I move:
That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the House:
Coalition MPs are running away from the Howard government’s plans to—
I move:
That the member be no longer heard.
Question put.
Is the motion seconded?
Shine the radioactive light on them, Mr Speaker—
I move:
That the member be no longer heard.
Question put.
Original question put:
That the motion (Mr Garrett’s) be agreed to.
I remind all members that, while it may be Thursday morning, they are expected to uphold proper dress standards.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Abbott.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
This bill proposes an amendment to the Health Insurance Act 1973 relating to the arrangements for reviewing the operation of sections I9AA, 3GA and 3GC of the act, collectively known as the Medicare provider number legislation.
These amendments are the result of the widespread acceptance of the legislation since its introduction in 1996, and aim to change the frequency of the review from two to five years.
The Medicare provider number legislation contained within section 19AA of the act was introduced in 1996. At the time of its introduction it was considered a contentious move as it was perceived it could harm the future employment opportunities of junior doctors.
In 1999, a review of the legislation found that these concerns were misplaced and that the legislation was working well. In 2001, the act was amended to require a biennial report on the operation of the legislation.
The 2003 and 2005 biennial reviews found that the legislation continued to be well accepted and was raising the quality of general practice services to the community. There was also broad agreement that the operation of section 19AA of the act had certainly not exacerbated any medical workforce shortages.
During the 2005 biennial review the frequency of the review process was questioned with a view to extending the period between reviews.
The bill proposes to retain the review process, but change the interval from two to five years, with the next review report to be tabled in parliament no later than 31 December 2010.
Debate (on motion by Ms Plibersek) adjourned.
I move:
That the House, at its rising, adjourn until Tuesday, 20 March, at 2 p.m., unless the Speaker or, in the event of the Speaker being unavailable, the Deputy Speaker, fixes an alternative day or hour of meeting.
Question agreed to.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Andrews.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
This bill is an omnibus bill which makes amendments to four acts, all of which contain mirror provisions relating to personal identifiers. The amendments are to the Migration Act 1958, the Fisheries Management Act 1991, the Torres Strait Fisheries Act 1994 and the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
The bill also makes two other amendments to the Migration Act, dealing with movement records, and enforcement visas granted to illegal foreign fishers.
Schedule 1 of the bill amends provisions in relation to personal identifiers.
Identifying information provisions were inserted into the Migration Act in 2004. These provisions create a scheme for the collection, access and disclosure of ‘personal identifiers’ in various immigration circumstances. Personal identifiers include photographs, signatures, and fingerprints; and audio and video recordings.
Since the provisions were inserted, it has become clear that there have been some unintended consequences of the access and disclosure provisions which need to be rectified.
The provisions impose criminal penalties in relation to the access and disclosure of personal information, unless that access or disclosure is expressly permitted. It has become apparent that the list of permitted disclosures and access grounds is too limited. My department’s ability to continue normal working practices is being seriously hampered and in some instances activities have been discontinued as a result. For example, my department can no longer disclose photos and signatures to investigate and prosecute some Migration Act offences. My department can also no longer disclose photos and signatures to law enforcement agencies or the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for the prosecution of crimes that are not immigration related.
An independent review of these provisions is scheduled to commence on the third anniversary of the provisions in the second half of this year. It is expected that this review will address many of the difficulties which have been identified with the personal identifier provisions. However, in light of the serious problems presently being faced by my department, it is essential that certain amendments be made as soon as possible. These are expected to resolve the most urgent problems being experienced.
The proposed amendments will introduce a permitted disclosure ground that mirrors the Privacy Act ground of ‘reasonably necessary for the enforcement of criminal law’. Without this amendment the department cannot provide a signature on an incoming passenger card to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for drug trafficking cases. This piece of evidence is crucial in establishing when a person charged with such offences arrived in Australia. Several drug importation matters have been delayed because of our inability to provide this information.
The bill will also allow identifying information to be disclosed where the disclosure is ‘required by or under law’. Again, this mirrors a Privacy Act ground, and will allow my department to provide photos of clients in response to search warrants.
There will be a new permitted disclosure ground to allow the department to send audio tapes and video recordings of client interviews to companies for transcription and translation services. The current provisions mean that this activity is largely being done by staff in my department. Allowing professional transcription and translation companies to provide these services will result in a more efficient allocation of departmental resources.
The bill will also permit disclosure of identifying information collected under the Migration Act to the Migration Agents Registration Authority to enable it to continue to investigate complaints into migration agents.
These amendments have been developed in close consultation with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to ensure that they are aligned with the provisions of the Privacy Act.
Similar amendments will also be made to the personal identifier provisions of the Fisheries Management Act, the Torres Strait Fisheries Act, and the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
These acts contain provisions which mirror the personal identifier regime in the Migration Act. The mirror regimes ensure consistency of rules and practices between the four pieces of legislation. This is particularly important in the case of illegal foreign fishers, who may be in detention under the fisheries or environmental protection legislation when brought into Australia, but the legal basis for their detention may change to the Migration Act after a number of days. There is therefore a need for consistency in how identifying information is collected and dealt with under all four acts. The only amendment to the Migration Act provisions which is not mirrored for these other acts is that which permits disclosure to the Migration Agents Registration Authority, as this is not relevant to the other portfolios.
In addition to the personal identifier changes, the bill makes two other amendments to the Migration Act.
Schedule 2 of the bill deals with the release of movement records kept by my department. These are electronic records of arrivals in, and departures from, Australia of both citizens and noncitizens.
Under the Migration Act, it is an offence for a person to read, examine, use or disclose a movement record, unless the person has been authorised to do so by the minister. The act sets out who may be authorised and for what purposes. It does not allow the minister to authorise officers to make records available to the person to whom the record relates, or that person’s agent.
Individuals seeking their own records must therefore apply for access under the Freedom of Information Act 1982. There are many occasions where a person’s movement record is required as evidence for health insurance, tax or other purposes. Access through the freedom of information process is unnecessarily complex from a client service perspective.
The proposed amendments to the Migration Act will ensure my department can respond to client requests for movement records in a more efficient manner.
Schedule 3 to the bill amends the Migration Act definition of ‘fisheries detention offence’.
The definition lists offences specified in the fisheries legislation. Noncitizens brought into Australia under suspicion of having committed such offences are granted enforcement visas. This ensures that while they are in fisheries detention they are not also in immigration detention.
The Fisheries Management Act was amended last year to add new fishing offences. The proposed amendment to the Migration Act will include references to these new offences in the definition of ‘fisheries detention offence’. This will ensure that enforcement visas are granted to noncitizens who have been brought to Australia in relation to these new offences.
I commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Ms Plibersek) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Pearce.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Today I introduce a bill which will improve the corporate governance of three statutory authorities in the Treasury portfolio. Those authorities are: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee (CAMAC) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).
The bill is part of a broader exercise within the Australian government to improve transparency and consistency in relation to governance arrangements for statutory authorities and office holders.
In June 2003 the government received the Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Office Holders. This is now generally referred to as the Uhrig review. The Uhrig review identified a number of options for the government to improve consistency and transparency in the relationship between ministers and statutory authorities and office holders.
The Australian government announced its response to the Uhrig review in August 2004.
As part of its response, the Australian government agreed that the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997, generally known as the FMA Act, should apply to statutory authorities where it is appropriate that they be legally and financially part of the Commonwealth and where they do not need to own assets.
This bill implements this decision in relation to ASIC, CAMAC and APRA.
Under the new framework, the three agencies will hold money and property on behalf of the Commonwealth rather than in their own right. This reflects their status as agencies that are largely budget-funded, in contrast to agencies that raise funds for commercial activities.
The agencies will also have the power to enter into contracts on behalf of the Commonwealth. In addition, ASIC and APRA will retain the power to enter into contracts on their own behalf. However the intention is that this power will only be used for regulatory purposes; for example, in regard to regulatory agreements.
Importantly, the bill will also define the financial reporting requirements of ASIC, CAMAC and APRA under the FMA Act and the responsibilities of the chief executives of the agencies.
It is important to note that the changes I have just described will not adversely affect the operational capabilities nor the independence of the statutory bodies. As noted in the Uhrig review, it is the authority’s legislative framework—and not its financial framework—which establishes the level of operational independence required to exercise its statutory responsibilities in an effective way.
While these reforms may be considered to be minor in nature, I note that they are an important part of a broader effort to improve governance across Commonwealth agencies. Improved consistency and transparency in governance will assist all agencies in delivering important services to the Australian community. This bill therefore delivers on the government’s commitment to increase consistency across public sector regulation wherever possible.
I commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Ms Plibersek) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Ms Ley.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The Australian government is committed to building the sustainability of the agriculture sector and providing assistance when it experiences severe downturns during rare and severe climatic events.
We are all witnessing the devastation of the current drought.
It is the worst drought on record.
At present, more than 44 per cent of the country’s agricultural land has been exceptional circumstances (EC) declared.
That covers 63 regions. And a further four areas are currently being assessed for EC declarations.
If you pause to think about this, you will realise that several European nations could fit into an area that size.
Some regions are heading into their sixth consecutive year of drought, and more and more farm families are having trouble making ends meet.
To help farmers, small business operators and communities cope with deteriorating conditions, late last year the Australian government announced additional assistance measures and made existing measures easier to access.
These measures included:
Since 2001 we have provided over $1.3 billion in assistance, and we have committed a further $900 million in assistance until 2008.
Now, eligible small business operators will be able to access the same support that is already provided to farmers.
The Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2007 will let agriculturally-dependent small business operators access EC relief payments and access ancillary benefits, such as a healthcare card and concessions under the youth allowance and Austudy means test.
The bill gives effect to the current ex gratia arrangements for small business income support, and changes legislation so that eligible small business operators can access the ancillary benefits.
It is important to note that not all small business operators in rural areas are eligible to access EC assistance.
A small business operator must be able to demonstrate that 70 per cent of their gross business income is derived from providing goods and services for the purposes of farming.
The bill outlines all the eligibility criteria that will determine whether a small business can access EC relief payments.
We expect the criteria will make sure assistance is provided to the small business operators most affected by the drought.
The Australian government is aware that there are small business operators who can also be considered farmers.
Due to the extended nature of this drought, it is beginning to affect this group of people’s ability to make a living from their small businesses and their farm enterprises.
Under the current eligibility criteria for EC relief payments, these small business operators may not be eligible for assistance as a farmer, as their off-farm income is too high.
Nor may they be eligible for assistance as a small business operator, as their farm assets may rule them out.
The bill will give support to small business operators who meet both the small business and farmer qualifications, except that they do not derive significant income from the farm.
Specified farm assets and small business assets will be exempt from their assessment for assistance.
The bill will also give effect to two other pieces of legislation:
Changes to the Social Security Act will let eligible small business operators access concessions under the Youth Allowance and Austudy means tests that are already available for farmers.
Under these concessions, assets that are exempt in the Farm Household Support Act 1992 will also be considered exempt if a small business operator receiving EC relief payments applies for Youth Allowance or Austudy.
Both the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Education, Science and Training have agreed on these changes to the Social Security Act.
The bill also brings into effect a section in the Farm Household Support Act that outlines that the rate of EC relief payments for small business operators is the same as that for farmers—and it is dependent on age.
The Attorney-General has provided exemptions under the Age Discrimination Act that let the rate of EC relief payments for both small business operators and farmers be calculated according to their age.
The bill makes a number of other changes to the Farm Household Support Act to bring it into line with the Age Discrimination Act.
Sections under the Farm Household Support Act that have age qualifications that do not already have exemptions under the Age Discrimination Act will be removed when the bill is passed.
Conclusion
I would like to reiterate that the Australian government has a strong record of providing assistance to the agriculture sector to manage the impacts of drought in rural and regional Australia.
And we remain committed to providing help whenever and wherever it is needed.
I have been out to these drought-affected areas in recent months and I can confirm that I have never seen a drought that is so harsh and so far-reaching.
I know that the Prime Minister has also seen how bad it is firsthand.
I would like to thank the farmers, small business operators, community and industry groups who have all contributed to the success of the Australian government’s drought assistance measures.
My thanks also go to the ministers and government agencies that have swiftly implemented the drought assistance measures announced in October and November 2006.
Passage of this bill will ensure that our drought assistance can reach those most in need.
I commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Ms Plibersek) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Ms Ley.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The purpose of this bill is to amend the Primary Industries and Energy Research and Development Act 1989.
The amendments follow the government’s endorsement of the assessment by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry of the statutory rural research and development corporations (RDCs) against the Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Office Holders (the Uhrig report).
The government commissioned the review by Mr John Uhrig AC to assess the governance arrangements of Commonwealth statutory authorities, with particular focus on those that impacted on the business sector.
The objective of the review was to identify issues surrounding existing governance arrangements and to provide options for government to improve the performance of statutory authorities and office holders, and improve their accountability frameworks.
Individual ministers are responsible for the assessment of statutory agencies in their own portfolios with the Minister for Finance and Administration providing a coordination role.
More than 160 Australian government agencies are being assessed against the Uhrig report principles and templates.
The amendments to the act will give effect to governance improvements for the eight statutory RDCs.
Six of these RDCs cover the cotton; fisheries; forest and wood products; grains; grape and wine; and sugar industries.
Smaller and emerging rural industries are covered by the rural industries research and development corporation.
Natural resource management research and development is covered by Land and Water Australia.
The assessment of the eight statutory RDCs concluded that they should continue to be governed by independent, skills based boards.
Such a governance structure is in line with the board template under the Uhrig report. It ensures the RDCs are best placed to enhance the partnership between industry and government under the RDC model, the RDCs also determine investment strategies that best meet industry and government priorities and maintain key relationships with an extensive range of primary industry stakeholders and research providers.
However, the current administrative practice of appointing serving public servants as government directors on RDC boards was recognised as not consistent with a skills based approach and is to be discontinued. Instead, the skills set for board selection will be expanded to include expertise in public administration.
This decision will also remove the potential for conflict of interest for serving public servants between their responsibilities to the minister and to the board.
As part of the assessment process, consideration was given to the operational and reporting requirements under the act to achieve the appropriate balance between the minister’s role, effective communications and accountability and the role of the RDC boards.
The interactions of the act with the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 (CAC Act) in regard to accountability and management obligations of the RDCs were also considered.
These considerations gave rise to a number of other amendments to the act that respond to the Uhrig report’s recommendations to improve corporate governance and will improve board expertise, experience and management arrangements.
Two changes to the act in the areas of board selection committees and reporting on selection committee performance will improve governance through providing greater emphasis on the diversity of board membership.
They will also provide a practical response by the government to the recommendations by the recent report of the inquiry into women’s representation on regional and rural bodies of influence. That inquiry as, I recall, was at the table chaired by Judith Troeth. I thank Senator Judith Troeth and panel members Heather Ridout and Dennis Mutton.
These amendments to the act will further strengthen the delivery arrangements for rural industries’ R&D. Together with the seven industry owned rural research and development companies, the eight statutory RDCs operated as a key partnership between the government and industry in delivering more than $541 million in rural research, development and extension in 2005-06.
It is vital that the RDCs meet best practice in their operations. Through the Uhrig report assessment process, the government is helping to strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness with which the RDCs pursue the competitiveness, productivity and sustainability of Australia’s rural industries.
The amendments to the act are part of the broader range of responses to the Uhrig report that are being pursued by the government to improve the governance framework for a number of statutory agencies in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry portfolio.
These include the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority and the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation. The legislative amendments to improve their governance framework and performance are due to be considered during the current parliamentary session.
I commend the bill.
Debate (on motion by Ms Plibersek) adjourned.
On behalf of the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, I move:
That, in accordance with section 5 of the Parliament Act 1974 , the House approves the following proposal for work in the Parliamentary Zone which was presented to the House on 27 February 2007, namely: Reconciliation Place—Women artwork.
The National Capital Authority, in consultation with the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination, has developed a design proposal for the Women Artwork at Reconciliation Place. Section 5(1) of the Parliament Act 1974 provides that no building or other work is to be erected on land within the Parliamentary Zone unless the minister has caused the proposal for the erection of the building or work to be laid before each house of parliament and the proposal has been approved by resolution of each house of parliament.
The proposed artwork recognises the respective lives and contributions of Dr Faith Bandler, Dr Evelyn Scott and Lady Jessie Street within the context of reconciliation. The proposed artwork is to be located on the eastern promenade of Reconciliation Place, adjacent to the High Court of Australia. The artwork will reach the height established by the existing artworks. The National Capital Authority is advised that it is prepared to grant works approval to the above proposal, pursuant to section 12(1)(b) of the Australian Capital Territory Planning and Land Management Act 1988. The approval of both houses of parliament is sought under section 5(1) of the Parliament Act 1974 for the Women Artwork at Reconciliation Place.
Question agreed to.
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: Lavarack Barracks redevelopment stage 4, Townsville, Queensland.
The facilities at Lavarack Barracks in Townsville have been progressively updated over three development stages. These works are stage 4 of that redevelopment. The principal objectives of this proposal are to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the infrastructure in support of defence capability, to reduce facilities maintenance expenditure on buildings and infrastructure and to address functional and occupational health and safety deficiencies within the existing facilities.
The majority of the facilities to be addressed by this proposal were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s to support training for deployment to Vietnam. These facilities are now substandard and no longer provide the functionality for a modern army. I know the member for Herbert and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence would be strongly in support of this work being carried out, particularly so that the men and women of the Army in that area have the best possible facilities to carry on with their work. The estimated out-turn cost of the proposal is $207.2 million. Subject to parliamentary approval, construction could commence in late 2007, with completion in mid-2011. I commend the motion to the House.
Question agreed to.
On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, I present the report of the committee entitled Statutory oversight of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, together with evidence received by the committee.
Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.
by leave—I would like to put on record the committee’s thanks to ASIC for appearing biannually at the statutory oversight hearing. They have a rather large reporting burden to the parliament, as they also must appear at estimates. We thank them for their open review and discussions. At the hearing on 30 November, various issues were covered: the government’s proposed reforms to corporations and financial services regulations, ASIC’s first survey on superannuation fees and costs, professional indemnity insurance for financial planners, AMP’s enforceable undertaking to ASIC to improve the quality of advice provided by its planners, ASIC’s handling of the Westpoint matter and other high-risk mezzanine schemes generally, ASIC’s work to better educate investors, the Vizard matter, implications for ASIC of the Cole commission report, proposed prohibition on hedging executive share options, corporate governance standards of Australia’s listed property trust sector, and implications for ASIC of the expansion of private equity investment in Australia. These issues are all covered in the report.
Numerous issues were discussed at the hearing that have not been covered in the report, and they are also tabled. Most of us may think that this is fairly boring and routine stuff, but when you discover that it is all about how you are going to retire and whether your investments are going to be there, it is actually fairly important that ASIC is providing this oversight. One of the things that we need to commend ASIC on is their shadow shopper exercise to monitor super choice, how funds are moving, and giving advice to people about what to do with their investments. Most of us are fairly clueless about what to do with our investments, and we need to ensure that the people who are giving us the advice are giving us advice that is not skewed to one product by virtue of the commissions they are receiving in respect of that product.
Another fundamental role that ASIC is playing is to educate the public about fraud. I am sure that all of us have had a constituent who has been burnt by Mr Tweed. Mr Tweed is out there getting lists of companies and share registers, and we need to keep reminding the public that if Mr Tweed offers to buy their shares from them, they should check the share price first and not just sign the paper and think, ‘This is a quick way to get money.’ It is not. It is a lot less than you would get if you sold the shares. By virtue of his new schemes, you will probably never see the money. ASIC is keeping up a vigil on that and we commend them for it. We also ask, as ASIC does, that companies take the time and effort to ensure that, if Mr Tweed has asked for their register, they inform the shareholders on the register that Mr Tweed is probably about to lodge on them a share offer that is too good to be true—and it is. It is actually less than you would get if you just went to your stockbroker and sold those shares.
There is other information in the report with respect to the ongoing Vizard matter. We will keep a watching brief on this, as we do believe that there is more action that can be taken against Mr Vizard and other interested parties in that ongoing debate. I commend the report to the House.
Consideration resumed from 27 February.
Senate’s amendments—
I move:
That the amendments be agreed to.
Australian citizenship became a reality with the commencement of the Australian Citizenship Act 1948 on Australia Day, 26 January 1949—just three years after the first celebration of this day as our national day. Each year, more than 100,000 people from more than 200 countries make the pledge of commitment and, in doing so, become Australian citizens. They pledge to uphold a set of common values, which include belief in our democratic system, equality under the law and equality of treatment and opportunity. As full participants in the Australian community they can vote, they can stand for parliament and, more importantly, they have the privilege of being a part of this nation. The Prime Minister recently said:
… the path is you come to this country, you embrace its customs, its values, its language, you become a citizen.
Since 1949, more than four million people have followed this path. They have contributed to the wonderfully diverse, welcoming and energetic country that Australia is today. These bills represent major improvements in the legislation which has served us well over the years but needs to better reflect and cater for the challenges of the 21st century. In addition to the policy changes, the bill will result in better structured legislation using modern language.
The legislation provides for the refusal of applications by people who are assessed as a risk to our nation’s security, consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. There is explicit provision for refusal of an application unless the minister is satisfied as to the applicant’s identity. A further significant safeguard is a provision to revoke citizenship where that status was acquired as a result of fraud by a third party. The revocation provisions have also been strengthened to cover conviction for a serious criminal offence committed at any time before the person becomes an Australian citizen.
The legislation will remove the age limit for registration by descent. This will provide access to their Australian heritage for those born overseas whose Australian parents failed to register their birth before they turned 25 years of age. In recognition of the potential for fraud is the registration of citizenship by descent case load. The bill makes it clear that a person registered as a citizen by descent will be taken never to have been an Australian citizen if, at the time of the person’s birth, there was not at least one parent who was an Australian citizen.
There have been some claims from the opposition that COAG was somehow involved in the decision to increase the residence requirement from two years to three years. The fact is that the increase from two years permanent residence to three years permanent residence was not an agreed COAG outcome, nor was it the result of consultation with COAG. Indeed, it was announced by the Prime Minister on 8 September 2005, prior to the COAG meeting on 27 September. This is not surprising, given that citizenship law is a federal, not state, matter. There have also been claims that no reasons were given for the change from three years permanent residence to four years lawful residence. It is important to note that the change was from three years permanent residence to four years lawful residence, and up to three years on temporary visas can be counted towards the four years residence requirement. Reasons for the change were given on 17 September 2006, when the change was announced. The former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the Hon. Andrew Robb, said at the time:
This change, together with the proposed citizenship test with its English language requirement, will help ensure citizenship applicants have had sufficient time in Australia to become familiar with our way of life and appreciate the commitment they are making when they become citizens.
He also said:
These new requirements recognise the changes in the migration program over the past four years. Increasing numbers of people spent significant periods of time in Australia as temporary residents prior to becoming permanent residents. This is why only one of the four years spent in Australia, as proposed in the amendment, will need to be as a permanent resident.
Resumption of citizenship has been streamlined, consistent with the repeal in 2002 of section 17, under which Australians who acquired citizenship of another country automatically lost their Australian citizenship. The age limit for resumption by people who knowingly renounce their citizenship will also be removed.
Importantly, there is explicit provision that all persons who were Australian citizens immediately before the commencement of this legislation, whether by birth in this country, by descent or by grant, will remain Australian citizens under the new act. The Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2006 has received little comment during its passage. However, it contains essential provisions to allow for transitional changes and consequential amendments to other legislation which are necessary following the repeal of the act that has served us so well over the years.
I would like to acknowledge those who have been involved in the development of the policy changes reflected in this legislation: my colleagues the Hon. Gary Hardgrave, the Hon. Peter McGauran, the Hon. John Cobb—who introduced the bills in the parliament—and, most recently, the Hon. Andrew Robb. I commend the provisions to the House.
In his speech, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship gave a summary of the government’s position on the Australian Citizenship Bill 2006 but did not really go to the question that is currently before the House. The question before the House is not that the bill be read a second time; it is that the amendments be agreed to. It is worth noting, in support of resolving the question that the amendments to the bill that went to the Senate be agreed to, what those amendments actually were. When this bill went through the House of Representatives, it contained a section which should have been unthinkable, and that was for a very small class of people—those who had been defined under the legislation as being stateless people. If they had spent five years inside a prison within Australia, they would be prohibited from becoming Australian citizens.
That part of the legislation is not controversial, but it also said that if they had spent the same period of time in prison in any country of the world they would be prohibited from having Australian citizenship. Labor argued the whole way through this—and I do not blame the minister opposite, because it was his predecessor who was responsible for the sloppy drafting—that you could outsource many things but you should never outsource Australian citizenship and you certainly should never outsource Australian citizenship to the worst regimes in the world. The government refused to amend that bill while it was in this House, so the House of Representatives of Australia was actually saying—and I have always acknowledged that it is for a limited class of people—that those people would be prohibited from taking up Australian citizenship not because they had done anything contrary to Australian law but because they may well have broken the laws that enforced apartheid in South Africa. They may well have rebelled against the Hussein regime in Iraq. They may well have been part of the support group of Aung San Suu Kyi, in Burma. They could have been imprisoned for the requisite period of time for any of those reasons, and the Australian government minister would have had no right, no discretion at all, to allow that person to be an Australian citizen.
I have never been that impressed by the way the government exercises its discretion, but I certainly believe the minister should have a discretion in those instances. The motion that is before the House now is not about the entire bill. It is not about all the issues that the minister just went through. The motion before the House now is about an amendment that should have been carried in the House of Representatives the first time round. Fortunately, however, the amendment passed the Senate. We now have amendments which say that if that limited class of people were imprisoned by a foreign power then that would be highlighted to the minister and the minister would have a discretion. The bill is better for that change. Labor supports that amendment, and we are happy to support the amendments before the House.
Very briefly, in response to my honourable colleague opposite, I remind the House that the amendments in the Senate were government sponsored amendments.
Question agreed to.
Debate resumed from 28 February, on motion by Mr Ruddock:
That this bill be now read a second time.
I had a few minutes yesterday to begin speaking on the Customs Legislation Amendment (Augmenting Offshore Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2006. This bill is quite simple. The three different schedules interleave to protect Australia better and to give better tools to the Australian Customs Service in dealing with a number of different situations with people they need to identify—in some cases people they need to search and, in other cases, where they need to look for weapons or to retain documents for later use. They are sensible changes and they have already been looked at in depth by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.
Schedule 1 deals with changes to the powers of search and seizure available to Customs officers in the offshore environment. I will not be dealing with schedule 2, which updates broker licensing provisions and deals with the issue of locum customs brokers. Schedule 3 deals with a related matter, the recovery of customs duty, and the schedule modernises those provisions. I will also leave that aside. That arises from Malika Holdings Pty Ltd v Stretton in 2001, and there is nothing in it that I think needs to be drawn out.
Schedule 4, in respect of electronic statements or declarations about goods, deems those statements or declarations to have been made to a Customs officer. SmartGate technology is new to Australia—indeed, new to the world—and if you present yourself as something other than what you are, you might be in a bit more trouble.
There are two particular aspects that I want to concentrate on. One is the difficulty Customs officers have in boarding vessels offshore. Currently, there are a series of provisions in the act that are deficient compared to what is available in the fisheries act. We know how difficult it is for our people operating against foreign fishing vessels, where they have to board and then seize to carry out their functions. They have been given extra powers to deal with search and seizure of information because of the very remote nature of what they are doing. In fact, Labor is going to look at moving an amendment in the Senate to one particular provision of this bill—that is, there is an extension of the powers here, not just in the maritime area but also relating to aircraft. Labor has looked at it in the legal and constitutional committee. It is of the view that it should not so extend, so it is going to be looking at that further.
The key element here, though, is that, if you are an Australian Customs officer and you are looking at what is dealt with in this bill, it is almost like the dry bones of the problem. When you look through a bill, you try to read it; you try to work out what people are doing and where the changes are made. It does not really tell the story of what the problem is. On the high seas, this is what this bill is about: when there is a fishing vessel off Northern Australia. Customs vessels are not part of an Australian coastguard, which the Australian Labor Party is committed to introducing—because, in a coastguard with powers such as those of the United States Coast Guard, what is involved here in this bill is already done. Our naval people have a capacity to exercise their powers of search and seizure in a way covered by their legislation; Customs do not have that same range.
I said yesterday that I had been privileged to see a demonstration of the detention of a foreign fishing vessel. These are done in large numbers by our defence forces off Northern Australia. It is a difficult and dangerous task, not just according to the current level of the sea and the difficulties in relation to that. One never knows, when our people board a ship, what they going to confront. Where you have heavily armed people from the Australian Navy, and SAS officers, heavily armed, well-prepared and highly trained, going onto a vessel, their experience and expertise dramatically assist them. But our Australian Customs officers are not trained to that high level. They have a particular problem in that, when they go onto a vessel in similar circumstances, at the moment the only way that they can go forward is to detain the ship. If they think that the ship needs to be searched or people need to be searched, they have to formally say, ‘We’re going to detain the ship and then we’re going to drag it into Australia.’ This bill says, ‘Let’s break that part of the process. Let’s just put a search provision in so that a frisk search can be undertaken in specific circumstances where there is a belief that the law has been contravened.’ And there are some deliberate reasons for that.
I am talking about it at length, but I think it is important. If you just look at the dry dust of the writing on the pages of the bill, you cannot really understand what our people out there are confronting. It is a dangerous situation. There is also a situation where part of the provision of this bill is that Customs can do searches and look for weapons—and there is a specific subclause. Item 16 has been knocked out and there is a new item 17. I would like to refer it to the parliamentary secretary and to the minister. In that particular subclause, a new power is given to undertake searches, and the concentration with regard to item 17 is not on the weapons that people might have but in fact on prohibited goods they might have. Given that change, a complete change in emphasis, with the existing item 16 being knocked out, does that mean that the existing power to search for weapons is knocked out or is that provided for elsewhere? If you look at the Bills Digest, that question is raised. It may have been raised at the constitutional committee, but that is material.
In the Bills Digest, the evidence given by the Customs people is potent stuff. It gives you a picture of what they are facing. Officer safety and risk of evidence being destroyed are the main factors. This is why we are here and why we should support the changes. I quote the Bills Digest:
… an incident occurred during a boarding of an Indonesian fishing vessel located inside the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone. The team began to conduct an investigative boarding to determine if there was evidence of any offences. As a decision had not been made to detain the vessel, physical pat down searches were unable to be conducted. During the search of the vessel an Indonesian crew member produced a weapon and physically threatened the boarding team. A tactical withdrawal occurred to avoid physical injury to any Customs officers.
So, to be able to apprehend under threat of physical violence and simply because of not knowing whether at any time our officers could be under threat, we have to make these changes.
In the second part of their evidence, though, Customs go to why we have to have an ability to take documents and keep them for the length of time that might be needed in order to prosecute. This is a very modern reason—it is about a global positioning satellite and a bloke who had that in his pocket, because that provides evidence of where that fishing vessel had been. It provides conclusive evidence that can put them in court, have their vessel destroyed and stop them fishing our waters. I quote again:
During another recent boarding of an Indonesian fishing vessel, the Customs boarding team identified sufficient evidence for the vessel to be detained and escorted to port for further enquiries. Subsequent pat down search of the crew located a concealed Global Positioning Satellite in the trousers of a crew member. There was potential for this piece of evidentiary material to be disposed of from the time of boarding until the search finally took place once the vessel had been detained. If no other evidence of suspected offences had been identified, it would not have been possible to detain the vessel and conduct the searches and the GPS would not have been located.
I commend that to the House and to anyone listening. These are the practical reasons why we have to support our people in the field. If you just looked at the normal explanations we have, you would think, ‘Why are they going to do this?’ So people are saying, ‘Well, people don’t like searches; they don’t like them to be undertaken,’ and so on. People are very wary about it. But you have to imagine yourself as a Customs officer on the high seas in a dangerous and difficult situation, when you are doing your best to prosecute that job. We should not put impediments in front of them, and we should not have a situation, as exists now, where they cannot do the job we have asked them to do. So I entirely support that change and underline it for their experience.
I want to raise another matter, and that is SmartGate, which is a German invention. It is different from what I originally thought with regard to this technology. SmartGate has been developed by the passports office, so the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and a number of other agencies are involved, as well as Customs. There is an implication here that, if SmartGate works—and, in terms of development, initially we are looking at a cost in the order of $60 million to $70 million and even more over a five-year period—we might have fewer Customs officers operating in Australian airports. You might be the Customs officer, Parliamentary Secretary, when I lob up to a customs gate! I have my passport in hand. It is a passport that has a digital photo and a digital signature on it. I might go to the member for Macarthur and lob in. He would not necessarily be officious, but I would identify myself. He would have a look at the photo on the card, have a look at me and see whether there has been any change: have I lost weight—that is unlikely—have I put any more on, do I seem a bit too ruddy or whatever, or do I look like I have had a bad night? Is there any resemblance between that person and the one in this photo? If you get a tick, you are on your way through, if the rest of the information is okay.
Under SmartGate, you do not meet a Customs officer, either charming or otherwise; you meet a little bit of technology which has a simple scanner. You whack the passport onto it, the face image is read and the technology then says, ‘Bang! That’s what we have here. This is what we have in our database. There’s the match.’
If you go to the Customs website, everything is wonderful. It is terrific. There has been a lot of research done in relation to this matter and they are pretty happy. They say that Australian e-passport holders will be able to use it, as will e-passport holders in other countries. SmartGate takes a live image of your face and uses facial recognition technology that matches that with a stored digitised image—so there is a database element—in your e-passport. You are there, although you have changed somewhat. I mentioned this, I think, yesterday. Al Gore wonderfully said, ‘The only thing that can make you look like your passport photo is international air travel.’ They are not the most wonderful representations of people in the world. The only other things like them are drivers licences. You cannot even smile these days on them. They are embarrassing. Now that local clubs are doing the same thing, you just want to hide them rather than use them. But, given that there can be a mismatch, even for humans, there is an argument here about whether this thing will work and work effectively. Customs says:
SmartGate will also undertake immigration and customs checks. If there is a successful match, you are cleared through the Customs control point. If there is not a successful match you will be referred to a Customs officer.
So the member for Macarthur might still have a job at the customs point! He may still have something to do. Maybe he will be released from more mundane things. But—and here is the big but—does it work properly? Roger Clarke, who is a consultant in the area of biometrics, in web information, on this matter, said, ‘Australian government tries to make face-recognition look good’. He has talked to Customs. He has severe doubts in relation to this proposal and about the way in which it has been put through. He says that these technologies have been uniformly unsuccessful. Maybe the Germans have done it, but everybody else has failed. He has accused those who are backing this, including the department, I imagine, of extreme manipulation of data, truth and the media—that is normally the government’s job, not just the department’s. But there is a problem with the German technology: there is nothing open and public about how it has been proven. The methodology of doing it involved a couple of international experts being called in, and they have validated it.
Clarke says that they did not perform the tests, they did not design the tests and that they reported on three reports, only one of which was a technical test. They conducted independent observations. What does that mean? They had a look at it. In addition, they reviewed SmartGate data logs and other, derivative documents which are meaningless without additional information and analysis. There has not been any information provided about the study. The only other information he has seen a little of concerns DSTO—the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. They had had a look at it, and they said it works better than others but, if the others are broke, does this one really work? As an operational facial recognition system, it is not bad. Clarke says, ‘It doesn’t work very well and there have been disasters.’ This is borne out by an answer given by one of the experts: He said:
In one test 100 company employees attempted to impersonate someone other than themselves and eight of them were falsely accepted by the system. That is a very low rate of false accepts. At that “very low” level of force acceptances, every 747-load of people can include 25-30 terrorists; and some (undeclared) number of people will miss the plane because they were false rejections, and they’re still waiting in the queue for interrogation—
probably with the member for Macarthur there, doing his job as a Customs officer! These people will have missed out. We need to have a definitive answer to this because, if it is not going to work comprehensively, I do not want 747s potentially carrying 25 to 30 terrorists rolling up because we depended on the technology, which is not yet proven, rather than on Customs officers who have human eyes to make that determination.
I thank the member for Blaxland for his enlightening comments and for raising a couple of issues, which I am more than happy to answer as I sum up the Customs Legislation Amendment (Augmenting Offshore Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2006. I also thank members, both government and opposition, who have spoken on the bill.
This is an important bill and, as the member for Blaxland, who is sitting opposite, quite rightly pointed out, it is all about protecting our officers in the field and making sure that we have the best possible security system available in Australia to deal with people who tend to bend the rules a little, whether it involves illegal fishing boats or whether it is an immigration matter, such as someone trying to get into the country by false means.
Can I assure the member opposite, in relation to one of the concerns that he raised about weapons and the availability to search for weapons under the provisions in the bill, that this is covered by the legislation. I will enlighten him a little more on that as I read through the bill. The other point that he made—which is a sensible point—was about whether we were looking at machinery to replace Customs officers. Certainly not. The equipment will speed up the process and make it more convenient for people entering Australia. It will also improve reliability because, as an extra piece of equipment, it will be an extra asset available to Customs officers.
The member for Blaxland also quite rightly asked: ‘If there are problems and discrepancies, will they be subject to further investigation by Customs officers?’ This equipment is all about trying to streamline the system, and anybody who has ever come into this country after being abroad will know and understand how vitally important that is. It is important that Australia leads the world as far as Customs is concerned.
The bill proposes amendments to the Customs Act 1901 in relation to existing powers of search and seizure available to officers in the offshore maritime environment and to limiting circumstances relating to aircraft. The amendment powers will apply to ships being boarded by Customs, such as those suspected of illegal or foreign fishing. Recent escalations in the level of resistance by crews toward Customs officers boarding ships suspected of contraventions of the act or other prescribed acts have threatened the safety of officers and created a situation where evidence of possible offences may be destroyed. As the member opposite mentioned, evidence could easily be thrown overboard or ‘lost’ prior to boarding or during boarding by Customs. The proposed amendments deal with these circumstances, and that is why the amendments are desired.
The Customs Legislation Amendment (Augmenting Offshore Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2006 contains amendments to the Customs Act 1901 and the Customs Legislation Amendment and Repeal (International Trade Modernisation) Act 2001 that relate to border enforcement powers under the Customs Act, customs brokers’ employment arrangements, duty recovery and payments of duty under protest, and false and misleading statements made under the new SmartGate system.
The bill empowers Customs officers and other Commonwealth officers immediately upon boarding a ship or aircraft for various border enforcement purposes under the Customs Act, the Criminal Code and any relevantly prescribed act to conduct personal searches for, take possession of and retain weapons or items that might be used to assist a person to escape detention and to dispose of evidence of the commission of a relevant offence. The new powers ensure the personal safety of officers in exercising their enforcement functions. They also help to prevent the escape of any person detained as a suspect and help to prevent the disposal of evidence. This bill will also make amendments to other provisions relating to search powers under the Customs Act, which the member opposite referred to earlier.
To recognise the changing employment practices in the customs brokers’ community, the bill will remove the current restrictions in the Customs Act prohibiting individual customs brokers from being employed by more than one customs brokerage at the same time. The bill amends the Customs Act to limit the time for recovery of customs duty to four years in all cases except those of fraud or evasion, where no limit will apply. The proposed new regime is a response to the decision of the High Court in the Malika Holdings Pty Ltd v Stretton (2001) 204 CLRL 290 and is consistent with the existing regime for the recovery of other indirect taxes.
The bill will also clarify the process for making payment of customs duty under protest. Further, the bill will amend the Customs Act to enable the CEO, in certain circumstances, to offset an amount of unpaid duty on goods against any amount of refund or rebate that the owner would be eligible for if the owner were to pay the duty.
Customs will be introducing the electronic SmartGate passenger processing system in early 2007. This will allow eligible airline passengers and crew to use the automated clearance process through the immigration point at the border. This bill will amend the Customs Act to ensure that any false or misleading information provided under the SmartGate system will be covered by the existing offences provision relating to making false or misleading statements to an officer of Customs.
I once again thank all members for speaking on the bill. It is a sensible bill and will improve services and security for all the travelling Australian public. I commend the bill to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Debate resumed from 30 November, on motion by Mr Vaile:
That this bill be now read a second time.
I rise to address this very important bill: the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. In my opening remarks I must say that I am actually amazed, having left the shadow transport portfolio in December 2004, that this bill is still unfinished business. The truth is that extensive consultations occurred around this bill in the last parliament. It was effectively understood within the industry that it would have been dealt with by 2005 at the latest. Yet here we are, very close to another election, and the government is still trying to clean up its failure to pay proper attention to the legislative framework that surrounds the operation of airports in Australia.
Having said that, as the member for Dawson noted in her second reading speech, the privatisation of Australia’s 22 federal airports has indeed fostered a vibrant and dynamic industry and in doing so has enabled these airports to provide improved services with minimal call for public investment. That is important, because the travelling public expects quality services in terms of what they encounter at airports around Australia, both major capital city airports and regional airports.
The rapid growth in non-aviation development is also very welcome to generate the funds needed for future expansion, replacement of aviation infrastructure and improved quality of service at Australian airports. There is no way any government of any political persuasion could carry the investments required to maintain these quality airports. The funds generated from commercial development of airports will certainly remove what would otherwise be an enormous burden on taxpayers to deliver the essential aviation services that underpin more than ever our national economy.
But this development has not come without its problems, many of which have been unnecessarily created through the poor implementation of the planning and approval process by the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Local communities, particularly around Essendon, Adelaide and Perth, are very sensitive to some of the commercial developments at airports, and rightfully so. It is difficult to explain to a local community why on earth they should trust the planning regime for airports, when successive ministers have delivered an inappropriate decision or two—for example, to place a brickworks in Perth on airport land opposite a residential development. On all counts I think most accept that that development should never have proceeded; it is just inappropriate. It is those inappropriate decisions that create community concern and make it far more difficult to handle these issues, in the minds of some members of the House, in a rational and constructive way.
I say that because the problem is not so much with the planning regime but with the poor judgement of the minister in failing to consider surrounding land uses and plans when he has made decisions about commercial developments at airports. The price for that is that we will have to seek to amend this bill before the House, in the same way the minister himself has had to amend it—and he announced those amendments even before the debate started today. That reflects the fact that the minister’s own colleagues did not trust him with the responsibility for decision making and the exercise of due process. Obviously they, like the opposition, are reflecting the concerns and frustrations of their constituencies. Airports are very sensitive issues, and all too often ministers find it very difficult to make the right decisions because of local political campaigns. I refer to the fact that three weeks ago the minister, Mr Vaile, said:
I have received a number of representations from government MPs and senators asking me to extend the 45 working day period for consultation to 60 working days.
If there were historical evidence of the minister having due regard for community and local government concerns when it comes to sensitive airport development, I believe the revised timelines—and some did not even appreciate that they were talking about working days as against ordinary days in the consideration of this bill—which would have brought the planning regime into line with state and territory planning processes, may have been accepted. But the nature of the emotion that surrounds this bill has effectively meant that the minister himself has had to make an adjustment to be able to carry his caucus with respect to this bill. The unwillingness to reduce consultation timelines is a manifestation of distrust in the implementation of the process. The department, in association with the minister, have to work very hard, once this bill is approved by the parliament, to try and turn around that mistrust in the Australian community. It is for that very reason that my own colleagues are equally concerned and so are their constituencies.
The government’s record on airport development, with the brickworks at Perth, and retail developments at Adelaide and Essendon, means that we in the Labor Party are not prepared to accept any reductions in consultation or approval timelines. This is about distrust of the process and the will of the minister and the government to have due regard to the concerns of local communities and the land use and infrastructure plans of local government authorities. Perhaps the minister has finally learnt from his experiences with Harbour Town in Adelaide and the DFO at Essendon that he has to also take into account the impact of commercial development on surrounding infrastructure, such as roads. Local councils and state governments expect serious consideration of those issues.
I say that because I consider that the minister made the right decision three weeks ago with respect to the proposed Sydney airport retail development. That development would have required somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion worth of road infrastructure investment by the state and adjacent local authorities. Those are the issues that have to be considered by ministers when thoroughly considering applications to change master plans and seeking development approvals arriving out of those master plans.
I think it is totally inappropriate to expect that kind of contribution from government and equally inappropriate to clog up the existing road infrastructure without it. But I will also be fair—I will give the minister a break here. It is time that some of the airport lessee companies also woke up to their responsibilities, because their own performance is creating local problems in airport communities around Australia. It is not acceptable for some of those companies to treat state and local government authorities and local communities with the arrogance and disdain that some have clearly displayed when it comes to airport development. If you actually seek to work with the local community, you can take them with you. In the end, local communities are vitally dependent on efficient, modern airports.
It is also time that some state and local government authorities demonstrated a capacity to negotiate in good faith with airport developers for reasonable rate equivalent payments and contributions to off-airport infrastructure. Airport developers are all too often seen by a small number of councils as the source of the golden egg. That was never the intention with respect to airport development. But they must also recognise that the benefits of airport development flow on to local communities, and they are winners on a variety of fronts. For example, they are a huge generator of jobs in our regional and major capital cities.
Having said that, in some cases it may well be reasonable for the state and local government authorities to also contribute to surrounding infrastructure, particularly when they are in receipt of substantial rate equivalent payments, flow-on economic opportunities and job opportunities as a result of these huge investments by the private sector. These also include ordinary workers’ superannuation funds. They are looking for a fair return on their investment, which they are entitled to because it goes to their capacity to retire with some dignity.
On that note, I refer to the Gateway upgrade project in Brisbane, which I consider is a wonderful example of what can be achieved when infrastructure owners and all levels of government are prepared to work together to get the right outcomes for regional infrastructure. Obviously Brisbane Airport has learnt from past mistakes. The Brisbane Airport and airport precinct is not only important for the region; it is also of strategic economic importance for Queensland and the nation at large. So if we want to rebuild community trust in the planning regime for airports it is time for all parties, including the Commonwealth, to lift their game.
It is time for the federal minister to be more mindful of state and local government planning schemes, to consider the impact of developments on off-airport infrastructure, and to make sure that airport lessees are meeting their obligations to make rate equivalent payments and contribute to off-airport infrastructure, where that is reasonable. There is a qualifier: ‘where it is reasonable’. Some councils also have to appreciate that airports are not milking cows to help them avoid their own responsibilities on the rate base at a local level.
It is time for airport lessees to engage properly and fairly with all levels of government and community stakeholders, to propose developments that have due regard and respect for surrounding land uses, and to pay their way when it comes to associated infrastructure. It is about what is fair and reasonable for all involved in a local community, the private sector, and local, state and federal government authorities.
When it comes to planning control itself, it is clearly in the national interest that strategic economic infrastructure like our major airports, just like our ports, remain under proper planning process. And the airports should absolutely remain under Commonwealth control. At the end of the day, I do not believe that state and local government authorities really want ownership of controversial airport decisions—it is all too hard. That effectively means that the Commonwealth government has to do this difficult task in a fair and proper way.
Airport development, as we all appreciate, is a contentious community issue and both state and local governments remain far more exposed to the electoral pressure of short-term expediency than the Commonwealth. That would effectively mean that if we are not careful we would get overburdened with legal obligations and there will be no airport investment in Australia, because politicians—especially at local and state levels—are all too fearful of making those tough decisions because of local political considerations. I therefore rigorously argue that it is the role of the Commonwealth to adopt a leadership position and to take a long term view when it comes to national strategic infrastructure development, like airports. It is the level of government best placed to do this.
Therefore, it is my view that the Commonwealth must retain ownership of airport land and control over the long-term development of airport infrastructure that is vital to the future success of the Australian economy. If you have any doubts about that, just think about how dependent the national tourism industry is on the aviation industry. Many of the concerns about this bill relate to bad historical experience, with fault on the part of some local government authorities and planning authorities and some airport lessee companies from time to time. There is fault at all levels. However, the minister has the power, if he or she chooses to actually exercise it, to ensure good planning outcomes at airports for all parties. They must be held to account in this regard.
Poor implementation of planning processes has been a problem at state and local government levels as well, and changing the jurisdiction, as some suggest, would not solve the problem. It is actually about using the current legislative framework, including any refinements, to do the right thing in tough planning decisions. I say that because, in addition, we all appreciate that airport development is a contentious issue and we all accept that the Commonwealth is the only level of government that is actually capable of making these tough decisions. It is the only government authority that is capable of taking a more long term view when it comes to national strategic infrastructure development decisions like airports. It is the level of government, as I have said previously, best placed to actually make these decisions.
That aside, I also believe—as reflected in the amendments in the bill and those that the Labor Party will seek to move in the consideration in detail stage—that the airport approvals processes for airport developments clearly need further improvements in the current planning regime. In particular, I draw attention to the Airport Development Consultation Guidelines, released by DOTARS in December last year, which the Labor Party, as the opposition, very much welcomes.
The guidelines clearly set out the Australian government’s expectations of all stakeholder groups when it comes to consultation about airport planning and development. Some of these recommendations also arise from previous consideration of airport issues by the Senate with respect to some of the airport developments in years gone by. They therefore appropriately suggest an outline for an approach to effective consultation. While the guidelines are not binding, I say to airport owners that there is an onus on them for their own effective operation to make sure that they seek to implement these guidelines in the future. Any minister worth his or her salt is going to have regard to the process of consultation undertaken by proposed airport developers with respect to the application of these guidelines. That is what is expected in the guidelines: acting in good faith, applying proper practice and procedure, and consulting the community on major airport developments.
My colleague and friend the member for Hindmarsh is to be congratulated for his proposal, by way of a private member’s bill, for the appointment of an ombudsman. I understand that in the airport leasing industry there are mixed views about this issue. Some are in favour; some have some private concerns. But the member for Hindmarsh is one of the few members in the federal parliament of Australia who has, within the boundaries of his electorate, a major capital city airport, and he understands the sensitivities of airport development. He wants to make sure that in securing airport development he has the best possible opportunity to take his community with him, rather than create unnecessary fights where the community is divided about the airport development.
The member for Hindmarsh knows only too well about the conflict between the greater public good that airports provide and the inconvenience that comes for some residents. For that reason, in days gone by, as a candidate he was at the forefront of a campaign to put in place a noise amelioration program with respect to the operation of Adelaide Airport. The residents he represents have experienced significant disruption to their lives as a result of noise. Adelaide Airport is there, and it is there to stay. Our job is to make sure, as best we can, that the operations of airports work to meet the needs of the local communities.
As I have said, people know that airports are there to stay but they want to be able to show someone other than those with a vested interest that from a resident’s perspective there is still a lot to be done to achieve better airport planning. They want to be able to direct their concerns through an independent umpire. They can access an ombudsman to hear their concerns regarding the defence forces, immigration or taxation, and even the postal industry. There are complaint bodies to receive representations regarding banking, financial services, telecommunications, energy and insurance but, unfortunately, at this stage, when it comes to airports and the impact they have on the community, there is no independent umpire.
If this government had been more active in paying attention over the last decade to the conflicts that have arisen between the new airport lessee companies and their neighbours—businesses, residents and local government authorities—the Australian public might have more confidence in the airport planning regime and we would not be where we are today. There have been long delays in getting these changes before the parliament.
That brings me to some of the other issues I want to raise today with respect to this bill. I note the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport tabled last night and I fully support the two recommendations laid out in that report. The report represents a proper consideration of the right of members of the community and the business sector to have their views heard through due process with respect to the bill currently before the House.
In the light of that report, and our own consideration of these issues, the opposition will be moving amendments in the consideration in detail stage to give effect to those recommendations. Firstly, we will seek to add the requirement that airport lessee companies advise state or territory and local government organisations of the commencement of public consultation processes so that they have full awareness and the opportunity to comment and be engaged early in the process rather than simply reading about it in the local newspaper.
Secondly, we will seek to provide for all public consultation submissions received by the airport lessee company to be forwarded to the minister as the decision maker, together with the written statement already required. That is merely a matter of detail so that all the submissions are before the appropriate authority when it considers these complex decisions.
In addition to those two amendments arising from the Senate report there are a number of other amendments that the opposition will propose to improve the integrity of the airport planning and approval process. Should these amendments be defeated the opposition will, in government, revisit these amendments in the context of a broader review of legislation to reduce the impact on local communities.
However, having said that, might I also say that airports are not only key parts of the nation’s economic infrastructure but also unique in that there is only one in each capital city. We have to make sure that we secure the future of airports; otherwise we will be cutting off our noses to spite our faces in terms of future economic development in Australia. There is no way any government is going to set about building more airports, because it simply cannot achieve that outcome in many communities.
Airports are here to stay. I will tell you why they are here to stay. The truth of the matter is that the Australian community wants modern airports because they want to use them more than ever. Air travel has grown over the last decade in Australia, especially because of the introduction of Virgin Blue and Jetstar, which means that many people who previously did not have the opportunity to travel by air now regard it as something that they can do on a regular basis.
But it is important that we do the right thing. These airports are the social, tourism, business, government and trade gateways to our regions, states and nation. They connect us with each other—with the rest of Australia and the rest of the world. For that reason we have to get the planning process right. If we get it wrong we are going to make a major economic decision that is wrong for Australia.
Let me also remind the House that it was a federal Labor government—we should never forget this point—that privatised airports, for good reason. The community simply could not afford to keep pace with the investment required to maintain and grow our airports and to expand the aviation industry that we so want in Australia. The privatisation of airports was the right decision for Australia and for Australian taxpayers.
The modernisation and upgrade of airports is now being done by the private sector, and that is good for Australia. But investment in the airport facilities and services that business and the community at large expect and demand will not continue if we undermine the regulatory regime that is the foundation for the viability of airport businesses and their expansion.
The private sector expect some certainty in the investment decisions they make, because they are making those decisions on behalf of their shareholders. Unless there is some certainty that they will get a reasonable return on the value of their investment, they will not make the investments in the future. That is why all of us have to work to make sure that there is a planning regime in place which meets the needs of the private sector, the airport lessee companies, whilst at the same time meeting the needs and expectations of local communities. Our review of legislation, if necessary, will focus not only on local community impacts of airports but also, and importantly, on the greater public good that they bring and on continuing to provide the investment certainty that airport owners need to grow these vital infrastructure assets so necessary to Australia in the 21st century.
In the meantime, let me briefly outline the additional amendments that the opposition will be moving. Firstly, while we note the comments of the Senate committee with respect to the ‘deemed approval’ provision, the need for investment certainty by airports, the view that the deemed approval process places some pressure on the minister and the department to meet their obligations under the act in a timely manner, and the fact that the provision has never been used, it remains of concern to us. I remind the House of the Treasurer’s nondecision of 22 May last year, when at midnight the National Competition Council’s recommendation to declare BHP’s Newman railway under the Trade Practices Act was deemed rejected. That was the right outcome, but it came only because the Treasurer was too gutless to make a decision.
No-one would argue against an effective and efficient access regime for rail haulage for all Pilbara iron ore producers. But the National Competition Council’s recommendation failed to protect the initial investment of BHP Billiton and its billion dollar export industry. And in effect it favoured access seekers over the operations of existing owners, who have borne the risk of investment, who maintain the infrastructure and who operate a sophisticated logistics chain to supply their export markets. Instead of doing the right thing and clearly articulating the national interest, the Treasurer went missing in action. As a result, there remains no investment certainty for BHP and Rio Tinto in the Pilbara. The parties are now embroiled in legal disputation and the future investment in Australia’s export supply chains is at serious risk as a result. Deeming provisions can and do go wrong, and this is an issue we want addressed in this legislation.
The second issue we would like to see addressed is an explicit provision that the department have qualified town planners as one of the many disciplines involved in the assessment of airport development plans. This seems a fair and reasonable requirement to address the concerns of local government authorities when it comes to the integration of town plans with airport plans. I understand that the department does have town planners on its staff and that their advice is utilised in airport development assessments. However, I can see no reason that this should not be an explicit requirement in the act to provide additional confidence to state and local government planning authorities when it comes to the capacity of the department to properly consider airport developments.
The third issue relates to the provision of an explicit statement of reasons if the minister decides not to adopt the recommendations contained in the submissions from state planning agencies and local government authorities. While I understand that the minister’s decision is already reviewable through the administrative appeals process and that aggrieved parties have the right to obtain a statement of reasons from the minister, again I can see no reason that this should not be an explicit requirement of the minister in the decision-making process. This is about providing the community, and state and local government, with confidence in the process and requiring better accountability of the minister. I remind the House in this context about decisions such as the one regarding the Perth brickworks. The fact is that there is a history of disregard of due planning processes and due consideration of the concerns of communities and local governments.
The fourth issue would require the minister to specify in approval conditions whether a proposal will have any impact on off-airport infrastructure and, taking into account rate equivalent contributions, whether there is a reasonable requirement for the lessee to negotiate in good faith with state and local government authorities to reach agreement for appropriate contributions to specific off-airport infrastructure. Again, I know that the act already has a broad conditions power and that the minister has in fact addressed road infrastructure impacts and contributions in previous decisions—though I am not so sure about this being the case at Essendon Airport and the DFO development associated with that—but I am not convinced that the minister has done enough to address the conflicts between airport lessees and local councils when it comes to rate equivalent payments and the interpretation of the obligations in this regard when it comes to airport leases.
When it comes to the important issue of lifting the threshold for major developments from $10 million to $20 million, I simply have to say that this is a fair and reasonable proposition given that construction costs have increased significantly since 1997 and site works must now be included in total costs. By way of comparison, the Public Works Committee recently increased its threshold for project consideration from $6 million to $15 million. Building costs in south-east Queensland last year increased by 13.8 per cent compared to 2005, following a six per cent increase in 2005 and a 9.6 per cent increase in 2004. This suggests that a cost inflation index is appropriate. There will also now be a capacity for the minister to require consecutive or concurrent developments to be included in the total cost. The opposition will be moving an amendment to make sure this is done and is not simply optional for the minister. It is about caution. Again, it is about transparency and about providing greater confidence to the community that the right thing will be done.
There are two other issues which will not be addressed through amendment but which I would like to place on the record. Firstly, the opposition would not like to see Bankstown Airport become one of the non-core regulated airports subject to the lifting of the five per cent airline ownership cap, and we will be addressing this issue should regulations be introduced in this regard.
Secondly, we have some concerns about the accreditation by CASA of parties other than Airservices and the Australian Defence Force to provide airspace and fire and rescue services at Australian airports. I note that to date these provisions have only applied to Townsville Airport and the accredited service provider, Delta. We will be addressing this issue on a case by case basis should additional airports or service providers be added to the schedule by way of regulation.
The opposition will support the bill but, as I have outlined, we will be moving a number of amendments during consideration in detail and I hope the government will give careful consideration to these amendments in the interests of restoring the integrity of the airport planning regime, providing community confidence in it and providing for greater accountability on the part of the minister when it comes to airport development decisions. I therefore move on behalf of the opposition a second reading amendment which seeks to merely lay out our overall concerns about the application of the act in the past, especially with respect to Perth brickworks and the Essendon direct factory outlet. I move:
That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for undermining public confidence in the Airports Act through approval decisions such as that relating to the Perth brickworks site, located opposite a residential area, and the Essendon direct factory outlet, proposed without regard to the impact on local road infrastructure”.
In moving the amendment, I simply say that the opposition supports the thrust of this bill and the amendments but we believe that there are further improvements to be made. We are seeking to work with the government in a constructive way and we will consider these amendments in the proper consideration in detail process of the House. I simply say to the minister: the Australian community wants airports and it is our responsibility as a parliament to deliver a planning process which guarantees investment whilst at the same time taking local communities with us. Airport planning is a tough process. It is a Commonwealth responsibility. (Time expired)
Is the amendment seconded?
I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.
I rise to speak on the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 and the government amendment. As members opposite have indicated, in principle, the concept of this bill has bipartisan support because of the investment that is required for airport infrastructure. That recognises that Australia, possibly more so than any other nation, has relied on aviation both for the transport of people and freight, emergency services, defence and a range of other activities. A large part of that comes down to having the appropriate infrastructure in place to enable training, general aviation operations as well as commercial, charter and regular public transport operations to be in place. When the ALP introduced this bill back in September 1995, the concept was supported in practice by the coalition government, who then actually brought the bill to fruition in 1996.
As well as talking about some of the specific provisions of the bill, I wish to look at the underlying purpose of the bill. This is even reflected in the second reading speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services in November 2006. She talked about how, under the Airports Act, proposals for development come back to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. She said:
Developments have included non-aeronautical development on airport land where that is consistent with the long-term development of the airport as an airport.
I think that is an underlying point that all parties involved—whether they be government, local government, airport owners or operators, or other people—need to remember. The primary purpose of these pieces of Commonwealth land, which have been set aside and leased to allow further investment, is not to be predominantly a commercial enterprise around retail or other operations; they are predominantly there as airports. My comments will be along some of those lines.
I turn now to some of the specific points of the bill. I am aware that there has been some concern about, as well as some benefits from, non-aviation related developments. Adjacent to the electorate of Wakefield is the airport of Parafield. I am aware that, for example, the Bunnings Warehouse that is there is utilised by a broad range of people from across Wakefield—as are a number of other retailers who have established on the site of Parafield Airport. There is perceived to be, and indeed there is, a broad community benefit derived from those developments. I do not think anyone would seek to oppose them completely.
However, there are other retailers who have had to comply with local government planning restrictions. Local governments who have sought to actually plan developments for the whole of the area feel as though their whole process has been usurped by the fact that developers can come in and, separately to their plans, establish on Commonwealth land. Part of those concerns, particularly from the councils’ perspective, is that where things like road infrastructure are required there needs to be adequate consultation. For that reason I am pleased to support the government amendment which increases the period of consultation to 60 business days. That allows people to have input into developments. It is broadly consistent with—and, in fact, exceeds—some of the other state and territory development planning requirements.
Under the South Australian Development Act 1993, the public comment period for a major development for something like an environmental impact statement or a public environmental report is six weeks and for a development report it is three weeks. So this is not inconsistent with that. Another thing that has been talked about is the lifting of the threshold from $10 million to $20 million. That does accurately reflect the increased cost of doing business, particularly since it includes all site preparation. I think that is an appropriate change.
What I would like to talk mainly about, though, is this other broader implication—the underlying issue of what is the primary purpose of the airport. I have briefly touched on the importance of air travel for Australia. I believe that the comments in the second reading speech in November 2006 need to be the basis upon which all parties involved move ahead. To reiterate: the developments on airport land that are non-aeronautical must be consistent with the long-term development of the airport as an airport. Part of the reason this is important is that people who do not understand aviation, aviation operations and, particularly, aviation safety, say, logically enough, ‘What are the regulations? As long as we meet those regulations we’ll be fine to move ahead.’
I was interested to see in the June 2000 Senate committee report and recommendations that the committee considered that it would raise public faith in the airport corporation—in this case the Brisbane Airport Corporation—if the corporation were to demonstrate a willingness to go beyond the minimum legislative requirements to meaningfully consult and consider the public as it proceeded with the airport development. I would argue that going beyond the minimum requirements also needs to apply to their liaison and engagement with other stakeholders, such as the operators. I am talking here particularly about general aviation airports where those operators are not large firms. They are normally small operators who are working to pretty tight margins and do not have a lot of capacity to adapt, when costs are involved, to changes that are imposed upon them. I think that consultation—which was pushed by the Senate committee in that report—is something that needs to be carried out in good faith by airport corporations. Just meeting the minimum requirements is not necessarily all that is going to be required. It is interesting to note that, when the various airport corporations look at requirements, they do not necessarily see that if there is an impact on aviation operations then perhaps they need to reconsider what they are planning to do.
The strategic plan for the Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd looks at the range of their operators, and some of the operators include general aviation and helicopters. They make the comment that they are not going to invest any further in those facilities. They think they are adequate for the current range of operations. But they imply they believe that in the future the flexibility of those operations may reduce due to tighter regulations or operational restrictions. My argument is that, if the primary purpose of that land being made available is for aviation operations, then developments and modifications are the things that need to be limited, as opposed to those developments and modifications limiting the aviation operations. I think there is a fundamental difference in position there that needs to be considered.
To a certain extent, we see that already. The decision by the Minister for Transport and Regional Services this year to not approve the development of a shopping precinct near Sydney airport on the basis of safety was a welcome decision, but it raises this whole issue of regulation versus reason. I use those two words very deliberately, and I will explain why. Regulations are, if you like, the things that set the minimum standard. They also link into, from an aviation perspective, the Reason concept. The Reason model is a safety model that is used broadly in the aviation community, where it recognises that there is no one element of an aviation operation that is going to guarantee safety.
The original model that Reason put up was that safety was like trying to shoot a ray of light through a number of slices of Swiss cheese. Every slice had holes in it—no slice was perfect—but, as long as you had enough slices and as long as all the holes did not line up, you could stop that beam of light from getting through and you could prevent an accident. But, the more holes you had in those slices, the more you increased the chance of something happening. So, if every single element of safety—whether it be regulation, air crew training, the equipment in question, the airport standards we have designed or the weather minima that are in place—is right at its minimum, that is the equivalent of having a number of pieces of Swiss cheese with big holes in them, which increases the possibility of an accident.
I believe what the committee said: corporations should demonstrate a willingness to go beyond the minimum legislative requirements to consult and this should also be extended to their approach to the minimum requirements in terms of who is operating at their airport, what other factors come into play, and how they collectively work together to ensure that they can be viable as a business with their lease holding and that the aviation operations can continue profitably and, most importantly, safely.
There are guidelines. There is the manual of standards; part 139 for aerodromes is the base that people use now, but there are other standards such as advisory publications. CAAP 92-1 looks, for example, at aeroplane landing areas, and it has principles in it. For example, at paragraph 8.4, titled Geographic Location, it states:
A landing area should not be located:
You can have RPT, regular public transport, operations into a main airport. Generally speaking, they are taking off and landing over set approach and departure routes. So the exposure per flight is literally that approach and take-off.
When you go to a GA airport, though, and training operations are under way, you see that circuit training is quite common. Aircraft are taking off, flying a circuit around the immediate area of the airport and coming back in to land. If risk is a combination of consequence and exposure then what we are seeing there is that there is a far larger exposure where those aircraft are doing training operations. In terms of populating the area around the airport, generally speaking, airports were put there with minimum obstacles around the runway, but also in the back of people’s minds was the thought that we have student pilots and we have aircraft that are not necessarily built to the same standards. You have the FAR 23 for GA and the FAR 25 standard, which is applied to different aircraft depending upon the level of safety for regular public transport operations.
So there is a range of factors. It is a bit like the Reason model: we are now starting to get more holes in those pieces of cheese. It is important that, just as the CAAP provides in the guidance, we should not be unnecessarily flying over populated areas. When we look at how much we actually bulk out areas around a GA airport, we also need to take that into account from a flight safety perspective. Then we have things like operational limitations. Increasingly, aircraft are becoming equipped for flight and instrument meteorological conditions. In fact, CASA are encouraging people to use GPS technology and to have non-precision approach runways. There are standards that apply to that, but the standards that apply under CAAP 89P look at the approach obstacle limitation surface and gradient. It extends that quite considerably compared to a non-instrument rated runway in terms of the amount of obstacle-free area that has to be there.
When obstacles are there, it means that in designing the approach, particularly the circling minimum—that is, when you come down, you break free of cloud and you have to circle around to land—there has to be a given height between obstacles and that circling minimum. Every time we put buildings in there, particularly two-storey or higher buildings, that raises the minima for those approaches. The designers have to take that into account. That starts placing operational restrictions on aircraft that could have got in with no buildings there, but now they cannot make that approach or they perhaps need to carry alternate fuel to go somewhere else because these new obstacles within the OLS area are pushing the minima higher.
The regulation is one thing—it defines the minimums—but the Reason model of flight safety indicates that there are a number of factors that have to be considered. My call to the airport operators is that when they are looking at their consultation, they should use this period that the government amendment approves not only for extended community consultation—to speak to local councils and to the local community, and my understanding is that that process is improving—but also to consult closely with not just the large RPT companies, but also, particularly at GA airports, with the smaller operators and really understand what the implications are of development on both the safety and the effectiveness of operations in terms of both physical hazards and operational limitations with things like implications for IFR approach and procedures.
Aviation is an important industry for Australia. We cannot afford to price them or regulate the training and the breeding ground for our pilots—which is often in the GA world—out of business. Part of that requires a partnership on the part of the airport owners in their consultation. I welcome the decision earlier this year by the minister, which was based on a safety case, to not go ahead with the development, and I think that principle should be applied more broadly to ensure the continuation, viability and safety of all aviation operations in Australia.
I rise today to speak on the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. In the second reading speech, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services spoke in lyrical terms about the importance of community input to airport planning. Specifically, the government claims to have developed consultation guidelines to ensure the exchange of views between the operators of privatised airports and the other stakeholders in airport planning. This legislation ensures that the consultation period will be 60 business days. What is not clear from the bill is the use of the term ‘demonstrating’. This is used in the context of airport management demonstrating due regard for public comment in the preparation of the airport master plan.
Over my parliamentary career I have taken an intense interest in issues relating to Bankstown Airport. While it is not currently in my electorate, residents of Banks are deeply affected by the operation of the airport. With the recent redistribution in New South Wales, Bankstown Airport will now fall within the new seat of Banks. I should at this point acknowledge the vigorous attention given to Bankstown Airport by the member for Blaxland, Michael Hatton. No doubt he and I will continue to work together on this issue, as it will remain critical to the residents of both Banks and Blaxland.
Theoretically, this bill is to ensure that state planning authorities, local governments and the community are provided with sufficient opportunity to comment on the airport regulatory regime. We are told by the parliamentary secretary in the second reading speech:
... the government is committed to ensuring the consultation processes in the scheme are operated effectively and ensure genuine engagement.
In addition to the change in the consultation processes, the dollar threshold for even requiring a major development plan is to be increased from $10 million to $20 million. This will allow airport owners more opportunity to implement development plans before actually consulting local residents and other key stakeholders.
I note that the lessees will be required to provide planning documentation to be more readily available to the community. I also note that improved information regarding noise exposure levels will be provided to the public and local planning authorities. I am unclear how these steps are going to assist the communities around regional airports to have the opportunity to comment or whether those comments are going to be listened to. The reality is that the government has the numbers and, in all probability, this bill will become law. The public consultation period will now be 60 days. That said, I would like to think that airport operators might take this as an opportunity to consider the quality of the consultation process and make genuine attempts to confer with their local communities. The bill provides the impetus for a review of the past and a move towards a more positive consultative process.
Bankstown Airport was established in 1940 and has become a part of the community of Bankstown and the surrounding areas. Families moved into the area knowing there was an airport. In the time I have represented the electorate of Banks, I know that most residents have come to terms with living near an airport but maintain concerns over potential increases in noise, activity and impact on local infrastructure. That is why it is critical that airport management work hard to maintain positive relations with the local community. If handled appropriately, the consultative process can reach mutually satisfactory results.
At the same time, concerns have been raised with me by aeronautical businesses currently operating out of Bankstown. This includes the disquiet expressed by Bankstown City Council and others in relation to the development of the Bankstown Airport zone, which will include space for retailers, manufacturing, logistics and a business park. In its submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport’s inquiry into this bill, the local government and shires association stated at page 1:
The impact of airports on adjacent urban areas has been exacerbated in recent years with a significant shift in the use of airport land from purely aviation-related purposes to other commercial developments such as retail, hotels and entertainment. These developments are no different to commercial developments elsewhere, yet are excluded from normal State and Local Government planning processes due to the historical arrangements underpinning the Airports Act.
The New South Wales government submission to the inquiry makes a similar point, while indicating that:
... all airport non-aviation development (excluding defence or airport ancillary developments inside of terminal buildings) be subject to relevant State and Territory Planning Laws, policies and procedures.
The New South Wales government further suggests that master plans and major planning proposals be ‘subject to a review by an independent panel’.
A number of small operators and the organisation Save Our Secondary Airports, or SOS, have indicated some of the changes to their operations in the two years since the privatisation of Bankstown. These businesses are now under increasing financial pressure being applied by Bankstown Airport Ltd. This pressure consists of several key decisions taken over the past two years. Ground rents have been increased, and SOS indicates that this has been up to 200 per cent. Mr Bill Miller, who runs a helicopter charter business, said in the Sydney Morning Herald on 4 March 2006 that his rent has increased by 108 per cent in the past year.
By their very nature, businesses located on airport land require space to operate. These small operators at Bankstown bought into their businesses or established them on the basis that ground rents would remain reasonable. An excellent example is that of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which has a small base located at Bankstown. The real value of that organisation to both the local and the broader community cannot be realised by high rents.
Some leases have not been renewed or have been renewed for only short periods of time. There has been a tradition of renewal, given that the airport is on crown land and freehold title has not been possible. SOS argues that the government, prior to the sale, could have offered the leaseholders the opportunity to regularise these arrangements. When the minister was asked about this in a question on notice by the member from Hunter on 9 May 2006, he responded that rental arrangements are a commercial arrangement. Certainly they are; nonetheless, tenants have a genuine grievance when their businesses were established on the basis of crown land leases and then the rules are changed.
The rules have not changed in terms of the planning processes involved, as the New South Wales government has indicated. I have been advised, however, that there seem to be mechanisms to allow a lessee some recourse when negotiating leases. In an article in Airports magazine in April 2006, the CEO of Moorabbin Airport said, in a discussion on the nature of airport leases:
… but mechanisms do exist to ensure that if agreement cannot be reached then arbitration and ultimately independent valuation will be used.
Hopefully it will not come to this. I hear the arguments from BAL and the other airport owners about the nature of rents in the past, and there is some justification in those arguments. Notwithstanding that, I urge the airport owners to give consideration to the view that, given the size of the increases, these be gradually introduced over time. In this way, airport owners may go some way toward demonstrating their good faith in operating with the lessees.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Australia also made a submission to the Senate inquiry. Two of the key points made by the association—and, I note, supported in other submissions—were that AOPA ‘believes that the consultation processes employed by GAAP airport operators to date may be deficient in the area of consideration of dissenting views’. Secondly, AOPA supports proposed item 47, paragraph 79(2)(c), which states:
This item provides that an airport-lessee company must ‘demonstrate’ how the company has had due regard to comments provided by the public in preparing their draft master plan …
There are conflicting views about the use of the word ‘demonstrate’ in item 47, as I noted previously. Bankstown Airport Ltd states in its submission on page 5 that more information needs to be provided on exactly what the term ‘demonstrate’ means. It seems to me that airport management, airport lessees and the community would like to have this term qualified.
I am not against a company turning a fair profit. But let me comment on the impact that these decisions have on my community. If businesses close or move to other airports because of escalating costs, then people in my electorate and surrounding electorates are at risk of losing their jobs. Bankstown Airport is a major employer in the area. The flying schools employ staff and attract clients who purchase commodities on site and at local shopping centres. These schools use fuel supplied by local fuel companies who employ local people. Aircraft servicing in the form of aircraft parts, parts fabrication, avionics servicing and installation, aircraft painting, cleaning, office cleaning, catering, office supplies, IT support, security services and so on are all required. Local people are employed directly and indirectly because of aircraft operations at Bankstown Airport. Concerns have also been raised by AOPA Australia. In a media release on 16 August 2006, AOPA said:
They—
operators—
are being forced off airports with little or no recompense for any improvements or building costs incurred. There is no effort at enhancement or assistance for existing aviation small businesses—instead they are told to pay more and earn less, or leave.
Again I say that I do not object to companies turning a profit, but we must carefully consider the impact of the 120 hectares of land which has been designated for a business, manufacturing and retail park at Bankstown. Where is the money to repair and replace our neighbourhood roads? State government estimates indicate that road traffic in the area could increase by 13,000 vehicles per annum.
I have provided some detail of local community involvement with Bankstown Airport to simply make the point that the airport is clearly a part of the community. That community must be provided with reasonable opportunity to comment on developments at the airport. Further, that comment must be taken seriously. It is only when all the parties operate in good faith that a mutually satisfactory result can be achieved.
In 2004, we saw a consultative process conducted when BAL published its draft master plan. Almost 4,000 submissions were made, including submissions from me; the member for Blaxland; the state member for East Hills, Alan Ashton; and thousands of people in the local area. I am pleased to say that we did get a prohibition on large jet aircraft—that is, 737s, 717s and the like would not be able to land at Bankstown Airport. But things change. I refer to a report in the Daily Telegraph on 22 June 2006 that the airport owners were in discussion with Airbus to introduce the so-called ‘quiet’ A318 aircraft. The member for Blaxland, Mr Michael Hatton, stated at the time that it was important to see the statistics on the levels of noise—and so it is. It could be said that this is the thin end of the wedge when it comes to the so-called 20-year master plan. We have a master plan approved, we have community consultation of a kind and then the rules change. Whether the claims about Airbus are true or not, I use this to provide an illustration of how things can change—even when there was a form of community consultation.
My point is this: given the likely passage of this legislation, it will now be even more incumbent upon airport management to ensure that the consultative process is quality based. This can be an opportunity for both sides to show they are operating in good faith. I draw the attention of the House to the community commitment made by BAL. I quote from their website:
The Bankstown Airport Community Consultative Forum is a community committee established to provide a forum for community to have direct interaction and input into the development and operation of Bankstown Airport through representatives of interested community based organisations.
One of the purposes of that forum is to ‘assist in resolving and prioritising issues based on local knowledge’. I urge Bankstown Airport management to continue to take that commitment seriously.
In the 17 years that I have been the member for Banks, my record—including comments I have made about Bankstown Airport—speaks for itself. I have never been an airport basher. I have always accepted that the airport is there, that it provides jobs and that it is integral to our local community. All that I have insisted upon in my time as the member for Banks is that the residents and the local community be dealt with in an honest, open and transparent fashion, that the airport and those involved with the airport recognise that their actions impact on the local community and that we want the airport owners to be good community citizens. I met with representatives of the airport, and I was impressed with the meeting that I had with them. All I ask is for them to give that consideration to the local community, because I think it is better for the airport to have the local community on side. And most of the local community are on side, because the airport provides jobs and it impacts on the local community.
Consultation and changes need to be considered. Changes were made to the master plan in respect of where helicopters would take off. The initial proposal would have had an adverse impact on residents in Milperra, who had never experienced that aircraft noise before. To the credit of the airport operators, the master plan was changed. Amendments were made, and I was communicated with recently by them in that regard. That is a positive example of a satisfactory conclusion being reached after interaction between the local community and the airport owners. It turned out to be a win-win situation. With some modifications, the airport owners achieved what they wanted and the impact on the community was not as bad.
That sort of thing goes a long way to allaying the fears of the local community. In respect of Sydney airport—and this applies to both sides of politics—when Labor was in power, misinformation was given to the local community. The local community was not informed in an honest fashion of the consequences of some of the decisions. I do not want to go over the old third runway arguments, the lead-up to the third runway, what was promised, what happened and what subsequently changed, but I think those sorts of things do not do anyone any good.
It is important that legislation such as this has the support of both sides of the House, the government and the alternative government, because we should not play politics with airports. These decisions have long-term impacts on local communities and they should not be taken with an eye to politics. For some people, that is in some ways an unrealistic view of the world—because most things do involve a level of politics—but key structural decisions about transport needs and the impact on local communities can be above politics. Those decisions should be based on not only what is best for the companies concerned but also the impact on local communities. I commend the bill to the House.
In rising to support the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 I would like to firstly acknowledge members of the Australian Defence Force who are in the gallery this morning to be part of the parliament and to witness the proceedings. I assume they are here as part of the exchange program, and they are very welcome. I hope they find the debate interesting and that they can admire the spirit of bipartisanship we are witnessing here this morning.
I rise to support this bill because, firstly, the Airports Amendment Bill, while not revolutionising the Airports Act 1996, provides some improvements to the act—in particular, the arrangements for airlines that own smaller airports. Secondly, the bill makes changes to airport land use, planning and building controls and environment management provisions. Thirdly, the bill confirms the ACCC’s capacity to monitor and evaluate the quality of airport services and facilities. It is the second point into which I will be going in more detail today.
I believe that the bill before the parliament does in fact offer some sensible changes to the Airports Act. I also believe that airport users will be particularly pleased at changes that are contained in it. In my community of northern Tasmania, the issue of air services, by way of access and quality, is a constant talking point, both for the tourism industry and for the business traveller.
Launceston Airport is serviced by three airlines. Those are QantasLink, Virgin Blue and Jetstar. Last year, Qantas announced that it was scaling back its services, which was met with predictable and understandable concern from the local community. Qantas withdrew its jet service and replaced it with a QantasLink turboprop service, and that of course had immediate ramifications for the concerns in the community that the quality of the travelling experience to Launceston would be adversely affected. I am pleased at least to be able to report to the House that the planes that are arriving in Launceston are reasonably well occupied and that there appears to be a strong case for QantasLink in the future to provide even better services than they presently do.
As the local member, I felt it was my duty to respond to these challenges, and I went on to form the Launceston Air Action Group. We have had some positive and productive talks with all of the airlines that service Launceston, and I hope that those discussions will continue to be fruitful in the future.
But, despite my general support of this amendment bill, I still remain concerned about the discharge of the Australian government’s responsibility to deal with airport land use, planning and building controls so far as it concerns airports which are covered by the act. I say that with thought to my home state of Tasmania—in particular, Hobart International Airport, which is one of the airports that are the subject of controls within the Airports Act.
I would like to take this opportunity this morning to remind the House about the controversy that has been raging for the last 12 to 18 months over the planned Direct Factory Outlet for southern Tasmania. To inform the House further, I would like to remind you that the development is being proposed by Hobart International Airport Pty Ltd. If it goes ahead, it will cover an extraordinarily large ground area of 77,000 square metres in retail floor space alone. This is not taking into account exterior hard surfaces or the footprint of the development en masse; what I am referring to is the actual amount of retail floor space upon which customers can wander up and down corridors or mall ways and go into stores: the stores themselves, the internal floor space of 77,000 square metres.
To anybody listening, perhaps that just sounds like another number. Let me just put it into context. Those 77,000 square metres of retail floor space would represent the largest discount factory outlet in Australia, along with its furniture stores, a hardware centre and bulky goods. This would be the largest of its kind in the country, in the capital city of the smallest state. In retail space alone, this represents some 20 acres of shopping. I am advised that that represents about the size of four Australian Rules football fields.
It is not that I oppose the development per se, and it is not that I oppose the entry of a new retail precinct into Tasmania—and some may be wondering why I am concerned about something happening in Hobart, in the south, when I plainly have an electorate well away from that, in the north. But the reality is that it is simply the dimensions of this project that cause me grave concern, not just for the business district in Hobart and surrounding areas but because of the size and the scale of it. I am very deeply concerned about the distortion effect that it will have on small business and the retail sector all across the state. I think it is inconceivable for anybody to put up an argument that a development of this size and scale will not have an adverse impact on businesses in my community of northern Tasmania.
Today I would particularly like to acknowledge the concern which has been expressed by the Launceston Chamber of Commerce in a submission that it lodged with Hobart International Airport in the course of Hobart International Airport’s obligation to consult and to take public comment. The chamber raised issues of planning and how the proposed development simply does not comply with Tasmania’s own Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993. That is a state act of parliament which of course, as we all know, does not apply to developments which are proposed on Commonwealth owned land—that is, airports covered under the Airports Act. However, it is a relevant argument to be raising. It is important for us to understand. In the process of a federal government assessment of a development on Commonwealth owned land, we ought to have close regard to how that proposal would be considered if it were on state controlled land, which is just about all land in Tasmania other than Commonwealth. The chamber argues that the development does not fulfil the aims of the National Charter of Integrated Land Use and Transport Planning.
In particular, I think it is important to point out that when other development proposals of this kind have been proposed in Tasmania they have faced many hurdles, which perhaps is not always the case in other states. In particular, there was a proposal for a big box development in the northern midlands area, which is just to the south of Launceston, in a rural community. The application for a rezoning and subsequent approval of the big box development was approved by the Northern Midlands Council. It was taken to appeal and the Resource Planning and Development Commission heard that appeal and took into account the concerns which were being raised, principally from the Launceston City Council, a neighbouring council and the Launceston Chamber of Commerce, along with Cityprom Ltd, which represents central Launceston retailers.
Interestingly, the RPDC accepted the view of those people who are arguing against this development, and it did so on a number of bases. Time does not permit me to go into the detail but, in particular, the RPDC was concerned about regional strategy. In the end, it did not regard the Northern Midlands Council as a stand-alone jurisdiction which could be viewed in isolation from its neighbouring council areas. Unfortunately, in Tasmania, as a result of a legacy of our local politics, we have, for a population of less than half a million people, 29 local government areas. That has some positives, but it also has many problems associated with it. One of them is the lack of a regional approach that can result from having neighbouring councils fighting. You are far better to take a regional approach, as much as possible, with small populations.
From 1969 until 1990 there was an organisation by the name of the Tamar Regional Master Planning Authority. That comprised members elected by the City of Launceston itself and also by neighbouring municipalities. So in that regard, it was a regional body. It developed a master plan for the region, which was finalised in 1990. It was never formally adopted. However, councils which comprise that committee did take away from that organisation its master plan and effectively implemented it in their local communities. While the local councils were still independent of each other, there was this notion of having a regional approach because, by working together, you all become stronger.
Interestingly, the commercial hierarchy, recommended by the TRMPA, based on size and function, essentially recognised that for all of these communities the regional centre was Launceston. Launceston is, if you like, the hub of all of these communities. It then had larger district centres, such as Kings Meadows, and it had smaller district centres, such as Mowbray and Riverside. Scaling down, as you go out from the radius of Launceston, effectively you then get down to large neighbourhood centres, small neighbourhood centres, local stores and rural centres, such as Longford, Perth and Evandale. The local councils, including Northern Midlands—the subject council in this case—Meander Valley and West Tamar all then went away and effectively implemented that plan, at least in intent, in their planning schemes.
Coming back to the RPDC decision, it rejected the rezoning application for the big box centre on the basis that it was contrary to the regional strategy, which was agreed to. Its conclusion was that the amendment provides for:
… uses and development which can be expected to impact adversely on the Northern Tasmanian regional retail hierarchy, and thus be in conflict with planning strategy for the region.
This is a key point because, under the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act of the Tasmanian parliament, it recognised that, in all of the approvals, appeals and all of those processes which go through state planning bodies, retail hierarchy and regional strategy are factors to be taken into consideration. This is not a feature of the Airports Act. When the federal Minister for Transport and Regional Services receives an application for a major development on Commonwealth owned land at an airport which is subject to the Airports Act, unfortunately these aspects, which are reflected in Tasmanian law, are not a feature of the Airports Act. Given a future opportunity, I would welcome the Australian government introducing such a provision into the Commonwealth act. I think that would be a major improvement.
I think the concerns of those people in this place about developments which they regard as inappropriate, or which they regard as needing some extra assistance in getting approved, would also be satisfied if we could implement within the act a more deliberate function of the minister regarding state planning laws. I do not agree with the argument which is being put up by various state planning ministers that the states ought to take back the role of land use and planning issues for Commonwealth land. That is a ridiculous notion. But I do believe that the Commonwealth government, in determining the future for development on Commonwealth land, ought to have a regard and, even if it is just that, it ought to be a deliberate function of government.
In addressing this point, I would like to bring to the attention of the House some advice I have received with regard to this matter, which gives me some heart. Can the minister take into account planning issues when giving his approval for airport master plans and major development plans? I asked this question specifically with regard to the issue at Hobart. The advice is that it seems that the fact that the legislation specifically states that both major development plans and final master plans need to at least include information regarding how the plans fit in with state planning laws does suggest that the minister may need to keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to approve the plans.
I hope that is so. But it is not deliberately mentioned in the act, so I again put it up as a future proposal. Having said that, I have had meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister in his role as minister administering the Airports Act. A major development plan has still not been put forward by Hobart International Airport. They keep talking about it, they put up their public information and they go through these processes, but, as far as I am aware, no MDP has been put forward. I continue to urge the minister to have regard to the issues of regional strategy and retail hierarchy. I believe the proposed development will have a very adverse effect on the retail businesses in my electorate in northern Tasmania.
I will turn briefly, in the time remaining, to the role of the state government in this matter. I am very angry about the way in which the Tasmanian government has conducted itself with regard to the DFO proposed for the Hobart airport site. Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to advise you and my colleagues in the House that Hobart International Airport is 100 per cent owned by the Tasmanian government. All shares in the airport are owned by the Tasmanian government. How ironic that the government which is demanding that the Commonwealth give back planning powers to the state governments is putting up this proposal through one of its 100 per cent owned companies.
When the community raised concerns about this proposal with the Tasmanian state government, government ministers and Premier Lennon himself said: ‘Nothing we can do. We can’t control this process because we don’t have any jurisdiction over it.’ That is wrong. While in a legal sense he is certainly right, the Tasmanian government are the owner of this company and, as such, the actual proponent of the proposal. If the Tasmanian government were so minded, they could pull the proposal tomorrow. They could direct their directors to scrap the proposal. They could direct that the proposal be changed. They could direct that the proposal be made to conform with Tasmanian planning laws.
As I have said in the past, there is some room for both the Tasmanian and Australian governments to give some ground on this matter. The fact is that the Tasmanian government has been extremely dishonest in its handling of this matter. It has wanted to sheet the blame away from itself for a proposal that will have an adverse impact on small business and employment in my community. The government has been very duplicitous, and it ought to be condemned for that.
The bill is an improvement. I am very pleased that the Minister for Transport and Regional Services and Deputy Prime Minister listened to me and a number of my colleagues when we asked for the consultation period to be increased. I welcome the fact that it is being increased to effectively 12 weeks, at 60 working days. I thank the minister for that, and I understand that an amendment will be forthcoming. (Time expired)
I rise to express my deep concern about some important aspects of the Airports Amendment Bill 2006, which affect directly or indirectly the constituents of Lowe and others who are affected by Sydney basin airports, such as Bankstown Airport. The electorate of Lowe is located directly under the northern flight paths of Sydney airport. Residents of Lowe have long suffered from the reckless and irresponsible policies of the Howard government and its surrender to the interests of Macquarie Bank and its affiliates in the elimination of pricing surveillance, thus causing massive rises in airline landing fees and retail fees, including parking.
Prices for aviation landing fees have forced regional airlines out of Sydney airport and into Bankstown Airport. Prices for landing fees have risen hundreds of times higher than the consumer price index, despite the categorical promises made in 2001 by the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services that this would not occur. In particular, prior to the privatisation of Sydney airport, airports were subject to price regulation in the form of price notification and price monitoring by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. This price regulation included the regulation of prices notification for aeronautical services and monitoring of aeronautical related services under the Prices Surveillance Act.
Prior to the exploration of the price caps for Sydney airport, in December 2000 the Commonwealth government asked the Productivity Commission to inquire as to whether price regulation was required at privatised airports, and Sydney airport was one of them. The Productivity Commission opted for a light-handed approach in its recommendations and recommended that price caps and prices notification arrangements at Sydney airport should be replaced by a mandatory price monitoring arrangement for a probationary five-year period. The then minister for transport announced on 13 May 2002 that the government had accepted the Productivity Commission’s recommendation that Sydney airport be subject to price monitoring for five years, effective from 1 July 2002.
The minister further announced on 13 May 2002 that the new arrangements would not impact on regional airline operations into and out of Sydney and that regional airlines would continue to be guaranteed reasonable access to Sydney airport under the slot management system and with a prohibition on any increases in aeronautical charges that exceeded the CPI. I note from the ACCC media statement titled ‘ACCC decision on Sydney airport prices of 11 May 2001’ that a decision, too, was made to increase Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd aeronautical revenue in 2000-01 from $93 million to around $183 million—an increase of $90 million or 97 per cent. This compares with the increase sought by SACL of 130 per cent. Since privatisation, aeronautical revenue at Sydney airport has increased to a far higher rate than CPI.
This point is most relevant to today’s bill. The Airports Amendment Bill 2006 is but one more item in a litany of acts of betrayal against the people of Sydney in order to pander to the vested interests of Macquarie Bank and its affiliates. Macquarie Bank is not content to make normal operating profits. It must now purchase Qantas itself and thus force the people of Sydney to use Macquarie Bank motorways, Macquarie Bank taxi services, Macquarie Bank airports and now Macquarie Bank airlines.
One underhand purpose of the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 is found in item 21. Item 21 of the bill allows regulations to be made that would permit airlines to own more than five per cent of an airport-operator company which owns or manages a non-core regulated airport, such as Bankstown Airport. It is more than fortuitous that this bill would enable an airline to own more than five per cent of a non-core airport such as Bankstown Airport. This is so in light of the much publicised moves by Macquarie Bank and its affiliates to purchase Qantas. The duplicity could not be more pronounced or transparent.
I place on the record my total opposition to Bankstown Airport becoming one of the non-core regulated airports subject to the lifting of the five per cent airline ownership cap. Any consortium with an interest in swallowing up Bankstown Airport would do well to keep the corks in the Bollinger on hold. Should regulations be proposed to allow Bankstown Airport to become exempt from the five per cent airline ownership prohibition, I can assure members that I will pursue this matter most vigorously.
It is further noted that another purpose of the bill is to ‘improve the pool of available investment funds’ for relevant airports. To do so, it appears that this bill supplements the existing section 32 by explicitly incorporating into that section the interpretation found in Westfield Management Ltd v Brisbane Airport Corporation Ltd [2005] FCA 32. In essence, non-aeronautical development in a lease agreement between an airport operator and the Commonwealth will be permissible. Item 16 further provides that such businesses must also be consistent with the master plan.
I note other provisions of this bill, particularly the slashing of time proposed in these provisions in which the public interest stakeholders have to respond to amendments to airport master plans, major and minor development plans and environment strategies found in parts 5 and 6 of the Airports Act. I am appalled at the attempt by the government to justify the savaging and slashing of community consultation periods and public comment periods. Again, quoting from the Bills Digest, I note:
... the Bill also reduces the time allowed for public comment on drafts of Master Plans, Major Development Plans and Environment Strategies. It is currently 90 calendar days and this is being reduced to 45 business days. Disregarding any allowance for any public holidays, this represents a reduction from approximately 13 weeks to 9 weeks for comment.
And further:
... the public comment period for (so-called) minor variations of Master Plans, Major Development Plans and Environment Strategies has been reduced from 30 days to 15 days ...
Mr Deputy Speaker, you are doubtless aware that there has been a revolt about that. How can the community and the public interest possibly be served with the cynical, savage cuts in consultation that are attempted in the original bill? Airport master plans, major development plans and environment strategies are instruments of the utmost complexity. These instruments contain reams of technical data, statistics and complex calculations. We know from experience that an airport lessee company can take over three years of research and preparation for a master plan, major development plan and environment strategy. So I ask the Minister for Transport and Regional Services: how is a member of the public, a local council or a state government supposed to be able to respond adequately within 45 days to a plan that may take upwards of three years to prepare? To demand that members of the public do so is to deny them natural justice.
It is sophistry to suggest that a 45-day consultation period will bring airport consultation times in line with other jurisdictions such as local government. What a load of humbug that is. That is what the government were proposing. One can hardly compare a development application for a two-storey home at the local government level with the preparation of a highly technical master plan or major development plan for Sydney airport. The impact of a two-storey home on the amenity of any neighbourhood is nothing like the impact of new flight paths or a 48,000 square metre shopping centre at Sydney airport. To compare the two is preposterous and dishonest. The only validity of such bastardy and cutbacks in time can be to delimit and effectively annihilate the public interest so that the only researched submission to these plans and strategies is the proponent itself.
Ordinary members of the public, like the people I represent in Sydney’s inner west, should have months, not days, to investigate the many complex issues that will arise, such as noise and traffic, not to mention the potential disastrous impacts on some of the property values in the area. Members of the public, local councils and state governments should have time to obtain detailed expert analysis on technical matters raised in master plans and major development plans. They should have time to challenge the assertions and obfuscation of airport owners such as Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd. Why should the only substantive submission to an airport master plan or major development plan be from the applicant itself? Why should these mini-republics in major cities have carte blanche to do what they want with even greater ease?
Without amendment, the government’s changes will impede and do violence to an already flawed maladministration of Commonwealth law. I am particularly galled, as is the rest of the community, that Airports Act laws could be amended with such reckless indifference towards the public interest. That is what the government were intending. Indeed, as I noted from the Bills Digest, which cites the contribution to the debate by the member for Dawson, the purpose of this bill is to ‘improve the available pool of investment funds’. This so-called ‘improvement’ really translates into the same, tired old anarcho-capitalist mentality of the government in removing all environmental, airport control and pricing regulatory regimes so as to turn all Sydney Basin airports into a money-raking, gouging exercise.
This bill yet again further lowers the bar for the chosen few, such as Macquarie Bank and Colonial First State Bank, who own Bankstown Airport Corporation. These banks are allowed to purchase airport leases and airport corporations whilst enjoying windfall after windfall as this government makes amendment after amendment to regulatory laws so as to accommodate these corporations at the expense of my constituents. I do not call these ‘profits’, because these moneys are being obtained at the expense of both the environment and aviation safety.
I turn now to the two social costs from this bill, namely the costs from this bill to the people of Sydney on the environment as well as to the fundamental issue of aviation safety. In environmental terms, this bill continues to persist in the legal fiction that core and non-core airports are operated upon land which is not the subject of state planning, pollution and other environmental laws. This is a major point of controversy for our state government parliamentary colleagues, who support airports such as Sydney and Bankstown airports. I commend my parliamentary colleagues in the New South Wales parliament who have fought vigorously and consistently on the manifest injustice to the resident ratepayers of New South Wales, who must suffer the ignominy of seeing the airport lessee companies exempted from state environmental laws.
I am aware of the litigation that has occurred in the cases of Westfield Management Ltd v Brisbane Airport Corporation Ltd [2005] FCA 32 and Direct Factory Outlets Pty Ltd v Westfield Management Ltd [2005] FCA 34. Item 16 of this bill attempts to overcome the limitations of the existing section 32, which is apparent in the fact that the Federal Court in these cases considered the non-aeronautical development to be not inconsistent with the provisions of section 32. However, this is only part of the story. It is in fine style that this government would wait until commercial imperatives in direct harm occur before being shunted into action. I speak for the broader application of state environmental laws being locked out of application in development generally.
I point out what I consider to be the core constitutional issue of the operation of the Airports Act 1996. I specifically refer to section 112 of the act titled ‘Exclusion of State/Territory Laws’. Members of this House should note that section 112 refers exclusively to part 5 of the Airports Act, dealing only with master plans and major and minor development plans and building activities. Section 112 states:
I turn to clause 122 of the bill, which prescribes a purpose statement of a final environment strategy. I note that one of these purpose statements in the bill is to:
… ensure that all operations at the airport are undertaken in accordance with relevant environmental legislation and standards …
So what does ‘relevant environmental legislation and standards’ mean? To answer this question, it is necessary to refer to the provision found in section 136 under part 6 of the act titled ‘Environmental management’. It is significant to note the distinctly different, indeed opposite, intention of section 136 of the act to that found in section 112:
I quote sections 112 and 136 to show that the Airports Act 1996 contemplates diametrically opposite legislator’s intentions, depending on whether we are talking about, on the one hand, airport land use, planning and building controls in instruments such as master plans and major development plans or, on the other hand, environmental management found in environmental strategies.
For airport land use instruments, Commonwealth law is to apply to the exclusion of state law, whereas with environmental management, part 6 is not to apply to the exclusion of state laws, including environmental laws. What are we to make of these provisions? A plain reading of section 136 would mean that environmental management is subject to state environmental laws of New South Wales. If so, the issue is whether the minister will make laws consistent with New South Wales environmental law, including its planning and development and pollution laws, concerning the environmental management of airports.
I ask this parliament a question that I have asked on several occasions: has the Minister for Transport and Regional Services thought through the legislation he puts to this House? It is clear to me that this bill, and in particular item 122, contemplates that the purpose of airport environmental strategies is to ensure that airport operations are undertaken in conformance with environmental legislation, including New South Wales state environmental law pursuant to section 136.
This is what the significant grievance throughout the broader community is about—that is, whether state and territory laws apply to their relevant airport lands. Why should Macquarie Bank at Sydney airport or Colonial First State at Bankstown Airport be permitted to develop airport lands as retail outlets, shopping centres and the like, apparently exempt—so we are told—from state planning, environmental and pollution laws, whilst other corporate and Australian families must be subjected to those stringent New South Wales planning, environmental and pollution laws?
I note that the New South Wales legislature has a comprehensive and well-formulated environmental and planning regime developed over decades of refinement. New South Wales planning and development legislation, pollution regimes and other environmental laws are excellent law, administered by professional agencies such as the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority, the New South Wales Department of Planning, the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service and the New South Wales Department of Local Government. To deny such agencies their natural jurisdictional powers is to do grave violence to the administration of laws. To do so by the stroke of a pen in a provision such as section 112 is equally galling.
I further put to this House today that it is time to revisit this legal fiction that state and territory law has no application on airport lands. I share in the justified outcry from those public interest stakeholders, including, critically, the New South Wales state government and its statutory agencies who are routinely ignored by this arrogant government. I refer to the outrageous example most correctly cited in the Bills Digest concerning the conflict of laws with respect to Canberra airport, which is subject to the Australian Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act 1988, which is a piece of Commonwealth legislation. The effect of clause 112A is that the Canberra airport master plan will override the National Capital Plan. I therefore raise the question as to the applicability of those provisions of the Commonwealth Places (Application of Laws) Act 1970, in particular section 4 of that act with regard to whether state environmental law generically applies to Commonwealth land, including airport land. I further question this point in light of the express provisions of sections 112 and 136. There is the additional question of whether these two provisions, in light of the amendments before us here today, impede state and territory laws and whether this impediment, if any, creates an inconsistency of laws, thus triggering the constitutional law found in section 109 of the Commonwealth Constitution. Section 109 states:
When a law of a State is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth, the latter shall prevail, and the former shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be invalid.
These are all questions that require revisiting. We cannot sit as a parliament making such amendments here today, with the presumption that these land developments in Sydney Basin airports such as Sydney and Bankstown operate with immunity from state planning, pollution and environmental laws. I challenge that presumption here today and seek that this parliament revisit this long mantra of presumption.
I finally move to the issue first flagged by the June 2000 Report on the Inquiry into the Development of the Brisbane Airport Corporation Master Plan by the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport. This report made eight recommendations, one of which is very pertinent to this bill today:
1.24. That the Airports Act 1996 be amended to specify the relationship a major development plan has to a master plan.
Item 75 of this bill does provide a purpose statement of major development plans. Clause 91(1)(c)(ca) and existing paragraph 91(1)(d) provide ‘whether or not the development is consistent’ with the lease and master plan. I note from the Bills Digest that this wording is at best ambiguous and at worst does not fulfil the Brisbane Airport inquiry’s recommendation 1.24. It is clear that after six years this government is still not prepared to define precisely the relationship between major development plans and the airport master plan; thus, it is still possible for a major development plan to be inconsistent with the master plan. This I consider to be a major flaw of this bill.
I ask the Senate to consider carefully and accept amendments to this bill proposed by the opposition. All residents affected by airports, particularly those that have become mini republics, deserve better than the carte blanche being offered by this bill to those fiefdoms. This is particularly true of Sydney airport and Macquarie Bank.
I have long argued that, as an airport, Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport operates very well as a shopping centre and car park. Since I last made that statement it is clear that the Howard government has allowed Sydney airport to expand beyond its ecologically sustainable limits. Development does not come without its fair share of problems, many of which are created as a result of the minister’s apparent disdain for proper planning and approval processes and for the people of Lowe, whom I represent.
Labor’s amendments will ensure that there are no reductions in consultation or approval times. This is particularly important in light of the distrust many have towards the Howard government in relation to this issue that is so critical to my constituents in Lowe and the people of the inner west of Sydney.
The government have form on this. They have not properly implemented the long-term operating plan. We are supposed to be getting only 17 per cent of movements to the north of Sydney airport and we have been getting up to double that over my electorate. Moreover, the government have abandoned any idea that Sydney will ever have a second airport to take pressure off Sydney airport. (Time expired)
My electorate of Hasluck contains part of the Perth Airport’s operational area and surrounding airport land. In recent years the Westralia Airports Corporation has dropped the ball on airport operations, judging by the regular chaos that exists at the Perth domestic terminal. Access to the terminal on many occasions during the week and on weekends is difficult. Road traffic is highly congested, parking is not available and there are long queues waiting to get through security and to check bags.
Then we see where their focus has been. For the past two years I have had firsthand experience of the problems that can arise under the current act when major developments are proposed on airport land. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these amendments are justified and warranted. Unfortunately, if corporate Australia is not prepared to consider the needs of communities surrounding such facilities on a voluntary, good-neighbour basis, governments need to impose legislation and regulations that ensure that the needs of the community are adequately addressed and their amenity protected.
The current act does not adequately do this. For example, we had on Perth Airport land the West Aviat Golf Club and golf course that had been established over some 24 years by the blood, sweat and tears of its many members—mostly retired or semi-retired members of the local community. The Westralia Airports Corporation served notice on this club to quit this facility with just 28 days notice. That was legal, yes, but consistent with building goodwill in the community or being a good neighbour, no.
The West Aviat Golf Course was a fantastic community facility that blended into the surrounding environment which had become the home of many species of birds, native marsupials and flora—and of course golfers. This facility and its members deserved to be treated better than was initially the case. I am pleased to report that after representations by me, and the hard work of club secretary, 84-year-old Mr Peter Cox, and others, the Westralia Airports Corporation agreed to change the notice period to six months instead of 28 days. If the Westralia Airports Corporation lived up to the claims detailed in their master plan, this would have happened in the first instance.
When I first heard of the proposed brickworks, there was a lot of rumour and misinformation being promoted in the community about the proposed development, which was strongly denied by the proponents. I therefore sought an urgent meeting with BGC and the then CEO of Westralia Airports Corporation and encouraged both parties to effectively engage the community and discuss and confirm their plans. This should be a standard process for any organisation interested in working with and in the community. This did not happen. In February 2006 I tabled in this House a petition opposing the development, signed by 5,000 constituents. In May 2006 I raised specific concerns in a letter to the newly appointed executive chairman of the Westralia Airports Corporation regarding, among other things, claims in their Perth Airport Master plan 2004. I was concerned that the plan outlined key objectives which were not being met. The plan included such objectives as:
... respects and supports current regional and local planning principles and concerns as outlined in the Metropolitan Regional Scheme (MRS) and Town Planning Schemes.
and—
... respects and supports the planning efforts of airport neighbours such as the City of Swan, the City of Belmont, and the Shire of Kalamunda.
There have been a lot of reports in the media that would suggest the corporation has done otherwise.
The plan also sets out a development strategy which recommends development plans based on compatibility with surrounding communities; land uses which complement adjacent communities’ existing and planned land uses which are assigned to the respective precincts; and uses which were assigned with the goal of ensuring that the precincts were compatible with surrounding communities’ development efforts. The development objectives state:
Perth Airport has considered environmental issues in its planning efforts, including:
Neighbouring Communities. The airport will adopt a good neighbour philosophy and consult adjacent communities in its planning process.
The corporation acknowledged the role of local government and noted ‘the importance of the arrangement between Perth Airport and the state in also considering local government requirements to ensure that, as much as possible, there is uniformity and transparency in the working arrangements between all parties’.
Throughout that master plan, Westralia Airports Corporation consistently restated its commitment to appropriate land use which was compatible with airport operations, acceptable to adjacent communities and had consideration of state and local government planning objectives. The building and operation of brickworks on Perth Airport land is, in my view and that of many of my constituents, a breach of this commitment and was certainly pushed through without any community consultation or strategy to inform the community of its plans, other than of course the statutory requirement as provided in the current act. A brickworks is very clearly not compatible with airport operations or compatible with the land uses of the adjacent communities as they are largely residential or industrial—mostly light industrial.
The master plan makes a number of other reassuring-sounding statements such as listing future development opportunities as being business centres, corporate headquarters, manufacturing complexes, entertainment centres and logistics hubs. There is no mention of heavy industry. Industrial use is defined as activities which may involve manufacturing, distribution and assembly. There is no mention of heavy, emission-producing industries such as brickworks. It is my view and the view of many residents that the proposed brickworks are in contravention of the key objectives listed in Perth Airport Master plan 2004. A number of concerned constituents with aviation expertise have raised concerns at the potential aviation risk posed by the brickworks being placed at the end of a runway. I am advised that the brickworks will be directly under the approach path of runway 24 and within the departure envelope for runway 06.
It is also rather astonishing that the Perth Airport Master plan 2004 clearly states:
… Perth’s airport was located at Maylands, which by the late 1930’s had become inadequate because of its restricted size and the presence of flight path obstructions, mainly brickwork chimneys.
Can you believe that? I would have thought the Westralia Airports Corporation would have been willing to learn from the mistakes of the past. Anyone reading the master plan would have been left with the distinct impression that the proposed brickworks did not fit within the scope of their master plan.
Much of what I have had to say today I have said before in this House, and that does demonstrate the need for a clear legislative framework with effective supporting regulations for airport operations and for commercial activities incidental to airport operations. Unless they are based in the legislation or provided for in regulations, master plans are nothing but reassuring words to fool people into thinking they have some level of protection and security in their communities. Unfortunately, under the current act, they do not.
My constituents of Hasluck deserve better than to be saddled with brickworks at Perth Airport. They definitely deserved better from the state Labor government, who once again sat on their collective hands ignoring their own constituents. I speak in particular of Michelle Roberts, state Labor member for Midland and Minister for Housing and Works, Heritage, Indigenous Affairs, Land Information, and Eric Ripper, state Labor member for Belmont, Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister for State Development. You might be asking yourself: where were they in all of this? What action did they take? Did they do anything? Did they endeavour to source an alternative site?
Let us take a look at their roles. Minister for housing and works and land information, Michelle Roberts, would have been only too well aware of the extreme shortage of bricks delaying the construction of houses in Western Australia, causing delay and hardship for many new and first home owners. Some houses were taking up to two years to construct. Another brickworks needed? You bet. What representations did she make to the minister for planning and infrastructure to locate a brickworks in appropriately zoned land around Perth? I would have to say not many.
Then we have the highest taxing Treasurer in the history of Western Australia. Not only is he the Treasurer; he is also the minister for state development. BGC directly or indirectly employ some 7,000 people in Western Australia, providing cost-effective housing as both a builder and a manufacturer of building materials. Surely Mr Ripper’s lack of action would have to be considered to be against the best interests of Western Australia and Western Australians. He also failed his constituents who live in areas around the airport in not seeking an alternative site.
The then Minister for Transport and Regional Services, the Hon. Warren Truss, attached some 60 conditions that have to be met prior, during and after the brickworks are constructed and before they are commissioned. These conditions have been imposed as a result of direct representation by many residents and me to the minister and will address many of the concerns raised in those representations. These conditions go to the heart of the environmental issues, public health issues and traffic concerns.
I said at the time that I was disappointed at the decision to place the brickworks on this land. I am still concerned about a number of the issues that relate particularly to the oversight of the conditions and who is responsible. It seems to me that it is actually the Westralia Airports Corporation who have the responsibility for ensuring that the conditions are met. That seems to be somewhat at odds with the fact that they are a direct beneficiary for their tenant and the income that they receive from their tenant in this relationship. Surely we need to be resourcing the Department of Transport and Regional Services much more than they are currently resourced, with a single airport environmental officer at the Perth Airport to make sure that these works are carried out according to the conditions provided by the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. We need additional staffing, human resources. It is not good enough that existing staff pick up that extra workload.
The community are entitled to be part of the development process in ensuring compliance with the conditions imposed in the major development plan as they are fully realised. Airports and airport businesses do not operate in isolation from the rest of the community. In early September 2006 I actively sought the support of the then Minister for Transport and Regional Services by proposing the formation of a community consultative committee for the brickworks development at the Perth Airport. The merits of engaging the community in this way are obvious. The proposal was taken up and supported by Minister Truss in a letter to the Westralia Airports Corporation, and subsequently the establishment of the community consultative committee was announced. The committee’s inaugural meeting was held in early December. Mr John Collins of the Hazelmere Progress Association was elected as chairperson and is strongly supported by several members of the community surrounding the airport.
The community consultative committee will work through the issues that were of concern to the community and provide some community oversight so that the proponents of this development comply with the conditional approval for development set by the minister. I was very pleased to hear late last year that the new Minister for Transport and Regional Services, the Hon. Mark Vaile, had released new airport development consultation guidelines, which should be adopted as an integral part of any future developments at leased airports. He rightly pointed out that communities have an expectation that they will be consulted effectively about what are often intensely local issues. However, I would much prefer to see these guidelines introduced as regulations, not merely guidelines, based on the recent experiences of constituents of Hasluck.
I am pleased to see that the government have obviously learned a lot from the Western Australian experience. I am pleased to see that they have strengthened the consultation aspects of the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. Currently, virtually the only requirement for the airports corporation to show that they have engaged in community consultation is to tick a box. This amendment requires not only proof of community consultation but also that concerns raised by the community are listed. The people consulted and all the concerns, including what the developer intends to do about the issues raised, have to be listed. One has a deep suspicion that the many submissions and representations made by individuals and community groups on the brickworks development at Perth Airport were by and large ignored by the Westralia Airports Corporation. This amendment requires that all submissions be adequately and effectively addressed.
Initially the public comment period was to be significantly reduced, bringing it into line with legislative requirements in other states and territories in Australia. I was not prepared to support that particular change. I lobbied Minister Vaile hard over a long period on this aspect, along with other colleagues, and I understand that he intends to amend this bill to extend the period of consultation to 60 business days. This is a considerable improvement over the period originally intended of some 45 days. It is a win for our communities and for common sense. Developers have an army of professional people—often consultants with skills, knowledge and competency—employed to work through the details of these major development plans, giving them the ability to meet any time lines. For the average working family, mum or dad, or community group this is not the case, and any reduction in time for response to what are often very complex development plans would have been unreasonable. Businesses, including airport corporations, need to be working with the community, and government should be ensuring equity in these processes and establishing a proper balance between the needs of business and those of the community.
The other amendment that I fully support is the stop-the-clock provision. Under the act the minister can only approve or reject a development proposal within a 90-day period, otherwise the project is deemed to be approved. This amendment allows the minister to seek additional information on airport major development proposals by stopping the clock. In the brickworks decision the minister could only approve or reject the development proposal within a 90-day period or the project was deemed to be approved. This amendment will ensure that additional time can be given to address concerns from the community, health and environmental perspectives. It is important that these amendments are supported, enabling further legislative protection for the community. It may be that these amendments do not go far enough but, by and large, those that I have mentioned are a step in the right direction.
I rise to speak on the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. We are told that the purpose of the bill is to amend the principal act to improve the land use planning system applicable to federal airports. There are two areas of concern here. One is, of course, the principal act and the way it has been used right around the country to plan and to develop airports. Secondly, the question that should be asked is: does this bill work to provide solutions to these problems and to the conflicts that arise? Perhaps it actually contributes to them.
I would like to make a couple of points in response to the contribution of the member for Hasluck. We heard about the Perth brickworks located opposite a residential area in Perth. We heard the member criticise the state ministers and the state Labor government but, at the end of the day, that particular brickworks site was ticked off, signed off on and agreed to by the federal transport minister. The state government had absolutely no say in that final decision regardless of whether it agreed to or disagreed with it. Let us make it quite clear: that final decision, that final tick of approval, lies with the federal transport minister. So the consequences of the decisions made clearly lie on his shoulders.
I would also like to condemn the government for undermining public confidence in the Airports Act through the approval decisions such as that one relating to the Perth brickworks site, which is located—as I said—opposite a residential area. Another example is the Essendon direct factory outlet, which was proposed without regard to the impact on local road infrastructure. These were signed off on by the federal Liberal government transport minister. As we have seen from this government so many times before, the devil lies in the detail. Indeed, as any member in this place who represents an electorate that has an airport in it or nearby will tell you, airport land use and the systems within which airport lessee companies are told to operate—in the interest of their shareholders, of course—give rise to highly contentious issues. Let me add at this point that the airport operators, and I can only speak about the operators at Adelaide Airport, Adelaide Airport Ltd, try to work within the legislation. The CEO, Phil Baker, and others, ensure that they follow appropriate procedures in the day-to-day operations of Adelaide Airport. I must also add that, when a dispute does arise, they are quite happy to come out and consult with the residents.
I would like to pay due respect to the Adelaide Airport operators because they operate within the legislation that is provided to them. They have shareholders and their No. 1 interest, of course, is to return a profit to those shareholders. But at the same time they are very consultative, and at every request from residents’ associations and residents’ groups around the airport they have always been willing to come out and speak to see if they can resolve particular issues. But they are operating within the legislation that is provided to them, and that legislation is not always favourable to the residents, which is why we have these disputes.
There are a number of issues that I want to raise about the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 that concern how airport developments affect local residents. While the objective of streamlining the processes for businesses and for economic development may be a good thing, we must still remember that airports and their use of land also affect ordinary people—the battlers who live in and around airport land. We can all remember the classic Australian film The Castle. All of us here, I am sure, have seen it. That film serves as a reminder that a person’s house is his or her castle, even if that ‘castle’ is near an airport.
As the member for Hindmarsh, an electorate which Adelaide Airport is squarely situated smack bang in the centre of, I am continually being contacted about how the airport and development on its land affects local residents. I hear a range of complaints on a daily basis: from issues to do with the curfew to issues about developments that take place on airport land. Residents in the Hindmarsh electorate are concerned about not only the development of land around Adelaide Airport but also the excessive noise generated by planes. I have introduced a private member’s bill to this House: the Airport Development and Aviation Noise Ombudsman Bill 2007. I have done that because for years residents have had concerns about noise generated by overhead aircraft and airport developments. However, there is nowhere for these residents to turn when a dispute arises—absolutely nowhere. It is time that we had an independent, non-party-political, non-partisan body established to monitor the airport and take into account complaints that are made about noise or disputes that arise out of developments.
My concerns about the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 and the introduction of the Airport Development and Aviation Noise Ombudsman Bill 2006 are in the interests of the residents in the electorate of Hindmarsh: residents of suburbs adjacent to the airport, such as Brooklyn Park, Cowandilla, Henley Beach, Lockleys, West Beach, Richmond, Mile End and Glenelg. Many residents from those suburbs have contacted me, anxious about the changes that we are discussing today. They are anxious about the changes to the current regulations that guide the development of airport land. I see local residents as a critical stakeholder. They too should have a say in what takes place in and around their neighbourhoods, regardless of whether it is on Commonwealth or state government land.
This government has ignored the many residents who have lived near the airport for many years. The first concern raised by residents was that the Airports Amendment Bill proposed to slash the consultation period currently required from 90 days to 45 working days. How can that be a good thing, when you propose to slash a period of 90 days for consultation down to 45 days—half the amount of time? The Minister for Transport and Regional Services conceded that this amendment was a mistake, and rightly so. The Australian Financial Review of 14 February 2007 published an article to this effect. The transport minister moved to amend the government’s original proposed consultation time in the Airports Amendment Bill for major development of airport land. Instead of 90 days, or about 13 weeks, it was proposed that the consultation period be 30 days. Following the amendment, the time frame was increased to 60 working days—approximately 12 weeks. It is still a reduction, and we do not agree to the consultation period being cut to 60 days. That is why there is an amendment to be moved to keep the consultation period at 90 days.
The second concern raised by residents was the doubling of the threshold for developments not requiring ministerial approval from $10 million to $20 million. Let us go back for a moment to the consultation period. The present Airports Act 1996 requires that an airport lessee company have its draft master plan open to community consultation for a period of 90 days before it is submitted to the minister. The consultation process is valuable for all those who have a stake in airport development. Whether it be the airport company itself, tenants of parcels of airport land, carriers, businesses or residents, they all have an interest in how airport land is used. We cannot afford to have a one-sided process that could shut out any of these stakeholders, whether by design or otherwise.
My concern as the local member and as a resident who even before my parliamentary days was very active in airport issues is that consultation is not a straightforward process. It is not a matter of simply ticking boxes. Stakeholder consultation in any land use matter can be incredibly complex. For airports, the complexity is something that we can try to simplify. But ultimately, due to the very nature of the airport land use itself and the ongoing lack of impact assessments on surrounding areas, road and traffic management, land uses and the like, the myriad of issues cannot be compressed into a nutshell. It is positive to see that the Airports Amendment Bill provides that there must be evidence provided that community consultation has taken place.
I have worked to ensure that community consultation is an integral part of the development process. But for consultation to be meaningful—as I said earlier, it is not just a tick the box process—stakeholders must have a reasonable opportunity to go through the matters that will affect them. Much of this is not included in the master plan and is left for others to deal with after the fact. Any grounds for recourse will be lost if there is no consultation before the development at the airport goes ahead, as there is currently no body such as an ombudsman—an independent, impartial body—that residents can approach with their concerns. That is why the introduction of an airport ombudsman—a proposal in a bill which I presented to this House not so long ago—is so crucial and is becoming even more crucial with the introduction of the Airports Amendment Bill 2006.
As I have mentioned, it is an unavoidable function of airport development that master plans give rise to such a wide range of complex issues and that, therefore, they will necessarily take time to process. While we do not want red tape to be unnecessarily burdensome for anyone, community consultation should be encouraged. As I said earlier, community consultation can only be a good thing. There is nothing negative in community consultation. The more of it there is the better off we all are.
The Airports Amendment Bill 2006 also proposes that the threshold for a major airport development be increased. The consequence of a development being a major airport development is that a further level of vetting applies. It cannot proceed without ministerial approval—without the minister giving that tick mentioned earlier. Under the current Airports Act 1996, the major airport development threshold is $10 million—that is, constructions that would cost more than $10 million would be subjected to ministerial approval. The Airports Amendment Bill proposes to double that to $20 million.
We all know that any regulatory threshold can be manipulated for land use. We have seen carefully planned strategies used in the past to work around the threshold above which ministerial approval is required. There has been much ambiguity as to what exactly counts towards the existing construction cost threshold of $10 million. Is it the cost of building the structure? Does it include costs associated with fit-outs? What about the expenses that are necessarily incidental to construction but not necessarily relating to the bricks and mortar? Does it include stage 2 and stage 3 of the same development? These are the questions that have to be asked and that we have to grapple with.
The proposed amendment clarifies that construction includes carrying out all associated building activities but, to minimise the impact of the amendment, for holding developers with planning and cost assessments to at least account for their proposals in the future. The bill simply continues the perceived irrelevance of this provision by doubling the amount on the basis of increased material and construction costs. It has been a deliberate abuse of the act to provide costings. In this amendment, the motive of those flouting the rules is seen by the public to be rewarded, and the minister is still protected from having to make a decision. Anyone without vested interests would surely struggle to see how local residents would benefit from having the threshold doubled.
As the local representative, I have done and will continue to do my best to ensure that the views and concerns of local residents in my electorate affected by Adelaide Airport get due recognition and responses. With the act as it is, they have no rights. Their concerns are ignored by the government and, at the end of the day, they are just paid lip-service and then put in their place. We have seen that over and over again with a range of developments at airports all around the country.
One broad concern that still arises despite the amendment, which purports to make things easier, is that there will be no independent way to resolve any land use disputes that might arise between residents and airports—again, no independent body for residents to have their voices heard in an impartial way. As local residents and resident organisations have taken up the fight against impositions against their domestic interests, I stand ready to continue to support them as I have in the past, even after the government ignores the fundamental problems inherent in airport development rules and passes an amendment bill that only adds salt to their wounds.
I wish to acknowledge the hard, thankless and obviously voluntary work of resident organisations, including those of Glenelg, Lockleys South, West Beach, Henley, Grange and Netley, the Adelaide Airport Action Group, and those of Brooklyn Park, Richmond and Cowandilla. All these residents groups were put in place because they were unhappy with what was happening either through aviation activities at the airport or development of land at the airport. All these people and residents groups that I have just mentioned had input into and submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport on this particular bill.
As members of a democratic society Australians expect to be able to have their views heard, particularly when their homes—as I said earlier, their castles—are at stake. Community consultation is not particularly onerous for lessee companies or developers, and I hope that the committee process for this bill concludes on the realisation that we must do what we can to give all stakeholders a voice, including the residents. We are trying to give the community groups and residents a voice. I was originally approached by individuals within Hindmarsh frustrated with and concerned about the lack of accountability for aviation noise and land development. Again, I have been contacted by residents worried about the development at Adelaide Airport. I received a huge response from the Hindmarsh community when I initially put forward the proposal for an airport ombudsman. I know there is support for an ombudsman within Hindmarsh, and this support has only intensified with the introduction of the Airports Amendment Bill 2006.
Big business and the members of the Senate inquiry into the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 should not ignore the cries of residents near the airport calling for more rigorous consultation processes and their voices to be heard. At present the master plan is virtually worthless anyway. Even after substantial consultation, the incorporation of community views into the zoning of airport land for appropriate usage and the draft plan—the result of so much company and voluntary time—is approved, residents are back at square one. The only way a resident can rest assured that a parcel of airport land will not be used for a particularly dreaded purpose, contrary to the master plan, is if something else is built on it. If it is vacant land at the airport, anything could end up there—and probably will. One virtually has to resort to blind hope that the land will be used for something positive, necessary and pleasant, even if clearly against the master plan.
We have seen in a number of states, in relation to multiple airports, conflict descend upon stakeholders that has almost led to a constitutional challenge. The power being exercised by this government in relation to airports and the use of airport land has been mishandled so acutely that airport interests and local government interests have been at war, lobbying legal challenges and opinions over no-man’s-land from their respective bunkers. The fact that opinions on the status of any parcel of airport land and consequent implications for surrounding authorities can be at such variance, that the government can remain silent, inactive, irrelevant, and that relations between parties can sink into such hostility, makes a pretty clear case against the government responsible for the administration of this act and the role that they see themselves as playing in its implementation, which is, of course, effectively zero; none.
This is a peculiar example of how one government—in this case the federal government—can engineer a situation that causes hostilities to break out between its agent, the airport lessee company and state or local authorities. For what purpose this is, I do not know—money, presumably. I have called the airport lessee companies the federal government’s agents because they are clearly doing exactly what the government wants them to do. Otherwise the federal government would intervene or substantially amend the act to prevent them from doing what they may disagree with, not just aid and abet the current dynamic.
As I said earlier, I do not blame the lessee companies and the operators of airports; they are doing their job. They are doing what their shareholders want them to do and they are doing what the act says they should do. They are doing it in ways the act—and thereby the government—says they should be able to do it. The government is in charge because the minister ticks off the developments whether the minister, the local residents, the Australian public or the Labor Party like it or not. Consequently, the minister is responsible for the demoralisation of the local residents, the enmity between stakeholders and the deterioration of the entire area within which the airports are located. The opposition will be moving detailed amendments to this bill in the consideration in detail stage of this debate. If rejected, a federal Labor Party will revisit these key issues in a broader review of the legislation to reduce the impact on local communities.
I am pleased to speak on the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. As we know, the purpose of this bill is to loosen restrictions on airlines owning smaller airports; make various changes to airport land use, planning and building controls, and environmental management provisions; and make changes confirming the ACCC’s ability to monitor and evaluate the quality of airport services and facilities.
In light of that, the primary amendments proposed in this bill comprise the following points: (1) reaffirming the parliament’s intention to provide for non-aeronautic development at airports consistent with the airport’s lease and current master plan; (2) providing, through regulation, for commercial investment at non-core regulated airports—that is, general aviation airports; (3) excluding Canberra airport from the operation of the National Capital Plan; (4) implementing recommendations 1, 2 and, in part, 6 arising from the June 2000 Senate committee inquiry into the Brisbane Airport master plan; (5) refining the land use planning and development regimes by reducing statutory public comments and assessment periods; ensuring that the public have ready access to associated documents in electronic form, free of charge, to assist them in providing comment on land use proposals; improving the quality of information provided in airport planning documents; and raising the dollar threshold requiring major development plans to be submitted from $10 million to $20 million; (6) requiring airport master plans to depict the most current aircraft noise forecasts; and (7) providing for greater flexibility with regard to day-to-day on-airport activities, including vehicle control et cetera.
I listened with interest earlier in the day when the opposition spokesman on transport, the member for Batman, had a fair bit to say about this issue, and he made a lot of sense. He seems to be the sensible one in this debate. The rest on the other side seem to be diverging onto their own ideological local airport agendas. Let us remind ourselves about the genesis of the Airports Act 1996. It was, in fact, the Australian Labor Party in 1995 that moved that privatisation of the airports take place. I remind the parliament that, in opposition, the Australian Labor Party continue to make a big thing about privatisation and, shock, horror, what a dreadful thing it is. I remind them that they privatised the Commonwealth Bank, they privatised Qantas and they privatised such things as the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. They were in the business of privatising the airports; and, as we know, Mr Blount was brought out to privatise Telstra, but they will not admit to that.
In 1996, when the Howard government took office, Labor continued their agenda of 99-year leases of 22 airports around Australia. In 1997, the first phase of these lease sales took place. Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth were the first three involved in this operation. Unbelievably, one of the reasons that problems have arisen from this operation of the lease sale is that most of the bidders paid too much for the airports—in their eagerness to get hold of a Commonwealth asset in this time frame. As a result, it has forced a number of further downstream issues which we are confronting today. One of them is land use and planning issues involving airports.
Today I am going to speak a little bit about the Western Australian situation, particularly the Perth Airport and Jandakot Airport. As some members might know, I used to represent the seat of Swan, and Perth Airport was one of the major issues. Interestingly, the Labor Party used to make much of the Perth Airport until the current member took the seat, and we do not hear much about Perth Airport these days. It has gone very quiet, and why wouldn’t it? The issues that were being used at that time for conflict were a beat-up. Such things as noise issues were well and truly in the forecasts. The same noise contours are being experienced today, and the forecast for such things as the extension of runway 0624 and the parallel runway are still the same in the master plan as they were then.
Other issues have arisen in and around the airport, particularly the issue of land use and planning. When I was the member for Swan, a group in the area began an agitation group called RAGE—or Retailers Against Government Enterprise. It was led by a local businessman, Wally Daly, who happens to own the Super Value store in Belvedere Street, Belmont. He enlisted the support of a leviathan public figure at that time, Bill Mitchell, to lead the charge. RAGE was successful in seeing that a retail complex did not go ahead on Horrie Miller Drive, and for good reason. At that stage, and I was very supportive of this action, the retail in that area—they had done their demographic surveys—was going to hurt many of the businesses in the catchment area. As an aside, RAGE won an award for being one of the most effective lobby operations that year. They were quite pleased about their success and also about their recognition as a lobby group.
Other issues arose when I was the member for Swan, and one was the proposal to put a hot mix plant on airport land. I remember going to public meetings and standing on the back of a truck. Michelle Roberts, the member for Midland or whatever her seat was called, was also standing on the back of a truck, beating up about all these terrible things that were going to happen. And there were the same people who are currently involved in the issue over the approval of the brickworks. The hot mix plant on the airport land is quite an entitled use. It is well placed; it is right out of the way.
I heard the member for Hindmarsh talking about this brickworks’ operations being near residential housing. He obviously has not been into or around Perth Airport. It is a long way from any residential housing. In fact, it is mainly semi-rural lots that surround that particular area, as well as a cemetery, a dogs home and a major dual carriageway. To say that it is near residential housing is quite fatuous and incorrect. Having represented that area, I know it well. All I can say is that those same activists were involved in the issue of the siting of the brickworks.
We know that there are a huge amount of issues around Perth Airport. I refer, for example, to Munday Swamp. It was considered that there might have been a rare, short-necked turtle there. They have never found the turtle. They then said that, while they could not find a turtle there, they had found some skeletons of turtles and that it would be an ideal place in which to reintroduce turtles. Again, it is a long bow to draw. I understand that the current management of Perth Airport have dealt well with this issue.
There was the issue of remnant native bushland on the Perth Airport site. If you look at aerial photographs, you will see that most of it has been degraded by being chopped up by people in hotrods and on motorbikes and motocross bikes; they have degraded the whole site. There was also the issue of native title. That issue has now been dealt with, I understand, in most respects, and the matter has gone forward.
Anyone with a half-decent understanding of this issue would know that Perth Airport has a buffer zone that is far larger than that of Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport. Why, right in the centre of Perth, should there be this absolutely vacant space around the airport which could be well used under a proper land use proposal? In Perth at the moment, there is a critical shortage of industrial land. If you have read any transcripts recently about the interference of the celebrated powerbrokers of the Labor Party in and around Perth, you will understand that the issue of land use has been very critical to their success. Some of these land use issues have involved the farthest perimeter around the airport, and the surrounding councils. For example, the City of Belmont lost a third of its area when the land was taken from it in order to locate Perth Airport at its current location. That has led to an issue about the payment of rates. That issue is still outstanding. I understand that the City of Belmont and the owners of Perth Airport are continually negotiating on that matter. The owners have paid their rates this year and they are continuing to work with the CEO of the City of Belmont about the annual payment of rates, and services. These are some of the issues involved in land use around airports.
My colleague the member for Hasluck—and he is entitled to his point of view; he represents that area now, and he represents it very well—was opposed to the siting of brickworks on this land. He is quite entitled to lead the community charge on this issue. But in my opinion this is an entirely suitable use of Perth Airport land. He fails to understand—because I know the same people he was dealing with, the activists in that area—that their agenda was not pure. In fact, those agitating against the brickworks were being financed by Boral to run their campaign. I will not say anything further on that because it is the subject of legal action. There will be a lot more said about what the agenda was in trying to stop the Perth brickworks going ahead.
We do know that the company that wanted to build the brickworks tried to find many sites around the Perth metropolitan area but because that company and its owner, Mr Len Buckridge, were deemed to be enemies of the state by the state Labor Party, they were unable to find suitable land on which to build this facility. It would be potentially the cleanest brickworks that this country has seen, when compared to the Boral operation in the Swan Valley—which, I might add, was given a licence to continue emissions over and above the EPA requirements by the then state environment minister, Judy Edwards. It was an absolute disgrace—it was exposed that she had given them a concession to spew into the atmosphere huge amounts of pollutants outside their licence requirements. At the same time they were working in conjunction with their business partners, the Boral group, to try and knock off this development.
Where could anyone locate their business if the state government was not supportive? Furthermore, Mr Buckridge had tried to buy some land. Believe it or not, Alannah MacTiernan had sold him a parcel of land for $5 million, but Geoff Gallop made her reverse the decision. This was all outlined in the paper in Western Australia. This was the status of his ability to do business in Western Australia. And what happened? The Labor Party continually tried to screw him down because he was deemed to be an enemy of the state because he has not fallen into line with the unions in Western Australia. We know what control the unions have, particularly through their factional allies.
It is interesting to note that one of the most voracious voices in the parliament against the member for Hasluck is Senator Glenn Sterle. He has been given his riding instructions, as we know, by the Labor Party in order to try to do what he can to effect this argument. Unfortunately, he is an absolute disgrace. He is the person who took Senator Cook’s place. It is a disgrace that he could be mentioned in the same breath as Senator Cook. They knocked Senator Cook off at preselection and did not even give him the decency of being allowed to retire due to ill health. They knocked him off and they put this apparatchik of the union, sponsored by Kevin Reynolds, into the Senate. All I can say is that if anyone talks on the phone to Brian Burke and his acolytes, it would be Senator Glenn Sterle, because we know they put him in there through the preselection process. So we know how all of this happened. People need to know some of the background to this matter.
In the time available to me I wish to raise briefly the issue of Jandakot Airport. Jandakot Airport is located in the electorate of Fremantle. There was a proposal to relocate the airport to an area in my electorate called North Dandalup. This has caused much community angst because, even though Jandakot Airport is in the Fremantle electorate, many of the circuit training planes fly over my electorate of Canning and Canning Vale and surrounding areas. There was a proposal by the owners—a group called Ascot Capital—to shift the airport. When the community of North Dandalup inadvertently discovered this in the Australian newspaper they became very active in fighting against it. I can understand their doing so, as I can understand people in Canning Vale wanting to fight against it. They did not want this disruption to their lives and their land use.
What they did not realise in this whole argument was that there was never a formal proposal put to state, federal or local governments. At a public meeting a rather interesting character who is being put up against me as the Labor candidate in the forthcoming election thought he would get some traction on the issue. The community realised that the proposal was something that they needed to work against collectively. I was able to point out to them that the proposal had no legs because it did not satisfy the criteria of both Minister Vaile and Minister Truss, as minister and former ministers for transport. It did not have the support of the local community, it did not have the support of the aviation community, it did not have the support of local government and it did not have the support of state government. Therefore, I was able to read to that meeting a letter by Minister Vaile outlining that, because it did not satisfy these criteria, it would not be approved—even though there was not a formal proposal. It was actually a letter responding to people such as the Air Force association located at Jandakot and saying that this was the minister’s view—that it did not satisfy the criteria. As I said at that meeting, it is a dead duck as an issue. Mrs Marrion Elliott, you wanted to hear me say this in the House: this issue is a dead duck and it will not go ahead because it does not satisfy those criteria.
What will happen now is that the Jandakot Airport owners will do what is being done at most airports around Australia—that is, they will examine the opportunity for land use in the buffer zone of the Jandakot Airport. That includes aviation related industries and non-aviation related industries. As a result we will see quite a growth in non-aviation related use of land at Jandakot Airport. This will not only bring jobs to the area but also do much in terms of enhancing trade for the owners of the small businesses at Jandakot Airport.
I would have liked to have had more time to speak to the specifics of the bill, as I said at the beginning of my speech, but I do agree—I go back to the member for Batman—that planning control of federal airport land should stay in the hands of the federal government. The fact is that we are the honest brokers in this debate. The partisan interests of state and local governments cannot be allowed to take over a national strategic asset like federal airports. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.
Given that Melbourne Airport is located in my own electorate of Calwell, I am particularly keen to speak to the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 that is currently before the House. It is of direct relevance to my constituents and to my overall community.
The bill seeks to make a number of amendments to the Airports Act 1996. The Airports Act 1996 was originally introduced to help facilitate the sale of leasehold interests in some 22 airports operated by the Federal Airports Corporation, with the first phase of airport lease sales occurring in 1997 in Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. The act covers issues such as the leasing and management of airports; restrictions on the ownership of airport operator companies; land use, planning and building controls; environmental management; control of non-airport activities; and access to airports.
In the time that has passed since its introduction, a series of disputes over the development and expansion of certain airports in Australia have emerged, especially in relation to the expansion of retail, commercial and other non-aviation developments on airport land; as well as increased levels of aircraft noise following expanded or varied aircraft operations; and disputes over the fees charged by airport lease owners for airport use.
Perhaps the most controversial of these is the development of large-scale retail and commercial property on airport land, with most opposition to this traditionally coming from local councils, local businesses and local residents. As it stands, the development of retail and commercial properties on airport land does not come under the jurisdiction of local development and planning laws. Rather, responsibility for their planning approval rests with the Commonwealth minister for transport. Currently under the 1996 act, an airport lessee company must produce a draft master plan for any proposed development of airport land, and it must ensure that that draft master plan is open to public comment and consultation for a period of 90 days before it is submitted to the minister for approval.
I intend to return to some of the changes to the consultation processes surrounding draft master plans and ministerial approvals that are being proposed under this new bill later in my speech. Before that, it is important to note that because retail and commercial developments built on airport land are exempt from local planning laws and formal approval rights that otherwise apply outside the airport, local councils are largely rendered powerless to monitor or modify such developments, especially in light of the possible impact they may have on local traffic, local businesses and also the amenities of the local community.
This was pointed out by a number of local councils in submissions they made to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee inquiry into the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. Indeed, in its submission to the inquiry, the shopping centre council called for all land not required for aeronautical development to be made available for normal commercial development in the interests of fair competition. At the very least, the range of submissions that was made to the Senate inquiry into the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 gives a strong indication of the many different competing interests that are at play when it comes to the development of airport land. The importance of preserving an adequate public consultation process when it comes to proposals for airport land development must be seen in this context, as offering a way to balance these interests and to allay the fears of those parties most likely to be affected by any new developments.
Whilst Essendon Airport does not fall within the boundaries of my electorate of Calwell, the traffic congestion that followed when a DFO, or direct factory outlet, was first opened at the Essendon Airport site points to a series of other problems that we need to be aware of, especially in terms of how airport developments can affect the surrounding local community. When the DFO outlet first opened at Essendon Airport, it created an enormous amount of traffic and a good deal of chaos, to say the least. The volume of traffic which the retail store generated far exceeded anything that the surrounding roads and approach routes could cope with, and the problem was only compounded by the fact that DFO management had failed to notify the relevant authorities regarding the centre’s opening and the enormous influx of people and cars that this was likely to create. As an example, this reinforces the key importance of consultations aimed at keeping local councils, state and territory governments and local communities in the loop on these issues when they happen and particularly if they are going to have a fundamental impact on the routine daily business of the local community and on the local traffic.
We need to be mindful, however, not to make the mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The development of commercial and retail properties on airport land also generates jobs for the local community. Commercial developments on airport land can bring with them a series of positives for the local community that we would not want to dismiss or ignore.
Many of the amendments that the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 introduces to the Airports Act 1996 directly relate to the existing framework that is used to regulate airport site development and long-term planning. In line with decisions handed down by the Federal Court in the case of Westfield Management Ltd v Brisbane Airport Corporation and Direct Factory Outlets Pty Ltd v Westfield Management Ltd, the 2006 bill allows for airport lessees to undertake non-aeronautical development as long as it is consistent with the relevant airport master plan. The 2006 bill also includes a purpose statement aimed at ensuring that airport master plans have a strategic focus, that public information is made available about intentions, and that there is land use compatibility.
Clause 77 of the new bill further requires that if a proposed major development may affect future flight paths, the master plan must set out what that effect is, though it falls short of specifically outlining exactly how such an effect must be shown. The 2006 bill also requires Australian noise exposure forecasts and flight paths to be included in airport master plans. In the event that noise forecasts change, it requires that a new master plan be developed. In relation to noise exposure forecasts, the bill also allows for noise forecasts to extend beyond the current limit of 20-year planning horizons. Other important changes include those contained under item 21 of the 2006 bill, which undo some of the restrictions currently provided for under section 44 of the existing 1996 act that prohibits airlines from owning more than five per cent of a company which owns the lease interest of an airport or manages the airport.
In particular, clause 21 allows for specific exemptions to be made in the case of non-core regulated airports, which essentially means smaller regional airports rather than major metropolitan airports. In non-core regulated airports, airlines will now be able to own more than a five per cent stake in any company that serves as the operator or manager of the airport. This is intended primarily to attract more money and investment into some of Australia’s regional airports, though I note that, as it stands, the 2006 bill puts no ceiling on the percentage of ownership that is permissible.
The Airports Amendment Bill 2006 also proposes a number of additional changes relating to the consultation procedures currently provided for under the 1996 act. As I have already mentioned, under the existing act an airport lessee company must have its draft master plan open to community consultation for a period of 90 days before it is submitted to the minister for approval. The 2006 bill reduces that consultation period to 60 days. Originally—many of my colleagues have noted this already—the government had sought to have it reduced to 45 days. Under this bill, draft master plans, major development plans and environment strategies will be available for public viewing and comment for a reduced period of 60 days.
This amendment introduced by the government is one that Labor has strong concerns about. I certainly do. We will seek to address them. When it comes to the development of airport land, the local residents who live close to our regional and metropolitan airports remain one of the most important stakeholders in this process. We must continue to put them front and centre in this process.
Public consultations provide local residents with an opportunity to voice their own concerns and to put forward their own recommendations in response to proposed airport land developments, changes to flight paths and so on. Reducing the time line for public comment on airport master plans, major development projects and environment strategies is thus bound to put local communities, as well as local councils and other interested parties, at a significant disadvantage, even though the bill tries to compensate for this by putting more onus on the airport lessee company to demonstrate that it has had due regard to public comments in revising its original draft master plan when it submits that plan to the minister for approval.
In determining what counts as a major airport development, the 2006 bill also increases the threshold from $10 million to $20 million. This means that any airport development below $20 million does not need to be accompanied by a major development plan. It also allows the minister to determine that the combined cost of consecutive or concurrent projects or extensions can be included when the minister is deciding whether the cost of a proposal exceeds this threshold for major development projects. Importantly, the 2006 bill also sets out a purpose statement for a final environment strategy to ensure all operations are carried out in accordance with relevant environmental legislation and standards.
Labor will be moving a number of amendments to this bill during its consideration in detail. Should those amendments be defeated, Labor will in government revisit these amendments in the context of a broader review of legislation to reduce the impact on local communities. There are a number of ways in which this bill can be improved, especially in terms of getting it right when it comes to balancing the needs and interests of the different parties affected by airport developments. Australia’s airports form a crucial link in Australia’s national infrastructure. I believe that they should remain within the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth and thus that it is the Commonwealth’s responsibility to get the balance right.
The current provision that a development proposal be automatically approved if the minister fails to make an explicit decision within the required 10- or 11-week time frame provided for under the act weakens the bill. There should be an onus of responsibility placed on airport lessee companies so that it is up to them to advise local and state governments about the commencement of public consultations regarding draft master plans. It should become a requirement that all public submissions and public recommendations regarding a draft master plan be forwarded to the minister in conjunction with the draft master plan. It is reasonable to expect the minister to provide a statement of reasons should he or she override these recommendations when approving a draft master plan.
In relation to the implications that airport retail and commercial developments may have for local infrastructure, the bill should contain a requirement for the minister to specify in his or her approval conditions whether a proposal will have any impact on off-airport infrastructure and whether there is a reasonable requirement for the lessee to negotiate in good faith with state and/or local government authorities to reach agreement for appropriate contributions to specific changes in off-airport infrastructure.
In conclusion, I want to take this opportunity to say a few words about the relationship between Melbourne Airport and my local community in Calwell. Melbourne Airport was built many years ago in what was a non-residential area and, although a large community has since sprung up around it over the years, there is still enough of a buffer zone to ensure that the expansion of the airport and its future needs do not conflict in any serious way with the local communities, their amenities and—most importantly—their lifestyle. I am happy to say that there exists a strong working relationship between the management of Melbourne Airport and the local community, including local council and local members of state and federal parliaments. There is a shared recognition that regular consultation is seminal to maintaining this strong relationship, and I want to make sure that this bill aids that relationship and does not hamper or obstruct it in any way
I want to take this opportunity to commend the senior management at Melbourne Airport on the approach that they continue to take on issues that are of relevance to the overall development of the airport and particularly on the approach that they take in relating to the local community. All involved know how important Melbourne Airport is to our community, especially as a major employer. We all recognise how maintaining a good working relationship is in everyone’s interest. Proximity to the Melbourne Airport is increasingly a plus, and a major selling tool for developing industry and infrastructure in my federal seat of Calwell. Many of the major travel and logistics companies have sought to locate in my seat of Calwell, primarily because of the direct access to the Melbourne Airport. So in addition to the employment that the airport provides for my constituents, the infrastructure that is built around it continues to provide jobs.
Yesterday, Jesuit Social Services presented a report that proclaimed Broadmeadows and Campbellfield, which are in my electorate, as highly disadvantaged areas. Although we often talk about the low unemployment rate in this country, the reality is that, in parts of Broadmeadows and Campbellfield, unemployment—
And underemployment.
and underemployment—especially among young people—remains very high. Therefore, any opportunity to attract business and industry that provide jobs for our local people and help our local economy is very welcomed. It is in that context that I want to emphasise the symbiotic relationship between Melbourne Airport and the federal seat of Calwell and the relationship between the airport and the community. There is a need to keep that fine balance so there is no conflict. That is why I am interested in this particular bill and in making sure that the Commonwealth, when it makes decisions on activities in and around major airports, does so in the interests of not only the commercial applicants but also the local community.
The Airports Amendment Bill 2006 is an important bill. This is the first time that we have had major changes to the Airports Act 1996, which was a Labor government act. It is an important bill because it makes some significant changes to the operation of that act. But in some ways it just does not go far enough. Since 1996, we have suffered—you might not have, Mr Deputy Speaker Barresi, but I have and everybody on the Labor side has—11 years of government by the coalition.
It has been tough.
The member for Gorton is exactly right. It has been hard, but we have to endure these things. In that 11 years, we have discovered that the operation of the Airports Act has a number of fundamental failings and flaws. Whenever you put something new into place—whenever you hazard that the Commonwealth should do things that they have not done before—you have to expect that it will need tweaking, twisting and changing. But the tweaking, twisting and changing that is involved here ain’t enough. I can say that because of the experience that I have had with the development master plans that have been put forward for Bankstown Airport, which is the busiest general aviation airport in Australia. I will come to that shortly; I just want to deal with the general context here.
There are now 22 privatised airports around Australia. What drove the incorporation of the Airports Act in 1996 was a recognition by the Labor government that they had to do something better than what they had done before when the Federal Airports Corporation ran those government owned airports. They would have to do something better in terms of getting more money in to develop the airports and improve the existing aviation infrastructure and passenger services than what would come out of the normal budget process. So they had a bit of a debate. Part of the debate was whether they would flog off those airports in toto, in perpetuity. Luckily, the decision was made that that was not a good use of Commonwealth resources and that instead there should be a lease of those airports and that the lease should be subject to a specific range of lease provisions and that that would be incorporated into the Airports Act. There was to be protection for the public at large, for the people who lived around the airports and for local councils and state governments that would be impacted by the infrastructure changes at the airports. There had to be a master plan in process, and the master plan was to cover 20 years.
I think Rip Van Winkle went to sleep for 20 years and then woke up. The master plan basically says: ‘Start here. Okay, Rip, go off to sleep now. Twenty years down the track you will wake up and this is the what the world will look like.’ But that master plan is subject to the community having a look at it. There is a 90-day community consultation period. The people who have bought the lease actually run the whole of that consultation process. They take in comments from the community, from councils, from state governments, from individuals in the community, from interest groups. They take those comments in, finalise their master plan and put it to the minister. The minister has the power to either tick or cross, to say yes or no. He can accept or reject.
We know that Minister Anderson rejected Coolangatta airport’s plans for the extension of their runway at least twice if not three times. The fact that the seat of Richmond was held by Larry Anthony and they did not want the extension of that runway to impact on that seat might have had some direct bearing on that. But we know you can just knock it back, and that is what he as the minister did. We also know that, in the interstices between the plan being put up to the minister and when we get a final result, there can be discussion—and in fact there is—between the minister’s office and those people who are the proponents. But no-one outside the minister’s office and the people who have bought the lease know what is involved in those discussions. They cannot have any more say in relation to it. The only say they have been allowed to have is an input to the people who actually own the lease and have a vested interest in getting their master plan up.
Whatever the point and purpose of the 1996 act was, I think there are still fundamental problems, because I have seen it in the operation. I was told at the time: ‘Don’t worry, because we go through the public planning process. You will be able to have your say. People in the community will be able to have their say,’ and we did—very forcefully. The one thing that I ensured got up was that it should be written in blood into this master plan that large jet aircraft would not be flying into Bankstown Airport. Why was that important? I was told by the owners: ‘Don’t worry about that, Michael. What are you worried about? We have got no real intention of doing that. We would actually have to get rid of the current runways and extend the runway.’ They did want to extend the runway by 200 metres. I said that it was not good, that it would have an impact on the people in Condell Park. We would have to widen it from 30 metres to 40 metres and we would have to strengthen it. They said: ‘Don’t worry, because we are going to build buildings right around the runway. Gee, we would have to knock those buildings down to go ahead with it.’ You could put 737s straight into and out of Bankstown if you did that.
Guess what? On 13 December 2000 the federal government wanted to do just that. They came up with this genius of a plan where they decided that Bankstown Airport would be an overflow airport for Kingsford Smith, because they did not want to build another one at Badgerys Creek or anywhere else. So it was an overflow airport. I told them at the time that they were just completely insane. You cannot run Bankstown and Kingsford Smith coevally given the distance between them and the fact that the paths of the aircraft run across each other. It took this government at least five months—it may have been longer—to come to realise what I had told them on the very first day that they announced it. They were stark raving mad—it couldn’t be done.
In the end there was a release from Minister Tuckey, who was helping out Minister Anderson. They said, ‘Oh, we’re not going to do it anymore.’ Well, that was not good enough: ‘We are not going to do it any more, we don’t intend to do it.’ I wanted it written in blood in the master plan that the category Cs would be the absolute limit, that we would not be having 747s—they would be too big. You could have 737s, 737Bs; you could have a whole range of aircraft flying into Bankstown. I was also against regular passenger transport going into Bankstown, but this government allowed 12 flights a day—that is just the start, the first kick in the door, nothing has happened yet. That is despite the fact that there was an attempt to set up yet another airline that was going to run in the back blocks from Melbourne through to Sydney and then to Brisbane by a guy who was running around with racing cars and so on—an ill-considered move but one that in the future more could happen with.
There is a specific provision within this bill which is of concern not necessarily to the Labor Party but to me, because under that provision there is a possibility that Bankstown could be declared a non-core airport, and the limit of five per cent in terms of airline ownership could be lifted. That could happen by regulation as a result of the changes to these acts. I am totally, utterly and completely against such a change, and the shadow minister in his contribution has indicated that we will act in order to stop that should they do it. You have to regulate, and regulate hard, in this area.
I discovered through this process that to have the act written in that way, allowing a lessee in the master plan a period of 90 days to take everybody’s comments in, but to then take no notice whatsoever of those comments at all—not even to have to reply to the comments or justify the stance they are taking—is an abrogation of the Commonwealth’s responsibility. It is the case today that, after these amendments go through, that situation will still pertain. More work will have to be done by an incoming Labor government to really amend this legislation to make it more robust.
The prospect of getting a large block of land in the middle of Sydney, the geographical heart of Sydney, by the people who bought Bankstown Airport and Camden Airport and Hoxton airport as a job lot—they got a phenomenal deal—is a great commercial enterprise. Had Bankstown council had its head screwed on, it would have bought it. The cost of buying those three entities will be paid for when Hoxton Park is sold. It is right next to the M7. It will be sold for residential and industrial development. The very cost of buying all three will be amortised completely through the sale of Hoxton Park, and it is in the legislation that five years after the master plan is approved, bang, that happens. So you pay your money and you get it all back. Terrific.
What else to do you do with this? What do you do with the flights? They have to go back to Bankstown, some more go to Camden, or they go out to Wedderburn—the smaller ones. When you look at the practical experience of it, Bankstown Airport is really an industrial-commercial-retail zone with an attached airstrip. That is it; that is what we have got. It is an attached airstrip. What does not drive the new airport owners centrally is the need to run general aviation in Sydney. We do not have enough general aviation airports in Sydney.
When the RAAF finally leaves Richmond we may have an opportunity to really expand general aviation provisions in Sydney. If this government wanted to start at Badgerys Creek or elsewhere to build up general aviation—given that Schofields, one of our major training facilities at Bankstown, was knocked off; it still does the core of the training work done in Australia—we could expand and make a great deal more if the central focus was on airports and running airports.
I do not blame the lessees for saying: ‘This is a magnificent commercial prospect. We can put retail, commercial, industrial and light industrial into this and make a motza.’ They have been given that opportunity; that is what the lease allows them to do. But what is only partially addressed here by this bill is the impact of that on the local council area and on the state government responsibilities. And the impact is significant.
When the act was thought up and put into operation over the past 10-plus years, I do not think anyone in the minister’s office really envisaged—and they should have—just what impact there would be. They said: ‘Good idea. We’re going to flog off 22 airports. We’ll get the biggest amount of money we can. We’ll then let them just have a go in terms of what they want to develop on that land.’ There is no provision whatsoever for local councils to control land development on the airport. I do not necessarily think there should be.
However, there should be conformity in planning and planning powers, not only with local council provisions but also with state government provisions, which really control what the local councils can do. But I have a situation with the development of this master plan at Bankstown Airport, where the local council, through their mayors—the current one and the previous one—have run campaigns on the basis that Bankstown council should have complete control of what happens in planning at Bankstown Airport. They can do it because they know they will never get it. But we do not have a strong enough underlining of the fact that the federal government owns this land and is responsible for it.
Do we have town planners in the minister for transport’s office? I think the answer is no. Should we have them? The answer is yes. We should have town planners who everyone dealing with this situation will know can give direct advice to the minister’s office. So when a lessee rolls up with his 20-year development master plan that has to be a reviewed every five years, people who are competent in the area can say: ‘Minister, there’s a problem here. If you look at the impact of this massive development at Bankstown Airport, there will be a great deal more truck activity, a great deal more commercial activity. The sensible way to do things is to provide an internal road.’
But guess what? Greater activity has to come out in one way or the other. So it comes onto either Henry Lawson Drive or Milperra Road. There is much greater ingress and egress, and much greater transport impact. Who is going to pay the cost of that? At the moment no-one is. The lessees do not want to cough up and say, ‘We’ll fix these’—in this case, two state roads. They will say: ‘We won’t pay a couple of hundred million dollars in order to make sure those lanes are expanded and we can get our traffic out. That’s somebody else’s problem.’ This bill does not fix it. It should, because, 10 years on, this is the opportunity to tweak and change and make it more robust as a result of experience. Airports are not just about getting planes in and out of the air, they are not just about the infrastructure that is directly aviation related; the non-aviation purposes of airports also have a fundamental impact.
The biggest impact with regard to this is on the local community. State governments are not going to rush to put in tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars to provide the infrastructure. Somebody has got to pay; this has to be worked out. The master planning process should be a conjoint one, with the Commonwealth in control of it and fully driving it. It should not be controlled by the lessee, and that is exactly what we have got now. The lessee must conform to what the state and local provisions are, and the Commonwealth has to write it. Why? Because we did not sell these airports; we are leasing them. We are still liable, fundamentally. If you receive the money, you take the responsibility.
This bill does a few bits and pieces to make changes. I will tell you what, Mr Deputy Speaker: it does not fix the master planning problem for any one of those 22 airports Australia-wide. You can have your say, you can have a yak, for 90 days or so, but the lessee does not have to take a single bit of notice of any of it. They could do a side deal with the minister’s office and say: ‘We’ll flick.’ What happened in our case? The 737s were banned. The class C and up were banned. They said: ‘Trust us. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we won’t really do it.’ Well, I do not, and that is why I ensured that that got up, but I could not stop the extension of the runway and I could not stop the regular passenger services, because the minister decided that was okay.
That is a coalition minister who on 13 December 2000 wanted to turn us into Sydney’s second airport. Can you trust the minister in those circumstances? I have to tell you: no. Could you do so in the future? No. Do we need to have major, significant change here so that the community can have a say and that say can be represented in what the outcomes are? Otherwise we have just got to cop it. We have to cop massive development that is unconstrained because whatever the person who has bought it wants to do, they do it. One tick and you are away: 20 years later—the Rip Van Winkle effect—what have we got here? What do we do with this? Who is going to pay for all that increase? What about all that extra impact on those local roads?
I do not want 20 years or more of local campaigns with state councils or groups coming and saying, ‘We want to run this and we want to fix it.’ I want a Commonwealth government which, when it takes the money, takes the responsibility. I want a Commonwealth minister for transport who says: ‘We will regulate. We will legislate these industrial-commercial-retail zones with attached airstrips’—because that is what they have turned into. Even though it is an airports act, fundamentally there is massive development in the heart of Sydney. And it is great—good for jobs, a good impact in terms of the amount of money rolling through the community. It is not great if you are a local council and you are not getting enough return or you do not see that it is adequate. That is why the shadow minister in his argument has said, quite rightly, you need to compensate the locals properly. There should be a proper rate of return. That is why the councils argue for these sorts of things. What do they get back? Zero—maybe a meeting with the previous minister. But the fundamental reality is that nothing really changes in this area, because the quantum of complaints is not properly dealt with.
I welcome the fact that we have got some change after 10 years, but in terms of the practicalities of the way in which this operates we need an overhaul of this system that takes into account the fact that if you are going to flog something you do not give control of the process to the lessee in perpetuity—for the 20 years of the lease plus. What are they on? A 99-year lease, aren’t they? So you just say to the lessee: ‘After 20 years we’ll have a bit of a look at what you’re up to. You can put it in your new master plan. We’ll have 90 days with a “stop the clock” provision and then that’s okay.’ (Time expired)
I rise today to support the member for Batman’s second reading amendment to the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. He has moved:
“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for undermining public confidence in the Airports Act through approval decisions such as that relating to the Perth brickworks site, located opposite a residential area, and the Essendon direct factory outlet, proposed without regard to the impact on local road infrastructure”.
While neither of those developments is in my electorate or my city, I have got a lot of sympathy for the sentiments expressed in this amendment, because we have had a recent battle at Sydney airport about the proposed retail precinct that the airport wanted to build there on airport land. It was a disaster of a proposal, and it has been stopped by the minister. I will speak a little bit more about that later.
This bill, amongst other provisions, allows airport lessees to undertake non-aeronautical development as long as it is consistent with the master plan. It requires Australian noise exposure forecasts and flight paths to be included in master plans and to be developed beyond the 20-year planning horizon. It reduces the time for public comment on proposed development plans and requires the airport lessee to demonstrate how it has consulted with local communities.
We think that there are some weaknesses in this bill but we also understand that airports are essential infrastructure in our cities and also support the tourism industry and other industries. I would like to speak a little bit about how the most recent non-aeronautical development proposal around Sydney airport was campaigned on and how we encouraged the minister to reject that proposal.
Obviously any sort of large development in the middle of one of Australia’s biggest cities is going to be controversial, but the development that was proposed for Sydney airport was particularly controversial for a number of reasons. It was controversial for its size. It was controversial also because there was an absolute unwillingness on the part of the airport to consider their responsibility to surrounding communities or to consider their responsibility for the infrastructure demands that would be made by the development. What they were interested in was making a buck—well, there is no crime in that—but there was a complete lack of confidence in people whose communities surround the airport that the proposal was well thought through even in terms of the future development of the airport site. What the federal government has to establish when there is a non-aeronautical development like the proposal put forward by Sydney Airport Corporation is not only whether it is appropriate for the expansion plans of the airport but also what kind of effect it is going to have on the communities living around the airport.
Sydney Airport Corporation put forward a draft development proposal to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services for a massive retail complex. The original draft plan included a substantial cinema complex, and I was very happy to see that defeated after an incredible community campaign led by residents in my area and in the neighbouring seats of Kingsford Smith, Wentworth, Lowe and Grayndler. I must say that the state members of parliament in that area, in particular Kristina Keneally, the member for Heffron, were also very active in seeing that proposal rejected. I hope the fact that this is an election year had nothing to do with the decision to reject that proposal, because I am sure that Sydney Airport Corporation will be back with further proposals. It is worth noting the scale of the proposal they last made. They were talking about an outlet centre of 24,000 square metres, a homemaker centre of 10,000 square metres, food courts of 1,900 square metres, an independent discount store of 12,500 and almost 2½ thousand extra car spaces.
The first thing to say about that is that it is pretty hard to see how it is necessary to have such an enormous new shopping centre when you have Eastlakes just down the road and the SupaCentre five minutes drive away. It is not as though Sydney is short on shops. The other thing we were really very concerned about was the amount of extra infrastructure that would have been required just for people to come and go from this shopping centre. We are talking about $2.7 billion worth of extra roadworks between now and 2024 if that development proposal had gone ahead. Who pays for that $2.7 billion worth of roadworks? It is not the Sydney Airport Corporation, the people who are making all the money out of the retail complex, and it is not the federal government, which gives it the go-ahead; it is in fact the state government that have to pay that $2½ billion, even though they have no say over the size, the scale or the type of the development or whether it should go there in the first place.
I noticed that Brisbane Airport have made voluntary contributions—in fact, quite large ones—to the infrastructure around Brisbane Airport, including hundreds of millions of dollars to roadworks around Brisbane Airport. It is the right thing to do. If you are interested in growing a business like the Brisbane Airport you have to understand that your growth impacts on local communities and that you have a responsibility to the local communities to mitigate some of the most difficult effects for those people.
There is another area that is of enormous concern. It is not just the impacts on the neighbouring residents of the infrastructure and all the extra traffic in and out of the shopping centre when they are already dealing with an awful lot of traffic in that area because of the airport and because of the container terminal down the road at Port Botany. And it is not simply the fact that there are probably plenty of shops in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and not necessarily a demand for a new shopping centre when there is one just down the road. There are also the very serious concerns about what it means to have a massive complex attracting thousands of visitors every day located smack bang in the middle of an airport precinct. Is it necessarily the smartest thing in the world when we are in an international environment of increasing terrorist threat to have people coming and going from airport precincts, hanging around airports when they do not need to be there, and having huge developments with thousands of visitors coming and going right up against the fence of an airport? It is difficult to explain why you would want to increase the risk to the people who are doing their shopping and also increase the threat of a security breach at the airport by having such a massive development in an airport zone.
One of the areas of concern has been a lack of access to a merit appeal process when it comes to development applications on airport sites. I am very pleased that the minister for transport made the right decision in relation to the development proposed at Sydney airport. But we want to be confident that the right decision is made each time and that, if the right decision is not made, there is a decent appeal process in place that people can use. We also, I think, would be much happier with these sorts of developments if we were confident that when non-aeronautical development was taking place on airport land and massive new infrastructure was required to support it—new roads to the airport, expanded roads to the airport, extra public transport, even upgrades of electricity and water networks to the airport—that there was some developer contribution in the way that there is a developer contribution expected of other developments which are opening up new landholdings and so on. We expect them to contribute because we know that they are going to make money out of the new development that they are proposing. It makes sense, in this instance when we are talking about a need for an extra $2.7 billion worth of roadworks alone, that developers should contribute to some of that money. You should not have the external costs passed straight to the taxpayers of New South Wales when all the profits sit with the developer of the airport complex.
I want to finish by saying that airport noise and breaking of curfews continues to be a major issue around Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport. I have had constituents from all over my electorate write to me—from Rosebery, from Paddington and from Haymarket—talking about experiences they have had of curfews being broken. A resident from Rosebery complained on behalf of many of his neighbours of the constant noise they are experiencing. A constituent from Paddington told me that one morning planes were flying overhead between six in the morning and 8.30 am every five minutes. After making a complaint to the aircraft noise complaints line, she was told that this was because was some work was being done on the runways. They were unable to tell her when this very intense flyover pattern was going to finish. Another constituent, whose complaint was covered in the Southern Courier and Inner West Courier recently, said that the curfew was being broken regularly. The constituent said that five aircraft a day are breaking the early morning curfew at Sydney airport. Of course, it is not unusual; it has happened before, but it is certainly something that we need to continue to be aware of.
Order, it being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.
My question is to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, who is responsible for the nuclear industry. Given the minister currently has portfolio responsibility for the nuclear industry I ask him again: will the government rule out imposing nuclear reactors on communities right around Australia by overriding state and territory planning controls?
Can I correct the Leader of the Opposition, who has already made his first mistake of question time. I share nuclear energy with the Minister for Education, Science and Training. We work very closely together on this, of course, with the Prime Minister and the rest of the cabinet. We will not play the Leader of the Opposition’s little game. What we want first is a debate based on facts, not fear. We want people to be given the opportunity to discuss this matter in a bipartisan environment.
My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister update the House on progress on the government’s National Water Initiative? How will this help the Australian environment and contribute to the prosperity of regional communities? Is there an alternative approach, and what is the government’s response?
I thank the member for Barker for his question. I know how he and all other South Australian members, particularly on this side of the House, care about the health of the Murray-Darling Basin. He will recall the agreement that was reached last Friday between me, the premiers and the Chief Minister of four of the jurisdictions. I am very hopeful that the Victorian government will see that the interests of the people of Victoria are served by Victoria’s also joining in the historic commitment by the Commonwealth of an extra $10 billion to secure the health of the Murray-Darling Basin for decades into the future.
The plan that I put forward on behalf of the government, and which is supported by New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory, is a balanced plan that tackles the fundamental problems of water security. It is not a knee-jerk reaction to the problem of water security. It is not an ill thought through response to the water crisis that Australia faces. Rather, it is a carefully thought through, well-crafted proposal that addresses the seepage and wastage of water in the irrigation system and the problem of overallocation.
The member for Barker asked me whether there are any alternative proposals. I saw an alternative proposal this morning emanating from the National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, president of the Victorian branch of the ALP and endorsed Labor candidate for Maribyrnong—a man often touted as a future leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party—Mr Bill Shorten. Yesterday he called for cotton and rice growers to be forced out of business and for their water intensive crops to be replaced by less thirsty options such as hemp. Bill Shorten is now adding the workers in the rice and cotton industries to the Labor Party’s hit list of the workers in the uranium and coal industries.
It is not enough for the member for Kingsford Smith to say that there cannot be an unlimited expansion of the uranium industry. It is not enough for the member for Kingsford Smith to be evasive when it comes to the future of the coal industry. Now we have Bill Shorten, who is coming to Canberra and has Labor preselection for a seat the Labor Party has now held for decades and who is often touted as a future leader of the Labor Party. The fascinating thing is that he is the secretary of the union whose members would lose their jobs if the rice and cotton industries were put out of business.
Let me make it very clear: this country needs balanced agriculture. It needs balance in its water security policies and it also needs balanced agriculture. That means that you need perennial crops like horticulture and annual crops like rice and cotton. This idea that you get rid of one of them in the name of saving water is ludicrous. What you do to save water is introduce proper pricing policies and a proper trading system, as postulated by the National Water Initiative; invest $6 billion in piping and lining the irrigation systems of Australia; and allocate $3 billion to deal with the problem of overallocation, where necessary by structural adjustment. Bill Shorten is a menace to the job security of workers in the rice and cotton industries—
He is not even here yet and you’re attacking him. You must be really worried!
Order! The member for Melbourne Ports should remember yesterday’s warning.
just as the Australian Greens and those in the Australian Labor Party who would cuddle up to them are a menace to the job security of people in the uranium and coal industries of Australia.
I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon the Hon. Ham Lini, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Vanuatu, and the Hon. Willie Jimmy, the Vanuatu Minister for Finance. On behalf of the House I extend a very warm welcome to our visitors.
Hear, hear!
My question is to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, as the minister responsible for the nuclear industry. Will the minister release the full submission to the Switkowski inquiry from Nuclear Fuel Leasing Group, a company seeking to build a global nuclear waste dump in Australia?
Would the member for Kingsford Smith repeat the question for the benefit of the minister.
My question to the minister for industry, as the minister responsible for the nuclear industry, is: will the minister release the full submission to the Switkowski inquiry from Nuclear Fuel Leasing Group, a company seeking to build a global nuclear waste dump in Australia?
I do not have a full list of who made submissions to that inquiry, but I am happy to get the House a full list, based on the fact that it is not commercial-in-confidence, which was one of the conditions of releasing that to the public. I will ask those people involved, personally, if they are happy for the report to be released.
My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer outline to the House results from the latest Productivity Commission report on the potential benefits of the national reform agenda? Is he aware of any alternative policies?
I thank the honourable member for Braddon for his question. I can tell him that the Productivity Commission has done an assessment of the national reform agenda which was agreed between the Commonwealth and the states at COAG in February 2006. The findings of the Productivity Commission are that improvements to competition and regulation could, after a period of around 10 years, increase GDP by 1¾ per cent, or about $17 billion in 2005-06 terms. The reforms that could benefit Australia to that degree on the competition and regulation side include nationally consistent road and rail regulations, including safety and technical standards; the introduction of performance based standards to promote flexibility and innovation for heavy vehicles; and more efficient investment spending on road and rail infrastructure. For electricity, this could arise from structural and organisational changes in the generation sector, enhanced demand-side measures and improved regulatory governance. For gas, this could result from streamlined regulatory arrangements and the establishment of a spot market for gas. Similarly, the Productivity Commission found that reforms on the human capital stream could, after a period of around 25 years, raise output by about nine per cent. The commission has modelled improvements that would come through increased workforce participation and higher work incentives.
This assessment by the Productivity Commission has found tangible, real economic benefits to our country as a whole in terms of increased living standards and increased revenues for government from a reform agenda—a wide-ranging agenda to get regulatory reform in these areas. This, of course, is coming off the back of the last 10 years of the competition agenda, which had been administered under the Competition Principles Agreement, under which the Commonwealth has now distributed billions of dollars to the Labor states, according to their progress in relation to reform. As the person who administered the competition agreement I can say that it was hard work getting those states to the barrier, but the gains are worth it. This finding by the Productivity Commission is that the government’s next agenda over the years to come in competition, regulation and human capital has the capacity to drive the economy forward. That is why the Commonwealth is working on them, and they are the gains to be taken from it.
My question again is to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. Is the industry minister aware that the director of Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd, Mr Hugh Morgan, stated on 12 July 2006 that ‘to put together an internationally managed repository’—meaning nuclear repository—‘would bring great standing in the international community for Australia’? Does the minister agree with Mr Morgan? Has the minister ever discussed this proposal with Mr Morgan? And will the minister rule out a global nuclear waste dump for Australia?
I am used to being verballed by those on the other side, and I would like to check the comments that have just been raised by the Leader of the Opposition. When I am able to do that, I will.
My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on the importance of irrigated agriculture to employment and investment in regional Australia and, in particular, my electorate of Riverina? Is the Deputy Prime Minister aware of any threats to our regional economies and the rice and cotton industry?
I thank the member for Riverina for her question and recognise her great support of those irrigation industries in her area, particularly the value-adding that takes place in the rice industry. The irrigation sector of agriculture in Australia employs around 171,000 people. It is not just the farmers and their families on those farms in those irrigation areas; it is also the farm labourers and, just as importantly, the workers in the processing plants in those industries that are value-adding industries in regional Australia. They include the jobs of the workers in the cotton gins, in the rice mills and in the sugar mills—also irrigated agriculture—across Australia. We think that those people working in those industries do a fantastic job, and they are of great value not just to the Australian economy but particularly to regional economies across Australia.
But it has become clear that there are other people in the community who do not value those jobs, and we do not think those 171,000 workers throughout those industries are valued by the Australian Workers Union or by the National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, or indeed the Australian Labor Party, as well as the union movement. We saw comments this morning from the endorsed candidate for Maribyrnong, who is also the Victorian Labor Party President and the National Secretary of the AWU, who actually represents many of those workers who work in the rice mills, in the sugar mills and in the cotton gins. He was quoted in the paper this morning as follows:
Union leader and Labor recruit Bill Shorten called yesterday for cotton and rice growers to be forced out of business and their water-intensive crops replaced by less thirsty options such as hemp.
You would think that the head of the AWU, and someone aspiring to be a minister in this place, would take an interest in the sustainability of jobs in those mills. He certainly does not, and he has shown that he does not care for those workers. I point out, because he is talking about the scarcity of water and water-intensive crops, that the rice industry has reduced its use of water by 30 per cent in the last 10 years. It has improved its efficient use of water by 30 per cent, while at the same time increasing production by 60 per cent over that period. The cotton industry has reduced its dependence on water by 18 per cent. Those are the sorts of things that you do—such as our government’s national water plan—to sustain an industry, rather than adopt harebrained ideas like that from Mr Shorten, which will put not only thousands of people out of work but thousands of his union’s members out of work. In an article in the Australian, Mr Shorten said:
The world wouldn’t end if, instead of growing cotton, we started growing hemp.
Mr Speaker, the world might not end, but the world might end for the workers in the rice mills, for the workers in the cotton gins and for the workers in the coalmines—just like the workers in the forestry industry if Labor had been elected at the last election. The one piece of advice we can give to the workers in those industries is: do not get between the Labor Party and Green preferences, because you will lose your job.
My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. If the minister will not have a nuclear reactor in his electorate, how does he expect others to have one in theirs?
I have no intention of being as foolish as the member for Richmond. I was asked where I would nominate a nuclear reactor to be in my electorate. It is the smallest electorate in Australia: 25 square kilometres. It would be like asking the member for Richmond where you would put a nuclear reactor in downtown Murwillumbah. It is a stupid question. The member for Richmond knows it is a stupid question, and she does herself a disservice by asking it.
My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Has the Treasurer been notified of any business interest in nuclear energy? What is the role of business lobbyists in relation to economic policy?
For days now I have been hearing outside the chamber that I am going to be asked inside the chamber about what I knew about Mr Walker’s company, Australian Nuclear Energy. Chris Bowen promised to ask me on 27 February, Peter Garrett promised to ask me—
Order! The Treasurer will refer to members by their seat.
On 27 February the member for Jagajaga promised to ask me. The member for Grayndler said, ‘We will be pursuing these questions both inside and outside the parliament over coming days.’ I am pleased that the member for Canning finally did what the Labor Party did not. As I have already made public, Mr Ron Walker certainly told me that he was forming a company called Australian Nuclear Energy—just as he told the Prime Minister, just as he told the Premier of Victoria and just as he told the Labor Treasurer of Victoria. This was, apparently, some great scandal, so scandalous that he told the Labor Party. Mr Walker is the chairman of the Fairfax companies and he is the chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee. He chaired major events for both the Labor and the Liberal Party, and he is a very respected businessman. Undoubtedly, he has every right to notify the government in relation to these matters.
It is quite different when somebody is lobbied by a convicted criminal like Brian Burke. Brian Burke has been convicted of fraud and he has served time for his crimes. Brian Burke’s reputation was so sullied that the former Premier of Western Australia, Premier Gallop, banned any connection between Brian Burke and members of the Western Australian government. Indeed, I pay tribute to the member for Perth, who, yesterday, said he had not had a conversation with Brian Burke for a decade and a half. He said:
… if only more people in Western Australia had followed that example.
I don’t believe … that the activities and actions of Brian Burke, which have been exposed in the Corruption Commission established by a state Labor Government, deserve anything other than complete and absolute condemnation.
We pay tribute to the member for Perth for taking that attitude.
It will come as some considerable concern to members of this House to know that, whilst Mr Burke was under a ban and whilst the member for Perth was refusing to deal with him, there was a member of this House who was flying into Western Australia regularly to meet with Mr Burke, and that was the Leader of the Opposition. We know that the Leader of the Opposition went to Mr Burke’s favourite eatery, Perugino, in West Perth on 1 August 2005.
We have had an explanation from the member for Cowan that the way this came about was that the Leader of the Opposition was staying with the member for Cowan. He had nothing to do that night, so the member for Cowan said, ‘Why don’t we go down to Perugino’s?’ And guess who was there? It reminded me of the scene in Muriel’s Wedding when the mistress of Bill Hunter walks into the Chinese restaurant and Bill Hunter says, ‘Deidre Chambers, what a coincidence!’ ‘Brian Burke, what a coincidence down here at Perugino’s on 1 August 2005. I didn’t know you were going to be here, Brian. And while I am here, I will make a speech on China.’ That is apparently what he did. He made a speech on China at the Perugino restaurant.
It was not just that he was at Perugino’s with Brian Burke on 1 August 2005, whilst Burke was under a ban from Premier Gallop, but that he happened to be in Western Australia in May for breakfast with Brian Burke. ‘Brian Burke, what a coincidence! He’s down at my breakfast place.’ In November 2005, he happened to see him at lunch. Brian Burke at lunch—what a coincidence! On three occasions in 2005, whilst a convicted criminal was under a ban from the Western Australian government, the Leader of the Opposition flew into Perth to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with Mr Brian Burke. Those who understand politics in this House will say that it was no coincidence that, in 2005, when the Leader of the Opposition was looking for numbers for his leadership bid, he happened to be going regularly to Western Australia and meeting with Mr Brian Burke.
Let me make another observation: Mr Brian Burke never does something for nothing. Mr Brian Burke has now been fingered by the crime commission in Western Australia and four ministers have lost their jobs because of their contacts with him, because anyone who deals with Mr Brian Burke is morally and politically compromised. If the Leader of the Opposition thought that dealing with him in 2005 did not sully him, it did. The member for Perth knows it, the people of Western Australia know it and the people of Australia deserve an explanation as to what he was doing there.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister provide the House with full details of contact between members of his government and former Liberal senator Noel Crichton-Browne?
Yes. Mr Speaker, thank you, thank you, thank you! My contact with Senator Noel Crichton-Browne reached its climax 12 years ago when, as opposition leader, I secured his removal from the Liberal Party Senate ticket in Western Australia.
Has the Prime Minister completed his answer?
Yes.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It was about contact between members of his government.
The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. He has asked his question and the Prime Minister has given an answer.
My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister update the House on any plans to advance regional cooperation against terrorism? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?
I thank the honourable member for the question and the interest that she has shown. It will not come as any surprise to members of this House that the government takes a very strong stand against terrorism all over the world, because this is not just a local problem or a regional problem; this is a global problem.
On Sunday I am going to Indonesia. During the early part of next week, the Attorney-General, the Acting Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police and I will participate in a subregional meeting on counterterrorism. This meeting will include foreign ministers, law enforcement ministers and police chiefs from regional countries—Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. We will be spending time early next week exploring ways to deepen our existing cooperation, which is very good. We will also be addressing emerging challenges: how are we getting on in countering radicalisation? What more needs to be done? What narrative needs to be challenged? How should it be challenged? We will be looking at how we can more effectively respond in the event of mass casualty attacks, and we will also be looking at law enforcement cooperation and legal frameworks.
Dr Hassan Wirajuda, the Indonesian foreign minister, and I will open a regional leadership course for senior police at the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation. I will be addressing students at a Muslim university in Yogyakarta, visiting a Muslim school that is part of AusAID’s Islamic education assistance program and meeting with other community and religious leaders.
Let me say this about counterterrorism in South-East Asia: I think governments, like the Indonesian government—I will particularly mention them—and those of Malaysia, Singapore and more recently the Philippines have been making real progress in their counterterrorist activities. Very importantly, and very noteworthy, there has been a decline in public support for terrorism and extremism in Indonesia. It is important in the war against terrorism to understand that. I do not think many people in Australia do. The last two years have been good years—not perfect years, but good years—in South-East Asia in terms of counterterrorism. There is a long way to go. There is still, day by day, the risk of terrorist attacks. There is no question about that. Nevertheless real progress is being made. I think next week our government will be able to take this matter further forward and with greater success.
The honourable member asked me about a different approach. I think the Labor Party do have a very different approach. For a start, the Labor Party do not recognise that terrorism is a global problem. They think terrorism is just a sporadic problem—it is a bit of a problem, maybe, in South-East Asia. They say we need to bring troops back from Iraq to South-East Asia to fight terrorism. I am not quite sure where we would be sending the troops in South-East Asia to do this, but we look forward to that revelation. They think it is very important to fight terrorism in Afghanistan, but we should let the terrorists win in Iraq—it is important to let the terrorists win in Iraq and lose in Afghanistan, and presumably lose in South-East Asia. It is completely incomprehensible.
The most incomprehensible part of this is that the Labor Party never answer the question, because in his heart the Leader of the Opposition knows the answer—that victory for terrorists in Iraq would be a massive boost for terrorism around the world, including in South-East Asia. This is not a regional movement; this is a global movement. Whether it is popular or whether it is unpopular, political leaders in this country owe it to this country to make sure that we do our absolute best for this country’s security. Nobody could ever say that this government is anything but very strong and very determined on national security.
My question is again to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware that the Western Australian CCC inquiry was told on 21 February this year that former Liberal senator Noel Crichton-Browne continues to exert influence on the internal operations of the Western Australia Liberal Party at the highest levels? Can the Prime Minister provide the House with full details of contact between members of his government and former Liberal senator Noel Crichton-Browne in the period since Mr Crichton-Browne’s removal from the Liberal Senate ticket?
I have a couple of observations. I was not aware that Noel Crichton-Browne had been sent to jail. Maybe something has escaped me. I am not aware that he has been sent to jail for fraud. As to contact between him and people on our side of the House, if you want to ask other ministers, you can go ahead and do so. But, speaking for myself, tomorrow being the 11th anniversary of the defeat of the Keating Labor government, I well remember the year that led up to that. I consumed, inside my own party, the first couple of months of that year in making sure that Noel Crichton-Browne was not on the Liberal Party Senate ticket for the election that brought my government to power. That involved taking him on. That involved going to Western Australia, not to consort with a convicted criminal. It meant going to Western Australia to make certain that my party’s Senate ticket did not have on it somebody I regarded as unsuitable. I was willing to do that as opposition leader because I regarded it as my obligation as the leader of the party. It involved some difficult confrontations with some people in the party. I have never regarded that man’s influence in the Western Australia division of my party as being anything other than rather negative.
But let us understand what this is all about. This is all about a double standard in the Australian Labor Party. I am meant to justify and explain to the last detail a telephone conversation I had, in the course of my duty as Prime Minister of Australia, with a very reputable business man. Ron Walker has never been convicted of fraud. Hugh Morgan has never been convicted of fraud. Robert Champion de Crespigny has never been convicted of fraud. The three of them represent exemplars of ethics and good behaviour in the Australian business community. Hugh Morgan is a member of the board of the Reserve Bank. Robert Champion de Crespigny is an advisor to the South Australian Labor government. Ron Walker is proudly a former honorary federal treasurer of the Liberal Party and is now the chairman of the Fairfax company.
What this is all about is a double standard. I am meant to explain every detail of that, the Treasurer is meant to explain every detail of that, but the Leader of the Opposition thinks that he can skate by with some kind of generalised answer at a news conference in relation to his contact with Brian Burke. Anybody who has any understanding of Australian politics would suspect that what the Leader of the Opposition was about was touting for preferment and favour from a man of influence in the Labor Party in Western Australia. That is what we are on about. The member for Grayndler can question me as often as he likes about the former senator from Western Australia. I will be very happy to go on answering in the vein that I have in the last two answers.
My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister inform the House what the government has done to improve the position of nurses in Australia? Are there any alternative policies? What is the government’s response?
I thank the member for Makin for her question, and I acknowledge the many years that she has spent in the great calling of nursing. Thanks to the policies of the Howard government there are now more nurses in Australia and they are playing a more important role in our health system. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare there were just under 250,000 nurses in nursing in 2004, and that was an 11 per cent increase since 1999. Since 2005 the Howard government has announced a further 3,000 nursing training places. Since 2001 the government has committed some $234 million to improving the position of nurses in general practice. Thanks to the government’s policies there are now at least 5,000 nurses working in general practice, and those nurses are now supported by Medicare rebates. This is the first time that this has happened under any Australian government.
One thing the Howard government does not intend to do is create a Commonwealth position of chief nursing officer. Didn’t our failure to do this get the opposition very excited! Last year the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said:
At the most recent Nursing Leadership Conference in Sydney, Minister Abbott refused to appoint a Chief Nurse ... It seems the Minister for Health is happy to talk about the role of nurses when it suits him but has failed to take the profession of nursing seriously.
A month later she said, ‘A Labor government will appoint a chief nursing officer to ensure Australian nurses have a voice in the federal government.’ So it could not be clearer: Labor will appoint a chief nurse. But hang on a minute: two years into his time as the de facto Premier of Queensland, the now Leader of the Opposition sacked the chief nurse of Queensland. So Dr Death killed the chief nurse of Queensland.
Order! The minister will withdraw that reference.
I am happy to assist the House by withdrawing, Mr Speaker. This is what the Leader of the Opposition’s health minister in the Rudd Queensland Christian socialist Labor government told parliament in 1991: ‘I can confirm that under the restructured department of health the position of chief nursing officer for Queensland will disappear.’ Members opposite think the Commonwealth government, which does not employ nurses, must have a chief nurse but the Queensland government, which employs tens of thousands of nurses, must not have a chief nursing officer.
What is now clear is that members opposite in the Labor Party actually have four health policies. Their first policy is to have a single funder for health, if you believe the deputy leader. Their second policy is not to have a single funder for health, if you believe the shadow minister for federalism; their third policy is to have a chief nurse, if you believe the deputy leader; and their fourth policy is not to have a chief nurse, if you believe the Leader of the Opposition when he was the de facto Premier of Queensland.
He is a real piece of work, this bloke. He is not a socialist, but he is a Christian socialist. He attacks Howard’s utopia but he is happy to have Brian Burke as his Western Australian numbers man. He is a disciple of Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he is seeking Christian votes, but he is the associate of Brian Burke when he wants support in caucus.
Order! The minister will bring his answer to a conclusion.
I think the people of Australia are starting to get a sense of this bloke. They understand that deep down he is a phoney. He is a phoney.
My question is again to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Exclusive Brethren directly supported his re-election in the seat of Bennelong at the last federal election?
Mr Costello interjecting
Order! The Treasurer! The member for Grayndler will start his question again.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Exclusive Brethren directly supported his reelection in the seat of Bennelong at the last federal election? Can the Prime Minister confirm that this support included an extensive letterboxing campaign and attacks on other candidates at public meetings?
So the Exclusive Brethren equals Brian Burke! That is an interesting and fascinating question! To start with, the Exclusive Brethren do not vote. That is the first thing I say. The second thing is, if they letterbox in my favour, good on them; they show great taste. And let me also make it clear—
Mr Albanese interjecting
Order! The member for Grayndler has asked his question!
that like any other group—
What were they doing then?
The member for Lilley is warned!
in the Australian community—
They do fund political candidates, though!
The member for Brisbane is warned!
the Exclusive Brethren are entitled to express their views, and I make it clear that my door is open to any lawful organisation and to any group of people who have not been convicted of crimes. Let us take it back to where the Treasurer put it: what we are talking about is the behaviour of the Leader of the Opposition supping with somebody who was under a ban by Dr Geoff Gallop and who had been convicted of a crime. To my knowledge, as a group the Exclusive Brethren have not been convicted of a crime. Individuals may have—like individual people who are members of a church may have been or individual atheists may have been—but as a group they are a lawful organisation. If the member for Grayndler thinks that by this line of questioning he is going to intimidate me out of meeting lawful organisations, he is wrong, and I encourage all—
Mrs Irwin interjecting
The member for Fowler is warned!
the good people of Bennelong, whatever their faith or no faith may be, to vote Liberal.
My question is directed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister update the House on the way in which the government’s workforce reforms have assisted women, young people and long-term unemployed back into work, particularly on the North Coast of New South Wales? Is the minister aware of any alternative views?
I thank the member for Page for his question. I note that I read an article in the Northern Star with the headline that the Far North Coast has shed its reputation as the nation’s dole capital. It says that unemployment has hit a 30-year low as the region cashes in on the economic boom. It cites no better authority than the federal member for Page as saying:
... the lifting of unfair dismissal laws gave local business owners confidence to employ more staff.
That is excellent. It is a good news story. Unemployment is down to 5.6 per cent on the North Coast of New South Wales. The unfair dismissal laws are job destroying. They have had a negative impact on small business. That is why we removed them—to provide an incentive for small business to go out and employ more Australians.
I was asked about alternative policies. I note that the Labor Party has had, to the best of my knowledge, seven different policies on unfair dismissal laws in the last seven months. Seven different policies! Policy No.1, from the member for Brand, the former Leader of the Opposition, was to abolish Work Choices and reinstate unfair dismissal laws. Policy No. 2 was in a transcript of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on the ABC Insiders program where she suggested they change the threshold. Policy No. 3 scrapped Beazley’s policy on dismissal and flagged reinstatement. Policy No. 4 was from the shadow minister for small business, over there, in a speech to COSBOA—a landmark speech that said nothing—on 27 February. Policy No. 5 was the next day: that fabulous interview with Madonna King on the ABC! We will not forget that in a hurry. And there were a number of policies within policies in Policy No. 5 with Madonna King. Policy No. 6—God bless her!—was from Sharan Burrow. Sharan Burrow was asked today:
Do you have the unequivocal support of federal Labor for winding back Work Choices?
She said:
No question. There is an absolute commitment to reinstate the unfair dismissal laws.
It goes further. Today there was an article in the Australian; and this is the next policy.
By Kevin Rudd?
It was by Sid Marris. The article says:
Labor is debating internally how it can minimise a backlash from small businesses over its plan to wind back their exemption from unfair dismissal laws.
And listen to this:
Some in the labour movement are considering a special mediator who could go to a workplace to resolve a dispute.
What sort of mediator? Brian Burke or Mark Latham? There could be a whole range of them. I was reminded of the article in the West Australian about a fellow by the name of Joe Mcdonald. It says:
Unionist Joe McDonald has vowed to continue breaking the law by trespassing on Perth building sites to conduct union business after police were called to remove him from a site yesterday when he refused about two dozen requests to leave.
It goes on to say:
The assistant secretary of the Construction, Forestry , Mining and Energy Union conceded it was the fourth time in the past fortnight that police had been called to building sites to remove him, but on two occasions he left before they arrived.
It is illegal for Mr McDonald to enter building sites ... after losing both his State and Federal right of entry permits for behaviour, including bullying and harassment.
This is the perfect sort of mediator that Sharan Burrow might have been considering! It gets better:
But the controversial unionist admitted for the first time yesterday that the law would not stop him entering building sites.
No wonder Sharan Burrow wants to change the law. She wants to bring mediators like Joe Mcdonald into the workplace. This is policy No. 7. Seven policies in seven months!
They are not only walking both sides of the street when it comes to unfair dismissal laws; they are stuck on a Canberra roundabout and they cannot get off. When is the Labor Party going to come up with a policy? At this stage the only policy that Australian business can understand is the ACTU’s policy, where they are going to have trade unionists going back into every workplace, where they are going to reintroduce the job-destroying unfair dismissal laws and where they are going to leave small business and Australian workers behind.
My question is again to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm reports in the Age on 10 February that the exposure of his links with the Exclusive Brethren has caused his office to ban contact between Liberal MPs and the Exclusive Brethren ahead of the next campaign? Are these reports accurate?
The answer to the honourable gentleman’s question is no.
My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Science and Training. Would the minister inform the House how the government is working towards greater consistency in Australian schools? Is she aware of any alternative views, and what is the government’s response?
I thank the member for Macquarie for his question, and I note his deep interest in developing education policy for this nation. Earlier this month the Australian government put on the agenda of the next education ministers’ meeting in April a proposal for greater national consistency in curriculum. We are seeking higher standards of education in our schools through national consistency in curriculum. We want to set benchmarks for assessments across the country and, specifically for year 12 certificates, we want a consistent national approach for assessment and reporting.
We see this is as a national priority. Wherever a student lives they should have access to high-quality education and high-quality curriculum. We want it to represent world’s best practice and have Australia’s national curriculum benchmarked internationally. And we do not want students, or indeed teachers, to be disadvantaged as they move between states.
I am asked about any alternative policies or views. Labor do have some policies on education, and every single one has been a failure. Here is the totality. Members will remember the ALP education policy of the century. Remember Knowledge Nation? Remember that that was the policy to beat all policies that was instantly dismissed as a joke. ‘Noodle nation’ was then shot down in flames—not only by their own side but across the board. I do recall that the member for Brand took the fall for the discredited ‘noodle nation’ policy. They made the member for Brand take the fall for that. Members will be interested to know who the other authors of ‘noodle nation’ were. Hands up! The other authors of ‘noodle nation’—
Mr Sawford interjecting
Order! The member for Port Adelaide is warned!
Where’s your big boots and your whip?
Order! The member for Bruce is warned!
Members would be interested to know that, while the member for Brand took the fall on ‘noodle nation’, there were two other authors of ‘noodle nation’ that have not yet revealed themselves—none other than the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Perth. Take a bow, Member for Griffith and Member for Perth, for ‘noodle nation’.
Then we had the third education policy. This was Mark Latham’s ‘schools hit list’. Members will recall that the Labor Party wanted to rip the heart out of Catholic and independent schools. Their crime? They were private schools. This was discredited because of the ugly politics of envy—the ‘schools hit list’ of Mark Latham.
Absolute rubbish!
Order! The member for Fowler has been warned. She continues to interject. She will remove herself under standing order 94(a).
The member for Fowler then left the chamber.
So we have Mark Latham’s discredited ‘schools hit list’ policy. But this year where does Labor get its policy inspiration from? None other—
Ms Vamvakinou interjecting
The member for Calwell!
Ms Vamvakinou interjecting
The member for Calwell is warned!
Ms Vamvakinou interjecting
The member for Calwell has been called to order. She has been warned. She continues to interject. She will remove herself under standing order 94(a).
The member for Calwell then left the chamber.
So after Mark Latham’s discredited ‘schools hit list’ policy, what do Labor come up with this year? They are now taking their policy inspiration from Mark ‘Education Revolution’ Latham. Another one hits the dust.
Then we have the maths and science policy of Labor that has been proven not to work. Cutting HECS has been proven not to work. We have the architect of HECS, Bruce Chapman, coming out and saying it will not work. This is the architect employed by Labor to introduce the HECS system. He says Labor’s policy to cut HECS in maths and science will not work. And the unkindest cut of all: the Queensland Teachers Union says Labor’s policy will not work. So even their own side says it will not work. That was, until yesterday, the totality of Labor’s education policies. By yesterday they had run out of ideas so they started pinching somebody else’s homework. Labor on education gets an ‘F’ for ‘Fail’.
My question is addressed to the Special Minister of State. How much money did the Exclusive Brethren spend on the 2004 election campaign to publish ads such as this in the Adelaide Advertiser: ‘Keep Howard Prime Minister’? How much money was spent on the production and distribution of the pamphlet ‘Keep Howard in Bennelong’?
The member for Grayndler can get any information he likes about the expenditure on the elections of 2004, 2001, 1998 or whichever election he likes to choose from the AEC website, which publishes all the expenditure.
My question is addressed to the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. Would the minister outline to the House the government’s commitment to water recycling? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?
I thank the member for Bonner for his question. Right around Australia the Howard government is promoting the innovative reuse and recycling of water. A particular focus is managed aquifer recharge, where stormwater or treated waste water can be returned to an aquifer for later extraction and use. The government has supported a number of innovative projects of this kind in several states. Last week, together with the Western Australian government, I announced the latest of these schemes: a $30 million managed aquifer recharge project at Beenyup in the electorate of Moore. When fully developed, the project could supply up to 10 per cent of Perth’s water supply.
The Labor Party’s commitment to recycling is somewhat different. In a speech earlier this week, the shadow minister for water recycled the coalition’s entire water policy on markets, water trading and pricing. In that very speech the shadow minister confirmed the Labor Party’s commitment to the Beenyup project that we had announced only four days before. The opposition leader goes beyond recycling. He has, as we know, very good sources of information in the Western Australian Labor Party and he learned of the pending Beenyup announcement from someone in the Western Australian government two days before the due date. So he promptly ‘precycled’ the same announcement, and of course the shadow water minister recycled it four days after that.
I invite the opposition to end its trick cycling and abandon this effort in recycling and ‘precycling’. I call on the opposition to stop the games, to stop running around the country front-running government announcements and just, unequivocally, commit to the leadership the government have shown and to the policies they and the Australian people know are right. I am talking about the $10 billion national plan for water security. This plan includes the assumption of Commonwealth control over the Murray-Darling Basin, which the member for Kingsford Smith said in this House a few weeks ago had always been Labor Party policy. We are still waiting for the policy document.
I call on the opposition to commit to the water plan, to commit to the $2 billion Australian government water fund, to commit to the $2 billion climate change strategy, and to commit to the $3 billion Natural Heritage Trust and the $1.5 billion Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund. Above all, I call on the opposition to allow the national interest rather than ideology to guide their energy policy and to keep all the low-emission options on the table so that we can make the right decisions to ensure that our energy policies are consistent with a low emissions future. If common sense and practical measures guide us in our considerations then nuclear power will be on the table, not struck off for ideological reasons.
My question is to the Prime Minister. I ask: will the Prime Minister rule out that any recent commercial dealings have occurred between any member of his government and Mr Brian Burke or Mr Noel Crichton-Brown?
Speaking for myself, I can certainly rule them out. I am not aware that any members of my government have been involved in any commercial dealings. I will find out pretty quickly after question time. If that is wrong, I will find out very quickly. I want to thank the member for Grayndler. He has rendered meritorious service to the Liberal Party. I think he should get one of those long service awards. They were actually suggested by Ron Walker when he was the Federal Treasurer of the Liberal Party.
Let us come back to what this is all about. This is, amongst other things, an attempt by the Australian Labor Party to draw an equivalence between the Exclusive Brethren collectively and somebody who is a convicted felon and who is under a ban so far as contact between him and members of the Western Australian Labor Party is concerned. He is also somebody who, according to reports in the newspaper this morning, has been involved in an arrangement whereby the manipulation and the distortion of a parliamentary inquiry led to a company having to fork out $20 million in order to effect a court settlement. We are dealing here with serious corruption in Western Australia. This is an attempt by the Leader of the Opposition, and I say it is an attempt by the Leader of the Opposition because he has been talking to the member for Grayndler the whole time—
Mr Downer interjecting
There have been six questions asked of me by the member for Grayndler. The Leader of the Opposition has had his back turned the whole time. I do not know why he did not have the courage to get up and ask those questions of me. I mean, he is a man of great principles. The Treasurer and I have been prepared to confront him with his obligation to come clean to the Australian people about his consorting with Brian Burke in 2005, but he gets the member for Grayndler to ask a whole lot of questions. I am very happy to go on answering them because they do not really amount to a row of beans.
Mr Kelvin Thomson interjecting
The simple obligation that comes out of question time is for the Leader of the Opposition to do what he demanded of me. He demanded of me that I give chapter and verse of a perfectly legitimate telephone conversation conducted in the course of my duties as Prime Minister of Australia with a reputable businessman—a person who has given service to this nation as well as being successful in business—who was going into partnership in a business venture with a member of the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia, one of Australia’s most esteemed mining executives, Hugh Morgan, and Robert Champion de Crespigny, who has not only been successful in the mining industry but also been regarded as good enough by the Labor Party to have a seat at the cabinet table. That is how Mike Rann, the Labor Premier of South Australia, has described it.
It is part of my job to talk to people like this, but it is not part of the job—unless you are scrounging for votes—of a Labor Party federal backbencher to be going to the sorts of gatherings enumerated by the Treasurer with somebody who is a convicted felon, who is under a ban by Dr Gallop and who—according to what has come out of the CCC inquiry—was involved in what can only be called a swindle of the Xstrata company that involved that company having to pay some $20 million. I can only brand as pathetic the attempt by the member for Grayndler to say, ‘All of that is no worse than being a member of the Exclusive Brethren.’ That is pathetic, and I think the House has observed that all of these questions were asked by the member for Grayndler—none were asked of me by the Leader of the Opposition.
My question is addressed to the Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer. Would the minister inform the House how the government is helping low- and middle-income earners in the seat of Wakefield and elsewhere build their retirement savings and secure their future prosperity?
I thank the honourable member for his question and note the serious support that he provides to the government in securing the future, particularly of young Australians who have low incomes and are supported by this government’s co-contribution scheme.
I note that every time you come to this dispatch box you look at the view, and it all remains the same right across as you look out—the same old faces, the same old union hacks who have no idea what we are talking about when we talk about support through the co-contribution scheme for small business and low-income people. They are the same puppets run by the unions and of course run by Mr Burke, as we know. When you look out, you think it is no wonder that this is a party which is bad for the Australian economy. It is a party which drives the economy into the ground because it is dictated to by the union movement in this country. That is why the Australian people recognise that the changes this government has made and the support that we provide through the co-contribution scheme to lower income people in particular will set up the next generation in this country for continued economic prosperity.
I am pleased to announce today that this government has provided support to almost 800,000 payments, worth more than $631 million, to Australian workers during the period 1 October last year to 31 December. That is a $1.50 contribution by the Howard government for each $1 put aside into superannuation by low-income workers earning less than $28,000. The message today is for Australians, particularly young Australians or people on low incomes across any age bracket, to think about putting money into superannuation. This government will provide 150 per cent return up front. And when people get that money into their superannuation funds, they should be reminded that the Labor Party opposed this policy at the last election at the behest of the union movement. What that demonstrates is that the Labor Party is still dominated by the union movement and it is bad for the Australian economy.
Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
Mr Speaker, I seek the indulgence of the chair to add to an answer.
The minister may proceed.
I was earlier asked by the member for Kingsford Smith whether the government would release a submission by the Nuclear Fuel Leasing Group to the uranium mining processing and nuclear energy review. I advise the House that the Nuclear Fuel Leasing Group provided a public submission to the review and this submission is available on the website of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
So why didn’t you know that?
The member for Oxley is warned!
I table that submission. A second submission including commercial-in-confidence information was also provided to the review on the basis that the submission would not be made public.
Mr Albanese interjecting
The member for Grayndler is warned!
Consistent with longstanding government practice, this request has been respected. I also table a list of submissions received from organisations to the review.
Mr Speaker, I will table documents, but I thought there might be a personal explanation from the Leader of the Opposition beforehand. I am waiting, Mr Speaker. I am still waiting, Mr Speaker, and, I tell you, he is going through the motions of writing—but we know what he is thinking. He is thinking, ‘This is a bad day.’
Order! The Leader of the House will resume his seat. When the Leader of the House is called to help proceedings, he will not engage in debate. I call the Leader of the House.
I am justly rebuked!
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. A number of members on this side of the House have been excluded from the House today, and many were warned. None of them have behaved as badly as the Leader of the House did just then in terms of unparliamentary—
The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. I say to the Manager of Opposition Business that he will not reflect on the chair. Furthermore, I say to the Manager of Opposition Business that he is developing a habit of reflecting on the chair both in the chamber and outside of the chamber. If he continues to do it, I will take firm action.
Documents are presented as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members. Details of the documents will be recorded in the
That the House take note of the following document: Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade—Joint Standing Committee—Australia’s defence relations with the United States—Government response, February 2007.
Debate (on motion by Mr Albanese) adjourned.
I have received a letter from the honourable member for Gellibrand proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The cost of living pressures facing working families because of the Government’s policies on health, industrial relations and childcare.
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—
It will be interesting to see if the Minister for Health and Ageing can actually do anything that is related to his portfolio when we have this debate today about the Howard government’s rising health costs. We have seen what his favourite behaviour is in this House—that is, to talk about everything other than health. The only thing that he thinks he is an expert in is anything that is related to attacking the Leader of the Opposition or something else causing trouble. He is usually actually attacking you, Mr Speaker.
Today I want to talk about what has happened under his stewardship of this portfolio; how Australian families, mums and dads, are facing spiralling health costs every day because of his government’s policies. I have to tell members on this side of the House that when I first took on this portfolio and had the surprise of seeing the minister running around inside the halls of the parliament in his sporting gear, I thought he was actually doing his exercise. What I have found out since, having followed what he does in the portfolio more closely, is that he is actually practising his parliamentary strategy—that is, to run away from any health issue that is ever raised.
We ask him about reform that is needed in the health portfolio: off he runs. We ask him about the costs that parents are paying when they go to the doctor—an increase of 100 per cent in out-of-pocket expenses since this government was elected—and the minister runs away. We ask him about chronic disease and he stands up in this parliament and ridicules chronic disease, and then he runs away. He does not believe that he should take any responsibility for the growing crises in the health portfolio.
We cannot afford in this nation to have a health minister who is tired of the job. We cannot afford to have a minister who is bored with the job. We cannot afford to have a minister who has stopped listening to stakeholders’ concerns and does not care about the deep problems in the health system. On this side of the House, we do not ever want parents to have to say, ‘Can I afford to take my kids to the doctor?’ We do not want parents making decisions about the health care of their children because they cannot afford to properly protect them.
Look at the rotavirus vaccine. Rotavirus gastroenteritis is a preventable disease that strikes young children. It is a dreadful disease; they can get sick and dehydrated very quickly. Many thousands of children end up in hospital with this disease every year. In fact, 27 children a day have to go to hospital with rotavirus, and the minister could stop that immediately. PBAC has already recommended that this vaccine should be approved, but cabinet is just sitting on its hands. The minister is not pursuing this, and every day individual mums and dads have to make the decision about whether they can afford a $200 or $300 vaccine because this minister cannot be bothered to push for their interests.
I hope the minister is going to tell us when he will approve this vaccine. We cannot afford to go through another winter, which is when this virus peaks. It is expected that 10,000 children will be hospitalised this year. We have parents looking to the government, saying: ‘How can you help us? How can you protect our children from this disease? What if we don’t have the $200 or $300 to get this vaccine?’ The minister has the power to fix this, and instead he is doing nothing or, as I said at the start, just running away from an issue that affects every family every single day. He spends all his time looking at what sorts of silly stunts he can run in question time instead of thinking seriously about our health policy.
What about dental care? We have thousands of children going to hospital for preventable dental illnesses because this government has completely washed its hands of dental care. This takes us to the other favourite strategy the minister has in his portfolio: if he is not running away from something, he is standing still and blaming somebody else. But when do we actually see him fixing anything? With dental care, this is the classic situation: he jumps up and down and says, ‘This is the states’ responsibility.’ He avoids the fact that there was a Commonwealth dental scheme. He avoids the fact that it is even in the Constitution that the Commonwealth has a role to play in dental services. He avoids the fact that the government has a role to play in providing dental services for veterans. Instead, the minister is happy to have hundreds of thousands of people, including many children, on waiting lists around the country not being able to get the dental care they need, and 50,000 people each year going to hospital with preventable dental conditions because this minister says he is not going to fix it.
We cannot afford to have a health minister who is going to approach the portfolio in this way. We cannot afford to have a health minister who says: ‘It’s okay. We expect working families to be able to find all that money to look after their kids’ teeth. We expect them to be able to find the money to pay for the rotavirus vaccine. We expect them to find the money for a 100 per cent out-of-pocket increase in doctor’s expenses and we expect them to be able to find the money, if they have private health insurance, for a 46 per cent increase.’
The government introduced the changes to the private health insurance rebate—a policy that we supported—but they made the promise when they introduced this rebate that it would keep premiums down. And what do we see? A whopping 46 per cent increase in the cost of private health insurance. Working families are hit in all directions when it comes to healthcare costs: they are hit with increased private health insurance expenses; they are hit with extra costs for dental; they are hit with extra out-of-pocket expenses for doctors and the list just goes on.
We now have the Medicare surcharge levy, also part of the government’s reforms when they introduced the private health insurance rebate. It was said by the minister at the time, the minister’s predecessor—I think his predecessor by two—that this was going to be a tax on the wealthy. They were only going to be charging this levy to the wealthy who chose not to be privately insured. We now have 350,000-plus people who are earning below the average wage and getting whacked with this levy. How is that fair for working families? How are they supposed to find in their budget these extra healthcare expenses when the cost of living is getting tighter for them every day?
I do not want to live in a country—and I am sure there is no-one on this side of the House, Minister, who does—where people cannot afford the health care they need, when they have to make a choice about whether they go to the doctor’s with their sick children because they have to look in their wallets first to see if they have enough money to go, rather than doing what is in the interests of the kids.
The minister can stand up here every day and say, as he often does about health: ‘This is all the states’ fault. If there is any problem in the hospital system, it is all the states’ fault, Minister, you cannot keep saying that it is all the states’ fault when you are neglecting your duties, when you are neglecting paying attention to preventable diseases that would keep people out of hospital. You cannot keep doing that.
The minister had the cheek earlier this week to stand up in the parliament and ridicule the idea of paying more attention to chronic disease. He ridiculed the idea that we might be worried about this tsunami of chronic disease that we have to face. But, for his government, less than two per cent—I think it is 1.7 per cent—of national health expenditure is on prevention measures.
Do you know why the minister really does not care about prevention? Probably because he has no sympathy for those who are suffering from diabetes, cardiovascular disease or other conditions. He does not worry about them. The minister is not worried for one second about the people who are suffering, because he is just rubbing his hands together and saying, ‘They will end up in state hospitals and I will stand up in the parliament and blame them.’ That is not the way for a health minister to run his portfolio. We need a health minister who is prepared to be interested in health—not someone who just stands up here enjoying the toing and froing of parliament, attacking the Leader of the Opposition when he feels like it or coming out with some silly stunt. Families in this country want a health minister who is interested in administering the health portfolio. They want a health minister who is worried about the costs of health care. They want a minister who understands what a heartbreaking decision it is to say, ‘Can we afford $200 or $300 for a vaccine’—a vaccine that has been approved by your advisory committee—‘or do we take the risk and hope that our child does not get sick?’
I am sure the minister has been to plenty of hospitals and visited plenty of emergency departments. I am sure he has seen children suffering from rotavirus gastroenteritis; it is not a happy thing. No-one wants their small children to be in that situation. We know that there are some diseases we cannot stop. We know that there will be times when children will get sick and we cannot do anything about it. But in this instance there is a clear, preventative action that this government can take—that the Howard government is responsible for taking—but that the minister refuses to take. The PBAC recommended it in November; we are now in March. You cannot wait any longer, Minister. If you keep waiting, we are going to have another 10,000 children in hospital this year who do not need to be. They are calling on you to take action.
The minister has been happy to stand up here being dismissive about the growing threat of chronic disease. I know that many people on this side of the House have been campaigning in their electorates with the growing number of stakeholders who are concerned about how we deal with diabetes, mental illness and cardiovascular disease, but we have the minister standing up here saying: ‘Actually, the government has taken some initiatives. We are spending $200 million on some Medicare initiatives.’ Minister, those initiatives are fine, but overall we still have the government spending a tiny portion of its money on chronic disease—on the illnesses that are responsible for more than 70 per cent of deaths in this country. We need to make sure that the minister is prepared to look again at the priorities of the government. We want him to have some reformist agenda.
I have been at a number of conferences with the minister recently where he has proudly stood up and said that he is anti-reform, and he has used the motto of the medical profession, which is ‘Do no harm’. There is not a doctor in this country who would stand by if their patient was at risk, Minister. If your portfolio is at risk because you are not looking at the things that are causing and presenting challenges for the future, then you are not doing no harm. Taking no action will actually cause some harm.
Even the Productivity Commission this week, when they released their report on the national reform agenda, made it completely clear that this is not just the minister ignoring health imperatives and the pressures that they are going to put on families every day; the minister is also ignoring important national imperatives. He is a minister in a government that prides itself on having a great economic record, but we have the national reform agenda, the Productivity Commission’s report, saying, ‘If we do not take action on preventable disease and chronic disease, we are giving up an opportunity to improve our gross domestic product by six per cent.’ That is a huge increase. In fact, the Treasurer actually spoke about that today. He obviously has not highlighted the health section of that for your attention. It says we must take some action, or else the productivity of this nation will be affected. People cannot be full, participating members of the community if they are suffering and losing many days and years of work through chronic disease. You have to be prepared to tackle this, Minister, or you are not doing your job as the health minister.
Look at the way working families are being put under pressure every day with the spiralling costs of health care. We have heard, through questions from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, that many women are being put under pressure when they are working under Australian workplace agreements and getting paid less than they would be if they were working under collective agreements or certified agreements. We have people being squeezed in all directions. They are earning less because of the government’s policies. They are being charged more because of the government’s policies. I know that the member for Jagajaga has been pursuing the spiralling costs of child care. That is another way that working families are getting hit because of the government’s policies. We cannot afford to have health be yet another one of those things that are hitting working families in their hip pockets. We all have people who come into our offices to raise concerns about not being able to afford pharmaceuticals or not being able to afford to go to the doctor. We know that they turn up in our hospital system. It is not adequate for the minister to say, ‘That’s okay. I’ll just run away or blame somebody else for it.’ Minister, you have a lot of the levers in your hands. You can actually help fix these problems. Working families in this country expect the health minister to do so.
We want some answers about how you are going to help keep premiums down for private health insurance. This is what the government promised when they introduced their initiatives. In fact, the minister had the cheek, when the increases were announced last week—4.5 per cent on average—to say that these were really good figures. Since when is a 4.5 per cent increase, which is anything from $50 to several hundred dollars, depending on the type of product you have, good news for a working family when they have to add that into their budget? They are not getting anything extra for it. It is the same policy they have had year after year, and now they have another 4.5 per cent to bring it up to 46 per cent. Minister, what are you going to do about that? Why are you taking out of the law of this country that the government should play a role in minimising premiums? Why are you running away from that? We know what the answer is. Minister Wooldridge’s promise that premiums would be kept under control has already been broken, and now you are taking it out of the law to make sure that nobody can try to hold you to account for your failings.
Working families cannot afford to have this health minister in the portfolio any longer. They need a minister who is actually interested in fixing their problems. They need a minister who is not going to run away, spending his time jogging around the parliament and working out the smart lines he wants to use against the Leader of the Opposition. We want him interested in the health of Australian families and we want to know what he is going to do to take some of the pressure off the cost of living for working families. (Time expired)
Of course the government does not want people to worry about whether they can afford to visit the doctor. Of course no-one wants to see chronic disease rampant in our community. Of course we all want to see happy, healthy people in a cohesive society. The difference, if I may say so, is that the opposition is talking but the government is acting. The government has policies to deal with this, but all the opposition has is a series of complaints.
It is all very well for the shadow minister for health to stand up in this place and talk about things which might, in a perfect world, be done differently, and it is all very well to ask, having seen the government do 99 things, what it will do about the 100th thing. I have not had very many dealings with the shadow minister for health; she has been in the portfolio for only three months. I am sure she is a highly competent politician and I am sure she is a decent human being but, on the evidence of what we have seen today, there is a rather long way to go before she is a credible shadow minister.
Why don’t you just fix some of the problems you are responsible for?
The member for Gellibrand should be well aware that the chair will not tolerate interjections after she has had her chance to speak.
I listened to all of her tirade in courteous silence. I listened to all the accusations of bad faith without interjecting. I listened to all her shrill claims about how I did not care and how I had no interest. I took all that stuff because I thought someone who had been in the job for only three months could be excused for going over the top occasionally. However, the shadow minister would have a lot more credibility if she actually did a bit of homework.
I do not pretend for a second that this government is perfect. I do not pretend for a second that as health minister I have all the answers. I do not pretend for a second that I am a model of every last bit of human sympathy. Of course I have my weaknesses and my failures, but I think the government do have a good record on health. I think we have diligently addressed the problems of our health system as they have occurred to us. Sure, there are some things that we have not done—not because we do not care about them but because they really are the responsibility of others.
I ask the shadow minister for health: is there anything which is fairly and squarely the responsibility of this federal government that has not been addressed? Sure, there are areas where maybe we could do more. Sure, if we had more money, we could do more. Sure, if advertising campaigns were more effective we might get better results, but I do not think that any fair-minded observer who looked at the record of this government in health, particularly in that period that I am most familiar with—the last 3½ years—would say that there has been the slightest evidence of lack of interest or the slightest evidence of carelessness about this portfolio.
What about rotavirus?
The member for Gellibrand is warned!
She constantly interjects, ‘What about rotavirus?’ Let’s take rotavirus. There was a recommendation from the PBAC in December, at about the time the shadow minister for health occupied that position, that rotavirus be put on the national immunisation program. For some time after that, there were negotiations between the government and the suppliers over price. Those negotiations have now been completed and, before the end of the month, this matter will be considered by cabinet—no delay, nothing unusual, nothing sinister.
Too late!
She says now, ‘Too late.’ There was no rotavirus vaccine between 1983 and 1996. I did not hear any hysterical speeches about rotavirus last winter or the winter before. I would like to see a rotavirus campaign for this winter. If we do consider this matter—as I am sure we will before the end of March—and, if the recommendation of the PBAC is accepted by cabinet, it will then be in the hands of the states, as these things normally are. I certainly want to work with the states to get this vaccine out there into the community as quickly as possible. I can give no fairer answer than that.
I do not believe there is anything that any reasonable observer or any fair-minded critic could legitimately hold against this government on the issue of rotavirus or on vaccines generally. Let us not forget that, back in 1996, the federal government spent $13 million on vaccines. In the last financial year, from memory, we spent something like $250 million on vaccines. In the early 1990s, the childhood immunisation rate in this country was 53 per cent; today the childhood immunisation rate is well over 90 per cent.
Let us go through some of the other issues that were raised by the shadow minister for health. I accept that there are spiralling health costs. Health costs go up, just like other costs in our community go up, and obviously no-one likes it. Who is happy when, for argument’s sake, their private health insurance premium goes up 4½ per cent? Of course people are unhappy about that. But I tell you what: they are a lot less unhappy than they were when it was going up by 11 per cent a year on average. If I am such an incompetent health minister because under my stewardship health insurance premiums have gone up by 4½ per cent, what kind of incompetence was there in this parliament when Labor ministers for health saw premiums go up by 11 per cent a year? Fair cop! If members opposite had been able to keep premiums to one per cent, two per cent or three per cent of CPI, and I came in and it was 4½ per cent under me, I would be prepared to stand here and say, ‘Yes, not a very good job.’ But when members opposite had average increases of 11 per cent—I think one year it was over 20 per cent—and this government has kept the average to about five per cent over 13 years, please let us not have the kind of sanctimony that we had from the shadow minister today.
Dr Stone interjecting
She was talking about the rising costs of visiting a GP and the rising costs of visiting specialists. I accept that the charges of GPs and other doctors have gone up, but they have gone up by no greater a rate than they went up when members opposite were in government.
But I will tell you what the government have done, which the former government never did—and which members opposite do not actually support, even though it helps people who face higher costs—and that is introduce the Medicare safety net. No-one likes to see people paying high costs, particularly for their health care. No-one likes that. And we have done something about it. We have put a safety net in place which, in the calendar year just gone, should have helped about 1½ million Australians. That is a safety net that members opposite are still pledged to take away.
Now that the shadow minister has been in the job for three months and has presumably had a chance to get her head around some of these things, I would like to know: is that still Labor’s position? Certainly it was their position before the last election. Certainly it was always the position of the former shadow minister, now the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, that they would abolish the Medicare safety net. Is it still the position now that the member for Gellibrand is the shadow minister? If it is still her position, what a hide to come into this House and start talking about spiralling health costs, when probably the most important structural change to Medicare since 1984 was put in by this government to help people who face those spiralling health costs, and now Labor want to rip it away.
On dental care: I am not at all happy about the fact that there are some 650,000 Australians currently on public dental waiting lists. I do not like it one little bit. And, yes, I suppose that, if the Keating government scheme which lasted for three or four years were put back in place, some slight dent might be made in those waiting lists. But you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, they did not disappear, and, in many states, as soon as the Keating government put a bit of money into those things which had always been states’ responsibilities, the states took the money back. It comes a bit rich from members opposite to talk constantly about the horrors of the Howard government dental policy, when the Leader of the Opposition—as de facto Premier of Queensland—still had three-year waiting lists for public dental treatment at the very time that the Keating scheme was operating.
I do not say for a second that clearing public dental waiting lists will be easy, just as I do not say for a second that eliminating elective surgery waiting lists would be easy. The states have a hard job. Running public hospitals is hard. Running public dental services is hard. I just think they should do their job. They should do their job, and I do not think the states doing their job is helped by the shadow minister for health saying, ‘It’s not their fault. Everything is the fault of the Howard government.’ I do not believe that there is any real way to end the blame game in this country by blaming everything on the policies of the Howard government.
The shadow minister talked about complete inaction from this government—total inaction from this government—on health. I simply table a speech which goes through some of the things which the government has done since 1996 and, in particular, since October 2003.
Another topic of this MPI is industrial relations. Members opposite get hysterical about the alleged evils of Work Choices. Let me just make it very clear. Since 1996 we have had more jobs, higher pay and fewer strikes—almost two million new jobs, including almost a quarter of a million new jobs since Work Choices was introduced in April last year. Basic award earnings are up 18 per cent in real terms since 1996. I think they only rose by about one per cent in real terms in the previous 13 years. The real wealth per head of Australians has increased by 100 per cent since 1996. Average weekly earnings in this country are up by 25 per cent in real terms since 1996.
I do not say for a second that there are not some people in this country who feel financial pressure. You can double your salary and, if you double your expenditure, you are still under financial pressure. I accept that. But the government’s responsibility is not to stop people spending; the government’s responsibility is to give them the opportunity of earning, and that is precisely what we have done since 1996.
I do not claim to be any great expert in the field of child care, but just for completeness, because I do not want people to think that the government has in any way run away from the topic of this MPI: the spending on childcare benefit has doubled over the life of this government, and the number of places has doubled under this government. I am advised that, in the last eight years of the former Labor government, childcare fees increased by 47 per cent in real terms. In the last 10 years under this government, childcare fees have increased by 22 per cent. Again, no-one likes increases. Unfortunately, in the real world, they are unavoidable, and the fact is that they have been much more moderate under this government than under its predecessor, and people have had much more by way of financial resources to deal with them under this government than under its predecessor. I have tried as best I can to deal soberly and sensibly with the topic of this MPI. I am sorry if question time was a bit thermonuclear, but I think the serious critique has been well and truly answered. (Time expired)
It is a delight to be able to second the MPI, moved by the member for Gellibrand, which seeks to shine a spotlight on what is happening for Australian families across this country—a spotlight which the Minister for Health and Ageing seems desperately keen to avoid. Families are under more financial pressure than ever before. Australian families are struggling to make ends meet under the growing weight of record household debt, rising interest rates, pressure at work, rising health costs and reduced family time. For the last six months, as part of Labor’s Family Watch Task Force, Labor MPs and senators have met with families in shopping centres and markets around the country. We have surveyed households in every state and territory. Far from being relaxed and comfortable after a decade of the Howard government, Australian families are increasingly anxious about their household finances. They are also worried about the Howard government’s attack on working conditions and the neglect of skills and training and what that means for their children. Australia’s prosperity depends on the hard work and commitment of Middle Australia, and Middle Australia deserves a government which actually focuses on its needs.
The rising costs of health and child care and the adverse impacts of the government’s industrial relations agenda are placing extreme pressure on families. Family budgets are not just blowing out in one area. The cost of living is rising across the board, whether it be housing repayments or rent, weekly grocery bills, petrol, utility bills, health care, childcare fees and education expenses. All of these cost pressures are having a severe impact on family budgets and family life. It is clear that growing financial pressure on household budgets is influencing critical decisions which families are taking. Parents told Labor’s Family Watch Task Force that financial constraints are denying them the opportunity to make real decisions about the size of their families and about time out of the workforce after childbirth. Middle Australia is working harder than ever before, with longer hours and longer commutes, and second and third jobs are eroding family life.
Parents are worried about the impact of health costs on their ability to ensure that their children get the health and dental care they need. They are also concerned about what the rising cost of education means for their children’s future. Families are being hampered by the complex interaction between the government’s tax and welfare systems, and they are being actively hurt by the government’s industrial relations legislation. Family income is not keeping pace with the increased costs of living, leaving middle- and low-income earners struggling to make ends meet. Many low- and middle-income families have simply been overwhelmed by the growing financial burden. That fact was demonstrated in the report by Catholic Social Services Australia entitled Dropping off the edge, released this week.
The shadow minister for health has outlined how the rising costs of health care and the health system are affecting families. Lack of funding for areas of prevention, combined with increased costs of seeing a GP and accessing medicines, is contributing to preventable hospital admissions in this country. Such admissions place even greater strains on both the hospital systems and families.
Medical and healthcare expenses are the fastest growing cost category for Australian families. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says that personal health bills are rising at a rate of 6.9 per cent per year, which is double the rate of inflation. At the same time, the ability of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to deliver affordable medicines is being undermined as the Howard government takes every opportunity to strip funds out of its budget.
We have seen yet again a rise in private health insurance premiums. These rises, coupled with an increase in gap payments, have occurred despite the public rebate and the Howard government’s promise to keep rises under control. The health of children is a major source of anxiety for parents. The last thing parents need when their child is ill is the worry about whether they can afford to pay for treatment.
The level of household debt has skyrocketed in Australia, with average household debt now 125 per cent of disposable income. People are having to spend more money than they are earning; 83½ per cent of all household income is spent on housing. That figure is just in respect of housing which people occupy. The stark reality for working families is that there is no such thing as a small interest rate rise and no such thing as a small mortgage. People have more debts and larger amounts owing. The average home loan is now $300,000. The sheer size of debt, coupled with the government’s inability to keep a lid on inflation, has pushed up interest rates. This means that people are now paying 50 per cent more for their mortgages than they were when Labor was in government.
Despite the rhetoric about lower interest rates, the Howard government is taking 50 per cent more out of the pockets of working Australians just so that they can stay in their own homes. Add to this the vast amounts of consumer debt that each working family is carrying and it will become clear why Australian families are struggling. Total Australian household debt has now reached $1 trillion. That is equivalent to $125,000 for every household. Labor’s Family Watch Task Force was appalled to hear that some families are having to rely on credit drawn at 48 per cent interest in order to make ends meet.
Such massive personal debts create huge tensions within working families and, as shown in Dropping off the edge, often lead to family breakdowns and other social problems. These debt levels are simply too much for many working families. Mortgage repossessions have been skyrocketing since 2003 as working families are pulled under by debt. In Victoria alone there has been a 210 per cent increase in the number of repossessions. This is higher than in the recession period of the early nineties.
Access to secure, appropriate and affordable housing is an essential ingredient of a quality family life. Unfortunately, many families are denied that access. Many families are trapped in a vicious cycle of rising rents for low-standard accommodation as an ever growing number of families are denied access to the benefits of home ownership. Out-of-reach house prices and increasing interest rates, combined with rises in other costs of living, mean home ownership is no longer an achievable goal for many families.
Housing affordability is tied to other costs of living. As working families are having to spend more to meet the climbing costs of child care, health care and education, less money can be put aside for a housing deposit. Tightening rental markets have seen big increases in rent across the country, which has put decent accommodation beyond the reach of many working families. We also have 100,000 homeless Australians on any given night. With $3.2 billion being ripped out of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement over the last 10 years, thousands of Australian families have been denied access to rent assistance and have had their eligibility restricted.
In the area of child care, wherever you go in Australia families want to talk about child care—about the lack of availability, rising costs and the difficulty of finding care for young teenagers. Since 1996 childcare affordability has declined for almost all Australians. Childcare costs have grown three to five times faster than the CPI over each of the past three years and low- and middle-income families are being left behind in the wake of these fee rises. Working Australian families often have little choice but to access child care in order for both parents to work to pay for housing, health costs and the ordinary costs of living. These working Australian families are slapped with childcare bills that eat up their earnings. Many working women across Australia are being punished by the government’s system that makes it unaffordable to work but impossible to stay at home to look after their kids. The government’s own members have referred to the childcare system as ‘a shambles’ and the government’s policy in this area has been an absolute failure in keeping child care affordable for Australian families.
In the area of industrial relations, contrary to the Howard government’s promise that life would be better for women under Australian workplace agreements, the ABS data that we saw yesterday shows that it certainly is not. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the employee hours and earnings for May 2006. The data indicates that women on Australian workplace agreements are earning less than Australian women on collective agreements. These statistics clearly show that there is a big earnings gap between those women who entered into an AWA before Work Choices, when the no disadvantage test applied, and those on collective agreements. You can hardly imagine what the gap will be now that the no disadvantage test does not apply.
These are just four areas where families are under pressure. The reality for many Australian families is that they are sinking under the growing burden of debt as they simply try to keep up with the basic costs of living. Families are asking why their pay packets are not stretching as far as they used to; why their pay is spent before they actually seem to get it; why they cannot seem to save; and why their debts never seem to go down but the cost of living seems to keep going up. The reality for many families is that child care and health costs, household debt and housing costs are becoming increasingly unaffordable. Australia’s prosperity depends on the hard work and commitment of middle Australia. Middle Australia deserves a government that is going to work for them. (Time expired)
I am pleased to join in the debate on this matter of public importance. I remind members of what the MPI is for: it is an opportunity for the Labor Party—the opposition—to raise an issue of importance for that day. As a way of gaining momentum, it is usually preceded in question time by the opposition asking a series of questions on issues relating to that matter of public importance. What we have had today from the opposition shows us that this matter of public of importance is not one that the ALP believes in; rather, it was the member for Gellibrand’s turn to get up and raise an MPI. During question time, the opposition raised no questions on any of the issues the member for Gellibrand spoke about; rather, the opposition went down various rabbit holes on other issues, trying to deflect their possible guilt in what has taken place in Western Australian and its link to Canberra.
It was unfortunate that the member for Gellibrand spent the first seven or eight minutes in her MPI getting personal about the Minister for Health and Ageing. It is very unfortunate that she did that rather than sticking to the substance of the MPI. She made the comment, ‘We don’t want to live in a country where people cannot afford health care.’ Nobody wants to live in a country where people cannot afford health care. One of the things this government has done through its tax cuts, through its rebates, through its Medicare safety net and through the increased ability for people to have a job is provide people with the ability to pay and to earn a living.
But, no, the member for Gellibrand ignores all of that and instead gets very personal about the health minister, saying, ‘What is he doing when he is all sweaty, running in his tracksuit around Parliament House?’ I will give the member for Gellibrand a hint. Just ask the member for Parramatta and the member for Oxley what the minister does as a way of making a contribution. Not only has the minister, in his portfolio, responded from a policy perspective; he has also responded with conviction by using his feet, his muscles and his energy to help those who need support. I urge the member for Gellibrand to put on her tracksuit and in April join the member for Oxley, the member for Parramatta and members on this side of the House in a charity ride which takes place every year. Over the last nine years, the minister has raised over $1 million through his Pollie Pedal ride. Over $1 million has been raised by the minister through his efforts in this charity ride, and most of it has gone to the very issue that the member for Gellibrand says the minister has no concern about—diabetes.
Member for Gellibrand, I look forward to your lycras, your bike and you pumping out those kilometres between Brisbane and Sydney this year. No doubt if you, as the shadow minister for health, participated with the minister for health in riding down the highway between Brisbane and Sydney, we would raise a lot of money. Guess where that money goes? It goes to the Millennium Foundation for medical research. The minister for health is a man who has delivered not only on policy but also as an individual. To see that he has delivered on policy, we only need to look at the response on Gardasil and on Herceptin for breast cancer; the rotavirus is being considered. When we look at the child immunisation rates, we see that the number of children who are now immunised has increased from 50 per cent to 90 per cent. In the last 24 hours, the minister for health made an announcement that a new centre for gynaecological cancers will be established. This is a minister who has responded in all sorts of ways.
Let us also go to the substance of the MPI: the cost of living pressures facing working families. I say to the member for Ballarat and the member for Gellibrand that one of the things that Australian families can do today which they were not able to do prior to 1996 is have a job to be able to pay for the cost of living. Most people are experiencing interest rates which are far lower than the rates the ALP left us with back in 1990s. It was not a matter then of housing affordability being beyond the reach of most Australians—one of the subjects of the member for Ballarat’s contribution. Back then, interest rates were such that housing affordability was beyond the reach of all Australians. We have seen interest rates come down to levels that the ALP could only dream of ever achieving—and of course they will not, because they do not have the ability to manage an economy which creates such sustained increases in wages and jobs growth and which makes sure that people have the ability to participate in the workforce.
The facts are that since March last year, when Work Choices came in, which those on the other side thought was going to be the end of the family, we have seen over 241,000 new jobs created. Most of those have been full-time jobs and over 100,000 have been jobs for women, particularly those who have returned to the workforce. These are people who can now participate in Australian society in a real way and make a contribution to providing bread and a meal for their families when they go home.
Wages have increased by somewhere around 18 per cent since 1996. The earnings of employees have also gone up in real terms since Work Choices came in. The member for Ballarat was going on about the ABS figures from yesterday. I am not sure whether we are on the same page. The figures I have here are from May 2006—which, remember, is only a couple of months after Work Choices came in; yet those on the other side like to make out that it is for the full year. Those ABS employee earning hours survey figures show that full-time employees under registered individual agreements such as AWAs earn on average $511 per week more than award wages. Part-time employees—and we know most part-time employees tend to be females who are re-entering the workforce after an absence from it—under registered individual agreements earn on average $81.70 per week more than award wages. And all employees under collective agreements earn on average $404 more than employees on award wages. So, far from the doom and gloom that they predicted—and are now trying to say has actually come to pass—the record is one of growth in employment and also increased ability to earn a wage which is commensurate with someone’s contribution to the workforce and which is increasing as we go.
On a number of fronts this MPI is discredited. The private health insurance rebate and the Medicare safety net, which the minister has certainly gone through at length, are there to help address the pressures that are faced by working families. Yet what is the Labor Party’s response? We still do not know whether or not they are going to maintain the rebate on private health insurance. They criticised last week’s announcement of a 4½ per cent increase in premiums, but until they come out and state what their policy is we have to assume it is the previous policy that they had, which was to get rid of the private health insurance rebate completely.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member is completely misrepresenting the position of the Labor Party, which has clearly been stated in support of the 30 per cent rebate.
That is not a point of order.
So we have a party here that does not know what its policies are, whether it be assisting people into the workforce—
You mean you don’t know what our policies are!
The member for Gellibrand has already been warned and I will not hesitate to throw her out.
They have no idea whether or not they are going to support the Medicare safety net. With respect to child care, which is the other part of their argument here, they have not acknowledged the fact that under the coalition we have seen real fees increase by 22 per cent in the last 10 years versus 47 per cent in the eight years they were in power. (Time expired)
It is a great honour to be speaking about this issue and following the member for Deakin on this matter about the cost of living. In listening to the member for Deakin and the achievements of the government that he has listed, one would think that we are living in a utopia, that in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, which he is part of, there is boundless prosperity, that there are no cost-of-living constraints, that people can wander into doctors’ surgeries without having to worry about bulk-billing, that people do not have a care about industrial relations and that child care is fine—that it is a perfect world.
But it is interesting, in their perfect world, in the suburbs and the electorate that I represent, that last year, when petrol prices were about $1.30 a litre, inflation was about four per cent and we had just come off another interest rate rise, I distributed a survey to my constituents asking for their views about the cost of living, their concerns with industrial relations, their hopes and fears for the future and issues that concerned them. The interesting thing about this utopia—listening to the member for Deakin—that may help the member for Deakin in terms of facts and figures, was that there was a 22 per cent response rate; unheard of in outer suburban areas. Do you know what the interesting things that they raised were? Their main concerns were job security and cost of living. In fact, they were very angry. So in this utopia that you talk about, Member for Deakin, the No. 1 concern that they had as a consequence of the introduction of the Work Choices legislation was job security. Why would that be, in utopia?
Mr Barresi interjecting
Yes, exactly. So that large number of people living in that happy little utopia were basically worried about job security. I wonder why that would be. They were worried about their capacity to pay off their homes. In fact, some of them were worried about being able to pay school fees or for car registration. So in this perfect world that I have just listened to with the contribution from the member for Deakin we had people in January this year coming into my office trying to work out where they could get money to pay for book fees for their students. They were basically saying that they could not afford to pay doctors’ bills, that they could not afford to run their second family car anymore and that their houses were going to be repossessed—in this perfect world! So we are saying there are two worlds: we have the world of the member for Deakin and the government, and we have the real world reflected in the survey results that I have received. I know which world I believe in.
Mr Barresi interjecting
Member for Deakin, I do not know which world you are in, mate, but it is not the real world. The cost of living and its impact are eloquently summarised by an essay called ‘Divided nations: cracks in the veneer’, which talks about a gentleman who lives in an outer suburban area. It says:
He lives with his family in Hoppers Crossing, in the outer tract of Melbourne’s rapidly expanding western growth corridor. It’s a place like many on the fringes of Australia’s cities, where hopeful households have flocked in recent years chasing the promise of a better life enriched by the Australian dream of home ownership.
But [this gentleman’s] dream is souring. Escalating petrol prices and mortgage interest rates have pushed him to take on a second job to keep his family’s budget in the black. His edgy neighbours are slashing their spending to make ends meet. Holidays, entertainment, new appliances and health insurance have all been cut. “It’s just getting so hard,” he told the Herald Sun in May. “They say we live in the lucky country but that’s crap when people have to live like this.”
So I do not know what the member for Deakin thinks about that; that is obviously not the real world! I wonder what they would make of the price of petrol. On Monday morning, on 28 February, unleaded prices at service stations in my electorate were between $1.08 and $1.12 and all of a sudden, that very same morning, they jumped up to $1.21.6 or $1.22.9. For what reason? Why does the government just sit idly by when that happens, particularly when so many of my constituents are reliant upon cars?
We have spoken about the increase in private health insurance, and when you look emergency relief providers you see that their offices are being flooded by people who are seeking financial support and counselling because of the difficulties of the increased cost of living.
So we have two worlds: we have the world of the member for Deakin—the utopia he and the government have put forward—and we have the real world. It is about time that we actually reflected the concerns of people struggling with the costs of living, struggling to pay for child care, worried about their jobs, worried about their futures and worrying about not being able to take out private health insurance. Kick this mob out of government. (Time expired)
I look at the MPI today and I see it is about pressure facing working families. I suppose we are finally getting an acknowledgement from the other side that there are people out there working. It certainly was different some time ago when the Labor Party were in office in Australia, when we had a million unemployed people on the dole queues. That situation has turned around in a big way thanks to the policies of the Howard government. We have a situation now in Australia where we have record low unemployment and record wages growth. As the member for Deakin said, wages have grown by 18 per cent in real terms under this government, whereas after 13 years of Labor government wages grew by something around one per cent. We also have the lowest rate of strikes since records have been kept. That shows that there are working families out there.
A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting visit to my electorate. Sharan Burrow of the ACTU decided that she was going to turn up there and campaign heavily against the Work Choices legislation. Ms Burrow turned up at the front of my office with half a dozen or a dozen or so protestors, screaming abuse at my window. I thought I should go out and see what her concerns were, so I went and asked Ms Burrow what her problems were. She said she did not like this Work Choices legislation. She said it was terrible. At the time, it was only the day after unemployment figures were announced in the Northern Territory. We had the Northern Territory Labor Treasurer trumpeting the fact that unemployment had fallen to two per cent in the Northern Territory. It had fallen to two per cent from 6.4 per cent in February the previous year, immediately prior to the introduction of Work Choices. I said to Ms Burrow that the reason we had had such a great drop in unemployment in the Northern Territory was that business was embracing Work Choices and was employing more people as a result.
Only on Tuesday, the Sensis small business index released their report, and what they said about the Northern Territory was that it was a little bit different from the rest of the country. They said:
Support among SMEs—
that is, small to medium enterprises—
for the Federal Government recorded a further marginal rise during the quarter and has now been net positive for nine out of the last 10 quarters, with the Federal Government being the most supported government in Australia by SMEs.
… … …
The strongest support for the Federal Government’s policies occurred in the Northern Territory, where businesses recorded a positive 23 per cent net balance.
They go on to say:
Once again, the Federal Government’s industrial relations policies were by far the main reason SMEs gave for believing the Federal Government was trying to support small business.
Order! The time allotted for this discussion has now expired.
Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented.
Ordered that the bill be considered immediately.
Bill agreed to.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented.
Ordered that the bill be considered immediately.
Bill agreed to.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented.
Ordered that the bill be considered immediately.
Bill agreed to.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
I present the report from the Publications Committee sitting in conference with the Publications Committee of the Senate. Copies of the report are being placed on the table.
Report—by leave—adopted.
I have received a message from the Senate informing the House that Senator Bernardi has been appointed a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, and that Senator Forshaw has been discharged from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and Senator Hurley has been appointed a member of the committee.
Message received from the Senate returning the bills without amendment or request.
Bill received from the Senate, and read a first time.
Ordered that the second reading be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Bill received from the Senate, and read a first time.
Ordered that the second reading be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Debate resumed.
The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Batman has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.
I rise to speak in the second reading debate on the Airports Amendment Bill 2006 and I note the second reading amendment moved by my colleague the member for Batman. This bill provides members with an opportunity to reflect not only on the role and importance of the 22 federally leased airports but also on the effectiveness of the regulatory controls that are placed on airport lessees. Labor’s second reading amendment condemns the government for undermining public confidence in the Airports Act, particularly in relation to the decisions to approve the Perth brickworks site and the Essendon direct factory outlet. That second approval ignored the potential impacts on local road infrastructure.
The proposed amendments to the Airports Act are designed to relax restrictions on airlines owning smaller airports, to institute changes to land use, planning, building controls and environment management provisions, and to confirm the availability of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to monitor and evaluate the quality of airport services and facilities. As the federal member who has the largest and busiest airport, Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport, in the electorate that I represent, I find this bill particularly important. It is of great interest to the constituents of the Kingsford Smith area, in particular those who live close to and around the airport.
Labor recognises the role that airports play, particularly in allowing us to have sufficient travel and conduct business and leisure, both out of Australia and around Australia. Tourism provides a significant contribution to our national economy. That industry represents Australia’s third-largest export earner. The amendment that the member for Batman has moved is informed by the government’s response to a review in 2002, a report into this act, which was never publicly released. What was eventually released in November 2005 was called ‘the outcomes’ of the review.
The significant issues that have been discussed in relation to this bill relate specifically to the planning and approval conditions within the bill. The amendment that the member for Batman has moved goes to the heart of ensuring, in this parliament, that there is public confidence in the decision-making processes that are contained in the act. There is no doubt that the question of the most appropriate form of development that can take place on airports, other than that which is specifically required for the airport and for the needs of aviation, has become a contentious public issue. In particular, the proposals by Sydney Airport Corporation for a sizeable development at Sydney airport—which I will return to a little later on—are a matter of local, state and, ultimately, national interest.
The Sydney Airport Corporation proposed that there would be a significant development including retail facilities. Once that first proposal was made public, the level of concern from state government, local council and local residents was huge. Sydney Airport Corporation submitted a revised development proposal and in this proposal sought to build a shopping complex at the junction of Foreshaw Road and the M5 motorway—an area of significant traffic congestion at most times of the day in and out of Sydney, and a location quite close to the emergency services and the fire services that are there in the event of any accident, terrorist action or anything of that sort, which we dearly hope will never happen. All of this occurred without any consultation. It represented an extraordinarily out of scale proposal and as a consequence it was subsequently rejected. I think that the concerns of residents, the state government and other authorities were listened to, and they needed to be.
The bill seeks to reduce the time allowed for public comment on draft master plans, major development plans and environmental strategies. The current period for consultation is some 90 calendar days. Initially the government proposed a reduction to 45 business days. However, this was then reconsidered following a number of ‘representations from government MPs and senators’, and the government has now settled on a period of 60 working days. There was also initial concern from a number of stakeholders, including the Australian Local Government Association, who stated:
We do not support the proposed reduction in the statutory consultation period from 90 calendar days to 45 working days.
The Shopping Centre Council of Australia also argued that they were concerned about halving the period of public consultation from 90 to 45 days.
Labor is opposed to any shortening of public consultation and approval time lines. Item 16 seeks to codify the right of the airport lessee to conduct non-aeronautical trading on airport land as long as it is consistent with the airport master plan. This explicitly incorporates Federal Court decisions in 2005 which affirm the ability of federal leased airports to engage in non-aeronautical on-airport development, but, importantly, it should always and only happen where there are significant and sufficient public consultation and approval time lines. The recent decision by the Minister for Transport and Regional Services to reject Sydney airport’s revised draft major development plan—which, incidentally, included 48,000 square metres of outlet centre, 2,000 square metres of office space and commercial buildings, and a 2,412-space car park—reaffirms the critical role of the public consultation process.
I note that in a speech on 22 January 2007 the Chairman of Macquarie Airports Management Ltd, Mr Max Moore-Wilton, argued:
I ask anyone to seriously contemplate an alternative regulatory model that involved local and state government participation in the supervision of airports.
The regulatory confusion would paralyse the process and create uncertainty.
To my knowledge, no-one is asking that the supervision of airports be handed over to local councils and state governments. However, it is necessary that when considering developments on airport land, particularly of the size and scope proposed by Sydney airport in this specific case, the views of local residents be expressed and heard, including through their elected representatives.
The Southern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, representing the City of Botany Bay and Randwick City Council amongst others, argued in its submission to the Senate inquiry on this matter:
A key piece of infrastructure in the Sydney region, the future development and planning of Sydney Airport has the potential to impact neighbouring businesses, communities and individuals and is therefore of particular interest to nearby councils and communities.
This point was reinforced by the minister’s decision when he stated:
Given recent history, not in Australia but in Bangkok and in Toronto ... where aircraft have ended up when they’ve overshot the runway … and the possibility of impact with buildings containing people that are not involved in aviation at all is still unresolved …
That is absolutely right, but why in this instance are we seeking to reduce the capacity for local communities to give feedback? Clearly, the need to consider the concerns of the surrounding community must be taken into account, and councils and state governments are the appropriate institutions through which these concerns should be raised. In introducing this bill the member for Dawson stated:
The government is mindful that the planning arrangements for Australia’s leased federal airports have been an area of concern for the states and territories and some local governments ...
The member went on:
Input from state planning authorities, local governments and the community at large is important for the operation of the airport regulatory regime, and the government is committed to ensuring the consultation processes in the scheme are operated effectively and ensure genuine engagement.
It seems that following the member for Dawson’s second reading speech on 30 November the government took some notice, as 2½ months later the consultation period on major development plans was revised. This bill also amends the current definition of a ‘major airport development’. At present any proposed development which costs over $10 million requires the airport lessee to submit a major development plan. The bill before us would raise this figure to $20 million.
In relation to the deemed approval provision, Labor will address this issue by way of amendment. Presently, if the minister does not make a decision within the allocated time frame, it is assumed the decision is made in favour of the entity proposing. This seems a completely illogical proposition. As a representative for the Shopping Centre Council pointed out in evidence to the Senate inquiry:
In most local government and statutory regimes that I am aware of there is a deemed refusal if the planning authority does not consider the matter within the statutory time period. Here we have a reversal of that; it is a deemed approval.
This is a ridiculous proposition.
Labor also believes there should be a requirement for all public comments on proposals to be submitted to the minister in addition to the summary currently required of the developer. This is a sensible proposition which ensures the minister is properly informed of all concerns relating to each of those proposals. Labor would also require the minister to specify approval conditions where a proposal will have any impact on off-airport infrastructure and take into account rate equivalent contributions where there is a reasonable requirement for the lessee to negotiate in good faith with state and/or local governments to reach agreement for appropriate contributions to specific off-airport infrastructure.
Finally, and importantly, Labor would require, rather than allow, the minister to include consecutive or concurrent projects in total project costs when it comes to major developments. The New South Wales government’s submission to the Senate inquiry estimated that the proposed Sydney airport retail development would add a further 20,000 to 25,000 vehicle kilometres travelled by 2011. The additional burden that a decision of this kind would have had on surrounding road infrastructure would have been substantial.
Debate interrupted.
Order! It being 4.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the House do now adjourn.
On 6 June 1995 John Howard, before he became Prime Minister, gave his first headland speech. In that speech the Prime Minister committed himself to parliamentary reform. He said:
For that reason I wish in advance of the election of a Coalition Government to commit the next government of this country to a series of reforms which will restore greater authority, dignity and meaning to our parliamentary institutions.
He went on to say that he hoped to see:
... a return of some respect and trust and a greater understanding of what occurs inside Parliament House.
Of course the reality is that a desperate government has chosen to trash the respect and integrity of the way in which discussion happens in this parliament. Indeed, last Sunday in the Sunday Age a senior Liberal strategist was quoted as saying:
“Rudd is on the examination table right now,” one senior Liberal strategist told The Sunday Age this week.
“And we have a team of physicians crawling all over him, tapping him here and prodding him there, testing his strengths and weaknesses. And don’t worry, we will find something.”
The article went on to say:
A significant part of the Coalition’s attack on Rudd, though, will be coming through the office of the Liberal Party’s sagacious pollster Mark Textor.
We all know about Mark Textor’s role in the Exclusive Brethren’s campaign and involvement in the last New Zealand election. The article went on to say:
Information of this kind—
that is, information from Mark Textor—
is fed in a daily briefing to the Prime Minister by federal campaign director Brian Loughnane, and sooner or later you start to see the research peppering Howard’s public rhetoric.
It is very clear that the government has determined once again in an election year to go down the low road in what it sees as an opportunistic way to promote its electoral prospects. This is because it has run out of ideas. It has run out of ideas in this parliament and outside of this parliament. This week we have seen Labor take up a number of positive initiatives, taking on a tired government that can no longer hide 10 years of complacency, years and years of inaction on its watch.
On Monday we took on the issue of interest rates and the economy. The government is no longer in touch. The fact is that more household income than ever before is being consumed by mortgage repayments. The Prime Minister refused to answer the questions of the Leader of the Opposition on this issue even when Reserve Bank figures were tabled indicating that 9.1 per cent of household finances went on housing interest payments in September 2006 compared with 6.1 per cent in September 1989. The Prime Minister refused to address the question and the true interest rate reality being faced by families today.
On Tuesday the opposition had to ask seven questions during question time before the government admitted to having had discussions with Ron Walker and Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd before commissioning the Switkowski report. This is a government that is happy to say that it supports nuclear energy but wants to pretend you can have nuclear energy without the 25 nuclear reactors actually being located anywhere in Australia. On Wednesday, time and time again, we heard how the government, after years and years of talk, has failed to act and deliver on a national curriculum for Australia’s schoolchildren. It has failed to act and deliver on supporting maths and science. It has failed to act and deliver on investing in education and training so that we can secure Australia’s prosperity. The fact is that it has even managed to ignore its own recommendations on the provision of early childhood education.
No matter how much this government is prepared to get down into the gutter and try to smear the Leader of the Opposition and others, that will not hide the fact that it has no ideas and it is ill-equipped to govern in the new century. This is also a government that has no respect for proper parliamentary processes and for democracy. It is a tired government that cannot hide 10 years of complacency. This is a government that is out of ideas. It is out of action and out of time. Australia is looking forward to a government that will actually prepare Australia for the future, rather than a government that has ridden off the back of the mining boom and squandered the opportunities created by the boom to maintain productivity growth. (Time expired)
This afternoon we witnessed the most extraordinary question time that I have ever seen in my 2½ years in the House. Serious questions were raised about the dealings of the Leader of the Opposition with corrupt former Western Australian Premier Brian Burke. Extraordinarily, the Leader of the Opposition refused point-blank to respond to any of these allegations. It has emerged that, within the space of six months, the Leader of the Opposition had three separate meetings with Brian Burke. He had three meals with him: he had breakfast with Brian, lunch with Brian and dinner with Brian. Yet today he refused point-blank to explain what his meetings with Mr Burke were about. What dealings has he had with Mr Burke? What did they discuss at these meetings? What was the aim of him meeting with somebody whose odious public record is plain for everyone in Western Australia to see?
Instead, the Leader of the Opposition sent out the member for Grayndler—a man who is never going to let his own integrity get in the way of cheap political point-scoring. The member for Grayndler threw out some red herrings such as the Exclusive Brethren and former Senator Noel Crichton-Brown. But no amount of mud-slinging is going to change the fact that we have evidence that the Leader of the Opposition has met with Mr Burke. Yet he refuses to explain to this House what his dealings with Mr Burke were about. I find this an extraordinary contempt of this House and an extraordinary contempt of the Australian people.
The daily diet of corruption and manipulation that we have seen emanating from the CCC within the past fortnight brings absolute shame on the Western Australian Labor Party and on the Carpenter government. Four ministers—in a cabinet of only 16 people—have had to resign their posts, and a further one has been removed from her portfolio. This reflects a culture at the heart of the Western Australian Labor Party that breeds corruption. This is a party that are very used to doing deals. It is a party that are used to trading favours. It is their way of doing business, and you only need to cast an eye over their preselection process to see that.
Of course, this process that they use to preselect state MPs is that used to preselect federal members of parliament, and the Leader of the Opposition was obviously aware of the enormous influence that Mr Burke has at the heart of the Western Australian Labor Party. In fact, he was so aware of this influence that he met with Mr Burke three times within the space of six months. I would be interested to know how many trips the Leader of the Opposition actually made to Western Australia during this period. I suspect that the answer is three. Every time he went to Western Australia he felt the need to sit down and have a meal with Mr Burke.
Why would he do that? Why would a man who is obviously ambitious—seeing that the member for Brand, the former Leader of the Opposition, was making no headway as Leader of the Opposition—sit down with the Western Australian Labor Party’s pre-eminent powerbroker, a man whose character and criminality is a matter that is well documented on the public record? He is a man who notoriously abused the position of trust that the Western Australian people placed in him when they made him Premier. He notoriously abused it for his own personal gain and he has gone on to compound his disgrace by manipulating the feeble cabinet of the new Labor government in Western Australia.
So what was it that Mr Rudd and Mr Burke discussed? Why did the then shadow minister for foreign affairs seek out Mr Burke every time he went to Western Australia? I very much doubt it was about emerging trends in China. In light of the CCC hearings in Perth this week, Mr Rudd needs to explain his dealings to the House.
Order! The member will refer to the Leader of the Opposition by his title.
The Leader of the Opposition needs to explain his dealings with Mr Burke to this House, and he needs to explain why he went to see Mr Burke every time he went to Perth.
The alternative Prime Minister of this nation feels that Brian Burke is someone with whom he can do business, and that is a serious question of judgement. Does anyone entertain that the Prime Minister would find himself in this situation? Of course he would not, because his judgement and experience would preclude him from dealing with someone such as Mr Burke. Other Labor MPs have come clean. The member for Perth and the member for Swan have both said that they have not had any dealings with Mr Burke—or at least not in recent years. The candidate running against me in Stirling has also ruled out having had any dealings with Mr Burke.
These questions need to be asked of all the Labor members and candidates. Sharryn Jackson, the Labor candidate for Hasluck, is the President of the Western Australia Labor Party. (Time expired)
I was shocked by the unwarranted and quite vicious attack launched on Professor David Peetz by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations in question time on 14 February, although it does now appear that the personal attack is becoming par for the course. I know Professor David Peetz on both a personal and a professional level. He is a person of integrity, credibility and high professional standards. He is currently Professor of Industrial Relations at Griffith University.
David Peetz has studied and written extensively on important workplace issues and has a distinguished record in industrial relations research, especially in the fields of union membership, wages policy and individual contracting. He is a widely published scholar and past President of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand. I had the honour recently of assisting in the launch of his book Brave New Workplace: How Individual Contracts Are Changing Our Jobs.
The minister’s attack on Professor Peetz was in response to an academic paper written by him which assessed the impact of the government’s Work Choices legislation, particularly on women. It should be noted that Professor Peetz made it clear in the introduction to his analysis:
It being less than a year since the laws took effect, any assessment of the impact of WorkChoices can, at this stage, only be preliminary.
The minister vilified Professor Peetz and tried to discredit his work, saying that his analysis was fundamentally flawed and that his report lacked academic integrity. The minister obviously did not like some of the findings in that study, particularly the following:
In short, WorkChoices has been associated with a decline in average real wages, at least in the short term, despite the economic boom. It appears to have led to real wage declines in retail and hospitality, probably as a result of the loss of penalty rates in those industries, and in the short term at least a drop in real and relative earnings for women, while profits are at record levels
Well-known economics commentator, Ross Gittins, read the Peetz analysis and said it was:
… fact laden, measured and most informative.
He suggested that, with the attack it made on David Peetz, the government might have something to hide. And so it did.
We now know that yesterday the ABS data showed that Australian women on workplace agreements are earning less than women on collective agreements. When confronted with this data in question time, the minister had no answer. The minister’s hot air and personal vilification are no substitute for the facts. The minister should stop hiding from the truth about the impact of AWAs, particularly on women. On that same day, in question time, the minister told parliament:
... the pay gap between men and women has narrowed. So we are getting to a better position in relation to the pay gap.
The minister misled parliament. His claims are not upheld by the facts about the gender pay gap.
If one takes the data on all employees’ total earnings, one sees that there has been no narrowing in the wages gap since the election of the Howard government. The ratio of female earnings as a percentage of male earnings was 65.5 per cent in May 1996. A decade later, the most recent figure for November 2006 shows no change—the ratio remains at 65.5 per cent. If one takes full-time adult ordinary time earnings, one sees that the data reveals that female earnings as a percentage of male earnings have been in decline since February 2005, when the ratio was 85.2 per cent. By November 2006, that ratio had fallen to 83.7 per cent—the worst outcome in the gender gap on this set of data since August 1998.
In November 1996, the ratio on this data was 84.2 per cent; a decade later, the wages gap has gone backwards and fallen to 83.7 per cent. The minister misled parliament and should take the opportunity to acknowledge that he did so and correct his statements and claims about the gender pay gap. At the same time, he should unreservedly apologise for his attacks on the integrity of Professor David Peetz.
Last week I was at the Bathurst campus of Charles Sturt University, where the vice-chancellor, Professor Ian Goulter, launched the university’s proposal and detailed plans for a school of dentistry and oral health. This is a project I fully support. I have already taken it up with the relevant ministers on more than one occasion and will continue to pursue it until we have a successful outcome. Charles Sturt University’s proposal is an exciting and innovative plan which will be a major step forward in providing a long-term solution to the shortage of dentists in rural and regional New South Wales.
There is a serious shortage of dentists in this state and an even more severe shortage in rural and regional areas. A 2002 report from the Association for the Promotion of Oral Health said that five of the six worst areas for dental health workforce were in inland New South Wales. The OECD said that, while the average dentist per hundred thousand of the population is 56, one of the worst areas is central west New South Wales, with an average of only 17.3 dentists per 100,000 people. This maldistribution is not just confined to the private dental system; it is also the case with the public dental system. In fact, the far west of New South Wales has just over one dentist per 100,000 of the population and mid-western has only 2.4, whereas central Sydney has 11 dentists per 100,000 of the population.
Importantly, Charles Sturt University’s proposal would address the underlying cause of this shortage by increasing the supply of dentists and, specifically, increasing the supply of dentists most likely to practise in rural New South Wales. If dentists train in the west, they will make connections in the west, they will put down roots in the west and therefore they will be most likely after their graduation to set up practice in the west. So this proposal would be a win-win: it would be a win for those needing access to dental services because it would add to the supply of dentists and it would be a win for young people in the central west and western New South Wales by providing increased educational opportunities for them.
As an aside, this is similar to the argument that I, along with two of my colleagues, put forward back in 2004 when we pursued the proposal for a medical school for the University of Western Sydney. Along with the member for Lindsay and the member for Macarthur, I took up the fight for a medical school for the University of Western Sydney. It was promised in 2004 prior to the election, and I am pleased to inform the House that this year—in fact, just last month—the medical school of UWS opened and took its first intake of students. They are students who will no doubt largely practise in Western Sydney. I am determined that we will have the same successful outcome for Charles Sturt University in this proposal for a dental school that, as I said, will provide increased educational opportunities but also add to the supply of dentists.
We hear a lot from the other side about the dental crisis. Dental services are a shared responsibility. The Australian government, the federal government, has the responsibility to provide the training to add to the supply of dentists—as I said, this proposal will help in that regard. The Australian government assists in a number of other ways—for instance, some of the veterans’ affairs programs and some of the Indigenous programs provide dental services for some of our veterans and Indigenous communities.
The Strengthening Medicare package includes additional support in some cases for dental services for those with chronic conditions and complex care needs. From 1 July 2004, dental assessments and treatments can be provided to patients on referral by their GPs, under an enhanced primary care plan. The Australian government also helps through the private health insurance rebate—a rebate opposed by the other side—which reduces the effective costs of dental services. The Australian government is doing its part. The states need to do their part for public dental health and they have failed, despite record revenues. I am determined to pursue this great proposal with Charles Sturt University for a dental school for western New South Wales.
Today 9.1 per cent of household finances are dedicated to mortgage repayments—that is some 50 percent higher than the peak reached under the Hawke-Keating government in September 1989. Australian interest rates are the second highest mortgage interest rates of all OECD nations. This is the new interest rate reality, and it is crushing the dreams of many people in Western Sydney seeking to become homeowners. It is crushing the expectations of those wishing to break into the home ownership market.
South-western Sydney is bearing the brunt of Prime Minister Howard’s broken interest rate promises. For many mortgagees, the great Australian dream is slipping away and those looking to break into the home ownership market of south-western Sydney are wondering if they will ever get the chance. While the government hides behind national statistics, the Prime Minister has promised to protect but has promptly forgotten those he referred to as ‘John Howard’s battlers.’
In south-west Sydney bankruptcies rose 27 percent in the year ended 30 June 2006. Mortgagee closures are on the way up. Recently I was advised by a series of real estate agents that mortgagee sales are at an unprecedented rate. The rising tide of financial stress is made worse by the fact that families face negative equity and are losing money on the sale of their homes. In Liverpool, property prices have dropped by up to 25 percent. Properties in Prestons, Hoxton Park and West Hoxton purchased for more than $500,000 are reselling for as little as $350,000. In Campbelltown, Lifeline Macarthur has noted a significant increase in the number of people seeking financial assistance and counselling.
A recent survey of Sydneysiders by the Wesley Mission found that four in 10 households were unable to draw on their savings or to redraw on their mortgages if they were faced with a large unexpected bill and that 15 per cent would find it difficult or impossible to meet an increase in household expenses of $40 a week. My own constituents report that increases in mortgage repayments and credit card debt repayment are crippling their household budgets.
The impact of rising interest rates is not quarantined to mortgagees and homeowners. Rising interest rates and a reduction in household spending are having an impact on small business. It is estimated that an increase in interest rates of one-quarter of one per cent rips more than $2 billion out of household spending, which is felt by small businesses operating in outer metropolitan areas. Every MYOB survey that has been undertaken since July last year has reported that the greatest concern of small business operators is interest rate increases. They know that an interest rate increase is going to be bad for their costs and is certainly bad for their revenues. The impact of rising rates on regions varies considerably, but it is really belting people in outer metropolitan areas. The University of Newcastle’s Centre of Full Employment and Equity recently noted:
The current wave of interest rate increases is projected to further damage this sector and regions (such as South-west Sydney) which depend highly on manufacturing employment.
Interest rates and the financial pressures faced by working families are impacting on people’s working lives, with one-quarter of employees not wanting to leave their current jobs because of the absolute risk to their financial security. So while this government boasts about its record and mischievously presents national statistics, aggregate figures and averages to create the illusion everything is going well, there are clearly severe structural problems emerging in the economy. It is time to take action to lock in the prosperity that we have gained through the mining boom— (Time expired)
Today I rise to speak on renewable energy—a matter I also raised in the Main Committee earlier today, where I discussed the Howard government’s programs and policies that have directly supported or generated investment in renewables in excess of $3½ billion. In contrast to the member for Werriwa, I clearly remember the 17 per cent interest rates, the record bankruptcies and double-digit unemployment of the 1990s. The member for Werriwa mentioned job security and financial security. We have never been in a better time in Australia’s history as far as economic prosperity is concerned.
I want to continue with the theme of renewable energy in my home state of Tasmania. I particularly wish to acknowledge a company called Roaring 40s, which was established in 2005 as a joint venture between Hydro Tasmania and CLP Power Asia Limited. Roaring 40s not only operates the Woolnorth Wind Farm in Tasmania’s far north-west but also is involved in some of the great work and industries that they are creating in China.
Opportunities exist in the renewable energy sector not only in connection with construction and the creation of clean, green energy; there is also considerable potential for maintenance services to the existing wind turbines both here in Australia and overseas. For example, Australia currently has 542 wind turbines. Another 119 are under construction and an additional 426 have been approved for construction. Approximately another 220 are expected to be built in New South Wales, and others have been proposed in Victoria. The current estimated market value for wind turbine maintenance and service in Australia is $10 million. The CSIRO has forecast that this amount is likely to increase to approximately $100 million by the year 2016.
There are also substantial overseas maintenance and service opportunities, including in the New Zealand market, which is growing significantly due to New Zealand’s high renewable energy target. The growth of the maintenance market in New Zealand is expected to reach some $130 million by 2016. The value of wind turbine establishments in Asia is predicted to increase substantially over the next decade, adding to this opportunity. Major wind energy projects are underway in China, the Philippines and Malaysia. Taiwan is expecting its demand for wind turbine components to grow from $US80 million to $US 550 million by 2009.
North West Tasmania provides an exciting opportunity for developing industrial centres of excellence as well as offering the development of strategic supply chain and servicing alliances. The region offers considerable potential in the provision of professional services in designing and developing new technologies for wind turbine components and renewable energy equipment which is currently being exported overseas. In addition, associated export facilities provide the region with significant investment opportunities across a range of high-end manufacturing, technology and related service sectors. For example, as part of developing a high-end industrial cluster, a family-owned Tasmanian company, Aus-Tech Composites Pty Ltd—which was established in August 2002 to supply a growing Australian wind turbine market—is the first and only company to manufacture wind components in Australia. Aus-Tech Composites supplied Vestas, the world’s leading wind turbine manufacturer, with composite components including nacelle covers, nose cone, and spinner sets.
Braddon has a ready-made skilled labour supply which is experienced in many facets of wind energy and related manufacturing. There are substantial opportunities to foster linkages and to broker both skill and intellectual capital partnerships with local employers, the TAFE, and the local campuses of the University of Tasmania and the North West Tasmania Australian Technical College. It is so important that they work together to achieve the best not only for industry but also for education.
I believe wind energy has the potential to be a key element of the Howard government’s long-term strategy for cleaner energy. I will continue to strongly encourage the government to continue to support research and investment in this field—not only as part of its ongoing development of a practical suite of renewable technologies but also to ensure Australia’s energy security, to lower Australia’s emissions and to safeguard Australian jobs. I am committed to doing all that I can to further technological and manufacturing opportunities related to the wind energy sector, especially in North West Tasmania and associated areas that have the potential for wind energy.
Order! It being 5.00 pm, the debate is interrupted.
The following notice was given:
to move:
That the House:
I rise today to speak about the current situation regarding the Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Study. At the last election the Howard government refused to commit to a study, instead committing only to a feasibility study. Never before has a feasibility study been required for any of the health studies by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. After a long and drawn-out process, the feasibility study was conducted. The results of this study were clear: (1) a study was feasible and very worth while and (2) a pilot study should be completed.
The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs said that he did not like the findings of the feasibility study, as they had recommended a study into children of only male Army Vietnam veterans. However, the minister neglected to mention that the reasons for this were fully explained in the feasibility study itself. We also have learnt from responses to questions that the department received no complaints from any veterans organisations that this format would be a problem. Furthermore, the department has revealed that they received no scientific or expert advice that such a study would be unreasonable. Therefore, it seems that it was the minister and the minister alone who had these concerns.
Despite this, the government refused to commit to a study or even a pilot study. Instead, they wanted yet another preliminary study to try to determine possible research protocols. It should be noted that never before in the history of veterans’ health studies in this country has a study had to be conducted into the development of research protocols separate from an actual study. Obviously, if the government had committed to a full study, they could have developed research protocols as part of this. However, the government are refusing to commit to a study.
In responses to questions on notice and questions at the last two estimates hearings, the department has refused to say a study is now guaranteed. At the last estimates hearings Mr Sullivan said:
We are expending this money in the hope and expectation that the CMVH will provide us with some methodologies and advice which will help—through the minister—the government to determine whether it can conduct such a study.
My simple question is: why? The independent feasibility study has already found that a study is feasible; therefore, there is no reason why this government cannot commit right now to a study. Instead, we are now waiting for the results of yet another preliminary study which, we are told, will be handed to the department on 30 June 2007. Given the current minister’s form when it comes to time taken to consider reviews, we will be lucky to have a firm commitment on this before the next election.
There are two things that should be clearly understood by the veterans community: (1) there is no reason why the government cannot commit to a study right now and (2) the department has repeatedly failed to give a guarantee that a study will actually take place. I call on the minister to make a public commitment that this government will conduct a full study. If he will not do this, I call on him to come clean with the veterans community and explain that the government is unwilling to commit to this very important study. The people should have no doubt and the parliament should understand that the health of the children of Vietnam veterans is a serious issue—for example, they have three times the suicide rate of the general community. (Time expired)
I rise today to speak about the wonderful work of the rural bushfire brigades that are in my electorate, and particularly in the Hawkesbury. The Attorney-General and I had an opportunity to visit the Hawkesbury bushfire brigades in December, and we had the pleasure of touring the control room at Wilberforce. Karen Hodges, the incident control captain and a fire control officer, and Captain Rod Grant, captain of the Yarramundi Rural Bushfire Brigade, took us around and showed us what they were doing. At that time there were fires both in the Hawkesbury and in the Blue Mountains and, over the three-month period from November through to January, they were involved in over 230 incidents of various types, including bush, grass and structural fires and motor vehicle accidents, as well as support for other agencies such as the New South Wales fire brigade. Major incidents during this period included providing assistance to the Blue Mountains brigade during their fire known as the Lawson Long Alley fire. It also included the provision of 20 tankers to assist with strategic back-burning along Bells Line of Road and the Darling Causeway.
Remote area fire teams from Hawkesbury also assisted in the Blue Mountains incident management team. They also worked with the communities of Berambing, Bilpin, Kurrajong Heights, Bowen Mountain and Yarramundi to provide community information meetings. They also undertook strategic planning and preparation for the impact of this fire. There was another fire at Stony Waterhole. This fire started on Tuesday, 21 November last year along an isolated stretch of Putty Road north of Colo Heights, some 75 kilometres north of Windsor. The fire spread quickly under severe weather conditions over the next two days, which resulted in a declaration being made under section 44 of the Rural Fires Act.
Given that the fire was burning in remote and rugged terrain, the management of the fire was difficult. A number of the brigades have been involved at Cumberland, Hornsby, Gosford, Blue Mountains and Victoria, and I will list them here: Bilpin, Blaxlands Ridge, Colo Heights, East Kurrajong, Ebenezer, Freemans Reach, Glossodia, Grose Vale, Grose Wold, Kurrajong, Kurrajong Heights, Lower Macdonald, Lower Portland, Mountain Lagoon, Oakville, St Albans, Tennyson, Upper Colo, Wilberforce and Yarramundi. Of course, I also thank the catering and communication services. I congratulate the volunteers and the teams for all that they do by contributing their time and effort to saving lives and homes and protecting our bushland. If they can stop the fire early then, of course, less bushland is affected.
I rise today to voice my concerns on behalf of those people who are not easily categorised within the government’s welfare system. These are people who are required to register on Newstart. They are seeking employment, yet they are not job ready. This is through no fault of theirs; it is the system which is letting them down. The system does not allow for exceptions and the individuals I refer to fall outside the system.
Perhaps I can best explain by way of illustration. I have one constituent who visited my office seeking assistance. In my 10 years in the law and in my 17 years in parliament, I have never seen a person so in need of special assistance. This person had the shakes and was obviously incredibly stressed, yet he was still required to look for work. He has a major depressive illness as well as other problems. In my considered view, he was more than entitled to a disability pension, yet he had fallen through the cracks. His application was rejected and he is now in the process of appealing.
What sort of system do we have in this country if it allows this person to suffer so much? This person was by any definition obviously unable to work. I cannot understand why there is no discretion for the key decision makers within the Department of Human Services. I have several constituents—you might call them regulars—who desperately want to work. They visit my office or phone in at least once a week—sometimes even four times a day. In some cases, they are not work ready, perhaps suffering from an illness that they do not acknowledge, yet they are required to conform to Newstart rules and to look for work. They do not understand the process they are required to go through and they experience extraordinary frustration and grief.
I am reminded of my time as a legal aid solicitor and barrister. There were often people with mental health problems who did not fit the profile and fell outside the system. They suffered because of it. Jail became the only alternative. There are still many people with mental problems in jail today who should not be there. I read through the material on the department’s website. On paper it seems that there is provision for these unique individuals. The sad fact is that the reality is completely different. We must and should have a welfare system which has the ability to recognise and act on individual circumstances. We should have a system that caters for those who have specific difficulties and who face unique barriers to working. There should be more discretion within the system for the competent officers that work within the department; it is needed. People are falling through the cracks, and it is creating great problems for particular individuals who are the most vulnerable in our community. (Time expired)
I rise this morning to speak on renewable energy, a matter of extreme importance both nationally and internationally. The Howard government’s programs and policies have directly supported or generated investment in the renewable energy industry sector in excess of some $3.5 billion. Currently, the Australian government has provided $52 million to 25 innovative projects through the REDI program and has committed over $1 billion to low emission and renewable energy research and projects, thus stimulating billions of dollars more in private sector investment.
Australia has produced some of the world’s very best renewable energy technology. I would like to concentrate on wind energy in particular, which is a clean energy source that offers an environmentally sustainable solution in supporting Australia’s future energy requirements. The Australian wind energy industry currently offsets some 2.8 million tonnes of CO per year, the equivalent of taking some 650,000 cars off the road. The CSIRO has estimated that the wind turbine market is expected to grow by 20 per cent per annum over the next five years, and, in light of additional responses to climate change, this growth could potentially increase by as much as 50 per cent. Figures released by the Global Wind Energy Council show that in 2006 the total value of new wind energy generating equipment reached $US23 billion. The Australian wind energy industry experienced significant growth in 2005, almost doubling the industry’s 2004 capacity. Australia has approximately 542 turbines operating across the country, with an average rated capacity of 1.75 megawatts. By the end of 2006, Australia’s installed capacity is expected to represent a total capital investment of some $1.4 billion.
I turn to my home state of Tasmania, which is a state that is uniquely placed to respond to the demands of clean and green energy. Particular strengths that cannot be easily duplicated include some of the world’s best wind resources, major investment already underway in wind energy, a clean green reputation and local companies with relevant specialist skills. Tasmania is a leader in renewable energy generation in Australia, with over 90 per cent of the state’s electricity sourced from renewable hydro-electricity and with a company established in 2005 between Hydro Tasmania and CLP Power Asia Ltd being a leader in the development of wind energy projects in Australia, with over 200 in operation or under construction.
Roaring 40s operate the Woolnorth wind farm on the far north-west tip of Tasmania, where the site recorded the cleanest air in the world. In 2004, Hydro Tasmania signed a 10-year $90 million Australian contract with Energy Australia to sell renewable energy certificates earned for Woolnorth. King Island has been a beneficiary of wind generation since 1988 and they have a vision to be self-sufficient in renewable zero emission energy by combining wind, wave and solar power. It is important that we continue to support such initiatives. (Time expired)
Thursday 8 March is International Women’s Day. Women around the world will be celebrating our achievements and contemplating how far there still is to go. There are women, though, who have nothing to celebrate. The theme for International Women’s Day 2007 is ending impunity for violence against women and girls. Women and girls who are abused have nothing to celebrate. Women and girls who find themselves subject to violence and rape in refugee camps have nothing to celebrate. Women and girls who find themselves subject to violence and rape in countries torn apart by civil wars have nothing to celebrate. Women and girls who are the victims of wars and natural disasters around the world will not be celebrating International Women’s Day. As we celebrate, we must do whatever is in our power to protect these women and girls around the world.
Closer to home, as we celebrate our successes, we remind the rest of the world that Australia and New Zealand led the world in affording women political and social rights over 100 years ago when Australia became the first country in which most women were granted the right to vote and stand for parliament in federal elections. Australia was, however, beaten for the honour of being the first nation in which women voted by New Zealand in 1893.
Over 100 years on, our national parliament does not reflect the fact that women make up half the population and half the voters. There are currently 37 women out of 150 members of the House of Representatives and 27 women out of 76 senators. However, I am proud to say that Labor has a total of 37.5 per cent female representation in this parliament compared to the Liberal Party’s 21 per cent. The number of women elected to represent the Labor Party has increased with the support of EMILY’s List. EMILY stands for ‘early money is like yeast’ and EMILY’s List provides financial training and mentoring support to endorsed female candidates. I am a proud member of EMILY’s List and will continue to provide my support to young women aspiring to enter parliament who support the principles of equity, diversity, pro choice and the provision of equal pay and child care. Our motto is: when women support women, women win.
While women’s participation in parliament has increased over recent years, 2006 figures show that Australia’s top 200 companies have made little progress in increasing the number of women in their boardrooms. Only 8.7 per cent of board directors are women and only 12 per cent of executive managers on the ASX200 are women. There are only six female CEOs of ASX200 companies and 50 per cent of those companies have no women on their boards.
On International Women’s Day, like any other day, women around the world will suffer as victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and discrimination. In war, women will be raped, families will be shattered and many will continue to be displaced in refugee camps. This day provides an opportunity for us to honour the achievements of women and to recognise issues that continue to affect many women and girls in Australia, in our region and in countries throughout the world.
Over the last decade or so the Australian Labor Party has learnt absolutely nothing when it comes to infrastructure planning. Failure to invest in years past is causing a lot of hurt and concern in the federal electorate of Moreton. Passing through my electorate, we have the national transport corridor which includes the Brisbane urban corridor, Kessels Road and the Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road. Since 2005 I have been able to secure $1.73 million, which was used to take 221,000 trucks off this road by simply paying their toll on the southern Brisbane bypass—the Logan Motorway and the Gateway Motorway—between 10 o’clock at night and five o’clock in the morning during the working week. I want to expand that program, and the government wants the Queensland government to cooperate in a way that will allow this to occur.
This road is the only toll road anywhere within the city of Brisbane. It has a direct impact on residents in my electorate, with interstate trucks in particular avoiding a total of $6 of tolls by going through suburban roads. McCullough Street at Sunnybank and Padstow Road at Eight Mile Plains are choking on big interstate trucks that are finding their way by rat running around the tollway. The Queensland government are doing nothing to stop it. They say that from 1 July they will have a camera system installed that will take photos of trucks’ numberplates, and the drivers will be asked why they are on that road. What we want to see is an end to the toll. If we can get off the Logan Motorway and the Gateway Motorway the $6 toll that trucks are hit with now, it will no longer be an issue. Some 221,000 trucks have come off in just the last two years during the night-time. Night-time is not the busiest time for trucks; nevertheless it is important for residents to know that those 221,000 trucks have come off as a result of the Australian government’s $1.73 million investment.
The Queensland government have also failed to come clean and deliver on promises they have undertaken. Firstly, there is the Acacia Ridge rail level crossing, where Beaudesert Road—a state owned road—crosses the Brisbane-Sydney rail line, which is also owned by the Queensland government. Three years ago, leading up to the 2004 federal election, they said it would cost $50 million to fix that crossing—$25 million from the federal government and $25 million from the state government; let’s start building it. We put our $25 million on the table, but the Queensland government have done absolutely nothing in regard to this level crossing. The cost has now blown out from $50 million to $110 million, and they expect the federal government to continue to increase the amount of money it contributes.
Secondly, there is the Logan Motorway interchange, which connects the Gateway Motorway and Logan Motorway to the Ipswich Motorway. A few years ago it was going to cost $165 million to fix that, but now it will cost $250 million to fix. The Queensland government keeps ratcheting up the prices, without actually doing the work. The Australian government is ready to work with the Queensland government to fund programs and projects that will work, but if they have pilfered a couple of million dollars allocated in 2001 for the Riawena Road noise barriers, how can we trust the Queensland government? (Time expired)
Each generation breeds its own greed brigade. We all remember the excesses of the mid-1980s when banks across Australia lost $28 billion on foolhardy ventures and loans. We all should become aware of the growing private equity debt in Australia and its possible threat to superannuation funds. As I said, every generation has its own brand of greed brigades and yet another is emerging. Greed does not result in wealth creation. High debt does not result in wealth creation. Private equity debt is no different. Ultimately, debt cannot create wealth. That only happens when productivity, innovation and hard work occur. Certainly carpetbaggers can make ill-gotten gains in the short term, but ultimately greed, financing on debt and high private equity debt, leads to tears.
In 2004, and five years previously, private equity debt in Australia averaged $1.5 billion. In the 2006 December quarter it grew to $19 billion. That is $76 billion a year. The $11 billion proposed sale of Qantas is a case in point. If allowed to go ahead, this grab for an Australian icon will be financed by 70 per cent private equity debt. Significant individuals become megamillionaires on the transaction fees alone. Ken Davidson in the Melbourne Age on 15 February said there are five reasons why the Treasurer should block the sale of Qantas to the private equity debts consortium. He wrote:
The sale is at the expense of Australians both as taxpayers and superannuants. It increases the risk Qantas will go bankrupt.
The takeover will not generate wealth. It simply adds to the already considerable foreign debt in Australia of $550 billion.
In the 1980s the main actors were the Bonds, the Holmes a Courts, the Spalvins, the Skases and the Abe Goldbergs. The victims were the banks, which ended up with $28 billion in non-performing loans. Those entrepreneurs have now been replaced by a new breed of financial engineers who specialise in private equity. The banks still play a major role but, instead of depositors’ funds being risked, the deals and the risks are passed on to superannuation funds.
Fees passed for a successful sale are staggering. They could be as high as $500 million—a very nice bonus for some. ‘You beauty,’ they say. But that low-grade activity will add nothing to Qantas’s value. If Qantas is sold to the private equity group, then in five years Qantas will be sold again—this time to the public, with another round of hefty transaction fees for that sale too. ‘Thank you very much,’ says the new round of financial engineers. ‘You beauty, we’re going to be rich.’ Productivity zero, but rewards for some counted in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.
What encourages these actions are the scandalous decisions by the Howard-Costello government to abolish capital gains tax on capital gains realised by foreigners and changes by the corporations regulations to not make private companies subject to the same rules as are applied to public companies. These decisions should be reversed. If not there will be a flood of LBOs—leveraged buyouts—and, unlike the eighties when the banks were exposed, this time it will be the superannuation funds at risk. (Time expired)
I rise this morning in this place to raise the hypocrisy in Western Australia right now. We have a Western Australian government that is awash with corruption and collusion at the same time as its population is deeply concerned with the topics of global warming, greenhouse gases, shortage of water et cetera. Yet within the Western Australian government lies a conviction that we should have nothing to do with uranium or nuclear energy.
The simple fact is that Western Australia has something like $40 billion worth of uranium and its miners and resource developers are prevented from developing that resource and making money and providing more jobs for the economy of Western Australia. With nuclear energy being used in Western Australia as a result of our supply of uranium, we could be producing energy well in excess of our immediate electrical needs, we could be desalinating water somewhere near the coast of Perth with cheap clean energy, and we could be producing hydrogen from that same water to fuel all of the vehicles mobile in the cities of the Western Australian area. We could solve in a very meaningful way the creation of greenhouse gas today from the burning of fossil fuels by the use of nuclear energy.
If there is a case of economics and a question of whether it would cost more or less, let commercial activity determine that, but do not let us hide our heads in the sand, deciding that to mention the word ‘nuclear’ three times in the one day will make you glow in the dark, which is the opinion right now of the Western Australian government! As I say, they are awash with corruption and collusion, but they cannot see that the people of Western Australia need a break. We need to bring the debate back to the real issues here. We need to insist on the facts and get those facts out there. We need to debate on merit not myth. The difference between Chernobyl and modern power producers today is like comparing the model T Ford with the latest Commodore. It is not realistic.
The Carpenter government needs to move on and weed out this corruption and collusion in departments in the Western Australian government and agree with those who are concerned about the environment in which they live. They should firstly permit the mining of uranium and then consider the possibilities of a cleaner environment through the use of nuclear energy, producing water at a very low cost and producing hydrogen at a very low cost—and hydrogen is the fuel of mobility for the future—which will give us the ability to provide ourselves with clean, unpolluted cities. It is time that the Carpenter government took notice of what is happening in the rest of the world and once and for all got their heads out of the sand and moved into the modern era. (Time expired)
Last Thursday I visited Gateshead Public School and witnessed the enthusiasm of students involved in the Active After-school Communities Program. I was welcomed to the school by the principal, Martin Frohlich, and parents, teachers and the students that are involved in the program.
This is a good program. It provides after-school activities for primary school students between 3 and 5 in the afternoon. Particularly at a time when childhood obesity has increased to the level that it has, I was really impressed by the dedication of all those people involved in the program and the innovation associated with it. I would also like to mention Sue Barben, the regional coordinator of the program in my area.
When I was there I was involved in some of the activities with the students in the program. There were 20 children involved in the program, and it was operating at capacity. They were playing with balls and hoops, and I enjoyed being involved in a ball game with some of the girls.
Last semester the school went to Blacksmiths Beach. The people involved in instructing the students there were members of the Swansea-Belmont Surf Lifesaving Club, and the students learnt a lot and had a very enjoyable time. Currently the program operates one day a week. Next term it will be operating two days a week.
This program should be applauded and it should be funded at a higher level. If there is anything that we as a parliament can do, it is to make a commitment to the young people of Australia and to their health; I see this as a program that is doing that. I would like to see the future of this program secured beyond this year. I would like to see a commitment to its expansion and to the development of partnerships with some of the key sporting bodies like the NRL and the AFL. This requires the involvement of a teacher as well as an instructor.
I am not sure that this program is properly funded. It has the support of the parents and it has the support of the school. This is a program that the students support, evident by the fact that it is operating at capacity and that it will be expanded next term. I commend those at Gateshead Public School and the regional coordinator. (Time expired)
I hasten to mention that this story is not about frogs; it was triggered by dead owls and fat snakes. I would like to commend the work done by the macadamia growers and community organisations of Bundaberg who have joined forces to find an environmentally sensitive solution to a problem in local macadamia orchards. The nub of the project is the installation of five prototype nesting boxes along Splitters Creek, a tributary of the Burnett river, in a naturally wooded area adjacent to a number of macadamia plantations owned by Hinkler Park. The boxes are designed for rehabilitated owls, which will then become territorial and go on to control the rat population within the plantations.
Last Wednesday, 21 February, I was asked to release the very first owl into a plantation but, sadly, tragedy struck just hours before the event. Although these owls had been brought in as a natural predator for rats, a predator of the owl got in first; the owl that I was due to release was eaten by a carpet snake which got into its enclosure. It was the second owl to be taken in such a manner. Ben Ralph, of Readymix Concrete in Bundaberg, came to the rescue and offered to donate a concrete slab, which would be built underneath the enclosure to ensure the safety of future owls. Growers and business organisations also assisted with enhancements. Hinkler Park macadamia manager, Adrian Van Boven, offered financial assistance to extend the enclosure with netting and mesh. In the meantime, local macadamia growers will continue to encourage owls to take up residency in the newly constructed owl boxes.
There are many people who have been pivotal to this project from the start—in particular, the project coordinator of the Australian Macadamia Society, Growcom’s Development Officer, Patrick Logue, along with Bundaberg wildlife carer David Kirk, who originally nursed the damaged owls back to health. David is also the workshop supervisor of the Salvation Army’s Tom Quinn Community Centre, which oversaw the design and construction of the owl boxes.
I commend the work of these people. It is innovative and I hope to hear of even greater successes with this project, not just in Bundaberg but across Australia where there are owl populations—for example, in your area in northern New South Wales, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley. This project is truly an integrated pest management adventure being taken to another level. I commend the people involved.
(Hon. IR Causley)—Order! In accordance with standing order 193 the time for members’ statements has concluded.
Debate resumed from 12 February.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Statute law revision bills are simple but important tools to pursue more effective and accessible laws. The process of reviewing, correcting and updating the body of Commonwealth legislation is a function well executed by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, which prepares these bills. On occasion, scrutiny of the statute book extends beyond the correction of minor errors and the clearing of obsolete bills. This bill, for example, will ensure that our laws are contemporary by removing references to outdated expressions and gender-specific language. I think they are matters that would meet generally with approval and not be a matter of contest.
The timely corrections and repeals effected by statute law revision bills improve the quality and accuracy of Commonwealth legislation and facilitate the publication of consolidated versions of enactments.
The bill has five schedules. Schedule 1 amends minor and technical errors contained in 18 principal acts, such as incorrect spelling, punctuation or numbering. Schedule 2 amends errors contained in 13 amending acts. Many of these errors are misdescribed amendments that either incorrectly describe the text to be amended or specify the wrong location for the insertion of new text.
Schedule 3 repeals a total of 17 obsolete acts. Part 1 proposes to repeal 15 acts that are administered by the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Part 2 proposes to repeal two acts that are administered by the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. Part 3 proposes to remove references to the acts that are repealed by parts 1 and 2.
Schedule 4 repeals obsolete references to the out-of-date terms ‘official manager’ and ‘official management’. Schedule 5 removes gender-specific language from the Customs Act 1901.
There are various commencement dates for the provisions listed in schedules 1 and 2. The effect of the commencement provisions is that the errors are taken to have been corrected immediately after the error was made. All other provisions commence on royal assent.
While none of the amendments proposed by the schedules will alter the content of the law, the bill will improve the quality and public accessibility of Commonwealth legislation.
I commend the legislation to the Committee, and I present the explanatory memorandum to the bill.
The main purpose of the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2006 is to correct technical errors that have occurred in acts as a result of drafting and clerical mistakes. It also repeals a number of acts and provisions of acts which have become obsolete. These corrections and repeals are considered to be desirable to improve the quality of the text of Commonwealth legislation and to facilitate the publication of the consolidated versions of the acts. As far as we understand it, none of the corrections make any change to the substance of the law and so we will not be opposing this legislation.
I take this opportunity to make reference to a few of the provisions in order to give the House a feel for the content of the legislation. The issue of commencement of the legislation is covered by clause 2. In order to be clear about the location of text in the Workplace Relations Act 1996 that is being amended by items in schedule 1, the commencement of those items is tied to the commencement of schedule 5 of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005. The effect of this is that the error is taken to have been corrected immediately after that act was renumbered.
The items in schedule 2 mostly amend misdescriptions in amending acts. There are a small number of items amending other errors in amending acts. In order to correct the misdescription, it is necessary to amend the amending act rather than the principal act and to treat the correction as having occurred immediately after the time specified in the amending act for the commencement of the misdescribed item.
The items in schedule 3 repeal obsolete acts and make consequential amendments to any acts that refer to those acts. These items commence on the day on which this act receives the royal assent. The items in schedule 4 repeal obsolete references to official managers and official management. These items are all to commence on the day on which this act receives the royal assent. The items in schedule 5 remove occurrences of gender-specific language from the Customs Act 1901 and replace them with gender-neutral language. These items also commence on the day on which this act receives the royal assent.
I turn to item 11. It makes reference to the fact that subsection 93D(1) of the Federal Magistrates Act 1999 incorrectly provides for the chief executive officer of the Federal Magistrates Court to authorise an officer or staff member of the Family Court to provide family counselling under the Family Law Act 1975. Officers and staff members of the Family Court can already be authorised by the chief executive officer of the Family Court to provide family counselling under one of the subsections of the Family Law Act 1975. Item 11 amends subsection 93D(1) of the Federal Magistrates Act to provide for the CEO of the Federal Magistrates Court to authorise an officer or staff member of the Federal Magistrates Court to provide such counselling.
Item 30—and indeed quite a few items in this bill—deals with the workplace relations legislation. Item 33 of schedule 16 to the Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1996 repealed division 2 of part XIV of the Workplace Relations Act. That division used to contain divisions relating to the Industrial Relations Court of Australia. It contained sections 365 and 366, which dealt with the payment of salaries to the judges of that court. Section 358 of the Workplace Relations Act provided for the consolidated revenue fund to be appropriated to the extent necessary for payment of items under sections 365 and 366. The Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1996 did not remove the references to sections 365 and 366 when it repealed division 2 of part XIV. Item 30 removes the incorrect references to sections 365 and 366.
Again, item 38 deals with the Work Choices legislation. Paragraphs 91(a) and (b) of schedule 6 to the Workplace Relations Act refer to subclause 105(1). However, clause 105 of schedule 6 is not in fact divided into subclauses and item 38 corrects those references. Quite a few of the items in the statute law legislation refer to Work Choices legislation and it is obviously important that legislation like this is not hastily drafted or done on the run.
Schedule 3 refers to the repeal of obsolete acts, and there are quite a few of them. For example, item 11 repeals the National Rail Corporation Agreement Act 1992, item 14 repeals the Ships (Capital Grants) Act 1987 and item 15 repeals the States Grants (Urban Public Transport) Act 1974. I note in passing that this act extended to moneys that were being paid in the years 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977 on projects to improve the quality, capacity, efficiency or frequency of the public transport system of a major city. It is regrettable that the Commonwealth these days does not seem to take any interest in urban public transport and that some of the transport problems of our cities—to say nothing of greenhouse gas emissions—would be reduced if it did.
Item 16 repeals the Bounty (Ships) Act 1989. Item 17 repeals the Sydney 2000 Games (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 1996. We also have the repeal of the Australian Capital Territory Taxation (Administration) Act 1969, the National Rail Corporation Agreement Act 1992 and the Pay-roll Tax (Territories) Assessment Act 1971. These are just some of the pieces of legislation that have been rendered obsolete over the years, and the statute law bill has the effect of repealing these pieces of obsolete legislation. I indicate that the opposition will not be opposing the legislation and will be supporting it through the House.
In a perfect world it would not be necessary to return to the parliament to correct the wording, or to correct mistakes, in the drafting of legislation. But no matter how efficient the legislative draftsmen are, mistakes will always occur. When you look at the volume of legislation which is processed and which indeed becomes part of the law of this country, it is most remarkable that the Office of Parliamentary Counsel does such a fine job. When you look at the opportunities for error, typos and so on, it really is amazing, relatively speaking, that we have so few.
As was indicated by the honourable member for Wills and by the Attorney-General, this Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2006 is essentially a housekeeping bill. It is tidying up things that need to be tidied up. It is removing from the statute books things that are no longer relevant and things that are no longer appropriate to remain part of the law of this country. I am pleased that the opposition is not opposing what the government is proposing to do. I saw that the member for Wills, however, did take a sideswipe at the government by suggesting that in some way this government is not interested in urban traffic or transport. I would commend to him the AusLink program. If you look at what the Australian government is spending on matters which traditionally have been the responsibility of the states in the transport area, the inaccuracy of what the honourable member uttered in a throwaway line in his speech becomes very obvious to anyone. The member opposite did seek to criticise some aspects of the legislation and some aspects of the changes brought about by the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2006.
I would like to ask the member a question, if I could.
Would the member for Fisher accept a question?
Yes.
I wonder whether the member for Fisher could detail for me the amount of money that is being spent in the area that he was referring to and demonstrate to the chamber how the government is actually—
The member for Shortland will resume her seat. I do not know whether I should encourage the member for Shortland to extend the debate away from the bill; it is a very narrow bill. I call the member for Fisher.
I was not expecting the question so I do not have the exact figures here, but I think most people would accept that the Australian government are spending billions of dollars on transport and are not running away from that. We are in effect picking up the slack that the states have left, even though they are now getting every last cent of GST that was supposed to enable them to carry out their constitutional responsibilities. Sadly, they seem to be failing in this area.
The Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2006 is a fairly narrow bill. It does traverse almost the entire area of government activity. When you go through the explanatory memorandum, it is obvious that acts of parliament dealing with many portfolios are being corrected, altered, changed and varied as appropriate. The Office of Parliamentary Counsel do a very good job and I want to commend them on bringing forward this bill and having gone through all of this legislation, with all of this detail. We are very fortunate to have competent people in the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. This is an important bill. It might not appear to be a bill of great significance, but it is important that we update our legislation so that people going to the statute books of this country are able to see legislation which continues to be relevant to Australia in 2007. I commend to the bill to the chamber.
in reply—I thank the member for Wills for his indication of support for the measure and I thank the member for Fisher for his very supportive comments. He will observe that, listening to the speech of the honourable member for Wills, he and I did take interest in one of the comments, which I will come back to in a few moments.
The first Statute Law Revision Bill was introduced into Commonwealth legislation in 1981. Legislation of this type has been a feature of ensuring that what are traditionally housekeeping issues in relation to legislation are effectively addressed. Parties of both political persuasions have used statute law revision measures to achieve that outcome. So there is nothing unusual about it, but the expansion of it, which covers areas that I identified such as the removal of obsolete and outdated language as well as legislation that is no longer required, takes us beyond mere technical amendments. I would not want to overlook the role of parliamentary counsel in this process; they work under enormous pressure. I know the speed with which they have had to address very major legislation. If you look at the workplace reforms that have recently been implemented, they took an enormous amount of time, I think it required something like three teams of drafters to be able to have that very complex legislation readied.
The member for Wills suggested, in relation to these matters, that legislation is sometimes hastily drafted. Let me say, it is drafted under a great deal of pressure. That does not mean it is hastily drafted. Governments have programs which need to be implemented. People would be critical of us if those matters, which we had foreshadowed as policy initiatives, were not implemented in a timely way but, inevitably, there can be drafting errors. That should not be a reflection on parliamentary counsel. They have a very high level of expertise in this area. Noting and collating errors in existing legislation to ensure that our statute book remains accurate and effective is one of their roles and I think they do it extraordinarily well.
The bill does not change the substantive nature of law, but it is always interesting when people make comments outside of the legislative measures. I did note with interest the rather expansive view that the member for Wills took on the use of Commonwealth powers in areas in which he may have an interest—he identified urban public transport, for instance. It is interesting to note that—in the context in which the Commonwealth is often accused of taking an expansive view, such as in the area of Work Choices, and the opposition is very critical—they have a view that when there are other areas of interest to them an expansive view should be taken. I am sure they would not want to simply hand over buckets of money to the states and hope that issues might be addressed.
Obviously, what the opposition are observing is that we should have Commonwealth oversight in areas where the states have been traditionally responsible, and there are difficulties in relation to that unless you take it over entirely. You have duplication; you have expenditure that has to be made at a Commonwealth level to administer these matters as well as the administration that happens in the states’ hands.
Our view has been—particularly through the GST, which is a growth tax—that the states would be better resourced. I note the recent reports that have demonstrated that the growth tax has grown much more substantially than it was originally thought. It has put the states in a very strong position to be able to undertake their responsibilities more fully, and, I would say in relation to urban public transport, to do so at all. But the fact is they seem to have their own priorities and it seems to me that the proper approach is to see in an election in the states whether or not the priorities that the states have determined are the most appropriate.
I would agree that urban public transport is an area in need of very significant additional resources, but I think the states have made decisions that those resources ought not to be put there and that they ought to be put into areas of public expenditure. I note that, in my own state, it tends to be simply in those areas of administration, and increased funds are being committed to paying those involved in public administration. I suspect that, if the states had been more careful in the way in which they programmed their own expenditure, they would have been better placed to deal with a number of these tasks. I only offer those comments because of the observations by the member for Wills.
Can I return to my starting point and say how much I appreciate the support of the opposition for this measure. From time to time I do make observations that a very substantial proportion of legislation is non-controversial; this is such a measure.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.
Debate resumed from 15 February, on motion by Mr Ruddock:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The background to the Bankruptcy Legislation Amendment (Debt Agreements) Bill 2007 is that debt agreements were introduced in 1996 with the intention of providing consumer debtors with an option to enter into a formal arrangement with creditors as an alternative to bankruptcy. The number of these debt agreements has grown significantly in recent years. I understand that there were over 7½ thousand proposals in 2005-06, and just under 5,000 of those proposals resulted in debt agreements being made. Debt agreement administrators received over $55 million from debtors in 2005-06, of which approximately $38 million was paid to creditors. Over the course of the 10 years since 1996, administrators have been largely unregulated. There are no entry requirements. People can, however, be declared ineligible to be administrators on the basis that they have failed to properly perform their duties. Those duties are restricted to putting the agreement into effect and do not cover information and advice that they provide to the debtor before the agreement is made.
There has been, however, what could be described as a pretty high failure rate in relation to these debt agreements; I understand that it is more than one-third. The reasons given for that are, firstly, that the proposals from debtors are unsustainable, particularly where they are not fully informed about all their options, so the debt agreement that they enter into may not be a suitable one; secondly, that there is little allowance made in proposals for changes in circumstances—debtors are not always advised properly on budgeting and planning before committing to an agreement which typically lasts for at least three years; and, thirdly, that debt agreement administrators have been able to take their fees in priority to creditors, which can result in proposals being developed that might be attractive to creditors—and, naturally, creditors want the large settlement of 70c in the dollar or whatever—but which are unsustainable over the longer term.
So you can end up with a situation in which administrators get paid and creditors do not and the debtor may be worse off than before commencing the agreement. Finally, creditors can focus on the rate of return rather than on what the debtor can afford. That contributes to a high number of unsustainable offers and consequently to the high failure rate. It is my understanding that this proposal has been the subject of significant consultation and that creditors, debt agreement administrators and financial counsellors—that is to say, key stakeholders who have an interest in debt agreements—generally support the proposals before the House. The intention is to bring these changes in from 1 July this year. Creditors and administrators are now investing in the systems, making procedural changes and engaging in the training necessary to respond to this legislation.
What we will have from here on in is a formal registration system for debt agreement administrators based on their ability to properly perform their duties. There will be mandatory qualifications to ensure a minimum level of knowledge for all administrators. Their duties will cover pre-agreement work such as informing the debtor about alternatives, ensuring that the proposal is affordable over the promised term and ensuring that the debtor makes proper disclosure to creditors. It is hoped that this regulatory regime will add to the professional standing of administrators, provide clear guidance about what is expected of them and assist in addressing some of the concerns about the ability and conduct of some administrators.
It requires debt agreement administrators to be paid proportionately over the life of the agreement rather than in priority to creditors. The idea behind this is to provide an incentive for administrators to develop sustainable proposals and to assist debtors who run into trouble in the course of the agreement. It requires creditors to be paid proportionately based on their respective debts rather than negotiating different rates of return within an agreement. The idea behind this is to encourage creditors to focus on what the debtor can afford to pay rather than on the rate of return that they might prefer to receive. A debt agreement ought to be seen as a simple one-off offer to creditors which they can accept or reject rather than a series of individual offers which aim to meet the different demands of all the creditors involved.
The new regulatory regime also seeks to provide more effective mechanisms for dealing with default and meeting creditors’ expectations that the administrator be actively managing defaults and keeping creditors informed. The amendments require the administrator to notify creditors when a debtor defaults and has not rectified it within three months. An agreement will be automatically terminated if no payments are made for six months or the agreement is not completed within six months of the agreed term. It also applies the realisations charge and interest charge in a manner that is in accordance with the government’s cost recovery policy and the intention of recovering the cost of regulating the system.
It has been suggested that there are some concerns amongst debt agreement administrators about not being paid in priority to creditors and that this could affect their cash flow. The response to this is that the value of the amendment is that it provides an incentive for administrators to develop sustainable proposals and to assist debtors who run into trouble in the course of their agreement. Some creditors have expressed concerns about the requirement to be paid proportionately based on the size of their debts. These creditors are concerned that they will become involved in debt agreements which do not meet their expectations in terms of acceptable rates of return.
It ought to be noted in response to these concerns that debt agreements can currently provide for different rates of return to creditors and payments to creditors at different times. This complicates the system. It adds costs by requiring significant negotiation prior to developing proposals in order to try to meet creditors’ different demands. It excludes many debtors from the system who could afford to make payments which are greater than creditors might otherwise receive and it suggests or is based on the principle that debt agreement should be seen as a simple one-off offer to creditors representing the best offer the debtor can make and creditors then decide whether to accept that offer—and it is probably fair to say that this amendment is fundamental to the success of the overall reform package.
It is also the case that some creditors may be concerned that the government has not proceeded with the amendment that it was talking about back in July last year, which would have required administrators to defer payment of at least 15 per cent of their remuneration until the end of the agreement. The idea behind this amendment was to provide an additional incentive for administrators to focus on sustainability and to assist debtors to complete their agreements. However, it would have penalised administrators who are doing the right thing and in situations where a debtor’s failure to complete an agreement was outside the administrator’s control. The government’s case for the amendment is that a greater incentive will result from an amendment that requires administrators to be paid proportionately over the life of the agreement rather than in priority to creditors and that we do not want to see an additional compliance burden for creditors which would be difficult to monitor, could have outweighed the marginal benefits provided and indeed had the outcome that administrators increased their fees by 15 per cent to overcome its effect.
There has been some consultation and a process behind the legislation. The Attorney originally announced amendments in March 2006. There were amendments announced in July 2006. Further consultation and revised proposals occurred after July 2006 and we now have the legislation before the House.
The objects of this legislation—providing for enhanced regulation of debt agreement administrators, specifying the duties of a debt agreement administrator, encouraging creditors to make decisions based on the debtor’s capacity to pay, providing more effective means of dealing with defaults and seeking to streamline some of the provisions—I think are all things that we can support.
Schedule 1 contains provisions relating to the registration of debt agreement administrators. They will commence on the date of royal assent so that existing and prospective administrators can be registered prior to 1 July this year with the idea of administering debt agreements which will be subject to the new rules from that date and the official receiver will not be able to accept debt agreement proposals nominating an unregistered debt agreement administrator from that date unless the administrator is administering no more than five active debt agreements. Schedule 2 contains amendments which apply in relation to debt agreement proposals and resulting debt agreements from 1 July this year. This schedule contains all the amendments apart from those which deal with the registration of administrators.
We have got the Bankruptcy Legislation Amendment (Debt Agreements) Bill 2007 and also the Bankruptcy (Estate Charges) Amendment Bill 2007. The companion bill extends the application of the realisations charge and interest charge to money received by debt agreement administrators under debt agreements under part IX of the Bankruptcy Act. The state charges cover the cost of regulating the system and what this bill is going to do is spread the cost recovery over a broader range of realisations. It is my understanding that the amount recovered will be the same and that it is essentially the same group of creditors who end up paying the charges, so I do not see this as a particularly controversial change. It is designed to give effect to the government’s cost recovery policy, the basic principle of which is that users of services provided by the government should generally pay for those services and that the price they pay should reflect the actual cost of providing the services.
In this case, the realisations charge and the interest charge recover the cost of regulating the personal insolvency system. The cost of regulating debt agreement administrators within that system is currently recovered through the realisations charge and interest charge as they apply to bankruptcies and personal insolvency agreements. The present situation means that the cost of regulating debt agreement administrators is effectively borne by creditors in bankruptcy and personal insolvency agreements. This is no longer considered appropriate as debt agreements make up a significant proportion of insolvencies in Australia and the cost of regulating the system should now be reflected by imposing these charges on money received from debt agreements. In practice, it is largely the same creditors paying the realisations charges in bankruptcies and personal insolvency agreements who cover the cost of regulating debt agreement administrators. Applying the charge to debt agreements will broadly result in the same creditors paying the same amount of money but over a larger range of administrations. This means that the rate of the realisations charge will be reduced following these amendments.
I note there was some media commentary on the legislation which we are debating. The Financial Review back on 16 February reported on a disagreement between the regulator, Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia, and debt administrators. The Financial Review reported that the regulator had blamed the way in which debt agreement administrators charged fees for the high failure rate of insolvency agreements. But the administrators of debt agreements rejected those claims about the impact of up-front fees. For example, one of the directors at Fox Symes, one of Australia’s biggest providers of debt agreements, expressed the view that:
... administrators put in an enormous amount of effort upfront and should be allowed to draw down fees as and when work is performed.
The Attorney responded to this article with a letter to the Financial Review, stating that the requirement in the bill:
... is that fees be taken over the life of the agreement rather than as a priority before creditors are paid ...
He made the point that the reforms:
... do not require that 15 per cent of fees be paid only once the creditors have been paid in full.
The Attorney has expressed the view that the reforms do not prevent administrators from charging up-front fees but:
... seek to regulate fees to administer a debt agreement that has been entered into. Administrators are still able to impose ‘upfront’ fees for services provided to the debtor before entering into the debt agreement.
I should not close a discussion about these issues without expressing concern about issues to do with insolvency and repossessions in Australia. In September last year figures were released which indicated that there has been a quite substantial jump in mortgage repossessions. Mortgage repossessions have been rapidly rising since around May 2002 for each of the various states and territories for which data has been collected. The data released in September last year indicated that mortgage repossession orders in New South Wales are now higher under this government than they were under Prime Minister Keating, who gets pilloried on these matters, back in 1990.
And rightly so!
If you are concerned about Prime Minister Keating, why are you not concerned about the fact that mortgage repossession orders are now higher?
Order! We are discussing bankruptcy here, so I will ask you to come back to the subject matter of the bill.
Indeed, and that is exactly what I am referring to. The increase in mortgage repossessions reflects the fact that many households are under more financial pressure than at the peak of high interest rates in 1990. The data from the Supreme Court of New South Wales shows a rapid and, from my point of view, concerning acceleration of mortgage repossessions in New South Wales since 2002. The figures from the Supreme Court of New South Wales show that the number of repossession actions increased from 2,189 in 2002 to 5,368 last year. I am concerned about the impact of that on the individuals concerned. I am concerned about the fact that a Macquarie Bank survey shows that almost two-thirds of mortgage referrers expect to see an increase in the incidence of mortgage distress and defaulting over the next year and that that is almost twice the level reported in last year’s survey.
We now have a situation where the OECD Economic Outlook No. 80, released just before Christmas, found that Australia’s household debt, as a proportion of household income, experienced the second fastest growth in the OECD over the last decade. Clearly, if you have that situation going on and you have Australians seeking to repay a mortgage at much greater levels of payment than is occurring in other countries around the world and you have increasing mortgage repossessions as a result, then we ought to be concerned about the impact on housing affordability, bankruptcies and insolvencies of the now eight interest rate rises since 2002. The figures that have been released for administrations under the Bankruptcy Act show that bankruptcies increased from 20,051 in 2005-06 to 22,300 in 2004-05. That was an increase of well over eight per cent. Debt agreements also increased, from 4,738 in 2004-05 to 4,866 in 2005-06.
These things are a direct consequence of increased household debt, an increased proportion of income going into repayments and people being unable to pay. We see this happening in the area of mortgages and we see it happening in the area of credit cards. Debt accrued on credit cards reached $39 billion at the end of last year, 14 per cent higher than a year earlier, which has prompted concerns about household debt levels. Reserve Bank of Australia figures show that total household debt in Australia was $962 billion as at 31 December. Reserve Bank figures on credit card debt are also matched by comments made by key people in our largest banks talking about the perils of credit card debt. For example, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia chief executive, Ralph Norris, said that he was ‘worried about predatory pricing in the credit card business’, saying that smaller lenders had taken on risks that the CBA had rejected.
Household debt is very important to the health of the economy and also to the individuals concerned—those people who end up on the sharp end of this and who are unable to repay their debts. The main source is mortgages, as I mentioned, but credit card debt is also skyrocketing. According to the chief economist at AMP Capital Investors, the ratio of household debt to annual income is about 160 per cent, and that ratio was 102 per cent five years ago and 69 per cent 10 years ago.
After a series of interest rate rises, we have had an increase in calls from Australians in financial distress. It has apparently risen by 35 per cent from last year. We have also had an increase in bankruptcies—6,016 in the December quarter, which was 20 per cent more than in the same period in 2005. The Wesley Mission, Debt Helpline and the like, who have surveyed these things and measured these things, say that households are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. There are more Australians in financial distress than there used to be. The managing director of Debt Helpline said:
These days, there is no discretionary spending in the suburbs. After accommodation, food, education and fuel, there is nothing left over.
When you put these things together, there is a disturbing picture of rising household debt and problems with housing affordability in this country which the government has failed to understand. When we have tackled the Prime Minister with questions about interest rate rises and so on, he says: ‘It is fine. Asset prices are going up, house prices are going up, and this is a fine thing.’ But the sharp end of this is mortgage repossessions going up, people finding it impossible to get into the housing market and, in some cases, finding it impossible to stay there once they have entered and arrived. I hope the government will be less smug and less complacent about these issues and turn its attention to them so that we do not get the insolvencies, the debt agreements and the things of this character that we are presently being required to deal with.
The question is that this bill be now read a second time. I remind the chamber that this is in fact a cognate debate.
I am pleased to be able to join the debate in the Main Committee on the Bankruptcy Legislation Amendment (Debt Agreements) Bill 2007 and the Bankruptcy (Estate Charges) Amendment Bill 2007. As you mentioned, Madam Deputy Speaker, this is a cognate debate. The honourable member opposite referred to household debt. Obviously when people are falling into financial difficulty that is a matter of concern. I think we have to recognise, however, that we are a free society and people do have the opportunity, if they wish, to buy things. If they want to borrow to acquire possessions then that is a matter for them. You cannot have a situation where the government regulates everyone from the cradle to the grave. We do have free choice and we do have assistance for those who need guidance with respect to whether or not they should undertake certain debts, but it is wrong to say that it is the fault of the government that we have rising debt levels. The member opposite also mentioned home loan affordability. He referred to repossessions by mortgage companies—
Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.
Is the member for Fisher willing to give way?
Yes.
I was listening to the contribution of the honourable member opposite and I noticed that when he was referring to household debt he stated it was purely and simply the role of the individual. My question to the honourable member is: does he believe that government has a role to ensure—
It has to be a quick question.
It is a quick question. Does he believe that government has a role to ensure that the proper checks and balances are in place to see that people do not access finance when they cannot afford to repay their debts?
I am pleased that the honourable member has been listening to what I have been saying. Obviously in a free society everyone should have an opportunity of free choice. Everyone must make decisions in life. We make good decisions and bad decisions, and we stand by bad decisions. Clearly there would be in place certain provisions to stop predatory lending practices. Indeed, government has a role in this particular area. However, you cannot have a situation where before someone undertakes a debt it has to be run past the Attorney-General so he can personally tick it off and approve it. That is an absolutely ridiculous proposition. But we do have a situation where lending institutions do not lend more than a certain proportion of the value of a property.
One other reason that we have higher home prices is the failure by the Labor states in this country to give access to land. Land is not being released at anywhere near the rate it should be and prices have gone up because of shortage of supply.
Bankruptcy historically has been around for probably hundreds of years as a mechanism to take someone out of the market when that person becomes insolvent. In 1996, an important initiative was introduced whereby debt agreements could be used as an alternative to bankruptcy. I do not think we should look at bankruptcy as a penalty. Bankruptcy or a situation of insolvency ought to be a chance for someone to remove debts and then possibly go on to be once again a productive member of the community. That is why these debt agreements, as an alternative to the draconian measure of bankruptcy, really have been a good idea. I think they are broadly supported in the community and they have become increasingly popular as the years have gone on.
However, at times it is necessary to finetune legislation, particularly when the legislation is not necessarily delivering the outcomes that it was intended to deliver. The amendments made by these bills are designed to improve the operation of debt agreements under part 10 of the Bankruptcy Act to ensure that they remain a viable means of dealing with unmanageable debts.
It is important to look at both the interests of the creditor and the interests of the debtor and to achieve a balanced situation. The amendments to these bills currently before the chamber are appropriate and I believe they achieve the balance that we seek to achieve. There has regrettably been, with respect to part 10 agreements, a reasonably high failure rate and one of the aims of the amendments currently before the Main Committee is to reduce the failure rate of these agreements.
The member for Wills has conceded that the Attorney-General, as is his practice, has consulted widely in the community. The Attorney-General does not bring in half-baked proposals to the parliament. There has been a period of consultation. These bills are very important. They are broadly supported in the community and this is very important.
The amendments address key concerns that have led to a lack of confidence on the part of creditors in the effectiveness of the debt agreement system. In particular, the amendments are designed to ensure that debt agreements are used only by debtors for whom they are suitable and who can afford them. Where a debt agreement is the correct option, the return to creditors is significantly better than bankruptcy. I think this indicates that a successful debt agreement should be a win-win situation. It should be a win for the debtor and also it should be a win for the creditors insofar as receiving so many cents in the dollar from a debt can be considered a win.
The objects of the Bankruptcy Legislation Amendment (Debt Agreements) Bill 2007 are to provide for enhanced regulation of debt agreement administrators, specify the duties of a debt agreement administrator, encourage creditors to make decisions based on the debtor’s capacity to pay, provide a more effective means of dealing with default by the debtor and simplify, streamline and clarify a range of provisions to improve the operation of the legislation.
The other bill, the Bankruptcy (Estate Charges) Amendment Bill 2007, has as its purpose to extend the application of the realisations charge and interest charge to money received by debt agreement administrators pursuant to debt agreements. These charges are in accordance with the government’s cost recovery policy and will enable the cost of regulating the debt agreement system to be recovered from those who benefit from it—that is certainly an appropriate way to go.
The government accepts that some people will inevitably become formally bankrupt. However, we do wish to prevent as many people as possible from going down that road because if you can have successful debt agreements, it means that the creditors benefit, it means that the debtors benefit and it means that the debtors are able to make an ongoing positive contribution to the Australian community. These two pieces of legislation are thoroughly worthy of our support. I am pleased to commend them to the chamber.
The opposition is supporting the Bankruptcy Legislation Amendment (Debt Agreements) Bill 2007. The parliament is essentially regulating industry developments which have emerged due to factors not envisaged by the initial drafters of the debt agreement provisions in 1996. The amendments to be made by this bill are designed to improve the operation of debt agreements under part 9 of the Bankruptcy Act 1966. The objects of this bill, as detailed by the speakers, include the provision for enhanced regulation of debt agreement administrators, specification of the duties of debt agreement administrators, encouragement of creditors to make decisions based on the debtor’s capacity to pay et cetera.
Schedule 1 contains provisions relating to the registration of debt agreement administrators. These amendments will commence from royal assent to enable existing and prospective administrators to be registered prior to 1 July 2007. This will ensure that they are able to administer debt agreements which will be subject to the new rules from that date. Most importantly, the official receiver will not be able to accept debt agreement proposals nominating an unregistered debt agreement administrator from that date unless the administrator is administering no more than five active debt agreements.
Schedule 2 contains amendments which apply in relation to debt agreement proposals and resulting debt agreements from 1 July. This schedule contains all the amendments other than those relating to registration of administrators. In their submissions to the Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia—ITSA—inquiry into amendments of the debt agreement provisions of the act, the Consumer Law Centre of Victoria submitted that debt agreements were introduced in 1996 as a low-cost, informal, flexible alternative to bankruptcy for low-income earners. Since their inception, the number of accepted agreements has increased significantly, from 48 in 1996-97 to 4,739 in 2004-05. According to an ITSA profile of debtors for 2003, the majority of those who entered the agreements had a gross income of less than $30,000 in the year prior to the debt agreement with 61 per cent owing unsecured creditors less than $20,000 and with 25 per cent of them owing less than $10,000. Unemployment followed by excessive use of credit were the main attributed causes of insolvency. Sixty-three per cent of debtors who entered into debt agreements were under 34 years of age.
Since the inception of debt agreements, concerns have arisen regarding the operation of part 9. In particular, debtors and creditors have indicated concerns regarding the conduct of some administrators of debt agreements, the lack of knowledge of administrators in relation to the alternatives to debt agreements, the lack of frank information provided to debtors as to the consequences of entering a debt agreement, the payment of excessive fees for the setting up and administration of agreements and the drawing up of unsuitable debt agreements by commercial debt agreement administrators. These concerns have been responsible for diminishing the benefits that were expected from debt agreements. Problems include excessive fees charged by administrators, which add to the debts of the debtor and are payable irrespective of the outcome of the agreement. Hence, even failed attempts incur fees. Another issue is that the administrator may, once the agreement is accepted, pay his or her fees first. If the agreement becomes unsuitable and the creditor requests a termination of the agreement, the debtor may be in no better position than if he or she had not pursued a debt agreement.
Due to the imposed limits on income, debt and assets, debt agreements are undertaken by people who have low incomes and are otherwise disadvantaged. A large proportion of debtors who enter into debt agreements are young people who often display financial naivety. Fees are being extracted by administrators from a section of the population that is least able to seek lower cost alternatives or negotiate a better deal.
In the groundbreaking research report Do the poor pay more?, Anna Stewart wrote:
The lack of knowledge amongst administrators/agents and brokers as to the alternatives to debt agreements and the lack of frank admissions as to the consequences of entering a debt agreement, means that a debtor entering a debt agreement may unwittingly place himself or herself in a similar position to bankruptcy when it comes to securing credit in the future. Debtors who enter debt agreements are permanently recorded on the National Personal Insolvency Index (NPII) and the agreement also appears on his or her credit report. These events effectively exclude the debtor from mainstream lenders, place the debtor at the mercy of high cost fringe lenders and thereby works to entrench financial exclusion, as research undertaken by CLCV demonstrates.
The commonly expressed view of consumer advocates working at the coalface of financial counselling is that the debt administration industry has been formed in a highly opportunistic and ad hoc manner. It is a relatively new industry and this bill represents the first efforts to regulate it. A key concern emanating from financial counsellors is that consumers who enter into debt agreements tend to be highly vulnerable. That was obviously indicated by the earlier figures. Many of those consumers also find it difficult to understand the implications of entering into these agreements.
Whilst the opposition is supporting the bill, I would point out that this support is in the context that the bill does not represent a comprehensive examination of all the issues which should have been assessed. This is especially the case given that the introduction of debt agreements happens to coincide with the coming to power of the Howard government. We have seen a massive increase in personal debt—and some of the figures in relation to that have been alluded to earlier.
According to the Parliamentary Library statistics on monthly economic and social indicators, Australian household debt has seen a massive hike while the coalition has been in government. Accordingly, in the 1995-96 financial year, total household liabilities as a proportion of annual household gross disposable income averaged about 70 per cent. That already too high figure—and the member for Fisher agreed that it was too high back then—has during the past 10 years ballooned to a staggering 157.3 per cent for the current quarter. So when the government is trumpeting the economic fortunes of this nation, it must be reminded that it has also presided over historically massive increases in household debt. ‘Relaxed and comfortable’ is a fantasy perpetuated by the Howard-Costello government. Our reality is that we are in debt up to our eyeballs.
I return to the Consumer Credit Legal Centre. In their outstanding submission to ITSA, they argue that the review of the provisions is disappointing due to its limited scope. Given the huge growth in debt agreements, the review should have asked the following fundamental questions: whether debt agreements are in fact a viable low-cost alternative to bankruptcy; whether debt agreements are serving the needs of debtors who are in financial difficulty and yet wish to avoid bankruptcy and make some payments to their creditors; whether the rise of commercial debt agreement administrators has furthered the objectives of the part IX regime or has had negative consequences for debtors and/or creditors; and, finally, could the debt agreement regime be amended and regulated to achieve its objectives or should alternative options be explored.
It goes without saying that debtors experiencing financial difficulty are an especially vulnerable group. They are characterised by a desperation to find any solution to stop creditors from ringing them, harassing them and demanding money that they simply do not have. The CCLC argued:
In our experience, many commercial Debt Agreement Administrators take advantage of this vulnerability to convince debtors, either by active misrepresentation or by omission, that a Debt Agreement is the best option for the debtor, without adequate explanation of the other options available, or of the consequences of the path recommended.
In our view—
that is, the organisation’s view—
Part IX debt agreements are currently failing many debtors. What was intended as a low-cost alternative to bankruptcy has now turned into an expensive alternative to bankruptcy. Indeed, for many callers to our service, it is not an alternative to bankruptcy at all, but a long and expensive path to eventual bankruptcy.
The following case studies taken from their advice line demonstrate the point:
Caller has a Part IX that she cannot service. She was referred to a financial counsellor by ITSA. Caller is interested in bankruptcy information.
Client has had a Part IX disbanded and owes the creditors $25,000. Wants to know what she can do and also wants to know about bankruptcy.
Caller has a Part IX that is ready to be terminated as he cannot make the payments. He wants to file for bankruptcy or to know whether there are any other options—
et cetera. The CCLC go on to say:
In many of these cases clients have paid fees to Debt Agreement Administrators that would have been better spent on living expenses to avoid the accumulation of more debt or distributed to their creditors. Their inevitable bankruptcy occurs later than it would have done were it not for the intervention of the debt agreement, meaning that more years have passed by the time they are discharged from bankruptcy and they have less time in which to re-establish themselves financially. Some remain in limbo for indefinite periods as creditors refuse applications to terminate or vary agreements and yet payments are not being met.
The bill before us is a step forward. However, I fear it is also an opportunity missed to provide a more fastidious consumer protection mechanism. Consumers of financial services become accustomed to the certainties and high levels of transparency provided by the Financial Services Reform Act. The CCLC argues that, as debt agreement administrators are only regulated in a minimal way, the debtors accessing their services do not have the protection enjoyed by consumers of financial services. For example, it is compulsory for banks and credit unions to become members of the ASIC approved industry external debt dispute resolution scheme, but the same obligation does not exist for debt agreement administrators and their agents.
Some of the key licensee obligations under FSR include: doing all things necessary to ensure that relevant services are provided; acting honestly and fairly; managing conflicts of interest; complying with conditions of the licence—or vary or revoke existing licence conditions—having adequate resources to provide relevant services; maintaining the competence to provide those financial services; ensuring representatives are adequately trained and are competent to provide services; and having a dispute resolution system that includes internal dispute resolution and membership of an ASIC approved industry dispute resolution scheme.
In summing up, I again stress that the opposition will be supporting the bill. However, we are disappointed that the voice of consumer groups has been ignored once more. This is despite the fact that numerous submissions were made by all of the key consumer groups around the country. I am indebted to the interest and work of the Consumer Action Law Centre and the Consumer Credit Legal Centre. I commend the bill to the House.
in reply—I do intend to respond to those members who have participated in the debate. I hope they will read it later, now having left, because some of the points made indicate a degree of misunderstanding on their part and sometimes advice from only one quarter rather than a balanced view. I thank the member for Wills, the member for Reid and the member for Fisher for their comments, and I welcome the fact that these two measures will be supported by the opposition. I think they have come to a view that these measures, being the subject of very wide consultation, represent a balanced approach to dealing with the issues in relation to debt administration and the regime that we operate for debt agreements. It is important that the debt agreement arrangements continue as a viable means of dealing with unmanageable debt. Society will inevitably always have some people who have not been able to manage their affairs in a way that addresses their dealing adequately with obligations that they may have incurred.
These particular measures are designed to address the lack of confidence on the part of creditors in the effectiveness of the system and to protect debtors by assisting them to assess whether a debt agreement is the right option in all the circumstances. That is, of course, the issue that financial counsellors are interested in. They are also aimed at addressing the high failure rate which has resulted from a significant number of unsustainable agreements being made where debtors are not properly informed or creditors cannot rely on the quality or accuracy of the information given to them.
The amendments will ensure that debt agreement administrators operate at high standards by introducing a registration system based on ability, knowledge and qualification. It will also ensure that administrators are paid for results rather than activity by requiring them to be paid proportionally over the life of an agreement rather than in priority to creditors. They will provide an incentive for administrators to see that agreements are completed and encourage them to focus on proposals that are likely to succeed rather than those that are likely to be accepted by creditors. To encourage creditors to a view that a debt agreement is a simple one-off offer to creditors which represents the best offer a debtor can make, the amendments will require creditors to receive payments proportionately rather than trying to do better than other creditors. The Bankruptcy Legislation Amendment (Debt Agreements) Bill 2007 will also include a number of other amendments which improve, clarify and streamline the operation of the act and reduce uncertainty.
The separate measure, the Bankruptcy (Estate Charges) Amendment Bill 2007, which has not been the subject of any expensive debate, extends the realisations charge and the interest charge to debt agreements and ensures that the cost of regulating the scheme is properly recovered from creditors, as it would be if they were in bankruptcy. At the moment, those in bankruptcy arrangements are subsidising the debt agreements. That is essentially what is happening. This will ensure that it operates across the totality of the scheme. As I said, there was extensive consultation in relation to these matters. I assure the member for Reid that financial counsellors were actively involved in those consultations, but the sorts of comments he was making reflect something of a more narrow view that financial counsellors come to because they tend to deal with the cases that fail rather than the cases where the debt administrations work. It ought to be seen that they are only seeing a proportion—sometimes a small proportion—of the client load.
We saw it as being important to get the balance right—to get creditors, debtors, debt administrators and financial counsellors all on board in supporting these measures. The member for Wills read from the Financial Review some comments by Fox Symes. My understanding is that the comments had been floated in the Financial Review earlier, before the consultations had concluded, and that Fox Symes have made it publicly known that they are happy with the result—that is, the compromises that have been made.
The interesting debate is the one that is off the measures. I hope you will not call me to order, Madam Deputy Speaker, for dealing with matters that have already been allowed to proceed. There are some clear distortions in the views that have been put, particularly the comment that insolvency has allegedly increased. It is important to recognise that this is an area, like many areas of economic activity, where there are fluctuations. Bankruptcies are not at record levels. If new bankruptcies continue at the current rate, we may see a return to the levels of 1997-98 or 2001-02, but the figures are still well below the historical peak, which was experienced in 1998-99. So you do see fluctuations, but the current bankruptcy figures are not at record levels and it is expected that the figures will still be well below the historic peak.
Total personal insolvency activity under the Bankruptcy Act—that is, comprising bankruptcies and debt agreements and personal insolvency agreements—did see an increase in the last December quarter as compared with the December quarter 2005. However, the insolvency activity decreased slightly compared to the September quarter. So again you see fluctuations rather than trends. The latest figures reflect the fact that only a small proportion of Australians become insolvent. We are dealing with a figure of 0.14 per cent of the Australian population. Bankruptcy activity is usually indicative of personal circumstances rather than general economic conditions—for example, individuals overextending themselves financially, relationship breakdowns, changes in individual employment circumstances. They typically relate to credit cards and other unsecured forms of debt, rather than secured debt on housing. I note that Treasury advised that bankruptcy figures should be considered in the context of the strength of the Australian economy and household balance sheets generally. Despite the severe drought, the Australian economy is still expected to grow by 2½ per cent in 2006-07, before accelerating to 3.75 per cent in 2007-08.
Reference was made by the member for Reid to unemployment as being a contributing factor to debt agreements, yet the unemployment rate is at a 30-year low of 0.4 per cent, and real wages have grown by 17.9 per cent since this government first came to office. For every dollar of debt, households have over $6 in total assets and almost $2 in financial assets. The unemployment figures that were cited today by the member for Reid were in the context of New South Wales and a financial organisation in New South Wales. When the member for Wills spoke about housing repossession rates, again he was speaking about New South Wales.
I ask myself: why New South Wales? I can tell you why it is New South Wales. It is because New South Wales is the one part of the Australian economy that is holding Australia back. If you want to look at where the unemployment levels are out of kilter with the rest of Australia, it is in New South Wales. A higher proportion of people in New South Wales are unemployed these days than in Victoria and South Australia. The comment may be, ‘Well, maybe it is with Queensland and Western Australia that these comparisons are being made, and they have got a resource boom, so you cannot really look at those.’ But the other states have also been outperforming New South Wales. On the issue of repossessions in relation to housing, I despair for those young people trying to buy housing in New South Wales, where something like $150,000 of the cost for which they are going to have to go out and borrow money is being paid to the state government and state instrumentalities. It is $150,000 of the cost, and we expect young people to be able to go out and saddle themselves up with debt to be able to meet those rapacious charges that are being made by the New South Wales government? They are out of sync with what is happening everywhere else in Australia.
It is particularly instructive that members come in and make these sorts of allegations and use data in relation to New South Wales, because it demonstrates the point that I have been making around New South Wales lately. The way in which the state government in New South Wales is administering its responsibilities has been dragging the Australian economy back. It is the one state where the data suggests that it could even go into technical recession. It is a pity that the members who use this data did not wait to hear the response.
I commend the bill. I welcome the support for it. It is obviously quite unexceptional; otherwise they would have tried to find a way around berating me even for this. Often you have to go to these other sorts of issues and use distortions and the like to try and get your arguments across. Let it be understood that these measures are unexceptional, they have been the subject of very extensive consultation and are very appropriate reforms to ensure that a system that has served us reasonably well to date will serve us better into the future.
I did allow wide-ranging response from the Attorney-General as I allowed a wide-ranging debate from other participants in the debate. The question now is that the bill be read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.
Debate resumed from 15 February, on motion by Mr Ruddock:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.
Debate resumed from 29 November 2006, on motion by Mr Ian Macfarlane:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Labor will be supporting the Australian Energy Market Amendment (Gas Legislation) Bill 2006. I do not propose to detain the House for too long but will be briefly outlining the reasons for the opposition’s support. The legislation is the federal government’s part of the bargain in establishing the national framework to regulate access to gas pipelines. The national gas regime proposed in this bill was negotiated between the Commonwealth and the states and territories through the Ministerial Council on Energy. It is the latest stage in the implementation of the principles and the letter of competition policy to the gas industry. We believe it will have real benefits for consumers and provide certainty for the industry. It is certainly the case that we should have certainty wherever possible in these matters, and for this reason the Labor Party is happy to give this bill bipartisan support.
Cheryl Cartwright, the CEO of the Australian Pipeline Industry Association, said in the Australian Financial Review on 26 May last year:
Because investment in gas transmission is so long-term, investors need to have some certainty that regulators are not going to step in and change rules part way through.
As Cameron O’Reilly, the Executive Director of the Energy Retailers Association of Australia, said a few months after that on 29 September 2006:
Investment decisions for regulated business are long term, so achieving greater certainty is in the interests of all parties, especially owners.
Everyone is having to make guesses or judgements about where things are at and the hardest area to be in making those guesses is generation.
That is why the opposition indicates that it is happy to support this bill, so that the industry has an indication that it is the policy not only of the government of the day but also of the alternative government.
The proposed national regime will replace the current nine different regulatory regimes operating across the country. It is another step in implementing the Ministerial Council on Energy’s reform agenda, which will ultimately see a national gas law, NGL, and national gas rules. The regulatory framework will underpin the proposed national gas law due to be in place by 30 June 2007. Under this cooperative regime, state and territory laws will confer functions and powers to the Commonwealth minister and agencies, including the Australian Energy Regulator, the Australian Competition Tribunal and the National Competition Council. The bill ensures that the Australian Energy Regulator can perform the functions and powers conferred on it by the national gas Commonwealth law and regulations, as well as for the Australian Competition Tribunal, the National Competition Council and the Commonwealth minister. In addition, the Federal Court will be given jurisdiction to deal with matters arising under the new laws.
My attention was drawn to an article yesterday in the Australian Financial Review entitled ‘Gas regulation at flashpoint’, in which a number of commentators in the industry state their concern about the powers to be conferred on the Australian Energy Regulator, particularly the powers to investigate matters of competition. The article by Annabel Hepworth states:
But the industry fears the draconian nature of the draft laws will stymie gas network investment needed to meet the soaring demand for power and will increase compliance costs, which would be passed on to consumers in higher gas bills.
Industry—which hopes the proposals will be redrafted—and users have in recent weeks been having detailed discussions with government officials about the draft laws. Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane yesterday told The Australian Financial Review that the talks had been “constructive” and that he had met separately with industry groups to discuss key concerns.
Obviously, that is an issue of concern to the industry; therefore, it is an issue of concern to the opposition. The opposition will be supporting this bill, but I encourage the minister or his representative to address these matters in summing up the debate because it is important that we encourage more investment in the gas pipeline industry and that we take no steps to discourage it. On balance, we will be supporting this bill because we are confident that it will be an encouragement to industry and not a discouragement, but the minister does need to address the matters raised by industry in that article.
The national gas law will include a form of regulation under which pipeline owners can negotiate commercial outcomes with access seekers, subject to competitive pressures. Only when these negotiations fail will the Australian Energy Regulator become involved and offer a binding arbitration to resolve the access dispute. The states and territories are to pass complementary laws to give effect to these changes, effectively transferring their power to regulate these matters to the Commonwealth. The regulatory framework proposed in the bill will operate alongside the new national gas law, which will be passed by each state and territory. South Australia will be taking the lead early this year through the National Gas (South Australia) Act 2007 and the other states will then follow.
I know that some in the industry have expressed concern that access under the national competition policy is a disincentive to investment and a disincentive to laying more pipes. I have not been convinced by these arguments. We would need to see evidence that this is the case in the gas industry. In matters of national access, a genuine balance needs to be reached. To ensure maximum competition, we need to get the balance between granting access to competitors and not providing a disincentive to investment.
While I am not convinced that this bill will be a disincentive to the laying of gas pipelines, we do need to get the balance right across the market generally. I am glad that the honourable member for Batman is here, because I know he also has strong views on this. We saw the recent—
Mr Randall interjecting
Especially on you!
Especially on the member for Canning. The honourable member for Batman is not the only one who has strong views on the member for Canning, but he is also not the only one who has strong views about the national—
You have strong views on the deputy speaker!
I think we will have some order in the chamber.
I think Deputy Speaker Bishop does a fine job. I have a strong view on that.
Government members interjecting—
Order!
We recently saw the high-profile Fortescue and BHP case. I am not convinced the system got this one right. The Treasurer failed to exercise his right to override the decision to grant Fortescue access to the railway line, which was a pity. His failure to act had the same consequence as if he were to have acted—deemed refusal—but it would have been better if the Treasurer had come out and explicitly outlined his reasons. That is why the government should, in my view, accept the recommendations of the Export Infrastructure Task Force. The task force recommended an efficiency override for applications for the declaration of export related facilities under the national access regime. The task force said that this test would ‘minimise the risk that access regimes would disrupt the very areas of the economy that have performed best in the management of export related infrastructure’.
My personal view is that there is a strong case for some legislative prescription which would codify what is and is not part of the production process and therefore provide more certainty for investors. I stress that we should not lose sight of the fact that the national access regime is a very important part of national competition policy. It is a positive development that has opened up access to infrastructure in this country, but we cannot for one second let it become a disincentive to investment. We need to get the balance right both in this bill and in national competition policy generally. It is a positive development that there will be a coherent national approach to the access regime for gas pipelines. It will be a light-handed regulatory approach, which is appropriate. We do not want to discourage investment in pipelines. Some 95 per cent of Australia’s gas production is located in the north-west of Australia, but 90 per cent of the population lives in the south-east, so we need pipelines to get the gas from the north-west to the south-east.
Establishment of secure national gas market infrastructure is vital to meeting Australia’s growing national energy demands. The speedy passage and implementation of this legislation is in the nation’s interest, and it is critical to ensuring our energy market and its export potential. There are over 140 trillion cubic feet of known natural gas reserves. The private sector now owns the majority of this resource. Transmission pipelines and substantial private sector investment will be required going forward.
These reforms are being implemented against the background of unprecedented demand for energy resources. The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics estimates that, by 2030, electricity generation will need to grow by 73 per cent to meet demand and that gas demand will increase by 50 per cent. The bill we have today will pave the way for the $30 billion in investment that the energy industry estimates will be required over the next 15 years for energy infrastructure projects. This bill will be an important first step in reaching that investment.
While Labor supports the bill and the implementation of the national gas law and the national gas regime, the federal government must push ahead with a second wave of gas reform, which is scheduled to come on line before 1 January 2008. There is much more to be achieved with competitive gas reforms.
The example of the benefits of these reforms is best seen by our experience in the electricity market. Average world prices have fallen by 19 per cent since the early nineties, delivering real benefits to businesses and to households. I noted again in today’s Financial Review, as opposed to yesterday’s, a report by Adrian Rollins and Duncan Hughes, which reports on a Productivity Commission finding that the potential benefit from further competition reform would result in an increase in gross domestic product by almost two per cent, adding about $17 billion to the national economy. Of course, gas is a very important part of that energy reform which is necessary.
The Productivity Commission’s 2005 Review of national competition policy reforms has put this in the context of the importance of pushing forward with the ministerial council’s energy market reform agenda. It says:
Given the long lead time involved in bringing new generating capacity on line, it is also important to get the timing, location and nature of investment decisions right.
By getting the national access regime, the NGL and the next wave of reforms in place in a timely fashion, the energy industry will have more confidence in the long-term investment decisions that they need to make.
In December 2003, the Ministerial Council on Energy announced its reform program. It included a reform program that was supposed to take three years to be fully implemented. Of course, that was four years ago. In August last year, the Ministerial Council on Energy announced that some of the proposed energy reforms would be pushed back from 1 January this year to 1 July this year. It was the Ministerial Council on Energy that in 2003 set in trail what was supposed to be a three-year time frame for establishing a national regulatory regime for electricity and gas. Here we are early in 2007, we have already fallen behind the MCE’s timetable, and the commencement of the national gas law has been pushed back to 1 July this year.
I am not seeking to make a political point here; I do not hold the Commonwealth government entirely responsible for that. This is a matter of some negotiation between the different levels of government. This is not a matter for the blame game and certainly on this side of the House we are not going to play the blame game. But all governments need to do better.
Mr Randall interjecting
I am glad the honourable member for Canning agrees that this is not a matter for the blame game. All governments need to ensure that there are no further delays in the implementation of the national gas law. Any delay creates uncertainty which can be both crippling for those seeking to make long-term investment decisions and concerning for them.
Labor understands the need to set the right regulatory framework that promotes competition and efficient economic outcomes in the gas industry. Labor supported the Commonwealth’s first instalment of reforms through the Energy Legislation Amendment Bill last year, although the opposition were keen to remind the minister at the time about the Commonwealth’s sluggishness in moving forward with the next wave of economic reform and the strengthening of the Trade Practices Act, and we would renew that reminder today.
Getting the national regulatory framework right is essential for the investment climate surrounding gas transmission and generation. The second wave of Ministerial Council on Energy led reforms is being developed by the ministerial council’s retail policy working group in consultation with a stakeholder reference group. The nation does need to move forward urgently with more microeconomic reform. We cannot rest on the laurels of previous achievements. We cannot say that national competition policy is over and there is no more reform necessary. One thing that the Prime Minister and I would agree on is that there is an ever-receding finishing line on economic reform; there is always more to do. This bill is one step in that ever-receding finishing line. The government needs to progress quickly to ensure the second wave follows soon thereafter. I commend the bill to the House.
Under the oversight of the Ministerial Council on Energy, Australia has made substantial progress towards an efficient and effective national energy market over recent years. The Australian Energy Market Amendment (Gas Legislation) Bill 2006 represents a significant legislative step towards a national regime for the regulation of gas pipeline infrastructure complete with national regulatory and national rule-making bodies. This is crucial to Australia’s future economic energy security and economic growth.
The Ministerial Council on Energy will apply the new national gas law and national gas rules in all participating jurisdictions by 30 June this year. The national gas law will reduce the regulatory burden on industry, improve service provider certainty and protect long-term interests of consumers by introducing a new light-handed form of regulation for gas pipelines. It will empower the Australian Energy Regulator as the national regulator for gas access to improve the consistency of regulatory decision making, enable merit review by the Australian competition tribunal of key regulatory decisions, introduce strict requirements for timely regulatory decisions, increase information transparency and maintain incentives for investment in new pipelines established by the Ministerial Council on Energy in June 2006.
The new gas access regime will be underpinned by lead legislation enacted in the South Australian parliament. Early next year, the South Australian parliament will enact a national gas act and the national gas law will be the schedule to that act. The reformed gas regime is established primarily in the national gas law, which will be established in South Australian law and applied through application acts in all other participating jurisdictions except for Western Australia, which will pass mirror legislation.
A draft of the national gas law was released for consultation on 7 November last year prior to the Ministerial Council on Energy meeting agreeing to a final version. This bill amends the Australian Energy Market Act 2004, which will now apply the national gas law in the Commonwealth’s jurisdiction, ensuring that the new gas access regime will apply throughout Australia, including offshore areas and external territories. Under the current gas access regime, nine different regulators make decisions. That leads to uncertainty and inconsistency in the application of regulations. Under the new national gas law, the regulation of all gas transmission and distribution pipelines—except in Western Australia—will be undertaken by the Commonwealth through the Australian Energy Regulator. This will obviously lead to a more efficient and consistent regulatory decision-making process.
The bill will empower the Australian Energy Regulator and two other Commonwealth bodies—the National Competition Council and the Australian Competition Tribunal—to take crucial decisions within the new gas access regime. The bill amends the Trade Practices Act 1974 to confer new functions and powers and impose new duties on these three Commonwealth bodies when applying the national gas law. The Australian Energy Regulator, the National Competition Council and the Australian Competition Tribunal will have important roles in overseeing and reviewing the national gas law to boost competition while protecting the interests of gas consumers. All those decisions in all jurisdictions will be reviewable by the Australian Competition Tribunal to better protect the interests of both consumers and investors in the gas sector.
This bill allows the greenfield pipelines incentives in the current gas access regime to continue to operate in the new gas access regime. These incentives support new investment in pipeline infrastructure within Australia or crossing our territorial waters to other countries, increasing Australia’s energy security and benefiting Australian gas consumers. The national gas law will also allow those companies owning pipelines subject to competition to negotiate commercially and economically efficient outcomes with access seekers with direct involvement by the regulator. Only where negotiations fail will the Australian Energy Regulator arbitrate to resolve the access dispute. Through this bill, the Commonwealth is taking a legislative lead in establishing this regime. This process has the full support of the Ministerial Council on Energy and represents a bipartisan, cooperative and national approach to regulating access to gas pipeline infrastructure. The national gas law is currently the subject of a rigorous consultation process engaging all of the relevant stakeholders. Officials from the Ministerial Council on Energy are currently considering submissions made concerning the national gas law and will be finalising legislation taking into account all of those issues raised by stakeholders.
As members in this place know, I hail from Darwin in the Northern Territory. We passed legislation through this place only this week in relation to the Greater Sunrise unitisation agreement between Australia and East Timor.
Did you speak on it?
I certainly did speak on it, Mr Ferguson. I am very keen to stand up here and talk about gas issues. The reason that I am very keen to stand up here and talk about gas issues is that Darwin—my electorate—is fast developing into a significant gas and energy hub in Australia. We already have natural gas being piped from the Bayu Undan field in the Timor Sea—Bayu Undan has some 3.4 trillion cubic feet of gas—to an LNG plant in the Darwin harbour. It is hoped that, following this legislation, there will be increased activity at the Greater Sunrise fields in the Timor Sea. I think there are 8.7 trillion cubic feet of gas in that field. There are significant amounts of gas in the Timor Sea that should be piped to Darwin.
It would be my desire, although you cannot interfere in commercial decisions, to see some of that gas used for domestic use—and not just by Northern Territorians but by other Australians. If at some point down the track a far-sighted company wants to build either a gas pipeline or a high-voltage DC transmission line which would allow Darwin to generate electricity and move that electricity interstate, those proposals would receive my strong support. Irrespective of whether these things happen, a large amount of economic activity is generated by the gas industry in my electorate. The more activity that happens in the Timor Sea and the Bonaparte Gulf and other places, the better it is for our economic future in the Northern Territory.
That is why I support these amendments. I want to see a flexible and uniform regime for gas pipelines across Australia that will give companies certainty and greater ability to invest in these assets around the country. It is very, very important for my electorate. I am very pleased to support this bill and I commend it to the House.
Like the member for Solomon, can I say on behalf of the opposition that the Australian Energy Market Amendment (Gas Legislation) Bill 2006 is welcome. It is long overdue, because it is about a national framework to regulate access to gas pipelines in Australia. The bill will implement an agreement reached between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments on the need for a national framework through the Ministerial Council on Energy, so at least one ministerial meeting is actually producing a few outcomes and is trying to work with state, territory and Commonwealth governments towards a common framework.
On that note, state and territory governments are reminded that they will need to pass complementary laws to fully give effect to this national framework. But, whilst this bill goes a long way to improving the regulatory framework for the Australian gas market, there is still much work that needs to be done to allow it to reach its full potential—and that is the challenge to the ministerial council. There is a challenge not to one level of government but to all state and territory governments and the Commonwealth to do more to enable us as a nation to realise our full potential on this front.
While the Prime Minister is out there applauding the merits of nuclear power, the real question is: what has he done for the gas industry and, more importantly, what intentions does he have with respect to the gas industry that we need to articulate in the lead-up to the next election? Or is he going to allow this opportunity to pass us by like a ship in the night, just as so many economic opportunities in Australia are passing by because we have a tired old government over there which has seen better days?
This is important because the east coast of Australia, as a matter of urgency, needs to make baseload and peak load energy decisions within the next two years; otherwise the lights will be going out. The truth is that no-one is prepared to invest, because of the government’s failure to introduce national emissions trading, a requirement that would give investors certainty about carbon pricing in the future. This uncertainty has become, now more than ever, a barrier to investment because the private sector wants to understand and have certainty about the investment regime that will apply not only now but also in five, 10, 20 and 30 years. This issue has to be worked out in a balanced way.
The greenhouse debate is complex and we have to make changes, but we have to make sure we have balanced outcomes; otherwise we will drive jobs offshore. That requires all of us to have a sense of responsibility. Yes, there is a certain amount of political rhetoric at the moment about the climate change debate, but Australia has to be very careful. If this goes wrong, we will undermine economic prosperity based on continued economic growth in Australia and job and training opportunities for our nation. If you undermine them then you are also diminishing your capacity to build the necessary infrastructure, adequately resource our schools and childcare centres and also provide proper health care and the opportunity for people to retire with a fair standard of living in Australia. These are complex issues.
We also have to front up to the fact that it also means you need leadership not only in working out emissions trading—a complex issue—but also in being prepared to back that system by making some hard decisions on baseload energy requirements in Australia. That is about coal-fired power stations in association with the gas industry. The truth is that, because of inaction in recent years, we as a community—Australians—are paying more for our electricity today because of the ad hoc measures currently in place and arbitrary hedging by market participants to offset unknown greenhouse risks in the future. We are already paying for it because of a lack of action by government at all levels in Australia.
There is a simple requirement, but the fact is that the Prime Minister has refused to adopt national emissions trading. I believe that is now costing Australians money on their power and gas industry bills, as is his failure to push ahead with the many other reforms necessary to deliver a truly national energy market, including both electricity and gas.
The Prime Minister thinks he can get off the political hook with international debates about global emissions trading and nuclear power. He needs to get on with the job of implementing a national emissions trading system and then let the national electricity energy market decide on the lowest cost abatement technologies. What is wrong with letting the market prevail? There is no doubt in my mind that nuclear power just does not stack up, but gas and renewables like hydro, biomass and geothermal will.
No industry understands more than the gas industry the importance of technology neutrality in the national energy market because, in many ways, it is the sector most disadvantaged by the plethora of current greenhouse measures at a state and territory level. The opposition will take to the next election, as it took to the last, a national emissions trading policy—one that will be technology neutral and finally deliver a level playing field to the benefit of the gas industry.
Meanwhile the Howard government will still be about picking technology winners and debating a futuristic international emissions trading scheme that will do nothing to solve investment uncertainty here at home and will not facilitate us making those baseload and peak load energy decisions that we need to make as a community now. That effectively means that we could end up not making or delivering the $35 billion worth of investment decisions needed to meet the sharp rise in energy demand over the next 10 years in Australia.
When it comes to energy security, Australia has only two issues—underinvestment in electricity infrastructure and overreliance on foreign oil and transport fuels. Government leadership at a national level, requiring states and territories to actually work in partnership with the private sector on these issues, could confront these challenges and effectively mean that we position ourselves as a nation to do the right thing on this tough front. Gas comes into play in both of those issues, and they are the same two issues I faced when I was in the resources portfolio from 2004 to 2006, when I read the speeches of my predecessor in the portfolio, the member for Hunter, because they are the same issues he raised in the previous parliament.
The truth is that energy market reform has moved at a snail’s pace under the Howard government. It is not as if they did not have a couple of good reports. The Parer report was an exceptionally good report. It actually laid out a road map for action, but it has gathered dust on a series of ministerial tables and no action has been taken to implement practical, forward-looking recommendations.
It also means that you have to have a hard look at the COAG processes. Let us look at where COAG has got to so far this year. While the commitment to progressive national rollout of smart meters from 2007 is to be commended, it is heavily qualified and only time will tell whether the initiative is truly national. Beyond that, we are promised a recommitment to earlier COAG reform proposals and the recent new Energy Reform Implementation Group report. On past action, you would not want to hold your breath. Action actually speaks louder than promises in COAG statements worked out by bureaucrats behind the scenes. It actually requires ministers of all political persuasions to do something than to go to COAG and ministerial meetings, sign a communique and then walk away, saying: ‘That’s done for another six months. The issue will disappear.’
It really goes to the issue of a promised recommitment to earlier COAG reform proposals and the recent new Energy Reform Implementation Group, under the chairmanship of Bill Scales, a person greatly respected in government and private sector circles. There is nothing wrong with the ERIG report, but the problem is that it is not a replacement for decision making or for the national leadership needed to address the inertia of the Ministerial Council on Energy—and that is all ministers of all political persuasions—and the National Electricity Market Forum. I believe they have done virtually nothing collectively over the last five years. The fact is that we are no further advanced on energy market reform than we were when COAG announced the Parer review in June 2001, along with the establishment of the MCE and the NEM.
The Parer review was released in December 2002, and only a handful of its recommendations have ever been implemented. It was August 2004 when the Productivity Commission review of the gas access regime was released. COAG promised a response by the end of 2006—a full 2½ years later. All I can say is that you would not want to see them if they were actually trying to work quickly. They try to say to us that they are men of action. Well, we are still waiting for a response, despite those commitments and 2½ years to actually do the job.
With ERIG, we have yet another review when what is really needed is action and national collective leadership. I suppose I should take some comfort from the fact that, by and large, the energy policies that the federal Labor Party took to the last election—and would have implemented by now—have stood the test of time. We can rewrap them and rebadge them for the next election, because this government has done nothing. Effectively, the ideas and proposals are there for implementation, but it requires leadership to put in place some of those recommendations.
I note that the ERIG review concludes, as did the Parer review in 2002 and another committee called the Gas Market Leaders Group, that one of the key tasks towards better market penetration for gas is an active upstream reform agenda. Four years ago the Parer report said:
In the first instance, the previously identified upstream reform agenda needs to be re-activated to ensure access to upstream facilities is available on competitive terms. This would involve ensuring the joint marketing of gas is constrained especially for gas coming from mature gas fields; and that exploration and production acreage management is further tightened to ensure prospective territory is available for exploration and development by new players if incumbents are less interested in bringing forward new supplies.
It is actually about freeing up the market. Four years later, the ERIG report says:
Competition in upstream gas markets, particularly intra-basin competition, could be enhanced with improvements to acreage management practices.
It continues:
Joint marketing often involves common terms and conditions such as pricing which may lock up the potential to implement short term balancing arrangements, and hence extract optionality, for efficient re-trading of imbalances.
But ERIG still makes no recommendations to address these issues other than—guess what?—further assessment. This is despite the fact that the reality is emerging in Western Australia, as we have seen recently, that it is easier to get cheap gas to Shanghai than to Perth and the south-west for domestic purposes in Australia. We do not need more assessments and reviews of these issues. We need action, and that is what Labor will do in government. Nevertheless, I am pleased to say that in June this year the government’s Energy Legislation Amendment Act did in fact implement part of the policy that the federal Labor Party took to the 2004 election—and I quote:
In natural gas, industry remains engaged in battle with the ACCC over a range of regulatory issues. Australia still lacks all the necessary ingredients for the development of a mature and fully competitive gas market and yet again, Parer’s recommendations have been ignored.
No initiatives have been taken to tackle the various barriers to enhancing upstream competition and nothing has been done to address regulatory risk, whether real or perceived. Labor will retain a strong gas code but, consistent with the Parer review, will pursue two significant changes to provide greater certainty for new investors. We will provide for binding and upfront coverage rulings and binding upfront agreements locking in key regulatory parameters for extended and agreed periods of time.
It is strange that the opposition is actually praising a former member of the coalition to prod the government to do something, because he did a good job on this report. It is a report that we all have ownership of and responsibility for in order to implement its recommendations.
This legislation was a long time in coming, and we do not believe it goes far enough in implementing the energy market reform measures that are still outstanding. Still, they are welcome and much needed. Australia is a gas rich nation with over 140 trillion cubic feet of known reserves, and we have been finding gas faster than we have produced it for the last 20 years. But most of it, unfortunately, is remote from markets. Ninety-five per cent of Australia’s natural gas resources are in the remote north-west, but 90 per cent of Australia’s population live on the eastern seaboard and most of the country’s energy-intensive job-creating industries are in the south-west and the east. So there is a problem of getting it to where it is needed in Australia. That is the stark consideration of the challenge. That is why we also need to be thinking about strategic national energy infrastructure today and promoting investment in natural gas transmission and distribution markets. Four years ago, the Parer report said:
Where governments observe a public benefit in facilitating gas developments, competitive processes which do not distort the natural gas market should be used to achieve least-cost outcomes.
The Labor Party agrees. Natural gas is the best transition fuel for a lower carbon economy, with proven reserves more than capable of meeting the nation’s energy growth needs over the next few decades. We have to get more of it into the energy mix along with renewables and clean coal—an absolute priority for Australia is the issue of clean coal. But it is not about picking winners. This means, firstly, enhancing the competitiveness of gas in the domestic market; secondly, achieving greater interconnection of major supply and demand hubs; and, thirdly, expanding domestic gas markets in electricity generation to process energy, transport fuels and chemicals. The opening up of new markets for natural gas is critical to underpin the development of remote gas production, processing and pipeline infrastructure for future gas supply security. Without investment in that infrastructure today, Australia’s gas resources could be too expensive to get to market in the future and could be locked away forever or destined only for export markets as liquefied natural gas. In particular, much more needs to be done to get gas into the transport sector, our other energy security problem.
Gas in the form of LNG, compressed natural gas and gas converted into clean diesel is part of Australia’s transport future and essential to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and the difficulties of the Middle East. I believe the Howard government has dropped the ball on CNG refuelling infrastructure at a time when the community has never been so concerned about high petrol prices—or, even worse, shortages—which can occur because we are hostages to foreign oil. Natural gas has an enormous role to play as LNG and CNG and when it is converted to clean diesel using gas-to-liquids technology. It has been done overseas in Qatar; it can be done in Australia with leadership and the involvement of the private sector.
Australians want to secure their energy supplies for the future at affordable prices, and they are rightfully expecting their governments and the companies with stewardship of their resources to have a plan to achieve this. But there is no plan, and Australians are far from relaxed and comfortable about this huge economic challenge to Australia. It is now almost five years since the government held another review, undertaken by the Gas to Liquids Taskforce, that highlighted the potential significance of a gas-to-liquids industry to Australia’s economy. It said the government could underwrite offshore gas supply infrastructure and, in doing so, bring forward the possibility of major new domestic gas pipelines to connect the national market, increase domestic gas competition and energise gas exploration. What a win for Australia.
The potential benefits of course go beyond unlocking new resource wealth and creating new industry, more jobs and more exports. They include the opportunity for Australia to address the most pressing of problems: our future transport fuel security. Every nation around the world is worrying about this issue, but not Australia. If you go to Europe and talk about the problems of Russia and cutting off supplies of gas, you will see that people are in a state of panic about their energy security for the future—but not Australia. We are told that we are relaxed and comfortable about where we are going on this issue. Despite that recommendation on gas to liquids, five years later there has been no action. We have a tired, worn-out government which just wants to ignore its responsibilities and concentrate on winning elections without decent policy proposals for confronting our future and guaranteeing a prosperous Australia in the 21st century.
The Howard government has failed Australia by letting the opportunity pass to create the right fiscal and regulatory environment. Government action is needed to make gas to liquids a new industry option and a new fuel supply source for Australia. The private sector will follow, if you actually create the investment framework to encourage the investment. If the government were serious about the gas industry and gas market reform, it would have seriously reviewed the PRRT regime and considered special treatment of capital investment in gas-to-liquids fuel projects and associated gas production infrastructure. This is a simple proposition for the government to consider in the ensuing months.
The government could have faced up to some responsibility for resource related infrastructure instead of just passing the buck to the states. They could have done a little bit on the ground to assist the private sector in opening up some of these far-flung regions of Australia. Above all, they could have sent a clear signal to Australia that they are interested in their future fuel security issues and that industry is part of the solution. This long list of failures has to be pointed out to the government because we are not just about energy market reform; we are about making tough decisions to guarantee our future on the energy front.
The issues I have discussed today are some of the failures, and industry, as well as the Australian community, deserves better leadership from the Australian government on these issues. Under the Howard government, microeconomic reform on the energy and gas front has actually gone backwards. Hawke and Keating set the agenda, and the government have run away from it. (Time expired)
In opening my remarks I commend the thoughtful speech of the member for Batman and his assessment of this very complex subject. I would contest the view that the government has not moved quickly enough, because of the difficulties of cooperation with the states and drafting this legislation. I am pleased to contribute to the support of the Australian Energy Market Amendment (Gas Legislation) Bill 2006. I congratulate the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, the Hon. Ian Macfarlane, for bringing this historic legislation to the parliament.
This bill is historic because it allows for the introduction of a truly national system of regulating gas pipeline infrastructure, and this system will be the national gas law, or NGL. The national gas law will help to underpin an efficient national energy market and will make a substantial contribution to the management and attraction of investment in the gas pipeline infrastructure.
Before I comment on the detail of the bill and the national gas laws this bill will help to bring about, can I note the key concepts of interest. Firstly, these reforms will reduce the burden of regulation, red tape and paperwork for gas infrastructure providers by providing a set of consistent national laws pertaining to the gas pipelines. The terms and conditions and standards that gas pipelines operate under will be compatible across state borders. That is exactly what the member for Batman was talking about: gas from the north of Western Australia to the eastern seaboard. This will be a major breakthrough for the industry and for consumers. All gas users will benefit from these arrangements, whether they are small business users, mums and dads paying for gas hot water and ovens in their homes, or big industries.
Currently gas service providers are required to hire large armies of in-house legal professionals to wade through the mounds of different, inconsistent, contradictory legislation, regulation and red tape operating in different states under nine different regulators. Under the current regime, companies hire government relations lobbyists to negotiate with state and federal regulators and consumer representatives. The introduction of a consistent national system will substantially reduce this burden on business.
Having one national regulator—the Australian Energy Regulator—instead of nine regulators that currently make decisions to determinations will also result in an improved consistency of regulatory decision making and provide increased certainty for service providers. Contributing to the reduction in red tape, the reforms will introduce a new form of light-handed regulation which regulators may apply. I particularly note the light-handed regulation approach of the government. The other point I would like to make is that the reforms will encourage investment in gas infrastructure by delivering greater certainty to service providers. As a result of the increased certainty, firms should be more prepared to invest in new gas infrastructure to provide for Australia’s future energy needs.
To put this bill in its proper context, it represents the long way Australian governments and the energy industry have evolved over the last 20 years. The gas industry has changed from being a set of autonomous, inefficient state run instrumentalities, with prices subject to being influenced by the political process. In Victoria we had the old state run Gas and Fuel Corporation. There was little investment in new infrastructure, innovation or service delivery for gas. Unions were able to exert undue influence on the management of the corporatised organisation at a significant cost to investment and the consumer. Under such a model there is insufficient incentive to invest in new generation capacity and the upgrading of infrastructure. Vote-seeking state governments often feel obliged to cap or restrict energy prices offered to consumers as essential services. They tinker with the price, eroding funds that might otherwise be available to fund investments in infrastructure and new generation capacity. As a result, infrastructure was run down and the system failed to plan for future energy needs.
What a different position we have today following the advent of the national competition policy, the privatisation of the gas industry in Victoria and the implementation of full retail competition. The combined evolution of the gas industry has been remarkable. No longer will the public expect governments to build, own and manage gas generators and deliver gas to industry, shops and homes. It is recognised that this is a big business that is better provided by the competitive private sector. Competition is encouraged to offer the best prices and innovations in product that respond to consumer needs. Importantly, we have a situation where companies feel confident to invest in laying gas pipelines and establishing new sources of gas generation.
In south-west Victoria, located just outside the boundaries of the Corangamite electorate near Port Campbell, we have seen some of this investment in the development of the Woodside Otway gas project. The Otway gas project has involved the construction of a remotely operated offshore platform tapping into gas fields off Victoria’s southern coastline, offshore and onshore pipelines that transport the gas and a gas-processing plant located about six kilometres north of Port Campbell.
The Otway gas project is a joint venture between the majority stakeholder Woodside, Origin Energy Resources, Benaris International NV and CalEnergy Gas (Australia). The Otway gas fields are estimated to contain natural gas sufficient to provide, over the next 10 years, more than 10 per cent of the annual demand across south-east Australia measured at current levels. Natural gas from the project is being sold to retailer TXU, condensate from the project will go to Shell’s Geelong refinery and liquefied petroleum gas will be sold to Victorian distributors.
This project has delivered significant investment to south-west Victoria and has generated employment in construction. Woodside has worked closely with the community and the Corangamite Shire Council, and the company should be congratulated for the way it has gone about the project. I raise this as an example because such investment would likely not have occurred under the old state based management of gas and fuel. These private companies have been encouraged to invest in exploration and construction of gas-processing plant because of the freeing-up of the gas industry over recent years and allowing this gas to be exported to other states.
As we move to institute a truly national energy market under the oversight of the Ministerial Council on Energy, all state and federal energy ministers and this parliament will provide greater certainty and security for companies such as Woodside to invest in Australia and increase our production capacity to meet the needs of our industries and consumers.
This bill is an essential part of the process of establishing the new national gas law and implementing the cooperative Australian Energy Market Agreement between the Commonwealth and the state governments. The national gas law will be established in South Australian law and will be adopted by other states through the application acts. The Western Australian government will pass mirror legislation. The South Australian parliament needs to see this legislation adopted by the Commonwealth, meeting our role in the agreement to provide for that parliament to introduce the national gas law.
The bill will apply the national gas law to Commonwealth-responsibility offshore areas and external territories. The bill also provides Commonwealth legislative consent to the conferral powers and functions under the national gas law in three Commonwealth bodies: the Australian Energy Regulator, the National Competition Council and the Australian Competition Tribunal. I note the national gas law is currently being finalised in consultation with stakeholders. The law will provide for the regulation of access to gas pipelines by users and remains consistent with the recommendations of the Productivity Commission’s 2004 report, Review of the gas access regime.
The National Competition Council will provide recommendations to ministers about which pipelines should be classified as being covered under the national gas law regulation for access. The NGL will only impose access regulation where the coverage criteria are met: access promotes a material increase in competition; the pipeline is uneconomic to duplicate; and access is consistent with safety and is in the public interest. Gas pipelines that are classified as uncovered will operate subject to the provisions of the Trades Practices Act and market forces, providing greater security to infrastructure owners—and I emphasise that particular aspect of the bill.
I note that in particular the greenfield pipeline incentives which have been contained in the current gas access regime will continue to operate in the new gas access regime under the national gas law. Greenfield pipelines are new pipelines or proposed pipelines for which there was not previously a market for the gas output. Under the national gas law, these greenfield pipelines may apply for a 15-year no coverage recommendation, which, if granted, will provide an exemption from all regulation for 15 years from the time the pipeline commences operation. The exemption is a big step forward in providing investment certainty to private enterprises which are considering laying down new gas pipelines. Where a private firm at its own cost lays down a pipeline to transfer gas from processing site to market, that firm should be secure and confident that it owns the asset and can determine whether or not others gain access and if so at what price and under what conditions.
This is the core issue underpinning the debate in the infrastructure access regime and was an important recommendation of the Productivity Commission’s June 2004 Review of the gas access regime. I particularly draw the relationship with the access of railways in the northern part of Western Australia, where I made a contribution at an earlier time. In my view, the capital that has been invested in either pipelines or railways should have a return to the particular investors.
The greenfield pipeline incentives will support new investment in pipeline infrastructure, helping to provide energy and security to gas consumers. The Productivity Commission found that, without the greenfield pipeline incentives, the gas access regime may potentially discourage new investment.
Some key changes that will be part of the new gas law compared with existing arrangements will include introducing a new, light-handed form of regulation for gas pipelines, empowering the Australian Energy Regulator as the national regulator for gas access to improve the consistency of regulatory decision making, enabling merits review by the Australian Competition Tribunal of key regulatory decisions, introducing strict requirements for timely regulatory decisions, increasing information transparency and maintaining incentives for investment in new pipelines established by the Ministerial Council on Energy in June 2006. These changes will have the impact of reducing the regulatory burden on pipeline owners and will reduce risk.
In concluding, can I note with satisfaction that this bill enjoys bipartisan support and is supported by state governments, which happen to be under Labor rule. There is a convergence of views across the political divide on the importance of freeing the gas industry from regulatory burden and providing enhanced security for new investments in order to provide for the nation’s future energy security. Australian governments have come a long way since the 1980s in moving from a state run gas system towards an efficient, competitive, privately managed gas industry operating in the free market with light-handed regulation. Australian industry and consumers have benefited from the major reforms to the gas industry, which have encouraged private investment, and we have seen new sources of gas generation coming on line to supply our nation’s energy needs. I commend the bill to the House.
I am delighted to follow the member for Corangamite and to endorse the Australian Energy Market Amendment (Gas Legislation) Bill 2006 as he has endorsed it. Why? Because this bill is about centralism not federalism. This bill is about the Commonwealth, in cooperation with the states, taking over power to control a national gas pipeline. I am glad that recalcitrants in the coalition—not that the member for Corangamite could be typified in that way—have finally come to see that the old federalism of the Fraser period, the old approach to Australian affairs, where whatever powers the states had had to be locked up forever for the states to simply have what they had at the start of 1901, has ended. This bill is yet another nail in the coffin of that type of approach to national affairs.
There has been another significant move in this area. The member for Corangamite well knows this; he has picked it up on his radar. There is $10 billion of Commonwealth government money going into a national water plan. Guess what? It is a Commonwealth takeover of state powers. It is centralism.
This mob over here spent decades railing against the concentration of power at the Commonwealth level. I have to tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker—and the member for Corangamite might well appreciate this—when Labor were last in power we saw that the disparate arrangements that we had in compartmentalised approaches to state run pipelines and state electricity grids needed to be entirely renovated. We saw that there needed to be a revolution in energy supply and in cooperation between the states and, if it demanded it and if it needed it, that had to be centrally driven. This is one of those wonderful cases where ideology fragments in the face of practicality, where the old way of doing things is completely shattered. I think what has been done on water is the right approach to take for a continental Australia with continental problems.
Colonial Australia understood it. When the first ships came out, individual colonies developed that were isolated in time and space from each other. They ran their own affairs. From the 1850s onward they developed their own legislative assemblies and legislative councils. There was a change of structure in terms of power relationships between the governors and the parliamentary entities. We know how difficult it was to get a country unified in 1901. That took 10 full years.
We might think of 10 full years as a long time—certainly the last 10 years plus has been a long time with the coalition in government here in Canberra, a long time for those people who have been on the end of that particular stick. But it was a 10-years-plus process to cohere the Australian states and to get them to understand, to sign up through a referendum to a national way of doing just certain things—post and telegraphs, defence and one other: customs and excise duties. That was it from the start—three things.
But here we have an old ideologist in the member for Corangamite coming out of the states’ blocks, out of the Victorian blocks—and he was right to make the point about the energy use in Victoria—but seeing a broader view. I am glad that this kind of revelation could happen in the 21st century for both him and some of his other colleagues on what was railed against forever. In Australia, it is a great privilege to live not just in one country but in one continent, surrounded by seas. We have been compromised in our history time and time again because of the shackles of that very history.
We saw the debate in the parliament yesterday about the issue of a national curriculum and who has pinched whose idea about this. Just in passing: John Dawkins, in 1984, the then minister for education, was kicking off the process to try to knock the states’ heads together, to try to get a national approach with fundamental educational principles Australia-wide, to start the process to drive towards not only bringing in lots of people from overseas to study here and to build our educational capacity and earn more money but fundamentally and very importantly taking the first key steps with Dr Paul Brock, who was then his chief educational adviser, to get a national approach to our educational problems.
What has been the fundamental problem—the glacial approach in the 23 years since then? The fundamental problem has been the states’ bureaucracies wanting to hold tight to their constitutional certainties. That is what has caused the problem in relation to this. That is what has to be shattered in exactly the same way as the issues here of who owns what gas pipeline in Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia or whatever. That has to be shattered in the national interest in order to get not just economies of scale but an approach that is entirely consistent in terms of our energy use and production for Australia as a whole—a centralist approach. Maybe sometimes it is necessary. Maybe that is why, as embryonic as it was in 1901, we formed a Commonwealth in the first place, where we could do things in a coherent, national way.
What we have done so far in this—and it has taken quite a while for this bill to actually get here, as the member for Corangamite and others know—is take steps along the way to a more unified electricity system, steps here to a uniform provision for gas pipelines across Australia and sensible direct provisions in this bill to assist a greenfields pipeline program for gas pipelines that were not there before. Western Australia has specific provisions under this bill. Everybody else is going to have to take their own approach to put in their own legislation. Western Australia is different. Why? Because it is half a continent. Why? Because there are such rich gas resources, not only land based but off Western Australia.
Back in the 1960s, as I know certainly from Claude Killick, who is the president of Condell Park branch—because he was out in the boat with the Yank captain, off looking for petroleum, and he ended up on Barrow Island—he saw the scans, around Barrow Island and the area they were mapping looking for petroleum resources, that were alive with gas resources.
In the Chevron project on Barrow Island, with its associated first attempt, really, in Australia to lock up the CO directly into the ground at the place where they produce the product, when I went there the initial cost of that program of sequestration was $36 million; the projected cost was about $60 million. It was a condition of their going onto Barrow Island to do this particular work in the gas area, from the state government of Western Australia, that they undertake the sequestration of the CO, and the work that has been done there is brilliant. But it is not just the Gorgon field that has been developed. We have a minimum of 60, maybe 100, years of resource security and gas supply just from the Gorgon field and its associated field. They are also exploring further out in those other rich areas that Claude Killick and others saw on their screens in the 1960s.
We have an immense resource that needs to be used well. We have a resource now as part of the Gorgon project that needs to be pipelined back into Australia. Most of that product goes overseas where we will earn income not just from Japan or China but largely from Korea and other areas. So it adds to what has already been done, but this is new capacity that is coming on line. There is also a direct pipeline to the mainland to feed into the national grid and be part of the national gas pipeline. It is a fundamentally important thing for Australia to build this capacity. Coal was our greatest export. What is our most underutilised resource? It is gas.
We have a major contract worth $25 billion to supply Guangdong province in China. That allowed Woodside to say: ‘We’ve got three trains set up on the Burrup Peninsula. We can now commit to a fourth train.’ Even though the contract was at a 30 per cent discount because the Prime Minister really wanted to push forward and get this project underway, the other ones that we have signed up to have meant building capacity—Woodside has a fifth train. We saw the recent development yesterday on the Sunrise agreement with Timor-Leste for the further development of those fields.
But we do not use our gas well enough in Australia. This government never gave the go-ahead to Chevron on the mainland to develop a gas-to-liquids regime. I know because I was briefed when I was running Labor’s regional committee. The person who did the briefing now works as chief adviser in this area to Martin Ferguson. She is quite brilliant in the area, as Chevron was in saying: ‘Here is an absolute resource that Australia has. We not only flog this stuff overseas; we should be developing a gas-to-liquids industry here in Australia based on that rich resource to feed in to all of our natural gas needs and our energy needs in Australia and do it on a national basis.’
I think it was short-sighted in the extreme for the government not to really give this project a go and put effort behind it to get it started, because we need new national schemes, not compartmentalised state approaches to these things. We need new drivers for our economy. Given the nature of Australia, it will always be in the energy area that governments really need to be pushed. I am glad to see that very shortly we are going to get an answer from the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources on a report that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry and Resources brought down in the 39th parliament. We are now up to the 41st parliament, and I have been on the industry and resources committee from that 39th parliament. We have had to wait for these bills.
It is an old sort of approach here that the government blames the states and says they have taken all the time in terms of coming to an agreement. We know how recalcitrant the states can be, but we know that the Commonwealth should be the engine driver of this approach. It is right and proper to have an entirely national approach to this issue and have a coherent program. It is also right and proper that we drive from a national level. We need to have a national pipeline running from one end of Australia to the other and we need to feed into that national pipeline, not just for our domestic use as it is now and not just for the use of current industries. We need to build new Australian industries Australia-wide utilising our resources, because it is much more efficient with respect to greenhouse emission than utilising coal. We know that our coal-fired power stations supplied with natural gas from offshore Western Australia and mainland Australia will work better, fire better and be more efficient. Gasification of that process means that there is less greenhouse effect and therefore less global warming as well.
It is an excellent thing to see that the member for Corangamite has announced effectively today—inherent and inferential though it might be—that he has finally become a centralist and that he finally believes in the Commonwealth of Australia’s national powers demonstrated in this bill! Let us see it happen in a whole range of areas. Let us see that not just with water but with gas. Let us see it happen in education. Let us see the Commonwealth government really willing to take on the key issues that we have and from a leadership base say: ‘We not only believe in ourselves; we believe in the people of Australia and their willingness to cooperatively reshape the map of Australia politically by doing things from a totally national perspective.’ In deference to those who want to go on with the adjournment debate, I will finish my remarks there, but it is a wonderful day, Stewie, on which you have become a centralist!
Debate (on motion by Mr Neville) adjourned.
I move:
That the Main Committee do now adjourn.
One of the biggest issues facing my electorate is securing a sustainable water supply. The evidence of the drought is everywhere. We have been on stage 4 water restrictions in Ballarat since November last year. Our iconic lake, Lake Wendouree, an important tourist attraction and site for sporting events in the heart of our great city, is completely dry. Farmers who have worked the land for generations are getting by on just the bare bones. Our water catchments are at 13.7 per cent. If we do not do something and we continue with the current low rainfall, Ballarat’s water supply will run out by April 2008.
ABS statistics released this week further stress the need for an immediate solution to Ballarat’s water crisis. Ballarat is one of the four fastest growing inland statistical districts in Australia, the other three being Mildura, Bendigo and Shepparton. Bendigo and Ballarat are adding great social and economic value to the state of Victoria. Ballarat and Bendigo are also important historic cities that hold an important place in Australia’s history.
Those of you who believe regional communities can work through the drought with little impact do not appreciate the urgency or seriousness of the matter in our district. Without a sustainable long-term water supply, the lives of regional communities like Ballarat and Bendigo are literally drying up. The Howard government cannot leave us high and dry when it comes to securing a long-term water supply.
Last year on 18 October the Bracks Victorian government announced the construction of the goldfields super pipe project. The pipeline will provide Bendigo and Ballarat with a reliable and secure water supply. The pipeline is part of a wider $204 million package that contains groundwater and recycling initiatives that will secure sustainable water supplies for our district. The pipeline will connect Ballarat’s White Swan Reservoir to Bendigo’s Lake Eppalock, which is currently being connected to the Goulburn-Murray system. The water will be purchased from willing sellers in the Goulburn system, which has an allocation of about one million megalitres, meaning that Ballarat will be accessing less than two per cent of the system.
I spoke to the minister at Christmas last year, asking that he look to fund the super pipe project. I did not seek to make that conversation public at the time because I wanted to provide the minister with the opportunity to consider the proposed pipeline, to gather more information as he requested and to develop a more informed view. He has had lobbying, certainly, from the City of Ballarat and also from industry groups such as MasterFoods and McCain who are desperate to secure our water supply. The minister has now had ample time and information on which to base his decision. I now ask the federal government to commit the $90 million required to finish this goldfields super pipe to secure Ballarat’s water supply so we do not run out of water in April 2008.
I rise today to discuss the apple and pear industry and the challenges being faced by our fruit producers and associated industries. Apple production in Tasmania, for example, in 2004-05 was some 45,000 tonnes, and Tasmania is responsible for almost 65 per cent of all Australian apple exports to overseas markets. In 2005-06, the value of Tasmania’s apple exports was approximately $4.92 million and, of this amount, some $720,000 worth of apples were exported to the ASEAN region; $480,000, to the European Union; $1.5 million, to North Asia; and some $220,000, to other regions. Tasmanian apples are exported to a wide range of countries, including the United Kingdom, the USA, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vanuatu and Vietnam.
Restrictions on the export of Tasmanian apple varieties, other than Fuji apples to Japan, were lifted in July 2006. Tasmanian orchardists can now export any variety of apples, which will potentially increase apple exports and allow growers who have not previously been able to export to Japan to begin doing so. Exports of apples to Japan are also expected to grow due to a solution having been found to the problem of apples browning due to fumigation. Australia’s high-quality product and disease-free status have been pivotal in ensuring export markets for our fruit produce.
The future of the apple and pear industry, especially in Tasmania, is seen to lie in upgrading rather than in expansion. Investment in high-density plantings with high-value cultivars and newer varieties will capitalise on Tasmania’s mild climatic conditions, reliable production and availability of land and water resources.
However, despite this good news, the apple and pear industry faces other significant challenges. In particular, there are significant concerns that imported produce could present a serious threat to the industry by potentially carrying the devastating bacterial disease of fire blight and other exotic pests. For example, the recent decision to allow New Zealand apples into Australia, even under the strictest conditions, raises the real spectre of fire blight, a disease which significantly threatens the biosecurity of our own apple and pear industry.
The facts about fire blight include: (1) there is no fruit-growing area in New Zealand free of fire blight; (2) fire blight has spread from the USA to 46 other countries and, with the exception of one instance, scientists have not been able to confirm the method of introduction; (3) the disease can be spread by wind, rain, birds, insects and aerosol droplets; (4) Australia has a significant number of insects that could spread the disease, and it also has myriad host plants other than apples and pears which are susceptible to the disease; and (5) Australia has much more favourable weather conditions than New Zealand for the establishment and spread of fire blight. I understand that in ideal conditions the bacteria can replicate from one to one billion in just 30 hours. In some areas with similar climates to Australia where fire blight has been introduced, the disease has made it impossible to grow pears economically.
The disease-free status of Australian fruit has been pivotal in attracting and retaining export markets for our produce. The recent decision by Biosecurity Australia to allow imports of New Zealand apples was made despite a 400-page submission prepared by Apple and Pear Australia Ltd, the national industry peak body, against such a decision. The Import Risk Analysis Appeal Panel’s subsequent dismissal of industry concerns that such action could enable the disease fire blight to infect Australia has been roundly rejected by peak bodies in the industry. These include Tasmanian apple growers, who appealed the decision; Fruit Growers Tasmania Inc., who are proposing to hold talks with the Tasmanian government about ensuring that state quarantine barriers are maintained at such a level that they will prevent any risk of fire blight and other diseases entering my home state of Tasmania; and the Australian Apple and Pear Growers Association, who have indicated that they may seek to have a Senate inquiry into the decision of Biosecurity Australia.
I believe that our fruit growers deserve an independent and transparent process of quarantine protection which ensures adequate inspection of orchards at appropriate times—for example, immediately prior to harvest—in order to ensure protection against the spread of fire blight. It is somewhat ironic that there is an arrangement that Tasmanian growers exporting apples to China have their orchards inspected three times a year for fire blight even when we do not have the disease, yet our own growers are being asked to accept that one inspection of orchards—which may take place at a time in the growing cycle when the presence of the disease is not apparent—is permitted for produce being imported here from a country that does have the disease.
Retention of Australia’s pest-free status in relation to fire blight and European canker is critical to both maintaining and growing our markets and to ensuring the continued viability of our fruit industry— (Time expired)
Last week we learned that the Badgerys Creek airport project is still on hold. The minister for transport advised councils in Western Sydney that, while a second major airport seems unnecessary for at least two decades, the site will remain in reserve in case there is a change. We were promised a review in 2005 and we are still waiting for that. But now, according to the minister, a further inquiry into air traffic will be held in 2009.
But not if this government is thrown out in this year’s election. A Labor government will scrap plans for an airport at Badgerys Creek once and for all. The people of Western Sydney who are affected by the government’s dithering will have a clear choice: stick with representatives like the members for Lindsay and Macarthur and face another 20 years or more of uncertainty, or support Labor and remove the unreasonable restrictions that this government has placed on their lives and their homes. When it comes to Badgerys Creek airport, who can the people of Western Sydney trust? In March 2001 the member for Lindsay declared:
Badgerys Creek is dead, hooray—
The member went on to say:
I am proud to have led the fight against Badgerys Creek airport. In December last year John Howard formally adopted the view that Sydney does not need extra airport capacity for a decade.
But the member for Lindsay should realise that, under the Liberals, Badgerys Creek airport is like the parrot in the Monty Python sketch: it is not dead; it is just resting! Perhaps the member for Lindsay does not plan on being around for another decade. At her gala dinner last year the program listed her achievements:
While in parliament I have been involved in a number of ground breaking changes for Lindsay and Australia. Some of my most memorable local achievements have been—
And she includes in the short list:
... no airport at Badgerys Creek!
She is right about one thing: there is no airport at Badgerys Creek. But there is a 1,700-hectare site which is quarantined from development for the next 20 years and thousands more hectares affected by imaginary flight paths and noise contours—all of that smack in the middle of Western Sydney.
The New South Wales government cannot plan transport links or residential development in the region because all the maps have ‘Airport Site’ stamped on them. Yet we heard the member for Mitchell saying on Monday that New South Wales had the greatest shortfall of broad-hectare land available for residential development in Australia—no wonder, when the federal government has tied up thousands of hectares just in case it thinks it will need an airport in 20 years time.
While the rest of Australia is progressing, this government is locking Western Sydney in a time warp. State and local governments cannot make planning decisions because the federal government will not lift its quarantine of the site and surrounding areas. The development of Western Sydney as a whole is now affected by this government’s dithering on Badgerys Creek. But the cruellest blow is to the landholders and residents in the area. They cannot afford to just hang around for 20 years waiting for the government to make up its mind about Badgerys Creek airport. They face unreasonable planning requirements for the most basic changes to their homes. A big part of that problem is the government’s failure to review the site needs in 2005, as it promised. A review might at least have refined the plans and made a selection of runway alignments, which would greatly reduce the area currently quarantined. The people of Western Sydney have lived under the cloud of Badgerys Creek airport plans for more than 20 years. They should not be made to suffer for another 20 years or more.
We need a government with the guts to make a decision here and now about Badgerys Creek. We need a government that knows that enough is enough. We are sick and tired of the weasel words of the member for Lindsay. We need a Labor government to release Western Sydney from the constraints imposed by the airport designation of land at Badgerys Creek. I know that the new Labor member for Lindsay who will be there after the 2007 election supports our stance 100 per cent.
I rise this afternoon to talk about an issue of vital importance not only to my electorate of Moncrieff but to all Gold Coast residents. That issue is road infrastructure. It is of particular concern to me because Gold Coast residents are now choking as a result of the success of our city. The Gold Coast has been Australia’s fastest growing city for the past 25 years, and it is anticipated by noted demographer Bernard Salt from KPMG that it will be Australia’s fastest growing region for the next 25 years.
As a representative of this city, along with the members for Forde, Fadden and McPherson, I must put on the record my total frustration with the complete lack of action on road infrastructure by the Queensland state Labor government. It is very clear, when one looks at traffic congestion on the Gold Coast, where the fault lies. To put it in the most basic terms, if you look at all roads on the Gold Coast, there is only one for which the federal government has a significant proportion of responsibility, and that is the M1. The back highway, the Pacific Highway, whatever name you want to put to it—that is the road with which the federal government has a connection and for which it has some responsibility.
With that one exception, every other road on the Gold Coast is either a state government road or a local council road, and, in both respects, the Commonwealth government has stepped up to the plate in terms of funding. When it comes to local government roads, under the Roads to Recovery program, which has seen record investment go direct to local councils from the Australian government, we more than doubled road funding to the Gold Coast City Council. When you turn to the issue of Commonwealth government funding for the Queensland Labor government, this is where the scab can be lifted off to reveal the state minister responsible for the complete lack of action on Gold Coast roads—the Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Paul Lucas.
Under AusLink, a project investing some $15 billion in land transport infrastructure across Australia, we see that funding for Queensland roads was increased by the Howard government by some 119 per cent. So we more than doubled road funding to the Queensland Labor government, notwithstanding that the Beattie Labor government is the single biggest beneficiary of the GST windfall from the Australian government. So, despite being awash with cash through the GST and through the Commonwealth government having more than doubled the amount of road funding, the Beattie state Labor government is still unable, even at the most cursory level, to provide any kind of real investment in Gold Coast roads. The consequences are that Gold Coast residents continue to choke from traffic congestion.
It is particularly frustrating to see that one consequence of this lack of action on state roads is that there is now an obscene amount of pressure on the Pacific Motorway. In the same way that it has not acted with respect to the Ipswich Motorway, the Queensland government, rather than build new arterial roads or improve the carrying capacity of arterial roads along the Pacific Motorway in response to the rapid expansion of the population base of the Gold Coast, seems quite happy to sit back and allow all of the suburban traffic to flow onto the Pacific Motorway, resulting in the ridiculous situation where the motorway effectively becomes gridlocked between the hours of 7 am and 9 am and from 3.30 pm until about 6 pm—gridlocked because the state government refuses to spend the money required to ensure our rapidly growing city can adequately have its infrastructure needs met. The state government is happy to funnel traffic onto the Pacific Motorway and then claim that the Commonwealth government is not doing enough.
My newsflash to Paul Lucas, the Queensland minister, is that, with the Commonwealth government having more than doubled the amount of road funding it provides to the state government, Gold Coast residents demand action, and I demand action, from the Queensland state government. We do not own the roads, but we are happy to write the cheques and we have been writing the cheques. A 119 per cent increase is more than enough money for the Queensland state Labor government to pick up its act and start building the kind of road infrastructure that Gold Coast residents rightly deserve and demand. I call on the Queensland state Labor government to stop passing the buck and to step up to the plate.
Girraween Activity Centre is an out of school hours care centre located in the grounds of St Anthony’s school at Girraween. Along with the children from St Anthony’s needing after-school care, they also collect children from Girraween Public School and walk them to the service, and on any given afternoon you will see a group of around 40 children making the walk from Girraween Public to St Anthony’s.
They already have a waiting list for 2007 that has about 30 children on it. The hardest part of that is that at least 17 of the children on the waiting list who will not get a place in 2007 are siblings of children already enrolled in the service. As a matter of fact, all of the 30 children who are on the list are starting kindergarten and will not have access to after-school care for 2007. A lot of the children come from multicultural families who do not have the support of family and friends in the country, so child care is their only option. Although most of those families—and I know quite a few of them—speak English at home, there is nothing that replaces for a four-year-old child that experience of spending time with children who speak only English. It is an important part of their preparation for their school life.
Girraween Activity Centre is funded for 80 children and has no more indoor space to expand its service. The principal of Girraween Public School down the road has agreed to let it operate a service from the school grounds as long as the service can find a suitable portable building to operate from, as the school has no vacant classrooms due to the large number of children enrolled in the school.
The problem, of course, is money. As a not-for-profit organisation and a community centre, finding the money needed to purchase or lease a building is difficult if not impossible. And here is the rub: the state government department, DOCS, does not provide funding for childcare centres and only deals with preschool support and kids with disabilities. It says the capital funding for before- and after-school care is a Commonwealth matter, which seems to be well understood. The Commonwealth department, FaCSIA, says there are no capital funding sources for building before- and after-school childcare centres, although there are some small grants for sustainability assistance of around $9,000 and for set-up services of around $2,000—considerably less than is needed to actually buy or lease an appropriate building.
The general federal government policy, according to the department, is that flexible shared arrangements can be made to use school halls and community services buildings so that separate capital grants are not provided for this purpose. Where is my community in all this? It is between a rock and a hard place. There are no spare school halls or classrooms at Girraween Public—in fact, they do not have a school hall—and every single schoolroom is filled to the brim. The same pressure from the growing community that the Girraween Activity Centre is facing, the Girraween Public School is also facing. They are bursting at the seams. Yet on the other side there is no public funding to build something specific, and 30 children and their families are left trying to figure out how they can get on without childcare services.
Labor understands about the need for additional physical infrastructure to be built by state and territory governments, community or private providers. This is why federal Labor has committed to providing extra financial assistance to build additional childcare centres on primary school grounds and other community land in partnership with childcare providers. The total investment would be $200 million and priority would be given to locations such as this one where early childhood services are not currently available or are insufficient to meet growing demand. Any new centres constructed under this initiative would incorporate early learning centres, and further discussion will take place with state and territory governments to ensure that new early learning centres incorporating long day care are considered in the planning of all new primary schools.
Unfortunately, children’s lives do not wait for the changing of governments and nor can the families in Girraween. It is pretty tough out there, in spite of the Treasurer’s belief that they have never had it so good. Making a family work, I would suggest, has never been more difficult—high rents, high house prices, high interest rates relative to the rest of the OECD, rising costs, but most importantly juggling family and work time with both parents working. Now, in addition to that, my community in Girraween has to spend valuable family time trying to find ways to provide for themselves something that should by now be a basic service, which is access to good-quality, affordable child care. The lives of children move at the speed of light; they are two and then they are three, and the time that families spend together with their children and the service they provide their children in those years are the most important in the child’s life. They are not called ‘formative years’ for nothing. I commend my Labor colleagues for putting forward policy that recognises that.
Enid Alison Dowling OBE, BEc died on 18 February at the age of 94. She was late of Toowoomba and formerly of Tara in southern Queensland. She was born in Sydney in 1912. Her mother died when she was only three years of age. Her distraught father threw himself into work, travelling overseas extensively. Enid and her elder sister and younger brother were brought up through those important formative years mostly by nannies and housemaids. After a couple of years, her father remarried, and a modicum of family life resumed.
Enid had an interesting childhood. Her family lived right on the harbour and she often watched the sailing clippers, with their loads of wheat and wool, coming in and out through the heads. She saw Major De Groot cut the ribbon at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And she was a keen sailor, spending many Sundays on the harbour with her brother, Bill.
Because her father felt it was important for girls to have a full education, Enid attended Sydney university and obtained a degree in economics. It was not easy. She did secretarial work during the day and attended lectures and studied at night. Those were the Depression days, so she often could not get time off from her work to sit for exams. She would therefore resign from that job and find another job after the exams.
In 1938 she married Ron, and this brought about a major change in her life. All she had known was Sydney—she had been born, raised and educated there and she had worked there—and suddenly she was a farmer’s wife in central western New South Wales, but she never completely accepted the role of a farmer’s wife.
Enid was a superb organiser. She started the Gumble CWA, in which she was active right up until the end, some 60 years later. After the family moved to Tara in southern Queensland, she became active on the Tara hospital board auxiliary.
In 1950 Enid and her children, Bill and Alison, moved to Queensland, which, according to her family, was a bit of a culture shock for her. At her funeral, her son related a story to demonstrate just what Enid faced. Soon after arriving in Queensland, a neighbour called to say that they had seen a dingo on the family’s back boundary, and so a dingo drive was organised. The assembly point was the homestead. Half-a-dozen men duly arrived, discussed their tactics and then set off. Enid thought they would like a cup of tea when they returned, so she pulled out her best china and the silver teapot and made sandwiches, which she arranged on a silver server. When the hunters returned, she offered them a cup of tea, and one said: ‘If you don’t mind, Mrs Dowling, we would rather have a rum.’ So this Sydney girl’s education moved on apace.
Enid had a lively intelligence and was always interested in politics. Queensland politics was going through some dynamic changes at the time, and it was not surprising that she joined the Country Party. After years in the political darkness, the coalition finally won government in 1957. It was an exciting time for country people, who finally felt they had a voice. This created an opportunity for Enid to embrace the momentum and help in the formation of the Young Country Party, which Margaret Lawrie had started at about the same time. Enid went on to succeed Margaret Lawrie as its supervisor and led the youth of the Country Party into its golden era.
At this stage she started to reach her life’s fulfilment. She was dealing with young people in a political atmosphere and she seemed to have a wonderful rapport with them. She would talk freely about her hopes and also about their hopes, their disappointments and their political aspirations. Several of her proteges went on to become members of parliament, including many cabinet ministers and even a premier, and me.
She travelled extensively through the state to conferences, meetings and rallies and was greeted affectionately as Mrs D—right up until her death, she was known to us all as Mrs D. I attended those rallies, and she would throw open her home. We would see the captains of industry and state and federal cabinet ministers who had come to talk to young people aged from around 16 to 24. It was quite revolutionary in those days, and we got a great grounding.
In 1977 she was awarded the OBE, and I quote a section from her citation:
Mrs Dowling has been unsparing of her time and talents and numerous worthy bodies have benefited from her drive and enthusiasm in the cause of rural women.
In extending sympathy to Bill, Penny and Alison, let me say that this was a life well lived.