Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have talked many times in this place about funding for cancer services in this country and the expectation that government at all levels, but in particular the federal government, should have a coordinated response to look at the issues of cancer in our communities. I am pleased to say that, leading on from this government’s first budget, we have put in place a range of measures which will work effectively with some of the things that were put in place under the previous government.

I make particular mention of the establishment and ongoing importance of Cancer Australia in our community. When we debated the introduction of Cancer Australia, one thing that was consistently raised was the importance of ensuring that, once a commitment was made by the government to insert such a very powerful organisation into our health profile, from that point onwards effective funding would be provided, budget after budget, to ensure that such an organisation would be effective, responsive to the needs of the community and would have integrity in processes of coordinating cancer care across the community and being a vanguard for research funding. Publicly making that statement would ensure that the Australian community could be proud of what was going on in this field.

This year the budget continues to provide effective funding for Cancer Australia to continue to exist, under the auspices of the Department of Health and Ageing, and to maintain their role of keeping a high-level, professional process going to ensure that effective research grants are provided and to ensure that we get the best possible services—not just medical processes but also drawing in community knowledge and support. One thing that came out in the two cancer inquiries conducted in this place over the last five years—the cancer inquiry under the leadership of Senator Peter Cook and, several years later, the follow-up inquiry around issues of gynaecological cancer, led very strongly by Senator Jeannie Ferris—was the need for that cooperative response.

During the lead-up to the budget, the Minister for Health and Ageing, Ms Roxon, talked effectively with places in communities across this country. The government gave a list of commitments during the election, that were fulfilled in the budget process, to ensure that there would be appropriate community funding in this area. The government is providing $15 million over three years to CanTeen to establish young cancer networks in Australia. From the cancer inquiry in 2004 we identified that young adolescents who were diagnosed and working through the process of cancer treatment were missing out on the most effective awareness in our communities. The committee were advised that this group of people were lost somehow between the issues of child and adult medicine. We found from a number of witnesses who came to us that there needed to be a particular response to look at the needs of young people who were going through the difficult enough period of adolescence and to look at their personal response to the issues of cancer care. Youth cancer networks have already been in place in some parts of this country. They run with the involvement of young people, some of whom are still working through their own journeys, and more importantly, they run with the involvement of their families and the people who support them so that they can give peer support to young people who have received the pretty tough diagnosis of cancer. The networks also support the families who are surrounding them. We believe that the $15 million over three years will be an effective support to keeping this work going in the local community and seeing whether it can be a step towards more funding in the future.

During the inquiries we also found out consistently about the absolute importance of clinical trials. There is evidence across the world that people who have had access to the areas of clinical trials with their own particular cancer diagnosis are significantly able to achieve better results in their treatment and in personally coping with the process. Our government, through the budget process, will invest $15 million over three years for independent clinical trials of drugs and research into cancer treatment and care. This funding is being allocated for a range of cancer research and treatment centres which are spread right across the country. I want to name just a few of them to show the range and geographic spread of where this money is going to be spent. There will be funding of $50 million over three years for the Comprehensive Cancer Centre co-located with the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. Very importantly, people from all over the state of New South Wales who are diagnosed with this disease will have a cancer treatment centre of excellence to which they can go with their families and carers to receive effective medical treatment, the immediacy of support from people who know the experiences that they are going through, and also a range of services. That variety of services to be provided—direct medical services, complementary services and work with community organisations—can be part of a personal decision about how you wish to be treated through this process.

There will be funding of $15 million over five years to set up two dedicated prostate cancer research centres. Over the last few years there has been significant discussion in the community about the need for Australian men to take some personal ownership around the area of prostate cancer. There have been public campaigns, a range of speakers and a number of TV advertisements, but the key issue is that when you raise people’s awareness, when people accept that there is a process to which they should submit themselves and actually take personal ownership of what is going on, there must be effective services available. It is all very well to get the awareness and education, but if you do not have the medical services available that will be useless. So $15 million over five years for two more dedicated prostate cancer research centres will mean that, once again, we can tap into the amazing medical knowledge that is available in this country. It consistently makes me proud to see the high-quality research, knowledge and commitment available to us at a range of research centres across Australia. We must use this and we must continue to give these areas support, and $15 million is a start.

Linked to that, we have given money to a number of other places for prostate cancer research. In Adelaide, your home city Madam Acting Deputy President McEwen, we have made a contribution of $15 million—that seems to be a very popular figure—over two years in capital funding to help build a children’s cancer centre at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. We have heard, and it has been talked about in this place a number of times, about the special help and support that is needed for families who are working with a child who has been diagnosed with cancer. There are examples in this country of superb hospitals that are dedicated to giving that particular support to families. What we have identified—and what came out during the election period and is now being funded through the budget to provide these services—is the need to have these incredibly expensive capital works at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to ensure that that particular service can be provided. Once again, that is not just for the people of Adelaide; it provides a hub, a centre, for people from across South Australia who, when they are working through this process and get the diagnosis, are seeking the best possible help and support. If they have a truly world-class centre in their capital city then they will not need to travel too much away from their home base. We know that when people are going through quite traumatic periods of extensive treatments, it is always particularly hard for them to be too far away from their home base, from their families and from familiar things. When you are working through cancer treatment, having that social support around you is incredibly important. Funding high-class services that are as close to home as possible makes for a better treatment process and results in a better journey for the whole family.

Another $15 million has been allocated towards the establishment of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne—again, a world-class service to be provided in an Australian city, this time connected with the wonderful work that the Olivia Newton-John Foundation has done, focused specifically on the areas of breast cancer and women’s cancer. That knowledge and research can be shared across so many areas. People will be able to see that success and it will give them the confidence they need to work through the whole area of treatment and recovery.

One area that is very dear to me is the $5.1 million over three years to the ongoing operation of the National Centre for Gynaecological Cancers, under the strong auspices of Cancer Australia. This is an area about which we talked with Senator Jeannie Ferris during the cancer inquiry. We believe that there are many streams of research and support that need to be followed through in the area of gynaecological cancer, particularly with the women and the families who are working through that process. Cancer Australia has a plan into the future to work on this. The $5.1 million, through the budget over the three years, will maintain the work in this area and, most importantly, draw more support and more involvement from other areas.

I had planned to talk about this issue anyway, but today is a particularly important day because $12 million over four years has been given by the government in the budget to the McGrath Foundation. Today there has been an outpouring of praise, sorrow and shared knowledge around the death of Jane McGrath, who encouraged many of us over the last 10 years to stay strong, stay involved and to be active in our community and, most importantly, to ensure that we put the woman and the family first and the diagnosis second. I have heard Jane McGrath speak a number of times about her own journey. One of the key roles of the McGrath Foundation has been to recruit, train and employ breast cancer nurses in country towns and rural areas. These are areas that perhaps do not have access to the most up-to-date services.  Through both the inquiries that we have been involved in, we consistently heard about the very strong role that an informed professionally trained nurse can play in working with people who are going through their own journey and with the families around them. The McGrath Foundation, with their amazing fundraising, which has been going on for many years now and will continue into the future, provides these nurses in regions that may not have been able to afford them in any other way.

The nurse network—and it is very much a network; it is not isolated; it is not a one-off; it is a network of people involved in the process—will provide information, supportive care and, most importantly, care coordination to women with breast cancer and their families. Care coordination is a key issue when we are talking about the treatment of cancer. It is not a single process; there is not one treatment to which someone must submit. There need to be a range of treatments and they must be coordinated effectively with the patient as the central person—and I say ‘patient’ because people have different views about people being called sufferers. You need to be central to your care when you are working through your diagnosis and your recovery, but there needs to be coordination around you. We found that one of the best mechanisms for that is a strong professional nursing network. That is part of the budget for the $12 million that has gone to the McGrath Foundation. I will just take the opportunity now to send my best wishes and my prayers to the McGrath family and to the extended family who are working through that particular part of the cancer journey with the family.

I have worked with a number of women in the area of mastectomy and I know the expense of working with prostheses. I know that Senator Kay Patterson worked on this issue when she was the Minister for Health and Ageing. The expense and support needed in this area have been ongoing issues. In this budget, women who have undergone mastectomy as a result of breast cancer will be reimbursed by up to $400 for both new and replacement external breast prostheses. The government has committed $31 million over four years to provide this reimbursement. This is a really expensive exercise for a woman who not only needs to have surgery but needs to then maintain this particular part of her self-image when returning to the community, so as to feel good and strong about herself post surgery. The cost of the prothesis can be quite expensive. This measure also ensures that there is an opportunity for people to have those prostheses replaced at different times and to feel good about it. Thirty one million dollars over four years is not a lot of money, but it is incredibly important to those women who are seeking those services.

Through the budget process we also have given funding to things like the National Tobacco Strategy. I am watching your face, Madam Acting Deputy President to see whether you are going to pull me up any second here!

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am about do that, Senator Moore. Thank you for your contribution.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying before the break, the Rudd government is committed to ensuring that there is a national, coordinated approach to the horrors of cancer in our community. The fight against cancer is our national challenge, and the Rudd Labor government is committed to supporting researchers, clinicians, practitioners, health professionals and people who are working their way through this process individually, with their families, to be involved in immediate cancer research and treatment. This is an issue that relates to all of us and it is all our business, not somebody else’s. We know from the statistics that cancer is Australia’s biggest killer, with more than 35,000 deaths and 88,000 people diagnosed every year.

I have run through a couple of the initiatives that the Rudd government committed to in its first budget, but one thing I want to talk about just briefly in this last five minutes and 40 seconds is the issue of bowel cancer in our community. We know that there has been an ongoing process of looking at this issue and we have had research and gathering of information across the community for the last two to three years. In the budget, we have determined that we will expand that, because it has been demanded of us by the people who care most—the people who are suffering and who think there must be a way to survive this disease. Each week about 80 Australians die from bowel cancer, and one in 22 Australians is likely to develop this disease at some point in their life. It is one of the diseases in Australia that we should be most concerned about, yet sometimes we tend to push it aside and hope that it will go somewhere else.

As well as testing for people turning 50 in 2008-10, testing will continue for people turning 55 or 65 years of age in this period. The national program, which will be funded through the budget, will cost $87.4 million over three years. This is a large commitment, a large amount of money going to the problem, and certainly it reinforces that we believe it to be an important issue for all of us. It is something a lot of community groups have been working on. I want to give particular credit to the Rotary association across Australia, which does many good things and which, as one of its key initiatives over the last few years, has been looking at the issue of bowel cancer in the community. I know that it is pleased by this budget announcement. It is something that meets with its cause to work with people across the country.

I have described the larger commitments of money in our budget, but there are a number of local measures that came through election commitments last year and through working with people at a local level. It is worthwhile mentioning them in this contribution looking at budget appropriations. We have committed to investing in radiation oncology services in Cairns and in north-north-west Tasmania—you could find few parts of Australia more distant than Cairns in my part of the world, which Senator Jan McLucas also knows so well, and north-north-west Tasmania. There will be PET facilities for the Royal Hobart Hospital—I know that Tasmanians have been waiting for a long time to have their own facilities in Tasmania rather than having to travel to the mainland when they need this incredibly valuable service—and the Calgary Mater hospital in Newcastle, and we are also looking at fast-tracking radiotherapy services at Lismore Base Hospital. All these initiatives have been funded through the health budget.

I am very proud that our government has decided to invest this much of taxpayers’ money in something that is so important for people across the community. It follows from recommendations made through previous cancer inquiries by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, and I know the people who worked on those inquiries will be well pleased at the response to recommendations about care coordination, specialist services for young people and teenagers who are facing this process and the incredibly important elements of research and clinical trials. These areas came up consistently through the community affairs inquiries. We are pleased that the government have looked at those recommendations and now, with the overall support of Cancer Australia, will be able to look at results and supporting people through their own very tough cancer journey. We will be able to learn from their strength and put into place effective funding to ensure that that journey will be supported not just by family and friends but by the government to whom they turn.

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

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President, for the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related legislation and on the important issue of obesity. Last week we saw a report released by the head of the Preventive Cardiology Unit at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne. It was a landmark report. I want to refer to its key findings and then speak to the issue of obesity, what is being done in Australia to address the obesity epidemic and what is not being done, in particular at a federal level, by the Labor government.

We know that obesity leads to type 2 diabetes, we know it leads to heart disease and we know it leads to certain cancers, respiratory disease and a whole range of other health complications. So what were the findings of this landmark report by the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute? There are a number of key findings. Firstly, overall almost four million adult Australians are currently obese. Secondly, the ‘fat bomb’ is loudly ticking in middle-aged Australians, with around seven out of 10 men and six out of 10 women aged between 45 and 64 years being overweight or obese. Overall, around 1.5 million middle-aged Australians are currently obese and therefore at high risk of a cardiovascular event in the longer term. Based on the best available evidence, our expanded middle-aged waistlines will result in an extra 700,000 CVD related admissions—that is, heart related admissions—in the next 20 years. These highly preventable admissions will conservatively cost, in today’s terms, an extra $6 billion in health care—and $2.9 billion of that will be hospital costs alone. An estimated 123,000 Australian men and women will die, many prematurely, from cardiovascular disease over the next 20 years as a result of their excess weight—more than the seating capacity of the MCG.

A simple strategy, such as losing five kilograms in five months, has the potential to result in 27 to 34 per cent fewer cardiovascular disease related hospital admissions and deaths over the next 20 years. The findings relate in particular to heart disease and cardiovascular disease and concerns, not directly the issue of type 2 diabetes and not directly the concerns relating to certain cancers, respiratory disease and other health complications. You can see that the consequences of this obesity epidemic are incredible—almost beyond belief.

It is true that this government has announced obesity as a national health priority, and I want to congratulate the government for doing that. It is a good move. It is a very good move and it is something that I have supported for a number of years and I am very pleased that it has happened. But what did we find from the federal Minister for Health and Ageing last Friday upon the release of the report? What did Nicola Roxon say about this report? She said that we will have an anti-obesity strategy released next year. I put it to the Senate—

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McLucas interjecting—

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

Senator McLucas, I did not hear that injection, but I am happy to take your interjections.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would want to be evidence based.

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

It would want to be evidence based? That is a good contribution from Senator McLucas! The strategy would be released next year. I want to say on the record that a do-nothing approach is not an option. We need action and we need it now. Let us go through the various options in terms of what should be done and say that we cannot wait. First of all, I call on the Prime Minister as a matter of urgency to convene the key stakeholders involved in the obesity epidemic. I call on him to convene them, with the support of the minister for health, in the knowledge that this is a whole-of-government problem and a whole-of-government approach is required. We are talking about the ministers for health, sport, industry. Different aspects of the obesity epidemic impact on different parts of our lives, so the Prime Minister should convene an urgent meeting of the key stakeholders to address this obesity epidemic. A do-nothing approach is not an option.

In 2006 a report by Access Economics was released at my sixth Healthy Lifestyle Forum to help combat childhood obesity. I congratulate the author of the report and the lead consultant, Lynne Pezzullo, for her excellent work in pulling it together. That report was commissioned by Diabetes Australia, and I commend Diabetes Australia and particularly Matt O’Brien for his work and his advocacy in supporting healthy lifestyles throughout this country. The report said that obesity was already costing Australians $3.767 billion in direct costs each year, or $21 billion a year after including factors such as loss of wellbeing through premature death and disability. This is not good enough. This requires a call to arms. It is a wake-up call like we have never seen before. As I say, I have had eight Healthy Lifestyle Forums since 2002, when I entered the Senate, to try and highlight this issue and require and look at options for reform.

I released a 10-point plan for a healthier Australia in 2006 and I think it is still relevant. The first point classified obesity as a national health priority, which has occurred—and that is good news. I also recommended applying a Medicare rebate for obesity consultations to allow those who have this condition—and we found out last Friday, according to this report, that there are some four million adult Australians in this condition—to go to their GP, and the GP can prescribe not just a drug but also a lifestyle prescription to say, ‘Listen, regular exercise and a healthy diet is the way to go.’ In a way it is a simple solution, but in a way it is a complex one because it requires a change of behaviour, a change in attitude, a change of lifestyle. It is not so easy because we have habits, and they are hard to kick.

The Prime Minister should establish a healthy lifestyle commission, reporting directly to the office of the Prime Minister. We cannot just put this in silos and think this is just a health issue. As we can see from the cost of obesity, it is more than that. It affects the economy. It affects industry. It affects our productivity. It affects so many aspects of our lives. Look at the education system and our kids. We want the best for our kids in Australia, and at the moment that is not happening. The Active After-schools Communities program should be extended to reach all school-age children. I commend the former Minister for the Arts and Sport, Senator Rod Kemp, for his advocacy and strong support for that program, for first of all getting it started and then extending it through the schools that receive it. Most senators and members in this place would know that it is a very successful program and well received. We want our children in schools to be healthy and active and playing sport not only during school but also after school. Why have all these facilities there in the middle of our towns and cities all around Australia unused after school? They should be used, and we can encourage further use by our children. The government should also extend its $1,500 Healthy School Communities program to annual funding.

School canteens is a very important area. It leads to the next point of the 10-point plan, which is to allow only healthy food to be sold through school canteens and provided at childcare centres, including a ban on sugary and fizzy drinks. Children should only have healthy choices in schools, not unhealthy choices—not Coke, not Fanta, not the sugary, fizzy drinks. They should be removed entirely from primary schools, and certainly from junior secondary schools, so that children do not have that choice.

We know from the statistics that Singapore is one of the few countries in the world that have successfully defeated the childhood obesity epidemic. Their figures have actually gone down, not up. Australia is going up and up still more, as was seen in last week’s report. We are now the fattest nation on earth, according to this report. This is not a happy record for Australia, by any means. To think that we are outweighing the Americans—and indeed the UK and Mexico—almost beggars belief. We were in the top four. It seems that now, based on this report, we are the top one. But it does not matter whether we are the top one or in the top two, three or four. It is not a good record, and we could do a lot better. We need those urgent meetings of the key stakeholders to be convened to come up with solutions.

We need the tuckshops and the school environment to be healthy environments. In that respect, annually benchmarking children’s health and fitness should occur, in the same way we benchmark literacy and numeracy. That has been happening for years now with literacy and numeracy. We think it is a good idea. Surely our children’s health and fitness are important enough to require benchmarking, so the results can go home to their parents, their guardians and their loved ones, and it can be done in a sensitive and appropriate manner. Whether it is a BMI check and some other health and fitness regimes remains to be seen. Let us get the experts to decide. I know Robert de Castella, who is here in the ACT. He is a wonderful advocate for this regime. He has been working successfully for years here and in other parts of Australia. I commend the Robert de Castella program to the government. There are other programs all around Australia, but I know that Robert de Castella’s works well.

I still support adopting 2010 as a target for halting the rise in obesity and adopting 2015 as the target for halving obesity in children. It can be done. Where there is a will, there is a way. We need the political will to make it happen. I call on the Prime Minister to exercise that political will.

Another area of action is No. 9 in the 10-point plan: frame new food-labelling regulations to outlaw claims such as 98 per cent fat-free and help consumers tell at a glance which products are healthy. These claims need to be honest and truthful and they need to be designed in such a way as to help consumers tell at a glance which products are healthy and which are not.

Finally, No. 10 in the 10-point plan is to increase funding for participation in local sport and recreational activity. As I said earlier, regular exercise is part of the answer. If we can provide funding at different levels of government—federal, state and local—to encourage more physical activity, whether it be sport or recreational activity it does not really matter, then that is certainly the way to go. I note that the former government, the Howard government, did provide significant funding for research and development to the food sector for making products healthier and for research into this issue in general.

I also have a view that bariatric surgery and lap band surgery should be supported, not just from time to time by some hospitals across the country. It should be supported wherever possible in the public hospital system because it works. Some people are very dismissive of bariatric surgery and lap band surgery, but the facts do speak for themselves—res ipsa loquitur—and I would encourage anybody to look at the facts in terms of that. There are some risks involved, and that needs to be acknowledged, but it does provide a better health outcome for those who undergo such surgery.

I want to commend at this point the work of Professor Paul Zimmet, who is a leading expert from the International Diabetes Institute based in Melbourne. He has been a keynote speaker at many of my forums and will be a keynote speaker at my next forum on Friday, 22 August in Hobart. It is a great honour to have him speak at such a forum. He will be expressing his views and his concerns and also his suggestions on the way forward. Professor Jennie Brand-Miller from the University of Sydney, a former President of Nutrition Australia and author of many books and publications on the GI factor and nutrition activities, and Karena Brown, a childcare operator and an outstanding citizen from Burnie in Tasmania, will also be at the Hobart forum. The chief convenor will be Dr Michael Aizen, a former President of the AMA. He will be supported on the convening committee by Jenny Branch, who is President of the Tasmanian Parents and Friends Association; James Walker, a podiatrist from Hobart; and Chris Rennie, a rural health nurse in southern Tasmania. It is a great honour to be working with these wonderful Tasmanians to help combat the obesity epidemic. I do want to congratulate the Mercury newspaper for their leadership and their advocacy in tackling this issue. They do see it as a concern and they have taken it up as something that needs defeating. I say thank you and well done to the Mercury for what they are doing to make a difference.

In terms of Tasmania, Premier Bartlett should convene an urgent meeting with key stakeholders in that state to tackle the obesity epidemic because, sadly, Tasmania is the worst of the worst. We have a gold medal in Australia for being the fattest nation on earth, according to this report, and Tasmania has the highest rates of diabetes in Australia. On the north-west coast in particular we have the highest rates across the country, outside of our Indigenous communities, and we have amongst the highest rates of cardiovascular disease and certain cancers. So Tasmania does not have a good record. I would certainly call on Premier Bartlett to act and act swiftly. I thank the Senate.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2008-2009. I do so because I do not think they adequately reflect the urgency of climate change. Tomorrow I will be lodging a petition with over 1,000 signatures collected by Women for Urgent Action on the Climate Crisis. That petition calls on the government to take 12 steps: (1) sign the Kyoto protocol and cooperate with UN initiatives; (2) set mandatory targets to effectively reduce emissions; (3) regulate for deep cuts in all sectors through energy efficiency; (4) provide incentives for a massive take-up in renewable energy; (5) halt public funding and tax benefits to fossil fuel and other polluting industries; (6) phase out coal-fired power stations; (7) protect native forests and vegetations as carbon sinks and tackle environmental repair; (8) accelerate national measures to return water use to sustainable levels of extraction and increase long-term water and food security for all; (9) provide incentives for efficient water use; and, finally, invest in public transport, not more freeways.

I have absolutely no doubt that these women speak for millions of others who want government action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Kyoto has certainly been ratified, but other action, including funding, is very slow and in some circumstances is taking us backwards. A week ago Australia’s key climate scientists met in Canberra, and their message is that the situation is dire. Humanity faces dangerous runaway climate change. Professor Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins, Dr Geoff Davies, Dr Andrew Glikson and Sebastian Clark, of the 2008 Manning Clark House conference Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth, summarised the findings of that conference: global warming is accelerating, and the Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within five years, decades earlier than predicted by the 2007 Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report. Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous climate warming to be high. The loss of the Great Barrier Reef now seems likely. Extreme weather events such as storm surges, adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become more frequent. There is a real danger that we will soon reach critical tipping points and that the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point. Beyond two degrees of warming seems inevitable, unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened. We risk huge human and societal costs and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation.

We need to cease our assault on our own life support systems and those of millions of species. Global warming is one of many symptoms of that assault. Peak oil, global warming and long-term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to renewable energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions by dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources.

The need for action is extremely urgent, and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing, yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic; they are political and social. We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is the last call for an effective response to global warming. We cannot wait until 2020 for future technology that will rescue the coal industry by capturing carbon and pumping it underground. The sum of $500 million is being spent on so-called clean coal but, of the 34 coal-fired power stations in this country, 22 are older than 20 years, four are older than 40 years, and the older they are the less able they are to capture carbon.

Large-scale solar concentrated technologies have not been made part of the Asia-Pacific partnership low-emissions technology study because, according to the response I received from the Minister for Climate Change and Water recently, there is insufficient publicly available data. The $500 million for commercialisation of renewable energy has to wait until the financial year 2009-10.

I want to argue tonight that we should not be waiting for more reports on what the economy can afford to do. But I get the feeling that this government would perhaps prefer to defer all of those decisions indefinitely. It was great that the government ratified Kyoto, and it may just scrape through our generous target by 2012, but other countries have already commenced emissions trading. Other countries have already lifted their renewable energy targets and have mandated energy efficiency. The Australian Greenhouse Office developed an emissions-trading framework almost a decade ago, and the previous government had one out for discussion. If reports are accurate, this government is seriously contemplating exemptions for coal-fired power and energy intensive industry, which would make the system totally worthless.

There have certainly been no moves on energy efficiency, despite the great scope that exists. Australia lags behind the rest of the world because our huge stocks of coal have made governments complacent. Coal and gas have been cheap because there has been no price on carbon, and they are stacked with government subsidies. Emissions from transport are huge and growing, yet transport economists are seriously still suggesting that we have more expensive road systems, tunnels, freeways and the like. The Prime Minister says he will put a blowtorch to OPEC so that they release more oil and, alarmingly, the Minister for Resources and Energy says that developing countries should now be showing constraint in their own oil demands. I really wonder how either the Prime Minister or the minister for energy can look at themselves in the mirror in the morning, having said such absurd things.

We have known for more than a decade that peak oil will increase prices as will, inevitably, carbon pricing but we have no energy efficiency standards for cars. We have the worst gas guzzlers coming into this country tax free. Rail is losing freight to road, even though it is 10 times more efficient. In these appropriations we do have a budget for reducing congestion. Let me tell you that nothing will reduce congestion like high petrol prices, but the problem is that that will strand people who live in the outer suburbs of our cities and in country areas who have no other choice than to use a car when it comes to going to work or to school. We have a national bike plan, which has only made the most modest progress in getting people onto their bikes to commute to work or to school every day. We have electric cars and motorbikes here, but the government has shown absolutely no interest in them, and indeed the new Camry hybrid props up that great but foolish Australian dream of everybody having a huge car.

Here in the parliament we have a pilot scheme with two Prius Comcars. What exactly is to be learned from a pilot for a car that we know uses less than half the amount of petrol of a car an equivalent size, let alone huge Holdens and Fords? If a handful of senators have legs that are too long or bums that are too wide, then let us switch over just half the fleet or 75 per cent of the fleet. Why we need a pilot to tell us that these cars are more fuel efficient I cannot imagine.

I say the same thing about Solar Cities: we do not need pilots to show us what to do. This, in my view, is a very old government trick: have a few cheap pilots underway and some people will think this is a genuine initiative that will be replicated more widely. I don’t think so. Pilot schemes typically do not get evaluated and they certainly do not get replicated, even when they are successful.

The government, as we know, has neutered the household PV system with means testing. The government said that that scheme was ‘heating up’. It was funding just over 500 grants every month. If that rate were to be kept up for the next 10 years then a mere one per cent of existing households would have PVs.

I remind the Senate that in 10 years time we will be getting very close to 2020, when we are supposed to have some sort of target, although I will come to that in a moment. What we do know about 2020 at the very least is that big percentage shifts are going to be required in emissions abatement. But without decent feed-in tariffs—and the government said nothing about that—photovoltaic systems will never get beyond that very low level of penetration. The government says it will increase the renewable energy target but not until next year. My question to the government is: why would you want to wait? The industry is ready to go because the previous low target was essentially met in 2006.

The last budget had nothing for public transport. A mere $192 million was provided for the national rail network and a massive $3.2 billion for roads. So rail gets a mere six per cent of total transport funding. Infrastructure Australia, as we know from when we dealt with the bill a few weeks ago, has no clear obligation to consider greenhouse in framing its advice on roads, buildings, power stations or any of the other major infrastructure in this country. So desalination projects are going up everywhere despite adding hugely to the demand for electricity.

The government has repeatedly rejected our efforts to put a greenhouse trigger into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and to impose emissions standards on coal-fired power stations. So you can put up one of the worst polluters on the planet tomorrow. We resurrected Hazelwood—again, one of the worst polluters we have—and we have brown coal in Victoria.

The government says it has a target for 2050 but is reluctant to come out with one for 2020. I have often found this to be a completely ludicrous situation. For one thing, no-one currently in the parliament, let alone the government, will be around by 2050 to justify what is essentially an arbitrary and doubtlessly all-too-low target. Even if it is based on a two-degree warming from pre-industrial levels, catastrophic climate change and unpredictable feedback processes could take the planet to the brink of habitability. A target of 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 is not only possible; it is essential, and the emissions trading must reflect that.

The Democrats over the years, and certainly in my time in this place, have put up dozens of bills and amendments on energy efficiency, renewable targets, triggers for the EPBC and power station emission standards. I have personally asked hundreds of questions in this place on greenhouse. I have made dozens of speeches. I have put up countless motions. I have initiated a major inquiry, and that was almost a decade ago. I negotiated $400 million in greenhouse abatement with the last government, as well as two extensions of the PV rebate system. The list goes on, including remote photovoltaic systems in rural communities that previously used diesel to generate their power, the Green Vehicle Guide and many, many more.

I had to nag the government to actually use its own Green Vehicle Guide on the list of vehicles available to senators and members. I had to beg them to allow our offices to go onto green power. I often ask myself why this whole issue needs to be so difficult, why governments have to be dragged kicking and screaming even when the cost is miniscule. So I urge the government to act and to act quickly.

Greenpeace came to see me just the other day. They have prepared a very credible plan that they call Energy [r]evolution. That plan shows that making the necessary transformation in how we use energy is achievable and it provides a wealth of opportunities to stimulate economic growth and to ensure social stability. It shows how renewable energy could be 40 per cent of all electricity provided by 2020, that energy efficiency could cut energy consumption by 16 per cent, that coal-fired power could be phased out entirely by 2030, that waste heat could be captured and that electric, more fuel efficient cars could be on Australia’s roads, displacing petrol and diesel vehicles.

It can be done. The problems are political; they are not technological. They are about vested interests; they are not about the common good. The Greenpeace report finds that the 14,000 jobs that would be lost in the coal sector by phasing out coal altogether could be replaced easily by 26,000 new jobs in renewable energy and gas generation. I see today that the coal union has come out and urged the government not to delay the increase in the mandated renewable energy target. It makes sense—who would want to work in coal when the option could be renewables? I seek leave to table the Greenpeace report.

Leave granted.

I urge the government to read this report very carefully, to stop ducking for cover when things get difficult and to take these bold decisions: Australians like those who signed the petition which I will table tomorrow—over a thousand of them—are with you on this issue. So there is no need to be afraid; there is no need to worry that Australians do not believe that something urgent must be done on climate change. This is essential and our future depends on it.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Prime Minister for Social Inclusion) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 , Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2008-2009 and a related bill and to make the point that the Rudd government’s first budget is making social inclusion a reality. It proves that this ambitious new agenda is far more than rhetoric. The 2008-09 budget includes a range of important measures to increase participation in Australian life, to tackle disadvantage and to build social inclusion in our communities. Some of these initiatives are focused on increasing access to work, which of course is very important. But the budget also supports participation in education, training, civic life, sport and recreation. We believe that every Australian deserves the right to play a part in the life of this great nation. The problem is that many people face barriers to their participation, barriers which require innovative new policies developed across all levels of government in partnership with the business and not-for-profit sectors.

The 2008-09 budget represents the Rudd government’s first critical down payments and initial steps to meeting the challenges of social exclusion, and these social inclusion priorities cannot be implemented soon enough. As Professor Tony Vinson has told us in his publication, Dropping off the edge: the distribution of disadvantage in Australia, some 1.7 per cent of postcodes around Australia account for more than seven times their share of the major factors that cause poverty and disadvantage. We know that about 100,000 Australians are homeless every night and one in four jobseekers have been out of work for five years or more. We find these facts both morally and economically unacceptable. We see other examples of our lack of social connection every single day: infants dying of neglect, pensioners dying in loneliness—and we know that is just not good enough. So it is all the more important that we develop policies that build social inclusiveness in our suburbs and communities, giving everyone the chance to engage and encouraging everyone to care.

The budget honours our election commitments with a significant focus on areas such as early childhood education, school retention, employment services, homelessness, literacy and numeracy and Indigenous health, education and employment. I will turn to the Working Families Support Package, which is such an important initiative. The Rudd government’s budget, as opposed to 11 years of coalition budgets, places Australian working families at its core. We want to help those families that are under pressure, at risk of not falling into social exclusion. So the budget’s $55 million Working Families Support Package will do exactly this, providing assistance to those Australians who are working hard but are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. Personal income tax cuts in the budget are worth $46 billion over the next four years to ease pressures from rising costs, and we have brought in an education tax refund, worth $4.4 billion over four years, to help mums and dads with the rising cost of educating their children. And the $1.6 billion childcare tax rebate will help parents who are struggling to get their younger ones into affordable and accessible child care.

The government are intent on ensuring that we have measures to lift and enhance educational opportunities, because we recognise that these are crucial to achieving our social inclusion priorities. Schooling is the key to improving a child’s life chances and directly impacts on their employment opportunities, their financial independence and social inclusion. So this budget is the first instalment of the Rudd government’s ongoing work on the education revolution, an enormous investment of $19.3 billion delivering commitments for early childhood, schools, vocational education and training and higher education.

Through the government’s $2.1 billion digital education revolution, we are building tomorrow’s workforce through access to a world-class education. Round 1 of this digital revolution has seen 116,000 new computers for 896 secondary schools—and this is just the start, as we drive the computer-student ratio from one to eight, or worse, to a new national benchmark of one computer for every two students. We will improve school enrolment and attendance with a $17.6 million pilot program with our state and territory governments. Among our other budgetary investments are $520 million for universal access to preschool for all children in the year before formal school and $32.5 million for a home interaction program to help disadvantaged children prepare for school. The government is committing more than $577 million over four years to deliver a national action plan on literacy and numeracy, starting with those schools and students most in need of help. We recognise too that many Australian adults also lack literacy and numeracy skills, which is a major barrier to participation in Australian life, so in the last few days the Deputy Prime Minister has released an adult language literacy and numeracy skills discussion paper to address this important issue. Improving language, literacy and numeracy skills will play a key role in driving the Australian government’s social inclusion agenda, because equipping individuals with language and numeracy skills greatly improves their chances of engaging in broader training and work. Financial literacy is important, too, as we see so many families now under increased pressure from inflation and higher interest rates and from the mortgage stress that comes with that environment.

The 2008-09 budget also delivers on the Rudd government’s promise to establish trade training centres in secondary schools, upskilling Australia’s young people to ensure that they can play a part in the future of our economy. As well, we want to help the most disadvantaged Australians find work through a simpler, more effective, better targeted and modern employment services system—again, another critical social inclusion priority. The budget provides $3.7 billion over three years to deliver services to help job seekers find suitable employment, to drive efficiencies and to reduce waste. The fact is that if we are to make Australia’s future economic growth more sustainable we must bring back into the fold those people excluded from the workforce because of barriers like disability, poverty, mental illness, or drug and alcohol abuse. So the new employment services system will be rolled out from 2009 and will emphasise work readiness, giving every Australian the opportunity to reach their potential. The reforms will reduce administrative red tape for employment service providers, allowing them to spend more time delivering real outcomes for job seekers. Under the Howard government, the system was characterised by waste and inefficiency, and our new government, the Rudd government, has been able to find savings of $350 million by simply streamlining the system and making it much more accessible.

The government is also delivering a national mental health and disability employment strategy, which will be released later this year. The strategy is being developed in close consultation with consumers, peak bodies, employers, state and territory governments and experts. It aims to address the barriers faced by people with disability and those living with mental illness that make it harder for them to gain and keep work. It is quite a travesty to know that Australia is ranked 13 out of 16 OECD countries when it comes to the employment of people who receive disability benefits. We must do better, and the Rudd government will do better. We will further support the employment of people with disability by extending access to wage assessment tools for businesses in this budget at a cost of $25.7 million over four years.

Our Fresh Ideas for Work and Family program will support small businesses and increase workforce participation and productivity. Over three years the program will invest $12 million to encourage small businesses to implement practices that help employees balance their work and family obligations. And the 2008-09 budget will invest almost $50 million over four years to help migrants—another group at high risk of exclusion—gain the language skills needed to join the workforce.

The budget also addresses the issues of housing affordability and homelessness. Every single person in the Rudd Labor government, from the Prime Minister down, sees homelessness as one of the greatest social challenges facing Australia. Over the next four years the government will allocate spending of $2.2 billion to not only build new homes for the homeless but also put homeownership within the reach of more Australians. We will build 600 new homes for the homeless, with a $100 million total investment over the next four years and another $50 million in the out years, 2012-13. The funds will be used for the construction of new accommodation, spot purchases or the renovation of suitable public housing properties.

The A Place To Call Home strategy will reduce the number of homeless people turned away from shelters each year and it will help them to break the cycle of moving in and out of homeless support services. We want to replace the revolving door with a place to call home. The government also understands the need to draw out fresh ideas and solutions to tackle homelessness in the long term. Our homelessness green paper, Which way home?, will inform the development of the first ever homelessness white paper, to be released in September this year. This white paper will lay down a national strategy to fight homelessness over the coming decade.

As rental prices rise, we recognise more families are at risk of losing the roof over their heads and falling into poverty and exclusion. The government will therefore create up to 50,000 new rental properties, through the new National Rental Affordability Scheme, at a cost of $622.6 million over the next four years. This scheme will increase the supply of affordable rental housing and reduce rental costs for low- to moderate-income households. On housing affordability, the budget includes a number of initiatives to give more Australians the opportunity to achieve that elusive Australian dream.

The Housing Affordability Fund will invest $359 million in this budget period, totalling $512 million over the next five years, to lower the cost of building new homes with an emphasis on proposals that improve the supply of new entry-level housing. The government is also establishing first home saver accounts to help people save for their first home in which to live. The accounts will provide a simple, tax-effective way for Australians to save for their first home through a combination of a government contribution and lower taxes. The government is providing $1.2 billion over four years to deliver on this important election commitment.

The budget also delivers for Indigenous communities. Tragically, we know Indigenous Australians are some of the most at risk of social exclusion. The Prime Minister’s national apology, which turned a new page in our history, was far more than words. We are committed to our targets of closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Those targets are: closing the 17-year life expectancy gap within a generation; halving the mortality gap for children under five; closing the gap in literacy and numeracy achievement within a decade; halving the gap in employment outcomes; and halving the gap in Year 12 retention by 2020—ambitious targets but targets we believe we can deliver. The Rudd government is delivering $1.2 billion over five years, including 37 measures in the budget, towards these targets.

One year on from the Northern Territory intervention, we are spending $666 million in the Northern Territory on initiatives, including early childhood development services, expanded education opportunities, community safety and policing, welfare reform, and health services. Across Australia, $554 million has been allocated to building better literacy and numeracy programs; improving child and maternity services; strengthening Indigenous drug and alcohol services; fostering improved Indigenous early development and learning; establishing an Indigenous Mothers Accommodation Fund; addressing the drivers of Indigenous chronic disease such as tobacco; and building a stronger Indigenous health workforce. These are some of the measures—and all are essential—if we are to make a real difference in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Our social inclusion agenda forces the government to realise that promoting economic participation, reducing welfare dependency and developing partnerships based on mutual respect and responsibility are critical to tackling Indigenous disadvantage. Closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians requires more than just extra resources; it involves developing the right policy settings and effective solutions for achieving long-term change. The Council of Australian Governments has adopted the Commonwealth’s targets and established a working group on Indigenous reform to develop a detailed work plan for meeting the targets.

The government is committed to supporting our carers and older Australians as well. The nation’s carers and older Australians are also an important focus of the social inclusion agenda, and our budget includes a number of initiatives to ensure they can make ends meet. As of last week, 430,000 carers and 2.7 million senior Australians started to receive more than $1.8 billion in bonuses from the Australian government. Pensioners will receive a $500 bonus; recipients of carer payment and certain veteran care pensions will receive $1,000. Carer allowance recipients will also be paid $600 for every eligible care receiver and, where possible, these will be made directly into bank accounts. Eligible seniors and carers are also receiving the $125 June quarter utilities allowance payment. This is their second instalment of the utilities allowance which, under this government, has gone up to $500 per year—a permanent increase. This is also the first year that carers will be receiving the utilities allowance. This is all about relieving some of the pressure for carers, and the government will continue examining ways of providing them with greater security.

Older Australians will also benefit from several other budgetary measures, including national transport concessions, free internet kiosks and portability of concession cards when travelling interstate and overseas. However, we appreciate that many seniors remain under financial pressure, and that is why, apart from our budget initiatives, the current tax review will examine how Australia’s social support system, including that for older Australians, provides for their future economic security.

We are supporting our volunteers. Australia’s volunteers are the lifeblood of our not-for-profit sector, and therefore are an integral part of the social inclusion agenda. The nation’s 5.1 million volunteers are out there every day, at the sharp end of service delivery, changing the lives of disadvantaged Australians. Where disadvantage divides communities, volunteering unites us, and the Rudd government will continue to sponsor and support volunteering efforts.

The budget provides for the government’s new and expanded $64 million Volunteer Grants Program, providing assistance to an extra 6,000 not-for-profit organisations to help volunteers, for the first time, pay for their petrol. The program will also help not-for-profit organisations buy important equipment and facilities. We are also extending funding for voluntary resource centres across Australia with a $5 million budget allocation so that these centres continue to provide support and training for our volunteers.

I believe this budget truly strikes the right balance between delivering for families and investing in the future. Through investments in this important budget, as well as the Australian social inclusion board, the social inclusion committee of cabinet and the social inclusion unit that we have established in the centre of government in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, we are delivering coordinated reforms and innovative programs that will make a real difference in the lives of disadvantaged Australians.

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

In rising to speak about these appropriation bills, I have a few comments to make with regard to the shameless pork-barrelling that this government has undertaken. It is, quite frankly, embarrassing what this government has done. This government has very clearly made a range of election promises, some of which have been funded in this budget but most of which it is clearly trying to hide not only from the Senate but also from the accountability and scrutiny of the Australian people.

Why do I say this? Let me take you back a few steps. It is a painful and excruciating story about a government that is clearly trying to hide something. It is time for the Labor Party to come clean about what they promised and with delivery on their promises to this place. But, no, they will not do that; they will not fess up that they have rolled out the biggest pork barrel in the history of this country. They will not fess up to that; they will not fess up that the prince of pork is now the Prime Minister of this country, who has bought his way into an election.

Let me begin. On 16 March the Minister for Youth and Sport, Ms Kate Ellis, went on a television show called Offsiders boasting that over 100 election commitments had been made to upgrade community sporting facilities by the Labor government. A boastful claim. Very proud of that was Ms Ellis on the Offsiders program. So, on 17 March, because I was interested in what these election promises were, I approached the Senate leader, Senator Evans, to let him know that the following day I was going to request some further information on this material. On 18 March, I asked a question without notice in this place. Although I say it was without notice, I had been through the courtesy to notify Senator Evans, who assured me of his full cooperation.

The end of this process was that, despite repeated assurances and email conversations and promises from Senator Evans’s office that they were waiting for the minister to get back to them, on 13 May I was advised that the answer to my question would be tabled the following day. So what did we receive? My request, remember, was about the more than 100 sports projects. I wanted to know what they were, when they were announced and in what electorates they were based. I received a list of 15; only 15. But I did receive an acknowledgement that over $100 million was committed by the Labor Party during the election campaign for these commitments. My question, a very reasonable question, one that any regular person would ask is: why provide only 15 if you have promised over 100? Surely, you must have a list of them—but apparently not, because there were only 15 identified.

When the budget came out $20 million was identified and it had a line item for 91 projects. Of those 91 projects, only five were clearly identified in the budget papers. What about the other 86? Why won’t the Labor Party come clean with this? We had a lot of deceptive answers, a lot of misleading suggestions, that these things were going to be rolled out over time and would become apparent. Why won’t they table them now? The stench of rotting pork barrel is overpowering. Minister Ellis is the hapless fall guy for these grubby promises they made during an election campaign in the hope of snaring an election win, and they did snare an election win. Not many people in this place would be stronger supporters of sport and more committed to seeing a great sporting future for this country and great participation than me, with the possible exception of Senator Kemp. But the simple fact is: the Labor Party are not coming clean on very straightforward questions.

We have been told there are over $100 million worth of commitments, but they have only identified 15 of them so far. On 16 June, only last week, quite extraordinarily, Minister Ellis told the House of Representatives Main Committee that she is:

… tremendously proud that we have delivered upon these commitments …

What commitments? She does not even know what they are. If she does know what they are, she will not tell anyone. It is a snow job on the Australian public, showing a great deal of contempt for processes and the accountability that Mr Rudd so strongly promised. Minister Ellis is tremendously proud that she has delivered upon all of her commitments, even though she does not know what they are. These are the same commitments that she is unable or unwilling to provide. She also said:

All of this funding came up after local communities, advocates or representatives made the case for new facilities or facility upgrades in different areas.

Well, I have evidence to the contrary. I have had any number of people contact me saying, ‘We didn’t know anything about it and our club’s been given a whole chunk of money.’ It has not gone through the normal scrutiny and the normal process. The pork barrel has been rolled out in marginal electorates, promises have been made, and yet now the Labor Party does not want to fess up and tell us what they are.

On 17 June, after reading about how Minister Ellis promised she had delivered on all her commitments, I moved a motion in this place asking for a list of commitments made by the government during the election period, with their recipients, locations and amounts, because Minister Ellis had told us she had delivered on them all. What a furphy that was—an absolutely furphy. The due date for the tabling of the document was today. We received it today. It was tabled before 5 pm, as requested. What did we receive—can you imagine? We expected a list of 100 commitments, at the very least. The minister had told us she had delivered on all her election commitments and there were more than 100 of them. Unfortunately, we only received a list of 35. These included the 15 that we had had before, so we received an announcement of 20 new commitments—20 out of over 100.

Just how sloppy are the government? Just how untidy are they? We know who is running the government: it is the two juniors in Mr Rudd’s office, dictating what the ministers do. We have read about that in the paper. How untidy and sloppy are they? Let me tell you how bad they are. In the list of commitments that we were given today, we were told that the contribution for the Penrith Valley sports hub in New South Wales was $250,000—you signed your name to that, Senator Evans. And yet, strangely, in the budget papers—one of the few disclosures in there about this pork-barrelling—it says: ‘Penrith Valley sports hub contribution: $5 million.’ What happened to the $4.75 million?

This is the sloppiest work of a sloppy, untidy government. All members of it should be ashamed of themselves. I know that they are embarrassed. I can tell the embarrassment is creeping out, because I see them hang their heads. They put on a brave face on occasion, but this is very grubby senior level pork-barrelling. This is the largest pork barrel we have ever seen. This government do not even know what their election commitments are; they know they have made a lot of them. They cannot even produce an accurate list. After being requested by this Senate, they provide us with a snow job and a con job by saying that $250,000 was put into a project when they allocated $5 million in their budget. They cannot even get that right. How can the Australian people trust them with anything else? Where are the other 65 projects?

But it does not stop there; it gets worse. In the list that Senator Evans tabled in this place today through Senator Faulkner—it had your signature on it, Senator Evans—there was no mention of the Traralgon West Sports Complex, for which a grant worth $160,000 was announced on 20 June. They cannot even get that right. They are throwing money out and they cannot advise the Senate. There is something really smelly here. The stench is overwhelming. There is clearly something that the government are trying to hide. But we keep digging because we know that there is more to find, and we will continue to dig; we will not let them off the hook, because the Australian people need to know just what are they allocating money to. They need to know and we deserve to know. You do not even know at this point. The government do not understand.

Despite hiding as much as they possibly can from the coalition and the Australian public, when Minister Ellis is pressed to provide an answer because a journalist is sniffing around because they can smell the stench of rotting pork barrel as well as anybody, a slightly more complete answer comes along. This is what a journalist was told—not the Senate, not any accountable body, but a journalist: 95 projects, valued at $46.8 million have been allocated through the Health and Ageing portfolio and a further 32 projects, valued at $71.6 million, through the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. In total, there were 127 projects valued at $118.1 million. They also included—helpfully, of course—a further allocation of funds, before the election, which made a total of $167.8 million allocated for pork-barrelling. And they will not fess up where they are.

This sloppiness, this contempt, beggars belief. It is embarrassing for any government, and this is a government that went to an election saying, ‘We are going to be open and accountable. We are going to be delivering on our election promises, even though we do not exactly know what they are.’ I ask members of the government: why won’t you come clean? Are you so incompetent that you are unable to compile a simple list of election promises? I think you guys need to get the story straight, because the minister has said that you have delivered on your election commitments. But you are unable to provide a list of them. There is no proof about what is going to transpire here. This is clearly a government in disarray. It goes right to the very top, because we know that everything that happens in this government leads directly to the office of the prince of pork, Mr Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister himself. This is the largest pork barrel we have ever seen in the history of this country. It is an embarrassment and it is an indictment of the processes of this Senate.

When the budget of the entire sports system in this country is something over $240 million and a $167.8 million pork barrel is rolled out, with no accountability, without the government coming clean, it says that something is really wrong. Something is rotten in the burrow that is the Labor government. They have never been able to be good economic managers. They have never been about coming clean for the Australian people. One previous Labor Treasurer gave us the recession that we had to have. He said, ‘This is the budget that is going to bring home the bacon.’ Let me tell you: this is a budget that has more bacon, in the form of giant pork barrels, than any we have ever seen.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course, Senator Bernardi, there was another Prime Minister who knew a lot about pork as well, and a famous piggery—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can say that! You know him well!

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I don’t. I think you know him much better than I do, Senator Marshall. Tonight, I rise to look back at some of the ‘highlights’ of the last seven months of the Rudd regime. I would like to start by looking at the so-called 10 employment standards which were delivered on the very day when the Belinda Neal affair was due to be scrutinised by the House. Of course, Labor preaches about workers’ rights—so what about the rights of the workers at Iguana Joe’s? This sad and very sorry affair shows just how some in the Labor Party really feel about workers’ rights. You only had to see A Current Affair this evening, where we witnessed another chapter in this very disgraceful affair. We will just hold our breath and see what Prime Minister Rudd will do about this matter now.

Workers’ rights were a feature of Senate estimates hearings recently. The 24/7 attitude of the Prime Minister has been foisted on our Public Service. Instead of respecting the work of our public servants, the Prime Minister has shown his contempt by criticising them for not working hard enough. Having spent 20 years with the Australian Government Solicitor, I saw firsthand just how hard our Public Service works. The Prime Minister’s attitude in criticising hardworking public servants is, in my view, contemptible. The paranoia of the Prime Minister with the 24-hour media cycle, so graphically described for us in the weekend press, was vividly exemplified by the Fuelwatch legislation. Treasury staff worked through the night—37 hours straight—to get this legislation drafted and prepared for tabling. The indecent haste meant that the legislation was not even tabled in its proper booklet form. So much for balancing family and work life. This is Labor hypocrisy at its worst.

Getting back to the 10 employment standards, Labor mouth platitudes about working families but refuse to give an undertaking that no worker will be worse off. This mantra is always on their lips—to the exclusion of pensioners, seniors, carers and others—and this mantra has not stopped the Rudd government budget forecast of 134,000 job losses within the next 12 months. What about those working families whose breadwinner will lose his or her job? Where is the concern for the 134,000 who will lose their jobs in the next 12 months? This is the product of the government’s industrial relations reforms—the payback to the unions.

Deputy Prime Minister Gillard has confirmed on numerous occasions that she has done no economic analysis of the Rudd government’s industrial relations laws and their impact on job losses. Glenn Milne described the secret union pact with the Rudd government in the Sunday Telegraph of 23 March. There they all were, the union heavyweights, at the official Australia Day function at the Lodge. As Glenn Milne wrote:

A leaked union strategy document marked ‘confidential’ reveals … ‘strong support’ from Mr Rudd … for new industrial relations arrangements that will drive up inflation.

Of course, the unions want payback for their $30 million investment in the anti-Howard government campaign and the more than $50 million that they have contributed to Labor coffers since 1996. And we now have a government where power is concentrated in the Prime Minister’s office and chaos has ensued, with the February draft charter letters still in the Prime Minister’s in-tray, with ministers flying blind, with Senator Faulkner amassing a wealth of ministerial responsibilities as the Prime Minister seeks to take policy control away from portfolio ministers. And all this is at a time when the Rudd government has stripped $1 billion from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in 2008-09, with rural and regional Australians to suffer as a result, and spent $2 million on a 2020 summit instead of worrying about the here and now. During Senate estimates we saw the rather dubious contracts that were awarded in jobs for the boys and girls. At a time when its green credentials were in tatters, the Rudd government was prepared to pay a $530,000 bill for the Bali climate change junket in December but not to continue highly successful Howard government programs like solar panels, community and water grants.

We had Senator Allison come in earlier bemoaning the various broken promises made by the Rudd government. Senator Allison, you should have thought about that before you gave them your preferences. Medibank Private has revealed that it alone expects to lose up to 290,000 members as a result of Labor’s foolish, ideologically driven Medicare surcharge changes, which, as my colleague Senator Cormann so ably elicited in Senate estimates, will result in crippling even further our public hospital system. No concern is being shown for the impact on community groups of attempting to abandon hundreds of the former government’s Regional Partnerships commitments.

The Rudd government has been shown to be all about spin over substance. It is about pressing forward with bad policy, often in the absence of, or in spite of, proper modelling and evidence from its own departments. Treasury confirmed that the government did not consult with the Department of Health and Ageing about the ready-to-drink tax, confirming it is purely a revenue-raising measure, implemented with no consideration of the health implications. The Rudd government did not ask either Treasury or the Department of Health and Ageing to model, cost or in any way assess the impact of the Medicare levy surcharge change on our already overloaded public hospital system. The government did not consult with the states and territories about the changes and the burden that they would place on the public health system.

We have the expose of the government’s incompetence in relation to Fuelwatch. There was no urgency for this measure, but it was rushed in when the Rudd government hit turbulence with rising petrol prices. Then there is the computers in schools program. What a sham, with departmental officials unsure of the delivery of the computers or the costs to schools, with the budget for the program significantly underfunded. We now have a case where even the ABC is complaining, about bullying of its journalists. And Jeeves, the Prime Minister’s butler, is having a very hard time cleaning up the mess!

All this reveals an alarming incidence of maladministration, a stubborn refusal to seek advice and, in short, a government in disarray. All this, and so very much more, and we are only seven months into this government.

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Very scary.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right, Senator Bushby; very scary indeed. The government has been shown up for what it is: all spin and no substance. The Australian public have been sold a real dud.

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

It is my privilege to speak this evening on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and the related bills. This is a historic first budget for the Rudd Labor government, the first federal Labor budget in over a decade. The budget is a very significant achievement. It is an economically responsible budget that invests in the future while meeting all of our election commitments. When I cast my mind back over the last 12 or so years, I remember the first budget of the Howard-Costello government, an infamous budget that introduced the shameful concept of core and, as we remember well, non-core promises. It was a budget that introduced deceit and trickery of a new order to Australian politics back in 1996 and set the scene for a government that would say or do anything to hold on to office.

This budget, unlike those of the past decade, is designed to meet the challenges of the future and strengthen Australia’s economic foundations. But, perhaps even more importantly, this budget keeps faith with our commitments to the Australian people. We have fulfilled our election commitments and ensured that every single dollar of new spending is more than offset by savings. Citizens need to be able to rely on governments keeping their word and honouring their promises. Over the years, under the Howard-Costello government, there has been an erosion of trust. Mr Howard’s tricky division of election promises into core and non-core promises helped fuel voter cynicism and alienation from the democratic process. It is important that this budget is keeping Labor’s election promises and, in doing so, helping to build trust and confidence in Australia’s political process and institutions.

When the Labor government came to office in November last year, Australia was facing the highest levels of domestic inflation in over 16 years. It is often said that the Howard-Costello government were asleep at the wheel, allowing the inflation bogy to creep up on them. The truth is that they were more like a drunken sailor, bingeing on shore leave, ignoring the warnings of responsible commentators and spending the taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars on election bribes as though there were no tomorrow. For over a decade, government spending was not directed to the major infrastructure challenges or to boosting the productive capacity of our economy. A surge in revenues year after year and handouts before every election was the character of that government. Over the last three years, the Reserve Bank of Australia warned on more than 20 separate occasions that skill shortages and capacity constraints were threatening growth and contributing to inflation. The Howard-Costello government ignored the inflation problem that they had created and neglected the long-term needs of this country.

Therefore, I am particularly pleased that the first Labor government budget in over 11 years has started a new era of responsible, long-term economic management. The Rudd Labor government has delivered a budget surplus of 1.8 per cent of GDP and we have offset every new spending initiative with savings measures—a discipline that the previous government neglected. As a consequence, this budget puts downward pressure on inflation and interest rates. Twelve interest rate rises in a row have hammered homebuyers and small businesses and it has to stop.

The budget has produced a record surplus, so the government is playing its part. It is an economically responsible budget that also supports working families. The education tax refund will allow parents entitled to family tax benefit A or whose children receive the youth allowance or similar payments to claim a 50 per cent tax refund of up to $750 in educational expenses for each child in primary school—that equates to a refund of $375—or a 50 per cent tax refund of up to $1,500 in expenses for each student in secondary school, a rebate that equates to $750 per child per year. These are significant amounts of money for people who have children in school and that is why the education tax refund initiative will be welcomed by people throughout Australia. For families with two school-age children this new arrangement could mean a maximum family benefit of $14,200 over their full school life. For families with three kids it could mean up to $21,000 worth of benefit for those families over the full school period. This is a significant benefit for many working families, particularly those who are doing it tough.

I am proud to say that the budget will provide $491 million for the Teen Dental Plan. Eligible families will be able to claim up to $150 per year for a preventative dental check for each of their teenage children, making it far more affordable for families to access dental services. The Medicare levy surcharge will also provide significant relief for many people. Under the budget, from 1 July this year singles with incomes of up to $100,000 and families with incomes of up to $150,000 will no longer be subject to the Medicare levy surcharge if they do not take out private health insurance. This simply restores the thresholds effectively to the position that they were in when the levy and the surcharge were initially introduced back in 1997. The opposition should be ashamed of itself for not supporting this part of the government’s budget and for playing short-term politics by referring this initiative to a committee. The opposition does not need information on this measure, nor does it need time to reflect on its impacts. That is what Senate estimates were for. The government has been fully transparent, and the opposition well understands that we are restoring the thresholds as they applied when the surcharge was introduced by the opposition when they were in government. The opposition is merely seeking to delay and frustrate the will of the democratically elected government. This shows the opposition’s wilful contempt for the Australian people and the processes of parliament.

The digital education revolution is at the heart of the Rudd government’s commitment to equip Australian students with the skills they need to live, work and succeed in an increasingly digital world. At the core of the digital education revolution is $1.2 billion of new funding to provide Australian secondary schools with world-class information and communication technology. I for one am particularly proud of this measure, having long been an advocate of the role that ICT increasingly plays in our lives. The new funding includes grants of up to $1 million per school to provide new or upgraded ICT for students in years 9 to12, through the National Secondary School Computer Fund, and a $100 million commitment to support the deployment of fibre connections to Australian schools, delivering broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. Other elements of the digital education revolution include $32.6 million to supply students and teachers across Australia with online curriculum tools and resources for specialist subjects such as languages; the development of online learning and access, which will enable parents to participate in their child’s education; and $10 million to develop support mechanisms for schools in the deployment of ICT provided through the National Secondary School Computer Fund. I am very pleased that 23 secondary schools in the ACT, my constituency, will receive funding for new school computers as part of the Rudd Labor government’s $1.2 billion digital education revolution.

I congratulate those schools in the ACT that were successful in attracting funding for new computers in the first round of funding announced over the past few weeks. The allocation of the first round of funding from the National Secondary School Computer Fund delivers on yet another Rudd government election commitment. This is an economically responsible budget that builds for the future and helps working families who are in need. No more do you see that this budget delivers for the future than when you look at the initiatives relating to ICT. Those initiatives are about building capacity, strengthening our education system and making sure that our kids are learning the skills that they require for the future. All of that is good for our economy and our efforts to resolve the existing skills shortage.

The Rudd government’s first budget delivers for the people of Canberra as well. As I said, the ACT is my constituency and there are a couple of initiatives that I want to mention. One point five million dollars has been allocated to secure water for the Australian National Botanic Gardens. This funding is part of the government’s $254.8 million National Water Security Plan for Towns and Cities. The government will provide $500,000 in 2009-10 to the ACT government to assist with the restoration of the Albert Hall. Albert Hall has a significant place in Australia’s history, and indeed Canberra’s history. The first citizenship ceremony was in fact held in that wonderful building. Albert Hall sits very close to the Parliamentary Triangle. Those of you who are familiar with Canberra outside of this place will know that it is just down the road to the left of the Commonwealth Bridge on the approach. The government has also met its commitment on upgrading the King’s Highway, as part of the government’s AusLink commitment.

Universities in the ACT will receive over $34 million of capital funding from the Rudd government. This includes $24 million for ANU, $4.7 million for the University of Canberra and $5.9 million for the Australian Catholic University. This funding is part of an extra $500 million to Australian universities to help them rebuild their infrastructure—infrastructure, I might add, that degraded over the period of the Howard-Costello government. Its lack of investment in higher education is now established as part of its legacy of neglect of this country.

Canberra remains one of the most expensive places in Australia for child care. I am concerned that high childcare costs may lead to parents, particularly mothers but fathers too, having to leave the workforce because they just cannot afford child care. The Rudd government recognises the financial burdens placed on working families and will lift the child care tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent to help parents meet the costs of child care. These changes will come into effect on 1 July 2008. The government will also invest $114.5 million over four years to build more childcare centres and $22.2 million to develop new national quality standards for child care. All of these initiatives are important for working families, particularly families who are contemplating having children but are afraid of the financial burden that will place on their family. For many young people, the prospect of managing a mortgage and affording child care is very daunting indeed.

The inflation problem we inherited from the Howard-Costello government has required the Rudd government to make some hard decisions. We have had to make off-setting savings to pay for new policy and cut back on staffing in some agencies. I am happy to say that, to its credit, the government has listened to the ACT community and has been very careful to manage the effect of budget decisions on the Public Service. Budget cutbacks have been spread across many agencies that have also received funds for new measures. The budget papers show that average staffing levels are expected to decline by less than 0.5 per cent. This is a net figure that includes the effects of all the budget decisions, changes in workload and the effect of terminating programs and includes agencies that are growing as well as agencies that are declining.

The government has done everything it can to ensure that staffing reductions can be managed without forced redundancies. The government has also put in place a whole-of-government career transition program to help manage the staffing changes in a way that ensures we retain our high-quality public servants. The Public Service Commissioner issued eight principles to guide agencies in managing any staffing reductions and changes. These principles include commitments to maintaining expenditure on training and development and the employment of minority groups. This will protect the future capacity of the Public Service. In particular I commend the Special Minister of State, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and the Public Service Commissioner and her staff for their work in putting together this program.

The Rudd government’s careful approach contrasts with the crude ideological approach to the public sector under the Howard government. The Howard government abused the Public Service and undermined its institutional integrity through a combination of fear, institutional reforms—or claimed reforms—and blatant political jobbery. The Howard cabinet developed a cynical and opportunistic approach to government, reflected in its history of boom-and-bust staff cuts and recruitment programs. In its early budgets, the Howard government terminated programs, privatised and outsourced functions and cut back on activity levels. In its first years there were substantial across-the-board job reductions throughout the Australian Public Service, with over 30,000 staff made redundant. This cost $300 million in redundancy payouts by the end of the government’s first year in office. Over the following years, many of these staff were subsequently re-employed as expensive consultants and contractors as the Howard government realised that its cuts had been too crude and that it required the skills and expertise that it had cut out of the Public Service so unthinkingly.

The Rudd government, by contrast, values the importance of a professional, impartial Public Service and will be working to restore the values of the Westminster tradition to the Australian Public Service. The Rudd government has ambitious policy goals and a determination to deliver on its commitments to the Australian people. We are looking forward to working with the Public Service in delivering better outcomes for all Australians.

This budget provides a first instalment on our commitment to govern in a responsible and forward-looking way for all Australians. The emphasis on forward thinking, the use of technologies, reducing inflation and investing in infrastructure augur well for Australia’s long-term economic future. I commend the budget to the Senate and look forward to working very hard as a member of the Rudd government in meeting the substantial challenges of the future.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to address issues of the immigration component of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related bills and of the new Labor government’s budget and policies more broadly. As senators may know, I have been the spokesperson for the Australian Democrats in this area for over 10 years. It has been a source of some frustration to me that we have had enormous political controversy around the immigration area and that the vast amount of that has focused on asylum seekers; in fact, on a subset of asylum seekers colloquially known as ‘boat people’. At its peak, 4,000 people arrived in one year; in most cases, there were far fewer than that. Of all the people arriving in Australia on any sort of residence visa, the proportion would be lucky to be one per cent, yet we have had 99 per cent of the political debate, public focus and media attention on this tiny proportion of people who engage the Migration Act in regard to potential residence. Of course, there are very important issues that arise with regard to asylum seekers. I do not dispute that. But it does mean that the enormous, incredibly important role that migration as a whole plays in the future of Australia is almost ignored.

It is to me both a shame and a real problem, because it is an important area of policy and it is a very complex area of policy. Minister Evans, who is in the chamber at the moment, is no doubt all too aware of this these days, having taken on the portfolio in the last six or seven months since the election. But it is absolutely vital to the future of Australia and it is vital to the present moment of Australia and the functioning of our economy. It is crucial in a social way. It presents environmental challenges, but certainly not challenges that cannot be overcome with good planning, yet it gets very little substantial policy attention and public debate compared to the significance that it plays in its impact on our nation.

It has been pleasing to see some of the changes that have come into play in the refugee area since the government came into office, and I hope to see more changes of a positive nature in the coming months and years. Again, I think it is important that we focus more on the wider issue of the migration program proper, because asylum seekers and refugees in general, particularly people who arrive here seeking asylum, are not part of our migration program. And, whilst also important and fairly sizeable, the humanitarian refugee offshore program is again seen as separate and distinct from the migration program. It is still quite a small proportion—less than 10 per cent. I have been interested to see a number of statements, both by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Evans, and also, to a slightly lesser extent, by the Prime Minister, in regard to the expansion of the migration program as a whole. It is in that area that I think it is important to examine both the measures contained in the budget and also some of the broader policy issues that underpin them.

It is worth looking at just the figures very briefly. If we look at the figures from the Howard government era, from 1996-97 through to 2006-07, we had quite a substantial increase in the rate of net overseas migration—that is, the number of permanent and long-term arrivals minus the number of permanent and long-term departures. In the 2006-07 financial year, it rose to a level of almost 178,000. This was one of the rare occasions when the net migration intake contributed more than half of our population growth in that particular year, so in that year it was a significant part of the population growth of Australia—a majority part.

The other key factor in this in many ways happened without a lot of attention over the life of the Howard government. There was a dramatic increase in the number of long-term temporary migrants. There are a lot of different uses of terminology in this area and it can often cause different understandings about what is happening, but in general terms long-term arrivals are counted as migrants even though they are not necessarily automatically going to be permanent residents, although many of them end up that way. The number of people coming as long-term arrivals was as high as 373,000 in the financial year 2006-07. That is far above the number of people who arrived as permanent residents, which is what people generally think of when they think of migrants—people who come to settle as permanent arrivals.

But the number of long-term temporary arrivals was far greater. That change has happened only in the last 10 years. And the size of the difference between the long-term temporary and the permanent arrivals has increased more and more, particularly in the last few years. This is, in part, to do with the massive increase in the number of people arriving here on student visas—I think it was well over 200,000 arriving on student visas in that financial year. There were also very large numbers—increasing numbers—in what is known as the 457 visa category. Broadly speaking, this is the category of people who come here for work related purposes on skilled visas. But very large numbers also come here on working holiday type visas. Some of those are for up to two years and many others for one year.

I think it is a very positive development to have such a large migration intake, if we have adequate planning in place for the numbers of people who come and for what they do when they get here. It is understandable that there is concern about the impact of a large migration intake on things like infrastructure, housing and the environment. That presents a planning challenge, but it does not present a reason in my view to simply dramatically reduce the numbers of people who come here. There are differing views, but the evidence is very strong that there is a clear economic benefit to Australia from the significant migrant intake that we have at the moment. There is no doubt that the large numbers of overseas students, for example—200,000 plus—are a significant benefit to the Australian economy. It is an enormous export industry, in effect, for Australia, as is the working holiday visa program.

There are obvious economic benefits to Australia from the very large numbers of people—well over 100,000—who come here on both temporary long-term and permanent visas, filling the skill shortages. It would be absolute economic catastrophe for Australia if we did not have those people come here to fill those skills shortages. One of the things that is being recognised, and which I have seen signalled to some extent in recent times, is that it is not simply a matter of skill shortages in particular areas; it is actually in part—certainly in some areas of Australia—a straight out labour shortage. This is moving beyond the skills category to semi-skilled and even unskilled labour in particular parts of the country. It is really welcome to see calls for a genuine wide-ranging debate on these issues.

There were measures in the budget, to some extent, providing both funds for expansion and migration intake in some areas—a welcome but still small increase in the humanitarian intake—and also some extra resources towards settlement support and other sorts of issues like that. Just last Friday, on World Refugee Day, I heard the minister, Senator Evans, note that he had received some mild criticisms about overemphasising the economic contributions that refugees make and talking too much about migrants as though they are nothing but economic units, to paraphrase what he said at the time—as though they were just cogs in a machine. I think it is valid to make sure that we do not overplay that. It was one of the things I thought the previous government overplayed when they dramatically reduced family intake and increased the skilled and business migration intakes. One of the justifications they gave for dropping the family intake was that it cost too much money. I think that played too much into what is a misleading and an inaccurate stereotype, that migrants are a drain on the economy. Overall, migrants are a boost to the economy. That does not mean that every single one of them individually is a boost, but as a whole they are a boost to the economy.

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recognised in the budget for the first time.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that interjection from Senator Evans. And it is true with regard to the humanitarian intake as well. I think it is worth making that point. One of the downsides of the debate that we did have about refugees and asylum seekers, apart from all the blatant, disgraceful vilification, was this suggestion that it was a drain on the economy. Sure, there are costs; I do not dispute that. But there is a cost every time a person has a child. People chew up resources, and children chew up a lot of resources, as any parent knows—as society should know, with the cost of educating and schooling any child. But any suggestion that we should stop people having children because they cost too much to educate would be rightly laughed out of the arena. To use such crude arguments against having migrants or refugees coming here is just as ludicrous. Of course there are costs, and of course we need to take those into account and assess them all, and look at the wider economic, social infrastructure and environmental issues that come into play. But to simply make blatant statements and say they are a cost is ludicrous. The minister was right in emphasising that even the humanitarian intake, where people can have significant issues in relation to overcoming past trauma, English issues, major social dislocation issues, family separation issues and settlement issues, in general costs money; but it is an investment, in the same way education is an investment.

To me this comes to a core point. One of the aspects of the significant increase in the proportion of our migration intake that are coming as long-term temporary migrants is that our settlement support and wider welcoming measures, if you want to use that term, have not adjusted properly. Lots of people when they come here, whether as permanent migrants or long-term temporary arrivals, do fine—they come into a job, they have family here, they can plug straight in. But plenty of them do not. Plenty of international students are actually extremely isolated and are quite at risk; many of them are quite vulnerable. Many of them have had parents go hugely into debt to make sacrifices to provide this opportunity for their children. It is certainly not cheap to be an overseas student to pay for your education fees, let alone the costs of getting here, the costs of housing and all of those things when they arrive. And if they run into difficulties, if they fail too many subjects, if they get caught working 20.1 hours instead of 20 hours, they can have their visa cancelled like that and they can lose the whole lot. They can literally have their lives ruined, particularly if they end up in detention, as some of them do—they cop a debt as part of that; they have a mark on their record as though they have been jailed. It can cause horrendous destruction of people’s lives, a cost far in excess of an appropriate penalty for any mistake they may have made with regard to breaching their visas or simply not passing their courses. We need to take those things into account, particularly for what is an export industry. There are always going to be circumstances where these things happen, but I think we can reduce them, whether it is in the student area or in the many other areas where people arrive on temporary visas, by just providing more short-term resources to make sure people are not isolated, that they are plugged in somewhere, that they have support, that they know where to go to get help early on. That early investment in the arrival of these huge numbers of people—because they are not cogs in a machine; they do contribute to Australia economically, socially and culturally—like education itself can bring enormous benefits to Australia down the track, as we have seen from so many who have come here under the humanitarian and family intakes. I do think it is important to have more resources and to re-examine how we deploy existing resources with regard to arrivals.

Another aspect of the significant increase in the migration intake is the potential for public backlash. There is no doubt that that exists. The apprehension about large numbers of people coming here is understandable. That is why I think it is better to have an open debate about it, and that is my understanding of why the minister has called for an open debate rather than just pushing it all through and hoping nobody really notices. There is a real risk that factors can combine. I am certainly seeing a growing number of people somehow or other suggesting that we need to reduce the migration intake because of climate change—because more people will come here, so we will have more emissions. Now, people consume resources wherever they are on the planet. Whether they consume resources and are involved in generating greenhouse emissions in Australia or elsewhere, it is a global issue. To me the issue is the amount of emissions everybody is generating, not where they happen to live when those emissions occur. But to blame too many migrants for greenhouse impacts or for us not meeting our climate change targets is an easy argument to make, if you do not think about it too much. There is a strong thread within parts—certainly not all—of the environment movement that really heavily pushes this line.

The reason I became immigration spokesperson for the Democrats when I first got elected to the Senate was that we had a migration policy with one line in it—which none of the then senators supported—courtesy of a departed former senator, calling for zero net migration. It made it rather hard to argue that we should be allowing refugees and boat people to stay, when we had a policy that said no-one is actually allowed to stay until someone else leaves.

We had a policy that I think was not logical, and I was very pleased to take on the portfolio so I could help make that policy logical again. But that thread of thought about zero net migration still survives in parts of the environment movement, and climate change is the latest thing people hook onto—and the environmentalist side is my side of politics. Similarly, there is undoubtedly still a thread within the trade union movement that continues to run the line that migrants take jobs and drive down conditions—arguments that were run back in the late 19th century and early 20th century. When we are, I think rightly, considering taking in people from some Pacific island nation both to assist the economies of those nations and to meet labour shortages here in my own state of Queensland, that has undertones of some arguments that were put forward from the union movement there around the early 1900s.

If an argument is being put from an environmental angle, or from a workers’ rights and conditions angle, and there is also general unease about rising housing prices, and migration is being blamed for increasing demand too much on housing and pushing up prices, and there is a general unease about rising costs in general, these things can all knit together to create a fairly nasty mix. That is why I think it is valuable to have a public debate about it, to be open about these things. I am not saying that everyone who expresses concerns about environmental impacts or about workers’ rights is just some bigot; not at all. What I am saying is that those concerns need to be addressed factually. A really strong leadership role needs to be played by everybody in public life, not just by politicians but by people across the board in any sort of public position to counter some of that mythology, to highlight the undoubted benefits that migration provides to us across the board. I would also make a plug here, again, for the family intake, because that was significantly reduced.

I note that Senator Ellison moved a motion calling for the retirement visa group to be given the opportunity to apply for permanent visas. I think that is an area worth considering, without making the obvious point that the previous government had plenty of time to do that and did not. The previous government also put a very severe cap on the ability of parents and aged parents to come here and reunite with their families, unless they could pay a very large fee for their visa. This was the so-called non-contributory parent category. It is very small—I think it was 1,000. It has an enormous waiting list for people who do not have a lot of money, and it is pleasing that there has been an increase in that. But I think it is difficult to be making an argument for one group without also looking at the parents of those people who have been here for a long time. (Time expired)

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related bills. While I can say that this budget has dealt fairly with my state of Tasmania, there is one field of endeavour where that is definitely not the case. Australian Rules football in Tasmania has a proud history. It was not long after the game’s earliest origins in 1858 that it was embraced by the sporting population of my state—the state that I have the honour to represent here in this place. A club existed in Hobart as early as 1864, and the state’s oldest continuing club, Launceston, was formed in 1875. Leagues and associations flourished throughout the state, more often than not providing the social and sporting lifeblood of our geographically diverse population.

This enthusiasm remains the case today. Tasmania enjoys the highest participation rate of any state in the sport of Australian Rules football. Despite only having 2.4 per cent of the Australian population, Tasmania provides 5.35 per cent of Auskick participants, 4.12 per cent of clubs and 6.77 per cent of school based football nationally. But it appears that the people of Tasmania must suffer a significant penalty for their enthusiastic embrace of the national game. Like Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, our relative participation in Australian football exceeds our relative population level, but Tasmania exceeds by more. It is quite the opposite in New South Wales and Queensland. It appears that Tasmanians are too committed to AFL football, so much so that in fact it seems to have caused the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Football League and his advisers to reach the conclusion that there is such little room for further expansion of the game in Tasmania that we should not be considered for one of the two new team licences to be issued. This is an extraordinary premise, one which completely ignores a rich history of commitment to the game and which surely prevents the AFL from achieving its stated aim of having a truly national league. Let us examine a few raw facts.

The proposed team on the Gold Coast has effectively nowhere to play and limited available existing support, based mainly on those who have moved to the area from the established Australian football states. The team planned for Western Sydney has a stadium at which it can play but whether in the short or even long term it can go anywhere near even partially filling it must remain the big question, as it has no supporter base at all. Meanwhile, Tasmania has an existing AFL stadium and a large and committed support base which all but fills that stadium’s seats on a regular basis for those AFL games that do come our way.

The Australian Football League is a successful sporting body and business enterprise. It is arguably the standard bearer for achievement in sporting excellence in this country. It has much of which it can be proud, both on and off the field. It is entitled to continue its work and achievements to strive for even more growth and success. But surely it also has an obligation to respect, honour and reward the most committed members of the Australian football family, especially when there is no good reason why it should not. Since the clubs Hawthorn and St Kilda began to play regular roster matches at Aurora Stadium at York Park in Launceston, Tasmanians have made it clear that they want the game played at the highest level in their home state. Whilst they have always demonstrated a tremendous culture for the game, it now materialises in an additional manner through enthusiastic attendance at AFL games on their own patch.

The Tasmanian connection with the game in the past has been substantial; the contribution extraordinary. There are only 21 legends in the AFL Hall of Fame; three of them are Tasmanians: Daryl Baldock, Peter Hudson and Ian Stewart. The Tasmanian AFL ‘Team of the century’ is full of those who are wonderful exponents of the game and stands favourably alongside similar teams selected by the AFL clubs themselves, many of which, in turn, include Tasmanians who played for them. And it continues in 2008. Rodney Eade is now the coach of the Western Bulldogs. More than 20 Tasmanians are currently on AFL senior lists, and five umpire at AFL level. Matthew Richardson is playing at his very best in the twilight of his career, while Brendan Gale heads up the AFL Players Association.

The Tasmanian talent pathway continues to prepare and deliver up its young men for the AFL draft. Earlier this year, the state was victorious in the national division 2 under-18 championship, defeating both Queensland and New South Wales. The question must therefore be asked, given an apparent capability to field a team in the highest competition in the land, why Tasmania should be cast aside without even the slightest chance to mount a case, let alone be encouraged or assisted to do so. The answer may well lie in the chairman’s contribution to the AFL 2007 report. In it Mike Fitzpatrick said:

Next Generation: Securing the Future of Australian Football was adopted by the AFL ... in 2006 and $1.4 billion was allocated to all levels of the game during the next five years.

A key component of that strategy is to have an AFL premiership season match played in south-east Queensland and Sydney each week by 2015.

I note that this target date seems to have been rushed forward considerably since the presentation of the report. It might well be argued that one of the reasons for this is the continued embarrassment of having to explain the exclusion of Tasmania from the process. In the same report, Mr Fitzpatrick commented:

To assist the AFL Commission, a Gold Coast advisory group was established among local business, community and government leaders to put forward the case for an AFL club to be based on the Gold Coast.

The case put forward by the Gold Coast group to establish an AFL club on the coast was compelling.

The Gold Coast region is Australia’s premier tourist destination, attracting more than 10 million overnight and daytrip visitors each year.

That latter statistic may well be the case, but what we already know is that not too many of them bother to support or attend AFL games when they are played there. The AFL’s 2007 report reveals that an average of 11,319 people attended roster matches at Gold Coast Stadium compared with 17,403 at Aurora Stadium at York Park in Launceston, and it is nigh on impossible to buy an airline seat from Melbourne to Launceston on the weekend of one of those AFL matches. It is clear that it is as much the mainland tourist population as the locals which supports the playing of AFL at its highest level in Tasmania, and we are currently able to compare apples with apples because in both cases neither local crowd has a home team to support.

The comparative news has only got worse for the proponents of the Gold Coast in 2008. On 19 May a reported crowd of just 6,354 watched North Melbourne take on West Coast on the Gold Coast. Two weeks later 19,378 poured into York Park to watch the Western Bulldogs battle Hawthorn—maybe not apples with apples this time because the Kangaroos may have been on the nose up north and the West Coast may have had a few local fans, but it is hard to imagine that the AFL-committed Tasmania crowd would ever drop to the dismal depths experienced on that day. The last time the Eagles came to Launceston a crowd of 18,112 turned up. Maybe that is the real point: the AFL is so obsessed with growth above all else that it ignores the facts before its eyes. Referring to North Melbourne’s decision not to accept a $100 million package to relocate to the Gold Coast, Mr Fitzpatrick said:

Our major responsibility rests with continuing to grow the game and the national competition and given the Kangaroos’ decision, we will pursue the establishment of a new club on the Gold Coast. This work started in the past year and it will be a major focus of the AFL ... in 2008.

So obsessed, in fact, is the AFL that it seems that this might well be at any cost. In the Australian on 24 May journalist Patrick Smith wrote:

The Gold Coast franchise—set down for 2011—threatens to set back other sides in the competition, in some cases terminally. The AFL has drawn up generous benefits for the new side that most AFL club chiefs think will eventually hand the Gold Coast a superteam. As it stands, the Gold Coast recruiters have 80 picks to fill a 50 or so strong list. Only the baubles will be kept, the fool’s gold discarded. Clubs are finetuning their thoughts on the AFL blueprint and fans should expect a push to have the Gold Coast’s tip truck of draft picks traded for shots at uncontracted players.

There has been plenty of speculation that the AFL will also be prepared to invest whatever it takes in terms of raw cash, some say hundreds of millions, to make sure it works. This may even include building a stadium from scratch at the AFL’s expense because no-one else appears interested. Surely that must cause the odd penny to drop. Meanwhile a much surer shot lies ignored in the nation’s southernmost state.

Growth is not the only factor that ought to be applied in these situations. Key performance indicators are a feature of measuring success in today’s society and growth is always a favourite inclusion, but there is also much to be said for commitment and stability, particularly when variables such as long-term support by fans of a sporting team are thrown into the mix. It is most probably true that Tasmania would easily lose out in the potential for growth debate in any discussions on the expansion of the AFL. It is hard to grow when your level of commitment and participation is already at a high level. On the other hand, it should prove easy for the AFL to spin out plenty of data on growth in Sydney’s west and on the Gold Coast given the low base of current support. One hopes that statistics are not clouding this debate too much. As we know, it is too easy to manipulate them to get the result desired.

This is all a bit like the children’s fairy story about the bears, the chairs, the beds and the porridge. Poor old papa bear, Sydney, has a stadium but it is a bit too strong. Then there’s Goldie, the mama bear—hers is just not up to scratch and there were lots of problems when her relatives from Brisbane tried to make people sit in it a few years back. But baby bear, Tassie, has the facility that is just right, with plenty of potential for it to grow as time goes on and at not a ridiculous cost. Lots of people want to sit in Tassie bear’s stadium. The challenge it seems for the littlest bear is to find and convince Goldilocks.

But perhaps the most serious issue facing Tasmania’s push for a team in the AFL is making others, as well as its own, believe that it is serious. Perhaps until recently, any concept of an AFL team for Tasmania has been based mostly on emotion—that given the state’s history in and contribution to the national game it had a right to a team when the league expanded. And perhaps it was too easy to cast such expressions aside, largely on the basis of the state’s small and static population. But we now live in a very different world. Corporate investment transcends state and national boundaries. As far as I am aware, unless there has been a dramatic development in the past hour or so, my beloved Collingwood is not located in the Gulf States, yet it is sponsored by the national airline of the United Arab Emirates. It is not a prerequisite that sponsors have a geographical connection with the team or product that they sponsor, particularly in the 21st century. In fact, Tasmania proves exactly that by sponsoring a Melbourne based team. It makes sense because a commercial entity will often have very good reasons for promoting itself well outside its own backyard and through a popular third-party entity. I again quote Patrick Smith, who wrote in the Australian on 11 June:

It says everything about the ruthless AFL ... that when the competition is at its wealthiest—with much more to come—three Melbourne sides are threatened with all but instant execution.

At least those clubs have had the chance to put their case over a hundred years and more. Tasmania has never even had the chance for a trial—fair or otherwise. Mr Smith was referring to the possibility that the AFL might end the practice of special distributions to clubs in need, which this year saw those three clubs receive $4.1 million under the scheme. He went on to say in the same article:

The devil in all this detail is historical contracts with Melbourne’s two playing venues, the MCG and Telstra Dome. The three clubs are locked into long-term deals that deliver piddling returns.

This is a big issue not just for these three clubs but for a number of other Melbourne based sides as well. Whilst it seems to threaten the survival of three long-term existing clubs, it is not a problem which we could expect Tasmania to face if it were able to field a permanent team in the big league.

Three of the reasons that have been advanced against the argument for a Tasmanian based team in the AFL warrant some consideration. The first is that Tasmanians are so committed to the AFL game and its current clubs that they might not sufficiently embrace a team of their own. It is true that it is often hard to find a Tasmanian that does not associate with an existing AFL side one way or another. Our passion for the game and ‘our’ team is significant and during the footy season sometimes life determining, at least in terms of our social programs. The obsession with footy tipping on the AFL is almost overwhelming with a huge number of Tasmanian workplaces and social clubs committed to one form or another of such competition. But this can easily work in favour of the push for Tassie’s own team. Even if we remain loyal to our original side, we are faced with the immediate bonus of, at least once every two years, that side playing a rostered game in Tasmania. And these things are of course generational. You only have to take a cursory glance at Hawthorn games in Launceston to see that the biggest proportion of Hawks fans at the games are younger supporters—those who have made their decision as to which team to support in the period since Hawthorn has begun to play in Tasmania.

And let us not overlook the fact that Tasmanians are often, with some considerable justification, accused of being parochial. The Apple Isle did not have a team in the interstate cricket competition for the early and middle years of the Sheffield Shield. This did not prevent Tasmanians from quickly embracing the Tassie Tigers once they were admitted to the competition, and certainly not when they eventually won it—much more quickly I would say than was the case with Queensland! It is doubtful that Tasmanians would avoid for too long the chance to support an AFL team of their own, even if it were by the time honoured practice followed by AFL supporters of having a ‘second’ team.

The second cause for concern that has been thrown up is that we might not get too excited about a team that did not have many Tasmanians in it. It is, of course, true that there is no guarantee, given the current draft and transfer systems, that a significant number of Tasmanian-bred players would be part of a Tasmanian side. But Tasmanians are a welcoming bunch and, as they have shown with many new arrivals in other sports, it does not take long for a new arrival to be regarded as one of Tasmania’s own. Daniel Marsh, the captain of the Tasmanian cricket team, is a perfect example.

And then there is the argument that Tasmania could not support an AFL team in other respects. But in the case of an AFL club it is no longer necessary, as it may have been even a short time ago, to find jobs for the players in a team’s home town. This would have been an issue for Tasmania in those days, but it is now an irrelevancy because it is the club that provides the employment opportunities, not only for the players, who are now all full-time, but for the support and administrative staff as well. The same applies to many of the other arguments that are raised in objection to the suggestion that Tasmania should have its own resident AFL team. Much has been said, in justification of an expanded national league, about the need to provide more material for broadcast rights holders. But surely it does not matter whether a game being telecast is coming from Tasmania, the Gold Coast or Sydney.

There is growing support within Tasmania for an AFL team of its own. The Tasmanian government has responded by allocating some $200,000 to commission a study into the feasibility of such a move. It is perhaps regrettable that to date the Tasmanian football family and its supporters have not been treated with the respect that nearly 150 years of devotion to the national game deserves. In a thoughtful, forward-thinking piece in the Age on 15 May, Jake Niall pondered July 2013 and what that time might reveal of the progress of a Western Sydney team in the AFL. The picture painted was bleak as Niall was foreseeing poor crowds and a ‘borderline competitive’ AFL constructed team with just a single local player. In Niall’s words:

It has no supporter base and no basis for being, except the league’s ambitious expansionist agenda.

Naturally much of this is speculation, however well based, except, of course, for the latter remark, which arguably is already accepted fact. Niall’s well-considered case, which predicted that Western Sydney loomed as ‘the AFL’s Iraq’, concluded with the following:

If the AFL forges ahead with its (second) imperial adventure as planned, the Western Sydney team will consume untold millions and drain coffers to the point that the code could be weakened elsewhere—textbook overstretch. My guess is it would be cheaper to prop up a team in Tasmania, or even Canberra. In terms of financial viability, the best market for another team actually would be Perth.

In the AFL’s logic, a large population is the precious natural resource. Tassie, sadly, doesn’t have the numbers, which is tantamount to having no oil.

I think those words of Niall’s are prophetic. On all that we have heard to date, it is hard to conceive that Niall’s ‘guess’ is all that far off the mark. Surely that justifies, at the very least, the AFL giving some real time to considering Tasmania’s case.

Debate (on motion by Senator McLucas) adjourned.