2010-02-09
42
1
7
REPS
0
0
2010-02-09
The SPEAKER (Mr Harry Jenkins) took the chair at 2 pm and read prayers.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
811
14:00:00
Questions Without Notice
Climate Change
811
14:00:00
811
Abbott, Tony, MP
EZ5
Warringah
LP
Leader of the Opposition
0
Mr ABBOTT
—My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to comments by the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change—
HVP
Perrett, Graham, MP
Mr Perrett
—Did you iron that shirt, Tony?
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order!
Honourable members interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The Leader of the Opposition has the call.
EZ5
Abbott, Tony, MP
Mr ABBOTT
—I refer the Prime Minister to comments by the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change on ABC radio this morning regarding the drycleaner I visited yesterday, who has been excluded from the government’s emissions trading compensation scheme. I quote:
Costs faced by such a business will be passed through in the prices of that dry cleaning business and consumers will meet the cost.
So I ask the Prime Minister: does he agree with his minister’s admission that costs for small businesses and consumers will rise as a direct consequence of his great big new tax on everything?
811
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—My position on this is no different to that of John Winston Howard, who said exactly the same. That is, if you impose a price on carbon what happens is it actually has an effect on prices in the economy. The question therefore is: how do you actually compensate? We in our scheme provide compensation directly through for consumers who have any pass-through price effect and, secondly, for businesses themselves we have a $1.97 billion Climate Change Adjustment Program fund, $200 million of which is available for small businesses. That is our policy. It is very clear, because we are putting a cap on carbon, we are charging the big polluters and we are also providing compensation for families. With your policy there is no cap on carbon, you are not charging the polluters and you are putting one huge slug on the taxpayers for a completely unfunded policy.
National Security
811
811
14:03:00
Symon, Mike, MP
HW8
Deakin
ALP
1
Mr SYMON
—My question is to the Prime Minister. What is the Australian government doing to strengthen aviation security?
811
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—I thank the honourable member for his question. There can be no higher priority for a national government than the security of the country: protecting the country and protecting its citizens. National security has always been a priority of this government and those which have preceded it and those which will succeed it. For an island nation like Australia, aviation security is a particularly important part of our national security challenge. Australians love to travel and they rightly expect that the government will be doing all that they physically can to keep the travelling public safe.
The United States experienced an attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day on Northwest Airlines flight 253. It was a cold reminder to us all that no nation can afford to be complacent when it comes to security. Following the attack I directed the National Security Adviser to launch an immediate review of Australia’s aviation security arrangements. This review examined the implications of that attack for Australia’s aviation security arrangements in the field. This review has concluded and has finalised as a matter of urgency and provided advice to the National Security Committee of Cabinet. Based on those findings the government has today decided to implement several significant upgrades to Australia’s aviation security arrangements, which will have implications in part for the Australian travelling public.
Today the government has announced a four-year $200 million strategy to boost Australia’s aviation security. It includes, firstly, increased passenger and baggage screening measures. These include body scanners, next generation multiview X-ray machines and bottle scanners capable of detecting liquid based explosives. The strategy includes, secondly, increased screening at regional airports, including explosives trace detection and metal detectors; thirdly, 50 per cent more firearms and explosives detection dogs at major international airports; fourthly, stronger international engagement and securing last ports of call to Australia; fifthly, a stronger air cargo supply chain through a number of screening measures and the introduction of a regulated shippers scheme; and, sixthly, enhanced systems to improve analysis of passenger information and to screen visa applicants for national security risks.
Australia already has a world-class aviation security regime but today’s announcement is about how we enhance that regime even further for the future. This may mean it takes longer for passengers to pass through security, but the government believes that this inconvenience is a small price to pay for increased security. Even with these changes there is always a risk that the methods and tactics of terrorists will change and evolve. That is why the government will continue to review on a rolling basis the upgrade of airport security arrangements. No government can guarantee that it will stop every terrorist attack but we will continue to do everything reasonably within our power to prevent attacks in the future.
We will increase passenger and baggage screening measures, as I outlined before. There will be, as I noted before, an increase in the number of passengers who will be subject to explosives trace detection at our major international and domestic airports. The government will assist the industry to introduce as soon as practicable a range of new screening technologies at passenger screening points. These will include the latest body scanners, next generation multiview X-ray machines and bottle scanners capable of detecting liquid based explosives. Body scanners will be progressively operational as an additional screening measure at screening points servicing international departing passengers by early 2010. The government understands the privacy concerns some travellers may have with body-scanning technologies and will implement appropriate privacy and facilitation measures to mitigate these concerns.
The government will also bring forward screening at a number of additional regional airports served by larger passenger turboprop aircraft. This will provide funding to regional airports to provide equipment for passenger and baggage screening, including explosive trace detection. We have also announced today measures concerning policing at airports, including the explosives detection dogs that I referred to earlier, and the strengthening of international cooperation, particularly in terms of those countries of origin or so-called last ports of call to Australia. The initiatives announced in relation to the air cargo supply chain are also important given its vital link to the overall security fabric of our airports. Finally, there is enhanced data analysis. If there is one thing which has emerged from the events in the United States on 25 December it is that we should make sure that when data is in the system it is properly collated, coordinated and passed to action points within the security system. For those reasons we have also taken further measures in this respect as well.
Recent events have shown that terrorists and terrorist organisations are now trying new techniques and strategies in their efforts to target innocent people. Although no single measure can prevent a terrorist attack, new technologies, better training and greater cooperation with other governments can help us stay one step ahead of terrorist organisations. It is vital that we remain vigilant and take those steps that are necessary to protect Australian citizens at home and abroad.
Emissions Trading Scheme
813
813
14:08:00
Ciobo, Steven, MP
00AN0
Moncrieff
LP
0
Mr CIOBO
—My question is to the Minister for Sport. I refer the minister to the Nottinghill Pinewood Tennis Club in Glen Waverley in Melbourne, which currently spends over $9,000 a year on electricity costs. Is the minister aware that according to the government’s own Treasury modelling the tennis club faces a 57 per cent increase in electricity costs by 2015 and a 120 per cent increase in electricity costs by 2020 thanks to the government’s emissions trading scheme? What compensation will the minister provide to the Nottinghill Pinewood Tennis Club, and to the many thousands of sporting clubs throughout Australia that face a doubling of electricity prices because of the government’s great big new tax?
813
Ellis, Kate, MP
DZU
Adelaide
ALP
Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare and Youth and Minister for Sport
1
Ms KATE ELLIS
—I thank the shadow minister for youth and sport for his first question in his portfolio and say that it is very important to all of us on this side of the House that we ensure that sport is accessible and remains accessible to the Australian community. We know how important it is as part of our preventative health agenda. We want to see more Australians getting out there and active within the community. This is why we were delighted within the last 12 months to be able to inject over $300 million into community sporting facilities, which is a record injection from a federal government at this level.
With regard to his question about the impact of climate change, I would remind the shadow minister opposite of the $200 million which we have put in a fund to ensure that we will be able to help the Australian community deal with this. In contrast to this, there is nothing offered by those on the other side. They are quite prepared to sit back and watch as Australian sporting facilities suffer the consequences they are currently suffering as a result of water shortages and temperature rises forcing changes to competition. Australian sport is already being hit by climate change. We on this side of the House are making sure that that is addressed, and addressed responsibly. I would urge those opposite to get on board.
National Security
813
813
14:11:00
Bevis, Arch, MP
ET4
Brisbane
ALP
1
Mr BEVIS
—My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. How is the government implementing the aviation security initiatives which were announced in the aviation white paper on 16 December last year?
813
Albanese, Anthony, MP
R36
Grayndler
ALP
Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government
1
Mr ALBANESE
—I thank the member for Brisbane for his question. He, of course, has an ongoing interest in these issues. In December last year I launched Australia’s first ever national aviation policy white paper, Flight path to the future. It had in it some 130 recommendations and we are rolling out many of those today with regard to safety and security. As the incident involving Northwest Airlines flight 253 shows, we need to continue to be vigilant when it comes to ensuring that governments will field their responsibility to do everything in their power to secure the safety of the travelling public. Today’s announcement certainly does that, with $200 million committed to improvements in aviation security.
This is a comprehensive approach. It deals with the increase in passenger and baggage screening, including, of course, the introduction of new technology such as body screeners. We are committed to proper consultations with industry and with the privacy commissioner. They will be involved in the rollout of these which we consider, in the first instance, will be rolled out for secondary screening at the major international airports. We will also be doubling the use of ETDs at airports. We will also be securing our air cargo with $54 million to make sure that our air cargo security is uplifted.
With regard to international cooperation, there are a number of measures. We will double the amount of work that we do at last ports of call, identifying on the basis of risk what those last ports are and ensuring that Australia has a presence and an auditing role in ensuring that we do what we can offshore to ensure that Australian travellers who use those airports can use them safely. We will also be increasing our presence internationally at a number of locations. We will be conducting a trial with the United Kingdom, an issue I raised with the Secretary of State for Transport, Lord Adonis, in December last year in London. We also raised issues with Janet Lute from the United States administration in a meeting I had with her earlier this year, and we will be having a trial of the use of new technology with regard to liquids, aerosols and gels.
We will be bringing forward the announcement that we made in the white paper for regional screening at airports to 2012, and the government will be providing some $32 million in funds for capital equipment related to that and to an expansion of the use of explosive detection devices in those airports. Previously, we had quite an irrational position. Whether screening was required was based upon the propulsion of an aircraft, not based upon the weight of an aircraft. That is not a sensible position in moving forward, so from July 10 the specific weight will be 30,000 kilograms. From 2012 that will be brought down to 20,000 kilograms. The issue of safety and security at our regional airports has been around for a long time. This government is acting.
We are also increasing by 50 per cent the presence of dogs at our airports. We know that feds, as they are called, are particularly good at both detection and deterrence. The increased AFP presence, which will be looked after by the Minister for Home Affairs, will be a substantial move forward in conjunction with the Australian Federal Police.
The government will also be reintroducing, when the Senate resits, the regulations that were disallowed last year and, because of the disallowance, there is self-regulation as to who goes into a cockpit of an aircraft. The government believes that it is appropriate that the only people who should be in an aircraft’s cockpit are there for operational reasons. We will be seeking to reintroduce these regulations into the Senate. I call upon the Leader of the Opposition to support these sensible regulations because we will need a majority of the Senate’s support just to have them introduced. In 2010, when it comes to aviation security, it simply is the case—regardless of the noise from the National Party over there—that we have moved beyond self-regulation. We need to move forward and not look backwards. These sensible regulations should be supported in the Senate when they are reintroduced.
Economy
814
814
14:17:00
Tuckey, Wilson, MP
SJ4
O’Connor
LP
0
Mr TUCKEY
—My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister agree with Australian Food and Grocery Council that the cost of the average household supermarket trolley of fresh and manufactured food products will increase because of the government’s emissions trading scheme by $520 a year unless 300,000 relatively well-paid Australian workers are sacked and all such goods are imported from low-cost countries like China? Why is the government putting jobs of overseas workers ahead of jobs in Australia?
815
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—I thank very much the rehabilitation of the member for O’Connor because he is back in harness. It is good to have him back fully engaged in the deliberations of the parliament. His question asked about the priority of jobs relative to other government measures. That was how he concluded his question, so let me go to that. I simply say this: today we had the Leader of the Opposition out there saying that keeping Australia out of recession was a big waste of money or words to that effect. I will let him justify exactly what he meant by that. When it comes to protecting Australian jobs, can I say to the member for O’Connor that the first priority we had, and not supported by him and other members opposite, was to back the national economic stimulus strategy. By keeping Australia out of recession the government’s priority has been to protect Australian jobs—hundreds of thousands of them. Had we taken his advice and the Leader of the Opposition’s advice and not brought forward the national economic stimulus strategy, we know from our own Treasury modelling that Australia would now be in recession. Furthermore, we also know that we would have put at risk 200,000 Australian jobs. The member for O’Connor asked a question about the priority which the government attaches to jobs. That is it. On the question of the impact of consumer price on the CPRS, I draw his attention to my earlier statements.
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
815
Distinguished Visitors
815
14:19:00
SPEAKER, The
10000
PO
N/A
1
0
The SPEAKER
—Before calling the member for Parramatta, I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of a delegation led by the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Mr Pascal Lamy, who is in Australia to discuss developments on the Doha trade talks. On behalf of the House I extend a very warm welcome to our visitors.
Honourable members—Hear, hear!
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
815
Questions Without Notice
Economy
815
815
14:21:00
Owens, Julie, MP
E09
Parramatta
ALP
1
Ms OWENS
—My question is to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Why is it essential that proposals for new government spending be offset by savings?
815
Tanner, Lindsay, MP
YU5
Melbourne
ALP
Minister for Finance and Deregulation
1
Mr TANNER
—I thank the member for Parramatta for her question. It is critical that new spending proposals be offset by savings in order to ensure we get the budget back into surplus as quickly as possible. That is why the government, in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook papers that were published at the end of last year, had savings that covered all of the new spending initiatives that had been announced close to the budget last year. That is why we will be doing the same thing in this forthcoming budget for any new spending that occurs prior to the budget, and that is why we will be having savings in that budget that also cover the prospective new commitments.
We have heard a great deal of ranting and raving from the opposition about the evils of deficits in recent times but sadly we have not had the same degree of fiscal discipline coming from them. In fact we have had not one single savings measure put forward by the opposition in spite of the ever-growing list of big unfunded spending promises—including in more recent times, of course, a new climate change policy costing $3.3 billion over the next four years; $3 billion or so on the Murray-Darling Basin; and, just today being trailed in the media, the prospect of a bigger, bolder parental leave scheme, being funded by the opposition from who knows where.
Since the election in 2007 we have had endless announcements of new spending but not a single savings proposal from the opposition. I am now on to my fourth shadow finance minister, and the first three are all back in the pavilion with ducks beside their names on the scoreboard. Now Barnaby is at the crease and we are waiting to see what he produces. I note that he is now attracting derision even from his own side. The member for Mayo said today when he slipped up on some numbers in a doorstop interview, ‘Oh, no; I’ve done a Barnaby.’ So soon we are going to have a new noun in the Macquarie dictionary as a result of this.
Perhaps somewhat more seriously there was something else said about fiscal responsibility in an interview today—and it was indeed something said by Senator Joyce, the shadow finance minister. He spoke about the alleged evils of government debt and he said:
We are getting to a point where we cannot repay it.
That means that he is asserting on behalf of the opposition that Australia is on the verge of defaulting on its debts. He is not content with alleging that the United States might default or indeed that the Australian state governments might default, which he did a couple of months ago; he is now suggesting that Australia might default on its debts. Statements of this kind indicate why an Abbott-led opposition, the Liberal opposition as it is currently constituted, is a giant risk to the Australian economy and to the future prosperity of Australia working people and the reputation of Australia.
At the time of the change of leadership in the Liberal Party at the end of last year, a lot was said about the Liberal Party reconnecting with its support base. The Leader of the Opposition may have reconnected them with the conspiracy theorists, the haters and the science deniers out there but there is another Liberal support base out there, another much larger Liberal support base—that is, a very large number of good, honest, prudent, hardworking people in the towns and cities of this country who, rightly or wrongly, for many years have voted Liberal because they believe that the Liberal Party are sound economic managers. Those people were supported by the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth—who yesterday spoke eloquently about the kind of concerns that he has. It is those Liberal supporters who are being completely betrayed by the Leader of the Opposition, who has said that he is bored by economics and has handed over economic policy and economic management to the outer fringes of the National Party. It is those loyal Liberal voters who will understand why it is a giant risk to Australia to put the Leader of the Opposition and the Liberal Party in charge of the nation’s finances.
Electricity Prices
816
816
14:25:00
Abbott, Tony, MP
EZ5
Warringah
LP
0
Mr ABBOTT
—My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the 87 per cent increase in the number of Western Australians who cannot pay their electricity bills after a 26 per cent price increase this year. I also refer him to the further 19 per cent increase, on Treasury’s own figures, coming down the pipeline as a result of his great big new tax. I ask the Prime Minister: will he apologise to those 77,000 Western Australians who already cannot pay their bills for threatening to make their lives worse? And will he now admit that his emissions trading scheme will not work and drop the whole idea?
816
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—I welcome the question from the Leader of the Opposition. I have a very good working relationship with the Liberal Premier of Western Australia but this is the first time in this House that I have been asked to be accountable for his actions. I would just—
Opposition members interjecting—
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—The last time I looked there was not at present a carbon pollution reduction scheme in operation, therefore the Leader of the Opposition’s question goes to electricity prices already announced by the Liberal government of Western Australia—and apparently I am responsible for that! As a matter of basic logic I would suggest to the Leader of the Opposition that he might reflect further on his question.
9V5
Pyne, Chris, MP
Mr Pyne
—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order going to relevance. The Prime Minister was asked about what he is responsible for, which is the 19 per cent Treasury estimate of the increase in electricity prices. That is what he was asked about and he should not dissemble that—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat and he will not debate his point of order.
EZ5
Abbott, Tony, MP
Mr Abbott
—Mr Speaker, further to the point of order: he is responsible for making a bad situation worse.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. The Leader of the Opposition knows that the opportunity under our standing orders to raise a point of order is not an opportunity to enter into debate. The Prime Minister has the call.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—I am sure Colin will be pleased to know that the decisions he is taking about the electricity industry are judged by the Leader of the Opposition here as bad decisions. I am sure Eric Ripper will have fun with that one in the Western Australian parliament when it convenes on these matters. The Leader of the Opposition talked about the impact on gas and electricity prices. They have been the subject of detailed responses by me and other ministers here at the dispatch box based on the Treasury modelling. On the question of the impact on prices, there is one key element missing in this whole debate—that is, the hidden pricing regime of those opposite. When Senator Joyce, who has been the subject of some discussion in recent days, was asked about the impact of what would happen to the opposition penalties regime for non-compliant businesses he indicated that those penalties would apply to business. And if penalties are applied to business as a cost to business then guess what happens? The prices get passed on to consumers. That is the hidden penalty price regime contained in their policy—
9V5
Pyne, Chris, MP
Mr Pyne
—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Clearly the Prime Minister is not entitled to answer an entirely different question. It is your job to make sure the parliament is not held in disrepute and you should—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Prime Minister understands that he must relate the material to the question.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—Thank you, Mr Speaker. The question went to the impact on electricity prices and went to recent decisions by the WA government prior to any passage by this parliament of any emissions trading scheme. I will just repeat that to go back to the basic logical flaw in the question. Secondly, our position in terms of the impact on electricity prices is clear, it is documented, it is on the public record and we have said it day after day. What has not been clear on the part of those opposite is the hidden penalties regime buried within their own scheme. They say that, if you breach so-called business as usual, then businesses unspecified in number will be penalised. When asked what the financial penalty is, they run and they hide and they do not say what it is. But there are three questions which arise here: how many businesses, how big is the penalty and where does the compensation lie?
Emissions Trading Scheme
818
818
14:31:00
Bradbury, David, MP
HVW
Lindsay
ALP
1
Mr BRADBURY
—My question is to the Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science and Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change. What is the most efficient and cost-effective way to take action on climate change?
818
Combet, Greg, MP
YW6
Charlton
ALP
Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science and Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change
1
Mr COMBET
—I thank the member for Lindsay for his question. The most efficient and the most cost-effective way to combat climate change is to implement an emissions trading scheme. It is demonstrably the sound economic approach to reducing emissions, and that is the government’s policy. In contrast, the coalition’s policy will not work. The Department of Climate Change, of course, has modelled that under their policy emissions will rise by 13 per cent over 2000 levels by 2020. In addition to that, we know that their policy will cost more. The scheme will have a greater fiscal impact than they have stated. In addition, we know that taxpayers will pay, not the emitters of carbon pollution, and all the costs are going to be on the budget. It is going to put pressure on to force up taxes.
On that front, we know that their policy is not funded. But now we are learning even more from other analyses of their policy. This is what Mr David Pearce, the director of the Centre for International Economics who last year conducted a review of greenhouse policy for the coalition, had to say. It was reported in the Financial Review yesterday:
… the apparent simplicity of the coalition plan would soon disappear if it were ever implemented … The cost of the scheme could also rise significantly once details such as penalties and assignment of risk were taken into account …
So an expert that the coalition have relied upon in the climate change policy area is saying that their plan is too complex, it is incomplete and the costs will go up. Yesterday, in addition, as the Prime Minister just adverted to, Senator Joyce again was out there saying that business will be subject to unspecified penalties, but he has no idea what the penalties will be, how they will be applied or who is going to be liable for them, and no-one in the business community has any idea whatsoever what costs they are going to have to meet. Talk about business uncertainty! It is a policy for chaos.
Just before question time, a fresh analysis of coalition policy was issued by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. They have done an analysis of the opposition policy. They have estimated that the opposition climate plan ‘would result in an average carbon price of $64 per tonne over four years’, compared to a carbon price under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme of only $14 a tonne. Part of their reasoning for that analysis, which is quite a stunning assessment of the cost of their policy, is that the CPRS will be more cost effective because it is a market based mechanism. Is it any wonder the business community is running away from you? You are creating uncertainty and cost, and it will affect investment and jobs.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The minister will refer his marks through the chair.
YW6
Combet, Greg, MP
Mr COMBET
—Mr Page from the Energy Supply Association of Australia said this last Friday of the Leader of the Opposition’s policy:
We are still not quite sure how an investor in new generation would make a decision about what technology and what fuel source to use.
But I can tell you one thing—they will not be thinking about algae fired power stations like you are.
The business community is being left with anticipated cost increases and tremendous burdens, and it will have the effect of deferring investment. As the Prime Minister said, these costs will be passed through in higher prices, and yet from the hypocrites that the opposition are there is no compensation and no assistance for pensioners and households to meet those increased costs.
Could there be a greater hypocrisy than the member for Menzies rising yesterday out of feigned concern for a maritime worker facing rising costs of living? The entirety of their attack is totally phoney. Their position is phoney. They will be putting up costs and there is no assistance for households and consumers to meet it. The only person on that side of the House in recent times to stand up, say what is right and say what is in the national interest, to his credit, was the member for Wentworth in his address yesterday to the parliament on the CPRS legislation. This is what he had to say:
In short, having the government pay for emissions abatement, as opposed to the polluting industries themselves, is a slippery slope which can only result in higher taxes …
And that is an accurate observation of your policy. The member for Wentworth went on to say this in referring to the CPRS legislation:
This legislation is the only policy on offer which can credibly enable us to meet our commitment to a five per cent cut to emissions by 2020 …
I would like to acknowledge the contribution by the member for Wentworth and sincerely so because he stood up under a lot of pressure. It cost him his job as Leader of the Opposition. He was taken out because of his stance, his respect for the science and his acceptance that the best way to reduce emissions in an economy is an emissions trading scheme. The new Leader of the Opposition would do well to take a leaf out of his booklet.
Electricity Prices
819
819
14:37:00
Hunt, Gregory, MP
00AMV
Flinders
LP
0
Mr HUNT
—My question is to the Minister for Sport. I refer to the minister’s previous answer about a 120 per cent increase in electricity prices for sporting clubs. Will the minister now correct the record and confirm that she—
Government members interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The member for Flinders will resume his seat.
R36
Albanese, Anthony, MP
Mr Albanese
—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The question is out of order. It is not in order to verbal ministers during question time.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! I will listen carefully to the question by the member for Flinders.
00AMV
Hunt, Gregory, MP
Mr HUNT
—I refer to the minister’s previous answer to a question about a 120 per cent increase in electricity prices for sporting clubs. Will the minister now correct the record and confirm that she overstated the funding available to community organisations by 250 per cent? Will she confirm that there is no money specifically available for paying the 120 per cent increase in electricity prices with which sporting organisations are about to be hit?
819
Ellis, Kate, MP
DZU
Adelaide
ALP
Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare and Youth and Minister for Sport
1
Ms KATE ELLIS
—I stand by my previous answer of a $200 million compensation fund to compensate Australians for the impact of our scheme in contrast to that which is being put forward by those opposite where there is zero to compensate them for these costs. I add that Australian sports are already feeling the consequences of climate change and are already concerned about the impact it is having on their infrastructure, on water shortages and on their ability to maintain their grounds. That is something that we on this side are particularly concerned about. It is why we have a serious plan to tackle climate change; we believe it is real, we believe that it needs to be addressed and we believe it should be done in a fair way to compensate Australians.
Resources Sector
820
820
14:41:00
Trevor, Chris, MP
HVU
Flynn
ALP
1
Mr TREVOR
—My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House of any new developments in the resources sector in Australia and any risks to these developments?
820
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—I thank the member for Flynn for his question because I know how strong a supporter he is of the future development of the resources sector in his part of Queensland. The government strategy is to build a stronger economy, to protect Australian jobs and to support Australian families by protecting Australian jobs. That is why we acted in the way in which we did in response to the global economic recession and, as a result of that, why Australia remained out of recession.
Today Woodside made a significant announcement in relation to the Browse gas project. Woodside announced that the Browse joint venture had selected a site at James Price Point, 60 kilometres north of Broome, as its preferred location to process gas from the venturers’ gas fields. There will be more than $1.25 billion invested over the next two years. That this resource is likely to be processed in Australia is welcome news for both the WA economy and the Australian economy. The Browse field contains a contingent resource of about 14 trillion cubic feet of dry gas. The Browse LNG development is expected to contribute about $50 billion to Australia’s economy over the life of the project. It is estimated that around $9 billion in additional revenue will flow to the Commonwealth government over the life of the project. The Browse development is expected to generate around 2½ thousand to 3½ thousand jobs on-site during peak construction.
I also welcome pronouncements yesterday by Incitec Pivot and British Gas concerning their very substantial projects in Central Queensland. Incitec Pivot has announced that it will restart its billion-dollar Moranbah ammonium nitrate complex. The Moranbah ammonium nitrate complex was mothballed as a result of the global financial crisis in February last year. Restarting it one year on is a huge vote of confidence in the recovery of the Australian economy. When the project restarts in May this year, 500 to 600 jobs will be recreated in civil works.
Even more evidence of a bright future for Central Queensland is BHP’s 18 January announcement that it has approved a US$267 million investment to accelerate the development of the Caval Ridge and Hay Point Coal Terminal stage 3 expansion projects. These are good projects for Australia. They are good projects for Western Australia, they are good projects for Queensland as well and they reinforce the government strategy of building a stronger economy for the future.
Australia is regarded as a desirable investment location around the world. This is reflected in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, which shows that Australia was ranked eighth highest out of 55 countries in 2007, sixth highest in 2008 and fourth highest out of 57 countries in 2009. According to the yearbook on whether ease of doing business is supported by regulations, Australia’s rating increased from 5.65 out of 10 in 2007 to 6.03 in 2009. This is real progress in making Australia an even more desirable investment location.
The government and the Deputy Prime Minister entirely seized on the implications which these projects have for the future skills demands of the Australian economy. That is why we have put a range of measures in place to deal with that skills shortage. We want to make sure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past whereby the expansion of resource projects was not accompanied by a parallel investment in infrastructure and skills.
The member for Flynn also asked me a question about risks to the Australian economy. I would draw the attention of honourable members in this House to one big risk to the Australian economy, and that is the appointment by the Leader of the Opposition of Senator Joyce as alternative finance minister and, secondly, Senator Joyce as alternative finance minister of Australia saying today, ‘We are getting to a point where we can’t repay it,’ meaning our debt. You have the alternative finance minister of Australia standing up and saying that Australia is at risk of defaulting on its sovereign debt. This is the height of irresponsibility. It is the height of risk to Australia’s global economic reputation. He has done this already in relation to the United States, he has done this in relation to the individual states of Australia and today he has done so with a public statement—which will be read in marketplaces across the world—about the sovereign debt of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Can I say to the Leader of the Opposition, as he finds this statement really amusing, that investors around the world do not find these remarks amusing at all. They take them seriously. We know that the Leader of the Opposition thinks he is on a roll to win the next election. We know he has had a bit of a hoopla in the party room about winning the next election. Well, one of the big risks which the Australian public are evaluating in their minds is what sort of economic risk they buy with a Leader of the Opposition who says he has no interest in economics and an alternative finance minister who today said Australia may default on its sovereign debt. The Leader of the Opposition has got two choices: (1) go out and repudiate the remarks by Senator Joyce, the alternative finance minister and (2) if he has any courage whatsoever, dismiss him today. Even when he does that—and it is coming, as sure as night follows day—his decision in the first place to appoint Barnaby Joyce as the alternative finance minister will still cause the nation to scratch their heads about what possible process of judgment could have been applied to that appointment on day one.
Mr Mike Kaiser
821
821
14:46:00
Smith, Anthony, MP
00APG
Casey
LP
0
Mr ANTHONY SMITH
—My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the appointment of former Queensland ALP secretary Mike Kaiser to a $450,000-a-year job at the National Broadband Network at the suggestion of his Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, a job that was not advertised. How is this consistent with the Prime Minister’s statement of 3 August 2008:
… the Government believes in practising a new way of governing that is more transparent, more accountable …
Does the Prime Minister stand by the actions of his minister—yes or no?
821
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—Both the government and I have full confidence in NBN Co. and full confidence in the minister. The first point I would make in response to the honourable member’s question is that the decision to appoint Mr Kaiser to this position was taken independently by NBN Co. Secondly, I am advised that NBN Co., through Mr Quigley, has told estimates that a selection process was undertaken and that Mr Kaiser was interviewed three times before being appointed, twice by NBN Co.’s head of human resources and once by Mr Quigley himself. Furthermore, the CEO of NBN Co., Mr Quigley, has said that, following industry practice, senior roles at NBN Co. have been sourced through a combination of searches by recruitment firms and referrals. Mr Quigley told Senate estimates that 40 per cent of NBN Co.’s staff had been hired on a referral basis. That is the approach which applies to this particular appointment.
On the question of appointing people of ability, whatever their past political experience, before those opposite whip themselves up into a frenzy over this one, can I remind them that this government has appointed Peter Costello, on the basis of merit, to a position on the Future Fund; we have appointed Brendan Nelson as our ambassador in Brussels, on the basis of ability; we have appointed Tim Fischer as Ambassador to the Holy See, on the basis of ability; and I think we have even appointed Arthur Sinodinos to something as well. We believe in merit based appointments and we have full confidence in the minister and in NBN Co.’s handling of this matter.
Housing Affordability
822
822
14:49:00
Neumann, Shayne, MP
HVO
Blair
ALP
1
Mr NEUMANN
—My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the discussions which took place at an important housing affordability forum this morning?
822
Swan, Wayne, MP
2V5
Lilley
ALP
Treasurer
1
Mr SWAN
—I thank the member for Blair for his question. This morning I opened a housing supply and affordability workshop, with the Minister for Housing, which involved officials from state governments and from the Commonwealth government, representatives of the private sector, the National Housing Supply Council, developers and construction companies. This is one of the most important challenges we face as a nation. As our economy recovers and as our population grows, the demand for housing continues to grow. It has been the case for a long period of time that we have not been constructing enough houses. The housing supply issue, and particularly a shortage of houses, is something that has emerged in our economy over a long period of time.
Of course, we put in place a range of measures immediately on coming to government to deal with this question. Our National Rental Affordability Scheme, for example, is being rolled out and is doing a very good job. And there is our investment in social housing—a massive investment in social housing—which is not only stimulating our economy, supporting and creating jobs, but playing a very important part in putting in place a pipeline of activity for our construction sector.
But of course the underlying challenge remains to increase supply substantially given the shortage that has emerged over a long period of time. I for one can remember sitting in this House and listening to the former Treasurer talking about doing something about housing supply but then doing nothing—talking about it, blaming it all on the states and not coming to the table to work with state governments and the private sector to do something about a sustainable increase in the supply of housing. Unless the constraints to the supply side of the market are addressed, our cities simply will not adapt to meet the needs of a growing population.
In some cases we are the victim of our own success, because we are one of those economies that is growing. We are growing when other economies are going backwards. There are many economies around the world that would love to have this problem. Because this economy is growing and growing more strongly, it makes it all the more urgent that we deal with this problem that has been left to this government particularly by those opposite. That is why we have put in place those measures I was talking about before—the National Rental Affordability Scheme and the investment in social housing. But much more needs to be done, something that was squibbed by those opposite. We need planning and zoning reforms to reduce the time it takes to develop, build and deliver houses. We need to minimise the uncertainty and delay from developer charges. We need to find ways to use data from land audits to enable better use of land development. Of course, we need further work done through COAG, and this matter was put on the agenda of COAG in December. It is being progressed by planning ministers and state housing ministers and Commonwealth ministers in the weeks ahead.
We will go on carefully and responsibly building a stronger economy while those opposite simply continue to play in this House, day after day, their political games. Today they have demonstrated yet again why they are such a grave risk to the Australian economy. The statements today by Barnaby Joyce, the alternative finance spokesman from the alternative government, that Australia’s sovereign debt was at risk—or that somehow our triple A credit rating was at risk—are simply a slur on this economy and a slur on our international standing. I bet the Leader of the Opposition has not got the guts to remove him because he simply does not understand the nature of what he has done to our international reputation. Not only are those opposite a risk to the budget and to the recovery; they are a risk to our international standing.
Last night I attended the 50th anniversary of the modern RBA. At that function in Sydney there were governors of reserve banks from right around the world. There were senior people from the finance community. What they were celebrating there last night was reform in the Australian economy over a 20-year period. What we were celebrating there last night was that, as we get to the end of this year, we will be entering the 20th year of continuous growth in this country. One of the reasons that it will be the 20th year of continuous growth is the fact that this government put in place its economic stimulus precisely at the right time to avoid the recession that those opposite wanted to give this country.
In that environment, almost simultaneously with those governors from reserve banks all around the world sitting around the table, we have the finance spokesman from the alternative government putting a slur on our credit rating and suggesting that we could not meet our debt obligations, when it is the case, as every one of those governors around the table knows, that Australia has the lowest debt and the lowest deficit of any major advanced economy and just about any advanced economy. That is what Australia has. We are the envy of the world, but not to Barnaby Joyce, who simply wants to slur the great achievements that the Australian people have made in this economy over a 20-year period.
Asylum Seekers
823
823
14:55:00
Morrison, Scott, MP
E3L
Cook
LP
0
Mr MORRISON
—My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his pre-election promise to take ‘a very hard line on the question of people smuggling, a very tough line on people smuggling’. How does this reconcile with the extraordinary fact that the government has transferred to Australia four Tamil refugees who were on board the Oceanic Viking as a result of the government’s special deal, despite receiving adverse security assessments from ASIO?
823
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—I thank the member for his question. Firstly, on the responsibilities of ASIO in security assessments, that is independently undertaken by that agency. Secondly, the honourable member will be referring to discussions which have occurred in Senate estimates concerning the way in which ASIO screenings have been undertaken in relation to those individuals, including those who obtained adverse security assessments. We are advised by ASIO that, during the period July to December 2009, ASIO processed security assessments for all irregular maritime arrivals in an average of 35 days. We are also advised that the average time taken to process security assessments for those on the Oceanic Viking was consistent with the average of that period. That is what occurred in this case and that is the advice we have received from ASIO.
Health
824
824
14:57:00
Hall, Jill, MP
83N
Shortland
ALP
1
Ms HALL
—My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Can the minister explain the importance of being upfront about challenges facing the health system and the approaches previously taken?
824
Roxon, Nicola, MP
83K
Gellibrand
ALP
Minister for Health and Ageing
1
Ms ROXON
—I thank the member for Shortland for her question. She has always taken a strong interest in the health reform debate, including hosting forums with health professionals in her own area. This government came to office aware of the challenges facing the health system. It is why we increased hospital funding by 50 per cent, it is why we initiated a root-and-branch reform of the health system and it is why we increased GP training places by 35 per cent. Unlike the previous government, we are upfront about the challenges faced by the system.
Of course, when it comes to not being upfront, the Leader of the Opposition has form. This was the man who attacked cancer sufferer Bernie Banton and who harshly capped GP training places when more than 70 per cent of the country had a shortage of GPs. This is the man who strangled hospital funding. This was the man who was so incompetent and disloyal he was even fired by John Hewson. But he also told bald-face porkies to the public. So let us just turn the clock back to July 2004, a very different time to now in this parliament. There were leadership problems within the Liberal Party. The Liberals were in denial about climate change, the Liberals were running fear campaigns about interest rates.
9V5
Pyne, Chris, MP
Mr Pyne
—On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I am wondering how this personal embittered slag-off of the Leader of the Opposition is within the minister’s responsibilities on health and ageing. How can she explain that?
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The member will resume his seat. The member does not have the call.
Honourable members interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The House will come to order. The point of order of the Manager of Opposition Business goes to whether the question was in order. The question was in order. The minister will relate her comments in response to the question.
83K
Roxon, Nicola, MP
Ms ROXON
—When it comes to not being upfront with the public, the real rolled-gold winning performance was from the Leader of the Opposition when he was health minister, when he was asked on Four Corners about whether the Liberal Party would change the Medicare safety net.
SJ4
Tuckey, Wilson, MP
Mr Tuckey
—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I wish to draw your attention to the rulings and precedent established as far back as Speaker Snedden on the issue of the relevance of a question that called upon a minister responsible for their department to give a commentary to the House on the activities of their then opposition. I also draw your attention to the fact that Speaker Snedden and other Speakers ruled that it is not within the competence of a minister, irrespective of the question, to give commentary on the activities of an opposition. It has become so prevalent here that we hear nothing about the activities of this government from their own ministers.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—As I said in response to the point of order by the Manager of Opposition Business, the question was in order, and I have asked the minister to make her response relevant to that question. She appeared to be taking some of that advice before the member for O’Connor’s point of order. I will listen carefully to the response of the minister.
83K
Roxon, Nicola, MP
Ms ROXON
—Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am always keen to take your advice and it is the reason that I am comparing and contrasting the performance of the Rudd government in delivering reforms in health and the performance of the Leader of the Opposition when he was the health minister. He was asked on Four Corners whether or not the Liberal Party would change the Medicare safety net. He said that the Liberal Party had a ‘cast-iron commitment, an absolutely rock solid ironclad commitment’, not to make any changes.
I got to thinking: he made a cast-iron promise, he made an ironclad guarantee. I wonder whether really Tony just has a problem with irons. There is no doubt about it, he just has a problem with irons. It was dishonest from the start. He knew that the expenses for the Medicare safety net were going through the roof. He knew it at the time of the election. He told an outright fib to the public and only seven months after they were elected he increased the threshold by a whopping 66 per cent. We know that this is a fateful warning bell for Australians who may or may not be considering voting for this man as Prime Minister of the country. He is just too big a risk to do that.
Asylum Seekers
825
825
15:03:00
Bishop, Julie, MP
83P
Curtin
LP
0
Ms JULIE BISHOP
—My question is to the Prime Minister. Has the Prime Minister or his government given any commitment to President Yudhoyono or the Indonesian government that Australia would play a role in the processing and resettlement of 240 asylum seekers moored in Merak for the past four months?
825
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—In terms of the diplomatic conversations between ourselves and the Indonesians, they have gone to resettlement procedures generally. As they relate to this particular vessel I have no information which I could convey to the honourable member. I say more broadly, though, to the honourable member that our conversations with the Indonesians over a long period of time have gone to resettlement and how we can assist the Indonesians over a whole range of countries, the whole spread of resettlement countries, including Australia, as in fact did the previous government. I say therefore to the—
83P
Bishop, Julie, MP
Ms Julie Bishop
—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. The Prime Minister has spoken about his conversation with President Yudhoyono. I have asked him about a specific commitment from this government to the Indonesian government about the 240 asylum seekers at Merak.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The Prime Minister is responding to the question.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—As part of our rolling cooperation with Indonesia on the challenge of asylum seekers we have had a whole range of discussions over a long period of time about how that cooperation should be unfolded. It deals also with Indonesia’s existing caseload of asylum seekers within Indonesia itself. It deals also with the totality of the caseload in that country. We stand ready to assist Indonesians in their challenges, in their dealings with other resettlement countries and also where we can assist with Australia. That has been the case in the past. That will be the case in the future. That was the case also, I seem to recall, on the part of the previous government, which assisted with some resettlement of those who were asylum seekers in Indonesia to Australia. That is precisely the approach that we would embrace in the future because for the Indonesian government, President Yudhoyono and myself the situation is as follows. This is a common challenge for both of us and therefore we would work very closely with Indonesia on source problems, on what we do with transit people who are in Indonesia itself and also what we do with people who need resettlement to other countries, including Australia.
E0H
Laming, Andrew, MP
Mr Laming interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The member for Bowman is warned!
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—Australia stands ready to assist our friends in Indonesia as Indonesia has stood ready to assist Australia. That is the way in which sensible governments deal with the challenges of asylum seekers. That is the way we will deal with it in the future.
Hospitals
826
826
15:06:00
Vamvakinou, Maria, MP
00AMT
Calwell
ALP
1
Ms VAMVAKINOU
—My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. What increase in funding has the government provided to the nation’s public hospitals and how is this an important reform on past practice?
826
Roxon, Nicola, MP
83K
Gellibrand
ALP
Minister for Health and Ageing
1
Ms ROXON
—I thank the member for Calwell for her question. She is another member vitally interested in health reform for the future to make sure that the next generation of Australians are going to be able to have and to continue to have the health services to the quality that they deserve. The Rudd government is investing more in our public hospitals than any other Australian government. In the last two years we have been working hard to rebuild after a decade of neglect, and particularly neglect of public hospitals, by the former government and of course its then health minister, now the Leader of the Opposition.
Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition called these days the good old days for our hospitals. Let us just have a think about those good old days. In the last decade while the opposition were in government, to the period 2007-08, hospital admissions grew by a million people, and emergency department presentations grew by two million. What was the Leader of the Opposition’s policy response in those good old days when we saw this enormous growth? It was to rip a billion dollars out of our public hospitals and blame the states for all of the problems it caused. In fact, according to the Leader of the Opposition, the good old days were so good that there were not any major problems to fix. I would like to read to the House a very short quote from a speech called ‘The trouble with reform’, a speech given in relation to the health system in 2005 by the Leader of the Opposition when he was the health minister. He said:
No-one should fret over an “unreformed” Australian health system.
And this gem:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
So no wonder he did not even bother to turn up to the debate on health in 2007: he simply did not think there were any problems to fix. We on this side of the House take a very different view from that of the Leader of the Opposition. We do believe the health system needs reform. We do not believe that the Australian public should risk letting the man who ripped a billion dollars from our public hospitals be the Prime Minister of this country. He has a track record which we are prepared to line ours up against at any time. Have a look at just one example. A $600 million investment in elective surgery has already delivered relief to more than 60,000 patients across the country. Currently, 125 hospitals are building new operating theatres and renovating or buying new equipment. I would like to read out a couple of examples, and perhaps members opposite will want to comment on them. There is $11 million for a 63-bed interim care facility in Carrara. A $1 million investment in the Flinders Medical Centre for an extra operating theatre and equipment—perhaps the member for Boothby would like to tell us that that is a waste of money. It is something that their government never did. Busy emergency departments have received $750 million to help relieve the pressure on them; 37 emergency departments around the country are undertaking projects to boost capacity, restructure services and put on more staff.
The member for Bowman is being unusually quiet. That might be because $18 million is going to the Redland Hospital, in his electorate. I do know that the member for Solomon is usually not a quiet member. He would not be on this because he has been delighted to welcome the $4.3 million going to the Royal Darwin Hospital. All of this is helping to deliver on our promise to fix hospitals. Not one of these projects would have been delivered by the Leader of the Opposition. Not a single dollar would have been put into these projects for the four years that the Leader of the Opposition was the health minister and for the 12 years that they were in government.
Do not forget, though, that for all this time Mr Abbott thought that nothing was wrong. He did not really even bother to take a health policy to the 2007 election. There was a decade of massive demand growth in our health system and all it was met with was that famous swagger and a shrug of the shoulders of the man who thought there were no problems to fix. We are prepared to debate his legacy with our record on any day and at any time, but he will have to turn up.
Water
827
827
15:10:00
Windsor, Antony, MP
009LP
New England
IND
0
Mr WINDSOR
—My question is to the Prime Minister, and it relates to the government’s commitment to critical human water needs within the Murray-Darling Basin. Is the Prime Minister aware that the township of Barraba, north of Tamworth, has effectively run out of water from normal sources and is entirely reliant on emergency groundwater bores for its highly restricted water supply? Given that this town has been experiencing a water crisis for some years now and that the only long-term solution is a pipeline to Split Rock Dam, would the Prime Minister be amenable to investigating a financial solution in conjunction with the Tamworth Regional Council and the New South Wales government?
827
Rudd, Kevin, MP
83T
Griffith
ALP
Prime Minister
1
Mr RUDD
—I welcome the question from the member for New England. I know his concern for his constituency and people who are doing it tough, particularly because of problems with the Murray-Darling system and the secure delivery of water to individual towns and areas within his electorate. I am not aware of the circumstances that concern that town. In response to the honourable member’s question I suggest that the parliamentary secretary now engage the honourable member on what can be done about his specific proposal. This side of the House seeks to engage other members when they come forward with a practical idea of how to fix X, Y and Z and A, B and C. The honourable member has come forward with an idea. I will have the parliamentary secretary investigate it to see whether we can do something about it that is practical and sustainable.
More broadly, the honourable member’s question goes to the challenge of the Murray-Darling Basin. As a country we are dealing with the fact that the Murray-Darling has in the last decade enjoyed perhaps less than half of its normal average inflow in terms of rain and over the last three to four years something like a quarter of its normal inflow. This has had a cumulative effect on the entire system. We see it right across the Murray-Darling system.
We had one set of events recently that concerned the release of water into South Australia by the government of New South Wales, which occurred through the new arrangements put in place by the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong. We now have in place the decision-making mechanism, through the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, to for the first time put a cap on the overall use of water in the system. We also have the capacity for the first time, from next year, in the history of the Murray-Darling for the federal water minister to have responsibility for setting that cap on a scientific basis. We also have for the first time the Australian government buying back water entitlements from what is a hugely taxed river system. From memory, we have purchased back some 780 gigalitres—am I right?
An honourable member—776.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—776 gigalitres from the entire system in terms of water entitlements. Over the period I have just been referring to and for some decades before that, as the Murray-Darling became progressively constrained because of the declining inflow of water, the issuing of entitlements by various state governments trebled in number. So on the one hand we had a massive trebling in the entitlements of farmers to take water out of the system; at the same time on the other hand the supply of water was affected by the decrease in rainfall. Of course, climate change is relevant to all of those considerations as well.
The other thing, as the honourable member will be aware, is that we are seeking to improve the efficiency of the irrigation infrastructure being used in the Murray-Darling. That is why the government are investing, from memory, in excess of $3 billion with the irrigators across the system, in order to improve the efficiency of irrigators. The last advice I had was that the irrigation system in the Murray-Darling was in many places so antiquated that it was resulting in something like a 30 per cent water loss.
9V5
Pyne, Chris, MP
Mr Pyne interjecting—
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—The member for Sturt interjects. I always enjoy interjections from the member for Sturt, as he is such a positive contributor to the deliberations of this place. I do like, however, what Senator Cory Bernardi had to say about him. He said that the member for Sturt said:
I live in a Liberal seat, so I had to be a member of the Liberal Party …
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The Prime Minister will resume his seat. Prime Minister! The Prime Minister will resume his seat.
IYU
Briggs, Jamie, MP
Mr Briggs
—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order that goes to relevance. Maybe he could read out how much of that $3 billion has been spent on water infrastructure in the Murray-Darling Basin.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The member for Mayo will resume his seat. That is not a point of order.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—I am always taken by what Senator Bernardi says. He says that member for Sturt said:
I live in a Liberal seat, so I had to be a member of the Liberal Party to get into Parliament. If I lived in a Labor seat …
EZ5
Abbott, Tony, MP
Mr Abbott
—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Under the standing orders, I do not see how the Prime Minister’s recent comments have added to the decorum of the House. I ask for them to be withdrawn.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The Prime Minister has the call.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—As the member for Sturt said:
If I lived in a Labor seat I would have joined the Labor Party.
Opposition members interjecting—
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—How sensitive the member for Sturt is!
SJ4
Tuckey, Wilson, MP
Mr Tuckey
—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is a very important point of order. My office has now provided me with the precedent to which I drew your attention. It is to be found in the Hansard of the House of Representatives, 27 August 1981. The Speaker said:
Order!
In other words, the Speaker intervened. He said:
The Minister will answer the question and not engage in irrelevancies, such as contrasting the Government and the Labor Party.
In Hansard on 9 September 1981 a member of the House by the name of Charles—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The member for O’Connor will resume his seat. I am reluctant to now address a point of order which is about the question before the question before last. The member for O’Connor will refer to page 553, where that very incident is mentioned at footnote 280. What we need to do to have a balanced discussion is to have his office research the question.
9V5
Pyne, Chris, MP
Mr Pyne interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The member for Sturt yet again! I am trying to catch up to that point. In the question that the member for O’Connor first raised, mention was made of past practices. I know that many will cringe because that is code for a practice that perhaps many consider is unhealthy in this place. I think the view on the degree of unhealthiness depends on which side of the chair you sit. I simply say that, on the present circumstances that confront me, there is a lesson here. The member for Sturt might dampen his enthusiasm by way of interjections and the Prime Minister should perhaps ignore those interjections. The interjections themselves are out of order. They do not justify in any way responses that stray from the intent of the question. The Prime Minister will respond to the question.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, but we do welcome interjections from Comrade Christopher.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The Prime Minister will refer to members by their titles. I am trying to dampen the member for Sturt’s enthusiasm.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr RUDD
—The member for New England’s question goes to the locality and the town. I have outlined the course of action that we will undertake. In response to the question, I did go through the other reforms that we have brought into the system. They are in three categories. The first is, through the basin authority, the capping of water and the scientific basis for it. Secondly, I mentioned what we are doing in terms of investment in irrigation infrastructure. Thirdly, I spoke about what we are doing in the buying back of water entitlements. This is a fundamental challenge for the nation to restore health to the Murray-Darling system. It is being severely challenged by drought, which is in turn exacerbated by the long-term impacts of climate change. Therefore, we must act to deal with the consequences of climate change in a practical way now, while dealing with the long-term causes, which is why some in this House are united in their resolve to act on climate change in an effective national and global manner.
Workplace Relations
829
829
15:21:00
D’Ath, Yvette, MP
HVN
Petrie
ALP
1
Mrs D’ATH
—My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. What has been the response to the award modernisation program and the creation of national workplace relations laws? Can the minister detail the need for accuracy in making claims about workplace relations?
830
Gillard, Julia, MP
83L
Lalor
ALP
Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion
1
Ms GILLARD
—I thank the member for Petrie for her question. I know that she is interested in fairness and balance at work for the working people in her electorate. The Rudd government is proud of having delivered on its commitment to kill Work Choices and to introduce a fair and balanced workplace relations system, and we are proud of having delivered on our commitment to simplify and modernise the award system.
The new workplace relations system and simple, modern awards have been broadly welcomed. They have been welcomed by small businesses because they are slashing red tape. They have been welcomed because it has been modelled to show that it will benefit the Australian economy by $4.8 billion. It is easier for employers and employees to be able to look for their award conditions in 122 simple, modern awards than in more than 4,000 old, archaic industrial instruments. In December last year, the National Workplace Relations Consultative Council welcomed the award modernisation result, and that council includes the ACTU, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Ai Group, the Australian Mines and Metals Association, the National Farmers Federation and many others who represent employers in this country.
On the task of award modernisation, let us be very clear: when the Liberal Party was in government, it squibbed that task, and the Leader of the Opposition and his fellow Liberal Party members in government decided instead to introduce Australian workplace agreements which could strip away the award safety net without a cent of compensation. This is a government that has got on with the hard job and simplified awards. We can guarantee to Australian workers that they will always have a safety net at work on which to stand. And we can guarantee to Australian workers that, as we have made the move from the old award system to the new award system, every Australian worker has a guaranteed take-home pay. They are entitled to a take-home pay guarantee.
In relation to award modernisation, we have seen a number of claims made, and I am asked about their accuracy and the responsibility of making sure that if you make a claim it is a truthful one. Yesterday we saw, in this parliament, the Leader of the Opposition stand up at 10 minutes past three—about 24 hours ago—and say this:
The nurses union says that the government’s scheme is worse than Work Choices, and it is.
I thought, when he said that, ‘Gee, that’s a little bit odd,’ because I knew Australia’s nurses were desperate to get rid of Work Choices, because they feared a re-elected Liberal government would tie hospital funding to the introduction of AWAs, the way they had done in Australian universities. So I thought it was a little bit odd when the Leader of the Opposition said it. But then, of course, the nurses union today has put out the following statement:
Assistant Federal Secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation … Lee Thomas said comments by the Federal Opposition Leader made about the union in Federal Parliament yesterday … were completely false and should be corrected.
Ms Thomas said—
A government member—Straight-talking Tony!
83L
Gillard, Julia, MP
Ms GILLARD
—Straight-talking Tony—such an honest man!
Ms Thomas said the statement made by Mr Abbott in the Parliament that the nurses union “says the government’s scheme … is worse than Workchoices..” has never been made by an official of the Australian Nursing Federation.
It ‘has never been made’. And Ms Thomas, a representative of nurses, went on to say:
“In a speech about being honest with the Australian people he put words in the mouths of nurses that we never said.
“This statement then must be corrected or he has misled the Australian Parliament,” …
That is a statement from the Australian Nursing Federation.
With this Leader of the Opposition we are dealing with a man so arrogant and so out of touch that he wants to put irons in the hands of Australian women and he wants to put words in the mouths of Australian nurses. He should do the decent thing and apologise for this statement, which lacks honesty. Each and every day, Australians are coming to know that this man represents a risk to the economy and represents a risk to the truth, and he certainly represents a risk because he wants Work Choices back.
Home Insulation Program
831
831
15:26:00
Abbott, Tony, MP
EZ5
Warringah
LP
0
Mr ABBOTT
—My question is to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. How can the minister explain the fact that his failure to properly administer his portfolio has now resulted in the suspension of the foil batts component of the Home Insulation Program and an inquiry into the complete collapse of the Green Loans Program? Will the minister now guarantee that every home with a potentially electrified roof will be subject to an audit and repair?
831
Garrett, Peter, MP
HV4
Kingsford Smith
ALP
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts
1
Mr GARRETT
—I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question and I say, at the outset, that the safety of householders in this program of home insulation is an absolute priority for this government, and that is why the announcement has been made today—
Honourable members interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The minister has the call.
HV4
Garrett, Peter, MP
Mr GARRETT
—to suspend foil insulation in ceilings pending investigations and discussions between my department, safety authorities, the industry itself and technical experts.
That comes on top of a number of steps that have been taken in relation to this program, including the decision that I took on 1 November to ban the use of metal fasteners in the installation of foil insulation, and also for the targeted safety program of some 10 per cent in Queensland where there is a significant number of homes with foil insulation in them. That targeted program is underway, and I can report to the House that there are a number of interim results from some 400 homes that have already had their inspections concluded.
We will continue to look carefully at the results of the remainder of that program. If it is necessary to expand that program on the basis of providing additional certainty for the delivery of that program, we will. But let us be very clear: the program guidelines at present provide for greater levels of safety and accreditation than is required under Australian standards and under the Building Code of Australia, and I say to people that it is now a specific requirement on the part of installers that they actually make sure that, pre-installation, they conduct a risk assessment. So there is a responsibility on the part of insulation installers to ensure that they observe the guidelines that we have in place and that they make sure that, when they go into the ceiling, there are no risks in relation to this program.
As I said at the outset of this answer, safety is an absolute priority for the government in delivery of this program. If there are any additional measures required to increase the levels of safety that already exist in our guidelines, then we will take those steps as necessary.
Workplace Relations
831
831
15:29:00
Dreyfus, Mark, MP
HWG
Isaacs
ALP
1
Mr DREYFUS
—My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. What work is being undertaken by Fair Work Australia, the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to inform the public of Australia’s new Fair Work laws? How is this an improvement on past practices?
832
Gillard, Julia, MP
83L
Lalor
ALP
Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion
1
Ms GILLARD
—I thank the member for Isaacs for his question. Of course, in the killing off of Work Choices and in the move to the Fair Work system there has been a need to ensure that Australian employers and employees got all of the information they needed as the system came into full operation on 1 January this year. That is why we have been in the business of getting that information to them in a practical and responsible way. The Fair Work website has had more than 1.4 million visits, 54,000 copies of the new Fair Work Ombudsman best practice guides have been downloaded, there have been 570,000 calls to the Fair Work information line and $3.7 million has been allocated to fund almost 50,000 education visits by the Fair Work Ombudsman—personal discussions to help businesses make the transition. Under the Fair Work Education and Information program, over 1,700 workshops have been delivered around the nation and there are a further 600 to come in the months ahead. The Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia has worked in partnership with Telstra—a very innovative partnership—to mail out Fair Work information to over 900,000 small businesses. There have been 60 seminars around the country conducted by the National Farmers Federation for farmers to make sure that they get the information they need. And of course unions are working on the education of employees to make sure working people get the information they need through the union education fund. This is real, on-the-ground education and training. It is a low-cost approach.
I am asked whether there have been alternative approaches. Well, there have been. There was the waste of $121 million of taxpayers’ money on Work Choices, with $212,000 of that money producing 200,000 of these mouse pads. The House has looked at these mouse pads before. Of course, when we came to office in February 2008 I was advised that there were 97,898 mouse pads still in storage out of the original 200,000. I think I am a pretty determined person and I work as hard as I can, and I have laboured hard to get rid of these mouse pads—I have laboured hard.
Honourable members interjecting—
83L
Gillard, Julia, MP
Ms GILLARD
—Well, you can have one, because we have got some left. I have made sure that they have gone to Africa with missionaries. There are some in Uganda in a Christian mission helping out with education over there. They have gone to services for people with disabilities so that they could be cut up in craft class. I have even tried giving them away to journalists as Christmas presents. And of course I gave one to the member for Menzies as a consolation prize when he did not become the fourth Leader of the Opposition in two years. But I have to say this task has been beyond me: there are still 34,650 mouse pads in storage despite my very best labours to get rid of them. They are still there.
This would all be very funny if we could quickly get rid of the remaining 34,000. I have actually asked my department for advice. What can we do with them now? The trouble is we cannot shred them and put them into landfill because they are not biodegradable. It is like the Liberal Party’s commitment to Work Choices—it is going to take 150,000 years to biodegrade. Tony’s toxic mouse pads; Tony’s toxic Work Choices. But it is the Australian taxpayer that is having to put up with all of this because storing these mouse pads has cost the taxpayers $17,898.
SE4
Bishop, Bronwyn, MP
Mrs Bronwyn Bishop
—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I would remind you of the rulings previously made, by both you and your predecessors, with regard to the use of props, and I would ask you to rule that props be not used further by the Deputy Prime Minister.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The Deputy Prime Minister should not overly display the props.
83L
Gillard, Julia, MP
Ms GILLARD
—In conclusion can I say the poor old taxpayer has had enough. Let me renew the offer I made earlier this year to the Leader of the Opposition. I know that he will want these for his next election campaign. We are prepared to shift all 34,000 of them to the Liberal Party secretariat free of charge. Just give me the word and there they will be for you. No more taxpayers’ money will be spent on these mouse pads. If you want them, Tony, there they will be. Just let us know.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The Prime Minister.
00AMU
Mirabella, Sophie, MP
Mrs Mirabella
—Mr Speaker—
Honourable members interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The Prime Minister has the call.
83T
Rudd, Kevin, MP
Mr Rudd
—Mr Speaker, notwithstanding the Olympian effort just then, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
DOCUMENTS
833
Documents
Mr ALBANESE
(Grayndler
—Leader of the House)
15:36:00
—Documents are presented as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members. Details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings, and I move:
That the House take note of the following documents:
National Health Amendment (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) Act 2007—Report to Parliament on the Act—The impact of PBS reform—2010.
Surveillance Devices Act 2004—Report on the operation of the Act for 2008-09.
Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979—Report on the operation of the Act for 2008-09.
Debate (on motion by Mr Hartsuyker) adjourned.
MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS
833
Ministerial Statements
India
833
833
15:37:00
Smith, Stephen, MP
5V5
Perth
ALP
Minister for Foreign Affairs
1
0
Mr STEPHEN SMITH
—by leave—I wish to update the House on the Australia-India relationship.
Introduction
India, the world’s largest democracy, has emerged in recent years as a significant global power, both politically and economically. India is also expanding its strategic reach and capabilities, and is playing an increasingly important role in the security of our region.
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By 2030, India is projected to overtake China as the country with the world’s largest population.
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Some forecast India will be the world’s third largest economy by 2025.
Recognising the implications of India’s rise for Australia’s national interests, over the last two years the Australian government has moved towards placing India firmly in the front rank of Australia’s international partnerships. Making India such a policy priority in Australia’s foreign relations was very long overdue. And that is not just because of India’s rise, but because of the strong convergence of interests and values that we share: trade and investment, strategic and security, people-to-people links. We are natural partners.
As the Prime Minister’s visit to India in November last year illustrated, we are building a comprehensive, enduring strategic partnership between Australia and India. Yet for decades the Australia-India relationship did not receive the consistent focus and attention it deserved. In 2008 I compared Australia’s earlier approaches to India to a Twenty20 cricket match: short bursts of enthusiasm followed by lengthy periods of inactivity. I said then we needed to treat the relationship like a test match and to work with diligence, dedication, application and perseverance day in and day out to extend the partnership.
The era of inactivity and even neglect is over. Australia and India are now heavily engaged on many levels across the economic, political, security and strategic spheres. We know each other better. We understand each other better. Since taking office, the government has worked with India to reshape the bilateral relationship for the long term and for our common good.
Before I set out some overall policy directions for the bilateral relationship, I wish to address a matter that is of great concern to Australians and Indians alike. Over the last decade Australia has emerged as a major destination for Indian students studying abroad. Enrolments of Indian students in Australia have increased at an average annual rate of over 40 per cent since 2002. There were over 120,000 Indian student enrolments in Australia in 2009. Of the 96,000 visas issued last year to Indian students, 47,000 were for students to study in Victoria. Recent contemptible attacks on Indian students and others of Indian origin in Australia have cast a long shadow, not only over our education links, but across our broader relationship and bilateral agenda. These attacks are inexcusable.
Australia needs to take this seriously and we are taking it very seriously. We also need to accept and to understand that it has considerably damaged Australia’s reputation in India and among the Indian people. Indeed it has been widely noticed beyond India and South Asia. On behalf of the Australian government and the Australian people I again express publicly, as I have privately to my counterpart, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna, my deep sympathy and condolences to those Indians who have had family members in Australia attacked and, in some tragic cases, murdered.
Police forces in Australia are investigating all incidents so that we can bring those responsible to justice. We will continue to do our utmost to ensure that the children Indian parents have entrusted into the care of the Australian community remain safe and come home with a first class education and a great Australian experience. We have zero tolerance for racism in this country. If any of these attacks have been racist in nature—and it seems clear some of them have—they will be punished with the full force of the law.
Let us be absolutely clear about this: the Australian government and the Australian community condemn all such attacks, irrespective of nationality or ethnicity. The Australian government and the Australian community unequivocally condemn any attack which is racially motivated. Such attacks affront our values and are an anathema to our view of the modern Australia. Australia and India are countries for which the rule of law is fundamental. The rule of law means that we allow the processes of investigation, prosecution and sentencing to take their course. That is what we are doing.
Governments at all levels in Australia are working together to address this problem. Law enforcement agencies have brought perpetrators of attacks to justice in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland. In Victoria alone some 45 people have been arrested for crimes against Indian students or nationals. Perpetrators are being pursued with vigour. To mention a few recent arrests: nine were arrested and five charged for an attack on 25 January on two Indian students in Melbourne. Arrests have been made or charges laid for four of the five attacks on Indian taxi drivers on 15 and 16 January in Victoria. In New South Wales, on 28 and 29 January this year three were arrested in connection with the murder of Ranjodh Singh, an Indian man, whose burnt body was found in Griffith in 29 December 2009. In New South Wales police have arrested and charged a man for an assault on a man on Coogee Beach on 13 January. In Victoria, an individual was charged with giving a false report to police in which he alleged he was set alight by others, and with criminal damage for financial gain. In one case a sentence of more than 18 years was handed down in November last year for vicious attacks two months earlier, including against a person of Indian origin in Williamstown, Victoria.
Victoria has changed its legislation to allow judges and magistrates to impose tougher sentences for hate crimes. Regrettably, many Indian students in Australia, in particular in Melbourne, find themselves in a higher risk profile for crime. Many work late night shifts in occupations like taxi driving where assaults can be more likely. Many live in higher crime neighbourhoods, often commuting to and from there late at night. None of this excuses the attacks. But it may help to explain why some attacks are happening, and why the perception has arisen that Indians may be targeted in Melbourne.
Indian citizens are welcome guests in Australia. Indian-Australians make a most important contribution to the fabric of our multicultural society. The Indian government estimates that the Indian diaspora in Australia numbers as many as 450,000. Australia’s core values of acceptance, tolerance and open-mindedness have allowed us to forge a modern, vibrant and harmonious multicultural society that attracts people from all over the world. Today, close to half of the Australian population—43 per cent—was born overseas or has a parent who was born overseas. During the past two centuries migrants have arrived from over 200 different countries. Since the Second World War, more than 6½ million people have migrated to Australia, including more than 650,000 through refugee or humanitarian programs.
More than four million people have chosen to become Australian citizens since citizenship began in 1949. On Australia Day, 26 January this year, which also happens to be the day that India celebrates becoming a republic, around 16,500 people from over 140 different countries became Australian citizens. Immigration is a key ingredient in sustaining Australia’s economic and social success. While Australia is one of the world’s most tolerant countries and one of the safest, we cannot promise to stop all urban crime. No government can credibly do that. What we are promising is to make a whole-of-nation and whole-of-government commitment to do our best to address this problem and to minimise it.
Strengthened and higher visibility police operations have been undertaken to improve physical security in Australian cities. Increased police resources mean safer streets for all. In June 2009 the Prime Minister established a special task force to deal with these attacks, chaired by the National Security Adviser. We have also most recently set up a new high-level consultative mechanism between the Commonwealth and Victorian governments. The first high-level meeting was held on 29 January and there have been, and will be, regular meetings since then.
Almost half of Indian students in Australia study in Victoria. On 28 January the Victorian government launched an International Student Care Service. This is a new 24-hour service where international students can get greater access to accommodation, counselling, legal services, emergency and welfare assistance. We want to ensure that international students, whether from India or elsewhere, obtain a quality education, can support themselves financially, and have a positive experience in Australia. The safety issue has revealed deficiencies in our education and visa arrangements for international students. Australian governments at all levels have moved to address these deficiencies.
To ensure that those who apply to study in Australia are genuine students and not backdoor workers open to exploitation, education and visa systems for international students are being reformed and the integrity of those systems strengthened. We have increased to $18,000 per year the amount that international students must prove they have to support themselves financially before they can obtain a student visa. We have also just announced reforms of the general skilled migration intake. This will largely remove the incentive for overseas students to apply for a particular course simply in the hope of being granted permanent residency. Furthermore, we are establishing a national regulator for the vocational education and training sector and for the higher education sector.
The Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland governments have established a program of rapid audits of private education providers and these are underway. Education standards have also been strengthened to improve the quality of education institutions by tightening financial viability and student fee protection requirements. Action is being taken against providers shown to be operating outside legislative requirements. Those that need to be closed are being closed. The Deputy Prime Minister has appointed Mr Bruce Baird to review the Education Services for Overseas Student Act to ensure Australia continues to offer world-class quality in international education. Mr Baird’s report will be finalised shortly. An international student strategy is also being developed by the Council of Australian Governments in order to improve the experience of overseas students.
Australia is, of course, in close contact with India at all levels on these issues, both in Canberra and in Delhi. Prime Minister Rudd has discussed the matter with Prime Minister Singh. I have discussed this issue with Indian Minister for External Affairs, SM Krishna, in person and by telephone. We met during the minister’s visit to Australia in August 2009, during my visit to India in October 2009, and most recently in London on 27 January. I have kept Minister Krishna informed of developments. At our meeting in London, I offered to provide a detailed update on actions taken by Australian governments to address issues arising from attacks on Indians in Australia. This will be conveyed to Minister Krishna this week by the Australian High Commission in New Delhi and through the Indian High Commission in Canberra. We will need goodwill and consistent leadership on both sides to deal with the challenges this matter has identified. From the Australian government’s point of view, we are prepared to take further action wherever it is needed to ensure the quality of the Australian education sector and the safety and wellbeing of overseas students.
There can be no denying that the student safety issue—in all of its dimensions—is having a negative impact on Australia’s broader image, reputation and standing in India. The underlying strength of the Australia and India relationship is our common interests, including shared values and democratic traditions, part of which is our common appreciation of the importance of a robustly independent media. While some reporting on this issue in the press—whether Indian or Australian—has been, in my view, either inaccurate or misleading or both, in the main it has thrown a spotlight on the importance of responding quickly and effectively to these attacks. It is not whether the reporting of this issue has been fair or unfair, but how Australian governments are responding to the substance of the problem.
As Neville Roach, Chairman Emeritus of the Australia-India Business Council, has pointed out, Indian perceptions of Australia matter. They matter very much indeed. Repairing the Australian brand and reputation in India therefore is an essential priority. Just as Australia and Australians need to recognise the realities of India’s evolving society and emergence as a global influence, we have to work harder to convey to India and Indians an appreciation of contemporary Australia, an appreciation of the modern, multicultural and tolerant Australia. We need to highlight in particular the dynamism of our economy, the regional focus of our foreign and trade policies and the great diversity and tolerance of our modern Australian society.
When AR Rahman, the great Indian composer and musician, performed at the Sydney Festival last month, he opened his concert with the phrase, ‘Long live the India-Australia relationship.’ Mr Rahman went on to call for moderation, unity and understanding during these difficult times. I could not agree more.
Strategic Partnership
We are making a concerted effort at the government-to-government level to take our bilateral relationship to the next level, firmly into the front rank of Australia’s international relationships. One way we have done so is by encouraging high-level dialogue and engagement. Ten Indian ministers have visited Australia since early 2008. Ten Australian ministerial visits to India took place over the same period, as well as a prime ministerial visit.
I have visited India twice as Minister for Foreign Affairs. My last visit was in October 2009, when I took part in the Australia-India Foreign Ministers’ Framework Dialogue in New Delhi hosted by Minister Krishna. When Prime Minister Rudd visited Delhi in November last year, Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Singh announced the establishment of a strategic partnership between Australia and India. In keeping with the strategic partnership, Australia will pursue deeper bilateral, regional and international cooperation with India in a wide range of fields, including on strategic and security matters.
Shared values—our commitment to democracy, pluralism, human rights and the rule of law—make Australia and India natural partners in addressing international challenges. India has become an important player on the global issues of our time, not least climate change and international trade. We value our dialogue with the Indian government on these and other global issues. We want to work with India to achieve outcomes which serve the community of nations in a balanced way.
Australia and India have both welcomed the decision to make the G20 the premier forum for international economic cooperation. Australia has been working closely with India in the G20 over the past year to frame and implement a global policy response to the gravest international economic crisis we have confronted since the Great Depression. The G20 is a particularly important forum for multilateral cooperation, because its membership, which includes both India and China, reflects a rebalancing of global architecture to reflect new economic and strategic realities. Australia strongly supports this approach. Australia also firmly believes that India should become a permanent member of a reformed United Nations Security Council and a member of APEC.
Australia and India have many shared interests in South Asia. Australia will attend the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation Summit as an observer for the first time in April 2010. We will work with India and other South Asian nations to forge greater regional cooperation. We both wish to see stability in Afghanistan. Australia is making a substantial military and civilian investment in Afghanistan’s future, while India has provided Afghanistan with approximately $1.5 billion in development assistance.
Economic Links
Fast-growing trade and investment links are key drivers of the Australia-India relationship. Within a few years, India is likely to become Australia’s third-largest export market behind China and Japan. In 2008-09, India was Australia’s fourth-largest merchandise export market and seventh-largest merchandise trading partner. Two-way trade, including goods and services, was nearly A$22 billion. That was a 55 per cent jump on the previous year, making India our fastest-growing major trading partner. In recent years, Indian companies have also shown a great interest in investing in Australia, not only in the minerals resources industry but in agriculture, information technology and consulting as well.
Australia is already a key supplier of the resources India needs to fuel its economic growth and is well positioned to meet India’s energy demand into the future. This was demonstrated by the recently concluded US$20 billion deal between ExxonMobil and India’s Petronet to supply Australian liquefied natural gas to India from 2014 from the Gorgon project in Western Australia. There is significant untapped potential in the highly complementary nature of our economies, including in services, agriculture, and renewable and clean energy technology. Importantly, we are close to finalising a joint study on the feasibility of a bilateral free trade agreement. A comprehensive, commercially meaningful free trade agreement could deliver substantial new market access for exporters and investors, and create job opportunities in both countries.
There are a range of many other initiatives that we have seen between Australia and India in the recent period which I will not detail here. To facilitate these and other initiatives, Prime Minister Rudd recently announced a significant upgrade to Australia’s diplomatic resources in India. Specifically, we are enlarging our missions in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai and establishing new Austrade offices in a number of other regional cities.
It is in the long-term interests of both Australia and India to take our strategic partnership agenda forward. When we face challenges, such as the attacks on Indian students, we address them in a frank and honest way, but in a way which does not disturb the ongoing nature of the relationship and our strategic partnership. We do so because Australia and India’s broad based relationship is grounded in common interests, shared values and democratic traditions.
I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for Curtin, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, to speak for 21 minutes.
Leave granted.
5V5
Smith, Stephen, MP
Mr STEPHEN SMITH
—I move:
That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent Ms J. Bishop (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) speaking in reply to the ministerial statement for a period not exceeding 21 minutes.
Question agreed to.
838
15:58:00
Bishop, Julie, MP
83P
Curtin
LP
0
0
Ms JULIE BISHOP
—India is the world’s largest democracy in terms of population and its elections are often described as the single biggest human event on earth, with more than 400 million people casting votes at the last election. It is forecast to be the world’s most populous nation by 2030 and is a rapidly emerging economic and military powerhouse. Currently the 12th largest economy in the world and ranked only behind Japan and China in Asia, India has huge potential for future growth.
One of the key drivers of economic growth has been India’s large pool of well-educated and highly skilled workers. For example, India has established a significant presence globally in the software and technology sectors. As a former Minister for Education, Science and Training, I can attest to the fact that it has long been one of Australia’s proudest boasts that we have welcomed thousands and thousands of students from around the world to our educational institutions. I have always believed that educational exchanges are one of the best ways to build stronger links between nations. It is a form of public diplomacy that over time enhances the understanding of the ideals, values and aspirations of our country.
Student exchanges should be one of the most powerful tools in our diplomatic efforts. Providing educational services can also be important in terms of economic growth in developing countries. Indian students are a welcome presence on our university campuses, in our educational institutions and throughout our communities. People of Indian background and ethnicity have long made an enduring contribution to many aspects of life in the great tapestry of Australian society, with more than 450,000 people of Indian heritage living in Australia. It is the great value of student exchange and our deep respect for Indian people and their culture that makes these attacks against Indian students all the more heartbreaking and soul destroying.
In a number of incidents, there have been reports of racist taunts. Racism is abhorrent to the vast majority of Australians. We are horrified at these reports and condemn them in the strongest possible terms. Australia is not a racist nation. Australia has welcomed and embraced people from all around the world. That does not mean there are no individuals in this country with a twisted view of the world who harbour irrational prejudice against those of different ethnicity.
During a meeting this week with Indian High Commissioner Singh, I expressed on behalf of the coalition our deep sympathy and condolences, particularly with regard to those young people who have lost their lives or been seriously injured in the spate of attacks. I find it impossible to comprehend the psyche of those who have committed these crimes. The police have been working hard to respond to the spate of attacks and I must thank the minister for the briefing given by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on the many positive steps taken by governments in Australia.
Reforms are also underway in the education sector, where steps can be taken to reduce the numbers of at-risk Indian students in Australia. However, it is also important for national, state and community leaders to re-articulate the values of Australian society. It is illegal in this country to discriminate against anyone on the basis of their race, religion or gender, amongst other things. Those laws are the formal implementation of the national rejection of racism. The perpetrators of these crimes must face the full force of the law. A strong message must be sent by our police and our judiciary that racially motivated violence is utterly unacceptable in this country. The cowards who lurk in dark places at night waiting for the vulnerable to stray into their web must get the message loud and clear that their behaviour will not be tolerated and that they will not get away with it.
It is deeply troubling to read of the distress that these attacks are causing to people in India and that it is impacting more broadly on our bilateral relations with a valued friend. No-one should underestimate the level of concern within India about these attacks. Indian authorities have naturally urged for the welfare and protection of their students in Australia to be given the highest priority. There is a need for urgent action to be taken on this issue and for it to be considered a priority. People in India must be reassured that we do not take the issue lightly. That is why it is important for there to be open lines of communication between everyone involved in the response to this issue. State police and state governments must maintain open lines of communication with the Australian government and with the Indian authorities to reassure them that action is being taken and that concrete steps are being implemented to increase the security of Indian nationals.
I am concerned that many Indian students, particularly in Victoria, are working and living in high-risk situations. They live in areas of increased crime and work in jobs late at night, when crimes involving drugs and alcohol are more prevalent. It is also vital for Indian students to take all possible precautions with regard to their personal safety—the types of precautions that people should take in any large city anywhere in the world. Crime is an unfortunate aspect to life in large cities, and if people can take any additional steps to improve their personal security I strongly urge them to do so. It is my sincere hope that these attacks stop, that the criminals and cowards realise the damage they are causing not only to individuals but to the nation as a whole. I am not hopeful that an appeal to reason will penetrate the fog of immorality that surrounds these people. However, they should know that a coordinated response is underway, and I urge the state and federal authorities to take all possible action to resolve this situation.
While the damage to our bilateral relations will take some time to heal, some time to subside, we must continue to take a long-term view of our relationship with India. There is much that we have in common in terms of shared values and shared aspirations. We share a tradition of parliamentary democracy, membership of the Commonwealth and a passion for the national sport of cricket. The Commonwealth countries, including Australia, look forward to the Commonwealth Games being held in India, reflecting the passion for sport that our countries share.
India can play an important role in regional stability. It is a lead member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, which was established in 1985 to promote economic and social development in the region, an area of vital and strategic interest to Australia. It can be a constructive force in Afghanistan, as that country struggles to emerge from the yoke of oppression. I note recent statements by the Indian government of its preparedness to play a more prominent role in Afghanistan in support of the NATO led forces.
India is a growing economic, political and strategic megademocracy, although it sometimes seems Australia is yet to fully come to terms with its global significance and what a deeper and stronger relationship could mean to Australia’s national interest. Rory Metcalf of the Lowy Institute observed of the India-Australia relationship:
There is just so much potential there, and it is probably the only relationship Australia has with a major power that is far less than its potential.
While the attacks on Indian students have been rightly condemned by Australian political and community leaders, there is no doubt that the relationship has been severely tested. This is a very difficult issue. It will need to be resolved.
There is another ongoing and unnecessary thorn in the relationship that, if removed, would help overall efforts to build a stronger bilateral relationship. The minister referred to Australia being a key supplier of the resources India needs for economic growth and its energy demands. But there is a thorn in the relationship, being the Rudd government’s decision to overturn the Howard government’s agreement to sell uranium to India, subject to appropriate safeguards, to help it use low-emission nuclear power for its growing population. The Labor government is refusing to support India in its quest to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by selling Australian uranium to support India’s expanded nuclear energy capability.
It is not in Australia’s national interest because it sends a message to India that Australia does not trust it to be a recipient of our uranium even though the United States and Canada, amongst others, have agreed to sell uranium and nuclear power technology to India. India has an exemplary record in nonproliferation. It is only able to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state, which India believes to be discriminatory because some existing signatories have larger nuclear weapon stockpiles.
Labor uses the excuse that it does not sell uranium to any country outside the 1967 nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That is disingenuous: a Labor government sold uranium to France in the 1980s before France was a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is a missed opportunity for Australia with our large uranium reserves as it has shut us out of a huge export market, a market that is growing and that would underpin more Australian jobs, particularly with the recent lifting of the ban on uranium mining in my home state of Western Australia. Indian officials were told by the Rudd government that the real reason for the ban was internal Labor Party politics. I believe it is time for the Labor Party to put Australia’s national interests ahead of its dated dogma.
Australia should maintain a long-term focus on India, but in order for our two countries to realise the potential of our bilateral relations we must resolve tensions in the relationship. The attacks on Indian students must stop. Australia will not rest until this happens. That is the message we must send to reassure our friends in India and to Indians living in Australia. It is a message that we must send to those who are responsible for these attacks.
MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
841
Matters of Public Importance
Rudd Government
841
10000
Burke, Anna (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER
(Ms AE Burke)—Mr Speaker has received a letter from the honourable member for Casey proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The failure of the Government to honour its explicit commitment to act with ‘integrity’.
I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.
More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—
841
16:09:00
Smith, Anthony, MP
00APG
Casey
LP
0
0
Mr ANTHONY SMITH
—This is a critical matter of public importance at the start of the second parliamentary year of the Rudd government. Two years ago the Prime Minister made many promises that he said he would deliver if he was elected. Two years on, it is becoming increasingly clear to the Australian people that the Prime Minister’s promises were disposable. Two years on, it is becoming increasingly clear that the much vaunted promises of a new era of integrity were just words from the Prime Minister. Of all the policy documents that the Prime Minister, the then Leader of the Opposition, released prior to the last election, one was designed to sum up his new approach should he be elected—‘Government information: restoring trust and integrity.’ There was this now infamous portrait of the then Leader of the Opposition and document after document just like that one summing up very, very specific promises and principles.
On the issue of integrity, we saw this government’s definition of integrity on display in full glare in a Senate estimates committee yesterday. We had the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy candidly and openly admitting that he suggested a well-known—and again I use the word ‘infamous’—Labor figure in Mike Kaiser as someone suitable to be employed by the National Broadband Network. They see no conflict between a minister suggesting jobs for Labor mates and their new approach to government based on what they call integrity. Integrity and the minister’s actions are miles apart. What was most staggering was not just the brazen attitude of the minister; it was also his complete inability to see any potential conflict. This is what was said in estimates yesterday by the minister and Mr Quigley, the head of the NBN:
Senator Conroy—I suggested his name as a possible person with relevant experience.
Senator FISHER—Was Mr Kaiser’s position advertised?
Mr Quigley—No.
Senator FISHER—Were there other candidates? Was there a short list?
Mr Quigley—No, there was not a short list.
The minister responsible for communications sees no problem in saying to the head of the NBN, ‘My suggestion is Mike Kaiser.’ We have all heard about Mike Kaiser. The position was then not advertised and Mike Kaiser went through a process with the NBN and was successful in receiving a $450,000-a-year job. This is the Labor government’s new definition of integrity. The minister sees no problem whatsoever in making a suggestion like that; he does not see it as out of line, out of order and totally improper. If the minister was asked—as we heard he was—if he had a skerrick of integrity about his conduct as a minister, his advice would have been, ‘You should advertise a $450,000-a-year position, get the best pool of people and pick someone on merit.’ But that was not his first instinct; his first instinct was to think of a Labor mate.
Let us look at the contrast here. The Labor Party went to the last election promising a new National Broadband Network. They promised it would begin operations in their first year—that is, by the end of 2008. We heard last week, from an Auditor-General’s report, that it took nearly 18 months and $17 million of government money—and more than $30 million in total, when you consider the funds that the tenderers had to put forward—and that that $17 million of government money went down the drain, 17 months was wasted and nothing was achieved. But when it comes to appointing a Labor mate, a decision can be made like greased lightning.
It is a sad statement, but this is perhaps the minister’s only achievement in his portfolio. On his list of achievements of what has actually been done, No. 1 is: ‘As minister for mates, I suggested the appointment of Mike Kaiser.’ The minister obviously does not think that, in his role as minister, by even suggesting someone of Mike Kaiser’s political background, someone with Mike Kaiser’s rich history, he puts enormous pressure on the head of the NBN to deliver. No, the minister sees nothing wrong with that at all.
We discovered today from the Prime Minister—I thought surprisingly—that he thought this was completely normal practice. We heard at the Prime Minister’s press conference and in answer to the question today that, as far as he is concerned, he is quite happy for all of his ministers to be suggesting these sorts of appointments and he is quite happy that the positions are not advertised. That is the clear-cut position of the Prime Minister, but he did not promise that before the last election. He did not promise that at all. This is just an example of what this true Labor government is really like—the difference between what they say and what they do. At the end of the day, a Labor mate will always come first.
Senator Conroy thinks he has escaped some questioning. He has got lots of questions to answer. He must reveal all the detail of his conversations with Mike Kaiser before and after his discussion with the NBN chief. He must reveal just how close a friend Mike Kaiser is. He must reveal the extent of the conflict of his interest. There is no doubt there is a conflict. He will need to reveal the extent of it.
But for those opposite, led by the Prime Minister, to say this is completely appropriate conduct just shows how arrogant they have become over the two years since the last election. We have seen this sort of attitude writ large in this first week and a few days of the new parliamentary year. We have seen it in the candid refusal to acknowledge any policy commitments made prior to the last election. When it comes to delivering policy commitments, the Prime Minister’s approach is now, a couple of years on, really quite obvious for all to see. Promises are not delivered. Promises are in fact just replaced with bigger promises—leapfrogged. He is almost like a Nigerian scammer: ‘I’ve made the promise. Just give me a bit more time, send me a bit more money and I will deliver eventually.’ If this guy were trading on eBay, he would have the worst record of anyone. If you looked up his seller records, you would see there: ‘dodgy goods, not delivered on time’. It would be absolutely obvious for all to see.
In the last week, we have had specific commitments put to the Prime Minister and he has just refused to acknowledge his solemn pledge not just to this parliament, which is critical, but to the Australian people. Let us be clear on a few of them. Last week, on the Neil Mitchell program in Melbourne, he was confronted with the fact that his award modernisation program had left some young people out of a job because they could no longer work their part-time jobs because they had to be paid for a minimum of three hours. He had told this parliament that no-one would be worse off. It seems the response of the Prime Minister and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations is: ‘If these people had jobs, we’re looking after their conditions, but they’re not worse off hypothetically,’ ignoring the fact that they no longer have a job. This is writ large all over Australia. It is amazing that this government thinks it can hide the fact that there are thousands of teenage workers in part-time jobs—in the hospitality industry and in hardware stores, for example—who will lose them because of this government’s approach. The government thinks it can hide that fact. For the Prime Minister to say on the Neil Mitchell program, ‘I never gave any explicit guarantees,’ and to deny the explicit guarantees he gave in this House is the greatest snub to the Australian public.
It is not just on award modernisation that this is beginning to catch up with the Prime Minister. He was questioned last night on Q&A about his failure to deliver his promises on laptops for schools. We have seen what he has done with private health insurance. Let us recall that, before the last election, the now Minister for Health and Ageing made this very explicit statement:
On many occasions for many months, Federal Labor has made it crystal clear that we are committed to retaining all of the existing Private Health Insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians. … The Liberals continue to try to scare people into thinking Labor will take away the rebates. This is absolutely untrue.
Well, it was absolutely true.
We saw in question time yesterday the Prime Minister’s refusal to acknowledge his solid commitment to take over public hospitals by 30 June last year. We had this incredible answer from the Prime Minister yesterday where, with all the strength he could muster, he said:
As for the future plan which will be put to the states very soon, I say to those opposite that we will seek to achieve a compromise with the states …
His promise at the last election, and the promise that those opposite were elected on, was to take over public hospitals by June 30 last year. That is only a little over 220 days ago, but now he seeks to ignore the promise and, in doing so, he ignores the Australian people. My friend next to me mentioned superannuation. Again, that promise was that superannuation laws would not be changed—not one jot, not one tittle. We have already seen major change and we will see quite a bit of change again in the future.
What we are seeing from this government is arrogance and an approach where it thinks it can make and break promises and the Australian public will not care. The Australian public is a wake-up and the Australian public is starting to ask why it should believe the promises that this government makes now when it has broken the pledges it made before the last election. On the issue of integrity, the actions and the conduct of the minister for communications are just a window into how this government applies itself and acts. There will be more of this. When you look over an old car—I am a bit of a car fanatic, as my friends know—and you find a bit of rust, there is always more and there will always be more with this minister. Those opposite know it. There will be more with this minister because this is how Labor operates. (Time expired)
844
16:24:00
Bowen, Chris, MP
DZS
Prospect
ALP
Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law and Minister for Human Services
1
0
Mr BOWEN
—It has been a particularly unedifying spectacle over the last few days to see those members opposite lecture members of this government about integrity. It has been hypocritical on so many levels. Let us go through a few of them. The member for Casey and his colleagues fulminate, they belt their chests, about election commitments which have not been honoured. They say it is a matter of integrity that the government must fulfil its mandate. They say that it is disgraceful that the government has not met all its election commitments completely and in full. These are the people whose colleagues sit in the upper chamber and block us from implementing our election commitments. These are the people who say, ‘You went to the election promising an ETS; yes, we know you are upfront with the Australian people about that, we know it was part of your mandate’ —and, by the way, it was part of their election program as well—‘but we are going to stop you from implementing it.’
The ETS is a particularly germane example because this is where the integrity, or lack of it, of those members is on display because it was only two months ago that the then Leader of the Opposition came out of the party room and said that the Liberal Party had met and had endorsed the government’s ETS. He told us that a majority of those opposite supported an emissions trading scheme and supported letting the government’s election mandate through. These are the same people who, with a straight face, now stand at that dispatch box and in front of television cameras across the country and call this a great big new tax. It is part of their great big new scare campaign. These people, who in the privacy of their party room argued that we must let the ETS through, are the same people who say to the Australian people that the ETS must be stopped at all costs.
If the member for North Sydney had won his diabolical mini-election campaign to become Leader of the Opposition, he was going to allow a conscience vote and then we would have seen where they really stand. But, of course, he did not win and so they hide and argue in the privacy of the party room that Australia really needs an ETS and that Australia must deal with the climate change challenge; but, to suit their own tawdry political purposes, in the contest between complex truths and simple lies they choose simple lies. That is what the honourable members opposite do. So they sit in the Senate and block us from implementing our election commitments. The dental scheme is another one—a clear and transparent election commitment from the Labor Party in opposition seeking to be implemented in government. Those opposite say, ‘No, we will block you in the Senate from implementing your election commitments.’ Let us have none of this hypocrisy about election commitments being sacred, about governments having to implement every election commitment to the letter, when the opposition sit in this chamber and the other chamber and stop us from doing just that.
But, as I said, there are a number of levels on which this matter of public importance is hypocritical. The member for Casey raised the matter of jobs for Labor mates, jobs for the boys. He was, of course, a member of the Howard administration: a junior member, I give him that—he was not senior—but nevertheless a member of the Howard administration which used the diplomatic corps of this country as the retirement village of the Liberal Party, the administration which appointed so many former Liberal and National Party ministers to diplomatic posts which I do not recall being advertised that it was an embarrassment. As my friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry reminds me, the diplomatic corps faces a great challenge in Italy, for example. When a government minister visits, they have to decide: do we greet the minister at the airport with Amanda Vanstone or Tim Fischer? That is the challenge for the government with the diplomatic posts of those opposite. They appointed Andrew Peacock, they appointed Amanda Vanstone, they appointed Richard Alston—the list goes on—and they appointed Michael Baume.
0J4
Ruddock, Philip, MP
Mr Ruddock
—You appointed Tim Fischer.
DZS
Bowen, Chris, MP
Mr BOWEN
—The member for Berowra very helpfully chimes in that this government appointed Tim Fischer, and we appointed Brendan Nelson, because we recognise that there are occasions when former members of parliament and ministers can make very valuable contributions to the Australian public life. We recognise that there are times when it is appropriate to make those sorts of appointments. So we recognise the appointment of Kim Beazley and Brendan Nelson and Tim Fischer, because it is sometimes appropriate. But we will not be lectured by those opposite who sat in administration and used government appointments and diplomatic appointments as their plaything. Under the Howard government it was impossible to go to the first-class lounge at Sydney airport without tripping over a Howard government appointee jetting off to take up their position in some of the best and plummest posts in the world as they left the Howard ministry. And they come in here and lecture us about integrity of government appointments.
The member for Casey makes the point that there is something very unusual about the appointment of a former political staffer in the telecommunications field. Something very fishy is going on here, something very fishy is going on when you appoint someone to a very well-paid job in the telecommunications sector. Perhaps he could have used as his precedent the appointment of Mr John Short in Telstra. In April 2005 Mr Short’s position as government relations manager with Telstra was abolished. Fair enough. He received a redundancy payment. A short time later he was reappointed by Telstra as a consultant. Nice work if you can get it. This is what Senator Minchin had to say when he was asked if he had intervened, if he had spoken to Telstra, if he had asked Telstra to make the appointment. A very little interesting little statement, this. I quote from a news report at the time:
A spokesman for Senator Minchin confirmed the minister had known Mr Short for several years, but would not say whether he had any role in him being rehired by Telstra.
“Senator Minchin has known John Short for a long time, but the company’s management policy is entirely a matter for the company,” the spokesman said.
“Obviously in his role as finance minister he talks to Telstra management on a regular basis but he doesn’t detail those conversations.”
But he does not detail those conversations. He did not come out and say, ‘I didn’t talk to Telstra, I didn’t ask them to rehire my mate, I didn’t ask them to reappoint him.’ So that is the difference. As the member Casey himself at the dispatch box just a few minutes ago said, the minister for communications openly and candidly declared what role he had played, at Senate estimates. You could not find a starker contrast with Nick Minchin. You could not find a starker contrast when it comes to integrity. We know the power and influence of Senator Minchin in the Liberal Party and he should come clean. If the member for Casey is going to make points about integrity in administration, he should come clean with the full story.
Hypocrisy on several levels. The member for Casey and his colleagues were members of an administration which treated government appointments and government money as their own personal plaything. They were members of an administration which spent $1 billion over 11 years on government advertising to support their own political purposes—$1 billion of taxpayers’ money to support their political campaigns. It is a situation we have fixed: substantially reduced and introduced new guidelines. It is a problem they would never fix because they did not regard it as a problem. They regarded it as a very good thing indeed.
The biggest advertising campaign was to sell Work Choices. Let us go to Work Choices, because we heard a lot from the member for Casey about integrity on election commitments, about how we have to be upfront with the Australian people. Well, I do not recall in the 2004 election, in which I was a candidate, a mandate being granted for Work Choices. I do not remember the then Prime Minister giving a solemn promise to the Australian people that he would reduce their working conditions and salaries. He was too busy promising to keep interest rates at record lows; that is what he was doing. Do not lecture us about integrity in government.
We will have none of this from the opposition. This is from a Leader of the Opposition who made a rock-solid, rolled-gold guarantee that the Medicare safety net would not be changed. Within a year of the election it was changed substantially. I understand that ministers get overruled. Ministers argue for their policy positions and cabinets take a broader view. I understand that. But there comes a time when if you have given a rock-solid, rolled-gold commitment to the Australian people and you get overruled, the decent and honourable thing to do is to tender your resignation. But the then minister for health did not even think about it. He did not even consider it because he did not consider his rolled-gold, rock-solid guarantee was worth his resignation.
In the time I have available to me I am not even going to touch ‘children overboard’. The Australian people know that tawdry episode oh so well and I am not going to detain the House on that particular episode. But this MPI takes the Australian people for mugs and treats the Australian people like fools. That is what this MPI does and this opposition does. The opposition says that every election commitment must be implemented 100 per cent, no variations, with no regard to changes in circumstances. The Australian people, when they are providing a mandate to a government, provide that mandate for three years. They give that government the mandate to protect them, to respond to crises overseas and to adjust. They do not want the Australian government to say, ‘Well, the right thing to do in the face of a reduction in government revenue of $170 billion would be not to change our spending, not to revise our priorities, not to ensure that our spending is as efficient as possible.’ That is exactly what they expect the Australian government to do. At the end of the three years they do two things. They weigh up how safe you have kept it, whether you have improved the nation, whether you have made the nation more prosperous and whether you have protected the nation against external shocks. They do that, and they will do that with us.
The other thing they do is weigh up who will be best placed over the next three years. Who will present the biggest risk? Later this year, the Australian people will do those two things. They will weigh up our performance and they will judge us appropriately. They will judge us well on some things and not so well on others. They will have regard to how we handled the biggest economic crisis in 70 years. They will think about those crucial three days, those crucial 72 hours following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when the Australian economy was on the brink, when decisions being taken in the cabinet room were the most important decisions that had been taken since World War II. They will think about those 72 hours and they will judge us on them, and then they will think, ‘How would those 72 hours have gone if Barnaby Joyce had been in the chair?’
That is what they will do. They will weigh it up. They will consider the risks and they will think, ‘If Barnaby Joyce has been appointed to one of the most senior economic roles in the alternative government, what does that say about the judgment of the alternative Prime Minister of Australia?’ They will compare the judgment of the Prime Minister with that of the alternative Prime Minister. They will compare the important decisions they make. They will compare how they respond in crises. They will compare how they respond to very difficult circumstances and then they will make their decisions. They will not stand there with a clipboard and go through Labor’s 500 pages, or whatever it was, of election commitments and say, ‘You haven’t met paragraph 3.’ They will say: ‘You have met the thrust of your commitments. You have met our requirement to protect us, to withstand international crises. You have shown judgment.’ They will weigh us against the alternative, the erratic and dangerous alternative that sits opposite: the Leader of the Opposition who says: ‘I don’t understand economics; I am bored by it,’ the Leader of the Opposition who says, ‘We could’ve adopted the New Zealand method, which has lower unemployment and lower debt and deficit.’ Wrong on both counts. He does not understand economics.
Australians will judge us against the shadow Treasurer, whose most credible performance in two months has been wearing a tutu and carrying a magic wand, and the shadow minister for finance, who shows no basic understanding of economic fundamentals and does not understand the importance of his role. The Leader of the Opposition was out there the other day saying: ‘It’s fine. There’s no problem. Barnaby’s going to be very popular in the marginal seats in Queensland.’ He may or may not be, and you would be a better judge of that than I am, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. But I know this: he is not a credible alternative finance minister of this country. The bigger risk is that the man who thought it a prudent judgment to appoint him is the alternative Prime Minister of Australia. That is the bigger risk. That is what will be weighed up by the Australian people and that is a more important issue than the nonsense we heard from the member for Casey today. (Time expired)
848
16:39:00
Mirabella, Sophie, MP
00AMU
Indi
LP
0
0
Mrs MIRABELLA
—In rising to speak on this matter of public importance, this very important issue that goes to the core of our basic democracy, I want to begin with a quote:
Trust is the key currency of politics, and unless you can be trusted to honour that to which you’ve committed to do, then, I’ve got to say, you’re not going to obtain the enduring respect of the Australian people.
That was from Kevin Rudd a couple of years ago. It is even more important than just enduring trust. We are looking here at the integrity of the whole government. Who is head of the government? The Prime Minister, Mr Rudd. We do need to look at this issue of integrity and trust because it is the Prime Minister himself who has raised the issue.
There are two particular instances that stand out that go to the issue of personal integrity. I will get groans from a couple of members on the other side but they know it is true. One of them was the attempt to fake a dawn service at Long Tan. His office denied it because they were under pressure. This is what the Prime Minister does when he is under pressure: he finds it extremely difficult to take responsibility and own up to the truth. The other instance that comes to mind is the lie refuted in the media by the owners of a particular property. He used that occasion to portray his family as downtrodden, at the expense of decent employers.
Both of these issues go to the heart of integrity. In the latter case, it was the Prime Minister’s own image and reputation at the expense of a decent employer. In the first example, Anzac Day was being treated as a media opportunity for himself at the expense of a sacred memorial service. When he got caught out, he lied. It is as simple as that: he just lied. Both incidents were for selfish political gain at the expense of honesty, integrity and the reputations of other people. This is the same man who refuses to do a press conference on a Sunday—
10000
Scott, Bruce (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER
(Hon. BC Scott)—The member for Indi will withdraw the imputation that the Prime Minister lied.
00AMU
Mirabella, Sophie, MP
Mrs MIRABELLA
—I withdraw. This is the same man who refuses to do a press conference on a Sunday unless it is outside a church. We see that even God is expendable to the Prime Minister’s political career. These issues go to character. They go to values. They go to standards that he brings to the government as the head of the government.
Many of us women will particularly recall his claim that he was too drunk to remember that he visited Scores, a particular gentleman’s—some would not call it a gentleman’s club—a particular club overseas. Blackouts are normally due to alcoholism or paralysing drunkenness. In his case it was to cover for any accountability or memory. Not even another former Labor Prime Minister who was well known and is well known to enjoy his alcohol has ever blamed alcohol for not remembering misconduct or misbehaviour.
When the core of a person’s integrity does not exist, when it is challenged, it feeds through government like a disease and through the decisions that governments make. I was having a look at the definition of integrity. One definition says that some people see integrity as ‘the quality of having a sense of honest and truthfulness with regard to the motivations for one’s actions’. Some people use the term hypocrisy in contrast to integrity for asserting that ‘one part of a value system demonstrably conflicts with another’, and so it goes on. So some would claim not only that the assertions and promises that this government has made have been broken but also that this government has acted in a hypocritical way in standing up with such moral virtue, claiming a war on this and that greatest moral challenge of our time, and stepping back as soon as the media circus disappears and the news cycle for those 24 hours is dealt with, moving on to the next issue that they use as a circus.
Let us have a look at some of their broken promises. One that particularly affects many Australians is the broken promise on hospitals. We see elderly Australians who have worked and contributed to this nation waiting years in pain to get basic surgery. We see women miscarrying in the toilets in public hospitals. And what did we have pre the election? We had Kevin Rudd say that the buck stopped with him. He gave himself a deadline, 30 June. If hospitals were not fixed he was going to take over and fix them. Well, that did not happen. That date, 30 June, has come and gone. We are well into the new financial year and he has not fixed up private hospitals.
Labor said that they completely opposed cutbacks to Medicare funding for IVF and even launched petitions. But guess what? They have introduced caps to IVF. They promised services for defence health. They said they were going to fund 12 defence family healthcare clinics across the country, but to date no such clinics have been built. We heard them promise 260 childcare centres, but my advice is that to date only one has been built and most of them have been put on ice.
This is a government which said they were going to take responsibility; the buck was going to stop with them. Clearly, we see a Prime Minister whose time has run out. Time has run out for the great big con, for the Prime Minister to make big announcements and deliver nothing. They said they were going to take a tough line on terrorism and national security, but everyone knows that Labor are soft on terrorism. Late last year they announced an overhaul of Australia’s antiterror laws. They promised they would not means-test private health insurance, but ever since the time when the Deputy Prime Minister was shadow minister for health she made it known that Labor hates private health insurance, and now they are trying to gut the private health insurance rebate. They said that no worker would be worse off. They cannot make that guarantee now. There are pages and pages of broken promises.
Once, the Prime Minister said that he was an economic conservative. In fact, he went so far as to say that there was no sliver of light between the then government, the conservative government, and the Labor opposition on budget orthodoxy. What a joke! What an absolute contradiction! Eleven years of Howard government savings have been lost, and now we seem to be looking down the barrel of years and years of budget deficits.
Integrity is important, so it is no wonder that the Australian population reflects the attitudes of many people across the world in their cynicism about the political process and about politics. Why? They get lied to. They get conned. They think, ‘We’ll give this bloke a go. He sounds earnest. He says he’s like John Howard.’ What has happened? They have been miserably and utterly disappointed because this government lacks the integrity and the responsibility to deliver on what they promised. It is very easy to make all the promises in the world, and we see minor parties, the Democrats or the Greens, promise to deliver all sorts of things. But the Labor Party is the other significant party in Australian politics. They cannot get away with behaving like that. In government they need to deliver on their promises.
Even journalists are starting to get sick of being treated like fools. We see headlines like ‘There’s danger in PM’s spin addiction.’ He may have been on television last night talking about the dangers of alcohol and young people, but the Prime Minister seems to be addicted to his own propaganda, to a lack of substance and, as one editorial says:
… consistent and unattractive pattern of behaviour. Under pressure, Mr Rudd talks a lot but says little.
Indeed, we see that in question time every day. This is an issue that goes to the core of government, and those on the other side know that. It is no wonder that the Prime Minister has few friends. I wait to see in the months ahead the leadership challenge— (Time expired)
850
16:50:00
Perrett, Graham, MP
HVP
Moreton
ALP
1
0
Mr PERRETT
—For the edification of those people listening I will explain how MPI debates work. The first speaker is from the opposition, the second speaker is from the government, the third speaker is from the opposition. I am the fourth speaker, on the government’s side. Normally we rebut the propositions put up by those opposite. I thank the member for Indi for sparing me the necessity of doing that, because she contributed nothing. I will, however, return to some of the comments made by the member for Casey, particularly to comments about one of my constituents, Mr Mike Kaiser, and his appointment to NBN. Obviously, Mike Kaiser is one of the most qualified people for the job of NBN’s government relations person. Almost no-one else in Australia has been a state MP, an adviser to the New South Wales government and an adviser to the Queensland government. He has good connections throughout Australia from his time as a state Labor secretary. This is a guy who understands how governments work, so he is well qualified for the appointment to NBN Co.
While I am talking about the telecommunications area, I think it is timely to revisit some of the appointments made under the Howard government. There is an entity which is also connected with telecommunications called the ABC. Those opposite might have heard about it. It has a board which is impartial because the ABC was set up to be, and is respected for, being impartial.
Let us have a look at some of the appointments under the Howard government: Donald McDonald, Howard’s best mate; renowned conservative commentator, Janet Albrechtsen; Keith Windschuttle, the right-wing historian; Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger, replaced by Liberal Party member Dr Ron Brunton; then another close personal friend of John Howard, Maurice Newman; and then a former Liberal politician, Ross McLean. Those are just some of the appointments under the Howard government. What have we done? We have put in an impartial system, a fair system where people are appointed on their merits.
That is just one of the aspects that I wanted to highlight to the member for Casey, but since he has left the chamber I will not revisit the others. Minister Bowen certainly pulled him up on some of the health hypocrisy that has been displayed opposite and the ETS, which has already been highlighted by so many other people.
In returning to the subject of hypocrisy, I also want to revisit the Leader of the Opposition, because he would have auspiced this MPI, no doubt. He would have sent it off and said, ‘This is appropriate, something that the good people of Australia should be hearing about.’ So I want to just revisit something that Minister Bowen touched on, and that was the comments by the Manly member for Warringah, or the Warringah member for Manly, in the 2004 election, about the Medicare safety net. I remember it well because I was a candidate in 2004. I ran particularly on health. I had organised a health group in the community. I was part of a lot of community groups that were interested in health, because obtaining bulk-billed treatment in Moreton was difficult. That is something I was particularly passionate about and still am to this day.
Remember that Tony Abbott promoted the safety net, which paid 80 per cent of out-of-pocket medical expenses incurred outside hospitals above a threshold of $300 a year for most families with children and concession card holders and $700 for others. I remember that policy very, very well. The member for Warringah was proud of it, going everywhere on the media. He went on Four Corners and he was unequivocal in that Four Corners exchange. The interviewer asked:
Will this Government commit to keeping the Medicare-plus-safety-net as it is now … after the election?
TONY ABBOTT: Yes.
The interviewer:
That’s a cast-iron commitment?
TONY ABBOTT: Cast-iron commitment. Absolutely.
The interviewer:
80 per cent of out-of-pocket expenses rebatable over $300, over $700?
TONY ABBOTT: That is an absolutely rock solid, iron-clad commitment.
Four months later, a backflip—it is gone. He is out selling the flip, selling the change. So to have the member for Casey come in here at the bidding of the opposition leader and say that we are a party that is not ethical is hypocrisy at its rankest level.
I am not sure what the member for Warringah studied when he was at the seminary. I never went to a seminary. Obviously, as a good Catholic boy, I did dream of being a priest for a while but retreated from that soon after puberty. But one of the great works to come out of Italy is The Divine Comedy, an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri in the 14th century. It is all about a journey into hell by Dante. His guide is Virgil, especially going into hell. They journey through different circles of hell. They are working their way into the inner circles of hell and they get to circle 8. This is called the fraudulent circle. There are different trenches as you move further in until you get to the ninth and inner circle, which is for traitors. In the trenches you have panderers, seducers, flatterers and sorcerers and then, when you get to the sixth trench, you get the hypocrites. If you move on from there, you get thieves and counsellors—as the member for Isaacs might be interested to hear! But we will leave that aside and go back to trench 6. That circle of hell is reserved for hypocrites. Surely, the actions of the member for Warringah in bringing out an ETS policy because of political expediency are hypocrisy to the extreme—rank hypocrisy.
And for the member for Casey to trot out the argument that there has been some recalibration of our political commitments, our election commitments, is bizarre. I am going to take him to a person that the Queensland senator, Barnaby Joyce, might not be familiar with called John Maynard Keynes. John Maynard Keynes is famous for his quote: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?’ Those opposite seem to forget that we had a little thing called the global financial crisis. That meant that we had to recalibrate some of our election commitments.
I will take you to one in particular that I am pretty passionate about—that is, Building the Education Revolution. Before the election, we talked about a $2.4 billion education tax refund; $1.2 billion for digital education, where students in year 9 got computers; a $500 million investment in early childhood, preliteracy and prenumeracy; and also the national curriculum. There were many other things, but they are the big-ticket items. Well, we had something called the global financial crisis, so what did we do? We had to recalibrate that election commitment. As John Maynard Keynes says, when the circumstances change, you have to change your mind and change what you are doing. So what did we do? We bolted an economic policy onto an education policy, all about boosting productivity, so we did not have a $1.2 billion digital education revolution; in fact, we committed $14.7 billion. We recalibrated. We changed. Why? Because we had an economic policy that was bolted onto an education policy. It applied to all of Australia’s 9,540 schools: Primary Schools for the 21st Century, $12.4 billion; science and language centres, $1 billion; Renewing Australia’s Schools, $1.3 billion to refurbish all schools—all 150 electorates benefited. That is what you do when the facts change: you respond to them.
You could look at other examples as well. I just picked out another one: the Boom Gates for Rail Crossings Program. It was not a huge pre-election commitment, but then things changed. There were serious accidents at rail crossings in Queensland—maybe in the electorate of the member for Dawson; I am not sure. Once you have some serious accidents and there is an economic global financial crisis, what do you do? You bring out a policy on boom gates for rail crossings: $50 million, $100 million in 2009-10. Two hundred boom gates changed. Lives changed. But it is also an economic policy that benefits the nation, is good for productivity et cetera.
What else? When an Intergenerational report comes out that has serious implications for the future of Australia, you respond to that. You recalibrate your health election commitment in the light of that scary data, data that just blows me away. In 1970, 1.2 per cent of the GDP went on health. Now it is about four per cent. In 2050—not that far away—it is projected to go out to 7.1 per cent. Now it is costing about two grand per person; by 2050 it will be out to about $7,000. What do you do when a report like that, one of the scariest reports we have ever seen, is handed out? You respond to that report.
0J4
Ruddock, Philip, MP
Mr Ruddock
—Mr Deputy Speaker, the member’s time has expired.
10000
Scott, Bruce (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER
(Hon. BC Scott)—Order! The time of the member for Moreton has expired.
852
17:00:00
Ruddock, Philip, MP
0J4
Berowra
LP
0
0
Mr RUDDOCK
—I interrupted the member because I did not think he was addressing the topic. The topic clearly is the failure of the government to honour its explicit commitment to act with integrity. I know that the classic method of dealing with an argument that you cannot meet is to essentially attack your opponents. What we have heard from the government members who have spoken is a typical Labor attack. That is, if you cannot debate the issue you play the man. That is what we have seen. I am about to talk about the issue, because this is about a government that argued, in opposition, that it would restore trust and integrity. It did so in relation to access to information. I would like to quote the Minister for Defence, John Faulkner, who said:
Information is also the lifeblood of democracy … It is fundamental to openness in government, that cornerstone of government integrity. And achieving more openness in government is the Government’s goal.
They went with a policy on freedom of information that was designed to elicit support particularly from the press. They argued that they would break the code of silence that had developed over 11 years of the Howard government. They said:
Access to government information and decision-making are keys to a healthy and vibrant democracy.
They went on to say:
A more open system for obtaining reasonable access to government records is the mark of a strong democracy. In addition, it is essential that we keep a strong system in place to protect the privacy of individuals.
I mention those matters because I think they go to integrity. I agree with the statements that were made by the then opposition about the importance of integrity, and I would like to look at whether or not they have achieved anything in that regard in the two years, two months and two weeks that they have been in office. It is quite clear that any pretence of pursuing freedom of information by this government has lapsed. They have introduced a Freedom of Information Amendment (Reform) Bill and an Information Commissioner Bill 2009, but although those bills were expected to be passed and in place by January of this year, they still have not seen passage.
As the Senate is considering this matter, we know that it is more likely that, rather than dealing with greater access to information, the government’s proposals will inhibit access to information—in other words, rather than creating a culture of disclosure it is more likely that they will close off opportunities for people to get access to information. In Senate committee hearings recently, it has been drawn to attention that, in relation to appealing decisions to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal dealing with access to information, the onus to prove an entitlement to access to information is being reversed. An applicant must now prove that information should be released. As Mr Mark Robinson, from the Law Council of Australia, pointed out in the Senate committee, it makes it virtually impossible for any applicant to succeed in having a decision taken by an information commissioner reversed. He went on to say that applicants often do not know what document they are seeking or what it contains; they just believe it exists and that it will be useful. Yet if they do not know what the document is or exactly what it contains, how are they to prove that they should be given access to it?
More importantly, if you look at the issue of disclosure, the Rudd government in office have been even less willing than the Howard government to give access. My colleague Senator Brandis recently dealt with the 2008-09 report of the Rudd government dealing with exemptions in relation to freedom of information, and it disclosed an absolute rejection of 6.1 per cent of freedom of information applications. By comparison, in the last full year of the Howard government, only 4.4 applications were completely blocked. (Time expired)
854
17:05:00
Collins, Julie, MP
HWM
Franklin
ALP
1
0
Ms COLLINS
—Can I say that it is just galling to come into this place and be lectured by those opposite about integrity—with their lack of integrity when they were in government. I find it particularly galling to be lectured about integrity by the former Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, with ‘children overboard’.
0J4
Ruddock, Philip, MP
Mr Ruddock
—Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order in relation to this matter. There was clearly a government inquiry in relation to my behaviour, and any assertion that I misled the Australian public in relation to that matter was shown to be completely unsubstantiated. You should be very much more careful about—
10000
Scott, Bruce (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER
(Hon. BC Scott)—There is no point of order. The member for Berowra will resume his seat.
HWM
Collins, Julie, MP
Ms COLLINS
—I really am concerned about those opposite and their lack of understanding about what integrity means. As we heard from their own speaker, the opposite of integrity is ‘hypocrisy’—which is a word they should learn. They should know it well by now, because they have been so hypocritical about the NBN from day one, and their lack of integrity really is about the fact that they do not actually support the NBN at all.
They should come down to my home state of Tasmania where the NBN is being rolled out. It is really important to my home state and is well supported by the people in my electorate, by the small businesses and the big businesses. The people in my electorate support the NBN. The opposition should have the guts to come down and tell my electorate that they do not support the NBN. That is what this is really about. It is about the fact that they do not support the NBN. In fact, we have heard it from the Leader of the Opposition himself when he said in the Australian Financial Review ‘we’ve got the $43 billion broadband waste’. The broadband is a waste, according to the Leader of the Opposition, and that is the real truth about their view of the NBN. There is potential to fund a few things with that money, so they are going to stop the rollout of the NBN, particularly in my home state of Tasmania—
SJ4
Tuckey, Wilson, MP
Mr Tuckey interjecting—
HWM
Collins, Julie, MP
Ms COLLINS
—They are admitting to it over there. The member for O’Connor is admitting they are going to stop the NBN rollout. I hope they come down to Tasmania and tell the electorate and the state of Tasmania that they are going to stop the rollout of the NBN, because I can tell you that it has been well received down there. Everybody in Tasmania supports the NBN. We even have the Leader of the Liberal Party, Will Hodgman, saying that he supports the NBN. He said:
The Tasmanian Liberals believe there are great opportunities for Tasmania … to capitalise on the NBN … As Premier I would work with the Federal Government to ensure a speedy roll-out of the NBN—
I am sure he would—
and then actively pursue ways to capitalise on the benefits it presents to our states.
The NBN has been really important in my home state of Tasmania and Mr Abbott has been very clear that he thinks it is a waste of money and that he is going to stop that rollout. It is absolutely galling to come in here and hear about ‘integrity’ when they are the ones with the lack of integrity, because they are not being honest with the people of Tasmania about what they really think about the NBN.
We have also heard from previous speakers about Mr Abbott and his lack of integrity when it comes to the Medicare safety net—that cast-iron, rock-solid guarantee. We have heard about the ETS and the dental health scheme. Those opposite are not being honest with the Australian people that they are the ones holding up a lot of our election commitments in the other place, in the Senate. They are voting against our election commitments, the ones we have a mandate for and that we want to deliver to the Australian people, and the only thing between us and delivering that is you. It is the opposition in the Senate which is not delivering on our election commitments. The biggest obstacle to us delivering on our election commitments is the Liberal Party of Australia in the Senate. That is the truth of the matter. One of the other things I have seen in my home state that has been particularly galling is the lack of integrity involved in failing to support the stimulus package in this place and then going out and having your picture taken pretending you supported it.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! The time allotted for the matter of public importance has expired.
HVP
Perrett, Graham, MP
Mr Perrett interjecting—
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—The member for Moreton is (a) out of his place and (b) at the best of times very cheeky, but the whole debate has an hour time limit.
COMMITTEES
855
Committees
Public Works Committee
855
Report
855
855
17:10:00
Price, Roger, MP
QI4
Chifley
ALP
1
0
Mr PRICE
—On behalf of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, I present the committee’s report entitled Unauthorised disclosure of committee proceedings and evidence.
Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.
QI4
Price, Roger, MP
Mr PRICE
—by leave—Yesterday, I advised the House of a possible breach of privilege concerning the Public Works Committee. I informed members that the committee would conduct its own inquiries and then report its findings to both chambers. As I described yesterday, an article in the Townsville Bulletin of 5 February contained information provided to the Public Works Committee at a confidential briefing by the Department of Defence. The journalist attributed his source as the honourable member for Herbert, a member of the committee. At meetings yesterday and today, the committee confirmed that the member for Herbert was the source of the information. In fact, the member for Herbert has written to his fellow members of the committee acknowledging that he had spoken to the journalist in question and apologising.
The committee considered whether the release had led to a potential or a substantial interference with the work of the committee. The committee was particularly concerned that the information had been given to the committee at a meeting which had been explicitly acknowledged by all parties as being confidential. In order to fulfil its statutory responsibilities, the committee needs to be able to discuss commercially sensitive matters, financial options and tendering processes in a frank and open manner with government agencies. In the committee’s opinion, the action by the member for Herbert has eroded the trust that the committee has built with agencies and the Department of Defence in particular.
The committee believes that Mr Lindsay made a serious error of judgment in disclosing details of a confidential Defence briefing given to the committee. It should be noted that Mr Lindsay readily acknowledged his error; unreservedly apologised to the committee, to the Department of Defence and to the parliament; has given longstanding service to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works; and has given an undertaking about his future conduct. The full extent of the consequences of this event will only become apparent in the future. Nonetheless, the committee concludes that the unauthorised release of this information may substantially interfere with the future work of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works. Mr Speaker, the committee asks you to examine and consider the report.
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—I thank the Chief Government Whip. I will consider the report and I will report back to the House at the earliest time that I am able.
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4281
Cognate bills:
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME (CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4282
AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE CHANGE REGULATORY AUTHORITY BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4283
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME (CHARGES—CUSTOMS) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4284
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME (CHARGES—EXCISE) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4285
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME (CHARGES—GENERAL) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4286
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME (CPRS FUEL CREDITS) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4287
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME (CPRS FUEL CREDITS) (CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4288
EXCISE TARIFF AMENDMENT (CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4289
CUSTOMS TARIFF AMENDMENT (CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4290
CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME AMENDMENT (HOUSEHOLD ASSISTANCE) BILL 2010
856
Bills
R4291
Second Reading
856
Debate resumed from 8 February, on motion by Mr Combet:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Mr PRICE
(Chifley)
17:14:00
—by leave—I move:
That standing order 76 be suspended for the duration of the first speech by the Member for Bradfield on the second reading debate on this bill.
Question agreed to.
856
17:15:00
Owens, Julie, MP
E09
Parramatta
ALP
1
0
Ms OWENS
—The International Energy Agency predicts that it will cost an additional $500 billion to cut global emissions for each year that effective action is delayed. We on this side of the House make no apology for wanting to act or for stressing some urgency. We know that there will be a cost of action. Even if we use the most cost-effective mechanism, which is an emissions trading scheme, we know that there will be a cost of action. That is why, in putting our plan together, we were mindful of making sure that the vast majority of households were compensated for areas where prices will rise.
The costs associated with action are different to the costs of inaction. Inaction will cost the future through lost jobs in tourism areas and result in increased health costs, more extreme weather events and declining agricultural production. And those costs are imposed on our children and grandchildren. They are the costs of a declining economy, and the children in primary schools and the young adults in my electorate know it and will hold us to account if we do not meet our election commitment in this regard. The costs of action, on the other hand, are the costs of growing a clean economy and reducing pollution. They go to reducing the damage to the environment, investing in a new, cleaner industry and preparing for change we cannot avoid. It is true that most of the costs will be borne by us now; but, then again, we are the ones that have benefited from not having to pay for cleaning up our waste all those decades.
Some of that cost in the government’s plan will be felt by families as modest price rises, and those projections are in our papers. Treasury estimates that price rises will be as much as 1.1 per cent by the end of 2012-13. But a significant proportion of money paid by polluters for permits will go back to families to compensate them for those modest price rises. Of Australia’s 8.8 households, 8.1 billion will receive direct cash assistance—that is around 90 per cent of Australian households—and all low-income households will be fully compensated. Contrast that with the opposition’s so-called policy, which will slug taxpayers $10 billion without reducing emissions. And it will exclude Australia from the world debate on emissions trading schemes, the preferred model for governments around the world. The world has decided that emissions trading schemes are the most efficient way to go. So did John Howard, the Rudd government and, until very recently, the current opposition. We cannot stay in the carbon age while the rest of the world moves into a new, clean energy age. Innovation and research is what we do well and this continent of ours is superbly placed to benefit from new ideas on generation of power—wind, waves, geothermal and solar. Compare the capacity of Australia with others—some small European countries, for example, have minimal spare land, little coastline and a relatively cold climate. This country should lead the world on the development of new technology. We should already be doing so. Again, we will live to regret the wasted decade.
When we took office at the end of 2007, we started with a blank page. In spite of some 30 years of debate around the world on the need to act on climate change, there was still no modelling. There was no history of significant investment in renewables. There had been no real consultation on the structure of an emissions trading scheme. We very much started from scratch, and it has been a very busy two years to get to the position that we are in now. Let us hope the opposition’s wish for a brawl—no matter what the consequences—does not result in more wasted years. They have had their time in office, and now it is time for them to meet their own election commitment and allow us to meet ours and meet our obligations to future generations.
There are also great opportunities for developing new jobs in clean industries if we use the market mechanism to stimulate the tens of billions of dollars in investment that Australia needs to position itself to benefit from a move to a cleaner environment. Labor’s plan will move us down that path; the opposition’s plan will not. Treasury predicts that even throughout the introduction of a CPRS—which the opposition chooses to fear—average income is projected to increase by at least $4,300 per person over the 12 years from 2008 to 2200, with a strong trend in real GDP and GNP growth. Treasury modelling also projects that by 2050 the renewable energy sector will be 30 times larger than it is today.
A 2009 Climate Institute study showed that $31 billion worth of clean energy projects are already underway or planned in response to the government’s climate change policies. These will generate around 26,000 new jobs, mostly in regional areas, around 2½ thousand permanent jobs, 15,000 construction jobs and 8½ thousand indirect jobs in supporting sectors. This does not include the thousands of jobs that will be created by the government’s $4 billion energy efficiency programs and over $2 billion investment in carbon capture and storage. Only an emissions trading scheme will unlock the tens of billions of dollars in investment that will drive the move from a carbon economy to a clean economy. And only by taking that path with the rest of the world will our businesses be able to benefit from the massive growth in the international clean technology market.
In contrast, the opposition’s plan will freeze our economy in the carbon age, and I know that is not what our community wants. We all remember that, going to the last election, the community was looking for action after a decade of inaction. They knew we were late. They wanted action on Kyoto. They wanted action on climate change. Both parties went to the election on a policy of introducing an emissions trading scheme. So the opposition might like to reflect on the last hour they have spent accusing us of not meeting our election commitments and get out of the way and let us meet this one. The opposition have had considerable time to consider their position—their several positions—now.
It has been more than 30 years since the first World Climate Conference when governments were called to act and guard against the consequences of dangerous climate change. It has been 20 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed and produced its first report. It has been 17 years since the international community acknowledged the importance of tackling climate change at the Rio earth summit and created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That is where the global consensus has been emerging over the last 20 to 30 years.
In 1999, over 10 years ago now, the Australian Greenhouse Office released six discussion papers on climate change and emissions trading. That was within the Howard era. In 2000 and 2002 two further discussion papers were released on how we could bring about an emissions trading scheme. That was still within the Howard era. In 2007 the then Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mr Shergold, produced the report of the Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading. And, of course, at the last election both sides of politics committed themselves to introducing an emissions trading scheme.
Since the election the government has sought to make this election commitment a reality. We began in June 2008 when the CPRS green paper was released, the Garnaut review was released in September 2008, the CPRS white paper was released in December 2008 and then in March last year, nearly nine months ago, we produced draft legislation for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It went through the House of Representatives and it was rejected in the Senate. It went through a Senate inquiry and it came back to the House. There was considerable negotiation with the opposition and an agreement was reached. Then they decided that they had not been given time to consider the issues and launched a leadership challenge over their internal problems.
This is an election commitment. While you are running around the country accusing us of not meeting them, you might consider who is actually standing in the way of this one. I get the impression—I could be wrong—that the opposition think they are on a winner if they can invoke the big scary T word: tax. They think that if they can convince people that an emissions trading scheme is a tax, which of course it is not, then they will frighten people so much that they will all swing over to their side. Again, I have the impression—and, again, I could be wrong—that they want people to think it is not just a tax but a great big tax. I think I am right on that.
Clearly, they do not like the idea of a tax. Neither do we and neither does the world. That is why the option of a carbon tax was rejected by the world and by Australia many years ago. The world rejected the idea of direct action as the principal mechanism to reverse climate change and has since chosen emissions trading schemes as the way to go. We did as well and so did the Australian people at the last election. The opposition know we are not introducing a big tax on everything. They just like saying it with gusto and aggression, some of them with a bit of embarrassment, some of them threateningly and some of them with fierce expressions that certainly make me quake in my boots, because it reminds me of their great big new tax on everything: the GST in 1998. It was a great big new tax on everything.
Opposition members interjecting—
E09
Owens, Julie, MP
Ms OWENS
—I can see you guys are still living in the past. We in Labor are not the opposition. We make sure that families are looked after. We have made sure that if there is an increase in the CPI a compensation package will be in place, in full, for low-income families and to support the vast majority of families.
This new world of climate change with all its new acronyms—RETS, ETS, CPRS—is very hard economics. Its sophisticated and simplified explanations do not do it justice, but I am going to attempt today to explain the basics because I do know that there are still many people out there who are not familiar with the basics. For 200 years through the industrial age, manufacturers and electricity producers have spewed their waste into the atmosphere. We all know that. In fairness, for many years they probably did not know they were causing a problem, but they were. It has now reached a stage where the whole world will bear the costs of the damage done by the waste. If it is not borne by us, it will be borne by our children.
All the economic theories say that if those businesses had been required to pay for the cost of cleaning up their waste when they were producing it they would have found ways to reduce it, and cleaner forms of manufacture would have become more competitive and consumers would have looked around for cheaper options. You could say that, because they have not had to pay for the cost of waste removal, their prices have been lower than they should have been and we consumers have been paying less than we would have if waste removal was in the price.
The CPRS does two things, and that is why it is called a cap-and-trade scheme. First, it sets a cap on the amount of emissions that we as a nation can make. It does that for the biggest polluters—not for everybody, but for the biggest polluters. That cap reduces over time. It has to do that because we have to stop increasing our emissions and instead reduce them in order to have an impact on climate change. Without a cap and without reducing emissions, temperatures will continue to rise. That is why our plan will be effective and the opposition’s plan is pure nonsense.
The carbon price, as we call it, is actually the price of the permit. The polluters can use the permits themselves or they can sell them or buy more if they choose. The additional cost to production will encourage companies to reduce their emissions. If the price of permits is high because the demand is high, that will encourage even more businesses to find ways to reduce their emissions, to reduce their costs or to free up permits for sale at a high price.
Meanwhile, the government will use some of the money from the permits to compensate families and to ease the transition for industries that are exposed to international markets. But the real advantage of the price on carbon is that it encourages innovation to reduce emissions, which is necessary. It stimulates investment in alternative technologies. Government, through the kind of direct action suggested by the opposition, simply does not achieve that. Climate change is a problem that needs real action and only the government plans that action. (Time expired).
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! Before I call the honourable member for Bradfield I remind the House that this is the honourable member’s first speech. I therefore ask the House to extend to him the usual courtesies.
860
17:29:00
Fletcher, Paul, MP
L6B
Bradfield
LP
1
1
Mr FLETCHER
—Mr Speaker, I rise to speak in this chamber for the first time. It is a great privilege to be able to do so. I owe that privilege to the people of Bradfield who chose me to represent them in this parliament. I aim to live up to the trust the electorate has put in me, and to the high standards set by my predecessors. Prior to me, there have been only four members for Bradfield since the seat was created in 1949. I pay particular tribute to my immediate predecessor, Dr Brendan Nelson, who is in the gallery today. He served Bradfield and Australia with great distinction, and has been warmly supportive of me.
Like all who live in Bradfield, I cherish the natural beauty of this area of Sydney, including the magnificent national parks. In Bradfield we attach similar importance to our built heritage. We are proud of the gracious homes and beautifully tended gardens. But the distinctive built heritage of Bradfield is changing rapidly. High-rise apartments are spreading throughout the upper North Shore. A state Labor government with little sympathy for our area has imposed a dramatic growth in the number of dwellings. Decisions are made by appointed officials, not locally elected representatives. Ku-ring-gai Council is one of only three councils in New South Wales to have had its powers largely removed and handed to a planning panel. In my view these powers should be returned to the council as soon as possible. Decisions about development in our area should once again be made by people who live in our area and care about our area.
On this and other issues, I intend to be a strong advocate for the interests of the people of Bradfield. They face governments, state and federal, which are profoundly unsympathetic—governments with an instinct to regulate and intervene, governments with a misplaced conviction that they know best. Most people in Bradfield live their lives according to a different set of values: hard work, personal discipline and self-reliance. These are the same values that the Liberal Party stands for. That is why the Liberal Party has always received strong support in Bradfield.
Despite that history of strong support, we did not take last year’s by-election for granted. We ran a vigorous campaign. I was helped by a great many people. Let me express my particular thanks to the magnificent Bradfield Liberals—many of whom are also here in the gallery—under FEC President Alister Henskens. The support our campaign received from the Liberal Party, state and federal, both the parliamentary and organisational wings, was superb. It was a fantastic feeling to visit the booths on by-election day, 5 December 2009, seeing them all well-manned by an enthusiastic crew of Liberal Party volunteers, some local and some from out of the area.
I was also touched that so many personal friends and family members rallied to the cause, many of them having their first ever experience of standing on a polling booth. You do not get to this place without stalwart support from many quarters. But there is one source of support more important than any other: your family. My wife, Manuela, has been the bedrock of my life for nearly 10 years. Campaigning is a family business and our boys, Gabriel and Hugo, also made their appearances from time to time. To all three of them I say: thank you.
Manuela and I are typical Australians. We are both the children of immigrants who arrived in the fifties and sixties. Clive and Mary Fletcher came from the UK. Ignazio and Maria Zappacosta came from Italy. Australia had much to offer them, and they had much to offer Australia. Through hard work and the application of their particular skills and talents, both families prospered over time. When I say that Australia has been greatly enriched by immigration, I speak from personal experience.
Mr Speaker, I have been fascinated by politics since my teenage years. I remember my excitement when political journalist Richard Carlton came to speak to a fathers and sons dinner at school. From the outset the Liberal Party was my natural home. It stood for the values of hard work and self-reliance that I had seen in my parents and in other adults I admired. Other life experiences steered me in the same direction. As a part-time teenage shop assistant, joining the union was compulsory. It was ‘no ticket, no start’. I thought this was just wrong. So, at the age of 16, I joined the Young Liberals. Later, I was active in student politics. Being a Liberal student on campus in the eighties could be very character-building. I think we had only three seats on the 21-member SRC.
I was strongly influenced by Mark Heyward, the leading Liberal at Sydney University in the eighties. He was a courageous advocate for personal and economic freedom in an often hostile environment. Mark would have made a significant contribution to national politics had he not died tragically young.
Unusually for a student politician, I also went to lectures. Studying economics in the mid-eighties, my political views were further developed. I saw that Australia had an outdated economic model, with rigid labour markets, high tariff walls and heavy government ownership and control of many areas of the economy. But I also learned about the changes being made—floating the dollar, opening up the banking sector to foreign competitors and reducing tariffs. This reform process would continue for 25 years. I am proud of how the Liberal Party drove these reforms—from the Fraser government laying the groundwork with the Campbell report, to the Liberal opposition supporting key changes in the Hawke years, through to the stellar reform achievements under John Howard and Peter Costello. It took hard work and real political courage—for example, going to the 1998 election promising a goods and services tax. But Australia today is vastly better off. Our economy is more competitive, more flexible and more efficient.
I think it is no coincidence that we have broken down social barriers at the same time as we have economic ones. For example, in the last 40 years the role of women in the workplace has grown enormously. And Australia has become much more ethnically diverse. The White Australia policy is long gone. My electorate reflects that trend: at the last census over 10 per cent of Bradfield residents reported a Chinese background. In fact, the diversity of Bradfield is one of its most attractive characteristics. We have a vibrant Jewish community and significant populations from India, Korea and South Africa, amongst many other nations.
17:37:19 When it comes to economic issues, my instinct is for open markets, free competition and as little state interference as possible. And when it comes to social issues, I start with the same preference. I am a believer in the rights of the individual and I am suspicious of the state seeking to exercise control over personal choices. Of course, it is not always easy to brand an issue as social or as economic and it is hard to get good social outcomes unless you have the money to spend on them. I disagree with the frequently stated criticism that there is too much focus on economics in Australian political debate. I find it absurd that ‘economic rationalist’ is used as a term of abuse by Bob Ellis and other woolly-minded dreamers and utopians. What alternative approach do they recommend in allocating resources fairly and efficiently?
When a government commits, for example, to a $43 billion national broadband network without a cost-benefit study, that is a travesty. I say that coming to this place after nearly 15 years working on public policy in the communications sector, as an adviser to communications minister, Richard Alston—a valued mentor and friend—and later as a senior executive at Optus. This experience has reinforced my belief in economic reform and in the consumer benefits which flow when a protected sector is opened up to competition. Let us not forget that it was only 20 years ago that Telecom had a monopoly and there was no pay television, no internet and a tiny number of mobile services. The change today is extraordinary, with some 25 million mobile services and services that we did not have 20 years ago—broadband internet, pay television, wireless data and so on.
There are always voices raised against reform, and it takes political courage to introduce change. That is why the politicians whom I admire are the reformers—people like John Howard, Peter Costello, Nick Greiner and Jeff Kennett; people who have invested their political capital to deliver better outcomes for the people they were elected to serve. I do not admire politicians who see their objective as upsetting as few people as possible, who manage to do a daily media message rather than long-term objectives and who avoid at all costs any meaningful reform.
My motivation for entering public life is clear. I want to help make Australia a fairer, stronger, more prosperous, more secure, more inclusive nation. I want to be a voice for rational policymaking which recognises some basic realities—the reality that we are a small country in a large world which does not owe us a living; the reality that the prosperity we enjoy today is not guaranteed but needs continual work; the reality that our prosperity depends much more on the efforts of the private sector than the public sector; the reality that, as the government’s debt rises, its capacity to respond to external shocks reduces. Fundamentally, I want to be a voice for continued reform. Of course, I arrive in parliament at a time when the Liberal Party is in opposition. I will do everything I can to help in the work of getting us back to government as quickly as possible. But, until that happens, the reform momentum of the last 25 years has ground to a halt.
We face a government which have boldly commissioned many reports. They have been unstinting in their courageous setting up of inquiries. When it comes to establishing task forces, this government’s unflagging determination knows no peer. But we have simply seen no action. Even minor reforms get squibbed—like removing the parallel import restrictions on books. In fact, we are going backwards. Labour markets are now more heavily regulated after Labor’s so-called Fair Work Act took effect, and already we are seeing evidence of workers suffering as flexibility is lost. There is a new hostility to markets, to competition and to economic freedom. In his 2009 essay, the Prime Minister called for a new phase of social democracy in which markets would be ‘unambiguously regulated by an activist state’. I think this is going in precisely the wrong direction.
As a Liberal, I do not share the unbridled faith in the omniscient capabilities of government which unites those opposite. I do not admire their massive, complex, bureaucrat-administered spending programs in sector after sector. In just two years the federal government’s outlays have risen from $280 billion to $338 billion—an increase of over one-fifth—and debt will peak at over $150 billion. There are billions of dollars for pink batts in roofs and for school halls. There is a hugely complex emissions trading scheme proposal. There is a $43 billion plan for government to do what no private sector company could see a business case for—build a fibre-to-the-premises network to 90 per cent of the nation.
Let me comment on that specifically. I am a strong believer that, having high-speed broadband widely available is socially and economically desirable, but I think this plan is ill-judged. On the cost side, the network design is hugely expensive when compared to alternatives like fibre to the node or wireless. But the revenue side is even riskier. How much will be charged per customer per month for the service? Will it be $40, $100, $200? What will be the retail services that drive take-up? Will it be high-speed data? Will it be pay television or video on demand or something else? How many customers will take up the service, and how quickly? How sensitive are the take-up assumptions to whether there is a competing, Telstra-owned network also delivering services? What will the cash flows be in year one, in year five, in year 20? Remarkably, the government did not know the answers to any of these questions before it committed to this venture. Where I have come from, if you took such a sketchy proposal to a board not only would the proposal be rejected but you would be fired on the spot.
Twenty years ago, state Labor governments in Victoria and South Australia learned the painful lesson that banking was not as easy a business as it looked—and squandered billions of taxpayers’ dollars as a result. It seems very likely to me that the federal Labor government is going to learn the same lesson about building new telecommunications networks.
On these kinds of issues there is a fundamental difference between the Liberal Party and our opponents. We put less faith in government; we put more store in the private sector. It is the private sector which generates the wealth on which the incidents of a civilised society depend. Without a strong private sector, we cannot afford our health system; we cannot afford our education system; we cannot afford our welfare system. There are plenty of people in government and in NGOs who are suspicious of, or even actively hostile to, business. I come with the opposite bias. I see the business sector as a force for good. I believe Australian business has hugely lifted its game in the last 30 years due to that reform process.
To me, the sweet spot in public policy is when government identifies the objectives and sets ground rules and incentives to achieve those objectives—and then gets out of the way to let individuals and businesses do the work. To take an example from the sector I know best, in 1991 the government issued new licences to Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to operate mobile networks using the new GSM digital technology. The result has been the spectacular growth in the mobile market that I talked about earlier and tangible consumer benefits. This is a simple and effective division of labour: government establishes the market structure, private sector players compete in the market and the competitive pressure each puts on the others drives the best possible price and service.
Let me mention some specific policy areas in which I hope to be a voice for change. I believe our higher education and research sector is a vital national resource. In the United States, the great research universities have been a critical source of innovation and intellectual capital. I would like to see an aggressive push to choose amongst our leading universities a select few whose scale and brand can be built to a world standard.
A second, closely related priority is the process of commercialising innovation: moving smart ideas from the lab to the marketplace. That means closer ties between research institutions and industry. It means choosing key areas of research where we can build real scale and leverage that into a national competitive advantage.
My third area of focus, inevitably, given my background, is building a society which makes the best use of modern information and communications technology.
A fourth interest is making government more efficient and productive. That includes more use of contestability and contracting out in choosing the providers of government services. It means better use of information technology in delivering government services. In the private sector there is a huge focus on giving customers a simple one-click approach to completing a transaction. Where is the one-click mentality in government? In the way that government deals with citizens, let us have less compulsion and more persuasion. The recent book by American scholars Sunstein and Thaler, Nudge, is full of examples, in areas as diverse as retirement incomes and healthy eating.
Let us get serious about evidence based policy, using randomised trials to test whether specific programs actually work. Let us look at using the price signal more extensively to best allocate scarce resources, be it capacity on roads or water for irrigation. I think there is great scope to set lighter, less intrusive regulation which uses the power of incentive rather than the power of compulsion to secure outcomes which make people’s lives better.
I feel very privileged to be in this chamber and to have the opportunity to influence, through my vote, the course of legislation which will impact our nation. Like all who come here, I will draw on my own particular skills, experience and beliefs. I aim to be an effective advocate for the people of Bradfield and a thoughtful champion of long-term reform which improves the lives and wellbeing of Australians.
Honourable members—Hear, hear!
864
17:49:00
Sidebottom, Sid, MP
849
Braddon
ALP
1
0
Mr SIDEBOTTOM
—I too welcome the new member for Bradfield. I had a very good relationship with the former member for Bradfield and I hope I have an equally good relationship with the new member. I thank him very much for his lessons on the market economy and the importance of price signals. I will be using them extensively to justify support for the legislation before us today, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills. Everything he said endorsed it, so I congratulate him. Mr Speaker, you are leaving me! Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, you have a much better visage. Thank you.
I am very pleased to be able to speak again on this legislation. What puzzles me is that until quite recently this House agreed that there was a serious problem caused by climate change. Essentially there was agreement on how to deal with it. At the heart of that was a determination to implement an emissions trading scheme—until quite recently. Now that has turned around, as there is a collective memory loss on the part of those opposite. There is also a view, I believe, that the problem has somehow gone away, that we do not have a problem. It seems that, somehow, because the Copenhagen summit did not appear to produce 100 per cent acceptance globally for the implementation of an international ETS, the problem has gone away. The view seems to be that, because people have discovered that there are flaws in both the behaviour and ethics of some scientists involved in the climate change debate, somehow or other the problem has gone away.
There is almost an indecent obsession, amongst some opposite, with the idea that raising some of these unfortunate instances of ethical misbehaviour and scientific flaws somehow or other completely dilutes the scientific argument of thousands of other reputable scientists in the area of climate change. We have some commentators, particularly in News Ltd, frothing at the mouth in their attempts to regurgitate some of the instances of some of this unethical behaviour and some of the flaws in the scientific conclusions—regurgitating it, day after day, in the hope that the Australian people will believe that the problem of climate change has gone away, and in the hope that the general consensus worldwide that an ETS is the best, cheapest and fairest means of dealing with this problem has somehow gone away. And we have those opposite now prepared, almost to a person—bar one—to vote down this legislation which had been agreed to through an onerous, grinding process of consensus that has led to this amended legislation.
That person is the member for Wentworth, who most eloquently presented the argument for an ETS and a carbon pollution reduction scheme for this nation yesterday on the other side. And I congratulate him for that and acknowledge his courage in doing so. He knows what is right and he did what is right. And, you know, the only difference was one vote. The member for Wentworth lost the leadership by one vote. So I suspect that 99.9 per cent of them—although my maths is not that good—essentially were going to accept the emissions trading scheme and the amended legislation. But all of a sudden, all of them—bar one—essentially rejected the science and rejected the mechanism of the ETS. And now they will oppose this amended legislation. So this legislation—agreed to through a consensual process, ground out under the auspices of the member for Wentworth, the member for Groom, Senator Wong and Greg Combet, the Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science and Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change—has now gone by the wayside.
I want to remind this House, and those people who are listening to this broadcast—I hope they are still awake!—that we do have a problem. Let me restate what that problem is. I return to some good old evidence that was put out in the public domain. I say this particularly to those opposite. It is called the green paper; it was followed by the white paper, by lots of other papers and by this legislation and the legislation before it. You can all read it. But those on the other side, essentially, have said: ‘We don’t know what you’ve been talking about. We don’t know what’s going on. You’d better get out there and flog it to the public because we don’t know what it means.’ What a load of nonsense!
Page III of the foreword states the problem. With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, I will look at what that says:
Carbon pollution is causing climate change, resulting in higher temperatures, more droughts, rising sea levels and more extreme weather.
Well, we know that is true in Australia; we are one of the driest continents on earth, and getting drier.
The 12 hottest years in history have all been in the last 13 years and IPCC scenarios project temperature rises between 1 and 6.4 degrees over the next century relative to 1980–99.
Without action, scientists predict—
that is, the massive scientific consensus is that we will see—
up to 20 per cent more drought months over most of Australia by 2030, more intense and damaging cyclones and rising sea levels with serious impacts on:
-
coastal property in Australia—
which is where the greatest majority of Australians live and where the greatest number of our houses and properties are. There will also be serious impacts on low lying Asian megacities and on the Pacific Islands. The cry of the Pacific Islands was well registered at Copenhagen—in fact, embarrassingly so, for those who listened and were not prepared to do much about it. The foreword goes on:
With one of the hottest and driest continents on earth, Australia’s economy and environment will be one of the hardest and fastest hit by climate change if we don’t act now.
Professor Garnaut, in both the draft and his final report, emphasised that point. The foreword goes on to say that climate change:
… threatens Australia’s food production, agriculture, water supplies, as well as icons like the Great Barrier Reef, the Kakadu wetlands and the big tourism industries they support.
… we are already beginning to feel the economic and environmental costs of inaction on climate change. But if we delay action any longer, these costs will be felt even more by not only our generation, but also our children and grandchildren.
That is part and parcel of the problem.
Professor Garnaut, in his review, got far more specific about the impact and the costs of climate change for Australia. He believes they would be relatively greater than for any other developed countries. He gave a significant list of some of the impacts of unmitigated climate change in Australia, and it was very sobering reading indeed, and something, I hope, most members in this House would have read when they looked at the green paper.
There are some who would have us believe them when they say: ‘All right—there’s a problem. But we don’t need to be acting too hastily on it now. We need to be waiting for others. We need to have absolutely incontrovertible proof that climate change is in the state that many believe it is.’
However, Nicholas Stern—an economist, I admit, rather than a climatologist—in his report The economics of climate change in 2007 clearly demonstrated the high environmental, social and economic costs of delay and the likelihood of higher mitigation and adaptation costs and more climate change if action is undertaken at a later date. In other words, the costs now will be far less than the costs later. So there is an economic imperative to this, an obligation, a responsibility to act.
The Leader of the Opposition has flipped and flopped on this, along with a lot of his colleagues—indeed, it is just about all his colleagues if you believe what you are hearing them say on the other side—except for the member for Wentworth, who virtually positioned the environment in opposition to the economy. This is an absolutely false dichotomy. The Stern review clearly argues that stabilising greenhouse emissions at acceptable levels would cost on average one per cent of annual global GDP by 2050, whilst ‘the business-as-usual approach’—the term used by the Leader of the Opposition in presenting his so-called alternative—‘would cost between five to 20 per cent of global GDP’. So on economic imperatives alone there is argument to act now, to act comprehensively now, not in a piecemeal fashion.
There were those on the other side who were in some cases reluctantly drawn to this conclusion but drawn nevertheless when former Prime Minister John Howard established an emissions trading task group headed by Dr Shergold, then the secretary of his department. It contained a cross-section of people who would be most directly affected by the possible implementation of an emissions trading scheme. In 2007 the Howard government adopted the Shergold task group’s recommendation to establish an emissions trading scheme. The interesting thing about that was that the recommendation was to act now ahead of and in advance of many other countries, that it was irresponsible to wait and that Australia would have far more efficient, effective and cost-effective results if we were to act earlier rather than later. I quote from the Shergold report of 2006:
An Australian emissions trading scheme—
said the secretary, and adopted by Mr Howard and his government and accepted by those in this House at this very moment—
with a carbon price set by the market, would improve business investment certainty—
one of the great weaknesses of the current Abbott scheme. The report continues:
This is particularly the case for projects with a high degree of carbon risk. There is growing evidence that investments are being deferred due to uncertainty about the future cost of addressing climate change. Without a clear signal on future carbon costs—
note the member for Bradfield’s maiden speech extolling price indicators in a market economy and their central importance—
these investments will not be optimised. There is a risk that a higher carbon profile will be locked in for the life of the capital stock.
So we had the former government, the former Prime Minister, reluctantly drawn—like my son’s wisdom teeth will soon be—to the conclusion that an ETS was the most sound scheme to deal with climate change, supported by Dr Shergold and his task force and reinforced by the member for Wentworth, by the Prime Minister, by this government and, I suspect, by the majority on the other side up until quite recently. Indeed, through a grinding process we arrived at the amended legislation which is before us today, which I am proud to support.
However, on the journey to this point, supported by so much of the evidence, lots of passengers on the other side fell off or never caught up because they never intended to anyway, and we were left with a shambles which is the con job which has been announced recently by the Leader of the Opposition. Immediately the Leader of the Opposition put forward his proposal, if I could call it that, which essentially says that the largest polluters may continue to pollute—and I think the term ‘business as usual’ is used. Where I come from they say: ‘Go for it. Don’t hang around; just go for it.’
So the polluters who pollute now can continue to pollute. But what we might do, says their scheme, is offer some incentives for you not to pollute. We will help you not to pollute but, in the meantime, you can continue to pollute at the level at which you are polluting. What we will do is grow a few more trees and hope to heavens that the science on the capture of carbon in soil can be much more scientifically proven—and, boy, I too wish that that could be the case but, let us not kid ourselves, that is far from conclusive, particularly with the soil types in Australia. So we will plant lots of trees in urban areas and hope to heavens that the soil can capture most of the carbon. In the meantime the polluters can keep polluting and we will drop a few solar panels on some rooftops. Amen, that will solve the problem. Ah, but what if there is an international trading scheme in carbon? ‘Well, we may have to rethink it,’ they say. I predict that if this sham of a scheme was ever to be realised you would see a fairly consistent drive from industry saying, ‘Please introduce an ETS and do it quickly.’
The other thing I object to about the proposal on the other side—and I want to talk about our legislation, quite frankly—is their assessment that the CPRS is a great big tax when we know that the taxpayer, not the polluter, will be paying for the opposition’s so-called climate change policy. In our scheme the polluters will pay, and every single cent paid for those permits will be returned to the community so that those who need financial support to offset any increase in costs, and generally speaking that is going to be in the energy sector, will be compensated, and in some cases to 110 or 120 per cent.
So what we have on the other side is a sham. It is a politically motivated solution opposed to legislation which is fair and economically and environmentally responsible. It will compensate and it will allow us to take part in an international carbon trading scheme. It is sham versus responsible action—action that those opposite were quite prepared to follow until quite recently. It is only the member for Wentworth now who will see through what he regards as his responsible policy. (Time expired)
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18:09:00
Ramsey, Rowan, MP
HWS
Grey
LP
0
0
Mr RAMSEY
—This Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills are amended versions of the bills we last saw in this House. On that occasion I did not support the bill and, while I acknowledge the amendments as an improvement, if anything my opposition to the bill has increased since that time. My opposition has increased because having spent the last two months back in my electorate, and as the full ramifications of the bill slowly trickle down to individuals and industries in our local communities and the impacts on our economy are slowly factored in, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there is an absolute distrust for, and noncomprehension of, the scheme. In short, my constituents simply do not understand how the Kevin Rudd-Penny Wong ETS works.
While the member for Braddon is still in the chamber with us, he mentioned that we on this side of the chamber did not understand how the scheme worked despite the fact we had the green paper, the white paper and then the bill. In fact, the problem the member for Braddon and the government have on this issue is not that I should be able to explain their scheme but that they themselves have been incapable of explaining it to the people of Australia. This is because the government has failed to take the public into its confidence and has failed to explain the issue to them. I join those who quote former Prime Minister Keating in saying, ‘If you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it. If you do understand it, you’d never vote for it.’
849
Sidebottom, Sid, MP
Mr Sidebottom
—Did you think that up?
HWS
Ramsey, Rowan, MP
Mr RAMSEY
—I actually credited the former Prime Minister with it, Member for Braddon. The government have failed miserably to explain the ETS, and they have not done so because they cannot explain how this scheme will have any measurable effect on world emissions. Australia is responsible for 1.4 per cent of world emissions. The government’s scheme plans to reduce this amount by five per cent, or seven one-hundredths of one per cent. Clearly, that kind of reduction in world emissions is meaningless except as sending a signal to the rest of the world that we are prepared to do our bit. And if the rest of the world will join us, we will do more. So if we are to make a commitment to reducing our CO2 emissions over the next 10 years by five per cent as the government’s bill proposes—as, indeed, the opposition also proposes—and its purpose is to show the rest of the world we are serious about reducing emissions, we should do it by the lowest cost measure so as not to disadvantage our economy any more than is absolutely necessary.
Let us have a look at the government’s ETS. There are some astonishing figures here if you have a bit of a dig around. The government has nominated a reduction in CO2 emissions of five per cent by 2020. Without any change in our current trends it is predicted our CO2 emissions will rise by about 70 million tonnes by 2020. By contrast, a five per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 amounts to a cut of 70 million tonnes on current emissions. So to meet the nominated five per cent reduction we actually have to do much better than that. We have to reduce our emissions on ‘business as usual’ by about 140 million tonnes a year.
Over the full seven-year period the ETS will be in operation through to 2020 the accumulated reduction would be about 560 million tonnes. So by 2020 the total amount of foregone emissions or abatement will be about 560 million tonnes. The Rudd-Wong ETS is planning to charge industry $114 billion for the purchase of permits through this period. This equates to $203 per tonne for carbon abatement. Apart from diamonds this would be about the most expensive carbon in the world. This $203 per tonne will be splashed around to householders and big business and the rest will be chewed up in the churn of financial and government sectors.
So here we are with the Rudd-Wong ETS where we are told carbon may trade for $20 per tonne—of course, no one really knows—but the government will tax industry $203 per tonne to achieve that target. You have to come to the conclusion that everything above the assumed trading price of $20 per tonne is nothing more than a gigantic ‘money-go-round’. It is a massive tax that will cause the price of everything to rise—a scheme to tax industry to raise revenue for the government to buy electoral favour. The Prime Minister knows that if, for instance, he causes the price of electricity to rise by 18 per cent as predicted then the only way he will keep his job is to send cheques in the mail—hence the $900 handouts to buy votes. This is not a CPRS; it is a vote-buying exercise.
18:14:27 Admittedly, there will be one sector in the economy which will do very well. This scheme offers to be an innovative employment program for the financial services sector. The ETS establishes a whole new financial sector for the desk jockeys to play and speculate on. Indeed, that this scheme should be proposed by the same Prime Minister within six months of him publishing a 7,000 word condemnation of free markets is more than remarkable; it is astonishing. Markets are all fine when they are doing things which are entirely necessary, but this gigantic money-go-round has no reason to be except that the government has said that its way is the only way. It is the same conceited manner in which it said that a vote against a ‘cash flash’ is a vote against all stimulation of the economy or that a vote against the uncosted no-business-plan NBN model is a vote against technology—that to propose an alternative path is to do nothing. It is a dishonest argument and it must be of great concern to the Prime Minister that more and more people are beginning to see that. As I said at the beginning, the last two months in my electorate have provided me with overwhelming evidence that the general public have little understanding of how the Rudd-Wong ETS will work. But they are beginning to understand that Australian households will be slugged $1,100 a year for something which will reduce world emissions by seven one-hundredths of one per cent.
I often say it is my responsibility to bring to parliament an understanding of what it is like to live in a regional and rural electorate. Every member in this place is committed to their electorate, but it is a demographic fact that most of our federal representatives live in the city and they do not always appreciate the different effects policy has on regional populations. Nowhere could that be more apparent than on the ETS debate. Assessment by the New South Wales Department of Premier and Cabinet has confirmed that regional Australia will wear the worst of the economic damage. That is because the heavy industries that the nation depends on are overrepresented in regional areas. It should go without saying—but I will anyway—that these industries are built near the resource, near the port, near the energy source and often away from the major cities because in more enlightened times governments could see the value in developing the regions and were not encouraging the continual expansion of their major cities. There is much we can learn from those times.
I have three major centres in my electorate of Grey which stand to be heavily impacted by the government’s ETS. I would like to take some of the House’s time and explain a little about all three and their importance to each community. Port Pirie is the home of a complex smelter, concentrating predominantly on lead and zinc production but also producing significant quantities of gold, silver and a number of other metals and acid. The smelter, operated by Nystar, employs more than 700 people. Indirectly, it is responsible for around 1,800 jobs. Port Pirie has a population of 14,000 people, so 1,800 jobs would be more than 25 per cent of the workforce in Port Pirie or around 30 per cent of the employment. It is important that everyone understands what it would mean for Nystar should the government manage to pass this bill. The bill stipulates every tonne of carbon emitted by the country’s top thousand emitters will require a permit. Depending on the level of emissions per million dollars of production, each industry is rated as high or low intensity.
High intensity will be granted 95 per cent of their permits; low intensity will be granted 60 per cent. After the first year of operation, the level of permits granted will be decreased every year. In effect, industries pay to be allowed to pollute, because the government’s theory is that they will seek to avoid paying this tax by reducing emissions. In Nystar’s case, their industry is broken up into different segments, some rated high and some low. The effective rate across the range is around 75 per cent. That means Nystar will have to buy permits for 25 per cent of their emissions. In practice, this means they will be required to pay $7 million in the first year of operation for emission permits, with that amount rising every year after that. Only Nystar know if the business can afford this, but they will certainly be $7 million closer to the point of nonviability. One thing we do know is that Nystar will not be able to pass on the increased cost of doing business because metal prices are sold into a world parity market. Whether the metals are to be consumed in Australia or overseas, Nystar will be forced to meet the market.
This is exactly what the coalition, industry and industrial commentators have been warning about ever since the publication of the green paper, which the member for Braddon referred to—that is, we have been warning about carbon leakage. If the $7 million annually make this plant unprofitable, then the writing is on the wall. While it may be gradual, eventually if profitability cannot be found rundown and eventual closure will occur. The question then is just how much room for efficiency there is in the Port Pirie operation. The smelter has over the years been faced with financial pressure. It has had a number of owners. Energy costs have risen and we can be fairly certain that every chance to cut operating costs have been explored. There are unlikely to be quick or easy fixes to reducing CO2 emissions.
Let us take the case of steelmakers, which in this case is represented in my electorate by OneSteel situated in Whyalla, a city with 22,000 people. As with Nystar in Port Pirie, OneSteel is the prime generator of jobs in Whyalla, with nearly 2,000 employed directly and at least another 3,000 employed indirectly. If Whyalla were to lose the steel-making industry from the city, the withdrawal of the ship-building industry more than 30 years ago would look like a picnic. Whyalla’s population reached 35,000 in the 1970s prior to the loss of shipbuilding. Subsequently, the population dropped below 20,000. It has been tough. Only in the last five or seven years has the city been able to grow again. To say OneSteel is the major employer in Whyalla is a significant understatement.
While it is difficult to calculate OneSteel’s liabilities for the Whyalla plant from their published material, there is no doubt it will be well in excess of $10 million. The Australian steel industry is no licence to print money. It has been under international pressure for many years and the public is well aware that Australian steel has lost ground to cheaper imported steel for many years. Disturbingly, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, seem to have little understanding of the process of making steel. An essential part of the process of making steel is the addition of carbon. In fact, more than 70 per cent of the carbon emitted in the process is incurred when coke is added to the blast furnace.
You cannot turn iron into steel without using carbon in the furnace. Why then would you design a scheme which raises the cost of using carbon in the process to send a price signal as an incentive to seek an alternative? There is no alternative. All this can do is raise the cost of production; all it can do is make our steel uncompetitive. What it does is provide an incentive to buy cheaper steel from a nation which does not add in a price for carbon. The most important issue here for my electorate is jobs and the economic viability of our communities, but it is not the only issue. The loss of the Australian steel industry would be an A-class threat to our security.
We belong to a world economic community and Australian industry is a world away from the protective barriers which feather-bedded certain sectors of the economy a generation ago. Modern Australian industry is lean and competitive—it has to be. However to think that it has the ability to absorb artificial cost increases which its competitors will not face is madness. Plainly put, any new tax which our competitors will not have to pay could well be remembered as the straw that broke the camel’s back for these industries.
In Port Augusta we have a coal fired power station which provides 40 per cent of South Australia’s electricity. The power station was built in the fifties by the Playford Liberal government and was designed to provide an economic electricity supply to enable the state to power competitive manufacturing industries. Flinders Power now operate the Northern Power Station and the Playford Power Station at Port Augusta and employ 500 people in the city and at Leigh Creek where the coal is mined. By any multiplier—and let us be conservative—at least 1,000 to 1,500 local jobs are dependent on the power stations. Their closure would see around 15 per cent of the jobs in Port Augusta lost. The combined power stations provide 4.2 gigawatts or about 40 per cent of South Australia’s electricity.
Under Kevin Rudd’s ETS, Flinders Power will have to spend $122 million in the first year to purchase permits to emit carbon, increasing each year after that by 1.3 per cent. Flinders Power expects to be able to pass on somewhere between 30 per cent and 70 per cent of this massive tax in higher electricity prices, resulting in a 50 per cent rise in wholesale prices. The extra $30 million to $80 million will have to be absorbed by the business. Taxes of this level must bring the viability of the power station into question.
As I said before, the company operates two power stations in Port Augusta: the older Playford Power Station, being the least efficient, producing 1.5 megawatts per tonne of coal and the newer Northern Power Station, operating at near world’s best practice, producing 1.05 megawatts of electricity per tonne of coal. Millions of dollars have been spent upgrading the Playford station to extend its life through to 2025. The ETS threatens its viability. Flinders Power needs to make a decision in the very near future on whether to open up a new mine at Leigh Creek. The current mine will expire in 2016. Much of the cost of generation at Port Augusta is absorbed in the mining operation. Flinders Power mines eight million tonnes of coal a year at Leigh Creek. The costs of a new mine development are significant. If the fundamental economics for generation do not stack up then they will not develop the new mine. If they do not, coal fired power generation will cease in the medium term, the Playford station will close and the future of the Northern station will be uncertain.
In the larger debate, I suggest that, facing the threat of a complete collapse of power generation capacity in Australia and the associated ‘brown-outs’, it is likely that governments would have no choice but to grant extra permits to pollute. In turn this would be likely to seriously affect the market for permits, putting at risk other industries who have invested on the basis of a high price for carbon. The government plans to compensate low-income households for electricity rises. Instinct suggests that taxing one entity and giving the proceeds to someone else to avoid electoral backlash because your taxes forced up the price of electricity in the first place is all about elections and has little to do with the environment.
The opposition has proposed an alternative policy. It will give us the same result: it will reduce emissions by five per cent by 2020. It will cost just a fraction of the government’s scheme. It will reward good practice and penalise poor practice. It is a scheme which will not export jobs out of Australia. It is a scheme which will assist landholders who control half of Australia’s land mass to adopt new practices, raising production and benefiting the environment. It will not threaten local business by ramping up the price of electricity by 19 per cent but rather offer them incentives to reduce their individual footprint. It will protect the jobs at Nystar, OneSteel and at Flinders Power. Critics say it picks the low-hanging fruit. That is unashamedly so. Only a fool would start at the top of the tree. We should adopt a positive direct action policy which will get us to the same place without the enormous risks of the ETS. Without global action, this ETS threatens to do nothing for the environment but offers to sink Australian industries—industries in my electorate.
872
18:28:00
Clare, Jason, MP
HWL
Blaxland
ALP
Parliamentary Secretary for Employment
1
0
Mr CLARE
—I rise to speak on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and cognate bills. This is the third time that this legislation has come before this House. It has now become a debate of two competing plans: the plan detailed in this legislation and the plan announced by the Leader of the Opposition last week. The plans are very different but ultimately the objective is the same: to cut carbon pollution by five per cent. This is no easy task. The key question here is whether they will work. This legislation puts a cap on carbon pollution. It makes polluters pay. It compensates working families for the 1.1 per cent increase in the cost of living. For the average family that is $12 a week or $624 per year. Nine out of 10 households will receive assistance. On average they will get $660 a year. Pensioners, carers and people with a disability are fully compensated. This legislation works because it puts a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide that the economy will produce, and that ensures that we can cut emissions.
The opposition’s plan, the Abbott plan, involves spending about $10 billion over 10 years on an emissions reduction fund, soil carbon, tree planting, solar panels and hot water systems. It sounds simple, but it has some problems with it. The main problem is it does not work. It does not work because it does not have a cap on carbon pollution. It has some other problems. It does not make polluters pay. It makes taxpayers pay—something like $1,000 a year per household—and it provides no compensation at all when the companies that they fine under the Abbott plan pass on these costs to consumers. Instead of capping the amount of carbon pollution that we will produce, the alternative plan, the Abbott plan, tries to cut emissions by picking projects to subsidise. This is a fundamental flaw. In his contribution, the former Leader of the Opposition yesterday said that that was ‘a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale’ and ‘a slippery slope which can only result in higher taxes and more costly and less effective abatement of emissions’. That is not the government saying that; that is the former Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, the member for Wentworth.
The main problem with the Abbott plan is it will not work. It is like a brand-new car without an engine: it looks good but it will not work. It will not get you anywhere. It will not even get out of the driveway. That is the basis upon which these two competing plans must be judged. Which one will work? Which one will cut emissions? On that basis, the Abbott plan fails because it cannot cut emissions by five per cent. In fact, it will not cut emissions at all. The advice of the Department of Climate Change is that under the Abbott plan carbon pollution will go up, not down. It will go up by something like 13 per cent. To work, the Department of Climate Change advises that the opposition would have to triple the amount of taxpayers’ money they spend on their plan. Instead of slugging taxpayers $10 billion, they would have to slug taxpayers $30 billion.
The department are not the only ones saying this. We heard in question time today from the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change, where he quoted David Pearce, the director of the Centre for International Economics, who last year conducted a review of greenhouse policy on behalf of the coalition. He said this:
… the apparent simplicity of the coalition plan would soon disappear if it were ever implemented … The cost of the scheme could also rise significantly once details such as penalties and assignment of risk were taken into account …
That is from David Pearce, former adviser to the coalition on climate change. In his analysis in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, Ben Cubby also outlined problems with the opposition’s plan:
By failing to address the sources of rising greenhouse gas emissions, even the federal government’s minimum target of 5 per cent cuts by 2020 would be likely to spiral out of reach, potentially exposing Australia to punitive action from other nations that are able to meet their targets. A 15 or 25 per cent cut by 2020 could no longer be contemplated, passing on much steeper costs into the following decade.
We have heard from the Department of Climate Change, which says the Abbott plan would not work. We have heard from former advisers to the coalition on climate change who said it would not work. But perhaps the most important contribution to this debate in determining what plan would work is the comments of the former Leader of the Opposition in this place yesterday, where he said this:
This legislation is the only policy on offer which can credibly enable us to meet our commitment to a five per cent cut to emissions by 2020 …
This is the important thing. This is a debate about which plan will cut emissions by five per cent by 2020, and that is the basis upon which in the first instance we need to compare these two plans. What the former Leader of the Opposition told this place yesterday is that there is only one plan that will do this, and that is this legislation. The Abbott plan will not.
The former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth, is not the only Liberal who realises the best way to cut carbon pollution is with an emissions trading scheme. This is the great irony of this debate: the Liberal Party are now opposed to the same thing they voted for under John Howard and promised to do if they won the last election. On 3 June 2007 John Howard said:
Australia will move towards a domestic emissions trading scheme … beginning no later than 2012. Australia will continue to lead internationally on climate change, globally and in the Asia Pacific …
John Howard said this, John Howard did this and John Howard got his party to support this for two simple reasons: (1) because it works and (2) because it is the cheapest way to do it. This is the advice of Dr Peter Shergold, John Howard’s most trusted and senior adviser. The Shergold report, the report of the task group on emissions trading which John Howard commissioned, said this at page 6:
The Task Group is firmly of the view that the most efficient and effective way to manage risk is through market mechanisms. An Australian emissions trading scheme would allow our nation to respond to future carbon constraints at least cost.
Emissions trading focuses on the ultimate environmental objective: to reduce emissions in the most efficient manner.
That is what we are trying to do here: reduce emissions in the most efficient manner. I do not see this as a debate on whether climate change exists or not. You have two plans here whose objectives are to cut emissions by five per cent, and the basis upon which you have to judge them is whether they are effective in meeting that and which is the most cost-effective way to do it. Here you have the Shergold report giving advice to the former Prime Minister saying the most effective way to do it, the cheapest way to do it and the best way to ensure that you do do it is with an emissions trading scheme. It goes on:
Emissions trading enables the market—not government—to decide which new or existing technologies will reduce emissions at least cost.
That is why the Liberal Party promised hand on heart at the last election that they would introduce an emissions trading scheme. That is why a few months ago John Howard, when asked about this legislation, said it was ‘not all that different from the one I took to the last election’. That is why the member for Wentworth, when he rose in this place yesterday, said:
At their core, therefore, these bills are as much the work of John Howard as of Kevin Rudd.
Who would have thought the Liberal Party thought John Howard was capable of such a despicable act? I am forced to ask myself why all this has happened. What explains this big shift in the view of the Liberal Party since John Howard left this place? What explains the shift in the last few months? It is to do with politics not policy. If you want to find the origins of this shift you have to go back to 3 June last year. This is when the national accounts data came out for the March quarter and it showed that Australia, unlike the rest of the major advanced economies around the world, did not go into recession. The economic ramifications of that, as we all know, were enormous—the political ramifications were even greater. It proved that the government had made the right decision to stimulate the economy and the Liberal Party had made the wrong decision to vote against it. That was the economic debate—it changed everything in this place. If you want proof of that, have a look at the number of questions the opposition asked on the economy before and after that event. Between 3 February and 2 June last year, the opposition asked the government 154 questions without notice on the economy. In the rest of last year after 3 June—five months—they asked only 51 questions on the economy—so before the data came out 154 and after the data came out 51.
Instead of asking questions on the economy, they had to look for something else and it did not take long for them to find it. On the very next day, 4 June, the former Leader of the Opposition asked his first question about a ute and we all know where that ended. The data which came out on 3 June shifted the whole debate in this country. The opposition had to look for something else to scare the Australian public. They moved from fear to smear. It also affected the way the new opposition leader approached this topic and this legislation. We all remember that in July last year the member for Warringah, now the Leader of the Opposition, was advocating a vote for this legislation. He said it should be passed. A couple of months later though he changed his mind. What explains this? Have a look at an opinion piece that the Leader of the Opposition wrote in October last year which explains why he changed his mind. He said:
A few months ago—
before the 3 June data came out—
the Liberals’ best bet seemed to be getting the ETS off the agenda and concentrating on debt and deficit.
What changed? One thing changed—the economy. Australia did not go into recession, the stimulus plan worked and so the Liberals needed something else to campaign on, something else to give people a reason to vote for them, something else to scare the Australian public about. They chose this legislation. That is why this legislation is still here and why we are debating it for a third time. It is also why Malcolm Turnbull, the member for Wentworth, was killed off. It is not about policy; it is all about politics.
If you want another example of this, more proof of why the Liberal Party have shifted positions on this legislation, have a look at the first speech of Senator Mathias Cormann in the Senate in 2007. We have just had a first speech. We all understand how important those speeches are and how they articulate your policy views. When Senator Cormann stood in the Senate for the first time in 2007, he said:
The government’s recent announcement of a national emissions trading scheme, including offsets for trade exposed industries, is a positive and sensible approach to addressing global warming.
When John Howard announced this, he said it was a great idea. A couple of years later he quit his job and knifed his leader over exactly the same thing. It has nothing to do with policy; it is all to do with politics. It is about finding another issue, another reason to try to scare the Australian public and give the opposition something to campaign on. That is why this legislation is still here and why it was not passed by the Senate in December last year.
One of the arguments that is always put up in this debate is that this legislation will cost jobs. As Parliamentary Secretary for Employment it is an issue that concerns me, but it is also an argument that I have heard many times before. It reminds me of the debates that happened in this place in the 1990s about universal superannuation, when the Liberal Party would come in here and fight tooth and nail trying to stop the implementation of universal superannuation. They said it would cost jobs because businesses would have to sack people to survive. What happened? People did not get sacked; new businesses and new jobs were created. It proved to be one of the most important economic reforms of the last century. It created new industries which now have more than $1 trillion in funds under management, making Australia’s superannuation savings the fourth largest capital pool in the world. It also created jobs. A report released last year by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia estimated that 60,000 people are now directly employed in the superannuation industry. The fact is structural reform creates new industries and new jobs. This legislation is no different. Treasury modelling shows that employment will continue to grow strongly under an emissions trading scheme and that the scheme will create new industries and new jobs. Modelling published in the Intergenerational report projects that by 2050 the alternative energy sector will be 30 times larger than it is today. The Climate Institute has estimated that this will create about 26,000 jobs, mostly in regional areas.
A lot is also being said in this debate about Copenhagen and what it means. I have always said, irrespective of Copenhagen, one thing is certain—there will be a price put on carbon. If you assume this, there are strong reasons to support this legislation and there are strong reasons for this country to act now. Treasury’s advice is that, the longer we wait to set up an emissions trading scheme, the more it will cost. That is why it is in our interest to pass this legislation now and why both sides of parliament have agreed to a five per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 without international agreement. The longer we wait to do this, the longer businesses have to wait to find out what rules will govern their investment decisions. They want to know what the rules are so they can make long-term investment decisions that will create jobs. That is what leaders in the business community are saying.
When these bills were voted down in December last year, Carl McCamish, the head of policy and sustainability at Origin Energy, said:
Ongoing uncertainty risks delaying both the investment necessary to meet Australia’s long-term baseload electricity needs and the investment in lower-carbon technology required to gradually reduce Australia’s emissions.
That is why this legislation is so important. If you accept that there will eventually be a price put on carbon then the longer we wait the more it will cost, the more it will delay these important investment decisions that business want to make and the more jobs it will cost.
I will end my contribution where I began. The Australian people have now been offered two plans to cut carbon pollution. Only one will work. Only one will cut carbon pollution by five per cent. That is an important difference. I will repeat what the member for Wentworth said yesterday:
This legislation is the only policy on offer which can credibly enable us to meet our commitment to a five per cent cut to emissions by 2020 …
These are the words not of the government but of the bloke who was once the Leader of the Liberal Party, the person that they once wanted to become the Prime Minister of Australia. He says that this legislation is the only plan that works. If you apply this test, the question is an easy one. It is like choosing between DVD and Beta. Only one will work. The other one will not.
Of course, why would you expect a plan put together by a bloke who thinks climate change is ‘absolute crap’ to work? Why would he do anything about something if he did not even think it existed? What the Leader of the Opposition has presented here is a pretend plan for what he thinks is a pretend problem. I am reminded here of an article I read in July 2008, by Phillip Coorey in the Sydney Morning Herald, where he quoted an unnamed Liberal MP explaining why he voted for John Howard’s emissions trading scheme:
We were staring at an electoral abyss. We had to pretend we cared.
I have often wondered who that unnamed Liberal MP was. Who could it have been? I wonder whether it was the current Leader of the Opposition, who does not believe that climate change is real but suddenly has a plan to tackle it. This is a pretend plan by somebody who does not even believe that climate change exists. They were pretending then and they are pretending now. That is why the member for Wentworth has said that this is ‘a con, an environmental fig leaf to cover a determination to do nothing’.
The last speaker quoted what a former member for Blaxland, former Prime Minister Paul Keating, said about John Hewson’s GST: ‘If you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it.’ As the current member for Blaxland, let me say this: if you don’t believe in climate change then don’t vote for this legislation. But, if you believe that climate change is happening—as most Australians do—and you want to cut carbon emissions, you will vote for this legislation, because it is the cheapest way to do it and, in this debate, it is the only plan that will do it. For those reasons, I commend these bills to the House.
877
18:48:00
Baldwin, Robert, MP
LL6
Paterson
LP
0
0
Mr BALDWIN
—I rise today to speak against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills. It is now apparent, more than ever before, that this CPRS is an indirect tax, a tax that will affect hardworking Australians who are struggling to keep family budgets in check and who work hard to limit their impact on the environment. The Rudd Labor government’s great big new tax will impose massive cost burdens on working families and small businesses, yet the government will not say how much the price of a loaf of bread or a litre of milk will rise under this big new tax—because either they do not know or they are too frightened to say.
The Newcastle Herald reported in October 2009 that the typical Hunter household power bill has risen by more than 20 per cent and could rise by as much again, if not more, with the cost of carbon trading. Last year the New South Wales Labor government commissioned a report through Access Economics on the impact that the CPRS would have on state economies. It concluded that the CPRS would severely affect the Hunter economy. An article by Ian Kirkwood in the Newcastle Herald, published on 11 June 2009, said:
The Access Economics report into the scheme’s impact on disadvantaged regions says that by 2025, it could cost the Hunter 17,000 jobs and cut its commercial output by more than $1 billion a year.
Coal, predictably, would be hardest-hit with at least one in three Hunter coalminers likely to lose their jobs as industry output fell by 37 per cent “relative to the [no carbon scheme] baseline”.
It would also be felt at Tomago Aluminium and Hydro’s Kurri Kurri smelter, with national aluminium output predicted to be at least 50 per cent less than without the scheme.
The Hunter’s coal-fired electricity industry is also expected to suffer.
Overall, Access Economics says the proposed carbon scheme will cut the Hunter’s output by 3.7 per cent and take 2 per cent from employment.
Things become dramatically worse if Australia’s carbon permits are not part of an international trade.
In this case, employment is hit by 7.8 per cent and output by 10.2 per cent.
That is perhaps one of the most damning articles I have ever read about the impact of an emissions trading scheme on a region—an impact that would be hard, if not impossible, for many to recover from.
The question to ask now is: from whose electorate will these 17,000 jobs be lost? Will they come from the seat of Hunter? Last night, Joel Fitzgibbon, member for Hunter, declared to all that he is willing to vote to sacrifice those 17,000 jobs in the Hunter region. Given that he has Hydro’s Kurri Kurri smelter, most of the state’s coal-fired power stations and most of the state’s coalmines in his electorate, that is a very bold statement to those who have elected him to represent them in this parliament.
Will they come from the seat of Newcastle? Sharon Grierson, member for Newcastle, is the icon of hypocrisy. On the one hand she calls for and praises the investment in rail and port infrastructure in Newcastle to export more coal, yet on the other hand she condemns anything to do with coal power energy. With the Kooragang Island and Port Waratah coal loaders and Tomago Aluminium in her electorate, her hypocrisy knows no bounds. She is prepared to export our emissions overseas, but what she has not realised is that, by supporting Rudd’s massive big tax that will affect coalmining and aluminium, she will be exporting local jobs overseas.
Will they come from the seat of Charlton? The member for Charlton, Greg Combet, as assistant minister for climate change, who is one of the architects of the great big tax, also has coalmines and coal-fired power stations in his electorate. If the members from the Hunter, Newcastle and Charlton had listened to their constituents, they would have heard the concerns on the CPRS expressed with the following theme. Gerry said in an email:
As the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change and as my local member I feel confident you can answer some concerns that I have about the climate change debate. I am not too interested in the argument as to whether the climate change is man made or a natural event because, in the short term, not a lot can be done by Australia to fix a global problem.
No Greg, my concern is how much your proposed ETS will cost me. In your response I don’t think it will be necessary to quote the ready available figures bandied about of $600+/-. I am concerned that the media’s figure of $1100+/- might be a possibility.
Where I have a major problem with all of this Greg, is that I have been told that big polluters will get a refund as well as low income earners. That leads me to wonder who will be buying carbon credits to provide the funds that are to be allocated. There has, as far as I can tell, been no mention of these people. Are they suppliers of goods that consumers usually buy? Will the price of these items rise? As electricity will rise 19% in the next 2 years, can you guarantee that businesses that use electricity (I can’t think of any that don’t) won’t pass on the increase in their overheads to us consumers?
I must say that I am disappointed with Mr Rudd who told us almost daily before being elected that his Government would be ‘open and transparent’. He now refuses to release the Treasury figures on the proposed ETS, figures that should allay our fears unless there is something to hide. What is even more disappointing is Mr Rudd’s childish excuse that he is doing the same as his predecessor.
I await your response and I trust you won’t ignore this email as you have with some of my past questions.
Page 3 of the Access Economics report names the Hunter Valley and the Latrobe Valley as the regions most disadvantaged by the Rudd Labor Government’s CPRS. The Hunter Valley has become a hub of growth and activity. In 1996, when I was first elected as the member for Paterson, the unemployment rate was 11.2 per cent in my region; it is now about four per cent. This is in no small way due to the boom in the mining and aluminium sectors and the industries that support them. Research prepared by Access Economics concluded that there will be 23,510 fewer jobs in the mining industry by 2020. Frontier Economics identified 45,000 jobs lost in high-energy-intensive industries. Australia’s 750,000 small businesses will receive no compensation for the massive jump in electricity prices from the ETS. This means that jobs will be lost and the price of consumer goods will go up.
Paterson families will also be hit hard by the latest increase in household costs foreshadowed recently by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, or IPART, on 15 December 2009. The determination recommends further increases to power prices ranging from 44 per cent to 62 per cent over three years starting in July 2010. This IPART recommendation has revealed the true cost of the Rudd Labor government’s proposed CPRS. Because there is little competition between our energy retailers, there is no incentive to reduce costs or emissions. So, if energy producers are forced to pay this great big tax for carbon under the Rudd Labor government, these costs will simply be passed on to the consumer, so where is the great environmental benefit Mr Rudd talks of from penalising electricity generators?
According to IPART the average Energy Australia consumer will pay an extra $727 by 2013, while those with Country Energy will pay $893 extra. IPART has also said that electricity prices will rise by up to 62 per cent over the next three years—a third of which will be as a result of Kevin Rudd’s great big new tax. A massive hike in power bills will hit all businesses hard as they battle through the financial downturn. If employers are forced to pay more, they may have to sack workers just to survive, meaning even more local job losses, or they will simply pass on costs to consumers as clarified by Minister Combet in an ABC interview today. This is simply unacceptable.
Kevin Rudd wants to tax Australian industry in the absence of global action—meaning both Australian jobs and emissions will go overseas. This would be harmful to our economy whilst doing absolutely nothing for the environment. The Prime Minister says he will make polluters pay—but what he will not tell you is that he plans to give Australia’s polluters up to $40 billion in handouts even if they do not reduce their emissions. According to the Access Economics report, on page 16, the annual impact of the CPRS on the New South Wales budget is estimated to reduce the net operating balance by $0.9 billion in 2013-14, increasing to $1.7 billion in 2020-21, with revenue losses from the downturn in mining royalties, reduction in profits from government owned enterprises and losses in payroll tax from job losses—just to name a few.
Prior to the 2007 election Mr Rudd promised to introduce an emissions trading scheme that would produce deep cuts in CO2 emissions but would not disadvantage Australia’s export and import industries. The current CPRS bill offers little to no protection to Australian businesses; they will actually be left out in the cold. Paterson’s businesses will be left out in the cold and Australia’s trade exposed businesses will be left disadvantaged against other competing countries in the market, as they will not be on a level playing field with their competitors. The current ETS proposal poses a significant threat to the continued competitiveness of Australian businesses operating in those trade exposed industries. Recently Access Economics stated that, without the trading of permits internationally, carbon prices in Australia will be much higher. Page 20 of that report states:
Without the trading of permits internationally, carbon prices in Australia will be much higher for the target of a 5% reduction in emissions by 2020 to be achieved. This would result in deterioration in State and Territory budgets by 2013/14 of $7.3 billion, increasing to $9.1 billion by 2020/21 …
Unfortunately for working families, the Prime Minister has no plan B to cut emissions by five per cent. He has a plan that he is too stubborn to drop and which he cannot deliver. In the space of 24 hours the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard and Penny Wong were all asked to explain the impact of Labor’s great big new tax on working families, and they all failed to do so. Only this past week, the junior climate change minister, Greg Combet, struggled to explain how a single person earning $80,000 a year will be $545 a year worse off under the Rudd Labor government’s planned ETS. Despite having a pile of tables detailing compensation arrangements, Mr Combet was unable to refute that some middle-income Australians will be out of pocket after the scheme’s start in July 2011. Mr Combet, to support this scheme, is to support 17,000 job losses in our Hunter region. How could you possibly be representing your constituents when so many thousands of these same people will lose their jobs, their livelihoods and their way of providing for their families under your big new tax? Clearly you are only representing your own interests, the interests of the Labor Party, rather than those people who put their faith in you when they voted for you in 2007.
Kevin Rudd talks about punishing the big emitters but the reality is that all of the penalties will flow down to the end consumer. Kevin Rudd said that 92 per cent of all households would be compensated or overcompensated, which then leaves eight per cent of the people to pick up the burden—and $140 billion to 2020 is a lot of burden. The reality of compensation packages is that they never amount to the full cost.
As the shadow minister for defence science and personnel and as a member who represents many ADF personnel in my electorate of Paterson, I would now like to briefly outline the impacts that the Rudd Labor government’s great big new tax will have on defence, and in particular defence personnel. It is disappointing that the Prime Minister has given so little thought to those who will be affected by his great big new tax, not least of all the men and women of Australia’s Defence Force who put their lives on the line every day to defend our nation. This great big new tax will cost the men and women of the ADF hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year. Let us take, for example, a RAAF flight lieutenant based at Williamtown who is single with no children: this person has three years experience at the rank of flight lieutenant and is paid at approximately the middle of the pay band. This flight lieutenant would be on a salary of about $69,100 per annum. When you include the $11,355 service allowance with the flight lieutenant’s total annual salary, not counting any additional allowances for overseas duties or dangerous duties, this flight lieutenant would receive approximately $80,500 per annum. Under the Rudd Labor government’s CPRS, this flight lieutenant would be slugged $545 per annum. So much for the Prime Minister’s claim of no-one being worse off!
Let us consider for a moment another situation, a family with two children and two working adults, one of whom is a sergeant based at Singleton Army base with five years experience at that rank. This sergeant would have an annual salary, including the service allowance, of approximately $74,000 per annum. This family, a family that has had to live with the constant deployments and relocations synonymous with serving in the ADF—a family that has sacrificed time together for the benefit of this nation—will now be slugged a whopping $668 per annum more because of the Rudd government’s big new tax. Again, how can the Prime Minister state that 92 per cent of households would be no worse off when two examples involving Defence Force members—and I might stress these two examples would be considered average circumstances within the ADF—will be slugged $545 and $668 per annum respectively? So I say to the Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science, who also just happens to be the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change: how can you possibly explain to the men and women of Australia’s Defence Force, who put their lives on the line to defend this nation, that your great big new tax will be good for them?
There is, of course, another dimension to this great big new tax, and that is how the Rudd Labor government plans to pay for the Defence Force of the future. Let us not forget for one moment that the Rudd Labor government will strip $20 billion from defence over the next decade. Furthermore, the Pappas report, an independent audit of the defence budget, states on page 7 that defence will require a 4.2 per cent real cost increase to fund future defence acquisitions. Yet this government has only promised a three per cent, decreasing to 2.2 per cent, real cost increase to the defence budget. Here is a government that cannot even manage to pay its personnel on time or get the amount right, yet it wants to introduce a great big new tax on defence personnel. Given this government’s sloppy record of managing defence, this can only end in disaster—a disaster that will damage the morale of ADF personnel both now and into the future.
8W5
Gray, Gary, MP
Mr Gray
—Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order on relevance. The bill is on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and I have been in the chamber and I have not heard it mentioned a single time.
10000
Sidebottom, Sid (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER
(Mr S Sidebottom)—The member for Paterson is aware of the legislation before us. He may continue and make it very relevant.
LL6
Baldwin, Robert, MP
Mr BALDWIN
—It is always relevant, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Rudd Labor government has no clue as to the costs its CPRS will have for the administration and operations of Defence. Furthermore, it has no idea how it will pay for the offsets that it will have to fund in order for Defence to continue with its operations and training. For every flight of an FA18, for every hour of sea time for an Anzac class frigate, for every kilometre a Bushmaster travels, there will be a new cost imposed to pay for their emissions—a cost that will be directly passed on to taxpayers. Let me reiterate: this government has no idea of the notional costs involved in running Defence equipment, let alone the increased costs associated with its great big new tax.
By stark comparison, the coalition’s direct action policy provides incentives for Australian families and businesses to reduce their carbon emissions and focuses on meaningful, effective and direct action to improve Australia’s environment. Our incentive-based approach will reduce emissions as well as address some of Australia’s serious environmental problems. The Prime Minister is not sure how to react to the recent admission by President Obama that he is considering an incentive-based approach. In the President’s own words:
… incentivising clean energy so that it’s the cheaper, more effective kind of energy, is one that’s been proven to work, and it’s a market-based approach.
This must be quite an embarrassment for the Prime Minister. No longer has he got the excuse that action in the form of an ETS is the only way forward. I congratulate President Obama for moving towards a direct action plan. Our intransigent Prime Minister has now become the emperor with no clothes. Everyone but the Prime Minister is beginning to see the nakedness of his argument, and it is not pretty.
The coalition’s proposed scheme seeks to reduce carbon emissions by five per cent. Labor’s emissions trading scheme, or emissions taxing scheme, seeks to reduce carbon emissions by five per cent. But that is where the similarity ends. The coalition will take direct action which will take advantage of Australia’s natural advantages, soil and sun, both of which we have in abundance. The coalition’s direct action plan is careful, costed and capped, reducing emissions without a tax on everything. Under the coalition’s plan there will be no job losses; there will only be job opportunities. Under the coalition’s plan, there will be no increases in energy prices—only incentives to reduce emissions. Under the coalition’s plan, we will match the five per cent reduction.
On behalf of my constituents, I have to ask: if you can get the same cuts to emissions as the Rudd Labor government scheme through direct and practical action, why would you proceed with a $140 billion money-go-round that will raise the cost of living for Australian families and cost jobs? At a time when we need to grow our economy to get out of the global financial crisis and pay off this Rudd Labor government’s massive debt, we do not need to penalise the economy further. The only thing that is clear is that, no matter what the cost of the Rudd Labor government CPRS, that cost will raise prices for virtually all consumer goods and services, it will hurt working families and small businesses by drastically increasing electricity costs and it will cost local jobs, all by ignoring real environmental concerns which should be passed on to the Australian— (Time expired)
882
19:08:00
Oakeshott, Rob, MP
IYS
Lyne
IND
0
0
Mr OAKESHOTT
—Whilst we are visiting the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related legislation for a third time, I will be moving the same amendments as previously, but also, this time around, I will be making something called a reasoned amendment in the second reading stage. So, with the indulgence of the House and, hopefully, with the support of the coalition, if they listen closely, I move:
That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:
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acknowledges that the bill does not adequately answer the following critical topics:
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the energy security needs of Australia;
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Australia’s regional stability and Asia-Pacific security needs;
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whether Australia’s international climate change obligations have the potential to inhibit or enhance our competing land management policies;
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possible protection and compensation for small businesses that are light emitters, given they are unable to access free heavy emitter permits or reach the 25,000 tonnes per financial year to gain support;
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possibilities for farms, small businesses and households to make and save money through abatement, carbon credits, offsets and small-scale production;
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the favourable position of heavy emitters compared with households, and whether this should be adjusted given the low 5 per cent emissions target that is likely to be met without any policy through this place;
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the workforce restructuring that it will cause and the need for retraining;
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the accuracy of the scientific data published in the Garnaut report and the Shergold report, and by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and
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calls on the Government to urgently conduct these reviews, audits and analysis and thereby begin engaging the Australian community in a detailed, serious and factual debate”.
In Camden Haven, on the mid-North Coast of New South Wales, we recently had a heated debate about whether the community would like to have a diesel-fired peak load electricity generator at a beautiful location close to water called Herons Creek. A previous local council had signed off on the right to allow a private company to put this facility on council land. As expected, the community reacted strongly and comprehensively, saying that they did not want such facilities to be part of their future. Quite rightly, they argued that we can all do better.
At two seaside locations in the electorate of Lyne, at places called Old Bar and Lake Cathie, we see some quickening in erosion that is right now jeopardising the houses and the savings of many within the region. The front page of a local paper, the Manning River Times, described this issue last year with the chilling headline ‘1000 homes at risk’.
I start this evening with these two practical examples from the mid-North Coast as evidence that this is not some global world government issue or some Copenhagen junket issue. Rather, the issues of how we minimise the impacts of climate change and how we maximise the natural advantages we have in Australia on the related issue of energy security are both at the core of this debate, and they are both directly relevant to my region and to my nation.
It is therefore with sadness, with frustration and with a bit of fury that I speak this evening, for the third time, on a variation of the same theme called the CPRS bills. Each time I have been provided with a bill that has some changes that seem to arrive at the eleventh hour, with these changes buried deep in the 440-page document. Each time we sit down as an office team and work our way through the changes, and each time we see areas we think should be changed to improve the bill. Again, for the third time, I will be doing this tonight, and once again I encourage the government to consider those same amendments, which attempt to bring greater independence in the decision-making process of the future and to lessen the amount of ministerial discretion in decision making in the future, something that will politicise the process of the future and will lessen the process of the future.
But rather than, like a broken record, explain these amendments again, I think it is now time to call some others to account, because at the moment we have neither the government nor the Liberal-National opposition talking the truth about the problems or about the solutions. Neither look focused on a national outcome on climate change and energy security. Rather, we have what I perceive as a focus on an election and a parade of self-interest as a consequence.
The joke that is presenting itself as national politics at the moment is that all sides of politics are really a lot closer on this topic than they care to present to the Australian community. Importantly, if the national interest were the priority of the major parties, we could have something for the Australian people by the end of this week. Unfortunately, however, we are witnessing a disgraceful failure of so-called leaders in this country to tell the story of climate change and energy security, and a failure to explain in context why it is in the national interest to put in place a range of energy measures, with one being a price on carbon leading to true pricing in the energy market. As a consequence of this failure, Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong have lost the pub test and lost the barbecue test within Australia, and in my view, in its current form, with the current strategy and the current personalities in charge, an emissions trading scheme in Australia in 2010 is dead. It will pass the House of Representatives but it is highly doubtful whether it will pass the Senate.
Most importantly of all, with so much heated division and confusion within the Australian community, it is now a policy that will become increasingly unwelcome to the voter-sensitive decision makers—not, mind you, because the concept of an ETS is wrong but because timely information has not been forthcoming throughout 2009 and 2010, leaving so many questions unanswered by a government that got caught with its pants down in bed with the opposition and that had spent its time cutting deals in the hallways of parliament with lobby groups and alternative parliamentary parties in an all-too-clever attempt to ram through a policy, and leaving behind the key to all policy in this country, the Australian community which is outside this building.
RIP CPRS 2007-2010. On reflection, all I can say is: a pox on both the major parties, Labor and the Liberal-National Party coalition, for placing the game of politics and the self-interest contained within it over and above the national interests of this country and the oh-so-close potential outcome on climate change and energy security policy. From here, I think we can all expect to hear less and less about climate change from the media-sensitive government and the Prime Minister over the coming months as the expected political strategy of retreat takes place in the lead-up to the national ballot. This is disappointing. The Prime Minister can be called many things, but, like a fish called Wanda, I do not think we can call him stupid. For an intelligent man with a strong mandate in 2007, it is an incredible disappointment that we now see such a central policy for our country’s energy security fall over. The question needs to be asked: what went wrong within the ranks and why so silent?
The failure to tell the story of why a price on carbon is so important has yet again been highlighted by the very odd and scatty responses we have seen to the coalition’s so-called direct action plan released last week. The focus by government has been to continue to highlight the Leader of the Opposition’s comments recently that the science was, in his words, ‘crap’ or to focus on a throwaway comment about an ironing-board today. They have chosen to continue to paint the opposition as a bunch of deniers of the science. They have chosen to push Tony Abbott away in an effort to park him in some loony bin. It is an unsuccessful and ill-thought-through strategy. If anything, this says more about government than opposition. It does nothing to enhance the government’s position on this topic. It shows only a weakness of character, strategy and intellect and continues to lose people from the main game of getting an outcome on climate change and energy security, which is, without doubt, the national interest that they should be focusing on.
The failure of this position is hidden in the sensible words from the member for Flinders on the first day of parliament last week, the day after the coalition’s climate change policy was released. He made reference to three critical things in his speech. He said the coalition policy is a market response. He said it is a trading scheme based on the New South Wales GGAS. He also said it contains a cap. I encourage anyone trying to do their homework to go to the GGAS website and look at the information. I will read the very first two sentences you will come across. It says:
The NSW Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme (GGAS) commenced on 1 January 2003.
And—here it is—it says:
It is one of the first mandatory greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes in the world.
This has been identified as the backbone of the model that the coalition has placed their faith in for their so-called different response. It is a market based response which involves a cap and trading scheme similar to the GGAS scheme in New South Wales—a market based trading scheme with caps. This is dripping with irony. The Liberal-National Party coalition have modelled their alternative to an emissions trading scheme on—lo and behold—one of the first emissions trading schemes in the world.
I therefore welcome the choice we now have between the Labor ETS and the coalition’s ‘ETS lite’, because the one critical point of difference, the one factor missing in the coalition’s scheme, is a price on carbon. But make no bones about it: we now have a choice between two emissions trading schemes, and these two policy positions are a lot closer than either side would be comfortable admitting by being truthful. If the coalition scheme is somehow an easier, simpler scheme, I ask anyone interested to google GGAS. Go to page 8 of the GGAS summary and see exactly what the coalition has modelled their ETS on. I encourage them to look at the five rules of the game. For example, figure 6 of the compliance rules overview looks something akin to Barry Jones’s spaghetti revolution of five years ago. Maybe they should then read some of the detail of how such a scheme runs. For example, if the coalition, as they have stated, are basing their ETS on the New South Wales GGAS then I warn businesses and households of what is involved. For example, the GGAS rules say:
Benchmark participants complete a standard calculation spreadsheet with relevant input data in January/February of each calendar year for the previous calendar year. The completed spreadsheet is then audited by an appropriate auditor and submitted to the compliance regulator—
who in New South Wales is IPART but in this case is unknown in the coalition plan.
So much for sexy, direct action. This alternative market based cap and trade system also has an accounting scheme, a scheme administrator and a whole lot of bureaucracy attached—no different to what the government version of an ETS has. So the coalition has thrown up nothing more or less than a variation of an ETS, one that caps and trades and is based and modelled on one of the oldest ETS schemes in the world, the New South Wales GGAS; one that is equally complex on reporting and accounting, as can be seen in the GGAS paperwork; and one that, importantly, based on their own definitions and logic, will therefore be an equally great big tax—that is, of course, if they define a tax as anything that might increase consumer costs without an examination of the benefits or the compensation. But the point still stands: the coalition ‘ETS lite’ is just as much a great big tax as the government’s ETS is a great big tax. Brrng, brrng: ‘Hello, Pot? This is Kettle.’ Once again we have the major parties serving up exactly the same tray of policy disguised with different words. We might call it heated agreement at the moment over climate change.
We now have a clear choice between an ETS and an ‘ETS lite’—one emissions trading scheme that places a price on carbon and one that does not. I do not say this as a negative, by the way; I say this as a positive. I say: ‘Finally, coalition, welcome to the party. Welcome to recognising a market based response as a sensible response to a problem in a market economy.’ I certainly welcome the focus on trees and I welcome the idea of solar panels. I welcome the idea of underground cabling being put in. But I also would welcome some honesty about your very own policy, as was shown in the House by the member for Flinders in his speech last week and by the former Leader of the Liberal Party earlier this week. However, the issue is being sidestepped by so many others, which makes me wonder if they have even read and understood their own policy.
Despite the concerns and disappointments of both positions in this debate—summed up best last week as Labor government lip-service versus a coalition con job—I do believe a compromise exists and I do encourage a compromise being found. We now have two emissions trading schemes on the community table. We have form from as recently as late last year, when the government and the opposition decided to enter into negotiations in the national interest, under a Rudd-Turnbull agreement. We have lieutenants such as Macfarlane and Wong ready to negotiate an outcome. We also have on the table a sensible Greens option for a temporary solution over the next two years that deserves real and valued consideration by all.
Critically, as well, this time, if we are serious, let us think about bringing people with us. Let us not forget the importance of constituency. With community understanding, with all sides recognising the science as a base and a platform for policy, we can do something. We can do something good. I seek the will of various leaders to make this happen and I urge the community to push for information and push for an outcome other than a good old election fight.
My point is that, despite the hype, despite the rhetoric, despite the question time antics and despite the trips to laundromats and school playgrounds for political positioning, the reality and the facts are that 150 House of Representative members are a lot closer in their positions than they dare to give themselves credit for. The test, therefore, is whether people want a national outcome or a political outcome. If we are serious about a national outcome, this place will start to negotiate in and around this CPRS Bill to find a compromise that works.
The other critically important point about the current state of play, where we now have all the cards on the table regarding policy, is the question of science. Both sides are now in heated agreement that the science is sound and a policy response is warranted. This is a welcome and important breakthrough, and the challenge is now for all of us to reaffirm the soundness of the science. To start the process of reaffirming the science, I previously put to the Prime Minister the importance of hearing from him an expression of his confidence in the foundation documents produced by Shergold, Garnaut and the IPCC. To be polite and diplomatic, it has been unhelpful that the fourth IPCC report has shown itself to be so skinny on scientific process and is failing to stand up to scrutiny. This needs to be explained so that the other reports are protected for their scientific base and so that the reason for an Australian policy response is kept very clear in the pub and around the barbecue. In my view, this is a critical time, when both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition must defend the foundation for policy. That foundation is the science—the good science and the overwhelming science that says that policy makers around the world must do something. I invite both men to take up that role over the coming months. Indeed, I think it is in the national interest to do so. I encourage all members of this place to do likewise.
Whilst blowing the candle on the death of the CPRS tonight, I also see a flicker of hope within the community. I see the community doing what politicians and the two-party-dominated parliamentary system could not. I will give four examples on the mid-North Coast. Lincoln Brickworks is spending $308,000 to improve its kiln techniques. A company called Edstein Investments Pty Ltd, in Taree, is improving its water harvesting and recycling plant. A third company, Hydro Photographics, in Port Macquarie, has just spent $165,000 to get some more solar panels and to access the gross feed-in tariff changes in New South Wales. I also want to quickly read this message from Malcolm McNeil, who is an architect in Port Macquarie. He says:
There is a huge push to build new (coal fired?) power station(s) to cater for increased demand. Yet recent statistics indicate a significant reduction in power consumption during 2009. My personal experience at home has been a 25% reduction in electricity consumption …
He wants to aim for 50 per cent. It can be done. So there are four local examples that give hope. There are examples in big business as well. They are almost naming and shaming all of us who are involved in the political process. They are showing what can be done to get an outcome, rather than just talking about it.
I will not oppose this bill tonight, but I will be moving a third reading amendment. I started by moving an amendment to the second reading in an attempt to drive the right outcome and make sure that this is the start, not the end, of a discussion between government and community. My amendment looks to capture the concerns of my region and my nation. I urge both sides to consider these concerns and continue working on them. This is too important an issue not to. I urge this place to catch up to the community. The business community are, for economic reasons, making changes already and could benefit from some carbon credit support to bring forward plans for renewable options. As well, the forgotten households of Australia want to be part of an honest response to this scientific dilemma and, to date, seem to have been shut out of an overly political process. It is time for this change to happen.
10000
Sidebottom, Sid (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER
(Mr S Sidebottom)—I thank the member for Lyne for his contribution. Is the amendment seconded? There is no seconder for the amendment. The amendment therefore lapses. The question is that this bill be now read a second time.
887
19:28:00
Bishop, Bronwyn, MP
SE4
Mackellar
LP
0
0
Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP
—I must say that I was rather disappointed when I listened to the member for Lyne, who I usually find a reasonable and sensible chap. Tonight I found his inability to distinguish between the two policies really quite astounding. Might I say to the member for Lyne: it does not sound any more true just because you yell. I think points can be made perfectly sensibly by simply arguing them in a moderate tone.
I point out to the House that there certainly has been a change in the climate. The climate has changed dramatically, away from support for Mr Rudd and his ilk. There is now a genuine debate taking place between two opposing points of view and two opposing plans to deal with what the member for Lyne calls ‘the science’. I always understood that the word ‘science’ meant knowledge, and that is knowledge in its current state, and there are myriad examples where the prevailing science of the time has had to change its mind because further knowledge has come before us. I guess we can say that, with the revelations of the way in which information has been manipulated by certain scientists of a particular persuasion and with other scientists who have a differing point of view now being heard as well, there is a genuine debate.
The thing that is important about the opposition’s plan is very simply that it offers direct action that will be of benefit to the nation in any event. Those people who like to argue, ‘Well, perhaps it is all correct; therefore, we must do something’ make a fair point, and that is precisely what the opposition’s direct action plan does. It makes improvements for Australia without crippling the nation. It does so without imposing a great new tax on everything, which the ETS or the CPRS—call it what you will; the Rudd plan to tax the Australian people—imposes.
If we go to some of the quotes that the Labor Party like to use to authenticate their position, we see that one of their favourites concerns former Prime Minister Howard, and they keep quoting the Shergold report. I think it is very important that I put on the record what Mr Howard had to say on 10 December 2006 when he appointed his Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading. He said:
Australia is blessed with abundant coal, gas and uranium reserves and significant renewable assets. In assessing Australia’s further contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions these advantages must be preserved.
While there is no single solution to the global climate change challenge we need to maintain the prosperity our abundant fossil fuels have given us while at the same time exploring options for global climate change solutions and accelerating the development and deployment of low emissions and clean coal technologies.
The No. 1 point in the terms of reference he established was:
… that Australia enjoys major competitive advantages through the possession of large reserves of fossil fuels and uranium. In assessing Australia’s further contribution to reducing greenhouse emissions these advantages must be preserved.
In other words he was expressing that there was a need for government always to consider the welfare of the nation as a whole. That means preserving jobs for people, seeing that there is a continuing growth in GDP, seeing that there is a continuing growth in wages for people and seeing that there is an increasing standard of living. That is what the opposition is offering with its direct action plan. On the other hand, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and cognate legislation, which we are debating now for the third time, is legislation that penalises and punishes the Australian people and that relies on that punishment and pain to attempt to persuade them to have a lesser standard of living.
I have even seen a government handout that contains the phrase ‘Things that you can do at home that will help in this process’. They say, ‘Don’t use the drier; hang out the washing.’ I have got a vision in my head of Mr Rudd at the clothesline pegging out the sheets and the various pieces of washing whilst he is thinking of, shall we say, 50 per cent of the rest of the male population doing likewise—I think not. What about those people who live in very hot parts of our wonderful country? They are being told, ‘Use less air conditioning.’ Those living in very cold parts of the country are told, ‘Use less heating.’ In other words, lower your standard of living.
The opposition’s plan does none of that. It does not rely on pain; it relies on incentive. It says that we want to give the businesses that produce the standard of living that we enjoy right now the ability to do business as usual. That means that power stations will continue to generate power for the lights that are on in this building and for the street lights that are on in the cities that enable people to walk through those streets without being mugged in the dark. It is part of our safety provisions. The fact that we have air conditioning, heating and all those sorts of things are part and parcel of our way of life and, dare I say it, so is the drier.
When we look at what the ETS does we have had some interesting admissions in this place from various ministers. I particularly like the one from Mr Combet this morning when he was on Radio National. He was asked about the now well-known drycleaner, who is facing a $3,000 a year increase in his electricity bill, up from $15,000, and who will get no compensation. When Mr Combet was asked, ‘How is he to cope?’ he answered this way:
Costs faced by such a business will be passed on through the prices and the dry cleaning business and consumers will meet that cost.
In other words, the cost of the drycleaning will be increased by the amount that the drycleaner himself has to pay for the electricity, and that cascades all the way through the system. It means that the consumer pays more, it means that the consumer in his or her business then has to up their prices so that they earn more to pay more for the things that they are consuming, and the cost of living and the cost to them of this new tax becomes an increasing burden.
Mr Combet made another interesting point today when he told us about Bloomberg’s, a part of the finance industry. The finance industry is the one industry that is desperate to have an ETS because, for them, trading in carbon derivatives replaces the old CDOs that brought us the great financial crisis. I was interested to hear Mr Combet say just before question time that a press analysis of coalition policy had been issued by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Part of the reasoning in that analysis, which he said was a stunning assessment of the cost of our policy, is that the CPRS will be more cost effective because it is a market based mechanism.
But then, if you bother to go and look at some of the arguments—which you can pick up on the web—that are put forth in the United States, you can find a very good description of why these finance trading firms are so anxious to have such a scheme. For instance, Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone magazine in a very lengthy piece—dare I say longer than the essay of the Prime Minister’s when he said that capitalism was such a disgraceful and discredited system; and this is of far more depth than that piece of work—explains that this is how the new carbon credit market would work. He says:
… if the bill—
in the United States—
passes—
and of course we now know that Mr Obama has walked away from it and that it will not happen, but this is what the Australian government wants to foist on us—
there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy “allocations” or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billion worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.
He then goes on to say:
The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the “cap”—
and you will remember that the boast of the Prime Minister is that the CPRS has a cap, and he is very proud of that—
on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison’s sake, the annual combined revenues of all electricity suppliers in the U.S.—
that is, the people who are actually generating it for people to use—
total $320 billion.
In other words, the trade in paper will far exceed the value of what is currently in the United States produced for people’s consumption. He certainly says that Goldman Sachs, and other like firms, desperately want that scheme. It is also well to the point to note that Nobel prizewinner Al Gore, who is intimately involved in the planning of cap and trade, which Prime Minister Rudd wants, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management called David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. What is their business? Investing in carbon offsets—the new derivative market.
Now I will go back. This is indeed a tax, and it is a cascading tax. It is a tax which will eat into every aspect of your life whether it is the dry-cleaning bill, the grocery bill or the petroleum bill. Then the Prime Minister makes his second point in saying that you can avoid his cap because, if you go over your cap under this scheme, you can give some money to the likes of Mr Mugabe and buy a few trees and you are off the hook. So the cap is meaningless, except to escalate the price.
Under our scheme it is business as usual and, if you do not go above what is your emission rate right now, there is no payment for you to make. You can continue to generate power and energy—the essence of our life—in order that we can continue to have our standard of living. But if a business wishes to lower its emissions, and it finds it can through technology, innovation or whatever mechanism, it can be rewarded for that lowering of emissions. And it will be a real lowering of emissions, not a pretend one where you can buy your way out with Mr Mugabe or his ilk.
Our policy has a plentiful scheme to benefit farmers who, under the ETS tax scheme, are simply penalised. They are due to come in under the scheme in a couple of years time where they would be penalised for the emissions that their sheep and cows make. I did read in the paper this morning, however, that domestic camels would be counted but not feral camels. I found that an interesting sideline to the peculiar nature of the ETS that is being put forward by this legislation.
Mr Rudd then says that 92 per cent of people will be compensated for this additional rise in their expenditure. Yet we have had people come to this dispatch box again and again and ask questions of ministers and of the Prime Minister about what is the precise loss to an individual in a particular category in their defined cameos. No answer has been forthcoming. But the bottom line is this: a new tax is forever. The new tax will go on for year after year. The compensation is temporary, and it is inadequate as well as being temporary, and the Australian people are coming to see just what a con trick the Labor Party has tried to pull on them.
Mr Rudd and his ministers have been lazy; they have relied on the fact that there was some way that the opposition could be brought under their plans and be here to support the Labor Party. What the Labor Party is proposing with a new tax and a diminution of the Australian living standards is the anathema of what the Liberal Party stands for. The Liberal and the National Party are parties of lower tax. The Liberal Party is a party of enabling individuals to keep more of their own money because they will always spend it more wisely than the government who wishes to soak up as much money as they can from the Australian people and then pretend to spend it for their benefit. That is precisely what this ETS—tax on everything—is all about. It is designed to collect $120 billion in tax. The government will then try and use it for a redistribution of wealth—as they see it—to try and sure up their vote in certain areas of Australia. There can be nothing more despicable than such a plan. And for it to be done in the name of virtue, with a rather sanctimonious Prime Minister who seems to enjoy using words that are, shall we say, of a slightly off-colour nature—and seems to rejoice in repeating them—I find quite off, and I am sure the Australian people do as well.
The Australian households will be spared the ETS, because we will vote against it in the Senate. But, it is important that we go on and win the next election to ensure that it does not come back. That is the task we will be pursuing from now to election day, whenever it might be. I remind this House of the whole purpose of the direct action plan of the coalition’s, which we are taking to the people and which will allow Australians to take advantage of our national and natural advantages, such as our soil and our sun. It is a careful policy; it is costed and it is capped. The cap is real, because you cannot buy your way out of it. If you do emit above your ‘business as usual’ cap then there will be a penalty. Business accepts that. Contrary to the words of Mr Combet, when he said today that business was running away from us, they are not. The truth of the matter is that even a member of one of his main critics through this debate—the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists—actually admitted on radio the other day that, in fact, our scheme would meet the five per cent reduction target. It does not matter what he went on to say after that; he said that our scheme would do precisely that.
My position is quite clear, just like the coalition policy: I will be voting against this bill. I have expressed this continually, and I will go on expressing it because this ETS—big tax on everything—is bad for Australia. It is bad for the Australian people. It is our responsibility to put forward an alternative plan, which we have done. We have to let the Australian people know what the Labor Party really has in store for them so that when they come to vote they will truly know that they have been led down the proverbial garden path and into the blackwoods and darkness by Mr Rudd and his ilk.
891
19:48:00
Secker, Patrick, MP
848
Barker
LP
0
0
Mr SECKER
—It seems to me that this legislation is an admission by the Rudd Labor government that they got their first legislation quite wrong. We came along with some suggestions to improve it, and that is what they have now introduced. They have admitted, by putting this legislation before the parliament as amended by our side of politics, that they got it wrong in the first place. That gives a very bad message out there that Labor cannot even get their original legislation right.
There are two arguments that I have heard ad nauseam from the Labor Party, although I do note that so many speakers from the Labor Party have actually dropped out of this legislation. I hope they have not just gone out for dinner, because there was a whole heap of Labor members who were to speak on this legislation but now are not doing so. There are two arguments that Labor have been trying to put to us. The first argument is that the ETS is the most efficient and effective way to reduce emissions. I will speak later on that part, because the examples in Europe have clearly shown that it has not been efficient or effective in reducing emissions. The second argument is that, apparently, business needs the certainty of an ETS. The only certainty that businesses will get with this ETS is that they will be slugged with a great big new tax that will vary enormously with trading. You have seen that with the voluntary market in the United States, which has clearly collapsed. There is no certainty to business with an ETS. Frankly, if the government were looking for certainty they would put up legislation that said, ‘It will be $10 a tonne in the first year and rising a dollar for every tonne per year afterwards’ or something like that. That is the only way you could get certainty. Were you to do it that way, you would not have property rights problems, which you would have with an ETS. Once an ETS is passed as legislation—which I hope it will not be—you can never get rid of it. It is like getting rid of the share market. Of course, there is no way you can get rid of the share market now, because of the entitlements and the property rights that are involved.
I rise tonight to speak for the second time on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and cognate legislation. I was prevented from speaking on the CPRS the first time the legislation was debated but certainly was able to put forward my point of view the second time it came before the House. Of course my point of view has not changed. This is the third time that the Rudd Labor government has tried to get some sort of flawed legislation through this House. I hope that Labor likes disappointment because this time round is going to be no more successful than the last.
The Prime Minister has produced legislation that penalises the Australian public, forces a great big tax on them and does nothing to actually improve the environment—whereas our scheme does, and I will explain it later. Labor claim that they are compensating families. But they have already admitted that 50 per cent of middle-income families will not be fully compensated, and of course there will not be any compensation for those on quite modest wages, both single people and married people with children. A married couple with one person earning $35,000 and the other working part-time and earning $15,000, a very modest income—and I would consider that to be quite a low income in terms of a family—will actually be worse-off according to the figures that have been produced by the government. The government have produced legislation that penalises the Australian public, forces a great big new tax on them and does nothing to actually improve the environment. We all know that the only reason the Australian public need this compensation is that the government will have penalised them in the first place. Over the last couple of days Labor have been trying to say to us that under our scheme we have not got any compensation. We do not actually need compensation under our system because we are not imposing on the Australian public the penalties that there are under the ETS.
Under the coalition’s direct action plan there is no great big tax, there is no forcing the Australian public to pay for this government’s mismanagement of money and there are no job losses. Labor’s policy is unsubstantiated, it is expensive and much of the detail is unclear—or has in fact not even been produced when it comes to the regulations. In fact, Labor themselves are as confused, if not more so, as the general public on their policy. Even the Prime Minister has to date been unable to explain his own policy. It would seem that his Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, has no more idea, admitting in an interview last week that she was unsure what would happen to electricity prices under the proposed CPRS. There is a complete lack of knowledge of the detail of the effects of the CPRS on everyday Australians.
We have even had the absurd situation where emissions from the one million feral camels do not count but the emissions of the camels used in the tourist industry in Broome do. I was part of an inquiry—along with you, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams—on this with the standing committee on agriculture. We actually recommended a very severe cull of the camel herds running feral—not because of the CO2 emissions but because of the danger they pose to the environment in very marginal lands and the desert. A very severe cull of those camels would not only reduce the CO2 emissions—even though, apparently, the CO2 emissions from those camels do not count under the Kyoto agreement—but also be of very great help to the environment.
Kevin Rudd has been struggling to come to terms with the cost of his ETS. He is so afraid in fact that he does not even want to calculate how much a litre of milk or a loaf of bread will cost under his ETS. What we are certain of is that an ETS will have devastating effects on small business, on families and on the farming sector. This policy will destroy regional Australia, it will destroy Australian industry and it will destroy jobs. It will send farmers bankrupt if they are forced to buy carbon permits, and it will shift market share to other countries. No other country in the world has yet put agriculture into the system; and frankly I do not trust this government, if it is re-elected, to make a decision in 2013 or later to actually include agriculture. Agriculture cannot pass on the cost of buying carbon permits, unlike other large companies and retailers, and therefore will be left with the financial burden. Given that there is very little scientific research on emissions produced by agriculture—and they vary so much—it is unfair to include them in the scheme. Frankly, Labor have never really cared for fairness where rural and regional Australia is concerned.
The arguments over the ETS have certainly captured the imagination of Australia. One has to wonder when Labor will stop with the fluff and make with the facts. I have heard just about every Labor speaker refer to ‘crap’, and I note that the member for Mackellar found that a bit off. I actually wondered when I first heard it in this parliament whether it was unparliamentary, but apparently it is not. Indeed ‘CRAP’ would be a good acronym for something called a ‘carbon reduction and pollution scheme’.
For a government that is so concerned with saving the environment, or so they say, Labor have really got it wrong on this one. If the Prime Minister is prepared to sell himself as a greenie to the Australian public then it would probably be a good idea to put forward policy that is actually pro environment, not pro tax. Labor has exerted much effort to package this policy up to appear to be environmentally friendly yet the Greens will not back it. No-one in the parliament will back it, bar Labor. Now it seems that the latest person to start questioning an ETS is the US President Barack Obama. He has decided to side with the coalition’s direct action plan.
The first time I stood in this place to debate what a sham Labor’s ETS is, I quoted some figures on the failure of an ETS overseas and I will reiterate that point now. Europe has had an ETS since 2005, and I will give you some examples of what happened there from 2005 to 2007. In Cyprus the level of emissions rose to 5.396 million tonnes in the two years from 2005 to 2007. In the Czech Republic, it has actually gone from 82.454 million tonnes to 87.334 million tonnes, and that is over five million tonnes more. In Germany, with an ETS, it has gone from 474.99 million to 487.004 million tonnes. That is over 12 million tonnes more with an ETS. In Denmark, it was 26.475 million tonnes in 2005 and it rose to 29.407 million tonnes in 2007. That is three million tonnes more. Estonia has gone from 12.621 million tonnes to 15.329 million tonnes in 2007, another increase of three million tonnes, or about 23 per cent more—not less, more. In Spain, a country that has probably done more than most to bring in the so-called green revolution, it rose from 183.626 million tonnes in 2005 to 186.495 million tonnes in 2007, nearly three million tonnes more. Finland went from 33.099 million tonnes in 2005 to 42.541 million tonnes—quite a substantial increase, in the order of 30 per cent or nine million tonnes more. Poland went from 203.149 million tonnes in 2005 to 209.601 million tonnes, 6½ million tonnes more. In the United Kingdom, where we all hear about their Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, saying that we have to do something about CO2 emissions—he is a great believer in it—they had an increase from 242.513 million tonnes in 2005 to 256.581 million tonnes, or 13 million tonnes more. Those are all countries that have an ETS in place, and yet their CO2 emissions are rising. So what the Australian public can look forward to under a Labor government are increases in emissions and a great big tax.
Food prices are predicted to rise, although in my experience as a farmer—as I had been all my life before coming to this place—the prices paid to farmers will be less, as the extra costs for food retailers and wholesalers will mean they will pay less to farmers rather than absorbing the extra costs of the ETS tax. Unfortunately, the primary industries are price takers, not price makers. It is interesting to note that farming is probably the only industry in Australia that has already reduced its emissions. Farmers have done that through such things as zero or minimum till sowing of crops. They did not do that to reduce CO2. It was actually about reducing costs, using less moisture and having better control of weeds. These are things farmers have achieved by using that sort of new technology. There will also be severe effects for farmers even if they are not included in the system. University submissions have shown that the costs for farmers are estimated to increase by 14 to 27 per cent even if they are not part of the system because of the extra costs for transport, manufacturing and so on.
There has been so much hysteria caused by the Labor government. Many people are worrying about global warming, worrying that the ocean might rise so much that it engulfs them. I have even heard Tim Flannery say that the oceans will rise by 100 metres. According to the present theory expounded by the IPCC, under the present conditions that would take 34,000 years. So it is no wonder that I might be somewhat sceptical about what Tim Flannery writes and says on this issue. I have heard people saying that global warming might cause deaths from heatwaves. I can assure you, in fact, that more people will die from global cooling, because coldness causes more deaths than heat ever does and ever will. I have no doubt there will be believers and nonbelievers in anthropogenic climate change. But the question you have to ask is: does an ETS actually reduce global emissions? Well, it has not so far. It has not in Europe, and I gave those figures earlier. I make no apology for the fact that I oppose an ETS. It would be disastrous for my electorate. It would be disastrous for Australia.
I have always been amused by the title of this scheme: the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Are we are talking about carbon or are we talking about carbon dioxide? The relationship between carbon and carbon dioxide is no closer than the relationship between hydrogen and H20, water. They are completely different elements. But this government thought it would use the name ‘CPRS’ as a marketing tool, rather than ETS, emissions trading scheme. I believe it is called the CPRS in the hope that people might think that we are improving the health of our environment, as CPR does in medicine.
I believe that the coalition’s direct action plan is careful, costed and capped, reducing emissions without a tax on everything. These measures are based on incentives rather than penalties and include initiatives such as an Emissions Reduction Fund to provide direct incentives to industry and farmers to reduce CO2 emissions, and a once-in-a-century replenishment of our soils through investment in soil carbon. The plan also includes a New Solar Sunrise for Australia: a $1,000 rebate for either solar panels or solar hot water systems for Australian homes, $100 million for our Solar Towns and Solar Schools Initiative and $50 million for the Geothermal and Tidal Towns Initiative. In fact, I believe that we could invest more in research into wave technology. I believe there is a huge potential for wave energy, not only to produce energy but to desalinate water for our future.
We will also have a green corridors initiative that will: see 20 million trees planted by 2020 to establish urban forests and green corridors; develop the Latrobe Valley, Hunter and Central Queensland regions as clean energy employment hubs; commission a study into replacing high-voltage overhead cables in our cities with underground cables; and support large-scale renewable energy generation and emerging technologies through the RET. If you can reach the same five per cent target as the government through direct action which is carefully costed and capped, why would you proceed with a great big tax on everything? If you can get the same cuts to emissions as the government through direct and practical action for less than a tenth of the cost, why would you proceed with a $120 billion ‘money-go-round’ that will raise the cost of living for Australian families?
In summary, our policy costs substantially less than the ETS. Our policy will cost $3.2 billion over four years whilst the ETS will churn $40.6 billion over the first four years. Our policy will achieve the agreed target of a five per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. It focuses on practical, effective and direct action on climate change within Australia and it provides tangible environmental benefits, provides incentives to reduce emissions within Australia and it is not a new tax on Australian families, businesses and industry. It will not cost jobs or hurt Australian businesses and it will not increase electricity and grocery prices.
895
20:08:00
Truss, Warren, MP
GT4
Wide Bay
NATS
Leader of the Nationals
0
0
Mr TRUSS
—Many have remarked on the fact that this is the third time that this House has debated the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related legislation. Many people have said that they are speaking on the issue for the third time. Frankly, when I was listening to members opposite, I thought most of them said exactly the same thing three times. Their message has been just this: the climate is changing, the climate is warming, Australia needs to solve this problem, the only way to do it is to introduce a carbon pollution reduction scheme and anyone who disagrees with them is a climate change denier. Each one of those points is dishonest and reflects an unwillingness on the part of the government to explain to the Australian people why they want to have a carbon pollution reduction scheme, how it is going to work and what it is expected to achieve for Australia and indeed our planet.
My first major speech on emissions trading was more than 18 months ago at a function in Brisbane. I made a similar speech at a major function in this building a couple of months later. Right back then I was asking these sorts of questions: how can Labor’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme actually deliver lower emissions? How is it going to change the climate? How is it fair? I started asking questions about the anomalies in the scheme. For instance, why should someone choosing to fly to North Queensland for a holiday pay Labor’s carbon pollution tax, but if you fly to Vanuatu for a holiday you do not pay? Why should somebody who goes to work on an electric train pay for Labor’s CPRS, but if you drive to work you do not? No answers were provided at that time.
In spite of the fact that the Prime Minister has on 22 occasions described climate change as the great moral issue of our time, he has never attempted or been able to explain to the Australian people why we have to have a carbon pollution reduction scheme. Neither the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister nor the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change, nor Senator Wong, have been able to answer even to this day simple questions like: how much will the price of electricity go up? How much more will it cost to buy milk and bread? How many families will be affected and how are they going to be compensated? What is going to happen to the small businesses in Australia which have to meet extra costs? What is going to be done to stop the jobs that can no longer be economically undertaken in Australia from going overseas and our simply importing products from other parts of the world?
Labor has never been able to explain to anybody how this tax slug will improve the environment. Never in my life have I heard of a tax that was able to save polar bears and yet that has been the simple message the government has attempted to portray. A tax cannot save the Barrier Reef. I have never seen a tax that lowers the temperature. The Prime Minister has never been able to explain to the Australian people how having bankers and traders in a multistorey building selling one another pieces of paper is going to lower the sea level. It simply does not pass the commonsense test. Nor has he been able to explain how Australia, with 1.4 per cent of global emissions, is able to fix a problem like this even if no-one else in the world is prepared to move. He has never been able to explain why trading something like $1 trillion worth of paper, maybe even more, will deliver a better climate for future Australian generations.
The reality is the scheme has always been fundamentally flawed. No other country in the world is proposing to embrace a scheme like Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. That became abundantly clear at the fiasco in Copenhagen. We were told when this was last being debated in this House that this legislation had to be dealt with before Copenhagen, that it was absolutely essential for the success of Copenhagen that this legislation was dealt with and passed by the Australian parliament. But when it came to Copenhagen, no-one mentioned a CPRS, and no-one was advocating the introduction of Australia’s proposed emissions taxation scheme. When the communique was finally written there was no mention of a CPRS. Indeed, our Prime Minister, who was a friend of the chair and, we were led to believe, one of the key movers at this conference with his delegation of 114, was not even invited to the drafting of the communique. That is how important the rest of the world thought Labor’s CPRS would be.
Now around 90 countries have made commitments to reduce carbon emissions around the world, but not one of those 90 countries is proposing to introduce a scheme like this one. Only Australia thinks that it is necessary to solve the world’s problem through a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme like this. Minister Wong is fond of saying that there are 35 countries that have an ETS. Most of those are in Europe, and we have just heard the honourable member for Barker explain how successful the European schemes is. It also needs to be remembered that that scheme has such a feather touch that it actually makes no impact. The scheme that Labor wants to impose on Australia is 500 times harsher than the scheme in Europe. Is it any wonder that no-one else in the world wants to embrace a scheme like this? The reality is that Australia is alone. We seem to be the only people who think that this is something we absolutely have to have.
Labor has generated a mountain of paper in relation to this scheme. Mike Steketee said in the Australian last weekend that the Department of Climate Change holds 210,507 different documents to help inform its minister, Senator Wong, about the government’s emissions trading scheme. So she has over 210,000 documents but she still cannot explain it to the Australian people. Of course, it may actually be a bit more than that, because we now have one extra document that seems to have been circulated widely. It is marked ‘in confidence’. The last time a cabinet-in-confidence document leaked like this, there was a police investigation, but this one has been provided to newspapers all over the place. The reality is that, even with that document, there is no explanation that can be understood by the Australian people about how this scheme will effectively operate. Indeed, most of these documents are not being made available to the public at all. Freedom of information requests are being rejected. If Senator Wong were to start today and spend 10 minutes considering the information in each of these 210,507 documents for eight hours a day, it would take 12 years to read them all. She has this mountain of paper. The Prime Minister no doubt has access to it as well, but he still cannot, and will not attempt to, explain this scheme to the Australian people.
Last November, I asked 21 questions of the Prime Minister about the CPRS which I felt needed to be answered, basic questions like:
How many jobs will be lost in regional Australia under Labor’s CPRS?
What impact will the closure of mines under Labor’s CPRS have on the economy of regional communities?
Will Mr Rudd explain why it is necessary to tax families and businesses and pay billions of dollars in compensation to industry to reduce the temperature?
Will Mr Rudd explain what will be the impact of the CPRS on inflation as prices and household costs increase?
How much more will pensioners and self-funded retirees pay for electricity, groceries and transport under Labor’s CPRS tax?
… … …
How will Labor’s CPRS tax stop global climate change since Australia only produces 1.4% of carbon emissions?
How will the CPRS help the environment if it forces Australian industry to move to other countries where environmental regulations are not as strict as our own?
The Prime Minister has not been able to answer any of those questions. Neither have members opposite in their contributions to this debate. They have never been able to explain to the people of Australia how the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will lower the sea level and change the climate. There is only one line that has actually cut through to the Australian people about Labor’s scheme, and that is that it is a great big new tax on everything. We should in fact call it the GBNT, great big new tax, not the CPRS, because that is what it is. It is simply a tax, a way for the government to collect another $140 billion—money taken from the Australian people that they can ill afford. The tax will not do anything for the environment. It is simply yet another Labor revenue-raising measure.
The coalition, and the Nationals in particular, have been very critical of this scheme right from the beginning. We could not see that it would deliver any good for the environment, but we knew it would do a great deal of damage to Australia. But it is not enough to criticise; you have to have an alternative.
So last week the coalition released a significant new option for the Australian people, a direct action plan that will deliver results. It is a scheme built around an Emissions Reduction Fund to provide direct incentives to industry and farmers to reduce CO2 emissions. Instead of inflicting pain, we propose to deliver a result by offering carrots. There will be a once-in-a-century opportunity to replenish our soils, so we will end up with a more productive country through an investment in building the fertility of soil structures. There will be a new solar sunrise for Australia, with a larger rebate for solar panels. There will be a solar towns and solar schools initiative; $50 million to a geothermal and tidal towns initiative; a green corridors initiative; and the development of the Latrobe Valley, the Hunter region and the Gladstone area as clean energy employment hubs. We are looking at large-scale renewable energy generation and emerging technologies through the renewable energy targets. There will be a total cost of $3.2 billion, delivering direct results.
Since the release of the direct action plan, we have had the government flailing around trying to find faults in the scheme, trying to criticise it and coming up with all sorts of different reasons why it is not appropriate, why our direct action plan will not work where their GBNT does work, why their program of pain is something that we should have rather than our approach of carrots. Let me go through a few of their arguments. One of the arguments that the Prime Minister used right at the beginning was the claim that the coalition’s direct action plan does not cap carbon emissions. Labor’s GBNT does not either. It does for about a thousand companies, who will pay fines if they do not effectively restrict their carbon emissions, but other companies are not covered under Labor’s plan. There is no cap under Labor’s carbon scheme either, and yet they criticise ours for not having any absolute cap.
The Prime Minister said initially that we had no price on carbon. Then, later, he said that the price we were putting on it was too low. Then today we had the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change saying that our price was going to be $84 a tonne. So it has gone from nought from the Prime Minister two days ago to $84 a tonne now, from the minister. The reality is that Labor does not understand our scheme. If they think our price on carbon is too low, effectively $15 a tonne because that is the budgeted rate we had used for our fund to encourage these new investments, they have set the price at $10 a tonne. So if there is something wrong with our price for carbon there is a lot more wrong with Labor’s price at $10 a tonne.
They say that our scheme will cost more to administer. How could you possibly say that administering a grants program is going to cost more than their giant new tax scheme—hundreds of millions of dollars, we have heard in Senate estimates, spent already on public servants to set up this new bureaucracy. It is going to be a new tax office, and yet they suggest that our scheme will be more costly to administer. It is simply a nonsense.
Labor also says that our scheme relies on mechanisms that have not been approved by the United Nations. By that, of course, they are referring to the Kyoto accord. We always argued when we were in government that the Kyoto accord was fundamentally flawed. This is another example of that. Here we have things that you can do to actually sequester carbon, things you can actually do to improve the environment, but Kyoto says they do not count—they work, but we will not count them. For some things they say, ‘Yes, we know they work, and you can count them if you live in China or India, but you cannot count them in Australia.’ This is the nonsense of this agreement.
A classic example is forests. Certain forests meet the Kyoto definition; others do not. That does not mean that the others do not sequester carbon, they are just not allowed to be counted. We have the classic example that the member for Barker referred to a few minutes ago about the camels. If you shoot a camel that is domesticated, the emissions saved count. But if the camel is in the wild, it does not count. What is the difference between the camels? They still have the same number of humps and legs and tails, but one counts and one does not. If an Australian industry sets up a generation facility using gas from a closed coalmine, the credits do not count. If the same Australian company went to China and did it, they would count. What is more, they could buy them back and they would get credit for them in Australia. This argument that our scheme does not meet all of the United Nations requirements is a shocking indictment on the United Nations requirements. The reality is that our objective will be to actually deliver CO2 reductions; to deliver real sequestration and not simply entertain the United Nations.
Labor’s other favourite criticism is that our scheme does not make polluters pay but Labor’s GBNT does. Who are these polluters that Labor wants to penalise? They are actually the job creators in this country, the manufacturers—they are the people who employ the union members; they are people who make the wealth of our country. They are the electricity generators, whom we all depend upon during our daily lives. These are the people Labor says are the polluters and they should pay. But under Labor’s scheme they do not pay either. They get compensation. Any person who has to meet the extra cost of Labor’s GBNT will either pass it on to consumers—in which case the polluter has not paid anyhow; the consumers have paid—or they will close down or will move overseas and we will import the product from some other part of the world. So these polluters that Labor is trying to make its target in reality will not pay under its scheme.
Labor also say that our plan does not penalise polluters who increase emissions. That is wrong—it does. They will be penalised if they emit more but, under our scheme, those who emit less get a reward. Under Labor’s scheme, if you emit less you do not get a reward and so there is not much point in trying to take that kind of positive action.
Then they say our plan costs more. How could Labor possibly say our plan costs more? Their scheme is $140 billion in the first 10 years, and going upwards continuously from there. Our plan is a $3.2 billion plan over four years. We will deliver our plan for one twelfth the cost of Labor’s scheme. And yet they say our scheme will cost more.
The classic is that they say our scheme will not reduce CO2 emissions. Our scheme will reduce emissions by 140 million tonnes—exactly the same amount of emissions that Labor says its scheme will reduce and over the same time frame. So if our scheme is not good enough, neither is Labor’s . We both deliver the same amount over the same period—but ours is for a twelfth of the cost.
Their final criticism is that we do not pay any compensation to low income earners. We do not because we do not have to. We are not putting up their cost of living. We are not putting up the price of electricity. We are not putting up the price of everything they do, as Labor is proposing under their GBNT.
They might also say that our scheme is not capable of delivering the carbon sequestration that we say it can. You need go to no other authority than Ross Garnaut, Labor’s guru on climate change. He in his report identified at least 850 megatonnes of carbon sequestration gains that could be made from land management activities for between 50 and 100 years—many, many times what we are proposing to achieve. Ross Garnaut has identified these measures and considered them to be a priority.
So there is an alternative scheme to Labor’s GBNT—their great big new tax. What’s more, it delivers results. Our direct action plan will achieve the same targets in the same time much cheaper, without hurting Australian families, without destroying Australian jobs and without causing havoc in the Australian economy. Is it any wonder that our direct action plan cuts through with the Australian people where Labor’s complicated great big new tax dismally fails?
Debate interrupted.
QUESTION TIME
900
Miscellaneous
900
20:29:00
Ciobo, Steven, MP
00AN0
Moncrieff
LP
0
0
Mr CIOBO
—On indulgence: at question time earlier today when questioning the Minister for Sport I referred to the Treasury modelling of the government’s emissions trading scheme and in particular table 6.14, whereas my question ought to have referred to table 6.15.
I would like to confirm now that, according to the government’s own Treasury modelling, the Nottinghill Pinewood Tennis Club in Victoria faces a 23 per cent increase in electricity costs by 2015 and a 30 per cent increase in electricity costs by 2020, thanks to the government’s ETS. However, according to the Prime Minister’s press release of 4 May 2009, and despite comments by the Minister for Sport, only $80 million of the $200 million Climate Change Action Fund will be available to assist business and community organisations with capital investment grants. I once again call on the minister to correct the record.
ADJOURNMENT
900
Adjournment
10000
SPEAKER, The
The SPEAKER
—Order! It being approximately 8.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the House do now adjourn.
Ethnic Communities
900
900
20:30:00
Simpkins, Luke, MP
HWE
Cowan
LP
0
0
Mr SIMPKINS
—I rise to speak of the problems of elected representatives rampaging through foreign affairs and ethnic community concerns like bulls in china shops. Although I have myself been outspoken on such matters in the past, and my views are on the record, I find it incredible that a Premier of a state in this nation would demonstrate such rank political opportunism as did Premier Rann of South Australia about a week ago.
To wade into the Macedonian issue with one sole purpose in mind, votes for the coming state election, whipping up enmity between communities, is highly irresponsible. Those with knowledge and experience in these matters know that feelings run deep. The depth of that feeling should not be underestimated and to invoke racial division is terrible. It is therefore not surprising that legal action against Mr Rann is likely. I said before that whipping up animosity between communities in Australia is highly irresponsible, but to do so for rank political purposes is nothing less than immoral.
There is a history between peoples in Europe that is very recent given the history of that continent. There are not only border disputes, but disputes across a range of issues, that are not black and white. We know that they are issues of national pride, where the blood boils, and therefore they are not matters that should be used for other purposes. As elected representatives we have our views, and that is fine and it is right, but the part we play must be constructive. It must be engaging and it should be to promote the harmonious interactions of life in this nation. It should not be the Premier Rann option of ‘How do I play off communities against each other to get votes?’ It should not be ‘What deep-felt and longstanding ethnic community issues can I harness to try to win an election, whilst leaving bitter divisions behind for the future?’ It should not be ‘Who can I abuse and denigrate as a means to win more votes than I lose?’ What Premier Rann has done is not what should be done. This is not the sort of Australia we want. No group of our Australians should be marginalised in the pursuit of political advantage for another group. This immoral playing off of one group against another completely surrenders the responsibility entrusted to Premier Rann to look after the interests of all South Australians.
What I would say to the Hellenic community is that your concerns and issues have been taken advantage of. The Premier of South Australia sees you as a political opportunity, and from what we have seen, and from the manner in which he has acted, his support is shallow and opportunistic. I would ask all ethnic communities in South Australia to question the motives of a desperate Premier, struggling to save his government, who is willing to take advantage of ethnic community issues. Who will it be next? Which ethnic community will be marginalised next in the pursuit of Premier Rann’s political opportunism? I will say again that all ethnic communities should suspect the motives of such a leader whose main concern is clearly political advantage rather than the interests of all the ethnic communities within his jurisdiction.
I said at the outset that I have myself been outspoken on matters of foreign policy. With regard to various countries I have spoken on what they may regard as internal matters. I have been critical of the lack of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and other freedoms that democracy holds dearly, yet on every one of these occasions I have spoken to add value, to highlight the rights of people around the world and their relatives in Australia, their rights to the great democratic principles. It has always been to speak up for communities within Cowan and not to blame one community for the concerns of another community.
I will say it again: these matters are complicated. More than 2,000 years of dispute and concerns across the centuries and across many areas are not going to be solved by one speech, especially not via a politically motivated and opportunistic speech. The key point that remains, in this matter so poorly and inappropriately addressed by Premier Rann, is that the governments in Athens and in Skopje have to resolve the issues. This is the fundamental point. As I understand it, there have been certain concessions made, and now those talks and discussions need to be finalised in demonstration of the good faith that has been shown up until now.
As one who has had many discussions regarding both sides of the issue, I would caution anyone against entering this debate lightly. As a responsible elected representative of the nation, I would discourage anyone from opening wounds between any ethnic communities in this country. As I previously said, to do so for rank political purposes is immoral and the damage that can be done to a harmonious Australia is a dangerous by-product that we do not want to see.
Solomon Electorate: Alan Walker Cancer Care Centre
902
902
20:34:00
Hale, Damian, MP
HWD
Solomon
ALP
1
0
Mr HALE
—I rise tonight to inform the House of a major event that occurred in my electorate on Friday, 22 January. It was the official opening of the radiation oncology facility in Darwin, which will be known as the Alan Walker Cancer Care Centre. The facility means that cancer patients in the Northern Territory will no longer have to travel to Adelaide to undertake their radiation treatment. I had great pleasure in officially opening this facility with the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. The facility was funded by the federal government to the tune of $27.8 million.
The first of two state-of-the-art linear accelerator machines for the unit has been installed and is currently undergoing preparations for precision use. The facility is expected to start taking appointments in March, with the first patients to use the facility in April. The facility has capacity for two linear accelerator bunkers, a treatment area for patients, clinic facilities for patient consultations and examinations, office and support facilities, and access to car parking. The Northern Territory Minister for Health, Kon Vatskalis, said the Northern Territory government was also pleased to provide some funding for a small chemotherapy ward at the same site. An agreement with Royal Adelaide Hospital will ensure specialist radiation staff, including radiation oncologists and registrars, are available to staff the facility.
I spoke to Helen Smith, who is Chief Executive Officer of the Cancer Council of the Northern Territory, and is a cancer survivor herself, about what this unit means to people in the Northern Territory and in particular in my electorate of Solomon. They can now stay at home for treatment. They can continue working, which is often a fantastic thing for people who are suffering from cancer—that they can continue to work while receiving treatment and support in their home city, Darwin or Palmerston. They have got their friends and family there for support as well.
It was amazing that, during the construction, there were often debates on local radio and in other media about whether or not we would be able to staff such a facility. But, through the support of Royal Adelaide Hospital, we have been able to do that. We already have eight staff and there are two physicists on board as well. Because it is such a state of the art facility—it is of world standard—we are having people wanting to work in the facility and signing up for three-year contracts.
I have also spoken to the wife of Keith Williams. Keith is the coordinator of the prostate cancer support group and a cancer survivor himself. I spoke to his wife, Pat, last night about what it meant to Keith to have this facility. It is just amazing what this will mean to the Northern Territory. For so long we have had people who have refused to leave Darwin, or the Palmerston area, or Katherine for that matter, because they did not want to go and get treatment in Adelaide or other capital cities. They have decided to stay in the Northern Territory and, often, have just taken as their lot that they are not going to survive cancer—just to be with their friends and family. Often with our Indigenous brothers and sisters that happens, as it does with our Greek and Chinese brothers and sisters, and older people from other ethnicities, too. They do not want to be away from family.
This facility now gives us the opportunity to treat people in the Northern Territory. Helen Smith told me the story of a young lady who was suffering from a lump in her breast and who decided that, rather than going interstate for treatment, she would go ahead and have a full mastectomy of that breast because she simply did not want to go interstate. So now a small area on a woman’s breast can be treated in a facility that is state of the art.
As I conclude, I do just want to mention briefly the contribution that the federal health minister has made to my electorate. While we debate health in this House—a debate, currently, about the hospitals and what the minister and Prime Minister are proposing—I want to quickly tell the House about what Minister Nicola Roxon has done for my electorate in the short time that she has been the health minister: $18.6 million for an accommodation complex of 50 units at the Royal Darwin Hospital; $27.8 million for a full medical program run by Flinders University out of Darwin, to train our own doctors; $4.3 million to the Royal Darwin Hospital to assist in reconfiguring the emergency department; $1.6 million for two new operating theatres; and $10 million for the construction of a superclinic in Palmerston, which is going quite well. There was also funding for a cancer breast care nurse at Royal Darwin Hospital. I just wanted to put on the public record my thanks to Minister Roxon for her efforts and her continued support of my electorate. (Time expired)
Paterson Electorate: Vandalism
903
903
20:39:00
Baldwin, Robert, MP
LL6
Paterson
LP
0
0
Mr BALDWIN
—I rise today to talk about the issue of wanton vandalism of private property and other antisocial behaviour in my electorate of Paterson. I have been contacted by a number of distressed constituents who are sick and tired of having such disdain and lack of respect shown for their property. The Newcastle Herald reports that, in the last financial year, Hunter Water spent $50,000 on graffiti removal, while RailCorp paid $380,000 just in the Hunter region. Paterson residents and small businesses are also paying big bucks in damages or increased insurance premiums as a result of graffiti and antisocial behaviour in our region.
This problem is not purely financial, however, and reports have come in of residents being threatened and intimidated in their own homes. John and Denise of Anna Bay have reported that they have had their side fences covered in graffiti and their letterboxes damaged several times and later stolen. They wrote:
Friday and Saturday nights are nights of anxiety, sometimes fear and anger [with] noise, abusive language, swearing, threats, excrement on lawns, yard intrusion and so … on.
The issue of graffiti, vandalism and petty crime has been an issue across the whole of my electorate, whether it is in the Tomaree Peninsula, Tilligerry Peninsula, Raymond Terrace, Maitland, Hawks Nest, Dungog or Forster Tuncurry.
We have had some success in grassroots direct-action approaches to combatting graffiti. In particular, the ‘graffiti buster’, Ted Bickford, is worthy of recognition for his outstanding volunteer work in not only removing graffiti from public property in the Forster Tuncurry area but also in working with local youths, and he has had some success in preventing graffiti through collaboration with local schools and youth groups. I know Ted has the full support of the Great Lakes Council. Ted operates a graffiti hotline to locate graffiti, as well as directly driving around looking for graffiti to remove. Ted has told me that it is important to remove the graffiti in the first 24 hours, as the tagger wants his so-called artwork to be seen and, once it is removed or altered, it loses the impact and the so-called kudos for the so-called artist. It is also worth mentioning the Port Stephens Graffiti Action Team which is acting in the Port Stephens area in a similar manner to Ted to prevent and remove the graffiti in Port Stephens.
These community-led programs show the selfless nature of the Australian people, as well as being a great example of the potent effect of direct action approaches to solving environmental problems. Unfortunately, if the problems of antisocial behaviour, graffiti and malicious damage to property are going to be addressed, there will have to be a higher level of engagement and action on these problems. While the local governments and community groups of Paterson have worked hard on tackling this problem, there has been a huge level of neglect by our state government in providing the resources necessary to address this issue. In recent years I have been working closely with my state counterpart Craig Baumann, the member for Port Stephens, to address this issue. Despite Craig’s tireless efforts, no real action from the New South Wales Labor government has occurred, as this troubled state government has decided to devote its resources to infighting, spin doctors and political consultants. Further on in John and Denise’s letter, they say:
People are disgusted and fed up. We do not want our homes, towns and cities treated as they are. Respect is at an all time low.
I couldn’t agree more and, for this reason, I have fought hard, along with Mr Baumann and our local councils, in part to address this problem in Paterson.
In 2007 I fought to have CCTV cameras placed in vandalism hotspots in Nelson Bay at a cost of $95,000. This was part of the coalition’s National Community Crime Prevention Program and has been successful in combating graffiti and other crime in these areas. I have also been active in briefing this House on the experiences of Paterson families as they encounter these attacks on their property and their peace and quiet. I call on the Commonwealth government to support an extension of the National Community Crime Prevention Program and provide more closed-circuit television cameras in vandalism hotspots throughout Paterson, to help address this wanton vandalism.
My constituents deserve to feel safe in their own homes and in their own streets. I would also like to warn the state Labor government and their federal Labor colleagues that I will not let this issue rest until graffiti and other antisocial behaviour has been cut down and eliminated in my electorate. The people of Paterson deserve better, and I will continue to work locally and fight nationally until they receive the peace and security they truly deserve.
Ballarat Regional Integrated Cancer Centre
904
904
20:44:00
King, Catherine, MP
00AMR
Ballarat
ALP
1
0
Ms KING
—My contribution continues on from the member for Solomon’s contribution in relation to cancer treatment in his electorate. The Rudd Labor government’s contribution to improvement of cancer services across this country has not received a lot of media attention but it is one of the great stories around this government’s investment in health and it is making a huge difference to cancer sufferers across the community.
It is no secret that cancer survival rates across regional Australia are well behind those of our metropolitan cities. It is appalling that one of the factors in relation to an individual’s chance of cancer survival rests with the location in which the patient lives. The Victorian Cancer Council published a report called Cancer survival Victoria 2007, which compares survival rates of Victorians in different regions. The report found that the five-year survival rate for cancer sufferers was 62 per cent in Melbourne compared with 59 per cent in the Grampians Integrated Cancer Services region, which is in my electorate.
In the 2009-10 budget, the government committed $560 million from the Health and Hospitals Fund over five years to establish a network of around 10 regional cancer centres, hoping to improve access and support for cancer patients in rural and regional Australia. We made this commitment because we understand the need to improve health outcomes for all Australians. By investing in regional cancer centres, the government is working to turn around cancer survival rates throughout our regional cities. We are working to buck a trend that for too long has gone unnoticed.
The Ballarat community has been working hard to establish its application for the Ballarat Regional Integrated Cancer Centre. The $55 million proposal includes four radiotherapy bunkers to be located at the Ballarat Base Hospital as well as other treatment facilities and a wellness centre. Austin Health, St John of God, which is the private hospital in my electorate, and Ballarat Health Services have all worked very hard with the Victorian government to submit an extremely strong application. A lot of hard work has been done by the CEO of Ballarat Health Services, Andrew Rowe, and the CEO of St John of God Hospital, John Fogarty, and their staff to achieve such a sound proposal. This proposal has also received tremendous support from my state colleague, Karen Overington, whom I want to commend for her efforts.
The people of Ballarat know too well the importance of lobbying for this important project. Since Ballarat announced its bid to establish a regional cancer centre, I have been overwhelmed to receive over 40 letters, phone calls and emails in support of this project. I would like to quote from some of those letters. Jenny stated:
It’s unfair really that people have to travel to Geelong or elsewhere for their treatment … I hope that you will be able to get funding for this valuable asset.
Faith from Ballarat said:
The Ballarat and surrounding community would really benefit from an increase in funding to allow for a new cancer service, because unfortunately the prevalence of this awful disease is increasing.
We have also received a letter of support from the Committee for Ballarat. In their letter, committee CEO, Doug Lloyd, noted:
We commend in the strongest terms the proposal for the Ballarat Regional Integrated Cancer Centre for adoption by the Commonwealth Government, and call on the Government to provide the $55m necessary for its implementation.
The community of Lexton, in the member for Wannon’s electorate, has collected a petition. I have had letters from families in Ararat and Stawell, outside my electorate, supporting Ballarat as the hub of cancer treatment services for the Western District of Victoria.
It is unfortunate that members of the Liberal Party are posing a threat to funding for this project. Senator Joyce is still to outline how the opposition will fund their climate change con job, let alone the $10 billion of unfunded promises the Leader of the Opposition has made since September. They are yet to rule out cuts to services such as hospitals and, given the Leader of the Opposition’s form on cutting $l billion from the health budget, I am concerned that Labor’s regional cancer centres will be seen as an easy target. Locally, the Liberal candidate’s performance on this issue has been less than impressive or helpful.
I am hopeful but cautious about Ballarat’s bid being successful. The locations for the centres are currently being assessed by the independent Health and Hospitals Fund Advisory Board, which will provide advice to Minister Roxon. Many regions across Australia are competing for this funding. I believe we have a strong case in Ballarat and I want to thank the many people who have written to me sharing their often painful family experiences and pledging their support for this project. I certainly commend the Ballarat Regional Integrated Cancer Centre to the government for funding.
Safer Internet Day
906
906
20:49:00
Johnson, Michael, MP
00AMX
Ryan
LP
0
0
Mr JOHNSON
—It is a privilege as always to speak in this great chamber of democracy, the House of Representatives, as the member for Ryan. At the outset I want to bid a very good evening to my constituents throughout the Ryan electorate. They live in a beautiful part of Brisbane, and I look forward to meeting and connecting with, in particular, the new constituents that I will be representing in the months ahead and at the election from all the wonderful suburbs, places like Enoggera, Keperra, Ferny Grove and Grovely, in the north part of Brisbane
Today, 9 February 2010, is Safer Internet Day. I want to put on the record my very strong support of and advocacy for its theme that, whether we are business people, mums, dads or social users, we should become aware of the power of the internet. Safer Internet Day, which has operated since 2004, is organised by Insafe. It promotes a safer and more responsible use of online technology, including mobile phones, around the world, especially for children and young people. The theme for 2010 is ‘Think before you post’. Safer Internet Day has been celebrated previously through 500 events in 50 countries all over the world. It is a celebration of the power of technology but it also promotes awareness of the dark side of the internet . Insafe is a European network of awareness centres which has been created to promote the safe, responsible use of internet and mobile devices.
This gives me the opportunity to talk a little bit more broadly about regulation of the internet as well as government policy and legislation in this area. Right now the Rudd Labor government is looking at bringing in a significant piece of legislation. It is quite far reaching and it will certainly have enormous implications for Australians who use the internet safely.
I want to take the House and all those who might be listening, throughout not only the electorate of Ryan but the great state of Queensland—and indeed this wonderful land of ours—to the words of a very fine Australian, the Hon. Mr Justice Kirby, a former member of the High Court of Australia. He is someone whom I have had the great honour and privilege of getting to know and whom I respect very much. We do not see eye to eye on many issues, but he is a man who is an inspiration to me for his dedication to making our land a stronger, freer and better land. I want to read into the Hansard, for the benefit of my constituents in particular, his very wise words about the path of internet censorship. Clearly, this is the path that the Rudd Labor government is going down, through the legislation proposed by Senator Conroy, the relevant minister. Mr Justice Kirby said:
This proposal in Australia is something entirely new, and of course it is opposed in some circles, including some of the big service providers, on the basis that this is the thin end of the wedge of a government moving into regulating the actual internet itself. Once you start doing that, well, you get into the situation of Burma and Iran, where the government is taking control of what people hear and what information they get. I understand the problem that is being addressed but it is an entirely different approach to the approach taken elsewhere in the world as I understand it and I think there is going to be quite a debate about it in Australia.
He gave this interview on Radio 2UE, on 17 December last year. The interviewer said:
It doesn’t sound like you are personally keen on the idea.
Justice Kirby said:
Well, I know it a little bit because of work that I have done in connection with the internet and it is out of line with what other countries in the world do. Now that does not necessarily mean that Australia is wrong. After all, we are totally out of line with the bill of rights or the charter of rights issue. Sometimes you have to do what you think is right. I understand all that. But we are a very small player in the internet business if you look at it globally, and the internet is on the whole a marvellous advance not only of information but also freedom of ideas and ideas of liberty. So that we have got to just be careful because if just one government, our government, begins to intervene in this then there will be other governments who just want to get into it in order to control the freedom of ideas that are out there on the internet, which are the ideas that will break down the Berlin walls of the future and make sure that humanity can live together on this blue planet.
What wonderful words. (Time expired)
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
907
907
20:54:00
Perrett, Graham, MP
HVP
Moreton
ALP
1
0
Mr PERRETT
—It is always good to hear from the member for Ryan. It was interesting to hear him list some of those suburbs, like Enoggera and Keperra. Unfortunately, the residents of those suburbs will not get to meet him unless they go to the waiting lounges of European airports. It is unfortunate. He is certainly one of the most well-travelled MPs in the parliament. It is always good to see him in this location. Hopefully, after the next election we will have a representative who knows how to live in Ryan and how to look after the interests of the people of Ryan.
But I am not here to talk about the member opposite. I am here to talk about the great big compensation package that is bolted on to our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I will acknowledge to those opposite that our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme involves a market. That concept is not something that those opposite seem to be as familiar with now as they were before the last election. There is a market, and that market means that there will be goods that are emissions intensive and it will become a little bit more expensive to produce them. That is how a carbon market works. I just wanted to make sure that people knew I was not retreating from that fact.
I am here to talk about the great big compensation package associated with our emissions trading scheme. It involves things like direct cash assistance for nine out of 10 Australian households—households in Enoggera, Keperra, Taringa and Indooroopilly. Nine out of 10 households will be receiving cash assistance under the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Low-income households, such as some of those in the northern bit of Enoggera, are expected to receive 120 per cent of any anticipated costs in direct cash assistance. The household assistance package will deliver around $50 billion over 10 years under the CPRS.
I urge those people opposite to look at the Department of Climate Change webpage. Have a look at the information there. Around $50 billion will be spent over 10 years under the CPRS. Obviously there will be some modest price rises. As I said, it is a market. It is a carbon market. I will give you an example. A dual-income family earning $100,000, with two children aged 10 and 13, would receive $1,014 in 2012-13 in assistance from the government, even though the cost impact of the CPRS would be $976 for that year. There are other examples I can give. For a single-income couple earning $50,000, with two children aged two and seven, the cost impact in 2012-13 will be $680. They will receive $802; therefore they will be $122 better off under the Rudd government’s CPRS. For a family earning $120,000, with a fifty-fifty income split and with three children aged four, six and eight, the estimated average cost of the CPRS in 2012-13 will be $1,088. How much will they receive? They will receive $1,240; thus they will be $152 better off under the CPRS. Yes, there is an adjustment package. Yes, we will hear the fear campaign being mounted by those opposite. But we need to remember that 92 per cent of households will receive compensation under this scheme.
I know that those opposite are very good with the fear button, so I should point out that petrol prices will not be affected by our action on climate change. The Australian government will make cent-for-cent reductions in fuel tax for the first three years of the scheme. The new leader opposite, the member for Warringah, has replaced the merchant of Venice and has become the merchant of fear. He keeps talking over and over again about every fear button that he can possibly push out there. To paraphrase, this is the man who said that climate change is absolute bovine faeces—I do not want to offend you, Mr Speaker. The next day he came out and said it was real and then he flipped back again and said, ‘No, we can run a fear campaign on this.’ This is the man who said to Malcolm Turnbull that he was an absolute weathervane when it comes to climate change. We all know what is on top of a weathervane, don’t we? It is a rooster that swings in the breeze. The member for Warringah has embraced the political expediency of pushing fear, and we are going to see more and more of that in the roll-up to election night.
VU5
Griffin, Alan, MP
Mr Griffin
—What’s on top of a weathervane?
HVP
Perrett, Graham, MP
Mr PERRETT
—A rooster.
00AMX
Johnson, Michael, MP
Mr Johnson interjecting—
HVP
Perrett, Graham, MP
Mr PERRETT
—This is despite the fact that those opposite, like the member for Ryan, and a majority of the party, according to Ian Macfarlane, supported the CPRS and the amendments. The majority of the Liberal Party supported the CPRS, and I believe Ian Macfarlane’s little black book more than I believe what those opposite say. (Time expired)
908
21:00:00
House adjourned at 9.00 pm
NOTICES
908
Notices
The following notices were given:
83K
Roxon, Nicola, MP
Ms Roxon
to present a bill for an act to provide for healthcare identifiers, and for related purposes.
83K
Roxon, Nicola, MP
Ms Roxon
to present a bill for an act to deal with consequential matters in connection with the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010, and for related purposes.
83K
Roxon, Nicola, MP
Ms Roxon
to present a bill for an act to amend the law relating to health, and for related purposes.
PG6
Macklin, Jenny, MP
Ms Macklin
to present a bill for an act to amend the social security law and family assistance law, and for related purposes.
HV4
Garrett, Peter, MP
Mr Garrett
to present a bill for an act to amend the law relating to the protection of the Antarctic environment, and for related purposes.
DZS
Bowen, Chris, MP
Mr Bowen
to present a bill for an act to amend the law in relation to corporations, and for related purposes.
DZS
Bowen, Chris, MP
Mr Bowen
to present a bill for an act to amend the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, and for related purposes.
HWL
Clare, Jason, MP
Mr Clare
to present a bill for an act to amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003, and for related purposes.
LS4
Ferguson, Martin, MP
Mr Martin Ferguson
to present a bill for an act to amend the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, and for other purposes.
RH4
Kerr, Duncan, MP
Mr Kerr
to present a bill for an act to establish the Parliamentary (Judicial Misbehaviour or Incapacity) Commission.
RH4
Kerr, Duncan, MP
Mr Kerr
to move:
That the House adopt standing order 271 in the following terms:
271 Address for removal of federal justice
An address to the Governor‑General pursuant to section 72 of the Constitution shall be dealt with in the following manner:
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A Member may give notice of a motion for an address praying for the removal from office of a named justice of the High Court or of another court created by the Parliament on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity. The motion must make specific allegations in precise terms.
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A Member shall not give such a notice of motion before giving to the Speaker a letter advising:
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that the Member has previously informed the justice in writing of the substance of the allegation(s) proposed to be made in any address for removal and inviting the justice to communicate to the Member any matter material to the allegation(s) and any reasons why, in the opinion of the justice, the allegation(s) is/are ill informed or do not amount to a cause for removal; and
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that the justice has had either at least 10 days to respond and has failed to do so, or has responded, but notwithstanding, the Member remains of the view that it is proper to proceed with a motion for the removal of the justice.
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A Member giving such a notice of motion shall at the same time lay before the House a statement of reasons in support of the motion together with any documentary materials relevant to that statement.
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On the notice being given, the Speaker must immediately advise the justice who is the subject of the allegations of the terms of the notice of motion and provide the justice with a copy of all relevant documents tabled in relation thereto and invite him or her to make a written response.
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The Speaker shall give consideration to the terms of the notice of motion, the statement in support together with any relevant documents, and any response from the justice made in response to the provisions of paragraph (d), and, if the Speaker forms the opinion that:
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the allegations against the justice are clearly laid out;
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the facts alleged are such that, if they were to be proven, they could lawfully form a basis for the removal of the justice on the ground of misbehaviour or incapacity; and
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either the facts alleged have been established, or there are reasonable grounds for believing the conduct alleged may have occurred and that examination of this possibility would be justified;
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At the first sitting day occurring 14 days after the justice has been advised of the motion, whether the justice has responded or not, the Speaker must advise the House of whether precedence is to be granted to the moving of the motion.
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If the Speaker declines to grant precedence to the moving of the motion the Member who gave the notice may, without notice, thereupon move that the House disagree with the Speaker’s opinion, but unless that motion is carried the notice of motion for the address shall not be moved and it shall be removed from the Notice Paper.
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If the House votes to disagree with the Speaker’s opinion, the notice of motion shall be dealt with as if the Speaker had granted it precedence.
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Following the moving of the motion for the address:
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the debate on the motion must be immediately adjourned;
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the Speaker must immediately refer the allegations in the motion, together with all materials tabled with it and any response by the justice, to the Parliamentary (Judicial Behaviour or Incapacity) Commission; and
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until the House receives a report from the Commission on the matter referred no further debate on the motion shall be permitted.
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When the Speaker receives the report of the Commission on the matter referred, he or she must, as soon as practical, present the report to the House. A copy of the report shall be provided to each Member, and arrangements made for the inspection by any Member, at his or her request, of any original document or exhibit referred to in the report.
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If the report of the Commission concludes that facts do not exist amounting to proved misbehaviour or incapacity such as would warrant the removal of the justice, there shall be no further debate on the motion for the address and it shall be removed from the Notice Paper.
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If the report of the Commission concludes that facts exist amounting to proved misbehaviour or incapacity such as would warrant the removal of the justice, debate on the motion shall resume immediately and the debate shall be given priority over all other non-urgent parliamentary business until disposed of.
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Before the question on the motion for the address is put to the House for decision, the justice whose conduct is the subject of the report, or counsel on his or her behalf, shall be permitted to address the House from the Bar of the House, if he or she so requests.
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A Member who, deliberately or recklessly, puts forward baseless allegations against a justice under this standing order is guilty of contempt of the House,
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In addition to action under any other procedures available to punish contempts, a Member who, in the opinion of the House has deliberately or recklessly put forward baseless allegations against a justice under this standing order shall be suspended from the service of the House, on motion being moved without notice, for a period of 14 days, or such greater period as may be specified in the motion.
REQUEST FOR DETAILED INFORMATION
910
Requests for detailed information
Parliament House: Energy and Water Measures
910
910
Hunt, Gregory, MP
00AMV
Flinders
LP
0
Mr Hunt
asked the Speaker, in writing, on 23 November 2009:
What measures have been taken to save energy and water use in Parliament House.
910
SPEAKER, The
10000
PO
N/A
1
The SPEAKER
—The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:
Since the building was opened in 1988 electricity consumption has been reduced by 40% and gas consumption by 73%, with a total energy consumption reduction of 58%.
This has been achieved through a number of measures, including:
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improvements in air conditioning system fans and pumps;
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upgrades to the heating and air conditioning control system;
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upgrades in the building management system;
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timer based lighting controls to some areas;
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replacing incandescent lamps with compact fluorescents (more energy efficient) in Public and circulation areas; and
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waste heat recovery from computer rooms for swimming pool heating.
Further energy saving initiatives being developed include:
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replacement of the low-load chiller with more energy efficient equipment;
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installation of energy efficient lights in offices and carparks;
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energy efficient lighting design incorporated into all new construction work;
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removal of instant boiling water units from some suites and offices; and
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assessing the feasibility of implementing tri-generation and solar power systems at Parliament House.
The Department of Parliamentary Services has implemented a number of water saving initiatives to date including:
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annual flower displays discontinued;
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overall irrigation restrictions based on condition monitoring of soil moisture levels;
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irrigation of nine hectares of gardens and lawns stopped, and watering of the Senate playing field, ramps, courtyards and formal gardens reduced;
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turning off 20 external water features in and around Parliament House;
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use of recycled water in the forecourt water feature;
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40kL storm water capture tank installed for overflow of forecourt water feature;
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water restriction shower heads installed in all bathrooms and change rooms showers; and
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increase of air-conditioning temperature set point in public and general circulation areas (less water consumed by the cooling tower).
Further water saving initiatives in progress include:
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trials of drought resistant couch grass that requires no water in winter;
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installation of low flow urinals in the male public toilets;
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installation of dual flush toilets and sensor activated water taps in all public toilets; and
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plans to undertake further projects using local rainwater collection.
These measures have resulted in the following water savings achievements:
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water consumption in 2008-09 was the second lowest on record since the building was opened in 1988;
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water consumption during 2007-08 and 2008-09 was reduced by 49% and 38% respectively from that during 2006-07; and
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water consumption during 2008-09 was 10% less than the ACT Stage 3 water restriction target.