and interest repayments were made in hospitals and schools, with more than $20 billion extra going to our hospitals and schools in real terms than at the election of the Howard-Costello government. We saw very strong tax cuts—the reductions in rates, reductions in thresholds and reductions in company tax, as well as income tax cuts. The largest ever were delivered in 2000 and there were further cuts in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007; and, of course, cuts are forecast again for 2008. There is the promise of more tax cuts to come, built on the strong fiscal budget management of the previous government.

These are a great set of circumstances for any new incoming government. We have long called Australia the lucky country; well, the Rudd government are far and away the lucky government, because they have inherited a growing economy, Australians in jobs and a debt-free government. They have inherited a wealth of opportunity to be able to build an even better country off the back of the work done in the Howard-Costello years. Economic management always has its challenges. Peter Costello as Treasurer used to speak of us having good problems and bad problems. Paul Keating had a lot of bad problems to deal with. His bad problems were high unemployment, low economic growth, a recession and staggeringly high interest rates. Those are bad problems. This government has been left with good problems, the good problems caused by a strongly growing economy. Yes, that means there are some capacity constraints in the economy. Yes, it means there are some mild inflationary pressures. But remember that those inflationary pressures are nothing compared with those of the past. Again, the Howard-Costello years saw inflation averaging just 2½ per cent, well less than the 5.6 per cent it had averaged under the Hawke-Keating years. Interest rates, similarly, were 7.26 per cent on average, compared with 12.75 per cent previously. These are good problems to have when the sole economic challenge you have is the fact that the economy is running so strongly that you need to slightly manage issues of inflation.

So it is with this great set of circumstances that the very lucky Rudd government has its work cut out for it in living up to and improving upon the economic conditions that Australians enjoyed and that were left to it. They need to improve on those to demonstrate to Australians that they are worthy of sitting on the government benches. They need to continue to grow jobs, push down unemployment and ensure that Australians enjoy the types of economic growth and opportunities that they have come to expect. But the government has many other challenges as well to live up to the many, many promises that it made during the election campaign to ensure that it won the treasury bench. There were many promises about making working families better off. Senator Joyce was just speaking about the pressures on families from higher petrol prices. Mr Rudd lulled Australians into believing that petrol prices—

Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Patterson interjecting—

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Patterson is right. Fixing petrol prices is an enormous problem. But Mr Rudd lulled Australians into believing that they would be better off on petrol prices and grocery prices under him than they would have been under a Liberal-National Party government. We wait to see the dividend of that. Australians, in particular, await the dividend of lower petrol prices and lower grocery prices. They await the substantial and sustained increase in the quantity of our investment in education that Mr Rudd promised. We will be looking for a substantial and sustained increase from this government in terms of education spending. That is what was promised. That is what we will expect to see. We await the elimination of duplication and overlap within the nation’s health system because, again, that is what was promised. That is what we expect to hold this government to account for. Of course, we look to see budget surpluses. If Mr Rudd and his team are so committed to budget surpluses and to fiscal restraint, not only do we await them delivering budget surpluses off the revenue that the Howard-Costello government left them but we particularly look forward to them seeing that their Labor colleagues in state and territory governments deliver some budget surpluses as well and bring their spiralling debt under control.

I look forward to seeing the end of blatant political advertising, wherever it occurs. I look forward to driving down the road in Adelaide and not hearing Premier Mike Rann on the radio in taxpayer funded commercials that he reads himself. I look forward to putting the television on and not seeing Premier Mike Rann appearing in taxpayer funded commercials. For all that you might have attacked government funded advertising in the past, I do not recall hearing John Howard on the radio or on television.

Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or in a helicopter.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or in a helicopter like Steve Bracks, flying over Melbourne. These Labor governments have taken taxpayer funded advertising to new heights of political opportunism. I look forward to seeing Mr Rudd bring an end to that. He needs to hurry up, because it was only a few weeks ago that I heard Mr Rann on radio yet again. Perhaps next time Mr Rudd is sitting down with the Labor Party’s national president, he could suggest that he follow the lead he is trying to set on blatant political advertising. Of course, we also look forward to fixing issues like broadband and communications—issues that the government again made great noise about.

In particular, as a South Australian, I look forward to the government successfully tackling the challenges we face on water management, issues which Senators Joyce and Heffernan before me have both spoken of. As a South Australian, I am well aware of the challenges faced by the Murray-Darling Basin system. 2007 was the driest ever year for inflows into the system. Prior to that, 2006 was the driest ever year for inflows into the system. It is pretty clear that that track record of driest ever inflows into the system is creating a very dire situation. It is causing pain for a lot of communities around the Murray-Darling system. Irrigators, as we are well aware, are suffering the pain of lost income, lost livelihood and diminishing property values. These are people whose family properties are often under threat now and whose future looks very grim indeed.

I spent some time recently with houseboat and tourism operators along the river system. They are, perhaps, the forgotten victims of the system and are people who are really caught on a double-edged sword on this issue. In most parts, the river, from a tourism perspective, is still quite accessible. Houseboats can still sail. Indeed, in some ways, the drop in river levels and the drought have created a unique opportunity. There are now sandy banks along the edges of the river. For the uneducated in terms of the river management, it looks quite attractive in places. There are things there that you would never have expected to see before. But the constant negative press about the river—necessary, perhaps, to get the attention required to see long-term solutions—has the ill effect of driving tourists away in droves. Our tourism operators are suffering, as they wish to see those long-term solutions but also wish to encourage tourists to continue to travel to and enjoy the river.

The cities of Adelaide, Whyalla, Port Augusta, Port Pirie, Broken Hill and many other towns in my home state are suffering and stressed over the availability of urban water supplies going into the future. State governments have for too long failed to secure alternative means of obtaining those water supplies. We are now seeing the stresses that this places on those communities. Then there is the environment. The environment is particularly stressed in this situation. The river Murray mouth, which has been dredged for many years now to keep it open, is truly suffering as a result of this prolonged drought. The Coorong, a Ramsar listed site of particular environmental importance, is struggling from the lack of freshwater inflows and is at serious risk. Many other lakes and reserves, such as Lake Alexandrina, are equally suffering under the driest ever conditions in the Murray-Darling Basin. This is the gravest of situations. While we have seen some drought-breaking rains in the north-east of Australia that are extremely welcome, they are doing little for additional flows into the Murray-Darling system, particularly down into the Murray. This grave situation is going to continue.

Labor came to office with some big promises on water, especially on the future of the river Murray. They promised the restoration of some 500 billion litres of water flows as a matter of urgency, and 1,500 billion litres of environmental flows over the next decade. They also promised to bring forward some of the expenditure on the National Plan for Water Security that John Howard announced just prior to Australia Day last year. This was greeted with much fanfare at the time and there was also much criticism from the then Labor opposition of the slow pace of expenditure on the National Plan for Water Security. They promised to bring forward $100 million of expenditure into this year, the 2007-08 financial year. This was an election commitment to encourage Australians to believe that Labor were serious about addressing water.

What did we discover during Senate estimates in talking with the water minister? Not that $100 million was going to be brought forward. Apparently, that was unachievable. The minister had not thought to see whether that was achievable at the time of making the promise. Only $15 million will be brought forward into this financial year—only $15 million out of $100 million. But, as they say in those classic commercials, wait, there is more, because, while $15 million is being brought forward, $50 million worth of programs under the National Plan for Water Security have fallen to the government’s razor gang. So the government promised to bring $100 million forward, is only bringing $15 million forward and has actually cut $50 million out. If my maths is correct, that is a $35 million cut in expenditure in the National Plan for Water Security in this financial year. This is the government’s first great delivery on the Murray-Darling Basin and on trying to ensure the water security for all of Australia. South Australians, sitting at the end of the system, have every right to be extremely disappointed that the government cannot live up to that promise and that the Minister for Climate Change and Water, a South Australian senator, cannot deliver for her home state on this first basic promise that Labor made to support the environment and particularly water.

We have negotiations for agreement on the National Plan for Water Security going along at a snail’s pace. We have the Prime Minister dodging any responsibility for it. He refused to place water on the COAG agenda for the first meeting of Labor premiers and leaders after the election in December. After refusing to place it on the agenda, he gave the then acting South Australian Premier, Kevin Foley, the assurance that he was committed to taking Premier Rann and Premier Brumby aside and dealing with the impasse in the new year as soon as he was able to. We are a long way into the new year and Prime Minister Rudd has not met with Premier Rann and Premier Brumby. He has not taken them aside, as he promised, to deal with this. Indeed, what he said on his last visit to Adelaide was: ‘Discussions with Victoria will be conducted at her’—Senator Wong’s—‘level and in due course at my level once we have narrowed the gap in terms of the negotiating position.’ Talk about buck passing. He has handballed it off to Senator Wong and only wants to step in and take the credit when it has all been negotiated. We will be looking to hold the government to account on its many promises. But I in particular will be looking to hold it to account on the delivery of more water flows for the river Murray and water security for all South Australians, particularly those in Adelaide.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate on the Governor-General’s speech has centred, quite appropriately, on measures that the new government is taking to manage the economy. It has also touched on the question of how it intends to fight inflation. Putting to one side the scepticism which many in this chamber and elsewhere would no doubt feel about the Labor Party’s ability to follow through on a policy such as this, it is important for us to focus on one omission from those plans that were outlined to this chamber. What we did not hear about was the government’s two per cent increase in the efficiency dividend. When we consider the way in which that efficiency dividend is impacting on programs all over Australia and all across the spending programs of the Commonwealth government, it is not surprising to find a lack of transparency evident about that particular issue.

The two per cent efficiency dividend is applied to almost all Commonwealth government departments. It will strip away Public Service jobs, gut public programs and research at our valuable national institutions and bin dozens of major projects already approved and funded—I emphasise that they are already funded—by the former coalition government. What the government’s program did not tell us about was how the government’s ‘slash first and ask questions later’ approach would damage communities around Australia, and nowhere more so, may I say, than here in the Australian Capital Territory. They were light on detail, I suspect, because they were unclear themselves as to how these initiatives would impact on individual programs and services delivered to the Australian people.

We saw some evidence of that in the fiasco last week and earlier this week surrounding the mooted cancellation of carer payments and seniors bonuses, one way of saving money which turned out to be a bit of a disaster. So back to the drawing board they go. Let us see what else they can find to meet these very impressive savings targets and think subsequently about how they will impact on the Australian people.

I want to put on the record some of the effects of the government’s scorched earth approach to savings. Let us start with Australia’s national institutions—the great collecting and research facilities which protect, preserve and promote Australian culture and history. The work of these institutions is absolutely invaluable, for without them we would have no collective record of our past achievements, no way of furthering our understanding of Australia’s past and present, and no way of encouraging culture, arts and learning in the future. Despite this, it was revealed in recent budget estimates hearings that every major institution in Australia will see its budget cut back by this government’s razor gang—no regard for their capacity to sustain such cuts and no allowance made for their needs to see through the important programs that each operates.

The National Gallery of Australia, which is responsible for preserving and promoting the largest art collection in Australia, not to mention the largest and most comprehensive collection of Aboriginal art anywhere in the world, will see over $2.8 million hacked from its budget over the next four years. The National Library of Australia, that great treasure trove of Australian literature, research and knowledge, will suffer a cut of over $3.8 million. The National Museum of Australia, the brainchild of Paul Keating and something of a cause celebre for Labor over the past 15 years, will see its budget slashed by over $2.6 million. Isn’t it funny? They talked at length about how we needed a national museum but failed to deliver it when in government. It was the coalition government that delivered the National Museum, yet when the Labor Party returned to office one of their first acts is to cut its budget—disgraceful.

Despite what the government seems to think, these institutions already run a very tight ship in terms of their funding. None would say, privately or publicly, that they have money sloshing around, unused, in their budgets. I doubt that there would be a single inch of ‘bureaucratic fat’ to be found among them. This means that the government’s budget cuts will actually be carving into the flesh and blood of these institutions—their public programs, research and collecting capabilities, and their touring programs. Never mind that cutting these programs and capabilities will affect Australia’s cultural life well into the future. Never mind that this decision will probably cost the government more in the long run when eventually it realises that these institutions are worthy of support and has to spend a fortune bringing them back up to scratch. Apparently making a big show of fiscal restraint is far more important than the long-term wellbeing of Australia’s cultural institutions.

It would be bad enough if these were the only damaging cuts the government planned to make, but they have not stopped there. Let us look also at what is in store for the Australian National Botanic Gardens—our living, breathing museum of Australian flora. As any member who has visited this oasis of green in the middle of Canberra would know, the gardens are home to hundreds of plant species which do not exist outside of Australia, as well as some which do not now exist anywhere outside of the gardens themselves. This facility is one of the key resources used to further our understanding of how climate change will affect Australia’s native plant species, as well as ensuring that threatened and protected species are preserved for the future.

During the election campaign last year, Labor lambasted the former Howard government for supposedly neglecting the gardens. Apparently we had not done enough to preserve their future. Indeed, Labor promised an additional $1.5 million to install urgently needed new pumping and recycling systems to secure its water supply—a very important asset for any gardens, I would have thought.

The reality is that we had not neglected the gardens. We increased their budget year in, year out. The nature of the problem facing the gardens was rising water costs and other expenses, some of them imposed by the ACT government. The gardens saw their utilities bill rise to over $600,000 per year. Nonetheless, it was our responsibility that the gardens were in trouble and we had to fix it. Labor promised $1½ million.

Next we see the phenomenon which Senator Birmingham has already described with respect to, ironically, the national water plan. As was revealed in February’s budget estimates, there was to be a savings measure imposed on the gardens—$2.6 million imposed on the national parks agency, which is responsible for the gardens, and an indeterminate amount to be sustained by the gardens themselves over the next four years—to satisfy the government’s increased efficiency dividend, which, incidentally, they severely criticised at 1¼ per cent in the hands of the Howard government but which now becomes acceptable at 3¼ per cent under the Rudd government. So $1½ million was promised but $2.6 million is taken out the back door. Worse, the $1½ million which we were expecting to be delivered almost immediately we have now been told will not be delivered until at least next year. This is, frankly, despicable.

During the election Labor would have had us believe that the gardens were under imminent threat of extinction without new water infrastructure. Now it seems that not only can the gardens wait indefinitely for that new infrastructure to be delivered but they can also wear big budget cuts when it suits the government’s agenda. In executing this sleight of hand, the Labor Party also went out to a large proportion of the Canberra community, which is very concerned about institutions like the gardens, and no doubt reaped the votes of the people who believed that the representative was going to secure the garden’s future but, instead, has delivered a net reduction in funding to the gardens. I wonder what those people think about that today.

The efficiency dividend is one type of cut this government will be making. In their so-called ‘war on inflation’, they have also deemed it necessary to slash over $643 million in spending for projects already approved and funded by the former coalition government using its budget surplus. We are not talking about election promises here; we are talking about funding which was allocated in the 2007-08 budget or earlier budgets that provide a range of important infrastructure, community and welfare programs, which the community deserves and I think supports.

The prime example of this is some $70 million allocated in May last year for the next stage of capital works to complete Walter Burley Griffin’s vision for our national capital. This money was handed to the National Capital Authority for major works on the Russell roundabout joining Kings Avenue and Parkes Way—a road most members of this house would be familiar with as it ferries them directly to the Canberra airport. This money was also intended to complete major works on Constitution Avenue, in keeping with Griffin’s plan to make it the third arm of the Parliamentary Triangle. Griffin envisioned Constitution Avenue as a wide, European style boulevard where people would live, work and meet and which would finally link the Parliamentary Zone to Canberra’s civic heart. But this will not happen now for at least some time because on 8 February the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, announced that $46,500,000 would be slashed from the Griffin Legacy works. Just enough funding will be left to complete the works on the Russell roundabout, no doubt making Mr Tanner’s trip to and from the Canberra airport quicker and more comfortable. But the plans for Constitution Avenue’s grand development will be shelved completely.

If Labor had opposed those plans and thought they were a bad idea or a waste of money, I could understand these cuts. But, of course, they did not. They supported the plans when they were announced. Now, apparently, they are dispensable. This is one case where the razor gang has not just pruned back spending a bit; it has cut this project right off at the root and ensured that it will not come to fruition at any time in the foreseeable future.

In a sense, the government has also scattered lime on the remains of the Constitution Avenue project by significantly reducing funding for the agency which was supposed to carry it out—the National Capital Authority. I do not want to bore the house with item after item from the government’s hit list, but the NCA really has been cut off at the knees by this government. Almost immediately upon taking office, the government announced that the NCA would have to shed 33 of its staff and $1.6 million from its budget in this financial year alone. You might think, ‘This is just another government agency; what does it matter if it has to shed a few staff and cut a few dollars?’ Anybody who lives in or visits this city and walks around the Parliamentary Triangle sees the product of the work of the National Capital Authority. That is what is at risk today by virtue of this cut of a third of the entire agency’s staff. It is impossible for cuts of that kind to be sustained without ordinary Australians seeing the legacy of that in the nature, shape and future planning of the Parliamentary Triangle. I dread to think what that will mean for the shape and appearance of our national capital into the future. The ACT Labor government and their federal Labor colleagues have long had a very serious antipathy for the National Capital Authority and this has no doubt precipitated the decision to cut back its budget. But the long-term sustainability of such cuts needs to be understood.

Nor should the cuts already made at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Centrelink in Canberra go unremarked, or those at any other agency which is getting the chop in the May budget. It has been indicated to me that some of those opposite think it is a bit hypocritical for my party to criticise Public Service cuts given the cutting that was engaged in after the coalition took office in 1996. But those who try to make that argument tend to overlook the fact that there was a very different environment in 1996 to the one that operates today. In 1996 we faced almost $100 billion in national debt, a budget that was $10 billion in deficit and an economy staggering from a recent major recession. We had to find savings in the budget simply to put ourselves back into economic control. After 12 years in government, we have left Labor with exactly the reverse situation. They have inherited a multibillion dollar budget surplus and an economy which has been stimulated by more than a decade of strong economic management. There is just no need for this government to make cuts on the scale being talked about in the media and foreshadowed for the May budget.

I suspect that the government are attempting to show what a strong, fiscally conservative government they are and that the things they will spend money on into the future will be their own work and not the legacy of the former government. A bit of insulation from the budget surpluses of the Howard government is what they are after. It is very clever politics, but it is not clever policy. It is not clever to cut back spending on our national institutions at a time when we have budget surpluses just begging to be reinvested in ways that will benefit the nation. It is not clever to slash Public Service jobs when, according to this government, they have a range of new reforms they want to carry out which will need an experienced, well-resourced Public Service. Cutting of the kind they are talking about now will be counterproductive in that regard. It is certainly not clever to curtail the long-term planning and development of our unique national capital, which just about every previous Australian government has seen fit to invest in, all for the sake of short-term political gain on the part of this government.

This is a government which, despite the legacy it has received from its predecessor, feels the need to slash and burn its way through the federal budget. Balancing budgets is a perfectly honourable thing to do and a perfectly acceptable exercise to engage in, but to do so in a way which damages the fabric of the Australian Public Service and the great national institutions, most of which reside here in the national capital, is a serious mistake. It is particularly dangerous to do so in a way which is indiscriminate. I recall very well the words used by the Labor opposition to describe the 1¼ per cent efficiency dividend that was used by the Howard government. It said the dividend was indiscriminate, unfocused and took out good programs and bad. Now we discover that apparently our mistake was not in having an efficiency dividend but in not having one that was large enough.

I would remind those opposite when they talk about how fiscally conservative they now are that every time we announced a new spending program, every time we put money into new areas in health, education, national institutions, bonuses for seniors or carers et cetera, they welcomed that spending. They said it was a good thing. Often they said it came too late or, in fact, it was not enough. That was the general criticism that was made. But we are now told, almost in the same breath, that we were spending too much. Well, that is an issue and a challenge for the government to face. It can face it any way it wants. But I say to the government: if you want to make cuts which impact on the fabric of the Australian Public Service and the integrity of Australia’s national institutions, you will have this senator to deal with and this issue will not be let rest until those cuts and that damage are made good.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, would like to contribute to the address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s policy speech. Today there is a great deal of interest in matters to do with Indigenous affairs, especially since the apology to our Indigenous people was made by this parliament last month. As I said in my speech to the Senate on the apology, it is a disgrace that in modern Australia there is a segment of our population whose living standards and circumstances are below what we would regard as acceptable for Australians at large. As I also said at the time, I believe we in the federal parliament should pledge ourselves to overcoming those pockets of Indigenous disadvantage and poverty which exist in our society and to ensuring that our Indigenous citizens are able to enjoy the benefits which living in modern Australia should bring them.

While the apology was an important symbolic gesture, I am concerned that the impression has been created to some degree that the previous government, under the coalition, was less concerned than it might have been about dealing with Aboriginal disadvantage and responding to the needs of our Indigenous people. The facts of the matter show how wrong such an impression is. Today I would like to remind the Senate of some of the important and very practical measures which were provided for the benefit of our Indigenous citizens in the last budget of the Howard government, for 2007-08. It is quite apparent that, far from being indifferent to the needs of our Indigenous people, the Howard government showed a great deal of concern about the general conditions of Indigenous people and a strong commitment to overcoming inequity and ensuring social justice for the Aboriginal people of Australia, who represent about 2.4 per cent of our population.

It is important to understand, in considering issues to do with Indigenous people, that around 70 per cent of our Indigenous people are urbanised and live in large cities such as Perth, Sydney and Brisbane and in the country towns and regional centres of our states. In most cases they are living as ordinary families in the community, doing the things that ordinary families do and accessing the services provided to all members of our society, including health, education, housing and social security. Less than 30 per cent of Indigenous Australians live in the so-called outback—in the Northern Territory, the Central and Western deserts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, the Kimberley or the north-west of Queensland. That is quite a small percentage of the total Aboriginal population. But while that percentage is small, the problems that Aborigines living in remote areas face are, I do accept, generally more serious. That is why the Howard government initiated the Northern Territory intervention—to deal with some of the more urgent problems which were found to exist in the Northern Territory, as documented in the Little children are sacred report.

Today I would like to remind the Senate of some of the more practical measures the Howard government included in its last budget to improve conditions for Indigenous people in areas of social justice, education, health, housing, economic independence and culture. Firstly, I would like to deal with social justice, which is really an umbrella concept because social justice is about making sure that every Australian—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—has choices about how they live and that they have the means to make those choices in their lives. Social justice covers many areas, such as education, health and housing, and it is the wish of any government that all of its people should have access to these things. The Howard government was in fact very aware of the disadvantage faced by Indigenous Australians and was working very hard towards the general goals, as outlined above, of social justice for Indigenous people. During the term of the Howard government, real spending on Indigenous specific programs increased by 42 per cent and reached a record of $3.5 billion in the last financial year of that government, which of course runs into this year. Total expenditure in last year’s budget for A Better Future for Indigenous Australians—a program of great importance—was $1,349.5 million and covered some 42 individual programs. This included $187.3 million spent on education, $135.4 million spent on health, $293.6 million spent on housing, $234.2 million spent on economic independence and $104.8 million spent on cultural programs.

As I said, the most looked at of the government actions to assist Indigenous Australians in the previous year was probably the Northern Territory intervention. Contrary to claims that it was rushed through parliament without much scrutiny, the bill for the Northern Territory intervention was one of the longest-debated bills in Senate history, with over 27 hours of time devoted in the Senate to considering this particular piece of legislation. Everyone regards it as pivotal in having defined the federal government’s interest in addressing some of the very real problems which existed in the Northern Territory, and which it seems exist also in other parts of the north of Australia, such as the north of Western Australia in Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing and Kununurra. Now the government of Western Australia, together with those of other jurisdictions such as Queensland, are seeking to address similar problems.

I will turn to some of the specific headings, such as education. Education is very important to Indigenous people because it is the key to the door of the world for them. Very important is not just education in terms of reading and writing but job skill education. Today, Indigenous students represent about 3.5 per cent of the overall student population of Australia. Something like 3.5 per cent of the Aboriginal population are attending university or other tertiary education compared to about 6.3 per cent of non-Indigenous Australians, so there is certainly a deficit there. But in the last budget the Howard government had programs totalling $187.3 million devoted specifically to assisting Indigenous people in facilitating their education.

The first program was a funding boost which saw an allocation of some $218 million to provide young Indigenous people from remote communities with a new start in life by assisting them with boarding school places and scholarships. These funds were aimed at Indigenous education and training mobility programs, such as the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program, which assisted young people to access quality training in major centres. It was designed to increase the number of places available by 860 to a total of 1,500. Places in the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program were increased to 750. Indigenous Access Scholarships, which assist Indigenous students enrolled in undergraduate courses at university level to meet the costs associated with relocating from remote and rural areas, saw funding increases for an additional 100 scholarships provided to Indigenous students from remote areas to attend tertiary education institutions.

Boarding hostel subsidies were provided to the extent of $43 million to help establish boarding hostels in regional towns that have quality secondary schools. For example, the construction of a new boarding hostel at Kununurra is expected to be completed around the middle of this year. There was $65 million injected into upgrading facilities to provide additional places in a number of existing boarding schools with strong track records of providing secondary school education for young Indigenous people. These were very practical measures to ensure that more Indigenous people participated in the education services provided to Australians in general.

Health is a very important area, of course, in terms of social justice for Indigenous people because generally they have a much poorer health record, with high incidence of kidney disease and diabetes and a lower life expectancy. In the last budget, again in a very practical way, the Howard government allocated $134.5 million to several programs, including the establishment of quality health standards. This saw $36.9 million invested into Indigenous health services for upgrading buildings and clinics, patient information and management systems, staff training and management to enable them to meet Australian healthcare standards.

The Indigenous Community Initiative of the National Illicit Drug Strategy was provided with $14.6 million to fund a variety of programs to provide evidence based Indigenous specific treatment guidelines, together with alcohol awareness products and other resources to enable Indigenous communities to address the misuse of alcohol and drugs. There was a family centred primary healthcare program with $38.2 million provided to existing Aboriginal medical services and primary healthcare service delivery centres. This funded up to 45 additional professionals providing primary health care.

Most importantly perhaps was an enhancement of Telehealth in Western Australia, with $3.1 million of funding coming into a project to enable improved health service delivery for up to 454,000 residents in regional, rural and remote communities across the state of Western Australia. This includes more than 44,900 Indigenous Western Australians. That is very important because it provides the latest technology as a means of delivering health services.

It is interesting to look at a summary of what the Howard government achieved in terms of Indigenous health programs since it came into office in 1996. Under the 10 years of the Howard government, spending on Indigenous health programs increased by a factor of 3.5. So, in other words, 3½ times as much money was spent on Indigenous health programs at the end of the Howard government’s 10-year period in office than was spent at the beginning. Indigenous utilisation of Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme increased by 80 per cent, and there were 50 per cent more Indigenous doctors and 30 per cent more Indigenous nurses in practice at the end of the Howard government’s period of office than at the beginning.

Debate interrupted.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 12.45 pm, the Senate will now proceed to non-controversial legislation.