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

At this late hour I am pleased to come and speak to the Governor-General’s speech. It has been a while since we have taken up this debate. I heard you call Senator Pratt, who is not in the chamber as she did not see fit to finish her address to the chamber, so I will take up the cudgels there. I am not surprised because I, after all this time, re-acquainted myself with the Governor-General’s speech, thinking perhaps that at the time I might have been a bit unfair on the Governor-General’s speech. I thought it was a drab speech at the time. In fact, I thought it was one of the worst speeches I had heard at the time. I am beginning to think Senator Pratt might think so too. It was a very shallow speech. So I re-acquainted myself with the speech, and I was right—it is one of the most shallow, drab speeches ever delivered by a Governor-General. It is directionless. I will read you some gems from the speech.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

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

I see Senator Collins is interjecting—still got life even at this late hour. I will read certain parts of that speech to prove my point. By the way, this is just a sideline—I have done some very deep research, which I would like to address the chamber on, on certain matters to do with industrial relations—but I thought it was necessary to point this out. I will read a couple of gems that came out of that Governor-General’s speech because—I do this for a reason—it will epitomise the very direction of the government since that speech. For example:

During this term, the government will pursue plans to reduce the tax burden on the business sector, simplify tax returns for ordinary taxpayers.

They will reduce the tax burden—then the speech goes on to say they are going to introduce a mining tax. I always thought tax reform had more to do with reducing the tax burden on the taxpayer. Their idea of tax reform is to introduce a tax. But then it gets better:

Further deliberations on the nation’s taxation system will be considered at a public forum to be held by mid 2011, which will re-examine the Henry tax review ...

Following that forum, the government will hold a debate on tax reform in the Australian parliament, enabling all senators and members to express their views.

So a forum and a debate will be held. It is the same old rhetoric—same old, same old. Nothing new came out of this address it all. I though—and I see Senator Nash is in the chamber—that we might get something for the rural and regional areas, considering they had to pander to the Independents to win government. So I went to the Governor-General’s address and saw that, under ‘Building Regional Australia’, this is what we got:

Accordingly the government has appointed a new cabinet level minister for regional Australia—

Who, by the way, is Simon Crean. What an offence! They could have put Senator Carr in the position; it would be just as credible. So we have a Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government supported by a whole new bureaucracy, a whole new department, for regional Australia. They go a step further for regional Australia, saying they have set up a House of Representatives committee on regional Australia. We have always had one in the Senate and it has been a very good one.

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Nash interjecting—

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

Senator Nash, you have been on it. I have been on it myself, for 10 years plus, with Senator Heffernan and the guy who is over in New York—what was his name? I have already forgotten him.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator O’Brien.

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

Senator O’Brien, of course, very diligent! That is what we got. That was the Governor-General’s speech. There was nothing but rhetoric going in circles. It epitomises and sets the pattern of this government. Look at today’s agenda. We have got two weeks of parliament. We are not sitting in December at all. It is the first time I have ever known parliament not to sit in December. This is a government that has ground to a halt. Look at today’s agenda. We have got three bills on it, all noncontroversial. Thank goodness for the Greens’ minutiae and petty questions on what is a terrorist organisation. However, it was padded out for the government for hours and hours; if it had not been for that we would be on this discussion a lot earlier. You have got three noncontroversial bills.

I was outside before and I had to rush back in to see what tomorrow will bring. You are reintroducing noncontroversial bills. This side is not even against them. This is your agenda for 2010—you do not have one. This is going to be a long week for the government, and it is going to be a long two weeks if this is what you are putting up.

Nothing much is happening down in the House of Representatives either. You want to take heed of some of your wise counsel—though I do not know whether you would call them that. Former Senator Richardson used to be in this chamber and I remember him well. I was going to say I used to serve with him—well, combat with him—and he was a fearsome warrior. You know that yourself, on your own side. He has killed plenty off on your side. He came out last week and said, ‘Get an agenda.’ Richo was always one for advice. But he is right: get an agenda, Prime Minister Gillard. You have not got one today. This address-in-reply to the Governor-General was not even on the red. I do not think that it has been on the red all week; it has just been sitting in reserve. Certainly it was not in today. You have rushed it in today. Richo said, ‘Get an agenda.’

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

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

I read the Governor-General’s speech again and there is not much of an agenda there. This is epitomising the whole Gillard government. They have ground to a halt. You have got more advice from the so-called ‘Father of the Labor Party’. He is a great warrior too, Senator John Faulkner. He has lost interest lately, though; he did not even turn up today. I do not know where he was today.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did too!

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

I never saw him at question time and I was looking for him. I am always interested when Senator Faulkner enters the chamber. But the light has gone off on Senator Faulkner, but nevertheless he says to you—

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

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

Yes, it has gone off on me too. Senator Faulkner offered this advice to you about the Labor Party. He said this about the current government which is no more than a month or two old:

... we are very long on cunning and very short on courage.

That was a very courageous thing for him to say, but how right he is. You have not got an agenda. You have ground to a halt. It is if you are shell-shocked about the election result. You are tired. You are not interested. We saw it at question time with Senator Carr. He was asked a question, a two-to three-minute question—however long this new system runs for—and he sat down after 30 seconds. What do you think the issue was? It happened to be the issue of the day—security, asylum seekers and border security. He is the spokesman in this chamber for it and he sat down after 30 seconds, unable to even waffle through the question. He is tired. He is shell-shocked. He is not interested. He is unbriefed.

Listen to your own. If you do not want to listen to the former Senator Richardson—and I would not blame you—or Senator Faulkner, listen to an up-and-comer within your own ranks, Senator Cameron. He is calling you zombies. He has said that you have all had lobotomies. I have kept his quote, do not worry about that.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You cannot find it now.

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

No, I can find Senator Cameron’s quote, for sure. I cannot believe he had the courage to do it.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have a look at page 1 of the Notice Paper.

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

I have looked. I have got the red. In all my time I have never seen such a shallow agenda on a Monday with only two weeks of parliament left. God, I remember the last two weeks when the question used to be: would we still be here at Christmas time? We would be pumping through the reforms—the sale of Telstra, the VSU legislation—it was one bill after another. You might not have liked it but we had an agenda.

I will tell you what Senator Cameron said—do not distract me, because this has to go down in the Hansard. Dougie said—

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

Senator, that is not the appropriate way to address Senator Cameron.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

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

Senator Cameron said that we were the rabble? It has turned out that you are the rabble. Dougie has worked out that you are the rabble. He says:

‘They are stifled in the caucus, they are stifled in the public’—

God, you cannot even speak frankly to the public, according to Senator Cameron—

Cameron said of Labor’s MPs, ‘and so people see the Labor Party having no values and no vision on a whole range of issues and I think that must change ...

It seems to be like having a political lobotomy.’

They are ‘zombies’, he said. You could not be more frank than that. I make this observation because it is only Monday of a two-week sitting. I have got to make my calls early these days and my call is this: if this drift goes on much longer—and I am only talking about until Christmas time—those polls are going to lock in. You are about the only government that has never enjoyed a honeymoon. Every government in history since Federation has enjoyed a honeymoon. You have never even had a honeymoon under this Prime Minister, and she is now collapsing in the polls. Your primary vote now is getting to very dangerous levels and if it still holds till Christmas, I will make this call now: you are gone. You will be having an election this time next year.

What is more, the Prime Minister—with all those polls around personalities and the capabilities of the leadership—is now starting to slump. That was always something you could hang onto under Kevin Rudd as compared to the opposition leader, or Julia Gillard as compared to the opposition leader. But now that has fallen. Now that is slumping in the polls. And if that is not turned around by Christmas, and you have not got much time to act, then I say that that is going to lock in and the public are not going to be turned around by any of your false rhetoric.

You have a Prime Minister who is a giggling gertie in this country and on her overseas trips. That is all I ever see. She has become an embarrassment with all of the giggling that goes on. There is nothing statesmanlike about the Prime Minister at all. She has become a total embarrassment. I only make those points as a sideline to the real address I want to make.

Whilst I berate and point out to you—no worse than your own side, by the way: Senator Faulkner, Senator Cameron or former Senator Richardson, who is really laying it out for you—there is one policy you will introduce that concerns me greatly as a Victorian senator. I have no doubt you will introduce a policy at some point in this term to strip and effectively abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. As a Victorian senator I am very concerned about this because the building and construction industry is one of the largest industries in Victoria. It drives Victoria. Of course, it was the epicentre of the Cole royal commission into the corruption and the illegalities of this industry. It basically all came out of Victoria.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s rubbish.

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

‘Rubbish’ says Senator Collins.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You need to go back and look at the Cole report.

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

I have looked at the Cole report, and I have plenty of it here. I happened to have this land on my desk recently. The man your side axed, the head of the commission, Mr John Lloyd—

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Another Howard political appointment.

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

No. This was a man with royal commission powers. He was totally independent.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We know the powers he was given.

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

You have just shown your colours, and you are a Victorian too. You know only too well the goings-on, the culture and the illegalities that the royal commission found in Victoria. I am going to run out of time, but Mr Lloyd, the former Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, said in his last annual report, which has just been handed down:

The performance outlined in this report demonstrates that unlawful conduct continues. This is especially so in Victoria. Victoria is responsible for 61 per cent of legal proceedings commenced during 2009-10. Similarly, Victoria represents 40 per cent of investigations and 68 per cent of compulsory examinations. Also, Western Australia continues to be overrepresented in ABCC data.

It is unclear exactly why this situation persists. The construction unions and some contractors appear committed to continue unlawful practices and possibly regard prosecution by the ABCC as an acceptable business risk.

                        …                   …                   …

The attainment of the outcomes is a credit to ABCC staff. They are professional and dedicated. Some encounter abuse, taunts, being photographed and physical provocation when going about their work. On occasions this has involved assaults, matters that are and will continue to be reported to the Police.

And he expressed his appreciation of the police.

So Victoria, I repeat, was the epicentre of the Cole royal commission and it still is after so many years of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Yet, as a payback to the union for their $64 million in the 2007 campaign and less obviously in the 2010 campaign, for the money they give the Labor Party and for the outright control that they have of the Labor Party not just at a national conventions, which we know is up to 50 per cent of the vote, but in the preselections of all of those on the other side—every single one of them belongs to a union; it is compulsory—this legislation will make its way back to this chamber and will, with the support of the Greens, be in danger of passing the Senate.

This concerns me greatly. It concerns me not just because of the lawlessness and not just because of the knock-on costs to households, small businesses and small and large developers. It has a productivity effect over the whole economy, not just in Victoria. Enough evidence came out of the Senate inquiry into this in 2009 and from independent sources such as the Bureau of Statistics and other economic data. I will refer to the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Economics from September 2009. It states that, over the seven years that the commission has been operating, there has been a 10 per cent increase in the industry productivity. Even the weekly wages in the industry have increased because of productivity, because the strike numbers are down, because the corruption is down, because the payoffs are down and because work is being finished on time or ahead of time in some cases. Because of the watchdog with teeth watching over this industry these have been the knock-on effects.

It is such a large industry that if costs start to blow out because of lawlessness, because of strikes, because of slow work days and because of increases, you will get a CPI increase. The economic data shows that the CPI has been positively affected. It is some 1.2 per cent lower than it would have been had the watchdog not been on the prowl.

With only a minute or so to go, I signal my deep concern that post July this legislation will be rushed through the parliament as a payback to the unions. It will have devastating effects on my state of Victoria in the building and construction industry. It will return all of the intimidation, lawlessness, the crime and the corruption. We have already got it at a certain level. Without the watchdog it will explode. We already have the Mick Gattos wandering around. He even has to be careful. We have even got the sycophants to the Mick Gattos from the larger companies.

This is not just about unions, but predominantly it is about the corruption and the lawlessness of the unions. There is a lot corruption and lawlessness by some of the big construction companies too. There are a lot of them that hire the Mick Gattos of this world. There are a lot of them that allow the criminality onto their sites. As John Lloyd rightly said, they seem to think it is a legitimate risk. We have to take that legitimate risk away from them for the sake of the public.

So I alert the Senate to this. I condemn the Labor Party. Someone from the other side should just stand up and condemn this legislation and this policy that will be coming up, I am sure, after July.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is quite an extraordinary act to follow for an address-in-reply—you really will be missed, Senator McGauran. The Governor-General’s speech, which this debate addresses and which was some time ago now, I found quite fascinating. It is only my second experience of an address-in-reply in my brief time here, being halfway through the term. I listened to the speech quite intently, partly because it is an expression of what the government is most proud of and because it is an indication of the agenda they are setting for the next couple of years. But I was also listening most acutely to hear what was not in the speech—what the government is doing, what its agenda is and what legislation it pursues that did not make its way into the speech—because I think that will probably tell us a little about what the government is up to that it is not proud of.

So, considering the kind of day that I have had, I am probably going to focus somewhat on the negative. But isn’t it interesting that there was nothing in the speech on the proposal for mandatory filtering of the internet? There was nothing in it on what we witnessed this afternoon, the entrenchment and furthering of the laws of terror. There was nothing in it on data retention, the Attorney-General’s proposal to start logging all the material and traces that people leave behind in web traffic and email and so on. But, most strikingly, there was nothing in the speech, nothing that any of the relevant ministers had sought to put forward, about how we were about to outsource our foreign policy to uranium-mining companies for the short-term interests of the nuclear industry here and overseas.

Australia is on the verge potentially—if people around the country have bulldozers driven over them in the next couple of months and years—of becoming the No. 1 uranium provider in the world. We will be selling uranium at that stage to most of the world’s nuclear weapons states, including places—obviously, most recently, such as Russia and China—with rather a queasy proliferation record. We will be the No. 1 uranium provider, providing jobs, providing tax and royalty revenues and providing the boost to the economy that the government never ceases to spruik. Why wasn’t that in the speech? Is that not something the government is proud of? I found that rather curious.

For the amount of time that Minister Martin Ferguson spends enabling and furthering the interests of this industry, you would have thought he would have managed to get a mention into the Governor-General’s speech—something about how proud the government is that it is taking this step towards becoming the world’s supplier of uranium to nuclear weapons states. But there was not a peep.

There was nothing in there about how the Australian government is pursuing the Howard agenda of a radioactive waste dump in the Northern Territory. It was an issue that played very heavily in the federal election campaign. Certainly in Melbourne it played its part in the huge swing we saw against the minister, the member for Batman, Martin Ferguson. I can tell those folk who did not manage to visit the NT during the election campaign, as I was fortunate enough to do, that in the NT it was in the top three or four issues that were debated. There was nothing in the speech about that. Nor was there anything about the Northern Territory intervention, which is dramatically unpopular in the NT.

There was nothing in there about our support for the United States nuclear weapons umbrella or the fact that Australia, while far from being a de facto nuclear weapons state ourselves, relies on security assurances from our alliance with the United States. Unlike New Zealand, which managed to kick free that prop decades ago, Australia still relies on the United States government’s ability to provoke Armageddon at any particular time and annihilate cities at the throw of a switch for our so-called security. There was nothing about that.

Speaking of outsourcing our foreign policy to multinational uranium-mining companies, it is important to mention the agreement that the Prime Minister announced recently about uranium sales to Russia. This has been coming for some time. Shortly after I arrived here I took my place on the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which published a document on uranium sales to Russia. It was not merely a majority report; it was a unanimous report, I believe. It pointed out that certain criteria would need to be observed before any such sales could be contemplated. The government has chosen to simply sidestep that—set it to one side, ignore that risk—in the cause of increasing uranium exports to Russia, for which there was no apparent mention that I could discern in the speech. Perhaps this is something that the Australian government is not so proud of. There were not multiple press releases put out. It was not an announcement that was heralded. It was dropped at a very odd day, very late in the day, too late for the newspapers and so on.

I would like to go back briefly and identify some of the issues that the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties put into the public domain and put forward for the government to consider, just in case there is that small moment or that small pause for hesitation for the Australian government to contemplate whether doing this to our foreign policy is a good idea. And it is a foreign policy issue, not a mining or a resources issue. When you get into the uranium business, you are engaging in foreign policy whether you like it or not, and you are engaging in a very old and very nasty story that is now three generations old about what happens to this material when it leaves Darwin.

There are 32 nuclear power reactors now operating in Russia. Twenty-three of those were constructed prior to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Russian generators are generally licensed for 30 years, but 12 of the current reactors have been operating for more than 30 years. Late in 2000, plans were announced by Russian authorities for lifetime extensions of these 12 first-generation reactors. So the extension period is now envisaged at between 15 and 25 years. So currently operating in Russia are an early generation of nuclear reactors that were designed and built before the Chernobyl explosion and that will be operating for a period of up to 40 or 50 years—that is, longer than most of the operators who will be running the plant have been alive.

By the late 1990s Russian authorities were exporting nuclear reactors and related technology to China and India. India, of course, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In August this year Russia announced that it would begin the start-up of Iran’s only nuclear power plant. Uranium fuel shipped by Russia into Iran began use at the Bushehr reactor on 21 August despite the fact that Iran refuses to sign up to the Convention on Nuclear Safety, which would make it subject to international monitoring of its atomic safety standards. That is looking at the state of Russia’s peaceful nuclear sector.

The foreign minister will need to stand up here every now and again in this building, as he has done in the past, on the announcement of some kind of grievous breach of international protocol by the Iranian government in starting up this plant or operating uranium centrifuges in apparent contravention of international obligations. The foreign minister will say: ‘Actually, folks, Iran is a grave threat to international security. You don’t mess around when it comes to nuclear weapons.’ But we are potentially about to start, at the behest of Rio Tinto, BHP and their allies in the uranium mining sector, large-scale exports of this bomb fuel to the Russian government.

We have contemplated the state of Russia’s peaceful nuclear sector. The Institute for Political and Military Analysis, which is a Moscow based non-government research organisation, reports that Russia has 3,100 nuclear warheads. The US Department of State claimed in April 2009 that the correct figure is around 3,909. Russia also has a large but unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons. Russia is actively producing and developing new nuclear weapons, manufacturing Topol-M, or SS-27, intercontinental ballistic missiles since 1997. That puts them in direct and fundamental breach of their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to stand these things down and dismantle them once and for all, but the Australian government seems to think it is appropriate that we start shipping this material to them nonetheless. So the very real security and proliferation concerns of uranium deals with Russia were spelled out, in my view, forensically by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties late in 2008. It was a committee that urged the Australian government not to undertake this same sale. The government has blindly dismissed these warnings. It is an example of short-term profits taking precedence over long-term health and security interests. There is cross-border and internal aggression from the Russian government, there is an ongoing abuse of power and corrosion of democracy in that country, there is persecution and assassination of journalists and critics, including with radioactive material, there is alleged election rigging, there is an ageing nuclear power sector and there is a vast and growing nuclear arsenal. All of these things make a compelling case against uranium sales to Russia, which was probably why it was neglected and did not find its way into the Governor-General’s speech.

Even if we forget the past, as supporters of the deal announced by the Prime Minister at the G20 conference exist, we cannot ignore the future. This is the kind of really blind self-interest at the behest of the uranium mining sector that mars us as a country. It is not enough for the Australian government to step back and say, ‘If we don’t sell this material then other people will’, because quite frankly that is the defence of the heroin dealer. If this trade is bad and toxic and the Labor Party has struggled with this issue for decades then under no circumstances should we condone it on the grounds that if we do not sell this material somebody else will. That is not good enough. I look forward in the next address-in-reply speech to being able to comment on the Governor-General’s acknowledgement that uranium mining is in the process of being phased out in Australia and that this carcinogenic and obsolete trade has no place in a modern and sustainable Australia of which all of us wish to be proud.

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

I would like today, in this 43rd parliament, to reply to Her Excellency’s address and discuss some of the aspects of the Governor-General’s speech. But firstly I would like to congratulate all the newly elected and returned senators and members, especially those on this side of the chamber. For each elected and returned member or senator, each term brings the wonderful honour of representing the constituencies that have elected them. It is also a profound responsibility to uphold the interests of the constituency and all Australians in this great parliament. To those who sat in the 42nd parliament and were unsuccessful in re-election, I offer my deepest commiseration, as each of us can respect the demanding nature of this place and each of us can value the individual contributions made in the desire to make the lives of Australians better no matter the ideology or side that we sit on.

I would also like to take the time to congratulate my South Australian colleagues on a successful campaign which saw a positive swing towards the Labor Party on a two-party-preferred basis. The sitting members of parliament achieved some amazing swings for the Labor Party, none more so than Kingston member Amanda Rishworth, who achieved a 9½ per cent swing, the largest to the Labor Party in this election. I would also like to congratulate Mr Nick Champion, the member for Wakefield, on his substantial swing, and Annabel Digance’s hard fought campaign in Boothby, which made it Australia’s third most marginal seat.

Debate interrupted.