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

This is a continuation of the debate of February this year. The context of the debate at the time was about concerns that the opposition had about the continuation of the Regional Partnerships program, which was a very flawed program of the previous government. I am very pleased to say that, since that debate occurred, things have moved on very quickly. When I was speaking I was talking about the Rudd government’s commitment to rural and regional Australia, and I am delighted to see that this commitment is now very much in action across the country. In the time since the debate, which was in February—so it is six months or so ago now—we have been building on our work to drive a whole-of-government approach dealing with the problems that are confronting our communities, particularly our rural and regional communities. We have undertaken a national review of drought policy, and this review has a three-pronged approach to ensure that we understand every aspect of the impacts of the drought. The national drought review includes an economic assessment by the Productivity Commission on a climatic report on future drought events which is being conducted by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO. While these two investigations are of critical importance as we take a balanced and measured approach to the way in which we help rural and regional communities through drought into the future, they only make up two parts of the pie. The review is also investigating the social impact of the drought: how the drought has affected families, friends and communities.

An expert panel was established to ensure that the social component of the drought is being considered as part of the review. This panel is in the very capable hands of the AgForce Queensland president, Mr Peter Kenny. Hundreds of people have spoken to the expert panel about just how the drought has affected them and their families socially and emotionally, and a number of issues have been raised. They include the impact of long-term drought on mental and physical health, the flow-on effects of farmers under pressure to other local businesses, the stresses on families, particularly how this stress is affecting children, and the impacts on local volunteering as people are forced to look for more work off-farm. The panel has been travelling around Australia and has heard from farming families and churches, counsellors, health organisations, representatives of farm organisations and many more, and their feedback will be considered with written submissions before the panel reports in September.

So the social impact component of the National Drought Review is very important. It is also very important to my work as Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector. There is certainly a risk, we know, of growing disadvantage in our rural and regional communities as we face a likely future of longer, more severe and more frequent droughts, so we do need to get the policy settings right when it comes to addressing disadvantage and social exclusion in our country regions. We need to make sure that we can provide the right assistance and support to Australians in regions emerging from drought. How can we help them to recover from the devastating emotional toll and economic toll that come from living through prolonged drought? Unless you have actually experienced it, you really do not understand how deeply embedded that is.

That is why the Labor government has begun to articulate its nation-building agenda. Through the 2008-09 budget, the Rudd government delivered on its election commitments to rural and regional Australia, especially in the area of climate change, an issue that has been completely occupying us in this chamber for the last two weeks. It occupies the discussion everywhere and it is of critical importance. We all know that we need to look no further than the crisis that is the Murray-Darling Basin, for example, to witness the enormous costs that we are beginning to pay from the impacts of the changing climate and a lack of commitment to making serious decisions.

So the centrepiece of the plan, as Senator Wong has so wisely and widely articulated, is to tackle climate change through the $130 million Australia’s Farming Future initiative, which is going to be funded over four years, with the first allocation from the 2008-09 budget. Other areas where Labor is delivering on its commitments to rural and regional Australia include the ongoing support for the EC-declared regions, with $760.9 million for EC assistance in 2008-09, $20 million to help our forestry industries prepare for the challenges of the future, including climate change, and new measures to fight weeds, which are a huge drain on the national economy and are also part and parcel of the aftermath of long-term drought.

We are seriously involved in a broad, whole-of-government approach to support our rural and regional communities. We have a $2.2 billion Caring for Country program, providing a new coordinated approach to natural resource management, and we are certainly looking to invest in the infrastructure of rural and regional communities. That was where the debate was left last time: the criticism of our decisions to reconnect and test the robustness of the proposals that were put forward under the Regional Partnerships program. The parliamentary secretary responsible for that, Mr Gray, has certainly done so. Testing the robustness of those proposals and honouring the project funding where contracts had been signed so that those projects could actually go forward has been a very genuine process. But there were many, many projects, as we well know, mentioned in the Auditor-General’s report that did not stand up to a robust test, and those projects we did not support. We did support the projects that were brought forward in the latter part of the year and early this year which were part of major social projects in communities around Australia, and we will continue to do so. But we have something else that has happened since then. With the Building Australia Fund, the announcement by the Rudd government of a nation-building agenda, we have an opportunity now to fund some of the critical social infrastructure that will underpin rural and regional community development.

In terms of the work within my own portfolio area, which is so close to the issues that were raised earlier in this debate, this week we announced millions of dollars of voluntary grants for community organisations. We have heeded the call of community organisations about the rising cost of petrol, we have included a capacity for petrol to be part of the costs that are reimbursed to volunteers and we have simplified the application process as part of our commitment to reducing red tape and making it easier for community organisations to get on with the work that they do best.

As well as that, we have started a process of consulting our community organisations around Australia. We are talking to them about the way in which we can develop a national compact. In that regard, one of the major members of the expert group that I have established to advise the government is Mrs Lesley Young, who is the National President of the Country Women’s Association. I know that there are many people who appreciate the work that the Country Women’s Association does in supporting rural communities and families that have been doing it tough for such a long time. I share and support the commitment that the previous government had to using the networks of the Country Women’s Association to help deliver some emergency relief to some of those communities where people were doing it tough.

This government is totally committed to supporting rural and regional communities in Australia. We certainly know that we have much to do in that area. We know that there are ongoing impacts—that is, the economic, social and environmental impacts of economic change. We know we need to do something about investing in regional economic development, which is something that the previous government gave up on a long time ago.

We have a new Building Australia Fund, which we have been calling for expressions of interest in. It is, as I say, a national infrastructure program. And what are we finding? We are finding that there is a great interest among the members of the opposition in this fund. The member for Flinders, for example, has put in proposals for $266.9 million for projects in his electorate. The member for Paterson has put in for projects to the tune of $20 million for what he identified in his submission as a coalition government election commitment, bless him! Also in this process, the member for Gippsland, who has only been in the parliament five minutes, has just asked the government for $140 million for projects in his own electorate.

We know that what is happening here is that the government is having to pick up the pieces of an opposition that really has not committed to community infrastructure for a very long time. We are now dealing with opportunistic opposition members who are desperately pleading with this government to support proposals to the Building Australia Fund.

We know that we have a range—millions and millions, billions—of projects that people want to have funded. This is in a climate where, on the one hand, we have the opposition desperately pleading for projects that they believe are genuinely worthy in their electorates and support their rural and regional communities and, on the other hand, we have an opposition that are prepared to do whatever it takes to undermine the government’s budget surplus—to undermine the budget measures that are going to actually deliver some of the funding that we want to put into this infrastructure fund.

We have a long-term infrastructure agenda, we have a commitment to rural and regional Australia and what we really need from the opposition is a commitment to travel down this path, talk the talk and walk the walk with us to invest in our regional communities. That is what we really need, and I expect that we will be talking much more about it in the future, because we know that spoiling the budget surplus for political gain is going to be to the disadvantage of our rural and regional communities in Australia.

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President Trood, I do not believe I have risen to speak in this place while you have been presiding. Congratulations on your deputy presidency.

I want to talk to the motion and draw the attention of the Senate to what ‘ending the blame game’ as a mantra has meant for my state of Western Australia. We have had nine months of the Rudd Labor government. We have had 2020 talkfests, inquiries, summits, committees, reviews—we have had a whole host of things that have not actually produced anything, save for the fact that in regional Australia the very first thing the Rudd government did was to slash Regional Partnerships funding. For all of those small communities that require a fire station or a community park or recreational facility, the first thing the Rudd Labor government did was to undermine the quality of life in regional Australia.

The other thing that they did, which bears out their long-held and galling attitude towards the Australian agricultural community, was to say to farmers, ‘Because of global warming, we’re going to change exceptional circumstances criteria for drought funding.’ These are the two predominant bits of action that the Rudd government have actually done. If we look for instance at this chamber, the legislative flow through it has been a quite remarkable litany of rehashed coalition legislation that was left over from the Howard government. One or two seriously major bills, in addition to the budget papers, have come here.

This party of government, this Labor Party, has no plan or agenda. It is simply marking time while it thinks about what it is going to do. That is very, very dangerous in regional Australia because, for example, not making a decision with respect to water—and I pause to say that the Minister for Climate Change and Water is clearly out of her depth. To come in here, point opposite and say, ‘What are you going to do?’ really lets the cat out of the bag, and I will have a little bit more to say about that.

On emissions trading, the crazy formulas of gross revenue and the crazy structures that are sought to be imposed through the green paper have sent the business community in this country into a tailspin. The minister has become known as the company killer. This is the sort of stuff that really does worry one when looking into the future to when they actually start to do something. Pensioners have been left out of the budget. The computers in schools program is nothing more or less than a fiasco. I was in Balgo the other day and there is absolutely no chance that Prime Minister Rudd’s computers in schools program is even going to get there, because they do not have the infrastructure for a whole lot of computers such as the plan sets out.

The other thing was the restructuring of the car industry. That is being measured daily by the number of jobs that Senator Carr has destroyed. That is the benchmark, the litmus test, of how well that minister is achieving his portfolio plans. We see the fiasco of truancy, the vacillation, the recycling of a Howard government policy—but, again, no real action. We all know that in education the Commonwealth has no constitutional jurisdiction. So this is window-dressing of little or no meaning, unless of course the Prime Minister is going to bludgeon the states with a significant reduction in education funding. That is the point: the states will not do anything unless they are threatened. We want to hear what the threats are all about. Then we have the fiasco of uranium mining. Three or four states and one territory are in complete opposition to a proper, professional, internationally respected policy. Lastly, we have—just off the top of my head—the fiasco in broadband. The minister promised that he would have broadband up and running within a matter of months. The whole thing is just in a black hole of fog through inability to come to terms with what is required.

No greater damage can be done through the incompetent, vacillating style of government these ministers and this Prime Minister bring to the table than in my state of Western Australia. Western Australia is virtually the only state, save Queensland, that is making any realistic and positive contribution to our national economy as I stand here now. The problem there is that, whilst Mr Rudd and his ministers sit back and allow the incompetence of Premier Alan Carpenter and his group of ministers to run rampant through Western Australia, the national interest is at risk. This is a very important state economy, but Labor ending the blame game has meant that we have a whole lot of fiascos.

I want to point to one particular fiasco that really distresses me. The policy potential index in the Fraser Institute’s survey of mining companies for 2007-08 sets out rankings for jurisdictions around the world that have high-potential mining regions. The latest rankings revealed that, although Western Australia is in the top 10 in terms of resource potential, we are slipping down the league ladder very dramatically when it comes to being a desirable place for companies to carry out exploration. In the international rankings of conduciveness for doing mining business, Western Australia has slipped from number 18 to number 25 in 2007-08, out of 68 destinations. Western Australia should in fact be first on that list—but, no.

The problem here is that we take Queensland’s and Western Australia’s resource- and revenue-generating capacity utterly for granted. There is no better example of the frivolously irresponsible state of mind of this Prime Minister and these ministers than this tax slug of $2.5 billion over four years from the Woodside joint venture. There are very, very few organisations and projects—not just in Australia but around the world—that could survive the commercial whack of $2.5 billion coming off the bottom line of their balance sheet. Canberra has simply reached into this organisation and said, ‘Thank you very much,’ without any consultation or formal engagement. I would describe it as a mugging from behind. The fact is that Woodside, to continue to be solvent and deal with this on behalf of its shareholders and partners, is obviously going to have to pass these costs on, both to its customers in South-East and East Asia and, more alarmingly, to the domestic consumers of Perth and throughout the south-west of Western Australia. That is the legacy we already have from Canberra after nine months—a delightful little gift from Mr Rudd to Western Australia—’We’re going to jack your gas prices up because we want the money to spend in the eastern states.’ That is the sort of contribution that this government is making to regional Australia.

We have seen an almost comical situation arise with respect to the mining of uranium in Australia. We are an international laughing-stock now in terms of IPOs, finance and mining investment. The diversity of governance policy on this subject means we are little more than a joke. At their last national conference the ALP voted to allow uranium mining in Australia so long as the premiers agreed. No more stupid is that proviso than the Premier of Western Australia this week actually disclosing that he voted in favour of that uranium mining motion. He votes in favour of the motion and yet he does not allow his own state to engage in a reputable, safe and very profitable industry—not just profitable for the shareholders of the companies but very profitable for the state.

More importantly, in Western Australia most of the deposits are located near or adjacent to several Aboriginal communities. The Martu Aboriginal traditional owners of land covering the Kintyre deposit in the East Pilbara were not consulted on Mr Carpenter’s sudden reversal with respect to the banning of uranium mining, which he proposes to do were he to win Saturday’s election. The Western Desert Land Corporation holds land including that covering the Kintyre deposit. The chief executive of that corporation, Clinton Wolf, said Carpenter’s announcement was disappointing. He said:

We strongly believe that uranium mining could be an opportunity for our people to generate equity and commercial benefit and importantly play an important part in the development of significant resources projects for this state.

When was the last time we heard the chief executive of an Aboriginal community out in the desert saying something like that? Clinton Wolf, you are a national champion, because Aboriginal people are crying out for something decent to do—crying out to be trained in an industry that is sustainable into the long term such that they can give their children some hope.

What have we got from the Premier of Western Australia and, indeed, from the Prime Minister of Australia? ‘We’ve ended the blame game’, and silence, as this incompetent state government simply rips the rug out from the potential that those Martu Aboriginal people had. Clinton Wolf went on to say:

This is an important intergenerational issue for our people, and it’s an issue that Martu should be able to consider and make decisions about in an informed manner, especially as a means of achieving economic and social outcomes for a group of people who continue to be underserviced by state government ...

Wolf added that the Martu wanted to generate their own income. Again, I say: congratulations and kudos to him. He went on to say:

By proposing to ban uranium mining, the premier and state ALP government are effectively robbing one of the most poor and disenfranchised people in this country of the right to earn a living and potentially achieve an equity stake in a major mining project.

There we have it: both a federal government which talks the talk about Aboriginals self-determination and a state government which is big on land rights and all that sort of stuff, just ripping the potential living possibilities out from underneath a group of people who are very interested in self-determination.

The other point I should make—not as important as the Martu people’s future—is that about $3.2 billion will be lost to Western Australia’s gross state product between now and 2030. We would have also avoided, through the export of uranium from Western Australia, 1.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. There is the hypocrisy and stupidity of a Premier and a Prime Minister who simply cannot get themselves organised. The exporting of uranium is probably the single biggest contribution Western Australia could make to the global fight against climate change. There is a significant, great and consistent demand for Western Australian uranium from world markets and from our traditional trading partners, who are all reliable and trusted people—China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. They are all hungry for uranium from Australia to help reduce their reliance upon high-carbon electricity from black coal and gas.

The Premier in his desperation in this campaign has sought to say that if we export uranium from Western Australia we will have to take the waste back. This is the most ridiculous, ludicrous and intelligence-insulting argument I think I have ever heard. He has been in full panic mode, making this ridiculous assertion that we would have to take back the waste. It is simply a gross misrepresentation—a representation he knows full well to be untrue. There is no precedent worldwide that supports this contention.

Can I quote Mr John Ritch, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association and former US ambassador to United Nations organisations in Vienna. He said:

Nations representing two-thirds of humanity are now using uranium to generate clean electricity, and each one is storing its small residual of waste in compliance with world standards.

He went on to say:

Nowhere has there been a proposal to ship wastes to countries fortunate enough to be uranium exporters, which obviously have sovereign control over their own imports.

Ritch added before concluding:

Any such fantasy is a scare-tactic by a politician looking for an issue.

Oh dear!

In the last few minutes I have, I want to briefly move away from that very embarrassing and disgraceful conduct by the Western Australian Premier—and, indeed, aided and abetted by the Prime Minister of this country—to what has happened to the people of Esperance. A particular mining company from the north-east Goldfields has been exporting lead through the port of Esperance. Western Australia has one of the largest, most skilled and most highly funded environmental protection agencies. It also has a very, very sophisticated mines department. It turns out that the lead was being packaged in a way that allowed the carbonate—and if people do not know what carbonate is, it is a flour-like substance that very easily disperses into the atmosphere—to contaminate the countryside. It was being transported through Kalgoorlie down to Esperance in such a way that the lead was actually streaming out of the rail wagons—in very, very minute particles, but nevertheless was being a contaminant to the surrounding countryside.

It so happens that Esperance has an absolute lead disaster. We all know that lead is principally very toxic and damaging to growing children. It gets into the system, affects the bones as they grow and causes severe damage—particularly, as I say, to children. There has been a report prepared on this industrial fiasco. So not only do we have a state government that is incompetent in administering carbonate, which is a known commodity that they should know better about—it has to be airtight, everybody knows that except the government and the EPA—but they have also done a very big report. They have commissioned a very large report and they are not going to release that report on the causes and the damage flowing from the event of that lead contamination, which is very, very severe, until after the election. This is the sort of contempt, this is the sort of subterfuge, this is the sort of arrogance that this state government in Western Australia has. And they make no bones about it. They have said that they have to put the price of electricity up because it has not been up for 15 years—the tariff has stayed the same in Western Australia—but they are not going to do it until after the election. This is the level of contempt that the state government has for the people of Western Australia.

My state colleague and good friend Dr Graham Jacobs—he is a medical doctor and the member for Roe—has been down there in his home town of Esperance with his family and all of his community, fighting a lone battle to have some justice distributed to the community after this fiasco. Do you think he is getting any assistance from an embarrassed and incompetent state government? This is the sort of thing the federal government should intervene in. The state government is incapable of properly caring for its people. Residents’ spokesman Pam Norris said that locals felt they had taken on much of the task of cleaning contaminated houses and were frustrated by constant delays in the release of the Golder report. That is the report I was talking about. She says:

It’s like pulling teeth to get any results ... They are sitting on this data while we are living in this dirty town.

This is as low as it gets. And what do we get from the senators from Western Australia on the other side of this chamber? We get silence. We get embarrassed fidgeting. This is a state government that is riddled with scandal. It is rotten to the core. They have put children’s lives at risk in this town and will not release the report because it is damning—it has to be damning. This is the length and breadth of the subterfuge, the dishonesty and the contempt that the government in Western Australia and, by association, the Labor Party in Canberra has for regional people. I thank the Senate.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the debate on rural and regional Australia. To start with, I would like to look at some of the issues raised by Senator Stephens, particularly in her capacity as the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector. Senator Stephens spent a deal of her presentation talking about things like the Regional Partnerships program and the fact that the government were moving towards a new program.

While that may be the case, my understanding is that those programs are not going to be ready until 2009, and there is significant need for access to these funding programs in regional communities right now. While I understand it takes a government a little time to get its new priorities and its programs up and running, they have been in government for nine months now and it is still going to be 2009 when the programs are available for regional communities. Effectively, we have a 12-month hiatus or more in the availability of funding.

I think we all agree, and Senator Stephens commented, that members of the coalition will be advocating for projects through the process. I do not have a problem with that. That is what a member of parliament is elected for. They are elected to do that. I was disappointed to note during the previous government that I very rarely saw advocacy for projects from members of the then opposition, so coalition members can be congratulated for the fact that they are being quite proactive. They understand their local communities and their electorates and they are out there advocating even though they are not members of the government. They are out there, working for their local communities. That is what they are elected to do, and for Senator Stephens to criticise a member of a local community for doing that does make you wonder.

Senator Stephens made quite a deal of what was in the budget for regional communities. I would like to put on the record some of the things that were in the budget for regional communities—and they do not necessarily make pleasant reading. There is $12 million of Medicare savings over four years taken from a pathology project for remote areas. Particularly given that Senator Stephens is the parliamentary secretary for social inclusion, it is not surprising that she did not mention it. There is also a $6 million reduction over four years in the budget for the National Mental Health Strategy. Having spoken to a lot of people in my state of Tasmania, particularly in rural and regional Tasmania, I can tell you that there is enormous stress, and this kind and caring government has taken $6 million out of the National Mental Health Strategy. It is another thing that this government has done for rural and regional Australia that reinforces the point of the motion that we are debating here this afternoon.

Half a million dollars has been taken from the Support for Day to Day Living in the Community program, so the numbers are starting to get up there. We have $12 million, $6 million, so we are up to $18.5 million—and this is just what has been taken out of the health portfolio in funding for rural and regional Australia. Funding for the Mental Health Services in Rural and Remote Areas program, which is specifically related to this particular motion, has been reduced by $15.5 million over four years. So we are now getting up there in excess of $30 million in funds that have been taken out of rural and regional Australia by this so-called caring and kind government. We go on to reduced funding for the Training for Rural and Remote Procedural GPs program: $30.5 million.

Senator Stephens, who is the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector, is saying what a wonderful job the government is doing for rural and regional Australia, but over $60 million over four years has been taken out of health programs for rural and regional Australia. Another $2 million has been taken from a COAG program for psychiatry training outside hospitals. Another $3 million has been taken from the Registrars Rural Incentives Payments Scheme. This government has taken an amount approaching $70 million out of health funding for rural and regional programs.

I am not surprised that Senator Stephens concentrated on the Regional Partnerships program. The Regional Partnerships program did, and the government’s replacement program will, when it comes online in 2009, provide very important funding for infrastructure in rural and regional Australia—in excess of $60 million. Particularly cruel is the funding that has been taken out of mental health programs in regional Australia. I am not surprised that Senator Stephens did not give any consideration to those particular programs that I mentioned previously. It really is a crying shame that the government has seen fit to take funding out of those critical programs at a time when we know that it is so tough in the bush.

Look at what is happening in my home state of Tasmania. It is interesting that the shadow minister for health in Tasmania, Brett Whiteley, and his colleague Rene Hidding did a tour of regional hospitals recently. They went to all of the regional hospitals, most of which are in the electorate of Lyons, which is the seat that Mr Hidding represents and the same seat that is represented in the Australian parliament by Mr Dick Adams. Mr Whiteley and Mr Hidding toured the hospitals at Rosebery, Beaconsfield, St Helens, St Marys, Campbell Town and Queenstown and those down the Tasman, and all of those hospitals are really quite concerned about the future of their facilities. We know that Beaconsfield is in a very precarious situation, and we have heard of the unfortunate circumstances that occurred there. But the particular events that have occurred over the last couple of years at Ouse and at Rosebery really have created a significant level of concern amongst those regional communities about the provision of health services in their local communities.

At Ouse District Hospital we had the spectre of an elderly couple who had lived in that community all of their lives moved forcibly by the Tasmanian government to Hobart. They did not want to go and there was not necessarily a reason for them to go—except that the Tasmanian government had decided that it was time to close the facility, against the wishes of that community. The Tasmanian government moved this couple, who had lived in that community their entire lives and who were living in Commonwealth funded nursing places at the Ouse District Hospital, to Hobart. It was one of the saddest things I think I have seen for a long time, because it absolutely devastated these poor people. It was an absolute tragedy that the Tasmanian government did not have the compassion to look after this elderly couple who had lived in that community their entire lives. Now that the couple have passed on, their family are justifiably quite shattered by the approach taken by the Tasmanian government.

But what was Minister Giddings’s response to the tour by Mr Whiteley and Mr Hidding? As I said, Mr Whiteley is the shadow minister for health and so he would obviously have an interest in these regional hospitals. All of the facilities that I mentioned are in the electorate of Lyons and so, as the local member, Mr Hidding would have a legitimate interest in those facilities. In her response on the radio, Minister Giddings was quite indignant that this tour was being undertaken by Mr Hidding and Mr Whiteley and said, ‘Now I am going to have to go and visit those hospitals myself.’ What an inconvenience! Because the local member and the shadow minister for health had been out and consulted directly with hospitals and communities in regional Tasmania, the minister was going to be inconvenienced by having to go and talk to those communities herself. What an absolute disgrace that something like that might be said by a minister of the Tasmanian parliament.

The Tasmanian parliament has a bit of form, I have to say. Many people would not necessarily recognise it, but there are areas in my home state of Tasmania that are in really deep drought at the moment. They are hurting so badly that what is occurring is really quite terrible. We had the spectre of farmers from the Clyde irrigation area here in Canberra over the last couple of days effectively begging the Australian government, particularly Minister Garrett, to give them some water. They know where there is some water. The Tasmanian government supports them having water. They actually thought they had a meeting with Minister Garrett. They had made their forward plans. They had come to Canberra thinking, ‘Here’s our opportunity to put our case directly to Minister Garrett,’ only to be disappointed by a meeting with an adviser.

These farmers, who have made huge investments in the infrastructure in their region, are getting a pretty raw deal. They are being pushed around a bit by Hydro Tasmania. A proposal has been put together by Hydro Tasmania to be submitted to the Australian government. The money is available after a commitment by the government at the time of the election. I congratulate them on that. That is a very positive move, and I will talk more about that later and about what is occurring with some of the water developments in Tasmania.

The proposal that has been put up by Hydro Tasmania provides them with really a pittance in respect of water supply. It is really disappointing. These farmers have been farming in that area for many years. My understanding is that the Clyde system is the oldest irrigation system in the country. It was the very first one built. These guys are effectively out of water and they are a few weeks away from having the Clyde River run dry. I know people on mainland Australia do not necessarily associate Tasmania with those sorts of conditions, but things are pretty tough down there at the moment.

I appeal to Minister Garrett through this process to consider making that allocation of water to these farmers so that they might sustain their businesses. We know there are issues associated with the release of that water but, as I have said, the Tasmanian government is on the record as supporting the release of that water. In fact, it criticised the previous government for not releasing the water when we were in government. There has been no word from the Tasmanian government now that we have the cooperative federalism and they have agreed not to criticise each other for everything.

You, Mr Acting Deputy President Barnett, will understand this, as someone who has travelled extensively around the electorate of Lyons. In the southern Midlands of Tasmania things are particularly dire at the moment. EC has been declared in that region until 31 March. We know the farming community are seeking an extension of that for at least another 12 months. It is going to take them a considerable period of time to come out of drought. There is no question about that. Things are really crook down there at the moment. I will give you an example of what it is like.

My office received a phone call two weeks ago seeking agistment for 45 breeding ewes. These 45 ewes were the last of this farmer’s breeding stock. The farmer had no money to pay for agistment or for transport. He was desperate to save these last 45 sheep. This situation exists in the southern Midlands of Tasmania. Fortunately, I was able to make a few phone calls to people I knew in the region and the next day we had found a place for those 45 sheep. That is the sort of thing that is going on in the Tasmanian community at the moment. The Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association has an agistment program, which is slowly starting to wind up, and the Lions Club of Westbury is seeking hay and feed to send to farmers in this region. Just this week I had a phone call from the north-west coast of Tasmania offering 45 large bales of hay to send to that region. So there is a general feeling of support through the farming community, and that message is starting to get out.

About four weeks ago, at about the same time we received the call for assistance for those 45 sheep, we had snowfall through the central highlands of the southern Midlands of Tasmania. The temperature dropped to the extent that one farmer found 60 of his breeding merinos dead when he went out the next morning. It was not because they had been shorn but because their condition was so low because of a lack of feed. They just could not handle the conditions. That demonstrates the situation in southern Tasmania at the moment.

The Tasmanian Premier took his community cabinet to Oatlands, which is in this region. He made a big deal of the event. He rolled into town with all the big, shiny cars, took over the council chambers and assembled his cabinet. At the end of the occasion he announced $145,000 to fund the Rural Alive and Well program. This program, which I understand is operating in Western Australia, has been picked up by a fantastic chap in the southern Midlands to prevent suicide in what is really a tough area. It is so tough that not only are the farmers struggling but the leaders in the community are struggling. Those who would normally support the community when times are hard are doing it tough.

One community leader who has worked to get the Rural Alive and Well program up and running heard this announcement on Sunday, 10 August—and it was supported by a press release by the Premier that came out on Monday, 11 August, which announced a $145,000 grant for the Rural Alive and Well program. This gentleman raced down to the council chambers and said, ‘Isn’t it fantastic that we have another $145,000 for our Rural Alive and Well program?’ The general manager had to tell him, ‘Sorry, it is the same $145,000 that was announced back in April and that we have already started spending.’ I cannot think of a more callous thing for a Premier of a state to do to a community that is doing it so hard than to reannounce funding.

Last week, in conjunction with the CWA, we called for some additional funding to assist rural families in those communities. I give the Tasmanian government credit for the fact that they came up with an extra $40,000, but that will last one month. Through that process and through that time I have not seen or heard one sound from a federal Labor member from Tasmania. The local member, Dick Adams, has not been seen or heard and none of the other Tasmanian senators has been seen or heard. It is an absolute disgrace that they are not actively out there working to support the farmers who, quite clearly from the words I have put on the record today, are doing it so tough. In conclusion, I urge farmers to contact Centrelink and not to self-assess. I think that is a very important part of this process. (Time expired)

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

It is a good opportunity this afternoon for me to speak against this motion, the debate on which was resumed in the Senate this afternoon. Labor absolutely understands the challenges facing Australia’s rural and regional communities. Whilst I am not an expert on the Tasmanian drought, I know that Mr Adams particularly is very aware of the issues facing Tasmanian farmers, particularly in his electorate. I am quite sure that he would happily receive representations on behalf of his constituents when it comes to dealing with the drought that we are very well aware areas of Tasmania are suffering from. But I do speak against the other elements of the motion.

In November last year the Rudd government made a commitment to govern for all Australians, and that is what we will do—all Australians, whether they live in regional areas, rural areas, remote areas or the cities. At the last election we went to the people arguing that there was much to be done in order to secure a prosperous future for Australian rural communities. After 11 years of Howard government inaction—and, can I say, rorting—Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Labor recognised that there was a need for new leadership and a new direction in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry areas, and also in terms of regional development. I will deal with the latter shortly.

The Rudd government’s commitment to regional Australia is about building a strong economy through responsible economic management. We hear the bleating on the other side on the question of economic management—and it can only be regarded as bleating. In the Senate this week we saw the raid on the surplus by the other side. It absolutely underlines that the other side of the chamber are continuing what they did when they sat on this side. History will show that what has happened in the parliament this week absolutely underlines the fact that the Liberal and National coalition members can never describe themselves as responsible economic managers. Only those who sit on this side can carry that tag.

The Rudd government’s commitment to regional Australia is about building a strong economy through responsible economic management. On 24 November 2007, the Australian public said ‘no’ to a government that was willing to spend taxpayers’ money on anything that would buy a vote. The previous government’s spending had been growing at an unsustainable rate and Australian taxpayers have paid for it with no fewer than 10 consecutive interest rate rises.

Due to this government’s good economic management, interest rates have now fallen for the first time since December 2001. If passed on in full, this will put an average of more than $146 per month back into farming families’ budgets, or around $1,755 per year. That is real money that farmers on average will receive if the interest rate cuts are passed on in full.

Unlike the previous government, the Rudd government has a strong commitment to ensuring high standards of public administration, accountability and transparency. The Rudd Labor government is committed to investing in regional Australia so that it can meet the challenges of the 21st century. This government’s new vision for regional Australia is based on building partnerships to ensure the government is responsive to local priorities and needs, but it is underpinned by major new investments in the areas of infrastructure, broadband, housing, health care, education, skills development, innovation and, most importantly, water. Our government is working with rural communities. We are bringing fresh ideas and a new approach that will harness the potential of our regions and develop them for a better future.

As part of our long-term plan, the Australian government will deliver the new Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program from next year to encourage economic development by investing in local infrastructure. In line with the Rudd Labor government’s national approach to infrastructure investment, our new program will be accountable, it will be transparent and it will be based on community needs. To ensure that the program is developed properly and reflects the needs or regional communities we will be consulting widely with the community.

The new Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program and our Better Regions election commitments will replace the Sustainable Regions and Regional Partnerships programs, which the Australian National Audit Office discredited last year as having fallen short of an acceptable standard of public administration. I have only been in this place for nine years but in that time I have read many ANAO reports and none of them have been as big as that report or as critical of any government department or program as that particular report. In that report, the Auditor-General found that the grants were approved by ministers before full applications had been submitted. Ministers overruled departmental advice and gave grants for no more apparent reason other than the fact that the money would be spent on marginal coalition seats. They were buying votes. More than one-third of the programs’ money was pumped into 10 rural coalition seats, including the seat of Mr John Anderson, a former minister responsible for the Regional Partnerships program. An amount of $4.6 million was earmarked for 22 projects in the electorate of Lyne.

The government, though, will honour all existing contracts under the Regional Partnerships and Sustainable Regions programs. But unlike the National Party, in particular, the Rudd government will deliver properly for regional communities. The fact is, the Nationals in particular said and did anything in a desperate bid to get elected. They made promises they were never going to keep.

There are a number of other investments that the Rudd Labor government is making in regional communities. We have $176 million to honour our election commitments through the Better Regions program to invest in the revitalisation of towns, major sporting venues, community centres and facilities; $1.9 billion in financial assistance grants for local government; and we will fund critical rural medical projects under the Rural Medical Infrastructure Fund.

In the other place the government has established an inquiry into the Audit Office report and on future directions for regional programs. We have to use the report to ensure that mistakes that happened, particularly under the watch of Parliamentary Secretary De-Anne Kelly, and other ministers of the previous government, never happen again. The Rudd Labor government will deliver up to $74 million for a new Regional Development Australia network to provide genuine engagement with regional communities. It has been a pleasure working with the organisations in Townsville and Cairns in order to ensure that their concerns and their issues about how it will be established are promoted. AusLink 2 commitments will deliver more than $10 billion for rural and regional roads.

We take rural and regional infrastructure extremely seriously, and there is no clearer indication of that fact than our first budget. In our first budget we put aside $20 billion for the Building Australia Fund—$20 billion to undo 11½ years of neglect of infrastructure in this country. Worse than all of the past neglect of those opposite is their current attempt to raid the Building Australia Fund. Every cent they knock off the surplus comes out of the Building Australia Fund. That is what is going to happen. Every time they block a budget bill they block further funding for national highways and rail networks that service rural and regional Australia. Whenever money is going to be taken out of the budget, those opposite need to understand it has to be found somewhere. We are a responsible economic management team and we intend to make sure that the budget is balanced. So every time you take some money out it has to be found from somewhere else.

There is a lot of work happening in primary industries. I advise the Senate that Labor is committed to securing a prosperous and sustainable future for Australia’s $38 billion primary industry sector. We heard from Senator Colbeck before about the drought in Tasmania. We know that the continent we live on is the driest continent in the world. One of the biggest challenges that this country has ever faced is in dealing with the reality that climate change is upon us and with the immediacy of the fact that the Murray-Darling has been in drought for such a long time. But the reality is that we have to deal with climate change not only in the immediate future but also for the medium and long term.

This is a challenge that, I am afraid, those opposite for the last 10 years simply avoided. It was really only in the last eight to 10 months of the previous government’s life that the former Prime Minister even acknowledged that climate change was in fact an issue. If you leave your head in the sand that long, of course you are going to be behind the eight ball. But can I say how proud I have been of our government and the way that we have seriously engaged with rural communities, trying honestly and openly to address the fact that the water in the Murray-Darling is not enough to do what all of us would like to do with it.

I commend Senator Wong on the work that she has done to face the hard questions and make sure that we are making the right decisions. She is going through the process methodically but, most importantly, honestly with rural communities. This is not about putting $50 million together, as the opposition leader is suggesting, to fix the problem. A long-term solution has to be found.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We didn’t say it’d fix the problem; we just want to relieve the hardship.

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

We want to relieve the hardship too.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s why they need the $50 million.

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

Senator Ferguson, the Murray-Darling is not like a pipe from a tank to a tap. If you put water in there it will not necessarily come out somewhere else. That is the simple fact. I commend Senator Wong for the work that she has been doing in order to deal with the very difficult circumstances faced in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Let us go to the question now of the Regional Partnerships and the Sustainable Regions programs. According to the ANAO report, seven days before the 2007 election caretaker period began, the previous government approved 32 projects and 28 of those were in coalition electorates. Before the 2004 election, in 51 minutes Parliamentary Secretary De-Anne Kelly spent $3.3 million approving 16 projects. I quote from the ANAO report that was released in November 2007:

... the manner in which the Programme had been administered over the three year period to 30 June 2006 examined by ANAO has fallen short of an acceptable standard of public administration ...

That is a damning comment from the ANAO, and those opposite know it.

In my area of North Queensland we had a particularly difficult program. It was a Sustainable Regions Program which was a commitment from John Anderson, when he was the minister, in recognition of the difficulties in structural adjustment that were occurring, particularly in the tobacco industry but also in other industries on the tablelands. Seventeen and a half million dollars was allocated to the Atherton Tablelands west of Cairns in order to invest in diversification, building the economy and getting the tablelands back on track.

I have never seen such a debacle. It was the work that the people on the tablelands did in bringing to our attention the appalling lack of accountability that was occurring up there that allowed some scrutiny to be placed on this particular program. Nearly $18 million was allocated. It was really only in the last two rounds of allocations that I think there was good investment in job creation, in true economic development.

Early in the piece, half a million dollars was allocated to the Mareeba wildlife park. You have to ask what sort of due diligence was done in order to allocate half a million dollars. It was six weeks after that money was allocated that the park went into receivership. We had African animals not being able to be fed. It was support by people from Kuranda, Mareeba and other Atherton Tableland communities and even from Cairns that kept those animals alive. What sort of due diligence gives half a million dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money to a company that goes into receivership six weeks later? I am pleased to report to the Senate that the park has now reopened, and I commend those who did that work. But, to be frank, it put the whole operation under a very big cloud for a very long period of time.

Funding of $1.2 million was allocated to a company called A2 Milk. This is a company that had as one of its advisers a gentleman who subsequently went to work for the parliamentary secretary. You have to wonder where the conflicts of interest occurred in such an incredibly bizarre relationship between the company and the parliamentary secretary’s office. It was in fact a ghost project. It had no basis in fact. There was no project to give the money to, but money was in fact allocated. The government’s own local advisory committee advised against the allocation of funds. They warned about the state of the project’s finances but they were ignored.

I could go through a range of inappropriate funding that was given to the Atherton Tablelands. I have to remind the Senate that quite a substantial amount of money was given to a hotel on the main street of Atherton, a hotel that had dubious events, in my view, occurring on Friday nights, with people serving alcohol in various states of undress. But quite an amount of money was given to this particular hotel in order to build a convention centre when we and the other hoteliers knew that there was simply not the room on that site to build a convention centre of any reasonable sort. That money was given and the owner of that hotel has built an extension. If you would like to call it a convention centre you can, but I wonder if the ACCC would look at you for false and misleading advertising.

But let us finish on a positive note. Can I commend the work that has happened in the nine short months that this government has been on the benches. The Prime Minister announced today that the Australian government will provide $95 million towards the construction of the Townsville port access road. The Townsville port access road is real infrastructure that will truly help the mining community but particularly the beef industry by filling in the missing link between the main highway and the Townsville port. It is something that we have been calling for for many years. I have to say, it was on the urging of the then shadow minister for roads in the 2004 election campaign that we actually got it onto the agenda, and now we are going to do it. (Time expired)

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary contribution by Senator McLucas. I listened carefully from the start of her speech, and what a wonderful start: ‘The ALP absolutely understands the problems facing rural Australia.’ What a statement, when you see the effect of the Rudd government and the cuts it has made since it came into office. We hear Senator McLucas putting all of her faith in new leadership, new direction, a strong economy and economic conservatism, and then we hear Senator McLucas talking about the fact that, because of the Rudd government, interest rates dropped yesterday, the day before or whenever it was. Because of that interest rate cut, farming families and others will have $246 a year more to contribute to their household budgets. If those farmers who are in dire need in the parts of South Australia that I represent go along to their bank manager confronted with a $100,000 fertiliser bill because of the cost of fertiliser these days and they say to their bank manager, ‘But I’ve got this extra $246 that I can contribute,’ I am quite sure the bank manager will say to them: ‘Yes, $246 will do. I’ll lend you another $100,000.’ That is the sort of understanding that is required in rural Australia, not a bland statement that the government absolutely understands the problems facing rural Australia.

I have lived in rural South Australia all of my life. As a matter of fact, I am proud of the fact that for most of the 16 years or more that I have been in this place I was the only senator from South Australia that lived outside of the metropolitan area. When it comes to rural communities, particularly throughout South Australia—

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Remember Geoff Buckland?

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remember Geoff Buckland, Senator Farrell. He did live outside for some time, but I said ‘for most of the time’.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Farrell interjecting—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did, but, for most of the 16 years I have been here, I have been the only one. I do not want to stretch the point too far because I remember former Senator Geoff Buckland.

Rural communities are amongst the most resilient people I have ever come across in my life. People ask: ‘Why is it so much different living in the country?’ Most people who live in the country, except for those who happen to have a job in the public service or who are schoolteachers or people like that, face a lifetime of uncertain income. This has been highlighted in the last four or five years with the ongoing drought that has affected many parts of Australia and many parts of my home state of South Australia.

I am very pleased to be able to report that there are some parts of South Australia this year that are enjoying a good season. I happen to live in one of them, and you do not know how grateful the people of that community are that for the first time in 10 years they look like having an excellent season—although the season has not finished yet. But there are still large areas of the Eyre Peninsula and other parts of South Australia that are hanging by a thread. And those rural communities are the ones that are not understood by the Labor Party.

We heard Senator McLucas complain about grants that were mostly given to marginal coalition seats. There was a good reason for that—the Labor Party did not hold any of them. If the Labor Party had held a few of those marginal seats, they would have found that they were getting the same grants. In the last parliament and the parliament before, it was impossible not to give most of the grants to coalition seats, because most rural seats were held by the coalition.

The drought, the poor seasons and the downturn in the rural economy have an ongoing effect that is very difficult to stop. One of the things that the ALP does not understand is that, when you have a downturn in the economy, you have a drop in population in all of the smaller rural and regional areas and it has a cascading effect. Once you get a drop in population you have a drop in the number of people who are around to have children who attend the schools, so the number of schoolteachers drops. The local chemist no longer finds their shop viable. You are lucky if you keep your hospital and you are lucky if you keep your doctor.

So you have this enormous ongoing effect on rural communities who over the past five or six years in particular have suffered from this downturn. Yet Senator McLucas says that the ALP absolutely understands the problems facing rural Australia. The ALP understands the problems so well that we had a state Labor government in South Australia that wanted to close more than half of our country hospitals! That was an unbelievable decision but, thankfully, because of public concern, mass rallies and the strength of rural communities standing together it looks as if that decision, I hope, will be reversed in the future. I do not blame governments for trying to do some rationalisation or to improve the health service, but at least it could be done in consultation with the local medical services and the hospitals concerned.

In her comments Senator McLucas one minute accused us as a government of neglect over 12 years and, in the next breath, accused us of spending too much on rural grants. There are a number of things that I would like to mention today, particularly in relation to the comments made about new leadership and new direction for Australia’s rural communities. Let me highlight a couple of the very successful programs that were put in place by the previous government that this government has treated with disdain.

Let us talk first about FarmBis. It provided assistance for primary producers and rural land managers to undertake training activities in how to build businesses and in natural resource management skills. Why wouldn’t you want rural people to learn more, to receive training, so that they can help themselves and then not require government assistance to do all of those things that they need to do? The former government used this program to assist over 165,000 farmers, fishermen and land managers. So what did this federal Labor government do? It cut it by $24 million. The ALP says it will save $97.4 million over five years, but I ask: at what cost will it be to the primary producers who will no longer receive this important training and education?

Then there was the Advancing Agricultural Industries program. This was a program that was aimed at helping primary industries develop their self-reliance, their resilience—which I have already talked about—and their ability to efficiently manage change. Through this program industries could identify challenges and opportunities and address them by developing and implementing industry led strategies. The coalition government assisted over 35 industries and 700 people. The program only commenced on 1 July 2007, but it helped that many people. What did this ALP government do? It cut $26.3 million out of that program which had proved so successful over a 12-month period.

We heard Senator McLucas talk at length about Regional Partnerships and the Growing Regions programs, which have been replaced, of course. The ALP abolished the Regional Partnerships program of $236 million and the Growing Regions program of $200 million, thereby saving $436 million in the budget. These partnerships were designed to assist communities in access to services from community planning to structural adjustment and strengthen communities to increase the opportunities for these people. I ask Senator McLucas to go to any of those areas which received grants that helped them to train to improve their future and see whether or not they appreciated those grants and put them to good use.

The government has replaced those programs with its Better Regions program. How much money was allocated? There was $176 million allocated, which is already committed to funding Labor’s election programs. So no new money will be available for regional projects until late 2009. There has been a cut of $260 million from the Regional Partnerships program and the Growing Regions program and yet Senator McLucas would have us believe that this is going to help rural communities. I do not know any community that can be helped by cutting $260 million out of programs that are designed to help people to train themselves and better educate themselves for the future.

Then we come to the CSIRO and other agricultural research. We heard Senator Carr waffle on today about the CSIRO and what a wonderful job he has done in appointing a new director, and I do congratulate the new chief. But at such a crucial time when rural communities need help in adjusting and adapting to drought and the so-called climate change that these people are saying is affecting these communities so much, the closure of two regional CSIRO centres conveniently placed to investigate and develop trials in those environments is absolutely absurd. We have Mildura and Rockhampton, which are two rural CSIROs—

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

Tell the truth: you were going to shut them yourselves.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McLucas, I am telling you nothing but the facts: your government decided to close these facilities at Mildura and Rockhampton. Research is needed to tackle rising agricultural input costs. Look at what has happened with diesel, fertiliser, herbicide and pesticide costs, which my colleague Senator Heffernan knows about all too well because of the inquiry that is going on. His work is to be appreciated in this area.

How are farmers going to produce cheap, quality, environmentally productive food in a changing climate without the research that is required to make sure that this is possible? The potential inclusion of agriculture in the government’s emissions trading scheme reinforces the need for stronger resources in science and research to enable rural and regional communities to best cope with such a situation. A hundred scientist positions and $63 million have been cut from the CSIRO research budget. That is this federal government’s response to the problems that face rural primary producers and others today. The coalition had a $54 million National Food Innovation Strategy. What did Labor do? They cut $20 million off it. We have a most irrational reduction in the spending on rural and regional communities.

There are a couple of other areas that I want to mention in the time available. How on earth could a federal government that pretends to be doing all it can for climate change axe a volunteer youth development and environmental training program which 18,000 young Australians have participated in and which has planted 14 million trees. I am talking about the Green Corps. How could a government axe that in all conscience? It was one of the most successful programs that the previous government put in place—planting trees, training young people, developing youth and the environment. The majority of the Green Corps projects in South Australia have been located in our rural and regional communities. What has this government done? They have axed it with no prospect of it being replaced.

The other area that I want to talk about briefly is the Investing in Our Schools Program leading to a smarter Australia—the education revolution. The Investing in Our Schools Program was one of the most successful programs that the previous government put in place and a third of the $1.2 billion invested in that program went to regional Australia. It has been replaced with a one-size-fits-all computer pledge. Communities in the previous program were able to identify their own priority area of need at their schools and apply for funding for it. Now, they can only get computers. As well as that, they are asked to cover the extra costs associated with the computers. These communities that are doing it so tough are being asked to fund the extra costs. I ask you, what is the use of computers and internet broadband access to many rural and regional communities when the proper infrastructure is not even in place? What is the point?

If you had left the money in the Investing in Our Schools Program, you might have supplied what the communities required instead of what this Prime Minister said they needed. Probably, he has hardly visited any of the rural and regional schools in Australia and yet he tells them they all need a computer for each child—which I think is now one computer between two children. So we have this enormous cut in the spending on regional and rural schools. None of these policies are going to help any of our rural and regional children and their communities to do all of the things that they hope they will be able to do to be a part of regional development and a sustainable future.

I support totally the motion moved by Senator Fiona Nash that has been put to the parliament today. There have been a lot of contributions but I go back to the first comment that Senator McLucas made, which was that the ALP absolutely understand the problems facing rural Australia. They have no idea. Perhaps if they spoke to people who live in rural and regional Australia, we might get a better outcome.

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

Like me.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like me, thank you, Senator McLucas. There is not actually anyone from the government who lives in and/or makes a living from the bush, with great respect, but that does not mean to say that some people that represent in a ministerial sense are not having a go. It is a great pleasure for me to talk about the challenges for rural Australia and I intend to define some of the issues that need to be fixed. The greatest challenge facing rural and regional Australia without a doubt is the changes to the planet and the way they are going to affect rural and regional Australia.

Even if you believe a quarter, a fifth or 10 per cent of what the scientists are telling us—all science has vagary, all human endeavour has failure—in 50 years time, 50 per cent of the planet will be water poor. This is on the assumption that we are going to grow the population from six billion to nine billion; there will be a billion people unable to feed themselves; 30 per cent of the productive land of Asia will disappear, where two-thirds of the world’s population is going to live; the food task is going to double; and, at the top of the actuarial assumption on the science, 1.6 billion people will be displaced on the planet. If you bring that down to the science on Australia, the scientists are saying that in southern Australia, and particularly in the southern parts of the Murray-Darling Basin, there will be a decline in the run-off of somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent. That relates to between 3,500 and 11,000 gigalitres less water in a run-off that is presently 23,000 gigalitres, which is 6.2 per cent of Australia’s run-off.

With regard to reconfiguring rural and regional Australia in the face of climate change—I am not interested in what causes climate change; there has been too much debate on what is causing the changes in the weather and whether it is a 10-year or 20-year cycle; I am interested in what we are going to do about it, which is why I talked the previous government into the northern task force. Let us talk about cutbacks. The first cutback that came to my attention was the $20 million we put into the northern task force. They took all but $700,000 out of the northern task force and left it to waddle on its own. It has not had a meeting since we lost government. The great challenge for Australia is to continue to be what it has been in the past: the best place on the planet to raise a family, breathe fresh air and drink clean water. Part of that is adjusting to the signals that Mother Nature is sending us. Mother Nature is saying that in the next 40 years the northern parts of Australia are going to be greatly enhanced, in a slightly anticlockwise direction, and southern Australia is going to be seriously disadvantaged. So what we have done in the new government—and it is an insult to not only rural Australia but the greater family of Australia—is taken the budget away from the northern task force. That is a pretty smart plan!

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

Shut down your task force?

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I said, Senator McLucas, there is not a person in the Labor Party, in the government, who lives and/or makes a living in the bush. Part of what you have done is taken away what is the flagpole of Australia, the very mast of Australia, in new technology and the future for irrigation: Carnarvon. Carnarvon wanted—and we agreed and approved—$1 million to put new joiners on their pipes, for their pressurised system. Every irrigator in Australia should either go to Carnarvon or know about Carnarvon to know where the future lies. Carnarvon uses the latest and greatest in Israeli and Spanish technology. They draw 11 gigalitres—11,000 megalitres—out of the Gascoyne River. They divert 3½ gigalitres of that water—and you will notice I am not using any notes; I do not need to read this, I know it—to reticulate the town of Carnarvon. They use 8½ gigalitres to supply the farmers there. The farmers there do not measure their water in gigalitres or megalitres; they do it in kilolitres—it is that precious. I delivered to the minister’s office today a paper I wrote—which is pretty unusual for me—in 2002 which was the ‘gumboot story’ about how, if we did not move with the times, we would have had to move Adelaide and deal with paddy rice—and I will come to that in a minute—and furrow cotton. But with 8½ gigalitres of water, Carnarvon produces $60 million worth of income from things like tomatoes, lunch-pack bananas, table grapes and capsicums. If you were in New South Wales with that 8½ gigalitres of water, you would produce $3 million worth of cotton. Carnarvon produces $60 million worth of produce.

If you go up to what is a great frontier for Australia, the Ord, with 40 times that amount of water—335 gigalitres of water—you will see they produce the same income, in a very old-fashioned and inefficient way. To their great credit, they withdrew the tender document for Ord stage 2, because it was a lazy document. As the chairman of the task force under the previous government, I said, ‘By March of this year we’ll have you sorted and you’ll be underway again.’ Well, there has not been a stroke of advancement for Ord stage 2. I went up there and I could not believe it. ‘Here is 14,000 hectares of country,’ the Ord tender document said, ‘and here is 335 gigalitres. What am I bid?’ That is all it said. It was a lazy document. There was no price signal for the price of the water and no disconnection between the land and the water. If you were a smart bloke who wanted to do at the Ord what they do in Carnarvon, you would not get paid for it; you could not separate your water to pay the bank for the technology. I said to the government at the time: ‘What arrangements have you made with the Northern Territory? Where does the drainage for Ord stage 2 go?’ They said, ‘It goes down the Keep River.’ I asked, ‘Where’s the Keep River?’ They said, ‘It’s in the Northern Territory.’ I asked, ‘Have you had a discussion with the Northern Territory about the sovereign issues of the bank?’ They said, ‘No, we were going to leave that up to the developer.’ That would have been some guy from the Gold Coast, with a pair of white shoes. So, fortunately for us, they withdrew the document. Carnarvon, as I said, is the hope of the future for Australia’s development of food technology.

We are at the present time in an overallocated regime in the Murray-Darling Basin, which, as I say, has 23,000 gigalitres of run-off, which is 6.2 per cent of Australia’s run-off, trying to do 70-odd per cent of Australia’s water farming in a situation where we have completely overallocated. In fact, we are about to impose a serious fraud on Australia’s taxpayers because we cannot get the Queensland government, who are a bunch of cowboys, to be compliant with the National Water Initiative. We are about to issue licences on the Condamine-Balonne based on earthworks where there was no environmental planning, which was the worst of the thinking of blokes like Russ Hinze in his time. By the way, all governments of all persuasions for all time have cocked up water planning. Everyone is to blame. We are about to issue a series of licences up there in full knowledge that we are going to buy them back. We are about to issue the biggest water licence ever issued to an individual farm in Australia—469,000 megalitres. Co-signatory and co-beneficiary of the licence—on the licence in the draft plan—is the chairman of the ministerial advisory body which is advising the government on how to issue the licences. It is a serious fraud on Australia’s taxpayers.

I sympathise with the government on what to do about it. I know what I would do about it: I would simply go up there and say to the Queensland government, ‘Halt the process; let’s do a full environmental study into the lower Balonne.’ The lower Balonne is a unique catchment that separates itself into five rivers and two creeks which eventually, after the flood goes overland, finish up back in the river and contribute to the Darling. But—as with Toorale station, which is at the junction of the Darling and the Warrego—we are talking about buying a farm to get some water. It is a fraud. God help us!

Going back to Carnarvon, Carnarvon needs $1 million to fix up its pipe system. It is the most efficient irrigation system in Australia. It is a beacon of technology for the planet. I do not know why, but the present government has withdrawn the $1 million they needed. I am pleading with the government today—and, I have to confess, I have rung the minister, because I only became acquainted with this yesterday—to revive the $1 million to help Australia’s farmers while we are down here making this false argument on the Murray about the lakes et cetera.

This time last year, I wrote to the previous government saying, ‘This time next year’—which is now—’we’re going to have a doomsday scenario in the Murray,’ because last year the snow did not actually melt; it evaporated. We are now at a doomsday position, and it shows itself up politically at the bottom of the river. But what is happening at the bottom with the lakes is happening all the way up the system. We have doomsday all the way up. At Leeton the rice farmers are on their fourth failure. If there is not any water, there is no magic formula. Everyone in here keeps talking about—the minister spoke yesterday about this—buying water. They keep talking about water. What is water? They are talking about doubling the price of buying back entitlements. Buying back entitlements will return no water to the system. You have to buy allocation. This is dreamtime stuff.

So what are farmers up to for the future? What are the challenges? Farmers face global cartels in fertiliser, chemicals and fuel. We have the ACCC. I rang Graeme Samuel the other day, and to his credit he took the call. I said: ‘Sorry, mate, that I had to say that you’re as useless as tits on a bull, but you were. You didn’t go looking.’ Here is a docket from a resupplier in Ayr in Queensland. This supplier is charging a sugar farmer who has bought fertiliser, for which the price has trebled in two years, 18 per cent a month—not a year—interest. The reason the reseller is charging the grower that is that Incitec Pivot are charging the reseller 17 per cent a month interest. And the ACCC does not think there is anything wrong with that? They are not looking too hard.

The great challenge facing not only farmers but the planet for the future is how we are going to feed ourselves. The world has been modelling future energy requirements, and we have this false argument about uranium and nuclear power. I chaired the oil inquiry. The situation was quite apparent, as it was in the wine inquiry. The wine inquiry took 20 minutes to discover that consolidated retailing and consolidated winemaking were going to put grape growers out of business. It is the same as Woolies. Woolies were on Four Corners the other day, pure as the driven snow, but anyone who gets a contract to supply Woolies eventually goes down the chute because they keep cutting back the costs. They will not pass the costs forward. It is the same as airlines flying today, as shown in the CASA inquiry. I said to them, ‘At some stage of the game the airlines have to have the courage to say to people who are flying, “We’re going to actually charge you the real cost of flying.”’ They may continue, by cost cutting, cutting back the servicing of their planes and all of that stuff, to keep themselves flying financially, but they will be physically crashing. That is what is going to happen to Australia’s farmers unless we can pass our costs forward. We are dealing with world cartels. I have to say that the Nauru government are not very happy about this; they have written recently to my committee. We have a situation where in Nauru, up until two months ago, they were getting $40 a tonne for their rock phosphate when the global price is $300, and we as a country are giving them foreign aid because they are going broke. This is crazy stuff.

So the great challenge for the future for Australia’s farmers and for the community is not what is in the garage; it is what is in the fridge. I have to say that the inquiry of the select committee which I chair is going to look at how we will in the future supply food that is affordable—which may mean a redefinition of what is affordable—from an environment that is sustainable and a farmer who is viable, who is paid to get out of bed and do it and not do it under some sort of slave or serf labour. That is the great challenge facing the planet. If 50 per cent of the world’s population is water poor and there are 1.6 billion people displaced—when Mick Keelty said that last year no-one took any notice; Mick Keelty said last year that the greatest threat to Australia’s sovereignty is climate change, and he is right.

Debate interrupted.