Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to raise a number of issues that were brought to my attention over the winter break. You might be interested to know that, despite the media's close attention to issues such as marriage equality and politicians' citizenship status, these are not the things that keep Tasmanians up at night. Tasmanians are weathering a tough winter and many are doing it without heating. The cost of electricity has compromised the quality of life of many of my constituents. For my colleagues who have yet to experience a Tasmanian winter, it is just as cold as a Canberra winter. The price of electricity is through the roof and it's not only Tasmanian residents who are affected. It's also put the handbrake on Tasmania's economy. The cost of electricity is enough to cause small and medium businesses to go under and deter new investment. Tasmania's Premier has the power to change this. If it's within his power to give electricity deals to industry players, it's within his power to give relief to the many disadvantaged Tasmanians. I'm not sitting on my hands waiting around for Premier Hodgman to fix the problem. When Prime Minister Turnbull announced in March a feasibility study into the expansion of the pumped hydroelectric storage in the Snowy Hydro, known as Snowy 2.0, I knew it was my chance to improve electricity costs for Tasmanians. I call it Tassie Hydro 2.0. My vision for Tasmania is that it will play a vital part in ensuring energy security for Australia and be an economic advantage. Tasmania is almost 100 per cent renewable and hydro provides a base-load power. There is absolutely no excuse for Tasmanian power prices to be as high as they are, yet, year on year, power prices just keep climbing in Tasmania.

After the Snowy 2.0 announcement, I promptly wrote to the Prime Minister requesting that a similar feasibility study be conducted in Tasmania. Prime Minister Turnbull heard my call and, now, through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, the government is supporting a few feasibility studies into the best ways hydro can expand. Firstly, the government will look at the feasibility of improving existing assets, which will focus on whether it is worth redeveloping hydrogeneration facilities nearing the end of their life, such as Gordon and Tarraleah.

Secondly, pumped hydro-energy storage will be considered, which will look at using existing assets to support pumped hydro, end or new pumped opportunities, independent of existing assets. Thirdly, the opportunity for Tasmania to provide storage for the national energy market will be considered. This feasibility study will look into Tasmania's capacity to provide battery or storage capacity in the future, which will build the case for a second Basslink Interconnector. If the feasibility study stacks up, which I believe it will, then it is under these conditions that I will support a second Basslink Interconnector and greater investment in renewable energy in Tasmania. A second Basslink cable represents Tasmania's capacity to capitalise on its assets and the things it does well—clean, green, reliable energy.

The government has also assured me that it is investing in a number of other projects beyond Hydro Tasmania that can only improve energy security and decrease costs for customers. These projects include, firstly, developing an online wave energy atlas to make it easier to assess the feasibility of wave power. Secondly, it will develop consumer energy systems to provide cost-effective grid support, which will allow consumers with battery systems to support the electricity network and reduce the need for diesel-generated power in times of crisis—similar to what we saw in Tasmania last year, when a series of unfortunate events coincided, the main one being the Hodgman government's mismanagement of hydrowater reserves. Thirdly, it will develop renewable projects on King Island and Flinders Island, such as solar, PV, wind, biodiesel, combined with storage to reduce the need for diesel-generated electricity.

Tassie Hydro 2.0 has the potential to expand Tasmania's renewable energy capacity without increasing the cost to Tasmanian residents and businesses. I would like to take this time to thank the Prime Minister for listening to my representations and seeing what I see, that Tasmania is an important piece of the energy security puzzle.

My resolve to see a healthy welfare card rolled out has been strengthened after a recent visit to another trial site—Kununurra, Western Australia—during the winter break. I met with many groups and many people on the ground. I heard about the services that were made available during the trial and I saw for myself the problems that the card was designed to address. I witnessed the affect of drugs and alcohol abuse on these communities, with the lack of jobs and the lack of opportunity creating a sense of helplessness that is causing kids as young as eight to attempt suicide.

I have seen firsthand the positive difference the healthy welfare card has made. If coupled with more services, resources and jobs, the healthy welfare card could be exactly what Australia needs to break the intergenerational welfare dependency cycle—something that is unprecedented. When the Liberal government chose to run with the healthy welfare card, I was impressed. I was impressed that it put policy above politics. But as the government's popularity dropped in the polls, I could see its resolve waver. A government that is a slave to the poll is a government that lacks leadership to make real, effective change.

Many community leaders have asked for the healthy welfare card to be implemented. Those who were against a healthy welfare card are people who do not understand the impact intergenerational welfare dependency has had and the sense of hopelessness that goes along with it. Australia is on borrowed time in this area. Today, the ABC shared the story of Lockhart River Aboriginal Shire Council Mayor Wayne Butcher, who is pleading for the healthy welfare card to be implemented in his community in Queensland. He said:

The worst thing is the children are suffering. … You start to see children wandering the streets because the carers have different priorities. … We've got to remember that money is not for the parents or carers—that money belongs to the children and it needs to be spent on health and education.

Councillor Butcher's story is a familiar one, and it impacts Australians across the board, no matter what colour skin they have. I want to be clear: intergenerational welfare dependency and addiction are problems that are not isolated to Indigenous communities. The healthy welfare card must be used to break the cycle across the board. At the very least, for a starter, the healthy welfare card should be rolled out to young people under 18 on youth allowance. Not all families can teach kids how to budget, but a healthy welfare card would give these kids a head start on learning financial literacy. When you make it harder for kids to engage in underage drug and alcohol abuse, you make it easier for those people as adults to get an education, a job and a future, and you hit at the heart of organised crime—two for the price of one.

I would like to take this moment to outline my backing for a second prison in Tasmania to be established in the north of the state. The state Labor Party intends to pursue a second prison if elected in the upcoming election, and I urge my Tasmanian federal colleagues to throw their support behind their proposal. In Tasmania we have one prison, Risdon. Risdon prison is on the outskirts of Hobart in south Tasmania and is under immense pressure. Prisoners are packed in like sardines, and it is difficult for family and friends from the north of the state to easily visit. A second prison at the other end of the state would ease the pressure on Risdon, its residents and its staff. I also believe that prisoners who are surrounded by the strong support network of their family have a better chance of rehabilitating and a lower chance of reoffending.

From an economic perspective, a second prison in Tasmania would create more jobs in northern Tasmania, where the unemployment rate, as of June this year, was close to seven per cent, compared to the national average of 5.6 per cent. And don't get me started on the underemployment rate!

Since the Tasmanian Liberal government has been in power, it has undermined the interests of Tasmanians time and time again. The Tasmanian government was presented by SubPartners with an opportunity to invest in the state's economy and build the foundations for new industry in the form of a submarine fibre cable connected to the mainland. I have been told that connecting to this cable would allow existing businesses to expand and to attract large-scale data investment into Tasmania. Former CEO of TasICT Dean Winter said:

Tasmania's clean energy, skilled workforce, cool climate and low security risks are already attractive attributes …

But our downfall has always been the cost of data transfer on and off island and inadequate redundancy.

This was a $20 million down payment on the state's cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, attractiveness to investors and future economic development—a small price to pay for Tasmanian industry to participate in the 21st century. Today, ICT minister for Tasmania Michael Ferguson told the media that the cable negotiation with SubPartners had broken down, but I suspect, and probably know, there is a lot more to the story. Even if SubPartners presented a different deal from the original, as Minister Ferguson stated in the Mercury today, why didn't the government jump at the original deal instead of waiting three years? I can only assume that the Tasmanian Liberal government had no intention of allowing this idea to be a success—that the state government wanted the negotiations to fail, doing everything possible to damage the process, including not permitting negotiation until the deadline was almost past and making impossible counter-offers. This is a government that cares more about a surplus than growing its state's economy. And when I sent urgent correspondence to the Prime Minister urging him to intervene to ensure that Tasmania could participate more readily in global markets, I received no response. This is just another example of the Liberal Party's contempt for Tasmania and its residents.

The state Liberal government will go to the next election crowing that it returned the budget to surplus. Wow! Whoopy-do! At what cost? I can tell you now: the surplus came at the cost of the Tasmanian economy, the Tasmanian public health system and the Tasmanian people. I wonder if Tasmanians feel they have got any benefit from the Liberal government whatsoever. I am still hearing horror stories—and I imagine they will continue—from constituents about their encounters with Tasmania's emergency departments. Patients are still waiting too long to see specialists. The state Liberal government can do all the political spin it likes, but it has not delivered a better public health system. In fact, it's made it worse.

The Liberal government certainly hasn't gone out of its way to begin developing new industries such as data investment, which this cable would have done. There is very little evidence the Liberal government has created meaningful employment; the only growing trend is toward casual jobs. Progress is a matter not of if but of when. The cable will only be a matter of time. The Hodgman government let the window of opportunity pass and guaranteed that in the future it will cost the state a lot more.

Tasmania is at a crossroads. The Bass Strait was always intended to be part of the national highway. In 1996, then Prime Minister John Howard made this promise and implemented it: driving down the cost of crossing the Bass Strait. Business in Tasmania boomed, but since then the commitment to equalise the cost of crossing the Bass Strait has been deteriorated by successive governments, to the point where the cost of travelling across the Bass Strait by ship is prohibitive and business is strangled by freight costs. Even the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme doesn't support travel groups or north-bound transport. The sad truth of it is that the extra $200 million I got for the Freight Equalisation Scheme hasn't been touched, so there is scope now, and there is no excuse not to include north-bound and passenger travel. We need a Bass Strait solution and we need the tourists. We need a solution that will encourage greater investment in Tasmania and create greater jobs, and a solution that will support Tasmania's manufacturing industry and create new apprenticeship positions.

We are at the point where the state government needs to start thinking and saving for alternative solutions to the Spirit of Tasmania for its passenger and freight services across the Bass Strait. The industry is calling for new routes, including the often overlooked King Island. The federal opposition agreed a catamaran could be part of the Bass Strait solution when Bill Shorten supported my call for a feasibility study just over two years ago. The government supported a catamaran as a viable Bass Strait solution when Prime Minister Turnbull finally agreed to back a feasibility study and a business case in June this year. A commitment in writing earlier this year stated, 'Following a detailed request from the parties behind the proposal, the government would be in a position to commit to a business case.' If a feasibility study into utilising catamarans across the Bass Strait has industry support, federal government support and federal opposition support, what are the state Liberal government and Premier Hodgman doing? If countries all over the world are interested in and using Tasmanian catamarans, why doesn't the state government have the same enthusiasm for Tasmanian product and the jobs that are bound to follow?

I reckon the only group of Australians less trusted than bankers are politicians, but the effect of that gradual erosion of trust is serious. It has a serious effect on the ability of people in this house to make a difference. That's the reason I and others in this chamber have called for a federal ICAC since day one. I'm sorry to say it, but the reason why these political parties take money from foreign donors is the same reason why they can't be trusted to put an ICAC in place. They can't be trusted to do what's needed, because they're more interested in doing what's best for their bank balance than what's best for the country. When it blows up in their faces, they suddenly support reform.

In the meantime, every controversy garners more public support for a federal corruption watchdog. When it's a Labor politician caught up in a scandal, people don't just think, 'Better vote for the Liberals instead.' They don't hear about a Liberal caught up in a scandal and think, 'Labor's got my vote.' When it comes to even a whiff of political corruption, neither of the major parties passes the pub test. In the eyes of the public, the parties are guilty of looking after numero uno first and foremost. The average Aussie battler—pensioners, students and the unemployed—doesn't even get a look in. For too long, the major parties have been locked in a comfortable conspiracy of silence. They haven't wanted to touch the system of handling foreign donations, because they have profited from it themselves. It's a stunning example of the political elite deciding to put their political interests ahead of the national interest.

If political donations are not enough of a reason to establish a federal ICAC, former Liberal minister Bruce Billson's case might persuade you. The ABC reported just tonight that Bruce Billson was collecting a salary from a lobby group, the Franchise Council of Australia, while still a member of parliament. No wonder the public has lost trust in the political class.

The world faces big challenges right now. We need to be guided by principle now more than ever, and we need to be seen to be doing so. But instead we see politicians on both sides locked in a dirty deal where they profit from the same corrupt system, so long as nobody rocks the boat. What happened to being better? When did this job become about being less worse than the other team? A federal ICAC would not solve all the problems or reassure all the public's fears about the influence of foreign donors on the political class, but if it helps to restore confidence in the ability of politics to be a force for good in people's lives then it is worth doing, 100 per cent. That can only happen if it is given the teeth to do its job.

People all around the world are sick to death of politics and politicians. When it comes to politics, business as usual is on the nose. It is not hard to sniff out why: because the taxpayer is being played for a mug. Politics has to get its act together. How do we do that? It's simple: we introduce a federal ICAC—one that is funded adequately and appropriately, and with the powers needed to hold politicians to account once and for all. It is time to make examples. This is the only proposal that is constitutional, reasonable and effective. It would demonstrate to the public a new commitment to integrity and independence—and, by God, we need it! That is what is needed, and that is what the public deserve.