James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the front page of today's Courier Mail is a very alarming story that should concern every Queenslander as it is a bloody attack on democracy and free speech in Queensland. It's an attack that affects all 577 local government councillors and mayors across Queensland. The article reports how the Mayor of the Barcaldine Regional Council, Councillor Sean Dillon, is under investigation by the Orwellian Office of the Independent Assessor for comments he made at a council meeting back in February when he questioned the logistics of the vaccine rollout in rural communities. The council was discussing the Central West Hospital and Health Service, a division of Queensland Health, and its plan to vaccinate entire rural towns through one of its visits.

To paraphrase the conversation, Councillor Dillon rightly raised his concerns about the Central West Hospital and Health Service's ability to vaccinate a majority of locals in the limited time. He raised particular concerns for individuals who had mobility issues or those who were unable to attend the local hall. Councillor Dillon was concerned that the health service probably hadn't considered those particular residents. Moreover, he lacked confidence in their ability to advertise the visits and was concerned about the logistical challenges of administering the jabs to the entire community. He said: 'Someone thinking they are going to do it in one pass is someone who has got no idea of regional Queensland. It's simply not going to work.'

The OIA—the gestapo of local government in Queensland—is alleging that Councillor Dillon made comments that could be considered detrimental to public confidence in a health service provider and lead agency in the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program in the region. It alleges Councillor Dillon has been reasonably suspected of inappropriate conduct for making statements in a public forum that are not in the best interests of the community. The last time I checked one of the primary roles of local government councillors is to raise concerns on behalf of their local community. Indeed, if councillors and mayors are not raising concerns on behalf of their local community, they are not doing their jobs. So I say well done to Councillor Dillon. I say well done to all councillors and all mayors across Queensland, regardless of your political colour, for continuing to stand up for your local communities. The comments made were undoubtedly valid concerns of the local community. So the mayor is simply being investigated for doing his job.

I spoke this morning to Councillor Dillon. He is expecting that the sandal-wearing jobsworths in the OIA will sack him. I've also spoken to the LGAQ, who are prepared to go to the High Court over this bloody attack on freedom of speech. This investigation is a blatant attack by the Queensland government on free speech. The OIA acts with minimal oversight or review and is used for nothing more than whipping up frivolous complaints that take an inordinate amount of time to investigate and cost local councils and local ratepayers thousands of dollars to defend. So who is watching the watchdog? We have had the CCC Logan case and now we have the Office of the Independent Assessor or, as The Courier Mail rather amusingly calls them, the 'office of idiot actions'.

As a senator, I speak to lots of councillors and mayors across Queensland, and here are some of the concerns from councillors. Investigations take too long. Many go for two years, and the office of independent assessment has no benchmark or timeliness for reporting. Not enough frivolous or vexatious complaints get knocked out at the assessment stage. Trivial matters like people being blocked on the council Facebook page for making derogatory comments end up going through the OIA and sent back to council to deal with. Both sides lawyer up and it costs councils thousands and thousands of dollars to deal with the complaint, not to mention the time it takes away from councils and councillors when they want to be dealing with the real issues in their communities. Councillors who have had their cases dismissed still end up being publicly reported on a register.

Despite this gestapo organisation only starting back in December 2018, some matters go back almost a decade. The state government will say they are independent, which is a cop-out. They were established by the state government, by legislative amendments in the Local Government Act, with very little, if any, oversight. They are nothing more than a self-serving money pit who go around the state whipping up complaints. They told one council that it wasn't a good thing that there were no complaints being made in that area because people obviously didn't know about the OIA or how to make a complaint.

This mob need to be reined in, they need more oversight in the legislation or, ideally, they actually should be abolished. Councillors are now afraid to make decisions or talk about issues in their community, and that is what they were elected to do. Councils are the most local form of government. They are the ones closest to the community. We need to be supporting councils, not making it tougher for people to stand up and be elected representatives in their local areas. Not only were Counsellor Dillon's concerns valid but this latest fiasco is yet another example of Palaszczuk turning Queensland into a nanny state.

Talking about Palaszczuk, whose state Labor government continues to fail regional Queensland, I want to talk about Paradise Dam. Every sitting fortnight I talk about Paradise Dam because state Labor are doing nothing about it. Unfortunately for the farmers affected by what is effectively a neutron bomb that has gone off in Wide Bay-Burnett with the destruction of Paradise Dam through the lowering of its wall, there is no good news. Do you know what is left for the farmers in Wide Bay-Burnett to do? Just pray for rain. That is what's left in Queensland: praying for rain. They don't build dams under state Labor; they just pray for rain. I say well done to Tom Marland from Marland Law, who is leading the Paradise Dam class action. He said:

With such low water allocations and no certainty about the future of the dam, farmers are left with few options but to pray for rain to keep their crops alive.

Shame on state Labor for doing that.

Everybody here knows that I am a big fan of the ABC. I believe that the best friend you can ever have is an honest friend, and I am very honest about the ABC. I have previously talked about my reform program for the ABC, but clearly the ABC aren't listening. So I am calling upon the minister for communications to commission a commission of inquiry into whether there is a need for public broadcasting in Australia, with specific reference to the ABC, its operation and its charter.

The ABC is like a lost teenager, aimlessly floating through time and trying to find itself, unperturbed by authority, yet infatuated with its own self-importance. In the absence of any serious review over the previous decades, the ABC has evolved into a self-serving bureaucracy that is out of touch with many Australians and that costs the Australian taxpayers $1.1 billion a year. After all, since the 1930s, when the ABC was first created, it has never been beyond the reproach of government review or reform, so why should it be now? That's why we need the urgent commission of an inquiry into public broadcasting and the ABC. In particular, we need to determine the ABC's applicability in the 21st century, with reference to how large the national broadcaster should be and to what extent they should compete in the modern media market. The review must define what is and what is not acceptable by a public broadcaster which effectively upholds the Australian taxpayer as a beneficiary of the ABC.

The review will need to accommodate for the ABC charter to be reformed to make it fit for purpose. In doing so, the review can serve as a mechanism to cut through the bureaucracy and minimise any waste of taxpayers' money. Refining the scope of the ABC's operations will promote strict purpose metrics that will demand compliance and mitigate any existing lack of priority for everyday Australians. Any aspect of the ABC's operation that falls outside these purpose metrics should be consolidated, privatised or cease operating.

There is a lot of discussion in this building and in the other place about net zero emissions by 2050. Last night, I talked about why we should build the Tully Millstream hydroelectric scheme. But if you're really serious about net zero emissions by 2050, we should have nuclear power in Australia. Back in 2019, the member for Hinkler and I wrote to the Prime Minister calling for an inquiry into nuclear energy in Australia. Now, as we are building a roadmap to net zero emissions by 2050, I am calling upon the government to make sure that nuclear energy is part of that roadmap. We've got a third of the world's uranium and we are geologically stable. It is in our national interest to make sure that we have nuclear energy in this country to provide affordable, cheap and reliable power as part of our energy mix.