Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader (Tasmania)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) and the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia (Senator Canavan) to questions without notice asked by Senators Singh and Urquhart today relating to the distribution of GST revenue and to funding for biosecurity measures in Tasmania.

We've already given this government ample opportunities through the course of this week to rule out, once and for all, that Tasmania and South Australia have anything to fear when it comes to their contribution of the GST being cut. The question asked today by Senator Singh referred to the revised estimates report to the Tasmanian Liberal government Premier, Mr Will Hodgman, which stated that our great state of Tasmania's budget was at risk and is at risk if this federal government cuts any distribution of Tasmania's share of the GST whatsoever.

It's important that we put this into perspective. What does it really mean for the people of Tasmania? The report refers to $168 million—$168 million is what this government is planning to cut from Tasmania's budget. What that means is that more than 1,611 teachers would have to be sacked in Tasmania. Twelve primary schools would have to shut. The health and hospital system is already in crisis in Tasmania. There would have to be a cut of 1,507 nurses. That's what it would equate to. That would be the real impact on Tasmania. We know there are about 1,334 police officers on the front line that would go. These are the priorities that this government has when it comes to the people of Tasmania. We know that the Prime Minister is still hurting and that he still wants to punish Tasmanians because they didn't vote for his weak team.

But what is really so disappointing is that you have the two senators from Tasmania, Senator Abetz and Senator Bushby, who were sitting there with their heads bowed, sitting on their hands saying absolutely nothing. It's not good enough for you go back around the communities in Tasmania and say, 'No, no, we won't do this; we will cross the floor. We won't take this. It's not going to happen.' But in this place they have had the opportunity, as they do every day, to talk to the Prime Minister; to talk to the Treasurer; to talk to the finance minister, Senator Cormann; and ask them to rule out emphatically once and for all that there would be no cut to Tasmania or to South Australia. But, no, we haven't heard one word from the Tasmanian Liberals. Now we know they're weak. We know they have no influence, because neither of the two that were in the chamber supported the Prime Minister when he rolled the former Prime Minister, Mr Abbott. So Tasmania's not getting the support and certainly not getting the representation that it deserves from the Liberals.

The other important issue facing Tasmania at the moment is fruit fly. Biosecurity is so critically important to Tasmania's reputation. It's taken years and decades to build up our international and national reputation for having clean green fantastic food, fantastic wine, fantastic berries. These industries are so important to the state's economy. And what have we seen from the Liberal state government under Will Hodgman? A million dollars cut from Tasmania's biosecurity in his first budget. They have been slack. The minister's taken his eye off the ball when it comes to biosecurity in our state. As I said, this is not just about the dollars that are going to be lost to those producers and those farmers. The real impact will be on the reputation of Tasmania in markets such as Taiwan and China. They've already responded.

Only today we saw reports of how fruit fly has been found in Spreyton, another community in Tasmania that is a fruit-growing area. The impact will be devastating. I have to say the response from the state minister was pathetic. The response to the question that we asked the Minister representing the Minister for Primary Industries in the other place was terrible. This is a huge issue for Tasmania, and he wasn't briefed. He wasn't prepared to answer those questions. There's one thing the Tasmanian people can be very clear about—they cannot count on the Liberals at either a state or the federal level. (Time expired)

Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's quite encouraging that we're having this conversation in the Senate in particular today, because the Senate is where states are best represented. I note that Senator Polley is in here batting for Tasmania, and that's exactly what she should be doing as I should be in here batting for Victoria, because that's what I'm here to do. It's understandable. This is the appropriate forum to be having this discussion. However, that said, I do feel that the entire discussion about the Productivity Commission's draft report is only politically motivated. I do note that it is of course Tasmania and South Australia where we're having state elections—they are the noisy states in this particular debate.

I don't think it would come as any surprise to know that fiscal equalisation, as you well know, has been a feature of Commonwealth-state government relations since the early years of Federation. This is nothing new. Under Australia's current approach, the Commonwealth Grants Commission recommends a GST distribution to the states that provides each state with the capacity to provide its citizens with a comparable level of government services—that's what it's here to do. The current system was agreed by all states prior to the introduction to the GST in the year 2000.

In recent years, clearly, views have been put to the government that the current approach to horizontal fiscal equalisation potentially creates disincentives for reform, including reforms that enhance revenue-raising capabilities or that drive efficiencies in spending, and they argue that any gains from reform are effectively redistributed to the other states. So, in commissioning this inquiry by the Productivity Commission, the government has sought an examination of the issues that underlie those particular claims.

It's absolutely vital for Australia's future prosperity that the system that underpins the Commonwealth-state financial relations supports productivity, efficiency and economic growth across the entire country, not just in one or two specific states. Ultimately, it is all Australians that will benefit when the states actively pursue reforms that seek to improve productivity, efficiency and economic growth within their own jurisdictions. It is absolutely critical that all Australians are entirely confident that our GST-sharing arrangements are working. And the recent circumstances that have resulted in one particular state having an extremely low relativity and therefore a low share of the GST revenue have undermined faith in that GST system amongst some Australians, although, interestingly, not those that we heard from today.

That is why in April last year the Turnbull government commissioned the Productivity Commission to review Australia's system of horizontal fiscal equalisation. That particular inquiry was undertaken to find the impact on the national economy of Australia's system of horizontal fiscal equalisation, which underpins the distribution of GST.

Now the report has come back. It is a draft report only; I think that's been said at least two dozen times in the chamber in the last couple of days. The final report is due to be handed down to the government early this year. The Productivity Commission is currently consulting extensively on that particular report. The government is not ruling anything in and it's not ruling anything out. It would be foolish to do so, and the opposition knows exactly that. It would be foolish to do so. This is the normal process with any Productivity Commission report: we let the commission complete its processes and then we will discuss and consult with the relevant state and territory governments, engage with the Productivity Commission and let everyone have their say on the contents of that report.

The findings and recommendations in that report have found that the current system of GST distribution has served us very well indeed during periods when state situations are relatively similar, but it has not been able to deal with the extremes of outlier circumstances in one particular state—in particular those that have occurred recently in WA. We are the only federation in the world that takes equalisation this far and stretches the rubber band to these kinds of extremes. So the Productivity Commission has recommended revising the objective of the horizontal fiscal equalisation program from the same standard to a reasonable standard.

These recommendations are going to be considered before the government makes any recommendations whatsoever. The scare campaign that is coming from the other side of the chamber is entirely due to the upcoming state elections in both Tasmania and South Australia. I thank those opposite for their the advocacy for their states, but I find it disingenuous.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the answers by Minister Cormann and Minister Canavan—in particular, the appalling response from Minister Canavan in response to three simple questions about the fruit fly emergency that we're facing in Tasmania at the moment.

I note that in January, adult fruit flies were detected on Flinders Island, on one of the eastern islands of Tasmania and also in the north-west of Tasmania. We're getting daily reports of additional fruit flies being detected, both larvae and the adult flies.

People are still arriving in Tasmania by sea and air without biosecurity checks. There's a fruit fly emergency. We haven't had fruit flies in Tasmania until just recently, when they were found in January. This threatens the future of our state's relative pest- and disease-free status, which then affects the markets that we send our fruit and vegetables off to—particularly in Japan, China and a number of Asian countries, but all over the world.

This is a biosecurity emergency that the Tasmanian Liberal government has completely failed to provide any adequate resources for. This emergency is the latest in a chain of biosecurity disasters for Tasmania under the Liberals. We've had Norwegian salmon on supermarket shelves, blueberry rust, Pacific oyster mortality syndrome—and now a fruit fly emergency.

What was particularly appalling about Minister Canavan's response was the lack of simple information from the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. Minister Canavan responded to my first question by reading his brief word for word. My first question specifically asked about what information the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, who is responsible for biosecurity in this country, had sought about the fruit fly emergency, the consequences of the Tasmanian Liberal government cutting $1 million from that biosecurity budget and the consequences of people arriving from mainland Australia without biosecurity checks.

Minister Canavan did not dispute that the Tasmanian Liberals cut $1 million from the biosecurity budget. No, he didn't say anything about that. He didn't dispute that people are arriving in Tasmanian airports and seaports from mainland Australia without adequate security checks. He just read the lines. At one point I heard him say that there is well-established monitoring in Tasmania. I pay tribute to the hardworking men, women and dogs from Biosecurity Tasmania, but to say that there is well-established monitoring does not specifically answer the question about how the crisis is being handled in Tasmania.

As I explained to the chamber in my question, people are still arriving in Tasmania by sea and air without those biosecurity checks. Last week I attended a Senate inquiry in Melbourne. When I flew back into Devonport on Thursday afternoon there was no-one at Devonport airport undertaking any biosecurity checks—not one person, not a sniffer dog—in the middle of a fruit fly emergency and at the one airport that's actually within the control zone. How is that allowed to happen? How can that happen?

It's clear that the Tasmanian Liberal government are out of depth in protecting Tasmania's interests. Again, the Tasmanian Liberals are not communicating with their colleagues, otherwise Minister Canavan would have been able to answer the questions that I asked. Labor, on the other hand, has a very strong relationship between federal and state branches of our party. I know that our Tasmanian shadow minister for primary industries, Mr Shane Broad, and the member for Braddon, Justine Keay, are working hard on consulting with industry and holding the weak Tasmanian Liberal government to account.

My second question to Minister Canavan requested information on whether the Tasmanian Liberal government had made any representations to the Australian government for additional support for the fruit fly biosecurity emergency. Just as he had read the brief, word for word, for the first question, his complete nonanswer to the second question demonstrated that the Tasmanian Liberals have not picked up the phone and not put pen to paper to get the Australian government involved. If they had have done then it would have been contained in the brief that he referred to.

The Tasmanian Liberals have failed business, failed the community and failed our farmers. Their budget cuts to vital biosecurity services, coupled with the ridiculously slow place of their response to this emergency and not ensuring we have biosecurity checks at our airports at the most vulnerable time, is incomprehensible. (Time expired)

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Clearly there is an election in the air in both Tasmania and South Australia, because all we hear from the other side are scare campaigns to try and convince the voters in those states to vote for the Labor Party. Let's take the example of fruit fly. If you believe the senator opposite in the contribution that she just made, it is the presence of a Liberal government in Tasmania that has caused a fruit fly emergency. Heaven forbid she should look at South Australia where there's a Labor government!

At the moment, unfortunately, despite the best efforts of state and federal governments, Queensland fruit fly has been detected in the Riverland, in the pest-free area. That hasn't triggered an outbreak, but one of our trading partners—Indonesia—has expressed concerns, and that's resulted in new biosecurity measures being required before we can export there. So we're working to try and get that status, as a fruit-fly- pest-free area, restored.

There was also an outbreak of Mediterranean fruit fly in February in Adelaide, in the suburbs. We've implemented in South Australia the eradication in accordance with the codes of practice. But what I'm getting at is that they choose to ignore an outbreak in South Australia, where there's a Labor government, and they talk only about an outbreak in Tasmania, because there happens to be a Liberal government there, rather than accepting that this is a fact of agriculture in Australia and that we have a program at both federal and state level, regardless of who is in power, to empower our agencies to take measures to reduce the risk of fruit fly infection or the occurrence of an outbreak.

We've already committed some $200 million extra to building a better biosecurity system, through the Agricultural competitiveness white paper. As a result, the total expenditure for biosecurity this financial year is $752.7 million. That's a 25 per cent increase in this area since the coalition came to power here in Canberra. I'd encourage people who are listening to this debate to realise that much of what they're hearing from the Labor Party is purely a scare campaign and it ignores the realities.

When it comes to South Australia and GST, the Labor Party again is trying to launch a scare campaign that some change is coming to the GST and that South Australia is going to be worse off. In South Australia, ever since the scheme started in 2000, there has been a trend upwards in the amount of GST we have received. From 2013, when the coalition came to power, the amount of GST in South Australia has continued to increase. The state government is receiving more money through the GST than it's ever had. The question South Australians should be asking is: with this money coming from the GST rolling into the state, how well is the state government spending it?

There are a few good examples that people should be looking at and asking questions of Premier Weatherill and his government as to whether he has made good use of that money. They should be asking why, in the middle of the blackout in South Australia, when all the lights went out, he didn't work with Alinta—who had highlighted the risk of blackouts, the risk of not investing in baseload power, and had asked for a contribution by the state government of just over $20 million to keep the Port Augusta power plant operating—and instead Premier Weatherill pursued what he calls his great big experiment of renewable energies. We ended up in a situation where the government came up, after that blackout, with a plan to spend $550 million, and hundreds of millions of dollars of that was on diesel generators—diesel generators!

Look at Transforming Health. Transforming Health has resulted in a huge amount of expenditure in South Australia, including the world's most expensive hospital. And yet we are hearing from health professionals that the level of health care available to South Australians is decreasing both in quality and in scope. The very basis that was used by then Minister Snelling to justify that expenditure—mortalities in care—has been shown to be flawed and false. Here is a government that, driven by ideology rather than science, is wasting the GST that is going to South Australia. On 17 March the people of South Australia have a very clear choice. If you want a strong government for a strong future, vote for Steven Marshall and the Liberal Party.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers provided by Senator Cormann to my questions asking him to rule out any changes to the GST distribution to South Australia and Tasmania. Today he certainly refused to rule that out or answer the questions, even though this was yet another opportunity for him to do so. He's been given several opportunities this week by other South Australian and Tasmanian senators on this side of the chamber, and today he had yet another.

We know that Treasurer Scott Morrison used the cover of the summer break to announce that the Turnbull government had extended the deadline—this is a very important point that some government senators seem to forget—for the Productivity Commission inquiry's report into the economic impact of horizontal fiscal equalisation from January to 15 May. That ensured that this really important report would be delayed until after both the South Australian and the Tasmanian elections. That was a decision made by the Turnbull Liberal government to clearly show that, between now and then, in both Tasmania and South Australia, we will not know the size of the intentions of the Turnbull government to change our horizontal fiscal equalisation distribution of the GST. They buried this report until after the elections because they cannot guarantee to the people of Tasmania whether we will be worse off.

What we know, though, is that with the Turnbull government's changes to the GST distribution scenario, Tasmanians will be worse off. I asked a question today and referred to the Tasmanian Treasury's Revised estimates report, which lists the Turnbull government's proposed changes to the GST formula as a major risk to the Tasmanian state budget. I quote: 'Tasmania's share of the GST could fall by $168 million.' On top of that, the Productivity Commission's interim report shows that GST revenue for South Australia could fall by $557 million.

To the senators opposite who think this is some kind of election ploy, it is all happening on your side. You're the ones keeping Tasmanians and South Australians in the dark. This report was supposed to be handed down in January. We would then go to the state election knowing full well what the Turnbull Liberal government had proposed for the bottom line in Tasmania's budget and, indeed, also in South Australia's budget. But, no, they have decided to instead help the Liberal Party in Tasmania win the election on a false promise. In doing so, they have avoided the necessary scrutiny. Tasmanian voters have the right to know before they go to the polls on 3 March.

We won't give up on this. We won't give up on the way that the Turnbull Liberal government is trying to hide, obfuscate and hoodwink the Tasmanian electorate on this. This is fundamentally important. We talk about horizontal fiscal equalisation. It's something that John Howard certainly supported. He didn't touch it in the way that the Turnbull Liberal government is doing. All week, my Tasmanian colleagues have been interrogating the Liberal leadership in both houses on their plans, but what we haven't heard is anything from the Tasmanian Liberal senators. They have been completely quiet on this issue. Where are they in standing up for Tasmania, Tasmania's revenue and a fair share of revenue from the federal government? Absolutely silent. Tasmania's Leader of the Opposition, Rebecca White, has been doing everything she can since the Treasurer first proposed these changes and will continue to do so, to fight for Tasmania's share of the GST and ensure that our schools and hospitals are funded adequately. (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Polley be agreed to.

Question agreed to.