Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to all questions without notice asked today.

In particular I rise to take note of the answer to a question about Qantas given by Senator Johnston, the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development. If ever there was an example of a government or a minister not understanding the importance of the issue of jobs and the importance of the issue of national interest, then Senator Johnston demonstrated it in his attempts to respond to the question. The issues for Qantas and the issues for the nation are extremely important. The national interest is not served by the break-up of Qantas. The national interest is not served by the maintenance functions at Qantas being sent to the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong. The economics of the break-up have not been understood before this government has moved to break up Qantas by ensuring that it does not get access to any government support. It is quite clear that the economic incompetents in the government are in complete control of the cabinet.

Jobs and safety are so important to the flying public. The jobs in Qantas are allowing ordinary Australians to put food on the table and send their kids to school, and 5,000 of them are now going to lose their job because this government refused to take a practical approach to support Qantas and took an ideological approach based on economic theory that dominates in this cabinet.

It is quite clear that the questions I asked Senator Johnston were not responded to. The question about how we can ensure that local and regional areas will have safeguards in terms of their capacity to access flights was not dealt with at all. The issue here is that both the Treasurer and the Deputy Prime Minister only a couple of years ago were of the view that we should not be breaking up Qantas and selling Qantas to overseas companies. When Mr Truss was the shadow transport minister, he said:

The Government’s decision—

that is, the former Labor government's decision—

to allow a single foreign investor to own 49 percent of Qantas would deliver effective control to a foreign investor, including possibly a competitor airline. Loss of effective Australian control could leave Australia without an airline primarily committed to our interests.

What safeguards will be put in place for the Australian flying public, particularly those in regional areas?

Today I asked the question that the Deputy Prime Minister asked a couple of years ago, and the answer was not forthcoming. There was a fudge on the answer because the reality is that the capacity to maintain services into regional Australia and the capacity to maintain services into the bush will be diminished when foreign companies take over Qantas. That will be the result of the coalition's position. Fortunately, the coalition's position is described in all the major newspaper outlets as 'a Claytons policy'. It is the policy you have when you do not have a policy. The so-called policy they have will not pass this Senate because it is not in the national interest. It is not in the interest of jobs, and it is not in the interest of communities that rely on Qantas. It is a hard-nosed, hard-hearted approach from this government, and it is based on political ideology and not on the national interest. The senators over the other side should be ashamed of themselves. They should stand up for this country. (Time expired)

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to debate Senator Cameron's motion to take note of answers in question time today. Yes, it is all about political ideology and about everything else you want to call it! The only thing that Senator Cameron knows about making a production line more efficient is introducing a picket line. That is his experience in production. That is how he thinks we get production going in this country. He has form—and plenty of it. He comes to this place like so many others on the other side. How many on the other side have ever run a business and had an overdraft? You are a solely-owned subsidiary of the union movement.

While we are talking about the union movement and its role in Qantas: I came to this place in July 2011. What was my first experience? It was the aviation inquiry. I sat on an inquiry when the CEO of Qantas grounded the airline because the unions had got hold of it. Qantas is a unionised workforce, and that is the problem. You are worried and shrill about 5,000 jobs. What about the 30,000 jobs? You are worried about foreign ownership, but, the last time I looked at the Clipsal 500 around the streets of Adelaide, Ford and Holden were owned by foreigners. Where is your problem there? Virgin Airlines is owned by foreigners. Who will take us to war if we have one? Virgin, Qantas, Air New Zealand, Emirates and Etihad will, just like they have been over the last 12 years. Get real with the Australian people. The Australian people get this. You, over the other side, 30-odd of you, are just bashing this up.

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

Order! Senator Edwards, I just need to correct you. You have to address your remarks to the chair. You cannot say 'you' across the chamber.

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. You do actually get it—

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

Senator Edwards, that is exactly what you cannot say. You cannot direct your comments to those on the other side. They must be directed to the chair.

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I am sure that those on the other side do get it. We have been in government for six months, and the previous government was in for six years. Back then Anthony Albanese, who still serves on the front bench in opposition, was a Labor minister in 2008 and said:

The new Rudd Labor government will drive an active strategy to further liberalise the aviation sector, seeking cooperation with like-minded partners.

That means reform is imminent. Level playing fields—which you heard for the last few weeks. I spoke to the now Treasurer, Mr Hockey, in April of last year about the problems facing Qantas. Everybody has been aware of it; you did nothing about it, and look what we have. We have this problem which you can fix. The legislation has come in and you need to vote it through to free up the management and stop vilifying them. You need to free up the management so that they can get on with the business of running an internationally competitive airline.

I want to now take you to what I believe is the fundamental problem in this argument. Back in October 2011, in the months before the grounding of that airline, an emergency Fair Work Australia hearing heard from the Federal Secretary of the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association, Mr Steve Purvinas. He was overheard, and introduced to that hearing were the words about Qantas: 'I want to bake them slowly.' More menacingly, he promised to sort out Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce and mused: 'If you live near a river, take a seat, and eventually the dead bodies of your enemies will come floating by.'

Congratulations—here we are with the union movement! I am sure the TWU will have something to say to you, or they are probably already ringing your offices and telling you how you should behave on this matter. You should be looking at how you govern your union movement before you try to tell private enterprise how to run their businesses. Qantas has argued and is appealing to you over there to pass this legislation, and I urge all of you to take its advice. (Time expired)

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on Senator Cameron's motion to take note of answers in question time today, including those concerning Qantas, and on the government's lack of interest in protecting Australian jobs. The Australian people were promised that under Mr Tony Abbott's Australia we would be open for business. The Prime Minister said that Australia was under new management. If this is what new management looks like, I think Australia would want a change of ownership at the till, quick smart. Every day it is reinforced that this is neither the government Australia was promised nor the government that they voted for. This is a secretive, mean government and a hard government. It is a government of cuts and of no compassion. It is a government of job losses, not job savings. What it also does is send the signal of complete business uncertainty. It does not support business and it creates uncertainty.

In fact, the only export industry the government has supported is the export of Australian jobs. It is an industry that is flourishing under this Prime Minister. On the Prime Minister's watch, the government dared Holden to leave—and it did. The government sent the same signal to Toyota, and it left too. The car manufacturing sector and the car components sector are now looking down the barrel of dismal outcomes, shell-shocked because of this government's lack of care or interest in Australian jobs. It refused to lift a finger to help SPC Ardmona and—this is choice—dropped the Victorian Premier in the deep end in the process. It blocked a boost of investment in GrainCorp when the old doormats—the National Party—got their way, and the government allowed them one win.

This is all clear evidence of this government's true form: ignoring Australian jobs and running Australia out of business. Let us be clear: the government played chicken with Qantas, and it played chicken with the workers of Qantas. It led Qantas down the garden path, trailing its coat and leading them to believe that a debt guarantee was coming. After the Treasurer, Mr Hockey, finished his dance of a thousand veils, the government said no to Qantas. With it, the thousands and thousands of Australian jobs were all put at risk by the government's reckless behaviour.

Earlier today, the repeal of section 3 of the Qantas Sales Act was rammed through the other place. This is a government that took months and months to put in place any support package for struggling, drought impacted farmers. But it took it less than a week to introduce and pass a bill to break up Qantas and send thousands of jobs to the wall. The Treasurer told us he was being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the aid of Qantas. But it did not seem too hard to get the repeal bill drafted and through the parliament. It must have been interesting to watch him hold onto that while kicking and screaming.

I suspect that this government has been doing more than a little bit of work behind the scenes to get ready to launch its ideological crusade against Australian jobs. You would have to think, 'What else they are hiding here?' This is a government that wants to continue to operate in secrecy, to hide from the public what it is doing and then, suddenly, to pop out of the box with its ultimate conclusion while misleading all the way. Treasurer Hockey was out there, misleading the public, saying, 'Yes, a debt guarantee; but only if you drag me kicking and screaming.' Suddenly we find that, within a very short space of time, a debt guarantee is off the table—he will not do that—and it is, 'Let's break up Qantas. Let's have a Qantas Sales Act wholesale sale.'

The answers about this lie on Mr Hockey's desk. The commission of cuts is there as well, and what will it show? That will be interesting. Will we see the Treasurer being dragged, kicking and screaming, saying, 'No, no,' to this commission of cuts? I do not think so. I think we will see Mr Joe Hockey embrace the commission of cuts because that is where he feels most comfortable—cutting to the bone and ensuring that workers lose their jobs. What this government stands for is not big business and not Australian jobs. It wants to export Australian jobs, and it wants to give big business uncertainty. (Time expired)

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to debate Senator Cameron's motion to take note of answers to questions from today's question time. I would particularly like to make a comment in regard to some comments that were made by Senator Cameron when he rose to take note of answers today. I think his opening line was some thing like 'local and regional areas will need safeguards for flights'.'

I come from a regional area, and I come from a state that relies significantly on regional flights to enable people to get access to their communities, particularly those people who live on the other side of the gulfs in my state. For the life of me I cannot see how denying Qantas what they have asked for—that is, a level playing field—can possibly not assist the continuation of these jobs. I cannot for the life of me see why the Australian aviation sector is going to be disadvantaged in any way, shape or form by Qantas being more competitive in the marketplace. They will be more competitive in the market place because of a market mechanism rather than because of a debt guarantee which would give them a competitive advantage against many of the other small carriers that operate in this regional space. I think we need to be very clear that lots of lovely words and grandstanding are not necessarily going to be in the best interests of the people who live outside the metropolitan area, and they are the people whom I seek to represent in this place.

The other thing that I find quite bizarre is that we talk about stuff that has happened in the past. We live in a global marketplace and we are expecting Qantas to go out there and compete in an international marketplace, yet we have stuck shackles on it. I would suggest that those opposite need to have a look beyond our shores and realise what Qantas has to deal with on a day-to-day basis before they stand up in this place and refuse to accept not just what the Australian government has suggested needs to be done but also what Qantas itself has asked for. Qantas did not ask for a debt guarantee. In fact, they have come out and said that that was not what they wanted. What they want is to be unshackled so they can operate in this marketplace like every other international carrier around the whole world.

Senator Ludwig also got up and made some comments along the lines that 'this is not the government Australia was promised, because there is so much business uncertainty'. I find this quite an extraordinary comment coming from somebody who was at the centre of the live export ban. If ever I have seen in Australia in my time a situation which destroyed the certainty of the Australian marketplace, it was that live export ban. We all know, sitting here, the extraordinary consequences that that had on the northern part of our country. Many of these people are still struggling today due to the impacts of what happened there.

Another question was asked regarding the struggling, drought affected farmers and how supposedly slow this government has been in responding to the problem. I advise this chamber that, until a few days ago, when Minister Joyce and the Liberal-National coalition announced the drought package, no drought-affected farmers in South Australia had received any funding whatsoever, because the South Australian Labor government refused to put any drought provisions in place, constantly pointing the finger at the federal government and saying that they needed to put them in place.

New South Wales and Queensland, the two other major drought affected states, put things in place at a state level, and then, once the drought deepened to such an extent that they required federal assistance, the federal government kicked in. So I think it is quite extraordinary that Senator Ludwig would make these comments, particularly given the nature of some of the decisions that he made.

If we want to look at uncertainty we should look at the question directed to Senator Fifield today about the Building Multicultural Communities Program. If ever there was a cruel hoax, it is the set of promises that was made to the Australian public during the election campaign from the then government, which obviously must have thought that it was not going to get back into government. Now that we have had a chance to have a look at the budget and the books, we can see that there was no way that any of these promises were ever going to be able to be funded.

Unfortunately, with respect to the region within which I live, the then Minister King made massive promises about grants along the river corridor in South Australia, none of which were ever funded. So we are left with a situation where these poor people believed that they were about to get funding, but it is non-existent. (Time expired)

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

I would like to take note of Senator Fifield's answer to my question about the government's appalling and heartless decision to take $11.5 million from the excellent Building Multicultural Communities Program. This is a program that has provided small financial grants to more than 470 community organisations that do invaluable work to enhance social cohesion in Australia by assisting migrants and migrant communities to participate fully in the many wonderful opportunities that Australia gives them, including opportunities in my home state of South Australia. These are organisations that teach new migrants how to speak English and assist new migrant children how to swim, which we know is very important. There are organisations that assist migrant children with their homework and assist migrants to apply for jobs and prepare for job interviews.

I did not hear, in Senator Fifield's answer to my question, any coherent explanation of why the Abbott Liberal government will not commit to funding which has already been promised to these excellent community organisations, or why supporting multicultural communities is not a priority for the coalition. He did not answer that question at all. I can only take from his answer that this is just another example of this government tearing down the good work that the Labor government did when it was in government, because the only explanation that Senator Fifield gave in the answer to my question was, 'These were Labor initiatives; therefore, we're not going to fund them.' That is what he said.

I also have to wonder whether this is an example of a sinister, nasty, ultra-conservative government failing to support multicultural communities and just implementing its ideological agenda, which apparently includes trashing our multicultural communities by refusing to support them with these grants. If there is any doubt about what the government really thinks about multicultural communities you only have to look at their ministry list. There is no minister for multicultural affairs in the Abbott coalition government.

I am proud to say that Labor has retained, in its shadow ministry, a shadow minister for citizenship and multiculturalism. That is the very hard working, excellent member for Greenway, Ms Michelle Rowland. She takes an interest in what is happening in our multicultural communities. In fact, last week she came to South Australia and visited some of the organisations that have been devastated by the heartless cuts that we have heard about today. She went to the Welfare Rights Centre in Adelaide. That is an organisation that teaches the English language to New Australians and now faces funding uncertainty. That is extraordinary, because I distinctly remember, during the Australia Day celebrations earlier this year, the government making a big noise about how migrants should learn to speak English. How are they going to learn to speak English if there is no funding to teach them how to speak English? The hypocrisy is extraordinary.

I am pleased to say that South Australian federal MPs are right behind the Building Multicultural Communities Program. For example, Kate Ellis, the member for Adelaide, has been out and about visiting organisations in her community, including the African Communities Council of South Australia and the Middle Eastern Community Council of South Australia, who have been devastated by these funding cuts. Other South Australian MPs are very concerned about this. I noted, in my question, the funding that has been withdrawn or is in doubt for the Greek Orthodox community in Norwood, which is in the seat of the opposition leader in South Australia, Mr Steven Marshall. We have not heard a word from him about these devastating cuts to that community in his electorate.

I would like to conclude by noting some of the organisations in South Australia that have funding which is now in doubt as a result of the decision of this government. They include the African Communities Council of South Australia, the Saint Spyridon Greek Orthodox Community, the Chinese Welfare Services of SA, the Hungarian Club of SA, the South Australian German Association, the Croatian Club Adelaide Inc., Czechoslovak Club in South Australia, the Inter-Italian Sports and Social Club of Adelaide, the Muslim Women's Association of SA, the Serbian Community of SA, the South Australian Lebanese Women's Association— (Time expired)

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, the newspaper for your home town and Senator Colbeck's home town in Tasmania, The Advocate, ran a big headline on Wednesday this week saying 'Banned'. It had a big picture of the Abel Tasmanformerly Margerissupertrawler on the front. The headline said 'Banned for good'. No doubt, that is a headline that the Tasmanian Liberals are happy to see, given their consistent opposition to a supertrawler in Tasmanian waters. No doubt it is also good for the Tasmanian election to have the Prime Minister come out and make an election promise—that is, if I read Senator Abetz's answers today correctly—that supertrawlers will be banned by this government.

Unfortunately, the government cannot be trusted on the environment, especially in relation to their election promises on the environment. The government had a very clear policy to send a Customs vessel to the Southern Ocean this summer for the whaling season, which was broken. They also had a very clear promise on fisheries to send a Customs vessel to police the Southern Ocean to prevent illegal fishing, particularly of Patagonian toothfish stocks, and that has also been broken. They also said they would not touch the World Heritage area in Tasmania, and that has also been broken. So excuse my scepticism around election promises on the environment. Part of me is glad and relieved that the Liberal government has come around to our way of thinking.

The Greens have consistently opposed this supertrawler being in Australian waters—I do not think anybody disputes that—and we have a policy which was reflected in a motion in the Senate back in 2012 that we wanted to see a permanent ban on this type of fishing arrangement in this country, with the onus of proof having to come from any future proponent to overturn that ban. We believe that a legislative ban should be put in place on this type of activity.

Once again, Senator Abetz insinuated very strongly during question time that I was asking about this because of the Tasmanian election coming up. It is quite the opposite: I wanted to make sure that the campaign we have run and prosecuted against supertrawlers in Tasmanian waters and in Australian waters was seen as genuine, that Prime Minister Tony Abbott's response to Andrew Wilkie's question the other day in the House was also genuine and that this was not going to be an election promise that was easily broken. So my message to Senator Abetz and to the Prime Minister is: put your money where your mouth is. Let's see you legislate to prevent and ban this type of fishing activity in this country.

Everywhere this boat and other types of supertrawlers have gone, trouble has followed. No-one disputes—even the ferocious champions who brought the supertrawler to this country do not dispute—that they have had trouble internationally. They have been dogged by problems related to overfishing, including being charged and prosecuted for illegal fishing. The country simply does not want this type of fishing activity. Rightly or wrongly, rationally or irrationally, very few of us have seen a campaign develop as quickly right across this country—right across different electorates in this country; right across different political spectrums in this country—as a gut reaction, not wanting to seeing this type of fishing activity in Australian waters.

I ask again that the government, rather than make an election promise that could simply be seen as hot air, put in place a legislative process to ban this type of fishing arrangement. It is not just because that is what the Greens want to see and, I think, most Australians would like to see—and I say that with absolute confidence—but that we are also undergoing a process through the Department of the Environment, with an independent fishing panel spending money on research around supertrawlers. If the Prime Minister meant what he said and if Senator Abetz meant what he said—although he did not say much; he certainly hid behind the Prime Minister's words and looked very uncomfortable during question time—I would suggest that they make a call on this, because we are spending taxpayers' money. There is another $650,000 allocated for expenditure on potential impacts of supertrawlers, but if we are going to ban them let's get on with it. Let's not muck around; let's put that in place and do what most Australians want to do and stop supertrawlers coming to these waters. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.