The SPEAKER ( Hon. Bronwyn Bishop ) took the chair at 09:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.
BILLS
Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme Bill 2014
Consideration of Senate Message
Bill returned from the Senate with amendments.
Ordered that the amendments be considered immediately.
(1) Clause 3, page 2 (line 8), omit "1 December 2015", substitute "1 December 2016".
(2) Clause 3, page 2 (line 10), omit "1 May 2015", substitute "1 May 2016".
(3) Clause 3, page 3 (line 1), omit "1 September 2016", substitute "1 September 2017".
(4) Clause 3, page 3 (line 3), omit "31 December 2016", substitute "31 December 2017".
(5) Page 3 (after line 6), after clause 3, insert:
3A Constitutional basis
Without limitation, this Act relies on:
(a) the Commonwealth's legislative powers under paragraphs 51(xxiiiA) and (xxxix) of the Constitution; and
(b) any implied legislative powers of the Commonwealth.
(6) Page 3 (before line 7), before clause 4, insert:
3B Principles for nominees
This Act and the rules are intended to reflect, in relation to nominees, the following principles:
(a) all adults have an equal right to make decisions that affect their lives and to have those decisions respected;
(b) persons who require support in decision‑making must be provided with access to the support necessary for them to make, communicate and participate in decisions that affect their lives;
(c) the will, preferences and rights of persons who may require decision‑making support must direct decisions that affect their lives;
(d) laws and legal frameworks must contain appropriate and effective safeguards in relation to interventions for persons who may require decision‑making support, including to prevent abuse and undue influence.
Note: The safeguards referred to in paragraph (d) are provided in this Act (see for example section 54) and the rules.
(7) Clause 4, page 4 (line 8), omit "subsection 6(2)", substitute "subsections 6(2) and (2A)".
(8) Clause 6, page 6 (line 19), omit "28 May 2014", substitute "31 January 2015".
(9) Clause 6, page 7 (after line 5), after subclause (2), insert:
(2A) Despite subsection (2), a person does not meet the condition in that subsection, and there is no eligible day for the person, if the day that (apart from this subsection) would have been the earliest eligible day for the person is later than 28 May 2014.
(10) Clause 8, page 8 (line 4), after "wage", insert ", indexed in accordance with the method in section 8A".
(11) Clause 8, page 8 (lines 15 to 22), omit subclause (5), substitute:
(5) In this Act:
actual wage means the total wages, worked out in accordance with the rules, that a person was paid in respect of all eligible days for the person.
productivity ‑scored wage means the total wages, worked out in accordance with the rules, that the person could reasonably have been expected to have been paid in respect of all eligible days for the person if the productivity component of a BSWAT assessment had comprised the whole of the BSWAT assessment.
(12) Page 8 (after line 22), after clause 8, insert:
8A Indexation
(1) This is how to index the excess of a productivity‑scored wage over an actual wage for the purposes of paragraph (3)(a):
Method statement
Step 1. Work out how much of the excess is attributable to wages in respect of eligible days for the person concerned in each financial year. Each such amount is the annual portion for the financial year.
Step 2. Multiply the oldest annual portion by the indexation factor specified in subsection (2) for the financial year to which that portion is attributable. If the result is not an amount of whole dollars, round the result up to the nearest whole dollar.
Step 3. Take the result of step 2. Add to it any annual portion for the next financial year (unless it is the 2014‑2015 financial year, in which case go to step 4). Multiply:
(a) the total; or
(b) if there is no annual portion for the next financial year—the result of step 2;
by the indexation factor specified in subsection (2) for that next financial year. If the result is not an amount of whole dollars, round the result up to the nearest whole dollar.
Reapply this step for each subsequent financial year up to and including the 2013‑2014 financial year, substituting the result of the previous application of this step for the result of step 2.
Step 4. Take the result of step 3. Add to it any annual portion for the 2014‑2015 financial year.
Step 5. If the result is not an amount of whole dollars, round the result up to the nearest whole dollar.
(2) The indexation factors are the following:
(a) 1.025 for the 2003‑2004 financial year;
(b) 1.025 for the 2004‑2005 financial year;
(c) 1.04 for the 2005‑2006 financial year;
(d) 1.021 for the 2006‑2007 financial year;
(e) 1.044 for the 2007‑2008 financial year;
(f) 1.014 for the 2008‑2009 financial year;
(g) 1.031 for the 2009‑2010 financial year;
(h) 1.035 for the 2010‑2011 financial year;
(i) 1.02 for the 2011‑2012 financial year;
(j) 1.024 for the 2012‑2013 financial year;
(k) 1.03 for the 2013‑2014 financial year.
(3) This section does not apply if:
(a) the productivity‑scored wage does not exceed the actual wage; or
(b) all eligible days for the person concerned were in the 2014‑2015 financial year.
(13) Clause 12, page 11 (line 6), omit "1 December 2015", substitute "1 December 2016".
(14) Clause 12, page 11 (line 7), omit "1 May 2015", substitute "1 May 2016".
(15) Clause 12, page 11 (line 9), omit "1 December 2015", substitute "1 December 2016".
(16) Clause 12, page 12 (line 3), omit "2016", substitute "2017".
(17) Clause 12, page 12 (line 4), omit "1 September 2016", substitute "1 September 2017".
(18) Clause 12, page 12 (line 6), omit "1 December 2016", substitute "1 December 2017".
(19) Clause 12, page 12 (lines 7 and 8), omit "31 December 2016", substitute "31 December 2017".
(20) Clause 13, page 13 (line 5), omit "1 May 2015", substitute "1 May 2016".
(21) Clause 13, page 13 (line 15), omit "1 May 2015", substitute "1 May 2016".
(22) Clause 14, page 13 (line 21), omit "1 May 2015", substitute "1 May 2016".
(23) Clause 15, page 13 (line 26), omit "1 July 2014", substitute "1 July 2015".
(24) Clause 15, page 13 (line 27), omit "30 November 2015", substitute "30 November 2016".
(25) Clause 15, page 14 (line 4), omit "1 December 2015", substitute "1 December 2016".
(26) Clause 16, page 14 (line 11), omit "1 May 2015", substitute "1 May 2016".
(27) Clause 16, page 14 (line 12), omit "1 December 2015", substitute "1 December 2016".
(28) Clause 18, page 15 (line 27), omit "1 December 2015", substitute "1 December 2016".
(29) Clause 21, page 18 (line 27), omit "1 September 2016", substitute "1 September 2017".
(30) Clause 21, page 18 (line 30), omit "1 December 2016", substitute "1 December 2017".
(31) Clause 22, page 19 (line 13), omit "31 December 2016", substitute "31 December 2017".
(32) Clause 22, page 19 (line 15), omit "30 November 2016", substitute "30 November 2017".
(33) Clause 37, page 30 (line 1), omit "or by", substitute ", the person or".
(34) Clause 38, page 30 (line 11), omit "1 January 2017", substitute "1 January 2018".
(35) Clause 102, page 65 (line 14), before "The", insert "(1)".
(36) Clause 102, page 65 (after line 19), at the end of the clause, add:
(2) To avoid doubt, the rules may not do the following:
(a) create an offence or civil penalty;
(b) provide powers of:
(i) arrest or detention; or
(ii) entry, search or seizure;
(c) impose a tax;
(d) set an amount to be appropriated from the Consolidated Revenue Fund under an appropriation in this Act;
(e) amend this Act.
(3) However, to avoid doubt, rules that make provision in relation to:
(a) the payment amount for a person; or
(b) amounts of remuneration or allowances for the purposes of subsection 27(4); or
(c) amounts of costs, expenses or other obligations for the purposes of paragraph 98A(1)(e);
are not to be taken to set an amount to be appropriated from the Consolidated Revenue Fund under an appropriation in this Act for the purposes of paragraph (2)(d) of this section.
Mr BALDWIN (Paterson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) (09:02): I move:
That the amendments be agreed to.
The SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Question agreed to.
Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015
Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Cognate debate.
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Ms MARINO (Forrest—Government Whip) (09:03): As I was saying last night about the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015, the ombudsman will need to be—and be seen to be—impartial in this process. The advocacy and assistance functions are entirely separate, and there will be no conflict between the two.
The ombudsman's assistance function will include a concierge role, responding to requests for assistance by referring requests to another agency of the Commonwealth, state or territory; by working cooperatively with another agency of the Commonwealth, state or territory; and by making recommendations where the request for assistance relates to a matter within the ombudsman's remit about how a dispute may be managed. This includes making recommendations that an alternative dispute resolution process be used—another ADR. Of course, the availability of an alternative dispute resolution process can certainly help preserve business relationships and avoid unnecessary and expensive litigation.
I think back to my time post the deregulation of the dairy industry and some of the challenges that faced us as dairy farmers. That is just a simple example of a group of people who were in a new environment. For example, at the time there were very few buyers in our market and a whole lot of sellers. There were some very interesting business practices applied, including third line forcing, and a range of matters took us before the ACCC. I can remember very clearly representing a group of dairy farmers at a hearing of the ACCC and officers saying to me that they were particularly disappointed in the quality of my presentation on behalf of dairy farmers. The officers were quite scathing, and that is something that has stayed with me to this day. I was appalled at their attitude and their approach to people who were trying to do the best they could in small business—which is where I see the ombudsman's role being important. It may not have been able to have been applied in that instance, but when I sat there and the commissioners looked at us as if we had crawled out from underneath a rock, I wished I had had an ombudsman—especially when an ACCC officer said to me, 'I am quite disappointed, Mrs Marino, in the quality of your presentation and the submission you have made to us.' I asked why that was, and he said, 'We were expecting something more along the lines of what we got in our previous inquiry—what we got from Air New Zealand and Qantas.' Shame!
I was working with a group of dairy farmers that had lost a third-plus of their income overnight in a deregulated environment. We were in a very difficult position, with very few buyers and a large number of sellers, and of course we also had the wolves at the door—Coles and Woolworths. In Western Australia they have an enormous impact over the market and the prices received by growers because it is basically a domestic market. To hear that comment from an ACCC person was extraordinary and showed an incredible level of disrespect for people actively out there, as small business people, getting on with the job and doing their very best to not only survive but also drive an industry and drive a local economy. Deregulation had a massive impact—we saw businesses disappear, not just farmers but other small businesses in our community. I remember driving through the small town of Brunswick, which was very dependent on the dairy industry, and seeing shop after shop closed. We saw businesses exit that small community—even the dairy farmers themselves, who were the ones who had supported not just the school but the local shops. The local store lost $10,000-$12,000 in the first weeks following deregulation. There was a $30 million exit of income out of the Harvey Shire alone, overnight. To have this sort of response from the ACCC at the time was appalling. I am really hoping that the ombudsman will take a very active role in a range of ways and that the ombudsman will be able to make inquiries and obtain information in relation to requests for assistance. This is a very important role. There are so many small businesses out there who find themselves in a David and Goliath situation, and often feel great frustration, as I felt, when dealing with any form of Commonwealth or other agency.
This Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill and its accompanying Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill will fulfil one of the coalition's key election commitments, to establish an Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. It is another example of how we value small business. That was very strongly reflected in the budget and it has been very strongly reflected in the fact that our small business minister sits within cabinet, sits within Treasury and is at the table for every discussion. The minister himself, as we know, is a very energetic and passionate advocate for small business. I think every small business around Australia knows that they have a champion within the government—but not just one. So many of us on this side are small business people ourselves, so we understand the issues facing small business. We have been the ones, like them, who have borrowed money, taken a risk and often pursued a passion, but, equally, with a very commercial focus. But there are times when we need that assistance from someone like the Ombudsman, someone who says: 'We will look at this for you in a practical, useful way. We will assist you in your dealings.' I am looking forward to what the Ombudsman can and will achieve for small business.
Australian governments historically, particularly the previous government, have not understood the challenges and needs and small business and family enterprises. We certainly do, and this is another plank in our continuing efforts to support such an important part of the Australian economy.
Ms BRODTMANN (Canberra) (09:10): I rise today to support these two bills, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2015. The first bill works to establish the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, including its functions and powers. The second bill deals with any overlap between the existing statutory office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the transfer of the information to the new Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. Labor of course welcomes and supports any measures that strengthen the small business sector. Labor recognises the significant contribution small business makes to the Australian economy, because 96 per cent of all Australian businesses are small and micro businesses. Small businesses contribute about 47 per cent to private sector employment and in excess of $330 billion annually to our GDP.
The reason I am so keen to speak on these bills is that in my former life, prior to coming to parliament, I had my own microbusiness. I had it for 10 years, and I loved every minute of it, despite many challenges at times. Since I have been in parliament I have been very keen to ensure that the issues I had to address when I had my own microbusiness were being discussed from a public policy perspective, particularly on government procurement. Most of my business was with government agencies here in Canberra, and there were times when I was tearing my hair out at the requirements of government procurement. I will come to that later, based on my own experience of having my microbusiness and my conversations with many businesses around Canberra since I have been elected. I have a meeting this morning with the Australian Industry and Defence Network, and I know from my discussions with them the challenges they sometimes face from a defence procurement perspective.
So, I do understand, having had 10 years of experience in my own microbusiness, the challenges that small businesses face, particularly in navigating their way around the system. The real challenge is the fact that these people want to comply, they want to do the right thing by the law, they want to do the right thing by the tax department, and quite often that can be difficult in terms of navigating their way through. So, as I said, later in my speech I will come to some of the issues I think the Ombudsman should be looking at, but I will say here now that I speak from experience and from lengthy conversations with Canberra business people particularly and defence industry.
As I mentioned before, Labor has a proud tradition in terms of the initiatives introduced when we were in government for small business. That is why we commissioned the first national small business commissioner in this country. We knew that small businesses needed a direct national voice to government. We provided funding of $8.3 million over four years to establish the Australian Small Business Commissioner to provide a voice to advocate for and represent the interests of small business directly to government.
Mark Brennan was announced as the inaugural Australian Small Business Commissioner in October of 2012 and commenced in this role on 2 January 2013. Mr Brennan is doing an outstanding job advocating for small business and has done so since he commenced in the role. The commissioner's role is to: provide information and assistance to small businesses, including referral to dispute resolution services; represent small business interests and concerns to government; and work with industry and government to promote a coordinated approach to small business matters. Essentially, the commissioner works in consultation with key small business stakeholders, including industry organisations, small business operators, state small business commissioners and other government agencies to ensure that small business concerns are heard and are taken into consideration across government.
The commissioner was not a statutory appointment and has no formal investigative or regulatory enforcement powers under any legislation and the commissioner does not have direct involvement in resolving individual small business disputes. The commissioner's role is to raise awareness of existing, effective services available at the federal government and state and territory levels to assist businesses in resolving disputes.
Labor's proud track record on small business does not end there. Labor established the Small Business Support Line and the business.gov.au website as a one-stop shop for information for small business people in a simple and accessible way. That is vitally important. Just speaking from experience, I remember when it came to the end of the financial year and I wanted to get a number of issues resolved. I had to navigate my way through the labyrinth that is the Australian tax office website, going through pages and pages to find out how much superannuation I could contribute. It was quite extraordinary. It took a lot of time. Particularly the end of the financial year, as you know, Madam Speaker, is the time when the rubber hits the road, so to speak, for small and micro business. It was incredibly frustrating. That is why a one-stop shop for information for small and micro business is an incredibly useful tool and is vitally important to help businesses work their way through the system very easily.
Labor also established the Small Business Advisory Services program delivered through business enterprise centres and chambers of commerce, and it was us that established the National Business Names Registry, saving money and reducing red tape for small business. Again, that was a really important initiative. In our glorious Federation, if you set up your business in Victoria, you had to get your business registered in Victoria and pay $100—I cannot remember what the figure was—and then your business would be registered for five years. If you went to, say, Canberra, it would cost $70 and that was for three years. Then, if you went to New South Wales, it was a separate amount for a separate length of time. Having one register was incredibly useful, not just in terms of saving money—from memory, the figures were in the hundreds—but also in terms of the hassle of having to remember that your Victorian business registration expires in five years time and your ACT one expires in three time. You had to remember when to renew on all the different dates. So, as you can see, Labor has a proud track record on strengthening the small business sector.
The new Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, as set out in this bill, will have an advocacy function as well as an assistance function. Under the assistance function, the ombudsman may respond to a request for assistance by an operator of a small business or family enterprise. The ombudsman must transfer a request for assistance to another Commonwealth, state or territory agency if the agency could deal with the request and if it would be more effective and convenient for the agency to do so. Where the assistance requested relates to a dispute with another entity, the ombudsman may recommend that an alternative dispute resolution process be undertaken. As set out in this bill, the new ombudsmen will: undertake research and inquiries into legislation, policies and practices affecting small business and family enterprises; report and give advice to the minister on those matters; contribute to inquiries to others on those matters; contribute to developing national strategies on those matters; review proposals relating to those matters and advise the minister on them; and promote best practice in dealing with small businesses and family enterprises.
I just want to focus here on the report and on giving advice to the minister on those matters, whether on issues confronting microbusinesses—because micros really are the very large proportion of small businesses in this country—or those confronting family enterprises, going back to what I mentioned before about the advice being vitally important. Should the Ombudsman be appointed, should this position be created, I would encourage that person to focus on that issue of advice to government, particularly when it comes to government procurement.
As I said, about 50 per cent of my business was with government agencies, and, again, I had so many experiences where I was tearing out my hair. One of them was about the fact that government agencies are by their nature risk averse. I understand that. They are dealing with taxpayers' money and they have to be careful in the way they spend it. But as a result of that you see them contracting with primes, large organisations, who then go and subcontract to small and micro businesses, quite often at a fraction of the cost they are charging. Also, in the process, they really drive down, in my view, the cost of small and micro businesses. It means that essentially government agencies are paying primes at premium prices. There is nothing wrong with that, but those primes are then subcontracting to smalls and micros, who are charging a lower price to the prime.
I think government agencies should, rather than go through the primes, who then subcontract, go straight to the smalls and micros—have some mechanisms established whereby you are getting value for money and getting a quality product at possibly a cheaper price without having to go through the prime. That is just one area I think the Ombudsman should be looking at in terms of providing advice. I also am concerned about the ability of micros and smalls to actually get into government procurement. As I said, government agencies by their nature are risk averse, and rightly so, because they are dealing with Australian taxpayers' money. But it does mean they are missing out on the innovation and the flexibility and the new ideas that are usually generated from the small and micro business sector. So, again, if the Ombudsman could take a closer look at that, then that would be terrific.
Finally, in terms of contracts, again, government agencies are risk averse, and as a result of that you get this huge contract that is 70 pages long for perhaps a $5,000 job. You have to pay professional indemnity and public liability of $10 million, I think it is in the Commonwealth at the moment. It costs a lot. It is usually in the vicinity of between $6,000 and $10,000 a year. Quite often, with the contract that you have, the risk is minimal to the Commonwealth, so you have this huge public liability and professional indemnity, imposing a huge impost on small and micro businesses for something that is probably not terribly risky at all. So, again, I encourage the Ombudsman to take a look at government contracting. As I have said many times, it is quite often sledgehammer to walnut. A 70-page contract for a $5,000 job is just ludicrous.
In terms of tendering, another bugbear of mine but also of other businesses around town is that getting access to panels for micros and smalls is very challenging. And the way the tenders are constructed, they are in a way geared towards primes, which excludes smalls and micros. It makes it very difficult for a small or micro to get into the government procurement process in the first place, and the way the tender process quite often is constructed means that businesses large and small are required to get their tenders in over the Christmas break, on 4 January or something. So, everyone works very hard to get their tender in during what is traditionally a holiday period, which again ignores the fact that small and micro business owners are people. They require time out over Christmas as well. There is a bit of a blind spot, I think, in some government agencies on what small businesses and micros are all about. You bust a gut to get this tender in just after Christmas and then you do not hear from the government agency for eight, nine or 10 months—I have heard of cases of 12 months. There is no word on how the tender is going. So, again, there are just a few areas that I think the Ombudsman should be looking at in terms of providing advice.
In conclusion, we are supportive of the move to establish a new Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, but we do hold some concerns, particularly relating to the Ombudsman's independence and impartiality. However, as I said, being a former small business owner myself I understand how vital it is to have someone advocating for the rights and interests of small business, and that is why I welcome this legislation. In continuation of the good spirit and bipartisanship that Labor has shown when it comes to small business, I commend these bills to the House.
Mrs ANDREWS (McPherson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Science) (09:26): I rise in support of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2015. The bills fulfil yet another of our 2013 election commitments, which is to establish an Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. In fulfilling this commitment we have set about ensuring that it is done properly, because we are not in the business of setting up another agency or bureaucracy just for the sake of doing it. Our approach is always to simplify, to ensure that government does not get in the way or hamper the growth of small businesses. This has certainly been evidenced over the last 18 months or so by the slashing of red tape through our repeal days, and that has delivered a staggering $2.4 billion in savings. So we are certainly a government that wants to get out of the way of businesses and knows how to do it.
The fact is that the Ombudsman is all about streamlining and providing a better process of dispute resolution for small businesses and family enterprises, and that is just so important. There was a public consultation process with 53 submissions received and a discussion paper that canvassed a range of options for ensuring that the Ombudsman would be effective, would not duplicate current services and would achieve our stated objectives. This legislation is a result of that process, and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the member for Dunkley, the Minister for Small Business, for the way he has championed the needs of small business. He has certainly been a tireless advocate and a strong voice in cabinet. This has been strongly evidenced by the Jobs and Small Business Package which was the centrepiece of the recent budget and the biggest small business initiative in Australia's history. It has been very positively received. I have spoken with many of the small businesses in my electorate of McPherson on the southern Gold Coast, and they appreciate the recognition and the assistance this package represents. It is a very clear, practical way to acknowledge the primacy of small business to our economy.
In my electorate of McPherson there are some 15,000 small businesses, and there are more than two million actively trading small businesses across the nation. Ninety-six per cent of all Australian businesses are small businesses. Many small businesses are also family enterprises, representing 70 per cent of all Australian businesses. Combined, small businesses produce more than $330 billion of total economic national output and employ over 4.5 million people.
The coalition has always believed in creating the right economic climate for small business to thrive. It is the central tenet of our policy approach: paying back debt, getting the budget back into surplus—these are all mechanisms for ensuring that we create the right conditions to allow small business to create jobs and contribute to the economic wellbeing of our local communities. We know this task is ongoing, and we know there is always more to be done, and this legislation represents yet another step in the plan.
The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman will have two primary functions: advocacy and assistance. In this way the Ombudsman will meet our commitment to establish a role that is a Commonwealth-wide advocate for small businesses and family enterprises; a concierge for dispute resolution, who will also offer an outsourced alternative dispute resolution service; and a contributor to making Commonwealth laws and regulations more small-business friendly.
As I said at the start, this is very much about making life easier for our small business owners. The Minister for Small Business has recognised and acknowledged that:
… small businesses are often treated as if they were big businesses, with all the resources of a big business. Important compliance demands faced by small businesses include the workplace relations framework, competition policy, contract law, business and tax law and business processes and communications. Big business, with their accountants and their legal departments, are better equipped to deal with such matters. For small business people, time spent on compliance demands is time away from investing in the success of their enterprise.
The minister intrinsically understands the challenges of small business—as do many on this side of the House, including me, because we have owned and operated small businesses. I know what a tough gig it is. We certainly have a lot of sympathy for, and a great understanding of, the time pressures on small businesses. Just having to comply takes them away from the day-to-day business of actually growing their business or even just making ends meet.
Not all governments have understood the needs of small businesses and family enterprises. Under the former Labor government, small businesses were pretty much left off the agenda. There was a revolving door of small business ministers, including five in the final 15 months of Labor's term in office. Sadly, over the six years of the former Labor government, 519,000 jobs were lost in small business. At the end of Labor's term, fewer small businesses were employing people than when Labor started, with the small business share of the private sector workforce falling from 52 per cent to 43 per cent of all employees. That is a really sad statistic but it is perhaps not surprising. Many representatives on the other side of the House do not have a small business background. While I acknowledge the contribution by the member for Canberra in this debate and her small business experience, that is not common on the other side of the chamber.
If you have not been in small business, you do not really understand the constraints and the issues and how hard it is to be a small business owner and operator. You do not understand the sacrifices, courage and hard work that owning and operating a small business requires. This bill is further evidence that we on this side of the House do understand small business and that we thank them for having a go. Looking through the submissions made by various stakeholders in small business groups on the establishment of the ombudsman, there were a lot of very positive submissions from representative organisations, including the Australian Association of Convenience Stores, the Australian Newsagents Federation, the Australian Sporting Goods Association, the Council of Small Business of Australia, the Franchise Council of Australia, the Housing Industry Association and so on. These are just a few of the many who contributed to the public consultation process.
I also note that one of the most common concerns expressed in the submissions was the duplication of roles between the ombudsman and various other agencies. Of course, the minister has expressly addressed this by ensuring that the ombudsman will not duplicate the functions of other officials. The ombudsman will work collaboratively with Commonwealth officials such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the state small business commissioners as well as other relevant officials across all jurisdictions. As part of this collaboration the ombudsman will identify systemic issues that warrant a national approach and advise the government about such matters.
To assist with our ongoing deregulation agenda the ombudsman will provide advice on proposed an existing legislation, regulations and practices. This will help ensure we can continue to have our highly successful repeal days twice a year to cut red tape and remove unnecessary legislation. The ombudsman's brief is to help ensure that, wherever possible, red-tape burdens are minimised, removed or prevented from being imposed in the first place. The small business minister will also be able to refer matters to the ombudsman for inquiry. This part of the advocacy function is similar to that available under the Productivity Commission Act, and is designed to provide a formal framework and supporting powers that allow the ombudsman to undertake a public inquiry into matters of significant interest to small businesses or family enterprises. The minister will be required to table reports of such inquiries by the ombudsman in the parliament.
The ombudsman will also fulfil an important alternative dispute resolution role, providing improved access to justice for small businesses at the Commonwealth level. The ombudsman's assistance function requires the ombudsman to give assistance in relation to relevant actions if requested to do so.
A key requirement of the Ombudsman is to not duplicate the functions of Commonwealth, state or territory officials. Instead, under the ombudsman's concierge role, small businesses and family enterprises will be referred, where appropriate, to existing agencies that can deal with their issues. The concierge role acknowledges that there are already a number of services for small business issues, complaints and disputes, but that small businesses often do not know where to turn for support. This means that, small businesses can approach the ombudsman for assistance for any dispute or complaint they may have. The ombudsman must then transfer a request for assistance to another Commonwealth, state or territory agency, if that agency could deal with the request and it would be more effective and convenient for that agency to do so. The point is that the ombudsman will be in a better position to know who the small business should go to and to provide initial advice.
The ombudsman will also provide an outsourced alternative dispute resolution service. As part of this facilitated dispute resolution function, the ombudsman may recommend that an alternative dispute resolution process be undertaken. To support the facilitation of early and cost-effective dispute resolution, the ombudsman may publicise the failure of a party to participate in a recommended alternative dispute resolution process. This approach is intended to incentivise parties to genuinely participate in an alternative dispute resolution process.
Just from the functions I have outlined so far, we can see how the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman will work to further the interests of small business and be of genuine assistance to small businesses requiring advice, particularly in relation to dispute resolution. It is no wonder that the submissions to the public consultation process were overwhelmingly in support of the establishment of the ombudsman. For example, the Australian Newsagents Federation said in their submission:
The ANF strongly supports the introduction of the role of Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. We believe it will be of great assistance to our members and to strengthening small businesses in Australia more broadly.
The Australasian Association of Convenience Stores wrote:
We are hopeful that the establishment of the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, and its capacity to extend the activities of the Australian Small Business Commissioner to create a more purposeful, empowered and effective role, will support these businesses—owners and employees—into the future … the AACS supports the establishment of the Ombudsman and is positive about the outlook for small businesses in Australia.
The Housing Industry Association said:
HIA notes the Government's commitment to transform the current office of the Australian Small Business Commissioner into a Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman …
They go on:
HIA supports the Commonwealth Government's overall focus and agenda on better representing the interests of the small business community.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry noted the brief to fight red tape as a significant positive, saying:
In relation to reducing red tape, ACCI argued that the Australian Small Business Commissioner should become a "warrior to fight red tape". We are therefore encouraged by the proposal that red tape reduction will be a priority for the newly formed Ombudsman.
Overall, our submission supports the principles that underpin this policy announcement …
So I do think there is widespread support for the establishment of a federal advocacy and assistance body for small business—the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman will be a very welcome addition to the range of services currently on offer. On behalf of small businesses on the southern Gold Coast I am very pleased to express my strong support for this legislation and to commend the bill to the House.
Mr PERRETT (Moreton) (09:39): I rise to speak on the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 and consequential and transitional provisions. I had intended to focus particularly on the benefits that come from this, but after the member for MacPherson's contribution I feel I need to respond on behalf of the Labor Party. I am loath to do this on a day when she is wearing maroon and I am wearing maroon. Everybody in the chamber would be supportive of the Maroon's endeavours tonight. Nevertheless, I will return to some of the statements made by the member for MacPherson—not only by the member for McPherson but by other members opposite—about the Labor Party and small business. I will touch on the initial part of the legislation because it makes an important contribution to establishing a small business and family enterprise ombudsman. The ombudsman will assist small businesses in both advocacy and assistance functions, and Labor is supportive of that legislative endeavour. The ombudsman will have extensive powers, including to research and inquire into legislation, policies and practice that affect small business and also to compel persons to give evidence at hearings and provide information and documents to assist in the ombudsman's work.
It is an ombudsman's role that I have looked at in terms of child protection. It is something we do not have yet. What the government has laid out in this, in terms of supporting small business, is certainly something I would like to see rolled out in some other areas that I am involved with because of my shadow policy work. The small business and family enterprise ombudsman can respond to requests for assistance from small businesses and then refer those requests to the appropriate Commonwealth, state or territory agency. There is a strong focus on dispute resolution in the bill, with the ombudsman having powers to publicise that one entity has refused to engage in or has withdrawn from a recommended alternative dispute resolution process. I am all for alternative dispute resolution, even though I have had my own small business and then worked as a lawyer, where most of my clients were small businesses. Obviously, lawyers need to make money. Nevertheless, any sensible person working in government or with legislation wants to avoid legal disputes wherever possible. So alternative dispute resolution is to be commended.
I want to take people to one of the roles. If there are two small businesses, the ombudsman may publicise, in any way that the ombudsman thinks appropriate, that an entity has refused to engage in an alternative dispute resolution process recommended by the ombudsman or has withdrawn from such a process. I understand the intention: to bring parties together to sort out their disputes. That is a good thing. But it would certainly be a strange process if the person responsible for government red tape named a small business because of its behaviour or they decided to go through a legal avenue or something that the ombudsman had not recommended. We will see how that plays out in the future.
I return to some of the comments made by the member for McPherson and other people on the other side about Labor and small business. I know how important small business is, as does the Labor Party. We understand that the number of private sector jobs in Australia connected with small business is nearly 50 per cent. If small business is humming, the Australia that we love and value is humming as well. If small business is lacking in confidence, scared and people are not spending money in small businesses, that is bad. Even if they are putting the money into their mortgages and saving and the like, it is better if money is being circulated through the economy. We understand that. We saw that particularly through the global financial crisis, when Labor responded particularly by going to small business. We saw it towards the end of the six years of the Labor government as well—by supporting small business where we could. For almost the last month, we have the government trying to drive a wedge between what the national interest is and their own interest by suggesting that Labor is not supportive of small business. On so many occasions in this chamber we saw the government suggest that the small business measures in the tax laws amendment were being held up by Labor.
We saw the Prime Minister in question time on 1 June, saying:
With the economy in transition, it is important that these budget measures to help small business get through the parliament as quickly as possible, some small businesses are reluctant to invest until the measure has passed the parliament. I say to the Leader of the Opposition, let us not let politics get in the way of economics. Let us not let self-interest get in the way of national interest. Let us pass this bill straight away.
Those were the actual words of the Prime Minister about small business. But, always, when it comes to the Prime Minister it is not what he says, it is what he does.
We did not have legislation in the chamber at the time. In fact, when the legislation did come into the chamber and the Leader of the Opposition said, 'Let's vote on it right now and get it through,' the government then voted against its own legislation! Why? Because, like security, small business was being used as a political vehicle to create political gain for the government and damage for the Labor Party. There was no focus on the national interest; instead, it was only self-interest. I guess the guy who had 39 people decide to vote against him said, 'I will do anything I can to reach to the extreme and divide the nation rather than lead the nation.'
I understand small business. I know that the member for Lingiari here has run his own small business as well. I come from a small business family: my father was a butcher and a grazier, and he ran abattoirs. Small business is in my blood, like it is for so many people. Whether it be as a lawyer, running a small business, or a lawyer working for a small business, so many people on this side and the other side of the chamber understand small business. So they should not try to carve out that false dichotomy and suggest that only the government supports small business. That is not the case.
We know that when we were in government we did so many things for small business. For example, so many of our policies were then embraced by the government after they got rid of them. That is the reality. I do remember the Prime Minister—the then Leader of the Opposition—saying on the night before the election that there would be no new taxes and no cuts to pensions et cetera. And what did he do? There was a $3.8 billion cut to small business. There was $3.8 billion taken away from small business. The government abolished the tax loss carry back provisions—I think it was at MYEFO, within a month or two of coming to office, that they abandoned those loss carry back provisions and the special depreciation rules for motor vehicles, and they unwound the instant asset write-off. I have not heard one speaker opposite who has stood up to talk about small business apologise to the small businesses in their electorates for what they visited upon their small businesses without warning—without a mandate at all! They just ruled that out and said—
Mr Ewen Jones: We took the policy to the election!
Mr PERRETT: They mugged small business! And that 2014 budget which, surely, put a foot on the throat of small business more than anything else this government has done: confidence collapsed—you can track it. It collapsed straight after that 2014 budget. There was the $845 million cut to industry and small business programs—programs like Commercialisation Australia, Enterprise Solutions and Enterprise Connect. They are programs that I know the member for McPherson would be familiar with. They vandalised the Tools for your Trade program, which was about investing in the workers of the future in small business. There was $1 billion in support for apprentices abolished and then another $1 billion worth of skills and training programs gone.
When I talk to the nearly 19,000 small businesses in my electorate—admittedly, some of those are quite large—the main thing they talk about is not red tape. I am sorry, I must be talking to the wrong businesses! It is not about red tape, it is about getting skilled personnel and getting the right personnel—the appropriate personnel. That is the main problem for small business—getting the right people—because it is crucial for a single-person, a two-person or a three-person enterprise to get the right people being able to step up. That is why training was so important.
I heard the Prime Minister say about small business on 1 June:
Let us pass this bill straight away.
The Treasurer then said in question time:
So here is a challenge for the Labor Party. This legislation is going to go through the House of Representatives this week—
absolutely right—
Then it goes to the Senate—
which only has two weeks to sit—
I lay down the challenge—
to the Labor Party—
help us get that legislation through as quickly as possible.
They were obviously trying to reach out to what they saw as their core audience and also drive a wedge between the Labor Party and the government when it comes to small business. The Prime Minister has an inability to sit down and see what is in the nation's interests. He has been the most perfect opposition leader—unfortunately, he has carried that behaviour, that form, that radar into government. That is not in the best interests of this nation. If he has the sort of character that means he can rise to the top of the writhing, seething heap of aspirants in the Liberal Party to become Prime Minister, he should be able to focus on what is in the nation's interests and leave that oppositional politics, that 'Nope, nope, nope' approach, to when he is in opposition. Small business needs more support.
We support the small business legislation; we are supporting this Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill. As I said, I had some concerns about some of the public naming and shaming aspects of it, but that will be sorted out in the process. No doubt the minister might address that when it is time to respond. But to use small business as a weapon in Australian politics is disgraceful behaviour. It is almost as if the focus is on having power rather than using power. That is the sign of a leader with a fundamental flaw, an Achilles heel. If they are only going to focus on wedging, you then have to ask what is the purpose of the Liberal Party—what is the purpose if it is only to oppose? That works when you are in opposition, but not when you are in government. If you are going to be the party of small business, you must focus on all small businesses that benefit the nation, particularly with the jobs of the future. We are not, to paraphrase Napoleon Bonaparte, a nation of shopkeepers—we must be a nation focused on innovation; we must be a nation that reaches out to Asia; a nation that uses the National Broadband Network to create the jobs of the future.
I know the member for McPherson has a strong track record in this area, because I have seen some of her speeches. I know she believes in innovation—but it must be done in a strategic way, by reaching out to our near neighbours, reaching out to those 250 million customers in Indonesia, and not by creating barriers between us and them; reaching out to that emerging middle-class in China and India and Malaysia and Vietnam and selling them Australian services. I visited a small business in Salisbury in my electorate last week, barely a kilometre from my home, and I was able to see a fender manufactured that then goes onto a Volkswagen that is sold in Europe. If a Volkswagen has a crash in Europe and the fender comes off, you will see on the fender that it says 'Made in Australia.' You can see the photograph on my Facebook—how proud I was to see that business holding its own, holding its head up high and selling our products to the world. I know our labour costs and some of our other costs are higher, but Australian innovation is what should be supported.
The reality is that if the Liberal Party focuses only on division and only tries to cling to power rather than focus on the nation's interests, it will be a hollow party and any victory will be hollow. It will be a soulless husk of a party encasing only the idea of power rather than the good that comes with power. I urge those opposite to stop trying to divide this chamber on small business, stop trying to divide this chamber when it comes to all those things that are in the national interest, including security, and focus on what is best for Australia and the small businesses throughout the country—particularly those 18,000 to 19,000 small businesses in the electorate of Moreton.
Mrs McNAMARA (Dobell) (09:54): I must say that it is a pleasure to return the debate to the actual bill before the House. I rise to support the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015. The bill fulfils yet another commitment by this government to the Australian small business community. This government recognises the vital role small businesses play in this trade and economy. I recognise and applaud small business on the New South Wales Central Coast for the role they play in the Central Coast economy. Australia's two million small business produce more than $330 billion in economic output and employee over 4.5 million people. Seventy per cent of all Australian businesses are family enterprises, and they deserve the full support of the government.
When introducing the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 the Minister for Small Business, the Hon. Bruce Billson, said:
These businesses and their enterprising women and men are the foundation on which Australia's economy is built and our future prosperity will be realised. The ability for small businesses to remain innovative, grow and deliver new jobs is dependent on reducing costs and increasing the time that owners have to invest in their business. We understand that small businesses do not have the same level of resources available to big businesses when dealing with compliance and regulation.
I know firsthand from my role, before I came to this place, as a compliance manager with a New South Wales government regulator that the majority of businesses want to do the right thing but they do struggle with compliance. So it is important that they know where to go to get that important information so they can comply. Small businesses must ensure that they comply with the workplace relations framework, competition policy, contract law and business and tax law. This is all in addition to meeting the needs of their customers. There is no doubt that small business operators are time poor and, as I mentioned, they need to know where to go for advice and assistance.
Since the coalition was elected we have delivered a suite of measures to ensure that the small businesses of Australia are operating within an environment that is focused on supporting success. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill establishes the position of an ombudsman who will assist the small business and family enterprise sectors. The concept of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman was first proposed by this government prior to the 2010 federal election. In 2013 the government announced the creation of an Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman with real power. Importantly, the office of the ombudsman will serve as a single entry point to access federal small business programs and support. The ombudsman will have two key primary functions—as an advocate and to provide assistance. The ombudsman will serve as a Commonwealth-wide advocate for small business and family enterprise and a concierge for dispute resolution who will also provide an outsourced alternative dispute resolution service and as a contributor to ensuring Commonwealth legislation and regulations are more small-business friendly.
These functions have been welcomed by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who have stated:
Small businesses lacked the financial and logistical resources to pursue any formal legal action on their own.
They suggested that the new ombudsman be given powers to perform investigations and refer disputes to authorities. The ombudsman will provide an alternative dispute resolution role providing improved access to justice for small business at a Commonwealth level. An example of a dispute resolution service provided by the ombudsman may be in relation to interstate and international commerce. As part of the dispute resolution function the ombudsman may recommend that an alternative dispute resolution process be undertaken. This may include referring parties to a relevant provider to independently perform the alternative dispute resolution process. The ombudsman's alternative dispute resolution service will complement the concierge role and will not replace existing systems across the Commonwealth, states and territories. Ultimately, the government's aim is to help improve business productivity, preserve business relationships and avoid expensive litigation. Therefore it is important that the ombudsman facilitate the timely resolution of disputes.
This builds upon the role of the Australian Small Business Commissioner. The former Labor government established the commissioner without a commission or legislative backing, therefore reducing their capacity to assist our small businesses. It is essential that positions such as the commissioner and ombudsman receive appropriate legislative authority to act and are equipped with the proper tools to assist small businesses. Unlike the Australian Small Business Commissioner, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman will be supported by legislation. Significantly, the ombudsman will be a strong advocate for small businesses and family enterprise in relation to relevant legislation, policies and practices.
This government takes small business seriously. Unlike the former Labor government, which had six ministers for small business in as many years, we understand the importance of having a strong, constant voice advocating for small business. This is why our Minister for Small Business has a seat at the cabinet table. Building upon this strong foundation, the ombudsman will listen to small businesses and family enterprise and operate within the Treasury portfolio to ensure that small business perspectives and views are considered by all areas of government when developing programs and policy. Furthermore, the ombudsman will be granted information-gathering powers to enable investigation into the wide range of issues impacting small business and family enterprise. This is particularly important if we are to understand the issues confronting small business as they interact with the public sector and elements of the private sector.
Importantly, the ombudsman will not duplicate the functions of other officials. The ombudsman will be directed to work collaboratively with Commonwealth officials such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the state small business commissioners to deliver outcomes for small businesses. As Minister Billson highlighted in his second reading speech, the government acknowledges that a number of services already exist for small business issues, complaints and disputes. Not all small businesses know where to turn for support. The ombudsman will provide small business with a point of contact when an issue arises. This means that a small business can approach the ombudsman for assistance in regard to a dispute or complaint. However, the ombudsman will be required to transfer a request for assistance to another Commonwealth, state or territory agency if that jurisdiction is best placed to resolve that complaint.
The government will ask the ombudsman to identify issues that warrant a national approach. It is important that we collaborate with the states and territories to ensure that it is as easy as possible for small businesses to operate across state borders. This bill will also allow the Minister for Small Business to refer matters to the ombudsman for investigation. The ombudsman can be requested to undertake a public inquiry into matters of significant interest to small business or family enterprise. In instances where this authority is used, the minister will be required to table the report of the ombudsman's inquiry in each house of parliament.
As a member of this government, I am proud to have supported efforts to tackle overregulation and the burden of compliance on small business. Cutting red tape is building a stronger and more prosperous economy. This has been particularly important for our small businesses, which currently spend far too much time dealing with regulation. As I have highlighted previously in this place, the average Australian business deals with eight regulators in a given year, spends close to four per cent of its total annual expenditure on complying with regulatory requirements and spends approximately 19 hours a week on compliance related activities. This is valuable time that could be better utilised growing its business and delivering more jobs.
Last year, I had the pleasure of hosting a delegation of business stakeholders from the Central Coast for the government's first regulation repeal day. John Mouland, CEO of Regional Development Australia Central Coast, welcomed the government's commitment to cutting unnecessary red tape and green tape. He said, 'It's great to see the Commonwealth introduce measures to simplify or completely remove unnecessary or duplicated regulation that directly adds to the spiralling cost of compliance that local Central Coast businesses face.' Our subsequent repeal days have continued to deliver relief for Australian businesses, ensuring that they spend their time focused on growing their business rather than complying with government requirements. To date, the government has delivered a total deregulatory saving of $2.45 billion.
The ombudsman will assist the government with our deregulation agenda by providing advice on proposed and existing regulations, legislation and practices. This ensures that small business and family enterprises are at the centre of policy and program design. Furthermore, it will also ensure that the burden of regulation and red tape is minimised, removed or prevented from being imposed.
As I previously mentioned, this is a government that listens to and understands small business. Our $5.5 billion Jobs and Small Business package was welcomed with open arms by the small business community. The New South Wales Business Chamber stated:
The engine room of the national economy, the small business sector, has received a much needed boost in the Federal Budget …
The Business Chamber also highlighted the difference between this government and the former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor government in regard to support for small business. New South Wales Business Chamber CEO Stephen Cartwright said:
Five years ago, the small business community wasn't even mentioned on budget night, but now it is front and centre of Budget commentary.
This bill continues to build upon the great support delivered through this year's budget. Importantly, the Business Chamber stated:
These measures will be particularly well received in regional Australia where unemployment is at its highest and job opportunities are limited.
These are the results when you have a government committed and determined to ensure the success of Australia's small business.
We are already seeing the results of this government's determination to help Australian small businesses. When the Hon. Bruce Billson MP, Minister for Small Business, said, 'Australians are well known for their enterprising spirit and their willingness to have a go,' he was absolutely correct. In 2013-14, Australians started over 280,000 small businesses. Our $5.5 billion Jobs and Small Business package will create the right conditions for small businesses to thrive and grow. This bill, the result of extensive consultation with the small business community, continues to build upon this government's strong record of achievement for small business.
Small businesses and family enterprises in my electorate of Dobell will benefit from the introduction of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. And we are determined to make life as easy as possible for small business operators so they can spend their time growing their business, spending time with their families and taking that well-earned break. On behalf of the 8,703 small businesses in my electorate of Dobell, I thank our Minister for Small Business, Mr Billson, for his commitment to small business. I commend this bill to the House.
Mr EWEN JONES (Herbert) (10:07): Can I say from the outset that I support this bill and I support what the government is trying to do. In question time yesterday the Treasurer was answering a question in relation to small business and the economy, and he said, 'We've made a good start but we have a lot of work to do'. Can I suggest: this is a good start but we have a lot of work to do when it comes to small business.
There are some real issues around small business, particularly around subcontractors, that I would like to concentrate on in my contribution here. The nature of unfair contracts and the nature of work in the construction industry seems to have changed. Once upon a time, the contractor would tender for a job and do the job. It seems to be the case now that someone tenders for a job and they become the lead contractor but they do not do any of the work. They are the developer. The person who carries all of the risk is the subcontractor; they are the one that carries all the debt and all the risk.
I can give you an example. We had a flight simulator built at RAAF base in Townsville. It was a fantastic job. People line up to do government work because they are assured of being paid. This was just after I was elected. The developer, as opposed to the winner of the tender—and it was a fair and open tender—had numerous other projects going on around the country. One of the projects they had a real issue with was a swimming pool complex in South Australia. Because of their bad work on that—or supposed bad work or technicalities on that job—that bloke went into receivership and liquidation. He was wound up. My subcontractors in Townsville, thinking that they were doing government work, were fully exposed. At the end of the day, you cannot get your concrete back. You cannot pull out the steel you put in the concrete foundations. You cannot do it.
So, I was a brand new member of parliament, a brand new person in the role, and someone is coming to me and saying, 'We've done this government work and we aren't getting paid'. I thump the table and say: 'That's what we're here for, Mate. Bloody Labor! They'll stick it to you every time.' But, when I go back and talk to my guys, they say: 'Mate, unless they've got a contract signed by the government, they don't have a contract with us. They're not doing government work.' So, whilst we are talking about this sort of thing—people being screwed for price on government work because you are assured of getting paid—they carry everything; they carry all the risk. There are two things we cannot legislate for in this place. We cannot legislate for greed and we cannot legislate for stupidity. So we have to make sure that it is part of the broader part of the nature of business and the nature of construction.
I am an auctioneer by trade, and the auctioneer's creed is to leave a dollar in it for the next guy. You cannot just wipe him clean every time he comes in, because he cannot make any money out of it. It seems to me that the way the big contracts are done—the construction of government roads and that sort of thing—instead of being left over at the end, the profit is taken at the front. They have structured in how much profit they need to make at the front. I say these words with absolutely no factual base whatsoever. But these are the sorts of things that are coming to me in the pubs, in my office and in the streets when I am talking to subcontractors.
There is the big end of town that takes the profit first, and the subcontractor down the bottom is left to accept the price or not get the work. The problem we have when we get into that space is—and the member for Flinders is in here, and he is a good man; he has driven trucks and done all this stuff—when you are that lone driver-owner-operator and the bloke from the big contractor comes up and says, 'That's the price'. You are promised about $1,200 a day to run your truck and that sounds alright; so you commit to the work, knowing that that is alright. But then they change the goalposts and say, 'That's the price.' You are already in so far; how do you get out? How do they get out? If the developer or winner of the major contract is struggling for cash and the subcontractor is not getting paid, how long does the subcontractor leave it before he walks away? When is he prepared to make the complaint? Who is going to make the complaint?
I had an owner-operator come and see me the other day. It was about a job in Townsville and it was reasonably close to the quarry. His end rate—and he could not really work out how much an hour or how much it was—was $1.84 a tonne to deliver. He was not paid an hourly rate; he was just paid a tonnage rate.
I have situations in Townsville where truck drivers—with a dog and trail, with a quad dog tipper—have to modify their trucks to make sure they have automatic curtain things that go over the top, covers and all that sort of stuff; they have to do all of that. These guys are signing up for about $80 an hour, knowing full well that their break-even is about $140 an hour, and knowing that to make a profit they need to make at least $160 an hour; yet they are signing these contracts and doing these things in the hope that, because they are turning wheels, something will happen and they will end up better off. This ombudsman here is a great idea but it is not going to fix that. It is not going to fix the nature of that thing. What we have to do is go back and have a look at the very nature of the tender process and the way business is conducted in this country.
As I said before, when I was a young bloke, my dream job was to be a final trim grader driver. I figured that was a bit of art; you could use your fingers and everything like that. But technology changes the nature of all these things, and changes the job. What we have done over a long period of time is change the rules about how business runs. We have just had a builder—not on a government job, but on a private job—for a very large not-for-profit church-based organisation. The builder or developer has gone under, and every subcontractor in Townsville who has worked on that is basically going to walk away with very little. This happens a lot.
People go broke. As an auctioneer I worked a lot in the insolvency industry and the companies for whom I worked made a lot of money out of these things. The Keating recession was a fantastic time for auctioneers. And when the economy is going well it is an even better time for auctioneers, because people have more money to buy the stuff from you. But what we have done is make the tender process so convoluted, conflicted and confused that it is no longer about driving value for the tax dollar and driving the value through our economy more than once.
I can give you one example here—it is not particularly related to this bill. The logistics hub at Lavarack Barracks is a $120 million job. It is a fantastic facility. Baulderstone, which are now Lend Lease, won the tender fair and square. But their major subcontractor was an organisation called Shamrock Civil Engineering. Shamrock have an office in Townsville—they have about six people working in that office. But their blokes were fly-in fly-out, and they brought all their equipment up from Brisbane. The local guys, even though they live there, could not match their price to do the work.
Minister David Johnston was the Minister for Defence at the time, and he said, 'You'd be really happy with that—that $120 million going into your economy.' I said, 'Well it is not, really. The $120 million-facility gets built, but there are no apprentices or tradies going through. So that $120 million flushed through our economy just once. The only person who is making money and putting people on is the bloke who runs Hungry Jacks across the road.' He was the only one making money out of it.
What we have to do here as a parliament, especially when it comes to government work, is to make sure that the money flushes through our economy more than once. I think that the tender process in this space has become convoluted and confused. It becomes harder and harder for someone to take a bite out of it and become the principal contractor for that part of it. That is where it leads to our subcontractors being exposed.
What we have to do is to understand the nature of business and how people get desperate when times are tough. There is a lot of stuff happening in Townsville—there is a lot of building going on and a lot of federal government money going in—and we are a very good town. But confidence is brittle, and a lot of what this government has done in relation to the small business package has been fantastic for Townsville. But small business is more than just the instant asset write-off. We understand that getting rid of red tape and everything like that is very important in this, but what we have to do is to understand that the way that business is being conducted these days is very different.
As I said before—and I want to make the point again—it just seems to me that the person who never loses is the person with the least risk. Surely, we have to look at these things? When these things go bad and these guys go to the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman they will not be able to get their money in every case. And we are not guaranteeing that they are going to get their money. No-one can guarantee that they will get their money because that is not the way that business works. That is not the way the world works. But the subcontractor in today's day and age—the concreter, the truck driver and the chippy—the bloke who does the work, cannot participate in the tender process anymore. So he cannot get the guarantee of the work, he cannot get the guarantee of the payment and he is exposed, she is exposed and their families are exposed.
These are the people who live in our electorates. These are the guys who we have to look after. And if we are to talk about unfair contracts: if someone is offered a job at $1.84 a tonne, goes and complains and says, 'That's an unfair contract,' so that they have to up their payments, what chance does he have of getting the work? They will find some way of getting rid of him. At the moment we have blokes driving around in rags in their trucks because although they are getting income and turnover they are steadily going backwards. We have to look seriously at the way we are doing these things in this country at the moment.
The tender size for a job like this is now very thick. There are all these things that go into it and you have the state and federal governments turn it over, open it up and see $1.1 million or $1.05 million—and $1.05 million gets it. So while it is weighted 100 per cent on price but not on value for money we have a real issue.
So this is good legislation; this is a good start. We have a very good Minister for Small Business, who understands this. We have a very good Treasurer, who understands this. But what we must do is drive this reform through COAG, because until we can get to the stage where people can actually bid for work—where the tender can reflect the part that they want to make—they are not guaranteed payment at any stage for government work. And they are the ones who are carrying the risk.
There is not a person in this place who wants subcontractors in their electorates, their state or their country to continue to be exposed. There is not one person in this place who does not understand the nature of business. There is not one person in this place who does not get that we must be better at this. This has happened over a long period of time and it is something that not one of us is happy about, getting belted in the street by people who hit us up about them having done all this work and, because something happened on the other side of the country, they are out of pocket by $100,000.
Now, $100,000 on a $120 million-job is not a lot of money. But $100,000 to an owner-operator of the truck with a quad dog is a massive amount of money; $100,000, or even $50,000, to someone who has three kids in school, loan payments or an overdraft is a lot of money. And when you have no chance of getting that back and you have no chance to alter your circumstances in the first place—you have no chance to participate where the money is guaranteed—that is where the fault lies. And that is what we as a parliament and what this country must do through COAG. We must work to the place where we can be better at making sure these things comply—that people can have a go.
The Treasurer stood up there on budget night and when he announced the small business package I almost ran down there and hugged him.
I thought it was bloody spectacular. But unless we are doing what we need to do, unless we can fix this up for people to have that go, unless we can offer some sort of protection, unless we can increase participation and make it easier for people to have a slice at it—the taxpayer must always be protected. I do not believe that the current tender situation is actually producing a great result for the taxpayer. There are too many examples out there of too much going wrong. So I support this legislation but I support it because it is a step in the right direction. As the Treasurer, the Minister for Small Business and the Prime Minister have all said, this is a start. We have a long way to go but we are up for the job—and we have got to be up to the job.
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (10:22): The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 is one of the steps that the coalition is taking to restore health and vitality to the small business sector of Australia after the previous six years of damage under the Labor government. We should never forget that under the six years of the Labor government we saw 519,000 jobs lost in the small business sector. More than half a million fewer people were employed in the small business sector after the six years of damage by the previous Labor government. The small business sector went from employing 53 per cent of the private sector workforce down to 43 per cent. We saw, despite the growth in our population and the growth in our economy, a decline in the number of small businesses employing people. So we have a lot to do to turn around: to get small business back on track, to encourage entrepreneurial activity and to get innovation again happening in the economy the way it should be. This bill is just one of those steps.
One of the reasons for this bill is the breakdown in the rule of law. The rule of law is one of the most important aspects that protects our liberal democracy and our free market system. The rule of law should mean that we are governed by pre-existing rules so that those participating in the economy simply know what is and what is not permitted. The rule of law should ensure that, when business decisions are made, the ground rules are known and can be enforced. Businesses must be protected from thievery and plunder, for our economy or any economy can never be fully productive if we have a legal system that does not protect the incomes, properties and contracts of those who produce our nation's wealth. If the rule of law breaks down it not only causes wealth to grow more slowly than it otherwise would but also decreases the living standards of some and often leaves some segments of the population in poverty. So it is essential that we have a rule of law that protects commercial activity, enforces existing laws and ensures fair dealing between those who buy and sell. But we have allowed a legal system to develop in this country that has resulted in the breakdown of the rule of law. We have allowed an order to develop where small businesses today are vulnerable to the depredations and thievery of larger businesses. We have created a legal system with a structure that provides privilege to a larger firm in a commercial dispute and puts a small business in a subordinate position. In a commercial dispute today between a large business and a small business, the small business simply does not have a chance. Small business can lose a commercial dispute. They can be right on the facts. They can have all the evidence. But they will often lose in commercial disputes because the larger competitor, the well-financed adversary they are often up against, simply has deeper pockets and can outspend them in a legal battle. That leads to a breakdown of the rule of law and a breakdown in access to justice.
That is one step this bill takes. By creating an ombudsman it provides one small mechanism that allows the ombudsman to step into the small business's shoes and help negotiate a dispute. This is one step but we should go much further. We should look at bringing triple damages, which were removed many decades ago, back into our competition laws. Unlike in the USA, where they have a triple-damages provision that encourages private enforcement in the law and allows small business to take on a larger competitor in a dispute, we had those triple-damages provisions taken away many years ago. We need to look at reinstating them as something we can do as well as creating the small business ombudsman.
Another reason why a small business ombudsman is needed in this country is another aspect of the rule of law, and one of the essential elements in the workings of any free market system. It is that all contracts need to be entered into freely. You need a willing buyer and a willing seller—and that word 'willing' is important. Through the failure of our competition laws we have seen the growth of duopolies and oligopolies fostered. We have reached a situation where the ability of one party to contract negotiations to say 'get stuffed' has been taken away. Take, for example, a small business supplying our supermarket sector. He would have assets invested in plant and equipment. He would have ongoing finance commitments to his banks or his other financiers. He would have ongoing commitments to his highly trained staff. He may have a lease on premises. These are all ongoing obligations and liabilities. And where he faces the situation that we have allowed to evolve in Australia, where we have allowed two players to capture 80 per cent or more of the market, that supplier will often find that 50 per cent or more of his sales are going to a single customer. So when he sits down in a contract negotiation with that customer, if that supplier finds that he is being put under undue pressure and being asked to do something unreasonable, he simply does not have the ability to say 'get stuffed'. Because if he cannot say that, if he walks away from those negotiations and loses 50 per cent or more of his business overnight, he is actually committing suicide in his own business. Very few businesses can continue to operate with a structure where overnight they lose 50 per cent of their business when they have investments in plant, equipment and an ongoing lease. This is the situation that we have allowed to develop in Australia. It is not only harmful to consumers; it is harmful to innovation in our country and we need that innovation. Everyone along the supply chain needs to get a drink along the supply chain.
If we allow our food producers to be squeezed to where their profits are so small, they will not have the money to invest in the innovation that they need, to expand into new products, to look at new markets, to tackle those developing markets in China and Japan where we have signed free-trade agreements, and to expand into all those new markets throughout South-East Asia. That is why what we see in the Harper competition review is very disappointing.
I note the small business minister walking into the chamber, and I would like to publicly say what an absolutely fantastic job he has done not only in getting very important legislation through to give small business actual practical results but for restoring confidence in the small business sector that has been so badly damaged and also for putting small business back front and centre of the political process.
This morning I was at a breakfast for the Master Grocers Association and they were talking about one of the recommendations of the Harper committee, the introduction of the effects test. But my concern with the so-called effects test is it simply has all the characteristics of a classic bait and switch. While similar to the effects test that was argued about long ago, the recommendation actually tacks another requirement on the end of the act 'that has the effect of substantially lessening competition'. Those words may not mean very much but they are the tests in our merger provisions. And by inserting those words, it will not strengthen the act; it will make the act completely ineffectual.
The other point that disappointed me in the Harper review was the recommendation on what was known as the old section 49, our price discrimination provisions. The old section 49 did not work; it was ineffective because it had that test tacked on to the end with a substantial lessening of competition, unlike the Robinson-Patman Act in the USA, unlike what they have in European competition law. European competition law talks about providing discriminatory prices or favours which puts one firm at a competitive disadvantage against another. We have those templates from overseas that could have been looked at. They have been unfortunately rejected and that is something I hope this government gives serious consideration to when we actually review this and decide what we are going to do and how we are going to take our competition laws forward.
Perhaps one of the greatest issues of price discrimination in this nation and one of the greatest problems small business face is the discriminatory position on retail rents. If you go to any major shopping centre across the nation, on average you will find the larger chains are paying around between 2½c and 3c or perhaps 4c in every dollar of sales towards their rent. Yet they are competing against small business competitors that can be matching them in sales per square metre dollar for dollar but, because of the discrimination in price, those small businesses are paying 20c and upwards in rent for every dollar that they make.
Imagine if we had a GST system where a small business had to pay 20 per cent GST but their larger competitor would pay five per cent GST. Imagine the distortions that would flow through the economy because of that. Those distortions are happening today and they have been happening for decades simply because of the price discrimination in retail rents. This is an unnatural market situation. It only occurs because of the protection from competition that we give our retail shopping centres through our zoning laws. For some reason we think it is a good idea to protect them from competition, which gives them special monopoly powers which have enabled them to screw the small business sector. It has been one of the major reasons why we have had such market concentration in this country over the last 30 years and why the supply chain has been squeezed so hard.
The other issue we hope that the small business ombudsman will tackle is unlawful penalties. It is part of our common law that where you have a liquidated damages provision, where one firm breaks a contract and they must pay a penalty, that the penalty agreed to must be a genuine pre-estimate of the loss for that company. But what we are seeing in bank fees, in contention fees and many other aspects throughout the economy are penalties put upon small business that simply are not genuine pre-estimates of the loss but are simply nothing else other than a price gouge, a got-you moment that is an unlawful penalty. And these companies have been able to get away with this because of the breakdown of the rule of law in this country where small businesses do not have the opportunity to bring these cases before the courts.
We hope that a small business ombudsman takes these issues up. We also have provisions still to be legislated over unfair contracts. While we believe in the importance and the sanctity of contracts, the provision of penalties, a common law provision going back almost 100 years, understands that there are times when firms can exploit their market power in negotiating that contract unfairly. That it is why we must recognise that today. We have so many firms that are basically placed where they do not have the ability to say 'get stuffed'. In contract negotiations, if a market is so concentrated and the smaller player does not have the ability to say 'get stuffed' to a demand and walk away, we have a breakdown of our free market system.
These are the things that we need to protect. We need to ensure that we do everything that we can in this country to encourage those that want to have a go in their own business, that want to be an entrepreneur rather than a unionised employee, to get out there and have a go. That is what has made our country great in the past: the individual citizen getting out there, taking risks and fighting against the odds. We need to ensure that this parliament gives them every support that we can.
Mr VARVARIS (Barton) (10:37): It gives me great pleasure to be able to speak today on the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015, because of the many positive ebbs and flows associated with this bill. Small businesses are vital to our economy because they are the backbone of our nation. Every time a small businesses is created job opportunities are created, and this contributes to our nation's bottom line. Starting a business converges into our national ethos of having a go. It represents that unwavering Australian trait of giving it your best shot and creating something for your children and your family and in leaving a legacy. We must do all we can to ensure that small and family businesses have the best access to resources when they need it and that they have the confidence of government to take necessary risks for their enterprises.
The coalition has always been committed to the small businesses and family enterprises of Australia because we understand that all businesses start off small, often family run, passing on from one generation to the next. In fact a quick snapshot of this sector shows that family businesses account for around 70 per cent of all businesses in this country, with an average turnover of $12 million. Small businesses represent approximately 97 per cent of all Australian businesses and employ around 4.6 million Australian people. Their tireless contributions, perseverance, hardship and success are felt in every electorate across this country.
In Barton alone there are over 13,000 small businesses, which employ locally and provide vital goods and services to the good residents of the St George region. In Kogarah, for example, family-run small businesses include Eve's Apple is consistently busy because they work long hours to meet the demands from customers and to ensure that the products they sell are of the highest quality and offered at the lowest prices. Eve and George have operated this business for more than 22 years and are hoping to pass it on to one of their four children. As Eve has said, no-one in this family is unemployed, and it is unlikely that they ever will be as long as this business is there.
Across the road is a popular women's boutique, a clothing store called Something Nice. This is a second-generation business started by two sisters in 1975. It has continued to support up-and-coming Australian designers whilst being a top destination for local shoppers, my wife included. Around the corner from Something Nice is Kaimaki Cafe, which is a thriving family-run business that operates six days a week. Owner and manager Nick runs the business and the team, while his daughter provides customer service to a never-ending line of customers. The only time the family takes a break is over Christmas and New Year. Over in Earlwood, Cafe Frappe, Christina's Pharmacy and Ray White Real Estate are all family owned and run businesses that are highly successful, well regarded amongst the community and thriving with local patrons.
I know from my visits and from what they have told me how hard they must work to ensure that they stay afloat, keep the staff employed and turn a profit. They are often competing with well-known franchises, bigger supermarkets or the threat of other one-stop-shopping destinations. As their federal representative, I want to advocate on their behalf to help them run their businesses without unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy. Businesses cannot survive if they spend more time doing paperwork than running the operations. They also cannot survive or remain viable long term if they do not have the assistance needed. Small businesses do not have access to resources such as human resources, compliance, legal and so forth like larger businesses do, although they are often treated as though they do. Instead they rely on staff and often themselves, working late into the night and on weekends to wade through the hundreds of pieces of legislation and awards at both state and federal levels to ensure they comply with the law. If they run into issues, they often have to search for a phone number or government department hotline to try to obtain the relevant answers to their questions.
Therefore, a good regulatory regime can make a difference to the productivity of businesses and decisions about potential investment or further costs associated with a service or product in hopes of return on investment. A university study in 2012 found that small businesses in Australia were spending around $28,000 and nearly 500 hours a year working on red tape and compliance burdens. Navigating through the legislative framework governing taxation, human resources and industrial relations is a full-time job in itself, let alone something to attempt after 12 hours of working in the business. Yet this is something that all small and family business in Barton and right around Australia have to do every day.
There is no doubt that legislation is necessary, but the need for compliance should not be at the detriment of running a business. Similarly, where businesses have trouble with interstate and international commerce and certain disputes relating to Commonwealth government agencies, they often do not know where to turn or simply lack the resources or the time to do so. I note that , when the Coalition implemented a dedicated small business support line within Fair Work Australia, it was inundated with calls within the first eight months. This clearly demonstrates the need for support for this vital sector. That is also why it is high time that family enterprises and small businesses have access to the relevant legislation, policies and practices within reach, so needs can be readily identified and solutions provided.
The ombudsman bill up for debate today fulfils a key election commitment to provide support for the multitude of small businesses and family enterprises of Australia. The ombudsman set up under this bill has two key functions: an advocacy function and an assistance function. The advocacy function provides an avenue for small businesses and family enterprises to have an appointed individual to appeal on their behalf. The advocacy function expands the current role of the Australian Small Business Commissioner and has increased legislated powers. Furthermore, the ombudsman may make inquiries on the ombudsman's own initiative, or the minister may refer matters to the ombudsman for advice. The ombudsman will take a collaborative approach on systemic issues affecting small and family businesses and will consult on proposed and existing legislation and regulations to guarantee that red tape burdens on small businesses and family enterprises are minimised or eliminated.
We have already cut $2 billion in red and green tape costs, but we can do more. The ombudsman will be equipped with assistance functions through two streams, one being a concierge and the other being a referral service for alternative dispute resolution services. The concierge role is one that I wish to highlight as being extremely beneficial for small business owners, like Eve and George, whom that I mentioned earlier, and Nick at Kaimaki Cafe. The ombudsman can provide them the support and the guidance they need for existing services which they may be unaware of.
Another important function that I wish to highlight is the ombudsman's provision of an outsourced dispute resolution service as well as referral to other alternative dispute resolution services. There is a real need for ADR services that are fast, low-cost and accessible to small businesses and family enterprises. Unresolved disputes can significantly impact the ongoing viability of small businesses and family enterprises, hindering them from contributing to the economy. The choice and availability of ADR services can help preserve business relationships and avoid unnecessary and expensive lawsuits.
I want to reiterate that the ombudsman's role is not about duplicating existing functions within the Commonwealth, states and territories. Importantly, the expanded powers of the ombudsman will reinforce our philosophy that small and family businesses do not have to understand government in order to ask for help. Rather, we are here to assist businesses and help facilitate better access for the issues they face.
Australia's economy would not move without the men and women behind the small businesses and family enterprises sprinkled across our country. These businesses contribute enormously to the economy and play a key role in growth and economic opportunities. Without them, Australians would have no jobs. We said during the election campaign that we are here to help them and support them and that we will implement policies that enable them to do what they have set out to do, without unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy.
The ombudsman represents a positive opportunity to establish a highly-regarded advocate who will act as a medium for issues that small businesses and family enterprises face at the Commonwealth level. This is also an opportunity for the ombudsman to play a leadership role in collaborating with state and territory channels as well as industry bodies to voice concerns of the small business sector that can be underrepresented due to a lack of resources or knowledge. I would hope that this legislation will garner support from both sides of the House, because it should be bipartisan. Supporting the engine room of our economy is in the best interests of all Australians and should be endorsed by both sides. The coalition firmly supports the small businesses and family enterprises in Barton and around Australia. I commend these bills to the House.
Ms LANDRY (Capricornia) (10:47): The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2015, are about providing a better service to our nation's small business owners. This sector is the backbone of the economy. Today's bills outline the appointment of an Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. I will talk in more detail about this shortly. But first, let me highlight how the ombudsman's role will further complement the great things our government has already announced in the recent federal budget.
A few weeks ago the federal coalition government announced that mum-and-dad businesses will benefit from the biggest small business initiative in our nation's history. It is called our Growing Jobs and Small Business package. Small businesses, including Capricornia tradies, sole traders and partnerships, will get a tax cut to help boost the local economy. These tax cuts form part of the $5.5 billion Growing Jobs and Small Business package to help small businesses in places like Capricornia invest more, grow more, and employ more local people.
Significantly, small businesses with a turnover below $2 million can claim an immediate tax deduction for every asset they acquire that is valued up to $20,000. This is a substantial increase from the previous $1,000 threshold. For example, if a small takeaway shop in North Rockhampton needs to buy new kitchen equipment, a new coffee machine, hot food display boxes, gas stoves or fridges, the owner can take advantage of this generous tax-related incentive. Any item under $20,000 is immediately 100 per cent tax deductable in its first year.
A business is not restricted to just one item but can purchase multiple items of up to $20,000 each. From 1 July, the government will cut the company tax rate for incorporated businesses with annual turnover up to $2 million from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent. From 1 July, the government will also provide a capped tax discount of up to five per cent for sole traders, trusts and partnerships which are unincorporated businesses and have an annual turnover under $2 million. As a result, small businesses—including those in Capricornia—will have the lowest company tax rate for public and private companies since 1967. These and other measures are significant in a time when small business has been doing it tough.
As a former bookkeeper, I have been a small business owner myself. I know, as any other small business owners do, that the maze of paperwork and recordkeeping, not to mention the various business laws that one must follow, can be confusing. In particular, the differences between state and Commonwealth jurisdiction and legislative requirements can sometimes cause conflict between a small business and government bureaucrats, particularly at a state level. That is why our government is delivering legislation to the House that will create an Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.
I commend to the House the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2015. These bills fulfil an election promise to help small business further. Let me borrow from my colleague, the Minister for Small Business, and his outline of this legislation during its second reading in the House. The minister indicated that there are more than two million actively trading small businesses in Australia. He said that 96 per cent of all Australian businesses are small businesses. This sector produces more than $330 billion of economic national output and employs over 4.5 million people. However, the minister acknowledges that small businesses are often treated as if they were large organisations with all the resources of major corporations. They face the same compliance demands in areas such as workplace relations, competition policy, contract law and business and tax law; but, while large corporations have teams of lawyers, accountants and experts, small business operators—which are often run by a mum-and-dad partnership—have to wade through this maze on their own. That is why the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman is an important role.
In short, the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman will be: an Australia-wide advocate for small enterprises; a single entry-point agency allowing access federal small business programs and support; an adviser to help ensure Commonwealth laws and regulations are more user friendly for small business; and a mediator for dispute resolution. One of the big benefits from the appointment of the ombudsman is in addressing inconsistencies and duplication of Commonwealth, state and territory laws, and state red tape that impacts on small business.
Government reports on this legislation indicate ways in which the bill will assist. Under an advocacy umbrella the ombudsman: undertakes research and inquiries into legislation, policies and practices affecting small business; reports and gives advice to the minister on these matters; contributes to inquiries by others into these matters; contributes to developing national strategies on small business matters; reviews proposals relating to small business matters and advises the minister on them; and promotes better practice in dealing with small business. The ombudsman will also have the power to require people to give evidence at hearings and provide information or documents to assist with research and inquiry activities. The ombudsman will respond to requests from small businesses for assistance by referring them to the appropriate Commonwealth, state or territory agencies.
The ombudsman will also play a role in dispute resolution by referring conflicting parties to mediation. This is expected to result in fewer costly disputes being pursued through the Federal Court system. As a result, the net economic savings from the ombudsman's function is estimated to be $18.395 million per year. In short, such a role will provide a strong advocate for small business owners in the 'David and Goliath' battles they sometimes face while trying to adhere to the complex laws and regulations that apply to the business world.
Mr RANDALL (Canning) (10:54): It is a pleasure to speak on the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 and related bill. Because I have an abiding interest in small business, I note that the minister is in the House and I want to congratulate him on being a minister for small business rather than a minister who talks about small business. The minister came to my electorate before the last federal election and outlined a number of things to my small business owners. I am very grateful that he has delivered on those outcomes, and this bill is one of those outcomes. The changes the government are proposing are yet another example of our commitment and the minister's commitment to providing small business with the right regulatory and legislative environment to grow and prosper.
Small business is of interest to members on this side, and, if we have a look at the speaking list, we find that only a handful of people from the other side are interested in talking about small business. It just demonstrates which side of the House is the friend of small business. When I spoke on the small business bill last time we were in this chamber it was the same thing. I mentioned that this side of the House has a diverse background in terms of its members and many of them are from a small-business background. There is only a handful on the other side. Of course we are interested in making sure that people in small business know who their friend and their advocate is—and it is the coalition, the government.
The member for Oxley was in here touting that he was some sort of hero of small business. That is an absolute joke because Labor's record on small businesses is woeful. I will bring a few statistics to the attention of the House. After six years of the chaotic Rudd-Gillard-Rudd rule, we saw 519,000 jobs lost in small business—that is an indictment. That means that 1,500, or thereabouts, hard-working Australians per week lost their job due to Labor's inability to culture, provide the environment and nurture small businesses to operate and flourish in this country. They had six different ministers for small business. They would have said, 'Oh, my God, who's got small business this month? Don't tell me I've got small business. How're we going to deal with that? I don't know anything about it. What are they giving me small business for?' That is the difference.
Those opposite, for years, talked about cutting the company tax rate, but they never did, yet they made promises. You guessed it, the company tax rate was cut a grand total of zero times while Labor were in office. As usual, they did not back-up any of their policies. It might have been in the third term of the chaotic Rudd-Gillard-Rudd rule, but they never got there, as we know. It is interesting to note that, when Labor took office in 2007, they were left with a country that ranked 68th on the global competitive index in terms of the level of government regulation imposed on business. After six years of Labor's mismanagement Australian businesses were well and truly suffocating under red tape and bureaucracy and, unsurprisingly, Australia slipped from 68th to 128th on that register. The statistics speak for themselves. In fact, Labor introduced more than 21,000 new and amended regulations during their time in government. It was a very busy time, that six years, to be putting in that number of regulations. Yet, they have the audacity to stand here and tell us that they are the friend of small business. No, thank you, you are not—we are.
This bill creates the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. The role is multifaceted and will provide a range of services for Australian small businesses, especially the mum-and-dad investors who do not have time to deal with and manage complex regulation and red tape in addition to operating their business. The ombudsman will consult with small business and family enterprises for the purpose of better informing the government on policies to ensure that our reforms have the greatest impact to those on the ground. So, it is an information and a regulatory function. The ombudsman will also work to identify systemic issues in the small business sector requiring a national approach and provide advice to government on these matters. This new ombudsman, who is properly funded to run his operations, will have real power. It is not lip-service.
I stand here, as I have said previously in this place, as somebody who has tried the small business route. My wife and I had a bakery. I will not go on about that too much. At the end of the day when you are in small business you are at the mercy of so many people. The shopping centre management are probably the worst. If you are in a major shopping centre, the management can up your rates and tell you to paint your shop or put on a new shopfront because you have signed on the bottom line. In our case they decided to redevelop the shopping centre and we lost two-thirds of our customers because no-one could park. When we went to the shopping centre management and said, 'We need some relief, as happens in other shopping centres,' they told us to read the contract. We actually had a ratchet clause in it, so not only were we not getting relief but we were actually paying more while we were losing money. We could not get any help or assistance.
How do you get relief there? You go to SAT, the tribunal. It is meant to be a non-legalistic tribunal. Their threat to us was: 'Take us on, sunshine, because we will take you all the way to the Supreme Court. We never lose. We will deliberately do it so we can make an example of you. No other small business in our shopping centre will take us on.' This ombudsman would be able to give advice and show some direction. Dare I say, if the ombudsman had rung the shopping centre management and let them know that he was watching our case, it might have made them pull their head in a bit.
I suspect this legislation, through the ombudsman's function, will have a mind to the poor old franchisees who are suffering at the hands of large franchisers, who package them up with a whole range of terms and conditions. Many people go into it starry-eyed and looking at the blue sky. They have no idea before they start but suddenly find they have a huge amount of compliance and a whole lot of delivery outcomes they never dreamt that they would have.
I have personally represented some of these people. I have rung their companies and told them I am a member of parliament trying to help my constituents and they said, 'We don't care who you are.' If they are saying that to me as an elected representative of the people, how does the poor little businessman trying to turn a quid in their franchise go when they take on the huge multinational? I will give you an example, and this is in the Hansard from some years ago. Lenard's chicken are a prime example. In my office I had a meeting with the Perth franchisers of Lenard's chicken, a company based in Queensland. They are real standover merchants. People were essentially going broke because the franchisers would come into their business and demand they sell chicken at a price that was less than they were buying it for and those sorts of things. Eventually it got to the extent that I had to bring these people into my office to have a meeting with them. I sat them down to try to get some resolution and an outcome going forward. I suspect this legislation now is going to provide a resolution for that.
In this case one of the ladies was a policewoman who had invested in a Lenard's chicken franchise. They were really threatening people, and you will find out why in a moment. I had to get the state protection security police to sit in my office while this was going on because even the policewoman was scared of being in this intimidatory position with her master franchisor. Interestingly, as history will tell you, the two people were gay lovers and one killed the other one. He is in jail now. That is the sort of people they were dealing with.
At the end of the day small business needs protection from predatory people like this, from shopping centres and from financiers. A lot of people go into these things underfinanced and suddenly start using their own bankcard to pay the wages of their people. It accumulates. They need some advice on how to get through the maze of regulation that hits them in a shopping centre in terms of their lease. There is a whole lot of taxation. After they have spent all week working they spend the weekend sitting at home doing their books. These are the sorts of people we are talking about. We are going to give them protection under this legislation.
I stand here today to say to the people in my electorate of Canning: 'We have a resolution for you.' In Canning we have something like 10,000 small businesses. You will see quite often a sign go up saying that they are in business. Some of them do not last more than six or 12 months, and that shop never gets filled again. Those people have essentially gone broke. I feel so sorry for them because quite often they have put their house on the line as collateral and then they lose their house and have to start again.
I congratulate the minister for bringing this legislation to the House today. It will provide protection, guidance and a way of getting disputes resolved for people who do not know where to go for help. I have a message for the people of Australia, particularly those in the electorate of Canning. I know the minister is soon going to come and talk to some of my constituents and the local chambers of business. We are going to be able to say to the small businesses: 'We know how you feel. We know what is hurting you. We know what you need in terms of protection and advice, and this legislation gives it to you.' I commend the bills today and I thank the House.
Mr BILLSON (Dunkley—Minister for Small Business) (11:06): I am thrilled to sum up from some really eloquent contributions from both sides of the House on the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2015. I was particularly pleased that Liberal and National Party members were very engaged with this topic. They have been so, right the way through from the policy formulation stage through to the preparation of our election commitments. I am thrilled this is delivering on those commitments. It is the foundation of those more than 20 election commitments that we are faithfully and sure-footedly implementing. We have then built upon that platform with the outstanding jobs and small business package in the budget. These are the commitments that we took to the electorate, and we are implementing them.
To recap for those who have joined this discussion. This Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 will establish the position of ombudsman to assist the small business and family enterprise sector. The ombudsman will have two key functions: an advocacy function and an assistance function. That assistance function focused on two key areas: the reliable and timely access to information and also facilitation of early dispute resolutions. We know when a small business is involved in a commercial dispute with a big business, no matter what the virtue of the case, far too often it is the small business that loses out. Our ambition is to resolve those disputes fairly and equitably and get people back to business, get them back to engaging in seeking to delight customers and providing that enormous boost to the economy that so many colleagues in this chamber have spoken about.
I thank those members who covered a range of very clear and easily understood examples about why this initiative, a first-time initiative for our country that is being implemented by the Abbott coalition government, is so necessary. I also want to thank the opposition and particularly the member for Oxley for his comments and for his indication that the opposition will also support these bills. We welcome that support. I am happy to and it is my duty to clarify some of the questions and matters of interest that were raised during the debate and, with your agreement, I would like to do that.
The member for Oxley raised some concerns about the independence and the impartiality of the ombudsman. The government agrees that the ombudsman needs to be and be seen to be independent. That is why we are establishing the ombudsman as a statutory position appointed by the Governor-General. This stands in quite stark contrast to the current nearest, neatest correct entry to this role: the very capable Australian Small Business Commissioner. Mr Brennan is doing some excellent work, but he is actually engaged as a contractor. So it is quite a different type of engagement and footing for his work. As I was saying, he is doing a good job independently representing small business interests but without the backing of a statutory appointment. The statutory appointment process offers the clear, unequivocal independence that an ombudsman of this kind truly requires, and that is why we have gone down that pathway with this bill.
The government also agrees that impartiality is particularly important with respect to the assistance function. We have prepared these bills with these requirements of independence and impartiality in mind. Whilst appropriately acknowledging that the ombudsman's functions and powers are necessarily limited by the Commonwealth Constitution, this does provide some constraints but shapes the way in which the ombudsman will interact with state ministers and state agencies. Part 4 of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015 outlines the ombudsman's assistance function. This will allow the ombudsman to transfer requests for assistance to other officials under whose jurisdiction those requests fall or to refer the request to the ombudsman's own outsourced alternative dispute resolution service where the subject matter of the dispute comes under the appropriate head of power under the Commonwealth Constitution. This is a fairly simple idea that the Constitution sets up the reach and scope of the Commonwealth's powers and of course through cases like Williams et al we need to stay within those boundaries to be constitutionally sound, and that is what this bill will do.
There was some comment on clause 67 subclause (2)(b)(c) of the main bill, which precludes the ombudsman from dealing with complaints concerning the actions of Commonwealth state and territory ministers and state and territory agencies. In relation to requests for assistance involving decisions of Commonwealth ministers, the bill rightly and understandably precludes the ombudsman from being asked to review the actions taken by a minister in carrying out the agenda of the government of the day. Actions taken by Commonwealth agencies and officers could be investigated by this ombudsman. To fully illustrate this, a small business or family enterprise could be assisted by the ombudsman if it were in dispute with a Commonwealth government department or agency. In relation to requests for assistance regarding state and territory ministers and agencies, it would be inappropriate for any Commonwealth official such as the ombudsman to take action in response to such requests. Such requests would be referred to relevant state and territory officials. That is keeping the jurisdictional reach in mind and making sure those officials dealing with state and territory concerns or requests for assistance are the ones responding to such requests.
In relation to clause 69 subclause (1), the requirement of the ombudsman to refer requests to other Commonwealth state and territory agencies where those other agencies can more conveniently or effectively deal with the request is intended to prevent the duplication of services or forum shopping. We are not wanting to create a situation where a small business or family enterprise with a concern can hop around a range of agencies for assistance and support services. Our role with this ombudsman is to land that concern or request where it is most appropriate and where the agency that is conveniently and most effectively able to deal with the request is provided the opportunity to do so.
The member for Ryan alluded to how pointless it would be to duplicate the work of existing officials such as the state small business commissioners, and this is the idea behind that provision. Preventing forum shopping means that businesses will be directed to receive assistance from officials who can deal with their complaints and not go from one official to another without matters being resolved. The member for Ryan correctly noted this when she commented on the role of the ombudsman and how it will complement the roles of existing officials and not duplicate them. Duplication would be a waste of public money and add another source of frustration and confusion for small business and family enterprise people and would not advance their interests anyway.
We have framed this legislation in such a way that the ombudsman will work cooperatively with those other officials and refer all matters which fall within those officials remit to them. To facilitate this and to ensure that the ombudsman can work cooperatively with other officials, the consequential legislative amendments are part of this cognate package. These will be required to allow the transfer of matters from the Commonwealth Ombudsman to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.
The comprehensive policy formulation processes have helped the government settle on an appropriate alternative dispute resolution model. This model recognises that the Commonwealth Constitution reserves judicial decisions to the Federal Court system and that low-cost alternative dispute resolution outside the court system represents an effective and practical access-to-justice remedy for small business and family enterprises. Binding decisions have a judicial character, and the ombudsman will therefore not make binding decisions, as the ombudsman will not be part of the Federal Court system. Importantly, it is worth highlighting that seeking the assistance of the ombudsman will not curtail the rights of people to take their matters to court. This is about aiding and assisting early dispute resolution, not about displacing a judicial conclusion where other mechanisms are more appropriate.
The member for Oxley mentioned the termination clause relating to the ombudsman. This clause is typical of termination clauses in other Commonwealth legislation, and there is nothing unusual about this clause. The government wants the ombudsman to be the independent advocate that we have long envisaged. This clause neither limits the independent role of the ombudsman nor compels the ombudsman to curry favour with the government, since the ombudsman's appointment may only be terminated in very specific circumstances.
There were some questions regarding statutory immunity. It would be most unusual for a Commonwealth official to be granted a blanket immunity. Commonwealth officials should be accountable for their actions. Where the ombudsman acts within the boundaries of the ombudsman's remit under the legislation we are discussing today, the ombudsman would have no need for immunity. It would not be appropriate or even possible to give an official immunity to act outside that official's remit.
Part 3 of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill outlines the ombudsman's advocacy function. This will grant the ombudsman power to conduct inquiries, to advocate on behalf of small businesses and family enterprises to government. This can be on the ombudsman's own initiative or on referral from the minister. The ombudsman may require a person or entity to produce information or documents for the purposes of an inquiry. Noncompliance with such requests may attract a penalty.
Mr Albanese interjecting—
Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—
Mr BILLSON: I thank the opposition for their encouragement.
Another area of appropriate oversight concerns the publication of reports and advice prepared by the ombudsman. This was a topic of some discussion in the debate. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill allows the minister to redact or decline to publish reports and advice produced by the ombudsman. It is important to stress that this power simply seeks to prevent information being released into the public domain where it is not in the public interest for such information to be released. We want the ombudsman to prepare the robust advice that government needs to hear, but we also want everyone, particularly small businesses and family enterprises, to be confident that any information they provide during an ombudsman's investigation or inquiry will not necessarily be released into the public domain.
Again, the government welcomes the opposition's support, and I trust that these points will provide the clarification requested during debate and the careful consideration we have given to each of those matters throughout the consultation process. I want to particularly thank the officials, who have been very diligent in working through the implementation of this election commitment and have consolidated a very effective, collaborative and consultative network in working up the provisions that are here today. I sincerely thank them for that work. The ombudsman's legislation fulfils an important election commitment and shows the commitment of the Abbott government to small businesses and family enterprises. I commend these bills to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr BILLSON (Dunkley—Minister for Small Business) (11:18): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr BILLSON (Dunkley—Minister for Small Business) (11:20): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Export Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015
Export Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015
Export Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015
Export Charges (Collection) Bill 2015
Cognate debate.
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (11:21): The House will be taking these four bills—the Export Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015, the Export Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015, the Export Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015 and the Export Charges (Collection) Bill 2015—together. I will speak to them generally but I first of all indicate that the opposition will be supporting the package of bills. Australia's agriculture sector, of course, is a vital part of the Australian economy. The export of agricultural goods is forecast to be worth $40 billion this financial year. The Department of Agriculture plays a significant role in supporting farmers and exporters and in maintaining international market access. Access for Australian agricultural exports relies on the department's certification, inspection and auditing activities that provide assurance to other countries that their import requirements are met. Last year alone, the department issued around 300,000 export certificates covering meat, grain, horticulture and fibre products. It also provided inspection and certification for the export of over 3.1 million live animals.
It is not my intention to go through the detail of each of the bills. The minister has done so in his second reading contribution. But to put it in more simple terms for those who might be listening to the debate, the bills that will follow this package of bills will do something very similar except that they will deal with the importation of goods rather than the exportation. Of course, the department on both import and export does certify products. For example, when we are exporting meat to China, the Chinese authorities want to know that it meets the standards they require. Therefore, it is for the Department of Agriculture to provide those certifications. And of course there are significant costs involved in the process. Rather than those costs being met by the Australian taxpayer, we have a system whereby we recover those costs from the exporting company. Basically, that is what this bill is about, and later the same applies to the importation of goods.
Australians expect the Department of Agriculture to ensure that the goods being imported are of a certain standard and of course that the health needs of Australians are being protected. Again, there is a cost in that process and that certification, and those costs are recovered from the importing company. These bills deal with those issues of tidying up and the regulations allowing charges to be set. The opposition will be supporting the bills. We do so with enthusiasm. It is a step in the right direction and it is something we would expect of the government of the day.
I want to talk about agriculture more generally because, as insignificant as these bills might seem at first glance, they are very important and are part of the very many building blocks which form part of a successful agricultural sector in this country—as I said earlier, a very important sector. In fact, it is now becoming almost part of the Australian vernacular to talk about the dining boom. As we see the mining boom tapering off, our hopes are on experiencing something very significant with the growing demand for food around the globe, particularly in Asia and amongst the growing middle-classes of Asia. So we are moving from the mining boom, I hope, to the dining boom.
I take this opportunity to say I would also like to think that we are moving to the fibre boom: the opportunities that will be presented to us for forest based product demand in Asia in particular, as we see research and development creating new opportunities from wood—wood to plastics, wood to biofuels et cetera. With the right strategic plans and leadership from government, there will be significant opportunities for Australia in that space as well.
I have often said that the dining boom will not come to us; it will be up to us to go to it—in other words, it is a very competitive market, despite the huge demand before us. But what is important for Australia of course is price value, not so much volume. Minister Joyce and I agree on one thing absolutely—that is, Australia will never be the food bowl of Asia because food bowl implies that we will be a very substantial provider of food. It has often been noted that even if we tripled our food output tomorrow, we would not even feed Indonesia and Australia let alone the rest of Asia. Volume will not be our business, although increasing volume will be important. Our real business will be value: securing higher returns at the higher end of the market, capitalising on our reputation as a clean, green, safe producer and provider of food. I note that my friends on the other side of the House are nodding in agreement on that point, and I am glad that is the case.
Minister Joyce and I have said on many occasions that the more bipartisanship we can have in agriculture the better because it is a sector which we cannot afford to have locked up in the three-year political cycle. It is a sector that requires long-term investment and planning, and the right strategic guidance from government. If we can strike bipartisan approaches to these things, agriculture will have continuity in that long-term strategic planning and that will be all important.
I talked about these bills as a building block to agriculture's future success, but it is one of many. I would like to make five points: (1) financial capital to fully realise our dreams—that is, the money that will be required to build the infrastructure to have the required investment and output, and the supply chains et cetera; (2) human capital—that is, the people and the skills of people on the land and along the supply chain, ensuring that we do have the skills, and that goes back to education, including tertiary education; (3) natural resources capital—that is, the land, the soils, the water and the natural elements that we rely upon in the farm sector; (4) infrastructure capital—I have mentioned it already through financing, but obviously we cannot be competitive in the global market without efficient supply chains and the infrastructure which is critical to that which are the roads, the rail, the ports, the dams et cetera; and (5) research capital—maybe the most critically important component as to how we innovate, how we get ahead of the game, how we ensure we are at the high-value end of the curve not the low-value end of the curve, and how we produce more food with the same limited natural resources, in fact with depleting natural resources. These five points are so important to our future success.
If I can just depart from bipartisanship for a moment, I remind the House that we have been for almost two years now under this government without an agriculture policy. Two years without an agriculture policy! If the minister were at the dispatch box opposite, he would say, 'Oh, we've got three free trade agreements.' I acknowledge that. We have got three free trade agreements. Negotiations were commenced by the former Labor government. This government completed them. There were good reasons why Labor was hastening slowly, and some of those reasons will be teased out, I suspect, over the coming months as we talk about investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms and about labour market agreements and how they might impact on this country. But Labor welcomes the signing of the agreements. We are pleased that they are complete. We would like to see them, by the way. That would be helpful. If we had that opportunity, we might give them even stronger endorsement. But I do accept in any case that this government has now signed off on those three agreements.
Minister Joyce can and will continue to claim that, but it is not his portfolio; it is Minister Robb's portfolio. I go back to his own achievements: nothing—although I do acknowledge some depreciation schedule changes in the budget which are welcome. But, in terms of strategic guidance and overarching agriculture policy, there is nothing—two years without an agriculture policy. While we fiddle as a country in agriculture policy, our competitors, South Americans in particular, are on the march. They are not waiting for their white paper; they are on the march right now. They are on the march while we fiddle. For our counterparts across the ditch in New Zealand it is the same. They have real goals and objectives and strategic plans to capitalise on the opportunities in Asia. They are way ahead of the game, way beyond where we are in this game, particularly in dairy, as people well know. So two years without a policy is a problem, and it is a disappointment. It is a great disappointment to everyone out there in the agriculture sector and indeed the agrifood sector, who had high hopes of this government, having been promised so much prior to the election, and who remain now bitterly disappointed.
I want to make a couple of points on some of those foundations I laid down. Australia is a large island continent with a very small population, around 23 million people. Therefore we have a very limited savings capacity. For that reason, as a nation, for all of our lives—indeed, since the First Fleet arrived—we have relied heavily on the capital of those in other countries. Traditionally, it came mainly or largely from our Western friends in the UK, the US and Canada. Over the years, that has changed, but they—and even New Zealand—still predominantly are our providers of foreign capital. But of course, as Asia and the Indo-Pacific generally continue to emerge, some of that capital is coming from other nations—China, for example. That is a good thing for Australia. It is good news for Australia—very good news for Australia.
It is well known in this place that the member for Hume was one of the primary authors of a great ANZ and Port Jackson Partners report on 'feeding our future'. I do not know how robust his numbers are, as I have never had the chance to get behind his methodology, but it is suggested in that report that, to fully capitalise on the dining boom, Australia will need $600 billion—that is billion with a B—worth of investment in infrastructure. I am glad that the shadow minister for infrastructure is with us, because he understands this very well. That is if we are to fully capitalise on the dining boom. Let us just assume that the member for Hume is only half right and it is only $300 billion. That is still a very, very significant amount of money, and it is axiomatic that it is not going to come from Australian savings. Yes, we need to do more to get the super funds more engaged and involved in agriculture, and we should all be working towards that objective, but it is never going to be enough. We will be very heavily dependent on foreign capital.
We should not be concerning ourselves about where the capital comes from. Chinese money is as good as US money or money coming from Canada. It is all important to us. I am really concerned that this government, for the first time, is implementing in this country a discriminatory foreign investment approach. We now have different rules for different countries. Coincidentally, maybe, we have different rules for Asia than we do for the American continent, for example. We have different rules for Asia than for the Americans and the Canadians and indeed the New Zealanders. In fact, now, under the current government's arrangements, if you want to buy some agricultural land, if you are Asian you will go to the Foreign Investment Review Board if the value of the land is more than $15 million. If you are an American or a Canadian or a Kiwi, you go if it is more than a billion dollars.
This does not make any sense, but it certainly sends the wrong signals to potential investors in Australian agriculture in a global market where competition is intense. A lot of money is flowing into South America. People are sitting back and saying, 'Well, I can invest in Australian agriculture, or I can invest in South America, for example,' and they will take the path of least resistance. Of course they will. Not only that, but the government is now planning to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from fees—big fees—drawn from applicants who want to invest in this country.
In fact, I was talking to the principal of Wellards, the live export company, a very successful company run by an Italian who lives in Australia but not as an Australian citizen. He lives in Australia; he has his home in Australia; his kids go to school in Australia; and he employs hundreds of people in Australia because his business goes right through to feedlots and of course abattoirs.
This gentleman faces a real problem now. He currently needs to buy a piece of land as an easement; it costs $6,000. His objective is to square off the block, and I think there are some water issues he needs to deal with around one of his abattoirs. Because Minister Joyce's, or the Treasurer's, new rules are cumulative, he needs to go to the Foreign Investment Review Board—this is for a $6,000 bit of dirt—because he is already through the $15 million threshold and he is not an Australian. I wonder how much the member for Calare or the member for Hinkler thinks the application fee would be? On a $6,000 block of land, would it be $100? Would it be $1,000? It costs $15,000 for an application fee to the Foreign Investment Review Board, and this is to buy a block of dirt for $6,000.
But it gets worse than that, because, as everyone in this place knows, when someone goes to an auction and makes a bid they have to be in a position to close the deal. It cannot be conditional. You cannot visit an auction and then ring up later and say: 'I can't buy it now, because I couldn't borrow the money,' or 'because my wife said I wasn't allowed to,' or 'because my husband said I wasn't allowed to'—to be politically correct. Gentlemen like the one I mention in my example cannot do that. He cannot go and bid at auction for his $6,000 block of land. Why? I am sure the member for Hinkler knows the answer to that question. The answer is: because he does not have Foreign Investment Review Board approval yet. And he cannot do it. The timing is all wrong.
So these are the simple but important things this government has not thought of. They have not thought these issues through. What they have thought through is populism. We all know that there are people out there who are concerned about Asian investment in agricultural land. But—instead of showing leadership and reminding people that investment by, for example, Chinese in agriculture is very small, in fact minute, in the total scheme of things; instead of showing leadership by reassuring people that they have nothing to fear and that in fact Chinese investment in our agricultural sector is a good thing, is good for Australia, is good for jobs, is good for export earnings; instead of explaining that they cannot pick up the land and take it with them; instead of explaining to them that a sovereign country maintains the right to export, for example, and maintains rights over what leaves this country; instead of doing all of that—they are playing the game and they are sending the signal out, 'Don't worry, we won't let those Chinese come and get your farm land'. Show some leadership. I challenge the member for Hinkler and the member for Calare to stand up to Minister Joyce in their party room and, in doing so, show some leadership.
Minister Joyce is very interesting, because he went to the New South Wales Nationals conference on the weekend. I am sure the member for Calare was there in the beautiful Hunter Valley. No doubt they enjoyed some excellent Hunter wine while they were there. And Minister Joyce declared at the conference, in a moment of mad populism, that he is not going to let any government-owned foreign companies buy any agricultural land in this country.
If you have a look at Sue Neale's article today, you will see there are many good examples of government pension funds, for example. Imagine locking out the Norwegian pension fund from Australian agriculture. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine if we told the Norwegians—with their billions of dollars from their oil funds—that we were not going to let them buy anything in Australian agriculture, that we were going to deny ourselves that opportunity? But of course he did not have the Norwegians in mind, did he? Is that right, Colleagues? You did not have the Norwegians in mind. He was not thinking about the Norwegians, was he? Of course he was not. I will let others come to their own conclusions about that.
This week, back here in the parliament, after his Prime Minister found out about this idea at the New South Wales Nationals conference, Minister Joyce changed his view. He still believes that—he told The Australian, or a spokesman told The Australian. He still believes it but he is not going to legislate it. He believes in it but he is not going to do it, which is a fairly novel approach to one's ministerial portfolio, I would have thought.
He believes this is what should happen, but he is not going to do anything about it. The Prime Minister needs to haul him into line and have him come in here and make a statement about his intentions; because, unsurprisingly, there are lot of investors out there—governments and their pension funds, for example—who do not know what the rules are going to be in a year's time or in two years' time, because Minister Joyce has made his views very clear to them. He sent the signal that if he had the opportunity he would be locking them out of an opportunity to invest in Australia. So what are they to believe? They do not know. They are sitting in Beijing or in Oslo or in London. They do not know what the rules are going to be tomorrow.
They will just go elsewhere. They will go to South America or elsewhere. Australia is getting too hard. Why would they line up in a queue for the Foreign Investment Review Board in Australia behind God-knows-how-many applications? And, by the way, the government has given no indication whatsoever of any intention to more fully resource Treasury to handle this additional workload. They have taken something like $750 million additional—I think, over four years, as demonstrated in the Treasurer's budget papers—from Foreign Investment Review Board applications, but they have not said one word about returning any of that to Treasury to handle the extra workload involved.
They look at Australia and see they are in a big queue—God knows how many applications we will now have. If my friend at Wellard has to put in an application for a $6,000 block of dirt, I suggest to colleagues that the queue is going to be pretty long. Then they look at the fees: up to $100,000 or more, depending on the value of the land they are looking at. An application fee of $100,000 at the Foreign Investment Review Board! This is just a black hole. Now they have the minister saying, basically, 'First chance I get, you won't be allowed in here at all'.
So, if someone is looking at an enterprise they want to be ultimately successful, and they need additional land to meet those objectives, they do not know whether they are going to be able to buy that in two years' time. So they look at Australia and they just do not bother—that is what is going to happen.
I say to the minister: put the populism aside, please. Show some leadership, get out there and explain to people that they need not fear foreign investment in agricultural land. At the same time, send a signal to potential investors around the world that Australia is open for business. Isn't that what they told us before the last election? That Australia was going to be open for business? Here is the opportunity to do so.
I am getting a lot of pressure from my colleagues and so I will try to wind up! As I said, Australia has no agriculture policy. We were promised an agriculture white paper. If the minister were here he would say—or, I would like to think he might say—'Yeah, you're right. We don't have any agricultural policy. But don't worry—the white paper is coming!' Well, I do not know whether the white paper is going to be a document of quality or not. I am feeling very pessimistic, I might say, that it will be because, as one of Minister Joyce's colleagues somewhat infamously told a journalist, 'It's full of every crackpot idea of the last 20 years.'
My fear is that the more it bounces from Minister Joyce's office to the Treasurer's office, to the Prime Minister's office and back again—and around and around again a few times—it will ultimately be a document not of quality but of compromise. I fear that this means it will be a bit of a wish list and a promise on infrastructure projects which could never be completed or even started prior to an election—in a years' time, let's say. Therefore, it would be useless—not a strategic, overarching document that provides guidance to the agriculture sector and its investors but basically a pre-election policy document.
Now, to the delight of my friends I will sit down! I restate Labor's and the opposition's commitment to the bills. We will be supporting the bills and on that basis I commend them to the House. I look forward to the member for Calare responding to some of those Foreign Investment Review Board issues that I raised.
Mr JOHN COBB (Calare) (11:47): My colleague the member for Hunter should save a bit of his voice for later on!
I rise to speak on the Export Charges (Imposition-General) Bill 2015 and related bills. It is a bill which, in itself, is not the most important bill that we will ever act on in this place. But it is part of a bigger situation which is totally one of the most important facets of agriculture, and that is export.
I come back to the issue of reputation. The member for Hunter mentioned it, and we all agree that we agree, that the greatest thing Australian agriculture has going for it is its reputation and the fact that we do not deliver dodgy products. I totally agree that we will never feed Asia, but we will feed those who can afford us. We put out a quality product; probably with the exception of wheat there is not much that we export that a totalitarian state wants to buy to feed its people with. But wheat, yes.
Whether it is broadacre, whether it is agriculture or whether it is intensive agriculture, exports are the most important thing for agriculture. I often say that the problems that producers and processors have with, shall we say, the position Australia finds itself in with the domination of the supermarkets can best be dealt with by not needing them—by having an export outlet for every product that we put out. That is what I would like to think is the best way to handle it.
This bill deals with that reputation. It deals with the need to have AQIS—and there is a need to have them, I am not stepping away from that for one second. It is their job to ensure that various things happen. Firstly, in the case of agriculture, that the product that leaves Australia is of quality and also that it is sent in the way in which the country which it is going to demands that process happen. That is AQIS's job and that should happen. I will talk a little later about the ways in which that can happen, but what this bill is about is trying to have equalisation and more efficiencies in the way in which AQIS charges. It is cost recovery. I think two predecessors to the member for Hunter as agriculture minister wiped out the subsidy which we used to give to export industries for the costs of AQIS. However, I guess that is in the past and that we have moved on. Now we have cost recovery. However, it has to be as low a cost as is possible. Whether it is the Department of Agriculture, of which AQIS is part, or whatever bureaucracy it is, as far as trade and production goes its job is to help not to hinder. Its job is to cost as little as possible. Agriculture should not have to bear the cost of running a department.
This bill attempts to equalise this. I do not think it changes the actual amount that is gathered. It may equalise it and perhaps be kinder to those who do not use AQIS a lot. An example is the individual horticulturalist who might send something out of Australia as against those who make a lot of use of the services of AQIS, which it does on behalf of agriculture and the Australian community in general.
The reason AQIS is so important is because they do play a role in ensuring that our reputation, which I repeat is the greatest selling point that Australian agriculture has, is maintained and that the country or the importer from whichever country it is knows that it will be produced and marketed in the way in which they have agreed they want it done. It needs to know that we will meet the particular protocols that country has; that we do not circumvent them but that we do them.
And different countries have different requirements, so it can be quite complicated. I go back to the point I mentioned regarding how these costs are done. Broadacre agriculture farmers are very rarely exporters themselves. Normally the processor is—the buyer of the grain, the processor of the meat and the buyer and the processor of the wool. The processor normally buys the wool and takes it—unfortunately not in Australia—to where that is done. It is awfully important that those costs are kept down. I would like to see them lowered, not just equalised. I would really like to see those costs lowered, and without doubt they can be.
I know and I accept that the department has people who are authorised to act on its behalf. One example—and it has happened for quite some time now—is the inspectors in export abattoirs where arrangements are in place with the countries concerned. Not every country will accept somebody who is not employed by a government department to do those inspections. But where that can be arranged it is very important that we have authorised people with a far lower cost scale than government departments are able to deal with. I have always felt that we need to go further. We need to make it contestable so that somebody out at Orange, for example, could do the course, become certified and, instead of someone having to come from Sydney or wherever, be certified to look at apples or whatever it might be to ensure that they met the requirements that we demand—and so we should—to keep the quality and the reputation of our products at the top. I am not suggesting for one second that we at any way put at risk the quality and the reputation that we have developed over one heck of a long time. We are awfully fortunate. If we are isolated from the world there are certain good things that come with that. We are less prone to disease. We have some natural quarantine barriers. Plus the fact is that we are very good at growing agricultural commodities, and our processing is good too. There are people who are more efficient; we have to deal with that. But as far as quality goes not many can equal us, let alone beat us. So we have to protect that. We have to make sure it is there.
I support what is being done in this legislation: equalising it so the small exporters do not get whacked so hard. It is also about the registration of premises. What a lot of people do not realise is that the premises where horticulture or processed goods are put together have to be, where exports are concerned—it is not just meat—quite often registered and paid for as well. To equalise the costs so the little guys do not get broken is a good thing. However, we do need to look beyond this. We do need to ensure that we have a way in which locals can be certified to do this. Yes, I know we have authorised people but I think we should go further. Make it contestable so that people can do a course, become certified and be one heck of a lot cheaper and, I dare say, probably more efficient than a department can be. Think about how far Sunraysia is from Melbourne. Think about the member for Murray's electorate, where by and large they still have to come from Melbourne to do inspections. It is a big deal for all of us. It does not matter where you are in Australia, whether you are up in Mackay—there is a lot of travel. Giving people the opportunity to be an earner locally gives them another chance to do something. Make the course as tough as you like but make sure we have people who can act on behalf, with the knowledge—not just to keep the costs but to get them down, because I have no doubt that that can happen. I support the legislation and I see it as an early step in lowering the costs of certification, of inspection and of audits as well. There are probably always going to be government audits but I have never seen why adding up should be so expensive. I support the bills and I hope this is the start of even better things in the time to come.
Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (11:57): As the member for Hunter, responding on behalf of the opposition, has made clear, Labor supports the Export Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015, Export Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015, Export Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015 and Export Charges (Collection) Bill 2015. We do so because we consider that the whole system of recovering fees in respect of the primary producers of this country is a system that needs to be sorted out. My understanding is that right now there are one or two hundred different fees that apply. In fact the whole primary production area is one where there is a lot of inconsistency when it comes to charging of fees. Indeed, as the member for Calare has quite rightly pointed out, in some cases those who pay the fees are unfairly burdened with the level of fees that they have to pay. This legislation is about reforming that whole system. It is about cost recovery, particularly when it relates to food exports—and, in subsequent legislation that will be debated today, also the importing of food into this country. It revolves around the responsibilities of government with regard to the certification, inspection and auditing processes that are applied by the Department of Agriculture and AQIS.
As other speakers have quite properly pointed out, primary producers in this country make a significant contribution to the economic prosperity of Australia. They have done so for many years, they do so right now and we acknowledge that they will do so in the future as well. Indeed, as has also been pointed out, they contribute something like $40 billion to our exports every year. In round figures it is a $50 billion industry to our nation. It should not be taken for granted. It should also be managed in a way that is responsible and fair to all of those who are in some way involved in that industry sector.
We also acknowledge the growth potential for food producers in this country. In less than 10 years time the population of the world will be some eight billion people and there is a rising middle class, particularly in the nearby countries of Asia, where the demand for Australian food has been rising in recent years. The demand for Australian food has been rising not only because a rising number of people can afford to buy it but also because it is widely accepted that Australian food is produced to a much better standard. The 'clean, green' image that we often talk about is absolutely true with respect to Australian foods, and overseas markets are prepared to pay a higher price for Australian food because of its quality. It is important, therefore, that that quality continues and that we do not in any way jeopardise the quality of the food that is produced here.
It is also important that we do not put the Australian population in jeopardy by allowing poor quality food to come into the country. It is not only about ensuring we can compete with other countries going into those overseas markets. If we can maintain the quality of our food, it also means we can get a better price for our growers, which in turn means they can remain viable. That is a critical consideration. Many members of the House have from time to time pointed out—and the member for Murray, who is in the chamber right now, has made this point—that many of our food producers in recent years have been struggling. It is, therefore, important that we do whatever we can to help those food producers remain in the business. The truth is that not only do they have a lot of money invested; they also have a lot of experience and expertise in what they do. It would be a shame to see them walk away from their properties; we as a nation would lose years and years of valuable expertise.
The member for Calare has quite rightly pointed out that the fees and charges that are imposed by this legislation—and I understand that it is a process that is going to operate in parallel with the current fee arrangement that is in place with respect to exporters and importers—should never become a barrier to the export or import of food to or from this country. Already, food processors and food growers have considerable obligations placed upon them in respect of the food they grow, how they process it and, if they want to export it, the export processes they have to go through. And having those processes overseen by the department comes at a cost. While we accept the term 'cost recovery', I hope it is indeed cost recovery and not more than that. If it is more than that, it will ultimately become a barrier to many of the food producers and food exporters of Australia.
I have spoken on other occasions about the burden that these fees impose on growers. Having spoken with the exporters, I know the difference it makes. The member for Calare quite rightly referred to the Sunraysia district, which exports a lot of grapes. My understanding is that the fees for some of those exporters went from a few hundred dollars a week to several thousand dollars a week as a result of some changes to the fee structures that were imposed in recent years. It is a significant difference and for many of those exporters it makes a difference to their livelihood and their viability. I have also spoken to food processors in Adelaide. Equally, they have to go through a very exhaustive process just to comply with state requirements on food health standards; and then they have to duplicate a lot of that if they decide that they want to export that same product overseas. It seems that that duplication or overlap could be avoided. Right now, it is a significant penalty to the exporters because they have pay costs to two separate governments with respect to the same activity. If we could avoid that, that would be a good thing. The exporters I have spoken to have to compete with other global players, and anything they can do to reduce their overheads when it comes to exporting their foods would certainly assist their businesses. It is true that we need to change the framework. Again, I support this legislation in that respect. I have very strongly made a point about the fairness of the fees that are ultimately going to be brought in. I understand that the minister proposes to go through a consultation process in that respect. I would hope that it is a very wide consultation process that not only has the input of all the different sectors but also takes note of what is being presented to the government.
There are a couple of other points I want to say about this whole issue. This issue goes hand in glove with the next set of legislation we will be debating, and that is about the importation of food into this country. Indeed, my view is that the real focus should be on food imports rather than food exports. Having spoken to industry sectors across the country, my view is that food that is produced in Australia is generally produced to a much higher standard than food that is produced in many other parts of the world. There are chemicals that we do not use in this country that are still being used elsewhere. We comply with health standards in this country to a much higher level than what I understand is the case in many other places. I have been to some of the packaging and processing facilities overseas, and the standards here in Australia give me enormous confidence that we are doing things better.
I do not share that confidence when it comes to food imports, and yet it appears that we apply a much more robust inspection system on the exporters than we do on the importers. I think that we have got our priorities back to front in that respect. We saw that earlier this year with respect to the hepatitis break-out from contaminated berries. And that led to two other matters—how we oversee the biosecurity system in this country and also the question of food labelling. Both of those matters have become topical issues among the community that I represent—and, I suspect, across Australia—in recent months, and quite rightly so. These are important matters and the government should be dealing with them.
I think we can do better to protect Australian consumers, particularly by stepping up or improving the biosecurity measures for food that is imported into this country. Indeed, it is not just about protecting the consumers, as important as that is. It is also because, if we get any form of disease in this country, it could effectively wipe out an entire industry and therefore, once again, have a long-lasting, damaging effect on the primary producers of Australia. So we need to do it both from a health point of view and from an economic point of view. I am aware of farmers who, as a result of an infection in their crops, have lost their whole crop and their whole business. They were not able to continue, because the very product they were growing and the soil in which they were growing it were effectively put a stop to because of the infection or disease that came into their crop. So it is a critical issue and it needs to be managed well.
In respect of that, I am pleased to see that the minister is here in the chamber. I am concerned about the number of cuts to staff within his department. I do not know the extent of those cuts, but I understand that there have been substantial staff cuts made within the Department of Agriculture. If that is the case then I can only assume that the level of oversight that is provided by the various departments, including those that work on biosecurity matters, would have been diminished if we have fewer staff working within those departments. I see very little point in increasing fees if we are not going to simultaneously ensure that we have the processes in place and that the processes are properly resourced to ensure that compliance with them is actually met.
The last point I want to make is with respect to my own state of South Australia. Again, it ties in very closely with all of this legislation, because South Australia, as we know, has been hit pretty hard with the impending closure of car making in the state. Already we are feeling the effects of the job losses that arise from Holden's impending closure, and we now have the additional uncertainty and job losses being caused by the government's unpreparedness to commit to the construction of the replacement submarines in South Australia.
One of the industries that we are looking at in South Australia—and I am pleased to see that the South Australian government made comments about this only recently—is the opportunities that are available through improving and increasing food growing, food processing and food exporting from South Australia, particularly in the northern areas of Adelaide, which for years and years have been a food-growing region. It seems now not only that we have the ability to grow food there predominantly for the Australian market, as we have done in the past, but that there is some real opportunity to expand that to the international market. The state government has clearly flagged this as one of the economic opportunities for the state, and it is a direction that I totally support. I have been advocating the same for years myself, because I believe that the future is there. I have also spoken with many of the food producers in that region, and there are already quite a few of them there. They are all very keen to see their businesses grow by working in collaboration with each other, with the state and with the federal government and creating what we might call a food park or a food hub so that they can, in different ways, support one another. There is real opportunity to do that. I support the local councils and the state government for doing so and for putting that economic development opportunity on the agenda.
It is now, I believe, time for the federal government to do the same. I believe the federal government has a role to play in supporting what is proposed and what is possible out there, and that includes skilling up the workforce out there to the levels required. Years ago, I guess people on the land learned from their parents and their grandparents about what they had to do, but the truth of the matter is that there are some real skills required in being a food producer in this country, whether it is growing the food or processing the food. We take it for granted that those skills just automatically appear. They do not, and sometimes it would be helpful if there were opportunities to assist and train producers through some of the organisations that currently exist but that perhaps could do with additional funding.
With those comments, I reiterate that we will be supporting this legislation.
Dr STONE (Murray) (12:12): I too rise to support the Export Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015. I come from an electorate, the electorate of Murray, which is a major exporter of prime food as well as fibre, so fair and reasonable charging for the inspection regimes which certify the cleanliness and quality of those exports is key to us growing our markets offshore and keeping those markets. I have to say that I am concerned about the price hikes in the past, particularly over the past five or 10 years, when it comes to paying for the tests, inspections, audits and certifications. Those price rises have been extraordinary. While this bill rightly sets out a new regime, and we need a new regime, we need to make sure that the biosecurity sector in the Department of Agriculture, which is making the full cost recovery charges, is mean and lean in terms of its efficiency so that the costs are not simply a bit of a go in order to support other activities within the department. They have to be very carefully watched, and I know the minister is dedicated to making sure that the department does not put unfair administrative overheads into that cost regime.
This group of bills is designed to be a cost recovery mechanism to recover costs under both the Export Control Act and the Australian Meat and Live-stock Industry Act. These acts manage the exportation of certain goods, such as meat, seafood, dairy products, plant products and live animals, to ensure that we meet the requirements of the importing countries.
As previous speakers have said, our clean, green global image is enviable. I have just come back from the Western Sahara, where I went to a number of sardine factories, and even in Morocco people were aware that Australia has an incredible reputation for not making shortcuts or mistakes with our biosecurity. We have very rarely seen diseases like rabies, foot-and-mouth or bluetongue that are endemic in our neighbourhood, because we are careful about our import regimes. In exporting our product, we offer high quality and good value for money.
The costs that the government incurs from all types of export activity happen to be incurred through the Department of Agriculture. It is going to be recovered through these bills. I am sometimes bemused when we talk about full cost recovery from the beneficiaries as the principle behind these charges and who pays. The beneficiaries of course go well beyond the actual grower of the oranges, the beef or the grains. The beneficiaries of our exports are well beyond the primary producer: they extend also to the broader Australian society.
Other countries, when they talk about cost recovery, do not simply pick the easiest target, which is the primary producer; they extend that concept to the taxpayer as a whole or the broader society. I would like us to think beyond the square in this, because too often we are burdening, in this case, our primary producers with cost recovery—so-called full cost recovery—which is not from the most efficient provider and which burdens producers to the extent where some just bow out of the industry altogether.
We have to make sure that the officials within the Department of Agriculture, and Customs, are highly trained and that the fees charged are competitive. We should regularly compare those costs with our competitors, such as New Zealand, the US and UK. What are their fees and charges comparatively? If ours are way out of kilter, then why is this so? Why is it that we are overburdening our primary producers?
Other countries, our competitors in particular, do not simply put the fees and charges collected back into general revenue; they actually make sure they go into research and development to improve the productivity of the sector. The fees, levies and charges paid end up increasing opportunity for even more exports, because funds are churned back into new ways to do a job—primary production in particular. I think we should look at that. We should say: 'Okay, we're generating hundreds of millions of dollars'—as it turns out in some cases—'with these fees and charges. Let's put them back into the industry.' If we are only going to charge the primary producers for this so-called full cost recovery, then let's make sure the industry sector benefits by redirecting those fees and charges into, for example, research and development or marketing that would support them in further export expansion.
Murray electorate is today the food bowl of Australia. We are doing it tough at the moment, because we have come through 10 years of drought where half of our irrigation water was siphoned off to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. That water continues to disappear to the Environmental Water Holder through on-farm water use efficiency grants and the so-called food bowl modernisation project, which has a billion dollars of federal funding. But the cost of that billion dollars is more water from irrigators going back into the Environmental Water Holder's bucket. My irrigators and my primary producers have some of the biggest and best herds of dairy cows in Australia, some of the best horse breeding—Murray standardbred horses, in particular, have their breeding material being exported for the racing industry globally—and large volumes of exported product from around Shepparton; Echuca; Nagambie, where Black Caviar was born; and Avenal. We have a huge horse genetics exporting sector. We export grains and of course our fruit exports are famous. We are getting back to exporting processed fruits as the dollar comes down and we deal better with the problems we have had with import dumping actions in the very immediate past.
We have to watch that, while 55 per cent of all our primary production is exported—including 75 per cent of our fish products and 60 per cent of all our forest products—the costs of the export inspection regime are not a killer and do not in fact mean that the primary producer cannot spend on improving the genetics of their livestock or plant or that they cannot employ higher-paid labour, because they have thousands of dollars in bills to be paid for the inspection charges.
I also have anecdotes, I am afraid, from my electorate where, if there has been a complaint about the productivity or experience or expertise of the inspector, then that inspector has actually sabotaged the product that they have been inspecting. I have brought this to the attention of the minister. This is not just unconscionable behaviour from a public servant but from anyone who is supposed to be supporting exporting from our country.
This bill is not setting charges; it is providing a modern drafting framework for applying cost-recovery levies and charges. The next step that the minister will oversee is the charges to be made. I am very pleased the minister is going to consult on the cost recovery guidelines, but he will be somewhat exercised, I know, in trying to ensure that the costs that are levied against these primary producers are fair and reflecting the most efficient, professional and export workforce of inspectors that any country can produce. I am not convinced that is the case at the moment with a lot of the personnel who are out there doing the job on behalf of the nation.
I heard the previous coalition speaker talk about a contestable situation where you can actually compete with others to do a very rigorous course to become a licensed, accredited inspector, auditor or tester of products in order to bring down the price that is currently required to be paid. It is a monopoly situation in our packing houses, abattoirs and piggeries across the country.
Let's look at some contestability without compromising any of the expertise or the very high regard that our inspection services are held in overseas. We have got to do all that we can to reduce these charges. I also refer back to my earlier remarks about looking at who are the beneficiaries of these charges. We need to understand that it is not just the struggling abattoir or orange grower; there is a whole sector of beneficiaries in Australian society, including the consumer, who could be asked to pay.
When overseas countries require certain standards or quality assurance in our nation—and let me also stress we have the highest standards globally anyway—we must make sure that the importer demanding those qualities pays for any extra costs. If there is an inspector from another country standing in a packing house in the Goulburn Valley, let us make sure that the fees and charges are fair and that the importing nation bears the cost. This legislation, as I said, depends for its effectiveness on the costs being reasonable. Every speaker, including the previous one, the member for Makin, has stressed this. It has been a shocking situation in which the massive, sudden price hikes cannot be justified. And I am pleased that this bill does look at that fairness and equity matter and talks about the averaging or amortising of costs across a whole sector, not just knocking out people who make a smaller contribution to export production because they carry such a heavy burden of fees and charges.
I will also say that it was not the coalition who introduced the massive cuts to biosecurity services; that happened under the previous government. Those massive cuts not only have left us vulnerable to accusations of not doing enough by way of inspection—auditing and checking—but have meant that those who are left to do the task are often stressed; they do not have a good relationship with the primary producers themselves, which is key. Cooperation is everything. So we have to make sure, if we are going to cut staff further, that we have that contestable situation in which people can enter into the field of inspecting from the broader public, not just from the Public Service itself.
I am very concerned that the No. 1 condition of Australia's exports—the clean, green image—be retained. We have an enviable record of virtually guaranteed quality. Unfortunately, with the loss of the Australian Wheat Board we have lost some of that capacity to guarantee the specification of the product we export. I am deeply concerned and saddened by that loss. But, despite that, we are one of the few countries that demand of our primary producers a paddock-to-plate continuous traceability of the product. Someone who produces a prime lamb in Shepparton is fully aware that when that prime lamb arrives as a live sheep export in a market in the Middle East they are still accountable if that animal experiences less than humane treatment. We are the only country in the world that demands that of our primary production system. It is an extraordinary thing that we do, that total traceability of our livestock. Some Middle East countries see that as contesting their sovereignty, that we are increasingly inspecting what they do with the animal once it arrives in their markets. But I am saying that Australian primary producers have been prepared to go along with that strategy. It is one of the most rigorous in the world. But they need a break. They do not need to be charged an arm and a leg for the inspection services that go along with that. They are already burdened with some of the highest prices for energy in the world and in my electorate some of the highest prices for water. They have some of the highest prices for refrigerant gases. The removal of the carbon tax has taken some of the heat out of their costs, but not enough to make a lot of them viable.
Australian primary producers are extraordinary in surviving despite, for many of them, year after year of not making a profit. They have to produce in one of the most variable climates in the world. They have to produce in one of the world's highest-cost labour markets and one of the world's least flexible labour markets. I am in awe of the capacity and the performance of our primary producers. But let us make sure that these inspection charges—the framework that is to be ushered in with these bills—is not an excuse for even higher charges and levies to be made. Our primary producers do an extraordinary job in bringing wealth to our nation through their export earnings. It is therefore a benefit to all of the society, and I commend these bills to the House.
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (12:27): I cannot help commenting on the very valuable contribution to the House by the previous speaker, the member for Murray, on these bills, the Export Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015, the Export Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015, and the Export Charges (Collection) Bill 2015. And I very much appreciate that the minister and the opposition shadow minister are both in the parliament. I think one of my greatest regrets about how this place functions is that heads of department and ministers are not required to be in the House for legislation. In the state parliament in Queensland the minister and the head of department are always required to be in the House for debates. If these people are elected by the people of Australia, then it behoves the minister to be in here and listen to those people. They should be the voice of the Australian people. But it is no use using your voice in here if the relevant minister is not here to listen, so I say to the minister: a very great thankyou and tribute for being here. It is one of the few times I have spoken when the minister has actually been in the parliament.
Having said those things, I want to take up two points made by the previous speaker on the cost of water and the cost of electricity. One of my friends recently sold up—was bankrupted and walked off after 51 years of farming, five generations, bereft of everything in the world. He was a man who had the great respect of his peers and was elected chairman of his mill for some 15 years—highly respected, well loved, a star performer as a farmer, yet he sold up. One of the reasons is that the price of water has now gone to close to $100 a megalitre. The Queensland government said: 'Oh, we had to do that. That's not us putting the water charges up; that's just the electricity charges.' I do not want to discriminate on a political basis, but both state governments in Queensland were involved in privatising and deregulating the electricity system, as in the other states. And Australia now has the second-highest electricity charges in the world, second to Germany. In Queensland we have gone from an average household price of $670 to $2,400 in the 12 years since the wonders of privatisation and deregulation, the wonders of our market fundamentalists who took control in both parties.
Not only do we have to pay $100, but the last time I looked we were paying $38 for water and in California they were paying $17 for their water. I do not know what the costs are in California at the present moment, but the differentials will be far wider now than they were before. Most of the Brazilians' sugar goes into an ethanol stream. Most of our sugar cane is used to produce sugar. If you produce sugar you are paid $340 a tonne and if you produce ethanol you are paid $420 a tonne. There are differentials between our farm situation and the farm situation in the other countries that have much lower priced water, much lower priced electricity—you have got to pump water—and the differential is in areas like our failure to commit to ethanol. We are now the only country on earth outside of Africa and, of course, the oil producing countries without any biofuels mandate. All the European countries, all the North American countries, all the South American countries and almost every one of the Asian countries—China, India, Japan—have moved to biofuels. So they get tremendous advantage on us.
The relevance of this is that the minister has moved to put some charges on product coming into the country. This is happening against a background where, the last time the OECD produced figures, Australia's tariff subsidy effect was 4.1 per cent and the OECD countries had 39 per cent. So we are at an enormous disadvantage. Their farmers get 40 per cent of their income from the government. Our farmers only get four per cent of their income from the government. I have never stood here and advocated that we get money from the government. But what I am saying is: do not come and preach to us about a level playing field when the rest of them are running the 100 metres and they have got a 36 metres start on us.
What is even more important is that the government are skiting about the interest charges coming down. The last time I looked, our interest rate average for the last couple of years was 2.8 per cent, while for foreign countries it was 2.5 per cent. So our dollar is driven up through the roof by interest rates set by the Reserve Bank that are a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world. Our dollar, when it was allowed to freefall, went to 49c under Keating and 51c under Costello, and then both of them drove it back up again—who only knows why? Clearly, the dollar should be at 50c. It is nearly twice that value at the present time.
Mr Joyce interjecting—
Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—
Mr KATTER: I will just wait until everyone has finished. Maybe I should speak to a tree outside.
Mr Fitzgibbon: We were talking about ethanol, Bob.
Mr KATTER: I am not saying that you people are wood or anything like that. We are talking about a playing field here, and I am going to be very specific on this legislation in a moment. But I just want to give the third background point, which is that if we sell in Australia we have only two people to sell to: Woolworths and Coles. I will get up anywhere, at any time, in any place and say that they have 90 per cent of the food market in this country.
So what have we got here? We have a 36 per cent disadvantage on the issue of subsidies and tariffs, we have a 50 per cent disadvantage on the value of the dollar, which is artificially propped up by interest rates that are a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world, and we have only two people to sell to—Woolworths and Coles. The market fundamentalists that occupy both of the sides of this parliament told us deregulation would be good for us. Go and tell that to a dairyman. The day before deregulation he was on 59c. The day after, he was on 42c. Who in the world would say that that was a fair thing? Seven thousand dairy farmers hit the wall, and we all know how some of them hit the wall.
Let me now concentrate specifically upon this bill. A very good friend of mine spent some seven years of his life setting up a game meat processing plant at Mount Isa. He used all of his savings and a lot of money he did not have, because he borrowed money, to build this game meat processing works. The impositions imposed upon us by the European Union and, specifically, France caused our federal inspectors to turn him around in circles for three years. When you have a couple of million dollars out there and your own departmental officials here in Australia that are supposed to be working for us are jumping to the tune played by the Europeans, what happens is you go bankrupt. My friend survived bankruptcy. But there is no game meat processing plant employing 34 people in Mount Isa in a town where we lost 2,000 mining jobs, because the demands put upon us if we want to sell into Europe are so enormous and so costly and it so impossible to get through the barriers that you may as well not try.
Please God, the minister will be imposing on them some of those stringent conditions that they apply to us, and we praise him for it. In the case of flowers—and I thought this was rather remarkable—there is a $320 an hour inspection fees for our exporters. The flower producers that I represent up on the Atherton Tableland are paying $320 inspection fees on flowers going overseas. We protect the overseas people. The flowers coming into the country are supposed to have five per cent inspection, so already one-twentieth have the costs that we have. They have a huge market advantage on us that was imposed upon us by the government. Our government charges us $320 an hour for an inspection fee. Of course, they are only five per cent, so they have one-twentieth of the inspection cost. So we are effectively subsidising the import of flowers into Australia and imposing a horrific burden upon the exporters of flowers.
Even if you believed in this free-market rubbish, which no-one on the planet with any brains has in the entire history of the world—including, I might add, Adam Smith, and I can give you the quotes from his books if someone wants them. We had hoped that minister was giving us a little bit of differential back. If they are putting these demands upon us, then we are going to put the same demands upon them. Let's forget that there is any sort of bias in this whatsoever. We have a proposition that you can bring into Australia everything you like and there will only be a five per cent inspection.
The five per cent inspection is ridiculous rubbish because, if you have a look at the figures, the monetary outlays on import inspection, you realise you are looking at something below one per cent. There is no way there could be anything remotely resembling a five per cent inspection. A number of Customs officials, whom I just happen to be friendly with through the Lions Club and various other things, have told me that five per cent is an absolute joke. We would be lucky if we are doing 0.5 per cent, because they just do not have the resources; they do not have the people to do it. So, if the minister is getting for himself some more resources to at least go to five per cent, we applaud that. But we would like to see our import services provide us with the protection that the Europeans enjoy when someone tries to get into Europe.
As far as America goes, try to get mangoes into America. Try to do it. Because it suits Dole and Chiquita and the big companies in America, you can get in pretty easily if you are coming out of Central America where the Americans own all the farms. But try to get mangoes in from Australia, where Chiquita and Dole do not own the farms. Mind you, the way that things are going, they probably will own the farms shortly. Both Chiquita and Dole have a very real presence in Australia now in the mango industry, as well is in the banana industry and a number of other industries. Try to get into America. I wish you well. I think we are in our 35th year of trying to get into America with our mangoes, but, because it does not suit Dole or Chiquita, we cannot get into America.
We applaud the minister, but I have to say that I was disappointed to find out that the charges were also going up on our exports. I thought they were just going up on our imports, and I was very lavish in my praise of the minister—some breath of fresh air after 25 years of darkness. I know the pressures that are upon the minister and I make allowances for that. We want to thank very sincerely the government and the minister for increasing the charges and increasing, I hope, the inspection regime of product coming into this country. The area that I represent has been hit by Panama disease and the banana industry has been hit by black sigatoka. There is papaya fruit fly and citrus canker. Every one of these diseases is a breakdown in our quarantine inspection service. That the quarantine service could have allowed beef from Brazil—a foot-and-mouth disease country—into Australia is an absolute disgrace.
I must say, in fairness to the government of the day—I cannot remember which government was there—the person in charge of AQIS in that period was transferred out. Very interestingly, she went across to trade, where the free trade philosophy was extremely— (Time expired)
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (12:42): I thank all the members for their contribution. In my concluding remarks, I would like to draw attention to some of the issues that have been brought up and will try, as best I can, to summarise. Of course, the issue is that we live in an area where we need cost recovery. In other nations, this is a cost of government. Obviously, with the financial issues that are around at the moment, it now becomes our responsibility, as best we can, to cover the costs of our own department. Agriculture is doing its job. It is a vital part of the Australian economy. We are a net exporter of agricultural produce that was worth over $41 billion in 2013-14.
I have been going through some of the prices we have been getting recently. We have been receiving record prices in cattle; we have been getting close to record prices in sheep. I put barley in just the other day. I am looking at the forward price of barley and it is looking very strong. It is part and parcel of what we do. What we do in government is make sure that free trade agreements are in place, that the live animal destinations are open and that our department works diligently, and it does. I commend the work of the department in making sure that our protocols are in place so that we can get free flow of product. Last night I spoke to ambassadors from the Gulf countries to make sure that we keep those channels of produce moving. This in itself is bringing money back into our nation.
We have had a substantial increase in exports. In 2008, it was about $32 billion and now it is up to $42 billion. That is more than a 30 per cent increase in the value of our exports. This is a section of the economy that can alleviate some of the problems that occurred because of the downturn in the coal price and the downturn in the iron ore price. It will never be the panacea but in agriculture we are doing our bit and all the time we are finding more people who are willing to make the journey to Australia to be part of the access to further soft commodity exports.
I might just clarify: I think we have actually opened up mango exports to the United States. In fact, I remember doing a presser on mango exports to the United States. The member for Kennedy was talking about 35 or 36 years where this has not been the case; it is now for mangoes and lychees. I did that announcement approximately half a year ago. We now have product, our tropical fruits, moving from our nation into the United States market.
Last year alone the department issued around 300,000 export certificates covering meat, grain, horticulture and fibre products. It also provided inspection and certification for the export of over 3.1 million live animals. Maintaining a robust export system comes at a cost and the Australian government has a long-standing policy of recovering these costs from exporters. However, the Department of Agriculture must recover its costs efficiently. Existing export charging legislation is complex and does not cover all exports such as live animals and reproductive material.
The Export Charges (Imposition-General) Bill 2015, the Export Charges (Imposition-Customs) Bill 2015, the Export Charges (Imposition-Excise) Bill 2015 and the Export Charges (Collection) Bill 2015 provide a flexible and common-sense structure than enables the appropriate recovery of the costs of administering the export system. This supports the important work undertaken by the Department of Agriculture in progressing the interests of farmers and exporters across the country. The export charges bills will enable us to address the high fees paid by some live animal and horticultural exporters.
The costs of export services must not affect our competitiveness in international markets. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics Sciences has recently reviewed the impact of cost recovery on agricultural exports. This work has shown that most of Australia's key competitors also have cost recovery arrangements in place for these types of services. The impact of full cost recovery on the value of Australian exports is less than 0.8 of one per cent. The government export certification costs are a small price to pay when you consider the returns to farmers and exporters from their ability to sell products overseas.
Might I say that one of our greatest exporting advantages is our clean green image. We will never be the food basket of Asia or, as some people have suggested, the food basket of the world but we will be able to sell a premium product at a premium price into niche markets. It is important to get this across because we do not want to be seen as a threat to rural producers in other countries who probably do not have nearly the standard of living as us. These things will work side by side. You see this as self evident when you go to places such as China where the premium product at the best restaurants and at the top end of the supermarket is an Australian product. The things that people like about it is that they know that it is underwritten by strong phytosanitary requirements, by strong occupational health and safety requirements and that there is real stringency in making sure the product that you consume is as clean as it can possibly be. Australia is seen as an identifier for that.
The export charges bills also include safeguards so that the amount recovered does not exceed the department's likely costs. The amount of export charges and who is liable to pay will be established in regulations under the impositions bill. The collection bill provides authority to collect charges and determine when a charge is due and payable. This bill also provides the Commonwealth with mechanisms to deal with non-payment and late payment. It also sets out provisions for remitting or refunding charges.
The export charges bill will sit alongside existing legislation that allows cost recovery on a fee-for-service basis for activities provided directly to exporters. The export cost recovery arrangements will provide essential support for the department's work in opening and expanding access to export markets. This is critical for Australia's agricultural sector and brings greater returns to the farm gate.
I grew up on the land. I still have a farm now. My family is still on the land and I have made it my role whilst having this ministry to make sure that our target is to get a better return through the farm gate. I do not believe in sticking mission statements to the wall but if one was to be placed there it would say: concentrate every day on how you get a better return to those farming families in Australia because they are the people who will increase our capacity further.
In the recent budget, a part of the agricultural white paper was seen in the accelerated depreciation rates for water.
Mr Fitzgibbon: When is the white paper?
Mr JOYCE: I know when and I know where and I should invite you along. There is accelerated depreciation for water and this allows for refurbishment on the farm of the irrigation precinct to make sure whether it is laser levelled, whether it is going from laterals to trickle tape—
Mr Fitzgibbon: What about on July 4?
Mr JOYCE: That is American Independence Day. That would be a big celebration.
Mr Fitzgibbon: That is my sister's birthday.
Mr JOYCE: I will take the interjection. It is the member for Hunter's sister's birthday on 4 July. We want to make sure that we get the refurbishment on the farm. We are also encouraging people to make sure they have got storage for grain and have purchased silos and hay sheds. These are all parts of the crucial infrastructure. There is 100 per cent write-off for fencing if your turnover is under $2 million. If you are selling $1.9 million worth of cattle a year, you are probably doing all right. But for that person, they have the capacity for 100 per cent write-off for welders, compressors, chainsaws, post hole borers. These are all areas where we are trying to make sure that we can refurbishment on the farm.
Off the farm, we have a dams policy. We will be rolling that out to create vital infrastructure because we know that water is wealth and dams are the bank. Without water, nothing else exists in the agricultural sector. There will be a distinct policy also to progress that issue as well.
In our genetics we are making sure that our investment in research and development keeps up to speed with the requirements of the global environment. For all the people who are in this chamber or listening to this at the moment: you are already part of genetic modification. All cotton produced in Australia is genetically modified. It is genetically modified so we do not have to spray it 17 times a year. Right now we are in the process of going through the genetic mapping of wheat. We are doing this in our nation. Wheat is hexaploid; it has three diploid genomes. Just one is more complicated than the human genome. This is because man has been affecting the genetics of wheat for as long as wheat has been about.
We want to make sure that our nation is at the forefront of this technology, that we are at the cutting edge. We have to be. In this nation also we have research into paddy-free rice. It was great to see the PhD students of Central Queensland University and the work that they are doing to see if we can remove the reason for a rice paddy—that is, the water that the rice grows in. That water is predominantly there to mitigate diurnal temperature ranges, as rice requires. It is also a very cheap form of weed control.
All these things are part and parcel of why agriculture under this government is having real successes. I refer to the work we have done on the development of markets; the work we have done on free trade agreements; the resilience we have shown to weather the storms that are often put up against us by our detractors such as Animals Australia; and the work we have done to make sure that we are working with the farmer on everything from on-farm water infrastructure, with the money that we put aside so that people get bores onto their places, to the extension of the Great Artesian Basin capping and piping scheme, the 100 per cent write-off of fences, the 100 per cent write-off of on-farm water reticulation, the write-offs over three years for silos and the 100 per cent write-off for those with a turnover under $2 million for any item of plant and as many items of plant as they wish as long as no single item of plant costs more than $20,000. Then there is the $300 million that has been put into the development of the inland rail; the $100 million that we have put into beef roads; the Northern Australia white paper, which will be imminently released—and is it imminent, believe you me—and the agricultural white paper, for which we received over a thousand responses.
This is something that we have had to work on ardently over a long period of time. The reason we had to do that was that the alternative government, the previous government, put only $30 million into their food plan. It was pathetic. We believe that agriculture is one of the premier portfolios. We want to take it to the centre of government and we have done that. I get the sense that the opposition sometimes believe that agriculture is some sort of booby prize, that it is a stepping stone to somewhere else. We do not want it to be that. It has to remain front and centre. It is so vitally important for where this nation goes.
Even last night at the local government dinner in the Great Hall, it was great to go around the hall and to get the responses from people representing those regional areas. It is an extremely powerful thing when people say to you: 'We absolutely back what you're doing. We thank you for the hard work you have put in. You are delivering results. A better return is coming back through the farm gate. You have been part of a government that has brought us record prices in cattle, that has brought about one of the most substantial turnarounds in soft commodity prices in the history of our nation.' We are heading towards the best prices in wool since the removal of the wool floor price scheme. They have eased off a bit now, but we have had record prices in sheep, mutton and lamb. This government has the vision to build dams and has already started that process in Tasmania with a $120 million process.
It is this government that is actually making a difference. When you think, 'What difference does a government make?' my retort is: go to the saleyards in any regional centre and see the difference that the coalition government has made for this nation.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (12:57): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Export Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (12:59): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Export Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (13:00): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Export Charges (Collection) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (13:00): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015
Imported Food Charges (Collection) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Cognate debate.
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (13:02): I apologise to the House. I got a little bit excited and jumped the gun, but I was concerned that I was going to lose Minister Joyce as my audience. I was worried that his duty might come to an end at one o'clock and I might lose him. I am very pleased he has obviously decided to stick around for my contribution. It never ceases to amaze me how he just makes it up as he goes along. He is claiming credit for Labor's irrigation system in Tasmania. He is claiming credit for every commodity price which has gone north, without any attempt to explain what role he played or how he achieved this magnificent outcome. But he does not talk about the commodity prices that have gone south. It seems that, whenever prices go up, the minister—
Mr Husic: He's an innovator!
Mr FITZGIBBON: The minister is an innovator, and we know that the member for Chifley knows a lot about innovation. So when commodity prices go up the minister takes credit but, when they go down, it is someone else's fault—or he just does not mention it at all.
Dr Stone interjecting—
Mr FITZGIBBON: What a wonderful thing it is to have the member for Murray in the chamber. She was so outstanding in her defence and support for SPC in her electorate—an issue that the minister, of course, had no interest in, by self-declaration. In fact, he wiped his hands of it, and I think he said it was a problem for the Liberal Party.
Mr Husic: He was saying the Liberal Party is a problem.
Mr FITZGIBBON: It may have been. It is disappointing that, despite my best efforts to take a bipartisan approach to agriculture and to take it out of that short three-year political cycle, the minister does not make a greater effort on that front.
Where is the white paper, Minister? I mean, really. We have now been two years without an agriculture policy in this country. Two years without an agriculture policy: that is an outstanding achievement. All those out there, in those commodity sectors the minister was talking about, just want to know when they will get a policy. I have said in this place many times, Minister: if you produce a high-level strategic document which provides leadership for the sector and gives them the support they need in a range of areas, I will be the first to jump to my feet and welcome it and congratulate you on it. I make that commitment. But I fear, Minister, I will not have that opportunity.
Mr Joyce interjecting—
Mr FITZGIBBON: The minister is about to tell us all the wonderful things he has done. He will mention the free trade agreements—Mr Robb's portfolio. The minister knows that those agreements, again, were Labor initiatives, begun by a Labor government. Yes, they were not complete by the time we left office. You were very quick, Minister, to finish them off. The Labor Party was being very careful about the free trade agreements because they are not all one-way. The minister forgets to remind people that free trade agreements imply benefits for both countries—reciprocal agreements. But they do come with their warts and there are issues to be properly considered, such as investor-state dispute mechanisms. I thought the minister might have an interest in investor-state, given his attitude to Chinese investment in this country. Labour market agreements I thought might be an area in which the minister might have an interest. I have had the great fortune to travel the world and see the Chinese build all sorts of facilities in the Pacific and Africa. I was in Ghana where they built the defence department. It is an outstanding building. But of course they brought all their own labour and materials. I do not know that we want that here in Australia. I think that when we attract foreign investment to Australia we like to think it creates local jobs at the standard labour rates that we expect as a wealthy nation. I would have thought those would be things the minister would be concerned about. But anyway, his minister rushed in and signed it, and that is fine. We welcome the free trade agreements, but I think that the minister's enthusiasm for all their aspects might wane just a little as we get down the track. We shall see. Labor could have signed them as they are, but we were concerned about some of the outstanding issues.
The minister talks about Labor's food plan. I happen to have it with me. I carry it with me; it is a high-quality document. It is an assessment of the sector and its future. It identifies both the opportunities and the challenges. More importantly, it sets goals, Minister. It sets in place a five-year rolling program so that those goals can be updated as circumstances change. The minister judges it on the basis of $30 million: 'It's only $30 million.' White papers or strategic plans, Minister, are not about money. The money comes in separate line items out of the minister for infrastructure's budget, for example. You have to understand that white papers and agriculture should not be a wish list of spending promises. That is not what it is about.
I know your plan, Minister. You will produce a white paper which promises the world—dams here and there, bridges, ports, roads. I do not know what you are going to have in there. You know as well as me that you have no hope of even commencing those projects prior to the next election, let alone completing them and, therefore, funding them. I think I am onto you, Minister. You will produce this document, the one best described by one of your colleagues, anonymously, as 'a document full of every crackpot idea of the last 20 years'. You will produce the wish list, the spending list, but you will never spend it. You know that you will never spend it. I will give you the benefit of the doubt. If you produce a strategic paper, which sets out real goals and objectives and a pathway to achieving those objectives, I will be the first to acknowledge it. I just want to know when the date is though, Minister. Did you say 4 July? You did say that the Northern Australia white paper was imminent, but you were not prepared to say that of the agriculture white paper. I can only assume that the agriculture white paper is not imminent. I think that would be a fair conclusion to come to.
The only problem we have then is: what is the minister's definition of 'imminent'. If you look at the Oxford dictionary, I think you come to the conclusion that it is pretty soon, if not in the next minute or sometime soon after. It is for the minister to explain when he gets back to his feet. If he is not prepared to give me the date for the white paper release 20 months into government—it was supposed to be out before Christmas, of course—he might at least be able to give me the definition of 'imminent', then I will know when the Northern Australia white paper is coming and, therefore, how far behind that the agriculture white paper will be.
The four bills before the House are being taken together and, by the bills we discussed earlier, are about cost recovery. In the last case it was for exports and in this case it is for imports. In other words, for those who might be listening, we have processes within the Department of Agriculture which ensure that food coming into the country meets the standards our community justifiably and rightly demands. Obviously, those food inspection services, et cetera, come at a cost and we pass those costs onto the importer. This bill aligns some of those administrative charges with the more broad charges imposed by government elsewhere.
I can indicate, once again, that the opposition will be supporting the bills. They raise two issues that are very current and contemporary and I want to address them.
Mr Joyce interjecting—
Mr FITZGIBBON: That is the greatest insult you can impose upon me, Minister. I am tempted to ask you to withdraw it. He suggested, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am starting to sound like a gnat.
Mr Husic interjecting—
Mr FITZGIBBON: The member Chifley rightly points out that that cannot be true because he can understand every word I am saying. There are two issues that I want to touch on. I am very concerned that, in his recent report, the Auditor-General has come to the conclusion that the Imported Food Inspection Scheme is flawed. 'Seriously flawed' is the way in which he described that scheme. He also said that the system for checking imported food is—and I quote—'incomplete and inconsistent'.
You will recall that some months ago we had a very concerning outbreak of hepatitis A in this country. It was suggested that the outbreak was linked to berries which had been imported from China. I want say at the outset that there is yet to be any evidence of that. It was an assumption based on who had been infected and what they had eaten in recent times. As I understand it, the testing still has not been able to come to any such conclusion. I do feel for the company involved because their reputation was trashed through that process. It might be that, in the end, it was well deserved, but, at this point, we cannot come to that conclusion. Terms from the minister like 'Australians shouldn't have to eat berries swimming in poo', or whatever it was he said, were rather inflammatory at a time when we were not in a position to come to any such conclusion. I will let that pass.
The question arises: what has the government done about it in the meantime? The government's first response was to switch the conversation straight onto country-of-origin labelling. It is a very important subject because we all know in this place that our country-of-origin labelling system fails consumers. It is too confusing, too vague, and too opaque. The 'made in Australia' term, for example, can mean many things to many different people. We do need to reform country-of-origin labelling in this country. It is a complex area, and I am on the House committee which held an inquiry into the matter. If it were easy to solve, it would have been done a long time ago. I wish the minister and Minister Macfarlane the best with that. Of course, the opposition will be ready to embrace the new scheme, if indeed it is a scheme which merits our embrace.
The China berries importation issue was not about country-of-origin labelling. Those berry packets were clearly marked 'product of China'. It was not written in tiny print either; it was very easy to read. Country-of-origin in this sense was a distraction from the key issue and that was, how was it that these berries, in their alleged infection, came through Australia's inspection system? Again, this is a complex area, and we cannot ever hope as a country—as is the case with any goods imported into this country or with people who come here—to inspect and check everyone and everything. We have a risk based system and we have to accept that, but what has the minister done since that scare to improve the system? Not much, according to the Auditor-General.
We are spending a lot of time talking about country-of-origin labelling—and hooray for that—but what about imported food inspection? The problem is we have a system in this country where local producers of food face a more stringent system and, if something goes wrong, they are more likely to be sanctioned and more harshly sanctioned than the importers. This gives the importers a competitive advantage on top of the competitive advantage they often enjoy because of cheaper costs in developing nations, particularly labour costs.
When talking about this important legislation, which talks about recovering the cost of inspection, I think it is incumbent upon the minister to respond to the Auditor-General's report and tell the House why the Australian community would not be concerned about the independent Auditor-General describing our imported food inspection system as 'seriously flawed'—and they were the words he used. This is the very bill on which the minister should be addressing that issue, and I invite him to do so. I do not want any distractions or diversions about country-of-origin labelling; I want to hear what he is doing about food inspection services as goods come into our country.
The other issue is seafood labelling. Seafood labelling has been visited upon by both the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee and the House of Representatives Agriculture and Industry Committee. Both committees have recommended that this issue be pursued. The House committee rightly recommended that the matter be taken to COAG, because at the end of the day it is a matter for the states and territories, and even for New Zealand. I have not seen the minister or any of his ministerial colleagues express any real enthusiasm for that. 'We will send it off to COAG' sounds to me like a bit of a tick and a flick. We need to hear from the minister a statement to this effect: 'I think this is a good idea and as a government we would really like to pursue this. When it gets to COAG we will certainly be asking the ministers responsible to pursue it with some enthusiasm.'
What we are talking about here is the FSANZ regulations that exempt fish on a plate in a restaurant, for example, from needing to be labelled. We import about 70 per cent of the fish we consume in this country. We are an exporter of high-value fish, but most of the fish we eat at a local restaurant in Manuka will more than likely come from Vietnam or a like country. Australians are in increasing numbers starting to demand that they be better informed about what they are eating when they go to a club, a pub or one of Canberra's fine restaurants, which the member for Chifley is so fond of, as am I, where they often sell good Hunter wine. I was pleased that the minister enjoyed some time in the Hunter last weekend and enjoyed some fine Hunter wine as well.
It is understandable that consumers are keen to be able to identify whether the fish they are about to consume was produced in Australia or in Vietnam, for example. But they cannot do that now because there is no labelling for fish on a plate, for example. This is another issue that is not easy to resolve. No-one is pretending for a moment that this issue is absent any complexity. That is certainly far from the truth. You have the regulatory burden and the red tape involved. You cannot put fish on a printed menu that might change not just the next day but even the same day. You have enforcement issues. It is not a great idea to put laws in place that are not easily enforced. I am particularly concerned about the regulatory issues for the restauranteurs. In my own state the biggest restauranteurs would be the clubs and the pubs. These are not always for-profit organisations and are not what you might describe as fine dining. They are providing relatively cheap food to working-class people. I am very conscious of all of those things.
I think the best way to do this is not by having government preaching from above. The government should bring in all the stakeholders—the growers, the producers, the restauranteurs et cetera—and start a conversation about how this might be achieved with little pain for retailers. For example, the enforcement might take place at the wholesale level. This is happening in Darwin in the Northern Territory as we speak. I am told that, while the restaurateurs were initially reluctant and opposed to the idea, they are now embracing the new system because they understand that they now have a product that consumers are looking for—that is, a product grown in Australia.
I do not think it is good enough for the minister to flick it to COAG. It is as if he is not particularly interested. I urge him to have a roundtable with all of the stakeholders—not just the retailers but the wholesalers, the fishermen and all those involved in the industry—to see how we as smart people in this 21st century can provide consumers with the opportunity to be more fully aware of the source of the fish they are consuming.
In closing, I ask the minister once more to answer when he gets back on his feet: after 20 months in office, when will the farmers of this nation have an agriculture policy? If you cannot give me the day, just give me the month. A definition of 'imminent' would help. That might give me some guidance. Just the month will do. Minister, if you cannot give me the month, please give me the year. Please assure me that your white paper will come out before the next federal election and that the farmers and producers of this country will not go three full years without an agriculture policy.
Dr STONE (Murray) (13:22): I too rise to talk on this most important bill, the Export Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015. As the previous speaker said, we are a country that exports significant volumes of food—that is self-evident—but we also import over 37 per cent of our manufactured fruits and vegetables and in particular frozen vegetable produce, and we import well over 80 per cent of the fish product consumed in Australia, very often from countries whose food safety standards are very different to our own. We have had in very recent times some extraordinary examples of contamination of frozen berries from China where the hepatitis A sickness affected a number of people. It was a case of faecal contamination of that product. You should not really be surprised at that faecal contamination when you understand the growing conditions of berries and vegetables in the country of China. They do a very good job with productivity but often by using faecal contaminated irrigation water and soils. Indeed, in their factories, there is not yet a common understanding of what in Australia we would call standards of hygiene and food safety measures that must be met for both our domestically consumed food and also food that we export.
This particular bill is looking at the charges, the costs and the way we charge for inspection services of product coming to this country. It is important that we do that. The problem of double standards always concerns me where we have certain inspection charges for product coming into the country and a different regime for inspection services, audits and testing of product that is to be exported. I think the previous speaker also made mention of the fact that we have not as yet in Australia arrived at a situation where all imported product is fastidiously and comprehensively inspected to the point where we do not face health dangers from product contamination.
I have mentioned the hepatitis A problem with contaminated frozen berries from China—that problem was also found in Europe with a number of people becoming sick from contaminated berries, not all from China but from other European countries—but I am most concerned because in my electorate we grow fruit for manufacture. We have the famous SPC Ardmona fruit manufacturing company, the last big Australian fruit manufacturer. They have been so concerned that when they try and compete fairly in the domestic market in Australia, not to mention the export market, they are confronted by Coles and Woolworths, who are determined to increase the numbers of products in their own home brands and to increase the quantity of product that goes through their home brand labels. Our labelling laws then become critical and key. The Australia consumer is not stupid. They are aware that there are different standards of food safety throughout the world. Some people say: 'We only buy on price for our food in Australia. We only buy on price for food and drink.' That is just not true. When we did have the crisis with SPC and it looked like they would simply be put out of their 100-year-long business because they could not compete with cheap dumped imports—Coles and Woolworths were taking them to the cleaner with prices and they could not compete with the horrendous costs imposed by things like the carbon tax and the refrigeration gas tax—we put out a nationwide appeal to save SPC by buying the product even though it was often 30 per cent dearer than the cheap imported dumped tomatoes from Italy or the canned peaches from China, even though the cost was so different. The Australia public went out and bought the Australia product—the Australia peaches, apricots, baked beans, spaghetti and tinned tomatoes. And they have doubled the buying of those products. They cleaned out the shelves of Coles, Woolies, Aldi and IGA of SPC products. Basically, the Australian public saved the SPC company from going broke. All of those orchards were being bulldozed. We lost hundreds of hectares of prime fruit trees, but we were able to save the ones that had not yet gone under the bulldozer with the enormous response of the Australian public wanting to have the choice of an Australian product in their shopping trolley. That is what they wanted, that is what they bought and I am very pleased to say they continue to buy at rates that far exceed the levels before the crisis.
Australians want to be assured that, when the product comes into this country, it is carefully and effectively inspected. Unfortunately, our Australian biosecurity import inspection services and issues like recall of contaminated products are divided between both the federal government and the state governments. In all things where we have lots of different jurisdictions, there is often a lot of slippage and often a lot of dysfunction, and that is certainly the case in the business of inspecting foods and responding to contaminated products in Australia. I will give you some examples; but, before I do, I will explain just how we inspect product that comes into Australia.
We conform to the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, which is the overarching code that applies to all food for sale, including those manufactured in Australia. In addition to the department's imported food testing, as I said before, the state and territory jurisdictions also have responsibility for ensuring that all food, including imported food, meets the requirements of that code at the point of sale. Food failing to meet the requirements of the Australian New Zealand Food Standards Code must be re-exported, destroyed, treated where possible or downgraded. In order to decide what imported foods will be inspected and how often, long ago we decided there would be a high- and medium-risk set of categories and a surveillance category. If the food is regarded as medium to high risk, it is referred to the department by Customs at a rate of 100 per cent of all consignments, but they only have to show that five consecutive consignments have passed inspection before that inspection rate drops to 25 per cent. After a further 20 consecutive passes, the inspection rate is reduced to just five per cent.
Any smart importer of products to Australia, whether it is frozen berries from China or fish fingers from Taiwan, knows that regime and knows that it must have very good product for the first five consignments and, if it passes, it will be on a lower rate of testing for the next 20 consignments. That is 25 consignments in all. After that, it is virtually never going to be inspected. I am concerned about that regime inspection rate. If the food is regarded as in the surveillance category—in other words low risk, and canned fruit is in the low risk category— (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the honourable member will have leave to continue her remarks at that time.
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
Powerhouse Youth Theatre
Mr BOWEN (McMahon) (13:30): The Powerhouse Youth Theatre, in my electorate, is the only youth focused theatre company in Western Sydney, based at the School of Arts in Fairfield. Shamefully, this company faces the prospect of closure because of Minister Brandis's cuts to funding for small and medium arts programs. For almost 30 years, the Powerhouse Youth Theatre has fostered cultural diversity in its performances and positively transformed the lives of the young people it works with. The slashing of funding and the threatening of this organisation is nothing short of a disgrace. Arts funding is not the personal plaything of Minister Brandis. It is there to encourage and support arts right across the country.
The government might think the people of Western Sydney are second-class citizens who do not deserve arts programs. They are wrong. For the information of the government: by 2020 there will be one million young people living in Western Sydney, and, yes, they do care about the arts, despite the prejudice of the government. Two hundred young people per week make use of the theatre space in Fairfield for training in the performance arts. They do an amazing job with the few resources they have, with only three part-time staff producing an annual program of 11 major projects in 2015 and thousands of people participating as audience members. The cultural life of Western Sydney is rich and vibrant, but it needs support. It does not need a lecture from this arrogant, out-of-touch, elitist and incompetent Minister for the Arts. It actually needs support for hardworking young people.
Herbert Electorate: Green Army
Mr EWEN JONES (Herbert) (13:31): I love the youth of today, and the resilience they show in times of trouble is fantastic. Let us not dance about the point: youth unemployment is a real issue across the country, but more so in the regions. That is why programs like the Green Army are important. They are not a panacea. They do not answer all the questions. But they give people an opportunity to participate in the workforce—to practise getting out of bed, putting on a uniform and getting out there. My Green Army guys are fantastic people. I was out at Bushland Beach recently—we are doing a Green Army project out there—and I spoke to Michael, Shannon, Kayla, Jessica, Sarah, Sean and Dylan. All they want is an opportunity. Some of their parents even think they are lazy. It is very hard to keep on knocking on doors and having that thrown in your face. We have all had to go through it in our business lives and that sort of thing.
But we have an asset here and we want to make sure that these people are taken care of and supported. We must make sure that the youth of today have the opportunity to participate in the workforce and do anything we can do to allow them the opportunity to get into it. I will not tell you her name, but one girl said that the Green Army had even helped her sleeping patterns. She had previously been up all night most of the time and sleeping most of day. In the Green Army, you have to get up in the morning, put your uniform on and get out there and work physically, which meant she was in bed at sleep at night. It is a great project. You should get out there and meet the people doing this, because they are a great bunch of kids.
Employment
Ms BURKE (Chisholm) (13:33): Since the 2013 election, there has been a significant increase in the number of Australians experiencing long-term unemployment, and it reached a 16-year high this year. The number of people out of work for a year or more has risen rapidly, by 18 per cent, to 188,000, which is the highest number since the late 1990s and almost three times more than during the mid-2008 GFC. Long-term unemployment has a major effect on people's wellbeing and dignity. Those out of work for a long period are more likely to become socially isolated and suffer mental and physical illnesses.
My electorate is now markedly above the national average unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent. Both Burwood and Box Hill are now at 10.2 per cent, an anomaly that I have never experienced before in my time in parliament. The Abbott government has no plan to get people off welfare payments and into work. The only solution the Abbott government has come up with is to cut the amount of support to programs, with $1 billion cut from apprenticeships; $1 billion cut from trade training centres; $128 million cut from Youth Connections, Partnership Brokers and National Career Development; Job Services Australia restricting participation for volunteer job seekers; and funding for local employment coordinators reduced by $800,000.
The Abbott government needs to invest in better quality training courses that match the jobs our economy needs now and in the future. Not all jobs are the same as they were a decade ago, and new skills need to be taught. These people need access to the training they deserve. Without the skills, these vulnerable people will never have the confidence to re-enter the workforce, and the sad cycle of long-term unemployment will continue. So wrote Sarah Hearn, a year 10 student from Korowa doing work experience in my office last week.
The Torch
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (13:34): Professor Steven Kates has written:
An economy works best where the population at large is disgusted by corrupt practices and refuses to accept dishonesty at any level.
… … …
Where dishonest practices become the norm … no economy can … succeed.
… … …
Acceptance of corrupt practice will condemn a society to economic stagnation.
Therefore we owe a great debt of gratitude to those who have stood up against corruption, often at great personal risk. Last week I attended The Torch newspaper's 95th anniversary. I would like to recognise that paper's long and proud history in exposing corruption, and especially the contribution of the late Philip Engisch, the editor of The Torch in the 1950s, with his expose of the 'Mr Big' of Bankstown, Ray Fitzpatrick. It has been written of Fitzpatrick that he was like a Tony Soprano, a thoroughly despicable character guilty of various crimes, from intimidation and racketeering to arson and possibly worse. His links with the New South Wales Labor Party appear to have protected him.
In exposing corruption as editor of The Torch, Philip Engisch was seriously bashed at a cricket match at Bankstown Oval, but that failed to silence him. Fitzpatrick even set up a rival newspaper, trying to drive Engisch out of business, and that failed. When that did not work, The Torch newspaper was firebombed and burnt to the ground. And yet it continued to publish, as it still does today. As for Fitzpatrick, he remains the only Australian, along with his editor, Browne, to have actually been jailed by this parliament. In 1955, through a motion moved by Prime Minister Menzies, this parliament voted to jail him for three months.
Barnardos Beach Bolt
Mr THISTLETHWAITE (Kingsford Smith) (13:36): On Sunday, I joined hundreds of members of our community to take part in the first-ever Barnardos Beach Bolt, at Coogee Beach, to raise money for Barnardos Australia. Barnardos, of course, provide valuable foster care and adoption services and support abused and neglected children in our community. The weekend's event was raising awareness of child abuse and, of course, much-needed funds. On Sunday, close to $40,000 was raised by our community for Barnardos. Billed as the toughest mile in Sydney, the beach bolt saw competitors run downhill from Grant Reserve in Coogee onto the beach for a 500-metre, soft-sand beach run and then up a huge hill to the crest of Gordons Bay to the finish line. It was a great community event with competitors of all ages, some in fancy dress, and a mini bolt on the beach for kids.
I must give special praise to a number of people who raised a substantial amount of funds for Barnardos, including the Coogee Cougars, a group of mums who run and raise money for local community events. The Coogee Cougars raised $2,100, and six-year-old Sadie Juneja raised $1,700 all on her own for Barnardos. All in all, it was a wonderful event. I look forward to participating again next year. And special praise to my good mate Pete Wilson, who organised the event.
National Security: Citizenship
Mr LAMING (Bowman) (13:37): I rise to speak to the people of Bowman about my position strongly supporting the stripping of citizenship from dual nationals. Under the precautionary principle, my view is that, presented with adequate information from security agencies, I am comfortable with the ministerial determination on these matters if they are subject to judicial review. Everything should be subject to judicial review in this country, but Australians deserve the security of knowing that these people do not slip back to our homeland without us knowing what antics they have been up to in ISIS controlled territories. It pertains to a few hundred dual nationals. But whether they are single or dual national, my belief is that when they arrive at Istanbul, Oman or Beirut, before they fly and avail themselves of their rights of citizenship, we carry out a full national security assessment before they get on that plane to return to Australia. That may take more than two weeks. That may take a year.
Our message to ISIS is you should not have those travel documentations that come with citizenship until we know you are safe to return. You may be planning on coming back for welfare, obtaining for your spouse a carer's payment for all that mental stress you have suffered. You might want to put your entire extended family on welfare and feel like slinking home to this country. The message is simple: you will not do that unless a national security assessment is performed. Let that occur outside this country through bilateral agreements with our allies.
Lalor Electorate: Wyndham City Swimming Club
Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (13:39): I rise to share with the House an event that I attended last Saturday evening. I had the pleasure of attending the Wyndham City Swimming Club's 2015 presentation night. It was a wonderful evening organised to recognise the achievements and participation of many in my community. I was honoured to present the club champion trophies to two wonderful young people who work tirelessly on their swimming and also contribute to the club. I also presented letters of congratulations to swimmers Emmason McCurley and Marco Soesanto as well as head coach Peter Botheras, for their performance in state and national championships. It was a celebration that all in attendance enjoyed. I would like to congratulate Sharon Macintyre for her work in organising the event and president Vin, who is always, always giving to our community.
It is great that in my electorate we have many varied sporting clubs and thousands of volunteers who give their time and energy to ensure that the community have access and the ability to participate and connect through sport. The swimming club does this as well and does it with aplomb. This was an evening where young people, dressed to the nines, came together to celebrate the time they spend together doing laps at training and getting together to compete all around Australia. They reflect the community spirit that is in my community. I commend all the young people and the volunteers who support them.
Parkes Electorate: Schools
Mr COULTON (Parkes—The Nationals Chief Whip) (13:40): On Friday, 5 June, my wife and I were very privileged to be invited to the Macquarie Anglican Grammar School commissioning service for their new headmaster Mr Craig Mansour. Mr Mansour has moved to Dubbo from Nowra, where he was the head of campus at Shoalhaven Region Anglican Schools. I would like to compliment the Macquarie Anglican Grammar School because in the very short 14 years since it has been established, it has become a centre of excellence for education in the Dubbo community. Along with the other schools in Dubbo, whether they be the Dubbo Christian School, St John's Catholic Primary School or the large number of public primary and high schools, Dubbo has become a centre of excellence for education, together with the outlying schools in the Parkes electorate.
This week I had the privilege of meeting the students from Rowena Public School, a very small school in western New South Wales, at Parliament House. They were certainly great ambassadors for the black soil plains of western New South Wales. Also, on Monday students of the Boggabri Public School were privileged to be part of the ceremony to celebrate 800 years of the Magna Carta. They did the community of Boggabri very proud in the way that they were presented and the way that they behaved while they were here.
Newcastle Electorate: Camplify
Ms CLAYDON (Newcastle) (13:42): I would like to send a shout out to the staff and students of the Holy Family Primary School who are joining us in the schools gallery today. They have travelled from Newcastle.
Last Friday, I hosted the shadow Assistant Treasurer in Newcastle to showcase some of the exciting innovations in our community. We visited Camplify, a tech start-up engaged in the sharing economy. Less than a year old, Camplify got its start through the Jumpstart accelerator program, run by Slingshot in conjunction with the NRMA. The peer-to-peer caravan-sharing service is looking to connect Australia's 500,000 caravan, motorhome and campervan owners with holiday-makers, who could rent and utilise these vehicles in the 46 weeks a year that they generally sit idle in backyards across the country.
Last week, the Camplify team moved into their new office and launched the next phase of their website. Soon they hope to be facilitating hundreds of rentals a week and if that goes well, they look to take their vision globally. Regardless of how successful their organisation is and how big the team gets, Camplify are determined to keep their base in Newcastle, because they value the innovative tech and start-up community and the range of skills and ideas that are generated by Novocastrians.
This visit and engagement was part of Labor's considered approach to the sharing economy. We believe that the sharing economy offers the promise of improving our lives, but we are not uncritical cheerleaders. That is why we have been consulting with service providers, consumers and unions to get their ideas on the rules that should govern this new sector.
Australian Local Government Association
Mr LAUNDY (Reid) (13:44): This week in Canberra we have been joined by local government councillors from across the country as they attended the Australian Local Government Association conference. I am proud to a part of a government that recognises the important role that local government plays in our community and I am delighted that a number of measures announced in the budget reflect this.
In 2015-16 we are giving councils around the nation $700 million to spend on local projects under the $2.1 billion Roads to Recovery Program. The $500 million Black Spot Program will also deliver important road safety upgrades to my electorate of Reid—
An honourable member: And Lyne.
Mr LAUNDY: and Lyne. And we will continue to support local government through the Financial Assistance Grant program, which will provide an estimated $9.45 billion to all councils across the forward estimates. These funds will be untied, so many local councils can decide where best to spend the money.
I pay tribute to all the councillors from across my electorate, from all sides of politics, who do such outstanding work. You will forgive me, however, if I make particular reference to those who sit on my side of the fence: Mayors Ronney Oueik and Gulian Vaccari, from Auburn and Strathfield, and Councillors Ned Attie, Steve Yang, Michael Megna, Mirjana Cestar, Helen McCaffrey, Tanveer Ahmed, Sang Ok, Stephanie Kokkolis, Tony Doueihi, Justin Taunton, Julie Passas, Vittoria Raciti, Max Raiola and Adriano Raiola. Thank you all for the great work you do. It was a privilege to have you here this week, and I look forward to seeing you back in the electorate sometime soon.
Forrest Electorate: Illicit Drugs
Ms MARINO (Forrest—Government Whip) (13:45): Last Thursday, 100 people from my electorate met at the Gelorup Community Centre to discuss the impact that methamphetamine, or ice, is having on our community. The stories we heard that day gave those present a real and at times terrifying impression of the lives lived by those families who are impacted by this scourge, as well as the damage done to the person using ice.
We heard from family members too frightened to be in their own homes with an ice addict, fearful for their personal safety. We heard of a 78-year-old woman having to live in a refuge as a result. We heard from those who suffered the financial burden of their family member's addiction. We heard from recovered addicts, telling their story and giving their opinion on how to help others. And we heard from the community professionals, including Superintendent Peter Hatch, of the Western Australia Police, on the great job they are doing in this space—how they are doing their best to manage the issue, and how they themselves need assistance. We heard from young people, and I asked them what information they need to help them make better decisions.
I would like to thank all those who attended and the Minister for Justice for his support in getting this meeting together. I look forward to working on this issue and the issues raised—especially that of connecting families suffering from the impacts of ice addiction—into the future. This issue of ice is a law and order issue; it is an education issue; and it is a health issue as well.
Kingston Electorate: Australia's Biggest Morning Tea
Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston) (13:47): It is my pleasure to report that I recently was involved in Australia's Biggest Morning Tea with residents at the Aldinga Shores retirement village, as well as the Moana Mews Retirement Village. It was fantastic that residents were all involved in raising money for this very important cause, the Cancer Council. I would particularly like to recognise the members of the social committee for their hard work in organising the fundraising activities.
At the Aldinga Shores Retirement Village, they put on a fantastic morning tea. I think I was a little heavier when I left! They also treated me to some spectacular line dancing. At the Moana Mews Retirement Village, they also put on a wonderful spread, and there was also the quick-thinking resident dancer Jane Hawkins, who did an impressive impromptu dance when the PA system failed. She is really a great entertainer.
I have to say that I did not dance at either of these events, but I did enjoy watching them. I was also pleased for my son, Percy. It was one of his first official functions, and he was also warmly welcomed by the residents. In fact, he was much more popular than I was!
Aldinga Shores raised almost $600. The residents at Moana Mews raised $500. They deserve to be commended for their efforts to raise money for a very important cause, the Cancer Council of South Australia.
Price, Mr Stephen
Mrs MARKUS (Macquarie) (13:48): I rise to acknowledge the bravery of the former Captain of the Valley Heights Rural Fire Brigade, Stephen Price, during the devastating Blue Mountains bushfires of 2013. Last Saturday, I had the privilege and was absolutely delighted to attend the station's annual general meeting, where Mr Price was acknowledged and honoured for his bravery. Last month, Mr Price was awarded the New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner's Certificate of Commendation for his outstanding actions and service.
On 17 October 2013, a fire was reported at Linksview Road at Springwood. Within 30 minutes it had crossed Hawkesbury Road and was spreading rapidly. Mr Price took the brigade's personnel carrier to Singles Ridge Road at Winmalee to check on the safety of residents. On his arrival at the Rainbow Pre-school, where five adults and 13 children, aged two to five, were on the scene, with fire approaching, Captain Price made the decision to evacuate everyone and drove them to Springwood Public School, to safety.
He then returned to Singles Ridge Road to transport residents who were unable to leave under their own steam. The conditions were extreme. On the way back to safety, the vehicle sustained a damaged tyre. Captain Price changed the tyre of the fully loaded vehicle under severe ember attack before leaving the fire zone, returning all to safety. I congratulate him and acknowledge his bravery.
Freedom of Information
Ms MacTIERNAN (Perth) (13:50): We need to rename the Freedom of Information Act because its current name constitutes deceptive and misleading conduct. It must be renamed the 'Freedom from Information Act'. For over a year, I have been trying to get some documents relating to the $1.6 billion Perth Freight Link and have drawn a blank. I thought it was pretty extraordinary that the department of infrastructure were demanding over $2,500 in charges because they reckoned that I wanted the documents for my own interest and not to inform the public debate. That absurd decision is currently being challenged in the AAT.
But now we have a new challenge. Yesterday the department told us that they have decided that, even if I pay the ransom, I will be getting only the publicly available documents. Extraordinarily, they have accepted the argument from Main Roads WA that, if a document is not in the public domain, it is inherently confidential and therefore can be exempted. They argue that, if the confidential exchanges between the state and the Commonwealth government are made public, it would damage relations between the Commonwealth and the state, and therefore all documents are to be exempt.
So why do we have FOI legislation, if all documents that are not in the public domain are excluded by definition? And how can having traffic counts between— (Time expired)
Boardman, Mr Victor Maxwell
Mr MATHESON (Macarthur) (13:51): I wish to pay tribute to a great man, Victor Maxwell Boardman, a constituent in my electorate of Macarthur, who sadly passed away at the age of 93 on Sunday. Vic lived and worked on his family dairy farm on the outskirts of Camden his entire life and became a noteworthy and trusted advocate of agriculture in the Macarthur region. Vic displayed his lifelong passion and commitment for the local community by contributing to the Camden Show, the Camden Historical Society, the Oaks Historical Society, the Vintage Car Club and the Crank Handlers Association.
Vic is well known for his extensive historical knowledge about early Camden, the Oaks and surrounding areas as well his hugely popular 'drovers camp', in which he served exceptional damper and billy tea to the public at the Camden Show for the past 25 years. In 2006 Vic was presented with the Agricultural Societies Council of New South Wales award for his contribution to the Camden Show Society over fifty years. In 2014, he received a Senior Volunteer Award at Macarthur's 2014 National Volunteer Awards.
A few months ago, I visited Vic at Carrington Centennial Care to have a chat and to see how he was going. I fondly remember that sunny morning when I sat there with Vic's daughter, Ruth, and Vic opened up about his life, and this gave me a great insight into a truly remarkable man. It is a day I will never forget.
I would like to extend my deepest sympathy to Vic's wife, Joan; their four remaining children, Ruth, Max, Kevin and Rex; and their entire family and friends in the community. Rest in peace, Vic. You will always be loved and remembered by your family, friends and community. You were truly a great man.
Parliament House Midwinter Ball
Ms BRODTMANN (Canberra) (13:53): As we all know, the social event of the year is being held tonight—Parliament House's night of nights: the Midwinter Ball. It is, of course, hotly contested, with thousands of people applying for tickets every year, and only a couple hundred of tickets available.
It is a chance to catch up with colleagues and friends and to have a bit of fun. But it is also about so much more. Since the first Midwinter Ball in 2000, almost $3 million has been raised for charity. And many of those charities are in the ACT and in my electorate of Canberra. Last year $100,000 was donated for Soldier On; $30,000 to Motor Neurone Disease NSW-ACT; $30,000 to Muscular Dystrophy NSW-ACT; and $30,000 to Cystic Fibrosis ACT. In previous years other ACT and Canberra organisations and charities have also benefited, including Marymead Child and Family Centre, MS Society of the ACT, Red Cross ACT and Autism Asperger ACT.
A huge amount of work goes into organising an event like the Midwinter Ball—as we know, it is huge—and I would like to acknowledge the hard work of the panel and, in fact, the entire press gallery, for the effort they put into it. I look forward to catching up with everyone tonight and I hope we exceed all expectations in the amount of money we raise for community organisations.
I shopped locally for my frock and I am looking forward to wearing a beautiful Zilpah Tart dress.
New South Wales Federation of Community Language Schools
Mr VARVARIS (Barton) (13:54): Last Saturday I had the great pleasure of attending the New South Wales Federation of Community Language Schools annual dinner, representing the Prime Minister, the Hon. Tony Abbott. Community Language Schools play a significant role in communities all over Australia. Community languages are so vital to our vibrant, multicultural society, because they reflect the social fabric of this great nation. It also allows for a fostering of greater understanding of different cultures through the exchange of language.
In Australia, more than 300 languages are spoken, and in my electorate of Barton over 40 different languages are spoken at home. As such, many families enrol their children in language schools to ensure they have cultural links to their country of origin whilst building new networks in Australia. In Barton alone, there are options to learn Chinese, Greek, Arabic, Macedonian, Hindi, Bengali, Filipino and Hungarian—just to name a few. The ability to speak two or more languages is a great benefit to Australia and something we should encourage and promote.
The work of community language schools is vital to giving people linguistic diversity, and the ability to do business in other languages. In New South Wales, we have over 50 different community languages being taught in our schools. This is due to the effort and dedication of the New South Wales Federation of Community Language Schools, the hardworking volunteers, parents and community leaders. Their hard work is very much appreciated.
Asylum Seekers
Mr FEENEY (Batman) (13:56): Last week Australia saw yet another example of this government's irresponsible exploits when it comes to asylum seekers, with the Prime Minister refusing to deny that people smugglers had been payed to ship people back to Indonesia. This most recent incident follows the Prime Minister extolling the virtues of his 'turn back the boats' policy in relation to the Rohingya humanitarian crises.
It was deeply irresponsible for the Prime Minister to liken the week-long journey from Java to Australia, where boats are turned back to a transit country, to a situation in the Indian Ocean where people travelling for weeks in unsafe conditions face the risk of being pushed back into the open ocean to suffer from malnutrition and even starvation.
Even after two damning reports, we are still seeing children languishing indefinitely in detention and we have even seen babies hours-old returned to Nauru. This comes after the government's inexcusable use of detained children as blackmail to pass their temporary protection visa scheme. In 2014 children in detention had been held for an average of 400 days, a shocking statistic when we consider the impact that indefinite detention can have on the mental, physical and developmental wellbeing of these children. In the United Kingdom the maximum period a child can be detained is three days. No-one wants to see children in detention, and we have only seen the length of detention increase under this government. Where children must remain in detention for any length of time, their health, education and wellbeing must be assured by the provision of adequate services and facilities.
Asylum seeker policy should be driven by fairness, compassion and a determination to prevent deaths at sea; instead, what we are getting from this Prime Minister and this government is secrecy, an ignorance—(Time expired)
Housing Affordability
Mr NIKOLIC (Bass—Government Whip) (13:57): I am pleased to inform the House that the Mayor of Launceston, Albert Van Zetten, is in the chamber today. It is timely he is in the gallery because he can confirm my good news for first homebuyers who are struggling to find an affordable home in Sydney or Melbourne. My advice is: have a look at property prices in regional areas like Northern Tasmania. The Tasmanian Real Estate Institute's March report shows that the median price for a house in Tasmania was $310,000. In Launceston in the previous quarter 58 per cent of houses sold for under $300,000. Using a quick internet search this afternoon, I found more than 20 properties in Launceston for sale under $200,000. Now that is affordable.
I have no doubt that young people wanting to get into the property market where prices are up to $1 million face a very difficult situation. But prices in Sydney and Melbourne do not give an accurate picture of housing affordability more broadly. This year the average mortgage in Australia was more than $400,000; the latest APS figures for Tasmania show the average home loan for owner-occupation of a new house was half that. So I ask people around the country to think—as the Mayor of Launceston does and as I do—and join our wonderful uncrowded lifestyle in Launceston, the most liveable city in Australia.
Defence Procurement
Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (13:59): Today on the front page of The Australian there was more concern that more defence manufacturing jobs will be lost. Again and again and again under this government we are losing vital defence manufacturing jobs. I am concerned about what this means for the Bendigo Thales facility. We are sweating and waiting on this government to sign the Hawkei contract. When will this government commit to the Hawkei contract and lock in those jobs? In Bendigo, we are waiting on this government to sign that contract. How many defence manufacturing jobs will be lost under this government? How many people will lose their jobs? What kinds of guarantees will this government give to the supply chain for these defence manufacturing jobs? The Bushmaster is an example of great defence manufacturing success. There are 120 companies involved in that supply chain, including a number of small businesses in my electorate. We are calling on this government to make the same commitment to small business— (Time expired)
The SPEAKER: In accordance with standing order 43 the time for members' statements has concluded.
CONDOLENCES
Johnson, Hon. Leslie Royston, AM
Report from Federation Chamber
Order of the day returned from Federation Chamber for further consideration; certified copy of the motion presented.
Debate resumed on the motion:
That the House record its deep regret at the death, on 26 May 2015 of the Honourable Leslie Royston Johnson AM, a former Minister, Deputy Speaker and Member for the Division of Hughes from 1955 to 1966 and 1969 to 1983, place on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service, and tender its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.
The SPEAKER (14:00): The question is that the motion moved by the Hon. the Prime Minister be agreed to. As a mark of respect, I ask all present to signify their approval by rising in their places.
Question agreed to, honourable members standing in their places.
Clarke, Mr Ron, AO MBE
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah—Prime Minister) (14:01): Madam Speaker, on indulgence: I do wish to inform the House that today we mourn the loss of a true gentleman of Australian sport, Ron Clarke, who embodied the very best of sportsmanship.
As members of a certain age might remember, at 19 years old he was chosen to light the Olympic flame at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Ron represented Australia at two Olympics and at three Commonwealth Games and over almost a decade on the international circuit he broke 17 world records. From 1965 to 1972 he held every world record for middle-distance running, a feat unmatched by any other athlete.
But it was Ron Clarke's sportsmanship that defined his running career, a trait which he shared with his great contemporary, John Landy, who famously stopped mid-race to ask Ron if Ron were okay after a fall. Many Australians have been told the story of that race, and that race made Ron and John part of the Australian sporting pantheon.
He was honoured many times. He was an Australian and an international sportsman of the year. He was awarded an MBE and an Order of Australia. He was a successful businessman and author, and served as Mayor of the Gold Coast from 2004 until 2012. To Ron's wife, Helen, and their family I offer the sincere condolences of this parliament and the Australian people.
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:03): Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on indulgence. Today Labor honours the life of a magnificent sportsman and citizen. We offer our sympathies to Ron Clarke's family, friends and loved ones.
In December 1963 Ron broke his first two world records in the same race—the six mile and the 10,000 metre. In an astonishing two-month stretch in 1965, Clarke broke 11 world records in 16 races. For nearly seven years, Ron Clarke set every world record from, two miles to 20 kilometres. He will be forever immortalised in international athletics records.
He won an Olympic bronze in the 10,000 metres in Tokyo and three Commonwealth silvers. After gruelling events over many years and thousands more miles he was in peak form for those two narrow Olympic windows—one week out of 208 weeks—every sinew and muscle in perfect condition. Ron Clarke's tenacity, determination and character were tested but never conquered.
Many reflecting on Ron's passing today will have in their minds the image of a young man, clad in white, carrying a sputtering Olympic torch into an MCG packed with 103,000 spectators to begin the 'friendly games'. This was a 19-year-old carrying the hopes of a nation, proudly opening itself to the world. Incredibly, Ron was not even given a ticket to the ceremony. After he lit the torch he took the train and a bus to his uncle's house in Balwyn and watched the rest on TV!
I believe the enduring message of Ron Clarke was to be one half of the most famous incident in Australian sport. At the Australian mile championship in Melbourne in March 1956, Clarke clipped the heel of a fellow competitor and he fell. John Landy, who was behind Clarke, tried to leap over him but he caught his spikes on Clarke's forearm on the way through. What happened next belongs to legend. Landy stopped and turned back to check on Clarke. Clarke got to his feet and assured Landy that he was okay. Landy then went on to catch the field and win the race. Much of the nobility of that event belongs to Landy, who sacrificed a world record. But it demonstrated respect for a young athlete who will forever be part of the moment as it is immortalised in bronze outside Melbourne's Olympic Park. He will be remembered for the graceful, resolute way he always bore his fortunes. He is an enduring message to all young Australian sportspeople. He is a vivid example of the Olympic ideal.
In later life Ron became a great citizen. He served his community as Mayor of the Gold Coast. Ron Clarke filled every unforgiving minute with 60-seconds worth of distance run. We salute his life—a great citizen and a great sportsmen who ticked many boxes—and we offer our heartfelt condolences to his family. May he rest in peace.
The SPEAKER (14:06): As a mark of respect, I ask all those present to stand in their places.
Honourable members having stood in their places—
The SPEAKER: I thank the House.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Budget
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:07): Before the election, the Prime Minister said: 'Only the Coalition can be trusted when we say there will be no deals with the Greens. No deals with flaky Independents, no deals whatsoever.' Given the Prime Minister has now done dirty deals with the Greens on the debt ceiling and slashing part pensions, how can Australians believe a single word this Prime Minister says?
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah—Prime Minister) (14:07): I am a little surprised that the Leader of the Opposition should choose to start question time today talking about trust, given what we were told on The Killing Season last night. We all know that former Prime Minister Julia Gillard was advised—
Mr Burke: Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order on direct relevance. If we are going to get that segue on every question it will be a very boring question time.
The SPEAKER: There is no point of order.
Mr ABBOTT: One after another the guilty men get to their feet, trying to defend the guilty party. The former Prime Minister was advised 'you couldn't trust Bill Shorten and he would do Julia in', and that is exactly what happened. It is typical, I fear, of the Leader of the Opposition that he would verbal others in the way that he has just sought to verbal me. As everyone knows, the quote in question was in reference to the formation of a minority government. I was speaking about the formation of a minority government. I said that when it came to the formation of a minority government after the 2013 election there would be no deals with the Greens, no deals with independents and no deals with anyone to form a minority coalition government. We all know what happened the last time someone did a deal with the Greens to form a minority government. That is exactly what the Labor Party did. They did a sordid deal with the Greens to form a minority government. And what did that give us? It gave us the carbon tax, it gave us chaos on our borders and it gave us the absolute disaster of that term from 2010 to 2013 about which we are learning so much, courtesy of the ABC. I want to say publicly thank you to the ABC. I do not normally say thank you to the ABC but I have to say Australia is indebted to you in this instance.
Trade
Ms LANDRY (Capricornia) (14:11): My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on how the free trade agreement signed today with China will boost jobs and help exporters in my electorate of Capricornia?
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah—Prime Minister) (14:11): I thank the member for Capricornia for her question. This is indeed a historic day. On behalf of the Australian people I was there to witness the signing between Minister Robb and Minister Gao of China of this free trade agreement which will do so much for our two countries and will do so much to cement and build upon the friendship between our two countries. The historic agreement that was signed today means that more than 95 per cent of Australia's exports to China will enter duty free. Beef will enter duty free. Dairy will enter duty free. Wine will enter duty free. Most of our minerals will enter China duty free. That is very good for Australia and it is very good for China. For Australia it means more exports and lower prices for consumer goods. For China it means more exports and it means high-quality food. All of us in this place—all of us in this country—can be proud of the role that Australia has played in the Chinese economic miracle, which quite simply is the greatest advance in human prosperity in history. Australian iron ore, Australian coal, Australian gas and increasingly Australian food have done that. We on this side of the House have effected a trifecta of trade deals. That will be very good for our country and very good for the world. More trade means more jobs. More jobs and more trade mean a stronger economy. We have just seen some modelling from the Centre for International Economics of the three free trade agreements. Within two decades, Australian goods exports to China, Japan and Korea will be up 11.7 per cent, or $17 billion more than otherwise. Our service exports will be 14 per cent more than otherwise. Our GDP will be almost $25 billion more than otherwise. There will be 178,000 more jobs than otherwise, and real wages are expected to be half a per cent higher than they otherwise would be because of this trifecta of trade. This is a government which is getting on with the job of building a better Australia, creating a strong, safe and prosperous Australia for everyone.
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
The SPEAKER (14:14): I would like to advise the chamber that we have with us Her Excellency the Honourable Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources, Minister Mereseini Vuniwaqa, from Fiji. We make you most welcome. We also have with us Mr Martin Chungong, the Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, who is visiting as well. We make you both most welcome.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Pensions
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:15): My question is to the Prime Minister. Independent analysis reveals that couples on lower than average incomes will be hardest hit by the Prime Minister's cut to part pensions. What does the Prime Minister say to hardworking Australians in their 50s and 60s who suddenly find that the Prime Minister has cut their plans for modest retirement incomes?
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah—Prime Minister) (14:15): What I say to all those decent hardworking Australians who are putting something aside for their retirement, is that their savings are safe under the coalition. But their savings will never be safe under Labor because Labor sees their savings as a potential source of revenue to fund their out-of-control spending. That is what Labor does. Labor sees their savings as their piggybank.
This government understands the difference between a social security benefit that the government pays to you from tax revenue and superannuation, which is your money. Superannuation money does not belong to the government; superannuation money belongs to you. It belongs to the person who has scrimped and saved and denied himself or herself to put money aside for retirement. So that is why we say that your superannuation savings are safe under this government.
We promised before the election there would be no adverse changes to superannuation in this term of parliament. There have been done. There will be none. We have said that we have no plans for further changes to superannuation. Let me make it crystal clear: under this government, there will be no increased taxes on superannuation. There will be no increased restrictions on the use to which remuneration can be put because we understand something that members opposite just do not get. We understand that your superannuation belongs to you.
Mr Champion interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Wakefield.
Mr Thistlethwaite interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Kingsford Smith will desist.
Mr ABBOTT: There has been an agreement reached between the government and the Australian Greens. It is a good agreement. It is an agreement which means that pensions will be fairer and more sustainable over the future. What this agreement does is give 170,000 Australians with very modest assets $30 a fortnight more. And Labor wants to take it away so that people with a million dollars in assets and the family home should continue to be part pensioners. Well, nothing better illustrates the deranged moral compass of the current Labor Party.
Trade
Mr HUTCHINSON (Lyons) (14:18): My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Will the minister update the House on the response from industry to the landmark free-trade agreement with China. What are some of the broader benefits for businesses in my electorate of Lyons and around Australia?
Mr ROBB (Goldstein—Minister for Trade and Investment) (14:18): I thank the member for Lyons, who everyone knows is a very strong advocate for the businesses in his electorate, which are many and varied. This free-trade agreement that was signed earlier this afternoon is in fact very much a transformative agreement. I can quote several sources already.
There is a very significant former trade minister who is now chairman—amongst other things—of the Australian Livestock Exporters Council, Mr Simon Crean. Mr Crean said about this agreement:
Across the board, Australia is poised to enter a new era of trading relations with China. I particularly welcome the comprehensive nature of the agreement and the tariff free access gained by the red meat sector which is a huge win for producers and exporters.
The Business Council of Australia describes the agreement as 'transformative'.
This historic agreement is a transformative moment for the Australian economy
… … …
The agreement opens an unprecedented level of access for our key sectors into Chinese markets,
The bottom line is that this is such a complementary set of economies. What China wants, we have got. And what we want, China has got. This agreement allows both our countries to play to our strengths and to make the most of our strengths. This agreement allows us to build on the resources and energy market and the agricultural relationship that we have with China. It allows us to, in many ways, build on the educational services. China is our biggest education market with 140,000 Chinese students here right now. It allows us to build on our health services.
This agreement is very much not just focused on goods but for us it does put a focus on our services. We are an economy in which 75 per cent of our GDP is made up of services yet 15 per cent of our exports directly result from services. We have got so much to offer a country like China that is desperate for services. That is where the jobs are. Even a seat like Lyons is going to benefit from all the things the Prime Minister talked about in beef, seafood, honey and you name it in the agricultural area, as well as from services such as even things like pilot training and financial services. A lot of small business will be able to set up and get a presence in this huge market of 1.36 billion people. This is a landmark agreement and one that is going to stand Australia in good stead.
Mr Abbott: Madam Speaker, on indulgence—Australians yet unborn owe a debt of gratitude to this minister for this agreement. I think he deserves a round of applause.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
The SPEAKER: That was an unusual intervention and is not to be taken as a precedent.
Superannuation
Ms MACKLIN (Jagajaga) (14:22): My question is to the Prime Minister and follows his last answer. The leader of the Greens, Richard Di Natale, says that superannuation tax concessions are on the table as part of a deal to cut up to $8,000 from part pensioners. Prime Minister, is that the case?
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah—Prime Minister) (14:23): No, it is not. I have been asked about deals with the Greens. What I would invite the Leader of the Opposition to do is to guarantee that the Labor Party will never again enter a minority government with the support of the Greens. It is a very fair question.
Mr Burke: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. You have frequently counselled the opposition that, if there is argument in a question, it opens it up. There is no argument in this question, and there is no way that where the Prime Minister is now going is directly relevant.
The SPEAKER: I call the honourable the Prime Minister.
Mr ABBOTT: I think that following on my clear commitment never to do a deal with the Greens to enter a minority government—
Mr Burke: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Prime Minister is addressing the question of an agreement.
Mr ABBOTT: the Leader of the Opposition should be required, if not today, at least by gentlemen in the gallery, to indicate that under his leadership Labor would never, ever enter into a deal with the Greens to form a minority government. I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that while we are extending the time for submissions to the tax white paper—
The SPEAKER: The Prime Minister will resume his seat. We will have some silence. The honourable member for Isaacs, on a point of order. We have already had relevance.
Mr Dreyfus: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Prime Minister answered this question in his first sentence. The answer was, 'no'. He is wilfully disregarding—
The SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. The member for Isaacs is abusing the standing orders. He ought to know better. The Prime Minister has the call.
Mr ABBOTT: We have agreed to extend the closing date for submissions to the tax white paper process for six weeks. Obviously, we welcome further submissions to the tax white paper process. I suspect that, as originally intended by the tax white paper process—
Ms Owens interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Parramatta is warned.
Mr ABBOTT: some of those submissions will be on retirement incomes.
Mr Champion interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Wakefield is warned.
Mr ABBOTT: That is perfectly fair and reasonable. I suspect that many of those submissions will say, 'Whatever you do, don't increase taxes on superannuation. Whatever you do, don't make superannuation more restrictive.' I will be able to say that this government will never do that. We are not going to increase taxes on superannuation. We are not going to make superannuation more restrictive. I tell you what we are going to do: we are going to give pensioners with modest assets a much better deal. That is what we are going to do. 170,000 pensioners with modest assets will be $30 a fortnight better off under this government thanks to the agreement we have with the Australian Greens. Would that Labor were so responsible. Would that they were not so determined to be wreckers—not just wreckers of legislation but wreckers of the lives of those 170,000 poor people who will have their $30 a fortnight ripped off them by this individual if he ever gets to be the Prime Minister of our country.
Biofuels
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (14:27): My question is addressed to the Minister for the Environment. There are now three biofuels projects almost shovel ready—Ingham NQBE, Charters Towers and Townsville UBurIS and Atherton Tablelands StaDS—producing nil emissions, 10 per cent of Australia's petrol and three per cent of its diesel. In light of US Pacific Fleet interest in biodiesel and AIMS research showing that CO2 increases causes flowering coral to be deflowered, could he assure a flowering of the north and stop any naughty deflowering please?
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for the Environment) (14:27): I thank the member for Kennedy for his question asked with characteristic elan. I will say this: in just that question, he has asked 50 per cent of the questions that the entire Labor Party has asked about the environment in the last two years, and that one question was twice as good.
Firstly, I join with him in being delighted at the fact that a reef that we inherited on the path to being listed as in danger is off that track and is now being proclaimed by the United Nations. Secondly, in relation to his three projects, there are probably three things that we are doing that can help. But I will say this: all of this is being done as we prepare very shortly for a Northern Australia white paper which will open up the great north to immense opportunity.
The three things we are doing at these. Firstly, we are removing barriers to new projects. To the best of my knowledge, none of those three projects are currently seeking federal environmental approval; but, if they do, they will be subject to a one-stop shop which has seen us clear $1 trillion of backlogged approvals under a process which they proposed in government and opposed in opposition.
Mr Burke: That's not true, Greg.
Mr HUNT: Yes, you go back to 2012—April COAG, Dunce. But it was a great performance last night, Burkey—one of your stellar performances! The best since Thredbo, I have got to say. Keep it coming, Buddy!
Honourable members interjecting—
Mr Dreyfus: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order—
Government members interjecting—
Mr Dreyfus: When the baying stops on the other side: that was a clearly unparliamentary expression and it should be withdrawn.
The SPEAKER: The minister would assist the House by withdrawing.
Mr HUNT: I withdraw. Not only is there the one-stop shop. Beyond that, we are also providing incentives for emissions reduction. The first Emissions Reduction Fund auction: 47 million tonnes—in Queensland, 19 projects. I believe, from what I have heard, that these projects may well comply under the transport methodology. So there is another opportunity—barriers gone, incentives in place and, thirdly, we can provide incentives for new workforce development. And we can do that by giving young people training through the Green Army. Already 300 projects have commenced, even though we said it would be only 250 this year. In your electorate, I think the figure is: 24 projects have been announced and a number of those have commenced. So we are removing barriers. We are providing incentives and we are allowing new people to enter the workforce, so we can help if you have a project that you want to bring forward.
Trade
Mr RUDDOCK (Berowra) (14:31): I have a substantial question for the Minister for Health, on trade. Will the minister update the House on benefits to the health sector of the free trade agreement concluded with China?
Ms LEY (Farrer—Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (14:31): Can I also congratulate the Minister for Trade and Investment on successfully negotiating this momentous agreement which will have highly positive benefits for the Australian economy. As the Prime Minister and the Minister for Trade and Investment have noted today, Australia is well and truly open for business. At its core, this agreement will mean more jobs for more Australians. It will mean better access to the world's second-largest economy, an improved competitive position for export markets, more prospects for increased two-way investment and reduced costs for imports—for Australian businesses and consumers alike.
The benefits of this agreement are far-reaching, and one of the great beneficiaries in our economy is services—in particular, our world-class health sector. I come from a rural electorate and often we think of the free trade agreement in terms of agriculture, beef and primary produce. But we forget that China is already Australia's largest services market, worth nearly $7.5 billion in 2013-14. This agreement will knock down barriers to trade in services. For the Chinese economy transitioning its population into the modern world of health care, the hospital system is there but the primary care system is well and truly ripe for development, and the opportunities we have to help provide 1.3 billion citizens with primary care are pretty good. In practical terms, Australian healthcare providers will now be able to take their world-class expertise to this emerging market. They will be able to build Australian-owned hospitals and nursing homes in China—and, most importantly, train the staff to run them. This will provide major benefits to Australia and to the biotech and pharmaceuticals sector, because tariffs on these products will be progressively phased out within four years. China already imports more than half a billion dollars worth of pharmaceuticals a year, and this is a terrific opportunity for us.
I note the grim looks on the faces of those opposite and I can understand their embarrassment. The minister made nine trips to China. I know the previous mandarin-speaking Labor Prime Minister probably made a lot more, but was anything achieved? Absolutely nothing. We have concluded three major trade agreements—something those opposite could never do. We have done in one year what they could not do in six. Negotiations for this agreement started under the Howard government, stalled under six years of Labor and were concluded under the Abbott government. Again I congratulate the minister.
Age Pension
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:34): My question is to the Prime Minister. Under this Prime Minister's deal with the Greens to cut the pension, a single age pensioner with a super income of less than $25,000 a year will lose $8,200 of their part pension every year. Does the Prime Minister think that pensioners with a super income of $25,000 a year are rich?
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah—Prime Minister) (14:35): No, I do not. But let me explain exactly what this government is doing. We are increasing the pension for 170,000 Australians with modest assets. That is what we are doing. We are increasing the pension for 170,000 Australians with very modest assets—and yes, Madam Speaker, we are ensuring that people with a million dollars in assets and the family home will no longer get the part pension. We are ensuring that. I draw a fundamental distinction—
Ms Plibersek: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am not sure that the Prime Minister knows that a pensioner with—
The SPEAKER: The member will resume her seat. Resume your seat. You know perfectly well you may not get up there and argue on a point of order. It is totally out of order and you do it constantly. The Prime Minister has the call.
Mr ABBOTT: This line of questioning is driven by two things: first of all, the Labor Party's embarrassment that the Greens are actually more economically responsible than they are—at least on this issue; and the wonky moral compass of a political party which wants to take money—
Dr Chalmers interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Rankin will leave under 94(a).
The member for Rankin then left the chamber.
Mr ABBOTT: off pensioners with modest assets so that millionaires can get a part pension. That is the truth of what the Labor Party is now proposing. What the Labor Party is now proposing—and it is clear from this line of questioning—is that they want to take money away from people with modest assets, from pensioners with very modest assets so that people with their own homes and $1 million in assets will stay as part pensioners. They would rather look after people with $1 million in assets than look after people with very modest assets. That is the clear conclusion from this line of questioning.
The other thing that Labor simply does not understand is the difference between a social security benefit, which is money that the government pays to people out of tax, and superannuation. Superannuation is the people's money. It is not owned by government. Because there is a tax concession, they say, it belongs to the government. That is their position. Because there is a tax concession it really belongs to Bill, the trouser king. There he is. He wants to trouser your money.
The SPEAKER: The Prime Minister will resume his seat. The Prime Minister will refer to people by their correct titles.
Mr Dreyfus interjecting—
The SPEAKER: I just said that; I do not need you to repeat it. The Prime Minister has the call.
Mr ABBOTT: I do apologise. I allowed my enthusiasm for the government's position to run away from me. The sad truth about Labor under this leader is that they would rather see millionaires receive a part pension than ensure that pensioners with modest assets are better off. This government has got its values and its principles right.
Budget
Mr BRUCE SCOTT (Maranoa—Deputy Speaker) (14:39): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. Will the minister update the House on the benefits to the Australian agriculture sector and to regional Australia, including my electorate of Maranoa, of the government's budget and the delivery of the free trade agreement with China?
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (14:39): I thank the honourable member for his question, because, if there is one place that has a lot to benefit from the free trade agreement, it is certainly the seat of Maranoa, and I commend the work done by Minister Robb. It is great also to see some decent rain happening in the seat of Maranoa this week as well.
In the seat of Maranoa we have one of the largest cattle-selling facilities in Australia, one of the largest cattle-selling facilities in the world. Under the free trade agreement negotiated by Minister Robb and the coalition we will see the tariff that was between 12 and 25 per cent eliminated to zero over eight years, and that is a substantial reduction. Obviously, this reduction will further enhance the record prices that we are currently getting for cattle. This, absolutely, sends a signal back to the people of Maranoa, back to the people of Mallee, and back to the people of Western Australia that, if we can increase our numbers, we can bring a real increase in returns back through the farm gate.
It is not just in cattle, of course. In sheep meat there was formerly a tariff of between 12 and 23 per cent. This, too, will be reduced to zero over eight years. This allows the repopulation of so many areas in Queensland with sheep. This is an incredibly important industry and is important, also, for the Labor Party because the AWU was founded on the wool industry. This is important and works hand in glove with the work that we are doing in such things as controlling wild dogs and in the fencing program that we are currently running out.
An industry which is probably not at the forefront of our minds is the goat industry. The goat industry is also getting record prices for goats. This industry formerly had a tariff of 20 per cent and that is being reduced to zero. If you go away from cattle there is the dairy industry where the 15 per cent tariff is to be reduced over four to nine years. Skim milk powder had a 10 per cent tariff and is to be reduced to zero over four to 11 years; there is also whole milk powder. If you go all the way into citrus there was an 11 to 30 per cent tariff on citrus. Citrus is so important to the member for Mallee. This will be reduced over eight years to zero. Summer fruits tariff of 10 to 15 per cent will be reduced over four years to zero.
The purpose of our side of the political fence is to get a better return through the farm gate. This does not happen by accident. Under our government it is most definitely happening. Under this government we have seen the largest turnaround, the biggest turnaround, in the price of soft commodities in the history of this nation. That goes to show you what a difference in government can make to the lives of people.
Age Pension
Ms MACKLIN (Jagajaga) (14:42): My question is to the Prime Minister. Independent analysis shows that couples on incomes of $62,000 a year, who are still in the workforce and due to retire in 10 years' time, stand to lose over $8,000 a year from the Prime Minister's cuts to part pensions. Why is the Prime Minister making hardworking Australians, who are in their 50s and 60s, pay for the Prime Minister's broken promises?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (14:43): I thank the Prime Minister for the opportunity to respond to this question relating to the Rice Warner analysis, which I assume the member is referring to. Rice Warner is who the opposition is relying on for their policy advice in terms of making criticisms of the government If you look at the Rice Warner submission to the tax white paper, this is what they say in relation to social security and the age pension:
We believe the part Age Pension should be phased out.
Out! They want to abolish the part pension.
Retirees should first spend their own assets and be eligible for a full Age Pension when they fall below a threshold.
We suggest that retirees should be allowed some exempt assets.
That is kind!
It would be appropriate for a couple to keep the family home up to a value of $1.5m …
That is it. They want to include the family home in the pension assets test. They are the advisers that those opposite are relying on. It goes on and says that they would allow a maximum amount of assets of just $500,000.
The SPEAKER: I call the member for Jagajaga, and it had better be a proper point of order.
Ms Macklin: It is a proper point of order, Madam Speaker, on relevance, because what he is saying is not relevant to the question.
The SPEAKER: The member will resume her seat. It was not a proper point of order. The minister has the call.
Mr MORRISON: It is very relevant to the policies of those opposite. They go on to say:
If people run out of income but still have a valuable home, they have the choice of downsizing or requesting a government pension …
What they are saying is when you hit it, they want to force them to sell their house. Those opposite have been exposed on this matter as being political junkies. They are relying on advice from people who are telling them to reduce the amount of assets someone can hold to be on a pension—
Mr Thistlethwaite interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Kingsford Smith is warned.
Mr MORRISON: to just $500,000 for a couple. The policy that will be supported in the Senate has a threshold of $823,000.
Ms O'Neil interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Hotham is also warned.
Mr MORRISON: If they are going to come into this place then they need to do their homework on policy. It seems that those opposite when it comes to this issue are only interested in the politics—and they are not very good at that either.
Budget
Mr NIKOLIC (Bass—Government Whip) (14:45): My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer explain how the passage of key small business measures will help create jobs, growth and opportunity in our economy?
Mr HOCKEY (North Sydney—The Treasurer) (14:46): I thank the honourable member for Bass for that fine question. Why? Because he knows how important it is that we create jobs, that we help business to employ more people.
Ms Ryan interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Lalor is not in her seat and may not speak.
Mr HOCKEY: In fact, the member for Bass asked me to acknowledge the Mayor of Launceston who is up in the gallery. Launceston is a great city. The good news is that the unemployment rate in Tasmania has been falling since we came to government. When we came to government, when the member for Bass was elected, the unemployment rate in Tasmania was nearly eight per cent. It has fallen to seven per cent. It is still too high, but it is heading in the right direction and our policies are helping. There is no doubt about that. When you get to that point in Tasmania every single job matters. The member for Bass has pointed out that he spoke to Rod Patterson, the franchisee of Autobarn in Launceston. We know there has been a change of the state government in Tasmania—hooray for that. Rod Patterson said to the honourable member, 'I just thought you would like to know that, because of recent decisions made both federally and in the state, Autobarn Launceston increased our employees by one additional staff member just yesterday.'
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr HOCKEY: The Labor Party are disparaging of that one additional job. That is typical Labor. That one additional job—
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr HOCKEY: Yes, it is so disparaging. That gentleman named Colin is 52 years of age—
The SPEAKER: The members for Griffith and Wakefield will leave under standing order 94(a).
Mr HOCKEY: That man is getting back into work. He is in his second week of his job and he is having a go and Autobarn in Launceston is having a go. They are doing so on the back of the initiatives we put in the budget that focus on giving everyone a chance to invest more in their business: through the $20,000 instant asset write-off, by cutting the income tax for businesses—cutting it by 1.5 per cent for companies and up to $1,000 for unincorporated businesses—
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr HOCKEY: There seems to be a bit of confusion over there, Madam Speaker.
Honourable members interjecting—
The member for Griffith then left the chamber.
The member for Wakefield then left the chamber.
The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business.
Mr Burke: Madam Speaker, did you just eject members of the opposition for applauding in parliament? Is three people applauding somehow different to what we saw there, led by the Prime Minister?
The SPEAKER: Yes, it was.
Mr Burke: Because you are allowed to be applauding the government—
The SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. The Treasurer has the call.
Mr HOCKEY: There were lots of Australians applauding last night when they saw the back of the Labor government. This guy gets best supporting actor in a tragedy—hopeless! The only people standing up for the people of Australia are the coalition. The only people standing up for the jobs of everyday Australians are the coalition government.
Asylum Seekers
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:49): My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to reports that the government is paying wads of cash to criminal people smugglers at sea to smuggle asylum seekers back to Indonesia. Is the Prime Minister concerned that these reports in Indonesia give criminal people smugglers new incentives to set out for Australia?
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah—Prime Minister) (14:50): Perhaps I could best answer the question from the Leader of the Opposition by referring the House to a question that was put to the opposition just the other night. I quote:
The ABC asked the Opposition if it could rule out the possibility that … ASIS agents made payments to people smugglers during the Rudd-Gillard years. Its response: it's unlawful to divulge security or intelligence information.
I am going to say to members opposite that we adhere to Australian law and we stopped the boats. That is what we do: we adhere to Australian law and we stop the boats. Members opposite, who are so upset about what they claim the government may have done, or agents of the Australian government may have done, signally failed to stop the boats. That is the problem. Members opposite just do not like the fact that this government has stopped the boats and they did not. In fact, members opposite started the boats and this government has stopped them.
Mr Dreyfus: Madam Speaker, I have a point of order. The Prime Minister is again not answering the question. I ask that you direct—
The SPEAKER: The member for Isaacs will resume his seat. The Prime Minister has the call.
Mr ABBOTT: We will do whatever is necessary within the law and in accordance with our values as a decent and humane society to stop the boats and to ensure that they stay stopped. That is what we will do. We will do whatever is necessary within the law to stop the boats and to ensure that they stay stopped. What will Labor do? We know what they did in government: they started the boats. Because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to make the decisions that were needed, under members opposite we had more than 50,000 illegal arrivals by sea, we had almost a thousand illegal boats and, tragically, we had more than a thousand deaths at sea. Compare all of that and the fact that there was an $11 billion budget blow-out in border protection, and it pales into insignificance. What this government has done is that we have stopped the boats. I want to say to the Leader of the Opposition, who asked this tawdry question: not only is what this government has done legal; it is moral. It is absolutely moral because the most moral thing to do is to stop the boats and save the lives.
Mr Perrett interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Moreton will desist.
Workplace Relations
Mr TONY SMITH (Casey) (14:53): My question is to the Acting Minister for Employment. I ask the Minister to update the House on the steps the government is taking to restore integrity to the union movement. And I further ask: what stands in the way of the government's plan to reward honest union leaders?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (14:54): I thank the member for Casey for his question. He and the House would know by now that the government is seeking to support honest union leaders by initiating the registered organisations commission and by bringing back the Australian Building and Construction Commission, both of which are stalled in the Senate. The hurdle in the path of being able to support honest union leaders is, unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition and the Australian Labor Party. That can be fixed, of course, but the question is: why? What motivates the Leader of the Opposition and the Australian Labor Party to take the position that they have taken in the Senate?
Mr Danby interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Melbourne Ports will desist or leave.
Mr PYNE: There may be a clue in last night's episode of The Killing Season—which reminded me of the Kardashians meet the World Wrestling Federation—although I was particularly surprised to discover that the Jesse Ventura character was the member for Watson! I think most members of the Labor Party would also have been surprised. They would not have actually recognised his central role in the destruction of Kevin Rudd until they saw him talking about himself last night on The Killing Season. Most people would remember that he had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. Apparently his schtick is to try and include himself in these things later on, after the event. Not so the member for Grayndler; at least he is honest about his political position, as he was for the period of the Gillard-Rudd government. But I digress. What would be the clue? Now, the clue was actually a man called Gerry Kitchener; he had his 15 minutes of fame last night. He was talking about Mark Arbib. I am definitely going to get—
Honourable members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Isaacs on a point of order—quickly. The member will resume his seat otherwise.
Mr Dreyfus: Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order. I appreciate that the minister wants to be a TV critic and not a minister—
The SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. The Minister has the call.
Mr PYNE: I think 'Brutus Beefcake' over there was just sorry he did not make it to the actual screen last night. What this man, Mr Kitchener, said, quoting Mark Arbib, was that you 'could not trust Bill Shorten', that 'he would do Julia in', and that 'he would use the union base to knock her off. Now, that could well be the clue we have been searching for. He would use the union base to knock her off. Maybe that is what motivates him not to support the government's reforms. I hope the member for Corio and the members for Maribyrnong, Isaacs, McEwen and Gellibrand can trust the Leader of the Opposition, because, of course, they all benefited from the 'Shorten coup'. Bill, I hope you can trust yourself! You have let everybody else down over the years. Rudd could not trust you, Gillard could not trust you and Arbib did not trust you, and he would know because he knocked off two premiers.
The SPEAKER: The Minister will resume his seat. The member for Moreton on a point of order?
Mr Perrett: No.
Mr PYNE: You cannot trust yourself, Bill.
Mr Dreyfus: You cannot trust yourself either.
Mr PYNE: I hope they can trust the Leader of the Opposition, because they all benefitted from the AWU coup initiated by the member for Maribyrnong, and I hope they are not going to be thrown overboard in the royal commission in August. (Time expired)
Asylum Seekers
Mr MARLES (Corio) (14:57): My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Does the Minister regret denying categorically that the government has made cash payments to criminal people smugglers to smuggle asylum seekers back to Indonesia?
Ms JULIE BISHOP (Curtin—Minister for Foreign Affairs) (14:57): In answer to the member's question: I do not do regrets.
Asylum Seekers
Mrs McNAMARA (Dobell) (14:58): My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.
Mr Watts interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Gellibrand will put his prop away.
Mrs McNAMARA: Will the Minister update the House on the importance of the government's turn-back policy in ending the people smuggling trade and securing the nation's borders? What are the consequences of an inconsistent approach to this issue?
Mr DUTTON (Dickson—Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) (14:58): I thank the honourable member for Dobell because on behalf of her constituents she is in here in this parliament every day, fighting on their behalf, and she strongly supports the government's work in relation to Operation Sovereign Borders.
As we have said before and as the Australian recognise, when Labor were in government over 50,000 people on 800 boats arrived into our country and Labor completely and utterly lost control of our borders. One of the main reasons that we have been so successful is that we have been able to turn back boats where it is safe to do so. We have made that point repeatedly because it is an integral part of the success we have been able to achieve under Operation Sovereign Borders.
When Kevin Rudd came into government in 2007, there were only four people in detention, including no children.
Ms Parke interjecting—
Mr DUTTON: I am coming to the member for Fremantle in just a moment. There were four people and no children. When Labor were in government, they turned that into a situation where almost 2,000 children were in detention, which was a shameful outcome. But, in addition to that, 1,200 people drowned at sea. For many years, Labor leaders—this Leader of the Opposition and his predecessors—have said before elections, hand on heart: 'We will adopt turn-backs. We will stop the boats.' When they get into government, they abandon every attempt to stop the boats. Why? Because they are dictated to by people like the member for Sydney.
I see a media report today which says, 'Labor to turn back boats.' I looked at the words that Bill Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition, is alleged to have said. You know, there is an eerie parallel to be drawn with similar words that Kevin Rudd said in 2007. Kevin Rudd said that he would stop boats, that the Labor government would turn back boats where it was safe to do so—and people actually believed him. But the irony is now that Kevin Rudd was a more trustworthy person than Bill Shorten. That is how history now turns out. How ironic it is that the Leader of the Opposition sits here looking befuddled on a regular basis about what to do with boats. He has the national conference coming up and he says that he is going to stare down the Left, including members opposite, including the member for Fremantle.
I am going to come to some quotes in a number of questions on this topic, because it is a very important topic in the run-up to the next election. If the Labor Party say before the election that they are going to adopt the coalition's successful turn-back policy, do not believe a word that they say. Labor presided over a complete mess when it came to border protection, and, as all Australians know, if you cannot control your borders, you cannot control national security. That is the problem with this Leader of the Opposition.
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
The SPEAKER (15:02): I advise the chamber that we have with us on the floor of the House and in the distinguished visitors gallery the Minister for Commerce of China, Minister Gao Hucheng; the Ambassador to Australia for the People's Republic of China, Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu—well known to many members in this chamber; and Ms Frances Adamson, the Australian Ambassador to the People's Republic of China. We make you very, very welcome, particularly on this day.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Asylum Seekers
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:03): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I add my welcome to yours. My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Does the foreign minister stand by her statement last month that people smugglers are starting to use money they receive to fund terrorism?
Ms JULIE BISHOP (Curtin—Minister for Foreign Affairs) (15:03): I thank the member for Sydney for her question. The Australian government is concerned about the people-smuggling trade. That is precisely why we have acted to close it down. The people-smuggling trade are criminal syndicates, and we have worked constructively with the Indonesian government and Indonesian authorities since we came into government to ensure that we can disrupt the people-smuggling trade, because this trade leads to deaths at sea. Twelve hundred people are known to have died at sea under Labor's policies. Eleven billion dollars in cost blow-outs occurred—
Opposition members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: There will be silence, and the member for McMahon will desist!
Mr Burke: How many after Malaysia?
The SPEAKER: The member for Watson will desist or leave!
Ms JULIE BISHOP: and 50,000 people, who paid on average about $10,000 to people smugglers, all did that under Labor's policies. So I do not expect to be lectured by the member for Sydney on matters to do with people-smuggling.
Mr Dreyfus interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Isaacs will desist or leave! The choice is his.
Ms JULIE BISHOP: I suggest she go back to her special topic: continents that are not countries!
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
The SPEAKER: Member for Lingiari, that is not a parliamentary term, and you will withdraw.
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
The SPEAKER: That is not what I heard.
Mr Perrett: It was definitely a joke.
The SPEAKER: In that case, have a warning.
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
The SPEAKER: I would not repeat it if I were you.
Superannuation
Mr HOWARTH (Petrie) (15:05): My question is to the Assistant Treasurer. Will the Assistant Treasurer please update the House on how the coalition government is assisting all Australians to build their wealth and to provide for their retirement?
Mr FRYDENBERG (Kooyong—Assistant Treasurer) (15:05): I thank the honourable member for Petrie for his question and acknowledge his strong contribution in this place to protecting the savings of hardworking Australians. Indeed, Australians are hardworking and they are aspirational, and this government stands ready to assist them to build their savings and to prepare for retirement. That is why we have committed to no unexpected or adverse changes to superannuation in this term of office. This is why we have repaired the unclaimed moneys regime, taking it back from three years to seven years. And that is why we support negative gearing.
But I am asked: are there any challenges to this approach? The greatest challenge comes from those opposite, because just yesterday we heard that the Leader of the Opposition did not even know his superannuation policy, and now we know that Labor is planning to take an axe to negative gearing. The member for McMahon was asked on the 7.30 program about negative gearing and he said:
… any responsible opposition would be considering a range of measures.
… … …
… any changes we took to negative gearing would be taken to the next election
But then the Leader of the Opposition himself let the cat out of the bag in an interview with Jon Faine—that famous interview—when he said, 'Everybody is somebody,' and so forth. But he was asked about negative gearing in that interview, and Jon Faine said to him, 'Isn't it electorally poisonous to touch it?' To that the Leader of the Opposition's simple reply was 'no'. The Leader of the Opposition, when he used to be the national secretary of the AWU, when he used to tell us what he really thought, said:
… higher income earners are availing themselves of negative gearing … and the endless variety of new avoidance schemes.
There we have it: the Leader of the Opposition is saying to the nearly 1.3 million Australians who access negative gearing, including 61,000 teachers and child carers, 42,000 nurses, 15,000 transport workers and 46,000 sales assistants that they are engaged in avoidance schemes. The Leader of the Opposition is saying, as the Prime Minister said, negative gearing is tax dodging. He is supported by the shadow Assistant Treasurer, who wrote an article in The Australian some time ago calling for the abolition of negative gearing. This is what the shadow assistant Treasurer said, 'We assume that $2 billion could be saved by its abolition.'
There we have it: the hard-earned savings of ordinary Australians cannot be trusted with the Leader of the Opposition. He has called superannuation a legalised tax haven. He is now calling negative gearing an avoidance scheme. And we know that the hard-earned savings of ordinary Australians will eventually become Bill Shorten's own savings. Shame on Labor.
Mr Abbott: I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
COMMITTEES
Selection Committee
Report
The SPEAKER (15:08): I present report No. 27 of the Selection Committee, relating to the consideration of committee and delegation business and private members' business on Monday, 22 June 2015. The report will be printed in the Hansard for today and the committee's determinations will appear on tomorrow's Notice Paper. Copies of the report have been placed on the table.
The report read as follows—
Report relating to the consideration of committee and delegation business and of private Members' business
1. The committee met in private session on Tuesday, 16 June 2015.
2. The committee determined the order of precedence and times to be allotted for consideration of committee and delegation business and private Members' business on Monday, 22 June 2015, as follows:
Items for House of Representatives Chamber (10.10 am to 12 noon)
COMMITTEE AND DELEGATION BUSINESS
Presentation and statements
1 Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs:
Reviewing Troubled Waters : Consideration of the Government response to the 2012 inquiry into arrangements surrounding crimes at sea.
The Committee determined that statements may be made—all statements to conclude by 10.20 am.
Speech time limits—
Mr Christensen — 5 minutes.
Next Member — 5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
2 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security:
Review of the re-listing of Hizballah ' s External Security Organisation .
The Committee determined that statements may be made—all statements to conclude by 10.30 am.
Speech time limits—
Mr Tehan — 5 minutes.
Next Member — 5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
PRIVATE MEMBERS ' BUSINESS
Notices
1 MR SMITH: To move:
That this House:
(1) notes that 1 July 2015 marks the 28th anniversary of the introduction of dividend imputation in Australia;
(2) recognises that:
(a) the system of dividend imputation introduced by the Labor Government in the 34th Parliament has been maintained and supported by every Government since;
(b) the system of refunding excess imputation credits for the benefit of low income earners and charities, which was introduced by the Coalition Government in the 39th Parliament, has been maintained and supported by every Government since;
(c) dividend imputation has delivered improved operation of Australia's capital markets and corporate landscape;
(d) the end of double taxation of profits has delivered increased prosperity to everyday Australians who own shares either directly, or through indirect means such as superannuation; and
(e) dividend imputation has encouraged increased share ownership levels throughout the Australian community;
(3) endorses and lends ongoing support to dividend imputation; and
(4) rejects calls to discard dividend imputation and reintroduce double taxation of dividends.
(Notice given 15 June 2015.)
Time allotted—20 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Mr Smith — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
2 MR WATTS: To move:
That this House:
(1) acknowledges the 40th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 which was passed in implementation of our international obligations under the International Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination; and
(2) recognises the:
(a) important role the Act plays in Australia's Human Rights Framework;
(b) importance of Section 18C of the Act in protecting Australians from racist hate speech; and
(c) important role the Human Rights Commission plays in administering the Act.
(Notice given 16 June 2015.)
Time allotted—40 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Mr Watts — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 8 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
3 MR VAN MANEN: To move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) the Coalition Government has:
(i) started to arrest the decline in the small business environment overseen by the previous Labor Government; and
(ii) developed and started to deliver as part of the budget, the largest small business package in the nation's history—the Jobs and Small Business Package—worth $5.5 billion; and
(b) as part of the Jobs and Small Business Package, small businesses will be eligible for a 1.5 per cent company tax cut or a 5 per cent tax discount for small unincorporated businesses; and
(2) condemns the Leader of the Opposition for making unfunded announcements to small businesses in his Budget Reply Speech which ignore the two-thirds of small businesses which are not structured as companies; and
(3) commends the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Small Business on their effective management of the small business economy.
(Notice given 28 May 2015.)
Time allotted—20 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Mr van Manen — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
4 DR STONE: To move:
That this House:
(1) recognises 26 June 2015 as the 70th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter (Charter) at San Francisco;
(2) notes that:
(a) Australia was one of the 50 nations which signed the Charter that established the United Nations organisation;
(b) the United Nations came into being on 24 October 1945, a date that recognises each year as United Nations Day; and
(c) the signatories to the Charter agreed to:
(i) save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind;
(ii) reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small;
(iii) establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained; and
(iv) promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom; and
(v) achieve these ends, to:
- practise tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours;
- unite our strength to maintain international peace and security;
- ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest; and
- employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples; and
(3) calls on all Members and Senators in the Australian Parliament to celebrate the achievements of the United Nations over the last 70 years.
(Notice given 2 June 2015.)
Time allotted—remaining private Members ' business time prior to 12 noon.
Speech time limits—
Dr Stone—5 minutes .
Next Member — 5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
Items for Federation Chamber (12.30 pm to 1.30 pm and 4.45 pm to 6.15 pm)
COMMITTEE AND DELEGATION BUSINESS
Presentation and statements
1 Standing Committee on Procedure:
Role of the Federation Chamber: Celebrating 20 years of operation .
The Committee determined that statements may be made—all statements to conclude by 12.40 pm.
Speech time limits—
Mr Randall — 5 minutes.
Next Member — 5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
PRIVATE MEMBERS ' BUSINESS
Notices
1 MR SIMPKINS: To move:
That this House:
(1) notes that it has been 40 years since the Vietnamese began coming to Australia and their arrival has been defined by:
(a) successful settlement;
(b) positive integration; and
(c) their assistance with the development of the Australian economy through their hard work and dedication;
(2) acknowledges the positive influence in Australia of the Vietnamese-Australian people from:
(a) the Vietnamese Community Association;
(b) the Vietnamese parishes of the Catholic Church;
(c) the Vietnamese Free Buddhist Church;
(d) other religious groups; and
(e) clubs and other service providers; and
(3) commends the Vietnamese-Australian community for its dedication to Australia and determination to provide opportunities and success for Vietnamese-Australian families.
(Notice given 27 May 2015.)
Time allotted—10 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Mr Simpkins — 5 minutes.
Next Member — 5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
2 MS MCGOWAN: To move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) by the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development's own statistics, two thirds of Australia's export earnings come from regional industries such as agriculture, tourism, retail, services and manufacturing;
(b) Australian regional businesses and industries are highly exposed to global market forces;
(c) whether exporting or not, businesses and consumers alike are influenced and are in turn influencing regional Australia's future competitive advantage; and
(d) the future of manufacturing and industry in this country requires extensive skills development, training and employee development in key sectors such as farming, food production, engineering and value-adding; and
(2) calls on the Australian Government to:
(a) prioritise investment in regional infrastructure that supports growth in rural and regional industries and manufacturing businesses, such as:
(i) improving telecommunications access for rural and regional Australians;
(ii) improving passenger rail and freight rail timetables and services; and
(iii) simplifying compliance for interstate businesses by reducing cross-border anomalies; and
(b) provide additional capacity for the regions to design their strategic vision to meet future industry, manufacturing and regional development demands in Australia.
(Notice given 26 May 2015.)
Time allotted—30 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Ms McGowan — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 6 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
3 MRS PRENTICE: To move:
That this House:
(1) notes that the Pacific Women's Parliamentary Partnerships Forum (Forum) is funded by the Australian Government and is designed to support women in the region in politics and to assist Pacific parliaments in addressing gender equality issues;
(2) recognises that the Pacific region has the lowest regional average of women parliamentarians in the world, currently 13.1 per cent female representation in single or lower houses across the region, including Australia and New Zealand;
(3) recognises that the third annual Forum was held from 29 April to 1 May in Suva, Fiji, with the focus on addressing family violence in the Pacific region; and
(4) notes that reducing family violence will require a coordinated approach, and that the Forum agreed on a list of priorities for Pacific parliaments to pursue that will raise awareness and encourage action to address the issue.
(Notice given 28 May 2015.)
Time allotted—20 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Mrs Prentice — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
4 MS L.M. CHESTERS: To move:
That this House:
(1) notes with concern the importation to Australia of goods that:
(a) breach Australia's anti-dumping regime; and
(b) do not comply with Australian standards;
(2) further notes the:
(a) injurious effect that the importation of such products has on Australian businesses and Australian jobs;
(b) risk to consumers of using substandard products and goods; and
(c) lack of inspection and compliance enforcement of imported products; and
(3) calls on the Government to:
(a) continue to monitor the anti-dumping regime and effectiveness of recent changes;
(b) strengthen the inspection and compliance enforcement regime for imported goods;
(c) review penalties for importers who breach their Australian legal obligations and if necessary increase the penalties where they are found to be insufficient, to act as a deterrent; and
(d) hold an urgent meeting of the International Trade Remedies Forum to address these and related issues.
(Notice given 12 May 2015.)
Time allotted—30 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Ms L.M. Chesters — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 6 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
5 MRS GRIGGS: To move:
That this House:
(1) commends the role of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in recent humanitarian aid missions; and
(2) congratulates:
(a) the Government on taking the decision to acquire two additional Boeing C-17A Globemaster III aircraft which will assist in future humanitarian and ADF operations; and
(b) the ADF on its rapid deployment of air assets, including C-17s, which supported the provision of disaster relief in Vanuatu and Nepal in 2015.
(Notice given 16 June 2015.)
Time allotted—20 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Mrs Griggs — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
6 MR PITT: To move:
That this House:
(1) acknowledges that the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program (ADFPP) has enjoyed bipartisan support since its formation in 2001;
(2) recognises the importance of providing an opportunity for Parliamentarians to experience life working alongside Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel;
(3) notes that the ADFPP provides ADF personnel with direct access to Members of Parliament in their own workplace or as a part of the exchange program to Parliament House; and
(4) expresses gratitude to ADF personnel who make ADFPP a great success.
(Notice given 26 May 2015.)
Time allotted—20 minutes .
Speech time limits—
Mr Pitt — 5 minutes.
Other Members—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
Orders of the day
1 MARRIAGE AMENDMENT (MARRIAGE EQUALITY) BILL 2015 (Mr Shorten): Second reading—Resumption of debate (from 15 June 2015).
Time allotted — remaining private Members ' business time prior to 6.15 pm.
Speech time limits—
All Members — 5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
DOCUMENTS
Presentation
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (15:09): Documents are presented as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members. Details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.
BUSINESS
Leave of Absence
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (15:09): by leave—I move:
That leave of absence for the remainder of the current period of sittings be given to Mr Pasin for parental leave purposes.
Question agreed to.
MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS
China-Australia Free Trade Agreement
Mr ROBB (Goldstein—Minister for Trade and Investment) (15:09): by leave—It gives me great pleasure to table the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, known as ChAFTA, and the accompanying national interest analysis for parliament's consideration here this afternoon.
Earlier today, Chinese Commerce Minister Gao and I had the privilege of signing the agreement and I join with you, Madam Speaker, in formally welcoming Dr Gao to the House.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
Mr ROBB: I would like to warmly acknowledge the professionalism, common sense and decency that Minister Gao brought to the negotiating table; it was fundamental to building the sense of trust necessary to get such an outstanding outcome.
ChAFTA is indeed a landmark agreement. It is also a high-quality agreement, one that will deliver lasting mutual benefits for our economies, and our societies in the years and decades ahead. China is already Australia's largest trading partner, with two-way trade worth around $160 billion, an amount far exceeding our next highest trading partner. We have an important economic relationship with resources and energy trade as its ballast and vibrant trade in services, agriculture and manufacturing.
This economy-wide agreement not only locks in and provides for a very strong future trade in goods; it also provides a springboard for wide-ranging, two-way trade and investment in services, manufacturing, logistics and environmental management. The agreement will take our already strong relationship to another level, and provide a road map which helps both our economies contribute as best we can to the economic phenomena and the social miracle in terms of the billions being released from poverty that we are all seeing across the Asia-Pacific region.
Let me focus on services. Mostly with these free trade agreements, the focus is on goods; I want to shift to services for a moment. Australia's services are world-class, and are recognised as such in the Asia-Pacific region and within China. Services such as financial; legal; engineering; health and aged care; secondary, tertiary and vocational education; project management; construction; design; architecture; tourism and hospitality; IT; pharmaceuticals; medical research; water management; agricultural production and processing; resources and energy; film and theatre; and so many others, if you get my point. The thing is, we have literally hundreds of services that are needed by China and by much of the rest of the region.
There are so many people who will need jobs, coming out of agricultural areas and moving into the cities not only in China but in many parts of the region. They will need jobs and the jobs are in services. Nine out of 10 of Australia's jobs are services jobs. That is where the Chinese economy is moving and that is what this free trade agreement, amongst lots of good things for goods, can deliver: many wonderful things in terms of the services that we can provide.
The full range of our services make up around 70 per cent of Australia's economy; yet directly contribute only 17 per cent to our exports. This landmark free trade agreement with China opens a huge door for so many of our service providers. To enable this, trade and investment concessions not yet available to many other countries, if any, are open and accessible to the millions of small, medium and large businesses in Australia, opening a market of 1.36 billion people—a huge number, a huge market opportunity.
With the digital economy, with the connectivity that exists now, even compared with 15 or 20 years ago, there is an opportunity now for not just our large businesses to take advantage of these concessions but for our small and medium businesses to be in there and establish themselves, even with a very small presence, to make an investment themselves in China and to develop a market not within 23 million people but within 1.36 billion people—a wonderful opportunity.
For our part Australia is an important trade partner for China. What surprises many people is that we are China's sixth largest source of imports and 14th largest export market. So a country of 23 million people is the sixth largest source of imports and the 14th largest export market for China.
ChAFTA provides better access to our respective markets. For example, ChAFTA will remove significant barriers to Australian agricultural exports to China across a wide range of products including beef, dairy, lamb, wine, hides and skins, horticulture, barley and seafood, and much more.
Under ChAFTA, China will remove tariffs on 99.9 per cent of Australia's resources, energy and manufacturing exports, worth more than $80 billion, or 30 per cent of Australia's total merchandise exports in 2014.
ChAFTA will restore Australia's exporters' competitive position against producers from countries that already have free trade agreements with China—in other words, this deal is as good as any other deal that China has done with anyone and better than most deals done with any other country—as well as advance Australia's commercial interest in a range of new and existing sectors. In turn, the free trade agreement gives the growing numbers of Chinese middle-class consumers better access to Australia's safe, high-quality agricultural produce.
And you can see it happening. Two years ago, we sold 60,000 tonnes of meat to China. Last year, we sold 260,000 tonnes of meat to China. China went from our 12th biggest market to our third biggest market in one year. This is happening now. This phenomenon is taking place now. It is not for decades in the future. We have got to grasp it while we can, as a country, and ChAFTA really, in many respects, is going to give us the first-mover advantage in many of these areas, especially in services.
ChAFTA will restore Australian exporters' competitive position, as I said. ChAFTA also means reduced import costs for Australian businesses and consumers alike. Australia will remove its remaining tariffs on Chinese goods within four years, and most of it will be removed on entry into force. This means Australian consumers and industries that rely on imported Chinese products are set to benefit.
The fact is that, 25 years ago, 20 per cent of all goods and services exported from anywhere around the world ended up as an input into another good or service—20 per cent. Today, just 25 years later, 73 per cent of all goods and services exported from anywhere in the world end up as an intermediate good, so 73 per cent of what we buy from China, on average, will be an input into one of our goods and services. It is very important because it means that we no longer look at exports in one way and imports in another, because the reduction of protection is important at both ends. So, again, this free trade agreement, removing a lot of our own protection against certain products, is giving much cheaper inputs for many, many producers of those products.
For Australia, ChAFTA is the third major trade agreement concluded by this government since coming to office. Independent modelling that has been conducted provides an indication of the significant, combined economic benefits that this powerful trifecta of agreements will deliver for Australia in the years ahead.
For example, between 2016 and 2035, our GDP is projected to be $24 billion larger in today's dollars. There are also those things that cannot be modelled such as substantial increases in investments that will inevitably flow from deeper trade relations and increased investor confidence. That has not been factored into this agreement. We have assumed no increase in investments, yet we look at what happened with the US free trade agreement. Within 10 years, two-way investment went from $653 billion to $1.3 trillion, and that is the effect of opening up investment opportunities.
The linkages that flow from the 140,000 Chinese students studying in Australia today, or the 800,000 Chinese tourists visiting Australia each year, builds mutual understanding and trust. Of course we also have one million Australian citizens who speak Mandarin in the home. In other words, we have 20 per cent of our population who are also enormously powerful linkages into China and a hugely powerful form of introduction to Chinese customs and character that is beneficial to our country. All of these linkages build mutual understanding and they build trust, which are key elements of future peace and prosperity. As trust and relationships grow, with agreements such as ChAFTA, intangible benefits emerge.
For example, in January this year—following the conclusion of ChAFTA—a landmark air services deal was struck between Australia and China that will see a tripling of aviation capacity between our two countries, from 22½ thousand seats per week to 67,000 seats per week by the end of 2016. We—both sides of politics—had been trying for four years to get to the table and have a negotiation. In a matter of three weeks after we had finished this deal, the doors opened; we were there; and the deal was done in about a quarter of the time that was expected.
For our part, today—again as a similar opportunity that emerges outside, really, the construct of the free trade agreement—I can announce, on behalf of my friend and colleague the Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, that the number of years applying to multiple entry tourist visas for Chinese citizens visiting Australia will increase from three years to 10 years. We will increase the multiple entry tourist visa for Chinese visitors visiting Australia from three years to 10 years.
This will provide an enormous boost, I think, to our tourism but it will also provide a very significant boost to their comfort in coming to Australia. It is also a sign of how we measure China and the trust that is growing between our countries in a very significant way.
Over the next two years, the Australian government is rolling out the North Asia free trade agreement information seminar series to all Australian capital cities and rural and regional centres, to help explain and encourage take-up of the opportunities the free trade agreements open for Australian businesses.
In tabling ChAFTA, I acknowledge the contribution made by my predecessors on both sides of the House. Negotiations commenced in 2005 during the Howard government, when Mark Vaile was the Minister for Trade. Mark was followed by Warren Truss, Simon Crean, Craig Emerson and Richard Marles; all share in the watershed outcomes of this agreement.
Pleasingly, this demonstrates bipartisan support across successive Australian governments for our relationship with China.
I would also like to acknowledge all of those officials and negotiators from my department who have dedicated so much time, effort and professionalism over a long period to help secure this outcome. After 10 years it is rather a large alumnus.
This includes Jan Adams and her excellent team. It includes our ambassador, Frances Adamson, and her predecessors. I would also like to thank my own staff for their efforts and support.
As with all proposed treaties, the Australian Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Treaties will now review the text of the agreement and, in due course, provide its report. The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee will conduct a separate review.
Tabling today follows the legal scrub and translation of the text, and I encourage business to prepare for its future entry into force, which I hope will occur later this year after passage of implementing legislation.
I commend this agreement to the parliament and hereby table the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement with its national interest analysis.
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:24): May I begin by saying what a pleasure it is to welcome Dr Gau Hucheng to the parliament today. I note also the presence of our good friend Ambassador Ma, and our own ambassador, Frances Adamson. Dr Gau has brought his delegation with him, and it is a pleasure to welcome all of them here today.
China is one of Australia's most important partners and friends on the world stage. Labor has a long and strong friendship with China. That is why we are so pleased to welcome this delegation today, including the Minister of Commerce in the government of the People's Republic of China. I want to also thank the Minister for Trade and Investment for his statement.
On 17 November last year, Labor welcomed the finalisation of negotiations for a free trade agreement between Australia and China and called on the minister to release the text of the agreement for scrutiny. We have waited seven months, or 212 days, for the agreement to be tabled in the national parliament. Contrary to a request from the opposition and in defiance of a Senate order, that agreement has only been tabled after it has been signed. Nevertheless, we now welcome the opportunity to examine the text of this very important document.
The agreement has been negotiated over the course of 10 years, under the stewardship of both Labor and coalition trade ministers. And I thank the trade minister for his acknowledgment of that. Of course, we acknowledge his hard work and that of his predecessors—Ministers Marles, Emerson, Smith, Crean, Truss and Vaile—and the hardworking officials who supported them. We are very fortunate to be able to pass on our personal congratulations to Ambassador Adamson today. But Ambassador Raby was also a critical negotiator on Australia's behalf. The staff of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been working on this deal for many years, and we congratulate them for the finalisation of it. We know that Minister Gau and his officials, some of whom are with us, today have also been working very hard on the Chinese side to conclude the agreement.
China is Australia's No. 1 trading partner. Our two-way trade was worth $160 billion in 2013-14. Australia's exports to China were worth more than $100 billion. One-third of Australia's total merchandise exports are destined for China. The strong growth in trade between our two nations over recent years has been very mutually beneficial. Australia's resources exports have helped China to industrialise and to modernise its economy over the last two decades, lifting many hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. Trade with China has helped Australia to keep growing during the global financial crisis. Trade with China will be critical to Australia's future.
We have watched with admiration as China has developed and grown and lifted its people out of poverty. Yet we know that China has much greater growth ahead of it. As China's economy continues that remarkable development over coming years, its people will grow ever more affluent. That means there will be rising demand from China for a range of products and services, including those that Australia does so well: food, education, tourism, health, aged care, and financial and professional services.
So growing, deepening and diversifying our trade relationship between Australia and China will drive the future prosperity of both of our nations. Australia wants to export more of our high-quality agricultural goods and food products to China. Australia wants to export more sophisticated services to China—like education, health care, aged care, financial services, business and professional services, and tourism. We want to see advanced Australian manufacturing playing its part in the global and regional supply chains which are increasingly centred in China, and we want to encourage more investment flows between our two nations. That means new opportunities for Australian businesses, stronger growth for Australia's economy, better living standards for Australian families, and more and better jobs for Australian workers.
Members on both sides of this place recognise that a comprehensive, high-quality agreement has the potential to deliver a significant additional economic return for Australia. It also has the potential to strengthen the already strong relationship between our two countries, a relationship that has grown and strengthened over more than four decades. Last year Labor laid out our benchmarks for a high-quality agreement with China. These included New Zealand-plus market access outcomes for Australian farmers; elimination of, or significant reductions in, tariffs on Australian industrial goods; retention of Australia's antidumping safeguards; major improvements in market access for Australian services; reduction in red tape and other barriers to Chinese investment in Australia and for Australian investment in China; no provisions which give Chinese companies operating in Australia superior legal rights to those enjoyed by Australian companies; and the retention of labour market testing, or comparable safeguards on temporary migration.
The impact of the agreement on the Australian labour market warrants particular attention, and we will examine the related provisions in this agreement closely. Labor's position is that any labour mobility must enhance, not constrain, job opportunities for Australians. Labor supports a China-Australia free trade agreement that provides genuine market access for our Australian businesses and supports Australian jobs.
The agreement signed by the government will now be considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee. I look forward to the participation of citizens, businesses and other stakeholders in these inquiries as we examine the agreement signed by the Australian government and tabled today.
Opposition members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: I think the definitive statement on clapping is that enough is enough!
BILLS
Labor 2013-14 Budget Savings (Measures No. 1) Bill 2014
Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2015 Measures No. 1) Bill 2015
Returned from Senate
Message received from the Senate returning the bills without amendment or request.
Biosecurity Bill 2014
Biosecurity (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014
Judiciary Amendment Bill 2015
Assent
Messages from the Governor-General reported informing the House of assent to the bills.
MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Pensions and Benefits
The SPEAKER (15:32): I have received a letter from the honourable member for Jagajaga proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The government hurting middle Australia with its cuts to part pensions.
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—
Ms MACKLIN (Jagajaga) (15:32): Today it is very clear that there is only one party in Australia which cares about pensioners. There is only one party which cares about those Australians who have worked very hard for their whole lives, and saved hard, so that they can feel secure in their retirement. There is only one party which cares about making sure that a fair retirement system exists in this country, and that party is Labor.
Today we have seen a despicable deal done between the Liberal Party, the National party and the Greens party to cut the pension. That is what today's deal is all about—a deal between those three parties to cut the age pension. Of course, it is not the first time that this government has tried to cut the pension. We all remember last year's attempt. Last year's attempt by this Prime Minister and, of course, his Treasurer was to cut the pension for 3½ million Australians; 3½ million Australian pensioners would have seen their pension cut by around $80 a week over the next decade.
This year the government has a new proposal. This year they want to cut the pension by $2.4 billion. And you would not be surprised to know, Madam Speaker, that this Prime Minister and all of those behind him are lying about who is going to be impacted. So today I want to put to bed some of these falsehoods that have been spread by the government again in question time today, and now by their friends in the Greens party.
These deceptions are designed to cover up one key fact, and that is that this is a cut of $2.4 billion to Australian pensioners. The money will come out of the pockets of pensioners. This is what the Prime Minister and his new best friend, the leader of the Greens party, have conspired to do. They have joined forces with the National party and the Liberal Party and, of course, all of them have joined forces to attack pensions and to take $2.4 billion out of the pockets of pensioners.
According to the government this is justified because all of the people who are going to be affected are apparently millionaires. Of course, that is complete and utter rubbish! The government would have us believe that all the pensioners impacted by this cut to pensions are on easy street. Well, we can tell you that that is not the case. We know from the government's own figures that some single pensioners will lose as much as $8,000 a year. These are pensioners with assets of around $500,000 and who have a superannuation income of just $25,000. So people with an income of $25,000 are going to have $8,000 ripped off them by Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens. That is the deal that has been done. That is a quarter of their income; and we know that couples could lose up to $14,000.
This is the important thing that this government has lost sight of—these people are middle-income Australians.
Many of them in fact are very low-income retirees: pensioners who have worked very hard all their lives and saved hard all their lives. They are the people for whom our superannuation system was designed. This is why we designed it the way we did: so that those who were able to save in their working lives could also rely, if they needed to, on a part pension. But this is how hard this government is. The harshest elements will be felt by these very hardworking Australians who have worked and saved so hard for all of their lives. And it is not just people who are already retired; it is people who are planning their retirement, in the 50- to 60-year age group. These are not millionaires who will be affected. None of these people are millionaires. For a couple due to retire in 10 years time the largest impact will be felt below average earnings. That is where the cuts of this change will fall the hardest: on people planning their retirement, in the 50- to 60-year age group, earning below average earnings. This government is taking the knife to their retirement incomes. That is a message that thousands of middle-income Australians will be hearing loud and clear from us over the next weeks and months to make sure they understand that this government is cutting their retirement income.
The detailed modelling that has been done indicates that around 45 per cent of Australians, currently very young Australians, aged between 25 and 29 will not have income sufficient to support a comfortable standard of living because of these cuts. That is the real impact of these changes. Under this proposal, according to the same modelling, eight in 10 single women retiring in 2055 will do so on incomes below that needed for a comfortable standard of living. I want to make it crystal clear. The government's argument is that the only people who will be affected by this cut to the pension are millionaires. That is blatantly wrong. It shows either extraordinary ignorance from the Minister for Social Services, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer about the long-term impacts of this change or—I think more likely—a deliberate fabrication of the impacts. These changes are not just harsh; they are actually also very bad policy.
My colleagues will be very surprised to know that I am going to quote from a previous Liberal Treasurer, Peter Costello. When he changed the taper rate for the age pension in 2007 he said:
The current taper rate of $3.00 means that a retiree loses more age pension than they earn on their additional savings if they do not achieve a return of at least 7.8 per cent a year.
Who is getting 7.8 per cent? This is what he said back in 2007. But of course it was pretty prophetic when you think about the returns that older people can get on their savings today. The Treasurer of the day, Mr Costello, went on to say:
This is currently a large disincentive to save for retirement.
That is what this government is putting in place with these pension changes: not just a cut to the pension but also, to quote former Treasurer Peter Costello, 'a large disincentive to save for retirement'. It is not very often I agree with Peter Costello but on this occasion he is absolutely right. We have already seen pensioners come out publicly and say they know that this will place in front of them a strong incentive to sell off their assets. In fact we heard some extraordinarily dopey remarks from some members opposite yesterday saying to pensioners, 'Just go out and sell down your assets'. Let us see how many of those members write to the pensioners in their electorates and tell them to sell off their assets. Pensioners are already recognising that that is what all of the members opposite want them to do. They are telling them to invest in non-assessable assets like their home or—the worst thing of all—not to save in the first place. These are the consequences of this measure. Pensioners will be forced to sell off their assets—assets that they have worked very hard for and saved for all of their lives. I cannot believe that all of the members opposite do not have pensioners telling them what this will mean for their future.
This measure is not only bad for pensions but also badly designed. Labor will oppose it. The government is not on its own in spreading these falsehoods; the Greens have been at it too. Yesterday we heard the Greens claim that they had agreement to a review of retirement incomes. It did not take long in question time today to hear from the Prime Minister that that was not worth the paper it was written on. There will be no review that is worth anything to the Greens. (Time expired)
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (15:42): I thank the House for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Our vision for Australia and Australians is that they will be able to be independent. That is what we would hope for every Australian: that they would be able to be independent financially wherever that is possible. That is what we seek to encourage at every opportunity, whether it is to find themselves in work or whether it is to find themselves saving for their retirement and to be able to draw down on their hard-earned savings to provide for their quality of life in their retirement. That is why they worked so hard for it. That is why governments for a long period of time now have provided support through the tax system to encourage people to do exactly that: to have a superannuation pool that enables them to live well in their retirement. That is the reward of a lifetime of hard work, of diligence and of saving. That is our goal not only for middle-income earners, who the debate today is focused on, but also for all Australians regardless of their level of means or opportunity—whether it is people with disabilities, those who have had very difficult starts to life or whatever it is. Our goal is to make sure that they can realise their potential and that they can become financially independent. This is not a welfare nation; this is a nation of free, independent people who want to have their own choices and be able to guide their own lives and not have their futures dictated to them by the government and the cheques that are sent to them.
We have a very different and, I think, more aspirational view of the Australian population—that they would do everything in their power to ensure that they will not be dependent on financial support from the government wherever possible. There are those in the community who need that—and that is what it is there for. We know that the welfare system is a safety net, and we know that the pension is a welfare payment. The pension is there as a safety net for people who, for whatever reason, over the course of their life have been unable to accumulate the savings they would need to support themselves in their retirement. At this time, with the superannuation system not having come to full maturation, there are still those who are coming through the system who will be more reliant on the pension than others. But it is important to recognise that the pension is a welfare payment. It is not superannuation. It is not savings that people are spending. It is a safety net for those who really need it and those who need it most.
We want to focus on a fairer and more sustainable pension. The pension currently costs around $42 billion and it is increasing. On the projections that are before us, it will continue to increase. We cannot simply stick our heads in the sand and think we can just keep pushing the bill onto the taxpayer without fundamentally thinking about whether the system is fair and sustainable. So we have engaged in a process where we are looking to put a measure in place that will ensure a fairer and more sustainable pension.
Over the next 20 to 30 years, more Australians will come to benefit from the maturation of the superannuation system and the pool of investment that they have been able to accumulate. Do you know why that was done? Do you know why Labor actually did that in the first place? It was so that, in the future, more Australians would not have to rely on welfare payments in the form of the pension. The whole point of superannuation tax incentives was that people would not have to depend on welfare in the future. That is what the pension is for and that is what superannuation is for. Those opposite seem to fundamentally misunderstand the difference between a government welfare payment and someone's own money in the form of superannuation.
With this background, and understanding the fiscal challenges that the country has, we set out to find a way to have a fairer and sustainable pension. It is true that, in the last budget, we had a measure to curtail the growth in the pension based on linking indexation to the CPI only. We have abandoned that position because we listened to the Australian people. We listened to the Australian people, we worked through this issue and we said: 'Fair enough, there's another way to deal with this issue. We aren't going to walk away from the task of having a fairer and more sustainable pension.' We engaged with stakeholders, we engaged with the sector and we engaged with people in this place and the other place to ensure that we could come up with a proposal and a measure that would be able to secure the support of this parliament. We engaged with Senator Xenophon, Senator Leyonhjelm and others in the other place. We engaged with stakeholders such as ACOSS. It was ACOSS—that great bastion of unfairness!—who brought to me a proposal to rebalance the assets test for the pension.
Mr Brough: Who was it again?
Mr MORRISON: ACOSS. The Australian Council of Social Service brought to me a proposal to ensure we would have a fair and sustainable pension by rebalancing the assets test for the pension. And do know what they suggested? They suggested that we should bring down the total level of assets that people can have in order to maintain access to a part-pension. They said: 'It is not right to be providing government welfare payments to people on a much higher level of assets; we should be focusing the pension on those with lower levels of assets.' We thought this was a fairly useful contribution to the debate—and there were others at the time who had similar views. Certainly the Council on the Ageing has been a consistent participant in this debate, and National Seniors Australia provided very strong support in the discussions we have had with them.
There will be those who will stay with the policy and there will be those who walk away. But what we will never walk away from is the importance of having a fairer and more sustainable pension. So we put forward a measure which, frankly, was not as harsh as the measure that was put to us by ACOSS; it was a more moderate proposal—which they would acknowledge. The measure was to change the taper rate and the assets threshold, the assets free area, and the maximum level of assets to rebalance the pension in favour of those on lower assets. That reversed the changes to the taper rates on the pension that existed back in 2007. The taper rates that we currently have, at $1.50 rather than $3, have only been there since 2007.
And do you know who voted against the changes back in 2007? It was the Greens. The Greens, back in 2007, did not agree with the changes in those taper rates. The Greens, through their agreement with the government last night, have indicated that they are simply going to remain consistent with the position that they held in 2007. I do not agree with the Greens very often—and there are still many, many, many areas where we are in wild disagreement—but I will say one thing about the Greens that I cannot say about those opposite on any measure, and that is that the Greens are at least consistent. In their appalling views about border protection policy they were at least consistent. The Labor Party flipped and flopped and went all over the place—and they flip and flop to this day. But the Greens were at least consistent—and I consistently disagreed with them. On this measure, the Greens have simply acted in accordance with the convictions that they held back in 2007.
What has changed for the government since 2007 in changing these measures? What has changed is this. When the greatest Treasurer we ever had, Peter Costello—
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr MORRISON: The member for Lilley never troubled his predecessor in terms of a claim to that title! When Peter Costello made these changes, what was different then from now? There was a $20 billion surplus and $40 billion in the bank. Where did that go? We saw six years of the killing season on the budget from those opposite—and that strength in our fiscal position is gone. There are consequences of bad fiscal management, and that means you have to make savings and you have to make decisions about the sustainability of welfare measures, and that is what this does. So we have reversed those measures back from 2007 and we have put in place a more sustainable pension.
But those opposite stand here with their usual playing of politics. They are seeking to play the politics of motions on the pension. But I challenge each one of their speakers: if you are really serious about their strong stand on the pension, come to this dispatch box and say you will reverse this measure if you win the next election. I will tell you what the cost is: it is $2.4 billion. Unless you can say that, it is a simple piece of paper which means absolutely nothing. But we know you cannot trust Bill Shorten, because that is what Mark Arbib told us, and he should know. Those opposite, if they have a serious position on this issue, will come to the dispatch box and say that they are going to reverse this measure if it is passed. They will not say it.
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:53): Every time the Liberals and the Greens do a deal, people suffer. They did a deal to block our proposal for asylum seekers to be taken to Malaysia. They did a deal for debt unlimited—remember debt unlimited? They did a deal to block the CPRS. And now they have done a dirty deal to cut pensions. Every time they do a deal, people suffer.
Nine times before the election, this Prime Minister promised no change to pensions. We have seen an attempt to cut the full rate pension that we on this side stopped. We had to stop it in the Senate, but we stopped it. We defended full rate pensioners. Now they have come back for the part rate pensioners. People who have saved and worked hard all their lives and done the right thing—done what every government in Australian history has asked them to do—are now going to cop it in the neck. It will affect 330,000 part pensioners immediately from 2017, but 700,000 people who are still in the workforce will join them in the following few years.
The government are trying to pretend that these people are millionaires. They keep talking about pensions for millionaires. Let's have a look at what you have to have in the bank to have your pension cut. If you are a couple with your own home, you have to have $451,500. If you are a single, you have to have $289,500. That is what you have to have before having your pension cut under this mob. What do you mean when you say 'assets'? Of course it includes your super. A bit of super is great; it is good that they have saved for their super. But it is also the family car. It is also your household effects. It is also a boat or a caravan. I know a lot of people in the minister's electorate, in the Sutherland Shire, might have a boat tied up down at the jetty. It is the surrender value of insurance policies. Your hobby collections are counted, as are your household contents, including your furniture—maybe the furniture you have inherited from your parents. It is your personal effects; that means your mum's engagement ring might be counted in this test. So you are talking about people who have $451,500 if they are a couple, to last them—what? Twenty years? Thirty years?
Government members interjecting—
Ms PLIBERSEK: Yes, a pensioner couple who own their own home and have more than $451,500 in assets will have their part pension cut. If you do not know that that is the effect of your legislation, you should know.
People who have been told this are deeply offended by the idea that they are millionaires and welfare bludgers. We have the minister up here saying that these people are different from taxpayers and taxpayers should not have to pay them a pension. They are taxpayers. They have been taxpayers all their working lives, and they have planned for their retirement based on the promises that they were made by successive governments that, if they saved hard, they would do all right and—I will tell you what else—based on a promise from this Prime Minister, nine times before the last election: 'We're not going to change the pension.' They are deeply offended by being told that this is welfare, and they are offended by your proposition that they should sell down their assets for their retirement, which should be a contented and happy time for 20, 30 or 40 years after they retire—because we know the Treasurer thinks that they are going to be living till well over the century mark. That is how long their assets have to last them.
We know that within 10 years half of all retirees will be affected. Single pensioners will lose as much as $8,000, and couples will lose as much as $14,000. These people are part pensioners, because they have saved hard, and somehow this makes them evil in the eyes of the government; it means that they should be penalised. But who should not be penalised in the eyes of the government? People with $10 million in their superannuation accounts. We have 475 people who have more than $10 million in super.
Mr Howarth: They don't receive a pension, Member for Sydney.
Ms PLIBERSEK: No, they do not receive a pension; they get a tax concession. So people who are getting $75,000 a year and up—people who are getting $1 million a year tax free—are fine, but those with $25,000 a year are going to see an $8,000 cut.(Time expired)
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde) (15:58): Just for the enlightenment of the member for Sydney, before she leaves the chamber, in her example of a couple who are homeowners, currently their pension starts to reduce when their assets hit $286,500. Under our proposal, their pension will not start to reduce till they reach $375,000 in assets. The other point worth noting for those opposite is: if their assets fall in value, what happens to their pensions? Their pensions actually go up in value as a replacement for the fact that their assets have fallen in value.
This government is focused on providing a sustainable, long-term pension and retirement income system for all Australians that qualify. At the end of the day, these changes will put $30 a fortnight extra in the pockets of some 170,000 Australians who need it most. It is the ones on the bottom rung of the pension ladder who need that increase and that assistance, and they are the people we are focusing on helping.
The age pension is a safety net for older Australians, but it is only part of our retirement income system, and that retirement income system includes superannuation and also voluntary savings. As our population ages, we need to ensure that the pension system is sustainable and fair so we as government can continue to provide those services to Australians who need it most.
We have listened to two contributions from those opposite that just demonstrate how short-sighted and in denial they are about where the budget and our pension costs are going in the longer term. Currently, our age pension is growing at unsustainable levels. We need a sustainable, long-term system.
The opposition talks about the government hurting middle Australia with its cuts to part pensions, yet Labor's approach to the budget deficit is to hurt middle-income families with tax increases. The coalition has passed measures to reduce the tax rate for small business; yet Labor wants to tax business more. Labor wants to punish Australians for making their own super contributions by charging higher taxes on the income they generate. Labor wants Australians, who have already paid for their own retirement, to keep paying the country's welfare bill. How is this helping Australians become self-funded and self-sufficient retirees?
Labor's measures punish our nation's middle-income pensioners for trying to get ahead in retirement savings. Labor wants to pull the rug on these families by abolishing negative gearing tax incentives. When we consider that 1.5 million investors with negatively geared investment properties have taxable incomes of less than $80,000, they are the middle-class Australian families who take the risk in property and investment markets with the hope of funding their future retirement income streams.
As usual, it is poorly-thought out measures from those opposite that hurt the families they purport to support most. A nation that fails to encourage its citizens to provide for themselves will become a nation where welfare becomes more and more common. As we all agree, I am sure in this House, welfare is about genuine need and it should be used as a helping hand to lift those up who have not been able to help themselves. It should not be seen as an incentive.
It is important to reflect that, currently, eight out of 10 taxpayers' tax goes towards paying the current welfare bill of $150 million a year. The coalition's fair and sustainable pension measures will see 90 per cent or 3.7 million pensioners better off or have no change to their pension and pension linked payments under these new proposals. Most importantly, the family home will continue to be excluded from the pension assets test.
Couples who own their own home with additional assets of less than $451,500 will get a higher pension and be better off. Couples who do not own their own home with assets of up to $699,000 will be better off. Singles with their own home and additional assets of less than $289,500 will be better off; and singles who do not own their own home and— (Time expired)
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (16:03): Pensioners in this country have a right to feel very disgruntled and disappointed with the Prime Minister, because let's have a look at what they are doing: they are taking $2.4 billion out of the pockets of pensioners: 330,000 part pensioners will lose part of their pension and 90,000 pensioners will lose their pension entirely.
They are also doubling the taper rate and that means: if you are a single pensioner and living in, say, Beenleigh, Rockhampton, Maleny, Redcliffe or Caboolture for a start with more than $289,500 in assets, you will have your part pension cut. If you are a pensioner couple with more than $451,500 in assets, you will have your part pension cut.
Not content last year to launch an attack on Australia's pensioners—3.5 million of them—and cut up to $80 a week out of their pension within 10 years and rip away $23 billion from Australia's pensioners, this year they come back with another assault on Australia's pensioners. They come into this place and they quote COTA—Ian Yates does not support this particular measure. They quote Michael O'Neill from National Seniors—they do not support this measure either. Michael O'Neill, president of National Seniors, put it this way:
The public talk was about 'wealthy' retirees. But, in fact, the sums show middle to low income pensioners, with little capacity to adjust, would have been seriously impacted.
That is not supporting the government for what they are doing. This government is about pushing pensioners into poverty. There are 14,250 pensioners in my electorate who will be affected by Tony Abbott's broken promise. There are 5,120 part pensioners in Blair who will be adversely impacted by this $2.43 billion cut.
They can talk all they like over there about the fact that some people do better but the reality is: $2.43 billion is being taken away from pensioners. Some 236,000 part pensioners will have their income reduced by an average of $130 per fortnight—that is a cut of $3,380 per year.
About 91,000 part pensioners will lose their pension entirely, as I said, losing about $190 per fortnight or $4,940 a year. Industry Super Australia has highlighted in their submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee the progressive impact on new retirees on more modest incomes. Over half of the 700,000 expected to retire in the next decade will have their retirement income reduced. Singles and couples on modest incomes—and it will particularly impact single women on modest incomes.
Those couples who are earning about $62,000 per year will see their retirement income reduced by $4,300 each annually—that is around $112,000 over their retirement period. But for couples further from retirement the government is cutting their part pension and hurting those on low incomes the most. Couples 20 years from retirement, earning as little as $45,000 a year, will lose about $1,500 annually. Just think about that: that is the difference between perhaps going for a holiday, replacing the TV, fixing up the car, thinking about providing food and clothing or giving a bit of assistance in terms of birthday presents or Christmas presents to your grandkids. This is what this government is doing: $1,500 annually. They are voting for it.
There are people all through their constituencies—and, I might add, in the Liberal Party branches—who do not know what is about to hit them. It is going to hit them hard, and if they think they are going to campaign, then I look forward to them handing out brochures in their electorates, in their marginal seats, saying, 'This is what we're going to do for you.' I look forward to those leaflets, the DLs. It is going to be great to see them. Those pensioners and part pensioners know very well what is coming for them. There is a shortfall, and the impact on the aged care sector will be massive. Aged Care Services Australia says the modelling indicates that those people going into aged care will be more severely impacted than other pensioners. So, the government should rethink this disgraceful attack on middle Australia and low-income earners.
Dr STONE (Murray) (16:08): My electorate of Murray is one of the lowest-income electorates in Australia. Over 60 per cent of the constituents are on some form of welfare support, a safety net that is, very rightly, in place. I have a big aged population. My electorate is low-income because the people are farmers and food factory workers. They are people who have worked hard all their life, but often as they enter retirement they just cannot make it with sufficient retirement income to carry them through. So, we have a safety net in Australia.
You would think, hearing now from the opposition, that my office would be under siege from my constituents, complaining about these new measures we are introducing with the support of the Greens. You would think, given that my constituents are very much more likely to be on some sort of welfare support, particularly aged care benefits, than people in most other electorates that I would be under siege. But, do you know what? I have not had a single complaint about this measure. And do you know why? It is because my electorate understands that this has to be a targeted measure in that for people who have over $1.15 million in assets plus a family home we just cannot continue to support that couple with a part pension.
We know that. They know that. And they know that Labor left us with a massive debt. They know they left us with the need to borrow about $100 million a day to pay down their debt. They know that we had $1 billion a month in Labor's interest to pay. It is a legacy of their profligate spending; their untargeted measures; their shocking pink batts project that killed people; their Grocery Watch, which had to be pulled after 10 minutes because it was useless; and the Gillard school halls. I had a school in Nathalia begging for a new toilet block. But no: the Gillard school hall scheme would not give them a toilet block; they had to have a new classroom, and it ended up being built over their small school oval. They were not allowed to have any flexibility in terms of what they actually needed to have that money spent on. That is the Gillard-Rudd legacy: debt and despair.
My constituents know that it is not sustainable to pay aged pensions to people who do not need them. I am very concerned about women in our workforce now who have broken work histories because of child rearing or looking carers for disabled people in their household. When they head into their retirement they are going to need a pension or a part pension to carry them through to their last days. Therefore our government and successive governments need to have the capacity to pay the $150 billion welfare bill annually. About $40 billion of that is for the age pension. They understand that.
When Labor offered $900 cash in hand when they were in government as a sweetener, as a 'please vote for us' measure, a number of the people who received that $900 were either deceased or back living in New Zealand. It was an untargeted measure. Part of the problem of the Labor government was that when it got into government—and, as you know, we left them a surplus of some $20 billion—they saw that as just a beautiful big birthday present to spend as they wished. Australia's surplus is now depleted, after being built up by the coalition's careful budget management.
The people of today know we have to have a sustainable economy and one that can afford welfare measures targeted at those in need, not those who think that this is a good deal and that what they can get away with will do. I am afraid that if you have $1.15 million in assets plus a family home, as a couple, then you actually do not need a part pension; you can do very nicely. But if it turns out that some disaster happens in your household, some extraordinary expense, and you lose that $1.15 million worth of assets, then of course you can turn around and apply for a pension. You are not excluded from that scenario, like the member for Sydney seemed to think.
I also need to add that this measure continues to provide access to the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card or the Health Care Card for those who will no longer be eligible for the pension or part pension under the new rules. I think that is a measure that is most generous of our government, on behalf of taxpayers, but it is also what matters most to a lot of those part pensioners. They say to me, 'If only we could keep the Health Care Card.' Well, they will, with this measure. Of course it has to be affordable. My electorate is not complaining. They are a low-income electorate, and they understand the realities of inheriting Labor's debt and what we had to do about it.
Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (16:13): This government is just great at using the word 'sustainable'. They are saying that this measure is because they need to have a sustainable budget; they need to cut $2.4 billion out of the pockets of our pensioners because it is about budget sustainability. Yet in the same budget this government is handing out subsidies for nannies. So, let's just be clear about it when they talk about saving the budget money. It is about priorities. This bill is not about saving the budget money; this bill is all about the unfairness in the priorities of this government.
So, let's just be clear about who they are actually attacking when it comes to these changes to pensions. For the members opposite, the people who it will target are pensioners—people who have retired now and who are on modest incomes and super incomes. It will also target people who are currently working, and for those who may not know a worker in their electorate, let us just talk about who they are for a moment. We are talking about people who are 45 and 50 today and who plan to retire in 20 years time. They are earning as little as $45,000 a year. We are talking about the people who work at SPC in the member for Murray's electorate, people who are earning right now less than $45,000 a year in their jobs. These are the people who this government is going to attack when it comes to these changes in super. They will lose about $1,500 a year in their part pensions because of these reforms.
I agree with the member for Murray. People in her electorate, like people in my electorate, have worked hard in low-paying jobs and they deserve the support of the government when they retire. Yet what we have seen from this government is lots of spin and lots of trickiness and their not telling the truth about who these pension changes are really going to hit. They are going to hit people who are on modest and low superannuation incomes. Workers who are earning as little as $45,000 a year who are thinking about their retirement are going to be hit by these changes. I do not think the government backbenchers have worked out yet how many working people in their electorates will be hit really hard as a result of these changes.
In total, one million retirees will have their pensions cut, including around 700,000 people in their 50s and 60s who are looking to retire. How will they be hit? Any pensioner couple with more than $450,000 or thereabouts in assets will have part of their pension cut. Any single pensioner with more than $290,000 in assets will have part of their pension cut. These are not millionaires, as the government is trying to convince us. These are people on modest incomes. These are people who, through their enterprise bargaining and through their workplace, have been able to secure some superannuation. But it is not the millions that the government and the Greens would like to pretend to you. These are people in your electorates and in our electorates working in manufacturing, working as teachers and working as nurses who will be hit because of these changes.
A couple of the pensioners have contacted me in the last 24 hours since learning about the deal that has been done by the Greens and the government. This is what they have said to me. One of the pensioners who will be affected is a 73-year-old widow from Woodend who owns her small home. She was a teacher and a social worker. She currently has $350,000 in super and currently gets the part pension of $330. She has been told by her financial planner that the money that she has might last the next 20 years. But what she has just been given by this government is a massive cut to her retirement income, forcing this particular woman into poverty.
It seems to be the wish of this government to go after those in the middle and force them into poverty. These people, who are in their 50s, 60s and 70s, have no ability to earn extra super to put themselves into the realm of the high superannuants that this government seems to support most. They are people stuck in the middle. This superannuation and retirement income was always about a generational change. Compulsory super did not come in until 1992, which means governments must support our part pensioners so that they have a decent retirement income. But this government and the people that are in government do not understand that these changes will affect good, honest working people.
Mr JOHN COBB (Calare) (16:18): I never thought I would rise in this place to say that we are here today talking about the fact that the Greens have shown a maturity and responsibility that you normally only see in a mainstream party. But obviously that has all changed, and I am still stunned that I am standing here saying the Greens are showing more responsibility to our country than an old institution like the Labor Party, which has always claimed to stand for the underdog. They are not standing very straight for it and their bark is very quiet. In fact, I would say the Leader of the Opposition has caught himself out somewhere, thinking this could not happen. Well, it has. Not only do we have a divorce between Labor and the Greens, but that formal coalition that existed in the last parliament would seem to be gone, and we now have Labor showing a lack of respect for people who need it.
We need to talk for a while about the facts. There are 170,000 pensioners at the bottom end of the scale who will see their pensions increase substantially. It will also mean that 50,000 more who are part pensioners will qualify for a full pension. Ninety one thousand current part pensioners will no longer qualify for the pension, and a further 235,000 will have their part pension reduced. I do not want to have a go at anyone, but this is to make it sustainable through into the future, taking into account those whom those on the other side said will be coming onto it. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition spoke of 700,000 people in the next few years coming online. We need to make sure that they too can be part of a sustainable pension plan.
Jenny Macklin, the member for Jagajaga, says we are hurting middle Australia with these cuts to part pensions. She does not say that we are helping those Australians less well off who surely do need that assistance. She does not say that her government made it much harder to spread largesse around to those in Middle Australia. Why does she not say that? Perhaps buried somewhere there is a note of conscience that they have—if I may put it this way—stuffed up the Australian economy pretty well. How could you say it is bad when we are lifting the asset-free test area by $50,000 for single homeowners, by $100,000 for single non-homeowners, by $90,000 for couple homeowners and by $140,000 for a couple who are non-homeowners?
As our Prime Minister alluded during question time, the Leader of the Opposition has surely caught himself out. I guess we can only call him, as we have seen in recent times, the Rasputin of Australian politics, a master of regicide. In fact, if you want to talk about the Leader of the Labor Party rather than the Prime Minister, he is certainly the Macbeth of politics, because he not only gets rid of the kings; he takes their place. The true regicide here is the fact that our Prime Minister got rid of two leaders of Australia who brought us to the position we are in, where we cannot afford to run as generous a system as we have in the past. It is the opposition's fault from when they were in government and it is the fault of the Leader of the Opposition—as I said, the master of regicide, the Macbeth of Australian politics. He has brought it upon himself and he has caught himself and his party out. When the Greens are more responsible than Labor, they are in trouble.
Ms BUTLER (Griffith) (16:24): Given some of the contributions that have been made in this debate today, it must be really lovely to be a Liberal and to live in that beautiful parallel universe that members of the Liberal Party and the National Party seem to inhabit—a universe in which there was apparently no global financial crisis; a happy place. The fact that the global financial crisis happened in our reality seems to have completely passed them by. If you listen to the justifications for the newest, fresh attack on pensioners, you will hear everyone on that side of the House pointing their fingers over here and saying, 'It's all Labor's fault that we have to attack pensioners. It's all Labor's fault that we have to do this sneaky, dodgy deal with the Greens, where we pull the wool over poor old Richard Di Natale's eyes to convince him that he's got a deal that he doesn't really have,' to get them to back him on this deal that is going to hit pensioners' incomes. It is going to affect pensioners significantly and adversely. Why? Apparently, their excuse for wanting to attack pensioners this time around is Labor.
There is all this carry-on about Labor. During the global financial crisis, thank God the Labor Party was in power in this country. I am pleased that the Liberal Party saw fit to at least support some of the stimulus at the very beginning, but, if not for Labor being in power, would we have saved the hundreds of thousands of jobs that were saved through the stimulus that Labor introduced? Would we have come out of the global financial crisis with a AAA credit rating? No, we would not. Would we have come out of the global financial crisis as the 12th largest economy in the world? No, we would not, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, because your mob would be doing what they are doing right now: trying to find austerity excuses and attacking pensioners.
We certainly came out of the global financial crisis in much better shape under Labor than we would have had the coalition been in power. If you want an example of that, just look at unemployment. What has happened to unemployment is an absolute disgrace in this country since you people came into government.
An honourable member interjecting—
Ms BUTLER: Interesting. Unemployment got up to 6.7 per cent in my state of Queensland under coalition federal and state governments. We might also say that unemployment has reached its highest peak since the current Prime Minister was the employment minister in the early 2000s. What a shock! You would think that they would learn and you would think that they would understand, but what do they do? They come in and they say, 'You know what we should do? We should attack low-income earners and middle-income earners. That's what we should do. We should try to find some sort of basis for austerity and cuts.' What did we see happen to pensions last year? 'I know! Here's a great idea. I'm a coalition MP. What I really want to do is slash pensions by $80'—an indexation change to take away the pensioner and beneficiary living cost index as a basis for indexing the pension, to take away average weekly earnings as a basis for benchmarking the pension and only keeping CPI at a cost to pensioners, relying on excuses.
Of course, we fought that every day since that budget was announced last year and we won that battle. Together with all of the pensioners and all of the people who speak out for pensioners across this country, Labor worked hard every day to defeat that indexation. But we know, Deputy Speaker Vasta, how addicted your side of the House is to seeking to attack the living incomes of pensioners. What have we seen in this year's budget? You finally realised that you were not going to get your indexation changes through—belated, but well done; congratulations. Instead, what have we seen? Somehow you managed to hoodwink the Greens into the idea that they are going to deal with superannuation tax concessions by dealing with you to slash the pensions of middle- and low-income pensioners—a new round of pension cuts that will hurt almost 330,000 existing low-income pensioners in this country, with independent analysis saying that, over the next 10 years, around half of the pensioners will be affected by these cuts.
In total, a million retirees will have their pension cut, including around 700,000 people who are about to retire and are aged 50 to 65 today, including more than 90,000 part-pensioners, who will be thrown off the pension immediately and entirely. Any pensioner couple with more than $451,500 in assets will have their part-pension cut. Any single pensioner with more than $289,500 in assets will have their part pension cut. We are not talking about millionaires, notwithstanding what the coalition government might like to have you believe. We are talking about low- and middle-income earners. There is a price to these cuts. The Greens have sold their soul. What have they sold their soul for? A pig in a poke. We know the government are not going to change their position on superannuation concessions.
Mr BROUGH (Fisher) (16:29): In the truncated period that I have in this debate, could I just turn it on its head for a moment? Please do not take offence at that. Can you imagine for a moment, the hypocrite sitting opposite, if the coalition were standing here today saying, 'This is what we would like to propose to the parliament. We would like to increase the assets test from $823,000 to $1.15 million for home-owning couples'? They would be screaming at us that we are Liberals looking after our blueblood millionaire mates. That is what they would be doing.
You see, hypocrisy knows no name like the Labor Party. Let me make a warning to everybody in this place and in the gallery. I was here in 1996 when the member for Jagajaga stood in this place and ripped apart a coalition policy to put a bond on aged care. She said it was the most disastrous, despicable, nasty, evil—the same word that was used by the member for Sydney today—policy. Guess what? When I came back into this place in 2013, surprise surprise, the Labor Party, led by the member for Jagajaga, had put a bond on aged care facilities. In other words, when it suits their political purposes, they know nothing but political opportunism. So if we were to stand here today increasing those assets tests at the upper echelon, the same people—the member for Griffith, the member for Sydney, the member for Jagajaga—would be screaming blue murder at us for helping our millionaire mates. But there is no recognition whatsoever that the person who is on $202,000 today will have $250,000 before their pension is impacted at all, and that is for a single homeowner.
It is not as though these people who are having some money removed do not have other assets with which to replace that income. Those opposite use the example of a hardworking family having $1,000 taken off them. Well, if you have $700,000 assessable assets as a non-homeowner, you will need to access 0.01 per cent of your assets to replace the income you have lost. You are not about to run out of money any time soon, are you? Even the Labor Party can work that out. Even the member for Lilley could work that one out.
Government members: No, they cannot.
Mr BROUGH: Well, maybe they cannot. My learned colleagues behind me remind me that they cannot.
I was the minister when we changed the taper rate from $1.50 to $3 because we could afford to, because we had taken the hard yards in government and because we had put our finances in this country onto a solid footing. Because of the waste, because of the mismanagement, because of the myriad mistakes made by the Labor Party that have been articulated by my colleagues, that is not possible. So when the member for Sydney talks about this policy's architecture, that is wrong. We are reverting to what this policy was. It was a $1.50 taper rate. It was increased to $3 under the Howard government because under good economic management we could afford it. What we have done here is look after those least able by increasing their assets test, we have removed it from the higher echelons, we have given people a sustainable system, we have put fairness into the system and that is what you can expect from an economically sound Liberal government.
I would say to the shadow Assistant Treasurer, the economic rationalist over there, I am not surprised you were not part of the debate today because you would have joined us in saying this is good politics. Unfortunately your colleagues are bereft of ideas, bereft of honesty and you have let Australians down again.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time for this debate has expired.
BILLS
National Water Commission (Abolition) Bill 2015
Governance of Australian Government Superannuation Schemes Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
Assent
Message from the Governor-General reported informing the House of assent to the bills.
COMMITTEES
Public Works Committee
Reference
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) (16:33): I move:
That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: OneSKY equipment rooms project in Melbourne and Brisbane.
Air Services Australia and the Department of Defence are planning to replace their existing air traffic control systems with the new civil military air traffic management system being delivered under the OneSKY project to provide a common platform for air traffic control in both civilian and military controlled airspace. To achieve this outcome, Air Services Australia proposes to construct new equipment rooms in Melbourne and Brisbane to house the critical OneSKY infrastructure in a Defence protected status building. The proposed works will include facilities which can be run in parallel with the existing system while providing a clear separation between the existing operational air traffic management system and the OneSKY system.
The project will require continual work to develop and test the system without disruption to existing operations and operational equipment. The project is estimated to cost $35.4 million in total excluding GST. These costs include all development and delivery costs, management and design fees, construction costs, furniture, fittings, contingencies and an allowance for escalation.
Subject to parliamentary approval, the proposed works are scheduled to commence in late 2015 with a staged practical completion and commissioning towards the end of 2016.
I commend the motion to the House.
Question agreed to.
Reference
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) (16:35): I move:
That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: Fit-out of existing leased premises for the Australian Taxation Office at 121-125 Henry Street, Penrith, NSW.
The Australian Taxation Office proposes to undertake a fit-out of existing leased premises at 121-125 Henry Street, Penrith, New South Wales. The ATO has a substantial presence in the Penrith region and for the past 20 years has been located in the building where it has a lease in place. The ATO has substantially reduced the amount of space it will retain in Penrith in line with the agency's off-ramping strategy. The reduction in space equates to a saving of $38.9 million excluding GST over 10 years, representing an excellent outcome for the Commonwealth.
The new fit-out will provide the ATO with considerable advantages in terms of building design and operating efficiencies and long-term viability through improvements in building infrastructure. The estimated cost of the fit-out is $19.6 million excluding GST and includes all costs associated it with an integrated fit-out as well as furniture, workstations, contingencies and builders' costs. Subject to the approval of the project by the parliament, fit-out is expected to commence in late 2015, with staged practical completion scheduled from mid-2016. I commend the motion to the House.
Question agreed to.
Reference
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) (16:37): I move:
That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: REDFIN Phase 1B Infrastructure—facilities required for the new fleet of special operations vehicles.
The Department of Defence is proposing to provide new and refurbished infrastructure at four locations across Australia for the acquisition of special operations vehicles and communications systems for the Australian Defence Force special forces. The ADF special forces are highly trained and specially equipped to conduct operations at short notice in a range of domestic and international environments. Special forces provide the Commonwealth with a range of strategic options beyond those available through conventional forces. Project REDFIN will provide new and upgraded facilities and infrastructure essential to the operation of the special forces which include new working accommodation, maintenance hangars, storage and workshop facilities. The project is valued at an estimated $50.4 million excluding GST. Subject to parliamentary approval of the project, construction is expected to begin in early 2016, with staged completion of the facilities occurring between mid-2016 and mid-2018. I commend the motion to the House.
Question agreed to.
Reference
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) (16:39): I move:
That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: fit-out of leased premises for the Administrative Appeals Tribunal at 83 Clarence Street, Sydney.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal proposes to undertake a fit-out of its leased premises at 83 Clarence Street, Sydney, New South Wales to accommodate the amalgamation of Commonwealth merits review tribunals following the passage of the Tribunals Amalgamation Act 2015.
From 1 July 2015, the Migration Review Tribunal, the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Social Security Appeals Tribunal would be amalgamated into a single Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This amalgamation will deliver savings through operational efficiencies and through the consolidation of property holdings and streamlining of back office administrative processes currently performed individually by each tribunal. The move to a single location for the AAT in Sydney will allow for the rationalisation of resources, particularly in the sharing of public facilities such as hearing and conference rooms across jurisdictions. The project will provide new working accommodation for tribunal staff and members and hearing rooms and other facilities necessary for the conduct of administrative reviews. The design of a new fit-out will allow the new AAT to improve the service to clients by using new technologies to deliver services more efficiently and effectively and by providing a single point of access for most Commonwealth merit reviews. It will give a physical dimension to the amalgamation which has been achieved in law.
The estimated total cost of the project is $18.1 million excluding GST and includes construction costs, management and design fees, furniture, fittings, workstations, contingencies and escalation allowances. Subject to parliamentary approval of the project, construction is expected to begin in late 2015, with staged practical completion scheduled from early 2016. I commend the motion to the House.
Question agreed to.
Reference
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) (16:42): I move:
That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: Royal Australian Air Force Base Williamtown Redevelopment Stage 2 Project.
The Department of Defence is proposing to upgrade and replace ageing critical infrastructure and construct new facilities at the Royal Australian Air Force Base Williamtown in New South Wales. The project will improve the functionality, capability and security of the facilities at RAAF Base Williamtown. The base has a long history—a proud history—and an important future as a site for Joint Strike Fighter operations. The project will upgrade base engineering services, relocate the main base entrance, provide new and refurbished working accommodation and demolish dilapidated buildings which are not suitable for adaptive reuse.
Office and working accommodation is dispersed across the base, reflecting ad hoc changes over the years. The majority of office accommodation is no longer functional for its current purpose, resulting in operational inefficiencies. Many of the buildings are at the end of their design life and do not meet current building codes and standards for work health and safety, security or ecologically sustainable development requirements. The project is valued at an estimated $274 million excluding GST and includes construction costs, management fees, furniture, fittings and equipment, contingencies and escalation allowances. Subject to parliamentary approval of the project, construction is expected to begin in mid-2016 and be completed by mid-2021. I commend the motion to the House.
Question agreed to.
BILLS
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015
Imported Food Charges (Collection) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Cognate debate.
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Dr STONE (Murray) (16:44): In continuation, I was saying that the Imported Food Inspection Scheme of Australia creates two categories of food for inspection. The first is the high- and medium-risk category, where 20 consecutive consignments are looked at over a period and if the inspection of those consignments, at varying rates, finds no problems with the product, then the inspection rate is reduced to five per cent. Unfortunately, those consignments can be just one carton of food, and that carton can be delivered as a new consignment every day for 20 days. Of course, the importers are not foolish; they understand the system very well, so they make sure that product is squeaky clean. There is a serious problem there, I believe.
Then we have the low-risk category called 'surveillance food'. Samples of surveillance food may be analysed for pesticides, antibiotics, microbiological contaminants, natural toxicants, metal contaminants and food additives. But in fact the inspection usually only involves visual label assessment. It may include some sampling of the food for application of analytical tests, but it does not have to. I am concerned about this surveillance category because it includes tinned fruits amongst its products. You might say that tinned fruits have been processed, they have gone through a significant heating process during manufacture, so they are probably going to be okay—wherever they have come from. But our experience is different when we have had, in particular, three-kilo cans of peaches tested in Australia by the National Measurement Institute last year, and elevated levels of lead were found in those three-kilo cans of imported peaches.
As required by the system, it is the states who, if notified of a problem of contamination, are supposed to decide on a recall or not. Virtually all states in Australia were notified of this lead contamination issue in the three-kilo cans of imported peaches, and no state chose to put out a recall or removal of that product from shelves. It would have been difficult, I have to confess, because a three-kilo can of product is most likely going to be in the hospitality or services industry, being served to hospitals, prisons, defence forces and school canteens. But, quite clearly, the surveillance food risk category for that product is not the right category.
More recently, at the beginning of the year, more canned peaches—imported from China—were inspected and found by the RMIT testing regime to contain not only elevated levels of lead but also arsenic. I am most concerned that none of that product has been withdrawn or recalled. In fact, since the contamination of that product was made known to numbers of governments, there has not been any feedback at all. So we have to make sure that with this bill, where we are looking at the costs of the Imported Food Inspection Scheme, those costs are right. We also have to make sure that the way we calculate those costs is right and that the party who is responsible for importing the product is charged. All of that is very important and, therefore, I support this bill.
What I am identifying is that we have a problem between the state and federal governments' coordination of food inspections. The states, in particular, are supposed to make sure that the food is fit for human consumption and is not likely to cause any illness or bad effect right through to its serving on a plate in a school canteen or a restaurant, or even in the home. States virtually no longer have food inspectors out in the system. Local councils once provided the pie and sausage inspectors; they are virtually non-existent now. The regimes, I believe, are under serious pressure in terms of the number of people who are dedicated to the task and the resources that are committed to this task. Under Labor, as we know, there was a slashing and burning in particular of biosecurity services. We really do have to protect the interests of our consumers in Australia. We have to make sure that the labelling shows not only whether the product is more or less 50 per cent grown, manufactured and made in Australia; the consumer also wants to know: where did the product actually come from? There is a lot of understanding about the different food safety regimes in different countries. Consumers are not stupid. They want to know. So that will, I think, be an important part of the consultation and feedback on our new food labelling laws.
I am commending this bill to the House but I am also saying that it is an area that we have inherited with a lot of flaws. I know the Minister for Agriculture understands this. He has to work through COAG to try to bring our states into line so that we have consistent food safety regulation and appropriate risk and surveillance categories. I think we need to revisit the manufactured fruit, particularly canned fruit, being in the surveillance or 'low risk' food category, because our random inspections of canned fruit from some countries has given us great cause for alarm. We cannot afford to have a situation not only where people become ill with hepatitis A but where, over multiple uses of, say, a product containing high levels of lead, we do serious damage to our children and our elderly. So I commend this bill to the House, but I also commend to us, in a bipartisan way, a comprehensive and thorough relook at how we test imported product that comes into this country so that we can make sure that we do not have two different regimes—one for exported product, which is of one of the world's highest standards, and a lesser standard for imported product. This is especially important as we import more food, which I am always concerned about when we have our own home-grown product, and when the supply chains are ever more complex. It is no longer just a case of saying, 'That product came from Taiwan'. Often the product was caught in Australia, was sent to Taiwan, was manufactured there, was marketed through some other country and finally ends up with very unusual labelling of country of origin on our 'no name' shelves in our supermarkets.
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (16:51): Having some of the most stringent food standards in the world provides a high level of protection for Australian consumers. Consumers expect that food imported from overseas meets the same standards as food produced in Australia. I disagree with the member for Hunter's comments that the Auditor-General's recent finding on the effectiveness of the imported food inspection scheme was seriously flawed. In fact, the Auditor-General found that the Department of Agriculture administration of these arrangements had been generally effective. Three recommendations have been made, all of which the department has agreed to. The department has commenced work to address the recommendations and this work will further improve the inspection of imported food. Maintaining community confidence in the safety of all food is of great importance to the government. This report will further support the improvement of food safety and compliance with Australian food standards.
To reassure the member for Hunter, actions have been taken in response to recent food safety incidents. The Auditor-General's report highlights the responses linked to hepatitis and imported frozen berries and food poisoning in imported fish. Inspection rates of these products have been increased. Food Standards Australia New Zealand has reviewed the disease status of frozen berries, and a testing protocol has been developed for E. coli in berries as an indicator for process hygiene. The department has also notified importers of frozen berries that they must ensure that their supply chains are underpinned by good agriculture and hardy manufacturing practices to manage food safety risks.
Having appropriate cost-recovery mechanisms in place to support the activities that ensure compliance with the scheme is essential. These standards are a critical part of an imported food system. The government is committed to maintaining and improving these arrangements. The Imported Food Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015, the Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015, the Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015 and the Imported Food Charges (Collection) Bill 2015 will enable cost-recovery activities that benefit importers of food. Constitutionality requires us to do all this in separate bills. This includes the recovery costs for administering the imported food regulatory framework, including the development of audit and compliance standards for third-party arrangements.
These bills are not about the country-of-origin food labelling. I know this is an important issue for many Australians. This is why the government is providing consumers with the opportunity to have their say on simpler and more logical ways to label food. I call on those who are currently listening to make sure that they get their responses in, and currently we have around 8,000 responses on our website. The Australian people have asked for a food-labelling system that: is simple; reflects proportionality of how much of the food actually comes from our nation of the substantive ingredients; is diagrammatic and can be understood at a glance; and is compulsory. This is something within the National Party and the Liberal Party that we have been fighting for for a long period of time, and it is great to be part of a government that is actually going to see this introduced.
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr JOYCE: I hear the interjections on fishing. It is always amazing that, when you are actually doing something that the previous government were unable to do, the opposition then find an extra position which is yet another thing that they never did. It shines a very clear light on the inadequacies of the previous government to deliver a labelling system which is what the Australian people asked for. We will be the government that actually see that labelling system in place.
People have said that the labelling system we have uses weasel words. It does not actually reflect whether a product comes from our nation. It can come from a myriad of nations, and maybe not come from our nation at all, yet it manages to get the words 'made in Australia' on it. In relation to proportionality, either a bar graph or a pie chart, which are part of the examples out for public discussion, this will give people the opportunity to discuss these and other avenues of clearly identifying a proper labelling system that the Labor government was unable to introduce.
In fact, everything that the Labor Party does is a commentary on issues that they never did. They never brought in a proper agriculture policy. They never brought in a proper drought policy. They absolutely decimated the Department of Agriculture.
Mr McCormack: The minister was hopeless.
Mr JOYCE: Well, not one, they had three of them.
Mr McCormack: All hopeless.
Mr JOYCE: It was a stepping stone to oblivion to be the Minister for Agriculture in the Labor government. We had the oxymoronic concept wherein one of the most urbanised seats in Australia held the Minister for Agriculture, which at that time was Minister Burke, the member for Watson.
What was more important is that they more than halved the agriculture budget. They spent money everywhere else. There was one place they did find savings. They found savings in agriculture and almost decimated the department. It is beyond belief that one could compare the absolute apparent success that the government have seen in record prices in cattle, record prices in sheep, close to record prices in wool, strong prices in cotton, three free trade agreements—and I commend the work of Minister Robb—six new live animal destinations and protocols in place. Since the GFC I think there has been a 36 per cent increase in our exports of rural produce. These are the actions of a competent government. It is like Sir Christopher Wren said: if you want to see our memorial, have a look around any saleyard you like and you will see how we are going, you will see what we are delivering.
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr JOYCE: I can assure you that I have seen alternative policies of the previous government that were able to decimate large swathes of agriculture in Australia. One would say that would be difficult, but the Labor government managed to do it. What we have seen on our side, even in the most recent budget, is the capacity to concentrate on agriculture. The former Treasurer, Mr Swan, I do not think, ever, in his budget speeches mentioned the word 'agriculture'. If you do the word search in his budget speeches—
Mr McCormack: He didn't mention the word 'farmer'.
Mr JOYCE: There was actually one time he mentioned the word 'farm'. I think it was to do with farm finance. This is a differentiation. We have taken agriculture to the centre of government. We honestly believe that it is a true pillar of our economy. We have delivered the results. The results speak for themselves. The results are there because the difference between two forms of government and two forms of outcome has to be understood. This is not hyperbole; it is actual, it is real, it is giving the capacity for people to say for the first time, 'I've cleared my overdraft. For the first time there is real money.'
I have just finished a conversation with people on my agricultural committee from around the nation. Overwhelmingly there was a positive response. They say that they are excited about the future because of the work that this government has done. Even if you go to the wine industry there are new contracts at better prices. This is the sort of work we do because we have people on our side of the parliament who have a passion for agriculture.
Beside me at the moment is probably the biggest cattle producer in the coalition, the member for Wentworth. He has a substantial holding of cattle in the Hunter Valley. That is what they lack on the other side. There is not one farmer. That party once had Mick Young and Minister Walsh, who was a grain farmer. Where are their farmers? Is it the case that any person involved in agriculture can see nothing but a desert in the policy of the Labor Party? There is nothing to intrigue people into being part of the Labor Party and to joining the Labor Party. When the question was posed if there was a farmer in the Labor Party we got the member for Fremantle, and I think that is a very obscure reference to her parents, who might have had something to do with the land. That is it. This is why we must lay down at treatise on how to take agriculture forward. We are doing it and we are delivering it.
The Australian government has had a longstanding policy of recovering the costs from importers of food. The arrangements in place must allow the Department of Agriculture to recover costs effectively. The package of bills will ensure that appropriate cost-recovery mechanisms are in place for all imported food related activities. Under the imposition bills, regulations will prescribe the amount of the charges and who is liable to pay. These bills also include a safeguard regarding the amount of the charge. The collection bill provides the authority to collect charges imposed and to determine when the charge is due and payable. The bill also provides the Commonwealth with mechanisms to appropriately the deal with nonpayment and late payment. It also sets out provisions for the remitting or refunding of charges. The legislation will sit alongside existing legislation that allows cost recovery of activities provided directly to people, such as inspection and audit services. It provides a flexible and common-sense structure for applying charges. This supports the important work undertaken by the Department of Agriculture to monitor the compliance of imported food with the Australian food standards.
When a small office of the ministry of agriculture moved to Armidale I was amazed that all we got from Labor was half a day in estimates.
Mr Fitzgibbon: A small office—175 staff?
Mr JOYCE: The current office in Armidale has three staff. What did they want? What was their alternative? They had plans to incorporate the Department of Agriculture's office in Kogarah in Sydney. That was it.
Mr McCormack: That's rural and regional.
Mr JOYCE: Well St George is close enough. 'Possibly in Queensland but more likely in Sydney'—that was it. What have we had all the time the Labor Party have been in opposition? Where is the ardent investigation of alternative forms of policy? We have had nothing but commentary and derision. They have never been able to table a policy that shows some respect to the people they are supposed to be representing. Let us look at what we have done. Even in the drought they managed to give out eight concessional loans. That is how many they got out. We have delivered 551 concessional loans. With the interim farm family payment they had managed to successfully deliver 367 across the nation. We have had over 5,000 people get access to the farm household allowance.
It is not only looking at the core constituency and making sure that our commodity prices are at record levels; it is looking after those people on the edge. We have been doing both. As we speak coming back into our office is the plan for dog fences so we can rid many areas of the western districts of a scourge that will not allow us to repopulate those areas with sheep. That is happening as we speak. As we speak we are getting a policy so the epicentre of the drought gets a stimulus package. That is happening as we speak.
As we speak we are developing new markets. Today we have tabled the free trade agreement with China. As we speak we are investigating greater ways to get further exports of kangaroo meat so we can take some of the pressure off the pastoral districts. We know that one of the only ways you can deal with an exploding kangaroo population is to find a market for kangaroo meat, and we are doing that. That is what an effective government does. I take the laurel of being the Minister for Agriculture incredibly seriously. It is one of the most significant policies that the coalition can have. We wish it were the case that that desire and quest were held on both sides of the House, but they are not. What we see is commentary and derision against real policy and delivery of outcomes. I commend these bills to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (17:06): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (17:07): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Imported Food Charges (Imposition—Excise) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (17:08): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Imported Food Charges (Collection) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (17:09): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2015 Measures No. 3) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Dr LEIGH (Fraser) (17:10): Labor's position is to oppose this bill. Labor opposed these measures when they were included in the Superannuation Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No. 5) Bill 2014. Moving them from TSLAB 5 of 2014 to TSLAB 3 of 2015 in no way reduces Labor's in-principle opposition to these measures. We oppose the abolition of the seafarer tax offset and the reduction in the research and development tax credit. The abolition of the seafarer tax offset does not have the support of the Australian shipping community. As the Australian Shipowners Association has noted:
The Seafarers Tax Offset … helped to reduce the operating costs of Australian vessels, increased the competitiveness of Australian shipping and provided significant opportunity for employment of Australians in international trades … the impact [of abolition] is severe with regard to future opportunity.
The member for Grayndler will have more to say about this proposed abolition.
Another part of this bill reduces the research and development tax offset by 1.5 percentage points. It is an interesting and somewhat curious story how this comes about. Members will recall that at the last election the coalition campaigned on a platform, in part, that they would introduce an unfair parental leave scheme. That unfair income-replacement parental leave scheme was to be funded by a 1.5 percentage point levy on large businesses. The parental leave scheme is now gone, and the government in the last budget said that the majority of its spending decisions were offset by savings decisions. What they mean is that the unfair parental leave scheme, which never went ahead, had $10.4 billion banked in the contingency reserve and that has now been taken out of the contingency reserve. The 1.5 percentage point levy on large businesses is now gone and is not going ahead, because the unfair parental leave scheme is not going ahead.
Somewhat surprisingly, the government has nonetheless decided to proceed with a 1.5 percentage point reduction in the research and development tax offset. That is curious because the original justification for this reduction has now gone. The original justification for the government was, 'We are going to have an unfair parental leave scheme, we are going to put a levy on large businesses and we are going to reduce their R&D tax offset by 1.5 percentage points commensurately.' Parental leave gone; levy gone; cut to R&D retained. That really says all you need to know about this government's attitude to science and research and development. Any excuse they can find to hack into research and development is an excuse they will take.
In 2013, the science and research community were appalled when it was announced that this would be the first government since 1931 not to have a science minister. The first Abbott government budget cut $3 billion from science, research and innovation—cuts which were maintained in this year's budget. The CSIRO has lost $110 million of funding, resulting in the loss of 500 jobs and the closure of eight research sites.
What does this mean in concrete terms? It means that eight infectious disease researchers at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong, the only facility for researching live samples of deadly diseases such as Ebola, will lose their jobs. It means that the Aspendale laboratory, which focuses on marine and atmospheric research, will lose eight staff. Among those staff leaving are Paul Fraser, head of oceans and atmosphere, who has been honoured by NASA. Water research has been targeted. The Office of Water Science Research and the National Water Commission will be abolished. The Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure program has had a massive cut to its budget. The CSIRO's Victorian site, in Clayton, has seen the loss of staff who did work around advanced materials, nanotechnology, energy, mining and minerals. Organic chemist San Thang, who was regarded at one stage as a frontrunner for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has been made redundant. The CSIRO has also lost indirectly, as the government has folded the Australian Climate Change Science Program into the National Environmental Science Program. CSIRO has lost researchers who work on eucalypt forestry. It is hard to imagine what other organisation in the world will fill that vital gap in knowledge in forestry about a kind of tree that grows more in Australia than anywhere else.
The Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, said in March that the government had 'got it wrong' with its science cuts. The government has been criticised by the head of Obesity Australia and the head of the Australian Academy of Science. We have seen considerable cuts to higher education research, again hacking into the country's science base. Those opposite often like to claim that they are in favour of innovation, and we saw a strong turnout yesterday when the member for Griffith and the member for Casey convened a gathering of the Parliamentary Friends of Innovation and Enterprise. But underpinning innovation and entrepreneurship is significant investment in science and research and development. The cuts to higher education, the cuts to CSIRO and the head-in-the-sand attitude to climate change—which has earned us the title of the only country in the world which is going backwards on climate change action—have left many wondering whether this government is serious about science and research.
The Parliamentary Library estimates that research and development spending will be 0.56 per cent of GDP in 2014-15, the equal lowest share of research and development spending since records began, in 1978-79. That contrasts with Labor, which takes science extremely seriously. That is why science formed a centrepiece of the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply, which focused on how we can make sure that kids at school have the chance to learn coding, the digital literacy of the 21st century, and how we can ensure that more young Australians are studying science, engineering, technology and mathematics so they have the skills to build new start-up businesses. Without significant investment in science and research and development, Australia will not be able to answer that vital question as to where the jobs of the future are coming from. Labor is deeply concerned that, under this government, science and research and development are going backwards.
I look forward to hearing, in the speeches of those opposite—I am sorry; the speech of those opposite; the member for Casey is the only one on that side of the House who has lined up to defend this bill—a coherent explanation as to what, since they are not going ahead with their unfair parental leave scheme or the 1.5 percentage point levy on big businesses, their rationale is for cutting the research and development tax credit by 1.5 percentage points. What is this apart from a cash grab by a desperate government? Why else would the government be trying to hack into the productive potential of the Australian economy, hack into that research base, at the very same time as the government—which began bereft of a science minister and continued by cutting CSIRO—has so put itself offside with the science community and so jeopardised the potential of the Australian economy to create new jobs? I look forward to hearing that 1.5 percentage point cut in the R&D tax credit justified by the member for Casey. Perhaps members opposite may think about joining the speakers list if they are so compelled. Maybe they can come up with more than yet another ad hoc argument for cutting research and development.
Mr TONY SMITH (Casey) (17:20): As always, I welcome the opportunity to follow the shadow Assistant Treasurer. I am chuffed that he has decided to stay for my contribution. It has rather made my day. He has asked a number of questions, which I will come to in a second. I am more than happy to answer the questions that continue to confound him. I would like him to end this day without any questions in his mind. The member for Fraser said a lot of things, but what he did not say revealed a lot as well. What he did not say was how much the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2015 Measures No. 3) Bill 2015 was saving the forward estimates and the reason why the two schedules in this bill have been moved. He has been agonising, obviously, for almost a month on why the government has introduced this bill. It has been troubling him and he is desperate for a explanation, so I am going to do something unusual with the member for Fraser: I am going to point him to a secret document which explains why the government has moved this bill. Member for Fraser, that secret document is in fact the Assistant Treasurer's second reading speech. That is the person you shadow. You only need to look back to 27 May—and already, unfortunately, we have lost the shadow minister, after a minute and a half. That is a record. But I suspect he well knows this, as he moves up into the chamber to have some conversation with a colleague of mine. As the Assistant Treasurer pointed out in the first few lines of the second reading speech of 27 May, these measures were necessary as part of the suite of difficult measures to put our budget on a more sustainable basis. Here is what he said:
This bill is a further step towards repairing the budget and providing taxpayers with value for money from the government.
In the fifth paragraph of that speech, he said:
The measures in this bill will return around $826 million to the budget over the forward estimates …
Now, $826 million is not a figure you heard from the member for Fraser. He was very quick to point out that he and his colleagues are going to oppose this bill, but in doing so they are opposing $826 million of improvement to the very difficult budget situation that they left this country. Not only is the member for Fraser quite happy to be a fiscal failure; he is apparently happy to be a fiscal sleepwalker as well—seeing a budget deficit that has grown and grown with our net debt at record levels but opposing every single measure to fix it. And he comes into this place and accuses the government of not having a reason for having to take these decisions when that reason is clearly articulated in the minister's second reading speech back almost a month ago.
I know the member for Fraser well. I have known him for a few years now. There are many things you can say about the member for Fraser. But I am not going to say he is unintelligent; he is not. And I am not going to say he does not work hard. He has read this speech. He reads everything there is to read. He has read it and he knows. What he did today was get up and give no explanation as to how Labor would repair the budget, no alternative at all, other than to say 'no' to repairing the budget and to affirm again that Labor are going to reintroduce the carbon tax, which was another interesting aspect of his contribution.
The point he did get right is that there are two schedules. As the Assistant Treasurer, the member for Kooyong, pointed out in the introduction, the seafarer's tax offset has not met its policy intent. That will save around $12 million over the forward estimates. It affects about five companies. Compared to the amount originally put in the forward estimates by those opposite, it is a much lower amount. Yes, the R&D tax schedule will save around $810 million over the forward estimates. It is all clearly there—not just in the bill; in the minister's second reading speech.
In terms of the rest of his contribution on industry and science, I would point him to the many other initiatives that this government have unveiled through Minister Macfarlane to support innovation and enterprise in so many ways: the Industry Growth Centres initiative, the Entrepreneurs' Infrastructure Program, the single business service, the growth fund boosting the commercial returns from research—and many others as well that have been encompassed in the minister's major policy announcements over recent months.
He talked about start-ups again without mentioning the critical importance of getting the tax settings right on employee share ownership. That is something this government has done after six long years from when Labor effectively killed employee share ownership for start-ups. That is something this government has done that has been welcomed by the start-up sector.
Some of those opposite have been up-front and candid enough to admit that Labor botched it terribly and, after they wrecked the employee share landscape, ignored any attempt by the industry to get them to revisit it. For six long years we had the start-up sector starved of the opportunity of employee share ownership. Some of those opposite such as the member for Chifley in this place, in an interjection to me, was candid enough to say, 'Labor got it wrong.' The member for Chifley was candid enough to say that. It is obvious they got it wrong. He said it publicly, but you will not hear it from the shadow assistant Treasurer. You will not hear it from him at all in any of these debates. If he wants to be taken seriously, he should at least acknowledge Labor's failures, at least acknowledge our repair of them and at least acknowledge the fiscal task this nation confronts.
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler) (17:28): There is something tragic about watching people lose their sense of reality as they succumb to fanaticism. As Napoleon Bonaparte once said:
There is no place in a fanatic's head where reason can enter.
This is what has happened to this government when it comes to anything to do with Australian based shipping. There is one element of this legislation that is about removing the seafarer's tax offset. Once again, this is yet another proposition by the government to increase the taxation that workers have to pay.
I notice that in his second reading speech, the Assistant Treasurer offered the view that abolishing the offset represented a step towards to 'simplifying coastal shipping regulation in Australia'. Now, that is an extraordinary statement from the Assistant Treasurer, because the seafarers offset has absolutely nothing to do with coastal shipping—with domestic shipping taking freight from one Australian port to another around our coast.
The seafarers tax offset was introduced by the former Labor government in 2012 as part of a package of reforms aimed at revitalising Australian shipping. These reforms included changes to taxation regimes to allow Australian based international shippers to compete with their international rivals on a level playing field. We did that in a very practical way. We did not do it in a protectionist way or in a regulatory way; we did it through micro-economic reform. We did it by introducing two tax changes: by having a zero rate in the form of company taxation for Australian ships that were registered on the Australian International Shipping Register and by having effectively a zero rate on Australian seafarers who worked on those ships.
What is interesting about the government's approach is that they are not trying to repeal, through this legislation, the zero rate of taxation for the companies; they are just trying to change it for the workforce. That is consistent with the government's very narrow approach.
This measure provided a rebate to employers of Australian staff for part of the income tax withheld while those staff undertake international voyages. It was a very effective measure indeed, which effectively would assist the companies, as well, which hire Australian seafarers to work on international voyages. The intent in creating the rebate was simple. We wanted to encourage the employment of Australian seafarers on ships. We wanted to see Australians involved in the international maritime industry. We wanted to see jobs for Australians.
What was the logic of this in terms of the debate that we had with Treasury and Finance? I must say that, when initially the proposition was put forward at the extensive consultative process that I established as the minister, Treasury and Finance's starting instinct was not to support zero rates of taxation. But they did because they acknowledged the logic that was there, because, if Australian ships are going to compete with ships that are based in places like Singapore and other competitor nations—let alone some that are registered under flags of convenience in Third World countries—they have to have competitive rates of taxation. Similarly, if you are a seafarer who works in international waters for a lot of the time, you can very easily simply base yourself in a country such as Singapore that provides for essentially a similar regime to that of the seafarers tax offset—effectively, a zero rate of taxation.
It actually is a false cost to government because, unless you have this sort of policy, you will not have Australian-flagged vessels in international trade and you will not have Australian seafarers based in Australia engaged in that trade. And yet this government is attempting to repeal this, which is certainly not in the national interest.
The Assistant Treasurer in his second reading speech chose to conflate the offset with the ongoing debate about this government's attempts to introduce Work Choices on water by dismantling Labor's domestic shipping reforms. What we have here is a case of ideology overtaking reason. Last month, the Deputy Prime Minister and transport minister confirmed his intention to dismantle Labor's 2012 Revitalising Australian Shipping package, which sought to use tax breaks and other benefits to strengthen the Australian industry. Part of his plan is to allow foreign-flagged vessels paying Third World wages to undercut Australian-flagged vessels operating between Australian domestic ports.
A rational person would accept that, if you work in Australia, whether you are moving freight by sea, air, rail or road, you ought to be paid in accordance with Australian law. But those opposite are not rational when it comes to the maritime sector. So obsessed are they with the Maritime Union of Australia that they are prepared to wreck an Australian industry to ensure that there are not Australian jobs in the maritime sector, because therefore you will not have Maritime Union members. It is an extraordinary proposition that they have.
The particular measure that is in this bill, though, is specifically about international shipping. But it is worth saying that, if you were carrying goods by road down the Hume Highway from Sydney to Melbourne, it would be an extraordinary proposition that Toll or Linfox should have to compete with someone who could bring in a Filipino based truck with Filipino based safety standards and therefore costs and overheads and employ a Filipino based driver with Filipino wages and conditions to drive down the Hume Highway. And yet what this government wants to do is this: if you go from Sydney to Melbourne on the blue highway off the coast, on a ship, you can do precisely that—a foreign ship with foreign standards, employing foreign workers, paying foreign wages and conditions. That is an extraordinary proposition. There is no difference between road or rail or air or shipping in terms of these issues.
The government has also tried to do this through the trade minister, who is still pushing to allow this to happen with foreign airlines in the northern part of Australia. He wants them to be able to come in and compete, and undermine the services that are provided by Qantas and Virgin and Airnorth and all of those operators in Australia's north. This is nothing more than unilateral economic disarmament. This is saying, 'Come in, take our jobs, take our economic activity, and we will get nothing in return'. There is no industrialised country in the world that allows a free-for-all around its domestic coast like this government is proposing. The junior minister, the Assistant Treasurer, did not seem to understand that the seafarer tax offset was not a part of that attack. That is a separate attack, I say to the Assistant Treasurer. It must be confusing for him—as he sits in meetings where there is wave after wave of attacks on the rights of the workforce in the maritime sector.
The ignorance of the Assistant Treasurer does not make him a lone soldier. The Deputy Prime Minister and transport minister—the person just a heartbeat away, the person who from time to time is acting Prime Minister of this country—spoke at a Shipping Australia function on 20 May. He surprised his audience when he indicated, in response to a question, that this seafarer tax offset had already been repealed. He did not know! The Deputy Prime Minister was asked if the government would do anything with tax incentives for Australian business, like those in Europe where there is accelerated depreciation in tax rebates for seafarers. And he said in his answer: 'Of course, there were some taxation measures in the previous government's framework that have not been used, and I think they were actually repealed in the last budget.' What an extraordinary statement from the Deputy Prime Minister. The truth is: the government has tried before to abolish this offset, and it was rejected by the Senate for good reason.
So this legislation represents the second time in two years that the government has sought to abolish this seafarer tax offset. Labor opposed this change the first time around and we will do it again. The former government introduced this as a part of wanting to see Australia as an island continent with a strong shipping industry. It is in our economic interest and our environmental interest—and it is in the interests of our national security—to have the Australian flag have a strong presence, not just around our coastline but around the seas, oceans and waterways of the world. We want to see the Australian flag flying on the backs of ships working our coastal trading routes and around the world.
The way the rebate works here is not really targeted just at employees; it is a payment provided to employers to encourage them to employ Australians. Once again, that is something the Assistant Treasurer just did not seem to get at all. The government sees the shipping sector not as an industry but just as an input cost to every other industry. Maritime Industry Australia, known previously as the Australian Shipowners Association, and Shipping Australia both support this offset. They are both industry bodies—the Australian based industries and indeed the foreign shippers that engage in Australia both support this offset, which came after an extensive process.
We will oppose this, as we will oppose the government's 'Work Choices on water' agenda. We believe it is in the national interest to have this proposition opposed. I do say that the major players in the shipping industry, including CSL and ANL, have told the government that the so-called red-tape burden under the post-2012 system is no different to that which preceded it. In a submission to the departmental review of coastal trading last year, CSL said this:
The cost impost on Australian shippers of engaging coastal vessels on coastal trades since the introduction of the Coastal Trading Act in July 2012, as a standalone piece of legislation, is minimal.
ANL also supported the current regime.
We will oppose the abolition of the seafarer tax offset because it is not in the national interest. (Time expired)
Mr CONROY (Charlton) (17:43): I am pleased to join my colleague the member for Grayndler and other Labor colleagues in opposing the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No. 3) Bill 2014. Labor strongly opposes the ill-advised and shameful cuts contained in this bill. The bill abolishes the seafarer tax offset with a saving over the forward estimates of $12 million, and reduces the research and development tax incentive offset with a saving of $620 million over the forward estimates.
We all know that the coalition's vision for the Australian maritime industry is a short-sighted and vicious vision. The coalition want our maritime industry to be dominated by foreign flagged ships, crewed by foreign workers, who are paid low foreign wages, and who work under scandalous foreign working conditions with foreign safety standards. It is indeed 'Work Choices on water', as the member for Grayndler stated.
This bill clearly identifies the coalition's intention to remove the supports that the previous Labor government established to revitalise Australian shipping. The object of this offset was to stimulate opportunities for Australian seafarers to be employed or engaged on overseas voyages and to acquire necessary maritime skills. Isn't there a stark difference between Labor's approach and the coalition's? Labor is supporting Australian workers and Australian industry and the coalition is supporting foreign workers and foreign companies.
This tax initiative was the result of lengthy consultations with industry under the Labor government, and resulted in Labor's shipping package. Even before the tax offset was two years old, the Abbott government moved to abolish it—how typically short-sighted of this government! The Australian Shipowners Association—that is right, the shipowners—strongly opposed the abolition of the Seafarers tax offset and they opposed the abolition for very sensible and rational reasons, principally that this offset is an important element of 2012 reforms which have helped to reduce the operating costs of Australian vessels, increase the competitiveness of Australian shipping and provide significant opportunities for employment of Australians in international trade.
The association has also stated that there are a number of Australian based businesses operating in the offshore sector that have a strong desire to deploy their Australian officers overseas. The Australian Shipowners Association not only argues that the offset should be retained but that it should be expanded to the offshore sector. So we have a situation where the shipowners are arguing that the offset be retained and the Abbott government completely disregards the wishes of the industry experts. By abolishing the offset there is a saving to the budget bottom line of $12 million. Considering the government is happy to pay $112 million to close down a health program, Labor believes that this relatively minor saving to the budget should be opposed because there are many benefits to the offset.
The Abbott government's plans for shipping are clear: we know they want to abandon support for Australian coastal shipping. This is against our national and security interests, and for this reason Labor opposes the abolition of the Seafarer's tax offset, which is a crucial part of those opposite's plan to reintroduce Work Choices on water.
I will turn to the second element of this bill which Labor is opposing, and that is the cut to the R&D tax offset. The R&D tax offset is proposed to be reduced by 1.5 per cent, from 45 per cent to 43.5 per cent for companies with an annual turnover of less than $20 million, and from 40 per cent to 38.5 per cent for all other companies. Cutting support to research and development forms part of this government's anti-science agenda. Admittedly, a Minister for Science was eventually appointed in the second year of this government. However this does not hide the fact that the coalition are hell bent on cutting support for science and research, and we see this in the drastic cuts to science funding that they have undertaken.
In November 2014, Minister Macfarlane told Manufacturers' Monthly:
The Government is putting in place the policies and programmes that will provide incentives for manufacturing firms to invest in technology, and research and development, in order to foster a viable, competitive and successful manufacturing industry.
Sorry, Minister, but I do not see how reducing the R&D tax offset provides an incentive to invest in research and development. Surely it does the exact opposite?
By contrast, Labor has a very proud record in relation to research and development. It stands in stark contrast to those opposite. This bill represents a $620 million cut to support for innovation in this country. It is incredibly short-sighted and it is incredibly silly in an era where we need to grow jobs for the future. Unfortunately, it is part of the broader agenda of the coalition to attack innovation rather than support it. In 1996, when the coalition government came back into power it slashed the R&D tax concession from 150 per cent to 125 per cent. And now the coalition government elected in 2013 is continuing that vicious theme.
We have seen $2 billion of cuts to innovation programs. We have seen the gutting of commercial programs, including Enterprise Connect. We have seen a $112 million cut to the CSIRO, one of the most short-sighted and counterproductive cuts in Australian history. And we have seen a $312 million cut to the precincts initiative. They have renamed that 'growth centres' but it is essentially the same program. It was a program designed to counter a problem we have in this country, which is that we are great at blue sky research but we are not so good at applied research.
The precincts initiatives announced and implemented under the last Labor government were all designed to bring together researchers who had some great ideas with Australian industry, which desperately needs assistance to innovate and develop the new products. It recognised that we are great at invention—whether that be the black box flight recorder, the humble Hills hoist or our part in developing wi-fi. We are great at inventing things but we are pretty ordinary at commercialising them in Australia and reaping the jobs dividend. That is why the $500 million precincts initiative was so important in bringing together industry and researchers to develop clusters.
Unfortunately, when this government came into power it slashed funding from that program, going from $500 million to $188 million. That is a great example of this government's complete mistrust and lack of support for innovation. The $620 million cut contained in this bill continues that theme. It is a theme that they have advanced in other bills. For example, they ended the R&D tax concession for R&D expenditure over the first $100 million—a policy of great stupidity. It is a policy that penalises companies that choose to be high-tech and that choose to invest in research and development. This bill builds on that barbarism, quite frankly.
Their broader agenda is designed to counter innovation, it is designed to counter developing the jobs of the future and it is designed to keep Australia as a farm and a quarry—and a nice place to visit. This is a tragically short-sighted vision for this country, a vision that will condemn future generations to a lack of economic competitiveness compared to the rest of the world.
We have seen their attempts to abolish the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, a very important agency designed to commercialise renewable energy research. We have seen their crusade against the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, so crucial to the innovation chain for supporting clean energy investments and so crucial to supporting the first large-scale deployment of new cutting-edge renewable energy technology. We have seen this approach to innovation in their destruction of the automotive industry, an industry which is a key driver of innovation in this country. It is an industry that contributes four per cent of business expenditure on research and development—more than 10 times their contribution to employment. It is an industry that has gone under this government's economic watch.
The government is intent on sending the work on the submarines overseas, ignoring not only the deep national security implications of that decision but also the loss of a great opportunity to modernise Australian industry. One of the great benefits of the Collins class project begun under the Hawke-Keating Labor governments was that it engineered a modernisation of Australian industry. Before the Collins class submarine project, something like 200 companies in Australia were qualified for ISO 9000, the global benchmark of competitive manufacturing. After the Collins class project, because of all the great firms involved in that project and the challenges of working on such a high-tech project, thousands of manufacturing companies were ISO 9000 compliant. That was the potential of the Collins class project, and that was the potential of the future submarines project that this government is ignoring by its short-sighted attempt to send the work to Japan. The bill we are debating now, which embodies a $620 million cut to research and development, is part of the broader agenda of destroying innovation in this country. They are not just destroying innovation; they are sacrificing the jobs of the future on the altar of economic short-sightedness. They are sacrificing the industries of the future.
I come from a region that has a proud industrial heritage. It is an area of the Hunter that still has steel production. We do not quite have the BHP steelworks anymore but we still have some great steel manufacturers. We have got heavy engineering, railway manufacturing, defence manufacturing, energy production—I am proud to have the largest power station in the country—and operating coalmines. We have a great future in those parts of the economy. We also have the CSIRO's clean energy flagship doing great work on solar research. And we have the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resource Research—an institute leading the country, if not the world, in research on energy networks and utilisation of fossil fuels in imaginative ways. So my region is well placed to grow jobs and to develop new industries while modernising and supporting current industries. But to do that it needs appropriate support from the federal government—support that recognises the massive externalities, benefits and spillovers that accrue to the Australian economy from innovation and the development of these industries. That is ultimately why we subsidise research and development in this country. We subsidise it because it produces not only a great private good but also a great public good: research and development, innovation and all the externalities that accrue to that. Any move to cut R&D, especially in this manner, is short-sighted. Any move to cut innovation, to stop companies being as competitive as possible, is short-sighted. It is symbolic of this government's economic irresponsibility.
This is a government that does not care about growing the jobs of the future. This is a government that does not care about giving our future generations—my kids and their grandkids—the best possible start in life and the best possible chance to achieve their full economic potential. That is why Labor proudly stands opposed to this bill and the measures within it.
Mr ANDREWS (Menzies—Minister for Defence) (17:55): On behalf of the Assistant Treasurer, I thank the members who have contributed to this debate. The Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2015 Measures No. 3) Bill 2015 represents another important step in the government's economic action strategy. Our economic action strategy is about making our strong social safety net more sustainable and redefining the role of government in people's lives. The economic action strategy is about switching expenditure from consumption towards investment in order to increase our future productivity. And our economic action strategy is about repairing the budget. We are putting it back into surplus so that we as a nation can start living within our means again. Our budget decisions have not been easy ones but these decisions will ensure that our economy is strong and sustainable, because a strong and sustainable economy is a key to a prosperous Australia.
The Treasurer has said it before: failure to fix the budget and to take steps towards improving our economy now will impact on our living standards in the future. There is no alternative to the budget repair task. Therefore there is no alternative to the government's economic action strategy. We need to get on with the job of paying off the $123 billion of debt we inherited from the previous government. This bill will go part of the way towards doing that. There are two measures in the bill that will together return around $826 million to the budget over the forward estimates in fiscal balance terms. While they are both part of the government's economic action strategy and our task to repair the budget, the measures in this bill are about different groups of people. As I have said, the government is committed to returning the budget to surplus for the benefit of every Australian taxpayer.
The first measure in the bill will help us do exactly that. That is schedule 1, which abolishes the seafarer tax offset. Put simply, the seafarer tax offset does not work. The seafarer tax offset provides a refundable tax offset to Australian shipping companies for 30 per cent of salary, wages and allowances paid to Australian resident seafarers who are employed to undertake overseas voyages on qualifying vessels if the company employs a seafarer on such voyages for at least 91 days in the income year. The offset is supposed to increase employment in the shipping industry, but no noticeable increase in the employment of Australian seafarers has occurred. The offset has cost the Australian taxpayer but has achieved nothing. The repeal of the seafarer tax offset will return to the budget bottom line $16 million over the forward estimates period. While this is a small amount compared to the other measure in this bill, every little bit helps when it comes to the task of budget repair.
Australian taxpayers will also benefit from the savings returned to the budget by the other measure in this bill. Schedule 2 reduces the tax offsets available under the research and development tax incentive by 1.5 percentage points for the income years commencing on or after 1 July 2014. The decision to reduce the offset rates provided by the R&D tax incentive was difficult, but repairing the budget must be done as fairly and equitably as possible. Our decision making was guided by the need for every part of the budget to make a reasonable and proportionate contribution, including the R&D tax incentive. It is also important to emphasise that these changes to the R&D tax incentive are simple and straightforward. The changes will not affect the eligibility of companies for the incentive or the way companies claim the incentive; nor will the changes affect the administration of the R&D tax incentive more generally. The R&D tax incentive will continue to support thousands of eligible companies in all sectors of the Australian economy in conducting research and development through the provision of a generous, easy-to-access program. This measure will provide a gain to revenue and savings of around $810 million over the forward estimates period. Again, all Australian taxpayers stand to benefit from the government's efforts to return the budget to surplus.
Today I have spoken to the chamber about the two measures in this bill that cumulatively will return around $826 million to the budget over the forward estimates in fiscal balance terms. These measures are responsible. They represent another important step in our economic action strategy towards a stronger, more sustainable economy and a more prosperous Australia. And on that note, I commend the bill to the House.
The House divided. [18:05]
(The Deputy Speaker—Mr Randall)
Third Reading
Mr ANDREWS (Menzies—Minister for Defence) (18:11): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Social Services Legislation Amendment (Fair and Sustainable Pensions) Bill 2015
Second Reading
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Ms MACKLIN (Jagajaga) (18:12): I am very pleased to be speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Fair and Sustainable Pensions) Bill 2015. This is the latest in Tony Abbott's relentless campaign to cut the pension and the latest attack by this government on pensions and Australian pensioners. It is the latest broken promise from a Prime Minister who promised before the last election that he would not touch the pension.
The Prime Minister, of course, has campaigned to cut the pension ever since he was elected. I want to make it very clear from the outset that Labor will oppose this bill and particularly oppose the asset test changes proposed in this legislation. With our vote we will make clear that there is only one party in this whole parliament that will stand up for pensioners, only one party that will fight for a fair pension and only one party that will make sure that Australia has a fair retirement income system. That is Labor. We already know that every single member opposite, Liberal and National party members, have voted once to cut the pension. Last year they all voted to cut the indexation of the pension—a cut that would have left three and half million pensioners with $80 a week less within 10 years. Today they intend to try to cut the pension again. Today the Abbott government will once again break a promise they made to pensioners before the last election. Each and every one of these members of the Liberal and National parties will vote to cut the pension, to hurt Australian pensioners.
I am very proud to say that Labor last year beat this government's savage attack on the pension. We stood side by side with pensioners in every single of corner of Australia and fought the Prime Minister's unfair changes from last year's budget. We stood united with organisations like National Seniors Australia and Council on the Ageing, and we won. To all those pensioners who fought with us: this was your victory, because you stood up to this government. Every pensioner was spared last year's savage cuts. But now we have another fight on our hands—a fight made all the more difficult because of a filthy deal between the Greens and the Abbott government. Senator Di Natale and the Australian Greens have been dudded into accepting a $2.4 billion pension cut in exchange for a six-week extension to the deadline for submissions to the tax inquiry. What a deal! Senator Di Natale has been hoodwinked into claiming that he got the government to put superannuation tax concessions back on the table. He said that over and over again. Since we heard those claims from the Leader of the Australian Greens, we have had the Minister for Social Services, the Treasurer and, just a few short hours ago in question time, the Prime Minister making it absolutely plain that as long as this government is in power there will be no changes to superannuation. So Senator Di Natale and the Greens have been completely fooled, and it is Australian pensioners who are going to pay the price. This dirty deal is nothing more than the government and the Greens getting together to agree to cut the pension. That is really what it is all about. The first act of the new Greens leader has been to sell out Australian pensioners.
It is very clear that there is no intention by this government to review the retirement income system or to consider any changes to superannuation tax concessions. The Greens have been completely conned. They have all—the Liberals, the National Party and the Greens—sold out middle-income pensioners who have worked hard and saved hard their whole working lives. Each and every one of them—whether it is the leader of the Greens, the Prime Minister or the Minister for Social Services, and all of these people are going to vote for them—is going to take money off part pensioners. I will give one example. A part pensioner earning $25,000 a year will lose money as a result of these cuts. At the same time, this government is saying it will do nothing to the very generous tax concessions for the highest-income superannuants—those with incomes of more than $75,000 a year. They are not just happy about it, of course. They have all given it the green light. This deal sends an unequivocal and unmistakable message to every single pensioner in Australia: never, ever trust the Abbott government or the Greens again. It is only Labor that can be trusted to protect the pension.
Because of this legislation, because of the Greens and the government getting together, hundreds of thousands of pensioners are going to face a cut to their pension. In 2017, 330,000 pensioners will lose. Of these, 236,000 will lose part of their pension—a cut of, on average, $3,300 a year. So I hope each and every one of you is going to write to your part pensioners and tell them you are going to take $3,300 out of their pockets. Another 90,000 part pensioners will lose their pension altogether; so you can all write and tell them as well. That will be $5,000 a year that you are going to take out of the pockets of part pensioners. Over the next 10 years, more than one million pensioners will be affected by this cut. Although the government might have all of us believe that all of these pensioners are millionaires, the reality is, of course, very, very different indeed. Because of this measure, because of the changes in this legislation, pensioners with less than $300,000 in assets will lose. Some of these pensioners are on incomes of less than $15,000 a year. Yes, some of them do have assets but they are not all on easy street. This is an attack on those Australians who have worked hard all their lives and saved hard. All they wanted was to enjoy a comfortable retirement. In fact, that is what they have been working their whole lives to achieve.
Mr Ciobo interjecting—
Ms MACKLIN: The parliamentary secretary at the table, who is making such a load of racket, is about to vote for a cut to part pensioners. He is doing exactly the opposite to what he promised before the last election, which was to make no changes to the pension. Each and every one of these Liberal and National Party members are going to pull the rug out from under these part pensioners. As one pensioner wrote to me recently:
After years of planning for retirement … retirees are being told that for some they must go it alone and for others their part age pension will be drastically chopped.
She wrote:
A knife has been plunged into the breasts of middle income retirees.
And she is correct. This cut is an attack on middle-income retirees. And some of them will lose a lot. Some singles will lose as much as $8,000 a year. Some couples will lose up to $14,000 a year, each and every year. And this is only the immediate impact. The impact of these changes will be even more acute over time.
According to independent modelling, within 10 years around half of all new retirees leaving the workforce will be affected by these changes. Far more pensioners will be earning an income less than average than above average. According to the same modelling, for couples due to retire in 10 years time, the largest impacts will be felt by those with below average earnings. A couple who are still working and earning $62,000 a year stand to lose $8,600 a year or $224,000 over their entire retirement.
Yet, what do these people opposite want to do? For those retirees with $1½ million in superannuation assets or more will not be impacted at all. They will not have any change at all. That is right, the richest retirees will lose nothing at all. Here lies the absolute injustice of what we are debating tonight. The government would have you believe that this bill is fair. Whilst the government are saying that part pensioners must get by on less, they are actively promoting people with much higher levels of assets by refusing to rein in tax concessions for millionaires.
Some weeks ago our colleague Chris Bowen put forward a proposal to rein in the tax concessions that the government provide to people with superannuation balances over $1½ million. The government have just rejected that outright. Of course, this just shows the government's true colours
Opposition members interjecting—
Ms MACKLIN: And they cut low-income super; that is exactly right. They still do not get fairness. They think that part pensioners have too much money, but that millionaires with huge balances in their superannuation accounts have too little. That is what this measure really protects. Let us be clear. If you are on a pension, if you are rely on a pension in the future, the Liberals are coming after you. If you have a few million squirrelled away in a superannuation account then the Liberals are there for you; they will protect you. But if you are a pensioner who has saved your whole life, then the government is coming after you and coming after your savings.
Not only is this measure going to mean pensioners are left significantly worse off, but it also has some very significant built-in floors. The government should be aware of these because it was one of their own luminaries, former Treasurer Peter Costello, who, when he was Treasurer said:
The current taper rate of $3 means a retiree loses more aged pension than they earn on their additional savings if they do not achieve a return of at least 7.8 per cent a year.
He went on to say:
This is a large disincentive to save for retirement
Of course, he is correct. This point was reinforced by Professor Andrew Podger who recently wrote that the new assets test taper involves—and I quote—'a very tough wealth tax'. That is what you are all imposing: a very tough wealth tax.
For every $1,000 of assets the pension will be reduced by $3 a fortnight or $78 a year, much more than those assets can deliver in income. That is what you are all doing to these part pensioners. As a consequence pensioners will have a very strong incentive to sell off their assets. There are already people giving pensioners advice about how to do exactly that, to invest in non-assessable assets like the family home or to not save in the first place. These are the flaws that are built into this cut to part pensioners, and the government know it. They know it. They would rather see a cut to the pension than a fair, sustainable pension system. That is because they seem to only have one goal and that is to cut the pension. There is no intention whatsoever of standing up for pensioners or of protecting the pension.
By contrast, of course, Labor have always fought for pensioners. When we came into government in 2007 one of the first things that I did was to ask my department to undertake a review into the pension. We knew that pensioners were doing it hard. Many were living in poverty and finding it hard to make ends meet. The Harmer report into pensions was delivered to me in February 2009. It made three recommendations. The first was a $30-a-week increase to the base rate of the pension. The second was the introduction of a new indexation measure: the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index. The third was an increase to the indexation benchmark from 25 per cent of Male Total Average Weekly Earnings to 27.7 per cent of Male Total Average Weekly Earnings. Not only would these changes provide for a fairer pension, but they would also be sustainable as the result of difficult savings decisions that we made at the time.
The Treasury made it clear that by 2021 these measures would be cost neutral. I am very pleased to say that Labor delivered this significant increase to the pension. I would like to particularly acknowledge the contribution that the member for Lilley, as the Treasurer, made to the way in which Labor could deliver this pension increase. Labor delivered, for pensioners, the biggest increase in the pension in its 100-year history. We delivered a new, fairer indexation arrangement that would see the pension keep pace with wages, making sure that pensioners maintained an adequate standard of living. I am very pleased that we were able to deliver these very significant changes. Analysis by Professor Peter Whiteford showed that, as a result of this single reform, poverty among older Australians was cut from 27 per cent to less than 12 per cent. It was a very significant poverty alleviation measure. It literally brought millions of pensioners out of poverty. That is Labor's record—a record we are very proud of.
This government would have you believe that the pension is unsustainable. They would have you believe that the government cannot afford to look after low- and middle-income retirees. But it is simply not true, and Labor knows that the pension is sustainable. Australia is considered to have one of the most sustainable pensions in the world. The Allianz Pension Sustainability Index last year found that Australia's pension system is the most sustainable in the world. According to the OECD, Australia spends just 3½ per cent of GDP on the age pension, compared with the OECD average of 7.8 per cent. Ensuring the continued sustainability of the retirement income system is important, but it has to be done in a fair and equitable way.
Our universal superannuation system—of course, introduced by a Labor government—has taken, and will continue to take, the pressure off the age pension. Labor believe that Australia can afford a fair pension system. We want to be both fiscally responsible and socially just. We believe it is possible to be both—to rein in unnecessary spending and to continue to support growth, jobs and hardworking Australians. We cannot afford to continue to provide generous tax breaks to millionaires with superannuation balances of millions of dollars. That is why we are continuing to make fair and responsible decisions.
The superannuation proposals that Labor has announced are all about putting fairness back in the system. They are fair and they are good for the budget. This Prime Minister thinks that pensioners have got too much money and that millionaires do not have enough. We know, however, that it is possible to be both fair and responsible. We cannot afford to let multinationals avoid paying their fair share of tax. That is not fair or responsible. That is why we have also put forward the changes to rein in the tax concessions for those superannuants with balances above $1½ million.
We know that tough decisions need to be made. That is why we will agree to certain measures in this bill. We will agree to the abolition of the seniors supplement and we will agree to the changes to the social security treatment of defined benefits, but we will not agree to the changes to the assets test, we will not agree to the changes to the portability arrangements for the pension and we will certainly not agree to the cuts to the pensioner education supplement or the education entry payment. We have fought these cuts for a year and we will fight them once again. We will continue to fight for pensioners. It is what we have always done and we always will.
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde) (18:32): Twice today I have had to listen to contributions by the opposition that were full of complaints and no real solutions. As usual, there was no recognition or admission of the fact that they were the ones who put the budget in such bad shape in the first place. I am proud to stand here and say that this government is focused on building a better, stronger and more sustainable pension system for all Australians who require that support.
I will assist those opposite with a couple of basic facts. The current base asset test threshold for a single homeowner is $202,000. Under the proposed measures in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Fair and Sustainable Pensions) Bill 2015 that asset test threshold will increase to $250,000 before they start to receive any reduction in their age pension. For a couple who own their own home currently the asset test threshold is $286,500 and under the new proposed limits it will be $375,000. They are two examples of how, through an increase in the bottom tiers for the asset test threshold assessment, we help those at the lower end of the income scale who are receiving significant pension payments. The end result will be a significant number of part pensioners moving from the part pension to the full pension. The arguments of those opposite were, as usual, hollow.
I am proud to support the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Fair and Sustainable Pensions) Bill. As I said, it is focused on creating a fair, sustainable and better targeted pension system for the future. More than 90 per cent of pensioners will be better off or have no change to their pension under these measures. Additional assistance will be provided to about 170,000 people with modest assets, particularly nonhomeowners who are currently affected by the asset test. The base threshold for a nonhomeowner currently affected by the asset test is $348,500. The base threshold will increase to some $450,000 with these proposed changes.
Importantly, there will be no change to the existing asset test exemption for the family home. Only people with significant levels of assets other than their home will see their pension reduced. The shadow minister touched on someone who has $1 million of assets who will lose about $5,000 in their pension. That represents about 0.5 per cent of their assets. There is no doubt that they can accommodate that reduction in their pension through utilising the assets they have accumulated, particularly in superannuation where they have received significant tax advantages over their lifetime. The whole purpose of the superannuation system is to provide an income stream and capital to fund retirement incomes.
I think this is a tremendous step in the right direction in creating long-term sustainability for our pension system. There are also a number of other measures in the bill that look to improve the longer term sustainability. These measures include changes to the defined benefit income stream assessment, the proportional payment of pensions outside of Australia, the asset test and concession card, the seniors supplement, the pension education supplement and the education entry payment. I notice that the minister, when she was at the dispatch box, touched on those last two, but at the end of the day people who want to go and study have access to support through VET FEE-HELP and a number of other measures that then do not require those supplements in duplicate.
In addition, the pensioners who lose the pension entitlement as a result of these changes will automatically be issued with a Commonwealth seniors health card indefinitely without having to meet the usual income test requirements. The government, in introducing these changes, obviously will not be proceeding with the indexation changes. From 1 January 2017, the government will rebalance the asset test parameters by increasing the asset test free area and taper rate. The budget changes to the asset test mean that the majority of pensioners in Forde with modest assets will be on average $30 a fortnight better off or have no change to their pensions. This is a measured and fair change. Around 170,000 pensioners in Australia with moderate assets will receive a full or increased pension, with many changing from part to full pensions as I alluded to earlier. At the end of the day, as I have already touched on, it is the pensioners with substantial assets, who have already received significant tax benefits through the superannuation system, who will be affected by these changes. People who change to a no-pension situation will also continue to receive the healthcare card for those under pension age.
From 1 January 2016, with these measures, the government will ensure a fairer portion of the superannuant's actual defined benefit income is taken into account when applying the social security income test. A 10 per cent cap on the income that can be excluded from the test will be introduced excluding in military defined benefit schemes. This will result in an increase in the accessible income for people with a deductable amount greater than 10 per cent for the purpose of determining the rate of income support the person receives.
Another measure that will create a fairer and more measured age pension system for Australians is reducing the length of time a recipient can be paid the age pension and a smaller number of other payments outside of Australia at the full rate. From 1 January 2017, this schedule will reduce from 26 weeks to six weeks for the period in which the age pension can be paid outside of Australia at the full means tested rate. After six weeks the payment will be adjusted according to the length of the pensioner's Australian working life residence.
I am pleased that as a result of these changes we will see many pensioners in Forde receive an increase in their age pension benefits from 2017. I also note with interest the former minister's reference to a large increase in the pension when they were in government. That was tied to the introduction of the carbon tax, and it was this government that repealed the carbon tax but also left that pension increase in place.
I would also like to reflect on some further comments that the former minister has made that their refusal to back our changes is based on advice from consulting firm Rice Warner. This is the same organisation that made a submission to the Tax white paper, calling for the part pension to be phased out. I did not hear those opposite speak about that. They also call for the inclusion of the family home in the pension test if it is worth over $1.5 million. I am pleased to say that we are not doing that. They also say that if couples have more than $500,000 in assets they should lose the pension entirely. I am pleased to say that the minimum threshold at which pension will cut out is some $547,000, the upper threshold for couple non-homeowners is a bit over a million dollars and the policy for couples is $823,000. Rice Warner, who seem to be the source of their information, even go on to argue that, if people lose income but still have a valuable home, they can choose to downsize it to access the pension, effectively forcing someone to sell their home. As usual, the Labor Party has been exposed. They should do some policy homework before they start lecturing the government on pensions. Instead, they are voting to deny an average $30 a fortnight pension increase to some 170,000 Australian pensioners with modest assets. ACOSS backs this policy as do others. It has been well received by the members of the crossbench and key stakeholders and it will receive the support in the Senate. Labor are upset that once again they have been made irrelevant and are suffering from relevance depravation syndrome. It is good to see the Leader of the Opposition here as well. What we are not going to do is tax superannuation any more than it is already taxed. The government position on super is crystal clear. We will not be taxing it, unlike those opposite, who want to tax your super.
We understand the difference between superannuation that people have built up through their own savings and the pension as a welfare payment. We understand they are very different things. Before the 2007 election, Labor told Australians, 'We won't touch super—not one jot or one twiddle.' But Labor could not be trusted. They made 12 different changes to super in government, ripping $9 billion out of people's savings, and they are going to do it all over again. Rebalancing the asset test and assessable income and continuing pension increases at the highest inflation or wages mean that our government is looking after pensioners today and age pension recipients in the future. I commend this bill to the House.
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (18:44): Nine times before the last election Tony Abbott said, 'No cuts, no changes to pensions.' On the day before the election, on election eve, in that famous SBS interview—which still has the hardheads of the Liberal Party slapping their foreheads in frustration when they watch re-runs—Tony Abbott said there would be no changes to pensions. Yet today we are here arguing about the government's rotten changes to pensions. But of course we know that the government has form when it comes to telling untruths to the Australian people. Mr Abbott said there would be no cuts to schools—and there are. He said there would be no cuts to hospitals—and there are. He said there would be no changes to universities and their funding—and there are. And, of course, he said, 'No cuts to the ABC and SBS'—and that is exactly what has been happening.
This country is run by a Prime Minister who is willing to look Australians in the eye and lie to them and keep lying to them. This time, just like he did with the debt ceiling, he is using a dodgy deal with the Greens. Here we go. It almost defies belief. The Prime Minister of Australia lectured the previous Labor government for three years, saying he would never work with the Greens. If it means breaking a promise and cutting pensions, Mr Abbott will work with anyone he can, and that includes the Greens. The real problem with the deal is not that he has lied, although that is terrible—but he has certainly lowered our expectations about his honesty anyway. That is not the real issue here. The real issue here is that he has certainly broken his promise to the present and future retirees of Australia.
Let us be really clear about what is happening with this proposed legislation, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Fair and Sustainable Pensions) Bill 2015. This new round of pension cuts is going to cut the pensions of 330,000 low-income pensioner households. That will be the effect of this law, of this change. This is not people in the future. This is people right now who have worked hard their whole lives. They have made plans and financial arrangements, they have allocated money into term deposits and they have made decisions about their assets based on a set of rules. And what does this government do? It is retrospectively undercutting the ground upon which 330,000 people felt they had a contract with the government of Australia.
In these 330,000, there will be 90,000 thrown off the pension entirely. The message is clear for Australians, as we watch the debate about this legislation: the Liberal Party are coming after your pensions. You cannot trust the Liberal Party of Australia with the interests of pensioners in Australia. They tried to cut the pensions last year. In the shameful 2014 budget, the government changed the indexation rates, and they said that was not a cut, even though their own budget papers demonstrated this was a cut of some significant amount to pensions, for every pensioner in Australia. When confronted with evidence of their wrongdoing, the government chose to defend their position for nearly a year. But eventually, in their concern to save the jobs of Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey, survival instincts kicked in and, at the last moment, they have chosen to drop their cuts to pensions, even though they told Australians for a year that they were not doing what we were accusing them of. Then they decided to change what we had accused them of, because they knew we were right and the government was hurting pensioners.
The real issue here, though, is that, if you are on a pension now, or if you will rely on a pension in the future, the Liberals are coming after you—and it is only the Labor Party willing to stand in front of the Liberal Party steamroller coming to flatten pensioners in this country. The research shows that, with these proposed cuts, if they pass the House and they pass the Senate—where the Liberal Party have their new-found allies in the Greens—half of all new retirees in the next 10 years will be affected. Seven hundred thousand working Australians who will retire in the next decade will be affected by these rotten changes.
The people we are talking about are not 'Tony's millionaires', as he likes to call them. These are ordinary people who have worked hard all their lives. They have paid taxes all their lives. They have paid off their house. They have educated their kids. They have been good citizens in their community. And they have been ambushed by a government that simply cannot keep its word. There is a new generation of Australians currently planning and saving for their retirement, people in their 50s and 60s, who this government is shifting the goal posts on.
The government love to say that they are only affecting rich people. They somehow think that they have become a new Trotskyist front, where they are helping the poor and punishing the rich. The government are making out—
Mr Baldwin: You don't know where you're going, Bill.
Mr SHORTEN: That arrow got home, I suspect. The government are making out that somehow they are doing poor people a favour and they are going after rich people. That has been their language. But it does not reflect the reality. Most people who are affected by these changes are below average income rather than above. That is right: most people affected by this are below average income rather than above. The wealthiest households to be hit by these cuts, the so-called millionaires that the government loves to criticise—because the standard product from the government when they do a broken promise is to lie about what they are going to do, then break their promise and then blame the victim for breaking their promise—are on a total superannuation income of less than $55,000 a year. That is the household's total income. And that is if they get all their income from superannuation.
Let us have a look at what we are talking about when we talk about the assets of the people that the government have now decided are so scandalously rich that they going to cut the part-pension on them. If you are a pensioner couple, you are going to be worse off if you have assets of over $451,000—not $1 million; over $451,000. That is a pensioner couple. If you are a single pensioner, you start to lose if you have assets over $289,500. The point is: they try and convince us that the asset is somehow the annual income. They make out that somehow the asset is the annual income. It is not the annual income. What you then have to do is divide that asset by what income is raised from it each year.
Let us look at the assets that will take you up to the ceiling of $451,000 if you are a couple or $289,500 if you are a single pensioner. It is your motor vehicle. Let us imagine that some of these couples or these single people have a motor car. So you take some off for that. It includes caravans or boats. So if you are someone who has a tinnie—after 40 years of working, you like to wet your line and go fishing on the weekend—we have got to count that. Or your caravan—heaven forbid that these pensioners ever want a challenge. Also it includes licences. So, if you have a fishing licence, there goes that. If you have household contents, they are included in your assets. So part of the assets which will take you over the part pension accessing arrangements will be if you have furniture—I think it is fair enough if you have furniture—whitegoods, linen and manchester, cutlery and crockery, and kitchen appliances. Of course, these pensioners do not have computers because their NBN is rolling out so slowly they do not need a computer—they would be better off getting two cups and a piece of string and talking to each other. It also has audiovisual equipment, books—
An opposition member interjecting—
Mr SHORTEN: You are right. Why would this government believe that you should have assets like books? That might involve reading! The point about all of this is that the pensioners whom this government are heroically attacking for being millionaires actually have much lower asset thresholds. They will keep some of their cash available for emergencies like getting sick and then they will put the rest in term deposits and maybe they will have a bit of superannuation. But under this out-of-touch government, as soon as a single person gets to $289,000 in assets, or a married couple gets to $451,000, including all those items I said, bang, it's over—this government are going after you for your pension.
This government arrogantly say that we do not know what we are talking about and that they have looked at this matter. But we know differently. Westpac and Australian superannuation funds association have said that for a modestly comfortable lifestyle, an individual retiree would want to have about $38,000 in income in today's dollars and a couple would need about $51,000. There is no doubt that the government think that a modest lifestyle is more like $20,000 a year. What they are doing is stranding a whole lot of working people who deserve better from their government.
The case they are making for these changes include, firstly, that there are a whole lot of millionaire part pensioners who are just rorting the system. The evidence shows that that is just not the case. But then they go on to say that there is a crisis in funding the age pension. Yet they do not deal with the fact that superannuation tax concessions are going to outstrip the age pension within four years in terms of the cost to the budget. If you are fair dinkum about making retirement income sustainable policy, surely you should look at the most well-off and look at where those taxes are going.
The government seem to confuse a tax concession with cutting pensions. They think that on one hand cutting pensions for modestly well-off people is a good thing to do and, on the other hand, reducing a tax concession paid for by the taxpayers of Australia from 45c to 30c is the death of democracy, and that that was what the Magna Carta was all about.
The truth of the matter is that a single person receiving superannuation income of $19,000 will lose more than $4,000 every year from their part pension. Who do these people think they are to grab $4,000 off people on very modest incomes? A pensioner couple on a superannuation income of just $25,000 will lose almost $2,000 every year. Say you have two people who have worked hard and they get the pension, and they have $25K coming in income—and let's hope the returns are good that year from the asset because if it is a poor return year, it might be less. These people are already subject to the vagaries of the market with their private investment, their term deposit or their superannuation. This government are going to take $2,000 from their part pension. This government seriously do not know what it is doing. Because if it did know what it was doing then that makes them a rotten bunch of people, even worse. I do not believe they can understand. This backbench have been led up the garden path by their frontbench, by Mr Hockey and Mr Abbott.
Labor are up for sensible changes to the retirement income system. We will support $1.5 billion of the government's proposed saving measures, but we recognise that the real challenge is in fact superannuation. It is the fastest growing tax concession in the federal budget. But as soon as we even talk about it, we get lectures from boy wonder down at the Assistant Treasury end of the benches saying, 'Labor do not know anything about superannuation.'
The government should not patronise the Labor movement on superannuation. We are the only ones who ever voted for increases in compulsory superannuation—three per cent, nine per cent, 12 per cent, and then they rolled back. We have listened to this government lecture us for two years about superannuation, but we know that when it comes to doing something for people, this government took the tax rebate of $500 from 3½ million low-income earners. They have taken it off people with low-superannuation accounts. They have also frozen increases in superannuation on three occasions—before the election and twice since; when they did the deal with Clive Palmer and they keep freezing it in the budget.
The truth of the matter is that this government cannot be trusted with superannuation. But the real challenge when all is said and done is that this government tells lies to the Australian people. This government is telling lies, saying Labor wishes to tax everyone's superannuation. That is just a lie. We attend question time more in a triumph of hope over experience, and I listen to this government parrot lines in their idiotic fashion. When we raise a question and the chief economic adviser says there is a challenge about housing prices in Sydney, they immediately scream Labor want to lower your house price. What a lie. When we say that we want to do something about excessively generous taxation superannuation concessions, the big joke that was introduced by Costello and Howard at the height of revenues coming in, and that we should modestly rein them in, this government say we want to tax everyone's superannuation. What a lie.
When we say to the government, 'Keep a promise for once in your miserly, meagre existence about pensions and don't cut 330,000 people, don't deny 700,000 people and change the goalposts in their planning for retirement,' they say that we are protecting millionaires. The truth of the matter is that we are the only force in this country, the only political movement in this country that stands up the pensioners. We are not just standing up for today's pensioners; we are standing up for the pensioners of tomorrow. We are standing up for the people who are over 50 and heading towards 65 and hoping for a decent retirement. There is no doubt in my mind that these measures in this budget, and this particular proposal, are simply unfair.
Who knows what on earth they promised the Greens. I understand from the Greens press releases that they were promised an extension of a letter-writing offer for six weeks so you can put in your submissions for a further six weeks. What the Greens should realise sometimes is that if the deal looks too good to be true, it probably is not true. The government got up in parliament today and contradicted the poor old Greens by saying they are not going to ever change or look at these matters, never ever—you know the nature of a Tony Abbott promise. Although, maybe the Greens think that when Tony Abbott promises not to do something, they do not have to worry because he probably will contradict his position. But I do not think the Greens will necessarily triple-think this issue.
The real truth of the matter, the real reason why we oppose this, is that there are part pensioners and people who have worked their whole lives who do not deserve to be treated so shabbily by the government. This government should take these changes to the election. They should also make very clear that when they castigate people, they should understand the harm they cause
Someone who has $289,000 in that range of assets from their car to their licences to their furniture to some money in shares in the local community bank and a bit of superannuation—these people do not deserve to have thousands of dollars cut off their income by an out-of-touch government. We will keep fighting for pensioners every day. Every day between now and the election, we will fight for pensioners because—I tell you what—you cannot trust the current government to ever fight for pensioners, now or in the future.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Vasta ): I thank the honourable Leader of the Opposition. The question is—
Opposition members interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The question is that this bill be now read a second time. It is my pleasure to introduce the honourable member for Longman.
WYATT ROY (Longman) (19:00): Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Leader of the Opposition just spoke about present and future generations of retirees in Australia. Let me take a moment to talk about what retirement will look like for the next generation of Australians, to remove from this debate the political desperation and the populism that we just saw from the Labor Party and the Leader of the Opposition, to remove the misleading assumptions and the political cynicism in this debate and talk about a reality that our country faces, a reality that we all face. It does not matter whether you are a Labor politician or a Liberal politician.
The Productivity Commission tells us that, for every Australian that is not working today, there are about 7½ Australians working, supporting through the tax system the welfare entitlements of that person. The Productivity Commission says that our country is transitioning from a phase where we have 7½ people working for every person that is not to a phase where we have only 2½ Australians working for every Australian that is not in the workforce. That is an inevitable demographic challenge for our country. It is an undeniable demographic challenge for our country. It will put enormous strain on the next generation of Australians.
This is not anybody's fault. It is not a problem. It is a great thing that in a simple reality, after the war, lots of Australians had big families, and we had a huge population growth and that demographic bubble. But the reality is that when my generation are heading towards retirement—when the supposed future generation of Australians that the Leader of the Opposition was trying to talk about are heading towards retirement—we will have a very different system in this country because there just will not be as many people working to support the system that we have today. If we go through that transition—and this is not a Labor politician or a Liberal politician saying this—the Productivity Commission says that, simply to support that demographic transition, that demographic bubble, we would have to increase taxes on the next generation of Australians, my generation, and other generations yet to come by 21 per cent.
I do not think any Australian politician in their heart of hearts wants to say that, because of the cheap political populism that we saw from the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party in this chamber, because of their own political survival here today, so that politicians of this generation can keep sitting on this green leather on one side of the chamber or the other—because of those self-interested reasons—we are going to leave a country to the next generation of Australians that has less opportunity, where the next generation of Australians pay more tax and ultimately will have to support themselves far more than the current generation of Australians do.
If we are moving towards that system—and we have to, because it is just a demographic reality—there is one thing that will save the next generation of Australians in their retirement. The one thing about which we will be able to say to the next generation of Australians, 'We've left you with enough opportunity so that your retirement can be as good as that of the current generation of Australians,' is superannuation. It is superannuation that will save the next generation of Australians. They will be able to keep more of their own money in their own pockets to plan for their own retirement so that, when my generation hit retirement, we might have the possibility of having a similar retirement to that of the current generation.
In this debate about how we manage the retirement of Australians of all generations, the one thing we should not be attacking, the one thing we should not be changing the goalposts on, the one thing we should not be removing certainty around, is superannuation. It is the saving system for your own money for your own retirement. What is the only policy solution that the Labor Party have in the mix of all this cheap political populism that is focused on the next media cycle, not even really the next election? We know that the Labor Party were mulling over the legislation we have before us for quite some time before they announced their changes. When the political heat came back on the Labor Party because of other political issues of the day, they looked for a very quick political distraction, one that will cost our country dearly if they have their way. The only policy solution that they could then come up with in this mix of pathetic political populism was to raise taxes on superannuation—to raise taxes on your own money.
The Leader of the Opposition, at the dispatch box, just said that superannuation tax concessions are a gift from the taxpayer. Having a lower tax on superannuation is not a gift from the taxpayer; it is allowing you to keep more of your own money. It is not taking more of your own money away. So I do not understand the logic that the Labor Party have when they say they are some sort of fighters for equality and fairness in this country because they are going to take away a gift from the taxpayer. They just forget to tell you that that gift is actually just you keeping your own money. It does not matter whether you are somebody who is heading towards retirement in the next five or 10 years or in the next 50. Surely, as a value system—surely, as a common-sense approach to policy—we should say in this place that one thing that the government should do and aim to do is allow you to keep more of your own money. When the government take away your money and we give a bit of it back, we should not be calling that a gift from the government. You actually had to go to work for years, for decades, to accumulate that money. Not taking away the money that you worked incredibly hard for across the course of your lifetime is not a gift from the government.
In this debate, the one thing I would say is—and I think there are many members of the Labor opposition, particularly the shadow minister, who would in their heart of hearts say—that this is a very sensible policy solution that we have before us today. The reason I think that is that they took a very, very long time before they announced their position on this legislation. They only announced this cheap political populist measure and approach when they had some political heat on other political issues of the day—on border security and on unions—and they needed a political distraction.
The other reason I know in their heart of hearts the Labor Party does not believe this is because the new leader of the Greens, somebody who I think deserves a lot of respect for the decision he has made on this legislation, has shown more economic responsibility than the entire Labor opposition. For a Liberal politician to say that about a Green is an absolutely remarkable thing. For the leader of the Greens to understand that we have to have a fair and equitable retirement system, not just for this generation of Australians but for future generations of Australians, and for him to understand that while the modern Labor Party has just decided to give up on it is absolutely remarkable.
The reason we think this is a fair and equitable system is because, firstly, we are not attacking superannuation in the way the Labor Party would like to; we are keeping your own money in your pocket, so you can plan for your own retirement with your own money. We are not going to take your own money away from you. Secondly, we recognise that the pension system is a safety net for the most vulnerable people. That is ultimately what the pension stands for. When we go through the reality of what is happening with the pension in this legislation, we can see that this gives a boost to the most vulnerable pensioners in our country. The fact that the Labor Party is opposing a package of legislation that significantly increases pensions for the most vulnerable people is just absolutely bizarre and very strange.
Let's walk through the reality of this: since the election of the coalition government the age pension has already increased by $51.80 a fortnight for singles and $78 a fortnight for couples. The age pension will continue to rise twice a year by whatever is the highest available indexation rate. On top of these perpetual increases in this legislation—the legislation that the Labor Party is opposing in this House tonight—170,000 pensioners with modest assets will have another increase of $30 a fortnight. So, for 170,000 Australian pensioners with the most modest assets, there will be an increase on top of those perpetual increases of $30 a fortnight on average. And the Labor Party is opposing it! The Labor Party is opposing this legislation.
On top of these changes, when the Labor Party were in government they introduced the carbon tax, which increased electricity prices on the average household by about $550 a year. So the Labor Party said that, in order to compensate for that tax hit on Australians, they would increase pensions. To compensate for the carbon tax, they increased the pension by $361 a year for singles and $546 a year for couples—even though for the average household it was about $550 a year increase, but that was part of the compensation measures for the carbon tax.
When we came to government we removed the carbon tax. We removed that $550 a year hit on the average household but kept those pension increases. So, while people saw lower pressure on their electricity bills, they kept that $361 a year increase for singles and $546 a year for couples. So singles have had an increase or kept the carbon tax compensation of $361 for singles and $546 for couples. The age pension since we have been elected has gone up by another $51.80 for singles per fortnight and $78 a fortnight for couples. For 170,000 pensioners with modest assets there will be another $30 a fortnight increase under this legislation.
Yet, the Labor Party has opposed all of these measures. They opposed the repeal of the carbon tax. They are opposing legislation which would increase by $30 a fortnight the pension for 170,000 pensioners. And what was their policy solution? In response to all of these fair and equitable increases—so we can keep the pension as a safety net for the most vulnerable people—their policy solution is to increase taxes on your own money. Their policy solution is to increase taxes on superannuation.
As I begin my contribution tonight, for the next generation of Australians it is super that will save us. It is a great scheme that was set up—to give them full credit—by the Labor Party. It was a remarkable achievement in many ways to have a policy that looked decades into the future. Superannuation was set up understanding this demographic change that our country is going to. And, to fix this enormous black hole the Labor Party has in their costings, they will simply tax your own money more.
For the next generation of Australians, we are not going to have to have superannuation accounts like today; we are going to have to have a radically higher amount of superannuation than the current generation of retirees, because the pension system will not exist in its current form. It simply cannot exist in the its current form when there will be 2½ Australians working to support everyone who is not—when we have 7½ working today.
So I commend these bills to the House because they represent a fair and equitable approach to how we can support the most vulnerable people in our community and ensure that they have increases in their pensions. We will not do what the Labor Party is proposing to do, which is attack the superannuation of not only the current generation of retirees but of the next generation of Australians that will critically need their own money to secure their retirement. I commend these bills to the House.
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (19:13): I speak in relation to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Fair and Sustainable Pensions) Bill 2015. What an Orwellian title—'fair and sustainable pensions'—when the whole purpose of the legislation is not to put $2.43 billion back in the pockets of pensioners but to rip away $2.43 billion out of the pockets of pensioners. If you listen to the contributions made by the member for Longman and the member for Forde—what courageous contributions they have made in the context of places like Beenleigh and Caboolture. I look forward to seeing the DLs and I look forward to seeing the newsletters that they send out to their constituents in relation to the cuts to the pension that their constituents will receive.
This bill signals a resumption of the Abbott government's attack on Australian age pensions—an attack which commenced, surprisingly, in its first budget in 2014. It reintroduces a number of measures which the government has been unable to legislate for. It introduces measures in this budget which, according to the government, will see 236,000 pensioners worse off by an average of $130 per fortnight or $3,380 per year. Australian pensioners feel aggrieved. They are angry. They were angry at the last budget, but they feel betrayed—betrayed by a government which said one thing before the election and did exactly the opposite after the election.
For example, who would ever forget the now Prime Minister being interviewed live from Penrith football stadium when he promised no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to the pension, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. So far, it is only the GST that has been able to avoid the Abbott stamp of cuts. Pensioners remember, of course, AM on ABC radio on 5 September 2013, when he said, solemnly:
… I can assure your listeners that there will be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to pensions, no change to the GST …
No cuts, no change: these were the words of the future Prime Minister.
Pensioners would think that was probably true, because that blue brochure—Real Solutions—which Liberal Party candidates and Nationals candidates took around the country was like the Bible to them. They paraded it everywhere. In fact, the future Prime Minister used to hug it—he used to hold it to his chest as if somehow it was a badge of honour! It was definitely going to happen; it was the holy Scriptures for the Liberals and Nationals, who would come into government—and this was what they would do. Nothing about cuts to pensions or changes to pensions was ever forecast in that document. If it were a Biblical text, there was no prophecy in it about what would happen! Pensioners could wade through all the pages of that glossy brochure and they would think that there were no dark plans for their pensions. But, guess what? It did not last.
It is very simple: after the 2013 election promised nothing in terms of changes they learned the brutal truth last year, in 2014. And this bill has to be seen in the context of the 2014-15 budget, because the coalition parties in government broke their promises. The Prime Minister broke his promise—his solemn pledge—to the Australian public. They said that in 2017 they would move the indexation of pensions solely to CPI. That is what they said. Now, all of the members opposite on the government benches know the anger. I have been to a number of their electorates and done forums, and I can say that the anger was palpable amongst those aged pensioners and seniors. They were furious. They knew the consequences of $23 billion being ripped away from their household incomes—$80 less a week within 10 years would be their lot in life. They knew it; they knew that the government had not respected them. They had expected to live in financial dignity in retirement but they were having money ripped away.
They knew it and they let the government know it. Labor stood firm here and in the other chamber. We campaigned ferociously on this and the government knew that they could not sustain it. So they went back to the drawing board and withdrew it. They went back to the drawing board—not, by the way, for making Australians work until 70 years of age; that is still their policy. But the Prime Minister went back to the drawing board on this and so did the Treasurer.
Surely government backbenchers understand what this bill that is before the chamber says? It says that 330,000 pensioners will be worse off and that more than 90,000 pensioners currently on a part pension will lose that pension. You can imagine that there are people who they know who will be affected. There are people in their Liberal and Nationals party branches who will lose this money.
Those opposite know that there are retired small-business operators, retired police officers, retired schoolteachers and retired nurses—people who have worked hard for a living—who are going to lose out. They have put some money away, they have modest incomes and they have modest assets. The Leader of the Opposition outlined some of those assets today—furniture, paintings, a fishing licence, a tinnie or a couple of cars. That is all taken into consideration outside the home. So they are in a position where they have a modest income and modest assets. If they are a single pensioner with more than $289,500 in assets they will have their part pension cut. If they are a pensioner couple with more than $451,500 in assets they will have their part pension cut.
All the money in those assets may not necessarily be geared as income-producing assets. That is what the Leader of the Opposition said. But the Prime Minister and Treasurer would have you think that these people are millionaires—that they are rich. They are engaging in some sort of socialist class warfare over there. It is not. In fact these are average working Australians who have worked hard all their lives, and this government intends to rip that away.
A single age pensioner who owns their home and who has a super income of less than $25,000 a year will lose $8,200 of their $11,800 part pension. How will they survive if they have that level of cut to their income? And an age pension couple who own their own home and receive a combined income of $45,000, with $450,000 each in superannuation, will lose their entire combined part pension of $11,400 per year. That is a second-hand car, a holiday, birthday presents or a new fridge or freezer. We are not talking about rich people here; we are talking about people who battled all their lives and put money away.
But those opposite think that these people are wealthy. It will come back to haunt them. More than 1 million retirees will have their pension cut, including about 700,000 people who are about to retire who are between, say, 50 and 65 years of age. They are going to retire. They are going to make decisions to adjust their financial affairs and put money away to retire. But they are going to have their assets cut in the future. The members opposite have talked about COTA and National Seniors supporting this. They have not come out and supported these cuts, because they know the impact it is going to have. We know the impact because we have seen reports done by Rice Warner Actuaries for Industry Super Australia. They reveal that the cuts will affect about 700,000 people who will retire in the next 10 years. The cuts will hurt couples 10 years from retirement. If they have an income of, say, $62,000 a year, which is about 80 per cent of average income, they will lose out. Those couples will lose $4,300 each per year, or about $112,000 over their retirement. For couples 20 years from retirement the cuts will hurt those on lower incomes, with couples earning as little as $45,000 set to lose $1,500 each year.
People say there is no difference between the major political parties. This debate shows there really is. Those people on the left of the political spectrum who want to support the Greens are shown what the Greens are really like. We have seen in this place the Greens not support an emissions trading scheme with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. When we tried to take action in relation to people smugglers and the Malaysian solution, the Greens sided with the coalition parties. The Greens sided with the coalition parties on the debt ceiling. And now they are siding with the Coalition parties again. What for? They are doing it to get an extension in relation to an inquiry. They have been sold out. They have been completely hoodwinked by the coalition. The coalition are good used car salesmen. They have sold the Greens a real dodgy lemon here; they really have. And the Greens accept it. I cannot believe that the Greens are so stupid as to accept this particular proposition. This shows that only Labor will protect pensioners. That is what it clearly shows.
There are so many pensioners living in our constituencies who are going to lose out. In my electorate there are just over 14,000 age pensioners. They are going to be affected by these cuts. There are 5,120 part pensioners in my electorate. They are going to be impacted by these cuts. This is a savage attack by the coalition parties on their savings. We on this side will fight for them. We will hold the government to account for these broken promises. This is a government that breaks promises and breaks them regularly. The two budgets they have done so far are full of broken promises. The people will hold the government to account when it comes to the ballot box. We will continue to fight for pensioners. We have suggested sensible changes to superannuation. We have adopted about $1.5 billion in savings as well. The government claims it is not impacting on superannuation but it is ripping away the low-income superannuation contribution for people earning up to about $37,000 a year. It is knocking off $500 a year. It is making those people pay more in superannuation contribution in terms of tax than they actually earn by way of PAYE paid in income tax. How sensible is that? It is dumb. Those opposite take away the rebate for the lowest earners. They attack pensioners who are the lowest income earners on the savings that they are trying to rely on. But they do nothing about multimillionaires in terms of superannuation, when they know very well that we are in a situation where in the next four years superannuation concessions will exceed the pension system in this country. They want to talk about fair and sustainable pension systems. We have a situation where 38 per cent of all super tax concessions go to the wealthiest 10 per cent. They want to be modern-day socialists over there—Trotskyites—and attack the wealthy in terms of pensions. How about they do the constructive thing and make the pension system sustainable? Support it but also make sure the superannuation system is more sustainable.
I heard the member for Longman lauding the Labor Party for bringing in superannuation. Since I have been in this place the coalition parties have never voted for an increase in the superannuation guarantee. They opposed superannuation being brought in in the first place in the Hawke and Keating years. They have opposed it every single time. They have put off the increase in the superannuation guarantee again and again and frozen it. They cannot come in here and say, 'We're going to protect superannuation; we're all in favour of superannuation', when they keep on voting against increases in superannuation. They have never supported superannuation. They used to call it a rort or a con. What platitudes they speak about the fact that they are supporting superannuants. They are not. Their record clearly shows that this is an attack on pensioners. If this were not an attack on pensioners, if this were really supporting pensioners as they claim it is, then it would be a $2.43 billion payment to pensioners, not $2.43 billion taken away from pensioners. That is what the record shows, and that is what this bill shows. That is why it is not fair and it is not sustainable. The title of this bill is Orwellian. This bill should be opposed. All of those members opposite who are in marginal seats should have a good look at themselves. They have been hoodwinked, like the Greens, by their frontbench and by the Prime Minister's office. They should not support this legislation.
Debate interrupted.
ADJOURNMENT
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ) (19:29): Order! It being approximately 7:30 pm, I propose the question:
That the House do now adjourn.
Refugee Week
Mr HAYES (Fowler—Chief Opposition Whip) (19:29): This week is Refugee Week, and I would like to use this opportunity to recognise the contribution of refugees in my electorate and across the nation. Many of them have fled horrendous environments, often facing immediate threats to their lives and those of their families. As the representative of the most multicultural electorate in Australia, I am constantly amazed at the resilience of many refugees that I meet, and also at their drive and their determination to create better lives for themselves and their families here in Australia.
The majority of refugees living in my electorate came to Australia following the fall of Saigon 40 years ago this year. Vietnamese refugees were often referred to as our first boat people. In the decades that followed, they have become an integral part of Australian society but have always maintained their proud Vietnamese heritage.
One of the most prominent organisations in my electorate is the Vietnamese Community in Australia, VCA. Since its inception almost 40 years ago, VCA's New South Wales chapter has grown into one of the most significant not-for-profit organisations in south-west Sydney. I have had the opportunity of working very closely with its president, Dr Thang Ha, and his board and have seen first-hand the VCA's efforts to support the community and ensure that the most vulnerable members of the community are not left behind.
Due to the high concentration of refugees and newly arrived immigrants, especially from South-East Asia, my electorate is home to the first Buddhist highschool in Australia, the Pal Buddhist School. A friend of mine Andrew, Giang Nguyen, is the school's accountant and is a former Vietnamese refugee himself, while the school's principal, Panha Pal, is a refugee from Cambodia.
The Cambodian refugee story is particularly compelling given their escape from the murderous regime of Pol Pot over 30 years ago. I have had the opportunity to hear many stories over the years, not only of their struggle to survive and their determination to escape such regimes but their drive to contribute to the Australian society. One of the most interesting stories comes from a young woman Lina Tjoeng, who, after escaping the Pol Pot regime, came to Australia, studied, became a local solicitor and is now the President of the Khmer Community of New South Wales.
More recently, Australia has seen a large number of refugees from the Middle East, fleeing the atrocities in Iraq and Syria, arriving in Australia and setting up home here. These refugees are particularly blessed compared to those left behind. Late last year, together with the member for Berowra, I had the opportunity of seeing first-hand the conditions in refugee camps across the Middle East. We visited Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. We know for a fact that those countries are carrying a huge humanitarian load, hosting the majority of refugees fleeing the violence.
During our visit to the camps in these countries, we were told how the camps were established to accommodate a much smaller anticipated number of refugees but only for a period of three months as that was how long the conflict was expected to last. As the conflict continues with no end in sight, these host countries are truly struggling. Children lucky enough to reach a camp were trying to study while sitting on an earthen floor in tent classrooms. There is not much in the way of hope in those camps.
Refugees who have been settled in Australia have made an enormous contribution to this country. Apart from contributing to the professions, to business and to our economy, they have set up religious, educational and cultural organisations that support the settlement of new arrivals. I have had the opportunity to visit a large number of these institutions, particularly in the Liverpool and Fairfield area, and I am impressed with the focus they have in shaping the younger generation to be more productive members of Australian society while maintaining their connection with the culture and traditions of their homeland.
I praise the efforts of refugees in my community and across the nation. They contribute very positively to the rich tapestry of our multicultural community, and in south-west Sydney we are particularly proud to be considered the most diverse community in the country.
Community Services
Mrs MARKUS (Macquarie) (19:34): I rise to speak on the wonderful recent gap announcement made by the Minister for Social Services, the Honourable Scott Morrison. By way of background, last year the government undertook a competitive tender process under the DSS New Way of Working for Grants scheme for organisations seeking funding under an $800-million Department of Social Services grants round to support a broad range of vital front-line services. These services that support communities around Australia included families, seniors, Indigenous, and culturally and linguistically diverse Australians as well as some of our most vulnerable. The department had received more than 5,500 applications. In December last year the department advised the outcome to the applicants.
In the electorate of Macquarrie, this left gaps in service delivery in both the Hawkesbury and in the Blue Mountains, which raised grave concerns for many community services. I made representations to the minister as well as spoke with him directly regarding the gaps in service delivery and voiced my concerns along with the concerns of the community. I wish to acknowledge the minister's willingness to hear the concerns of this community as well as others, and his prompt action to provide new bridging funding till 30 June this year to ensure continuity of these vital front-line community services. This was good news for LINCS, Richmond Community Services and Gateway Family Services and the people that they serve.
I continued to work with the minister, who also did not want to see critical community services fall between the cracks beyond 30 June. With that, the minister commissioned a comprehensive gap analysis. On 10 June this year, I was delighted to be advised that Mr Morrison announced the Abbott government will invest an extra $40 million into more than 100 front-line community services across Australia following the gap analysis.
Making the phone calls to LINCS, Richmond Community Services and to Gateway Family Services to advise them that they had just received funding for two additional years until 30 June 2017 was extremely gratifying. The extension of funding will see LINCS receive $142,186 $106, Richmond community Services receive $168,140 and Gateway Family Services receive $288,430.
I would like to particularly thank Carolyn Byers of LINCS, Yatra Sherwood from Richmond Community Services and Kerry Thomas of Gateway Family Services for working with me as we advocated on behalf of our communities.
The dedication and passion that LINCS provides in delivering to the people of the Hawkesbury is immeasurable
LINCS have been operating for some 17 years and, except for one employee, they are all volunteers—caring men and women who have helped several hundred families during this time.
Carolyn Byers, a LINCS volunteer since 2000, tells me that she has personally seen the benefits of this program for those who occasionally experience, as she calls it, 'hiccups' in life. She talked about struggling families who require additional assistance. Her volunteers are able to provide care for their children so they can access that help. Carolyn goes on to say that it is a privilege to be given this trust from the families and to have the capacity to care for their children.
The LINCS early intervention program tackles matters like a lack of parenting skills before they become greater issues. This is a preventative model. Each family is given two hours per week in home visiting time. There are some 21 volunteers as well as the management committee who volunteer for the service in both managing and performing home visitations. I cannot thank the LINCS volunteers enough for the time, dedication and passion they give so selflessly in serving the Hawkesbury community. It was more than a pleasure to be able to advocate on their behalf for this gap funding.
Likewise, Richmond Community Services have served the Hawkesbury community through programs such as Tools for Parents. This program was born over nine years ago, identified as need for the area. The service provides free child care for parents, removing barriers and enabling them to participate in the program wholly and without distraction. The program assists families with parenting skills, offering classes in dealing with conflicts and bullying. The executive officer of Richmond Community Services, Yatra Sherwood, said that, when you have the certainty of two years' extra funding, it enables you to foster intergenerational change.
I also want to acknowledge the Blue Mountains Gateway Family Services and Kerry Thomas, her volunteers and staff for all they do to serve the people of the Blue Mountains.
National Security
Mr BYRNE (Holt) (19:39): The most important responsibility in my mind and, I am sure, in the mind of my colleague, the member for Melbourne Ports, and the duty that we have as local members of parliament is to ensure that our local residents feel secure in their homes and safe in their community, and that all that can be done is being done to keep our community safe. To continue Australia's ongoing bipartisan effort and work to bolster Australia's national security capabilities, I was pleased to attend Australia's Regional Summit to Counter Violent Extremism, challenging terrorist propaganda, in Sydney last Thursday. It included ministers and officials from 24 countries.
The Sydney summit was part of an ongoing international effort to deal with the rapid rise and escalating aggression of radical terrorist groups throughout the world, in particular the Islamic State. The Sydney summit follows on from the United Nations Security Council resolution 2178 of September last year and in particular the Washington summit in February this year that was convened by US President Barack Obama to address the issue of countering violent extremism in our homelands. Australians appreciate that the terrorist threat our country now faces has also been felt in many other countries including Libya, Denmark, Tunisia, Yemen, France, Belgium and, elsewhere, in the South-East Asia region.
Terrorists today have considerable resources and use sophisticated communications technologies. Terrorists are increasingly mobile, adaptable and brutal. Terrorist organisations now include foreign terrorist fighters like the over 100 Australians who have travelled to conflict areas like Iraq and Syria. The threat increasingly includes people committing attacks where they live, as we have experienced in Australia.
The summit was extremely beneficial. It will not only support ongoing efforts to make our communities safer in Australia, but had the following regional outcomes: establishing a regional network of civil society groups to foster peer-to-peer learning and partnerships; creating a regional best practice guide to prevent the dissemination of terrorist propaganda; and investing in enhancing the role of communities to challenge terrorist propaganda, including by building the technical capability of grassroots organisations to elevate non-extremist voices that resonate with target audiences.
In that vein, following that bipartisan antiterrorist summit, I would like to acknowledge that I was very pleased to host the Prime Minister at the Endeavour Hills police station on the Friday following the Thursday. That visit was to provide in a bipartisan way—and I emphasise the word 'bipartisan'—encouragement and support to our local police officers, who were profoundly affected by last year's incident and who continue to remain resolute in keeping our community safe. I was pleased that the AFP and the Victoria Police were able to provide the Prime Minister; the member for La Trobe, Jason Wood; and me with a private briefing on the latest developments and challenges that we face in this particular area and also to provide time for the local police officers to convey their own concerns and some advice to the Prime Minister.
Unlike what you read in the media following that particular visit and the very unwarranted intrusion that was made by the journalist in question on a member of the Prime Minister's staff—at, I might add, a police station that was not a hardened police station—the fact was that the outcome of that visit was an enormous shot in the arm for our local law enforcement and security agencies. One thing that has come up in continuing discussions with local community members, including the Afghan community members in my electorate, and at a meeting of community leaders from the Muslim community that I hosted on 30 April—that was a meeting of the AFP, Vicpol, the Attorney-General's Department, Muslim community leaders and me—was the role of the media in misreporting events and also things like the visit made by the Prime Minister to the Endeavour Hills police station.
The thing that disturbed me most about the visit to the police station was that, as I said and as the member for Bass would know, being a member of the bipartisan committee on intelligence and security, it was a bipartisan effort to show our support for the police officers and the work that they do in keeping our community safe. I certainly hosted the Prime Minister on that basis, and the visit went very well. But, for the families of those serving police officers—those same officers whose families worry about whether or not they will come back home, particularly with the thwarted Anzac Day attacks—I wonder how they felt reading that the only thing that they saw was some invasion of a particular space by that particular journalist. Get with the program, press—report things that are done in a bipartisan spirit in the right way and do not pervert a message of hope to people like our law enforcement agencies that actually really need it.
Magna Carta: 800th Anniversary
Mr NIKOLIC (Bass—Government Whip) (19:44): This year marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta or, as honourable members may prefer, the octocentenary. Magna Carta was first sealed by King John, under sufferance, in 1215 on the green fields of Runnymede. Although some will say that Magna Carta was about rebellious barons restraining the power of their king—that it had more to do with self-interest than any altruistic motive—I think there is more to it than that. Others will claim that many of its original provisions are redundant. But it is important that, this year, we celebrate what Magna Carta stands for: restraint on royal power and executive authority. Its Latin name means 'great charter'—appropriate, given the great principles it illuminates.
The distinguished British judge Lord Bingham, said this of Magna Carta:
King John entered the meadow as a ruler acknowledging no secular superior, whose word was law. He left the meadow as a ruler who had acknowledged, in the most solemn manner imaginable, that there were some things even he could not do. This, then, is the enduring legacy of Magna Carta: the lesson that no power is absolute; that all power, however elevated, is subject to constraint.
I think that is a neat reflection on the rule of law and the principles that shaped how the civilised world thought about individual freedom and sovereignty. These principles are reflected in documents like the Declaration of Independence and too many western constitutions to mention.
Events around the world will mark this special anniversary. In England, the four original copies of Magna Carta will be brought together for the first time: two from the British Library, one from Lincoln Cathedral and one from Salisbury. There are specially-commissioned books, documentaries, exhibitions, lectures, speeches and academic conferences to commemorate this important occasion. In my home state of Tasmania just last Tuesday night, the University of Tasmania Law School held a gathering where scholars discussed the influence of Magna Carta on society, the law and parliament.
We are very fortunate in this building to have one of the few intact examples of Magna Carta. Our version, or inspeximus to give it its proper Latin name, is from the year 1297, during the reign of Edward I. The versions are important because, as Frederic Maitland, the modern father of English legal history, has observed, 'It is never enough to refer to Magna Carta without saying which edition you mean.' The text of enduring significance is the 1225 edition, which was the version confirmed by Edward I in 1297 and which entered the statute book. That is why we should applaud the foresight of two people in 1952—the then Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies and the then National Librarian Sir Harold White—which allowed Australia to acquire this wonderful document for our national collection. Our version cost 12,500 pounds, which was a very significant sum of money at that time and required prime ministerial approval, but its value today is incalculable. It is one of only two known copies to exist outside of England. The other one sold for over $21.3 million at a Sotheby's auction in 2007. Millions of Australians have been able to see our copy close up since it went on display in Old Parliament House in 1961—the year that I was born—and the fact that it is now on display for many more to see in this parliament is a marvellous thing indeed.
We in this parliament have a committee system in both houses, and we have joint committees, with origins in the principles behind Magna Carta. That is because our committees scrutinise proposals of the executive government. I am a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and, as the member for Holt mentioned, I am a member with him on the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security—a very good bipartisan committee, as he says. I am privileged to play a role, with the member for Holt and others, in scrutinising new laws that relate to the most important functions of this parliament and the government of the day, and that is the defence of Australia and the protection of its people. I congratulate the member for Holt on his comments in that regard.
It is therefore appropriate that this year we acknowledge the role of Magna Carta as the first official and public manifestation of the rule of law and the rich legacy we have all inherited, which it is the duty of all of us as elected representatives to promote and support. I thank the House.
Aged Care
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (19:49): I rise to speak on the chaos in the aged-care sector caused by this shambolic Abbott government. This is a government more interested in progressing an ideological agenda than implementing policy—policy which was developed by the member for Port Adelaide, who is at the table, when he was a minister in the previous Labor government and policy which was legislated with bipartisan support. Let us look at the Abbott government's record in aged care since they have come to power. The first thing they did was to axe the $1.2 billion Aged Care Workforce Supplement which was designed to address serious issues in the sector and promised to develop a workforce strategy, which the sector is still waiting for. They axed the $17 per day dementia and severe behaviours supplement paid to residential aged-care providers, after a blow-out—with no consultation and no warning. Until we notified them about the problem with the dementia and severe behaviours supplement, they did not even know about it. They announced some flying squads in their place to deal with residents with severe behaviours, with no evidence or trialling of the program. They asked for tenderers for the flying squads to come up with a model about how they might work. In this budget they cut $20 million from their newly-formed Dementia and Aged Care Services Fund, which was previously known as ACSIHAG, and they have abandoned the National Younger Onset Dementia Key Worker program.
The first thing the government did was to get rid of the $1.2 billion Aged Care Workforce Supplement. It was an ideological decision. This supplement was designed to help the lowest-paid workers in the country—those who work in the aged-care sector. Those opposite said, when they did this, that they would see vastly improved pay and conditions for the aged-care workforce because the market would let rip. There has been no such thing. We have seen a further casualisation of the workforce rather than greater certainty. The ageing of our population has put incredible pressure on the sector, and we need in the next eight years another 55,770 aged-care workers. We need a trebling of the aged-care workforce by 2050. This is a big challenge in the sector—a sector under pressure and facing increasing competition. It needs growing use of technology, development of leadership, a focus on wellness, reablement and not just traditional care. But, in a moment of unguarded ideology-free honesty, the assistant minister with responsibility for this $14 billion portfolio, said in an online journal that everyone in the sector reads, Australian Ageing Agenda, on 20 May 2015:
Government can't escape their obligation in terms of funding workforce. Building a better skilled, more appropriate aged care workforce will improve outcomes for older Australians.
I agree, but the government has an integral role to play here. Like many on that side of the chamber, he says one thing and does another, and actions speak louder than words. The assistant minister has just seen a 15 per cent reduction in the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund.
Almost 18 months ago, following the realisation that he had no strategy in place to develop the workforce, he needed to have a workforce strategy. He had said in February 2014 that he would develop that. It is now June 2015 and we are still waiting for the plan. In fact, as a first step to the strategy, he announced a grand plan to undertake a stocktake of the current government funded workforce initiatives. And we are still waiting for that. Instead, the only workforce measure that this government has delivered since he made these grand plans and announcements is, in fact, a $40 million cut to the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund. It is a fund that provides programs: that provide vocational education and training for aged-care workers; that funds the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Employment Program; that provides training and educational programs to upskill the workforce to meet the growing complexity in aged care, including programs such as Dementia Care Essentials.
I am truly concerned that the government's dithering, delays and disarray will cause even further anxiety in the sector for aged-care providers, for aged-care workers and for older Australians. The government have under two weeks before the programs currently funded under the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund end. They have two weeks to stump up with a mystery stocktake, two weeks to stump up with an aged-care workforce strategy and two weeks to demonstrate that they have a plan for aged care. I think they have nothing. I think this is an assistant minister who has taken his eye off the ball. I look forward to seeing the strategy implemented, wherever it may be. The tender is called. I just wait with baited breath. I do not expect much.
Bowman Electorate
Mr LAMING (Bowman) (19:54): In my Bowman report, which I give annually on what has been achieved in the last year, it is ironic that I am doing it in the shadows of the State of Origin where most of my state and all of my electorate are focused elsewhere, but I will ensure that they do hear what has been achieved in the last 18 months. The themes for our last year have been child and youth, aged care and seniors and infrastructure.
To start with the NBN, there is a massive relief in my seat of Bowman, which has the worst quality and access to broadband in the country out of the 150 electorates nationally. We are delighted that, starting July, we are shovel ready in the two southern suburbs of Redland Bay and Mount Cotton for fibre-to-the-node to every one of those 6,400 homes. The remainder of my electorate will be covered by HFC coaxial pay TV, cable high speed broadband connections over the next 18 months with speeds of 200 to 300 megabits per second in off peak. We have an emphasis on Rickertt Road, and I commit tonight to devoting black spot funding applications for the expansion and improvement of the road outside my electorate, but it is a road used by half of my electorate. Rickertt Road and Green Camp Road must be fixed. In senior's issues we have worked very, very hard to connect supervisors of Work for the Dole projects to young people to see an exchange of skills, confidence and opportunity.
We have seen an Anzac Memorial built with Anzac funding that recognises those who served and recognises every battle Australian's have fought in. I am very glad that, since 2008, we have been working on a medal for those who lost their lives serving this country. Deputy Speaker Scott, we have spoken about that before. The Army was the final line of our armed services to approve a pin that remembers that service. It was something that was given up in 1945, very tragically, and it has now been restarted.
For young people in my electorate there is nothing more important that Imago. I have partnered with the Medicare Local, PHN, to ensure that every single child in the electorate is screened by their general practitioner at 18 months, when they are vaccinated, to check for vulnerability or for falling behind in milestones. We are ensuring that every childcare centre is credentialed to carry out a PEDS test to identify children falling behind. We are bringing allied health practitioners into childcare areas to deliver those services, hopefully using Medicare rebates to do it, and that is very, very novel and innovative.
We have the Redland Young Champions program, which has been independently funded to provide two $500 travel bursaries for children of all school ages who are engaging, not just in sport as the federal program does, but in artistic, intellectual, academic, or dramatic pursuits, and they can have their travel funded.
We are working very hard to use regional infrastructure money to fund a community learning centre on one of our remote islands off the coast to enable children with a disability to travel and fully self-contained accommodation. It provides a revenue model for those who will be running the service and the centre, which is a partnership, potentially, with the Quandamooka people on North Stradbroke Island. Most importantly are local jobs on an island that is finding it hard to retain them. We know that this week North Stradbroke Island risked losing 200 jobs with state Labor closing sand mining in just four years. It is almost impossible to dispose of an asset like a family home when you have that many people being pushed off the island through lack of work.
In Work for the Dole and unpaid work experience, it is in Redlands in the seat of Bowman that is being extraordinarily novel in pushing private sector opportunities. A business can take a young job seeker, who is fully insured, for 28 days. Obviously they are working for their welfare payment as part of a mutual obligation and a participation requirement. It is my goal to have 1,000 of those places, to have 1,000 small businesses in my electorate taking on a young Redlander and giving them a shot, not just at a future job but at confidence, at building their resume and at being shoulder to shoulder with real workers. It is the private sector, which is 98 per cent of our economy and 93 per cent of employment, that holds the future and the key for young people looking for work.
Lastly, Work for the Dole is partnering up in my electorate in an innovative way in what we intend to be a partnership with men's sheds. The men's sheds have come together with Volunteering Redlands and are exploring the possibility that the aged, the frail, those living alone and those unable to maintain their own homes, both inside and out. can call in a Work for the Dole team to provide work and construction with the dispensation of the department. Men's sheds, Work for the Dole teams and skilled supervisors will be working together to help the community in a concept that is referred to as Home Help. These issues have been our focus in Bowman over the last 18 months.
House adjourned at 20:00
NOTICES
The following notices were given:
Ms Ley: to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Gene Technology Act 2000, and for related purposes.
Ms Ley: to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998, and for related purposes.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ) took the chair at 09:30.
CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Asylum Seekers
Mr GILES (Scullin) (09:30): This week is refugee week and, as it takes place, there are about 51 million people who are displaced worldwide. Let us take a moment to put ourselves in their shoes, to imagine their desperation, their vulnerability and their need for help. Let us step away from the dehumanising politics that has sadly characterised our debate over asylum-seeker policy in this place. While we are at it, let us also take the time to celebrate the extraordinary contribution of refugees to modern Australia. We could also think about how we can rise to some of the challenges posed by the UNHCR to make a greater contribution to a collective approach to this global and regional problem. Also think about how we can be an exemplar of standing up for and defending human rights. These are global challenges, but they are also important local responses.
I rise to talk about a very important festival taking place in Epping, in my electorate, tomorrow. Of course, I cannot attend this event, but I want to take this opportunity to mention, in this place, the wonderful work of this event and Whittlesea Community Connections make in supporting refugees. The celebration tomorrow will include a variety of different cultural events, including the Asanti Dance Theatre; the Kurdish Chaldean Women's Dance; the Alsadeqa Arabic Speaking Women; Mojdeh Abedi, Hamdel Family Violence Prevention Project Worker, based on an Iranian journey; and the South Sudanese Nuba Moro Dance Group. Whittlesea Refugee Week offers all members of the community a chance to share culture and learn about new ones. This is important in enhancing social cohesion and building social inclusion, a critical challenge at this time. In an electorate as diverse as Scullin, it is important to foster a sense of inclusiveness and belonging. I note this week's themes are 'strength, recognition and celebration'. It is very welcome to have cultural diversity recognised as a strength; sadly, this is not always the case.
An event that enables people-to-people links to be established can break down barriers and replace fear with empathy; it is something we need to see more of. We all have a stake in making our diversity a strength. It is something we all have a role in making happen. The theme for Refugee Week is: 'With courage let us all combine.' It is taken from the second verse of our national anthem and celebrates the courage of refugees, of people who speak out against persecution and injustice. It also speaks to our optimism as a people and our generosity. The verse continues: 'For those who have come across the seas we've boundless plains to share.' It serves as a call for unity and for positive action, encouraging Australians to improve our nation's welcome for refugees and to acknowledge the skills and energy that refugees bring to their new home. I am so proud of all of those involved in tomorrow's event, both the participants and the organisers. I take this opportunity to thank them for their courage and their activism.
Cowper Electorate: Employment
Mr HARTSUYKER (Cowper—Deputy Leader of the House and Assistant Minister for Employment) (09:33): Today I would like to draw members' attention to the employment opportunities that are being delivered in my electorate of Cowper and along other parts of North Coast New South Wales. Last week the Department of Employment released regional-employment projections for the five years to November 2019. By regional we mean both metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions.
I am pleased to advise the House that the Coffs Harbour-Grafton area is forecast to experience one of the highest levels of employment growth in the country. In the five years to November 2019 the number of jobs is predicted to rise by 13.2 per cent, a very encouraging increase. Further south, on the mid-North Coast, the growth is less but still very robust, with jobs growth projected to be 8.8 per cent over the same five-year period. It is clear that one of the major contributors to this strong employment growth is the unprecedented investment in the construction of the Pacific Highway. As a result of the federal coalition and New South Wales government's coalition efforts, and investments of some $7 billion in the construction of the highway duplication to have that duplication completed by 2020, we have very significant employment growth being generated. We are creating opportunities for many local people.
Last week I had the federal Indigenous affairs minister, Senator Scullion, in the electorate and we met with five Indigenous trainees who had started work on the Kundabung to Kempsey highway upgrade. Fred McKenzie, Peter Griffen, Tye Williams, Cohn McMeekin and Michael Roberts are the first of some 95 Indigenous trainees who will be signed up to work on key infrastructure projects in New South Wales. Most of these trainees will be placed on the Pacific Highway projects.
The five trainees will complete a Certificate III in Civil Construction through the MAP Training Group, which will provide them with a potential career pathway in highway construction. Local tradesmen are also securing work on highway projects. I know in the Nambucca Valley the local council has been very proactive in linking small businesses with the main contractors on the Warrell Creek to Nambucca Heads project. Council's business development manager Wayne Lowe has been very focused on capitalising on this massive investment for local people. The Clarence Valley Council is also working to ensure that local people benefit from the construction of the 155 km from Arrawarra to Ballina section which that is about to get underway.
The Pacific Highway is a massive project. It is delivering benefits to the people of the North Coast. It will result in faster and safer motoring, and more efficient use of freight. It is a great outcome in the employment space that we are seeing so many jobs created.
Bowell, Elizabeth
Mrs ELLIOT (Richmond) (09:36): I rise today to speak about a remarkable and inspiring woman—Registered Nurse Elizabeth Bowell, known as Libby, who lives in South Golden Beach on the New South Wales North Coast in my electorate of Richmond.
This year Libby was the recipient of the Florence Nightingale Medal—an international award presented to nurses who display exceptional courage and devotion to victims of armed conflict or natural disaster. The award is also for exemplary service and a pioneering spirit in public health and nursing education. Only 36 outstanding nurses worldwide received this award in 2015.
Libby is a veteran of about 20 Red Cross missions which have seen her serve all over the world. Libby's work as an Australian Red Cross Aid worker has taken her to some of the worst humanitarian health crises in recent memory including: the 2005 Boxing Day tsunami in Banda Aceh; the flood emergencies in Kenya and the Solomon Islands; earthquake relief in both Yogyakarta and Haiti; and cholera outbreaks in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone. Her commitment to these causes can see her dispatched to anywhere in the world with only 24 to 48 hours' notice.
In September of last year, Libby travelled to Liberia as an emergency health coordinator for the Ebola epidemic response. Prior to her arrival, the Ebola virus had spread across Liberia with more than 1,000 deaths. During her five-week stay, she worked 17-hour days providing crucial training to local Red Cross volunteers and communities. That training included important guidance relating to sanitation and disposal of corpses.
Libby also assisted in providing much-needed emotional support for bereaved families. During this period the death toll rose from around 1,000 to 2,400 people, almost 100 of whom were her fellow emergency health workers.
Whilst Libby calls South Golden Beach on the North Coast her home, this too is only temporary since her role as national director for education services with CRANAplus takes her all around Australia. CRANAplus provides essential education, support and advocacy for healthcare professionals working in remote Australia.
It is hard to imagine the degree of selflessness and dedication it takes for an individual to put her life on hold—sacrificing everything, including often personal safety—to travel to often remote locations, all for the purpose of alleviating the suffering of others.
Libby is highly respected by her peers and regarded as an exceptional person and a role model for innumerable healthcare workers both here in Australia and abroad. I would like to quote from one of Libby's colleagues Dr Peter May from Tamworth Hospital:
What makes Libby's efforts so significant are the commitment to service to the needy and invisible, the willingness to experience huge personal hardships in responding to those in need, the courage to expose herself to danger in that service and the generosity that causes her to never say no when she is so obviously terribly fatigued physically, mentally and spiritually.
In all of these efforts Libby is largely unseen and unknown and would not seek recognition. I'm proud of her and honoured to know her and humbled by her. I'm sure that I am not alone in this.
You are certainly not alone: Libby's life is one that has been dedicated to the greater good. I would like to congratulate her exemplary service. It is inspirational and serves as an example for all of us to use that same degree of compassion within our own communities and aspire to. Congratulations Libby: you are a very worthy recipient of the very prestigious Florence Nightingale Medal. Thank you for the wonderful work you do here and indeed right throughout the world.
Mildura: Media
Mr BROAD (Mallee) (09:39): Recently, Mildura was very disappointed to hear the news that the WIN news TV service was going to be closing in the township of Mildura. It is recognised that the media landscape has changed. In 1992 there were five metropolitan television stations, and there were seven regional broadcasters, three major newspapers and then some independently owned newspaper groups. Now, 23 years later, we have 16 metropolitan news broadcasters, seven regional broadcasters still, and 39 online news presences. The advertising dollars have diluted. The way that people get access to their news has changed.
The question that has been asked in my electorate is: 'Can we regulate that Mildura can have a news service?' It was perhaps an oversight that, under the Hawke government in 1987, Mildura was not included in the legislative framework to have to have regional broadcasting. But it is important that regional Australia can tell its story. It is important not only that the people that live in the community can feel proud of what they do and the community they live in but also that the stories of regional Australia are shared with the broader Australian community. That helps us have a fuller understanding as a community and helps us be proud of the country that we live in.
I will write to the ABC management, talking about the importance of a visual presence to tell our story. There is, I think, potential to have stringer cameramen and odd journalists placed in regional Australia. I have also got a meeting with the Minister for Communications to discuss this.
I want to pay tribute to the staff at WIN news in Mildura and to their professionalism. They were told on the Thursday night that their station was being closed and that they were going to have jobs, if they chose, in different parts of the WIN news network, and they were given the option of whether to do a story. The professionalism of these young men and women, cameramen and journalists—tears in their eyes when they were not in shot—showed in their love for their community and how they told the good news story.
So I am a strong believer that there will be technology that will come around in the future as different ways of communicating our story arise. But I just want to make it very clear: I am disappointed, of course. I am disappointed because our story will not have as many opportunities to be told in a visual sense. I will be trying to make some advocacy happen.
There is just so much good in regional Australia and so much that we should be proud of, and the good news story needs to be told. So I hope that we can look at new ways to make sure that that story gets out to the broader Australian population so that we can be a little bit more informed and more proud of Australians right across the continent.
Transgender Children
Ms McGOWAN (Indi) (09:42): May I offer my support to you, Member for Mallee, and if I can help you in any way, please let me know.
I would like to welcome to Parliament House today Isabelle Langley; her parents, Andrew and Naomi; and her little sister Hattie. They are constituents of mine from Taggerty in north-east Victoria.
Isabelle is a 12-year-old girl who was born a boy. She is a brave and courageous young person who was able to tell her family that she is a girl born in a boy's body. And her family's response was simply and lovingly: 'How can we best support Isabelle? How can we create a future that she can live in and thrive in?'
Unfortunately, not all parents respond in this positive way to their children, and nor does society. Obstacles that face transgender children include waiting lists for adolescent mental health services, particularly in rural and remote Australia; lengthy assessment processes; waiting lists for specialist treatment; and community attitudes and education.
The Victorian Government recently committed $6 million to the Royal Children's Hospital Gender Dysphoria Service. This funding will help reduce the waiting time from what is currently 14 months, and the funding is welcomed, but waiting times for treatment are still not good enough.
Another obstacle is access to treatment. Stage 1, 'puberty blockade' treatment, is prescribed by medical specialists. Stage 2, oestrogen or testosterone treatment, occurs in mid-adolescence. Currently, treatment decisions for Isabelle and other gender dysphoric adolescents need to be approved by the Family Court. Australia is the only jurisdiction in the world that necessitates medical professionals to request legal permission for this hormone treatment. The court needs to determine whether or not the adolescent is 'Gillick competent', and to determine 'Gillick competence', the court relies solely on the evidence presented by the medial specialists—and the court has never refused an application for treatment to date.
However, access to the Family Court is not an easy process. It is expensive—in excess of $30,000. The legal process is slow and time consuming, and delays in treatment can increase the risks of physical and psychological complications, including anxiety, isolation, depression and even suicide. It is dehumanising to scrutinise one's gender identity in court and it also involves travel and time.
Last week the Australian Human Rights Commission released its report Resilient individuals: Sexual orientation, gender identity & intersex rights. It calls for options other than a Family Court order for access to hormone treatment. This is urgent for young Isabelle and transgender children just like her. I call on the parliament for a bipartisan approach to immediately address the issue of access to treatment without recourse to apply to the Family Court. I would like to thank you, the whole family, and your supporters for coming today. How proud I am to introduce you to my colleagues in parliament. Thank you for the courage that you have and the work that we are going to do together.
Rare Cancers
Mr BROUGH (Fisher) (09:45): In December 2013, a local Sunshine Coast family received the worst news any parent can receive. Their otherwise healthy seven-year-old boy, James, was diagnosed with a high-grade brain tumour. The parents were clearly in shock and could not come to grips with the reality of the situation. In short order, young James had been operated on by Dr Charlie Teo in Sydney for his brain tumour. That occurred in February. From being a healthy boy in December with a normal life expectancy, he went to having this very invasive brain surgery in February. It was not to be the answer; it was to give him time. He was then required to have further surgery, again by Charlie Teo, on 16 June.
They came to see me, and the first point I want to make is how generous our community was because it is incredibly expensive. The hospital and Dr Teo wanted in excess of $80,000 within 48 hours for this surgery to take place. The Sunshine Coast community rallied and within four days had raised $125,000. Sadly, in the last fortnight, young James lost his battle for life. His heart simply gave up. He had been in Germany where, thanks to Rare Cancers Australia, Richard Vines and the support of this community, he was able to travel for what was experimental treatment. It actually worked, as I am advised. However, a secondary tumour came back and, as I said, unfortunately his little heart could no longer cope.
His family—Paul and Deborah and their daughter, Millie—now tragically mourn the loss of James. But he was only one of about 200,000 Australians living with rare or less common cancers. These are difficult stories, and it is only through the good work of Rare Cancers Australia that they are given hope. When a child is struck down with a brain tumour or anyone else is struck down with a rare cancer, it is very important to know that every single step that possibly can be taken is taken. It gives the family some hope and also some satisfaction to know that no stone was left unturned. The tragic ending of James's life means that all of us in this place next week can participate with Rare Cancers Australia as they meet in the Mural Hall to share with us some of the insights and the challenges facing these 200,000 Australians. I would encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the chamber to join us at 6 pm in the Mural Hall to learn more about rare cancers and what we can do as parliamentarians to support these 200,000 Australians.
James, Thomas Alfred, Major (Rtd), RFD LLB
Ms O'NEIL (Hotham) (09:48): Today I rise to pay my respects to Major Tom James RFD following his very sad passing on 8 April 2015. Tom was a very valued member of our Hotham community and he was a great servant of his country. Tom was the president of Cheltenham Moorabbin RSL in Hotham, a proud member of the Australian Labor Party, a good friend to me and a good friend to my office.
Tom had a lifelong interest in the military. He was born in Ballarat in 1941 and joined the Ballarat high school cadet brigade at the tender age of 16. From his early interest in the military, Tom went on to give 30 years in service, both to the infantry and armed corps. During this time, Tom was awarded the Australian Defence Medal in recognition of his truly remarkable service to his nation. It was a service that he was very proud of, and rightly so. Tom retired from the Army Reserve in 1988, having reached the rank of major, and was second in charge of the Prince of Wales's Light Horse armoured regiment.
As president of the Cheltenham Moorabbin RSL, Tom regularly conducted Anzac services and services on Remembrance Day. I am very honoured to have attended many of those over the time that I have been the member for Hotham. Tom was a proud and dedicated member of the RSL. My office had the great privilege of working very closely with him to secure the Anzac Centenary grant of $100,000 to restore the contemplative gardens to the RSL.
In March this year, just weeks before Tom passed away, I had the opportunity to visit the RSL and to have a look at the works that he and so many other members had worked for. He was very excited about the prospect of renovating and restoring this much loved garden. Sadly, Tom was not able to be present at this year's Anzac Centenary service. I know he would have been as proud as punch to have had so many men and women gathered at the Cheltenham Moorabbin RSL to commemorate that incredibly important occasion. I look forward to attending the unveiling of the gardens later this month. I know many of us will be fondly reflecting on our memories of Tom when we are there to unveil that work.
During his life, Tom was a really proud member of the Australian Labor Party. He was a member of the party for more than 40 years and he was a true believer in every sense of the word. He had a passion for social justice that was reflected both in his politics but also in the way he lived his life. Tom's remarkable contribution to the community of Hotham and his contribution to this nation will never be forgotten. To the RSL, I stand in solidarity with you in your grief. We miss Tom terribly. To Tom's family, in particular his wife Sandra, his children and grandchildren, I offer my deep and genuine condolences. May he rest in peace.
Citizenship
Mr VARVARIS ( Barton ) ( 09:51 ): Having been born and bred in the Barton electorate, one of New South Wales' most culturally diverse regions, I am extremely proud of our new citizens who have chosen Australia as their new home. As a first generation Australian of Greek heritage, I am passionate about our culturally diverse society and understand firsthand the journeys that migrants take and the paths they forge in their new country. As Australians, we all participate and share in this wonderful nation together. As a modern Federation, our rich social fabric is interwoven with various strands of cultural narratives, including defeating extraordinary adversity for the chance of a better life.
For these 507 individuals, receiving their Australian citizenship is a most auspicious event signifying hope and opportunity. For many, it is also an emotional journey in a foreign land—now they have been welcomed to be a part of a proud nation that is multicultural—offering them a new beginning. It has a strong legacy left by previous generations of Australians who have made our country what it is and the people we are today.
This year is the 66th anniversary of Australian citizenship. More than 4½ billion people have pledged their commitment to Australia and its people over the years. There is no doubt that the strength of our modern society, and Australia as a nation, lies in the diversity of its people and the cohesion of ethnic, religious and cultural differences. But our greatest asset is our collective adherence to democratic values and that is the defining hallmark of Australian life.
Despite recent domestic and international threats to security and an assault on our national identity, Australia remains incredibly tolerant. This is because the heart of our nation is peaceful and harmonious. What I frequently witness in my electorate of Barton and elsewhere in Australia is the mutual respect we have towards one another. We are an egalitarian nation that displays dignity and respect towards fellow individuals. The success of Australia is credited to the efforts, hardship and persistence of our forebears. We are all united by love of country, our strong family values and the want of opportunity and reward. By becoming an Australian citizen, we pledge our commitment to our state and to bettering our society. As the federal member for Barton, I am proud to present at these citizenship ceremonies. These new citizens have much to look forward to, and I wish them all the best in their new beginnings.
Kingston Electorate: Essentials 4 Women Adelaide
Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston) (09:54): Today I would like to highlight to the House a very important campaign: the Essentials 4 Women Adelaide campaign. This campaign aims to provide homeless and disadvantaged women with basic but often very costly sanitary products and underwear. When speaking to organisations that help these women, they often said that women do not particularly ask for these products when they turn up for help, but of course we all know that they need these products. I need to extend a huge thankyou to Kelly and Amy, two mums living in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, who really initiated and pushed this project, the first of its kind for South Australia.
Essentials 4 Women Adelaide asked for donation of sanitary products and underwear and received, in Adelaide, 10,000 items during this campaign. This was a huge effort by so many people in our community, and I was very pleased to join Amy and Kelly as well as the state member, Chris Picton, to present these items to Junction Australia housing and the local Southern Domestic Violence Service. These organisations do such a great job in supporting women, children and young people affected by domestic violence and homelessness.
My office was a drop-off location, and we were overwhelmed with the number of donations. I was really humbled to hear that a lot of people who brought in donations said they wished they could donate more but were not able to afford it. Those with the very least actually put their money forward and became part of this campaign.
Local organisations, such as aged-care homes, schools and local businesses, also made very generous donations. I would like to make special mention of the Noarlunga rotary club, which generously donated $200 in order to buy sanitary products for the cause.
It was a heart-warming campaign and showed that so many in our community, even those with not a lot of money, were willing to donate to this very important cause. What was also very interesting when we spoke with the Southern Domestic Violence Service and Junction Australia housing was they highlighted that women do not ask for these products; often, it is as a result of feeling embarrassed or shameful about it. It was an incredibly generous to offer to put packages together so that they, without having to ask, can receive these products.
I commend all those involved and thank all those organisations that do a huge amount of work in our community, and I especially thank Kelly and Amy, who brought this project to Adelaide. I commend them to the House.
Swan Electorate: Belmont Toy Library
Grayden, Mr Bill
Mr IRONS (Swan) (09:57): I rise today to update the House about two events I recently attended, which highlighted the community spirit that is evident in my electorate of Swan. I have spoken in this place before about the Belmont Toy Library, which was located at the Redcliffe Park Community Centre.
Since 2003, the toy library has provided an important service to the City of Belmont community, bringing families together who have a common interest, from all walks of life, whilst also fostering early learning and social interaction or, simply put: the importance of playtime for our children.
In 2012, I began a campaign with former City of Belmont councillor, Glenys Godfrey, who is now the state member for Belmont, to assist this community facility in finding a new location, as they had reached their full capacity at the Redcliffe site with 35 member families. Although Glenys and I worked to assist the toy library to find a new location, the not-for-profit organisation would never have been established or expanded if it had not been for the work of its committee members—in particular, Angela Holmes, Heather Forrester and Julie-Anne Beasley.
I am also pleased to update the House that not only does the Belmont Toy Library have a new home at the recently renovated Centenary Park community and recreation centre—which was funded by the WA state government—but also the toy library's facility has been purpose built to meet its needs. I recently attended the toy library's family fun day and annual general meeting, aimed at promoting the great community organisation and encouraging new members. It was a great success, with many local people attending. I congratulate the Belmont Toy Library committee—and, in particular, its president, Heather Forrester—for their dedication and service to the community. I thank the WA Premier, Colin Barnett, for providing the necessary funding for this facility, which will ensure the toy library has a permanent home, with the ability to grow.
I also take time to highlight another person who has dedicated his life to the service of the Swan community and the service of our nation. I am sure members in this place would either know or have heard of Bill Grayden, who served the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, as the member for Middle Swan, from 1947 to 1949, before being elected to this place as the member for my electorate of Swan from 1949 to 1954. From 1956 to 1993, Bill returned to the legislative assembly to serve as the member for South Perth, which is also in Swan. Last week I attended a dinner, hosted by my Swan division, to celebrate the achievements and service of Bill, and it was also attended by the Premier, who spoke highly of Bill Grayden.
I congratulate Bill on everything he has achieved throughout his life as a parliamentarian. Bill gave us a few insights into how he won the seat for Middle Swan, in 1947, as a 27-year-old. He said he printed up a 16-page booklet, which he handed out to all the constituents of Middle Swan, detailing the achievements of the sitting Labor member—all the pages were blank. He won the seat of Middle Swan, and that is the only time it has ever been held by the Liberals, before it was lost as part of the legislative assembly.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): In accordance with the resolution agreed to earlier the time for members' constituency statements has concluded.
BILLS
Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016
Consideration in Detail
Debate resumed.
Mr IAN MACFARLANE (Groom—Minister for Industry and Science) (10:00): Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to add to an answer that I supplied to the member for Makin last night. I apologise to the member for Makin: I was distracted a little during his question and I misheard which program he was asking me about in relation to assistance to South Australia. He asked about the Manufacturing Transition Program and I, unfortunately, misheard it and answered the question on the basis that I thought he was asking about the Next Generation Manufacturing Investment Program. There are a number of programs—in fact, a significant number of programs—we are running in South Australia, so I apologise for that confusion.
I now wish to properly answer the question that was asked. The member for Makin asked me to advise him how many applications were received from South Australia and Victoria for funds from the Australian government's Manufacturing Transition Program, which was part of the confusion that then occurred in my mind because the manufacturing program has been completed. It received 77 applications nationally—it is a national program, so when he said South Australia and Victoria I thought he was referring to a scheme within the Growth Fund. He was actually referring to a government policy we took to the last election. The Australian government's manufacturing transition program had 77 applications nationally, 74 of which were eligible and were provided with grants. Five were from South Australia and 19 were from Victoria. I say to the member for Makin: it was a genuine mishearing, and if he requires any further information, he is always welcome to come to my office. In fact, we are having an open session right now.
Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (10:02): Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek your indulgence to make a statement in response. I thank the minister for providing the additional information, and I certainly accept his explanation about the response last night.
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:02): Having heard from the minister for industry, I suggest that the order agreed to by the Federation Chamber for the consideration of proposed expenditures be varied as shown in the revised schedule, which has been circulated to honourable members.
The schedule read as follows—
Proposed order of consideration of portfolios:
Communications
Attorney-General's
Attorney-General's—Arts
Attorney-General's—Justice
Finance
Foreign Affairs and Trade—Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs and Trade—Trade
Employment
Industry
Immigration and Border Protection
Prime Minister and Cabinet
Prime Minister and Cabinet—Indigenous Affairs
Social Services
Social Services—Human Services
Education
Environment
Agriculture
Treasury
Treasury—Small Business
Infrastructure and Regional Development
Health
Health—Sport
Defence—Defence
Defence—Veterans' Affairs
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I understand there is no objection to that; we will follow that course.
Prime Minister and Cabinet Portfolio
Proposed expenditure: $1,879,379,000
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (10:03): As the parliamentary secretary knows, in this place if you snooze you lose. I am happy to go first and perhaps, when he does not answer my first question, he will get some of his opening statement jammed into that five minutes allowed for his response.
This is a good opportunity to talk about the appropriations bill as it relates to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. As the parliamentary secretary would know, to provide a whole-of-government focus on the deregulation agenda, the Office of Deregulation was created within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on 18 September 2013 and remains in the organisational structure of the department today. The parliamentary secretary would also be aware that in the autumn red tape repeal day of 2014 the government abolished the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines, which regulate the minimum pay and conditions for cleaners. As a result, from 1 July 2014—that is, between the government's first budget and their second budget—some of Australia's lowest-paid workers had their wages cut.
At the Department of Foreign Affairs, for example, cleaners have had their wages cut by $6,000 a year. Cleaners at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection are now receiving $2 less an hour, which means their annual wages will be reduced by thousands of dollars, while cleaners at Parliament House are facing a wage cut because of the abolition of the guidelines and the Clean Start rates. It should not have to be pointed out to members in this place that these are the people who clean our own offices—people we see around the building, people we interact with, people we spend a lot of time with. The government's deregulation agenda has had, is having and will have a very direct and very substantial impact on their take-home pay and their ability to pay the bills and raise their kids.
These wage cuts fly in the face of the Prime Minister's promise just over a year ago today that abolishing the guidelines would not affect cleaners' pay. He said:
I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that no cleaner's pay is reduced.
That was in question time on 16 June 2014. On Monday, at the front of this building on International Cleaners Day, I was proud to join so many colleagues from our side of the House, and indeed some of the crossbenchers as well, to stand with the cleaners who clean this building, to stand with people who just want a fair go. They are just doing their job; they do not want their wages cut. They do a fantastic job.
Mr Porter interjecting—
Dr CHALMERS: I am surprised that the other parliamentary secretary is interjecting at this point. I would have thought that he would agree that they do a fantastic job in this building. I am surprised he would object to that point. They do deserve a fair go, they deserve respect and they deserve fair wages and conditions as well.
Given that this government views cleaners' wages as red tape, my question is: will the PM&C Office of Deregulation conduct a review this year of the impacts of this particular measure in their deregulation agenda? Can the parliamentary secretary inform the House: how many cleaners are affected? How much money are they losing? And can he tell us the Office of Deregulation's estimates of how much money is being saved from this budget as a result of taking the wages out of the pockets of some of Australia's lowest paid workers?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:09): I am very happy to address the question from the member. Ultimately, the question had two specific parts—first, in his words, 'How many cleaners were affected by the deregulatory decision?'; second, 'What was the effect on the wage of the cleaners?' And, third, I think the question was, 'What was the regulatory compliance cost saving that was attached to the actual decision?' The third answer is certainly one that we can get to you with clarity. I do not have that to hand at the moment, but that is something that would have been subject to internal assessment, as to the compliance cost. From recollection, it was not insignificant that the guidelines had placed an onus on—
An honourable member interjecting—
Mr PORTER: I will get to that. The guidelines had placed an onus on employers, which was viewed by this government, certainly as unnecessary, and it was costing employers. The other two questions were: 'How many cleaners were affected by that deregulatory decision; and what was the effect on the wages?' To be able to answer that properly, what needs to be put on record here by the member—and it is something that I have seen failed to be put on record anywhere—is: 'What is the causal link between the deregulatory decision and whatever subsequent enterprise agreement was bargained between the cleaners and their employers?' As the member would know, having had some experience in these matters, enterprise agreements set wages. They are bargained often between union representatives for the individuals involved and they are the result of those arrangements.
In this instance, deregulatory changes were made. Immediately after those deregulatory changes were made there were no changes whatsoever to the wages and or conditions. Enterprise agreements that had a known termination date were then renegotiated by unions—many of which are affiliated with your side of politics—with their employers. What remains to be proven with any kind of substantial form is that there is a direct causal link between the two.
An opposition member interjecting—
Mr PORTER: It might assist my friend if I describe how wages are actually set. I might use the example that my parliamentary secretary colleague raised, which is Clean Event. Clean Event provides a perfect example of how wages are actually set. Wages are determined in enterprise agreements by negotiation, almost invariably, by unions negotiating on behalf of the workers with employers, to finalise an enterprise agreement that has a fixed term.
What has been put by the member for Rankin is that there is some kind of causal link between the enterprise agreement that was negotiated many months after a deregulatory decision—which was a far broader decision—was made. To clarify how it is that wages are set, I will use the example of Clean Event. A union negotiates on behalf of its employees with an employer to determine wages and conditions where the conditions will often involve things like leave, leave loading, holiday pay and other conditions of that type. Certain calculations must be made as to whether or not those employees are better or worse off, under the subsequent agreement, compared to previous agreements. Using the example of Clean Event—which has become somewhat topical of late—a view has been put that the cleaners, the employees, who were contracted with the relevant company, Clean Event, would not have been better off under the second compared to the previous agreement. In fact, they would have been substantially worse off. Interestingly, this decision—as the member for Rankin might be happy to concede—was not prefaced or predated by any regulatory or deregulatory decision, was it? It was just an enterprise agreement—
An opposition member interjecting—
Mr PORTER: What is being put without any evidentiary foundation is that the direct necessary condition that led to a subsequent enterprise agreement had something to do with a deregulatory decision in and about the same industry. What we are pointing out is that here is an example where, in a subsequent decision, a subsequent DVA—
(Time expired)
Mrs GRIGGS (Solomon) (10:13): Yesterday, in this place, I had a very insightful conversation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs about Australia's aid program and how it empowers women. The recurring theme of that conversation was that only when all citizens are full participants in society can a nation realise its potential. It should be plainly obvious. If a group excludes or artificially limits 50 per cent of its population from full economic participation, from participating in the national discourse and from decision making, then that society is only holding itself back.
In talking about limiting participation I need to be clear that I am not only referring to deliberate limitations, such as excluding women from educational opportunities and preventing women from voting, but also saying that the conversation needs to be broader. For example; if a couple who have children both want to work then a policy environment that creates inflexible work hours or that makes the cost of child care prohibitive becomes a limitation for that society. If a legal and social environment turns a blind eye from violence or crime against women then that becomes a limitation for the society. If the business environment does not encourage start-ups and entrepreneurs, then we are limiting opportunities for people to be self-sufficient and disempowering those who could otherwise stand on their own two feet.
The context of my exchange with the minister for Foreign Affairs yesterday was, as I said, Australia's foreign aid policy. In that conversation it emerged that in the Asia-Pacific region up to $47 billion is lost annually because of women's limited access to employment and up to $30 billion annually due to gender gaps in education.
Today, Parliamentary Secretary, I would like to bring the conversation a little closer to home—specifically, to my electorate of Solomon. In Darwin and Palmerston, the cost of child care is high and places are very limited. When child care is available, it is often only the long day care type, meaning nurses, doctors, emergency workers, some Defence personnel and other people with shift work or casual work arrangements struggle to find suitable care for their children.
Regrettably, rates of violence in the electorate of Solomon and the Northern Territory generally are also far too high. I say too high, but clearly one violent attack is one too many. In the Northern Territory, more than half of all assaults are in the family home. It goes without saying that most of the victims are indeed women. In this context, Parliamentary Secretary, I would like to put this question to you: what is the coalition government doing to support and protect women and to ensure Australia benefits from the full, unrestricted participation of all of its citizens?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:16): I thank the member for her question which goes to a range of issues with regard to this budget and expenditures. I understand the point that you are making about child care and I have visited a number of childcare facilities in my own electorate after this budget—and in fact many of them were mightily pleased with what had been done. Particularly, they found that there was an immense amount of confusion in the variety of payment and subsidies that were available prior to the decision that we are very much hoping would pass through the Senate and which is instituted in this budget.
In terms of increasing that participation, I might just preface what I am about to say by saying that the childcare reforms and jobs and families package are very much directed at participation per se. Obviously, this is a very large ongoing subsidy that is provided by the taxpayer in the area of child care. What we have done is look at ways in which we can make that most thoroughly purposive where the purpose is to engage, support and incentivise mothers to return to work.
When we look at the data in Australia about mothers returning to work, it has been very positive but, equally, when we look at qualitative research, departmental research and things that Productivity Commission has engaged in, it is quite clear that one of the largest, if not the largest, roadblocks in terms of returning to work for a mother is the availability and affordability of child care.
There has also been a very interesting report—I think I stated in the other place—from the United Kingdom which tracks data over several decades from the 1960s to try and interpret how it is that families become better off, become wealthier, increase their standard of living and their household wealth. What it found was that the largest single driver over that period of time was the ability for the female in the family to go back to work and contribute to family income. So women re-entering the workforce or entering the workforce for the first time was the single biggest driver in increased family prosperity in the United Kingdom.
What was even more interesting was that as a driver of family prosperity, it was much higher in the LMI—lower middle income—families than any other cohort. Indeed, what it showed was that the single biggest driver of increasing family prosperity in the UK over several decades, particularly in the types of families that need the greatest assistance, was in women returning to the workforce.
Looking at the packages that we have put in this budget, I will just mention two: the partnership agreement on homelessness, which I will come to in a moment and which I think is very important in this space but, first of all, the child care, jobs and family package. What we have engaged in in this budget is a complete reformulation administratively of the system and in directing what are very considerable amounts of taxpayer's money. Child care will now be an additional subsidy of $3.5 billion, and the way in which that subsidy is going to be allocated is that families between $65,000 and $175,000 will in effect be $30 a week better off, which will represent a subsidy of around about 85 per cent of the total amount of child care. Importantly, this is up to an hourly fee cap, which we very much trust will minimise and reduce some of the exorbitance that had grown up in some childcare centres' fees in some areas where there was a supply problem. Above the $170,000 level, there is again a very significant amount of subsidy—around about the 50 per cent mark, but that will be capped at $10,000 per child for incomes above $180,000.
Sitting beneath that very good and high-level subsidy is going to be a childcare safety net package—$327.7 million—that is going to support 95,000 disadvantaged children, with $168 million going to go specifically to families of children at risk of neglect, irrespective of whether parents meet the activity test, which I will come to in a moment. There is also an $840 million payment to early childhood education that will provide access to 600 hours of preschool per year funding, guaranteed to be indexed for the first time. All of that contributes to a scenario where it is going to be easier, simpler and cheaper for mums to return to the workforce—or, indeed, to enter the workforce for the first time—whether they are single mums or mums in a standard two-parent family. We have determined that that is the single best way to increase family prosperity and thereby increase children's chances for a much more productive future.
I might finish by looking very quickly at that $230 million National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness. That has been extended for two years to 2017, and for the first time ever there has been a clear focus driven into that program to ensure that the funds are properly allocated and prioritised to front-line services to women and children who have experienced domestic or family violence. Again, that has been a generally successful program in conjunction with the states, but for the first time ever the focus will clearly be on women. The very ironic thing that happens in issues of family and domestic violence is that it is almost invariably the case that it is the woman who has to leave the family home after experiencing family violence. That in itself is something that we all need to work to reverse. (Time expired)
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (10:21): I ask the parliamentary secretary, in response to his last answer: can he confirm for the House that he sees no link between the change in the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines and the subsequent wage cuts for Commonwealth cleaners? Will he sit down with the cleaners of this building and their representatives to explain to them why he thinks that there is no link whatsoever between the change to the guidelines and the changes to their wages, and to the wages of Commonwealth cleaners in DFAT and around the Commonwealth Public Service? That is my first set of questions for the parliamentary secretary.
The second set of questions also relates to the deregulation agenda. I want to remind the parliamentary secretary of some of the absolute crowning achievements in this area when it comes to deregulation carried out by him and by his predecessor, the now Assistant Treasurer. These are some of the achievements so far in the deregulation space: the government has changed clauses in 11 different pieces of legislation where from now on the law will omit the word 'e-mail' with a hyphen and substitute 'email' without a hyphen. There are 16 pieces of legislation where from now on the law will omit the words 'facsimile transmission' and substitute the word 'fax'. There are six pieces of legislation where from now on the law will omit the word 'trademark' and substitute the word 'trade mark', with a space. They have corrected a spelling error in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act so that the word 'committing' has the requisite two t's. They have corrected a punctuation error in the Fair Work Act 2009 to insert a comma between the words 'aircraft' and 'ship'; and there are 10 clauses in legislation in which a reference to the 'Legislative Assembly for the Northern Territory' must now be substituted with 'Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory'.
Can the parliamentary secretary inform us if the Office of Deregulation will conduct a review this year to determine the real economic impact of the repeal of these tremendously significant spelling errors, typos and lapsed legislation? And can he confirm for the House that the punctuation errors corrected in some of this legislation still saves the Commonwealth $350,000? Does he stand by that costing?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:24): One of the things that I have noted about having the stewardship of this deregulatory agenda is that laziness in one area breeds laziness in all areas. I know that members opposite may be happy to put up with poor grammar and over-hyphenation. It may be that you are radically pro hyphen, that you would hyphen everywhere you could and that you would ignore over-hyphenation. It is very interesting, because when we read the annual report what we found was that, for the first time ever, this government undertook a very thoroughgoing audit of the costs of regulation on the Australian economy. The figure that was derived from that report was $65 billion worth of cost effect on the Australian economy from Commonwealth regulation. We broke that down very thoroughly, per department, and we also broke it down in ways that show that the more minor contribution to that $65 billion worth of effect on the economy is in what you might call the acts and regulatory instruments, in the way in which they are devised and written. Underneath that, from recollection, around 80 per cent of the impact of the cost occurs from departmental-level decisions, forms and ongoing issues that relate to the way in which departments interpret the acts and regulations. What we have done—and I think that this is a virtue, not the vice that members opposite would have it be—is that we chase both the big things and the little things.
It is very interesting that the member raised the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act, which I agree had grammar which was appalling. It should never have been drafted in the way that it was. I cannot remember whether it was a previous Liberal or Labor government; I do not know. But, very interestingly, alongside those amendments—which were indeed very grammatical and would have had minor cost effects—there were also changes, because we identified that there were state regimes in the very act that the member talks about, which governs the installation and maintenance of pontoon devices on the Barrier Reef according to the Commonwealth regulation. We did tidy that up, as you point out, in a grammatical way, but also there was a slightly more substantive change. What that did was, in effect, redact those parts of the Commonwealth legislation that purported to have, and for some time had had, an impact the users and installers of pontoon devices on the Great Barrier Reef.
We went through a business cost calculation method. The saving was admittedly modest. From recollection, we calculated that the savings were in the vicinity of about $5,000 per year, because under the very act that my friend talks about there were a very small number of operators who were forced to abide by both a Commonwealth regime and a state regime that were doing precisely the same thing. To the member for Rankin, that may be something which is unimportant, but if you are operating a pontoon on the Great Barrier Reef and have to abide by two separate regimes which both require you to do essentially the same thing and fill in two sets of forms then the requirement that you have is too onerous and unnecessary, and it is worth looking at. If we can tidy up the grammar of the act at the same time, so be it. The sort of laziness that we had opposite is a laziness that not only stops you from looking at commas and hyphenation but then stops you from looking at and investigating acts like the very one that he mentioned, where there were significant cost savings to be had from businesses not having to go through a dual application and maintenance process for pontoons on the Barrier Reef.
The thing about looking at the acts, if you bother to do so, is that, very interestingly, what we have done is not merely to chase down those rats and mice but to look at much larger operational items. For instance, for the first time ever the e-tax system prepopulates. On calculations inside this government and the departments on the business cost calculator model, that saves 1.6 million-odd self-assessing Australians $156 million of their time.
Now I will get to the cleaners. Let me explain to the member for Rankin how causation works. Causation is not proved by saying if event A happened before event B then event A caused event B. What stands as proof quite clear of that— (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Ryan.
Dr Chalmers: Hang on a sec. Deputy Speaker, you will note that the member for Ryan, for whom I have great respect—I love her scarf today in particular—was nowhere near on her feet when the time elapsed. I let you have the first one, Deputy Speaker, which you were also not correct on, but this time I was up on my feet well in advance.
Honourable members interjecting—
Mrs Prentice interjecting—
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (10:30): Don't reflect on the chair, member for Ryan.
Mrs Prentice: No, I am going to reflect on you when I am in the chair!
Dr CHALMERS: That is very professional. The member for Ryan is being very professional about her stewardship of the chair. Thank you for the call; a very fair decision. I ask the parliamentary secretary for commas and hyphens: will he meet with the cleaners of this building to explain to them his position that there is no link between the Commonwealth cleaning guidelines being changed by the Abbott government and the cuts to their pay?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:31): Is the member opposite—
Dr Chalmers: Just answer my question!
Mr PORTER: going to meet with the employees of Clean Event to explain to them how it is that the EA—
Dr Chalmers: It is your budget, Christian!
Mr PORTER: negotiated by the leader of his political party produced an outcome for them that left them with very substantially less.
Dr Chalmers interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Let him answer please.
Mr PORTER: It is a very interesting issue. It is, in a sense, quite astonishing that you would choose cleaning as the issue to pursue here. As I said, you are presupposing that event A that occurs before event B causes event B. You explain to me what it is—
Dr Chalmers: Are you saying there is no link?
Mr PORTER: I am saying there is no link. The terms and conditions for employees are set by enterprise agreements, bargained under the Fair Work Australia system—the system that your side of politics devised—and negotiated by the union movement, which your side of politics has links to. Simply because event A occurs before event B does not mean event A causes event B. And when you look at the Clean Event example, what was it that caused the employees in the Clean Event EA to receive a less favourable outcome than in their previous EA? It was the way in which that EA was negotiated by the now Leader of the Opposition. It is fascinating because when you look at that process, everything turns on the enterprise agreement—signed by the now Leader of the Opposition. It is a document for Clean Event employees that benefits the employer and disadvantages the workers.
What was it that caused that outcome? Was it a deregulatory agenda? Was it a failure to properly negotiate with the employers? Was it some form of ancillary advantage that was seen as more important, like joining people up to a union? Very interestingly, you can print out the examples, and I advise you to do it, about how that particular EBA worked. Interestingly, the total award rate, had it been negotiated under the award, would have been $673.46, but the multi-hiring clause under the EBA that was negotiated ultimately by the now Leader of the Opposition produced a rate result of $586.32, which has put those workers in a significantly poorer position than they were in previously.
That was a result that came from the negotiation of the EBA under the Fair Work Act system, the system that the Labor Party put in place when in government. The contract was negotiated by the now Leader of the Opposition. In fact, the result was this: many of the Clean Event workers would have been better off staying on the minimum wage and receiving penalties as prescribed under their award rather than working under the now Leader of the Opposition's enterprise bargaining agreement that he negotiated on their behalf. The outcome of an EBA is determined by the negotiation of the EBA and the terms of the EBA. Trying to link that to the deregulator agenda is simply, completely, to misunderstand the causal nature of what produces outcomes in the EBA process.
Returning to the government's deregulatory agenda as a whole, what we have managed to do is enact decisions which, when fully implemented, will reduce compliance costs in the Australian economy by $2.45 billion. And, yes, inside that agenda there is a range of rather mundane cleaning-up of legislation, which has gone undone for too long, but also some incredibly substantive matters. Those will continue with the money that this budget has provided to the Digital Transformation Office. The interface with government will become clearer and crisper for people, whether they are undertaking tender and procurement processes, or whether or not they are going through Centrelink application processes. What we have done is a thorough top to bottom analysis of where regulatory costs are imposed in the economy, and we are tackling them all—both big and small.
When you look at some of the fantastic things that have happened here, and in this recent budget particularly, they have gone directly to organisations such as small business. Fringe benefits tax can now be claimed on two devices even if they have an overlapping functionality, like an iPhone or an iPad—a very significant benefit for business.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Landry ): The member for Ryan has just advised me she is at the Petitions Committee, so she will be late. I give the call to the member for Rankin.
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (10:36): That is very good of you, Deputy Speaker, given the member for Ryan is not in the room.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Ryan was supposed to be in the chair and I have just swapped chair duty with her.
Dr CHALMERS: That is very good of you, Deputy Speaker, and very good of you to mention that, given she is not here, she does not get the call. I think that is consistent with precedent—if you are not here, you do not get the call.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no need to be a smart aleck, member for Rankin, I was just explaining something to you. I do not appreciate your behaviour, and I do not want a repeat of yesterday's behaviour either.
Dr CHALMERS: We are in furious agreement—it is a good idea not to give the call to the member for Ryan, who is not here. We agree.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no need to be a smart aleck.
Dr CHALMERS: My question for the parliamentary secretary is in relation to the white paper on agriculture. Why is the white paper on agriculture six months late?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:37): That is an issue you would need to direct to the agriculture minister—
Dr Chalmers: You have got a white paper on agriculture on your organisational chart.
Mr PORTER: It is in an organisational chart but that is not conducted. There are two white papers being conducted under the auspices of Prime Minister and Cabinet—a tax white paper and a federation white paper. Some stewardship on tax is devolved to me and some stewardship on federation to my friend the parliamentary secretary. But matters with respect to the agricultural white paper are not in the auspices of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
From time to time, of course, white paper processes are elongated beyond original estimates. Particularly, very often—and this is something I think was noticed in the tax white paper—the sheer volume of submissions that are received, and the desire by people to submit further but have been unable to submit within the existing time frame, means that sometimes those time frames are elongated. That is something that would have to be directed towards the agriculture minister.
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (10:38): I ask the parliamentary secretary to respond to a story in the Canberra Times that said:
Paid parental leave for tens of thousands of federal public servants has been plunged into limbo by the Abbott government's controversial cuts to the entitlement. Departments are saying that they cannot finalise the arrangements for their workforces until they have been given clear guidance from public service authorities.
When will that guidance be provided?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:38): I have not read the article that the member refers to. Of course, any lack of clarity that might arise from the coalition's Jobs for Families childcare package—which of course includes both the new expenditure to increase the subsidies for child care but also, as the member points out, the savings measures which revolve around both the FTB(B) changes and the eligibility criteria for the state run, government run, system of paid parental leave—with respect to those proposals does not arise from the nature of the proposals, or the way in which the proposals are described, formatted or legislated. That is entirely clear. Of course, uncertainty, very unfortunately, will arise because the position of members opposite is, it appears, to not support those changes, which would give very significant increases to subsidy for those seeking child care. Maybe it is something that members opposite need to discuss with the relevant unions that they have close contact with, but there is no lack of clarity in what is being proposed. If there is any, you could try to point it out, but I think that the drafting is very tight. Of course, clarity may be an issue because of the fact that the legislation is going to meet, it appears, some opposition from Labor.
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (10:40): I refer the parliamentary secretary to his earlier response about paid parental leave, and again I quote The Canberra Times article:
The key Department of the Prime and Cabinet says it simply does not know what to do about its workforce's paid parental leave entitlements in the wake of the bombshell announcement in May's budget.
Until there is an agreed position across the public service, which was singled out and accused of "double-dipping" in an attempt to sell the policy, everything is up in the air.
Can he respond to this assertion in the article? Can the parliamentary secretary confirm that his colleagues in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet have absolutely no idea how to implement the government's policy on paid parental leave?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:41): Perhaps I can make this comment with respect to The Canberra Times article, which I have not read but you have gracefully quoted a part of: what a sloppy and hopeless piece of journalism that is. The idea that there is some form of a lack of clarity—
Dr Chalmers interjecting—
Mr PORTER: There are journalists of varying quality and acumen, and, based on the very little excerpt you have given to us about this particular article, I must say that is not the highest point in the art of investigative journalism which has graced the vocabulary of this chamber.
The position that the coalition has taken is that the $11,000-odd of paid parental leave that is provided for by the taxpayer through the auspices of the government should not be available to be taken by Commonwealth public servants who already have expansive and generous paid parental leave systems. The principle is that if you are a Commonwealth public servant who has a large, expansive and generous entitlement, which is of course also funded by the taxpayer of Australia, then you should not be able to also get a further taxpayer-of-Australia funded benefit. The principle is very clear.
The way in which that principle is enacted in the legislation is also very clear. What is less clear is whether or not there is going to be support to ease the passage of that principle, which is well-defined in legislation, through the parliament. To the extent that there may be uncertainty as to the future, that is not uncertainty created by the coalition government, nor pursuant to the principle nor pursuant to the drafting. That is uncertainty that you are creating, so maybe you should—
Dr Chalmers: It is your policy, defend it!
Mr PORTER: The policy is sound and the legislation is sound. Whether there is complete certainty is something which unfortunately is out of the control of any government who faces bloody-minded opposition. Maybe it is the case that we will find good support for this, as we did with our pensions package last evening from individuals—
An honourable member: Why are you putting the Greens down?
Mr PORTER: The Greens are lovely people. But any uncertainty here is caused by your side of politics refusing to do what is the right thing—that is, to move savings in one area of spending on families to very important, productive spending in another area.
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (10:44): My question is to the parliamentary secretary. The Prime Minister told his cabinet earlier this month that there would be 'political and personal consequences' for leaking, after Fairfax Media published very detailed revelations of a cabinet debate on plans to strip citizenship from suspected terrorists. My question is: can the parliamentary secretary tell us if the cabinet division is investigating ways to prevent future leaks and how much resourcing is devoted to finding the source of this leak?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: As it is 10.45 am, the Federation Chamber will now consider the Indigenous affairs segment of the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio, in accordance with the agreed order of consideration. Perhaps, parliamentary secretary, you could take the member for Rankin's question on notice.
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:45): I would be very happy to do so.
Mr COULTON (Parkes—The Nationals Chief Whip) (10:45): My question is to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister in relation to Indigenous affairs. As a member who represents a large number of Aboriginal people, the welfare and wellbeing of the people in my electorate are very important. We have seen a lot of successful programs, and there are some wonderful things happening in the electorate of Parkes.
I might just touch briefly on the Clontarf Foundation, which is ongoing and is set to increase in numbers over the next few months. The Clontarf Foundation is doing great work in Bourke, Brewarrina, Moree, Coonamble and now Dubbo in my electorate. They have had great achievements, like the two young men from Coonamble who are now working in construction with Leighton Contractors in Sydney and who previously, without the assistance of Clontarf, would not have had the opportunity to obtain full-time employment and, indeed, a career. They have great pride in their achievements, and their community has great pride in their achievements as well. Also, young Nathan Johnson, who was school captain of Brewarrina last year, is now doing a fine arts degree at the University of Newcastle, largely because of the mentoring and assistance from Clontarf.
We still have a lot of issues that affect not only the Aboriginal people in my electorate but also most people who are suffering from living on low incomes and on welfare in remote areas. We are seeing an escalation in the use of methamphetamine, in the form of ice, and the misuse of morphine patches that are being processed into what is locally known as 'hillbilly heroin' and the effects that they are having. There are also a lot of issues around alcohol and the domestic violence which comes with that. This is not an issue just for the Aboriginal people in my electorate; it afflicts a large number of my communities, of which Aboriginal people are residents. One of those issues is around cash in society, and the fact that when the welfare payments come through this money is, in some cases, squandered on drugs and alcohol, and we end up with children and women mainly bearing the consequences of that.
I have a couple of questions for the parliamentary secretary. I am just wondering where the parliamentary secretary is up to with the possible implementation of a Healthy Welfare Card, and what the government is trying to achieve with that. We are aware of the BasicsCard, but the parliamentary secretary might explain what the differences may be between a BasicsCard and the proposed cashless debit card. What will determine the success of a cashless debit card? I am particularly interested to know what discussions and community involvement might be happening at the moment around this process. Finally, how much is our government investing in Indigenous affairs, as well? If the Parliamentary Secretary could answer those questions, I am sure that the constituents in my electorate would be very interested to know.
Mr TUDGE (Aston—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (10:50): Thank you to the member for Parkes for those questions. I have been out to his electorate a couple of times and I certainly appreciate his absolute passion in this space—his passion for his constituents and for the advancement of Aboriginal people more broadly. He is a person who is very, very genuine about his commitment in this space, as are many people in this chamber.
The member for Parkes has asked me several questions. Perhaps I could take some of those in turn. Firstly, working backwards, in terms of how much money we are putting into Indigenous-specific programs, I can confirm to the member for Parkes that we are putting about $4.9 billion over four years into Indigenous-specific programs. They, of course, sit above and beyond any other mainstream programs that Aboriginal people access as well.
I will perhaps make comment in relation to the Clontarf program. There are some very successful Clontarf programs in the member for Parkes' electorate, which I have been out and visited with him, and where I had a throw of the footy with some of the boys in the morning—unfortunately it was not a kick of the footy, AFL style! But it is a terrific program, and this government backs the Clontarf program very strongly. In last year's budget, as you would probably be aware, we significantly boosted the funding for the Clontarf academies so that those academies can continue to be rolled out across the nation. Not only do they boost school attendance, but in many cases they provide the mentoring, the support, the advice and the counsel that these young Indigenous boys and men need, as well as providing opportunities for employment subsequently. So we are very big supporters of the Clontarf Academy, and I commend Gerard Neesham and his team for the work that they do across Australia now. I know that the members of the opposition also strongly support the Clontarf Academy.
I was also asked about the Healthy Welfare Card. This proposal, as you would be aware, came out of the recommendation of Andrew Forrest. We are not adopting his recommendation for it in its entirety, although we are taking that recommendation seriously. In essence there are three differences in what we are proposing to do from what Andrew Forrest recommended. Firstly, we are not proposing that a Healthy Welfare Card as outlined in his report be applied across Australia but, rather, that it would only ever be intended to be applied in discrete locations where there is higher welfare passivity and also high welfare-fuelled alcohol and drug abuse. Secondly, the proposal is to trial this card in two or three locations only to assess its feasibility, to work out what impact it will have and then to make decisions subsequent to that trial. In the most recent budget, funds were set aside to enable that trial to continue. The third difference from the Andrew Forrest recommendation is that, whereas he recommended that no cash be available and that all welfare dollars be placed onto a healthy welfare debit card, we are suggesting that at least some cash does need to be available because we are not in a cashless economy just yet. So we are working with community leaders in various locations to determine what amount of cash is a reasonable amount that you do need versus what you can reasonably put on an ordinary Visa debit card, which is what we are proposing to do.
The member for Parkes asked where this is at. We have been having constructive consultations across many communities around Australia. It is no secret that one of the communities we have been engaged with is the community of Moree, in the member for Parkes' electorate. Those conversations and those consultations, though, are ongoing.
We are also having consultations with many other places. At some stage there will be a decision made as to where we will trial the card, with the core, single objective of trying to address some of the welfare fuelled alcohol and drug abuse, which in some places is very significant and does lead to very significant rates of violence and assaults, particularly against women, and child neglect.
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (10:55): Parliamentary Secretary I would like to ask you a series of questions in relation to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. I will give one example in relation to it. The Indigenous Advancement Strategy was hailed by the Abbott government as a centrepiece of its Indigenous policy. Indeed the parliamentary secretary has just mentioned $4.9 billion over four years. But for hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations across the country it has been a living nightmare, and they are still living with it. One year on many of them do not know where the axe will fall. This budget entrenches more than half a billion dollars in cuts from Indigenous programs and from Indigenous frontline services, which started in last year's budget. It confirms more than $145 million will be cut from Indigenous programs and services in this financial year, including $46 million for Indigenous health. The budget provides no relief from last year's budget cuts.
What has the Indigenous Advancement Strategy actually done? Last year the government forced all Indigenous organisations to compete in an open competitive tender process. More than $14 billion of applications were received with just $2.3 billion being available under the strategy. Alarmingly, about 75 frontline Indigenous services, including women's shelters, did not apply for that funding because they could not deal with the guidelines. Struggling with this massive oversubscription, the government rolled out $300 million just to keep organisations going for another six months, and this meant $2 billion was available. In March this year the government announced $860 million in funding for Indigenous programs and services. Many of the services were offered just a fraction of their previous funding to deliver the same services and many missed out altogether.
The Indigenous Advancement Strategy left many gaps in vital frontline services so your government, Parliamentary Secretary, was forced to release another $140 million in funding to fix those gaps. Now we learn that the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the Hon. Nigel Scullion, is gap-filling even further with ad hoc funding offers, with demand driven and direct source funding. Parliamentary Secretary, by what process is the minister actually dealing with demand driven and direct source funding? How does he meet with them, when does he meet with them, how do they get access to him? On what basis or criteria does he make those decisions.
Two weeks out from the new financial year contracts have not been finalised for those organisations who have been notified that they are getting funding. The process is so bad that the submissions given to the Senate inquiry are damning. One of those organisations I would like to draw to your attention is the Bloodwood Tree Association, which operates the Bunara Maya hostel in Port Hedland. Initially they were forced through this process, and they got some interim funding to continue until 30 June 2015. They were told under the IAS they would get no money for the hostel they ran. Five Aboriginal staff members would lose their jobs. The gap-filling process offered an opportunity for the government to address the gap created by the forced disclosure. This is in Port Hedland, Parliamentary Secretary. About a year after the process began, the Bloodwood Tree Association was offered funding for another six months after a quick meeting with the minister. Again we are referring to the process by which those applications were made. Almost unbelievably the Minister for Indigenous Affairs has said that the half a billion dollars in cuts delivered through the IAS was simply an efficiency dividend. The minister guaranteed more than once that no frontline services would be cut. I ask you, Parliamentary Secretary, to explain what a frontline service actually is, according to your government. Does the Parliamentary Secretary stand by the minister's iron-clad guarantee that no frontline services have been cut? Can the Parliamentary Secretary confirm the cuts to be applied in this financial year? This budget did offer some additional investment in Indigenous Advancement Strategy, with $4.8 million allocated for further funding indexation in 2018-19. This is of little comfort, Parliamentary Secretary, to the many organisations which have not got funding beyond this financial year. I ask the parliamentary secretary: how many organisations have actually been contracted until 2018-19? Is this new money? What modelling has been done to arrive at this $4.8 million—at this indexation figure, as the budget shows? Will the parliamentary secretary disclose the modelling? If so, when?
Mr TUDGE (Aston—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (11:00): I thank the shadow Indigenous affairs spokesperson, the member for Blair, for his series of questions in relation to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy and some of the decisions which the government has made this year and last year.
I first address the point that he made right at the beginning and which the member for Blair has been making incorrectly for some time: that we cut half a billion dollars out of the Indigenous-specific programs last year. There was not half a billion dollars. Yes, there were savings made in last year's budget from Indigenous-specific programs across the forward estimates. There were savings across every single department in large part because we were trying to get control of the enormous debt and deficit legacy which we were left by the former government.
What the savings represents, though—to put this into context—were savings of $247 million, from memory, over four years, which out of $30 billion spent on Indigenous people across the nation per annum, according to the Productivity Commission, represents a savings of about 0.2 per cent. I know that the opposition has said a lot about this particular savings, but my point to them is that, if money were the answer, we would have closed the gap, a long time ago. Indeed, we have had an 80 per cent real increase in Indigenous funding over the last decade. Today about $44,000 per Indigenous person is spent across the nation. In remote communities it would be close to double that figure. Money is not the answer. Money is important; of course it is. But if it is just more money that led to closing of the gap then that gap would have been closed some time ago.
What have we done in relation to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy? There was a series of questions which the member for Blair asked in relation to that. As he would know, we have gone through a very significant process in relation to the Indigenous-specific programs. When we came to office there were 150 Indigenous-specific programs across multiple departments. The first step that Tony Abbott decided as the new Prime Minister was to incorporate all of those programs into the Prime Minister's department. That gives it coordination. That gives Indigenous affairs clout. It gives Indigenous affairs a much higher political priority than it has ever had. The second thing that the government has done is amalgamate those 150 programs into five broad, flexible programs largely oriented around the government's priorities, of which everybody knows our top three priorities are, of course, getting kids to school, adults to work and communities safe.
It has been, as you would imagine, quite a significant process to amalgamate those 150 programs into five, but it enables us to be more flexible in relation to the provision of funding and allows local regions and local community leaders and organisations to also be more flexible in terms of the type of applications that they might want to put in against the national priorities which we have set. We have gone through this process. Yes, there were many thousands of applications for the money. In total, 996 organisations have been funded to deliver funding to over 1,350 projects. That is what has occurred in the first round of the IAS funding.
As we have gone along, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs said that there would be a first round of funding and there will be subsequent rounds. Many were given the decision, 'You have not quite been granted funding, but please come back to us and address these couple of issues, and you may well get funding.' That is the process which is going through at the moment, again to try to provide that nuance and flexibility to be able to assess the outcomes on the ground. And in some instances, the outcomes are not being delivered, and where those outcomes are not being delivered, those organisations are not getting further funding. I do not think the taxpayers expect us to continue funding when outcomes have not been delivered.
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (11:05): The budget ceases the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing and a $5.5 billion investment which was not due to expire until 2018. It is a significant amount of funding—about $1.3 billion available to be rolled out over the remaining years of the agreement.
The 2014 progress review of the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing reported more than 1,600 new houses and 5,200 refurbishments have been completed between 2008 and 2013. States and territories have continued to achieve and exceed targets for construction and refurbishment, with another 531 new houses constructed and 839 refurbishments completed in 2013-14. The government will replace the national partnership agreement with a new remote Indigenous housing strategy over three years, totalling $1.1 billion, according to the budget.
Can the parliamentary secretary confirm how many new houses have been constructed and how many refurbishments have been completed under the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing? What were the construction targets for the remaining years of the agreement? How many houses and refurbishments are states and territories required to complete by 2018, under the government's new remote Indigenous housing strategy?
Of great concern is the redirection of $95 million associated with the existing national partnership agreement to fund reform of the Remote Jobs and Communities Program. Indigenous households are more than three times as likely to be overcrowded. The 2011 ABS census on population and housing reported that around 24,700 Indigenous households were considered to be overcrowded. This equates to 115,600 people, or about one in four Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in overcrowded accommodation. Approximately 60.4 per cent of Aboriginal households in remote parts of the Northern Territory are subject to overcrowding.
The problems associated with chronic overcrowding in remote communities are well documented. It is concerning that the government has ripped $95 million from the national partnership agreement, given the serious ongoing issues of overcrowding in remote communities. I suppose it should come as no surprise that funding should be ripped away from remote community investment after the Prime Minister described the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to live on their traditional lands as a 'lifestyle choice' that should be not be subsidised by taxpayers' money. It follows the decision of this government to cut federal funds for essential and municipal services in remote communities across the country and to hand that responsibility to the states and territories.
Parliamentary Secretary, why is the $95 million being cut from the Indigenous remote housing investment? How will reducing funding for remote housing reduce overcrowding in remote communities? Strangely, the new remote housing strategy will fund housing for employment related accommodation not in remote communities but in regional and urban areas—I don't quite get that one. How many houses will actually be constructed in remote communities, as was is intended in the national partnership agreement? And how much of the $1.1 billion for remote housing will now be spent on housing outside of remote communities?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. I do not know if he wants those questions in writing. There were a lot of statistics in there.
Mr TUDGE (Aston—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (11:09): I thank the member for Blair for his series of questions, and I am used to the member for Blair's series of questions, which in five minutes are very difficult to get through. I did not count them this time, but I think your record, Member for Blair, is something like 40 questions in a five-minute slot from last year.
Mr Neumann: I am not always satisfied with the answers, Parliamentary Secretary.
Mr TUDGE: I will do my best for the chamber and for the member for Blair. I will firstly address the municipal funding issue, which the member for Blair raised. As he would know, we have been working with state and territory governments to transfer the responsibility for municipal services from the federal government to the state governments. And we are doing that on a cooperative basis, where we will sit down with them and they will only agree to take on those services if they feel they have got a good deal out of it. Otherwise they will not sign up to the deal. That is the bottom line. But we have been able to have those constructive arrangements. The reason we are doing it is, in some respects, quite simple. When you look across Australia at everywhere else that municipal services are done, they are done by local councils, or by state governments, or by local councils on behalf of state governments. This is a peculiarity where municipal services have been funded and implemented by federal governments. We are just changing that arrangement so that the level of government closest to the ground in terms of the state governments—
Mr Neumann interjecting—
Mr TUDGE: The member for Blair is interjecting saying he did not ask about MUNS. He did refer to the MUNS funding, so I am addressing the particular point he has raised.
He has then raised a series of questions in relation to housing. He is right that the government is committing $1.13 billion over three years to remote housing, from 2015-16 to 2017-18. And $95 million has been redirected to the RJCP Work for the Dole program, in part to include activities such as working on housing construction. One of the problems with the former NPARIH system was that so few Indigenous people locally were getting employment out of it. From memory, on average the housing costs were something in the vicinity of $600,000 or $800,000 per house constructed, but very few people were getting work out of it. Often it was people who were flown in, or drove in, from the major capital cities to work on these projects. We are unashamedly saying that we would like to see local people working on local housing construction. That, absolutely, is one of our priorities.
Another priority is to move away from an exclusive focus on social housing, so that in the ideal world Aboriginal people, be they in urban Australia or remote Australia, have the same opportunities and the same choices in relation to their housing as anybody else has—so that their only option is not to be put on the waiting list and to wait for a social house to come up, but rather they can also have the option to construct their own house and to own it on a home ownership basis. That is also what we would like to see. I am certainly pleased that the former Newman government put through some important 99-year lease legislation that enables those home ownership opportunities to continue.
I will address the final point, and this does get directly to his questions about why we were thinking about urban and regional locations, at the same time as remote locations, in relation to housing. Part of it is for employment, because as we know there can be significant economic impediments, on top of other impediments, to people leaving a remote community to get a job elsewhere. One of the economic impediments—
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Lingiari!
Mr TUDGE: I would ask him to withdraw that comment. One of the economic impediments is the cost of housing. Should you want to leave a free, or close to free, welfare house in a remote community to take up a job elsewhere, you face significant economic impediments there. So we are supporting people to be mobile, including through housing—
Mr Snowdon: You are joking. You do not know what you are talking about.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Prentice ): This is not the House of Representatives. Just be quiet please.
Mr Snowdon: It is the House of Representatives. He has no bloody idea.
Mr TUDGE: I ask that the member for Lingiari withdraw some of the offensive statements he has made towards me.
Mr Snowdon: I withdraw.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Lingiari.
Mr RAMSEY (Grey) (11:14): My question, obviously, is to the parliamentary secretary. Firstly, let me say how pleased I am that the drug and alcohol rehab centre in Port Augusta will finally be officially opened in August—it will actually operate before that time. This has been on the books since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd committed to it in the 2008 apology. So it has been quite a while getting there and I am very pleased that this government has been able to deliver it.
An honourable member interjecting—
Mr RAMSEY: It may have been a budget item, but it was unfortunately due to the incompetence of the previous government that the building could not be established or put in place. I also thank the minister, through you Deputy Speaker, for the extension of the income management program into Ceduna, both the voluntary and the exploration and development of the system that leads to some directed welfare payments. I think this is making an appreciable difference in that community, along with a whole raft of other things that are being done there. As the member for Lingiari would he aware—he has been to Ceduna before—the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs recently visited Ceduna and Coober Pedy, both of which have taken a very proactive stance in the management of alcohol damage in their local communities.
The government has received the Forrest report. There is a quite wide-ranging number of recommendations in the Forrest report, some around the issue of the healthy welfare card, but many more. Obviously, communities in my electorate like Ceduna, Coober Pedy, Port Augusta and Port Lincoln are interested in what the government's approach may be in responding to that report.
Mr TUDGE (Aston—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (11:16): I thank Mr Ramsey, the member for Grey, for his questions. I also thank him for his significant commitment to his constituents who include many Aboriginal people in some of the more remote places of Australia. Like the member for Parkes, who was speaking beforehand, the member for Grey has a very genuine fair dinkum commitment to the advancement of Aboriginal people more generally. I know that one of the things he had been pressing for for some time was the Port Augusta rehab facility, and it is absolutely terrific to see that the funding has been delivered for that. I commend him for the work that he had done there. I would also make note of and commend former minister Jenny Macklin for some of the income management trials which she oversaw when she was the minister, which included a very small trial in Ceduna as well.
The member for Grey has particularly asked me about the Forrest report, the status update on that and how that might relate to his electorate. I can report that out of the 27 recommendations of the Forrest report the government has decided to move forward on 26 of those 27 recommendations. The one which we are not moving forward on is the one recommending a tax-free status business. In part, we agreed with the sentiment in that recommendation, but it is a very difficult one to implement. Each of the others we are working through. We know that some of those have already been announced and implemented. One of the most significant ones which will impact on the ground, including in the member for Grey's electorate, includes some of the demand-driven measures. By that I mean an increased employment target for the Australian Public Service and putting some pressure on the larger companies in Australia for them to do a bit more in terms of their Indigenous employment. Most significantly, I think, is that for the first time in Australian political history we will be introducing a procurement target for Australian government procurement dollars. We have set ourselves a target of three per cent of our procurement contracts by 2020. This is new for Australia but it is not a new idea. It is in fact an idea taken from the United States, who introduced something similar under President Nixon back in 1969, and Canada, who introduced a similar concept back in 1996. In each of those two countries it had a very significant impact of creating social uplift for minority groups. We are hoping, and we believe, that this important procurement measure will have the same impact for Australia, and I hope that there are many Indigenous enterprises in the member for Grey's electorate that will be beneficiaries of that particular measure.
Of some of the other Forrest report recommendations, the Work for the Dole measure is another important one, and we are rolling that out progressively across Australia. Minister Scullion is doing a terrific job in reforming the old RJCP program, which might have been fine in intent but was not delivering consistently across the board in outcomes. Our intent is for every single person in those RJCP areas to be doing some meaningful activity for at least 25 hours per week.
The member for Grey also touched on the Healthy Welfare Card. I made comment about this card previously, in terms of our objective and our approach. Again, it is no secret that one of the communities amongst a group of communities that we have been having some cooperative discussions with is in the Ceduna region and surrounding communities. We have had very good engagement to date, and that engagement will continue to assess the preparedness and the desirability of implementing that proposal in that region. I have worked very cooperatively with the member for Grey on that.
There are also other measures within the Forrest report which may have an impact in his electorate—some of them measures that concern early childhood; some of them school attendance measures, for example. They will ultimately have an impact on his electorate.
Mr SNOWDON (Lingiari) (11:21): At the risk of getting another non-answer from the parliamentary secretary, I want to again ask questions around housing, and to ask him to be very specific in his response. Can the parliamentary secretary confirm how many new houses have been constructed and refurbishments completed under the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing? What were the construction targets for the remaining years of the agreement? Can the parliamentary secretary explain why funding for housing at Borroloola has been cut from $22 million to $15 million? How many houses and refurbishments are states and territories required to complete by 2018 under the government's new remote Indigenous housing strategy? These questions are very specific and not difficult. I would like him to answer them.
I would also like to address the question of the redirection of the $988.2 million in funding over eight years to establish a new national partnership agreement on the Northern Territory Aboriginal investment. We are told by the budget papers that this new NPA will replace the existing NPA on Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory at a net additional cost of $61.3 million over four years from 2015-16. I would like to know where this money is coming from. Could the parliamentary secretary give us a break-up of how this $988.2 million is to be spent, over what programs and over what period for each program? I also ask the parliamentary secretary: how is the government attempting to change the existing NPA Stronger Futures program in the Northern Territory through the NPA? We do need to know what is going to be in this new NPA, how it is going to be described and what the obligations of the Northern Territory government, in this case, will be. I would like the parliamentary secretary to articulate what they will be, please.
The new NPA includes, as I understand it, the new MUNS funding for the Northern Territory of $154.8 million. I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary specifically: what was the process for calculating this amount of $154.8 million? In negotiating its provisions, what was the role of the Northern Territory government? What agreements have been reached with the Northern Territory government over this MUNS funding? What communities will be funded under this MUNS funding? Are all communities which have been previously funded under the municipal services program funding from the Commonwealth being covered by this funding? We need to know precisely that information. Can he inform us as to how the Northern Territory government intends to roll out services under this program?
I then just address a couple of other issues which he has spoken about, not the least of which is the idiocy of the comment that somehow you are going to ameliorate poor housing in Aboriginal communities by building housing in Alice Springs. That ain't going to happen, brother, I can tell you. What we need to do is increase the funding in the bush to address it. To say that somehow or other people are getting these places free is just a nonsense. You ought to know, Parliamentary Secretary, that they are required to pay the rates charged for them through the Northern Territory Department of Housing. That is how it is being administered. That is the money they are being paid. They are asked to pay rent like every other Australian, as a public housing tenant.
I also want to make some comments and ask a question about Clontarf. I know that you acknowledge, Parliamentary Secretary, that we on this side of the House believe that Clontarf is a very, very successful program. It operates in a large number of locations across the country, including in my own electorate in the Northern Territory. While I am about it, I want to commend all of those people who are employed in that program for the wonderful work that they do mentoring young Aboriginal men. But I want to ask: why is it that there is no money being made available for similar programs for young women? I am aware that there was a proposal put to the government under the IAS funding proposal by an organisation called Stars for funding to start such a program, which would develop across the country. I am advised that the Stars program was not funded. Can the parliamentary secretary explain to me precisely why the program did not receive funding. Like the government, we accept the need to address the needs of young people in schools. Like the government, we accept the need to make sure that there is equivalent treatment of boys and girls, but at the moment we are not seeing that treatment. I have to say that there was no money made available for these sorts of programs when Labor was in government either. We need to redress the situation, and information would be greatly appreciated.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Prentice ): Thank you, Member for Lingiari. I think you might even have outdone the member for Blair on the number of questions then.
Mr TUDGE (Aston—Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) (11:27): I thank the member for Lingiari for his series of questions. I do not know whether he did break the member for Blair's record of 40 questions in a five minute period, but he certainly did his absolute best to do so.
If I could address the questions in relation to Clontarf first, Clontarf, as the member for Lingiari mentioned, is a terrific organisation started by Gerard Neesham. Many years ago, Gerard Neesham, the first Dockers coach, went on to establish the Clontarf Academy in Western Australia. Subsequently he has been rolling out academies right across Australia, providing AFL football in some places and NRL in other places. They do an absolutely terrific job of ensuring the kids stay in school and are regularly attending school, because that is the fundamental basis of the program; they do a terrific job in providing mentoring to those young boys; and they do a terrific job in providing pathways from school into employment. I have had the opportunity to visit many of these academies across Australia, to see the terrific work which they have been doing, and to speak to young men who will literally tell you to your face that their lives were fundamentally changed as a result of the work of the Clontarf Academy.
The question was asked: why there no similar program for girls? The Clontarf Academy was established for boys, and there has been a lot of pressure on Gerard Neesham. He gets pressured quite frequently to offer the program for girls, and his answer is always: 'We do a very good job with boys; that is our core competency. Let us do that.' We of course would like to see other proposals and ideas and programs established to provide similar types of outcomes for girls, but the Clontarf Academy does a great job of delivering outcomes for boys. When an organisation has a track record in multiple places of delivering outcomes, we should continue to fund that organisation to deliver more outcomes across the country.
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Prentice ): Parliamentary Secretary, I am sorry. Member for Lingiari, you asked a wide range of questions.
Mr Snowdon: But this is very specific.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you were not specific. You asked more than the member for Blair.
Mr Snowdon: I am asking him about a particular girls program, and he cannot even answer it.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: And you asked a whole range of other questions, so please let the parliamentary secretary continue uninterrupted.
Mr TUDGE: Over time there may well be the Clontarf Academy equivalent for girls—I hope that there is. It may be based on netball, or it may be based on other types of activities that provide the mechanism for engaging those girls at school. One example of that has been— (Time expired)
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry but your time has expired. I am sure the member for Lingiari can ask you question in the chamber during question time. The question now is that the proposed expenditure for the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio be agree to.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Social Services Portfolio
Proposed expenditure, $10,678,037,000.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (11:31): The social services budget contains some 53 measures in the 2015-16 'have a go' budget: 21 savings measures totalling approximately $7.3 billion at the time of the budget, and 32 expenditure measures totalling approximately $6.7 billion. In this portfolio we understand the need to spend the considerable taxpayer funds wisely in an area of critical need, and you need to do that based on some pretty clear principles. Those principles include respect for the taxpayer, respect for the beneficiaries and respect for the communities in which both the taxpayers and the beneficiaries reside.
In regard to taxpayers, we know that the equivalent of eight out of 10 income tax payers go to work every day to ensure that social services expenditure of some $150-plus billion every year can be achieved, and it is important to do this in the most effective way that we can. This is an important expenditure, which is supported by the Australian people. They understand and support the need for a strong welfare safety net in this country, and they are pleased to do it. But they expect of us, both as a government and I believe also as a parliament, to be good stewards of that investment and to ensure that it goes to those who most need it.
We are all very familiar with the growth in expenditure in the social services area, and that growth will continue. One of the challenges for the government, both now and many years into the future, is to manage the growth of that expenditure and ensure that wherever possible we are spending it in places that make the biggest difference. It is a question of realising and understanding the alternatives to how money can be expended in this area, to manage that growth, but it is also about ensuring that we do not just shovel it out the door, but that we focus it in the areas of most need. That is why in this budget there are saving of $7.3 billion. We are redeploying that money, ensuring it is better spent with the expenditure of $6.7 billion on 32 programs. We are spending the funds that the taxpayer is choosing to invest in the welfare safety net better, and we are seeking to respect them in how we go about that process.
The budget is also about respecting the choices of Australians around the country, and trying to facilitate the choices they want to make: families who want to be able to work more; young people who want to be able to work; and young people who understand they have significant barriers to overcome when it comes to being able to work. In this budget we are investing in some $330 million worth programs to help some of the most vulnerable young people in this country, in a whole range of different areas and circumstances, to overcome the barriers they have just to get to the starting line of getting a job, let alone in getting a job, and, in addition to that, being able to keep a job once they have been able to secure one. For families it is about helping them facilitate the decision to work more. The Jobs for Families package, which is central to this budget, is critical to that process.
It is also a budget that is, I think, seeking to lead the country into a new understanding about our welfare system—an understanding that welfare is about need, not about entitlement, and certainly not universal entitlement. An understanding that distinguishes between what the welfare system does and what the tax system does. The tax system wherever possible should be trying to allow Australians to keep as much of their hard earned money as possible and not seeking to tax it and should not have an equivalency between a tax concession and a welfare payment, because they are different things. One involves an Australian keeping the money they have earned, and the other involves meeting a need that an Australian has which has been recognised. The taxpayers are very pleased to support people in that situation.
In the lead-up to this budget we have done an enormous amount of work in seeking to reimagine the welfare system of the future, and that work has been significantly assisted by the review done by Patrick McClure which I think provides a very good road map to a future welfare system that is built on the issue of need and safety nets rather than one that is built on the issue of entitlement.
It is our purpose in this budget to facilitate the choices of Australians, to better spend the welfare dollars that we have available, to ensure that we help those most in need and to ensure that we respect the taxpayer, who was pleased to provide that support.
Ms MACKLIN (Jagajaga) (11:36): I thank the minister for the opportunity to ask him some specific questions particularly about these people who are in very serious need. I want to draw his attention to a group of young people who are unemployed and who are going to be abandoned by this government and left with absolutely nothing to live on for a month. I would like to ask the minister: how many young people will be left with nothing to live on if the legislation that is currently in the parliament, saying to young people that they will have absolutely no form of income support for a month? How many young people will be affected in the first year of operation of this change? I also ask the minister what he expects these people to live on, where they will get food to eat and where they will get money to pay their rent.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (11:37): I thank the member and former minister in this area for her question. As the former minister, the member would be fully aware that in last year's budget we took a measure which sought to have a change in arrangements for those who are under 30. They would wait six months before accessing entitlements. There was a considerable debate that ensued as a result of that proposal. It would have provided significant savings to the budget, and these were very difficult decisions that were taken at the time of that budget to address the fiscal chaos that we inherited.
The consequence of not managing a budget well is that it leaves those who need to fix a previous fiscal mess with the responsibility of having to deal with very difficult questions, and that was a very difficult question. But the government listened as the debate ensued. When I came into the portfolio in December, we looked very specifically at this question. In this budget, as a result of the listening, as a result of the consultation, we have brought forward a very different measure. We have reversed the measure that was in last year's budget at a significant cost to the budget for that reversal—around $1½ billion. We have replaced it with a new measure for those who are job ready.
We are not talking about disadvantaged people who have significant barriers to unemployment; they are specifically excluded in the measures that we have brought forward. The exemptions to the measures that the member has referred to exempt former carers of people with a disability, those recently released from prison or psychiatric facilities, young people who are unable to live at home—and there are a number of reasons why they cannot do that, of which members would be very well aware—young people with undiagnosed mental illnesses, humanitarian entrants and other vulnerable migrant youth. If a person has some disability or a current activity test exemption—for example, they are pregnant and in the last six weeks of their pregnancy—they will not have to serve the waiting period. Parents who have primary care of a child are exempted from these measures. The list of exemptions goes on.
I know the opposition would like to characterise this measure in the way that they have, but this measure is quite targeted. This measure is designed to say to young people that getting on a shuttle bus from the school gate to the Centrelink front door is not the choice that we would recommend to you. We are talking about those who are in a job-ready position: they are ready to have a job, they can actually go out and apply for jobs—this measure requires them to have a job plan, it requires them to have a CV, it requires them to go out and apply for jobs and it requires them to choose work. That is what it does. It requires them to choose work and not welfare, and to get off on the right foot as they leave school, rather than the approach that those opposite seem to be recommending, which is to run a short shuttle from the school gate to the Centrelink front door. That is not something we want to encourage, but those opposite seem very keen on promoting welfare as a career choice for young Australians. We do not want to do that. That is not the choice that we want to put forward for young people.
Welfare should never be a career choice for any Australian. Welfare is there for people who need it; it is not the universal grand entitlement in the socialist paradise that those opposite seem to believe in. We think it is there for those who really need it. We want to tell this to young people as they are leaving school, the young people who are able to get a job. These are not young people who are not able to get a job, these are not young people who are unable to go home and have the support of their family; these are young people who are job-ready. The young people who are studying at university will continue to receive Youth Allowance, there are no issues there. The members opposite should understand that. We are encouraging young people to go into work, to go into study. We have the party of welfare on the other side—the welfare party, not the workers' party any more: 'You vote for the Labor Party and we will make sure you get your entitlement benefits for every single last thing, and if you are not entitled we will create an entitlement for you!' They are the authors of the entitlement culture. This measure is designed to encourage people to choose work. The exemptions are real, and they are in place to support those who are most vulnerable. Those opposite simply cannot accept that.
Ms SCOTT (Lindsay) (11:42): Deputy Speaker Hawke, it is wonderful to see you here today, as a fellow comrade from Western Sydney. I am here to ask a question of the Minister for Social Services. I would like to applaud his work in this portfolio, and applaud his work as a minister of this government over nearly the past two years. Deputy Speaker, being a native of Western Sydney, you know we are home to some of the youngest families in Australia. In fact, Lindsay is the tenth youngest electorate in the country, with a median age of 32. More than 50 per cent of households have dependent children. As a result, the government has spent considerable time in the electorate, launching a $40 billion package over the next four years to give the nation's 1.2 million families better access to child care. Part of the package is to assist up to 240,000 extra families back into the workforce. This is great news. The $246 million package two-year pilot nanny scheme was announced in the electorate of Lindsay—Deputy Speaker, you were also there on that day. This scheme has been met with a lot of applause from the local shift worker community who are looking to keep their jobs, work for their children and have choice about the things they need for their families. I think that is really important, and that is what is so wonderful about the scheme that the minister has provided. This is about giving people opportunities to work, rather than stealing opportunities away from people. We are providing people with opportunity.
Mr Deputy Speaker, we have received a lot of feedback from the community and I would really like to share with you some of the feedback that has come into my office. For instance, Hannah Redwood Blundy posted on my Facebook page:
I think this is wonderful. I was working in fdc—
family day care—
and often had trouble in placing children for nurses, doctors, police officers and even down to counsellors.
But it is more than just nannies; it is widespread reform to deliver affordable and fairer childcare right across the board. More people will get more access through a fairer distribution of rebates. These new measures, once in place, will make it possible for every four-year-old to attend childcare, and that is wonderful news.
For instance, another local lady who has contacted my office is Lyndal Callaghan, who works as a childcare teacher and has a three-month-old daughter. At an announcement with the Prime Minister, the Minister for Social Services and the Minister for Education and Training recently, where these measures were welcomed, she said:
Early childhood is the foundation of lifelong learning. It sets them—
children—
up for the future and early childhood and preschool teaching is very important for children's literacy and numeracy skills.
She is not alone. The overwhelming response to the reforms has been very positive. Recently, we surveyed the electorate—extensively telephone canvassing many people—and the messages were loud and clear. People liked quality care and they wanted to see more simplicity right across the system. That is what the minister is doing.
Another lady that we spoke to—Vicki Skoulogenis, who operates the Mulgoa Preschool and the Alasan Cottage Preschool—told me that she welcomes the new initiatives of flexibility for both parents and their service providers. She said this will provide more options for children through these important stages of their life. Moreover, Bianca and Norm Merchanda from Mulgoa welcomed the single streamlined payment for their family. They say it will make it easier to understand and apply for assistance as compared to the old CCB and CCR system. Renee Sophie from Minchinbury tells me, 'As a single mum, I am happy to see the safety net provided for me at those times when I am between jobs. I will still be able to continue child care under this initiative.' Carly Riddell from Glenmore Park takes another approach: 'I am happy to see the immunisation changes will further protect my five-year-old preschooler, which is comforting news with my newborn ahead.'
My question to the Minister for Social Services is about how the Abbott government is assisting families in my electorate with more affordable, accessible and flexible child care.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (11:47): I thank the member for Lindsay for her question and her comments. I remember the member and me being together when we announced the program for the in-home nannies pilot program, which we hope will commence in January of next year. This is an important program, because it assists those families that currently cannot access mainstream child care and the subsidies that are provided as part of that program. They are shiftworkers, nurses and police officers. They are those who are working in some of the most key occupations in our community and our society. This is one of the key areas that were identified in the course of the Productivity Commission inquiry, and we decided that we were going to focus our program on trying to address the needs of those who the system currently was not addressing—
Honourable members interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hawke ): Order, members! We have an important question and are hearing the answer.
Mr MORRISON: and that is why we are very pleased to have the nannies pilot. We are very pleased to receive the support of those like the Police Association and others who we are working closely with now to work towards implementation of this plan.
I want to commend those opposite who have been engaged with us in working on the Jobs For Families childcare package. Although it is quite clear they do not agree that you actually have to pay for things that you want to do in government, at least we have broad agreement on the package of measures that we are seeking to reform the childcare system with. There have been constructive discussions on that. I am not seeking to in any way impugn the support of the opposition on those measures, but I think there has been genuine discussion on them. I thank the member for Adelaide and the member for Jagajaga, in particular, for their engagement as we work through those processes. But the Jobs For Families package, at its heart, is trying to give the 48 per cent or thereabouts of families who have said—not only in work conducted by the government but also in other places—that they want to work more. That could be a few hours a day, an extra day a week or going back to work altogether. We want to be able to make that choice more achievable for those families. To do that, you have to have quality child care. As those opposite will know, we have maintained the support for the national quality framework.
An honourable member interjecting—
Mr MORRISON: If those opposite want to turn something where there is clearly bipartisanship to support families into a partisan slanging match, that will reflect on them. What I am saying is that we are working together, at least on the expenditure side of this matter. For those families who want to work more, who want a different set of choices for their families, we are working to ensure that the changes to the childcare arrangements will enable them to do just that.
The other area which we are focused on very strongly is the childcare safety net and the opportunities here are very significant. The childcare safety net package deals with some of the most disadvantaged children in our society and right across the country, whether they are Indigenous children or those from incredibly disadvantaged backgrounds, or children at risk, or families fleeing abuse, or families involved with family domestic violence, or children with profound disabilities—in all of these areas there is additional support and more targeted support for those families. There is more support for families in remote and rural communities who need this support. This is what this package delivers. It provides a subsidy which supports the mainstream of families to exercise their choice to be able to work more. That is not a welfare payment. That is a subsidy provided to the providers of services to reduce the cost of child care. You only get the subsidy if you are seeking to consume the service.
The other thing we have done in that process is to apply a tougher activity test to that. We all understand the value and importance of early childhood education and we have spent more in this package than the federal government has ever spent in this area to support that goal. That is what we have done, but we have also gone further in terms of the universal access commitment of funding to the states—something that was not in the forward estimates from the previous government and had to be funded as a new measure in this budget, just like with the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness. In this package, we are supporting mainstream families to exercise their choice to work more and to be able to support themselves more, to achieve the financial independence they want for their families.
For those who are seriously disadvantaged, we are giving them more support too through this package and that is facilitating a choice for those families they may not ever have realised they had, and that is a good thing to do. We are extending the reach of this program to support those families who currently cannot get access because of the nature of that work. That is why the Jobs for Families package will deliver jobs for families. (Time expired)
Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (11:52): The minister has failed to answer the question. How many young people will be affected by this government's harsh changes? How many of them will be forced to live in absolute poverty? How many of them will be affected? I know at least three in my electorate who will be affected. There is Kate, whose rent is $180 a week. She spends $20 a week on petrol, $45 a week on her electricity and gas, $25 a week on her phone, $10 a week on car insurance and $5 a week on medication. Who is going to pay those bills if she is forced to live on nothing? Will the minister be paying those bills? How will this young person pay for the basics? This is the party that stands for homelessness and starvation. They are the starvation party forcing young people to either starve or be homeless.
These are young people who have gone to university, who have got their degrees and are now actively looking for work. There are lots of them. Youth unemployment in my area is up to 16 per cent—that is, 16 per cent of young people who are actively looking for work. The three people that I know of in my electorate—Kate, John and Lee—who would be hit hard if these changes came in, when they first started looking for work when they finished their university degree, finished their TAFE degree, like so many others, how do they start to look for work with no means? How many people are like these people?
How many people who are about to finish university or about to finish TAFE will be hit hard by these changes? How does the minister expect them to live? How will they ensure that they do not starve? How will the government ensure that they do not become homeless? Who will help them pay their bills and ensure that they can actually get to those job interviews? These are people who are actively looking for work, trying to get to job interviews, applying for what jobs exist, but quite frankly there are not enough jobs.
The minister needs to be honest and tell the Australian people how many young people will be affected by this change. If this change had come in, as I said, when Kate started looking for work, when John started looking for work and when Lee started looking for work, who would have paid those bills? That rent figure of $180 a week—how would Kate have paid that bill? How would she have paid her rent if this measure had been in place? The minister needs to come clean. He needs to stand up and tell the Australian young people how many of them will have to beg or borrow from their parents or from their families to be able to support themselves because of this harsh measure. How many people will be affected by this change? How does the minister and the government expect them to pay their bills? How do they expect them to get to job interviews if they do not have the money to put petrol in the car? Be honest with the Australian people and tell us how many people will be affected by these changes?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (11:55): It is always interesting when you work through a budget. You deal with the parliament and you get a very quick and clear idea about which parties and which members of parliament are more focused on policy and those which are more focused on politics.
At the last budget, we took forward a measure—a series of measures, actually—and we listened carefully to the response to those measures and those measures were unsuccessful. But what we have learned from the Labor Party is this: the answer is always 'no'. They are not interested in a policy conversation about the future of the nation. They are interested in causing havoc and riot in the parliament. That is what they are interested in doing. They are the wreckers of the parliament. When you go to the parliament with the budget and you say, 'We are proposing to do these measures,' and those measures are rejected, we accept that. Those measures were rejected.
We were told that six months was too long, we were told that the age of 30 was too high and that these things had to be changed. Additionally, they said that there needed to be greater investments in employment programs to get people—particularly young, disadvantaged people—in a position where they could get a job. So what did the government do? The government said, 'Fair enough. We've listened, we've heard you and we've come back with an alternative proposal, which is to cut the six months to one month. We've cut the age from 30 to 25 and we've increased the amount we are spending on programs to assist young people to get into jobs by over $330 million.'
Opposition members interjecting—
Those opposite are not interested in this conversation. This is a process where you deal with people who are interested in policy. Those opposite have demonstrated in the last 24 hours on other matters—on the pension—that they are only interested in politics. It is all about the politics; it is never about the policy.
But on the matters that the member raised: I repeat—job seekers in streams B or C with a Job Active provider are not included in these measures. Disability employment service participants are not included in this measure. Parents with 35 per cent or more care for a child are not included in these measures. Young people leaving state care are not included in these measures. People with an activity test exemption are not included in this measure for the duration of that exemption, which includes pregnant women and people testing their eligibility for disability support pension. People who are unable to go back home, where they have a genuine and good reason why they cannot go home and seek the support of their family during that period, are not included in this measure.
In addition to that, there is $8.4 million in funding for emergency relief that will be made available to provide assistance to those affected by the measure will experience hardship. Those opposite are not interested in the substance of this debate. They are interested in their political campaigns, trying to resurrect a flagging leader who has shown appalling policy judgement, and it turns out that he has shown pretty appalling political judgement too, if the last 24 hours are any measure of his political abilities!
This is a Leader of the Opposition who one day wants to know everything about turn backs and the next day cannot even ask a question on them. This is a Leader of the Opposition who one day wants to maintain a campaign on—
Opposition members interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hawke ): Order! Opposition members will come to order!
Mr MORRISON: and find out in 24 hours whether he wants to continue it—
Ms Macklin: Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The minister knows that this is consideration in detail. The member for Bendigo has asked a detailed question about how many people are affected. The minister is refusing to answer and I would ask you to bring him to order.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no point of order. The member for Bendigo asked a series of questions and the minister is responding to those questions. He is entirely relevant. He has completed his answer so I call the member for Reid.
Mr LAUNDY (Reid) (11:59): Minister, before I ask my question I would like to take the opportunity at a personal level and an electoral level to say thank you. I am changing tack, given the following line of questioning, and talking about radicalisation and migrant youth in my electorate. I look at your path to politics and at when you started in 2007—coming on the back of the Cronulla riots—representing the seat of Cook, and entering parliament with the member for Blaxland, who I know is a close friend of yours as he is of mine. You did something that I thought was fantastic. It has been widely reported, I know, but it would be remiss of me not to mention it again. You and the member for Blaxland reached out to your local communities, realising that both communities needed to engage and learn more about each other, and started up your mateship trek to Kokoda, where the member for Blaxland, Jason Clare, would get young Muslim youth and you would get young Australian youth of Anglo decent and you would travel to Kokoda. You would not only bond as friends, but you would teach these kids that there is far more that unites us than divides us.
I look at my pathway to politics. I was elected in 2013 and not long after I was elected the issue of Daesh blew up on the world stage. It is no secret that I represent a Western Sydney seat with a large Muslim population. It is also no secret that I have parents in my electorate who are genuinely concerned for the safety and wellbeing of their children. I know the work you have done—I have seen it firsthand—with your and my good friend Jamal Rifi in the local community and with wonderful organisations like the Lebanese Muslim Association, chaired so ably by our good friend Samier Dandan and his amazing crew. I know that three weeks ago you and I were there to make an announcement giving the green light on some pilot projects that I, like you, believe will make a substantial difference in our local communities in Western Sydney. What you do not know, and what I would love to bring to your attention today, is that, not long after being elected, I ran into a character, a wonderful man, called Rabbi Zalman Kastel, and with him and Sheikh Charkawi—and it sounds like the start of a joke: 'A rabbi, a sheik, an imam and a politician walk into a school'—
A government member: And a priest!
Mr LAUNDY: We were missing the priest, Minister! But Zalman Kastel and Sheikh Charkawi have done a wonderful job of bringing students from Cronulla High School to South Granville high and the kids from South Granville high to Cronulla. There has been a pilot of an exchange program—a day when they all come together and do amazing things. Once again the common theme they learn—as you cottoned on to, not long after being elected—is that there is far more that unites us as Australians, irrespective of faith, than divides us.
The work you have done out in my local community, and continue to do, I thank you for, at a personal level. But I can tell you—and this is a direct message from the parents in Reid: they want us to stop their kids from being radicalised. They want us, if needs be, to grab them before they jump on a plane, so that we can give them the chance to learn that what they were heading off to is not only wrong but could ultimately prove to be the end of their life. These parents are very worried.
So, Minister, thank you very much, and what I would like to do—given that I know the topic so well, because I have had the benefit of sitting and watching you operate firsthand, and I know that many in this room do not have as multicultural a seat as I do, mine being the second-most multicultural seat in federal parliament—is to ask: would you explain to the House how the Abbott government is assisting vulnerable young migrants and refugees in communities like Reid to engage in work and helping them to make the right choices in their lives, for the sake of our local community, themselves and our country?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:04): I thank the member for Reid for his question and his comments and I commend him for the work he has been doing in his electorate of Reid, particularly in areas such as Auburn and Lakemba, where we have been together regularly with our good friends that you have just referred to, particularly Samier Dandan and Jamal Rifi, who are close friends. And I would add to that Jihad Dib. I commend Jihad Dib for his election to the New South Wales state parliament. I met Jihad through the member for Blaxland some years ago on the Kokoda Track. I think it is wonderful to see someone of Jihad's character and strength and experience in the parliament, serving alongside you as the federal member in that area.
It is important that you reach across the political divides to deal with these difficult issues at the community level. There are many great opportunities, and particularly in this area. I moved from a previous portfolio, looking at these issues from the national security and border protection perspective, and now have the opportunity in this portfolio to get to some of the root issues we have to deal with in countering the predatory behaviour of Daesh.
As you would know, we all have some hard days in this job and we have some very emotional days in this job. One of the most emotional days I have had in this job was going along with Jamal Rifi to see a family—a mother, father and their younger daughter. Four of their sons disappeared, got on the plane and went to Syria. It was a surreal experience. They were expecting these four young men to walk back through the door at any moment. They lost four sons in one day, and I doubt they are ever coming back—for whatever reason.
This starts at a place where it can be stopped. The measures in this budget specifically address these types of issues not specifically in relation to Daesh but more generally in terms of vulnerabilities that we know exist for those from migrant communities and ethnic communities where there can be an isolationism particularly for young people. You need to reach out to those young people and say: 'You're part of this country. Your future is in this country.' I remember something Mecca Laalaa said to me when we walked the Kokoda Track. She said, 'I don't like it that I always have to prove that I'm Australian.' She should not like it that she has to prove to be Australian, because I can think of no better Australians than Mecca, her friends and others who are so committed to their future in this country and their family and others, like all of our families.
There is an opportunity here to send a very clear message to those young people and to work with them to give them different choices. If we do not give them different choices then the great risk is that they will take the bad choices. Our job here with these sorts of policies and measures is to help people to be able to make better choices for their lives. They are their choices, and we all have to own the choices we make, but we have to give them better options. They will be accountable for the decisions they make, and these four young men who have gone over to fight for Daesh will realise, sadly, the consequences of their choices. That will be a terrible tragedy for their family, and that is something we can avoid with these sorts of intervention programs.
The Transition Support for Young Refugees and Other Vulnerable Young Migrants program in the budget contains four measures. The Partnerships for Employment program will provide support for over 2,000 young refugees and vulnerable migrants to undertake job readiness programs to improve their work readiness, to gain work experience and to fill existing job vacancies. The Strong Connections to Education program will provide assistance for up to 1,500 young refugees and vulnerable migrants to remain engaged with education through addressing and building self-confidence and social connections. The Sports Engagement for Youth program will support up to 10,000 young people a year to participate in sporting activities delivered by community groups and sporting organisations to help young people build social connections and confidence beyond their own community. And the Increased Vocational Opportunities program will design an innovative partnership based model and pilot of new arrangements to create pathways for young refugees and vulnerable migrants to strengthen and obtain vocational skills, and up to 300 eligible young people will benefit.
This will all begin in January of next year. I rate it as one of the most important things we are doing as a department in the country's social and national interests. There is a real opportunity for these young people to take a different path from the maniacal, crazed and deadly one that they so clearly can fall into if we do not take this action.
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (12:09): There are about 330,000 people working in the aged-care sector, some in residential aged care, others in home care and some in what will be taken up by the new Commonwealth Home Support Program. It is accepted that within the next eight years we will need 55,770 suitably qualified aged-care workers. One of the first acts of this government was to get rid of the negotiated Aged Care Workforce Supplement that Labor brought in, in consultation with COTA, LASA, FaCSIA and the whole sector. Through the 2014-15 budget they put the money back into the aged-care sector. It is accepted, Minister, that there has been very little appreciation of wages and improvement in conditions as a result of that. Your assistant minister made a very interesting comment on the Australian Ageing Agenda website. He said:
Government can't escape their obligation in terms of funding workforce. Building a better skilled, more appropriate aged care workforce will improve outcomes for older Australians.
The assistant minister, Senator Fifield, made a promise back in February 2014 that he would develop an aged-care workforce strategy. Over a year later: where is this strategy, Minister? He also promised there would be an audit of government funded aged-care workforce initiatives and we have not seen that released. Where is that, Minister? In this current budget we have seen a reduction of 15 per cent—over $40 million—from the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund. The contracts and stock take in relation to this will expire in the next couple of weeks. Why did the government cut the funding for the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund—15 per cent, over $40 billion—before the audit was released and before anything like a strategy was delivered?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:12): While the question may not suggest this, I think there has been a great deal of cooperation and support in the area of aged care—when the government was in opposition, and now that opposition is in government. While there may be issues of dispute, in relation to the matters that the member has raised today, more broadly, there is a healthy and positive consensus, which is allowing some important reforms to the aged-care sector to be realised. I thank the members opposite for their participation in the way we have handled those matters in government, in the same way that I believe they were able to benefit from the way we sought to do that in opposition.
In relation to this matter, the Australian government is redirecting more than $220 million over four years to establish the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund to support training of the aged-care workforce to better meet the needs of frail and older people. The fund will provide workforce initiatives targeting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The fund will replace the current Aged Care Workforce Fund. We understand that the workforce training-and-education role is a shared responsibility between the government and industry, with providers having obligations under the Aged Care Act to ensure there are adequate numbers of appropriately skilled staff to meet the individual care needs of residents. Support through the new Aged Care Workforce Development Fund represents part of the government's contribution to this shared—I stress 'shared'—responsibility.
It is expected that the aged-care workforce, as the member has noted, will nearly triple from around 350,000 people to more than 800,000 people in 2050. Priorities for the fund will be informed by a stock take of the Commonwealth funded aged-care workforce initiatives, scheduled to report in mid-2015. The stock take will identify areas of duplication or gaps in the delivery of government workforce initiatives undertaken over the next three years.
The government will provide prioritised funding for workforce initiatives that will have the greatest impact on building the capability of the aged-care sector. These priorities will be set out in the new guidelines for this fund, which will be available, I am advised, later this year. The guidelines will be developed taking into consideration the findings of the workforce stock take currently being undertaken. As part of the 2014-15 budget I note that the government redirected $1½ billion to aged-care providers. This funding was previously allocated for the workforce supplement. As a result, aged-care providers have increased flexibility in organised training and professional-development opportunities that are most appropriate for their staff's needs.
Mr HOGAN (Page) (12:14): I have a question for the minister, but, Minister, I want to give you a little bit of background on two organisations before I refer my question to you. One of the organisations I wish to talk about is Heartfelt House, an organisation that sits in my electorate between the centres of Lismore and Ballina, which does 18-week non-residential courses for adults who were victims of childhood sexual abuse. I think probably everyone in this chamber would agree that one of the greatest, if not the greatest, dysfunctions we have in our community and in our society is that, and that we have to help and try and heal adults who were victims of childhood sexual abuse. We have had many reports of that in the media over far too many years.
I have worked with Vicki and Heidi, who run Heartfelt House, over many years, and I have met many of the participants of the non-residential courses that they do and have read stories of others. There would not be a person in this country who would not be touched and affected by some of the stories that you hear. Vicki and Heidi are two very special people, and they have a great network of volunteers in our community who help them. There would also be very few service clubs in my community that do not fundraise for and help out Heartfelt House in what they do.
The reason that I believe a community organisation like this needs to be supported is the result once people come out the other side of the courses that Heartfelt House offer. The life improvements of many of the participants of these courses is profound. I have met women who have said that the first time that they have been able to attract and maintain a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex was after they did one of these courses. We have also had people who have basically said that they were released from a prison—their own mental or psychological prison—by the fact that they participated in the courses run by Heartfelt House.
So that is a bit of background on the organisation. The work they do is important. They are now also looking to extend what they do, to men's programs. To date they have run a few men's programs, just off where they operate, but they are also looking to work and to do the courses and the healing work that they do with men, who, obviously, can also be victims of childhood sexual abuse. So that is one organisation.
The other organisation I want to mention to you, Minister, is the Ballina-Byron Family Centre. This, again, is a great organisation. One of the programs that they have that I am very familiar with is the Fella's Family Project, which very much works with people on parenting and relationship skills. They work with expectant fathers on their self-esteem and also with boys between the ages of 11 and 16 on relationship skills. They do many things: home visits for one-on-one support, parenting programs and support groups, and they provide information and do advocacy and referral work. Much mentoring is done. There is one-on-one support. There are individual and group programs and activities. There is information and, as I said, referral. There are also recreation and leisure-based activities.
So, Minister, given the background of those two organisations, could you please advise how community organisations across Australia such as Heartfelt House and the Ballina-Byron Family Centre are being assisted with funding under the DSS grants scheme, to ensure—and we obviously know this—that we do not have any gaps in frontline community services.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:19): I thank the member for Page for his question but, more importantly, I thank him for his passionate advocacy on behalf of his local community, particularly Heartfelt House and the other various programs. In this place we are often pleasantly in the position where we are surprised that the parliament can really work. The members and the way we engage with members can produce some very good outcomes.
As we all know, there was the process A New Way Of Working for Grants, which was implemented by my predecessor, which sought to address some difficult funding issues and some cost issues within the portfolio—as the previous budget was being put together—and that again required hard decisions. For the first time we had had a competitive tender process—the largest ever, I think, round of competitive grants that any government had pursued before on these types of grants. That process was conducted with an enormous amount of professionalism and integrity by my department—my predecessor's department at the time—but it was quite apparent to me when I became minister that even the best process, with the best will and the best intent, can lead to some outcomes which are clearly nonsensical when you look at them from a different perspective and a broader community perspective.
We need to respect the fact that our officials need to make decisions based on very clear parameters and very clear guidelines. They do not have the flexibility that I suspect they would like on occasions and particularly on the sorts of occasions where some of the decisions were made in relation to that program . This became very apparent to me when I came into this portfolio and we announced that we would be extending for three months for emergency relief providers and six months for existing front-line community service providers to June 30, while we worked through a very considered process of identifying where critical front-line service gaps had emerged. We did that in partnership and cooperation with the full parliament. It was not just government members; we had representations from other members. I offered in the parliament some months ago for other members to bring matters before us as we worked through those issues. That has been, I think, a very useful and good faith process. As a result of that process, some 100 organisations that had been unsuccessful will now receive funding in excess of $40 million, in this budget, to ensure that they can continue those front-line services.
Of course, I am pleased to be able to say Heartfelt House is one of those, and they are receiving funding for two additional years. But, as I said, there are 100 organisations doing very similar and effective work around our communities, all around the country, who will be getting similar support. The reason they are getting that additional support is that members, like the member for Page, have been able to bring them to the attention of the minister to ensure that the decisions that were arrived at in late December prove not to be the final word for those organisations. It is important, when these situations arise, that we are as flexible as we can be, that we listen as hard as we can and that we seek to address the issues that are there. So 100 organisations will be receiving that ongoing funding for two years, which is in excess of $40 million.
It is not just Heartfelt House that will receive ongoing funding. The following organisations will also receive ongoing funding. Karralika here in the ACT—with support from Senator Seselja and Gai Brodtmann, the member here in Canberra—which runs a program that supports parents and their children through drug and alcohol rehabilitation in the electorate of Canberra. Playability supported playgroups are run in places like Cobargo, Bega and Eden. I commend the member for Eden-Monaro for bringing those to my attention. I commend the member for Lingiari for brining to my attention the crisis accommodation in Gove in the Northern Territory. I commend the member for Hinkler for bringing Phoenix House in Bundaberg, which runs a therapeutic preschool, to my attention. Multiple electorates brought the Mirabel Foundation to my attention. We are very pleased to ensure the continued funding for the Mirabel Foundation, which supports children and families suffering from the impact of drug abuse. I particularly commend the member for Melbourne Ports for bringing that to my attention. I am pleased that some members were prepared to engage in a constructive way on this. I was very pleased to be able to support them and listen to their concerns—
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr MORRISON: It seems that the previous minister opposite may have taken a different approach—I am not sure. There is the Malvern Special Needs Playgroup in Malvern, where we announced these programs. The member for Higgins was particularly keen on this and we were able to ensure that the funding continued. We are pleased to address those issues, and I thank all members for their good faith contribution to that process. (Time expired)
Ms BUTLER (Griffith) (12:24): I refer to the minister's plan to strip new mothers of up to $11,500 worth of paid parental leave. I remind the minister of his claim that Labor's paid parental leave scheme was not helping women stay at home longer. He said:
Importantly, there was an evaluation report done by the previous Government which showed that before and after the Union/Labor PPL scheme that was brought in post 18 weeks there was no change to people staying at home longer with their kids.
But the minister's own department has proved this to be completely untrue. The secretary of his own department, Mr Finn Pratt, said:
Certainly the high level evaluation finding is that PPL has been successful in assisting mothers to stay home with their children longer …
The evaluation said:
One of the key findings of the evaluation was that PPL had a clear effect of delaying mothers' return to work up to about six months after the birth of their baby …
The secretary of the Department of Social Services has directly contradicted the minister on paid parental leave, making it clear that Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme is helping women stay at home longer with their newborn baby. The minister thinks that women who access both their employer and the government funded Paid Parental Leave scheme are 'double dippers'. It is a name littered throughout their own budget papers. Their own budget papers claimed that families who claim both employer and government funded Paid Parental Leave schemes are double dippers. I also remind the minister of his comments on Sky News, that he thought that new parents were rorting paid parental leave arrangements when he said, 'Frankly, in many cases I think is a rort.'
Does the minister still think that new mums and dads are double dippers when it comes to paid parental leave? Does the minister still think that new mums and dads are rorters when it comes to pay parental leave? Does the minister stand by his statement that he thinks it is a rort? Does the minister still stand by his words that under Labor's PPL there was no change to people staying at home longer with their kids? Can the minister say how many parents will be adversely affected by his cuts to paid parental leave? In what professions do those parents work?
Given that the business community raised concerns about employers not offering paid parental leave if government was not sharing the cost, does the minister share those business people's concerns? How many enterprise agreements contain paid parental leave premised on the availability of government funded paid parental leave? In addition, how many policies of employers and individual contracts offer paid parental leave, premised on the availability of government paid parental leave? How many parenting aged people are covered by those enterprise agreements, contracts and/or policies? In what industries do those agreements operate? Which industries are covered by those enterprise agreements containing paid parental leave provisions?
Given that the World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding for six months, is the minister concerned about the public health implications of his changes to paid parental leave? For families in which the primary breadwinner is also the person who is going to be breastfeeding the new baby, is the minister concerned about the likelihood that cutting paid parental leave will mean that those families will have to send that primary breadwinner back to work sooner than they otherwise would have under the current Labor Paid Parental Leave scheme? The minister is aware of families like the family of Sienna Perry in my electorate. Sienna says that if her family had to choose between government and employer funded leave she would go back to work at 19 weeks. Her husband, who earns much less than her as a state school teacher, would have to stay home. He obviously cannot breastfeed, but that will leave them in a situation where they will be a one-income family earlier than under the present system.
Is the minister concerned about the effect on all families of cuts to the Paid Parental Leave scheme in relation to parents having to return to work earlier than was otherwise intended by those families, both from a public health perspective and from the perspective of the benefits that the Productivity Commission identified in respect of the availability paid parental leave?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:28): I would encourage those opposite, if they are to start reading a report, to read the report all the way to the end—it might help.
Ms Macklin interjecting—
Mr MORRISON: Page 33—that is a long way past the executive summary, for the information of those opposite. This is the evaluation report commissioned by those opposite when they were in government, so it is their work, their commissioning and this was the result, when it comes to the pay parental leave measures introduced by the previous government in a very cosy deal with the unions.
Ms Macklin interjecting—
Mr MORRISON: I think they need to hear this. We know that those opposite get pretty worked up when you start poking around the deals that have been done with the unions. When they have a sweetheart deal with the unions, that is the thing they will defend—their union mates.
… 78 per cent of mothers were expected not to return to paid work by 18 weeks, compared to 85 per cent after PPL was introduced.
So for up to 18 weeks there was an improvement in mothers staying home with their children. But after 18 weeks, this was the result:
Six months after the birth, the effect of PPL was no longer evident, with 64 per cent of mothers not having returned to paid work before and after the scheme's introduction.
But if you go on to page 44, the research showed no difference after 18 weeks—no difference. It was worse for single mothers, because those staying back 26 weeks after the introduction of PPL fell from 70.6 per cent to 64.5 per cent. The problem for the opposition is that the numbers just do not support the Labor union deal that they hatched together when they were in government.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hawke ): I thank the minister. The time for this debate has expired. The Federation Chamber will now consider the Human Services segment of the social services portfolio in accordance with the agreed order of consideration.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:31): I am pleased to be speaking on the Human Services budget consideration in detail and I acknowledge the fine work of my colleague Senator the Hon. Marise Payne, who is the minister responsible for these areas. Our welfare system, as I was mentioning in the previous discussion, must respect those who pay for it—that is, the taxpayers. Eight out of 10 income taxpayers are required to go to work every day to pay for our welfare system and they deserve two things in particular when it comes to the Human Services portfolio: that the welfare measures will be delivered with integrity, and that they will be delivered with efficiency. That is what they expect. More broadly, as a question of policy in relation to the previous discussion, it must help those who are most in need. In this budget, this government has committed to some significant initiatives that will improve not only the integrity of the welfare payment system and broader payment system for the government and the Human Services portfolio but also its efficiency.
We have said from day one in this portfolio that we have no tolerance whatsoever for those who rort the system. It is crucial that we have a strong welfare cop on the beat, and this budget contains significant measures to boost fraud investigation and compliance activities. Australians must have confidence in the system, just as they must have confidence that the safety net will be there for those who really need it. We have already made progress on welfare integrity, such as having Australian government contracted doctors assess new claims for the DSP to achieve consistency and equity across the country. We have tightened up portability arrangements, so people cannot just head off overseas for as long as they like and continue to pick up the DSP. You do not get an entitlement to holiday pay when you are on the DSP. In 2013-14 the Department of Human Services investigated 411 people for dishonestly claiming DSP, which resulted in $9.5 million in raised debts. We have put more than $200 million in this budget into strengthening our compliance and we have delivered on our promise to have a tougher cop on the beat for welfare. The government is committed to protecting the integrity of the welfare system.
We are also committed to innovation in service delivery. That is why we are replacing the decades-old welfare payment IT system, which too many governments have kicked down the road for too long. Investing in a new system will boost efficiencies and help advance welfare reforms as well as lessen the compliance burden on individuals, employers, service providers and, indeed, beneficiaries.
I commend the Human Services minister and all members who seek to participate in this debate. Above all, in the Human Services portfolio it is all about implementation. It is all about connecting the intent of policy with the beneficiaries of those policies. That has to be done with integrity and it has to be done with efficiency, and I commend Minister Payne for the outstanding job she has been doing in delivering on both of those objectives and providing a clear path for reform for the way forward.
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (12:34): The minister raised the Centrelink IT replacement project. We on this side believe it is necessary, but it needs transparency. At recent Senate budget estimates, I think just yesterday, the Department of Human Services officials were unable to explain what was expected in each of the five tranches of the DHS Welfare Payments Infrastructure Transformation project, commonly known as WPIT. Minister, can you explain the tranches, because it is going to be rolled out over time. When is the opposition going to be briefed on this, because our spokesperson, Senator the Hon. Doug Cameron, has not been briefed on it at this stage. We welcome the offer, but when will this take place? How will local content be maximised in this expected $1 billion project? Senator Payne has talked about an advisory group being formed. When is that likely to be formed, who is likely to be on it and how will representatives of the community welfare sector be involved? It is very important that the voice of the clients of the department be heard in the development of new technology. How will local IT operators and small businesses in the sector be involved in this process? What opportunities for skills transfer will be offered during this process for local small businesses, particularly those with expertise in the IT sector, and how is the government proposing to achieve compatibility between the new WPIT and other government IT platforms and systems?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:36): I thank the member for Blair for his questions. I am disappointed that he was not able to ask his own government those questions when they were in government—they were the ones who kept kicking the can down the road on these issues. I am pleased that he is prepared to support the government that is now taking up the challenge of dealing with this issue. He has a series of questions, which are all legitimate questions, and in the course of the implementation of this program various announcements will be made by the minister. I am sure the minister will go to the points that he has raised when those matters can be advised on by the minister. He has already rehearsed all the various announcements that have been made in relation to the various tranches. This is a program which is in its very early stages of implementation—it is the single biggest payments system ICT project in the world today. That is how big it is. Recruitment practices have been put in place to get the right expertise in to mould and frame what is an enormous undertaking, equivalent to major defence contracts and things of that nature. This is an enormous program, and this government was prepared to take on the challenge of something that will benefit generations of Australians. I do not think generations of Australians have been well served by the previous government, and other governments, allowing the system to just be kicked along from the time when Peter Brock won Bathurst. That is how long this thing has been around.
It is important that we now take the steps that we are taking in ensuring that we have this digital transformation of the way we deliver the payments system the country desperately needs. The people we are going to do that principally for are the taxpayers. They are the real clients of the welfare system. In my experience in business, clients are people who pay for things. I know those opposite take a different view of the welfare system and I think they see the entire population as clients of the welfare system, but on this side of the House we strongly believe that taxpayers are paying for this and they are the ones that we are going to respect more than anyone else when it comes to delivering this system. The taxpayers pay the bill.
The minister responsible has gone about the process of establishing $60.5 million, which reflects net funding of $169.3 million provided in years 2015 to 2017 with a net return to budget of $108 million, which will occur in years 2017 to 2019. There are lessons that will be learned from previous transformations, as minimal as they were. The Public Service jobs programs will be extremely large and complex tasks and these matters are being worked through. This is a seven-year project and as the efficiency of the ICT system improves, the staffing profile will also change to reflect the reduction in manual processes. As that proceeds, there will obviously be a lot of work to do to manage those transformations. The consultation through the expert advisory group, the consultation with those beneficiaries of the welfare system—
Honourable members interjecting—
Mr MORRISON: Well, when these matters are in a position to be announced, they will be announced. And when there are briefings to be provided to the opposition, they will be provided. But those opposite seem to forget which side of the House they are sitting on. The government is running this program, not the opposition. If the opposition wanted to run the program they should have introduced it when they were in government. But they kicked that can like many other governments did. So when the opposition can actually get to the starting point of acknowledging their neglect of this issue over their entire term in government, then I think they may be a little bit more prepared to engage instructively in the serious reform task that this government has engaged in. We will brief the opposition. We will keep the opposition informed of our issues. We will engage in the consultation. We will employ the right people to ensure this project works successfully and we will continue to show the leadership that we have shown in ensuring this program gets underway in the first place. I welcome the interest of the opposition. It is a little overdue, but if they remain patient they will receive the information they seek.
Mr MATHESON (Macarthur) (12:41): Before if I delve into my question in relation to welfare cheats, I would like to congratulate the Minister for Social Services on delivering good, strong, fair and responsible policy. It is what the community—the Australian people—has been looking for, for a long, long time. Great policy.
During my 25 years of service in the New South Wales Police Force, I had to deal with all manner of criminals, from petty thieves, druggies to bikies and organised crime figures. One of the things that quickly becomes apparent from police work is that criminals rarely choose their destiny. They are either born into a life of crime or they commit crime through need or necessity.
Welfare cheats are in that unique category that receives almost universal condemnation because the community recognises that these people are essentially stealing from the poor and disadvantaged, akin to taking money from a charity box or defrauding the elderly. As any police officer will tell you, criminals will always think of new ways to beat the system. It is therefore vital to use as many resources as possible to catch the crooks and create sophisticated systems to deter crimes happening in the first place.
In April, I joined the Minister for Social Services, the Hon. Scott Morrison, and the Minister for Human Services, Senator Marise Payne, to announce the overhaul of the Human Services' 1980s-era computer system at Campbelltown. The Department of Human Services is responsible for delivering welfare payments through Centrelink to 7.3 million people per year, many of whom are vulnerable and heavily dependent on Centrelink payments.
New systems will help the government automatically match Centrelink information with the Australian Taxation Office databases to look for areas of high-risk fraud and recovery of old debts. The pressing need for further measures was made clearly apparent earlier this year when a team from the AFP-led multi-agency Fraud and Anti-Corruption Centre, which was established by the coalition government last year, moved on a suspected racket in the family day care industry. Investigators from the FACC team, including AFP, Department of Social Services and the Department of Human Services were called in when anomalies exceeding $3 million were identified in government benefit payments to a family day care provider. A number of search warrants were executed and a 27-year-old woman was arrested and charged with three counts of obtaining a financial benefit by deception. AFP officers seized approximately $2.1 million in cash and a vehicle worth roughly $90,000.
In our first year of office, the coalition government's increased focus on compliance has prevented an estimated $70 million to $90 million in fraudulent claims by nearly 60 family day care centres nationwide. However, the problem of welfare cheats is significant and widespread. In 2013, Centrelink recovered $1.5 billion worth of outstanding debts and investigated 3,200 people. Of the money recovered and those investigated that year, $39 million were fraudulent claims and 1,200 people were prosecuted. In 2013 the government spent $132 billion on welfare, which amounts to $250,000 every minute.
Thanks to the years of ruinous economic mismanagement by the former Labor government and the fact that one in four Australian families now receive some form of welfare, we can no longer maintain current levels of expenditure. It is therefore imperative—both financially and morally—that the government has a zero tolerance approach to welfare fraud. We must significantly build our capacity to catch cheats who are in this environment, and to encourage customers to comply to assist the Department of Human Services in keeping non-compliance to a minimum.
We have to be smarter and faster, and more sophisticated systems have to be put in place to identify, investigate and manage potential cases of fraud. There need to be better prevention, better detection and better deterrence measures to counteract all activities ranging from inadvertent non-compliance to outright fraud. Greater intelligence and investigative capabilities will, in the end, require more support from other government agencies such as the AFP and the ATO. I would like to ask the minister—and I know he is going to respond with the good policy he has been delivering—what is the government going to do to crack down on welfare cheats and make sure our welfare system is not abused?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:45): I thank the member for Macarthur for his question. He was a tough cop on the beat in his working life before coming to this place. One of the great things about the government party room is that it is comprised of people—as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker—from so many different backgrounds. Having someone with the law enforcement experience of the member of Macarthur in this place is a great asset to this government. His passion for issues relating to law and order and community prevention of violence and things of this nature make him a real leader in his community not just as the member for Macarthur but as a person of great standing in his community over many, many years.
He knows what is required to deal with those who would seek to game the system, for those who would seek to rort the system, for those who would seek to basically steal from taxpayers. Before coming into this place he was used to dealing with crooks. It is very important that in this portfolio, when it comes to the integrity of the social services budget and its implementation through the Human Services portfolio, we do take a very strong approach when it comes to those who are not there to benefit from the system because of any issue of need but to benefit from it because they want to rort it. The measures that we have put in this budget give great substance to our promise that we are putting a tough welfare cop on the beat. There is a four-year intensive package of compliance strategies funded in this budget that complements the WPIT program I just made reference to in relation to an earlier member's question, by which time more streamlined compliance activities developed through the measures will be integrated into a 'business as usual' approach.
The measures from July 2015 will increase the number of fraud investigations and compliance interventions by over 900,000 over four years. That is what we are doing; that is a serious welfare cop on the beat. Fraud investigations and compliance interventions will increase by 900,000 over the next four years—we are going after the cheats, and we are going to stop those cheats. We are going to stop those rorters. This will deliver $1.7 billion in gross savings returned to the government in the budget. It will increase the number of individuals prosecuted for serious welfare offences, as they should be. That will send a very clear message: when it comes to this government we are not going to cop the fraud on behalf of the taxpayer—we are going to pursue it. This fraud and compliance activity is in addition to the fraud and compliance work already undertaken that returns significant savings to government annually. In 2013-14, DHS conducted 869,000 compliance interventions which resulted in $284 million in debts raised and fortnightly savings of $19.2 million, and prevented outlays of $51.8 million.
On 1 July 2015 a new task force will commence that will involve the establishment and developed deployment of specialised teams dedicated to fraud and non-compliance activity. The task force will focus on specific geographic locations and, importantly, will be led by a senior AFP officer—an actual cop. The task force will include intelligence support, compliance officers and fraud investigators. The task force will also include both a centralised intelligence component and field teams operating in the identified areas. The task force will audit individuals in receipt of income support payments to increase the likelihood of detection of current fraud and deterrence of future incorrect claims in the targeted areas. Locations will be selected according to the level of risk based on intelligence and data analysis, and will be conducted at specific locations around Australia on a rolling basis.
There will be an employment income-matching program for individuals who have failed to declare or undeclared their income between 2010 and 2013. That will be reviewed from 1 July 2015. These individuals have already been identified through the existing data-matching arrangements with the Australian Taxation Office. There are other elements—the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre—commencing on 1 January 2016, and real-time risk profiling, which commences on the same date. From 1 January next year a more active online approach will be introduced for customer reporting and declarations. There will be strengthened obligations for students commencing on 1 January next year, with full implementation from January 2017. We make no apologies for strong action to detect and deter welfare fraud. Not on our watch, Mr Deputy Speaker. We will be stopping the rorts.
Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (12:50): My question goes to the issue of call wait times, the amount of time that people are waiting and the significant increases that have occurred for people using Centrelink telephone services. I acknowledge that the previous government and this government have continued to improve the apps and people's ability to report or seek information through online services. However, in my part of the world in Bendigo we have lots of people who still do not have access to decent fast speed broadband. They do not have the connectivity to be able to use the online services. I hope, in answering these questions, the minister does not go to 'just connect to the internet'. A lot of people who still use the telephone services are older people that may not have either the skills or the capability. They may not have internet access. In one area in my electorate, Heathcote, 30 per cent of households do not have the internet. These are people who, when they are seeking support, use the Centrelink telephone services.
Recently the Australian National Audit Office released a report into this specific issue. I am sure that many members have had the same complaints raised with them from local constituents—example after example of people saying that they have been stuck on the phone trying to get access through to Centrelink with wait times of up to 60 to 70 minutes in peak demand time. This is not new. This comes up all the time when you are out in the electorate talking to people. These long waiting times have now been confirmed by this report released by the Australian National Audit Office:
Wait times for Centrelink telephone services have increased significantly in recent years from an average of 3 minutes and 5 seconds in 2010-11 to an average of 16 minutes and 53 seconds in 2013-14.
It notes that a key factor underlying these increases includes a reduction in the number of staff answering the phone. It is actually because staffing numbers have reduced. There have been job cuts, job losses and staffing numbers reduced for people answering the phones. The report found that there would need to be a 33 per cent increase in staffing levels of call centre staff, or 1,000 new full-time jobs, to get the call times back down to five minutes—not even getting back to what it was in 2010-11 of three minutes and five seconds, on average. To get it back down to five minutes there would need to be a 33 per cent increase in call centre staff.
My questions to the minister are: is the government going to increase, like the report has said, the staffing numbers? Will the government commit to these 1,000 new jobs or increase the staffing levels in call centres by 33 per cent? In my own electorate of Bendigo we have one of these smart centres. These are good, local jobs that not only will help—
Ms Claydon interjecting—
Ms CHESTERS: The member for Newcastle says that there is also one in Newcastle. These call centres tend to be in regional areas, so they are good, local jobs. We would welcome those local jobs. This is a chance for the minister to commit to creating more public sector jobs in the region, but more importantly, this is a chance for the minister to commit to all those people still relying on Centrelink call centre telephone services to get answered in an effective amount of time. Can the minister also answer the question around productivity? Has there been any work done to work out the productivity losses that we have when people are waiting on the phone for 60 to 70 minutes?
What are the productivity costs to the economy and to communities due to people losing so much of their time waiting for somebody to pick up the phone?
My questions to the minister are: will you commit to the 33 per cent increase in call-centre staff, as outlined by this report? Will the minister commit that these jobs will go to regional areas? Will the minister commit to making sure there is good-quality training for these people so they have the skills they require? These services are still vital for many older people and those who do not have access to the internet. Yes, a lot of our lives are online now, but people still rely on these Centrelink telephone services to enable them to communicate and get information and do the basics to ensure they get service from Centrelink.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (12:55): I thank the member for her questions. The response times for people, particularly for those in distress, are very important. This is a very important topic. I will run through a number of matters in relation to the volume of calls and various things that the Department of Human Services needs to deal with on a daily basis and more broadly. I think we would all agree that it is an incredibly large workload they get through.
I acknowledge many of the things the member opposite raised in her questions but she did neglect to say one thing: the staffing reductions in smart centres were 90 per cent under her government. She has raised the issue of staffing numbers in these areas but conveniently forgot to mention that while Labor was in government they had a 90 per cent reduction to smart centres in those areas.
It is a very big task. In 2014 the department handled over 59.5 million calls from new parents, job seekers, students, separated families, carers, people with disabilities, migrants, refugees, rural and remote Australians, and older and Indigenous Australians. You can imagine the diverse nature of the calls they would be dealing with. In 2014-15 the average speed of answer on the department phones for social security and welfare was less than 16 minutes, which currently meets the departmental standard. The average speed of answer has improved more than one minute when compared with the same period of the previous year.
For health-customer information it is around five minutes and 12 seconds, I am advised; the average speed of answer remains relatively stable when compared with the same period of the previous year. For health providers it is one minute and 23 seconds; the average speed of answer has increased by 50 seconds when compared with the same period of the previous year. For health, PBS authorities and e-health it is 25 seconds; the average speed of answer has improved by 21 seconds when compared with the same period of the previous year of 46 seconds. For child support it is just over 2½ minutes; the average speed of answer has increased by less than a minute. The average wait times in service centres, equally, is 12½ minutes for social security and welfare engagements. For health it is around 7½ minutes.
We do not deny the fact that we would like to do better in this area. I think that is really important. One of the things the member opposite did not quite understand is the revitalising of the payment system, which is what we are doing. As I said in response to an earlier question, the previous government decided not to do anything about the payment system, which is central to how you deal with these issues—when you can get people more online than being on the phone. I understand, as we all do, that there are some people who cannot go online. But if you can get more of the people who can go online off the phone, and get them online, that is a good strategy. Pretty much every business in the country understands that. Those opposite seem to struggle with the notion. That is why we have invested over $1 billion in the WPIT program to deal with these issues.
Those opposite raised the issue of the number of staff—but they cut the number of staff in smart centres by 90 per cent! The outrage we hear from those opposite seems to only find its voice in opposition. With their own government, they did not move on these issues. We are addressing them. There is over $1 billion to address the WPIT system, to improve the technology and ICT system support; all those initiatives.
Minister Payne has been an absolute Trojan on getting this project up and running and securing the support from the government in a difficult fiscal climate. We know if we get it right that the payment dividend for the government will come down the line, but we have to invest up-front in the technology. That is what we are doing. We do not want to try and paper over the problem as previous governments have done and not make the strategic investment which needs to be made in the ICT, which we are doing. We do not want to just deal with the superficial elements of this issue; we want to go to its core and its heart and improve the capability of the government to deal with this issue in a far longer term fashion, because that is what coalition governments do. We think through the long-term consequences of various policy initiatives and we think through the implementation. We think about what the objective is and how we can go about achieving it. I think that really does mark out this government from those opposite when it comes to matters of implementation.
So I acknowledge there are issues to be addressed here, but the members constituents will not be heartened by the way that Labour would approach this problem. They would just spend more money that they do not have rather than investing money strategically which we have been able to provide for through the savings we have put in this budget—savings those opposite do not support.
Expenditure agreed to.
Sitting suspended from 13:01 to 15:59
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Minister for Social Services) (15:59): I wish to correct an answer I gave during consideration in detail of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 in the Human Services portfolio today. I was asked about DHS staff numbers. I had answered, 'I am advised that 90 per cent of staffing reductions in smart centres occurred under Labor', and, further, that the previous government had actually reduced numbers by 90 per cent. The correct response is that at least 80 per cent of the recent reduction in smart centre staff numbers occurred under the previous government.
Education and Training Portfolio
Proposed expenditure: $2,015,007,000
Mr EWEN JONES (Herbert) (16:00): My question relates to access to school education for people with disability. I know, through my conversations with you, Minister, that this is something near and dear to your heart. A couple of years ago my wife, who is an early childhood teacher, was told that she was going to have a child with Down syndrome in her class. She teaches in the Catholic system. It sort of freaked her out because she had never had much to do with Down syndrome children, although she has had a lot to do with children with other disabilities. After doing some research, what she found was that it rekindled her love of teaching. What this child—I am sure the parents will not mind me mentioning her name—Lola has brought to my wife's school has been an absolute gift of inclusion and a sense of community in the school. My son was lucky enough to be in year 7 when Lola was in preschool and he became her year7 buddy. Although she was non-verbal, my son learnt a fair bit of Auslan to be able to communicate with her.
I have a group of people from my community who meet with us regularly. We have a series of requests in relation to access. It seems to me that what my parents are chasing is a consistent approach to back the programs we have, to be open to questions and to make sure the community has access to them. The big question from my parents, especially the parents of young Ben, has been about the transition to high school, and that seems to be the most scary thing. I know that schools and education sit primarily with state governments, but could you outline what you see as the major things we are doing in relation to access for people with disabilities to school communities? What do you think we can push through COAG with the state governments in relation to access for students with disabilities?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:02): I thank the member for Herbert for his question during the consideration in detail of this bill. There has been a tremendous amount of misinformation put out by the Australian Education Union, unfortunately. Yet again, they are the culprits who are frightening the parents of children with disability. As a parent myself, and I know the member for Herbert is also a parent, the worst thing that I could possibly imagine is not having the support required for any of my children if they were to have a disability and to be of school age. That is why both this government and the previous government, to be fair, ensured that there was a loading for disabilities as part of the new school funding model. The Australian Education Union knows that, and the sector knows that, and yet the Australian Education Union has been running a quite disgraceful campaign over the past few months, pretending that somehow what this government is doing is different to what was promised by both the then Labor government and ourselves when we were in opposition.
Before the last election, we said that we would fund the new school funding model for four years and that we would ensure that the loadings provided for as part of the new school funding model were entirely fulfilled, as was planned by the legislation passed in the previous parliament—and that is exactly what we are doing. So the loading for disability is precisely what would have been delivered if the Labor government had been re-elected in 2013. As it happened, we were elected, and we set about ensuring that that loading was applied. In fact, I, as the minister for education, brought the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland into the new school funding model. They had been left out because of the chaos and the mess that was the previous government.
The aspect of disability which makes it different from the other loadings is that the statistics upon which the loading is based are all provided by the states and territories. The states and territories provide that information to the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth puts it into the national school funding model and then out comes a monetary figure indicating what we should pay to each state and territory and the non-government sector, be it Catholic or independent, based on their number of children with a disability and the severity of the disability. The education ministers council, upon which I sit, obviously, has been over the last year and a half making sure that that data is as accurate as possible. That is a very difficult job—as difficult as it was when Labor was in power because each state and territory appears to apply a different definition of 'disability'. Some are more generous than others, and as part of the education ministers council—as the member for Herbert quite rightly points out, these matters are uniquely within the gift of the state and territory governments—we are attempting to achieve a nationally consistent dataset, which would also have occurred if Labor was in power, and we are making progress. It is not nearly as fast as the progress that I would like to be making, and I quickly add that that is not because of anything that the Commonwealth has not done. The state and territory education ministers have indicated to me that they will be able to provide that nationally consistent data this year so that it can apply next year, and I will be holding them to that so that every child in Australia with a disability will be able to receive the correct loading, as they should, to match their disability.
We have also put extra money into the More Support for Students with Disabilities initiative—an initiative of the previous government which did not go to students but which went to teachers. The AEU, and I have to say the shadow minister for education, who is not here, and the acting shadow minister for education, have tried to muddy the waters about that particular program and pretend that somehow that money was delivered to students with disability. It was not—it was delivered to teachers to train them in how to adapt their classes for students with disability. It has been a very successful program and because of its success it is coming to an end and therefore it will not continue to be funded. (Time expired)
Mr BUTLER (Port Adelaide) (16:07): In respect of the question asked by the member for Herbert, apparently the new black in this parliament now is the government applauding itself, not just in rhetorical terms but in physical terms. The member for Adelaide, the shadow minister for education, deeply regrets not being able to be here, because she particularly enjoys sparring with the Minister for Education during consideration in detail. She would desperately like to be here, but she and all members on our side understand that the education part of this budget will be assessed by parents, by students, by teachers, by early childhood educators against the very clear promises that the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education made during the last election campaign. They remember it very clearly—they remember the Prime Minister saying that there would be no cuts to education. They remember the Prime Minister saying at a press conference during the election campaign, or just before it started, that the Liberal-National coalition was 'on an absolute unity ticket when it comes to school funding' and the minister, then the shadow minister, said only a week or two before the election:
So you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school.
The Liberal Party even went so far as to prepare bunting and other election material to put up at polling booths—I do not think it came as far as Port Adelaide but I have certainly heard that it went to many seats—promising voters as they walked into the ballot box that the Liberal Party, if elected to government, would deliver exactly the same dollars to state schools, to independent schools and to Catholic schools as had been set out in the agreements negotiated in the aftermath of the Gonski agreement.
So educators, parents, students and the general community are looking at this budget. It was presented, by the Prime Minister and the besieged Treasurer, as a kinder, softer and gentler budget than the 2014 budget—not that that was a hard bar to get over—and yet, when we look at the education portfolio, all of the worst aspects of the last year's budget are still there. The $100,000 degrees are still there. This minister, as will be explored in more detail during this consideration in detail, is hell-bent on achieving the university reforms that were rejected so fulsomely by the Australian community last year and by the Senate as well. In school funding, the $30 billion or so of cuts that were proudly proclaimed in the 2014 budget papers presented and published by the government are still there. They are still there—and they are there in full colour now, after the 2015 budget, because from 2018 onwards the Commonwealth will only index school funding to the tune of CPI, putting the lie to the election posters that were bedraggled through so many different electorates—not mine, for reasons I still do not understand; you could not come at publishing them down in Port Adelaide, but they were everywhere else—saying that not a single dollar would be different under a Liberal government. But we know that only CPI indexation will apply from 2018.
Everyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the education system knows that this will have a very serious impact on the ability of schools, school managers and teachers to provide the best possible education for Australian students. The National Catholic Education Commission has said that indexation at CPI levels will lead to very serious impacts. Fees will rise, they have said, and schools may well close, as a direct result of the breach of that solemn promise that the minister and the Prime Minister made, while in opposition, to the Australian people, particularly to Australian school communities, that there would be no difference under a Liberal government to the arrangements that were being put in place in the later period of the Labor government.
So I think we would all like to know, given that the minister, under this 'kinder, gentler' budget, has kept every single aspect of the awful budget from last year in the education portfolio: what sort of election bunting is he proposing for 2016?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:12): We do not bother with election bunting in Port Adelaide because we know that the member would not be able to work in any other role if he was not in the parliament. We feel sorry for him and his children. His wife and children expect to be able to be fed. That is the generosity of spirit that you see in the coalition in South Australia.
The member for Port Adelaide also mentioned having a passing acquaintance with the education system. As he would remember, I knew him at university. We were known to knock about together on occasion. He certainly only had a passing acquaintance with education at Adelaide university; he was much more focused on student politics and climbing the greasy pole. But my advice to him is: the higher up the greasy pole you go, the greasier it gets. I notice, Member for Port Adelaide, that you are about to be elected as the national president of the ALP. My advice to you is: the higher up the greasy pole you go, the greasier it gets. So just keep that in mind.
I am very pleased that the member for Port Adelaide has raised school funding—very pleased—because the education union, parents around Australia and Labor states and territories are all wondering whether the Labor Party has committed to the extra many, many multibillions of dollars that were envisaged in the school funding model beyond the four years of the funding agreement. I note that only last week the member for Port Adelaide was asked, as the acting shadow minister for education, whether Labor was committing to those funds, and he could not commit. He did not commit. I read his comments; he did not commit. And he has not committed today. Bill Shorten has not committed. The Leader of the Opposition was asked many times on Neil Mitchell's program whether he would commit to that school funding; he danced around the issue and did not commit. Chris Bowen, the shadow Treasurer, has not committed to the billions of dollars of money that Labor knows they do not have. And I think you will find, Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, that at the next election Labor will again be on a unity ticket with the coalition when it comes to school funding, because they and we will both be committing to the model going forward.
We will certainly see spending on school education increase; it is increasing in this budget by eight per cent this year, eight per cent next year, six per cent the year after that and four per cent the year after that. School funding is going up every year in the budget estimates because we believe that school funding is important.
But funding is only important insofar as it ensures that a quality education can be delivered. Funding on its own does not deliver school outcomes. What we have seen in the debate over the last couple of years is parents realising that school funding is one thing but the quality of education is quite another.
The OECD in their PISA studies have shown us that the No. 1 issue in school education in Australia is the quality of teaching. In the last PISA report, the OECD said that, in Australia, in eight out of 10 reasons why a child will do well or poorly, it is the classroom to which they are allocated—in other words, it is the teacher to whom they are allocated in a school. One out of 10 reasons is their socioeconomic status and one out of 10 reasons is 'all other factors'.
So the government has a students-first policy. It has four pillars. Having settled the funding—having brought Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia into the school funding model, which meant $794 million more for Queensland, which would have been denied them under the previous government; so, having settled all that—we are focused on the national curriculum. And, from 2016, next year, a new national curriculum will be in place that will declutter the primary school curriculum, concertinaing four subjects into one so that teachers can focus on science and maths and English. We are reforming teacher training at the university level to have a focus on STEM and languages and practical outcomes. We are engaging with parents through a parental engagement strategy. And we are, importantly, increasing autonomy across the whole of Australia in the public school system through our Independent Public Schools initiative. Every single state and territory, including Labor states and territories, have signed up to the Independent Public Schools initiative. In this way, we are actually addressing not just funding but also the quality of education that students receive.
Ms MARINO (Forrest—Government Whip) (16:17): Minister, primarily can I congratulate you on your approach to the national curriculum.
Mr Pyne: Applause won't be necessary!
Ms MARINO: I won't applaud! However—
Honourable members interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Irons ): Order! The member is asking a question. The member for Forrest will continue.
Ms MARINO: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I understand the great interest that the members opposite have in our very good measures.
So the clearing and simplifying of the national curriculum is very much appreciated. As the minister would be aware, the Independent Public Schools system has been in operation in Western Australia now for some time, and I sit on two of those boards. One of the things that frequently has been mentioned in my work in and out of schools, on a regular basis, is the issue around the national curriculum and the difficulty that teachers have had in meeting the requirements of that and being able to teach those core subjects. So it is a very sound move that you have made in this space.
But I wanted to ask you about one of the key budget measures that has really not been tackled by any previous government, and that is: for the first time, Australian students who have moved overseas for more than six months will be required to pay back their HECS debt as if they were still residing in Australia, and this will happen from 2017. Minister, could you please explain why this is a fairer approach, and can you also give us some idea of what the level of overseas HECS debt is currently and whether you have an indication of what it is likely to rise to as a result of the demand-driven system ahead of us, please.
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:19): I thank the member for Forrest for her keen interest in education, not just school education and the national curriculum but also the independent public schools' model in WA that is having a very genuine impact on outcomes of students and the quality of teaching and management of schools.
One thing the member for Forrest did not mention, which she would have been quite within her rights to do so, is her very keen interest in the Youth Allowance and ensuring that young people from rural and regional Australia get the same opportunities to go to university as students in metropolitan Australia. In fact, the member for Forrest has been at the spear tip of the debate within the coalition—in opposition and in government—about trying to ensure there is a fair approach to students from rural Australia in getting to university. I do not want to steal the thunder of the Minister for Social Services. He certainly did make changes to the assets test, which will allow more students from rural and regional Australia to access the Youth Allowance and therefore achieve the same levels of engagement in higher education that metropolitan students are achieving.
The member also asked about the HELP debt—the HECS debt, as most people tend to call it—the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. The Higher Education Contribution Scheme in Australia is a world-beater. It is the envy of the rest of the Western world, in terms of education. It was initiated here, in 1988-89, by the previous Labor government, the Hawke-Keating government, which was a government that actually cared about policy—unlike the current Labor Party, which is much more interested in politics than policy. John Dawkins, as the minister for education, recognised that so-called free education initiated by the Whitlam government simply meant that the poorest Australians paid for the richest Australians to go to university. The Hawke-Keating government changed that error of policy by introducing the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, which we thoroughly support.
We currently collect four out of every five dollars of the HECS debt. To put that into perspective, Great Britain collects about 50 to 60 per cent of its debt through its similar scheme to our Higher Education Contribution Scheme. We are very good at collecting the debt. That is a good thing. That means that students who get to go to university get a major private benefit from that, and there is also a public benefit, and they pay back through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, which is the an extremely generous scheme. And so it should be, because we want to encourage Australians to go to university. It means that nobody in Australia is locked out of university education because of the cost of education. No Australian turns up to university and thinks they cannot afford to go, because they can access the Higher Education Contribution Scheme.
We are expecting the HELP debt, the HECS debt, to rise from about $36½ billion in 2015-16 to $62.7 billion in 2018-19. That is due to a combination of factors. It is the expansion of opportunity to go to university, under the government's reforms to higher education, and a feature of the vocational education and training system coming into the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. We think this is a positive move, because it allows all Australians, whatever their choice of career or education, to access government support.
For the first time, ever—the member for Forrest is quite correct—we are tackling the issue of overseas HECS debt, which previous governments put in the too-hard basket. It is not as high as we had expected and it does not return as dramatic a dividend to the budget as you would expect. The mythology about the number of Australians and the value of Australians' HECS debt overseas has been inflated, particularly by the tabloid press. But there is a very important principle involved here: if you do go to university in Australia and get a fantastic high-quality degree it does not mean that just because you move overseas you should not pay back that debt you owe the Australian tax office. And we are going to collect that debt. Starting next year we will collect that debt. Whether you are in London, New York or anywhere else in the world, if you are earning over the threshold for the repayment of HECS, you will be expected to pay. That is fair on all those who stay in Australia and pay their debt. If you are overseas in London, as a banker or a financial analyst, then you should pay back your HECS debt. (Time expired)
Mr HUSIC (Chifley) (16:24): This year's budget did absolutely nothing to address the fundamental unfairness of last year's budget disaster, which locked in $30 billion of savage cuts to education. These brutal cuts will affect every student passing through Chifley classrooms. And, because of this government's budget, New South Wales will be hit with over $9.5 billion in school cuts over the next 10 years—$3.1 billion coming from Western Sydney alone. In the electorate of Chifley, 68 schools will have to deal with $270 million in cuts over the next 10 years—the electorate with the second-biggest cut in New South Wales. These cuts will have a real impact on student outcomes and teacher resources. The $30 billion in cuts is the equivalent of an average cut of $3.2 million per school. It is the same as sacking one in seven teachers. At a time when Western Sydney is growing, these cuts are dangerous and short-sighted. They will mean less individual support that can be provided to students. It will mean less in terms of essential literacy and numeracy support, with programs being cut, and less training and support for teachers.
The Australian Early Development Index shows just how these cuts will hurt the students who will need the most help. For example, in the area of Blacktown, 23.8 per cent of children are classified as 'vulnerable' in at least one part of their development. At a time when we should be closing that inequity gap, these children are being dealt a cruel blow from these cuts. Our students certainly deserve better than these cuts to the education budget. Even the government's Liberal-National Party counterparts in New South Wales are joining in the fight on this. Less than three weeks ago, on 28 May, the New South Wales Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, said that the New South Wales government 'continues to advocate to the federal government to honour the agreement in full'. The minister certainly owes Western Sydney answers about these cuts.
I would ask the minister a series of questions. Principally, what does he say to the disadvantaged children in Western Sydney who are hoping to change their lives through education but who have been impacted by these cuts? What does he say to the parents in Mount Druitt who want the best for their children's education but all they have seen from this government are broken promises? What does he say to the hardworking principals who just want the resources they need so that children can thrive in their classrooms? Will he ever come to his senses and scrap his unfair budget measures, which will hurt our children and their future? When will he drop those cuts and stop punishing the children of Western Sydney?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:27): The member for Chifley would be well advised to do his homework, because the reality is there are no reductions in education spending in schools in this budget, or last year's budget, or any other budget into the future brought down by this government. School funding goes up every year, on year, for the next four years—eight per cent, eight per cent, six per cent and four per cent. I know it is very hard for Labor. Labor have not done the work in opposition to recalibrate their policy positions. It is sad that they are still just talking about the last election. They were still talking about it last night on The Killing Season. Like a narcissistic obsessive disorder, they are constantly talking about themselves and they are still talking about the last election and the policies from the last election.
The member for Lindsay is a much better member for Western Sydney than the member for Chifley, and the people who live in Mount Druitt probably much prefer to be represented by the member for Lindsay than the member for Chifley—but I digress. The truth is there is a massive increase in spending on school education, and Labor knows it. What the member for Chifley has not caught up with is that his party has not committed to the extra money in years five and six, beyond the forward estimates and beyond the current school agreement.
They have not committed to it. Bill Shorten has not committed to it. Chris Bowen has not committed to it. Kate Ellis has not committed to it. Mark Butler has not committed to it. I would recommend to the member for Chifley that he go back and look at Mark Butler's comments last week, or the week before, in The Australian, where the Labor states and territories and the Australian Education Union asked the federal Labor party whether they were committed to the billions of dollars of extra spending that they have not got the money for. Mr Butler obfuscated and did not answer the question—exactly as Mr Shorten did on the Neil Mitchell program. Chris Bowen has done the same thing, because Labor know they do not have the money.
Labor know that they already have a $58 billion black hole in their economic credibility going forward. They know that. They are going to apparently bring $15 billion of extra spending on foreign aid back if they get re-elected. They apparently have rivers of gold to knock off our savings measures and to vote against their own savings measures in the budget from when they were in government. They think that there is somehow a magic pudding of money out there, but the Australian public is much wiser than that.
Let me just tell the member for Chifley exactly what is happening. There is $69.5 billion, over the forward estimates, of funding to schools. It is a growth of 27.9 per cent on the 2014-15 baseline. A growth of 27.9 per cent is not a cut; it is not a reduction. It means an increase in spending.
Mr Husic interjecting—
Mr PYNE: It means an increase in spending, no matter how much the member for Chifley interjects. A 27.9 per cent increase means there is more money for schools in the budget this year, next year and the year after that than there was in previous years.
That is why schools are focusing, as is the government, on the other elements that make a quality education—for example, school autonomy, which New South Wales has definitely signed up to, just like Western Australia and Queensland, and all the other states and territories have signed up to. It is why they support our reforms to teacher training at university, because the OECD says the most important element in Australia about whether a child gets a good outcome is the quality of teaching.
The member for Chifley should stop following the line of the AEU and actually start listening to what parents say. What parents say and what parents want is quality teaching in their schools. They want a robust curriculum. They want to be engaged in their schools and they want their principals and their leadership teams to make as many decisions as possible locally. That is what we are delivering. We have decluttered the primary school curriculum. We have refocused the curriculum on science, maths and English.
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr PYNE: We have actually; you have not caught up with it. ACARA is now working on it, to start on 1 January 2016. There will be a new national curriculum on 1 January 2016, initiated by this government and agreed to by every state and territory. We have also reformed teacher training, have a parental engagement program and independent public schools across Australia.
Mrs PRENTICE (Ryan) (16:32): Minister, as you know, I have a keen interest in research, particularly locally-based research in my electorate of Ryan. I know that the wonderful changes you are making to curriculums in schools will lead many more researchers and students into the area of medical research. We are very fortunate. We have everyone, from Professor Ian Frazer, to the Brain Institute, to the Wesley Research Institute, to the CRCs and CSIRO. I thank you for visiting our nanotechnology department and also Professor Mark Kendall's for the work that he is doing, as well as many of the other research projects.
A lot of our research people reach that crucial time when they need support for their research programs. Not all of them are as fortunate as Dr Kate Schroder, who just benefited from some millions of dollars from Michael J Fox for her Parkinson's research at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience.
Minister, there was a lot of concern earlier this year about funding for NCIS programs. I clearly remember the date of 14 May, when you made that wonderful announcement that you would undertake funding for the next two years, of $150 million a year, for those projects to give them certainty and to assist them with the research.
Whilst I am clearly interested in the health and medical research ones in my electorate, I would be keen if you could elaborate on those and others that have received that funding and what led to that situation where we needed you to come out and restore funding for those particular research institutes and facilities. How are these projects evaluated? And what are the guidelines that my researchers need to consider when they are looking for funding in the future?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:34): I thank the member for Ryan, and I note her very longstanding interest in the University of Queensland, which is in her electorate. It is really one of the top four universities in Australia, and it has come along in leaps and bounds in the last 10 to 20 years, primarily because of a focus on research. The University of Queensland has always been a Go8 university, but in the last 10 or so years it has moved to a whole different level of quality, making it one of the very best universities in the world. In fact, UQ has been in the top 100 universities in the world for some time, as are all our Go8 universities. To put that in perspective, there are about 11½ thousand universities in the world. So for Australia to have eight in the top 100 is an enormous achievement.
We in this government do have a particular interest in research, and we are lucky to be led by a Prime Minister who is also particularly keen on research and knows the benefits of research. Therefore, as the Minister for Education and Training, it is a great pleasure of mine that, when I go to the Prime Minister to ask for more support for research, it is readily provided. He knows, as a former health minister, the enormous economic and social benefits of high-quality Australian research, whether it is, as you pointed out, NHMRC or ARC or CRC research for that matter. This year in the budget the government is committing $10.7 billion over the forward estimates to research in my portfolio alone, which is quite remarkable. Across the government, we spend on science research and innovation yearly about $9 billion.
So I was very disappointed, when I became the minister for education, to discover that the Labor Party, in government, had cut the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme. It had left a funding cliff for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme, known as NCRIS.
It had also left a funding cliff for the Future Fellowships program. Future Fellowships and NCRIS are both vitally important for Australia's research effort. Future Fellowships supports mid-career researchers who have perhaps not yet proven themselves nationally or internationally to attract a research grant from the private sector, universities or individuals but who we know are going to be really high-level, high-quality researchers and who we want to keep in Australia doing research in our universities or institutes. Therefore, we have refunded the Future Fellowships program. This year I announced 50 Future Fellowships under the program, which the ARC are now working on to implement, and we will be able to announce those successful future fellows soon. Also, happily, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister supported the continuation of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme at $150 million a year for the next two years—so that is $300 million—while we also undertake a review of infrastructure in our universities.
The NCRIS pays for really vital infrastructure that universities would not otherwise be able to fund. It might be the renovation, the refurbishment or the repurposing of an old building in the university which is no longer meeting its purpose, to turn it into something that will be a fabulous laboratory or a test site for research—things like the Synchrotron, for example. There are many other good examples of NCRIS funding, whether in agriculture, science or medicine. Take quantum computing, for example; much of the quantum computing, which is world-class—in fact, world-beating; it is a good year ahead of all of our competitors—is funded through the NCRIS program.
We have saved that NCRIS program, thanks to lobbying from people like the member for Ryan and others to make sure that that continued. Labor wanted to cut it; we refunded it. I fixed that problem, as the Minister for Education and Training, that Labor left for us. I am very pleased to say that we are continuing our strong focus on research. I am lucky to come from the great state of South Australia, as does the member for Kingston. Out of the 15 Nobel Prize winners in Australia's history, five have come from South Australia. Therefore, I have taken a very keen interest in research, because our Nobel Prize winners often begin doing medical or scientific research from these kinds of research grants.
Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston) (16:39): I have a number of questions for the Minister for Education and Training. Firstly, referring to a previous answer he gave a little earlier to the member for Port Adelaide, he said that all states have signed up to the independent schools model and that indeed that included Labor states. I have the agreements with the states here and for both South Australia and New South Wales there is a clause which says that it will not establish a model with independent public schools. Does the minister still back up these claims? I am happy to table these documents if he needs to read them. Maybe he needs his memory refreshed.
I also have a number of questions in regard to his proposals to make massive cuts to our universities and indeed to impose significant fee increases on our university students. Despite his legislation having been defeated twice in the parliament, can the minister confirm that the Abbott government is still committed to deregulating universities, sentencing Australian students to $100,000 dollar degrees and also, for the first time, imposing fees on PhD students?
I would also like the minister to confirm and concede that he is making $5 billion worth of cuts with the cuts to the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, the Sustainable Research Excellence program and the Research Training Scheme. Will he confirm that it does equal close to $5 billion worth of cuts? Also, given the government's plan to deregulate universities and rip billions of dollars out of the higher education system has now been defeated, is it slightly duplicitous to put the $37 billion worth of savings in the budget? Will he review that if his legislation gets defeated again? When will we actually get an accurate budget picture, considering this bill has been defeated twice? Will the minister take advice from the vice-chancellors that his time line for implementing these changes is just not practicable? Does the minister still think that six months is sufficient time to introduce these changes? If he does not introduce these changes, how will that affect the forward estimates and when will we hear a report of that? Finally, we would like the minister to tell us if he does plan to bring the legislation to the parliament, where is this legislation, when will he reintroduce it and what is his time frame for that?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:42): It really is a gift to get a question from the member for Kingston!
Ms Rishworth: You got a few questions, actually.
Mr PYNE: Well, there is lots of lovely time we will have together today and I am looking forward to it.
An honourable member interjecting—
Mr PYNE: You will get your turn. You did not jump in before; you just wandered in 40 minutes after we started and now you are trying to act like you are central to the story. Like Tony Burke in The Killing Season last night, who had nothing to do with the destruction of Kevin Rudd but now is apparently central to it.
Ms MacTiernan: Wait until season two. You'll be there!
Mr PYNE: I do not think so! Season two was last night, season three is next week. Keep up, Alannah! Last night was number two; next week is number three.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Perth will not provoke the minister.
Ms MacTiernan interjecting—
Mr PYNE: I am always helping you out!
Honourable members interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Perth! The member for Shortland! Order!
Mr PYNE: I am always looking after the member for Perth. I am too good to you! That is the problem. I am too kind-hearted.
Ms Rishworth: Independent schools, Chris!
Mr PYNE: Independent public schools, for the member for Kingston. The member for Kingston, like lots of Labor people, is very caught up with nomenclature. The government is caught up with outcomes and substance. Everything with Labor is superficial. When they were in government every minister had seven or eight titles! We are not actually interested in nomenclature. We are interested in the substance of the policy issue. The simple fact is that every single state and territory has signed up to the government's $70 million independent public schools policy and I am very pleased about that. I do not care whether the states and territories want to call them 'independent public schools,' 'local schools' or 'local choices,' as I think they are called in New South Wales. I do not mind how they dress the policy. The point, the substance of it, is that there will be a lot more autonomy rolled out across Australia in public schools. As an advocate for public schools, as am I, and as I am sure the member for Kingston is, surely the member for Kingston would support more autonomy in public schools. Surely she would, because what it is doing in Western Australia is actually driving people to the public school system. There is an increase in Western Australia of parents choosing public schooling over non-government schooling. Western Australia is the only jurisdiction since 1977 where there has been a greater increase in enrolments in public schools than in non-government schools, and it is being driven by the independent public school model.
When this government came to power, we resolved that we wanted that rolled out as far as possible across Australia. Queensland are going to call theirs independent public schools, in spite of them now having a Labor government. The Northern Territory and Western Australia are calling them independent public schools. Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT, New South Wales and South Australia have different names for them. I do not care what they call them; they have all signed exactly the same agreement. They are all rolling out autonomy in their public schools and giving parents, principals and their leadership teams and teachers the autonomy that they want to be able to have a better public school system for their students. I am very glad about it.
I welcome the member for Kingston's interest in independent public schooling, and I ask her to work with the Australian Education Union to bring them to a happier landing. I would have thought the AEU would be in favour of public schooling, since they represent public school teachers, yet they seem to be the most opposed to independent public schools in spite of the fact that more autonomy is driving more students into public schools. What it really shows is that the AEU is not interested in the students at public schools; they are interested in the teachers in public schools and their conditions, their salaries and their emoluments. What we want on this side of the House is a relentless, laser-like focus on the outcomes of students, putting students first through more autonomy, through a better national curriculum, through better teacher training and through parental engagement. I have taken most of this time to talk about schools and I am happy to talk about universities, and if I am given the opportunity I will come back to that in a moment.
Mr WYATT (Hasluck) (16:47): The right to education is a basic human right. The earlier that education can start, the better and more effective it is. It is important that especially our most vulnerable young people are engaged at an early age with formal education and continue to engage throughout their childhood and teenage years. It is critical, regardless of the circumstances a child is born into, that the opportunity for education is universal. That is why I am very pleased to ask the minister for education a question about the universal access partnership, which will provide continued funding for critical early childhood education through the funding of preschools.
This government is committed to supporting families and supporting young Australians to get the best start in life through early education by making it accessible and flexible. It is committed to helping families, and that is demonstrated through its other recent announcement on compulsory vaccinations, on the 'no jab, no pay, no play' provision ending the conscientious objector exemption on children's vaccinations.
We have also funded a pilot scheme for Australians who find accessing affordable child care difficult. On 3 May this year, the Australian government announced an $840 million commitment to continue the funding of preschool education across the country through the National Partnership Agreement on Early Childhood Education. I am pleased to see that more than $2.8 billion has now been provided to states and territories through these national partnership agreements.
Disappointingly, the previous government did not provide funding post-2014, and that is why we are pleased that this funding under the national partnership agreement guarantees federal support into 2016 and 2017, reflecting our commitment to providing flexible, accessible and affordable options for families and children. The funding will be offered on a similar term to those of the existing national partnership agreement. The Productivity Commission recommended that this funding be extended, and I am pleased to have been able to take that recommendation on board within my electorate, but more particularly our government has too.
Importantly, and for the first time, included in the funding is adjustment to increases in the consumer price index so that families and preschools themselves do not lose out. Linking the funding to CPI will result in an extra $30 million over 2016-17. Enrolments in preschools have grown over the years, but there is still more work to be done to support both enrolment and attendance, especially for vulnerable, disadvantaged and Indigenous children. This funding will be used in part to help boost those numbers of young people attending and engaging in early childhood education.
In Western Australia, this funding represents a commitment of $13.4 million in 2014-15 and a doubling of that commitment in 2015-16 to $31.2 million. I want families in Hasluck to have access to early childhood education through a government preschool or a stand-alone preschool, or through long day care. This funding gives certainty to families and also to preschool providers. This funding will create the opportunity for more children to attend preschool, to learn, to socialise with their peers and to help them create the routine foundation for their formal education. The funding will help to improve enrolments as well as to help boost attendance.
I am pleased that nearly 50 preschool providers in Hasluck, all of whom are working to give young people in the suburbs in my electorate the best possible start in life, can now be safe in the knowledge that they will be funded for at least a further two years. I am pleased that the families in Hasluck will continue to have access to 600 hours of preschool per year, ordinarily delivered as 15 hours per week following this government's commitment. This announcement reflects the government's support for Australian families to high-quality, early childhood education for young Australians and its adherence to the basic principle of the right to education, accessible to all people.
My question to the minister is: can you please explain why, when the previous government had failed to commit funding post-2014 to this very important program that gives states and territories the ability to provide universal access to preschool education, you thought and acted on this matter and why this government thinks that it is critical for the youngest people in our country to have this opportunity?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:51): I thank the member for Hasluck for his question. I am bemused by the member for Shortland's amusement at this because I would have thought this was good news in the government's budget, very good news.
Ms Hall interjecting—
Mr PYNE: The member for Hasluck thinks it is good news and I would have thought that you would have thought it was good news as well. Your government actually did not put the money in the budget into the future in the forward estimates. It took me as the minister for education to deliver universal access at $843 million into the future, because the Labor government had another funding cliff in the budget. I would have thought the member for Shortland would have been pleased with the government's decision. This is an unadulteratedly good news story in this budget, which the member for Hasluck has picked up on. I am not sure the member for Shortland realises the implication.
Under the Labor Party, if they had remained in power, the national partnership agreement would have come to an end and students who are currently getting 15 hours minimum preschool a week at the age of four would have no longer continued to be funded. Let's put that in perspective. Before universal access, in Queensland in 2008 there were no students enrolled in a preschool program for 15 hours or more. By 2013, this number had increased to 95 per cent. In Tasmania in 2008, only six per cent of students were enrolled in a preschool program for 15 hours or more. By 2013, this number had increased to 97 per cent. So the Liberal Party certainly welcome this focus on universal access for preschool for four-year-olds.
I am lucky to come from a state that initiated kindergarten in the 1950s and therefore has had kindergarten as part of our education system for 60 years. But that has not been the case nationally. I give the previous government credit. The previous government initiated this program but then did not fund it beyond 2014. It took this government to find the offsetting savings to make sure that students at the age of four continue to get a minimum of 15 hours support week universal access to preschool.
It is a very good news story and it will mean that every child in Australia who is aged four will be able to go to preschool for 15 hours minimum, supported and subsidised by the Commonwealth taxpayer. That will improve our education outcomes. It will have a long-term impact on literacy, numeracy and social engagement, especially for families of disadvantaged backgrounds, who will be able to get a real go at a lifetime of good quality education from the age of four onwards. And Western Australia alone—and the member for Hasluck is from Western Australia—over the course of the program will receive $307 million of support under the universal access policy.
I was very pleased that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Scott Ryan, took responsibility for this particular area of the Education portfolio. He has done a very good job in convincing the Treasurer, the Prime Minister, and the Expenditure Review Committee. I have to say there was a lot of support within the coalition party room for continuing the universal access model. Whether it was the member for Hindmarsh, the member for Gilmore, the member for Hasluck, the member for Lindsay, the member for Ryan, the member for Corangamite or many other members, there was a lot of lobbying and support for the government continuing universal access.
I would have thought that, rather than being churlish about it, the Labor Party would have been congratulating the government—you can hold the applause—on continuing one of their programs, finding the money to make sure that four-year-olds in Australia had access to a minimum of 15 hours preschool a week.
Ms MacTIERNAN (Perth) (16:56): I think we heard a little before of 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc'. The member has taken two facts, one being the rise in enrolment in government schools in WA, which is a good thing, and presumed it had been caused by the mood for autonomy. Given the minister is so strong in science, hopefully one day he will show us how he managed to get the 'propter out of the post'.
The questions I want to talk to the minister today about relate to the Bjorn Lomborg Australian Consensus Centre, for which there is a $4 million allocation to pursue a particular controversial methodology in relation to various international issues. In Senate estimates, we were told that the decision to provide the funding for this Australian consensus centre was made well before there had been any discussion with the University of Western Australia or indeed any other tertiary institution. A decision was made back in the first half of 2014, we understand, to provide this $4 million worth of funding in principle and then have Dr Lomborg go out and sell his wares to a particular university.
I am just seeking to understand how this all came about given that this was not a proposition that emanated from any university. I would like the minister to explain to us who began this process. How was the minister or his department first engaged, because the money does come from his department? Who first approached the department? Given this is not something that came from any Australian tertiary institution or indeed a tertiary institution, I am particularly interested in knowing what methodology was used to assess the methodology. As we heard at Senate estimates, the decision was made to put $4 million into promoting a particular methodology. I am eager to understand, and I am sure the minister is going to be able to clarify, just what processes were put in place to determine the academic rigour and standing of this methodology. What processes were put in place to prioritise the funding of this methodology before any other project? Can the minister say whether any effort was made to get professional advice from the Australian Research Council or any other body as to the standing, rigour and merit of this methodology?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (16:59): I am pleased to get this question from the member for Perth. I might say that I am surprised that the member for Charlton did not get to his feet at any point to ask me a question, and I will come back to the member for Kingston's questions about higher education. I might even do it in this particular answer.
In terms of the Australian Consensus Centre: the government adopted exactly the same processes that the previous government adopted for its grant of $7 million to the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney and the $4 million that it granted to The Conversation online website. Of course, governments make decisions continually on the effective use of public spending. The direct funding of targeted research initiatives is a well-established method of achieving value for money and public benefit.
A government member: He came back!
Mr PYNE: Oh, he's back! Marvellous!
The Australian Consensus Centre is something that the government is absolutely committed to. Obviously, we are—
Ms MacTiernan: My questions relate to the methodology.
Mr PYNE: Yes?
Ms MacTiernan: Who made the assessment?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Griggs ): Order! The member for Perth does not have the call.
Mr PYNE: We used exactly the same processes, member for Perth, as the previous government did in many different areas. I have given you two examples; there would be other examples.
Ms MacTiernan: But they were—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Perth does not have the call!
Mr PYNE: And the Australian Consensus Centre was slated to be at the University of Western Australia. On 10 November 1914—sorry, 2014!—I approved the department taking forward arrangements to establish the Australian Consensus Centre at the University of Western Australia. The decision was based on acceptance of the proposal submitted by the University of Western Australia on 4 November 2014, and on—
Ms MacTiernan: It's an absolute nonsense!
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Perth does not have the call!
Mr PYNE: 24 March 2015 I approved the department finalising the funding agreement with the University of Western Australia for the Australian Consensus Centre.
Ms MacTiernan: You won't answer the question, will you?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: If the member for Perth wants to listen she might actually hear an answer!
Mr PYNE: I am disappointed, as are many Australians, that the University of Western Australia was forced into abandoning the Australian Consensus Centre because of the agitation by certain academics at the University of Western Australia. Reading the email by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, Paul Johnson, I think it is fair to say that he was also disappointed—
Ms MacTiernan: It's got nothing to do with it!
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Perth will be quiet!
Mr PYNE: that he could not fulfil the contract that he had already signed with the Australian government to deliver the Australian Consensus Centre because the Australian Consensus Centre would provide a rigorous research project for Australia. The Australian Consensus Centre, modelled on the Copenhagen Consensus Center, would have brought together Nobel prize winners from around the world to talk about the major issues facing Australia and the world. Bjorn Lomborg is a world-famous academic with a very rigorous background, and the outrageous slurring on Bjorn Lomborg as a climate denialist by the Labor Party, the Greens and academics across Australia is completely and utterly false.
Bjorn Lomborg has made it absolutely clear that he believes climate change is occurring. But he has said that we need to put that in the same perspective as all the other challenges that the world faces and that perhaps there are better economic ways of dealing with climate change and with coal fired power et cetera than the ones that have been put forward by the Greens and others around the world.
I would have thought that universities and academics would not have been frightened by somebody in their midst who has a different view. One of the purposes of universities—
Ms MacTiernan: Will you tell us how the process worked?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: If the member for Perth keeps that up she will be asked to leave under 187!
Mr PYNE: is to explore ideas. And the Australian Consensus Centre and Bjorn Lomborg would have challenged thinking at the University of Western Australia. And even if he were a climate denialist, he is perfectly within his rights to be so if he happens to be that. He is not, actually, but freedom of speech would certainly allow that and academic freedom would allow that too. So I find it very passing strange that the Labor Party would be so vocal about Bjorn Lomborg and the Australian Consensus Centre but be absolutely silent about Jake Lynch and the Sydney peace centre at the University of Sydney.
The Labor Party and the Greens have said nothing—nothing at all!—about Jake Lynch and the so-called 'peace centre' at the University of Sydney, and yet they were very loud in their condemnation of Bjorn Lomborg and the Australian Consensus Centre.
Honourable members interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Griggs ): Order!
Mr PYNE: I have not forgotten you. I am definitely coming back to you. Don't worry.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Lindsay and she will be heard in silence.
Ms SCOTT (Lindsay) (17:04): Madam Deputy Speaker, today I ask a question of the minister about STEM training and why it is so important to the people of Western Sydney. Minister, Western Sydney has before it an innovation revolution. The innovation revolution stems from many different facts, all coming back to this federal government. We have an innovation corridor which in many ways has been spearheaded by some very good friends of ours, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, Barney Glover, and of course the Chancellor, Peter Shergold.
When we look at the innovation corridor, it goes from Campbelltown in the south, through Penrith and then out to the north-west sector. Over the next 10 years one million people will move into this region. This region is being earmarked, and Penrith, in particular to be a focal point of health and education. Already, with the $3.6 billion worth of federal infrastructure that is coming into this region in just supporting the roads packages, we are seeing science parks coming before the New South Wales department of planning. One in particular, Minister, is the Sydney Science Park. It is owned by the EJ Cooper group, the Baiada group. They see their 280 hectares to be 1,200 jobs, smart jobs—smart jobs in biotech. They also see an additional 10,000 research positions that they would like to come into this facility.
The next one that I would like to talk to you about is Sydney IQ. This sits on UWS land at Werrington. UWS sees there an additional 6,000 jobs—once again, in biotech, engineering, smart manufacturing and the technology and engineering that could go in there. With so much support from the federal government and moral support, they have created a business incubator—working with partners like Google, looking at how they can create the new businesses and a new Google, but an Australian new Google.
My electorate is also the 10th youngest electorate in the Federation. I want to see these smart business parks come in, but I want to see it is the children of Western Sydney that will be the best and brightest. I want to make sure that we provide STEM training to these children and that they grow through their education from primary school all the way through to university—and that it is the children of Western Sydney that will be filling the jobs at the Sydney Science Park and the jobs at the Sydney IQ.
Talking with my local principals—and I have been holding forums with all of my local principals, be it Catholic schools, primary schools, high schools, public schools, independent schools—they are so excited about the future for our region. They are excited about the innovation revolution. They want to get on board. They want to get on board and look at STEM training.
When talking to the principals, overwhelmingly a lot of my school teachers, like myself, hold university degrees from the University of Western Sydney. It is a major university for providing teacher training at the university level. Working with the University of Western Sydney, and with partners like Google, we are going to hold professional development days for the teachers that are already on class. We want to make sure that we get this STEM training all the way through.
When we look at those opposite and their track record here, they came up with a ludicrous idea which had no ability of funding. They could not even get the funding model right. Talking to Professor Barney Glover about this, his thoughts were, and I quote him from the Sydney Morning Herald of 31 May this year:
I'm not sure the evidence is there to support it. We'd need a much more serious debate about it to know if it would be a driver of greater participation in STEM disciplines.
This is really important for my region, Minister. The other thing I wanted to point out was a comment from UWS. The University of Western Sydney is committed to supporting STEM uptake across Western Sydney through initiatives like the Sydney Science Centre. This is a wonderful initiative that the University of Sydney is also looking at. They want a science centre where children can go and participate in science and really get up close and personal with STEM, because they want to see this innovation revolution take hold. They do not just want to see federal government investment in infrastructure. They want to see jobs for the future, jobs for our children. We do not know what jobs will necessarily be there for children in 10, 20 or 30 years time. We want to make sure that our children are creating it.
So, Minister, can you please explain to me what the government is doing to help all of these schools, to help school education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and the subjects with the aim of supporting the jobs for the future?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Griggs ): I might add that Barney Glover was the Vice-Chancellor of Charles Darwin University before he moved away, sadly.
An honourable member: He was, and he was from Newcastle before that.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There you go! He gets around, spreading the love.
Mr Pyne: Everybody loves Barney!
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is right, we do. The question is that the proposed expenditure be agreed to. I call the minister.
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (17:09): I am very pleased to get the question from the member for Lindsay, who is the best member for Lindsay yet elected. She is doing a fantastic job and has a fantastic relationship with the University of Western Sydney, through Barney Glover, but also she has focused on jobs in Western Sydney and the transformative impact of higher education on Western Sydney and on the people of Western Sydney.
The University of Western Sydney is a great driver of economic growth in Western Sydney and the chance to give young people, particularly, but also mature-age students who want to reskill, the opportunity to change their skills in Western Sydney. I have been to the University of Western Sydney several times—I opened their university college, in fact—and they are at the cutting edge. They will be one of the very best universities and are well on the way to achieving that status. They are not very old in the process of doing so.
I congratulate the member for Lindsay for jumping right into higher education, training, STEM and the University of Western Sydney and supporting that particular institution. It will have real benefits, both economically and socially. Western Sydney is a very multicultural part of Australia and by mixing together at the University of Western Sydney, by being in the same classes, by breaking down barriers, whether they are cultural or religious barriers, the University of Western Sydney is playing its part in the inclusion, cohesion and harmony of Australian society.
The benefits in the budget for the University of Western Sydney in STEM are, quite clearly, that our higher education reforms will be a massive bonus for universities like UWS. They specialise in giving low-SES or disadvantaged students a pathway into higher education. As part of our higher-education reforms, we will expand the demand-driven system for undergraduate degrees to sub-bachelor degrees, diplomas and associate degrees that are offered by universities and TAFEs and other non-university education providers. This is in those pathways programs that many students in Western Sydney use to get the opportunity to get an undergraduate degree. Our higher-education reform is a social-justice policy. It allows students who would not otherwise have the chance to access a pathways program to access it, to use the Higher Education Contribution Scheme to access it and then go onto university.
The Kemp-Norton report, which I initiated not long after becoming the minister for education, found that students who did a pathways program had a one per cent dropout rate at university in undergraduate degrees. Students from a similar demographic background who did not have a pathways program had a 24 per cent dropout rate. Our higher-education reforms will be a great boon for the University of Western Sydney when they are finally passed by this parliament, because they will be able to expand their pathways programs. This is why Barney Glover is so enthusiastic about my reforms and why, as the new head of UA, he is publicly and strongly supporting them. They will also be able to access the Australian scholarships and HEP scholarships that the government plans to introduce.
The scholarships the university would offer, would be used, I assume, to support disadvantaged students—because the University of Sydney's vice-chancellor has said that if the government's reforms pass he will be able to increase his scholarships from 600 to 9,000. He will be able to change his demographic breakdown from six per cent of the University of Sydney's students being from a low-SES background to 20 per cent of the students at the University of Sydney being from a low-SES background. It is great news. It shocks and surprises me that Labor have so lost their way that they would be opposing what is clearly a good policy for low-SES students.
Through our HECS scholarships, Member for Lindsay, we will be able to focus those on low SES, disadvantaged and mature age students wanting to be reskilled. The University of Western Sydney will win again because they educate a higher percentage of low SES students than many other universities because of where they find themselves. I have not had the opportunity to talk about STEM in schools, because higher education is such a passion for me, but I look forward to the opportunity to do so before half past five.
Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (17:15): I know I am going to disappoint the minister because my question is going to be around apprenticeships and not schools and STEM. I know he will be disappointed about that. As well as school education, I am very passionate about apprenticeships, the history of apprenticeships and how they came to be, what they mean on the ground and what the community understands them to mean. In Lalor there are around 3,800 apprentices—that was last year's figure, so I hope there are still 3,800 apprentices on the ground in Lalor.
Those young people's understanding of an apprenticeship is that they sign up and are indentured into an apprenticeship where they learn a trade while working. They form an agreement with their employer that they will be trained by that employer, and subsequently get training from other organisations where that is required. For their part, they then work a 48-hour week or a 38-hour week, depending on their EBA, of course. Some work overtime and are paid for that. They see that as a long-term historical contract and that is what apprenticeships are about.
Many of them have some questions for this government. Many of them want to know why suddenly that contract is no longer the way this government perceives apprenticeships. This government perceives that to complete that apprenticeship they might like to, as we have heard many times, take out a loan that would allow them to complete an apprenticeship that is actually them working for lower wages in a contract with an employer who says, 'Because I am paying you lower wages, I will provide you with training.' But now that seems to have gone by the by.
I went with the shadow minister last year to meet with some apprentices on site at a large building site in my electorate. We met with a dozen to 15 apprentices. It was a terrific day. It was terrific to spend some time with some young people. There were some girls amongst the apprentices as well. It was really, really good. Most of them, admittedly, on this building site were electrical apprentices and plumbing apprentices—the licensed apprentices, if you like, from licensed trades. Unfortunately, there was only one apprentice carpenter on this huge job site with 3,000 employees. He had done a transfer in his third year into commercial out of domestic. He shared with us that there were actually 400 457 visa workers on the site doing the carpentry and the panelling, so he was a little disappointed to be the only carpentry apprentice.
We had a long chat to them and we talked to them about their apprenticeships. We talked to them about their training. We talked to them about the costs of their training. The biggest takeaway from that meeting was their disappointment that they were not going to get the Tools For Your Trade program. One young apprentice, who was in his first year, verging on his second, was really disappointed because he had sat down and set out a plan across his apprenticeship in terms of what tools he would purchase. He and his employer had worked out what he would need across those years and how that expenditure would roll out. He was incredibly disappointed, and pretty much outraged, at the thought that now he was going to take on a personal loan to fulfil work requirements that he thought should be delivered another way, and he was accustomed to having it delivered through that loan program.
My questions to the minister are around exactly that. Of course there was much excitement about this loan program. There was much excitement about all of these apprentices who were going to go and buy that car so they could get that apprenticeship—because we all know that workplaces want 18-year olds and they want them to be licensed. So the question which has obviously been apparent all the way through this is: how many have taken out loans under your new program, what percentage does that represent in terms of apprentices on the ground and have you had any feedback on the cuts to the Tools for Your Trade program?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (17:20): I thank the member for Lalor for her question. I know she is genuinely interested in vocational education and training and apprenticeships and, as a former principal of a public high school in Victoria, she has a longstanding interest in educational outcomes for students. I am sure she and I do not always agree on the best pathway to achieve those outcomes, but I do not doubt her genuine interest in achieving the best outcomes possible for students in Lalor. In terms of apprenticeships and vocational education and training, the specific answer to her question is that 25,000 trade support loans have been accessed since the program began in July 2014 and it is a vastly superior program. I do not have the percentage but I am happy to ask my department to take that question on notice. I can tell her it is 25,000 loan applications.
To compare it to the Tools for Your Trade program, it is a vastly preferable scheme because it supports apprentices in the same way as we are supporting students who go to university under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. They receive a $20,000 loan, which they can access over four years. They can pay it back when they start earning over $53,000 a year, at the lowest rates possible, with a very low CPI interest rate. In fact, I do not think the Trade Support Loans program has a CPI interest rate. No, it is even more generous than the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, which is a CPI loan rate. The trade support loans are even more generous than that. I apologise because there is an Assistant Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham, who would know the details of that even better than I do. To compare it to the Tools for Your Trade, the amount of the program is $20,000 of trade support loans, whereas Tools for Your Trade was $5,500. So why would the Labor Party want to have a $5,500 grant when they could have a $20,000 loan with no interest, paid back when you start earning over $53,000? The payments for trade support loans in year one were up to $8,000. Lump sums for Tools for Your Trade were $800 in the first three months and $1,000 at 12 months, $1,000 at 24 months, $1,200 at 36 months and $1,500 on successful completion. So it was a heavily bureaucratised program and much smaller than the Trade Support Loans program.
The Trade Support Loans program will mean that the apprentice can decide what their priorities are. It could well be tools. It could be all sorts of things that the apprentice decides is what will help them to access and to stay in their apprenticeship. The member for Lalor would know that only about 50 per cent of apprentices have been completing their apprenticeships and that is unacceptable. It was unacceptable under the previous government; it would be unacceptable under any government. We want to encourage young people to complete their apprenticeship. The Trade Support Loans program gives them the encouragement and the chance to do so. It means they will be able to access a very generous scheme and my belief is that, as the years progress, the member for Lalor will be pleased as the rate of apprentices completing their apprenticeships increases because of this government's excellent policy.
Mrs SUDMALIS (Gilmore) (17:24): I address these remarks and questions to the minister. The recent budget provided a significant pledge of not just continuing funding but an increased level of funding for universal access to early childhood education. As some of the questions I wanted to ask have already been answered, I thank the minister but also add the following. As a teacher with 10 years experience teaching high school science, where I developed language and literacy models for students of all abilities to increase their learning outcomes, I am reassured by the action taken by the coalition government in regard to education funding. It was particularly important as a high school teacher that the entry-level skills were of a particular standard. Teaching science is often complicated by the use of specialist equipment that, if used inappropriately, can be downright dangerous. If a young student does not have entry-level skills then time must be spent to develop these skills before actual science content can be effectively taught. That was the trigger for me to develop the language and literacy modules that incorporated both science content and literacy skills, with a far better learning outcome overall. These modules were developed across curriculum areas. When I was exchange teaching in upstate New York, I facilitated a number of American teachers from all curricula sectors to develop similar content-based literacy modules.
There is no difference for the children going from the home or from child care to full-time primary education. In fact, the funding for early childhood education is far more essential not only for the child's individual learning but also for the nation as a whole. Investing in our children at this critical period is benefiting the long-term educational outcomes for decades to come. The confirmation of investment in this critical aspect of education for all young children in Australia is of huge significance. The funded hours are actually, for some children, the very first formal hours of socialising with groups of others, learning the behaviours that are expected in the classroom and learning in a structured environment. It is the chance to ask to go to the toilet and to share books, pencils and other equipment. The children, who may not even have siblings, learn to work with others, to cooperate with others and to learn with others. These are essential before-school skills to develop. The early childhood facilitators are a critical link to identifying for some of these children, if they show learning or social difficulties, the need for extra help or other intervention measures.
I am proud to be part of a government that has the vision to continue this essential funding for our young children. Many teachers have approached me recently to commend these actions and communicate to me how essential early childhood learning really is. They explain that this is an opportunity to teach children how to sit in a classroom, to hold a pencil in some cases, and to develop a range of fine motor skills that for some little ones is a completely new experience. These teachers have confirmed that, should these children not receive such introductory instruction, it could push back the progress in their primary education, in some cases causing a learning delay for as much as 12 months, impacting massively on their educational journey. At the same time that a teacher may be struggling to introduce these essential learning skills, the other children who already have these experiences can be held back, often just due to the dynamics of the classroom activities.
Minister, some questions have been brought to me from the community in relation to universal access, and I would like to outline these to you. Initially, there is curiosity as to why we have only extended this funding for the 2016 and 2017 calendar years. There is also some misunderstanding as to which level of government is really responsible for this aspect of education. What are the plans of the federal government in this regard? The Abbott government, as promised, committed to a Productivity Commission review into this aspect of education. Could the minister outline how this has influenced the decision to extend the funding of universal access for early childhood education. Can the minister explain how the commitment of an additional $840 million over the next two years gives families and schools confidence to continue preparing for the education of our young children. As I understand the issue of funding, there are differences that exist across the states and territories. How does the government plan to assist the delivery of funding so that all children in Australia have an equality of access to this critical introductory phase of education?
There are three sectors in our national support of this program that need special attention: Indigenous, vulnerable, and disadvantaged children. They are likely to be the very ones who need the early learning instruction so they can make the most of their primary education. These same groups of children are also likely to need attendance assistance, and they will certainly gain from the socialisation process. While Gilmore may, at first glance, not need any special consideration, there are in fact pockets of socially disadvantaged children, and we know that some of our Indigenous children are not attending early childhood learning at all. How will the Government's Universal Access funding support all children in my electorate and ensure that no one misses out on quality early education? It would appear that they are the ones who will experience the greatest benefit from well-targeted funding in their early years.
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (17:29): In the very short time that is available to me I am happy to answer a couple of the member for Gilmore's questions. I am sure the Minister for the Environment will not mind if I finish this particular answer, although I will not take five minutes. The first point is that I do want to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts that the member for Gilmore went to to ensure that the universal access national partnership agreement was continued by this government, having been defunded by the previous government. We are putting $843 million in the budget into the universal access national partnership. For the first time ever it has been indexed at the consumer price index. Labor did not increase it at all from year on year; we are increasing it through the CPI. It is the responsibility of the state and territory governments to provide this level of education in preschool for four-year-olds, but we do recognise that the Commonwealth can assist parents and children—four-year-olds—to access 15 hours minimum a week of preschool, under universal access to preschool, through a subsidy to the states and territories, which we are paying to the states and territories to deliver this on behalf of the Commonwealth.
I do not know if you were in the consideration in detail earlier, Member for Gilmore, but, to put it in perspective, in 2008 in Queensland there were no students enrolled in preschool for 15 hours a week at all. In 2013 that had risen to 95 per cent. In Tasmania there was six per cent in 2008, but in 2013 there was 97 per cent. So this has been a successful program, and I am pleased to be part of a government that intends to continue to fund it. We found the money and we fixed it to make sure that the students of Australia, the four-year-olds of Australia—
Honourable members interjecting—
Mr PYNE: That is right—we fixed it. And I fixed other things left to me by Labor—whether it was NCRIS or the Future Fellowships or, now, universal access. They start to rack up, the achievements—the things that I have fixed in this portfolio. No applause is necessary in the main committee! But I am very pleased to be able to say that, yes, we are funding the universal access, and in no small measure because of the lobbying and support from the members in the chamber today, and also particularly the member for Gilmore. I thank the House for allowing me the indulgence of continuing past the hour-and-a-half that I have had for consideration in detail, and that, sadly, is coming to an end. I would have looked forward to continuing, but unfortunately the standing orders do not allow me to keep going for more than an hour-and-a-half.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Environment Portfolio
Proposed expenditure: $1,965,588,000
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for the Environment) (17:32): May I start in an unusual place by congratulating the opposition spokesperson on his putative elevation to the presidency of the ALP. I have no doubt it will continue to consume much of its time, as it has of late, which may be why we have had only two questions on the environment in nearly two years from the entire ALP. Having said that, I want to make some brief opening points.
Firstly, on the meta picture of that which we inherited and on where we are heading with the priorities of the environment portfolio as demonstrated by this budget, we inherited a national budgetary position in a degree of significant chaos. We remember that the budget deficits bequeathed to this government were $27 billion, $54 billion, $47 billion, $43 billion, $18 billion and back up to $48 billion. Against that background of a catastrophic position, everybody has had to try to operate within the most efficient arrangements—within the most lean of possible structures—so as to ensure that we could spend money on action and would not have before us two things: a bloated bureaucracy or a large deficit. Against that background I am delighted that we have been able to achieve as significant an outcome as we have.
Of course, we inherited the problems of the Home Insulation Program, which still needed fixing. We have seen the catastrophe of the Green Loans program. We saw the aborted take-off of the citizens assembly and cash for clunkers, and of course we had to fix the impact of the carbon tax on so many businesses large and small and on 10 million households around the country. Against that background, to have an allocation of $1.965 billion in this year's budget and to have total available portfolio resources of approximately $2.4 billion over the forward estimates period is an outstanding outcome and achievement.
We look at this in four principal areas: clean air, clean land, clean water and heritage. Within the clean air space, obviously the most significant area is emissions reduction, and the first Emissions Reduction Fund auction has been held. It was a stunning success: 47 million tonnes of abatement contracted, 144 projects and a total allocation of $660 million in forward contracts. The areas in which abatement is to be found include waste landfill gas, reforestation, avoided deforestation, soil carbon, savanna burning, transport and methane from piggeries. That is an outstanding first round. In that first round alone we achieved four times the abatement of the entire carbon tax experiment at approximately one per cent of the cost per tonne of abatement--$13.95 per tonne as opposed to just over $1,300 per tonne of abatement, the real and genuine metric we should look at if we are trying to reduce emissions.
We are also achieving a national clean air agreement. We have in-principle agreement from all of the states and territories. Our objective has been 1 July 2016. I am hopeful that we can do it some considerable time before that. In terms of clean land, the Green Army has a $700 million allocation over the forward estimates in this budget. That is a considerable increase over last year's four years going forward. We set out to achieve 250 Green Army starts this financial year, and I can inform the House that we have in fact achieved 300 and those projects are going tremendously. The Threatened Species Commissioner will soon be joining with me in leading a national threatened species summit, and our focus is on turning around 20 significant species.
From there we move on to what we have done with the one-stop shop: $1 trillion cleared and agreements with all states and territories. In terms of clean water, we have had a tremendous outcome in protecting the reef. I hope to have an opportunity to speak on that more, but the reef outcome is tremendous. The Murray-Darling Basin agreement is making great progress. In heritage, of course, we are making huge strides with the acquisition of an Antarctic icebreaker.
Mr BUTLER (Port Adelaide) (17:38): I thank the minister for attending this evening and for his rather backhanded compliment on my election; thank you very much! I am wondering whether in the course of this next half hour—I understand we may have divisions at six—he might care to explain what he was doing to coral that the member for Kennedy was talking about earlier in question time. I have heard many things happen to coral, but deflowering coral was not one of them until this question time!
I want to talk a bit about the background to the Emissions Reduction Fund and the safeguards mechanism and welcome the opportunity to ask the minister a couple of background questions which go very much to the heart of the $2.55 billion of expenditure in the budget around the ERF and the associated policy mechanisms—the safeguard mechanism in particular. I know the minister has been across this policy area for a considerable period of time and so knows that breaking down what is very contested but perhaps the most complex public policy we have in front of us into basic elements is very difficult; but, if there is one central element around the world, it is the agreement that the nations of the world reached at Cancun to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius—an agreement I know the minister is very familiar with and talks about quite a lot in his public speeches. However, I want to talk particularly about the implications of the energy white paper and just get some clarification from the minister about the degree to which this remains a bipartisan position, because when Cancun was signed the minister then reiterated the coalition's support for that national commitment and has since on a number of occasions.
As the minister would know, in the energy white paper and also in an issues paper the PM&C published earlier—or I might be wrong about that, so I will focus on the energy white paper—the department writing that paper focused on what is broadly known as the four-degree scenario, which the International Energy Agency has published. It is called the new policies scenario, but it is broadly understood as the four-degree scenario, a scenario that contemplates a level of development and consumption of fossil fuels that would on scientific advice lead to four degree of warming. I think the minister understands that there is a bit of consternation in the broader community about how you square the energy white paper, which talks about the IEA's the four-degree scenario in pretty glowing terms, particularly, quoting page 44 from the paper:
Australia has the potential to reap substantial economic gains in meeting future global energy demand, which is expected to increase by over one-third by 2040 …
Given that is the trajectory the IEA assumes to be consistent with the four-degree scenario, is the government predicating an energy policy on the four-degree scenario while in the minister's portfolio continuing to express a commitment to the two-degree commitment that was expressed in Cancun? It is a genuine question that I think a lot of stakeholders in the sector are asking. I think we are going to have limited questions, and while I have got the floor I am also keen to get some clarification from the minister about how he proposes to deal with the different reports that the Climate Change Authority will be publishing as part of the deal that was done between the government and the Palmer United Party to pass the direct action—or the ERF legislation. Without going into political hyperbole about the nature of that deal, there is a targets-and-progress review that is out currently for public consultation. It will be finalised over the course of this month, I assume, as part of a special review requested by the minister.
The CCA Act—the Climate Change Authority Act 2011—has particular provisions in it for government responses to reports from the CCA. I would be interested to hear the government's plans for responding to this report that was commissioned by the minister and also what might be planned for a response to the CCA's report on emissions trading schemes that was also part of the deal with Clive Palmer and that I think is due by 30 November later this year.
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for the Environment) (17:42): Let me start by making a very clear statement. The government's policy is to commit to, work towards and be part of a global push to achieve the two-degree limit on global warming. The Cancun agreement sets that out. Australia was part of it, and we in opposition supported it and as a government we support it. That is both our policy and our objective. My understanding is that at this stage the French as they move towards the Paris post-2020 pledging conference are building a stack of bids. The extent to which they will achieve the two degrees is yet to be calculated. I am not aware of those outcomes, although, having met with the French minister in early April, her statement to me was that they were making significant progress. It is public that they do not believe they will get all the way this time but that they will get a significant proportion of the way, and that will set the world up for another pledging conference at some stage to be determined. I really welcome that.
The shadow minister asks about how this fits with the white paper, and the answer is 'very comfortably'. The energy white paper sets out, exactly as the shadow minister said, at page 44, amongst other pages, a four-degree scenario, but it was just that—a scenario. Our policy is to achieve a two-degree outcome for the world. What this was doing is what any good planner should do—hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. It was taking the realistic worst case. I am delighted and pleased to say that since that time what we have seen through a series of national pledges from other countries is significant progress towards the two-degree target. The energy white paper represented a scenario planning. It set out what it thought were the measures necessary to deal with what would be a worst-case scenario. Since then that worst-case scenario has, in our judgement, fallen by the wayside but, more than that, our policy is clear and categorical. I think that is extremely important to say.
I then want to move forward to the Climate Change Authority. I was in particular asked about the Climate Change Authority and the answer is fairly simple. We will respond to each of the three reports in due course. We are going through a process now of setting our post-2020 targets. That really involves contemplating and considering what was in the CCA report. We have received over 300 submissions—it could be higher now—to the task force being run as a whole-of-government coordinating task force by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. I have engaged in numerous roundtable or direct face-to-face meetings, as has Julie Bishop. We are going through a very detailed public consultation process.
We have always said that we will set our target in the middle of this year. Within the next month you can expect that Australia will lay down its target. Our goal—and I am perfectly public about this—is to have it in place before the major economies forum, which I believe is due on 20 July. That is our time frame. Against that, I am very confident that we will contribute in a constructive and ambitious manner that does not only the right thing by the planet but also the right thing for Australia's domestic future.
Having said that—and this is one of things where the white paper and energy comes in—it is extremely important to know that we have a series of elements that can help us achieve a very successful target. Remember this: we have already beaten our first round of Kyoto targets for 2008 to 2012. We will achieve and beat our second round of Kyoto targets from 2012 to 2020, and we will set a very constructive post-2020 target. We have the Emissions Reduction Fund; we have the safeguards mechanism. There is huge potential for vehicle emission standards in Australia, sadly following on from the loss of our domestic vehicle manufacturing industry. There is very significant potential for CO2 equivalent productions from the next round of the Montreal protocol and, in particular, the energy efficiency plan under the white paper.
Mr EWEN JONES (Herbert) (17:47): Minister, my questions will be from someone who lives and works alongside the Great Barrier Reef. I have a series of questions that I would like to put to you. Can you walk me through your response to the World Heritage Committee's listing, that the reef is not in danger? Obviously, as someone who lives alongside the Great Barrier Reef, we were very proud of the result that we got out of that. I would like your official response to that for my people at home. I am very proud to have participated in the reef 2050 plan, or the long-term sustainability plan. Could you give me some perspective on how that was received by the World Heritage Committee and how we are going to progress those things?
I am also after some perspective from you, Minister, in relation to the Great Barrier Reef and particularly as a working reef. I understand the nature of the challenges that we have as a working reef from farming communities and with ports and all of that sort of thing. Could you tell the people in my electorate of Herbert and the people of Townsville which government banned the disposal of capital dredge spoil on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park? From my recollection—correct me if I am wrong—in 2011 the World Heritage Committee first raised alarm bells about capital dredge spoil. Could you walk me through the actual extent of what we were facing in 2011? I know that the Campbell Newman state LNP government did rationalise a lot of the work that was going to be done that was proposed under the Anna Bligh Labor government. Could you walk me through those things?
Could you give me your perspective on how real the actual scale of what we were facing was and—I know that you were the shadow minister at that time—how seriously you considered that, and how much has changed between then and 7 September 2013? I do also note that the total amount committed to the Reef Trust is $140 million; I am very proud of that as well. What kinds of projects will this money be spent on? What is the total amount that Australia is investing to protect the reef into the future and how will my city benefit from it?
On a final personal note, Townsville city councillor Pat Ernst has been onto me, and I have spoken to you briefly about this: we live alongside the Great Barrier Reef and we are a reasonably large city of around 190-200,000 people. Our water management, sewage treatment and all of that sort of thing, when it goes out to the ocean, requires substantially extra capital expenditure because we live alongside the Great Barrier Reef. We benefit from the reef greatly, but Australia benefits from the reef greatly. Would you be able to give me some pointers on that; and can I ask you to commit that next time you are in Townsville—and I am not bunging it on you right now—you will meet with my council, in particular Councillor Pat Ernst and my mayor, Jenny Hill, to discuss the issues that we see into the future in this field, and how the federal government may be able to assist?
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for the Environment) (17:51): Thank you very much to the member for Herbert, who has been one of the absolute champions of the Great Barrier Reef. Let me begin in the easiest way: yes, I will commit to meet with the council, yourself and the councillor, to discuss options for improving water quality. Believe it or not just an hour ago I met with one of the great companies of Australia, GE Australia—which is a subsidiary of one of the great companies of the world. They indicated to me that they would be partnering with local councils up and down the Great Barrier Reef on sewage treatment proposals under the National Stronger Regions Fund. The simple answer is that the Stronger Regions Fund should, hopefully, be a possible source of funding; it is to be administered by a different department so I would not pre-empt that. I would encourage not just the City of Townsville but other municipal authorities up and down the reef to consider the Stronger Regions Fund. I know that one great water company is involved, GE; other great water companies may well seek to be involved in technology provision. There are real opportunities.
Stepping back to the question about UNESCO; I am absolutely delighted that the draft decision from the World Heritage Centre—which informs the World Heritage Committee, both of which sit under UNESCO—is that the Great Barrier Reef should not be listed as endangered, and there was also considerable praise for Australia. I think we should be fair and recognise that much of the work began under previous governments and has continued over successive governments. Having said that, of course, we inherited three previous decisions which had the reef on a track to endangered status, but it came off under our watch—pending, of course, the final vote. I have previously said to UNESCO that the process has helped people make reforms in Australia. I think that is the plain truth; it has helped us achieve things. Of course, the reef does have its challenges—it would be wrong of anyone not to say that—but it also has its enormous successes. If the world were establishing a world heritage list from scratch today, in my view the first natural property they should and would inscribe would be the Great Barrier Reef as it is today. It is majestic, it is extraordinary, it is 2,300 kilometres long and it is the greatest coral system in the world, by an order of magnitude.
We have done three big things. Firstly, we inherited a massive list of potential dredge proposals involving disposal in the marine park. There were five major proposals amounting to approximately 60 million cubic metres of disposal in the marine park. All those five are gone in terms of disposal in the marine park—all gone. We then put in, as part of the radical change in dredge disposal practices, a once-in-a-century ban on dredge disposal in the marine park. In my view, that practice will never come back. History will look back on this as one of the signature environmental achievements of the Abbott government. The UN has certainly said that this was fundamental to their decision.
Secondly, we then went on to develop the Reef 2050 plan. I thank the member and other members, such as the member for Leichhardt, for their involvement. That Reef 2050 plan sets out—and this was developed with successive Queensland governments—a plan for sediment reduction, nitrogen reduction and pesticide reduction. Those are real things that change the quality of seagrass and of the marine environment where fish breed, and they improve water quality for coral health.
Then we backed that up. There is a $2 billion plan over 10 years, but that has been added to with $100 million from Queensland and $140 million from the Commonwealth through the Reef Trust. That will go to sediment reduction, nitrogen reduction and pesticide reduction. For example, we recently opened a $3 million program in the Burdekin calling for tenders for nitrogen reduction on a lowest-cost-per-unit basis. It will also go to the crown-of-thorns starfish and to monitoring. I recognise that more monitoring is needed. I thank the member for Herbert. He is a passionate advocate for Townsville. He is just as passionate in his support for the reef.
Mr BUTLER (Port Adelaide) (17:56): I might ask a couple of questions about a matter that the minister talked about particularly: the 2020 targets—or the 2020 target, potentially—and some of the other targets. As the minister will recall, there was an unconditional target lodged, on behalf of Australia, to reduce carbon pollution by five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 and then two conditional targets. All three were endorsed by the coalition when in opposition. I want to ask first of all whether those conditional targets remain government policy. I do not think anyone thinks that the second conditional target is anywhere near being satisfied yet. But I would like to ask the minister whether the government has a position on whether or not the second target—so, the conditional target of 15 per cent, which was the subject of a Climate Change Authority report last year, which I do not think the government ever formally responded to—remains government policy. So, first of all, do those two conditional targets remain government policy? Secondly, if they do, has the government reached a view about whether the conditions for the 15 per cent reduction—the first conditional target—have been satisfied?
I am also particularly interested to follow up the member for Herbert's discussion about the reef. I am also interested to know whether the minister is monitoring the increase in land clearing in the Far North Queensland area, and, particularly, monitoring and modelling the impact that that increase in land clearing in Queensland is going to have on Australia's carbon footprint. As I am sure the minister appreciates, the only real reason why Australia was able to achieve its first Kyoto commitment was the extraordinary reduction in carbon emissions from that part of the country through the land clearing reforms put in place by the Queensland state government—the subject of significant arm wrestling over a long period of time, but a very substantial reduction in carbon emissions from that sector, which appear to be in the process of being reversed as a result of the changes to land clearing put in place by the Newman government. Given the minister's overall responsibility for the national carbon footprint, I would appreciate some information as to whether or not his department is monitoring the impact that that will have on Australia's overall carbon emissions.
I also want to follow up some questioning that happened at the Senate estimates process recently about the Emissions Reduction Fund first auction, which the minister again described as a 'stunning success'—which I will leave aside for the sake of brevity. As the minister knows, there was $660 million committed to 107 contracts. The Clean Energy Regulator indicated to the Senate committee that 104 of those 107 contracts were either seven- or 10-year contracts, so they run past 2020 obviously. Apparently the CER had done some modelling, from my recollection of the transcript—or the department had, at least—about how much of the abatement would be expected to be achieved before 2020 and how much would be achieved in the 2020s, given that 104 of the 107 contracts would still be running through the 2020s. Perhaps the minister can give some indication later—if at all—given that we have just been called to a division—
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Sitting suspended from 18:01 to 18:14
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for the Environment) (18:14): I will very briefly note that, in relation to the shadow minister's questions, we are monitoring land clearing in Queensland—that is factored into the national accounts. Secondly, our target is very clear. We will achieve and beat the minus five per cent. But that represents minus 13 per cent. So we will make a final statement, but we will achieve minus 13 per cent on 2005 figures by 2020 and we will beat it. As we have more detail as to the progress after subsequent Emissions Reduction Fund auctions we will provide an update. But our commitment is clear and absolute: to beat the target—that is minus 13 on 2005—and we will provide detail on the final target once the later Emissions Reduction Fund auctions have occurred. I will now allow the member to ask his questions.
Mr HUTCHINSON (Lyons) (18:15): I appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions of the minister in regard to the portfolio areas, but rather than focusing on the Great Barrier Reef I want to focus on the Antarctic and the importance of that research. It is now not only a major economic driver in Tasmania, in Hobart and the southern region, but there is also Hobart's vision of becoming a gateway to the Antarctic.
The University of Tasmania is the state's major employer. The economic drivers that are stimulated because of the investment that is made in the Antarctic by the federal government should not be overlooked, because they have benefits to local businesses in my electorate. For example, I know that Kerry Vincent, the owner of Rural Solutions at Sorell, has contracts with the Antarctic Division, and Dale Elphinstone manufactures equipment that is used to transport people in the Antarctic. So it benefits not only the research task but also businesses within my electorate.
Indeed, one of the key strengths of the University of Tasmania is its research. There is the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, and the foreign students who come to Hobart as a result of the excellence there. Then there are the global partnerships that are established. I really believe it is linked to the brand Tasmania. It provides students from around the state with absolutely high-quality aspirations. It is strategically important to Tasmania and Tasmania's economic prosperity. I note the funding provided by the federal government for Antarctic projects has reinvigorated the economy in Tasmania and delivered jobs and opportunities, as I have mentioned; there are some examples I have given. There was $24 million over three years for the Antarctic Gateway Partnership— (Time expired)
Expenditure agreed to.
Agriculture Portfolio
Proposed expenditure: $463,540,000
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (18:17): Agriculture is once more painting its position as a major pillar of our economy. When we started with the agriculture department, during the change of government, we had a budget that was less than half of what had been handed over at the conclusion of the Howard government. In that process we have tried to make it our aim to get the best return back through the farm gate, to make sure that we focus on those families on the land and do what is within our power to expedite a change in circumstance, so that they can be part of the refurbishment of the rural asset and so that we can bring real dignity back into their lives.
That process—and I am not saying that we are completely responsible for it, but we have been a vital part of it—now sees cattle at record prices. We have had sheep at record prices. Wool is now attaining the highest prices it has had since the conclusion of the wool floor price—the wool southern scheme—and it continues to go up, and we will soon have record prices there. Even in the wine industry—from my discussions with our agriculture advisory committee—we are starting to get sustained contractual obligations coming into play, assisting us in the wine industry, and we were starting from a very low base. If you go to other sections of our industry, such as the caprine section—the goat section—there are record prices. Cotton is at a very strong price. Our forward grain prices are strong. For our citrus, we are getting a good turnaround. And we have brought about things such as the opening of the tropical fruit market into the United States of America, with the first exports of mangoes and lychees to those markets. The agriculture portfolio is many and varied, and it requires a dedication and intensity. I like to always thank the work of my department and my colleagues for what they do.
We have also started on a process of proper country of origin labelling. This has been in its first pass of cabinet and we have finished the consultation phase with industry, and we are currently in the midst of a consultation phase with the public. I think we have around 8,000 submissions there at the moment. This will give us a descriptor which is diagrammatic, reflective of proportionality, simple to understand and compulsory.
We have also engaged for the first time in a formidable campaign to deal with issues such as wild dogs and pest control. We are now getting submissions back from the western districts about proper fencing programs, supported by the government, so that we can create the mechanism for the exclusion of wild dogs so we can repopulate those areas with sheep. That goes hand in glove with the revitalisation of a lot of the towns to bring back the wool industry. The wool industry comes with shearers and wages, and it is of vital importance to some of the western districts.
On a biosecurity level, our most recent fight was probably with Panama disease. We enacted the flying squad, which was part of our election commitment. The flying squad has been part and parcel for why we now have only one confirmed area of Panama disease. We had a false negative at Mareeba and we have one section in Tully. It is a very important industry to that area—approximately $600 million—and it is something we need to protect.
We have brought about accelerated depreciation of 100 per cent for fencing and 100 per cent on water reticulation so we get refurbishment of the irrigation asset on the property. We also brought the depreciation on fodder storage in silos and haysheds from over 30 years down to three years. We are trying to make sure that the better returns the farmers are now receiving are invested back into the farming asset, so they can work hand in glove in increasing the volume of our agricultural exports because our nation needs it. This is the sort of money we need to bring in to mitigate some of the effects of the downturn in coal and iron ore.
We have also started on the investigation and relocation of sections of the department. No doubt we will have some questions about that. I think this is important. We have to have a vision for the future. We have to have a vision for centres of excellence. We have to have the same sort of vision in agriculture that brought about Canberra. That involved a visionary process. I look forward to questions.
Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (18:22): I thank the minister for his contribution and his willingness to work with me when it has been necessary over the last couple of years to settle some very important issues in the agricultural sector. We had a little stoush the parliament today, so we are enjoying ourselves immensely. He knows my greatest disappointment in his government's performance is that two years into the government we still lack a strategic plan for the sector. We were promised an agriculture white paper by Christmas of last year. We still do not have one and, unfortunately, the minister has been unprepared to tell me when we might see one. Until we see it, I will not be in a position to assess whether he has delivered a strategic direction for the sector or delivered nothing more than a wish list of spending promises. We will wait and see. Again, I ask him on behalf of all the commodities sectors when they might hope to see that document. He told the House today that the northern Australia white paper was 'imminent'—a word is quite fond of. But he is not prepared to say the same thing of the agriculture white paper and I therefore fear that it might be some way off in the distance still. He might be able to give us some guidance in that respect.
The minister did tonight what he is fond of doing—that is, to take credit for prices in a range of commodities. He likes to take credit; he never talks about commodity prices which have fallen. I do not quite understand nor do people out there in the broader community why it is he that it takes credit for rises but no responsibility for falls. But tonight I challenge him again. He gave us a number of examples about commodity price rises. I challenge him again to tell us what indeed he has done which has caused these commodity price rises. I will be very interested in the answers, if he is willing to do so.
Tonight I am not going to take too much of the chamber's time. I want to focus on just a few areas. I want to delve into drought assistance just a little. I want to talk about the new FIRB rules. And I might just ask a couple of questions, if I get time, about some of the appropriations for legal advice and assistance for the department.
Drought in Australia is very bad. We know that many parts of Queensland and New South Wales have been without rain now for three years. Now, of course, the bureau is predicting an El Nino, so things are not likely to get better. My perspective is that the government's drought policy has been a failure. Its focus has been on concessional loans that have not suited the needs of the farming community, and on that basis the take-up rate has been poor. The minister will get up and say that, when he came, only so many concessional loans had been taken up, but he deliberately forgets that the concessional loans put in place by the former Labor government were not about drought, because we were not all that far into a drought. Drought had not become an urgent consideration. They were about farm debt, not drought. Certainly, if someone was in debt because of drought, that was a consideration and would make them eligible for the loans, but it is mischievous to compare the take-up rate on the concessional loans with the later introduced drought loans program.
Where I get a little bit curious is on the numbers. We were told in estimates at the end of April that $280 million had been allocated for drought concessional loans and $114.9 million had been spent. If my maths is correct, that leaves about $175 million not allocated. And then, on the original farm finance loan, which was $420 million, $167 million had been spent, leaving $253 million. So there is a total of about $428 million not allocated, and yet the money the minister announced in the budget equated to $250 million. So I simply ask the minister: what has the take-up on the most recently announced loans been, and where is the difference between the $400-odd million not allocated under the two original programs and the $250 million—only—allocated under the new program?
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (18:27): There are a range of things that the member for Hunter, the shadow minister for agriculture, has brought up, and I will try to go through them and be as succinct as I can. The first question he asked is about the white paper. The white paper is complete. It has been through the ERC process. It has been through the cabinet process. We are now merely finding the day for its announcement, so everything that we need to do there is complete.
I can understand the frustration that may be held by the shadow minister and possibly held by others, but it was very important, extremely important, on behalf of agriculture that we stayed at the table and bargained as hard as we possibly could for the best possible deal for regional Australia. I believe that we have done that. We have done that because the alternative was to come up with a motherhood statement, and the last thing I wanted was a glossy brochure that talked about aspirations but never actually delivered any money on how to do them.
Within the food plan there were many ideas. The Labor Party food plan had many ideas, but the capacity to finance them was not apparent. That was the problem we had with it.
What we have now—and you have already seen sections of it—are three issues: on fencing, on water write-off in the first year and on fodder. They are from the white paper. They were announced in the budget. Also on the back of that is that any person with a turnover of less than $2 million gets plant that is pertinent to their business to the value of $20,000 immediately written off. This has been overwhelmingly supported in the community.
It just stands to reason that you are not going to announce the Northern Australia white paper, a dams task force and the agriculture white paper in the shadow of a budget or all together at the one time. We will make sure that there is the proper absorption of the material that we need. Without giving too much away: within a month we will have the agriculture white paper out—and probably sooner. I am trying to be as honest as I can in answer to your question. I note your weekly media releases in this space, every Friday. It is good. I take that as advertising, and I do want the focus to be on this agricultural white paper because there has been so much work done. It is such a substantive document, with over 1,000 responses from the community, that we want to make sure that it gets the very best absorption by the public, and—regardless of whether I am the minister or someone else is, or we are the government or someone else is—that we have a formidable document that can be carried forward and utilised into the future, because in agriculture we do not work for three-year terms. This is something that the shadow minister and I are at one on. It is a long-term plan. It has to be a long-term plan. It is very similar to Defence; you cannot have wild oscillations in policy; otherwise, you have chaos on the land and you will have the loss of a sense of stability, and that is not respecting the people we represent.
The other question he asked was: what role does the government have in the turnaround in commodity prices? That is a very fair question, and now I propose to answer some of it. We have opened up six new live animal destinations: Egypt; Bahrain; Lebanon; Iran, after four decades—four decades—of it being closed; Thailand and Cambodia. We started this work immediately. The first place I went to as a minister on receiving the job was the Middle East. Even as recently as last night I was back talking to the ambassador and representatives from Kuwait, from Egypt, from Lebanon, from Jordan and from Iraq, trying to make sure that we further expand that trade. That is the role you have to do. It is a vitally important market to us. Today I have been speaking with Minister Gao, who is out here, and the ambassador about furthering the protocols to try and get the export of kangaroo meat. It is vitally important that we do this and export this product into this market. These are the issues that three free trade agreements have assisted with. I commend my department for expediting so many of the protocols so we can move products—whether it is tropical fruits, cattle or sheep. These are the things that we do that bring the return back through the farm gate.
Mr RAMSEY (Grey) (18:32): I thank the minister for his words. He would be well aware that the electorate of Grey, covering 92 per cent of South Australia, has many spokes to its wheels, including steelmaking, lead-zinc smelting and a large mining sector. We still—at least for a little while—generate quite a large proportion of the South Australian electricity grid through a coal-fired power station at Port Augusta, and a lot of renewable energy as well. But for all that, agriculture and fishing are still the backbone of our economy. I am very pleased with the energy that is in agricultural markets at the moment, and the minister covered off on some of those when he spoke. Some of those, and most especially the live exports trade, have been driven by good government and good policy, and I congratulate the minister and the government for those achievements.
I particularly appreciate the extra money the government is injecting into agricultural research. In my electorate specifically, of the $100 million that the government has put on the table for extra research in agriculture and the fisheries industry, there has been a grant going to the kingfish industry in Arno Bay. This is in the throes of re-establishing itself after running through a period of very tough times when they had very high mortalities and were struggling to understand what was wrong. They seem to have it all sorted out now, and the industry is starting to grow significant tonnages into good export markets. Of course that ties into some of the things that we saw today—the signing of the free trade agreement with China.
I have a very long background in agricultural research as a farmer representative on various bodies, and I know and appreciate just how important agricultural research is to the sector. In fact, I have said for many years that Australian farmers will grow more grain and more fibre every year—unfortunately with fewer people, but that is the reality of it—and we will grow it better. We will do that because we have the right tools provided to us, because we have always been at or very near the cutting edge of agriculture throughout the world, and it is so important that we keep there. So my first question to the minister is to ask him to tell me what he expects the extra research money for agricultural pursuits to do and just how different organisations can target that money and get the best outcome.
The minister has also expressed some views about shifting the last four, I think, registered research organisations out of Canberra into the regions. I have particular interest, of course, in two of those, one being the GRDC, the Grains Research and Development Corporation, and the other one being the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, because of course we have that rather large industry at Port Lincoln. I am just wondering exactly how the minister sees this unfolding, how these organisations are likely to adapt to the minister's request, and whether he sees any role for South Australia in perhaps hosting any of these bodies.
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (18:36): I appreciate the question, and I also commend the work done by the honourable member, especially in the backbench committee of the coalition, a very active and diligent committee that has within its continual purview the issues of agricultural Australia. It is of great assistance in the task that we have before us.
Research and development, of course, is a vital cog. We have to be at the forefront. We have a quality product, and unless it is seen by the world as a quality product it will not get a premium price. As an analogy, I always ask people who they think the biggest beef exporter in the world is. They generally get it right: they will say it is predominantly Brazil. But it is not exclusively Brazil; at times India is the biggest exporter of beef in the world. They do not get our prices, because of the problems they have with biosecurity and disease. This is why we have to be at the forefront of this.
That is why I have been happy to be part of some of our matched funding of GRDC in the last 12 months and to announce, I think, $12 million for further PhD students at Toowoomba in research into grains. I think it was about a year ago—it might have been close to a year ago—that we were at Curtin University to announce in excess of $100 million in further research and development into the grains industry there. Recently, the coalition has had a $100 million research and development process afoot, and it was with great pleasure that we announced the first tranche of that, which was $26.7 million for a range of research and development projects, such as Smarter Irrigation for Profit, which involves the Cotton Research and Development Corporation. That received $4 million.
I will just dwell on that one for a little, because Australia has the highest yields of cotton in the world, and a large section of that is because of the co-location of the RDC for cotton, which is in Narrabri in the seat of Parkes—and it is great to see the member for Parkes here—and the people who actually grow the cotton. This means that, with people such as Dr Guy Roth, we are at the forefront of this industry. There is that immediacy in getting the technology, delivering it back to the paddock, finding the problems from the paddock and dealing with them at the RDC.
This is one of the reasons that the coalition has always had a strong belief in decentralisation and also in the creation of centres for excellence, one of which is our Cotton RDC. I do not believe that this nation is only capable of doing it once; I think we can do it in numerous settings in other places. We are working with the GRDC and FRDC, and we are in continual negotiations because we want to make this a transition in which people partner with us. I believe at the start there were some hesitancies but now people are signed on and they are all wanting to be part of it.
What we have, as a classic example, with the GRDC are discussions about the parts of GRDC that can go to sections of our nation, obviously including places such as South Australia, Western Australia and other areas. I believe that this is what we have to do. When I go to Knoxville and the University of Tennessee, I see people who are expert in the cotton fields. When I go to the University of Georgia, I see people who are expert in bovine genetics. I do not have an expectation that everything I need to see is in Washington and I do not know why that should be the case here. We should be trying to create centres of excellence because we can affect the culture of a regional centre more than we can affect the culture of a large city like Canberra. It was possible in the past but now it is so big, so diverse and so dynamic. I do not think you will ever affect the culture of Sydney with an agricultural RDC.
All of these things get better bang for their buck if they are in areas where it is more pertinent to the industry they are dealing with—as was the case with the department of mines at a state level when it was moved by a state Labor government to Maitland, as it should have been. That is where the mining is. That is why the department of fisheries in New South Wales was moved to Port Stephens. It makes sense; that is where the fish are. The department of agriculture is in Orange and I do not think anyone thinks that was some sort of obnoxious decision. (Time expired)
Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (18:41): In my initial contribution I asked the minister some specific questions about drought funding and he made no attempt to answer them. Maybe he is waiting for the mathematicians up the back to help him out there. I understand that and appreciate it, so I trust those answers will still be forthcoming. I am going to help the minister answer the question by the member for Grey. Yes, the mining department regulates the mining industry and it might make some sense for it to be nearby, and fisheries regulate the fisheries industry and it might make some sense. But research and development corporations make decisions about where research dollars should be spent and the priorities. They do not do research. It makes no sense for them necessarily to be close to where the crop is growing. If it did make sense, the minister would not be sending the Grains RDC to Wagga Wagga; he would probably be sending it to Western Australia. But, of course, grains are grains and even if there were some merit in having it close to one grain, it does not necessarily provide merit because it does not put it close to the grains industry in Western Australia. Decentralisation is a wonderful thing and, unfortunately, it is a great challenge. It fails more often than it works. It works when someone has a strategic plan with long lead times and proper consultation has been undertaken.
The minister has just issued an edict that these RDCs move. There is great resistance. I was intrigued to hear the minister say that people are now on board. What that means is that there is partial backdown here. The minister has now realised this is not going to work. It is going to cost $40 million—money that could have gone to research—staff are going to leave en masse and now he is having a hybrid system where he is keeping probably the majority of people in Canberra. He will put two people in Wagga and say, 'I did it. I achieved my decentralisation plan.' We will see how wrong I am, Minister.
I welcome the backdown because this is just a silly idea—$40 million that should be going into research being wasted on redundancies and relocations. Of course, all the expertise we have in these RDCs will go out the window because people, for obvious reasons—they have got a husband or father in Canberra or kids in the local school—do not want to go to Wagga or Hobart or wherever the minister might have in mind. The bad news for the member for Grey is that I have never heard the minister make any reference to South Australia. I do not think there is any plan to send anyone to South Australia. There is another important point. The minister really does not seem to understand that, or he really is being mischievous and wants to mislead people. Remember that the minister has been cutting money out of the CRCs in CSIRO and the Rural Industries RDC. He promised more money, but he is cutting money. He has got his $100 million, but he has taken that much at least out of the bucket elsewhere.
But research and development money is precious, and we have got to have a competitive environment. So when the RDCs put money out on offer to researchers, there is competition. So this university might be interested and this university over here might also be interested, and there is a competitive tension.
The minister's insistence is that the RDC go an extra university, a regional university, suggesting to all and sundry that that university is going to be doing all the research—this great synergy between the RDC and the university. But where is the competitive tension?
You will have too much collaboration: you will have a nudge and a wink. The university will become the researcher of choice for the minister's new model of RDC. This is not a good thing for our RDC dollars—not by any stretch of the imagination. So I am glad you are climbing down, Minister. I know that will be greatly welcomed by those who work and manage our RDCs. Don't smile and suggest that people in our RDCs think this is a good idea. They are in rebellion, and you know they are in rebellion. In fact, they know you cannot make them move. You have got a problem now and you are backing down, and I welcome the back down.
Foreign Investment Review Board—changes; no, I will not go there, because I will not have time. I will save that for my next contribution. I simply again ask the minister to give me those drought answers I was looking for.
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (18:46): With regard to the drought, we have currently had 5,096 claims for farm household allowance being granted. The Australian government offers three concessional loan schemes. So far 551 farm businesses—I think this was to the end of May—have approved loans totalling over $284 million. The current interest rate for drought recovery loans is at 3.21 per cent; current recovery loans at 3.84 per cent; and concessional loans at 4.34 per cent.
It is surprising when the actual cost of the relocations—that is, a maximum worst-case scenario—
Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—
Mr JOYCE: You asked a range of questions, Shadow Minister—member for Hunter. If you ask a range of questions, you are going to get a range of answers. What that means is if there was a worst-case scenario, including such things as if you could not re-lease or sublease the building, which in the current market is rubbish—of course you are going to be able to re-lease the building. The issue is: you talk about 30—
Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—
Mr JOYCE: I seem to remember a place—was it Australia House or something that the Labor Party had—that had some of the dearest rents in the world owned formerly by the Labor Party? This is one of the reasons that if we want to spend money on research and development, then over the longer term we have to make sure we are in a more affordable market.
What I can say is, recently, as part of the $330 million drought package, we made quarter of a billion dollars accessible for a further 12 months. The longest term within that category is up to 10 years—10 years at 3.21 per cent. It is unsurprising that, in areas where the drought is most prevalent, you get the biggest draw down on the facilities; and, in areas where the drought is prevalent, of course you do not. But in New South Wales and Queensland, we are, I believe, pretty well close to the tranches as they are made available have been fully drawn.
What you also asked about within this research and development criteria and the incredible sin of a maximum cost—even at Senate estimates, Shadow Minister, they noted a maximum cost. When the Howard-Vale government was kicked out, lost the election, the budget in the Department of Agriculture was $3.486 billion a year. When we came back into government, it was about $1.5 billion. It is amazing that you more than halved the size of the agricultural budget; decreased it by more than $1,500 million, and then you have the gall to talk to us about the cost of trying to do a better job with $30 million or between $30 million and $40 million at a maximum cost.
If Labor, the alternative government, has a distinct policy they want to put money alongside, then that that is a statement for Mr Shorten to make in his budget reply speech—and we did not hear boo. In fact, we have no guarantee whatsoever that the Labor Party will stand by any of the budget allocations we have made available so far and which will be further apparent in the white paper. I look forward to substantive statements from you, as the alternative agriculture minister, clearly spelling out your willingness to stand behind the agricultural industry—and that must be something we can hold an alternative government to. What we have at the moment is remonstrations, ridicule and derision—but no policy. I think it is about time we started getting some policy. I think the people of Australia deserve attention to detail to show that you are taking this portfolio seriously.
Going back to further research and development issues, the $26.7 million tranche— (Time expired)
Mr COULTON (Parkes—The Nationals Chief Whip) (18:51): I have a couple of questions for the agriculture minister. I have been in this place for going on eight years. I would like to compliment the minister. On budget night, the Treasurer mentioned agriculture quite a few times. I acknowledge the minister's influence in those decisions to put agriculture once again at the centre of the government's priorities. In the previous six budgets that I sat through, I did not hear agriculture mentioned once. The shadow minister is not present in the chamber, but I admit that he is showing some interest in agriculture. It is rather unusual for someone in the Labor Party to show that interest. His predecessors were somewhat embarrassed to have the agriculture portfolio and they did everything they could do to get out of it. When Mr Burke was the minister, he decided we would no longer have 'droughts'—we would have 'periods of dryness'—and we would no longer need a policy for drought. So I commend the minister, who has come into the portfolio in the midst of the worst drought in history, for the work that he has done.
In the north-west part of my electorate of Parkes, the drought is biting very hard. We are going into our fourth year of drought. Just today and yesterday, as we had a magnificent rainfall event go through northern New South Wales and Queensland, the bizarre happened again: it skipped over the Walgett Shire. While Bourke, to the west, got 50 millimetres and Moree, to the east, got 50 millimetres, Walgett get itself got 15 millimetres—and with no subsoil moisture, there is no real relief. I acknowledge the work that you have done, Minister, and the visits that you and the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have made to my electorate to speak to those farmers.
One of the issues in those areas is that the ability of farmers to diversify has been somewhat limited. With over 30 years of farming experience myself, I happen to know that one of the quickest ways to generate a dollar is through the running of sheep. Cattle are running very hot at the moment—over $3 a kilo for weaners—but, from my experience, the quick way to generate a dollar coming out of a drought is through sheep. But in northern New South Wales, Queensland and other parts of Australia wild dogs are a huge problem. In some parts, not only has this prohibited the running of sheep but there are widespread reports that wild dogs are now taking down calves. This is having an enormous effect. As we come out of drought, the ability of farmers to get back on their feet, I believe, would be greatly enhanced if there were a control mechanism for wild dogs. I understand there is work being done. So one of the questions I would like to ask the minister is if he might update me and others present on what the policy will be on wild dogs.
The irony also is that as rain is falling in other parts—we have seen some magnificent rainfall across the eastern states—much of it is running out to sea. I would like to ask the minister about where he is with his dams white paper and what sort of thing we might expect from the minister and from this government with regard to dams. We are having a huge problem. The Parkes electorate covers 25 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin, and all the rivers in my electorate at the moment are looking at zero allocation. I know that the best investment that you can put into a town in my electorate is a megalitre of water. There is no other thing that you can put in that generates more of a multiplier effect than a megalitre of water.
So there you are, Minister: a couple of questions, one on wild dogs and the other one on where we are with our dams policy.
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (18:56): We have put forward a program of making sure that we create the best impetus for the creation of fencing that both begins and ends at the same spot so we get the greatest enclosure of the greatest possible area, but with a plan to eradicate the dogs within that area. I think that is vitally important. We are hoping—and this is the feedback we are now getting—that in certain areas the councils would work together. This also will increase our capacity to deal with this. Whilst we are dealing with the eradication of wild dogs, we also have greater capacity to deal with other feral pests, especially wild pigs. Also, because predominantly there is no natural predator to the kangaroo except us, we have to get the kangaroo meat industry going again. It helps us with some form of control there as well. This is vitally important.
I know we are getting to the end of the time, so what I will do, to pay proper respect to the questions that were asked by the shadow minister in regard to concessional loans, is to take it on notice to deliver to the shadow minister the precise answers. He can take that as a correction of anything I have said. Rather than read you through all the tabulated data here, we will get it to you. That, I think, is the most concise way. I think you deserve the respect of trying to get you as much detail as I possibly can on that issue.
In conclusion—because we are coming to a conclusion—on the water infrastructure, I know that, especially in the member for Parkes's area, in Walgett, it is a travesty that once more I hear that they have missed out on rain. But in other areas in the member's electorate there are some of the best irrigated farms with the highest yields in the world—the best in the world. They are going to grab the capacity with both hands. Whilst they are getting good prices for cotton, they now have the capacity to refurbish and make their farms even more efficient, with a 100 per cent write-off. It is that sort of investment.
I will give you one example. We have the IFED project, which the state Labor government in Queensland and the former Treasurer of Queensland, Keith De Lacy, are discussing. That is a $1.7 billion or $1.8 billion project in North Queensland, predominantly irrigation. This is the sort of thing that brings the jobs into the area. When we are talking to the people in the area, these are the sorts of projects they want in order to get the Indigenous community employed. Fred Pascoe from the lands council comes down and says, 'These are the sorts of issues that I want you to stand behind and drive.' Within our dams policy, we are going to have to have some reach across the chamber in a bipartisan way to drive some of these projects through. It is going to be vitally important in the refurbishment of the agricultural assets of Australia.
In conclusion, we will get to the shadow minister the tabulated data on exactly where those loans are. On the issue of wild dogs, I do not think it is going to wait too much. We will be paying further attention to the water infrastructure space in the white paper. That was actually part of the white paper, and it is of vital importance that we have a policy for refurbishment of the irrigated assets on the property. That goes hand in glove with the construction of further dams in our nation, in the catchments. In the area where I formerly lived, between Surat and Hebel, they have created a small dam for the fattening of lambs. It became a precinct that produced about $1 billion worth of cotton a year. But you have to have that seed capital—that seed investment. It is that sort of entrepreneurial spirit, driven by the individual, that actually puts money on the table for our nation.
There are so many other things I would have liked to be able to go through had I had the opportunity. There are further issues in our research and development field that are being dealt with. We are now developing a new rust for blackberries. We are looking at the biological treatment of parthenium weed. This is in our most recent tranche. We are looking for better efficiencies in irrigation. In the dairy industry, we have a $4 million grant for greater efficiencies in dairy. (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ): The question is that the proposed expenditure for the Agriculture portfolio be agreed to.
Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (19:01): Is there any time remaining, Mr Deputy Speaker? I am hopeful that there may be.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: We were due to conclude at 7 pm for the adjournment.
Mr FITZGIBBON: Yes, I understand that, but we started late because of the division. I think that might have been one opportunity to extend just a few minutes. I am going to shout the minister; we are having a dance. The minister and I are dancing tonight. His wife could not make it, so—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will allow a brief question.
Mr FITZGIBBON: I just thank the minister for his courtesy and his commitment in returning to me the drought. I might just ask him to add some information. It is very hard to derive just from the budget papers what the program is costing the government. The government is borrowing at the bond rate and charging between three and four per cent. So what will the various programs actually cost the government, taking into account, of course, provision for doubtful debts and administrative and other fees? I was going to ask him some questions about FIRB threshold changes and charges, but out of respect for the hour and the House I will leave those for another day.
Mr JOYCE (New England—Minister for Agriculture) (19:02): I thank the shadow minister. There are certain areas where some of our loan facilities have been virtually fully drawn, and in other areas not so much. They are more accentuated where there is not a drought. But the best way to get succinct detail is to provide it to the shadow minister rather than babble it out here.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Debate adjourned.
Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:03