Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr McClelland.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The Personal Property Securities (Corporations and Other Amendments) Bill 2011 is the final set of amendments to the Personal Property Securities Act (PPS Act) and consequential amendments prior to the Personal Property Securities (PPS) regime coming into effect later this year.
The PPS Act, which was passed by the parliament in 2009, created one national law with one set of rules governing interests in property other than land that secure debts or other obligations.
The effect of the PPS Act is to simplify over 70 Commonwealth, state and territory laws, common law and the rules of equity, which govern security interests in personal property. It will also replace the many registers of personal property security interests that complement these state and territory acts, with the one PPS Register.
PPS reform is a significant part of the Council of Australian Government’s deregulation agenda. The reform will deliver major benefits for business and consumers by reducing transaction costs, making lenders more willing to accept different kinds of personal property as security for loans and facilitating the extension of credit to borrowers.
Two sets of amendments to the PPS Act and consequential amendments to the Corporations Act have been passed since the PPS Act was first enacted in 2009. The regime now requires some further amendments to take into account the practical realities of commercial practice, before the reforms take effect in October 2011.
The purpose of the bill is to make amendments which have been raised by stakeholders and practitioners to ensure that all aspects of the regime are appropriate for users and take into account their particular business practices.
The bill makes a number of minor and technical amendments, including:
The bill will also introduce certain practical measures to ensure that the regime is appropriate for users, including amendments to facilitate consumer access to data held on other databases to confirm whether a motor vehicle is stolen or written off.
The bill also provides an additional method for states that have not yet referred power to the Commonwealth with respect to PPS to be able to ‘adopt’ the relevant version of the PPS Act and refer power to the Commonwealth to make subsequent amendments to the PPS Act.
Conclusion
A comprehensive and consistent national PPS system will benefit many sectors of the Australian economy. These reforms will streamline the way in which lenders conduct their businesses, facilitate the extension of credit to borrowers and reduce borrowing costs. I am pleased that this last set of amendments necessary to effect PPS reform has been prepared so that the regime can take effect in October of this year.
These proposed amendments have been the subject of detailed consultation with stakeholders through the committee process, and I would also like to thank the individuals and organisations who participated in the consultation process. I note that these amendments have also been agreed to by states and territories, through the Ministerial Council for Corporations and the Standing Committee of Attorneys General, in accordance with the Personal Property Securities Inter-Governmental Agreement.
I would conclude by noting the presence of the member for Berowra in the House and I would specifically recognise the work he did as a former Attorney-General on this significant reform. I commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Garrett.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The Schools Assistance Amendment (Financial Assistance) Bill 2011 makes amendments to the Schools Assistance Act 2008.
The bill amends the Schools Assistance Act 2008 to extend the existing funding arrangements, including indexation arrangements, until the end of 2013 and for grants for capital expenditure until the end of 2014. This will ensure funding certainty for all Catholic and independent schools beyond the current duration of the act.
The bill confirms the Australian government’s commitment to ensuring certainty of investment in all Australian schools.
The government is conducting a review of funding for schooling due to report in 2011, this year. The government must maintain an ability to provide certainty for the non-government sector to commit to expenditure in 2013 and, in respect of capital grants, until the end of 2014, while the review of funding for schooling is taking place.
By amending the Schools Assistance Act 2008, the Australian government will be able to provide continuity for capital grants to supplement funds provided by the state and territory education authorities and funds provided by non-government school authorities until 2014.
This amendment provides an opportunity to continue good infrastructure projects for our schools. It will enable the government to continue to work with school communities, parents and families in the non-government school sector to build on the partnerships that are so critical to improving outcomes for Australian primary and secondary students.
The Australian government seeks to improve educational outcomes and assist in the provision of school facilities, particularly in ways that contribute most to raising the overall level of educational achievement of all Australian school students.
I commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Garrett.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Today I am introducing a bill that will, for the first time, enable families to access the childcare rebate at least on a fortnightly basis. As a result around 700,000 Australian families will now be able to receive this crucial assistance at the time their childcare fees are due.
Importantly, many families will be able to receive this payment weekly as the majority of childcare services submit attendance information weekly.
Families will also be able to choose to have their childcare rebate paid directly to their childcare service to receive an immediate fee reduction, or directly into their bank accounts.
From July this year families will have the choice of four options for receiving the childcare rebate. They may:
This will ensure families have the maximum flexibility to manage their childcare costs within the family budget.
For the first time childcare services will be able to receive the rebate on behalf of families—delivering a direct fee reduction for those families that elect this method of payment. We know that families will welcome this option—98 per cent of families currently choose to receive childcare benefit this way.
To ensure that families do not accumulate any unforeseen debts as a result of overestimating their income, this bill also contains amendments to temporarily withhold 15 per cent of each rebate payment for families receiving a higher than zero rate of childcare benefit. This is consistent with current arrangements for quarterly childcare rebate payments, where the final quarterly payment may be used to offset any childcare payment debts incurred by a family.
This measure builds on the Australian government’s massive investment in improving the affordability of early education and care.
Overall, we are providing $14.9 billion to help 800,000 Australian families annually with the cost of child care, through the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate. This includes $8.7 billion over four years to 2013-14, to reduce childcare fees for low- and middle-income earners under the childcare benefit and $6.2 billion to assist working families with out-of-pocket childcare expenses under the childcare rebate.
In 2008, we delivered on our election commitment to increase the childcare rebate from 30 to 50 per cent of out-of-pocket costs, from a maximum of $4,354 to $7,500 per child per year. Members of this House would recall that under the Howard government families could only claim a maximum of $4,354 per child per year—some 72 per cent less than under the Gillard Labor government.
We also know that as a result of this measure, out-of-pocket costs, after subsidies, for a family with one child in long day care and earning $55,000 a year, have fallen from 13 per cent of their disposable income in 2004 to seven per cent in 2010.
We also increased the frequency of childcare rebate payments to families from yearly to quarterly, so families would not have to wait until the end of each year to receive assistance with their childcare fees.
Under the Howard government, families had to wait until the end of the year to receive this important assistance.
When it comes to improving the affordability of child care our record stands head and shoulders above those opposite. Overall we have committed more than $18 billion over four years in funding for early childhood education and child care—more than twice the amount provided in the last four years of the Howard government.
The Australian government has an unapologetically ambitious agenda to improve access to affordable, quality early education and care for Australian families. This measure will ensure that families are able to receive their childcare rebate payment at the time they incur their childcare fees and help manage their family budget.
Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Garrett.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Child Care and Other Measures) Bill 2011 makes a number of administrative amendments to family assistance law to strengthen debt recovery and improve compliance and the administration of the childcare benefit.
These amendments will make important changes to the family assistance administration act and other legislation to improve accountability in the childcare sector.
We know how important this is.
The overnight collapse of ABC Learning in 2008 was quite simply unprecedented.
The government’s quick and decisive action meant that 90 per cent of these centres continue to operate for Australian families today.
Had the government’s support not been provided, almost 100,000 families would have had to find alternative care arrangements with little or no notice.
Since 2008 the government has introduced a range of new measures to ensure the financial viability of childcare providers including strengthening approvals processes and requiring additional notification of closures of centres.
This bill will broaden the powers of the secretary to refuse the approval of a childcare service for the purposes of family assistance law, to ensure that operators are fit and proper persons.
This will give the Australian government greater scrutiny over operators and their past practices.
The bill will also enable the Australian government to offset and recover payments owed by one service from another services operated by the same operator.
This will ensure that operators that run up debts to the Commonwealth in one service can be held accountable for their actions.
For instance, this will stop an operator who accumulates debts, and then exits the market, from re-entering the market under a restructured company with similar but not identical directors.
Under current legislation, the government can only consider the exact operator and their history in the industry.
This will facilitate a broader consideration of the childcare operators, associated organisations and individuals in both the approvals and ongoing approvals processes.
The new approvals processes include financial checks for new childcare centre operators to make sure they are viable from the outset and well placed to meet quality standards.
The amendments in this bill represent a part of our commitment to improving accountability within the childcare market, and protecting the market from unscrupulous operators.
Importantly, the bill will also support the government’s $273.7 million investment in the national quality framework.
The changes to protected information will support the national quality framework by enabling the Commonwealth to share information on childcare services with state and territory regulatory bodies.
This will benefit services by not having to provide the same information to more than one body.
The framework, endorsed by COAG, will:
We are doing this because we know from years of international research that the first five years of a child’s life shapes their future—their health, learning and social development—and we want to make sure that future is bright.
I commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Brendan O’Connor.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
This bill will allow Customs and Border Protection to conduct a 12-month trial of X-ray scan technology. The equipment will be licensed for the internal search of a person suspected on reasonable grounds to be internally concealing a suspicious substance.
Currently, an internal X-ray scan of a person can only be carried out by a medical practitioner at a place specified in regulations, for example, a hospital or surgery.
The bill will allow, with the consent of the detainee, an initial nonmedical internal X-ray scan of a person to be carried out by Customs and Border Protection officers using new body scan technology that produces a computer image of a person’s internal cavities within a skeletal structure. Where the body scan image supports a suspicion of internal concealment, the existing regime governing an internal search by a medical practitioner will then apply.
The use, by consent, of body scan technology as an initial nonmedical internal scan will reduce the number of people referred to hospital for an internal search thereby reducing the impact on the resources of the Australian Federal Police, hospital emergency units and Customs and Border Protection. In the 2009-10 financial year there were 205 detainees referred to the AFP to be taken to hospital for an internal search, of which 48 were confirmed to be internally concealing an illicit substance.
The bill will extend the existing safety and training safeguards applying to the conduct of an external search of a detainee using prescribed equipment to the use of body scan equipment to carry out a nonmedical internal scan.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has provided input to the privacy impact assessment and all comments have been incorporated. The Office of International Law in the Attorney-General’s Department has advised that the amendments would not breach the right to privacy as set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I also want to add that the X-rays not required for any potential criminal proceedings will be destroyed in a timely manner.
The Privacy and FOI Policy Branch of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner will be consulted prior to the prescription of body scan technology. I commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Shorten.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Today I introduce this bill to amend the Corporations Act 2001 (Corporations Act) and the Payment System (Regulation) Act 1998.
By way of background information, the Corporations Legislation Amendment (Financial Services Modernisation) Act 2009, which commenced on 6 May 2010, inserted a new chapter into the Corporations Act—chapter 5D—that created a new national uniform regime for regulating trustee companies.
A trustee company provides a wide range of wealth management services including estate planning, administering deceased estates, managing the financial affairs of persons unable to look after their own interests, and administering charitable trusts and foundations. There are currently 11 licensed private trustee companies in Australia.
Since the commencement of the new national regime, the government has received representations from the industry, in particular the representative association—the Trustee Corporations Association of Australia—and the state and territory governments indicating that a number of amendments are required to increase market efficiency by ensuring restructuring of company groups which operated under the state and territory based regulatory framework.
This bill demonstrates our government’s understanding of the ongoing requirement to consult stakeholders on new and old regulatory regimes to ensure that policy objectives and outcomes are being met and to continually review and improve these regulatory regimes where appropriate so that all relevant parties are aware of their public policy obligations and requirements. And also, we do this to confirm that the government’s intended social and economic benefits are being delivered to the community—in other words, to check that the wellbeing of the Australian society is being enhanced.
This bill contains a number of measures to improve the operation of chapter 5D of the Corporations Act. This bill provides for the voluntary transfer of trustee business between entities. Prior to the commencement of chapter 5D, many corporate groups operated multiple subsidiaries in order to comply with the former state and territory regimes. The industry is now seeking a feasible and cost-effective process for consolidating the business of these subsidiaries into one Commonwealth licensed entity.
The bill provides for ‘compulsory’ transfers of trustee company business from a failing licensed trustee company to a state or territory public trustee. Currently, chapter 5D of the Corporations Act precludes the transfer of trustee company business from a licence-cancelled company to a state or territory public trustee because the public trustees are not licensed trustee companies. It is appropriate and important for the purpose of protecting the assets and stakeholders of failing or demonstrably noncompliant licensed trustee companies to rectify this situation.
At present, there is no formal procedure under which a prospective licensee applies to the government to be listed as a licensed trustee corporation. This contrasts with the former state based system where most jurisdictions published administrative (rather than legislative) criteria for applicants. This bill provides such a process.
To preserve the integrity of the new regime in chapter 5D and to prevent misrepresentations to the public, the bill provides that an entity is prohibited from holding itself out as a ‘licensed trustee company’ unless it holds an AFSL with a trustee company authorisation.
Finally, the bill would also amend the Payment System (Regulation) Act 1998 to protect participants in the automatic teller machine (ATM) system from prosecution under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.
This amendment is necessary because the Payment Systems (Regulation) Regulations 2006, which protect participants in the ATM system, sunsets in March 2011, as regulations made for the purposes of subparagraph 51(1)(a)(ii) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (formerly called the Trade Practices Act 1974) last for two years. To allow ATM participants to continue to comply with the Reserve Bank of Australia’s ATM reforms, a legislative change to the Payment System (Regulation) Act 1998 is required.
The Ministerial Council for Corporations has been consulted in relation to the amendments to the Corporations Act and has approved the trustee company amendments contained in this bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Bradbury.
Bill read a first time.
I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Today, I introduce a bill to strengthen the accountability and transparency of Australia’s executive remuneration framework and give shareholders more power over the pay of company directors and executives.
The bill implements the Gillard government’s response to the recommendations made by the Productivity Commission in its recent inquiry into Australia’s remuneration framework.
It is important that we have a system of remuneration that is not only internationally competitive, but that also appropriately rewards executives for their work and for the value that they bring to a company.
At the same time, directors should be accountable to shareholders for the level and composition of executive remuneration.
Shareholders are the owners of a company. They take on the risk of investing their capital and they share in a company’s profits and losses.
Shareholders, therefore, deserve more say over how the pay of company executives is set.
The government has sought to encourage shareholder engagement through the transparent disclosure of the details surrounding remuneration. This ensures that shareholders have the information they need to convey their views through the non-binding shareholder vote, and to hold directors accountable for their remuneration decisions.
While Australia’s remuneration framework is relatively strong, the global financial crisis highlighted a number of issues relating to remuneration structures.
In particular, it illustrated the dangers of remuneration structures that focus on short-term results, reward excessive risk-taking and promote corporate greed.
In March 2009, the government responded to these concerns by announcing reforms to curb excessive termination benefits or ‘golden handshake’ payments given to departing directors and executives. At the same time, the government also announced that it would ask the Productivity Commission to undertake a broader review of Australia’s remuneration framework.
The Productivity Commission undertook a thorough and comprehensive inquiry. Over the nine-month review process, the Productivity Commission received a total of 170 submissions and conducted a series of roundtables and public hearings.
Overall, the Productivity Commission found that Australia’s corporate governance and remuneration framework is highly ranked internationally.
However, it also recommended a range of reforms to further strengthen Australia’s remuneration framework.
The government, in its response to the inquiry, supported and further strengthened the majority of the recommendations. This bill implements many of these recommendations, and will put in place measures that will empower shareholders to influence the remuneration decisions of their company.
The ‘two-strikes’ test
A key measure in the bill is the ‘two-strikes’ test. This measure will subject the board of a company to greater accountability through the re-election process if it has not adequately responded to shareholder concerns on remuneration issues over two consecutive years.
The Corporations Act currently requires listed companies to put their remuneration report to a non-binding shareholder vote at the annual general meeting. While the introduction of the non-binding vote has seen a change in the way companies approach the compilation of their remuneration reports, shareholders currently have little recourse if boards choose to ignore strong ‘no’ votes.
The ‘two-strikes’ test gives shareholders more power to have their say.
Under this measure, the first strike is triggered where a company’s remuneration report receives a ‘no’ vote of 25 per cent or more. If this occurs, the company is required to explain in its subsequent remuneration report the action it has taken to address shareholders’ concerns. Alternatively, if those concerns have not been addressed, the company must outline the reasons why.
Some boards have already put in place processes to provide explanations of the issues surrounding remuneration to their shareholders, but it is not mandatory for them to do so. Formalising this practice for all listed companies will promote improved communication and engagement with shareholders.
If shareholders are still dissatisfied and the company receives another ‘no’ vote of 25 per cent or more at the following year’s annual general meeting, the second strike is triggered.
Once the second strike is triggered, shareholders are then given the opportunity to vote on a resolution to spill the board and subject the directors to re-election. If this spill resolution is passed by more than 50 per cent of eligible votes cast, then a spill meeting is to be held within 90 days, at which shareholders will be given the opportunity to vote on the re-election of the directors, one by one.
The Productivity Commission consulted extensively on this measure, particularly on the threshold level of a 25 per cent ‘no’ vote. The Productivity Commission concluded that a threshold of 25 per cent for each of the strikes was appropriate and is in line with the 75 per cent majority required for the passage of special resolutions.
A threshold of 25 per cent would better align with levels commonly accepted as demonstrating serious shareholder concern about remuneration, particularly in light of current voting patterns.
Whilst the threshold for each of the strikes will be set at 25 per cent, it should be noted that the threshold for the spill resolution will be set at 50 per cent.
This proposal targets the small number of boards that have not adequately addressed shareholder concerns over two consecutive years. The government believes that it is appropriate that these boards be subject to this additional scrutiny and accountability.
This measure sends a clear signal that unresponsive directors will be held accountable for their decisions on executive remuneration.
Remuneration consultants
The bill also contains measures to facilitate the independence of remuneration consultants.
The Productivity Commission inquiry concluded that the potential for conflicts of interest can arise where remuneration consultants report directly to the company executives and where they provide other services to the same company. Improved disclosure will help shareholders assess the independence of the advice that remuneration consultants provide to boards and their remuneration committees.
While the advice of remuneration consultants may be influential in determining a company’s remuneration decisions, it is important to recognise that the primary responsibility for remuneration arrangements rests with company directors.
The bill contains measures to require boards or remuneration committees to approve the engagement of a remuneration consultant. The remuneration consultant will be required to declare that their recommendations are free from undue influence and must provide their advice to non-executive directors or the remuneration committee, rather than directly to company executives.
In addition, boards will be required to provide an independence declaration, stating whether, in their view, the remuneration consultant’s recommendations are free from undue influence, and the board’s reasons for reaching this view.
The company will also need to disclose in its remuneration report key details regarding the consultant, such as the consultant used, the amount they were paid for providing remuneration recommendations as well as other services to the company.
These measures will deliver greater transparency for shareholders, as they will be in a better position to assess potential conflicts of interest associated with the use of remuneration consultants. By placing the onus on boards to demonstrate to shareholders the steps taken to ensure the independence of remuneration advice, the government also hopes to bring about a cultural change towards greater accountability around the use of remuneration consultants.
Prohibiting KMP from voting in remuneration matters
The bill also addresses conflicts of interest by prohibiting the company’s directors and key executives (or key management personnel) and their closely related parties from voting their shares in the non-binding vote on the remuneration report.
Currently, the Corporations Act does not prohibit key management personnel who hold shares in the company from participating in the non-binding shareholder vote on remuneration.
There is a real, as well as perceived, conflict of interest when key management personnel vote on their own remuneration packages.
As these directors and executives have an interest in approving their own remuneration arrangements, allowing them to participate in the non-binding vote may result in a higher approval rating on the remuneration report than might otherwise be achieved.
The bill prohibits key management personnel and their closely related parties that hold shares from participating in the non-binding vote on their own remuneration arrangements, as well as on the spill resolution.
Key management personnel and their closely related parties would also be prohibited from voting undirected proxies on the remuneration report and the spill resolution, except when they are the chair of the meeting and the shareholder has indicated their informed consent on their proxy voting form for the chair to exercise the proxy.
Key management personnel continue to be permitted to vote directed proxies on remuneration related resolutions.
Prohibiting hedging of incentive remuneration
The bill also ensures that executive remuneration remains linked to performance by prohibiting key management personnel from hedging their incentive remuneration.
Incentive remuneration aligns the interests of management with the interests of shareholders. However, it is currently possible for directors and executives to hedge their exposure to incentive remuneration.
This is a practice that is inconsistent with a key principle underlying Australia’s remuneration framework—that remuneration should be linked to performance.
Under the new law, key management personnel and their closely related parties will be prohibited from hedging the key management personnel’s incentive remuneration.
No vacancy
The bill also contains a measure to prevent boards declaring ‘no vacancy’ without explicit shareholder consent.
The ‘no vacancy’ rule allows a board to declare that it has no vacant positions even though the maximum number of directors allowed by the constitution has not been reached.
The ‘no vacancy’ rule provides boards with considerable power over the composition of the board, making it difficult for non-board-endorsed candidates to be elected.
The bill enhances the accountability of boards by ensuring that companies will be required to obtain the approval of their members for a declaration that there are no vacant board positions. A board may choose to declare ‘no vacancy’ where: its constitution allows such a declaration; there are fewer directors than the maximum number; and where a non-board-endorsed candidate has nominated for a board position.
Cherry picking
This bill also introduces amendments which ensure the enfranchisement of each shareholder who chooses to exercise their vote at an annual general meeting or extraordinary general meeting.
Proxies are allocated to directors or the chair by shareholders that are not able to attend a company meeting but still wish to vote. Shareholders can vote directed proxies, which specify how they wish to vote on a resolution. However, under the current law all directors except the chair have the ability not to exercise proxy votes that do not accord with their own views on a resolution and to exercise only those proxy votes that do support their position. This is called cherry picking. Cherry picking disenfranchises shareholders who made specific declarations about their intentions to vote and can result in outcomes that do not clearly reflect shareholder views on a resolution.
This bill ensures that all proxies will be voted. Either the nominated proxy holder will vote as directed or, if a proxy holder does not register at the meeting or the proxies are not voted by the proxy holder, the proxies will default to the chair, who has a duty to vote them as directed. This bill ensures that the wishes of shareholders can no longer be ignored.
Range of individuals named in the remuneration report
The bill also contains a measure to limit the remuneration details required to be disclosed in the remuneration report to the key management personnel of the consolidated entity. This will simplify the disclosures in the remuneration report to enable shareholders to better understand the company’s remuneration arrangements. This will also reduce the regulatory burden on companies, while maintaining an appropriate level of accountability.
Conclusion
While Australia’s current remuneration framework is strong, it is important that we are not complacent.
The Productivity Commission, while noting that Australia’s remuneration framework is highly ranked internationally, has recommended that the framework be further strengthened.
This bill will give unprecedented power to shareholders, improve the accountability of company directors on remuneration issues, address conflicts of interest that exist in the remuneration setting process and promote a culture of responsible remuneration practices.
These are significant but responsible reforms that will maintain Australia’s international competitiveness, while ensuring that boards are accountable to shareholders and the processes for remunerating executives are transparent.
Finally, I can inform the chamber that the Ministerial Council for Corporations was consulted in relation to the amendments to the laws in the national corporate regulation scheme, and has approved them as required under the Corporations Agreement.
I therefore present the explanatory memorandum to the bill and commend the bill to the House.
Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.
Debate resumed from 22 February, on motion by Ms Gillard:
That this bill be now read a second time.
It is good to have the chance to discuss this important piece of legislation and also to place this legislation in the context of the terrible disaster which has befallen so many areas of our country. Over this summer of disasters we have seen appalling damage first to the crops and settlements of the Riverina before Christmas, then in Central Queensland in the early part of the new year we saw the explosive floods in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley behind Brisbane. Brisbane itself along with Ipswich suffered major inundation and much of northern Victoria was an inland sea in the middle of January. Finally, we had the devastation of Cyclone Yasi, which almost blew to bits the town of Tully and other settlements in Far North Queensland.
It has been a shocking summer. In addition to the disasters that I have mentioned there has been serious flooding in Western Australia and significant flooding in northern New South Wales and in other parts of the Murray-Darling Basin as the floodwaters pass from Queensland over the border. But, while we saw terrible damage from nature, as always we saw the grit and the stoicism of the Australian people and we saw the professionalism of the emergency services aided and assisted by various municipal offices and the city and local councils of the affected areas. It has well been said that, over this summer of disasters, we saw the worst from Mother Nature but we saw the best from human nature.
Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the disaster we have also seen a federal government acting in character. The character of this government is when it sees a problem to reach for a tax. Plainly, the Commonwealth government must spend what is reasonably necessary to assist flood reconstruction and to assist the victims of these terrible floods and storms. On that point this House is entirely united. We must spend the money. The only difference between the government and the opposition is over how that money is raised. The government believes that the money should be raised through a tax—a new levy to raise $1.8 billion. The opposition believes that the money should be raised through additional savings. Plainly, savings are available. When the Prime Minister went to the National Press Club to first announce this measure she conceded when asked a question by a journalist that, if the costs ultimately were more than $5.6 billion, further savings would be found. So there is a clear admission by the Prime Minister and other senior members of the government that there is scope for further savings.
The coalition did not shrink from the task of identifying savings that would have saved Australians from this additional tax. We were criticised for it but still we held firm in our resolve to find the appropriate savings. The government was not so resolved. As soon as people started to criticise the savings measures that the government had announced, they were dumped. On the one hand, you have an opposition which does not shirk the task of finding savings and having found savings sticks with them; on the other hand, you have a government which will not find the full quantum of savings and the instant it is subjected to pressure goes to water and dumps the relevant savings.
One of the worst aspects of this tax is that it came in the wake of the most impassioned pleas by the Prime Minister to millions of Australians to give generously. She asked the Australian people to give of their hearts to the suffering people of Queensland. Having told them that they should give generously, she then proposes to coerce them with a new tax. That is so contrary to the normal Australian spirit. The concept of mateship that the Prime Minister evoked was simply out of place in the consideration of a new tax. Mates help each other; they do not tax each other. Mateship comes from people; it does not come from governments. Mateship is what people choose to do; it is not what they are forced to do.
I would be the last person to attribute bad faith to any member of this parliament. I would be the last person to bandy accusations of bad faith against the government. But it is hard to avoid, in this case, the suspicion that what the government has tried to do is exploit people’s goodwill towards flood victims to help it out of a fiscal hole. If there is any grounds to that suspicion, it demonstrates that this is a government that is not worthy of the trust and confidence of the Australian people.
The Prime Minister’s speech introducing this new tax was really quite remarkable. She claimed that in some way this new tax was honouring the victims of the floods. Really and truly, we honour the victims of the floods by rebuilding Queensland and the other states and the other communities that have been impacted. We honour the victims of the floods by being a competent parliament and a competent government. We do not honour them by imposing an unnecessary new tax. The Prime Minister in her speech spoke of the levies that had been introduced by a former government. Let me say this: there is a world of difference between a levy imposed by a government striving to achieve and maintain a budget surplus and a levy imposed by a government which has been recklessly spending taxpayers’ money and has given Australians the biggest deficits on record. There is a world of difference between a levy imposed by a government that could be trusted with the taxpayers’ money and a government that cannot.
This is a government which is already notorious for its waste of public money. The blow-out in the school halls program exceeds the total quantum to be raised by this new tax. This government has become an absolute byword for waste and mismanagement, and it knows it. That is why, along with announcing this new levy, the government announced the appointment of former finance minister in the Howard government Mr Fahey to oversee the spending of this money. They knew that the Australian public would not trust them to handle money, so what did they do? They resorted to appointing a Howard government minister to lend some respectability to their spending program. What is wrong with Lindsay Tanner? What is wrong with another former Labor finance minister to help—
Ralph Willis!
Ralph Willis: he must be one of the most humiliated men in the country, passed over—Peter Walsh; all of them—by his current parliamentary colleagues because the gold standard for fiscal responsibility was the Howard government. The gold standard for fiscal responsibility is provided by this coalition.
Obviously in most parts of Australia the floodwaters have receded, the clean-up has been largely completed, the reconstruction is underway. But the emotional scars will remain with the people who have been through this experience for many a long time. The physical scars on the land may be healing, but the emotional scars remain. It is important that members of this parliament do not forget the people who have suffered just because the cameras have moved on. And we will not forget them. We on this side of the parliament will not forget them. If there is any difficulty that people are having accessing reconstruction grants, we want to know about it. If there is any difficulty that they are having accessing the reconstruction loans, we are with them in pleading for justice. If they are having trouble with their insurers, we are on their side because it is very important that all institutions work with people rather than against them at a time like this. People are understandably conscious at a time like this of just how unfair life can be, and we do not want any sense of unfairness made worse by an unfeeling or an uncaring government, unfeeling or uncaring financial institutions.
While the opposition have naturally supported relief measures by all levels of government, we think this government could have gone further to assist people. We particularly think that this government could have gone further to assist the small businesses which are the lifeblood of our economy. You cannot have a community without a strong economy to sustain it, and when communities are suffering then it is urgent and important that the small businesses that are the lifeblood of their economies are succoured and sustained.
In order to help the small businesses of flood ravaged areas we have proposed a three-month tax holiday. I call on the government, even at this late stage, to adopt that idea of the coalition. We have also called for the extension of concessional loans to businesses that have been flood impacted but not actually physically damaged. We all know that there are many, many businesses in flood impacted areas that have not been physically damaged. Their premises were not inundated. They did not lose their roofs. Still they have lost business. There is no produce for them to carry. There are no customers for them to serve. Those businesses should also be assisted and that is why it is very important that those concessional loans be made available to them.
The problem with this tax is that it hurts people who have already suffered enough. The tax will fall on the shoulders of donors; the tax will fall on the shoulders of the volunteers who flocked to help their friends, their neighbours, their fellow Queenslanders and Victorians in trouble. And, despite the denials of the Prime Minister, this tax will also fall on victims. There are many people who have lost property, who have had loved ones placed into all sorts of difficult circumstances who are still paying this tax. The only people who will not pay this tax are people whose homes have been impacted and therefore are getting the Centrelink payment. So this is a fundamentally unfair tax as well as being wrong in principle, as well as being bad public policy.
This legislation and the respective attitudes of government and opposition to Queensland flood reconstruction has yet again highlighted a fundamental difference between the two sides of this parliament. We think that government should live within its means; members opposite think that government should put its hand deeper and deeper into the people’s pockets. This is not the way to go. On this bill, as so often will happen in the course of the coming year as the government bids in this parliament to impose tax after tax, the battle lines will be drawn between a government which is addicted to tax and a coalition which is always searching to ensure that government lives within its means. As each day passes, it is clearer and clearer that we have a Prime Minister who has never seen a tax she did not like and never had a tax she would not hike. That is the truth and that is why we should oppose this bill.
I rise to support the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, which seek to amend the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, the Income Tax Rates Act 1986 and the Income Tax (Transitional Provisions) Act 1997 to introduce a one-year progressive flood reconstruction levy in the form of an additional income tax on Australian residents and foreign resident individuals in the 2011-12 financial year. These changes will ensure that those with a greater capacity to pay make a larger contribution to the rebuilding of disaster affected regions of Australia through revenue raised by the levy.
It was only in the last sitting week of this parliament that many people in this chamber from both sides stood up and gave their condolences to families and friends of the victims of the Queensland floods. Those left behind have started to rebuild their lives; they still have a long way to go in those rebuilding efforts, but it is time to start rebuilding Queensland and its economy. To do that we need to rebuild our major infrastructure that has been devastated by these floods.
We have heard many arguments from those on the other side in relation to why this flood levy should be opposed. We just heard the Leader of the Opposition talking about the history of this Labor government and taxes. Let us put some facts around these debates on taxes. The fact is that this federal Labor government since coming into office in 2007 has provided three rounds of tax cuts for individuals. It is this Labor government since 2007 that has adjusted the tax scales to provide a lower income tax offset and thresholds. For those who will be paying this levy who are earning above $50,000, this is what they have achieved under a Labor government: a tax deduction of $29.81 per week over the tax cuts—a cumulative tax cut of $29.81 per week since Labor came into government. Per annum, these people are now paying $1,550 less per year than they did under the Howard government. In return, what is being asked of these people who earn $80,000 a year is that they pay $2.88 per week to help rebuild Queensland and to help strengthen our economy.
We have just heard from the Leader of the Opposition that to strengthen an economy you need to support business. That is absolutely true. But you support business by ensuring that the infrastructure is adequate, that the roads, rail and ports are operating to their maximum capacity. You do not do it by making cuts or taking away important infrastructure or stopping major infrastructure development.
We heard from a number of members that one of the proposed cuts should be the National Broadband Network. We heard previously from the Leader of the Opposition that, as far as he is concerned, the National Broadband Network is just about getting your emails downloaded faster. We heard from the member for Cowper yesterday that it is just about being able to download your videos faster. This once again shows how much the Leader of the Opposition and the opposition as a whole underestimate the importance of the National Broadband Network and the impact it will have across this country not just for businesses but especially in areas of education and health. That is why important infrastructure such as the National Broadband Network must continue to be rolled out across this country. You cannot just take it away and expect to see the economy continue to grow.
We heard the claim that we should scrap superclinics. The cuts that have been announced by the opposition to pay for the reconstruction are, not surprisingly, not new ideas. This has not come about because the opposition sat down and gave serious thought to where there could be cuts so that the funds could be found to reconstruct Queensland. All of the announcements they have made are announcements they made in 2010 as part of their election commitments: they would scrap the National Broadband Network, they would scrap future superclinics, they would scrap important school infrastructure. These are exactly the same announcements they made in 2010 during the election period and they have rolled them out again and said they should be scrapped to pay for the rebuilding of the Queensland economy.
I will not be surprised to be in this chamber sometime over the next 12 months or the next couple of years and hear once again that these things should be cut to pay for something else, because this is what the opposition’s real objective is all about. We have heard about the tax cuts. We know it is a complete furphy and that in fact it is the Labor government that has provided three lots of tax cuts and changes to the thresholds that have delivered real benefits to households across this country.
We have heard the baseless scare campaign that, because of this levy, people across Australia are going to stop making donations when there are natural disasters. We have heard a number of members on the other side run this scare campaign. This truly underestimates the Australian people. We know that the Australian people come out at times of need and they help. Whether it is financially or physical help, as we saw with the Queensland floods, or donating goods, they are out there helping. I expect we will see that same compassion in relation to what we have witnessed in the last 24 hours in New Zealand.
We do not just need to stand here and say, ‘We think the Australian people will keep donating and keep helping even if there is a levy implemented.’ This is not hypothetical. It is fact. It is happening in our communities right now. I can inform this chamber that since the Gillard Labor government announced that we would consider introducing a bill to introduce this flood levy to apply for the 2011-12 financial period, my electorate has not stopped fundraising. My electorate has not stopped collecting goods. They have not slowed down. In fact, they have increased. There are functions happening all over the electorate of Petrie to raise funds. We had seen the Kippa-Ring Lions Club and their jumble sale, the CIRP and the Golden Ox helping those most in need, and the Redcliffe Community Association Support Crew have held functions. Last Friday I had the great pleasure of going to pick up a donated electric piano to the value of about $3,500 to $4,000. It is in beautiful condition. A couple who heard me speak at a function about the schools affected by the Queensland floods wanted to donate this electric piano. We picked it up, with the help of the Redcliffe Leagues Club. They donated their trailer for us to use and we drove it down to Ipswich East State School, who had lost all of their music equipment, and we donated the piano to them. People are still donating. People want to help. That is the Australian spirit, and people will continue to provide this help.
After the government announced that it would be introducing a flood levy, I received a phone call from a lovely lady in my electorate who is a pensioner living in one of our retirement villages. She wanted to know how long the Premier’s flood relief fund was going to go on for and how long people would be able to donate. She wanted to know this because she was not going to be liable to pay the levy, and she wanted to do her fair share. She was asking how she could donate $20 a month for the next 12 months so that she could contribute like all of those in the workforce will contribute through the levy. To stand in this chamber and to argue that this levy will stop Australian people wanting to donate and to offer support in times of need is, to be honest, utter rubbish. Those on the other side should go out and talk to their communities; because clearly, if they are running this argument, they have not.
We have heard from the member for Cook and we have heard a bit from the Leader of the Opposition that under the Howard government they believe they earned the right to impose levies, because they created a surplus and so this somehow gives them the right to impose a levy. So what we say to the Australian people is that by being a government that has a surplus that could potentially absorb the cost of an initiative like this, ‘We are not going to touch the money in the bank. We are going to go and put our hand in your pocket.’ That is okay in those circumstances. As a government that spent 11 years getting a surplus because they squandered the boom and they chose not to invest in infrastructure, that is why they had a surplus. The Australian people are meant to believe that in fact they earned the right to impose a levy on people.
Let us compare that with the actions of the Labor government since coming to office in 2007. It is this government that dealt with the global financial crisis, that acted quickly and decisively to support jobs across this country. It is the Labor government that is now the envy of the developed world in relation to managing the economy through the global financial crisis. If you want to talk about the right to go to the Australian people and say, ‘We need your help. We need to rebuild Queensland, we need to do it quickly, we need this major infrastructure rebuilt’—
Mr Laming interjecting
I certainly would challenge the views of those on the opposite side and their recollections of the Howard government and their right to impose levies on people.
We also need to deal with this issue of who is actually going to be paying the levy. We heard from the member for Forde yesterday. He gave a couple of examples of who is going to be impacted by this levy. The example he gave was of a pensioner whose home was flooded. Once again, those on the opposite side of this chamber do not understand this levy. They have not bothered to read any of the detail of who actually pays. To stand here and say that a pensioner is going to be liable: is that pensioner getting an income of more than $50,000? I doubt it. The reality is that the examples that the other side are throwing up are ridiculous examples with no basis to them.
We have just heard from the Leader of the Opposition, who actually said that the only people who will not pay this levy are the people who had their homes inundated and claimed relief. Once again: have they read the bills? In fact, those earning $50,000 or less will not be paying this flood levy. I ask those who are to speak after me on this flood levy to please read the bills. If you listened to the statements of those who have spoken before me you would think that they do not know who this levy applies to.
The fact is that this levy is modest, temporary, sensible and responsible. It is important that we rebuild the major infrastructure in Queensland. The Premier’s relief fund will assist those individuals to rebuild their homes, but we need to get the major infrastructure in Queensland repaired as quickly as possible to help the local economies, the state economy and the national economy. That is what this levy will do.
I am very proud to be standing here as part of a Labor government that saw this country through the worst financial crisis that this country has ever seen and now is willing to make the tough decisions to rebuild Queensland after the most devastating floods that our state of Queensland has ever seen. I support these bills before the House.
I rise to express my concern about the government’s proposal to tax and impose a levy on all those Australians who have already given generously to the flood relief. I would like to start my remarks on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 by rejecting the viewpoint of the member for Petrie—in her rose-coloured glasses view of the world—that all you have to do to manage a national economy is accumulate surplus from a boom and it all just automatically happens and it is a wonderful world that we live in. The reality of being good economic managers is that you have to take tough decisions and you have to work at ensuring that you are taking responsible decisions that do not damage our economy and our capacity to function as a society.
What we are talking about here in these flood reconstruction levy bills is a fundamentally different viewpoint of how government operates and how government is supposed to function. We have no difference between us about the fact that government has a role to play here in reconstructing Queensland and assisting those Australians who have been hit by a natural disaster. There is no difference in this chamber in that. Government has a vital role to play in rebuilding critical pieces of infrastructure and in ensuring communities can rebuild in a way that is sustainable for their futures.
What we do have a difference in—and this becomes clear when you listen to the remarks of the member for Petrie—is that the Labor Party seems to have a view that imposing a tax and telling people what to do from a government level is better than the voluntary and natural instincts of Australians to help each other out. Government has a vital decision here. Do we want to encourage our society to be a voluntary society where we care for each other, where we voluntarily come forward and donate our time, money, effort and energy to help each other, because we want to and because it is the right thing to do? Or do we want the government, from its autocratic mechanisms, to tell people what they should do to help others—tell them how much they should help others, tell them that they must help others—because the government has decided it is the best way to proceed? It is not an approach to government that I accept from the Labor Party. When you look at the great stories and examples across this country that members of this place have spoken about, you will see why.
I was in Cowra the other week and I met a 21-year-old girl from the northern suburbs of Sydney. When news of the flood crisis broke, she jumped in her car—her own beaten-up car—and drove to Queensland. She had no plan except to go there to volunteer and help. She got out of her car in Queensland and started helping people. At the time I spoke to her, she had been there for six weeks. She had been taken in by an elderly couple in the Lockyer Valley. Her whole life plan had been interrupted by this one decision to go and help. She has now been offered a paid position in the council up there because she is so effective at what she does. But she had no plan to do that.
In talking to that girl it revealed to me more of why this government’s plan to force taxes and levies upon people is not going to work. She told me stories of individual businesses, contractors and people who owned trucks and heavy-moving equipment donating trucks and labour to man the trucks and to help move all of the damage and debris free of charge to the local council and the government. That has also been going on for six weeks. What we have there is a cost to government that government cannot afford. People have been stepping forward voluntarily. People have been giving their time, their labour, their capital and their vehicles in a way that government could not replicate or reproduce. They have done so without any prospect of reward or thanks—just because it is the right thing to do by their fellow Australians. It is that instinct which I think is under threat from the government’s proposal with this levy. That is why I have such a great concern.
When you look at how much this government wastes—and we have been over all of the arguments over a number of years in this place—you see that ‘billion’ has become the new ‘million’. ‘Billion’ is used like it is going out of fashion—a billion here, a billion there, a billion everywhere. The total amount of money raised by this levy is just $1.75 billion. The member for Petrie is exactly right: it is extremely modest. It is almost like: ‘Why are we doing this?’ We wasted so much money in so many government programs in the last term of government. More money has been wasted on the Building the Education Revolution than is being raised by this levy.
Many great Australians have been prepared to put themselves forward, their money forward and their time forward. The government said, ‘The government needs you to help.’ And we did need them to help. The reality is that so much has been done by ordinary Australians that could never have been done by government. But what I really object to is when government says to these Australians, ‘Help us. Please donate. Please give,’ and then, after they have done all that, it says, ‘Thank you for that. You have been wonderful, but now we’re going to have to tax you. We are going to have to force you to hand over more of your money regardless of what you have given or what you have done’—without any regard. That is another objection I have to this levy. It is a completely blunt instrument. It does not take into regard those who have given more than they could afford to give, those who have given a lot, and those who have suffered or have sacrificed their life plan to do what they could for others. It does not discriminate. It is a very blunt instrument.
Much of the justification, and it is a typical Labor justification for anything, is that this is means tested—that somehow that makes it better; that somehow those who are perceived as being able to afford to pay should pay more. It all sounds lovely in theory, except that the average wage in this country is $65,000. I want to explain to this government a couple of simple things about life in Sydney today because it is clear they have no idea about the reality of an ordinary Australian living in Western Sydney or in most of our major cities today. If you earn $50,000, you are not rich. You are not tapping into some land of milk and honey. If you earn $60,000 and you have a mortgage in Sydney, let me tell you, you are not earning a lot of money. If you earn $70,000, there is the contention from the Labor government that you have somehow struck King Solomon’s mines—you are mining the gold out of the earth and living on a fantastic wage. I want to reject that as completely and utterly false. Families in my electorate earn $80,000, $90,000 or $100,000 and have two, three or four children and a mortgage upwards of $750,000, $500,000 and $1 million.
People are already suffering under a burden of government charges and taxes. It is very severe in New South Wales. I take one example: electricity prices across Sydney. If you are in a Western Sydney household with two kids and you earn $85,000, or a combined income of $100,000, you are not well off. For this government to say you are well off and that you ought to be able to pay is, I think, blind and ignorant of the circumstances of so many in our metropolitan areas. I really want to reject the idea that people are wealthy. They live on incomes they work very hard to get and, at the end of the day, the government takes a lot of that money off them for the privilege of working so hard.
I think this policy of the Labor Party makes a great mockery of the last term of government. They handed out $900 to so many people. Once again, the rich people—the people earning so much money, like $75,000 or over, with a $750,000 mortgage and four kids in Western Sydney—did not receive that $900 payment. They splashed money around like there was no tomorrow. A billion dollars was the new million dollars. All this raises is $1.75 billion. It is a pathetic excuse.
I also want to address the arguments of the Labor Party in relation to levies. I was not a member of the Howard government, and my instinct is not to levy Australians when savings and government policy can be found. I am an advocate for the reduction of the size of government. It is very cute of the Labor Party to say in this place that the Howard government levied different sorts of levies on different occasions during its term, and that is why the opposition should be supporting a levy for the flood reconstruction.
The difference—and I think it is an important distinction—is that the Howard government, when there was a need for a levy, did not go to Australians and say, ‘Would you please give us money and donate for Ansett workers? Would you please give us money for the dairy regulation?’ There was no purported effort from government to raise money on behalf of needy people or a needy industry at that time. The government’s plans were clear. It was articulated. There was not this false dichotomy, where the government says, ‘Give us all your money. Do what you can to help. Donate, donate, donate.’ Then the government turns around and says, ‘We are now going to tax you after all that wonderful effort you put in.’ That is a very big difference.
The Prime Minister has failed in her duty in this place to understand the challenges of this issue. She says we are asking Australians to put in a cup of coffee a week. The first point that I would clarify with her is that, by legislating for a flood levy, they are not asking; they are telling Australians that they have to provide this money, regardless. As I said before, it does not discriminate; it does not recognise the contributions of so many.
The member for Petrie said that people in her electorate are continuing to fundraise. I want to thank every constituent in my electorate who fundraises for this flood. I was at a flood benefit the other night. I took a table of key volunteers who had been at the flood and made my contribution by thanking them. We raised $40,000 that night. I want to say to the member for Petrie and those opposite: I have no doubt that more people in my community would give more if a levy was not being proposed by this government. It is certainly the case.
I also want to record that my local council estimated that $10 million would probably come out of my electorate from this flood levy. That is their estimate. What that means for our local economy and for the people who have already given so much is that it will blunt their instinct to help in the future. What kind of system are we creating here? At the next need of ordinary Australians through a natural disaster or other dire circumstance, are people going to hold back and say, ‘Look, the government’s going to do it for us. They’re going to step in and force us to do it.’ That is the danger, that is the difference in approach to government today.
We are not seeking the best in our community, in our people and in our society; we are using government instruments to force people to hand over their money. That is a different approach to government. It is a very stark distinction. I reject that distinction. I challenge the member for Petrie: will she go to her constituents, who she says are happy to pay, and will she hand them their tax bills? Will she give them the ATO letterhead which says: ‘Australian Taxation Office. Here is your bill.’ That is what we are proposing to do to Australians, not say, ‘We have a great challenge in Queensland. We have a desperate need for people. Floods have affected Victoria and New South Wales. A cyclone has hit us. Can we all come forward in the spirit of mateship, in the great Australian tradition of filling a need voluntarily when there is a crisis?’ No—the government says, ‘We are proposing, by legislative instrument, to send tax collectors around.’ I must say, that is an uninspiring scenario for me and it is not reflective of the great Australian tradition of mateship that this country is built on, whether it be the great service from citizen soldiery and people stepping forward to the breach at times of military crisis, whether it be people like Sophie going to Queensland and donating her time or whether it be contractors and businesses giving up what they can. Even my in-laws donated furniture to people who lost all their furniture in the flood. Everybody has stepped forward in this country and has risen to the challenge that has emerged in Queensland, yet now we are using a punitive measure from the federal government and sending a very bad signal to people out there that we are prepared to indiscriminately seek more revenue from people rather than tightening our belt in government, stopping the waste and reducing the excessive and gross expenditure of the federal government.
There is too much money spent, and wasted, by the federal government. There is too much money collected in taxes. We collect $117 billion in individual income taxation every year. We make $114 billion in welfare payments every year. Almost every dollar collected in individual income taxation is sent back out the door by the government. We can do better than that. We are better than that as a country and we can find savings in government—we must find savings in government and we must end the waste that this government has become so renowned for.
Looking at these bills, there are other serious consequences from what has happened in Australia. The natural disasters that have hit us have great and ongoing ramifications for many of the small businesses and enterprises across this country. It is not just about people who have been affected by flooding of their business or properties; there are serious consequences for the operation and ongoing viability of so many businesspeople and entrepreneurs in this country. I think government has a real role in doing something about that, whether by the coalition’s tax concessions—the tax holiday proposed by the Leader of the Opposition—or other measures. If we lose sight of the fact that, beyond today, tomorrow and the day after there will be people suffering from these disasters for a long time to come, we have not done our job as a parliament.
I support the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. In my electorate of Blair, farms are destroyed, roads are ripped up, bridges are gone and homes have been inundated—vital community infrastructure has been damaged. Indeed, the electorate of Blair and the whole of the West Moreton region, Ipswich, the Lockyer Valley, the Brisbane Valley and adjacent areas have experienced the most destructive force that nature can offer.
In Queensland we have suffered dreadfully and our economy will suffer. Coal exports may be down by as much as $5 billion, rural production may be down by $2 billion and I shudder to think what it will be like in the Brisbane Valley and the rural parts of Ipswich. There is a damage bill of about $300 million to the tourism sector and of the remaining industries manufacturing and retail has lost $500 million. That is before we really look at the impact of Cyclone Yasi in North Queensland.
This is a terrible tragedy. Just today I visited the website of the Somerset Regional Council and obtained the list of the roads that are closed and the bridges that are down in my electorate. At the height of the flood the list was two pages long. Neurum Road is closed between Villenueve Quarry and Villenueve Road. Gregors Creek Road is closed at the Brisbane River because the bridge is lost. Patrick Estate Road is open with caution, only because the culvert structure has been lost. Strassburgs Road is closed. At Minden Village, Zabels Road North is closed. The Esk Hampton Road is closed. Across my electorate of Blair roads are closed everywhere and bridges are gone. Sure, we have seen wonderful communitarian spirit, with neighbours helping neighbours and strangers helping newly acquainted friends. We have seen wonderful volunteerism. The loss will be incalculable and the damage immense. It is estimated at $5.6 billion before the impact of Cyclone Yasi.
We will deliver the funding required to rebuild not just Queensland but Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania. We will deliver this funding by making $2.8 billion in budget savings, saving $1 billion by delaying infrastructure projects and raising $1.8 billion through this temporary levy. The member for Mitchell talked about those people in his electorate earning $65,000 a year. If they were not flood affected, as they would not have been, they would be paying $1.44 per week to help their fellow Australians. If they were earning $75,000 a year, as he mentioned, they would be paying $2.40—less than a cup of coffee would cost in any of the cafes in his electorate. This is important legislation and it is important to recognise the fact that the levy is very modest. Over 85 per cent of people will pay less than five dollars per week. Fifty per cent of taxpayers will pay nothing.
Yet we hear sanctimonious sloganism and sentiment uttered by the member for Mitchell. We have the unctuous, righteous sanctimony from the Leader of the Opposition, saying he wants to support business, but what about the global financial crisis? The coalition opposed the very measures that would have supported the 1.5 million Australians working in the retail sector. He has come into this place twice and said he opposes the flood levy, but at the last election, six months ago—and I understand it is still coalition policy—he wanted to slug Australian consumers with a $6 billion paid parental leave business impost indefinitely, forever. He could not give a date when it would stop. If you thought that would not have been passed on through the prices paid by consumers in suburbs of my electorate, like Brassall, Bundamba, North Booval, Lowood and Fernvale, which were hit by the floods, you would be kidding yourself. This proposed coalition program was all in favour of helping the rich. It was all to make sure that people earning more than $150,000 a year would get paid parental leave, and the coalition proposed it knowing full well Labor had a scheme, a historic reform, ready to operate from 1 January this year.
We have seen what those opposite will do with respect to costings. They allege they are the party of the market, free enterprise and economic prudence. It is a nonsense. Historically, the Labor Party—we saw it during the governments of Hawke and Keating and we are seeing it now with this government—is the party of reform. It is the party that makes the difficult decisions that need to be made. The coalition claim they are supporting regional and rural Australia, but they voted against measures to provide $37 billion for roads, ports and railways in regional and rural Australia. The opposed the provision of $22 billion for those areas in the west, in rural parts of Queensland and Western Australia, which have been so much affected by natural disasters.
They claim here, and I have heard it time and time again, that they are opposed to the BER. Their proposal in opposition to it was announced after much agitation and procrastination and cogitation and meditation. The member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, went on for day after day saying he could find savings easily until the point he said ‘It’s difficult to find them, but we’ll do it anyway.’ But that would have left a $1 billion black hole—if his costings were accepted—as a result of the deferrals, and he knows that it is against the national interest to cut funding to poor Indonesian schools. It was straight from the textbook of One Nation. I was the Labor Party’s campaign director in Ipswich at the height of One Nation’s popularity, so I know a bit about them. The same people who were handing out stuff for the Libs and the Nats at the polling booths in the Ipswich and West Moreton region before 1998 did the same thing for One Nation after 1998, and you see them these days doing it for the Libs and the Nats again. In my area, One Nation and the LNP are indistinguishable—the same sentiment, the same ideas, the same philosophy and the same notions. You can see it, of course, in those opposite and hear it in the words they utter. You can tell that they get the ideas from Mr Ian Nelson of One Nation, and that is why Mr Nelson is the spiritual leader of the Liberal Party across there.
They are opposed to the BER. They say they will defer $150 million from the BER—that is their alternative to raising the flood levy. List the projects in your schools and that you do not want. You say, ‘Give the money to us; we’ll use it in our schools.’ You say, ‘It’s a waste of money.’ But come to my electorate and tell the people in Esk, where the multipurpose hall funded under the BER acted as the evacuation and recovery centre in which hundreds of people got fed every night during the height of the floods and dozens of people stayed, that it is a waste of money. Tell the people in Fernvale who have the BER funded hall which I opened at Fernvale State School. That hall was the place where the people stayed and got fed. It was the place where they slept and the place that they broke into, and that place was needed by Fernvale and its area. You claim the BER is a waste of money. Did you ever read the report of Brad Orgill’s BER task force? Did you ever read the Auditor-General’s report? I guarantee that you did not, because the report of the BER task force said that 97 per cent of the projects were without complaint. That is exactly what it said.
They said also that they would cut funding for the GP superclinics. That is what they proposed to pay for their flood fund. But guess what the GP superclinic did in my electorate. The GP superclinic in Ipswich, located at the University of Queensland adjacent to the evacuation centre at the showgrounds, along with St John’s Ambulance provided medical assistance to hundreds and hundreds of people at the height of the flood. Yet those opposite say that they would cut the funding for the GP superclinics—they oppose them. Also, the doctors from the GP superclinic went down to Riverview Neighbourhood House, where there was an evacuation and recovery centre feeding hundreds of people every night, to help workers and volunteers make sure that people had a place to stay. Those opposite would cut the funding for the GP superclinics that have helped out people in my electorate. That is the reality of those opposite, and they should know it.
I think that, in their heart of hearts, they know this is the right thing to do. I think that, if John Howard were the Prime Minister now, he would be putting in place a levy for the floods, just as he introduced levies on many other things. He raised $1.48 billion through the superannuation surcharge levy, $500 million through the gun buyback, $1.74 billion through the milk levy, $100 million through the sugar levy and $269 million through the Ansett airline levy. He did all that while running a surplus, and we supported him on those sorts of things. Yet those opposite will not support us—and that is the truth. Come to my electorate and see the 700 streets in Ipswich that were inundated. Go and talk to the thousands of people who are no longer living in their homes but living in caravans and tents and say to them that you will not provide the funding, you will have a black hole and you will put the economy in a worse place.
The Leader of the Opposition knows very well that the proposal to cut funding to Indonesian schools is wrong. The Leader of the Opposition came in here to speak on the condolence motion on the flooding and started listing electorates that were hurt by the flooding. He understands neither electoral demography in Queensland nor flood geography, because he did not mention my electorate. He did not mention the member for Oxley’s electorate, nor that of the member for Moreton. But he did mention the electorate of the member for Petrie. He does not understand that the member for Petrie’s electorate was not flooded—he claimed that it was flooded. That is how much he understands and likes Queenslanders. The truth is that we are seeing opposition from the coalition to important income-raising measures and saving measures which are extremely important for Queensland.
Those opposite claim that we are a high taxing government. Let us have a look at the record. Apparently, they do not know that we have saved $83.6 billion in the last three years and do not know that we are the envy of their Western world because of that. They claim that we are a high taxing government, yet currently the tax-to-GDP ratio is 20.9 per cent. The Howard government got nowhere near that. Under the Howard government it was in the mid-20s all the time. Those opposite are addicted to tax. They claim that they are the party of low taxation, but they never once found a levy that they did not like when they were in power. If those opposite want to help Queenslanders, they need to support this levy. This levy is particularly important for South-East Queensland, and those opposite know we need it. They know in their heart of hearts that their position is wrong. They know their leader is opposing the levy because he is engaged in opportunism—opposition for opposition’s sake. All he is trying to do is to relive the last election. If they had won the last election, they would have brought this flood levy in. They would be asking for our support, and we would give it. This is not the time to argue; this is the time to agree. This is the time for bipartisanship. This is the time to rebuild; it is not the time to break down. It is the time to help, not the time to hinder.
Those opposite do not realise that this is so important. Through the mayor’s fund in Ipswich and particularly the Somerset Regional Council fund we raised tens of thousands of dollars, and today I thank James Hardie, which has contributed $250,000 to the Ipswich mayor’s flood fund and the Premier’s flood fund in Ipswich yesterday.
The Premier’s fund in Queensland has raised hundreds of millions of dollars. But we need billions of dollars because we need to rebuild the bridges, roads, ports and essential community infrastructure that those opposite do not like. There has never been a bill in this House in the last three years in relation to roads affecting my electorate—whether the Ipswich Motorway or any other road in my electorate—that those opposite have not voted against. They voted against all the nation-building funding and legislation that provided the funding for Roads to Recovery black spots in my electorate. That is the reality of those opposite. They will not vote for roads funding to build the roads, and now they will not vote for the funding to rebuild the roads. That is the legacy of those opposite. The members for Ryan and Brisbane in this chamber should hang their heads in shame for their failure to support their fellow Queenslanders. They should have a word with the Leader of the Opposition and say: ‘Tony, it’s time to fess up; it’s time to do the right thing by Queenslanders and it’s time to do the right thing by the flood victims of Queensland. It’s time to rebuild Queensland, it’s time to be bipartisan and it’s time to get with the program.’
I rise to speak in relation to the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. Before I do, I would like to seek a moment of indulgence to briefly reflect on the terrible tragedy which has befallen our New Zealand friends. There is no other nation more closely linked to Australia than New Zealand, and when our Kiwi cousins suffer we suffer with them. The earthquake in Christchurch may have occurred in New Zealand, but it has certainly shaken all Australians as well. As we watched the drama unfold yesterday on our television screens, and again this morning, we could not help but feel the pain of those who have lost loved ones or who have been injured in this terrible disaster. I would like to associate myself and the people of Gippsland with the comments made by the Prime Minister and the opposition leader in this House yesterday.
We must stand ready to help our Anzac mates in their time of need, and I think it is a great tribute to our nation that we already have rescue crews on the ground working through the rubble and doing their best to recover people from this disaster. We hope for miracles today in Christchurch. It is going to be a very difficult time for everyone involved in this rescue effort. We hope for miracles; we pray that they will be safe, and we pray that the rescuers themselves will be safe and given the strength to do the job on behalf of our nation. There are many New Zealanders in my electorate, and I am sure most members would have many Kiwis in their electorates and throughout Australia, and our thoughts and prayers are with them all today.
In relation to the bill before the House, I will be voting against the proposed tax for several reasons. But before I outline my exact reasons I want to clarify a couple of points. First is this Labor myth which has been perpetuated again by the gentleman just speaking: that somehow the coalition is against rebuilding the disaster-hit communities. The coalition stands shoulder to shoulder with all Australians, and we are committed to getting on with the job of rebuilding these communities.
I find it offensive in the extreme that those opposite suggest there is any sense of backsliding in our determination and commitment to help rebuild those communities that have been affected by these events. The people in Queensland who have been hit by floods and cyclones, the New South Wales floods, the Victorian and Tasmanian floods and the Western Australian bushfires show that it has been a terrible summer of natural disasters across Australia. It has been tragic in the lives lost and also in terms of damage to private property and public assets. Quite rightly, the people of Australia look to us in this place to provide some leadership on the rebuilding effort.
I believe that it is reasonable and appropriate for us to agree on the fact that we need to rebuild. But we can have a difference of opinion about how the federal government pays for that and how it should be funded. I take offence on behalf of the member for Brisbane, who is in the chamber today, at the suggestions by the previous speaker that somehow she should hang her head in shame when I know the tireless work that she has done on behalf of her community and that all other Queensland members have done on behalf of their communities to support them in their hour of need. I think the Queensland MPs on both sides of the house have done an extraordinary job in extremely difficult conditions. I find it appalling that any member would suggest that there is any lack of commitment from the coalition in the rebuilding effort. We stand ready to support our fellow Australians and we stand with them shoulder to shoulder on the rebuilding effort. We should be spared the self-righteous indignation we have seen and the aspersions that have been thrown from the other side of the House to suggest there is reluctance on this side of the House to support Australians in their hour of need. We just do not believe that we need to impose another tax to do it. We believe there are other ways to fund the work, and we believe that it is not the time for hitting Australian families with another tax when they are already struggling under the cost of living; this is not the time to slug them in that manner.
I stress also that we are talking about public assets and how the federal government pays its share of the reconstruction bill under natural disaster arrangements. We are not talking about people’s homes. There has been a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters, so to speak, by some of the speakers opposite, to suggest that somehow we are not going to help people in their own homes. The issue of people rebuilding their own homes is quite rightly a matter for them and their insurance company and, again, a lot of local members have worked tirelessly to hold the insurance companies to account in this regard. The issues relating to private property losses are a completely separate matter to the flood levy bill that we are debating here today.
One of the problems we have in debating this topic is that the full extent of the damage to public infrastructure is still not known. I believe it is almost inevitable that the Commonwealth will face extra costs beyond what are forecast now. As the full extent of damage to public assets becomes apparent in the weeks and months ahead there will be additional costs borne by the Commonwealth. I have had some experience in this regard in my own electorate of Gippsland. We live in a flood-prone area; there are six or seven major rivers flowing through the electorate, and on every occasion where there has been a major flooding event the first assessment of damage has never been accurate. It has never been accurate, and the cost has always gone up when we have started to realise how much of the public assets have been undermined—roads, rail or riverbanks—whatever they may be. I fear that the full cost of this flooding and these natural disasters across Australia, particularly in Queensland and Victoria—where we still have water lying across vast expanses of the north-west—will not be known for many weeks and months. I believe there will be additional costs to be borne by the Commonwealth.
A point I believe is also worth reflecting on is that there is a very real risk of more flooding in the weeks ahead. Our catchments in many parts of Australia are completely soaked. It will not take a rain event of the same magnitude to cause equivalent damage in the future. We have the very real risk of further flooding this year in many parts of Australia, and the Commonwealth must stand ready to accept the fact that there could be a larger bill coming our way. The damage bill could easily escalate in the weeks ahead, and the Prime Minister has said in the past that this levy that is proposed and put before the House today will not be increased and any additional costs will be met by cuts or deferrals to other programs in the budget. So it really does beg the question: why not make that decision now instead of imposing another tax on Australian families who are already struggling under the increased cost of living?
My reasons for opposing a levy come down to a few key points. Firstly, if the government had managed the budget properly in the first place, we simply would not be in this mess. Secondly, any new tax that is imposed will have a definite flow-on impact on consumer confidence, impacting particularly on small businesses in regional communities. Finally, and I believe most critically, there is a genuine risk that any new tax will reduce the community’s willingness to donate in future emergencies that may occur because they fear they will be hit by another government tax in the future. That is a very important point to remember, and I will come back to that in a moment.
The issue of the government’s management of the budget is key to this whole debate. Labor simply cannot manage money. In the past three years they have a record of expensive bungling and mismanagement almost across the board. There is hardly a minister who has not been touched by some example of mismanagement and a failure to deliver value for money to Australian taxpayers. We have had the home insulation scheme, and the great tragedy of that scheme was that young men lost their lives. In economic terms, it was a waste of $2.5 billion.
We had the school program, which the previous speaker was most indignant about. There was a cost blow-out of more than $1 billion before the program even started. We have a $16 billion program, and in my electorate BER now stands for ‘builders’ early retirement’. The BER program has been an opportunity to gouge money out of Australian taxpayers, and the state Labor government failed miserably in its job to be a watchdog and a guardian of taxpayers’ funds to ensure value for money. There was at least $2.7 billion wasted under that program, and I fear that in my electorate the state schools are the ones that fared worst of all. My children attend state schools—and I am a fierce advocate for state schools—in my community, and it is a great irony that this government, which claims to stand up for the state school system, would allow their state government cohorts to see a worse quality result in state primary schools across our nation in comparison to the Catholic and independent sector. I am still receiving reports in my electorate of poor workmanship, almost invariably carried out by building firms which have travelled out of Melbourne to undertake work in my electorate and have no local ties whatsoever. They have undertaken work at inflated prices and left my school communities very bitter indeed.
We also had the government’s appalling effort with the Green Loans program. Too many assessors were trained, and people were out of pocket by several thousand dollars and had their hopes of starting their own small business dashed—another example of a Labor Party which cannot manage money. There was the panicked response to the global financial crisis. There was the handing out of $900 cheques to a total of about $13 billion. It still stuns me that someone—in fact, several ministers on the other side—thought it was a good idea to hand out $900 cheques for people to buy plasma TVs with. That was about all we got out of it. It was a ridiculous policy position, and we find ourselves without any shots left in the locker when it comes to paying for natural disasters when we have spent $13 billion of borrowed money on $900 cheques.
A prudent government, a decent government, would have had plenty of money in the bank if it had not panicked and squandered so much in the previous year, but that is typical of this government. It always panics under pressure. It treats taxpayers’ money as if it is a blank cheque. It has failed to deliver value for money on a wide range of projects and has even had to resort to hiring a former Liberal finance minister to oversee spending on the flood recovery program. It begs the question about the former Labor finance minister: was he busy or something, or was he not even asked? Did they go straight to a former Liberal finance minister to oversee the government’s expenditure in the flood recovery?
If Labor had not wasted so much money over the past three years, there would have been plenty of capacity to manage a disaster of this magnitude—and I accept these were major disasters, right across the nation; everyone accepts that. But a decent government which had been prudent with the Australian taxpayers’ money would have been in a position to fund this recovery effort. That is what people expect governments to do with their taxes: manage the economy well, achieve value for money with every project, and put some money away for the proverbial rainy day. This government inherited a set of budget books which were in great shape, and it has destroyed them. Labor’s first response is to introduce a tax. In a $350 billion budget, it is hard to believe that the $1.8 billion to be raised from this new tax could not be found in budget savings measures. But avoiding the hard decisions is the Labor way.
As I said earlier, I am also concerned that any new tax will have a flow-on impact on consumer confidence and affect small business owners, both within the disaster areas and beyond. A lot of members have tried to downplay the significance of the tax by running through the income thresholds and indicating that many taxpayers will only pay $5 per week. That has been their claim, and I do not have any reason to doubt their word on that, but the Treasurer has not even been able to tell us how many people will pay the tax in the first place. He has not even been able to tell us that most basic of all facts. How can we sure that it will secure the $1.8 billion that they have talked about? Maybe it will be more; maybe it will be much less than that. How would we know? The Treasurer himself does not know.
In any case, I believe that taking any disposable income out of the economy at a time like this is a bad move, and I detect a real softness in the Australian economy at the moment in terms of the retail sector and the hospitality industry. Small businesses are doing it pretty tough at the moment. I am not sure that those on the other side actually realise that. There is a real softness in the market in terms of retail and hospitality. Small business people are struggling, and anything which damages consumer confidence at a time like this will be bad for small business and bad for employment, particularly in regional communities like mine. Consumer confidence, as we all know, is a very fickle beast, and this new tax will undermine that confidence and have a negative impact on spending in the small business community in particular.
Finally, I believe—and I think this is the most contentious point of this whole new tax—that there is a risk that any new tax will reduce the community’s willingness to donate in future emergencies, because people will fear that they will be hit by another tax. I think that is a key point and is the big difference between the government’s levy and those that have been introduced in the past and by the Howard government in particular. Those opposite have had a field day, running through previous levies and pretending that they were all the same. But the key difference is that with the previous levies—whether for the gun buyback, the dairy industry or others that have been raised—no-one was actually asked to make a personal donation in advance of that levy. Former Prime Minister John Howard did not go out into the community and say, ‘Here, donate some money and I am going to buy back some guns.’ He just introduced the levy, and people had not made a personal commitment of any funds at all.
I think there is a fundamental difference between this levy and the previous levies that members have talked about. I believe there will be a genuine reluctance in the future for people to donate, and it is disappointing, because people throughout Australia—in response to the Black Saturday bushfires and these most recent disasters—have been extraordinarily generous in giving their hard-earned cash over to community organisations to help with the recovery effort. They give because they want to give, but I worry that in the future they will say, ‘I was going to give $100 but, hang on, I might just give $50 because chances are I’m going to be hit with a tax down the track,’ and they will hang onto that fifty bucks. I think that is a real problem for us with this new tax.
The other issue is that, even if you have already donated your time, goods or cash, you will still have to pay this tax if you exceed the income thresholds. Many members on this side have talked about that issue, and I think it is a fundamental difference that the members opposite need to understand. You cannot tax the Australian ethos of helping out a mate. You do not tax the Australian spirit out of existence, and I fear that is what we are doing with this new flood levy. People have already given, and they are going to be hit with a tax and will be reluctant to give in the future.
My final word of warning is to Queenslanders: watch very closely how the Labor Party administers the donated funds. After the bushfires in 2009 the Australian community donated about $380 million, and that $380 million was so heavily politicised by John Brumby’s government it was an absolute disgrace. John Brumby as Premier issued media releases from his office, on his letterhead, pretending the money had come from the Victorian government when it came from donated funds from bushfire contributions. So I appeal to the Queensland government not to make the same mistake and politicise the donated funds.
This flood tax is another Labor failure and it should be voted against in the House. (Time expired)
I rise to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. I have been the responsible member of parliament through some 35 cyclones. A lot of cyclones are very small beer indeed, but a lot of them are very serious. The town of Innisfail has been wiped out completely twice. Thanks to excellent building codes—I think every member of parliament in Australia can hold their heads up high on this one—and particularly the builders themselves who have implemented those codes, the vast bulk of the homes stood up to 200- to 300-kilometre-an-hour winds. They stood up very well, with very little damage at all. There were maybe a few broken windows.
In order of priority, I think, food is the first thing that you require when the cyclone hits. In Cyclone Larry we put out 24-hour ration packs on day 3 or day 4 and water bottles from distribution points in key areas all over the area involved. We put up tarpaulins because people were just sitting there in teeming rain—almost invariably there is heavy rainfall that comes with a cyclone. There is a money issue, strangely enough. It is not that people are broke; it is just that they cannot get money. The ATMs go down and all of the plastic magic ceases to function because there is no power. I must single out for the highest possible praise Ergon Energy and the Ergon workers. I have said before that every morning at sun-up they seem to be out there, and every evening, when you are going to bed, they still seem to be working. Nothing ever seems to be a problem for them. None of them are ever standing around either; they are just working and working hard in extremely dangerous conditions.
So you have the money problem and you need the money for food. On the second day of Cyclone Larry I went hungry because plastic magic was worth nothing and I had run out of cash. I was fortunate to have a car with petrol in it. An awful lot of people in Innisfail did not have those things, and an awful lot of people in Cardwell and the other towns that were badly hit this time did not have cars. I do not know, but I think that, when we look at the figures closely, there may have been one or two deaths that resulted from the lack of phones and mobiles. There is, of course, no maintenance being done on telephones now. When the power goes off you move onto the batteries. For boosters in the telephone system the batteries run down after about a day or two of not being recharged because the power lines are down, and then the phones go out.
As for mobiles, I can only say that I am very, very disappointed with the performance of Telstra, but that is a story for another day. The mobiles, as it has been explained to me, are not a very great problem. You just go up with a generator to recharge the batteries, drive to another site and drop off another generator to recharge those batteries. They are about 2,000 bucks. You come back after you have dumped six of them, pick up No. 1 and go to another six. As I have pointed out to the powers that be, on day 5 and day 6 it seemed to me that most of the areas were without mobiles. Mine most certainly would not work. I must greatly praise Optus. They had mobile towers on the ground and free telephones distributed. In places like Mission Beach I used the Optus free telephones. It was the only way I could call out and get very important services back in.
With the issue of roads the tarpaulins have been a terrible problem, because people have been so worried about public liability that they are telling people not to climb up on roofs. Heavens! We are grown people; if you can see a roof is dangerous, you do not climb up on it. But there were terrible problems in the distribution of tarps. As for the roads, the 300-odd thousand of us who live in Far North Queensland have only one highway that can get us in and out, and if it gets cut we are in a terrible position. I cannot prove this and do not think I will be able to, but it seemed to me that the main highway was closed for about 85 per cent of the first four or five days, when it needed to be closed for about 15 per cent of the time. The argument was that there was a foot and a half of water across the road. In Townsville, when you get heavy rain people will have to drive through a foot to a foot and a half of water. That is just life. It is similar in Cairns and on my street in Charters Towers if you get any sort of rainfall. There is one particular road there that we drive out of town on and you have to drive through a foot to a foot and a half of water. But that is the artery—if you cut that off it would create so many more problems further down the track.
Having said all that, I steeled myself not to say very much about this cyclone and the way things were handled, but I would be very remiss in my duty if I did not refer to the fact that on day 3 after Cyclone Larry the Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, and the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, engaged Peter Cosgrove. Things did not run well, but they were a thousand times better than if there had been no central controller. It was on day 8 we had a central controller this time. I do not know whether we have a clear situation and still have a central controller, but I am assuming that we do, on the information that I hold. We praise Michael Keating very much for the job he is doing there.
I would bring to the attention of the House the nature, size and scope of what we are talking about. The main northern arterial highway runs between the beach and the shop frontages in Cardwell—there may be about 50 metres between the sea and the shop frontages. It is a beautiful drive as you look out on Hinchinbrook Island in that brief period when you can see the ocean. I think it is one of the very few parts of the entire Queensland coastline where you can drive on the main highway and see the ocean. That highway is now completely wrecked and extremely dangerous to drive on. Part of the foreshore has gone completely.
We need safe anchorage and the government has agreed to that. We thank the government very much for safe anchorage because we have not had it. We have gone through state instrumentalities, but they consist of people who put more faith in ridiculous considerations than in the boating safety of the public of North Queensland. There are 55,000 registered boats between Mackay and Cairns and you are lucky if you are within three hours of safe harbour. Whenever a squall comes up, the boats run for safe harbour. I do not know anyone who has beached a boat in North Queensland. There must have been some, but I am not aware of them, and I was the person responsible, as I said before, in 35 cyclones, some of them not much more than storms. There is no safe harbour. At the present moment you can go from Townsville—Moor-In-Jin has no tie-up facilities, so I do not know that I would consider it a safe harbour—to Cairns because Port Hinchinbrook is out.
That brings me back to Cardwell. You would have seen on the television the terrible scenes from Port Hinchinbrook where the boats—giant launches 40, 50 and 60 feet long and worth millions of dollars—were picked up and dumped 20 to 50 metres inland and smashed to pieces. There is debris and siltation off Port Hinchinbrook and it needs to be cleaned out. This is the sort of work that needs to be done. I think we will need a new rock groyne along the front at Cardwell, but it is up to the people of Cardwell to make that decision. It seems to me that is where they are headed at the moment. It costs a lot of money to put up a rock wall that is two, three or four kilometres long. Behind that there is no ground now, so those rocks will go into the water and then behind those rocks ground will have to be put. The obvious thing to do is to take the siltation from cleaning out Port Hinchinbrook, move it around with a dredge and put it behind the rocks on the foreshore to build up the foreshore. Then we can rebuild the road where it is at the moment. It is a beautiful highway and it would destroy the town if the road were moved because most of the businesses in that town depend upon that roadway.
I do not know how badly the prawn farms were affected, but one of the biggest pawn farms in Australia is situated there. There is another pawn farm beside it—I think the second biggest or third biggest in Australia. There will be very serious damage indeed and I would be very surprised if they have not lost their income for the next year at the very least. Something like $30 million comes in from those prawn farms and there will be no money coming in this year.
At the present moment, the highway and the businesses along those highways have a very serious threat hanging over their heads. Many of them have had no income for the last three weeks and it will probably be some weeks yet before they are in a position to have any income. Just that loss of income will place them in a terrible financial situation. The cost of reconstructing Cardwell to anything like the way it was will run into $10 million, $20 million or maybe $30 million. We thank John Hoare, Lindsay Hallam, President Smith of the Cardwell Chamber of Commerce and all the other people of Cardwell that have been working very hard to draw up a plan for the reconstruction of Cardwell.
Dunk Island—and I am just picking out some features—is really a town of 200 people. There are normally about 100 workers there and maybe 140 or 150 guests living there at any one time. Everything on Dunk Island has been destroyed. The jetty is completely destroyed, as are all of the big buildings and facilities for the tourists. I would say there would be accommodation there not for 250 people but for about 20. You can work out the size of the destruction, but I do not think $50 million would be unreasonable and it may take considerably more than that.
The banana industry is worth about $500 million a year to the Australian economy. It has not been as badly affected as it was by Cyclone Larry because we now have a lot of bananas on the tablelands area and further north. There will not be the same great shortage as the one that occurred after Cyclone Larry—that will not occur ever again. By the same token, of that $500 million, probably about $350 million will vanish, and about 4,000 or 5,000 people depend upon that income. Fortunately, the damage was not as severe as in Larry; I think we will be back to fairly big production within four or five months. In the meantime, the backpacker numbers will go down completely. That is the sort of sector that will not be re-employed. So there will be no backpackers, and there will be no tourism. We have been in a terrible plight with tourism after the GFC in Cairns, and this will make it infinitely worse. With losses to the banana farmers and, more importantly—and I do not mean to denigrate the farmers by saying this—the banana workers, including backpackers, which will take down the tourism industry, we are talking about $400 million or $500 million. The sugar industry will take a hit of $200 million or $300 million. I hope we will only be down by about 60 or 70 per cent, but that 30 or 40 per cent—and it may be much higher than that—is still very serious. It has occasioned the closing of a mill, which has meant 700 or 800 people out of work.
You can start adding up the sorts of figures I am putting through here. You simply cannot ask a government to suddenly pull $2,000 million out of a budget. I am sorry; I do not expect that to happen. I am disappointed in the government. I think the funding should be ongoing. Everyone gets their turn with these diasters, whether it is fire and earthquakes at Newcastle or the recent disasters. With the present disasters, politicians are dropping out of the skies like Santa Claus, making big heroes of themselves and getting themselves on television continuously. The classic example is in Queensland, where two areas where a category 3 cyclone went through are still not declared a disaster zone. (Time expired)
There is an urgent, pressing need to repair the immense damage that has been suffered in the state of Queensland. There is indeed an urgent, pressing need to repair the damage from natural disasters that have been suffered in other states of the Commonwealth. There is going to be a huge drain on the budget of the Commonwealth. There is no doubt about the extent of the damage that has been suffered, particularly in Queensland. We just heard in some graphic and moving detail from the member for Kennedy about the damage that has been suffered from recent disasters in his electorate and we have heard from many other speakers in this debate about the damage that has been suffered right across the country, particularly from the devastating floods in Queensland, which have prompted the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the cognate bill before the House.
Those devastating floods, as we have heard from many speakers, are rightly described as, if not the worst, certainly among the worst disasters that have been suffered by our country. There is agreement on both sides of the House about the need for a funding package, for the Commonwealth to come to the aid of the people of Queensland and of other states that are suffering from these natural disasters. Regrettably, we have not had agreement on the mechanism that is to be used to fund the Commonwealth’s assistance, which, there is no doubt, will be at a very high level. The $5.6 billion in this package is based on initial estimates of the level of assistance that the Commonwealth is going to be called on for.
On past occasions that there has been an unexpected hit on the Commonwealth budget, when the Commonwealth has been called on to fund unexpected expenses, one of the mechanisms that have been used has been the imposition of temporary, and sometimes not so temporary, levies; sometimes those levies have been in place for several years. I want to mention some levies that have been used since 1996 by the Commonwealth to raise money for various purposes, to fund programs and expenditures without hitting the budget bottom line.
I will start with the Howard government’s superannuation surcharge levy 1996. That levy introduced extra taxes on the superannuation contributions of higher income earners. It was introduced as a temporary measure to tackle budget deficits and was supported by the Labor Party in opposition. It raised $1.48 billion in its first four years and more billions of dollars over its life. It was not until July 2005 that it was finally removed. A little while after that, also in 1996, the government introduced a 0.6 per cent increase in the Medicare levy to fund the cost of the gun buyback scheme. That was a temporary levy which ran only for the 1996-97 financial year. It raised an estimated $500 million and, again, was supported by Labor in opposition.
The stevedoring levy was introduced by the Howard government in 1998-99. It was a levy on the unloading of containers and vehicles in Australia, at $12 per container and $6 per vehicle, to meet the cost of redundancies resulting from the restructure of the stevedoring sector. We opposed that from opposition, but that levy lasted until May 2006 and raised $100 million. We could point to the milk levy, which we suggested from opposition should be amended but which we ultimately supported. That was imposed in 2000. It was an 11c per litre levy on consumers for all drinking milk, to fund an assistance package for the dairy industry. That levy ceased under our government in February 2009 but raised some $1.9 billion over its life.
The sugar levy was another Howard government levy. It was introduced in 2003 and opposed by us in opposition. It was a levy of 3c per kilogram of sugar. Like the milk levy, it was to fund an assistance package, this time for the sugar industry. It was abolished in November 2006 and raised some $97 million over its life. The Ansett airline levy was introduced by the Howard government in 2001. It was a $10 levy on plane tickets to recoup funds for worker entitlements after the collapse of Ansett airlines. That levy lasted until June 2003 and collected an estimated $369 million.
Lastly, I should mention the East Timor levy proposed by John Howard as Prime Minister, at 0.5 per cent for those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 and one per cent for those earning over $100,000 for the fiscal year 2000-01, to fund Australia’s defence commitment to East Timor. Like some of these other costs that levies were introduced to meet over the term of the Howard government, this levy was to meet an unexpected expense to the Commonwealth budget. That levy, which again Labor supported from opposition, was projected at the time of its proposal to raise some $855 million. In the end it was not proceeded with because of the state of the budget by the time the funds were required.
I mention these levies simply to make the point that the use of a levy as part of a means of raising funds for unexpected expenses by the Commonwealth is far from unprecedented. Far from it; it has been a regular tool of the Commonwealth in managing its financial affairs. Nor should it be thought that levies were only used by the Howard government at a time of deficit. The stevedoring levy was imposed when the budget was in surplus by $3.9 billion in 1998-99. The milk levy was imposed when the budget was in surplus by $13 billion. The airline levy was imposed when the budget was in surplus in 2001-02 and the sugar levy was imposed when the budget was in surplus in 2002-03. It can be rightly said that Mr Howard had a levy in each and every single year of his government.
Lest it be thought that the Liberal Party of Australia stopped proposing or favouring levies when they moved into opposition, we need to bear in mind that the current Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, also favours levies, because he proposed last year a $2.7 billion levy on business to pay for the opposition’s very expensive paid parental leave scheme.
The modest, progressive levy is part of the government’s package. It is a $1.8 billion levy that is going to be funded just over the 20011-12 year. Very similarly to the proposed East Timor levy, it will be 0.5 per cent of taxable income in excess of $50,000 and one per cent of taxable income in excess of $100,000. No levy will be payable where a person has income of $50,000 or less. They will be very modest amounts indeed. For someone with an income of $60,000 the levy will be 96c per week. For someone with an income of $80,000 the levy will amount to $2.88 per week. It is a very modest levy indeed. One is forced to conclude, from the extraordinary level of opposition by those opposite to this modest, progressive levy, that as usual the opposition are simply playing politics—and petty politics at that.
The whole package has been supported by a very large number of economists across the country. A number of speakers who have preceded me in the debate have referred to the levels of support from economists and, one could add, other political leaders across the country—notably the Liberal Premier of Western Australia, who said in very clear terms:
I believe most Australians, most West Australians, are willing to contribute a little bit more to help Queensland get back on its feet.
Instead of the decency and good sense that has been demonstrated by the Liberal Premier of Western Australia, what we have seen from this opposition is petty politics, crude slogans—as usual their ‘great big new tax’ has been rolled out in opposition to this very modest, progressive levy—and meanspirited whinging. It is inconsistent and hypocritical for this opposition, in the face of that long list of levies that were imposed by the Howard government, to come into this place and suggest that there is anything at all wrong or untoward with our imposition of this levy. It is the kind of hypocrisy and inconsistency that we have come to expect from this opposition.
I rise today in this debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the cognate bill to voice my opposition to this unnecessary temporary flood reconstruction levy. But before I do, on indulgence, I would like to reflect on the earthquake in New Zealand. I have many friends in the great city of Christchurch and as we stand here today many of our Kiwi cousins lie trapped under rubble and in buildings, with rescue teams battling for their survival. We pray for their rescuers; we pray for those trapped in buildings and our thoughts are with them.
There are many reasons why the government’s latest raid on the taxpayers’ wallets and purses, through this so-called flood levy or ‘mateship tax’ as the Prime Minister likes to call it, is misguided and should be opposed, but I would like to concentrate on the damage that this tax will do to the tradition of Australian mateship. Mateship is an Australian and New Zealand tradition that makes us great nations. It involves the deepest bonds of generosity, sacrifice, community spirit and the ability to deal with hardship in the face of adversity. It is an ethos that pre-dates Gallipoli and the Kokoda Track. As the recent Victoria Cross recipient Corporal Benjamin Roberts-Smith said when asked what triggered the action that led to his decoration:
Mateship. I think the biggest sin in life is to let your mates down.
There are some in our society today that seek to reject, ignore, denigrate and deny our Australian tradition of mateship. To those people I would like to quote from a letter I received only yesterday from a constituent from the suburb of Engadine in my electorate:
Being from a European background and arriving in Australia 8 years ago, two things impressed us greatly: Australian ‘mateship’ and volunteers.
I’ve visited quite a few countries, throughout Europe and the USA for study and work, but not one has these two things.
They continue:
They are unique to Australia and touch everybody’s heart. In these 8 years we became Australians with the same beliefs and lifestyle. My husband and I both obtained local education, are working full-time, paying a mortgage and with our kids enrolled in local primary and high schools.
To tell the truth, the ‘flood levy’ upsets us greatly.
Everybody gave generously to the Flood appeal. We are also regular donors to the Cancer Council and the Stroke Foundation.
But it is very different when it becomes obligation rather than good will.
They say they already see one-third to one half of their salary taken by this government, “which cannot manage its funds”. They go on to say:
And yet again the same working people will be punished for the fact that this Government has spent billions on failing projects and didn’t make a decent reservefor emergency situations like the Queensland floods.
I could not have said it better. The community spirit in the aftermath of the recent flooding in Brisbane, compared with that during the flooding in New Orleans, further demonstrates that the Australian ethos of mateship is alive and well. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the city plunged into lawlessness. Anarchy and chaos reigned as armed gangs roamed the streets, preying on the helpless, pillaging and looting homes, committing murder and rape. In the aftermath of the flooding in New Orleans, a tourist asked a police officer for help and reportedly got the reply: ‘Go to hell. It’s everyone for himself.’ In contrast, following the recent floods in Queensland and Victoria there were armed gangs roaming the streets but these gangs were made up of thousands of ordinary mums and dads and volunteers from all walks of life. They were armed with mops and buckets and brooms, but most of all they were armed with their Australian ethos of mateship. It made you proud to be an Aussie.
But now, the very concept of mateship is being shamelessly exploited by this government as a smokescreen to slug Australian families with a new tax to prop up a budget bleeding red ink for reckless and extravagant spending, with billions wasted on misguided schemes such as GroceryWatch, the pink batts fiasco, the BER and a list that is too long to mention here.
The real danger of this unnecessary flood tax—or ‘mateship tax’ as the Prime Minister likes to call it—is the harmful effect it will have on the Australian tradition of mateship. Millions of Australians have donated generously to assist victims of the floods, simply because they did not want to let their mates down. Now they feel doublecrossed, with this government saying they will be forced to pay an additional, compulsory donation in the form of a new tax.
If this new flood levy goes ahead, next time a major disaster happens—and history tells us it will—many other generous people will simply say to themselves, ‘Why should I give voluntarily when the government is going to make it compulsory for me to give?’ Therefore, next time we face a major disaster, the memory of this unnecessary flood levy will weaken our Australian spirit of generosity and mateship, and that is why I oppose it. It is understandable that those who sit opposite, who have witnessed the Sussex Street death squads executing no fewer than two New South Wales premiers and a Prime Minister in less than two short years, have not got a clue about mateship.
Further, and what is very concerning, is that this government do not have a clue about fundamental economic principles. Earlier this week we heard the Assistant Treasurer claim that adding a new tax to electricity would somehow make electricity cheaper. Now we have them failing to understand a second fundamental economic principle: if you tax something you get less of it. Therefore this unnecessary mateship tax will simply result in less mateship and will thereby undermine one of the building blocks that makes Australia the great nation it is.
On the other side, speakers have made the point that the previous Howard government imposed several levies. That is correct. But they conveniently forgot to mention that these levies helped pay off $96,000 million worth of debt that the previous Labor government left, which the Howard government turned into a $20 billion surplus, every cent of which has already been spent by those on the other side. These are all facts conveniently overlooked by speakers on the other side. However, the big difference is that none of the levies under the previous Howard government were for causes that the general public had already donated generously for, like they did for the Queensland floods. That is my point and that is why I object to this levy.
I am not against the concept of levies in general; I am against this particular one being imposed when there is so much reckless spending going on and when it is for a cause that the Australian people have already so generously donated for. In an attempt to justify this new tax, I have heard speakers from the government claim that the recent floods were the biggest economic disaster ever. But they are wrong. The biggest economic disaster that this country has experienced is the waste, mismanagement and incompetence of this government. It is only slightly ahead of the previous high-water mark for waste, mismanagement and incompetence set by the Whitlam government.
This is not the time to introduce a new tax. Small businesses throughout Australia are doing it very tough. I have heard government speakers say that it is only a cup of coffee a week. I would like them to go and say to the thousands of small-cafe owners throughout Australia and the tens of thousands of employees that those cafes rely on that it is ‘only one cup of coffee a week’, because those cups of coffee create thousands of jobs throughout the economy which small businesses rely on.
We meant money not actually coffee, you know.
You have no idea about small business.
Here is my suggestion: if the government is not willing to show some discipline and rein in their reckless spending, let’s simply change the name of this levy. Rather than call it a flood levy, let’s name it after one of the many other disasters that this country has suffered in recent times. How about the ‘pink batts fiasco’ levy? Or the ‘glorious revolution in education’ levy? How about the ‘green loans debacle’ levy? Or even, to borrow a phrase from the Prime Minister, the ‘we have lost our way’ levy?
My suggestion is simply to call it the ‘Labor waste and mismanagement levy’, because the waste and mismanagement of this government has caused far more economic damage to this nation than any flood possibly could. After all, but for a range of government debacles and waste—a list too long to mention here—we would have the funds, and more, for all the reconstruction work needed in Queensland, Victoria and elsewhere throughout Australia.
In conclusion, if the government are determined to go ahead with this new tax, I would ask them to simply have the honesty to rename it. Change the name. Do not call it a flood levy tax; let’s just call it the ‘Labor waste and mismanagement levy’. You may get some more acceptance from the public if you do that.
I rise today to speak in favour of the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and a related bill. Before I start to talk about that, I would like to express the sympathies of the people of Canberra for those in Christchurch. It has been dubbed the darkest of days, and I would just like the people of Christchurch and New Zealand to know that the thoughts and prayers of Canberrans are with them today and over the coming weeks as they work through the rubble and destruction and try to come to terms with their loss.
In speaking in favour of the bill, I want to acknowledge that most of the people I have spoken to in my electorate support the levy. They embrace the spirit of mateship. They support the rebuilding, they support their fellow Australians and they want to help them succeed in the future.
What we have seen in recent months has been disaster on a scale unprecedented in our nation’s history: three-quarters of a state underwater, dozens killed and many thousands of people whose homes have been destroyed or damaged. Vital infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged—the roads, rail and ports that literally feed and power this nation. The scale of damage to infrastructure is also enormous. Ninety thousand kilometres of road are in need of repair. Queensland is in need of help. This is a fact beyond any debate; both sides of the House agree. What is being debated is how best to respond to this disaster.
On one side, you have a proposal to introduce a limited short-term levy to pay for a reconstruction effort—I say ‘reconstruction effort’ because those on the other side do not seem to understand what that means—so that we can address the issues of the destruction on a scale that could not be planned for. This is brought to you by a government that steered this nation away from the massive economic downturn that was felt so intensely by almost all other nations.
On the other side you have a proposal to cut or defer $2 billion of expenditure from vital programs, brought to you by people who failed to notice an $11 billion black hole in their so-called election spending cuts. These cuts include a decision to end a program to fund schools in Indonesia. These are cuts that are against our national security and economic interests, against the future interests of thousands of Indonesian children, and against the right thing to do.
This short-sighted approach to foreign and defence policy is truly gobsmacking, because it overlooks the fact that we are a wealthy nation. It overlooks the fact that, as a wealthy nation, we can support those in need in Australia and at the same time support those in need in our region. It also overlooks the fact that poverty breeds terrorism. What is the best way of eliminating poverty and the cycle of disadvantage? It is education. Education is the great empowerer. It opens up opportunities like nothing else. It builds self-esteem. It provides choice. Not that that is a message terribly dear to the coalition’s heart, given its track record in education when it was in government.
On one side you have a government that is prepared to make the tough decisions—decisions that may not be popular at the time but are nonetheless absolutely vital to the national interest. I commend the Prime Minister for having the commitment to make that tough decision. On the other side you have an opposition that is prepared to say and do anything to win. No three-word slogan or one-line sound bite is off limits to win their game. The problem is: their slogans are without policy backbone, they are uncosted and possess no vision beyond tomorrow’s headlines. To every problem they have an answer which is quick, easy to understand and ultimately wrong. That is what we have been presented with by the opposition: a quick, populist answer which is just plain wrong—wrong for Queensland and wrong for Australia.
The opposition stands here and speaks about the cost of living and the effect on families. This is rich coming from a side of politics that was the highest taxing government in history and that has previously proposed no less than six levies. Tony Abbott went to the last election promising a $3 billion a year levy on business to pay for its parental leave scheme. Contrast that with our parental leave scheme: introduced on 1 January, fully funded by the government without slugging business or taxpayers. Two thousand new parents are now receiving the benefit and there are 22,000 applications waiting.
Then there was the Howard government’s addiction to levies. I find it interesting when members opposite suggest that they have difficulty in understanding the word ‘levy’, given their addiction to it in the past. There was the gun buyback levy, the Ansett levy, the East Timor levy, the milk levy and the sugar levy. Let us explore a few of these. The gun buyback scheme started in October 1996 and ended in September 1997. The Commonwealth funded the scheme through a one-off 0.2 per cent increase in the Medicare levy to raise about $500 million.
Then there was the milk levy of 11c a litre that raised $240 million a year to fund the industry’s adjustment to deregulation. It lasted eight years and was abolished by Labor in 2008. Then there was the Ansett levy, which was imposed after the collapse of that airline in 2001. The $10 levy was imposed on plane tickets in October 2001 to help recoup worker entitlements after the airline’s collapse a month earlier. It was scrapped in June last year after nearly $300 million was collected—but not before the Howard government used $100 million of that money to pay for aviation security before many former workers had received their full entitlements.
The criticism of this temporary, one-off levy, which does not affect anyone earning less than $50,000 and does not affect those who have been affected by the floods, is a bit rich—because, in government, this opposition was absolutely addicted to levies. It is also a bit rich that the opposition criticises the levy because it says it is concerned about the lives of Australian families—this, from the architects of Work Choices, the worst piece of legislation to hit Australian families. Where is the consistency? Where is the long-term vision? Put simply: there is none.
This temporary, one-off levy is a limited and responsible response to the issue before us. It will apply only to incomes over $50,000. In fact, 60 per cent of taxpayers will only pay an extra dollar a week, which will contribute directly to the cost of rebuilding the damaged infrastructure—the roads, the bridges, the rail and the ports. It will directly contribute to rebuilding Queensland and the basic fundamentals of the economic fabric and productivity of the country. It is not a frivolous expense to rebuild the foundations on which we feed and power the nation. It is not a frivolous expense. We are talking about the underpinnings vital to the survival of our exports, industry and trade, and the framework for Queensland’s growth and prosperity in the future—and through it our nation’s.
Let me turn to those opposite again. What is the essence of the opposition’s argument—if we can dignify their claims with this term? Essentially, all the opposition can do, like a toddler in a tantrum, is bang away on its toy drum pretending horror at the idea of the levy. Childish exaggeration is very much a central characteristic of the sloganeering of the opposition. But, back in the adult world—where we, the Gillard government operate—we do not have to look far to find independent commentary endorsing the flood levy as economically responsible, and we particularly get that from the Australian. The levy is widely recognised for what it is: modest, temporary and progressive. And it is the right thing to do—the right thing for a government that is serious about bringing the budget back into surplus. But, like those little toddlers, the opposition cannot even put forward an alternative without holding their breath until they are blue or descending into bickering, as we saw last week. Their sad efforts at scaremongering have no credibility.
Putting forward a new levy, no matter how modest it is, does invite the risk of unpopularity. But this government does not count the polls or shy away from tough decisions when it comes to doing the right thing. In the last week we have seen the opposition attempt to pander to what it shamefully thought would be xenophobic and selfish instincts by making much of cutting aid to Indonesian schools—an attempt, I am happy to see, that was completely ill-founded in its contemptuous and cynical view of the tolerance of the Australian people. You think the opposition would have learnt after Lindsay. The opposition does not truly seek to make the right decisions; it seeks only to scaremonger, to appeal to what it hopes are prejudice and mistrust.
The devastation wrought in Queensland will not be easy to redress—nor does the government try to pretend it will be. But the bills we are debating are part of its careful, responsible and measured response. I call on all members, including those opposite, to support these bills.
I am very pleased to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and related bill, because there are some local implications for my electorate and I want to reveal to the House the feedback from my electorate. I have great admiration for the member for Canberra, who spoke previously, but I wish to comment on the Orwellian speak that the others are using on this issue about a ‘temporary’ levy—the same as their ‘temporary’ budget deficit. There is nothing temporary about this. The history of these sorts of levies is that they continue and that they will be morphed into something else at some time in the future.
What we are dealing with here is one of the worst governments ever in Australia’s history to be in this House. It is probably not quite as bad as the Whitlam government, but it is a mess. When I outline some examples in my speech you will see how this government is mismanaging this economy and why this levy is turning into a mess for this government. The problem is that the government does not know how many people are involved. It is drunk on taxes. As a Western Australian I object to the fact that this year this government wants to impose a carbon tax—when Julie Gillard said before the election that she would not have a tax—and it wants to impose a mining tax on Western Australia, and now we have got another tax.
I have constituents contacting me about this. Steven Pin, from my electorate, from Buckingham Road in Kelmscott—where houses were burnt down—rang about the Queensland levy. Mr Pin’s home was badly affected by the Kelmscott fires and is facing huge costs to rebuild parts of his house et cetera. He feels that he should not have to pay the levy. Michael King, from Mount Richon, said: ‘I really don’t support this levy.’ Dave Gossage says: ‘As a volunteer firefighter, I have an issue with being taxed again by this government.’ I could go on and on but, because of time constraints, I will limit it. At the end of the day, this is a bad tax.
Mr Gray interjecting
Absolutely. There are misguided people all around Australia on this issue. At the end of the day, this tax is misdirected and misguided. The number of people to be affected is not known and the amount is not known. The problem is that the Prime Minister is not even sure who should be paying the tax.
My electorate has been affected by bushfires on two occasions recently. In the Lake Clifton bushfires, 11 houses were burnt and there were 72 houses burnt in the recent Roleystone-Kelmscott fires. Interestingly—to show you just what a mess this is—Senator Cormann in estimates yesterday asked Treasury official, Mr David Tune—
Finance official.
I appreciate your help—Finance official, Mr David Tune.
Mr Gray interjecting
If I can continue—
The minister will desist so that the member can be heard in peace. Do not respond to interjections. The member for Canning has the call.
In estimates yesterday, the finance official, Mr David Tune, was asked a question regarding natural disaster relief payments to disaster declared areas. He was asked whether people in those areas would be paying the levy. His answer was quite interesting. Senator Cormann asked:
People like those in Kelmscott that was subject to those bushfires will be exempt from the flood tax?
The finance official answered:
No, no. Not necessarily, no.
Senator Cormann: Why is that?
The official answered:
Well, the government’s decision at the moment is that those who are subject to the floods are exempt from the levy. It would require another decision for that.
In other words, whether or not people affected by fires would be paying the levy. Senator Cormann continued:
So … if the natural disaster you are subject to was a flood you will be exempt from the flat tax. If it is any other natural disaster you are not exempt from the tax?
The official answered:
That is the situation at the moment.
Let’s talk about real, live action on this issue. This is what I am asking: how many people are going to be exempt, how many people will not be exempt?
I put out a press release, which was picked up by the West Australian newspaper, saying that people in my electorate would be hit with this tax, as per the description from the finance official. Interestingly, by the time the West Australian had finished talking to the Prime Minister’s office, things had changed. A spokesman was reported in the West Australian:
A spokesman for Ms Gillard said victims of this year’s WA bushfires would be exempted.
“As the Prime Minister has made clear, if people have been hit hard by natural disasters in the last few weeks, then it’s only fair that they do not pay the levy …
Well, they were going to pay the levy yesterday, but they are not going to pay the levy today? What a mess. The official declared to Senator Cormann in estimates—
Mr Gray interjecting
The minister has had his fun.
I have great regard for the member opposite, but I would hate to have to call a quorum on the next speaker from the Labor Party because of time taken. So, people who were going to be hit yesterday are not going to be hit today. That is all I am saying. But it goes further. This sort of ad hoc decision about those who are going to pay the levy is further exemplified in the article by Andrew Probyn in today’s West Australian:
Discrepancies in the treatment of WA disaster victims emerged … this month when the West Australian revealed Gascoyne flood victims were denied emergency relief payments from Centrelink …
After the West reported, Ms Gillard and Attorney-General Robert McClelland announced those affected by the Gascoyne flood would be eligible for payments.
Here are two occasions when those who were affected by natural disasters were going to be left high and dry—that is probably not the right term for people in the Gascoyne, because they now have their third flood coming through, and I understand that Cyclone Carlos is hanging off Carnarvon today—but, when the media gets on to the Prime Minister when she feels some sort of sensitivity towards this, she changes her mind. Is this how decisions are being made by this terrible government that is going to impose another tax on us—ad hoc decisions? If you go to the media and make a fuss about it, the Prime Minister backflips.
We have seen her backflips in this place. She announced that she was going to cancel several green programs. We know there is a green alliance with the government in this House, and the tail is wagging the dog. Along comes Senator Brown, some of the Greens say they have some leverage over the Prime Minister and they reintroduce some of the green initiatives that she had already cancelled. So, cancel it one day and reinstate it the next. Along comes the member for Denison—the same thing: lean on the Prime Minister, she changes her mind and reinstates it. Is this how we have government in this country? Is this how this levy will be applied, depending on who makes the most noise and who does not? Will it apply to people affected previously? Will it apply to any future disaster in Australia? God forbid we have another event—another cyclone. The member for Paterson is sitting here—there was the Newcastle earthquake. Will those people be exempt? Is it going to be months ahead or years ahead? It is so sloppy and out of control that we have a situation where we are governed by press release and media embarrassment of the Prime Minister.
In the short time allotted to me, I am pleased to say that I wrote to the Prime Minister previously—certainly well before yesterday—on this issue, and that saved some of the 72 people who lost their homes in my electorate and some of the 30-odd people whose homes were partially damaged from having to pay this levy. As I said, the problem is that the government have decided that they will find $1.2 billion from a levy and the rest from cuts. The cuts have been reversed and they do not know how much it will actually cost. They then say, ‘We’ll find some further budget cuts.’ Government has the capacity to pay for and deal with natural disasters. This government should do that. They should talk about spending priorities. For example, the $960 billion spent on illegal arrivals to this country over one year is the amount that was spent by the Howard government over its entire term. If you stopped the boats, you could find most of your spending from the illegal migration program, yet as a priority they still allow illegal arrivals to come. There is no hesitation in paying all the costs associated with those arrivals, yet they are willing to tax the Australian people with another levy because they do not want to attack some of their sacred cows, like the illegal migration program.
It is a privilege to contribute to the debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. It is a key debate that is at the centre of the discussion about the future of this country. Obviously, we have been through a summer of extraordinary natural disasters. I want to take this opportunity, as I have done in the House previously, to convey my condolences to those who have been impacted by the natural disasters in this country. I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that, just across the Tasman, our neighbours—our brothers and sisters in New Zealand—have been so deeply affected by the earthquake in Christchurch. They have already, of course, suffered the devastation of the earlier quakes, but with what has occurred over the last 24 hours or so, having gone through what we have been through as a nation, our hearts certainly go out to those across the Tasman. Indeed, the Australian government has already made various announcements around how it intends to provide assistance to the New Zealand government.
As I indicated, I have spoken at length in the House previously about the devastating natural disasters that we have faced in this country. In that respect, I wish to contain my comments principally to the debate around how we as a nation intend to fund the recovery effort. That is what these bills are about. They go to how we as a government and how the Australian people intend to ensure that we do not leave those affected by these natural disasters behind but that we step up to the plate and do what is required to rebuild these communities. There are clear and obvious reasons as to why that is important. It is important not just to those communities, though clearly it is; equally it is important to communities all around Australia. There are and will continue to be flow-on effects that will be felt in supermarkets and across lounge rooms and dinner tables around this country. There are very pressing and urgent needs of Australians in the areas that have been affected by those disasters, but there are equally important but more wide-ranging impacts to be felt right across the country.
The scale of what is required has been set out by many speakers in this debate. The early estimates are that the cost of rebuilding will be somewhere in the order of $5.6 billion—that is what will be required from the federal government. That does not include the effects of Cyclone Yasi, so, obviously, the task that lies ahead is significant and it requires us as a nation to work out how we intend to fund that. There are a range of options around how we may seek to fund that. The government has embarked upon the course of determining that some of those funds could be raised in the form of a flood levy. Also, we are deferring some infrastructure projects and embarking upon some expenditure cuts. We believe that this is an appropriate, fair and balanced mix of measures to address the need for us to raise this $5.6 billion to rebuild communities in the areas affected by the natural disasters.
There has, of course, been a lot of debate around whether or not this is an appropriate means through which the government should be funding the recovery effort, and that is a debate that we very much welcome. We think it is entirely reasonable for Australians to ask the question: is this the most appropriate way for us as a nation to make our contribution towards the rebuilding effort? It has been said by many in this debate that the Australian people have been very generous in their private donations. That needs to be acknowledged. We should not be surprised by it, because the Australian people have always shown a preparedness to step forward to help out—
As we will donate to New Zealand.
Indeed, as the shadow minister for tourism indicates, we will all step forward and make contributions to assist those in New Zealand as well. I think it is beyond contention that we as a people are generous in our private donations, but, whichever way you look at it, the total amount of donations that has been raised through the Queensland Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal is somewhere in the order of $200 million. Those moneys will be applied to certain purposes, but that amount falls significantly short of the overall rebuilding cost. We can think about it in these terms: $5.6 billion is almost 30 times the amount donated through the relief appeal. We welcome the donations and thank everyone who has dug deep to assist those in the areas affected by the natural disasters, but as a government we have to find the funds to do what every Australian should expect—that, if they were in a similar situation, the government would step in and ensure that that rebuilding effort was facilitated.
In raising these funds, most of the discussion has centred on the flood levy. I have to say that I am surprised that the opposition has gone down the path of opposing this levy.
No, you’re not!
I am surprised because I know that on many occasions in the past when levies, particularly directed towards confronting challenges in the national interest, were proposed by those on the other side when they were in government they were able to rely on the support of the Labor Party.
The community weren’t donating of their own free will at that time.
The community were donating in other ways in respect of some of those levies—for example, through the prices that consumers were paying—but can we just have a look at this question of levies. There is almost a religious fervour in the way in which people on the other side are opposed to the imposition of a levy. You would be forgiven for thinking that this was the first levy to be imposed on the Australian people, but indeed it is not. In recent history we can see that the coalition in particular has made an art form of introducing levies.
There was the gun buyback levy, for example. I am not disputing the merits of some of these levies, because they were applied to confronting some challenges in the national interest. There was the East Timor intervention—the subject of a levy which was not implemented because it was not required by the time it was set to come into effect. There was the dairy industry restructure, the payout of the Ansett staff, terrorism reinsurance and the sugar industry restructure. Those opposite—who say ‘It is almost criminal for a government to come forward and do such an outrageous thing as to impose a levy on the community’—had great form on this in government. There was not one levy, not two levies, not three levies but six levies—you could call it a bevy of levies—and the mother of all levies, in a sense, was the one proposed by the Leader of the Opposition at the last election. We know that those on the other side do not really like to talk about this because it was a matter of some division—
Mr Baldwin interjecting
No. In fact, not only—
The member for Paterson will desist, and the parliamentary secretary will stop responding to interjections.
I make the point that not only is the government not opposed to paid parental leave but also we proudly stand here as the first government in Australia’s history to implement a paid parental leave scheme. An alternative scheme was proposed which sought to raise the funds to deliver the scheme by way of an impost—a levy, as I recall. I do not want to go through the entire history of that, but we all remember that the first thing that the Leader of the Opposition said when he came into that role was that he was not going to increase taxes; yet the first policy he announced was an increased levy. There was a bit of a fudge during the election campaign suggesting that it was not a levy at all or was only a temporary levy, but at the end of the day it was a levy.
Those on the other side proposed a levy for a worthy cause. We believe that paid parental leave is a worthy cause, but it was not something that required an immediate and urgent response. Indeed, I think there is a much stronger argument that those sorts of expenditures should be covered through general expenditure restraint or expenditure cuts, but that levy was not going to be covered that way. So on the other side we have those who supported six levies—in fact, they supported seven levies, including the levy that we never got because the Australian people got in the way of it—yet they are opposed to this levy. I think the truth is that they are opposed not to levies in general but to a Labor levy. Liberal levies are good; Labor levies are obviously not so good.
A stream of economists have come forward to indicate that they believe that this levy is a balanced package. Craig James from Commsec said it best:
This is the right levy for the times—modest in size, temporary, progressive and applying to those on higher incomes.
… … …
The fact that the Government is cutting spending and applying a new levy on Australian consumers may reduce the need or urgency for the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates over the year.
There is an important element in the government’s response to the disaster relief effort—that is, the way in which the infrastructure deferrals that have been put on the table will not only reduce the expenditure of government and give us the capacity to meet the rebuilding task but also take some of the pressure off the capacity constraints that the Australian economy is facing and thereby take some pressure off interest rates. The opposition’s response to the floods was, ‘We’re going to make a whole series of cuts.’ In fact, they were not cuts; they were all deferrals. They are unlike the deferrals that we have proposed, however, which are specifically infrastructure deferrals, the purpose of which is to take some of the heat out of the economy so that where there are capacity constraints and skills shortages we will not as a result of the rebuilding effort put more pressure on interest rates, inflation and the cost of living.
That is a sensible, rational approach to economic policy, and I think that the underlying rationale of the response from the opposition falls a long way short. A number of the cuts, particularly those to the aid funding to Indonesian schools, were not motivated by anything other than some of the more malicious intent that we have come to know about thanks to leaks. We now know that there was a discussion going on in the shadow cabinet around what might be in the national interest, and that discussion had nothing to do with the rebuilding effort but a lot to do with stirring up resentment and sensitivities in communities that may well be very far away from the areas affected by the floods.
This is not only a temporary levy but also a modest one. A bit earlier, I heard the member for Mitchell’s contribution and was intrigued by it. On the one hand, he complained that higher income people did not receive handouts when the government made its stimulus payments and, on the other hand, said that he is a great advocate of small government. Somehow he wants to reconcile a commitment to small government with big, fat, middle-class welfare contributions. His contribution was interesting, but thankfully for the Australian people he is a long way from the Treasury bench—in fact, he is a long way from his party’s front bench. That is probably a good thing for the debate around the management of economic policy in this country.
As I said, this levy is of a modest nature. The point has been made that those earning under $50,000 will not pay anything, while those earning above $50,000 will pay incrementally. But one of the points that has not been made very clearly throughout this debate is the relationship between the tax cuts that have been delivered over the last few years and the modest, temporary amount that will be required over the coming year. For example, someone on $120,000 a year will pay $8.65 per week under the levy, but through the tax cuts of 2008, 2009 and 2010 they have received a cut of $52.88. This levy is temporary in nature, and people will not be subjected to that imposition at the end of the following financial year. So we think it is an important measure and a sensible one as well. On 9 March 2010, the opposition leader, in defending his paid parental leave scheme, said:
Sometimes, for very, very important social reasons, for national interest reasons, you’ve got to say, ‘We need the money.’
If a levy was good enough then, it is good enough now. (Time expired)
I rise today to oppose vehemently the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. As the Leader of the Opposition said in this chamber today, ‘We have a Prime Minister who has never met a tax she didn’t like or a tax she couldn’t hike.’ This new Julia is no different from the old Julia, and like her predecessors—Rudd, Keating, Hawke and Whitlam—
Order! The member will refer to members by their appropriate titles.
she is addicted to putting up a tax as a means of solution. It just shows a lack of management understanding
This Labor package will place further burdens on Paterson residents who are already dealing with skyrocketing living costs. Budgets are stretched to the limit because of recent increases in the price of power, water, rent, interest rates, groceries and fuel under the Gillard Labor government. Because our Treasurer, Wayne Swan, cannot manage a budget, local families have to rework theirs time and time again—and he is supposed to be a leader.
As Peter Martin wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald on 15 February:
IF YOU think your cost of living is rising faster than what official figures seem to say, you are probably right.
Living cost indices published by the Bureau of Statistics yesterday show the increases facing working families, age pension households and welfare beneficiaries have all outpaced the consumer price index.
In the year just gone, working households faced extra costs of 4.5 per cent, aged pensioners 3.1 per cent and welfare recipients 4.5 per cent. The CPI grew 2.7 per cent.
The bureau says there are different reasons for each of the rises. Aged pensioners spend a relatively high proportion of their income on utility bills and fruit and vegetables, the cost of which shot up.
As a group, welfare beneficiaries spend more than most on alcohol and tobacco, which rose sharply in price largely as a result of the 25 per cent increase in cigarette tax.
Working families are highly likely to face mortgage payments, which rose by 30 per cent over the year as a result of four Reserve Bank rate rises and one imposed by the banks themselves.
This just about sums it up and it just is not good enough. Why not? Because this Labor government cannot get its spending under control. It is not that it cannot; it is a fact that it refuses to do so.
The coalition had more than $20 billion in the bank when Labor took over power. Now we have a debt which will peak at $94.4 billion according to the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Because of our Treasurer’s and Prime Minister’s reckless spending, Australians have been paying for Labor to borrow more than $100 million every single day. That places upward cost pressures on just about every single product you can buy.
The spending and the debt would not be as shameful if the money had been spent wisely. But just look at our Prime Minister’s long list of failures. There was the school halls rip-off; that wasted an estimated $8 billion, which was half of what the entire program cost. Worse still, it left some schools with more inferior buildings than they had actually started with.
The border protection failure means there have now been more than 200 illegal boat arrivals under Labor, and it will cost taxpayers more than $760 million in this financial year alone. Rather than doing what is necessary to stop people smugglers putting lives at risk, Labor is building more facilities to house asylum seekers on Australian soil. They have actually put up the sign ‘open for business’.
The dodgy home insulation tragedy cost $2.4 billion, and was finally shut down after more than 190 related house fires—not to mention the deaths. The $50 billion National Broadband Network will take at least eight years to roll out and will not even reach all of the population. A paper released on 9 February this year by the Economist Intelligence Unit, one of the world’s most respected research organisations, shows that the NBN will cost Australian taxpayers 24 times as much as South Korea’s cost South Korean taxpayers. Despite the excessive cost, it will only deliver one-tenth the speed.
I have to mention GroceryWatch, Fuelwatch and the bank switch, all of which were supposed to help Australian families deal with the cost of food, petrol and lending. All those promises were abandoned, and now all of those things cost more. GroceryWatch alone saw this Labor government waste $7 million in taxpayer money.
I could go on, but there is not enough time. It makes you wonder: are Treasurer Wayne Swan and Prime Minister Julia Gillard really so incompetent that they cannot roll out a successful program, or do they just not care about wasting money and forcing up costs for everyday Australians? I think it is the latter. After all, a government with a $350 billion budget should be able to find $1.8 billion—the amount it hopes to raise through this flood levy. That is like having $350 in your pocket and asking someone for $1.80.
As Derek from Tuncurry, in my electorate, commented in a letter to me about the flood levy:
We are taxed enough, I am a single parent who receives no government support, pays most of my income in child support, escalating electricity costs, food etc. Now to lose several hundred more dollars a year because the Rudd/Gillard governments have wasted the national savings on insulation bats and blatant wasteful spending on ridiculous tin sheds for schools is totally unacceptable.
Labor seems to think that a tax is the answer to everything. If the Labor Party has its way, 2011 will be the year of the mining tax, the carbon tax and the flood tax, and that will mean higher prices, as history shows. In 2008, when the Labor Government introduced a new tax on alcohol, the price of alcohol went up; when it introduced a higher tax on cars, the cost of cars went up; and when it turned its focus to private health insurance, the cost of health care went up. As has been said, our Prime Minister has never met a tax that she did not like, or a tax that she was not prepared to hike.
The only way to stop history repeating itself this time is for Labor to get its spending under control. The coalition offered to help out. In fact, despite being in opposition, it was the coalition that was able to identify over $2 billion in savings over the forward estimates—enough to mean that a flood levy would not be needed. We were able to do so because we understood that in government you have to make tough decisions to protect your citizens. The coalition demonstrated that when last in government, with a clean record of fiscal responsibility. Then Treasurer Peter Costello entered government with a massive $100 billion debt from the previous Labor government, but he made the gutsy decisions he was elected for. Like any responsible person running a household or business budget, Peter Costello and Prime Minister John Howard not only paid back Labor’s debt; they also put some money away for a rainy day. That is the coalition way.
Since Gough Whitlam, the Labor way is to spend as if there is a money tree at the Lodge, when in fact the money tree is made up of hardworking taxpayers who will pay for Labor’s ineptitude for years to come. Labor’s failure to make tough decisions is nothing more than political cowardice. Today I oppose a legislation package which is unprecedented in this parliament. Never before in Australian history have people been asked to donate, responded to that call with overwhelming generosity and then had more of their money forcefully stripped away. I have received dozens of letters at my office on this very issue. Jo-Anne from the town of Paterson summed up her feelings when she wrote:
I cannot believe that we are being forced to contribute to the rebuilding of Queensland by the Gillard government. Is it likely that this is going to pass through parliament? Sadly, it has made friends and acquaintances of mine not privately donate, and long term I think it will make a lot of people think about whether to donate to other disasters in the future.
Australians are a generous people. I see it every day when travelling in my electorate. As soon as the floods hit, my office was overwhelmed with offers of money, goods and time. A number of local events were also held to raise money, including a fundraiser organised at Salamander Bay Shopping Centre which raised in excess of $15,000. Of course, that was just one of a number of local events. There was also a lunch at Corlette, a barbecue at Bulahdelah and a bucket collection at Australia Day celebrations in Maitland, to name just a few. It is amazing to see that when people are struggling with their own finances they still find a way to give. In punishing them afterwards, by making tax time more costly, Labor is delivering a slap in the face to those generous Australians.
I join the government in offering my sincere condolences to those who suffered in the floods: those who lost homes, businesses, loved ones and friends. I also join the government in thanking the amazing volunteers and charities who have worked tirelessly to help affected residents. They have been supported in their work by the provision of public donations. They have been helping our neighbours, which I believe is our moral duty. But it is a government’s duty to supply infrastructure. It is a government’s duty to ensure that the roads are maintained, levee banks are constructed and bridges are built. It is a government’s duty to ensure that it handles public money with the respect it demands. Labor has not done that and it does not deserve to be trusted with further public money, garnered through another new tax. These are completely unnecessary bills, which could easily be made redundant if the Gillard Labor government made a few tough decisions. I urge the Prime Minister to do the job she was elected for: to cut spending, instead of introducing a great big new tax. That is the best way to help our fellow Australians—in fact, all Australians. You will not maintain faith in the Australian spirit of helping your mates out with the Labor way of forcing people to do what is in their nature. Accordingly, I vehemently oppose this package of bills.
I rise to join the condemnation of this bill, the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, and I also join in the condemnation of this flood tax that the Gillard Labor government is going to slug many Australians and Queenslanders with. I have said it before in this chamber, but I will say it again: in the wake of this massive flood disaster and cyclone disaster that we have had in my home state of Queensland, which has impacted or will impact on just about every Queenslander in one way, shape or form, the answer that this government has given is an answer that only a Labor government could give—‘Let’s bring in a new tax.’
When people are doing it tough in the community with the rising cost of living, these guys are going to slug them again. Make no mistake: it will hurt everyday people in my electorate of Dawson. The other side seem to think that anyone earning $50,000 or over is on a good wicket and so they should pay through the nose. The reality is something altogether different. Just in case they haven’t got out into the real world lately, outside caucus, let me give an illustration of an average young couple from my electorate. This is a real couple from my electorate, Matt and Casey. He is a miner; she is a counsellor at a crisis centre. The flood tax to be taken from them is literally hundreds of dollars, roughly a bit over $550.
All the Labor spin doctors and apologists are coming out with these cheap lines about the levy being just the cost of a tin of beans, a cup of coffee or a piece of cake. A piece of cake? Get real! This young couple that I mentioned, Matt and Casey, have a large mortgage, costing them about $700 a week—but they should not worry; it is just a tin of beans extra! Their grocery bill is $200 a week and rising—but do not worry; it is just a cup of coffee extra! Matt and Casey’s electricity bill is nearly $300 a quarter and rising, and Labor are going to add to it with their carbon tax—but it is just a piece of cake extra! Their rates are nearly $3,500 a year, their phone bill is $200 a month, their fuel bill is $150 a week and rising, their home insurance and car insurance are nudging $3,500 a year, and their private health cover is $2,000 a year—and Labor are going to get rid of their rebate—but it is just a cup of coffee more, they say. Each month, Matt and Casey pay a combined $4,000-plus in tax to the federal government already. It is just a piece of cake, isn’t it? And now you guys want more. What has made it even worse is that they want more when these people have already given. Like many others who may soon find themselves having to put their hand in their pocket to pay this flood tax, Matt and Casey have actually already donated to flood relief efforts. And guess what: they actually went through Cyclone Yasi. They had to have their yard cleared of branches, debris and rubbish that were blown about from the cyclone, yet they are still going to have to pay. That is what is so bad about this flood tax. It hits those who have already suffered. As I said before, the floods and cyclone have impacted on nearly every Queenslander in some way, shape or form and now the Gillard Labor government is going to tax them in order to somehow help them out.
I want to refer to Mitch Clarke, a Proserpine local who owns Fresh Network Whitsunday, a fruit and vegetable company that sells its produce at the Brisbane markets. Mitch had tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock wiped out in Rocklea at the markets and he had equipment completely ruined, all a direct result of flooding, and yet he still has to pay the flood tax. I also want to refer to Bowen residents Rob and Cheryl Vennard, mango farmers, who had their entire year’s produce destroyed, also at the Brisbane markets. They lost $400,000 in produce when the markets at Rocklea were flooded, and because they go to the effort to process their mangoes, the government classifies them as manufacturers and so they miss out on any assistance provided to primary producers. That loss caused these hardworking farmers to deregister vehicles and, unfortunately, lay off staff. And yet it seems Rob and Cheryl are still going to have to pay this flood tax.
Then there are the many tourism operators throughout the Whitsundays—motel owners, charter boat operators and restaurateurs—who have suffered from record cancellations over the Christmas holiday period and record low numbers of tourists. These people have felt the brunt of the indirect impact of the floods. At a time when they should have had a massive influx of tourists, a time that should have been the best for the tourism industry in the Whitsundays, they have had record losses. These people have felt the effects of the flood, indirectly, and yet they will still be slugged with Labor’s flood tax.
There are the commercial fishermen from Bowen. These guys may not have had boats destroyed or equipment ruined, but they have had their fishing waters from Cairns through to Mackay all churned up. They tell me that there are sand and coral islands out there that a few weeks ago did not exist. That shows the level of disturbance Cyclone Yasi caused to their fishery. But more concerning is the fact that there is now next to no catch of consequence between the bottom end of Cairns and the top end of Mackay and yet, while they have had their crop per se ruined, they are not eligible for any assistance either through a grant or a concessional loan under the current arrangements. What some of them do find themselves eligible for is the flood tax. These are salt of the earth people, cut down by Mother Nature, and now the government wants to get in a free kick. These are but a handful of examples of this disgraceful situation. There are many families in Dawson and elsewhere in Queensland who are struggling in the wake of the economic effects of the floods and Cyclone Yasi.
The other side talk about ‘mateship’ when they talk about this tax. All through this debate and in the media, members of the government have been selling this flood tax as if it is going to somehow rebuild people’s homes and livelihoods. In fact it was the Treasurer who deceptively tried to tie this new tax to the rebuilding of Queenslanders’ homes. The flood tax is not for rebuilding homes; the reality is that the money collected from the flood tax is going to be used for things which would normally be funded through contingency funds that are available when governments have a budget surplus.
The problem is the cupboard is bare. Labor destroyed that budget surplus through the disastrous pink batts program and other failed schemes, not to forget their $900 cash giveaway. Most disturbing to me is the fact that people who, according to the government, earned too much to receive one of those $900 cheques—people like Matt and his partner, Casey, from my electorate that I mentioned earlier—now have to fork out hundreds of dollars a year in ‘flood tax’. The last Liberal-National coalition government had billions of dollars in the kitty for rebuilding after events such as the Queensland flood disaster and Cyclone Yasi. Now, because of Labor’s short-sightedness and lack of ticker to make the hard decisions, we, the people, have to pay once again.
There is no way you can say this tax is about mateship. You do not tax your mate when he is down. It is not mateship at all; it is bastardry—an act of bastardry. The argument we are having here today is not about whether we should rebuild Queensland or not. Of course it needs to be rebuilt. The Liberal-National coalition is committed to the rebuilding of Queensland’s infrastructure. The argument we are having here today is whether you tax people when they are already doing it tough, when they are already struggling with the rising costs of living and when they are suffering the indirect and in some cases—as I have outlined—direct effects of Cyclone Yasi and the floods.
Sadly, those opposite are trying as much as they can to deceive the electorate into thinking the only way that Queensland can be rebuilt is by this tax. The bile that has been spewing from some of those opposite, particularly the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, against those of us on this side of the House about that point has been absolutely disgraceful. To claim that we do not care about Queenslanders because we oppose their tax that is going to hurt Queenslanders and to claim that we want to leave things the way they are in Queensland because we do not support a new tax on families—and they have all made these kinds of claims—is dishonest and unethical. To be honest, it sticks in my craw, because I was there, like so many other representatives on this side of the House. I was there in Brisbane when the floods hit. I joined ‘Can Do’ Campbell Newman’s 20,000-strong volunteer army and helped people clean up their yards. I was there in North Queensland, in Bowen, when Cyclone Anthony hit. And when Cyclone Yasi hit I was there helping out my constituents to get the SES to fix a tarp on a roof. I was there in the Burdekin and in Townsville, going door to door, street by street, talking with residents whose homes were damaged or whose yards had become an absolute mess because of the cyclone.
I dipped into my pocket to help out with the relief efforts. I would be interested to see how many on the other side did likewise. They claim we have no compassion for Queensland victims of the floods and cyclone disasters because we do not support this tax. You could not get any more dedicated to the cause of flood victims than the member for Wright has been. This guy worked his guts out day and night. He was at the evacuation centres, he helped organise relief efforts and fundraisers and he was there with the family members of those who did not make it. He was typical of many on this side of the House—working with their local residents who were hurting from this disaster, working on the ground. He was not coming into this place crying crocodile tears one minute and spewing venom at us for apparently being heartless the next.
The thing is we do not need a tax in order to rebuild communities throughout Queensland and elsewhere in the nation that have had to suffer natural disasters. Don’t take it from me; take it from Saul Eslake, former chief economist with the ANZ, who told a committee of this House that this tax was a political decision rather than an economic one and this could be done another way. Take it from economist Professor Warwick McKibbin of the ANU, who also said this decision for a flood tax was of ‘a political nature, not of an economic nature’ and could be done another way. Take it from the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry or the Australian Retailers’ Association.
We in the Liberal-National coalition have outlined more than $2 billion in further savings that the Gillard government could adopt instead of its flood tax. We have a plan they could adopt which would pay for the $5.6 billion cost of rebuilding Queensland without this tax. We start with saving the funding that Australia sends overseas to Islamic schools in Indonesia. I mean, half of this Labor lot and its Green cohorts do not even want money spent on private schools here in Australia, but they get their backs up when we talk about cutting funding to private schools in Indonesia. We have savings from pulling back on the Murray-Darling Basin water buybacks and from lowering welfare to the motor industry. These are sensible budget cuts at a time when so many people have been affected by these disasters. I say ‘sensible’ particularly because we in the Liberal-National coalition would not cut funding of flood-proofing projects on the Bruce Highway in North Queensland as Labor has proposed to do to fund the recovery. How stupid. How ironic. How short-sighted is it to cut funding to flood-proofing projects in North Queensland—two in my electorate of Dawson and one in Kennedy? You not only want to tax us up in the north but want to hold us down by allowing a situation to continue where the artery of North Queensland towns, the Bruce Highway, is cut off whenever there is a greater than average rain event.
The Prime Minister had the gall to get up and say in this House a week or so ago when moving this bill that her flood tax was going to repair the Bruce Highway between Brisbane and Cairns. Her plan involves cutting funding to flood-proofing projects on the Bruce Highway. North Queenslanders will not tolerate this. We in the Liberal-National coalition had managed to find the savings without making a savage cut, without the need for a tax, and so Labor should be able to as well.
This is all just a sign of a government that is out of touch, has lost its way and just wants to tax more and more. It thinks it can peddle a tax when the price of everything is increasing. It thinks it can get away with making false claims—that this tax is going to help rebuild people’s homes and lives. It thinks that it can continue to screw people down time and again with tax after tax—a carbon tax, a mining tax and now this flood tax. It had better think again. Australians will not wear this for much longer. We will not tolerate it on this side of the House and we can only hope that when this bill goes to the vote we jettison this flood tax and adopt sensible savings measures to deal with this natural disaster crisis, as a decent government would.
The recent extreme weather events across the country, particularly in Queensland, have been unprecedented in their force, scope and damage. The loss of life, harm to livestock and damage to buildings and infrastructure has been appalling. In my own state of Victoria, as in Queensland, there has been enormous damage to agricultural land and to current crops. Unfortunately, as we have seen this week in Western Australia, in the Northern Territory and again in Queensland, damage from extreme weather continues and is likely to continue throughout the wet season. We know, because the climate scientists tell us, that these types of extreme weather events are only going to become more frequent and more severe as global warming exacerbates storm systems, fuelling them with more moisture and energy. It is possible that the unprecedented warming in our oceans has supercharged the recent storms—storms that are triggered by the La Nina period, which always brings greater rain and storms—and has made them worse and full of more energy.
Australia has always been a land of extremes, but what the climate scientists are telling us is that these extremes are likely to become more frequent and more severe. Certainly, there is growing evidence that climate change and extreme flooding are linked. Two recent studies, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, laid out the empirical evidence for linking flooding and global warming. One study looked at the whole of the Northern Hemisphere and another examined a specific weather event in Wales. We will need to continue to monitor the scientific research that is developing in this area but, for now, we can say with certainty, although we may not be able to link specific events here in Australia to climate change, that we will face more and worse extreme weather in the future because of climate change.
It may be, as I have said in this place before, that soon the term ‘natural disaster’ will no longer describe what is happening, that in fact something very unnatural and human-made is occurring. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, it is absolutely clear that there is now extensive established scientific research, looking at the whole of Australia as well as particular regions, which points towards extreme weather because of climate change. In my own electorate of Melbourne, I received a briefing from Melbourne Water about a study that they had released which suggests that some areas—even in the inner city of Melbourne—may be facing up to a 30 per cent increase in flooding because of climate change. At the same time, other studies point to increased extreme weather events in South-East Queensland.
How we respond to this current emergency and how we deal with reconstruction is important not only because we are dealing with the desperate needs of the families, individuals, communities and businesses who have suffered so much but also because it may establish a template for our future actions. That is why it is so important that we get this task right. That is why we, the Australian Greens, support the move towards an extreme weather or disaster fund. We also believe that we need to get to a situation where the insurance question is resolved. I welcome the move by the Queensland government on this issue and the move by the federal government to begin to address the problem.
For now, the immediate task of reconstruction and recovery must begin, and this is an enormous task. The rebuilding of infrastructure and community facilities and the provision of assistance to residents and businesses will require significant resources. It will be important for this parliament to closely examine how those resources are spent, to make sure there is value for money. There is no doubt that the requirement for reconstruction placed a particular stress on the budget and required the government to define a strategy for financing the reconstruction. The government, as we know, has adopted the strategy of a one-off levy and making certain cuts. It is this strategy that I want to discuss today in debating the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011.
Faced with the task of financing the reconstruction, the government has put on a self-imposed political straightjacket designed by the doctors of neoliberalism. The obvious alternative strategy—and that is supported by many businesses, union leaders and economists—was to allow a short-term nominal increase in the budget deficit. This would have allowed the reconstruction to proceed quickly and the target of returning the budget to surplus could have been extended by a year. This would have enabled the reconstruction to proceed without the requirement of a levy or cuts to programs. But a government caught in this arbitrary, economically unfounded and unnecessary promise made at the last election has lacked the political courage to say that the changed circumstances mean this goal should be pushed back. The Greens, along with many in the business community and many economists, would have supported such an approach. Another approach would have been to say, ‘Because of these extraordinary circumstances we need to revisit the original proposed mining superprofits tax.’ As we have seen in recent weeks, by revising the original superprofits tax the Australian taxpayer is standing to lose in the order of $60 billion that would otherwise have been raised by the tax over the coming decade.
This means that, because of the government’s backdown and its failure to use this very real and very legitimate opportunity to reconsider the question, $60 billion a year is going to have to be found by ordinary Australian taxpayers to fund education, climate change programs and schools, while the mining companies will continue to enjoy superprofits by selling off minerals, which we only get to sell once, without a fair return to the Australian taxpayer. We the Greens are very pleased to see that our proposal to have some of this money put into a sovereign fund that could be used for spending on infrastructure and projects like this is now being picked up by business leaders around the country.
Another option that was open to the government but again rejected out of hand was the proposal from the Greens to delay tax cuts for the big end of town. This government is proposing to introduce tax cuts that will apply from 2013-14 to Australia’s biggest businesses. On our figures, which have not been refuted by the government, these tax cuts are going to cost Australian taxpayers—the rest of us—somewhere in the order of $1.7 billion in the budget bottom line. We could have deferred these cuts for a year or two and said it was time for the top end of town in Australia to make a substantial contribution to reconstruction, but the Labor government failed to do that.
Adopting any combination of these strategies would have meant that the flood levy and the cuts to programs adopted were unnecessary. Unfortunately, as we know, the government has refused to take off this self-imposed political straitjacket. The government is unwilling to deal with the reality of the incredible mining boom and has been scared into an emaciated mining resources tax by a campaign from the big miners. It seems it will not defer tax cuts for big business, preferring to impose a flood levy on middle-income and higher income Australians.
Given the situation across the country and the need to move ahead with reconstruction, the Greens have been unwilling to hold up this levy; therefore, we are supporting this legislation. We do so in the knowledge that the structure of the levy will be progressively imposed, in part because of the position of the Greens that lower income earners should not be hit and those who can afford to do so should mainly shoulder the burden.
We have heard a lot from the coalition about how unfairly this tax is going to be imposed. What that shows is whose interests in particular the coalition really has at heart, because the figures show that nearly half of the money, 49.1 per cent, that will be raised from the levy is going to be raised from people who are earning over $200,000 a year, while people who are on less than $80,000 a year will contribute only around 10 per cent to the money raised. It is a progressively imposed levy, consistent with the principles of progressive taxation, and that goes a very long way towards explaining why the Greens will be supporting this. It also goes, as I said, a very long way towards explaining on whose behalf the coalition is opposing this flood levy. It is this principle of progressive taxation that should be the foundation on which the upcoming tax summit is centred.
The levy is temporary and will not be imposed on those impacted by the disasters. It will not affect the poor and the vulnerable, and it will not unduly affect those on middle-level incomes. It is not the best way to fund reconstruction. But, given that the government has gone down this route, the manner in which it has been reformulated reflects the Greens’ approach to progressive taxation and it is therefore something we can support.
However, in announcing this levy, the government also announced cuts to programs as part of the reconstruction package—in particular, cuts to climate programs, housing measures and higher education. The Greens said at the outset that such cuts could not be justified, particularly when there are other funding alternatives. It made no sense to us—nor, I think, to most Australians—to cut climate programs at the same time that scientists are telling us that these kinds of extreme weather events are likely to happen more often and are likely to be more severe.
For instance, the scrapping of the National Rental Affordability Scheme, NRAS, could not be justified given the housing crisis we face in this country, particularly for those on low incomes and the homeless. So we entered into discussions and negotiations with the government and, thankfully, we were able to reach an agreement on a number of these programs.
A hundred million dollars in funding was restored to the Solar Flagships program, and a number of measures, including industry consultation, will be put in place to ensure that we can have in this country the development of a large-scale solar power industry and that the program will do what it was designed to do. That is a significant win for common sense and the recognition that, in addition to putting a price tag on pollution, government investment in research, development and .commercialisation of renewable energy technologies is a necessary part of a pathway to a clean energy economy.
We were also able to help save the NRAS, with funding deferred until after the forward estimates but still able to be allocated to new projects, and get a commitment from the government that the scheme would continue and the original number of dwellings would be built.
As part of the agreement, we were also able to secure a guarantee that the core functions of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, the ALTC, remain separate from the government’s proposed quality framework. This is important because, following the government’s announcement that it planned to roll the ALTC into its proposed Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, TEQSA, many leading academics and universities expressed concern that the core functions of the ALTC would no longer be able to be performed separately. It is our view that it is not appropriate for academics to lose the scope to encourage excellence through a review and awards program that was at arm’s length from the government’s proposed regulator; these are two separate functions. We strongly oppose the key functions of the ALTC, such as citations for excellence in teaching and peer review acknowledgements, becoming absorbed by TEQSA. So we are happy that, through our negotiations with the government, we have ensured that peer review and the fostering of excellence are not simply rolled into the government’s quality standards body. Rather, they will remain separate functions, performed under the administration of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
So, as a result of these discussions and the government’s adoption of the Greens’ proposal for a progressive levy, we are able to support the bill. The repair and reconstruction tasks facing the nation are enormous, and the Greens are right behind the federal government and state governments as they proceed with these efforts. We will continue to urge all governments and all Australians to heed the warning that these latest weather events represent what could be our future if we do not take drastic action on climate change.
We need to see these disasters as an opportunity to prepare for what is coming for Australia down the line. We also need to put in place better arrangements for funding the response to and reconstruction following such disasters in the future. It is disappointing that the opportunity the government had to shrug off its self-imposed political straitjacket on the budget surplus and big business tax has not been taken. It is with some irony that in the case of a financial crisis the government is prepared to throw out its commitment to neoliberalism and economic rationalism and rediscover the Keynesianism that once beat at the heart of the Labor Party, but when faced with a climate crisis they are not willing to do so. Nevertheless, this levy is a step towards a progressive approach to taxation. So the Greens will support this levy going forward through this place and we will focus our attention on ensuring the money is properly spent. I commend the bills to the House.
I rise today to speak to the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. The coalition, which I am very proud to be a part of, will do everything necessary to rebuild our communities hit by the devastating floods and cyclone last month. Locally, in the community of Brisbane, we were very hard hit by the surge of waters that started in the Great Divide and swept through the Lockyer and eventually found their way to the Brisbane River and to my beautiful suburbs of Milton, Rosalie and New Farm and Brisbane city. Who will ever forget the images of the destruction brought by the waters to the hundreds of houses and shops in Baroona Road and Nash Street, Rosalie, and in Albion, and the restaurants and skyscrapers along the Brisbane reach of the river, or the streets and the parklands and houses in my beloved suburb of New Farm? Just as for over two decades we remembered the 1974 floods—its inundation, its slow rise, its recession and then the rebuild—I know the residents and small business owners in these area will never forget what we have just been through.
But for me it is on the basis of the vast majority of feedback that has been forwarded to me that I rise today to speak to these bills. I am certainly not of a mind to support the unfair tax grab that the Gillard government proposes to help rebuild communities in Queensland. If there is one major concern for flood affected businesses—and I have visited many over the past weeks—and residents in my seat of Brisbane, it is that they seek some improved business conditions in the Brisbane area. They need sensible answers from governments, ones that improve our national economic standing and increase the prospects for all future business success. What they do not need is an increased tax burden that cripples local economic conditions, particularly when locals are already struggling with flood affected price rises. There are very sound reasons why I and my coalition colleagues are against these bills that will result in an unnecessary flood levy being imposed in the wrong way, at the wrong time.
It is notable that the Gillard government has already received objective advice that it should dump its planned flood levy and instead fund rebuilding efforts by ditching wasteful spending programs. Members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants have also been urging the government to better plan for an increased and continuing disaster funding approach. A one-off levy will not provide a sensible conclusion to the required planning. A better funding approach would reduce the need for one-off and temporary levies to meet short-term funding shortfalls. The institute, in its own budget submission, also recommends that the government introduce a targeted investment allowance for businesses hit by the recent flood crisis. This would provide an effective kick-start to business activity when the economy needs it most.
Why will this government never consider sensible and practical solutions? It is their hallmark to embark on unpopular and very damaging programs and decisions, and the Australian public and business community are often left bewildered and appalled by government at its worst. They are taxed to the hilt and this government continues to tax them. The nation already has its hands full with increased grocery prices, increased water and electricity prices, with a proposed carbon tax and a mining tax. The result will be the same—there will be less money in people’s pockets and less spending in the community. I do not believe that is the outcome that the business community is looking for.
Recently I was in the Chermside Shopping Centre. I went to pay a bill, as you must do, and I was quite amazed—I was able to get a car park. I have been visiting that shopping centre for many, many years and I was very excited that I got a car park immediately. I went into the shopping centre and I could not believe what I saw. It was absolutely deserted. I walked into an area of Myer’s and I think I was there with about four shop assistants. I got plenty of attention, I must say. I highlight this because there is already a dampening of business conditions and consumer confidence and the last thing that we need right now is another tax in the form of a levy. Furthermore, a real consequence of the government’s new flood levy is that it will create a disincentive for people and companies to donate in the future to any other disaster relief that might come along. They will say, ‘If I donate, the government is going to tax me again. What other levy are they going to pull at the next disaster?’ and there has actually been a decline in donations as charities have been reporting since the levy was introduced. So it does have an impact on people’s ability to donate in the future.
Many people in Brisbane do not consider it fair that they were encouraged to donate, as I said. They did that so willingly, and they donated not just money. We have heard many speakers speak of the wonderful volunteer workforce that went out there and donated and worked hard, and I am very proud of my children who did the same. Many members of the Brisbane community went out there and cleaned up. But will people be willing to do this in the future if the federal government is taxing them with an extra levy instead of providing a much more considered approach and reprioritising government spending?
We in the coalition are genuinely committed to the necessary reconstruction and recovery that is required after the natural disasters of this summer period in 2010-11. We do not underestimate these requirements. But we truly believe that if you want to inspire the quickest of recoveries the best way to do that is to avoid a further tax on the community. That is absolutely imperative. It is businesses like Cuttings Wine, at Albion, who will suffer the most from this tax. They have suffered damage to the value of $100,000. Yet, because their owner’s home was fortunate to escape damage, they will have to pay the levy. At a time when they can least afford it, they will have to pay a levy. Businesses like Apex Smash Repairs, in Milton, who have lost more than $200,000 in assets and equipment, will have to pay this tax. At a time when they can least afford it, they will have to pay another new tax. Businesses like O’Brien Pizzato & Graff, chartered accountants in Newstead, lost power for 10 days and were unable to work. They are not eligible for QRAA assistance. It is people like these accountants who will have to pay the levy. The owners of ABC Printing, in Milton, will have to pay the tax. They had to lay off staff and they did not have power for 10 days but, because they do not fit the definition of a small business, they have received no help and will have to pay another tax when they can least afford it.
The costs of both repair and reconstruction should be met from consolidated revenue and the reprioritisation of spending. We are very sceptical about the political manoeuvrings that seem to underpin this decision by the Gillard government. The Gillard government have imposed a new tax on the people of Brisbane, the business owners of Brisbane, without first explaining how they will spend the money. Lord Mayor Campbell Newman is yet to receive a response from the Prime Minister as to whether or not they will assist the Brisbane City Council and its ratepayers. The rebuilding component of the council’s NDRRA funding claim includes a repair bill of over $137.3 million for the road network; $75 million for the floating river walk in New Farm; $70 million for the reconstruction and replacement of ferry terminals; and over $38 million for the rejuvenation, clean-up and repair of local parks. And the list goes on and on.
Despite this list, and even though the Prime Minister has announced yet another new tax, the Prime Minister has still not advised whether or not these assets will be covered under the NDRRA funding. It is also worth highlighting the inescapable reality that, had there not been a significant waste of taxpayers’ money on a number of government projects that have been poorly administered, including the $2.6 billion blow-out on the Building the Education Revolution, there would be no need to impose this tax on hardworking Australians. The levy does not even raise the amount of that blow-out. Quite simply, there is very little trust in the community that the Labor Party can successfully operate government programs, and one wonders whether there is any chance that the revenues raised from another levy will be spent sensibly by the government.
As the economic expert Mr Saul Eslake has already highlighted to the government, there is strong evidence that the introduction of a new flood tax represents political choices more than economic imperatives. What seems very obvious is that the coalition can highlight necessary savings so that no levy is required. But the Gillard government, and Treasurer Swan, refuse to consider these savings. They are sensible and, in many cases, important cuts that can be made to avoid the burden of higher taxes.
I do not support this levy; neither does the coalition. What we do support, however, is a change in spending decisions, not new taxes. The community demands that government increase the incentives for people to work, save and invest. Further taxes merely cripple these concepts. The people in my electorate expect governments to make the hard decisions if necessary, because they desperately seek to avoid any further hindrance to what are already very tough economic and business conditions. Businesses are already struggling to stay afloat and some have been doing it tough for a very long time. These bills represent a complete lack of interest in the business environment that currently exists for the Australian public. The flood affected businesses in Albion, Milton, New Farm, Rosalie and other areas of my electorate expect more from their government than these inhibiting legislative mistakes. The government is out of touch, and the coalition will vote against these bills.
I also rise to oppose the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. Following the devastating floods, a government levy would just add another unnecessary financial burden on those residents, businesses and farmers affected by those floods and the cyclone. The government’s only idea to raise the expected $10 billion—maybe $20 billion—cost of the floods and cyclone is to introduce a levy that will cut people’s incomes. This approach will not help those who have been affected by the floods, in some cases twice or three times in the last four to six months. It will not only directly impact on the cash-poor farming communities, poor small businesses and poor rural communities but add to cost of living pressures for residents and reduce their ability to buy goods from flood affected businesses.
Here is an idea instead: why don’t the government, like they have in Queensland, now concentrate on a plan for flood recovery in Victoria? They seem to have devoted the last fortnight to trying to get their flood levy in place, rather than concentrating also on the areas of Victoria which have been impacted by flood and putting together a plan which would help those communities recover. We have local government areas in western Victoria stretched to the limit by trying to deal with the damage and devastation which has been caused by the floods and we have a federal government which has in no way yet shown how it is going to help.
As a matter of fact the only thing we have seen is a leaked report saying that the government will commit $500 million. What we need to know now is: where will that money go, how will it help and will there be payments to local governments to help with not only repairing the bridge and road infrastructure but improving that infrastructure so that when the rains come again—and they will—they can withstand the floods next time?
Responsible governments, such as the Howard government, put money aside for a rainy day. If the Gillard government were a responsible government they would not be in this position where they now need to raise $10 billion to $20 million immediately. The government have plenty of programs they could scrap or redirect funding from to fund the flood reconstruction. There is the cash-for-clunkers scheme, the National Broadband Network and water buybacks in the Murray-Darling Basin to name just a few.
The feedback I am getting from local people and businesses is that they do not want to be hit with yet another tax in the form of a levy after all they have been through in recent months. Cheryl Schuyler from Halls Gap runs Grampian Gifts and Souvenirs, a business that suffered in the Victorian floods. I was speaking with Mrs Schuyler last month when I was in Halls Gap surveying the flood damage, which has been devastating for that small community. She said:
We have only been affected by loss of trade and downgraded income—many families and businesses have lost loved ones and have no income at all and yet the Federal Government’s response is to kick people while they are down by proposing another TAX. It never fails to amaze me that a lazy government’s easy solution is just to add another Tax! People are hurting badly; adding to their burden is not the right or just solution.
I could not have put it better. Flood victims will not benefit from extra taxes imposed on them.
The government should be helping those affected, not taxing them. The coalition are committed to doing everything necessary to rebuild and repair communities hit by floods and Cyclone Yasi. We know there is a better way to go about it than the lazy option of hitting Australians with another tax. In fact, last year the coalition set out $50 billion worth of savings and cuts to the Rudd-Gillard government’s reckless and wasteful spending. Earlier this month the coalition outlined more than $2 billion in further savings measures that the Gillard government should adopt instead of its flood tax.
In addition to this, Julia Gillard must reverse her decision to cut funding for flood mitigation works on the Bruce Highway and the Herbert River flood plain. Funding flood recovery through cuts to flood mitigation works makes no sense whatsoever, and that is why the coalition found savings, cuts, in areas which would not impact on infrastructure that can actually help when we receive further rains.
There is also a need for increased flood monitoring funding to the Bureau of Meteorology to ensure that substandard flood-monitoring equipment in rivers is improved as a matter of urgency. Again this funding should not be raised by adding another tax on people and communities that are already strained. What we need to see is a redirection of the Bureau of Meteorology’s budget so that they focus on doing this important mitigation work.
This debate, as with so many being brought before the House these days, comes directly back to Labor’s gross mismanagement and waste. If Labor had been taking proper care of their finances, as the Howard government did for years before them, they would not have been in the position where they were caught off guard and felt they needed to add another tax to dig themselves out of their budget black hole. Instead of a new tax, the government need to cut wasteful spending, such as on government advertising, to reduce consultancy expenses, to put a freeze on Public Service recruitment and to cancel the National Broadband Network. It is important that they do this.
We have heard in this House that the main reason the government thinks it is justified in putting a levy in place is that previous governments have also put in place levies. But there is one important difference. Before those levies were put in place the government had not called for the community to give, and give generously, their money and their time to help. The Australian community did that and did that in spades. Their generosity was outstanding. It made us all on both sides of this House proud. The way people contributed their time was also outstanding and made every member of this House proud.
The government encouraged people to do this. It went out and asked businesses to give generously and members of local communities to give generously. Then, after doing that, it hit them with a levy. No government has done that before. When previous levies were introduced, governments said to the people, ‘We need to raise money for these particular causes.’ They did not go out to the community and say, ‘We want you to give and give generously,’ and then, after the Australian people had done that, impose a levy on them. This levy is wrong. People in my electorate think it is wrong. That is the feedback I have had on it. People tell me that we should vote against it, and that is exactly what I am doing today.
Before I address the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 I want to associate myself with the words of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in relation to our New Zealand friends, particularly those in Christchurch. That is the home of the mighty Canterbury Crusaders. I come from a state in which rugby is very important. I have played against a number of junior All Blacks trialists. To a man they have been good blokes, but please do not misunderstand me: when it comes to the Bledisloe this year, there will be no excuses. We will be up you. You would expect nothing more of us and we expect nothing more of you. Our hearts go out to you.
When the Victorian bushfires hit, the Townsville firm for which I was working, Ferry Property, had a young girl working for them called Jaime Skiller. She came from a Victorian town that was affected by the bushfires. She got everyone at work together, we all brought in a plate of food and we paid for the privilege of eating it. We raised in excess of $500 and we put together care packages to send down to those Victorians. We got a letter back from Jaime’s aunt which expressed her heartfelt thanks that someone so far away from Victoria would care what was happening to them. She also told us of the trouble her chooks were having getting back on the lay and that made the letter even more special. You see, they did not ask for it, we gave it. They did not expect it, but they received it with a deflected smile of thanks. And they would do the same for us.
So when the floods and Cyclone Yasi hit Queensland, people like Jaime in offices across Australia did exactly that. They gave. The Prime Minister asked them to give and they gave nearly $200 million to help out. Now they are being taxed as well. My problem with this is: what happens next time? Do we jump in, do what Australians do in times of need and help with the heavy lifting or do we wait until we find out whether or not we are going to be taxed to make it happen?
I am from Queensland and we have a state government which has squandered all the money from the GST, introduced by the Howard government, as well as all the money from the greatest mining royalty boom of all time. This Queensland government has done such a poor job with the state’s finances that not only have they lost their AAA credit rating but they have no infrastructure insurance at all. What amazes me even further is that the Queensland Minister for Main Roads was incensed that insurance companies would not take calls from people chasing policies as the cyclone was hitting that afternoon. This was in the full knowledge that his government had no insurance on his state’s infrastructure whatsoever. I could just see the minister at the TAB on a Saturday afternoon trying to get a bet on as the horses hit the 100-metre mark, trying to bring it in. He would be climbing out of a wreck and ringing Suncorp Insurance to say: ‘Can I get the cover? I’ll pay for anything, I’ll take the lot. Give it all to me. Just bring it on in because I need some insurance and I need it now. Can you backdate the policy about 15 minutes?’ He was very quick to kowtow to the wishes of his Prime Minister and he let the federal government pull flood mitigation work on the Bruce Highway in North Queensland to aid flood mitigation work on the Bruce Highway in the south-east corner. I suppose it was the only option that he had to take. I mean, the Queensland government is so broke, it could hardly say it would stand on its own feet and do the right thing.
But that is not the cruellest irony. That belongs to the Prime Minister herself. When she stood there and implored all Australians to share the load and look for extra money to assist with the crisis, some would have been left with the impression that our own Prime Minister would do her bit. But our Prime Minister’s first response was to tax. She said, ‘Oh, if it cost more than that, then we would have to look for savings in the budget.’ My problem is that we would probably not even be discussing this tax or levy if those budget cuts had been visited as a first option. The Prime Minister’s second option was to deal with the Greens and the Independents to buy her way forward with the levy. Looking inward at savings came a long way third.
The savings can and should be found. I challenge every member in this House to find a saving of some kind in their electorate and make this happen. In my own electorate of Herbert, both sides promised a PET/CT scanner in the 2007 and 2010 election campaigns. The Labor government has promised one at the Townsville General Hospital by the end of 2012 at a cost of nearly $9 million. We, the coalition, in a public-private partnership with Queensland X-Ray would have had our PET/CT scanner up and running now, today, at a cost to the government of $2.5 million. That is a saving of $6.5 million with an increase in service level, bringing the product to the market sooner, and spending less. This would also result in reduced airfares and accommodation into the future as people needing PET/CT scans have to travel to Brisbane sometimes immediately after radiation, which requires them to travel with a partner and thus doubling the costs. I know it is simplistic to say it, but it does hold water that if we found $6.5 million in each and every seat in this House, that would result in a $975 million saving across the country—without a drop in service. That is without a budget cut. It can be done.
Whether you call it a tax or a levy, I am so over the talk about how righteous we all are on each side of this argument. We rail at the tax and you call it a levy. We say it is wrong and you say we have done it before a number of times. You quote the guns buyback and the Ansett workers levy as examples of why we should support this tax. You cannot see the difference. Well, in my electorate office, I have one person consistently supporting this tax—mind you, he would probably support a buyback of Mars from the Greens if the Labor Party proposed it. Almost to a person, the feedback to my office has been consistent. This tax of a taxing government comes on top of a charity supported by and called for by big-spending governments. Never before has a government proposed a tax or levy after already calling for the rest of the country to give generously to support our fellow Australians, and that is my problem. It is un-Australian to ask a mate for help and then send him a bill for your time. It is un-Australian to tell your mates that you will be there with them and then leave them alone with the bill. This levy is akin to skipping out on a shout in a pub. You just do not do it, and those who do end up friendless and shift from group to group trying to find a new mark—but once bitten, twice shy.
Again, if this government stood side by side with all Australians and said, ‘We will also help with the heavy lifting; we will do our bit because we are in there with you,’ we would not be having this argument. If this government stood in front of all Australians and said, ‘Look, we can find two-thirds in budget cuts but we want to do this properly, so we are asking for you to help some more,’ then we would probably not be having this debate. If the government did it this way then they would not have to skulk down the halls to the Independents and Greens to buy support, and the money they have had to expend to secure that support could have gone toward the recovery effort. They could have been straight with the people of Australia at this time, but the government just could not do it.
I spend a lot of time talking to my children about the unintended consequences of their actions. I tell them that what looks like something that may cause no harm may have implications down the track that they could not have foreseen. So I say to the government, ‘Go and pass this legislation, but you will be setting a precedent for which the consequences may be that the next time a disaster hits, a levy may be the only way to get Australians to give.’ I just hope that that is not the case and that the goodwill of all Australians toward each other is not affected.
I rise to oppose the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, and I do so as a member of an outer metropolitan seat in Melbourne in which families and members of the community are feeling the increases in the cost of living, with many already in distress.
I say at the outset that, along with my coalition colleagues, I am committed to doing everything necessary to rebuild communities tragically hit by floods and cyclones. There is no debate about the need to rebuild. There is no debate about the need for the Commonwealth to spend significant resources to assist in the process. The issue here is purely how to raise the money necessary for the rebuild. The government believes it should be raised through a tax. We believe it should be raised through making savings. A tax should be a measure of absolute last resort, not a thing that is reached for as the first item. Unfortunately, however, this is the pattern of this government. If they see a problem, they raise a tax.
There are savings to be made in the budget. The shadow Treasurer, Mr Joe Hockey, has outlined more than $2 billion in savings that could be made. An offer has been made to sit down with the government to go through the budget and to find saving measures in a bipartisan fashion. The government itself has admitted that savings can be made. It has said that if the reconstruction bill is higher than forecast then it will find the additional money from savings. This is an admission in and of itself that there are savings to be made. Our argument is that these savings should be made first, as the first measure, not down the track if, all of a sudden, we need to find further money.
The tax in question here is not an insignificant one. It is going to be imposed on every single individual earning more than $50,000. People in my electorate are already feeling cost-of-living pressures, people who are earning not much more than that. This will just add to their burden. I have talked in this parliament in the past about the price rises that are occurring: electricity has risen 42 per cent since 2007, gas prices are up 29 per cent, water is up 46 per cent, interest rates continue to go up. These things are going up faster than wages or the pension.
I have voiced in the parliament before my concern about Labor’s plans for the Murray-Darling, which will increase food and grocery prices. I have voiced my concern about their mining tax, which will have a flow-on effect on every single product that uses those materials, including electricity generation. I have voiced my concern about the National Broadband Network which, according to Optus, will increase the cost of basic telephony charges. I have voiced my concern about the proposed carbon tax, which will increase electricity prices by 25 per cent. And now I want to add my concerns about the floods tax.
People in Aston are very generous people, they have given generously for this cause, but they are feeling the pinch. For example, Danielle Scorer, from Wantirna South in my electorate, is a single mother. She represents the views of many when she says:
I feel as though the government and big companies … are taking everything they can. I actually feel like I will never be able to get ahead … My financial pressures are mounting with dramatically rising living costs. My gas, electricity and water costs are sky high and I am trying to reduce my bills wherever I can … I would like the government to understand that they have got things very wrong if they think someone on $50,000 [per annum] is well enough off to afford their flood levy.
Similarly, Mark Maloney from Ferntree Gully states:
We are a single income house hold. We have three children 3 years and under … We have next to no spare income as it is and now we will find ourselves with 450 odd less per year [due to this proposed tax].
It is families like these ones that will be hurt by this levy. It will put extra strain on them at a time when they are already hurting from the rises in electricity and other costs that I have talked about.
The Prime Minister says that only those who can afford it will be paying this tax. She implies that it is only for the rich, but of course that is not the case. The tax will come into play for every single individual earning above $50,000. The average salary in Australia is $65,000. People in our communities who are earning $50,000 are not rich, particularly those who are trying to raise a family. They are paying for petrol. They are paying for toll roads, for child care, for uniforms. These people are not those who can afford it, as the Prime Minister would say.
We also need to be mindful that this new tax is a disincentive to all Australians to donate to disaster relief efforts in the future. As many other speakers before me have pointed out, the government, before suggesting the need for this tax, was calling on Australians to be generous and to donate generously—and indeed they did. But what will occur in the future, the next time the government calls on Australians to donate generously? In the back of their minds they will be thinking, ‘We’ll do that but then the government, a couple of months later, will come in and slug me in any case, so maybe I’ll just wait to see if they’re going to do that.’
The Labor Party consistently raises other levies which the Howard government introduced and which, of course, the coalition supported. We introduced those levies when we were in government and we did, indeed, support them. But when we introduced a levy—say, for the gun buyback—it was at a time when no-one would have argued that there was significant fat in the budget. It was at a time when we were trying to reduce the enormous debt left by the previous Labor government. Aggressive savings had already been made in the budget by the government in previous years. Further, we were not raising other taxes at the same time. People were not feeling the pinch to the same extent that I believe they are today with cost of living pressures. Today, few people would argue that there is not fat in the budget. Indeed, the government itself says that savings can be made if necessary. Few would argue that the government has not wasted billions upon billions of dollars on pink batt disasters, on Green Loans schemes and on other green schemes. Countless billions of dollars were wasted through the Building the Education Revolution program with overpriced school halls. This new tax, additionally, comes on top of all the other new taxes that the government introduced last year and the proposed new taxes that the government is going to be introducing this year.
The federal government has an obligation to assist with funding for the repair and rebuilding of public infrastructure as well as providing financial assistance to people in need. The coalition stands shoulder to shoulder with the government in the commitment to do so, but we do not need a new tax which will hit those who have already donated, those who draw from their retirement funds to live, those who are flood victims themselves and those who simply cannot afford more taxes.
The debate in the House today about the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 is not about whether Australia, particularly Queensland, and the people of Australia, particularly the people of Queensland, have suffered a devastating impact from the floods of the 2010-11 summer. Of course the people of Australia and Queensland have suffered a devastating impact. The debate in the House today is not about whether infrastructure in Queensland and around Australia needs to be rebuilt. Of course it needs to be rebuilt. The debate in the House today is not about whether the Commonwealth should pay on behalf of the people of Australia a large part of the cost of that rebuilding. Of course it is appropriate that the Commonwealth government should allocate the people’s funds towards the reconstruction effort when you have, as we have here, a disaster of national significance. Nor is the debate about how much the Commonwealth government should be paying. We do not contest the conclusion that the government has reached. We say that the government, with all of its resources, is best placed to assess how much needs to be spent. So the quantum that needs to be spent is not part of what is contested in this debate.
This debate is about one thing and one thing only: how should the amount to be expended by the Commonwealth be funded? We are told by the government that it estimates that $5.6 billion needs to be spent. As I have indicated, we do not contest that estimate. We say that the government, with all of its resources, is best placed to develop that estimate. We are also told by this government that it will fund this amount in part from reallocating other expenditure and in substantial part by whacking on a new tax. Of course, since the government made the announcement of how it planned to deal with this expenditure and how, particularly, it planned to fund this expenditure, it has already thrown in the towel on some of the savings it said it would be obtaining in other areas. But that does not change the central issue of contention in this debate in the House of Representatives today: how ought this expenditure to be funded? More specifically, is there any justification for funding any of this expenditure through the imposition of a new tax?
I put to the House three simple points. Firstly, this money which is to be expended should be found through offsetting savings in other expenditure. Secondly, in a budget of over $350 billion it ought not to be beyond the managerial competence of a capable government to find the amount which needs to be spent, which we are told is $5.6 billion. Thirdly, to use this natural disaster as an excuse to whack on a new tax is bad policy and sets a very bad precedent.
Let me turn first to the proposition that the money should be found through offsetting savings. Let us think for a moment about the nature of constructing a budget. When you construct a budget, what you are doing is laying out your plans for the coming period—typically a period of 12 months. Of course, you cannot know the future with perfect foresight. Even as you are developing your budget you must take account of the possibility that the unexpected will come along. Inherent in the way you devise your budget must be the capacity to deal with variations in what you have planned for, because unexpected expenditure arises all the time.
In my years as a member of the senior leadership team of a large corporate, I participated in many discussions where we sat around the management table, we looked at the amount that we had budgeted to spend during the year and then we looked at the change in circumstances and said we needed to spend more on something we had not anticipated. As a corollary of that decision, we then needed to find areas where we would spend less; we then needed to find offsetting savings. That is good budgetary practice, that is good management practice and that is what this government ought to be doing if it were capable of managing its budget in a competent fashion.
The second proposition is that the magnitude of the task of finding offsetting savings is to be determined according to the scale of the offset which is required and the proportion which that comprises of the budgeted expenditure. The amount that the Commonwealth is budgeting to spend in 2010-11 is $354 billion. I could spend some time talking about the fact that that is more than $100 billion a year greater than the Commonwealth was spending only four years ago. I could spend some time discussing what a disturbing indication of profligate spending and lack of fiscal discipline that demonstrates, but I will not because I want to make another equally important point—that the $5.6 billion which needs to be found is around 2.5 per cent of the annual budgeted expenditure this year of $354 billion. It is a very modest percentage.
It is a test of basic managerial competence as to whether, in the face of unexpected expenditure which makes up a small percentage of the total amount you were previously planning to spend, you are able to find such offsetting savings. If the amount required to be found were 30 per cent, 20 per cent or even 10 per cent of the amount that the Commonwealth had previously budgeted to spend, then it may be the case that the proposition that alternative sources of funding would be required could be put in a plausible fashion. But when we are talking about a mere 2.5 per cent of the total budgeted expenditure of the Commonwealth for 2010-11 it is an indictment of the managerial incompetence of this government, its lack of capacity to manage its budget and its lack of basic fiscal discipline that it is unable to reallocate spending priorities so as to come up with offsetting savings.
It is even more of an indictment when you consider that the calculation I have just cited in fact flatters the government because it can spread the funding over more than one year. While the number required is roughly 2.5 per cent of the $354 billion budgeted to be spent, you could achieve it through smaller percentages by spreading it over one or more years. Indeed, I note that is precisely what the government is planning to do. It is spreading the savings that it is claiming over a number of years.
The third proposition is that it sets an exceptionally bad precedent to be whacking on a tax as the means of funding this amount of extra unanticipated expenditure. What is the principle we are to draw from what has occurred here? Is the principle that, every time you incur an unexpected expense which exceeds your budgeted expenditure by more than two per cent, that is somehow an excuse to whack on a new tax? I think in reality the principle we can draw from what has occurred is a very obvious one—Labor love to tax. They love nothing more than whacking on a new tax. It is in their DNA and they find any excuse to do so. They really enjoy the notion of taking an urgent short-term spending need and locking it into a longer-term framework for tax. That is precisely what has occurred here.
One of the extraordinary propositions from what is occurring here is that Labor have rushed to commit to this new tax even before we know with any precision what the actual final expenditure on reconstruction is going to be. You would search in vain through the material published by this government to understand with precision what that final expenditure is going to be. But the conclusion you can reach is that this lot love nothing more than whacking on a new tax. They are not troubled by the disincentive effects this might have on people making a voluntary contribution in the future. They are just keen to get a new tax out there.
There is no dispute that we need to rebuild. There is no dispute that the Commonwealth needs to spend several billion dollars on rebuilding. But there are alternative ways of coming up with the money. The way that this Labor government has chosen to proceed is ill disciplined, fiscally profligate and falls prey to the temptation, whenever it can do it, to whack on a new tax. We say that if this government had the most basic managerial competence it would have found the offsetting savings and it would not be imposing a new tax on the Australian people.
Debate interrupted.
Townsville did not cop the worst of Cyclone Yasi, but the city was impacted. The biggest danger we have at the moment is the piles and piles of mulch catching fire. Homes were damaged, tens of thousands of residents were without power for a number of days, thousands of trees were down and businesses were forced to close for days on end. But we knew, in our town, that the residents further up north in Tully, Tully Heads, Hull Heads and Cardwell were the ones that were impacted greatly. So we rallied as a community to help those people up north. The outpouring was remarkable, with fundraisers and appeals held all over the place, and we are still going forward with them.
The Townsville Bulletin, the Rotary clubs of North Queensland and my office as the federal member teamed up to run a Cyclone Yasi community appeal. Seven pallets of shopping—dry biscuits, tea, dog food, cat food, toys, two-minute noodles and other stuff that could be used straight away by the people in those cyclone affected areas which were still without power—were loaded up and sent up there free of charge. The people who donated were pensioners, students and people from every walk of life. I would like to congratulate the Townsville Bulletin and the Rotary Club Townsville, and especially Leon and Dianne, the staff of Universal 7 Day Hardware in Townsville.
The Liberal Party have been so caught up trying to plug their leaks, it seems they have not had the time to listen to their own constituents. The member for Moncrieff in Queensland is opposing the flood levy. But it seems that his constituents, who he is elected to represent, disagree. A poll he took over the weekend asked: ‘Should the government scrap its planned tax and fund flood-related rebuilding costs through savings?’ The results: ‘unsure’, 4 per cent; ‘yes’, 29 per cent; and ‘no’, a whopping 66 per cent.
He was so unhappy that his constituents did not agree with the Liberal Party’s stance on the issue that, only days ago, he changed the wording! The new poll asks: ‘How should the government fund flood-related reconstruction?’ The results: ‘unsure’, 5 per cent; ‘budget savings’, 32 per cent; and ‘flood levy’, a whopping 62 per cent. As we can see, it did not make much of a difference. No matter which way you put it, the Australian people and the people of Moncrieff agree that we need a flood levy.
The member for Moncrieff must choose to stand up either for his community or for his leader ‘Tin-Heart’ Tony. We are calling on the opposition to stand with us and work together to help rebuild our nation. But it seems they are too busy adding their names to the One Nation email distribution list and looking through the Yellow Pages for a good plumber to plug their leaks!
However, it is good to see the opposition is being a bit more open with the Australian people now, with shadow cabinet meetings becoming public affairs. It gives us a chance to confirm what we already know—that the opposition stand for nothing but wrecking. So embarrassed is the member for Moncrieff that today—
Order! The honourable member’s time has expired, and the member for McEwen would be aware that his description of the Leader of the Opposition was out of order when one considers the provisions of standing order 64.
On Friday January 21, youth leaders at Shirelive church in Sutherland showed incredible bravery and leadership when more than 40 of the teenagers under their care were suddenly swept out to sea after a sandbank fell at Stanwell Park Beach. Members of the youth group, who had been enjoying themselves in shallow water, suddenly found themselves struggling far from the shore, pounded by big waves. A number of the youth leaders helped surf-lifesavers pull dozens of teenagers from the water. Shirelive Youth Pastor Tim Biasetto, 24, and volunteer youth leaders Alex Vance, Jason Burns and Kerry Lauricella were among those heavily involved in the rescues.
Mr Biasetto also pulled a 20-year-old man from Cabramatta to the shore. The man was not breathing, but Mr Biasetto and a surf-lifesaver took turns at doing CPR until the man revived. He was taken to hospital and has since been discharged. Mr Biasetto met the man a fortnight ago at Stanwell Park Beach, where the rescued man was able to thank Mr Biasetto personally for rescuing him. Sadly, a 63-year-old man on holiday with his family from Western Australia drowned in the incident. Many of the youth leaders involved, including Mr Biasetto and Miss Vance, had undergone first-aid training, which made a big difference on that day. Miss Vance was last month announced as the Sutherland Shire’s Young Citizen of the Year for her tireless work as a youth leader and also as a volunteer surf-lifesaver.
As we come to the close soon of the summer season, I would like to ask all members to join me in thanking our surf-lifesavers for the great work they do in this country. I thank them for patrolling our beaches and looking after all of us.
Today I highlight Telstra’s conduct in my local community concerning the installation of a low-impact facility at Cabarita Road, Cabarita. Constituents affected by the facility have been very frustrated—indeed, infuriated—with Telstra’s very hasty and unsuccessful community consultation process. In multiple emails and conversations between me and my office and my constituents, my constituents have convinced me that Telstra have ignored real community concerns about serious health and amenity impacts, as displayed in the very brief and tardy responses residents received from Telstra in response to their concerns. One very serious concern was Telstra’s refusal to investigate further alternative locations for the low-impact facility, including co-locating the facility, despite strong objections to the community-sensitive location.
Over 160 residents opposed the tower on Cabarita Road. Despite significant concerns and numerous objections, Telstra have advised residents that they will proceed with the facility and assert they have complied with the act and the code. Today I voice my outrage in this House on behalf of my constituents about the apparent lack of concern shown by Telstra through the consultation process and I again call on Telstra to review its decision immediately.
Recently the Western Australian Certificate of Education exam results were announced. I would like to congratulate a course exhibition winner from Warwick Senior High School, Adam Hemsley, for getting the highest raw score in a subject in Western Australia, in accounting and finance. There were also certificates of distinction for the top 0.5 per cent of students in each subject: at Kingsway Christian College, Jonathan Baek, in applied information technology; at Warwick Senior High School, Adam Hemsley, in accounting and finance; and at Woodvale Senior High School, Jelena Durmic, in English. It was a great result for Cowan across the exams. There were 74 certificates of excellence, and I pay tribute to the great results in that regard of Ballajura Community College, with 23; Greenwood Senior High School, two; Kingsway Christian College, three; Mercy College, two; St Stephen’s School, Carramar, eight; Wanneroo Senior High School, three; Warwick Senior High School, five; and Woodvale Senior High School, 18.
The secondary schools of the electorate of Cowan have done very well. The students have done very well. So I take this opportunity to congratulate the students for their excellent hard work over many years to achieve these great results. I congratulate the teachers for guiding them along the way, the parents, the community and the schools for the great job that they do for all our young people in Australia.
Trish Wilson from my region in the Central Coast leaves today for the West African nation of Sierra Leone to take part in a very worthwhile mission aboard a medical ship. Democracy is slowly being re-established in Sierra Leone after a brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002, which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than two million people—about a third of the population. The recent history has left a legacy of trauma amongst its people. The trauma continues to be a source of many medical problems and the relatively small country simply cannot cope. Sierra Leone is an extremely poor nation with about 70 per cent of the population living below the poverty line.
Trish will be providing backup and support for 430 crew and medical staff aboard the floating hospital berthed in the port of the capital city of Freetown over the next eight to 10 months as a volunteer. She will be based in the dining room and kitchen areas aboard the ship, helping to feed the crew and give them sustenance for the great work they are doing to help the Sierra Leoneans. The ship is offering free medical care including eye surgery and dental and reconstructive surgery. It has six operating theatres and 100 recovery beds aboard and is run by a Christian organisation.
This is another great example of the wonderful work that volunteers do, whether it is at home or abroad, and they should be commended for the time and effort that they put in to help others. Today I would particularly like to recognise Trish Wilson but I also want to thank the many thousands of volunteers who live in my region on the Central Coast, for their ongoing efforts.
I rise today to announce the details of the inaugural Higgins Medal. In Higgins I am fortunate to have 42 schools in my electorate and they are diverse. They are diverse in religion—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Greek Orthodox and secular—and diverse in school culture, focusing on science, the arts, sports or languages. And they are diverse in size—schools with the smallest footprint to schools that are large in size and number of students. But the schools have one thing in common: all of these schools are charged with the great responsibility of educating the leaders of tomorrow., As President John F Kennedy said:
We must do all that we can, to give our children the best in education and social upbringing—for while they are the youth of today, they shall be the leaders of tomorrow.
Today, I am announcing the Higgins Medal, an award to support leadership in our schools. A Higgins Medal will be awarded to one student at each participating school who demonstrates leadership amongst their peers, exhibits in their behaviour a commitment to the ethos of the school, demonstrates excellence in attitude and achievement, is a strong and consistent participant in school and community activity, and exhibits an awareness of others and their needs.
I will be writing this week to each of the schools to invite them to participate. Each student who is awarded a Higgins Medal will receive an individual Higgins Medal. A larger, perpetual honours board displaying the engraved name of each year’s successful recipient will be provided to each school for display in a prominent position. I hope this will encourage students in the electorate of Higgins to study with excellence whilst actively supporting their school community.
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the official opening of the Windsor Park Multi-Purpose Community, Leisure and Wellbeing Centre. I was thrilled that West Tamar residents now have access to this first-class facility including a medical centre, allied health services, gymnasium, childcare centre, cafe and council offices as well as an outdoor recreation centre.
Since the 1960s Windsor Park has been a popular recreational area for the West Tamar residents. It is fantastic to see the new developments carrying on this sporting tradition as well as promoting health and wellbeing. During the planning and development stages of the project over 100 jobs were created in the local area. Now, at completion, there are 10 permanent positions. It is estimated that 550 people per day will visit the site. Social and community opportunities are created by providing access both to healthcare professionals and medical facilities as well as non-competitive recreational and sporting activities.
I would like to congratulate the West Tamar Council, the local community and the Australian Labor government for their respective contributions. The federal Labor government committed $3 million to this Windsor Park Multipurpose and Wellbeing Centre under the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program. This is just one of many examples of the federal Labor government supporting local communities and building the infrastructure that people in local communities want and need.
One of the principles underpinning our system of government is the rule of the majority decision. More and more I am seeing instances where the wishes of a handful of people are allowed to stand in the way of the majority. The case in point here is the vexatious matter of the North Nowra Link Road. For years, Shoalhaven City Council have been trying to build this link road and for years they have been frustrated in their efforts by the most tenuous of arguments pushed by a handful of people.
Thousands of valuable ratepayer dollars have been wasted on green frogs and endangered orchids. And now, out of the blue, we have a mallee species that I cannot find on any threatened list. Adding insult to injury is a government prepared to ignore the wishes of the majority to garner the green vote at any cost. The rationale for lending their support to this shrill minority can only be described as dubious, and it is to the detriment of good government that Labor chose to ignore the wider community. Now that the local member is in danger of losing his seat, suddenly their tune has changed. Now it seems that the link road is okay by them, but running in the background is the spectre of federal Labor, which might now run interference in their place. The game just goes on.
This is a dishonest government by any measure. Future development in North Nowra is seriously compromised by the growing traffic congestion that remains unresolved while the conflict goes on. How can a town develop if a handful of protesters, who do not even live there, are continually heard? The need for a third bridge crossing is becoming increasingly urgent. Our local Liberal candidate Gareth Ward has unequivocally stated that under a state coalition government the link road will be built because it has to be—it will be, for the greater good. Believe me when I say that I will be holding him to that promise.
I rise to commend everyone involved with the fantastic new AFL team on the block, the Greater Western Sydney Giants. We had an amazing night last Saturday as the GWS Giants played their first ever match in the NAB Cup. Although the score line was not all that pretty, they played with determination and represented the people of Western Sydney with pride.
Some 10,000 supporters packed out the AFL’s new training facility at Blacktown Olympic Park for the historic event. Such was the level of support—it was a capacity crowd—that fans needed to be turned away at the gates. It was also pleasing to see the number of orange jerseys in the crowd, easily matching the well established fan base of the Sydney Swans. It was an honour for me to represent the Prime Minister at the game. I thank her for the opportunity to attend such an important evening for the sport in Western Sydney.
I praise the outstanding work done by Tony Shepherd, Dale Holmes and Kevin Sheedy and all the support staff involved with the Giants. Saturday night was the culmination of months of hard work and years of vision and foresight. I particularly acknowledge the passion and dedication of Kevin Sheedy. Kevin was recently asked if he was worried about the competition for athletes by the differing codes in Western Sydney. Kevin replied:
You know who is going to win? The 12-year-old kids. It’s about getting great opportunities for Australian kids. That’s the way I look at it. We win. The country feels proud. What is the backlash of giving an Australian kid a chance?
I inform the House that next Wednesday, 2 March, you, Mr Speaker, will be leading the mover and the seconder of the address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s residence, along with other office bearers.
I have had a discussion with the Manager of Opposition Business and with the clerks. I can inform the House that it is the intention of the House to adjourn at 5 pm next Wednesday and travel to the Governor-General. You, Mr Speaker, will report back to the House at 9 am on Thursday morning. It would normally be at 7 pm but, given that it is just the adjournment remaining, it is my view and the view of the honourable member for Sturt, the Manager of Opposition Business, that this would be an appropriate way to proceed. So I inform members so they can make suitable arrangements for next Wednesday.
And any presents for my birthday next Wednesday from the Manager of Opposition Business would be welcome.
Honourable members interjecting—
Order! When the House comes to order, I have some condolence motions to report from the Main Committee. Members should take their places and sit there quietly.
Order of the day returned from Main Committee for further consideration; certified copy of the motion presented.
Order of the day reported from Main Committee consideration immediately.
The question is that the motion be agreed to. I ask all honourable members to signify their approval by rising in their places
Question agreed to, honourable members standing in their places.
Order of the day returned from Main Committee for further consideration; certified copy of the motion presented.
Order of the day reported from Main Committee consideration immediately.
The question is that the motion be agreed to. I ask all honourable members to signify their approval by rising in their places
Question agreed to, honourable members standing in their places.
I thank the House.
On indulgence—yesterday New Zealand lived through what was probably its darkest day in peacetime history, and today New Zealand is recovering from that darkest day. Australians are watching heart-rending scenes on their television screens as our New Zealand family copes with this enormous natural disaster.
The number of fatalities is now at 55. Prime Minister Key has indicated to his parliament that he expects the toll to rise above 75. Three hundred people are reported missing. Prime Minister Key has declared a state of national emergency.
In these circumstances I advise the House that one Australian permanent resident has lost his life. He is a New Zealand born man who has lived in Australia for a long period of time. His wife and his family are here. Our very deep and sincere condolences go to them and to his brother who is in New Zealand and grieving his loss.
This Australian resident was killed in the Pyne Gould building when it collapsed. He survived the initial collapse and was assisted by a passing stranger who was able to communicate with him and then made mobile telephone calls on his behalf, including to his family and his wife. But he did not survive long enough to be brought out of the rubble.
Our very sincere thanks go to that passing stranger. It was a very big act of kindness and emblematic of the sorts of things people are doing for each other in these extraordinary circumstances.
Australian officials in New Zealand are seeking to urgently confirm the safety and welfare of Australians in the Christchurch area. At 10.30 this morning, the DFAT consular crisis centre had taken 6,155 calls and registered 2,027 cases. All of this is to be expected, because we know that Australians visit New Zealand in large numbers and that large numbers of Australians live there for extended periods of time.
We have confirmed the safety of 682 Australians and we are seeking to confirm the safety of 1,266 Australians. We are aware of more than 440 Australians sheltering at an emergency centre near the Crown Plaza Hotel.
As I reported to the House yesterday, the Australian women’s cricket team is safe.
The devastated centre of Christchurch is being evacuated and cordoned off. People are still struggling with severe disruptions to water, electricity and phone services.
Domestic flights have resumed. The commercial airport is able to take domestic flights. We understand that both Qantas and Air New Zealand will be putting on additional capacity as part of their international service to bring people out of Christchurch. New Zealand civil defence is giving visitors to Christchurch the opportunity to relocate to Wellington and is assisting them to get there. We are boosting our consular support team to deal with the work necessary to assist large numbers of Australians and also to identify that the large numbers of Australians that we have registered in the area are safe. Six officials are now on the ground in Christchurch. Six further officers from our department here in Canberra are flying to New Zealand and will arrive there at 4 pm local time. Four Centrelink social workers will also travel to Christchurch to provide emotional and moral support to people who are traumatised. Australians who have lost their passports should go to the airport early and, subject to some basic questions about identity, they will be able to fly.
We are providing assistance directly to the people of New Zealand at this time. Seventy New South Wales urban search and rescue staff arrived in New Zealand this morning on two separate flights. Another 70 Queensland urban search and rescue staff are also travelling to Christchurch today. In addition to commercial services, RAAF planes that have transported urban search and rescue teams to Christchurch will have some limited capacity to transport Australians wishing to leave Christchurch and get back to Australia.
We have made available a specialist medical team of 25. It includes doctors, nurses, surgeons and support staff. We are deploying a 75-bed medical field hospital with six surgical, medical and support staff, and we have sent two Emergency Management Australia liaison officers so that they can ensure we get the information we need to upscale efforts at the request of the New Zealanders. The New Zealand Police have requested that Australia provide 300 police to assist with the aftermath of the earthquake. We are making plans for that deployment. That deployment will be a mix of Australian Federal Police—around 50 officers—Victoria Police and New South Wales Police. What we are being asked for in that regard is people to assist with community policing, not with search and rescue, and to backstop New Zealand Police, who are obviously under a great deal of pressure. We anticipate that the police who deploy will be there for around two weeks, but we will keep that under close review.
To assist in the immediate recovery and to help Christchurch get back on its feet, I announce that the Australian government will make a $5 million donation to the New Zealand Red Cross earthquake appeal. We think that this immediate donation of $5 million will be able to help with relief and assistance on the ground, because that is what the New Zealand Red Cross is doing. I have advised Prime Minister Key of the making of this donation.
We will continue to respond to the needs of New Zealand. I know that the thoughts of all Australians are with New Zealanders as we have watched the devastation on our TV screens. New Zealanders are like family to us. They are like family in good times and bad. This is a very, very bad time. We will be with them during this very bad time, and whatever assistance they need that we can provide we will certainly make available.
Obviously I support the Prime Minister’s remarks. I welcome the measures to support New Zealand which she has announced to the House, including the donation of $5 million to the New Zealand earthquake appeal. As the Prime Minister has said, New Zealanders are family; they are not foreigners, and that is why this disaster has especially touched the hearts of every Australian. Almost all of us have family and friends across the Tasman, so our thoughts and prayers have become even more focused and intense over the past 24 hours as news of the scale of the disaster unfolds. It is especially poignant now that we know that an Australian is amongst the dead.
The coalition stands shoulder to shoulder with the government on this one. Whatever New Zealand asks Australia will give. Whatever the government does the coalition will back.
As a mark of respect and to indicate the House’s support for the comments of the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, I ask honourable members to rise in their places.
Honourable members having stood in their places—
I move:
That further statements by indulgence in relation to the earthquake in New Zealand be referred to the Main Committee.
This will enable members to make statements, but obviously the Prime Minister has indicated that she will keep the House itself updated as events unfold.
Question agreed to.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister accept the advice of the Chairman of the Australian War Memorial Council, General Peter Cosgrove, that the net impact of reductions in funding is around $4.8 billion? Given General Cosgrove’s statement, does the Prime Minister now accept the coalition’s call for an immediate $5 million a year boost to War Memorial funding?
I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. As I indicated to the House yesterday, we are making some $38 million available to the War Memorial in this financial year, which is on par with earlier allocations. I am concerned about funding for the War Memorial. Consequently, some time ago, I asked the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs to work with the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and, of course, with the Australian War Memorial itself—its council and leadership—on budget matters and to report back to me. Because I asked for that review some time ago, that review is nearly complete. When the government has that review, we will look at its recommendations and act.
Of course, all Australians want to see the War Memorial properly resourced. I do. That is why I asked quite some time ago for the review and that is why the review will report back to me. Through a proper process of assessing the War Memorial’s needs, we will deal with its budget matters for the future.
Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question, if I may respectfully put it to the Prime Minister, because she did not—and I say this with respect—answer my question: does she agree with General Cosgrove, Chairman of the Australian War Memorial, that there has been a $4.8 million reduction in War Memorial funding? So I respectfully put that question to her again and ask that she answer the specifics of that question.
What I said in reply to the Leader of the Opposition’s question about resourcing is what I meant and I pointed to the resourcing that the government has provided the War Memorial. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that there are not two sides to this debate. Every person in this House would want to see the War Memorial properly resourced. That is why we are making a proper assessment of its needs. And the best way of making a proper assessment of its needs is to have the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation work with the War Memorial representatives, including its council and Peter Cosgrove, in order to assess its needs for the future.
In terms of the Leader of the Opposition’s general call and general desire to see proper funding for the Australian War Memorial, we are in complete agreement. Because of my desire to see proper funding for the War Memorial, I asked my two ministers to deal with the question and we will get the details of the review very soon and therefore deal with funding questions properly.
I seek leave to table a letter from General Cosgrove to the government where he outlines the funding cuts the War Memorial has experienced.
Leave not granted.
Opposition members interjecting—
Order!
It’s the War Memorial; just write the cheque!
Order! The member for Riverina will leave the chamber for one hour.
The member for Riverina then left the chamber.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House of the strength of our relationship with New Zealand, particularly in light of the tragic earthquake in Christchurch?
I thank the member for Corangamite for his question. On indulgence I was able to update the House on our efforts to assist New Zealand, but I did, on a day like today, want to speak about the depth of the relationship between our two countries.
Last week I had the very great honour of being the first Australian Prime Minister—indeed, the first leader of any foreign nation—to address the members of the New Zealand parliament. It was a great occasion on which to reflect on the bonds between our two countries. On that occasion I said the following to the members of the New Zealand parliament:
In the 1890s, there was a possibility that New Zealand and Australia might formally have joined their destinies to each other.
A relic of that aspiration even remains in our Constitution to this day.
But it was never necessary.
Our founders could not have imagined the extraordinary events that would bring our nations far closer than any words or any laws.
Not forged in meeting rooms by old men wearing suits.
But by young men in trenches wearing slouch hats and lemon squeezers.
That is why I say Australia has many alliances and friendships around the world.
Economic and defence partnerships of every kind.
But New Zealand alone is family.
When those 29 men never came home from the Pike River mine, we didn’t just mourn for the two Australians.
We mourned for them all.
Family.
When Pike River exploded, New Zealand didn’t have to ask Australia to send help.
We just did.
And when natural disasters hit Australia this summer, New Zealand didn’t need to be asked to lend a hand.
You just did.
And our gratitude is boundless.
When I spoke those words, I could not have foreseen that so shortly afterwards we would be returning to help New Zealand in its hour of need.
I want to take this opportunity to place on the parliamentary record the words that New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has spoken to the New Zealand parliament today about circumstances in his nation. He said:
To the people of Christchurch: we feel your pain, as only a small nation can, for none of us feel removed from this event.
Mr Key went on to say:
I am a proud son of Christchurch. I was raised there, I got my first job there, my sister lives there, my mother died there, I know what a wonderful place it is.
But my connection to Christchurch is no rare thing.
All New Zealanders have a piece of our heart in Christchurch.
All of our lives are touched by this event.
Those are Mr Key’s words to the New Zealand parliament. I believe we can say in this parliament: all of our lives are touched by this event, too. Mr Key went on to say:
Today I want Christchurch to hear this message:
You will get through this.
This proud country is right behind you and we are backing you with all our might.
The world is with us.
Our Australian neighbours, our British and American friends, the great countries of this world, all are putting their shoulder to your wheel. They are sending their support, their expertise, their people to help us …
And we are. He went on to say that this was the start of the long journey of recovery and that New Zealand would walk that journey with the people of Christchurch. Australia will walk that journey with the people of Christchurch, too.
I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of a parliamentary delegation from the European parliament. Their visit marks the 30th anniversary of interparliamentary relations between the Australian parliament and the European parliament. On behalf of the House I extend a very warm welcome to our visitors.
Hear, hear!
My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the Treasurer’s refusal yesterday to rule out interest rate rises on the back of the government’s plans for bank exit fees. I now ask the Prime Minister: will the Prime Minister guarantee that interest rates will not rise as a direct result of the government’s banking package?
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With regard to the first half of the shadow Treasurer’s question, that was pure argument and should be ruled out of order. Also, it was not the case and people should not be verballed by the way that questions are asked.
I will permit the question, but, again, it illustrates that, if the rules for both questions and answers were the same, there would be a greater restriction on the questions. That is a decision I have made, but the less opinion and argument in the questions the greater it helps me to drag the answers back to the question.
I thank the shadow—Treasurer. Sorry, they confuse me over there with their twists and turns. I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question. To the shadow Treasurer I would say this: the only political party in contemporary politics that has gone to an election making a false claim about interest rates is the Liberal Party of Australia when it campaigned on keeping interest rates at record lows and then interest rates went up and up and up. What I would also say to the shadow Treasurer, and I do not know if this has passed him by, is that in open market economies like the Australian economy we believe in the power of competition. I know that might be news to the shadow Treasurer. He has never heard of an open market economy, he has never heard of competition, and all of these things are confusing him. But I believe that, in an open market economy, competition is good. Consequently, I believe that, if you can remove impediments that stop people from using their competitive power and pressure as consumers to get a better deal, then that is a good thing. It is obviously anticompetition to chain people to banking products they no longer want through unfair exit fees. It obviously is a bad thing. I would say that the proof of the pudding has been in the eating.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I will repeat it very slowly for the Prime Minister, because she speaks very slowly and deliberately.
If the member for North Sydney has risen on relevance, that is the point of order, but he does not enter into argument. The member for North Sydney has risen on a point of order about relevance. The Prime Minister understands the need to relate her response directly to the question.
I would rather speak sense slowly than be a gabbling idiot, but there we have it. On the question of speaking sense slowly to the shadow Treasurer, I believe in competition. Therefore, if you remove impediments to competition, that is a good thing. The proof of the pudding has been in the eating. We are already seeing, as a result of the signals about banking competition that have come from this government, banks out there offering more competitive products, including no more exit fees. I do not understand the shadow Treasurer’s case to the Australian people, but I presume he is on the cusp of producing a bumper sticker that says: ‘Vote Liberal and get unfair banking exit fees.’ That would be a good bumper sticker.
Order! The Prime Minister is wandering too far into debate.
I recommend it to the shadow Treasurer if he really thinks that is good for Australian families. What I think is good for Australian families is being able to shop around for a mortgage product. What I think is good for Australian families is being able to say, with force and meaning, to their bank, ‘If I don’t get a good deal from you, I’m going to go down the road and get a better deal.’ What I think is in the interests of Australian families is that banks go in hard, go in competitively and go in with better and better and more and more competitive products. That is why we are opposed to these kinds of bank exit fees. I presume the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer support them. I will leave that to them.
My question is to the Attorney-General: how is the Australian government supporting the New Zealand response to the Christchurch earthquake emergency?
I thank the honourable member for Dobell for his question. I note that he was born in New Zealand and that, in fact, his brother works in our embassy in Wellington. He is no doubt extremely busy in these trying times. The tragedy in Christchurch has come on top of an earlier tragedy of last September. As has been expressed, our sentiments go out to our friends across the Tasman. As the Prime Minister has indicated, there are 65 confirmed casualties, but, unfortunately, there are also estimated to be about 300 people missing, so it is likely that that casualty figure, regrettably, will go up.
As at 10.30 this morning, the New Zealand Prime Minister, as our Prime Minister has indicated, has with John Carter, the Minister of Civil Defence, declared a state of national emergency in New Zealand. That is the first time that such a state of national emergency has been declared for a natural disaster. It was indicated that that course of action was taken to ensure the maximum cooperation and coordination between national and local resources but also to accommodate the international assistance that is coming into New Zealand.
As the Prime Minister has indicated, we have one search-and-rescue team on the ground now. They are self-contained. They take about 20 tonnes of equipment, their expertise and rescue dogs. It appears from reports that they have already had one success with a survivor being pulled from a demolished building. They will be joined in the next few hours by a second team, from Queensland—the first team being from New South Wales. That will make a significant contribution. I acknowledge also the willingness of other states to provide assistance and their preparedness, if you like, to cover for the resources we may require in Australia should a disaster occur.
Through the emergency management liaison officers, we have identified that a medical assistance team is required. That has been assembled: six emergency management department directors, six emergency management department nurses, six clinical nurses and one orthopaedic and general surgeon. In addition, we are assembling a 75-bed field hospital of six surgical and medical support staff. Also we have indicated, as the Prime Minister noted, our ability to assist with policing, with a 300-member police squad made up of Australian Federal Police officers, but also contributions from the states and territories will be deployed this Friday.
I assure honourable members that the sentiments expressed by the House have been communicated to our counterparts in New Zealand. In a statement issued at about 12 noon today in the New Zealand parliament, John Carter, the Minister of Civil Defence, paid tribute to Australian search-and-rescue parties, who are already on the ground. He noted that assistance is also on the way from the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Japan and Taiwan. Clearly, we have a close relationship with our New Zealand friends and family, as has been noted, but no more so than in the emergency management space, where they are always the first on the ground to assist us. It is entirely appropriate that we provide the assistance that has been endorsed overwhelmingly by all sides of this House.
My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer her to the statement by her own Treasurer on 12 December, where he said that interest rates would come down as a result of the government’s banking package. I ask the Prime Minister again: will she guarantee that interest rates will not rise as a result of the government’s banking package?
In answer to the shadow Treasurer’s question, let me adopt the following words and quote them to him because I think they are very wise words. They come from a member of the coalition, one of his Senate colleagues, Senator Williams. He said:
For 18 months now I have called for the abolition of exit fees on variable loans. When the banks raise their fees, and last December we saw Westpac and St George raise their fees more than the Reserve Bank did—
The Prime Minister will resume her seat.
Give Whacka a whack!
The member for Banks is warned!
I rise on a point of order that goes to relevance, Mr Speaker. It was a direct question to the person who is the Prime Minister.
Order! The Prime Minister is responding to the question. It is possible that by quoting somebody else the answer could still be within the standing orders as directly relevant. I will listen carefully to the response of the Prime Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and once again I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question and his point of order—not much gets past him! It was a remarkable display of intellectual agility in this parliament today; I am glad we have been treated to it by the shadow Treasurer. Let me quote the words of one of his coalition colleagues. I presume they are not so fundamentally divided today that they are unwilling to listen to each other’s words. Senator Williams’s words go on. He said in respect of banking:
Treasurer Wayne Swan is saying vote with their feet. How can you vote with your feet when you’ve got to pay an exit fee to get out of your loan? The sooner the government abolishes exit fees and also establishment fees, the banks can still add those fees onto their margins, then we can have proper competition in the banking industry.
Proposition No. 1: competition is good; proposition No. 2: competition leads to better products for consumers. I do not understand what part of those two propositions the shadow Treasurer is struggling with so badly.
My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. What consular support is being provided to Australians affected by the earthquake in Christchurch?
I thank the member for Lyons for his question. The 24-hour consular crisis centre of the Department of Foreign Affairs commenced operation at one o’clock yesterday afternoon, two hours after the earthquake hit. To update the figures that the Prime Minister gave the House just before, as at 12.45 today we have had just under 7,000 calls, we have registered just under 2,400 cases, we have confirmed that 937 Australians are safe and we are seeking to confirm the safety of a further 1,352. We have also—through the Deputy Head of Mission, who was in Christchurch at the time of the earthquake with two embassy staff—established an Australian crisis centre at the Copthorne Hotel Commodore, which is located on the road between the central business district and the airport. The Deputy Head Of Mission there has said that in the course of this morning we have had dozens of Australians call in. They have been provided with all forms of assistance in terms of travel advice, a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on in some cases. They have been through a really ugly time.
Our temporary crisis centre in Christchurch has had a meeting with 50 local hotel and tourism operators in order to make sure that their Australian customers know of arrangements being made for return flights back to Australia or elsewhere domestically within New Zealand. The temporary crisis centre has also made arrangements for local radio announcements to this effect.
As far as the Australian casualties are concerned, I would add to what the Prime Minister said before in two respects. The first is that we have concerns for an additional three Australians who are known to have been in the downtown area at the time of the earthquake and who, as of today, have not yet been located. The second is that we have been advised of a woman who made telephone contact with the media in Melbourne, and she did so from a building which had collapsed. We have, of course, sought to immediately contact her on that telephone number—but without success. We have therefore immediately provided to the search and rescue authorities the details as described of the building in which she was located. That search is ongoing.
Further, I inform the House about flight arrangements back to Australia. The Prime Minister has addressed this matter in terms of commercial flights back to Australia through Qantas. We are also making the opportunity available for flights through to other domestic locations in New Zealand as well as Auckland. We are supplementing consular staff at Auckland Airport in order to assist people there for onward flights back to Australia. The use of RAAF flights is as the Prime Minister mentioned before. I spoke to our high commissioner in New Zealand just before question time. He is currently at Christchurch Airport assisting in what is a fairly chaotic situation—there are thousands of people there. He and Australian consular staff are at the airport and assisting with the mechanical arrangements of getting people onto commercial or RAAF flights.
I also spoke to Foreign Minister McCully before question time. He made the point, as I think the Attorney-General did in his remarks to the House just before, that the government of New Zealand really appreciates what has been done here. The capacity which the Attorney-General has organised through his state colleagues is being deployed immediately. It is really needed on the ground, and these efforts have been deeply appreciated by our Kiwi cousins. Furthermore, he has reiterated the appreciation for all the expressions of solidarity and support that they have received not just from across the Tasman but also from elsewhere. We and the department will of course keep the House and the country updated on further consular developments.
My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer confirm that imposing a carbon tax on petrol will increase the price of fuel by 2.5c a litre for every $10 of tax?
I thank the shadow minister for his question. On this side of the House we believe that putting in place a carbon price is the most efficient way to reduce carbon pollution and make our economy much more competitive in the long term. If we do not get the investment, particularly in the energy sector, then prices will be far higher. If we do not get the investment in the energy sector, particularly when it comes to electricity generation, then we will face a future with an economy which is less competitive and prices that are higher than they otherwise would have been. Of that there is no doubt. But those on that side of the House will go to any lengths to run a scare campaign about the introduction of a carbon price and any lengths not to face up to this very big challenge for Australia.
Mr Speaker, a point of order on relevance—the question was very specific: do you confirm that for every $10 of carbon tax the price of petrol goes up 2.5c a litre?
Order! The Treasurer will relate his response to the question directly. I allowed him a lengthy preamble. He then entered a bit too much into debate. The Treasurer has the call.
Of course I could not confirm that.
My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. The minister would be aware of a letter dated 6 March 2000—and I will seek to table it—which states, ‘The current milk price of 59c after deregulation will be 41c.’ Within two years of dairy deregulation, an Australian farmer was committing suicide every four days. Consumers did not escape either—retail prices ‘greedied up’ to 41c, with ‘piggy in the middle’ taking an extra $1 billion a year. Currently, Coles and Woolworths are offering milk at $1. This is facilitated by parties slaughtering farm prices down to 47c in North Queensland and less elsewhere. Minister, don’t these realities prove that advocates for the free market in this place are loathsome hypocrites and that those parading themselves as Santa Claus have done so quite literally over the dead bodies of Australian farmers?
I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. I think it is important to acknowledge that the member for Kennedy has been absolutely consistent in his objection to dairy deregulation ever since it was first introduced by a National Party minister at the time and, in fairness, introduced with the support of both sides of parliament at the time.
It should be made clear, and I do have some information here from the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, that lower milk prices should not be at the cost of Australian dairy farmers. I am pleased that Coles have publicly confirmed that they are honouring their assurances that these price reductions would not drive down farm gate prices for dairy farmers.
You believe in the tooth fairy!
If the members of the National Party who are interjecting want to pretend that it was not their own leader who was the minister for agriculture when dairy deregulation came in, then go right ahead. I think that both sides should be consistent in acknowledging that the person who has been consistent in his objection to dairy deregulation is actually the member for Kennedy. I think that members of the National Party should just own up to that.
Ian McLeod, the managing director of Coles, has written to members of parliament and published in the media that, when Coles renegotiated milk supply contracts in January of this year, the dairy processors received higher prices. The government does expect that dairy processors pass these price increases back onto dairy farmers.
The question also deals with some very serious issues relating to mental health situations in rural and remote communities. Mental health is an issue of deep sensitivity to all members in this House, and a major issue for Australians in any time of crisis—particularly in those areas which have been through natural disasters. We refer to cyclones and floods, but are all very mindful of what happened among the farming community in particular during the long period of the drought, and the member for Kennedy has referred to those issues directly.
The Australian government does provide a range of initiatives and social support services for farmers. Front line service providers, including Centrelink’s rural service offices, are often the first point of contact for farmers or their families. They provide referrals to support services and to local social workers and specialists. The Australian government also has its National Suicide Prevention Strategy supporting suicide prevention initiatives at both the state and national levels.
Those mental health issues leading to suicide are always incredibly complex. There are always a range of issues that can affect them, financial pressure very regularly being one of them. I acknowledge the support for those measures from members of all sides of the House, but also acknowledge the particular links that the member for Kennedy has made for a long period of time on that issue.
Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question—
Order! The member for Kennedy realises that this puts me in an invidious position. The member for Kennedy gets a fair degree of slack, and on this occasion I will not allow him a supplementary question.
Honourable members interjecting—
Order! I understand the member for New England, but again this is an issue that I would hope that members pursue with the Standing Committee on Procedure. I believe that this parliament is the opportunity for the procedure committee to be able to operate to get change in the processes of the parliament.
My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the outlook for the global economy, and how the performance of the Australian economy compares with that of its peers?
Opposition members interjecting—
I do thank the member for Fraser for a very important question. It is simply stunning, and an indicator of just how out of touch and unrealistic those opposite have become, that a question about the growth in the global economy should produce that reaction from them. The fact is that they have just become so divorced from reality and the issues that really matter to average Australians that in this House they are not capable of behaving in a proper manner.
Growth is going to be stronger than we would have thought a year ago. That is very clear from the meeting of G20 finance ministers that I attended on the weekend. It was a good opportunity to take the temperature, if you like, of the global economy and to assess its ramifications for our country.
Asian economies are likely to grow strongly, and that is a very good thing for Australia. Also, the US economy and its outlook are more optimistic at the moment than they have been for some time. But I have to tell members of the House that the European outlook is not great. There is very sluggish growth in Europe, and of course on top of that we now have instability in the Middle East and North Africa. That will certainly weigh on global markets, and it will certainly push oil prices higher.
But this does give an opportunity to reflect on where Australia is vis a vis the rest of the world. Output in this country has grown something like five per cent since the global financial crisis, whereas many countries around the world are still struggling to get back to the levels they experienced prior to the global financial crisis. You can see this immense difference between Australia and many other countries in our unemployment rates. Unemployment in this country, at five per cent, is around half of unemployment in the euro zone at around 10 per cent. And, of course, in the United States it is stuck stubbornly at nine per cent.
It is a great thing for our country that in these circumstances, given this outlook, we have been able to produce in excess of 700,000 jobs in the period that we have been in government. It is something that everybody on this side of the House is absolutely proud of, because it means pay packets going into households and it means breadwinners who are able to provide for their families in a way which we are not seeing across so many other developed economies. And, of course, our net debt, compared to other economies, is low, at 6.4 per cent of GDP in 2011-12, compared to 90 per cent of GDP in major advanced economies in 2015 and, of course, coming back to surplus in 2012-13. So we have an underlying economic strength that is not evident in so many other developed economies.
Of course, there are patchy parts of our economy, and we have seen today that non-residential construction is a little weak. Consumers in our economy remain cautious and, on top of that, we have had some of the worst natural disasters in our history. But, to counter all of that, we have a very, very strong investment pipeline to support growth in our economy and to support rebuilding as we go forward, and we are making investments in critical economic infrastructure, particularly the NBN, which is absolutely important to the productivity of our economy and future growth. We are engaged in health reform. We are building up a pool of national savings to make sure that we can deal with the consequences of the mining boom. These are all things which will secure the prosperity of our country, and we on this side of the House have a plan to broaden and strengthen our economy—unlike those on the other side of the House, who are all opposition and no policy.
My question is to the Prime Minister, and I refer her to her statement before the election that there will be:
… no carbon tax under the government I lead,
and her statement after the election that a carbon tax is:
… the most economically efficient way of dealing with carbon pollution.
Yet this week the Secretary of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency told the Senate that since 2008:
We have not conducted full economy-wide modelling of the carbon price.
I ask the Prime Minister: how can she responsibly claim that a carbon price is economically efficient if there has not been any new economic modelling for the past three years?
I am not sure what it is that has come upon the opposition in recent days and is particularly on evidence today, but they seem to be in denial of all of the fundamentals of economics, particularly market economics. Maybe since they started using One Nation to generate their budget figures they have lost any understanding of what makes a competitive, modern economy. It follows from basic economic principles—and the economic commentary about this is wide in Australia; it is worldwide—that the most efficient way of dealing with carbon pollution is to put a price on carbon. Why? It is because it causes people to innovate, to reduce their exposure to that price and to reduce the amount of carbon pollution that they are generating. This is simply not capable of being denied. It is the same as trying to deny that demand and supply have an impact on prices. It is a basic economic rule.
Consequently, I have said in this parliament that we will work with people of goodwill through the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee to put a price on carbon. I know that sitting amongst the coalition are people who would prefer to be part of that process—who accept the science, who accept that pricing carbon is the most economically efficient way to do it and who were prepared to work with the government in pricing carbon under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Reluctant as I am to interrupt the Prime Minister’s monologue, I did ask her: how can there be any responsibility in what the government is doing when there has been no economic modelling done since 2008? And that is the question she should be answering.
The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. In putting the question in a different way, the Leader of the Opposition may have had a point of order, but his question went to ‘how can the Prime Minister claim’. The Prime Minister is responding.
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. As I said, we will use the opportunities of this parliament, and I know there are many coalition members who want to join us to work on pricing carbon. To the Leader of the Opposition, what I can say is this: the Leader of the Opposition completely misunderstands the purpose of economic modelling. You do not throw into economic modelling a general proposition that pricing carbon discourages carbon pollution and is an economically efficient strategy and ask it to spit something back out. Economic modelling is for the purpose of diagnosing and looking at a particular price. You would not go to an economic model and say, ‘If I constrict supply of a commodity, will the price go up?’ An economic model will tell you that if you constrict supply by 10 per cent then you can anticipate the following price effect. That is what economic modelling is for.
So I would say to the Leader of the Opposition: I know that he is grossly embarrassed by his weathervane approach to climate change.
Mr Pyne interjecting
The member for Sturt!
I know that his colleagues are grossly embarrassed at sitting behind a man who believed in the climate science and then said it was absolute crap, who believed in pricing carbon and then was opposed to pricing carbon, and who then believed again in pricing carbon and then was opposed again to pricing carbon. I know that that is grossly embarrassing for the opposition.
Mr Pyne interjecting
The member for Sturt is warned!
What I would say to the Leader of the Opposition is: do not come to this parliament with these economic absurdities. All you are doing is trashing the brand of the Liberal Party. It is actually pathetic to watch.
Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table the statement of the Secretary of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency:
We have not conducted full economy-wide modelling of the carbon price.
Leave not granted.
Following on from the Prime Minister’s paralysing and excellent response to the Leader of the Opposition’s question—
Opposition members interjecting—
The member for Reid will resume his seat. I remind the House that they are eating into their time for question time.
Honourable members interjecting—
The Speaker through another misspeak having eaten up the time again, the member for Reid has the call and he will come directly to his question.
I am now prompted to ask the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency: will the minister outline to the House the need for a carbon price, including any recent research on this issue?
I thank the member for Reid for his question. Of course to tackle climate change we need to cut carbon pollution. As our economy grows—
Opposition members interjecting—
Order! The minister will resume his seat. The House will come to order. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has the call. He will be heard in silence.
To tackle climate change, the simple fact of the matter is that we need to cut carbon pollution in our economy. As our economy grows we have to ensure that pollution does not grow with it. The fact of the matter is that a carbon price through a market mechanism is the most cost-effective way of cutting pollution in our economy. A carbon price will cut pollution, it will drive investment in clean energy and it will provide business certainty for investment, especially in the energy sector.
This week the Australian Industry Group released an important report about energy prices. The report echoes the government’s view that a carbon price is needed in our economy. The AIG report is in fact clear that energy prices have already risen significantly and that they are set to rise further with or without a carbon price; but, importantly, the report emphasises that a carbon price could, in fact, help reduce the impact of future electricity price rises. The report makes clear that electricity price rises are occurring because of the tens of billions of dollars of investment that are necessary in our electricity distribution infrastructure. In fact, on that point the Australian Energy Market Operator has estimated that we will need up to $120 billion of investment over the next 20 years in our electricity network.
The AIG report makes clear that without the certainty delivered by a carbon price we are going to see higher electricity prices due to poor investments being made. To answer some of the interjections from the other side, I will quote from the report. It says in the section attributed to the CEO of the Australian Industry Group:
… while much concern has focussed on carbon pricing, energy prices are going up significantly with or without it. Some of those cost drivers could be reduced by a well-designed carbon price. This could eliminate the policy uncertainty that is damaging investment in new electricity generation …
Ms Vamvakinou interjecting
Order! The member for Calwell is now warned.
The message which echoes the position that the government has been articulating for some period of time is that not only is a carbon price needed to resolve the uncertainty for investors in the energy sector but it will, in fact, mitigate price pressures in the electricity market for some time to come. This is something that it would be useful for the opposition to understand. We have before us a Liberal Party that does not understand markets and a Liberal Party leader who does not understand the allocative efficiency of markets.
Honourable members interjecting—
Those on my left will come to order.
You do not need modelling to tell you that markets allocate resources efficiently and that a market mechanism is going to be the most effective way of pricing carbon in our economy. It is a message you should take on and understand.
I seek leave to table the report to which the minister was referring.
Leave not granted.
The member for Flinders will resume his seat. Is the member approaching me to ask a question?
Yes.
The member for Boothby was unlucky yesterday. The member for Flinders should have learned from that.
Mr Hockey interjecting
The member for North Sydney did not lose the vote because of that one vote. The member for Flinders with a question.
My question is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to precisely the same report just discussed on energy prices released by the Australian Industry Group, which predicts that a carbon price of $26 a tonne will push up household electricity bills by an additional $300 a year in the first year alone. Will the Treasurer acknowledge, as government officials did this week, that this $300 per family will be additional to any other increase in electricity prices? Why is a tax that he ruled out in August as ‘hysterical’ policy now?
I am delighted to receive that question because, as the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency have said, a carbon price is the cheapest and most efficient way of dealing with carbon pollution. That is economics 101, which is not understood by anybody across the chamber. It is understood by the member for Wentworth, who nods his head at the irresponsible behaviour of all of those people over there. The member for Wentworth understood this when he agreed with the government on that fundamental proposition in this House just over one year ago. Just over one year ago the Liberal Party were in this House and they believed in the proposition that I just put to the parliament. That was suspended and all economic rationality went out the door when this Leader of the Opposition took the job. He has now suspended the fundamental rules of economics. We have seen it in here, whether in the debate on the carbon price, their lack of understanding of the need to get rid of unfair mortgage exit fees or their failure to understand debt and deficit in the economy. We see it time and time again. Not only are they economically irresponsible but they have become economically irrational.
Order! The Treasurer will come back to the question.
That is what is on display in this House question time after question time. They make a lot of modelling. There has been a lot of modelling done about putting a price on carbon. Let us start with the Stern report and go through model after model all based on that fundamental proposition.
Mr Speaker, a point of order on relevance: the question was in relation to whether there would be an additional $300 electricity price hit to families.
Order! The Treasurer will respond directly to the question. He has come back to the question after wandering a little wide.
They were making a lot of modelling and they have quoted some modelling which is contained in one report. The answer is it depends on the design of the scheme.
My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. How is the government ensuring Australia’s productivity growth through a more productive national freight system? How has this strategy been received?
I thank the member for the great port city of Newcastle for her question. Freight volumes will double between now and 2030, so there is an urgent need for national leadership and long-term planning. That is why the government asked Infrastructure Australia to develop a national freight strategy and yesterday, at the Australian Logistics Council, I released the draft of that strategy. We encourage input between now and April. Just like with the port strategy, we will have a process of consultation with industry and the community to make sure that we get this long-term planning right.
Our vision is for a truly national, integrated and multimodal transport system capable of moving freight quickly, reliably and efficiently. That is not the end in itself. The end itself is increased export earnings, decreased costs to consumers and increased productivity, leading to increased economic growth. This strategy is a plan for the next three decades, not just for the next three years. It is a plan which anticipates rather than merely reacts to bottlenecks and capacity constraints.
There are some specific ideas canvassed there: local planning laws to prevent urban encroachment on vital road and rail corridors, establishing dedicated freight routes, separating passenger trains from freight trains, more intermodals to improve access to rail and using smart infrastructure to get more productivity out of the infrastructure which is there at the moment, as well as moving to single national regulators in rail, heavy vehicle and maritime. At the moment we have 23 transport regulators for Australia’s 22 million people. We will move that to three and the Prime Minister advanced that process at the recent COAG meeting. It has been endorsed by the Australian Logistics Council, the Australian Trucking Association, the Australian Food and Grocery Council, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Engineers Australia, the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils and many other industry organisations in the last 24 hours. There has been one area of opposition, and we know who that will be.
As well as planning for the future we are also responding to Australia’s immediate infrastructure needs. As the member for Newcastle knows, we have rebuilt in our first term one-third of the interstate rail freight network. New figures from BITRE, the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics, confirm an equal commitment to building and investing in roads. During our first full year in office we invested a record $4.9 billion in the nation’s roads, which was up 80 per cent on the coalition’s records—indeed, the biggest investment since the creation of the national road network, of course again by a Labor government, almost 40 years ago. It is quite clear that we need to continue to invest, but it is also clear we need the right policy framework. This draft national freight strategy is just that and I encourage industry and the community to participate in this process.
My question is to the Treasurer. In a recent policy submission the Energy Supply Association of Australia warned that the government’s mining tax on coal will flow through to higher prices for electricity. Why is the Treasurer proposing a tax that will make the everyday lives of Australians harder?
First of all, I do not accept that for one second—
Certainly not from him.
and certainly not from the member for Dawson. We are now in this extraordinary position where all of those in the opposition, the Liberal and National parties, believe this fundamental proposition that the mining industry pays too much tax. Can anyone believe that? That is what they believe on that side of the House: the mining industry pays too much tax. We have the terms of trade at 140-year highs and there are record prices for iron ore and coal. It is only fair that, in those circumstances, where the price for these commodities is going to be higher historically, the Australian people receive fair value for the resources they own 100 per cent.
Who would oppose that proposition? The Liberal and National parties. We on this side of the House are determined to see that the Australians who own those resources 100 per cent—and these resources can only be dug up once—get some fair value for them. That is why we are putting in place our rent tax, which, extraordinarily, is opposed by the Liberal and National parties. It is actually supported by large sections of the mining industry, but opposed only in total by the Liberal and National parties in this House—demonstrating yet again just how out of control, how bizarre and how weird they have become in their approach to public policy. How could you oppose the Australian people, when prices are at 140-year highs, actually getting a fair return?
Opposition members interjecting—
The Liberal and National parties can, just as they are opposing the abolition of unfair mortgage exit fees, which are locking Australian mortgage holders into loans with banks they do not want to be with. How irrational could you be? And the list goes on and on: opposing the NBN—
Order! The Treasurer will relate his remarks to the question.
But we on this side of the House—
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order, on relevance.
If there had not been as much interjection, the member for North Sydney would have heard that I had asked the Treasurer to return to the question.
Opposition members interjecting—
Order! Just as it is very difficult for people to understand what is actually happening because they are talking and not listening, the Treasurer now, I think, has the message and the Treasurer will continue to respond directly to the question.
It is well documented that the biggest factor influencing electricity prices at the moment is transmission network charges and distribution—well documented. But those on that side of the House are so embarrassed by their opposition to the MRRT and the benefits it will bring to their electorates—
Order! The Treasurer will return to the question.
that they have to get to this completely irrational position.
Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table a paper by the Energy Supply Association of Australia.
Leave not granted.
My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. How will the government’s health reforms improve the delivery of primary healthcare services to Australians?
I thank the member for Kingston for her question because I know she, as a trained and qualified psychologist, knows the importance of primary care to the community and is a strong supporter of the government’s plans for a GP superclinic in her electorate and a new headspace site in her electorate. She, along with many others on this side of the House, knows that, if we care for people better in the community, we can reduce our rate of hospitalisations—which, unfortunately, in Australia are much higher than the OECD average. It is estimated that some nine per cent of hospitalisations are potentially preventable.
Obviously that is why the Prime Minister and I are focusing on moving more emphasis onto primary care and, as the House knows, released yesterday guidelines for the Medicare locals that will increase and improve coordination for primary healthcare service providers. I must say that we have been pleased with the reaction that we have had to this announcement, including from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. The president, John Kolbe, said yesterday:
If fully utilised, Medicare Locals can vastly improve how health care is planned and delivered, directly impacting patient outcomes by ensuring increased access to treatment in more appropriate settings.
That is absolutely what we are trying to do.
At the same time as trying to coordinate primary care better, we are also investing in building new infrastructure across the country. So I am pleased to be able to inform the House that on Friday the member for Page is going to be turning the first sod for a GP superclinic to be constructed in Grafton. There will be five full-time GPs in this clinic, together with practice nurses and allied health professionals, pathology collection and pharmacy services.
Reba?
So as of this Friday, when the sod is turned by the member for Page, there will be 30 GP superclinics that are open and fully operational—there are nine of those—providing early services or under construction, and that is with almost two years of our five-year program actually still to run.
You love the ‘Reba’ reference, don’t you?
So all these clinics have been established with consultation in the community on what services are needed. I know that the member for Dickson is getting agitated, as he always does when we talk about superclinics.
The minister should not encourage him.
I would like to give him an update about the superclinic in his electorate, which he, as yet, has failed to visit. The Strathpine GP Super Clinic has provided 92,000 items of care to patients through 71,000 consultations. Services are provided after hours; the clinic employs 15 GPs, nine nurses, a physiotherapist, a podiatrist and a pathologist and provides chiropractic care and mental health services; and all GP consultations are bulk-billed. I am also happy to inform the House that the Strathpine clinic has now employed its first nurse practitioner. They are benefiting from the government’s reforms to the MBS. In particular, this nurse practitioner is going to be working closely with three local nursing homes who have not been able to get services from other practices. So this is good news for the community, and it is about time the member for Dickson gave them a visit.
My question is to the Treasurer and refers to his previous answers today. Now that the Treasurer has confirmed that a carbon tax will include petrol, will the Treasurer inform the House whether his carbon tax on petrol will increase the price on fuel by more than 2½c a litre or less than 2½c a litre for every $10 of the tax?
I am delighted I have received another question on this from the Leader of the Opposition because, yet again, it just confirms the nonsense that comes from those opposite. The government is determined to put a price on carbon and for that we say this is an essential economic reform and that it must be done. Those opposite want to run around and pretend there is some cost-free way of dealing with climate change. They want to pretend that if we do not deal with climate change nothing will happen. But we all know that the cost of not acting on climate change is far higher than the cost of acting. That is point No. 1.
They want to pretend that they have some scheme to deal with reducing carbon pollution. They have a series of proposals that they took to the last election but every report that has come out—including the one from industry this week—proves that their direct action and intervention will actually make prices higher than if we introduced a carbon price. That is why we say that a carbon price is the cheapest and most efficient way of addressing carbon pollution. It is the cheapest and most efficient way.
What those opposite have on offer is an alternative which will provide for higher prices. They stand up and ask, ‘What’s the design of the scheme?’ We are working our way through designing that with a multiparty committee. Of course, that is not a secret. The multiparty committee is meeting every couple of weeks. Those opposite sit in this House and pretend that that is news. It is not news. We are determined to move towards a price on carbon because it is a fundamental economic reform in this country which will secure our prosperity for the future and mean that we will be able to generate the jobs and wealth that Australian families and industry expect.
What do we get in the face of that? We get more of this opposition of opposition’s sake because they think they can put their own political interests before the national interest. For our part, when it comes to responding to responding to natural disasters and when it comes to dealing with the challenges of mining boom mark 2 we will always put the national interest first.
My question is to the Minister for Trade. Why is developing the skills of the Australian workforce an important economic reform in boosting the competitiveness of Australian exporters?
I thank the member for Cunningham for her question. She represents a great industrial area of Australia—a high-skill area—and that is very important to Australia’s economic future. That reminds us that 30 years ago, in the very early 1980s, Australia had a big choice to make: would it continue as an economy behind high tariff walls, protected, to sell products onto a fragmented, small market or would it create an open, competitive economy—open up our trade and open up our business so that we could take on the rest of the world as exporters and win? That choice was made by the Hawke Labor government. The Hawke government decided that it would fashion an open, competitive economy.
This was a monumental change—a fundamental refashioning of the Australian economy. As a result of the reforms of the Hawke government and the Keating government, through national competition policy, the foundations were laid for 20 years of sustained economic growth. I will acknowledge that the Howard government, in the area of industry protection through tariffs, also continued that process of reducing those tariff barriers.
I am asked now about the impact on economic reform of investing in skills in this country. The decision that was made nearly 30 years ago was a decision as to whether we stayed as a low-skilled, low-waged country or took the high road to high skills and high wages. That was the road that was taken. That is the road that we must continue to travel—to high skills and high wages. That is why the Labor government is investing so heavily in skills. That is why the Labor government is investing so heavily in hundreds of thousands of productivity places. That is why the Labor government is investing in trade training centres. I lamentably have to point out that the coalition is absolutely opposed to those trades training centres.
This is the road to high skills and high wages. It also requires that we dismantle, here in Australia, those impediments to opening up the economy further. We are doing that through the seamless national economy reforms. I point out that the Attorney-General, even this morning, introduced legislation for one of the 27 areas of regulatory reform—namely, personal property securities—and the Assistant Treasurer did so with trustee corporations.
That is the Labor way: investing in skills and a high-skill, high-wage economy for a better future for working Australians.
My question is to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Has the minister seen this 17 December 2010 letter from the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment and Economic Development in the Queensland government—now Minister for Tourism, Manufacturing and Small Business—Jan Jarratt, where she states:
Mandating employers to take over the paymaster function—
for the paid parental leave payments—
is a costly and time consuming administrative issue for employers, particularly those who are operators of small businesses.
Why won’t the government accept the advice of a Labor colleague and adopt the coalition’s bill to keep the payment responsibilities with the Family Assistance Office rather than making life harder for the hard-working small businessmen and women of Australia?
I thank the shadow minister for his question. I just point out a few facts to him, including the number of employers who are actually signing up to be part of the government’s historic Paid Parental Leave scheme. These are employers who actually want to keep connection with their employees. They are employers who actually understand—
Mr Billson interjecting
Honourable members interjecting—
I did not clearly hear what the member for Dunkley said, so I am not in a position to ask him to withdraw. But he may have got some very sensible advice from the other side of the House: he should be very careful with his interjections.
A rare moment.
I am just cautioning him. The House will sit in silence while the minister responds to the question.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just remind the opposition that in fact employers are not taking any notice of their silly political games; they are signing up and joining with the government to make sure that we continue to introduce a successful paid parental leave scheme in Australia.
I seek leave to table the letter from the Queensland government saying the Gillard government has got this wrong.
Leave not granted.
My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. What options are available to the international community in response to the atrocities in Libya?
I thank the member for Melbourne Ports for his question. Yesterday the civilised world condemned developments in Libya. Today we face the question of what to do about developments in Libya. Colonel Gaddafi has made clear his intentions. His words are chilling: he has threatened to purge Libya—‘house by house, inch by inch’—of the protest movement. He has threatened slaughter and punishment by death. He has called on the Libyan public to ‘capture the rats’ of the protest movement. These are the words not of a responsible political leader; these are the words of a dictator out of control.
Yesterday, the Australian government together with governments around the world called in Libyan ambassadors, at least those who have not defected so far, to register international political condemnation of these statements and the actions of the Libyan regime.
Yesterday I also instructed Australia’s permanent representative to the United Nations to write to the UNSC president calling on the council to convene and also to consider the powers available to the council to protect the civilian population of Libya.
I am advised that the United Nations Security Council has now issued a statement which contains the following provisions: that the council condemns the violence and the use of force against civilians; that the council deplores the repression against peaceful demonstrators; and that members of the council call on the government of Libya to meet its responsibility to protect its population.
I am advised that this is one of the first times the United Nations Security Council has invoked the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ in one of its statements. This doctrine was introduced in the international community in the post Rwanda world.
The Australian government welcomes the statement in the last 24 hours by the Arab League, under Secretary General Moussa, which, following its emergency session on Libya, made a decision to suspend Libya from the meetings of the Arab League. We believe this important statement by the Arab League stiffened the resolve of the United Nations Security Council against some of the resistance which may be encountered in the council on this most important responsibility to protect the civilian population of Libya.
Depending on developments now in Libya, there are further steps available to the United Nations Security Council. We are following these developments in the council most closely.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has a critical role now to play in responding to human rights abuses in Libya. It is obscene that Libya has been chair of that council in the past. It continues to be obscene that Libya remains a member of that council.
It is critical that the Human Rights Council in Geneva use the opportunity to present an immediate factual report on human rights abuses in Benghazi, Tripoli and elsewhere in the country.
It is time for the international community to remind the Libyan regime and its leaders that crimes against humanity fall under the Rome statute in the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. As a result, members of the regime could be held accountable for mass casualties which occur as a result of the actions of the regime. Libya of course is not a member of the ICC; it would therefore be a matter for the members of the UNSC to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court for its consideration. Other measures possibly include targeted sanctions; the imposition of a no-fly zone, which would prevent Libyan aircraft from attacking civilian targets as they have reportedly done; and the declaration of an arms embargo.
The government remains seized of developments in Libya. It is difficult and dangerous, and we continue to attend to our consular responsibilities.
On indulgence—The wave of civil unrest that has been unleashed across North Africa and the Middle East has a number of common causes, particularly socioeconomic causes—high youth unemployment and high food prices—but also the overwhelming human desire for greater freedom from repressive regimes.
The response to the demonstrations has varied country by country, whether it is Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco or Algeria. But the crowd control, Gaddafi style, in Libya has been unconscionable, despicable and inhumane. The coalition supports the government’s words of condemnation as laid out today by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. We certainly support the government taking whatever steps it can to express Australia’s shock and horror at the way the people of Libya have been treated by the ruler of that country, a most vile dictator.
Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
I present the Selection Committee’s report No. 14 relating to the consideration of committee and delegation business and private members’ business on Monday, 28 February 2011. The report will be printed in today’s Hansard and the committee’s determinations will appear on tomorrow’s Notice Paper. Copies of the report have been placed on the table.
The report read as follows—
Report relating to the consideration of committee and delegation business and private Members’ business on Monday, 28 February 2011
Items for House of Representatives Chamber (10.10 am to 12 noon)
COMMITTEE AND DELEGATION BUSINESS
Presentations and statements
1 Standing Committee on Economics
Review of the Reserve Bank of Australia Annual Report 2010 (first Report).
The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made—all statements to conclude by 10.20 am.
Speech time limits—
Mr C. R. Thomson (Chair)—5 minutes.
Next Member speaking—5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
2 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services
Statutory oversight of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, February 2011; and
Report on the 2009 – 10 annual reports of bodies established under the ASIC Act, February 2011.
The Committee determined that statements on the reports may be made—all statements to conclude by 10.30 am.
Speech time limits—
Mr Ripoll (Chair)—5 minutes.
Next Member speaking—5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
3 Joint Standing Committee on Migration
Statements concerning the Inquiry into the economic, social and cultural contribution of migration to Australian society.
The Committee determined that statements on the inquiry may be made—all statements to conclude by 10.40 am.
Speech time limits—
Ms Vamvakinou (Chair)—5 minutes.
Next Member speaking—5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
4 Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications
Statements concerning the Inquiry into the role and potential of the NBN.
The Committee determined that statements on the inquiry may be made—all statements to conclude by 10.50 am.
Speech time limits—
Ms Bird (Chair)—5 minutes.
Next Member speaking—5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
5 Standing Committee on Regional Australia
Statements concerning the Inquiry into the socio-economic impact of the proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
The Committee determined that statements on the inquiry may be made—all statements to conclude by 11 am.
Speech time limits—
Mr Windsor (Chair)—5 minutes.
Next Member speaking—5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins]
6 Committee of Privileges and Members’ Interests
Statements concerning the Inquiry into the Draft Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament.
The Committee determined that statements on the inquiry may be made—all statements to conclude by 11.05 am.
Speech time limits—
Ms A. E. Burke (Chair)—5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 1 x 5 mins]
PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS
Notices
1 MRS B. K. BISHOP: To present a Bill for an Act to amend the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 to abolish the age limit on payment of the superannuation guarantee charge. (Abolition of Age Limit on Payment of the Superannuation Guarantee Charge Bill 2011). (Notice given 8 February 2011.)
Presenter may speak for a period not exceeding 10 minutes—pursuant to standing order 41.
2 MR OAKESHOTT: To present a Bill for an Act to amend the Auditor General Act 1997, and for related purposes. (Auditor General Amendment Bill 2011). (Notice given 22 February 2011.)
Presenter may speak for a period not exceeding 10 minutes—pursuant to standing order 41.
3 MR BANDT: To present a Bill for an Act to amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 in relation to alpine grazing, and for related purposes. (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Abolition of Alpine Grazing) Bill 2011). (Notice given 22 February 2011.)
Presenter may speak for a period not exceeding 10 minutes—pursuant to standing order 41.
4 DR LEIGH: To move—That this House:
Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 12 noon.
Speech time limits—
Dr Leigh—10 minutes.
Next Member speaking—10 minutes.
Other Member—5 minutes.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 1 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
Items for House of Representatives Chamber (8 to 9.30 pm)
PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS
Notices
5 MR L. D. T. FERGUSON: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—40 minutes.
Speech time limits—
Mr L. D. T. Ferguson—10 minutes.
Next Member speaking—10 minutes.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 4 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
Orders of the Day
1 ASSISTING THE VICTIMS OF OVERSEAS TERRORISM BILL 2010 (Mr Abbott): Second reading (from 21 February 2011).
Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 9.30 pm.
Speech time limits—
Mr Abbott—10 minutes.
Next 3 Members speaking—10 minutes each.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
Items for Main Committee (approx 11 am to approx 1.30 pm)
PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS
Notices
1 MRS MOYLAN: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—50 minutes.
Speech time limits—
Mrs Moylan—10 minutes.
Next 3 Members speaking—10 minutes each.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
2 MR L. D. T. FERGUSON: To move:
That this House notes that:
Time allotted—30 minutes.
Speech time limits—
Mr L. D. T. Ferguson—10 minutes.
Next Member speaking—10 minutes.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
3 MR ENTSCH: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—40 minutes.
Speech time limits—
Mr Entsch—10 minutes.
Other Members speaking—10 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 10 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
4 MR HAYES: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 1.30 pm
Speech time limits—
Mr Hayes—10 minutes.
Next Member speaking—10 minutes.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
Items for Main Committee (approx 6.30 to 9 pm)
PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS
Notices
5 MR S. P. JONES: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—30 minutes.
Speech time limits—
Mr S. P. Jones—10 minutes.
Next Member speaking—10 minutes.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
6 MR SECKER: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—50 minutes.
Speech time limits—
Mr Secker—10 minutes.
Next 3 Members speaking—10 minutes each.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
7 MS HALL: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—30 minutes.
Speech time limits—
Ms Hall—10 minutes.
Next Member speaking—10 minutes.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day.
8 MR NEUMANN: To move:
That this House:
Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 9 pm
Speech time limits—
Mr Neumann—10 minutes.
Next Member speaking—10 minutes.
Other Member—5 minutes each.
[Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 4 x 5 mins]
The Committee determined that consideration of this matter should continue on a future day.
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 documents:National Environment Protection Council—Report for 2009-10.
Debate (on motion by Mr Hartsuyker) adjourned.
I have received a letter from the honourable member for Flinders proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The impact of the Government’s proposed carbon tax on the cost of living
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—
As of today we know two things about the impact of the government’s carbon tax on the cost of living. First, in the first year alone it will be an additional $300 hit per family. That figure will rise. Within three years it will rise to a 25 or 26 per cent increase over and above everything else that would otherwise have occurred. Second, we have discovered something of great importance to the Australian public. Prior to today, the government had argued that petrol should not be included in any carbon tax. As of today, petrol is back in the carbon tax. The Treasurer was given two opportunities to rule out petrol from a carbon tax. The Prime Minister could have dealt with petrol within the carbon tax. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency could have dealt with petrol in a carbon tax. They had multiple opportunities to rule out petrol from a carbon tax, so what Australians know from today is that electricity prices are going up because of this government’s decision, and petrol prices, contrary to everything else the government have said over the last two years, will also be going up.
All of this comes against the background of a gross breach of faith. What was it that the Prime Minister said on the day before the election, 20 August 2010, on the front page of the Australian newspaper? ‘I rule out a carbon tax’. What did she say four days before that, in the now infamous television interview on Channel 10 on 16 August? ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.’ What did the Treasurer say on 12 August, right in the middle of the election campaign, when asked whether or not there would be a carbon tax? ‘We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.’ Most magnificently, what did the Treasurer say on 15 August on Meet the Press? ‘What we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax.’ That is precisely what is happening. That is a breach of faith, and this government went to the election on a grand, systemic, oft-repeated lie by the two people who sought office as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of this country. The most fundamental pledge of the election campaign was shattered within days of the campaign. And the cost will be borne by Australian consumers.
I want to add one more element on breach of faith, from somebody who is not normally involved with this. Today the minister for climate change sought to use this week’s Australian Industry Group report to say that prices of electricity would go down. He read a quote from Heather Ridout to imply that the impact of a carbon price would be to reduce any increase in electricity costs. What he left out was the last sentence of that quote: ‘This would soften the blow of a carbon price but it would remain a big hit.’ And the report goes on to show that that big hit is $300 additional cost in the first year alone to an average family. It was deceptive, it was dishonest, it was dishonourable, it was out of character, and he should apologise to this House for what he did. It was completely out of character.
Let me deal with three elements of this debate. The first is about the truth in relation to the cost of living and electricity prices. The government is seeking to peddle the myth that a carbon price would somehow control and decrease the cost which consumers would otherwise face. It is not only false but also completely contrary to the idea, the proposition, the purpose, the intent, the reason for imposing a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. Each is designed to do one thing: drive up electricity prices to decrease demand. Do not come into this House and pretend that this is about controlling electricity prices. The intent, the scope, the meaning, the purpose of everything you are doing is to drive up electricity prices precisely so that a pensioner in Bundaberg, a senior in Parramatta, a family in Maribyrnong—people all around Australia—would decrease the amount of electricity they use in order to cool themselves in summer or decrease the amount of electricity they use in order to heat themselves in the depths of winter. That is the truth, that is the intent, that is the policy and that is the denial.
Let us deal with the facts behind this. Firstly, what we see is that the former Prime Minister, the member for Griffith, made it clear at that dispatch box on 3 February this year that, under their old system, which would have been $10 per year in the first year and then increasing, they would have an increase in electricity prices of 19 per cent over the first two years. That was what the former Prime Minister said about the additional impact on electricity costs. And who pays it? Mums and dads, pensioners and seniors. I say to the members of the parliament: if you want to bring in this policy, be honest about the impact. Do not run away, because the Australian people will not believe you, and it is clear that this policy will translate into one thing: electricity prices, electricity prices, electricity prices. You know it, we know it, the public knows it, and this policy comes on top of everything else.
The second element, which is about going to the truth in electricity pricing, is the report of New South Wales IPART. The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal made it absolutely clear that there would be price rises of up to 26 per cent over three years—not just two. When you go over three years, there would be price rises of up to 26 per cent for households and up to 26 per cent for the tens of thousands of small businesses right across New South Wales, and that would be replicated across Australia. The report was the final report of March 2010, and the impact on prices will be up to 26 per cent over three years.
The third element is that Professor Garnaut made it absolutely clear in his report, and in every other thing that he has said, that price rises will follow any carbon tax. At page 387 of the Garnaut review, he said:
A major part, if not all, of the costs faced by electricity generators will be passed down the chain from electricity generators, distributors and retailers and finally to households through higher prices for electricity.
He went on to say:
These higher prices will require households to spend a greater proportion of their income to obtain the same goods and services purchased before the introduction of an emissions price. This will reduce households’ real incomes and purchasing power.
The goal, the intent, the purpose, the structure and the nature of the tax that the government is proposing is to hurt families so that they can afford less and cannot maintain the same standard of living. If that is not the case, why would you bother with a compensation package? What are you compensating if there is not going to be a change in electricity prices? Everybody in this building knows it is a fiction and a fraud for the government to pretend that there will not be a change in electricity prices. What we did not know was that petrol was to be added to the list as well to deal with some of the compensation issues that the government is facing.
The Business Council of Australia made it absolutely clear in its report prepared by the Port Jackson Partners last year that there would be a 25 per cent to 26 per cent increase in household costs over three years. In addition, this week, in the report that was so grossly misused by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Australian Industry Group makes it clear, across pages 17, 18 and 19, that in the first year alone of their carbon tax, there would be a $300 increase in the price of electricity for an average household. An increase of $300 in the price of electricity, though, is not just something that occurs; it follows on top of a 60 per cent increase in price that has occurred to date.
The Prime Minister asks about markets. What she does not know is that electricity is an essential service and that in a market, if you drive up the price of an essential service, people do not opt out of electricity; they opt out of other things. That is precisely what Professor Garnaut was saying when he talked about the theory behind the electricity tax. Those are the facts.
Let us deal with the efficiency argument around what the government are proposing. Their efficiency argument is this pretence where they say that, if you drive up the price, our costs will be $20 per tonne and that somehow that is quite cheap. In reality we know from Treasury’s own modelling that, in the first year of their previous proposition, $4½ billion would have been raised, 13 million tonnes would have been abated and that would mean an effective price of abatement of $340 per tonne. That makes cash for clunkers look like good value!
Let me say this to the Minister for Climate Change: let’s talk apples and apples. Even on your best case scenario of 160 million tonnes, at $16 billion per annum—which will come straight from the pockets of the constituents of every member in this House—that is $100 per tonne for abatement. That is the reason that the United States, Canada and Japan have all rejected precisely the mechanism you have chosen. This is not about whether we act or about whether we agree on the target; it is about whether we choose a system which has been rejected in much of the rest of the world.
Let us look at the other myth here, and that is what is occurring in the rest of the world. This government has systemically misused information from around the world. Let us look at the United States, with 19.7 per cent of global CO2 emissions. We know that they will not adopt a cap-and-trade system at any time in the near future. The most likely combination to have done that—the House of Representatives, Senate and the President—has passed. One of the Democrats’ own Senate candidates, Governor Joe Manchin from West Virginia, stood up with a gun, nailed the cap-and-trade bill to a tree and shot the cap-and-trade bill. That is what the friends of the bill do—they shot the bill on national television. There will be no change in the United States.
The government has attempted to say that there are regional systems that are effective. The greenhouse gas system in the north of America—the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative—has a floor price of about $1.89. The reason for that is that they have set the cap so high that they are not making any difference to emissions. The system is not operating as a real system. These guys on the government side have said, ‘What about California; there is a western climate initiative?’ It was meant to include 11 states, but there are only four in there. The others have all bailed on this system because they have realised that it is going to drive up electricity prices. Those that have remained have almost signed away from doing anything that is real or meaningful.
In Canada they have walked away from the system that this government is proposing. In Japan they have walked away from the system that this government is proposing. And then we look at Europe. In Europe what is fascinating is that we find that 164 industries that will compete directly with Australian industries have up to 100 per cent of their permits for free. What does that mean? It means that those guys are notionally in a system but they will not be paying the additional electricity prices. That is what is happening in Europe and that is the reality as far as what the rest of the world is doing. And all of this is against the position that there is a far better way—as was shown by research last week, in that you can purchase abatement in this country for $7 a tonne rather than driving up a $16 billion tax across the whole economy.
Let us go back to what all this means. The government’s system will not work, because electricity is an essential service. So, in order to drive down the use of electricity—in order to crush pensioners, crush middle-income families, crush small business and crush farmers—you have to drive the price right through the roof so that they can no longer afford the price of electricity. The IPA, the Institute for Public Affairs, is predicting that the additional cost and impact on electricity over eight years will be a doubling over and above everything else. The policy that this government is proposing is to intentionally, purposefully, drive up the price of electricity $300 a year—and that is from the report that the government quoted today to say that there would be no change. That was wrong. It was false. It was an abuse of this House. It was an abuse of a report. To do something as shoddy as leaving off the last sentence, which says that there will be a big hit no matter what as a result of a carbon price, was something that was beneath the scope of a minister who has hitherto shown good grace in his position.
Let me make this clear on behalf of the opposition: we will fight this impact on the lives and livelihoods of middle Australia and on the lives and livelihoods of the lowest income earners, who will be most regressively affected because electricity is a much bigger part of their budget. If you do not think that there is an enormous impact on electricity prices, why will you be compensating these people in the first place? The answer is simple: electricity prices are set to rise and, as of today, so is the price of petrol. (Time expired)
Firstly, I start with the issue of the integrity of some of the positions that have been taken in recent times by various actors in this debate, since the member for Flinders certainly brings them into question. In particular, let’s have a look at the positions that have been adopted by the Leader of the Opposition on the issue of climate change and responses to it over the last two years or so. The member for Warringah has in fact, on our count, had least eight different positions during that period on the issue of a carbon price. Firstly, he supported the former Prime Minister John Howard’s decision to take an emissions trading scheme to the 2007 election. Secondly, he supported, at various times, the passing of the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Thirdly, he adopted a position to oppose an emissions trading scheme. Fourthly, he went on the record at one point, on 29 July 2009, and supported a carbon tax. Fifthly, the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, at one point, in order to usurp the leadership of the member for Wentworth, decided that this was all about politics and that climate change was absolute crap. Sixthly, he then decided that an emissions trading scheme was sensible policy and said so on 4 October 2009. His seventh position was to challenge the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth, in November 2009, for the reasons that I described earlier—that is, to use the issue to usurp the member for Wentworth’s leadership of the Liberal Party. We are on the current position where the member for Warringah is again opposed to a carbon price and, in partnership with his shadow minister, the member for Flinders, is trying to beat up a scare campaign. All we have heard is the recitation of various attempts to scare people—a doubling in electricity prices, and the like—that is completely unprincipled.
There is a very important basis for climate change policy, and that is the climate science. We must never lose sight of it in the context of these debates. The fact of the matter is that climate scientists internationally are telling us that carbon pollution is contributing to climate change. Professor Will Steffen, who was advising the government’s multiparty committee considering a carbon price mechanism, has made a presentation, for example, to the committee on the basis of his broad review of the climate science—that there is 100 per cent certainty that temperatures are increasing and 95 per cent certainty that human activity, through the emission of carbon pollution, is contributing to that warming. In fact, 2010 was the warmest year on record, equal with 2005 and 1998, and the period 2001 to 2010 was the warmest decade on record. In fact, 2010 was the 34th consecutive year with average global temperatures above the 20th century average.
This country stands exposed to the impact of climate change, as we have heard on many occasions. There is a public policy responsibility on the part of any government to respond appropriately to the findings of the overwhelming majority of scientists. The 2010 Intergenerational report highlighted the fact that, without action to combat climate change, Australia’s GDP will fall by eight per cent by 2100. We all know from the economic analysis that has been conducted by many players, including Professor Garnaut—who is updating his review at the request of the government—that the cost of not dealing with this issue is going to be far greater than any immediate cost that we confront. There is a mammoth amount of evidence to support that contention. The member for Flinders valiantly puts this rather irrational but completely irresponsible position on behalf of the coalition and the Liberal Party but in circumstances where—and I certainly suggest no derogation of his integrity in relation to this—in his past, having worked at university, he had written a thesis on the importance of market mechanisms in response to climate change. This is the appropriate form of response that we need to consider.
The Australian economy is an emissions intensive economy. In fact, over 80 per cent of our electricity supply is generated through coal fired electricity sources, and any attempt to deal with climate change and reduce pollution in our economy has to attend to the reality of our energy generation sector. That is an issue that I will come back to shortly. In our country we are the highest per capita emitters of carbon pollution in the world. We emit about 27 tonnes of carbon pollution for each person in our country, whereas two-thirds of the world’s population emits less than seven tonnes per person. To deal with this issue requires a significant economic transformation. When one looks at such a requirement, such an obligation, such a public policy responsibility on the part of any government, one must go about it in a way that provides for the least cost to our economy and to our community. A carbon price that is based upon a market mechanism is unquestionably the cheapest and fairest way to cut carbon pollution and drive investment in clean energy. It is also important from the standpoint of providing certainty for investors in important sectors of the economy, including the energy generation sector, so that they know, with long-lived assets, what the rates of return are likely to be. They need the certainty in the energy sector in particular of a carbon price to unlock the investment that is going to be necessary in the long term.
During question time I referred to an important report that was released by the Australian Industry Group and, no matter what observations are made about how I presented it, the simple fact of the matter is that the report indicates very clearly that, with or without a carbon price, electricity prices are going to go up. They have gone up over the last few years by approximately 40 per cent. Projections are that they will go up significantly in coming years and it is fundamentally because of the fact that significant amounts of investment are going to be needed—they are needed now—in order to upgrade our electricity distribution network and ultimately to contribute to new generation capacity, particularly of a low-emissions nature. The estimates from the Australian energy market operator are that around $120 billion is going to be needed over the next 20 years to meet that investment demand. In long-lived assets there must be certainty for investors to invest and for bankers to provide finance. It is a universally held position in the energy sector, and a very widely held position across the Australian business community, that a carbon price will be needed to provide the certainty for that investment. The point that is made in the Australian Industry Group report, and that the government has been making for some time, is not as was misrepresented by the member for Flinders a short while ago—that electricity prices are going to go down; they are not—but that a carbon price will mitigate the extent of the electricity prices that will occur in the future because of these investment pressures in the energy sector.
The alternative policy position from the coalition is quite an absurd one. We have a Liberal Party that is divorced from markets. The Leader of the Opposition’s question during question time demonstrates that he does not understand how markets operate. The so-called direct action policy that the coalition has been advocating will be more costly. It is not a market mechanism and it will be more costly to taxpayers. It has to be funded directly off the budget and it will not be environmentally effective. It will not achieve the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are going to be necessary for Australia to make the economic transformation that is necessary in the longer term to ensure our long-term competitiveness and it will not make the emissions reductions that are necessary for Australia to play its responsible part in the international community to try to deal with this diabolically difficult problem of climate change. They do not have a credible policy on the other side of this House.
I would like to refer to some of the views that the member for Wentworth has indicated on a number of occasions about the various policy approaches, specifically in relation to market mechanisms. When you are talking about cost, as this MPI is endeavouring to do, it is critical that the least cost, most efficient method for pricing carbon in the economy is adopted. This is what the member for Wentworth had to say on 22 July last year about the coalition’s policy:
The Coalition’s policy is not the ideal from my point of view I grant you that—I’d like to see a market-based solution.
The Treasury in the incoming brief for the government said the following about the coalition’s policy:
Direct Action measures alone cannot do the job without imposing significant economic and budget costs.
We have done some analytical work on what the coalition’s policy may cost taxpayers in direct fiscal impact on the budget—and we are talking tens of billions of dollars—in an effort to try to reach the bipartisan targeted reduction of five per cent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. That is a completely irresponsible position. It is inefficient, it is high cost and it involves government picking winners to try and choose projects. Just imagine the National Party getting into that business. It is a completely irresponsible policy stance and one which completely undermines any credibility to an attempt to attack the government over the cost of carbon pricing.
On that front, the government has established a process which it is engaged in with representatives of the Greens and independent members of the House of Representatives. We have invited representatives from the coalition. The Leader of the Opposition has refused to participate in the process, but obviously it would be preferable if there were a bipartisan approach to the issue of carbon pricing, and we would continue to welcome it if that were achievable. However, we are in a process where we are discussing a carbon price mechanism that would have the capacity to pass both houses of this parliament so that we can start to make this economic transformation and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions—our carbon pollution.
As a government when we have prosecuted this case previously, including in discussions with the member for Groom, who is sitting opposite me—and I have high regard for the efforts that he made in discussing with the government on that occasion the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme—the evidence has been very clear: any Labor government is certainly going to do what it can to ensure that those who are most vulnerable, pensioners and low-income households in particular, are able to deal with any cost pressures that emanate from carbon pricing. The government has a very strong record in this regard. We have made a number of changes that are extremely important for the working people of this country. We have had three successive years of reduced tax burden on families. We have increased the childcare rebate. We have significantly increased the pension. We have introduced the education tax refund. We are delivering an increase of $4,000 in family tax benefit part A. We are extending the education tax refund to uniforms. We are exploring a whole pile of other options. We have introduced paid parental leave for parents. These are all extremely important ways of supporting Australian working families.
Our record, in relation to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme arrangements, is that significant assistance measures were put in place to assist those who needed the most help. In the process of considering the design of a future carbon price mechanism, we are going to be motivated by the same values—and that is what it gets down to. There is a public policy response here to deal with climate change. The scientific evidence is very clear that we have that responsibility, and we will act upon it. We are endeavouring to prosecute the case through this parliament to achieve a market mechanism to price carbon in our economy, because it is the least cost, most efficient way of achieving reductions in carbon pollution in our economy. And, because of the values that a Labor government has, we will be providing all the support that we can to those who need it the most in the process of any change.
Finally, in relation to the electricity sector, it is vital that we price carbon to unlock the investment that is necessary in the future. The simple fact of the matter is that, until we are able to do that, investment will remain stalled in the energy sector and prices will rise due to that lack of investment. Under the coalition’s approach to this issue, all of that will take place and they will provide no assistance to households whatsoever. The contrast with the government’s approach is stark. The government has the appropriate policy response. We are working through and are committed to it, and I once again invite the coalition to wake up to the issues. (Time expired)
I have just listened with great interest to the contribution of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency on the matter of public importance proposed by the member for Flinders. My electorate has a number of lower socioeconomic areas, and I admit I am a fairly simple country fellow, but I picked up on some of the minister’s comments there. Why would you need to compensate people if electricity and petrol prices are not going to go through the roof? Simply by its very design, isn’t the carbon tax’s intention to drive up the cost of living and to try to change people’s behaviour? I can understand that the minister is a bit embarrassed about his government’s position, in particular when it comes to lower income earners.
It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to report to the House today that it is only 127 days until the lunatics take charge of the asylum. That is right—in 127 days, the Greens will have the balance of power in the Senate, and all of their watermelon policies will come rolling through the corridors of this place. Every one of their red-on-the-inside-and-green-on-the-outside policies will be rolled out as the Greens strut their stuff on the national stage. It will not just be this carbon tax: if the Greens have their way, in 127 days we will start paying more for electricity, more for petrol and more for food, and businesses will be hit with extra taxes just to make sure they do not make too much money and actually employ Australians in meaningful jobs.
I raise that point in the context of today’s debate because we are already seeing the impact of the Greens on this Labor government. From the moment the Prime Minister signed her agreement with the Greens leader, Bob Brown, it has been hard to tell who is in charge. Is it Julia Brown or is it Bob Gillard? At first it was a bit hard to tell. How the Prime Minister must regret that photo opportunity in her office. In amongst that nest of grinning Greens, her cover was blown to pieces. The Labor Party is in government, but the Greens are in charge. How else do we explain the backflip on the carbon tax? The Labor Party was saying ‘Absolutely not, no way’ before the election, but now just a few months later it is the only way to go.
People listening at home and in the gallery may be saying: ‘So what? Those Greens seem like a nice bunch—all warm and fuzzy, cuddling up to koalas, strapping themselves to a few gum trees every now and then and maybe saving a few whales. What’s this bloke from Gippsland whingeing about? Why is he so worried about these Greens?’ All I can say is: don’t be fooled—I have seen the Greens at work in my electorate. Don’t be fooled by their empty rhetoric about saving the planet. Don’t be fooled by the happy snaps with koalas and the watermelon style policies of the Greens. Between them, the Greens and Labor are the greatest threat that regional Australia has ever experienced.
The Greens want higher taxes on the mining industry. They want a big new electricity tax, to ban live exports of animals, to ban rodeos, to shut down commercial fishing and to shut down the timber industry. They hate recreational anglers, and they are already talking about a private member’s bill to kick the cattlemen out of the high country. I noticed that the minister agrees with the Greens on that point. You have to ask yourself what is next for the Greens. Will it be pony clubs? Zoos? Horse racing? Where does it stop for the Greens, and where does it stop for the Labor Party? When are they going to cut their ties with the Greens?
I have a suggestion: let the member for Melbourne trial the Greens policies in the next 127 days and see how the people in his electorate go. Let us make a little trial project out of his electorate. If you do not want those nasty coal fired power stations providing energy, good luck with your solar panels in Melbourne in the middle of winter. I am happy for the Greens to eat their mung beans and sit around wearing their hemp underpants, but they should stop telling the rest of Australia how to live their lives. As I have told the House before and have said in my electorate on many occasions, there is a boiling resentment in my community. People have had an absolute gutful of city based Greens and Labor MPs telling them how to live their lives. The Greens have never helped to create a single job in regional Australia, and they are a direct threat to jobs in many of our traditional industries.
Adam Bandt got a job.
I take up the member for Moreton’s interjection. I said that the Greens have never helped to create a job in regional Australia and they are a direct threat to every person’s job in many of our traditional industries. Has anyone in this place ever taken a close look at the Greens elected representatives and taken notice of where they draw their vote? Let us start with Victoria—in Melbourne, where the new member for Melbourne recorded a healthy 36 per cent of the primary vote. Let us next move a few kilometres out of the city to the seat of La Trobe, where the Greens picked up 12 per cent and handed the seat to the Labor Party. There is a pattern of that right around Australia. There are 44 Labor MPs who owe their seats to the Greens, but we will talk about that topic on another day.
Mr Burke interjecting
It is no wonder that Labor MPs will never speak out against the Greens. The minister at the table will never speak out against the Greens in his new role as Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. They will never speak out against the Greens because they cannot win their seats without them—44 Labor MPs in this place relying on preferences from the Greens to get them across the line. The Greens own the Labor Party, lock, stock and barrel.
Let us move out to some semiregional seats. In McEwen and Corangamite, the Greens’ vote is down to 11 per cent, and—surprise, surprise!—their preferences got the Labor candidate across the line again. Let us now move out to the true regional seats in Victoria. In the seat of Mallee, the Greens vote is just 7.8 per cent. In Gippsland, my own seat, they get 6.5 per cent of the vote and in Murray they get six per cent. Isn’t it funny that the further you move away from the city and the closer you get to the natural environment the fewer people believe the Greens and all their bulldust. There is a very good reason for that. It is that country people are practical people. They understand that to make an omelette you have to break an egg. They know that if you want to have a high-grade feature red gum dining table in your kitchen you need to use some timber from a tree. They know that if we want to feed our nation we have to balance the needs of the rivers and the soil with the crops we are growing and the animals we are feeding. That is the grand hypocrisy of the Greens and the people who vote for them. Go around to the houses of some of the Greens and their supporters and check what they are made from. Is it Australian timber or illegally grown Indonesian rainforest timber? Check in their fridges. No, they would not have fridges, would they, because of all that nasty pollution from burning coal? But, if they did have fridges, they would be full of fresh products from Australian farmers—probably those same horrible irrigators they want to shut down in the Murray-Darling irrigation district.
Then check their power supply—if they are they on the grid. Are they getting some of that cheap and reliable baseload energy from the Latrobe Valley in my electorate? I am sick to death of people in my community being vilified for working in power stations while the same people attacking them are running air conditioners on hot summer days and benefiting from the cheap and reliable energy we provide.
And while I am on the power industry I want to mention the Greens’ plan to shut down the Hazelwood power station. The Greens say they can shut it down and replace it with renewable energy. Give us all a break! Hazelwood generates about 1,600 megawatts of power each year. The average wind turbine can do 1.5 megawatts of installed capacity, so you would need to build 1,000 of them in Victoria just to replace Hazelwood. But—hang on a second—they only work for about 30 per cent of the time, so you would have to build three times as many wind turbines to achieve that same level of installed capacity. So we are talking about 3,000 wind turbines in Victoria to replace Hazelwood power station.
The Greens are conning Australians and it is about time that the Labor Party called their bluff. Our economy has been built on access to cheap, reliable baseload power—and I stress the word ‘baseload’. When we talk about energy security policies, we need to talk about the baseload power that powers our factories, hospitals, small businesses and households. They rely on it. Under the Greens’ and Labor’s plans for an electricity tax—let us call it what it is—power prices will go through the roof, small businesses will suffer and households will suffer, and it will not make a single bit of difference to the environment.
I know that the other side will not change their minds, because they owe everything to the Greens. They know they need the Greens’ preferences. But I have a bit of electoral advice for them—just for free—and the minister for the environment might want to listen to this very closely as well. Yesterday in the House, it was like The Sound of Music as the minister held hands with the member for Melbourne and danced through the fields in his tirade against the mountain cattlemen. You could almost hear the von Trapps singing in the background as he raced across the chamber in this embrace with the member for Melbourne in his opposition to the mountain cattlemen. It was beautiful to watch: the Greens and Labor, hand in hand, attacking a great and iconic tradition of Australian regional life.
Mr Burke interjecting
Minister, you may laugh; and the members may laugh. Funnily enough, it was good enough for Sydney to have the cattlemen on horseback parading in the Olympics opening ceremony. The men were in their Driza-Bones, and you all cheered madly. But it is not good enough to let them do their job for regional Australia. The sheer impracticality of Labor and the Greens is on show again: ‘We don’t mind a bit of theatre when it is in Sydney, but we really don’t want those nasty cows eating any grass.’ Heaven forbid that they reduce the fuel load in the forest and actually help to reduce the severity of future fires. We would not want that to happen, would we? No. They were happy to cheer the mountain cattlemen at the Sydney Olympics but they do not actually want them doing their job out in regional Australia.
Make no mistake: Labor will pay a heavy electoral price for its dalliance and unquestioning service to the Greens. In Victoria we remember the member for Narracan, Ian Maxfield. This was the man who chaired the committee which did the hatchet job on the mountain cattlemen for Steve Bracks; he has gone, defeated by a Liberal candidate. Remember Brendan Jenkins, the member for Morwell—the man who sat back and failed to stand up to Melbourne Labor and the Greens on anything? He has gone too, defeated by the Nationals.
Nice bloke.
Nice bloke. Labor has been wiped out in eastern Victoria because they refused to listen to the people who live and work in those communities. They just took their orders from their Melbourne and Canberra bosses. It is time for the members opposite to show some courage. It is time for them to start putting the Greens last on their how-to-vote cards and to start protecting jobs in regional Australia. I can tell you now, Minister, that when you put the Greens last on your how-to-vote cards it is a very satisfying feeling, and I invite you to do so. (Time expired)
To correct the record, it is important to point out to the member for Gippsland that of course the only Green representative in this chamber was indeed elected on Liberal Party preferences.
The globe is warming. Those opposite may not like to admit it, though they did vote for a private member’s bill to this effect last year, but climate change is real, it is happening and it is caused by humans. When I say this I normally pause, because sometimes you get chuckles or shouts from the other side. They like to flirt with the denialists and they like to suggest that perhaps climate change is not happening, or to take the ostrich approach: ‘If we just put our heads in the sand for long enough, maybe climate change will go away’.
But the evidence accrues year after year. Since the 1940s, every decade has been warmer than the one that preceded it. Following this pattern, the past decade was indeed the warmest on record. And you can just look in your own backyard to see this effect. Only a few weeks ago, Sydney experienced a record-breaking seven days in a row of temperatures over 30 degrees. Never in 150 years of record keeping had Sydney experienced seven days of temperatures where the maximum went over 30 degrees, but it has now happened—evidence of climate change in one of our own cities.
Higher temperatures and climate change mean more extreme weather events—stronger and more frequent droughts, floods and bushfires. Dealing with climate change is a big challenge for Australia. That is why we need to start early, and we need to use the most efficient mechanisms available. Over 80 per cent of Australian energy is generated through coal fired electricity sources. Two-thirds of the world’s population emit less than 7 tonnes of carbon pollution per person. Australians emit 27 tonnes of carbon pollution per person. The challenge is real. Putting it off, or pretending it is not there, is not an option.
Dealing with climate change will require a substantial transformation of our economy, and the longer we leave it the more difficult it will be and the more costly it will be. Scientists tell us that climate change is happening and economists tell us to deal with it now—and they tell us that we need to use market mechanisms.
Climate change is going to fundamentally affect Australia. It will affect our energy supply, our water security, our agriculture and our health. It will affect our coastal communities and it will affect Australian infrastructure. That means we have an obligation to future generations to act on climate change now, and to do so in the most cost-effective manner.
In support of this I would cite the words of Rupert Murdoch—not normally a man who is cited in favour of propositions on this side of the House, I have to say. But Rupert Murdoch put it as follows:
Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction.
Think of it, if you are sceptical of the science, as an insurance policy. Even if you are not 100 per cent sure that climate change is happening, surely you would want to begin to think about the most cost-effective strategies to deal with it. Thirty-two countries and 10 US states already have in place emissions trading schemes, so it is a fallacy that Australia would be leading the world and going first. That is not the case at all. We would be moving in lockstep with international experts and with many other developed countries.
Whenever I speak at schools, universities and the Canberra Institute of Technology in my electorate, climate change always comes up. Young people in Australia want us to act quickly on climate change, and they want us to use market mechanisms. Frankly, they are astounded that we in this parliament have not yet begun to act. They are astounded that the wreckers opposite have managed to trash an emissions trading scheme. They want us to move on climate change.
Market mechanisms are the most efficient way of dealing with climate change, and that means that they are the cheapest way and the fairest way. If we put in place a carbon price, we will cut pollution and we will drive investment in clean energy. We will let the market decide which clean energies are the most effective, rather than taking the coalition’s approach, which is picking winners—McEwenism back from the grave.
As a Labor government, we will always support those who need help to meet an increase in their cost of living, especially pensioners and the most vulnerable. That is in our DNA. The coalition sometimes use the ostrich solution to climate change but, when they take their head out of the sand and admit that something is happening, they have a direct action policy, an anti-market policy, which is very ironic given that those opposite claim to be the defenders of the free market.
As the Australian Treasury has said of it:
Direct action measures alone cannot do the job without imposing significant economic and budget costs.
To take a tonne of carbon out of the atmosphere via direct action costs more than to take a tonne of carbon out of the atmosphere via a carbon price. So how do you do it if you want the same level of abatement with direct action? You have to raise additional revenue. You have to raise income taxes. In the end, to get the same level of abatement via direct action, you will need a huge new tax.
Over the decade, the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency estimates that the purchase of international permits to make up for the coalition’s flawed policy would cost $20.4 billion, and that is in order to meet the bipartisan five per cent reduction target. So on top of the $12 billion cost of the coalition’s policy we would need another $20 billion to meet that bipartisan target.
In support of market mechanisms, you can quote a raft of experts. Pretty much any economist you turn to will say, ‘Market mechanisms are the most effective way to go.’ Let me, for example, quote Treasury executive director David Gruen:
Well-designed economy-wide market-based mechanisms for reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are projected to reduce annual labour productivity growth by around 0.1 percent, even for quite deep cuts in emissions (Australian Government, 2008). Of course, were alternative regulatory, or other non-market-based, mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions implemented, that would be expected to have much more adverse effects on the economy’s aggregate labour productivity growth.
Insurance Australia Group have made similar points. They have noted:
Early action can be achieved at modest cost—
but—
Delayed action would be expensive.
The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change have said that, in comparison to early action, delaying action to 2022 would result in lower real GDP growth by an average of 0.2 per cent per annum through to 2050 and concentrate any disruptive shocks over a shorter period.
The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change have also discussed jobs. They note that an additional 3½ million jobs will still be created in the economy under the early action scenario over the period 2013 to 2050, equating to 250,000 more jobs than under the delayed action scenario. The coalition’s delayed action scenario will cost jobs.
Of course, this is what we would expect from the party of ‘no’. The member for Warringah has always brought a negative approach to public life. We remember that in 1999 his campaign against the republic referendum was: ‘Don’t know? Vote no’. In 2009 he came to the leadership, beating the member for Wentworth, who seems to be curiously absent in this debate. The member for Warringah won the leadership with one promise: he would say no to any sensible policy to tackle dangerous climate change.
The opposition have consistently taken the same ‘Don’t know? Vote no’ policy in this chamber. They have become the party of ‘no’ when it comes to sensible reforms, such as means testing the private health insurance rebate and introducing a Minerals Resource Rent Tax, giving Australians a fair share of their minerals. I know that there are thoughtful people in the Liberal Party caucus. There are probably people who could make a constructive contribution to the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change—if their leader allowed them to participate. But, alas, the party of ‘no’ consistently says, ‘Do not get involved.’
The current Liberal Party is a Liberal Party which I fear would probably have said no to some of the great Hawke-Keating reforms. They probably would have said no to the tariff cuts, to floating the dollar, to Medicare and to expanding universities. They would have said it would cost too much and was too risky. They would have said no to compulsory superannuation. I shudder to think what Australia would be like if the party of ‘no’ had been in power in the past. (Time expired)
The electorate of Bennelong, which I serve, is a diverse electorate in many ways. We enjoy diversity in culture, with the Chinese and Korean communities making up almost one-quarter of the population. We boast diversity in business, with blue-collar factories, plazas of small enterprises and the Macquarie business park, the third largest CBD in Sydney, housing major corporations. We incorporate diversity in socioeconomic position, with wealthy riverside houses to large commission buildings. Despite all the variation of this constituency, the one common thread is that the residents and businesses are struggling to make ends meet.
These are not complaints about the prices of luxury items but concerns about the cost of items that are absolutely essential for survival: food, electricity, gas, water and petrol—not to mention increasing rents and mortgage interest rates. These struggling Australians talk to me about their problems because it is the obligation of government to implement policy agendas to minimise the impact of rising prices and work to prevent a further decline in the quality of life of those who elect us as their representatives. And yet time and again we see this government acting wilfully and disrespectfully to our electorate, whether it is through the mining tax, the flood tax or, the topic of this debate, a carbon tax.
I use the word ‘disrespectfully’ because this government went to the voters last year with a policy of no carbon tax. Just two days before the election Prime Minister Gillard was quoted as saying:
I rule out a carbon tax.
Three days earlier Prime Minister Gillard said:
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.
So who is really leading this government?
Sure enough, here we are today debating the government’s proposed carbon tax. In fact, it took Prime Minister Gillard just 27 days to go from ‘I rule out a carbon tax’ to:
I think the rule in, rule out games are a little bit silly.
This was a backflip to be admired. We Australians love sports. We love the Olympic Games every four years. Our previous Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, had captured the imagination of the sporting public with his gymnastic abilities to backflip. He had practised in minor events but, at the Olympic event in Copenhagen, when the gold was up for grabs and the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’ was the stake, he scored a 10 with a perfectly executed backflip and capitulation on the subject of climate change.
His co-author, understudy and loyal supporter—the Tonto to his Lone Ranger—not only was able to learn the art of the backflip from very close quarters directly from the master but inevitably was able to add to his acrobatic style. When her chance came to enter the main arena around midnight, there were reassuring promises to ‘her’ Australia that there would be no carbon tax. Her backflip performed—with a twist. The twist came on the perfect landing with the announcement that there now would be a carbon tax. The twist came for her Australians that lay on her torture rack of living costs with just another little twist to add to their pain—the pain of the cost of living in Australia under a Labor government. Previously the Prime Minister had shown her interest in sports by claiming that there was more chance of her playing full forward for the Western Bulldogs than seizing the top job from Kevin Rudd. Another perfectly executed backflip was required and performed with distinction.
The other great thing about the Olympics is swimming. Our swimmers are the greatest the world has ever seen. We now have our top performer seeking another personal best for her country in the swimming pool of red ink. During her previous Olympic performances they were able to accumulate a $96 billion debt, but our new queen of the pool, valiantly assisted by her training partner, the evergreen Senator Brown, is seeking to exceed this amount in record time. Of course, all of these masterful displays of sporting prowess and achievement are best viewed on your flat-screen television brought to you by that most wise and effective government policy: the $900 stimulus payment. Well, the good lord giveth and the good lord taketh away.
When the backflip landings are complete and the races are finished, what are we left with? In a country that once had the highest rate of homeownership, our next generation and those who come to our shores for a better life are deprived of the opportunity of homeownership—a stake in Australia. The predicament that our young families and newest Australians face is the escalating cost of housing prohibiting them from establishing what used to be our national right of homeownership. Just for insurance that this will never happen, with insufficient rental properties and subsequent market forces applying upward pressures to rents the cost of living becomes the final roadblock. As if their path is not hard enough, it will be this generation of new Australians, when this government is through with their reckless spending and their unprecedented ability to generate debt, who will be given the task of paying it all back.
This tax will not only hit your home; it will hit every single item you purchase, every business that you deal with and every price you pay. This will be the tax that keeps on taxing. This tax is designed to curb our use of electricity through some very rudimentary economic logic. Several months ago the Prime Minister stated in a speech:
Over the past three years residential electricity bills have risen by more than 40 per cent across Australia—
and followed this with the comment:
I understand how much pressure this is putting on families.
This is pressure that will be stretched and heated with a carbon tax.
Former Prime Minister Rudd admitted that a carbon tax would push up power prices by almost 20 per cent in just two years. The New South Wales Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal approved electricity price rises of 35 per cent over three years but pushed this to 60 per cent if a carbon price were introduced. Even the government’s own climate change committee are in agreement, with one of their key advisers, Rod Sims, stating that carbon price plans were:
… estimated to increase wholesale electricity costs by 60% by 2015.
The United States, Japan and Canada have all recently rejected a policy of electricity price rises like those proposed by this government. Isn’t this enough already? Are we not getting the message? Do we really need a carbon tax to add to these increases? Will that be the metaphorical straw that stops people using the services that are essential to their survival?
There is a clear distinction here between different points of view. New to this place, I am seeking to learn from our leader, who believes in small government, lower taxes and the right to make your own decisions. What better summation could be made than our leader’s comments in this chamber this morning: ‘As each day passes it is clearer and clearer that we have a Prime Minister who has never seen a tax she did not like and never had a tax she would not hike.’ I plead with the government on behalf of the diverse electorate of Bennelong and all those struggling to make ends meet to stop this stupidity, to ease the pain, to let us get up off the rack and to abandon this new tax.
I thank the member for Flinders for bringing this matter of public importance to the attention of the House. I know him to be a man who is passionately interested in the issue of climate change. He does believe in the science, unlike many of those who surround him on that side of the House, and he has in the past had a very credible position on the issue. I also know him to be a man who is usually above some of the lower forms of politics that often accompany those on the other side of the House, which is why I was very disappointed to hear him draw some humour out of the fact that some involved in US politics have used guns to shoot down a policy. It might be an analogy which gets laughs from the cheap seats, but it really is below him.
He spoke for 15 minutes on the issue of climate change and our public policy responses to it, but very little if any of that time dealt with his own party’s policy on this. Perhaps this is because his own party’s policy is so confused. Perhaps before the member for Flinders leaves the chamber I can put a question to him—that is, whether he and his party are still committed to the bipartisan renewable energy targets and whether they believe the target of five per cent can still be met by their policies—
Yes.
the policies that have been priced at about $2 billion for the policy alone.
Order! I remind the member for Flinders that whilst he is out of his seat he is out of order.
It has been assessed by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency that those policies, if put into action, will fall well short of achieving the five per cent renewable energy targets in and of themselves—a point that the member for Flinders knows.
It’s five per cent emissions; 20 per cent renewable energy targets.
It is 20 per cent renewable energy targets, a point the member for Flinders knows full well. He is also aware that the cost of making up the shortfall is in the order of $20.4 billion to purchase the carbon pollution permits on the world market. This is the lie in the opposition’s policy. They have not been willing to come clean in this debate or anywhere else on what the cost of their direct action policy is to the budget and what the cost is to Australian households. We estimate that the cost to households is in the order of $600 per annum. If we want to have an honest debate about realistic policies and the comparison of realistic policies in dealing with this important issue, let us have an honest debate about comparing the costs of their inefficient policy with our proposed market mechanisms.
The second issue that arises from the contribution of the member for Flinders is that somehow if we act on this we will be one out in the international community. The member for Flinders knows there are scores of countries that have already started the transformation to a low-pollution economy—32 countries and 10 US states already have emissions trading schemes in operation. The member for Flinders knows this full well. Far from our leading the pack, we will be joining those countries and those states that know that we have to act and we have to act soon and decisively.
It was very entertaining and at times enjoyable listening to the member for Gippsland teeing off in this chamber against the Greens, but frankly it missed the point. The point is that at the last election a majority of Australians voted for action on climate change because they expect us to do something about it, and they expect us to do something about it in this term of government. The Labor Party, this government, is determined to act and is determined to act in a Labor way. That means following the science, that means following the best economic advice available and that means ensuring that we bring our people along with us and do not leave behind the working people who live in regions such as my own as we make this important economic transformation.
What distinguishes us from those opposite is that we actually believe in the science of climate change. I know the member for Flinders does, but he is not surrounded by a team of true believers. His leader describes it as ‘absolute crap’. The brains trust in the Senate, Senators Boswell, Bernardi and Barnaby Joyce, have made interesting contributions to the debate over the last six months, one of them suggesting that because he cannot sense climate change from his yacht it is not happening.
Climate change atheists.
Yes. Australia is in the front line of climate change and it is important that we act. This is a point that has been agreed by all scientists and the majority of Australian business leaders. They understand that, in an economy which is the highest emitter of carbon pollution per capita and has 80 per cent of its electricity generated by coal, we have an imperative to act and make the transformation.
My electorate of Throsby is also in the front line of a country that is in the front line, having traditionally relied heavily on manufacturing and coal as a significant contributor to gross regional product and for employment. We know that structural change hits working-class communities hard and it hits us harder the longer we delay. We saw that as we moved our community through the structural adjustments associated with the steel industry and manufacturing, and removing tariff protection. We know that if you do not act and act decisively there is some pain upfront but there is a lot more pain down the track. We contrast the steel industry, which is a very productive and efficient industry in our region, with those around the country in other regions which did not go through those transformations and act decisively and soon.
We believe in a market solution because it is the most effective way of reducing carbon pollution. We could, as the opposition suggest, adopt a market atheism on this issue alone—not in relation to other issues—and pick winners, providing grants and subsidies to some of their favoured industries, but we know that this is not as efficient as putting a price on carbon and introducing a market solution. It is something that is supported by every economist and every major industry group. It is something that many businesses are already factoring into their business plans. I quote from a statement by the Westpac Group dated September 2010:
… we factor carbon risk into our decision making processes and in consultation with impacted customers may require them to demonstrate risk reduction programs.
Our position has been to support flexible market-based mechanisms as part of a wider policy response to climate change.
That is a sensible position given domestic and international trends, a position that should be adopted by those opposite.
We know that the market mechanism is the most effective means of changing behaviour in households and business and, most importantly, as the minister has pointed out, changing investment decisions so that we can start getting investment into that critical area—the main game in this debate—electricity generation. Unless we send a signal to the market, there will continue to be a stall in investment in more efficient and effective means of electricity generation and, as has been pointed out, the cost of electricity will continue to rise because there is a shortage of supply and uncertainty in the market. Electricity generation is the main game.
In conclusion, I appeal to those on the opposition benches and crossbenches to put the interests of the country ahead of a position that they themselves know to be wrong and ineffective, to move beyond the silly ‘gotcha’ politics that we have seen in their contributions to this matter of public importance and get behind the only serious, rational and effective means for dealing with this important global problem.
Order! The discussion is concluded.
Debate resumed.
I am very proud to be able to join my parliamentary colleagues today to speak about this important legislation. The Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the cognate bill are the foundation stone for this Labor government to rebuild our damaged nation. As I have noted previously in this House, many heroes and helpers stood tall in responding to the natural disasters that have struck over the past few months: our emergency service personnel, volunteers who flocked to help and those who just found themselves in the wrong place at the right time and lent an outstretched hand. The spirit and the stories of the rescue phase of these disasters still echo in this place, through the moving anecdotes of the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the member for Oxley, the member for Wright and many others.
As we have all observed, the aftermath of the dramatic events of the last few months has seen a great outpouring of generosity from the Australian people. This legislation honours the service of these first responders. It also honours the commitment of those who have opened their hearts and their wallets. As a responsible government we need to take a responsible, fair and measured approach to rebuilding our damaged nation. Let us be clear about the need for this legislation. The reconstruction task ahead of us is massive. Yes, donations are still rolling in, in cash and in kind. That is to the immense credit of the generosity of the Australian people. It is an indication that the people understand what those opposite do not seem to—that there is still a great deal of work to do, which we should pay for as we go as much as we can.
I know that on the Central Coast the flood fundraisers are still continuing. A team of volunteers, the Central Coast Caravan of Angels, are heading up to Ipswich for the second time in as many months this weekend. This humanitarian group are going to help people in need. I take this opportunity to wish Samantha Schuetze, Vanessa Betland and all their fellow Central Coast angels very well on their mercy mission. They are leaving the Central Coast on Thursday morning and will hit the ground running on Thursday night. They have some clean-up and gyprocking jobs lined up in Bundamba and Redbank, and they have some donated wiring and appliances to deliver.
Their group for this visit is made up of 26 people and includes three builders and SES and RFS volunteers. They have been supported by a number of other generous local organisations, whose generosity I would like to acknowledge before the parliament today: Health Services International at Tuggerah; Mighty Lag services at Tuggerah; Budget Rent a Car at East Gosford; Factory Seconds at Erina, who donated a washing machine; RSH Electrical at Mona Vale; and the Melt Bar in Sydney, who raised $1,500 in a fundraiser of under-25-year-olds. I wish them a safe journey and my heart goes out to them for their wonderful compassion.
Such acts of giving and selflessness are powerful reinforcements to me of the innate goodness of the Australian spirit and of human nature in general. While I am paying tribute, I would like to put on the record my gratitude to Ron Arkoll of AFS Products in Goulburn. Ron and his company donated 20,000 square metres of plasterboard, worth approximately $100,000, to the rebuilding in Queensland. I was very pleased, in my own small way, to have been able to assist Vanessa of the Central Coast angels and Linfox to get the plasterboard from Goulburn to Ipswich, where it is still sorely needed and apparently well stored, out of water’s reach, at the moment.
The national response to the emergency has been phenomenal. The Queensland Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal has raised $221 million so far. In acknowledging all these efforts, the big-picture reality is that this will not be enough to rebuild Queensland. There is a need for positive federal government intervention in the form of today’s legislation. As the Treasurer has noted, the recent floods may well end up being the most costly disaster in Australian history. Initial estimates put the cost to the Commonwealth’s budget at somewhere close to $5.6 billion—and that is even before Cyclone Yasi. It would simply not be right to leave disaster victims across Queensland, Victoria and elsewhere to fend for themselves as they move into the reconstruction and recovery phase of this disaster.
It saddens me that the opposition—for purely self-interested political purposes—has refused to take a bipartisan position on the disaster relief initiative. As the member for Oxley noted earlier in this debate, if the shoe were on the other foot in this debate there would be no debate today because the Labor Party has proved, time and time again, that it is a party that acts in the national interest, not in self interest.
There is a clear contrast on show in this place day after day. The Labor members in this parliament believe in teamwork. For those opposite this is just another opportunity to trot out their pat spin and smear lines about so-called waste. For what one can only conclude are cynical political purposes, the Leader of the Opposition has chosen to send his coalition down the track of dissent and division by not supporting today’s legislation. Shame on him for doing this at a time when the people of Queensland need confirmation of our support and a commitment to getting on with the job!
The Leader of the Opposition has not chosen the bipartisan path. He is wilfully treading the path of cynicism. As the Treasurer has said in this place in recent days, the poor judgment of the Leader of the Opposition reveals again that he is all opposition and no leadership. The Leader of the Opposition was in the House this morning invoking the spirit of the rescuers—not in the name of everyone pulling together for the reconstruction, though; the Leader of the Opposition was invoking their name in order to make the reconstruction more difficult. What a shameless and disgraceful act of cynicism! What contempt for the people of Queensland! What contempt for the people who have suffered! What a slight to the Queensland members of this House, whose constituents have suffered! What contempt for this House!
But it gets worse. In the same breath he had the gall to suggest that the government should go further in its assistance. What enormous hypocrisy! Yet those opposite, like the member for Mitchell, stand up here and oppose flood recovery measures and still boast about how they are attending flood fundraisers in their electorates. Well, I sincerely doubt that they have the courage to say, up front, to those people attending these events what they are actually doing. Maybe the member for Mitchell was talking about attending a fundraiser for the Liberal Party to oppose the flood recovery levy, as suggested by the Leader of the Opposition in his email to Liberal Party faithful, earlier this year!
I know there are compassionate members opposite who are uncomfortable with the political tactics of the Leader of the Opposition. I urge them to find their voices, as the member for Pearce did earlier this week, and speak up for doing the right thing, not the politically cynical thing. The nation deserves more.
Lest we be misrepresented further in this House, let me spell out what this legislation will deliver. This piece of timely legislation will create a temporary flood recovery levy on Australian taxpayers with taxable incomes of $50,000 or more in the 2011-12 income year only. What is it for? It is to rebuild roads, rail, bridges and other essential infrastructure.
The flood recovery levy will be applied at the rate of 0.5 per cent of taxable income between $50,000 and $100,000 in the 2011-12 income year. Why? To rebuild roads, rail, bridges and other essential community infrastructure. The levy will be applied at the rate of one per cent of taxable income of $100,000 or more in the 2011-12 income year. Why are these people on $100,000-plus contributing one per cent of their income over that figure for one year? They are doing that in order to rebuild road, rail, bridges, and other essential community infrastructure.
The levy will not apply to low income earners with a taxable income of $50,000 or less in the 2011-12 income year. These bills will give exemptions from the levy for people who have been affected by a natural disaster. Nationally, about 50 per cent of taxpayers will pay nothing. More than 60 per cent will pay less than $1 per week.
I am mindful of the generosity that we have seen in the lead-up to this day, coming freely and without request, from Australian people. Sixty per cent will pay less than $1 a week. About 70 per cent will pay less than $2 per week and over 85 per cent will pay less than $5 per week. What is it for? Let us remember: it is to rebuild roads, rail, bridges, and other essential community infrastructure. We need to advance this for the people of Queensland. We need to advance this rebuilding program and we need to pay for it, as much as we can, as we go, in a fiscally responsible manner.
In the seat of Robertson I believe that roughly 20 per cent of the electorate will pay something towards this levy. The total impact of the levy will be $1.8 billion over the forward estimates period 2011-12 to 2014-15. Because we are a responsible government, we are covering the majority of the reconstruction costs with savings and rephasing of infrastructure projects in other parts of Australia. That seems fair to me, given that so many of us in other parts of the country were spared the phenomenal devastation of the wild weather, floods, cyclones and fire. There are two dollars of savings for every one dollar of levy. It is a fair and measured levy that demonstrates leadership—leadership with Labor values at its heart.
We want the levy to commence on 1 July this year. For that to happen—for Australians to support one another and for us to get on in a responsible way and rebuild roads, rail, bridges and essential infrastructure—the bills need to be passed in the autumn sitting of parliament. I urge the opposition: stop playing politics with this most important matter. Stop playing politics with disaster relief. Pass this legislation now.
Labor would have passed this levy if we were in opposition. It is time for those opposite to get on board or get out of the way and let us get on with the job of working for Australians hand in hand, without the miserly and negative approach that we are constantly seeing across the chamber.
I rise to oppose the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. I have to begin by making a curious observation for the member who has just sat down, the member for Robertson. It seems that there is an inherited disorder for Labor members for the seat of Robertson, and that is to have a nasty streak. She certainly has displayed that this afternoon. Claiming that if the shoe was on the other foot the Labor Party would support the proposals of a coalition government? What absolute rubbish. She must, sadly, have the memory of a goldfish, because I remember a long list of important reforms passed by the Hawke-Keating government that this opposition supported. I also remember that in the term of the Howard government not a single important economic reform was supported by the Labor Party—not the GST nor any other single reform. So perhaps, instead of trying to trump her other nasty newbie members who were elected at the last election, a bit of time dedicated to some political history would give her an appreciation of what has gone on in the House before, and this may prevent her from embarrassing herself in the future.
We find ourselves here today in somewhat familiar circumstances. I want to make the point from the very beginning—let’s not be conned by the tricky language, the Orwellian language, used by the Labor Party—this debate is not about flood reconstruction; this debate is about a government being incapable of managing the budget in order to provide for the much-needed reconstruction right across Australia. After the devastation of this summer I think both sides of the House are equally committed to rebuilding the lives of those who have been affected and devastated by flooding events. My electorate of Indi, in north-east Victoria, is no stranger to the devastation of natural disasters. We have had damage from successive floods from September last year right through to this month. So I do understand very well, as anyone else would, the need to roll up our sleeves and get on with the job of trying to rebuild from the ground up. This is a debate essentially about how we fund the reconstruction effort.
It is obviously no surprise to us on this side of the House that again we are arguing about a tax. I think 2011 will be the ‘year of the tax’. It is not the ‘year of the rabbit’; it is the ‘year of the tax’. Every time there is a problem, every time the government comes up with another challenge, they will try and pull another tax out of the hat. This flood tax is a tax we do not need. It is a tax that Australians cannot afford. It is certainly a tax that we can do without—if they actually do their job properly.
We have an incredible situation, where the member for Lalor, otherwise known as the Prime Minister—although she is not very prime ministerial so I will call her the member for Lalor as I am entitled to—would dare compare herself to previous coalition administrations. She would dare compare herself to the actions taken by a giant in Australian politics, the former Prime Minister Mr John Howard. What an insult. Compared to someone like John Howard, the member for Lalor is a political pygmy, and she will remain so. Every policy area she touches—and has touched both in opposition and in government—from the Medicare gold fiasco to the Building the Education Revolution has turned the opposite of gold. She has the reverse Midas touch. So let her not try and be tricky and say ‘governments have always introduced levies’. She cannot in any way whatsoever compare this administration and her own behaviour and tenure to the previous coalition administration.
The Prime Minister and the Treasurer love to stand up in this place and talk about making tough decisions in the national interest. They said it was a tough decision to throw $900 cheques in the mail. They said it was a tough decision to put free fluff in people’s roofs. They said it was a tough decision to spend $800,000 a pop on tin sheds on school grounds. They do not understand the meaning of tough decisions. That is why they need yet another tax; it is yet another opportunity to put their hands in the pockets of hardworking Australians because they cannot control themselves. They cannot make the hard decisions and reprioritise spending in order to fund very important reconstruction work, and indeed to fund any works that are unforeseen after an emergency.
Let’s look at the details of this tax. To begin with, the damage bill in Queensland is expected to top $6 billion and that figure does not even take into consideration the damage caused in other states like New South Wales and Victoria. The tax itself is actually only a percentage of the total cost. The tax itself is expected to raise $1.8 billion. So the government has quite rightly taken the axe to some of their ridiculous spending programs, programs like cash for clunkers, which was possibly one of the most embarrassing promises of the last election campaign, although there was great competition with the people’s assembly.
Cash for clunkers has now been scrapped, but when we said that it should be scrapped there was vitriol and absolute hysteria from the other side, claiming all sorts of doom and catastrophe. But guess what? In the quiet of the night, cash for clunkers has disappeared. Cash for clunkers was a scheme that would have cost $430 per tonne of C02 reduction—an extraordinary price to pay for a program that would have achieved nothing.
They have also taken the axe to the Green Car Innovation Fund, although I do not think the minister had much to do with that. This follows the hypocrisy of their criticising the coalition for saying it was an ill-devised, extraordinarily expensive program. At least I have given them a leave pass by saying, ‘We’ve criticised these programs, so you can get away without too much criticism by cutting them.’ I would like to congratulate the government for heeding my advice and my words and making cuts in these particular areas. But I think that is where the congratulations need to end.
Before I go on, it would be remiss of me to allow the earlier comments of the member for Melbourne to pass into Hansard without a reply. The member for Melbourne stood here, without shame, calling on the government to reinstate the very programs that I have just discussed. In typical fashion, the Greens have used this tragic disaster to push their own political agenda. They began by blaming the floods on climate change—a claim that scientists have refuted. They then took aim at the mining industry, an industry that actually provides enormous support and enormous funds to the coffers of the Australian government, through taxes. In typical shameless fashion they point the finger and resort to the basest of all political tactics, the politics of envy, referring to the coal barons and blaming them for the disaster and demanding that they foot the bill. What do you expect from a group of people whose ideology is to fundamentally consider human beings a disease on the earth? They are the sort of people who do not look at the realities of everyday survival, do not understand the anxiety and the concern that the increasing cost of living is having on families, on pensioners and on young people who are trying to carve a path for themselves. Their disgraceful behaviour is symptomatic of a political party that has no responsibility for the living standards of Australians, no accountability for the sort of damage they will cause. They stand in this place, wrapped head to toe in some distorted ideological purity, and expect to escape unscathed from scrutiny. But they are forming part of this government, and, come 1 July when they become melted on to the Labor brand even more, they will be held accountable for every single decision—particularly every decision that damages this country, that causes costs to go up and that leaves less and less money in the pockets of hardworking Australians. Their contribution to this debate has been nothing short of reckless and shameful.
The most concerning thing about the contribution of the Greens is that Labor has actually responded. Like a little puppy dog, Labor has responded. We have heard it before, but we need to keep repeating it: Labor may well be in government but the Greens are definitely in power and in control. When the Greens called on the government to reinstate some of these ridiculous environmental programs, the Prime Minister did not even think twice: she bent without so much as a whimper. With the swipe of a green pen, Labor made a $360 million backflip—a very concerning and very dangerous sign of things to come.
This is a debate about responsible fiscal management. It is a debate that separates the weak from the strong. This is a debate that separates the tax hikers from the tax fighters. The coalition believes that the very best way to fund disaster recovery is through a strong budget surplus. That is what we have done in the past, and that is what I would hope all governments aim to do. But that just does not happen. That requires the discipline and the ability to make hard choices over a sustained period of time.
We went to the last election with $50 billion in savings and cuts to the Rudd-Gillard government’s reckless and wasteful spending. We would have cut government advertising, reduced consultancy expenses, put a freeze on public service recruitment and cancelled the NBN. These are not popular decisions but they are responsible decisions. You cannot have everything. You need to make choices. Coalition governments have always been put in the difficult situation of fixing up the mess and trying to get the debt under control that they inherit from short-visioned, spendthrift Labor governments.
The savings that I have just mentioned would have paid for the flood levy more than 27 times over. Following the announcement of Labor’s flood tax, the coalition found a further $2 billion in savings—more than enough to cover the revenue the flood tax would raise. These cuts are not easy, and some of them were in my portfolio. They are difficult decisions. But we understand that you cannot please everyone all the time. You are elected to act in the national interest. The budget is full of fat, and you do not need to take my word for that. Just look at what the Prime Minister has said. When she used her Press Club address to announce her new tax, she was asked what the government would do if the damage bill exceeded original estimates. She conceded that, in the event that damages exceeded $5.6 billion, further savings would have to be found. Why won’t she do it now? She does not have the guts. She would prefer to hit families with yet another new tax when they can least afford it. They are totally out of touch with mainstream Australia and the issues that keep people awake at night.
But it does not stop there. This year alone Labor is planning two more taxes. There is the carbon tax. The Deputy Prime Minister called ‘hysterical’ those who claimed that the carbon tax would happen, and now he is in denial himself. We know from a recent AIG report that this measure alone will increase household energy costs by $300 per annum. All up, the government will be introducing three new taxes this year. I would hate to think what this will do to Australians right across the country. It is disgraceful that the government have used human misery and suffering for political gain and to try to force the coalition to support another tax. (Time expired)
The events of this summer will go down in history as some of Australia’s worst-ever natural disasters—possibly only rivalled by the Cyclone Tracy tragedy that levelled Darwin on Christmas Eve in 1974. As this House sits we currently have a cyclone off the Western Australian coast that has already done significant damage to the town of Karratha by way of a mini tornado and crosses the North West Cape as I speak. Unfortunately, I have a real concern that the wroth of this summer is not yet over. Cyclones, floods, fires and freak storms have literally taken all before it with devastating disregard for life and property. I offer my sincere condolences to those who have lost loved ones, property and irreplaceable personal effects.
The first week of parliamentary sittings this year saw an outpouring of raw emotion on what had happened over this devastating summer. There is no doubt that all Australians have felt the pain of those who have suffered. We saw the grief-stricken families who have lost loved ones, those who have lost everything they own apart from the clothes on their back, cars washed down roadways like corks, roads and bridges just disappearing. We all watched the television in awe, seeing millions of dollars worth of infrastructure and private property crashing down the Brisbane River, ending up in the bottom of Moreton Bay. Further south, towns in Victoria and New South Wales were enveloped by massive expanses of water and communities were isolated for days without power and other services. Members of this House in affected areas have struggled to recount the numerous stories of extreme sadness that their constituents and friends have endured. The sheer enormity of this summer’s devastation could not have been more raw and palpable than when the member for Wright recounted the devastation and loss in his electorate and state. The events of this past summer have literally ravaged communities, physically and emotionally, and it is beholden upon this House to act.
In this debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and related bill so much has been said about the government’s mismanagement of the insulation program, the Building the Education Revolution program and other projects—criticisms that I have also levelled on occasions. We need to remind ourselves that we have had an election since that time and this government was returned—not by my hand, I would add. There have also been calls for the Building the Education Revolution program to be scrapped, which I totally disagree with. During the election campaign, I considered making some political mileage, as many others did, out of the apparent waste and lack of value for money. The minute I approached a school or a parents and friends group, the shutters would go up, simply because these schools were getting some much-needed infrastructure. It may not have been exactly what they wanted and it may have been seen to be too expensive and lacked value for money, but it was much-needed infrastructure all the same and it had been a long time coming. If you go to many of these schools now they proudly show you their new buildings. It would be now totally unfair on those schools that are at the end of this program to not be included. By all means, the government needs to ensure that the remainder of this program is managed in a prudent and professional manner, but certainly not for the program to be cut to the detriment of those waiting schools.
This government are well and truly on notice that this levy and the infrastructure spend associated with it will define them in this term of government. If they are to put the insulation program and the Building the Education Revolutions program behind them, this infrastructure rebuild needs to be successful. Approvals and expenditure must be timely and prudent. There will never be a better time for them to get it right. To this end, I welcome the appointment of John Fahey, former New South Wales Premier and federal finance minister, to oversee the recovery project. I worked with John during the days of my involvement with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and I am confident that the reconstruction effort will be well served by him.
The fearsome bushfires of Lake Clifton and the Perth hills, bringing the devastation much closer to home, were a stark and further reminder that this summer has thrown nature’s worst at us. Fortunately, no lives were lost in those fires, but the anguish of property loss and the loss of never-to-be-replaced items can never ever be reconciled. I would like to make mention of the people of the Gascoyne region of Western Australia who were devastated by floods in December and have been threatened on several occasions since—and, as I speak, Cyclone Carlos crosses the North West Cape. My thoughts are with this very resilient community. I would like to recognise the state member for North West, Mr Vincent Catania, for the tireless work that he has undertaken in the last two months in Carnarvon and the surrounding areas.
There has been much talk in this debate of a natural disaster fund being established, mainly via the media, and this will no doubt be given more credence following the tragic turn of events in New Zealand. I would take this opportunity to echo the sentiments of others in this place on that tragic event. This notion of a disaster fund is worthy of further consideration; however, it should not be intrinsically linked to this debate. Whilst such a measure may prove beneficial for future governments and future disasters, we have a situation here and now that requires the government to take action.
I must say that I feel for those members who have had infrastructure projects cut or delayed as a result of the response. It is not easy to have projects delayed or postponed and explain that to your constituents looking forward to improvements in their communities. I hope that the Australian community will understand that, given these exceptional circumstances, hard decisions had to be taken.
Some members of this House from Western Australia have taken shots at the disaster response saying that Western Australians affected by disasters will not receive any assistance from the levy or indeed the Australian government. This is simply wrong. The Natural Disaster Recovery and Relief arrangements are jointly funded between the Commonwealth and the state. These arrangements include hardship and distress payments, income recovery, interest rate subsidies, freight subsidies for primary producers, professional advice grants and clean-up and recovery grants for small business and farmers.
The Liberal-National government in Western Australia, led by the Hon. Colin Barnett as Premier and the Hon. Brendon Grylls as Minister for Regional Development and Lands, is supportive of the flood levy. They have commented publicly that the WA state government will not be calling on the federal government for financial assistance through the Natural Disaster Recovery and Relief arrangements and instead have opted to fund the infrastructure repair and replacement process from state revenue. This commitment by the state government should in no way preclude them from making a request of this government in the future and that request being honoured.
I have sought and gained assurances from the Prime Minister that victims of the floods and fires in Western Australia will be exempt from paying the levy; furthermore, that there are no plans to cut infrastructure spending in Western Australia. This assurance highlights, in my view, the importance of Western Australia to the national economy, a topic that will no doubt be the subject of another debate in this House. I support this one-off levy because it is the right thing to do. There could never be, in my mind, a better time for Australia to take such an action to help rebuild our nation after what has been and continues to be a relentless and fearsome summer.
Many members of this House made some very eloquent and heart-wrenching speeches in this place when speaking on the condolence motion with respect to the Queensland floods. I did not contribute in that debate, so, firstly, I take the opportunity to express my sympathy and my condolences to the families who lost family members as a result of the Queensland floods and also to all of the families who perhaps lost their home, their possessions or suffered in any way as a result of floods. I can only imagine that the experience would have been horrendous for them. I was not there but—as, I assume, most members of this House—saw the footage at the time, read the newspaper reports and heard the stories firsthand about what was occurring within the communities.
Regrettably, similar events seem to be occurring right throughout the nation. I extend the same feelings of empathy towards communities wherever they might be that are also going through extreme weather events causing them grief. Right now we know only too well what is occurring to our New Zealand friends in Christchurch. Again, looking at the footage, all I can say is that our thoughts are with those people, and right now the most important thing is to provide them with every bit of support we can to ensure that we can help as many people who have suffered, and are still suffering, as we can. As we all know, life continues and the task ahead is to rebuild infrastructure, homes and lives in any community affected. The government has, through the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, and related bill, proposed a very responsible plan to do that for the people of Queensland. It is responsible because it spreads the burden of the cost of recovery fairly, evenly and right across all sectors of the Australian community.
In the brief time I have available today, I want to address three matters. Firstly, the merits of the levy itself; secondly, the opposition’s alternative strategy; and, thirdly, the likelihood of further destruction because of extreme weather events in the future. I turn to the merits of the levy. When a disaster occurs, to the extent that it is possible, the burden of recovery should be spread as evenly as practicable across the nation to those who can most afford it. This levy does exactly that. It does that because anyone earning less than $50,000 a year does not pay any levy at all. For those earning between $50,000 and $100,000, the levy will be 0.5 per cent of their taxable income. For those earning over $100,000, the rate will be 0.5 per cent for income between $50,000 and $100,000 and one per cent for income above $100,000. In fact, 50 per cent of taxpayers pay nothing; 60 per cent of taxpayers pay less than a dollar a week, and eligible victims of the flood will also not pay the levy. The levy is for the 2011-12 financial year only. It proposes to raise $1.8 billion, with the balance of the funding estimated to be around $5.6 billion, not including the effects of Cyclone Yasi, coming from expenditure savings, deferrals and cuts.
When budget cuts are made the costs are borne by those communities who would have benefited the most from the program from which the budget cuts are made. In other words, a narrow group of Australians wear most of the burden. That is the inequity of the opposition’s proposal to fund the reconstruction entirely from budget cuts. That is why a combination of budget cuts and a modest levy is the fairest response to meeting the costs. It spreads the burden as evenly as possible across all sectors of the community. I have heard speaker after speaker on the other side come in here and criticise the economic management of this government. Interestingly, economists from the ANZ, Westpac, the CBA, CommSec, Citibank and Rismark have all commented that it is a responsible response to meeting the costs of the reconstruction required in Queensland. I have not heard any members opposite suggesting that they are better economists than the economists who represent all of those leading financial institutions.
The second matter I want to refer to is the opposition’s alternative proposal to fund the entire reconstruction from cuts. What has been interesting in the course of this debate—and I have listened to many speakers from the other side—is that I have not heard one come into this place and defend the opposition’s alternative proposal. They have come in here and criticised the government and they have come in here and criticised past actions of the government in other areas, but not one of them has come in here and specifically defended the alternative proposal to find the funds to rebuild Queensland.
It is waste.
If that is what you believe—and I am not sure if you have made a contribution in this House—why did you not articulate the cuts that have been proposed by your leader and defend them in this House? I have not heard one member from the coalition do that.
What has been exposed by the opposition leader’s proposal to find the funds by making cuts is his contempt for, and neglect of, South Australia. South Australia would bear the brunt of the proposed opposition cuts. I say that for these two reasons. If you look at the two areas where the opposition would find their funds, one is the deferral of the $600 million of water buybacks and the second is the cut of $500 million from the Automotive Transformation Scheme. Both of those have a very big direct impact on South Australians.
The automotive sector, as most members of this House know, is vital to South Australia. Even though we have lost Mitsubishi, General Motors Holden is still a major employer and a major sustainer of the manufacturing economy in South Australia. My understanding is that there are in the order of 70,000 direct and indirect jobs as a result of the motor vehicle industry in South Australia. It is certainly important to the people I represent. Cutting $500 million from the Automotive Transformation Scheme means that the automotive sector will be hit again. The automotive sector, as we all know, has already been through some very difficult times. In South Australia, General Motors Holden is now starting to rebuild and recently advertised for more people. It has started the production of its new Cruze motor vehicle and things are looking up. The last thing that the sector now needs is for the opposition to come into this place and say, ‘If we were in government we would be cutting more of the funds that sustain your industry.’
I now turn to the water buybacks. The water buybacks are critical to restoring the balance in the Murray-Darling Basin system. What again is clear is that the Leader of the Opposition is prepared to turn his back on South Australian irrigators and that Senator Joyce dictates Murray-Darling Basin policy when it comes to the coalition. As a supplementary member of the Standing Committee on Regional Australia currently inquiring into the Murray-Darling Basin, I am acutely aware of the devastation caused to communities right across the basin as a result of the prolonged drought. I am also acutely aware that uncertainty about the Basin Plan is adding to the grief of those communities. To suggest to them that water buybacks should be deferred is to say to them, ‘We will add to that uncertainty.’ Right now no community across the Basin Plan would be in agreement with that. The committee has already, as an interim measure, contacted the minister’s office with respect to strategic water buybacks. It is a measure that is supported.
When it comes to South Australia, only yesterday there was a report by the Winemakers Federation in the Adelaide Advertiser saying that if we do not develop a sustainable Murray-Darling system, and if we cannot restore water entitlements to growers, South Australian winemakers will be hard hit, and that winemakers in the Riverland and Langhorne Creek in particular will suffer and may well go out of business. That is how important the water buybacks are to South Australia.
I turn in the few moments I have left to the final point I want to raise, and that is the likelihood of more frequent and extreme weather events and the destruction that will obviously come with them. I do not think anyone in this House would deny that it almost seems that in the last two years we have gone from one event to another. We seem to go—if not in this country, certainly around the world—from one devastating weather event to another. What that tells us is that those scientists who have been telling us for years and years that extreme weather events are going to occur more often were right—it is actually already upon us and we are seeing it. Only a week or so ago we had another two scientific reports which confirmed the likelihood of more frequent and more extreme weather events into the future. These are not just normal weather cycles. I accept that over the years there have been changing climate and weather patterns in a cyclical way. But what we are now seeing are not normal weather events. Rebuilding Queensland is certainly important, but we need to look into the future, because we are likely to be confronted by similar occurrences—as the member for O’Connor talked about happening right now in Western Australia—on a frequent basis. That means we cannot continue to ignore climate change.
Regrettably, we had a motion in this House only today by the opposition in which opposition speakers were suggesting that climate change was not real and that governments should not be doing anything about it. Effectively that is what they were saying. If that is their view, what I say to them is this: look at the cost to this country as a result of the floods in Queensland. The 75 per cent alone that the federal government is contributing, because it has to meet 75 per cent of the cost, is in the order of $5.6 billion. That means that the total amount is somewhere around $8 billion, just from that one event. That does not include the Victorian floods, the Tasmanian floods or the Western Australian floods. It does not include Cyclone Yasi. The costs run into billions. Look at the costs of trying to rectify and restore the balance in the Murray-Darling system—billions of dollars. This government has committed $13 billion just for that task alone.
We cannot continue to meet those kinds of costs if we do not properly prepare and take whatever action we can to minimise the events in whatever way we can. And we can do that if we take a responsible attitude, take the advice of our scientists that climate change is real and that we need to act. The sooner we do so, the sooner we will start to reduce the kinds of costs that we are now incurring almost on a daily basis. I close where I started. This is a responsible bill because it spreads the burden of reconstruction as evenly as possible across Australia on those who can most afford it. For those reasons, I support it.
It is a sad day when human tragedy is used to cover up a government’s failure to properly manage the finances of our country. That is what the Gillard government’s opportunistic proposal to impose yet another tax on Australians, in the form of a so-called flood levy through the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, represents. Simply put, it is a disgrace. It is a tax without fairness or equity. Large parts of my electorate of Ryan were flooded. I have seen the devastation the floods caused and the toll it is continuing to take on my constituents—all of my constituents. When an area is flooded it is not only those who lose their homes and possessions that are affected but also their families, friends and colleagues.
When the Prime Minister and the Treasurer claim that those affected by the floods will not pay the flood tax it simply shows how little they understand the depth of this disaster. I challenge the Prime Minister and Treasurer to find a resident of the Ryan electorate who has not been affected in some way. It is beyond doubt that Ryan residents lent a hand in any way they could. Countless residents donned their gumboots and gloves to help clean up strangers’ houses. Households took in families of flooded friends who needed a safe refuge. Thousands donated to the flood appeal and all who saw the devastating images on the news and in the papers felt their heartache.
The Prime Minister and Treasurer will not find anyone in Ryan who has not been affected by these floods. There is no doubt that this help was given in good faith. However, I have a great concern that our Australian community now has a reason to be cynical, after giving so much assistance and responding so generously to calls for donations—monetary and in kind—only to have the government turn around and impose a tax. When people are in need Australians always give generously. They give all they can. Invariably they are the first to respond, both at home and abroad. We do not need to be commanded through legislation to help our mates. What faith can Australians now have, when we face the next disaster, that the government will not use it as leverage to impose yet another opportunistic tax?
Even more telling of the lack of understanding shown by the government is the sheer number of people who are already struggling to recover financially from the floods and who will now be slugged by the Gillard government’s flood tax. They are the small business owners of Bellbowrie who were inundated, the small business owners of St Lucia who lost all of their goods, who lost the structural integrity of their buildings. They are the small businesses such as Simon’s Gourmet Gallery, just across the road from my electorate office, who lost power for five days, or even longer in some cases, and could not operate and lost thousands of dollars worth of refrigerated produce. They are the small business owners who cannot yet go back to work and have no income and revenue yet are still trying to support their staff. They are property owners, small investors who have lost tenants out of their rental properties, yet do not get to stop their mortgage payments. They are members of the body corporate for the unit blocks around the University of Queensland who now face tens of thousands of dollars in electrical repair costs yet are not eligible for compensation. They were all flood affected but, because their homes were left unaffected, they will all pay the government’s flood tax.
There was money in the bank when this Labor government took office. This government was left a legacy—one that it did nothing to earn—that would have been enough to cover the reconstruction of vital infrastructure destroyed by floods, cyclones and bushfires. This Labor government has destroyed that legacy. There is now nothing but a black hole of debt left in the coffers. Not only are there no funds to cover the reconstruction costs but also there are mountains of irresponsible spending and the consequential interest repayments we now have to make. In fact, the interest paid on Labor created debt in the 2010-11 financial year alone was $4.38 billion—2½ times what the flood tax will raise to rebuild Queensland and Australia.
This Labor government has misspent taxpayers’ money—misspent your money. It has treated public funds with absolute irresponsibility, and now it is asking for more. Why should taxpayers have any faith or trust that, should the government get its hands on more of our money through this flood tax, it will suddenly start spending responsibly? Why should we have any faith that the extra funds will not simply be wasted again, just as they were wasted with Building the Education Revolution, pink batts, GroceryWatch, Fuelwatch and the proposed cash-for-clunkers scheme—yet another program scrapped; another promise broken. How can this Labor government expect Australians to trust its economic credentials when it does not even trust itself? To find someone capable it has had to appoint a Liberal, John Fahey, to head up its reconstruction spending decisions.
It is clear that this Labor government does not understand responsibility; neither, it seems, does it recognise it. I have a copy of correspondence written back in 2005 by the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Campbell Newman. This correspondence concerns a report undertaken by the Brisbane City Council’s suburban flooding task force and recommends actions that should be taken to mitigate the severe effects of flooding that Brisbane faced. The lord mayor understood the serious risk of creek and localised flooding. The lord mayor also understood that such a mitigation effort could not take place without the cooperation of all three levels of government. So he wrote to representative members to seek their support for action or, at the very least, their recognition of flood risks in their electorates. The lord mayor never received a response to this correspondence, which was sent to the member for Griffith, the Hon. Kevin Rudd.
It seems that the member for Griffith is not alone in behaving this way. His old school mate also appears to like shirking responsibility. In fact, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, held a press conference on 16 February this year and tried to apportion all the blame for failing to provide flood reconstruction relief for Brisbane to Lord Mayor Campbell Newman. In true ALP style, when they get it wrong they shoot the messenger. The Treasurer claimed that, before the lord mayor had submitted projects to the federal government for assistance, he went to the media demanding a payment be made. This simply is not true.
On 19 January, the Lord Mayor of Brisbane met with Prime Minister Gillard to seek financial assistance for flood damage. The lord mayor then wrote to the Prime Minister on 4 February with the costs of flood damage to vital infrastructure and asked for assistance through the natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements grants. On 10 February, the lord mayor repeated this request for assistance, with detailed costings of damage caused by floods. Once again, the Treasurer has got it wrong—although perhaps the Prime Minister only consults the Treasurer on matters of leadership spills rather than matters of national policy.
Many members opposite have accused Queensland MPs of abandoning their state. I was told to hang my head in shame by the member for Blair for not supporting a raid on the wallets of my constituents—my constituents, who are already paying out for their own recovery—and for standing up for their right to donate through goodwill, not because of a legislative obligation. I believe that other Queenslanders have abandoned their state: the member for Griffith, for ignoring the lord mayor’s early warnings; and the member for Lilley, for refusing to commit support for Brisbane and then falsely laying the blame with the local government.
It seems that this Labor government is happy to point the finger of blame at anyone but themselves when, in reality, there is no passing the buck for the budget being in such a disgraceful position that there are simply no funds available for urgently required reconstruction without imposing yet another tax. When is this government going to learn that you cannot solve every problem by simply imposing a new tax on Australians? The alcopops tax, the luxury car tax, increasing the tobacco tax, a carbon tax—the government is simply taking more money from taxpayers, rather than reflecting on their own policy and taking measures to be more responsible with public policy.
Yet another tax will raise the cost of living for households. The devastation caused by these natural disasters—the increased produce prices, the hit taken by the mining industry, the dip in savings that individuals and businesses will have to take as they reconstruct—will already affect the economy, making times just that much harder for Australians. Despite all this, the government is still taking steps to increase costs even more through this flood tax. To those opposite claiming that previous levies justify this tax hike, I say: this flood tax proposal takes more money from taxpayers in one year than any previous levy took in three.
Perhaps if members of this Labor government—the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the former Prime Minister—recognised responsibility, understood responsibility and took responsibility we would not be here today debating an unfair and opportunistic burden on the Australian taxpayer, there would still be money in the budget for emergency reconstruction, there would not have been billions of dollars wasted and there would be no need for Australians to bear the burden of this Labor government’s incompetent management.
As we speak about what is, in effect, a disaster relief measure, I would like to add my voice to those who have already been heard in this chamber expressing their sympathy for and condolences to our New Zealand brothers and sisters. In particular, I would like to send out my greetings to the members of the New Zealand Defence Force, good friends of mine who I know will be very busily engaged right now.
It is very disappointing to be here participating in this debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and cognate bill. This should have been a moment in time when the chamber united behind the flood levy measure. It is extremely disappointing that, instead of sending that message of unity and cooperation, we are divided and engaging in partisan political debate over this issue. It really does underline what we are experiencing with the coalition leadership of the Leader of the Opposition. I know there are many fine and decent men and women on the opposite benches. I have great respect, of course, for the member for Wentworth, who is at the table, and many others of his colleagues. We are seeing now, I believe—I hope—a line being drawn on the descent we have seen the Leader of the Opposition take his party and his coalition on.
I must confess that I am a fan of the TV series Red Dwarf, which was on the ABC. It was a wonderful series. The other day, the Leader of the Opposition put me in mind of something: it was an episode of Red Dwarf that described a creature that was a shape-changing, parasitic mutant known as a polymorph, a creature that fed on negative emotions. In this parliament, we have now seen the incarnation of the polymorph in the Leader of the Opposition. He is a man who trawls this country seeking out and feeding on negative emotions, and seeking to play partisan political point-scoring with those negative emotions. He has nothing to contribute, no policy direction to offer this country, and this discussion on the flood levy is a prime example of that. I do hope that we have now reached the limit of the direction that the Leader of the Opposition had been taking, with the well-timed and commendable revolt we are seeing on his back bench.
In relation to the specific targets of the flood reconstruction levy, getting out and touring the flood affected areas of New South Wales was part of my responsibilities this summer—towns like Dubbo, Parkes, Narromine, Wee Waa, Narrabri and all of those places in New South Wales that have suffered tremendous damage to infrastructure, including damage to roads and bridges. We saw a bridge near Wagga where the bridge itself was still intact but the approaches on both sides had been completely washed away, leaving a major engineering challenge.
This will require a major effort. It is not just that crops were destroyed in the process of this flood and damage done to farming properties. For the crops that still remain, the challenge is to get those crops to market and, for the future crops that will be planted, to take advantage of the ground moisture we now enjoy. It is very critical that we tackle this infrastructure challenge.
That challenge cannot be met by any other means than by the Commonwealth weighing in heavily to assist the states. This measure of course, bringing in this levy, will help us do that and perform at the same time the very necessary task of enabling us to return to surplus in 2012-13. I should emphasise that the money that is being deployed through this levy and through the overall sums that will be used in this challenge also include areas outside Queensland and those areas in New South Wales that I mentioned. At this stage the proportional amount indicated was $1 billion, but of course that will relate to the overall sums that are determined when the damage is fully assessed. So those areas in New South Wales and even in my own electorate stand to gain from that investment and that deployment of funds.
Returning to surplus in 2012-13 is extremely important. It is important for the reasons that we should well understand of taking the pressure off private capital out in the open marketplace and thereby contributing to good sound fiscal policy and alleviating pressure on interest rates at the same time. It sends a very important signal to the market and to all those out there who are seeking capital, that the government is going to play its part. But also, very importantly, we have to understand that we cannot foresee the future, and nothing should have illustrated that more effectively than the follow-on cyclone that we endured following the floods. So what lies out there now for us in the future, what further challenges will there be? It is important that we return to surplus as soon as possible in order to meet those potential challenges, those challenges that we cannot foresee even today. So it is important on those particular grounds to return to surplus.
It is an interesting phenomenon to see the opposition debating the question of levies. It has been well aired in this chamber that the Howard government certainly resorted to this measure many times in its lifetime. Of course we know about the superannuation surcharge from the 1996 to 2005 of 15 per cent, and the gun buyback levy has been referred to many times. But very interestingly, when you look at the subsequent levies that were introduced, in 1999 to May 2006 there was the stevedoring levy which was introduced when the government was in surplus to the tune of $4.3 billion at the time. We had the milk levy in relation to dairy deregulation, which was imposed over a period of 10 years and which raised effectively the same amount of money that we are talking about in relation to this flood levy. At the time, the government was in surplus to the tune of $13 billion. The East Timor levy that was proposed in 2000 was also in the context of a government surplus of $13 billion. The Ansett levy that was introduced in September 2001 through to June 2003 was when the government was in surplus to the tune of $5.9 billion. From January 2003 to November 2006, the sugar levy that was imposed was when the government was in surplus to the tune of $7.4 billion. So the Howard government was a regular resorter to levies even when they were significantly in surplus. It is highly hypocritical of them to take issue with this measure at this time in the context of the current budgetary situation we are in.
Further to that, in my own portfolio responsibilities I am charged with signing off on increases in levies in relation to specific industry support. I think it might interest the chamber to know that we in fact have about 70 industry levies in place at this time that the government is engaged in with sectors of industry—in other words, a levy is raised from the industry and the government provides matching funding. It has been an excellent mechanism for improving the research and development of many of our sectors. They are wide and varied levies. There are 29 in the horticultural sector—almonds, avocados, bananas, cherries, pears, chestnuts. You can go through an extremely long list. There are nine grain levies, 14 livestock levies, three wine levies and about 17 other different ones including a queen bee levy—which maybe Julie Bishop might be interested in, but there are certainly a wide range of levies there that have been in place—
Order! I remind the parliamentary secretary of the provisions of standing order 64. He ought to refer to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition by her title.
Certainly, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition might be interested in that one. There are 70 of these levies in place and it demonstrates quite clearly and quite effectively, I think, that this country has always resorted to and relied upon and accepted the levy mechanism as a way for the people of this country to work as a team. We work as a team nationally when we face particular national challenges and we work as a team sectorally when there are advantages to be gained from particular industrial sectors. So the levy mechanism has been a fine tradition in this country. It is a way of dealing with issues like this equitably so that the burden is distributed equitably, but also efficiently as well.
We know that the donations that have come in from a very generous and compassionate Australian community are being directed towards those specific victims’ domestic homes and people who have suffered loss, and they are helping those people directly. It is a wonderful thing. Those direct donations are tax deductible in themselves. But those people who are benefiting from many of the provisions that we have put in place to alleviate the suffering will not find themselves the subject of this further levy action. It is a very small price to pay, I think, for those who will be asked to pay. We are talking about 60 per cent of taxpayers having to put forward only about $1, and of course this is in the context of all the tax relief that has been delivered by this government. The three tax cuts in a row have certainly put those people in a much better position in any event, so this one-year levy for this tiny amount of money will not have a significant impact on those tax cuts they have already received from this government.
What we have seen from the coalition in this discussion is the offer of ‘savings’. It has been very interesting to see the sorts of savings they have offered. It really does underline the farcical budgetary circus we saw right through the campaign last year with the $11 billion black hole and their inability to come to grips with putting a budget together, with counting, basically, in some cases.
When I look specifically at the offerings the coalition have put forward, it shocks me because it underlines further the deeply evident lack of understanding in relation to our security needs and basic market dynamics. For example, to propose cuts to the water buyback program fails to understand that right now is a good time to engage in these buybacks because it is the cheapest time to buy. So we will be achieving significant savings out there in the marketplace in relation to the water buybacks. Certainly that system is being refined, but the principle of buying in these good times is one that should be well understood and well appreciated. This is a good time to buy. So it is a false economy that the coalition proposes with respect to the water buybacks.
More deeply concerning to me—and I know it is deeply concerning even to a range of conservative commentators in the community—has been the proposal to cut the Australia-Indonesia Basic Education Program. It is a program that the Howard government introduced, to its great credit. I spoke here in this House in the Afghanistan debate and I emphasised in that speech that what we are facing is not a war on terrorism; it is a war on ignorance. Those were the words that I used. When you look at the tactics and the approach of our enemy in this respect, you see that they are waging a battle for the human mind. When the Taliban overran the Swat Valley in 2009, what was the very first thing they did? The very first thing they did was to blow up 100 schools and in their place establish radical madrassas. That is the challenge we face: the battle to win the minds of the Muslim world, to encourage and support the moderate thinkers, moderate Islam. The way we do that is by running these very programs in Indonesia, our great friend and neighbour who is facing the challenge of attempts to infiltrate and influence their community by radical Islamic extremists. As the Minister for Foreign Affairs said, this program will only be smiled upon by the Leader of the Opposition and by Abu Bakar Bashir. It really emphasises the failure of the Leader of the Opposition to understand where our national security interests lie and how to pursue the security future of this nation. I think the Leader of the Opposition will be universally condemned and will continue to be condemned for that fact.
I know issues have been raised in relation to the oversight of the reconstruction task. It should be well noted that that has been significantly and securely addressed by the introduction of the Reconstruction Inspectorate. The inspectorate includes Mr John Fahey, a former federal finance minister, as the chair, and also Martin Albrecht, Matt Sheerin and Brad Orgill, who performed such good work in oversighting the BER Implementation Taskforce. So the issue of oversight is well and truly addressed. There will be rigorous scrutiny of rebuilding contracts. The task force will inspect projects to ensure that they are meeting progress milestones and will investigate complaints et cetera. So the mechanism is in place. It is definitely a good way to deal with this issue. But in this debate we have seen the lack of a moral compass, no fiscal responsibility and no understanding of national security by the coalition. (Time expired)
We have had some very eloquent speeches in this chamber as a result of the condolence motion—stories about the devastation in Queensland and Victoria. We have heard about the courage and hope of the people who are set to rebuild their lives after suffering much tragedy and devastation. We in the coalition believe very strongly in supporting the rebuilding effort. Make no mistake about that. How it should be funded is the central issue in this debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011.
I am a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, which recently conducted an inquiry into this new tax. The coalition members’ dissenting report of that inquiry outlines the reasons for opposing this new tax in full. Today, in the limited time that is available, I want to focus on the overarching issue, the fact that this new tax goes to the economic credibility of this government, which is why it must be opposed.
Why is there a need to bring in this new tax? Throughout Australia’s history the federal government has not deemed it necessary to impose a new tax to deal with natural disasters. Whether it was the Victorian bushfires of 2008-09, Cyclone Larry in 2006, the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, Cyclone Tracy in 1974 or the Brisbane floods of 1974, the government did not seek to impose a further tax burden on the people. Instead, the money came from consolidated revenue—money that has already been collected in taxes by the government from you and me and businesses. Not even Gough Whitlam, the most profligate of Australian prime ministers in terms of government spending, suggested that a new tax be imposed on the Australian people to deal with the effects of Cyclone Tracy. Not even Gough Whitlam, whose reputation for waste and inefficient programs is surpassed only by this current government, felt the need to bring in a former Liberal minister to provide credibility to a government package.
This tax sets a poor precedent for the way in which governments go about funding unforeseen events. Instead of planning for the future and ensuring that the government has enough resources to deal with emergency situations when they arise, the government is creating a bias against proper and prudent planning and compromising the nation’s emergency response capability. If it needs to impose this tax, there is clearly a much bigger problem that needs to be rectified. But, rather than look at this, the government accuses any opponents of this tax of being hard-hearted and lacking compassion for the victims of these terrible tragedies. For that suggestion, they should hang their heads in shame.
In the Prime Minister’s National Press Club address she said:
… sound budget principals say we should pay as we go …
But, Prime Minister, Australians are already paying as they go. Australians are already paying taxes that, since Federation, have been designed to deal with floods and fires and other emergencies. This new flood tax has no precedent in our history. It is a new disaster tax. With this new disaster tax Australians will be paying even more for the government’s waste and inability to manage the budget.
This new tax might be a more credible proposition if the government had not shown a propensity to waste taxpayers’ money on programs, such as the pink batts program and the school halls program, that have failed miserably in providing value for money. The pink batts fiasco was a policy failure with devastating consequences—not only the loss of homes through 94 associated house fires but, significantly and very tragically, the terrible loss of four young lives. This was a policy with a cost blow-out of $1 billion, and the cost of fixing it will be an extra $500 million. The government could have provided the funds for reconstruction had it simply not embarked on this program in the first place.
Just recently we have heard from the Orgill report that public schools in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland were paying much more for their school halls than independent schools were. In aggregate, they paid $1.5 billion more, despite no differences in the quality of the projects. When compared to the independent school sector as a whole, the waste grows to $2.6 billion. This paints a very bad picture of the government’s ability to deliver a government program. It is clear that, if the government had not wasted taxpayers’ money in this manner, there would be no need for the government to compel taxpayers for even more money. It is no wonder they have now called in John Fahey, former Liberal Minister for Finance. I do note that they have neglected to call in Lindsay Tanner, Paul Keating or Ralph Willis.
There is room in the budget to cut at least $1.8 billion of further expenditure—the $1.8 billion that this government says it needs. The coalition has offered to help the government find these savings. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition said he would sit down with the Prime Minister to find these savings. On having that offer rejected, we set about providing a comprehensive list of over $2 billion of savings on our own. This brings me to my next point: the mirage of Labor government savings. It appears on the horizon in the economic desert as though it were real yet, as soon as you get close, it disappears. The government made much of its announced $2.8 billion in savings, which included some cuts and deferrals. It was, of course, a fig leaf for this new disaster tax. Where are these cuts now? Like the mirage, they are fast disappearing.
As of today, the government has reversed $364 million of announced expenditure cuts to the Solar Flagships program and the National Rental Affordability Scheme to—you guessed it—buy off the Greens. Nothing should get in the way of the Greens-Labor marriage. What is $364 million between partners? What was the price of the support of the member for Denison? Fifty million dollars. The reversal of expenditure cuts for the Australian learning and teaching fund secured the support of the member for Denison.
Having gone back on these expenditure cuts, the government is in no hurry to let us know what additional cuts will be made to make up the shortfall. The government needs to guarantee that it will not seek to increase the levy nor extend it to try to make up the difference. I fear that, even if the government were to guarantee it, even if it were to make a promise, if history is any guide the promise will not mean much. We only need to look at the Prime Minister’s promise before the last election not to introduce a carbon tax, not to impose it on the Australian people. Yet, already it is not a matter of whether she will bring it in but when.
So who is actually going to pay for this tax? According to the Prime Minister and the President of the ACTU, Ged Kearney, it will be borne by wealthy Australians, who can afford to pay more. During the inquiry of the House Standing Committee on Economics into the flood tax, the President of the ACTU said that she supported the tax because people on low incomes would be exempted. But, of course, she then admitted, after further questioning, that the threshold for the tax of $50,000 was below the average wage of around $65,000 a year—not the median wage but the average wage. She also said that the tax would affect around half of the workers that she represents. This tax will go directly to the cost of living for average Australians, who are already battling higher food prices, higher electricity prices and higher interest rates.
There is no economic argument in favour of a new tax. Economic expert Mr Saul Eslake provided very strong evidence to the recent inquiry into this tax. He said that the introduction of a new flood tax was one of ‘political choices rather than economic imperatives’. According to the evidence presented, the weight of economic opinion was that it would be highly undesirable to fund disaster reconstruction and relief with new taxes as a matter of both principle and precedent. Mr Eslake went on to say:
… if you continue to increase marginal rates of tax on a segment of the population by large amounts or with high regularity over time then there could well be some adverse consequences for incentives to work, save, invest and the like, which have been well documented in the economics literature.
Professor McKibbin, a senior economist and member of the RBA board, said in his evidence:
Most economists who study public finance would support the view that taxation is not the optimum way to finance the reconstruction of infrastructure after a natural disaster. The argument has a long tradition in economics.
I leave the final word to Professor McKibbin, who also said:
My view is that we should always, where possible, establish good principles for economic management because when the big decisions have to be made we have a framework in which to act, whereas if we continue to do what we have always done then we end up becoming a banana republic. We have to be very careful that all decisions, even the small ones, are done in the appropriate way.
This is why the coalition cannot support this flood tax; this is why we cannot create a new precedent; and this is why I will be opposing it.
I rise in support of the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, which will introduce what we call the flood levy. I have listened carefully to the contributions of the speakers from the opposition, including the honourable member for Higgins, who spoke about why she is opposing the levy. After listening to the debate for a while, I can see that the only reason the opposition is opposing the levy is pure political opportunism on the part of the Leader of the Opposition. He saw it as an opportunity to create a wedge, further divide the parliament and promote his own personal political interests. It has backfired. Listening to this debate, one might think that levies are something new—that they were just invented last week or the week before. I can remember there being eight levies during the previous administration, when Mr Howard was Prime Minister, six of which were implemented. I remember the East Timor levy, which was popular but it was decided that it was unnecessary, and another levy that I do not recall the name of, but there were two that were not taken up for which there was widespread support. And there were six levies that were taken up.
So I find it rather incomprehensible that the Leader of the Opposition is leading the charge against a levy. It was all right to have six levies when he was a member of the government, the cabinet and the executive—there did not seem to be any problem with them. They were levies where one could have equally argued that the money should have come from consolidated revenue. One can always put up that argument, but the fact is that things happen in Australian life where we might need to raise extra money. I cannot remember many Australians opposing the gun buyback levy. Some people did not want to part with their guns, but I cannot remember a huge outcry from the parliament about that. It was seen as an expression of good leadership—and this levy, under the current Prime Minister, is no different. The natural disasters we have had, particularly the floods and particularly in Queensland, are absolutely without precedent. It is necessary to raise some extra funding fast. It will be spent where it should be in rebuilding infrastructure.
This is a bit of a digression, but I note that Major General Mick Slater is heading up the Queensland reconstruction task force. I had the privilege of working with him in different circumstances, in Timor-Leste, on an almost daily basis. I worked and liaised with him and, when I saw that he had been appointed, I thought, ‘What a good appointment.’ You could not appoint a better person—he is a really straight soldier—to work with and give confidence to the community in performing the formidable and, I would say, daunting task that he is presented with. I offered him some unsolicited advice on certain things via SMS, but I am very pleased that he is there, because he will serve Queenslanders, our nation and the community well. And he is fiercely independent, which is very reassuring.
If you look at the flood levy, about 50 per cent of taxpayers will pay nothing. My memory of the gun buyback levy is that over 80 per cent of taxpayers contributed and there were no major objections. I also heard opposition members saying that the Leader of the Opposition has offered to sit down with the Prime Minister and help find savings. What a ridiculous notion—who believes that? It is just political posturing at its worst. When I looked at the plan that the honourable Leader of the Opposition put up for flood reconstruction, none of it added up. We had weeks of him saying it would be easy to find savings and then we got deferrals, double-counts and backflips and it was all over the place, around and around. There was a double-count of around $700 million in savings. They said that they would use the savings to rebuild Queensland, but they had already earmarked those savings to fund other spending priorities. It is a bit hard to spend it twice, although I suppose it does not matter if it is just a paper and political posture exercise. They also claimed over $100 million in savings from the Building the Education Revolution that is already allocated to projects committed or underway, but 99.9 per cent of projects have been completed or commenced, which is pretty easy information to find if you look. Then the coalition reversed their position on foreign aid. I will discuss that further a little later in my speech.
I would like to read some comments from constituents in my electorate of Page. One was an email and one was a letter to the editor of the Clarence Valley Review. We had about seven floods in my area during the time that the floods were happening over the Christmas period. There were a couple of minor floods, a couple of moderate floods, two major floods and then another flood. When I was speaking to the condolence motion earlier today, I said that we did not whinge—we dare not whinge, because there was no tragic loss of life. There was certainly loss, but there was no loss of life, so we got on with the business. Thank God for our wonderful volunteers, who responded so well, so ably and so calmly and looked after us in those times.
The email says:
Today I have sent the following to the MP.
That is me. It goes on:
I am an old-age pensioner, and we have an income well below $60,000. I have recently had two metres of flood water through my house—Clarence River’s floods. I am sick and tired of Mr Abbott carping on about the flood tax, and I want you to know that I am more than happy to pay my $52 towards the rebuilding of those communities affected by the recent natural disasters in Queensland and elsewhere. Please send me an account and my cheque will be in the mail.
That man is from Brushgrove, which was cut off for quite a few days during the flood. I will not say his name because I did not seek permission to do so, but I think the message speaks for itself. I have received a lot of messages like that. There are always some people who say that they do not want to pay a levy, but they are in the minority. There are very few people who do not want to pay.
This message from Ken Crampton OAM in Maclean is a bit longer, so I will just read a few excerpts from it. He is a constituent of the honourable member for Cowper, but my electorate borders that electorate. He says:
We are on a part age pension as I still do casual work but would still be happy to pay part of the levy. Like many other families, my wife and I have made a donation to the flood appeal through our local Lions Club. This way you know there is nothing taken out in administration—
so that is a good plug for the Lions—
but I also agree with the proposed flood levy, as it is only a small price to pay.
He then continues in that vein. That message is typical of the tone and tenor of the emails and telephone calls that I have been getting and the conversations that I have been having. There is no reason not to support the levy. We have had a major natural disaster, there has been a huge loss of life and people have suffered, so why can’t the Leader of the Opposition get on with it and see that, at a time like this, the last thing we need is this division and discord in the community for nothing other than rank political opportunism?
The levy is a one-year measure—it is a one-off. I can remember some of the other levies that were introduced under the Howard government. Some of them, I have a memory, went on a lot longer than one year. In fact, I think the dairy industry levy went on for quite some time. I supported that levy, particularly given the fact that I hold a rural seat, in which there is a very good and viable dairy industry that is suffering at the moment because of the milk price issue with Coles and Woolworths. I have always given strong support to the dairy industry, and I remember that levy. I also approved of the levy for the Ansett workers. That levy was for corporate failure, yet we put our hands into our pockets across Australia in the same way to fund it.
Some people could question that. They could ask, ‘Why are we funding corporate failure?’ We did it for the workers, and we did it for exactly the same reason we are doing it here—primarily to help people in Queensland as well as in other places that have been affected by flooding. In Queensland, we need nearly $6 billion that we know of. I am sure it will be more, because when we put in the cost estimates after floods we always know that more money could be required as we go along and see the extent of the damage, particularly to the roads and bridges. I know that through experience in my electorate of Page, having lived in an area where we have had a lot of floods over many years and being involved in the recovery efforts there.
These bills will provide the government with funding to assist in rebuilding or repairing essential infrastructure that has been damaged as a result of flooding, and this funding will cover all rural and regional areas—it has to because that is where the flooding happened. Sometimes it is harder for those areas as there are a lot more roads and a lot more bridges. I have five local government areas in my seat of Page, and among them is one shire where there are about 438 bridges. During the latest floods, some of those were affected, and obviously they will need to be repaired.
So much goodwill has emerged out of these tragedies, and it would be wonderful if that goodwill could prevail in this place too. I know there are a lot of members in the opposition who do support the flood levy. They see it as being a normal and natural thing to do. So I target the Leader of the Opposition—
Name one—go on.
I could, but I would not be so rude as to name them.
You’re making it up.
I am not making it up. The Leader of the Opposition saw it as a political opportunity to go out and gather some support around himself, but he has not done that. It has really blown up in his face. He wanted to cut the aid funding to Indonesian schools. That funding was a great initiative of Mr Downer—I remember when it was approved—and it makes sense to have that funding go to those schools in Indonesia. We all support it, and I know the coalition do too. Their opposition to the funding was just one of those rushes of blood to the head. I commend these bills to the House. The quicker they pass, the sooner we can get the money out to Queensland and beyond. (Time expired)
I am certainly pleased to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, which you could call ‘the flood tax bills’. For me, this is an important piece of legislation because I have had a unique insight, as a member and deputy chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, to actually hear all the evidence that was put to the committee by the various witnesses over the course of the single day of inquiry that the committee had. Really, the arguments against this new tax are compelling and overwhelming.
But personally I find that the single most compelling argument against the way in which Labor has conjured up this completely arbitrary flood tax has been one simple fact: the tax that the House is discussing this evening and that has been the subject of parliamentary debate for around one day—and it will no doubt go on into late this evening and possibly even tomorrow—raises for the Labor Party $1.8 billion. The estimated cost of repairs as a consequence of these awful natural disasters is around $5.6 billion. So they are raising $1.8 billion of the $5.6 billion, and the connection between the two numbers is completely arbitrary—there is none.
Most compelling of all is one simple fact: if it had not been for Building the Education Revolution, if it had not been for the failed pink batts scheme, if it had not been for the so-called green assessors scheme and if it were not for Fuelwatch or the money wasted on GroceryWatch or just about any other program you want to talk about, this government would have had $1.8 billion, plus some. There would have been absolutely no need whatsoever for the Australian people to reach into their pockets and pay another so-called mateship tax, as the Prime Minister quaintly likes to put it.
They are masters of spin on that side of the chamber, but they are not masters of finance. If they had any ability whatsoever to actually ensure that taxpayers got value for money and that their initiatives did not blow up into money pits, they would easily have been able to find $1.8 billion and avoid the necessity for the Australian people to pay a new tax. Typically of the Labor Party—consistent with Labor DNA and absolutely consistent with its past form—every time they get their hands on the Treasury benches this Labor Party does what just comes naturally to it: tax and spend.
It has always been a party of taxing and spending and it always will be a party of taxing and spending, because that is what the Labor Party does. It taxes when there is a problem and it hopes that by spending as much money as possible it will overcome the problem. Once again, we find ourselves with the Labor Party conveniently saying to all Australians, ‘Look, it’s not that we’re useless as a government; it’s just that we want to look after those Australians who have been adversely affected,’ and the way to do it is through a so-called mateship tax. There is no mateship involved in this tax; all there is is fiscal ineptitude.
I think it is a great shame that Australians are led down the garden path by this government. Australians do instinctively try to do the right thing. At this time of incredible tumult and tragedy—a time when so many Australians were truly suffering—we saw the resilience and the shine of community spirit as people rose up to lend a hand, to put their hands into their pockets and to help make a difference. And this completely fiscally reckless government has now tapped into that sentiment and said, ‘We need you to do it one more time; it is only for the cost of a cup of coffee’.
It may only be a cup of coffee a week that is at stake, but there is something much more fundamental at stake than that, and that is a principle: the principle that for the first time in recent memory that I am aware of—in fact, it may be ever—a government is responding with a new tax to help pay for a natural disaster. That is despite the fact that we also know that under the gaze of economic experts such as Mr Saul Eslake and Professor Warwick McKibbin the evidence is very clear. There is no economic rationale for this new tax. Not only could it have been funded by a government that was more in control of its spending but it could also have been done through other mechanisms.
Effectively, the economic experts who appeared before the committee outlined three pathways: debt financing, a new tax or cutting spending. But one thing that both Mr Eslake and Professor McKibbin were clear about was that the very worst of the three pathways was the approach the government was taking. It is not even a case of taking my word for it as a coalition member of parliament; you can rely on two of the foremost economic commentators in Australia, who are not members of the political process, who actually bring a level of objectivity to this debate and who made it clear that Labor’s approach is the worst approach to take.
There are other reasons why you would not support this tax. The reality is that there are also very significant risks—that there will be what is termed by Professor McKibbin and touched upon by a number of others as the unintended consequences of this new tax. There are two in particular that I would like to touch upon as part of the debate this evening.
The first is the unintended consequence that as a direct result of Labor imposing this new tax we will potentially create the situation that when there is a future natural disaster—and unfortunately this country has a long history of being prone to natural disasters—Australians will say, ‘Well, I’ll just hold off donating, because chances are that the government’s going to introduce a new tax.’ That does not sound that implausible. If we talk about a very significant natural disaster, something equal in terms of the magnitude of damage to what we have just seen off the back of Cyclone Yasi and the floods, then we know that it is not implausible in the slightest for Australians to say: ‘Last time this happened Labor introduced a new tax to help pay for it. Why wouldn’t they do it again?’
Mr Craig Thomson interjecting
I will come to that point. It is a very interesting point that the member opposite raises, and I am going to go to it very shortly. So stay in the chamber and we will discuss precisely that point. Stay right there; I have lots of good information for you. The interesting thing is that we will have this issue of unintended consequences, and I might point out that there might be some unintended consequences over on the other side too, and we will go into my website poll in just a moment. The issue is that understandably, if in future we had a similar magnitude-sized natural disaster, Australians would very reasonably say, ‘I won’t donate because I will have to pay a tax to help cover it.’ That is the first of the unintended consequences that are quite foreseeable as a direct result of this precedent-setting new tax by the Labor Party.
There is another unintended consequence. Witnesses before the House of Representatives economics committee told us that Queensland took a different decision to other state governments insofar as Queensland chose not to seek reinsurance on public assets. What is interesting about that is that in other states—and many of them have state Labor governments—we have the governments choosing to take out reinsurance on public assets, but the Queensland government did not. When I questioned the Queensland Under Treasurer, Mr Bradley, about why that was, he made it clear that as a consequence of the long-term arrangements under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements they did not believe it was worthwhile. He actually said it was not commercially feasible, or words to that effect. I am not claiming that to be a direct quote but it is a paraphrase of what he said. So the Queensland government effectively decided not to seek reinsurance with the full knowledge that their liabilities were underwritten by the Commonwealth government. The only reason there are potentially some checks and balances on that is that there is some political pressure associated with that cost: political pressure as it does not look good and the people of Queensland in this particular case—and who knows which other jurisdictions it might be in future—might scratch their heads and say, ‘That wasn’t a wise decision.’ As a direct consequence of this precedent-establishing new tax we know that in future the state government will simply be able to wash their hands of responsibility. They will wash their hands of responsibility because they will say, ‘The Commonwealth is introducing a new tax on this; it’s the Commonwealth’s problem.’ So the moral hazard for the Commonwealth as a direct consequence of the exposure of the Commonwealth to liabilities that may arise at a state government level because of damage to public infrastructure is very real and made even more prominent as a consequence of this new tax.
Those reasons alone provide a very compelling argument as to why this new tax should not be passed by the Houses. Of course, there is a more fundamental issue as well, and that is one of economic management. There is one inescapable reality—that is, with competent economic management there would have been enough fat built up in the federal budget for there to be no need for a new tax. Had the Howard government been in place—or, indeed, its successor, with Tony Abbott as Prime Minister—it would have been able to competently manage Australia’s economy and I have no doubt that we would not find ourselves nearly $100 billion in debt. We would have been able to accommodate the costs associated with this natural disaster out of existing government revenue. The reality is that this has happened many, many times previously. There were the unfortunate and tragic fires in Victoria. The consequence was the loss of so many homes and so many lives, and an economic cost that was estimated at around $4.4 billion. The recovery effort for that natural disaster was funded out of existing government revenue. There was no new tax. There was no need, because the previous government were competent managers.
What is interesting is that I have been running a website poll on my website on this issue. The member opposite, the member for Dobell, and earlier the member for McEwen made comments about the website poll, suggesting that in some way, shape or form my views in this chamber are inconsistent with the views of my electorate. What members opposite do not seem to get is that because it is a poll on my website I have all sorts of diagnostic tools available to me to find out where votes are coming from. Members opposite came and made a big deal about this poll in the 90-second statements before question time, and now the chairman of the economics committee is in here, trying to make a big deal out of it. Interestingly, there were 42 responses to the question on my website poll. Of the 42 responses, there were only 30 unique IP addresses. Two IP addresses which were responsible for multiple votes on my website happened to belong to the Australian Parliament House network. Who’d have thunk it? We have Labor members making a big deal about how a poll on my website does not seem to reflect the community mood, and yet so many of the multiple votes came from the Australian Parliament House network. It is almost as if you can see Labor members opposite clearing their cache, voting on the poll, clearing their cache, voting on the poll—and then coming in here and making a big song and dance about how the results of the poll were in some way inconsistent with the views of this side of the House. In fact, one of the votes even came from the United Kingdom, so at best there were 27 votes from one parliamentarian, originating in Australia. We are going to be running an audit on those 27 votes, but what we know is that the Labor Party has been caught out rigging a poll and coming in here to try to make a song and dance about it. We have the IP addresses. We know the Labor Party is skewing the results of this as it skews the results of everything. Not surprisingly, the old Labor adage is, ‘Vote often, vote early and try to make a big deal of it.’ (Time expired)
After the last contribution I thank heavens that we are dealing with the big issues in this chamber today. I start, on indulgence, by expressing my condolences to the people of New Zealand, particularly Christchurch. They have gone through a terrible tragedy. We know there are people from my electorate in Geelong who have been caught up in that, and that is reported in today’s media. My thoughts go out to their families, friends and loved ones.
We are debating today the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. As members in this place will know, this bill provides for a one-year, one-off levy in the financial year 2011-12 of 0.5 per cent of income on those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 and one per cent on income for those earning more than $100,000. Those earning less than $50,000 will not pay the levy, and of course those who have been affected by the terrible floods which affected many parts of Australia over the summer will also be exempt.
This levy forms part of a much larger piece of architecture dealing with the reconstruction of the parts of Australia which were ravaged by the floods over the summer. I take this opportunity to thank all of those around Australia and those in my electorate of Corio and in Geelong who have made such generous contributions to those who have suffered as a result of these floods. And it was not just financial contributions; it was also offers of help, assistance and volunteering to friends, business colleagues and ordinary Australian citizens in Queensland. It makes one feel proud of the country in which we live to see Australians helping Australians in times of need.
I attended an ecumenical service on 16 January which was emblematic of the sense of solidarity that was being felt in Geelong for all of those who have suffered as a result of these floods. It would be nice to feel that the money raised through those donations would be enough to deal with the reconstruction bill associated with these floods, but of course we know that that is simply not the reality. To date $222 million has been raised in the Premier’s fund, and that is a fantastic achievement by the people of Australia, but the initial estimates of the bill to reconstruct Queensland and other parts of flood affected Australia is $5.6 billion. So it is the responsibility of government in those circumstances. It is obviously completely unreasonable to expect, as we have heard some of the speakers on the other side suggest in this debate, private donations to deal with the reconstruction of the flood affected parts of this country.
The levy is not the sum total of the architecture that is being put in place to raise the money; indeed, the levy will raise $1.8 billion of the $5.6 billion, which means that, roughly, for every dollar raised by the levy $2 is being raised through difficult budget cuts—which I will come to in a moment—and delayed infrastructure. The delaying of the infrastructure is important both to save money and to make sure that the resources exist to put towards the building of the infrastructure in Queensland and other parts of flood affected Australia. The levy component of this package is very modest. For somebody on $80,000 we are talking about $2.88 a week—the price of a cup of coffee. And, by the way, the same person who would be paying that has received the better part of $30 worth of tax cuts since this government came to power. So this is a balanced and sensible package of which a levy is a part.
From the other side during this debate you have heard a sense that levies are almost per se evil. But we know that when the Liberal Party were in power under John Howard we saw the gun buyback levy, the superannuation surcharge levy, the milk levy, the sugar levy, the stevedoring levy and the Ansett Airlines levy, the last four of which were introduced in years in which the federal budget returned a surplus. So there is nothing wrong with putting in place a levy, and one suspects that if John Howard were the decision-maker in this instance he, too, would be entertaining a levy of the kind being put in place now. But, of course, because of the debate that we now find ourselves in and because the opposition’s political strategy, as we have seen, is to pick a fight wherever and whenever they can—which is a real disappointment in the context of such an important issue as the reconstruction of this country in the aftermath of these terrible floods—we find ourselves in the unfortunately partisan debate that we are having now.
It raises the question: if there were not a levy, what ought we to do? What is being put forward by the opposition is that, rather than having a levy, there should be further cuts. We have heard lots of speakers talk about the fact that there is plenty of money there in the budget and it is an easy thing to find the entire $5.6 billion through cuts to the budget, yet we also know that when the shadow cabinet met to work out exactly where those cuts would occur we saw it fracture and atomise. It has been as if a hammer has shattered the glass pane of the solidarity of the shadow cabinet when they have had to come up with an answer to the difficult question of where those extra cuts would come from. So we have had crazy ideas such as cutting the aid budget by $450 million to remove a specific program which was implemented under the Howard government to provide money to schools in Indonesia and which Alexander Downer described as one of the most important counterterrorism programs that the Howard government put in place. All of that, of course, was done under the inspiration of a viral email campaign.
There is one other cut that I want to spend a moment talking about because it is very relevant to the seat of Geelong that I represent. It is the cut in relation to the car industry. As part of the cuts that we are putting forward in the overall package to raise the $5.6 billion, we are proposing a $400 million cut to the Green Car Innovation Fund. The Green Car Innovation Fund has been a wonderful success. To date, $500 million has been committed, which in turn has leveraged $2 billion worth of investment in the car industry. It is really important investment, not the least of which is a commitment of $42 million towards the Ford EcoBoost engine, which is very important in my neck of the woods.
Clearly we would not want to see a cut in the Green Car Innovation Fund, but we did not want to see the floods in Queensland either. When a tragedy of this kind occurs the pain needs to be shared across all sectors and so this difficult decision is being made. It is really important that people understand that the cut being proposed relates to uncommitted funds within the Green Car Innovation Fund. It does not affect any of the funds committed to date, which means that all the projects, including the Ford EcoBoost project, will be honoured to the last dollar. That is to say, the cut that we are proposing to the Green Car Innovation Fund will not affect a single activity within the car industry and it will not affect a single job within the car industry.
This government has been a massive supporter of the car industry. In Geelong, we all remember back in July 2007, in the dying days of the Howard government, the disappointment when Ford made its decision to close its engine plant. We also knew the joy that was experienced just over a year after that, in November 2008, when a new federal government was in place with new partnerships and new support for the car industry and we saw that decision turned around. It is important for people to understand it was not turned around by virtue of a commitment from the Green Car Innovation Fund; it was turned around through automotive program funding and it was fundamentally turned around through the ongoing support which this government has provided to the car industry.
The Green Car Innovation Fund is just one part of A New Car Plan for a Greener Future, which is in turn a $5.4 billion program. The vast bulk of that is unaffected by the cut we have proposed to raise the money for the flood affected parts of Queensland and other parts of Australia. However, the same cannot be said of what is being proposed by the opposition in the event that this flood levy is not approved by this parliament. The other side is proposing all the cuts that we have been putting in place plus $500 million through the Automotive Transformation Scheme.
The Automotive Transformation Scheme is an entitlement based scheme which helps R&D, plant and equipment and production within the car industry. The point is that this is a scheme which is built into the budgets of the car companies. If you cut that, then you affect the jobs of people in the car industry, and there is absolutely no doubt that if this flood levy is not passed and the opposition has their way in putting in place the cuts that they want to put in place there will be job losses in Geelong as a result. That is why I am so passionate about seeing this flood levy passed. This flood levy forms part of a balanced program. It is a fair and balanced program, which includes the levy, and importantly sees the rebuilding of the flood affected parts of Australia right now. For all those reasons it very much deserves this House’s support.
Debate interrupted.
by leave—I move:
That standing order 31 (automatic adjournment of the House) and standing order 33 (limit on business after normal time of adjournment) be suspended for this sitting.
I thank the opposition and all members for their cooperation on this matter. This evening there will not be an adjournment debate. We will allow extra additional speakers on the temporary flood levy legislation to take us up to eight o’clock. The House will be adjourned when the speaker on their feet at eight o’clock concludes. There is an agreement with the opposition that during that time there will be no divisions called. This is to make sure that we can deal with this legislation tomorrow so that people are not inconvenienced by arrangements that have to be made to depart Canberra.
Question agreed to.
Debate resumed.
I rise to debate the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and cognate bill. We are here in essence to debate the government’s proposition that it must have a new tax, a new levy, to fund repairs following a natural disaster—something, as far as I know, that has never happened before in this country. Let me be clear, because the government is not clear on this issue, that our opposition to the levy is not about restricting assistance to those who have suffered flood damage but about how the government chooses to foot the bill.
It has become a disappointing habit of this government to paint resistance to their prescriptions for economic problems as opposition to the general premise that help or change is needed. In fact, it is a case of their way or the highway and the flood levy is just another such topic. I give a couple of examples: first, the NBN mark 1 was principally opposed because of the government’s duplicity on the issue. Remember the government promised to build a $9 billion fibre-to-the-home network. It was underfunded, it was taking money from the Future Fund—in this case the telecommunication fund—and, as we pointed out at the time, it was commercially unviable. All of these things have proved to be correct, but that did not mean that we in the Liberal Party, in the opposition, did not believe that Australia needed new broadband networks. That is what the government would have you believe. The government paint the picture that if anyone raises concern with the method then they oppose the premise. That is simply not true.
The CPRS is another example. We did not oppose it because we collectively did not believe we needed to reduce our carbon output; we opposed the CPRS because of the method, because of the enormous potential for economic self-harm. They were proposing to move too far ahead of the rest of the world. We were told by the then Prime Minister and his complete team that the CPRS was the only solution and it must be endorsed before Copenhagen. Remember their cry: ‘Just get out of the way!’ Well, guess what—we were right again. The government now believe not only that the CPRS was too early—they abandoned it eventually—but also that the method was wrong. ‘Just get out of the way!’ they said. Being opposed to the method does not mean one is opposed to the premise. Similarly, when we opposed the stimulus package, which included the home insulation disaster, the wastage on the school halls, the Green Loans debacle and $12 billion in $900 cheques, we were told to ‘get out of the way’. It is a pity we were not successful.
The point is that our opposition to wastage did not mean that we were against a stimulus package; we were opposed to a stimulus package which was too big, was badly targeted and would go for too long. It was, inevitably, appallingly managed. We were right in that instance, too. Our opposition did not mean that we were opposed to a stimulus package; it just meant that we were supportive of a smaller, better targeted and better administered package.
Consistently, at least, we now have a misinformation campaign around the opposition’s disapproval of the flood levy. The rebuilding fee for Queensland’s and Victoria’s public infrastructure will be funded under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements, where the Commonwealth is committed to meeting 75 per cent of the bill. Whether or not we have a flood levy to help pay for this is irrelevant; it is just a matter of how we foot the bill. The government is estimating a total cost of $5.6 billion, but it is early days. They plan to meet around two-thirds from the budget—or from savings, they say—and $1.8 billion from the levy. In total, the government is to raise $350 billion in taxes this year and around $1.4 trillion over the four-year forward estimates, which is likely to match the period it is expected to take to complete and fund the majority of repairs.
I mentioned some examples of their track record of enormous waste, but the big ones are: home insulation, $12 billion in $900 cheques, $6 billion in school halls, Green Loans, GroceryWatch, Fuelwatch, the greater Pacific economic forum—remember that one?—and, now, their intention to spend $50 billion off-budget on the new NBN. Given that record, we in the opposition have no confidence that any new funds raised will be any better spent. The $1.8 billion is just half of one per cent of one year’s budget. Surely any business could recover half of one per cent of budget due to a setback beyond their control. In fact, if we stretch this contribution over the forward estimates, as the spending is likely to go, it will only be a saving of 0.1 per cent. Surely any competent government could meet that infinitesimal saving.
It is often said that a national budget is like a household budget, and the government is very keen on repeatedly saying this levy is only the cost of a cup of coffee a week. They could also have said it is about the price of a light bulb or four rolls of toilet paper. Well, that is right: it is about the price of a cup of coffee, a light bulb or four rolls of toilet paper. But what kind of household are you running if you cannot replace a blown light bulb or buy a four-pack of toilet paper when visitors arrive? That is what this government is incapable of doing. They cannot afford a four-pack of toilet paper for when visitors roll up unexpectedly. It is beyond belief.
In fact, significant natural disasters in Australia are not rare at all. Governments should allow for such events in their contingency funds. Yes, the floods were a very big event. But previous regimes have always managed to meet these kinds of demands without resorting to a new tax. The Labor government inherited a $20 billion surplus and more than $50 billion in savings. They now owe nearly $90 billion, and they blame everyone but themselves.
I recognise the gravity of the Queensland floods. During the condolence debate I chose not to contribute as I believed that those who represented the worst affected areas should be the spokespeople for those affected physically, mentally and economically. I take this moment to pass my condolences to all of those who have been affected. However, I would like to place on the record that the same weather events and, in some cases, the same water has also been impacting on communities in my seat of Grey. I know you are well aware of this, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, as you have travelled into the area with me. In the north of the state, for almost 12 months we have been battling a very wet season. Let me say that, after a decade of drought, it has been more than welcome, but the damage to local roads has been enormous. There have been weeks and sometimes months during which many properties and a number of mining operations have been unable to carry on their business.
The Birdsville Track has been closed almost as often as it has been open. Even when it has been open, it has been impassable for a vehicle of more than 10 tonnes, as that has been the maximum weight of the totally inadequate ferry which crosses the Cooper when it has been in flood, as it was between July and February. Incidentally, the crossing is expected to close again soon as the floodwaters surge in from Queensland—the same floodwaters that have caused the problems in Queensland. The Oodnadatta Track, the Strzelecki Track and myriad other major freight routes have been disrupted, degraded and in some cases totally destroyed by the flooding, and the state government, who has responsibility for these roads, says it has no money to reconstruct them. These roads are now closed after a few millimetres of rain or are so rough as to wreck trucks and equipment. The people that live in this area are also victims of the floods.
Since last November we have seen a spate of flash floods cut a swathe through a number of regional towns and centres in the mid-north of South Australia. The Central Local Government Region of SA Member Councils have confirmed that $20 million to $25 million worth of damage has occurred, the bulk of which is to local roads. Quite simply, these repairs are beyond the capacity of these councils. Without assistance, the repairs will take most of the next decade to complete. While I have not yet witnessed firsthand the latest damage, I intend to do so in the next few weeks and will be assisting the councils in sourcing some essential assistance. While the damage is minor compared with that in Queensland and Victoria, the individual impact on small councils and outback communities is very high.
However, the situation brings into question the South Australian government’s commitment to seek assistance through the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements. I have obtained some figures from the National Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements program for the last 10 years. Queensland, before this event, had received more than $310 million; New South Wales had received $194 million; South Australia just $17 million; Western Australia $27 million. Victoria had received $323 million, including relief for the 2009 bushfires, which, at least up until now, had been the most expensive and horrific national disaster—in fact, $270 million of that figure related to the year we responded to the bushfire.
These figures pose a number of questions which I think need answers. Firstly, they suggest that perhaps we live in a very safe spot in South Australia, and that is a very good thing. But the figures also raise the question which others have raised before me—just very recently, here in this place, my friend the member for Moncrieff—and that is the Queensland government’s commitment to insuring its assets. I will leave it to others to explore this issue but I ask that everyone concerned look carefully at the figures I have just quoted and at the relative incentives for state governments to insure.
I also raise the question of just how serious the SA state government is when it comes to accessing federal funds which require them to make a contribution themselves. Further analysis of our local disasters would indicate that most of them have occurred in regional South Australia, where the government seems to have little interest.
In closing, let me say that the possibility of a levy—at this stage I would have to say ‘the probability of a levy’—to help fund repairs is irrelevant to this issue of reconstruction. Whatever method the government chooses to finance its obligations—whether by savings, borrowings or by raising a new tax—the result is the same: the taxpayers foot the bill, and they are becoming very sick of the wastage and excesses of this government. That should not be forgotten.
I am grateful to be able to add my remarks to what is certainly a very important debate for our community—the second reading debate on Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the cognate bill.
I realise that many speakers have contributed to this debate before me—and rightly so. It is one of the starkest expressions of the difference between the Labor Party and the coalition. The difference is not really about the merits of a levy or whether to impose a levy or not—because we all know very well that the Liberals have supported levies before. We did not seem to go for much more than a year of the Howard government’s period in office without seeing at least one levy being proposed or imposed. We saw the gun buyback levy in 1996, the East Timor levy in 1999, the milk levy in 2000, the Ansett levy in 2001, the sugar levy in 2003 and the stevedoring levy in 2006. Indeed, it was this government which lifted the operation of the last of those levies during its first term. The coalition’s tradition continued last year during the federal election campaign, when the opposition leader discovered a new-found interest in paid parental leave and grasped for a levy in order to fund it. So, no, the difference between the parties is not about whether to impose a levy; the difference between the parties that this debate bears out is that we know that there is a limit to politics—we know when to put politics aside; it is a question of judgment—while those opposite play extreme politics. There are no limits to which those opposite will not go and no depths that they will not plumb. They have no idea about when to say, ‘This is a matter about which we should be making a bipartisan commitment.’ There is a state to rebuild. There are people who are living with devastation and loss who need some practical assistance to recover. Let’s get on with supporting the rebuilding of infrastructure so that they can do just that.
Most of those opposite have no instinct for when it is in the national interest to work cooperatively in this place, and I hope and I trust that this absence of judgment will ultimately be their undoing. The test for all of us in this place is to work out what our limits are—what we are prepared to stand for and what we are not prepared to do irrespective of the political opportunities that may be presented. That is particularly pertinent in this parliament, with its fine balance of representation and the heightened expectations of our respective constituencies that we will work constructively together for the good of the nation.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union has had some fairly useful things to say about the responsible role of an opposition in its Guidelines on the rights and duties of the opposition in parliament. It notes:
… the opposition in parliament must show itself to be responsible and be able to act in a statesmanlike manner … In its action, the opposition must not seek to hinder pointlessly the action of the government …
I cannot think of a better description for this debate, and for the bulk of the recent actions of the present opposition, than an endeavour to hinder pointlessly the action of the government. We have seen the opposition’s displays of opportunism in this debate and in other very important contemporary debates, and it is time for those right-thinking people in the coalition to put the nation’s interests before their party’s interests. I know that there are members of the coalition who are having their limits sorely tested by their parties’ leadership on a variety of issues. It is time for them to consider whether that is why they have struggled so hard to be in this place and to represent their communities.
It is not the case that the Leader of the Opposition has not ever considered what the national interest might mean; it is just that he puts the blinkers on when it suits him. The opposition’s insatiable desire for political relevance—their sound and fury—seems to have overpowered any sense of rational judgment. We heard the Leader of the Opposition remark during the election campaign, in relation to his own paid parental leave levy:
… sometimes for very, very important social reasons, for national interest reasons you have got to say we need the money and we can’t summon the money out of thin air …
So the question for all of us is: is the government’s response to natural disasters such as those that we have seen during this summer in the national interest according to the Leader of the Opposition’s test? Is it a very important social reason? I think that most right-thinking people would probably say yes. Most of us might just consider it the most important current social reason for the introduction of a levy. These bills deal with the consequences of an event that could not be forecast in budget measures and which requires an extraordinary and timely response from government.
I have listened bemusedly to some of the speakers on the opposite side of this debate as they have, so very earnestly, tried to manufacture a logical rationale for not supporting a flood levy. I find it particularly curious that certain of our parliamentary colleagues from Queensland are amongst those opposing this important recovery measure. I think they almost believe their own confection, but then I remember that to believe in the worth and merit of their own position they would need to have in fact reached a consensus position.
This debate is not a true debate—that would imply that an alternative case has been put, a substantive case, something that presented some meaningful way of funding the flood recovery. But there is not one, because the coalition is so desperately divided over the nature of the budget cuts it has cobbled together in a politically opportunistic way that there is no meaningful alternative proposal.
When pressed to reveal budget cuts to fund the flood recovery, it should come as no surprise that the first places the coalition looks to are things such as: capital expenditure on schools, local schools programs, GP superclinics and aid commitments within our region. The look to the wholesale slashing of funding to the automotive industry and putting reform of the Murray-Darling onto the long finger—yet again—after they failed to give effect to any meaningful reforms after more than a decade in office. This is a piecemeal approach, which confirms precisely what we have always thought about this opposition: given half a chance they will look to cuts and deferrals in education, health and progressive policies that better support our industries, our environment and our water security.
Still they do not seem to have reached a consensus position about some of these cuts with dissension against the will of the opposition leader coming almost daily and from all angles. Its jumbled approach to cuts and its well reported track record of miscalculating budget cuts means that in effect the opposition is simply saying no to the prompt rebuilding of infrastructure. I hope that all of those who have been affected by the wrath of floods over this summer remember just that.
Paying for the reconstruction as we go is the right thing to do. The scale of rebuilding as a consequence of the floods will mean that there is an added demand on our capacity, our available skills and our resources. It is for this reason that this government has created room in the budget through spending cuts and has proposed the temporary levy to fund the enormous rebuild.
I believe that most Australians recognise that this is the right thing to do. They know that this is to be a temporary levy with a prescribed end date. They know that it is being applied in a way that is calibrated according to the earnings of each individual and that it is progressive. We know that around 50 per cent of Australian taxpayers will pay nothing additional under the levy proposal. We know that over 60 per cent of taxpayers will pay less than $1 per week. We know that about 70 per cent of taxpayers will pay less than $2 per week and that over 85 per cent of taxpayers will pay less than $5 per week. We know that those people who receive an Australian government disaster recovery payment for a flood event in 2010-11 will be exempt from the levy.
So the levy is appropriate, it is targeted, it is sufficient, it is timely and importantly it is temporary. But it is not just the government which is making those kinds of observations. The levy proposed by the bills before us has been very well received by many in the finance sector and many more in our community generally. CommSec’s Craig James, for instance, has remarked that this is ‘the right levy for the times, modest in size, temporary, progressive and applying to those on higher incomes’.
We know that the damage caused by recent flooding is unprecedented, and the task of rebuilding is significant. We know that the recent floods may well end up being the most costly disaster in Australian history. Now is not the time for opportunism. It is a time to exercise judgment in the interests of the nation. Labor’s package, including the flood levy, has been proposed to respond to the needs of those affected by the natural disasters we have faced while preserving the underlying strength of our economy. It is time that all members in this place put the national interest first.
I certainly welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate on the imposition of yet another tax on the Australian people. Massive flooding occurred in eastern Australia at the end of last year and through to January this year, followed by Cyclone Yasi on the evening of Wednesday, 2 February. The bottom part of my electorate of Leichhardt fell well and truly in the path of the cyclone, and up until about six hours before the cyclone hit we were very much looking at being in the eye of it. We were fortunate in that we were not as badly affected as those areas a little to the south of us, where of course it was an absolute disaster. It is going to take a significant amount of time for those areas to rebuild.
It had a serious effect on our region, an effect equally devastating from a business perspective. The disaster started of course in December with the first cyclone. While there was not a lot of damage, that was just the start of that huge rainfall that travelled further south and we saw it go right through to Victoria.
The impact on us was that people in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra could see the floods in Queensland and assumed there would be major damage to all of Queensland and so cancelled any intended visits to Cairns, not realising that they were in fact closer to the affected area than Cairns was. The effect on our economy has been absolutely devastating, and this has come on the back of several years that found us with the highest unemployment in the country and businesses already struggling.
When you look at the grand scale of what Mother Nature has dumped on Queensland and other states—like Western Australia with the floods in the north and the fires to the south—in the last few months, it has caused a hell of a lot of pain. There was a tragic loss of life with an effect that will take many years to recover from. The Commonwealth is stepping in—and that is expected—to repair and rebuild the infrastructure and with income support for households. This is essential and it is absolutely welcomed and expected from both sides of politics.
The coalition are certainly not opposed in any shape or form to the rebuilding and repair of infrastructure. The rebuilding of Queensland is, of course, absolutely vital. What we do oppose is where the money is coming from to fund this rebuilding. The flood tax that the Gillard government is proposing comes on top of what very generous-hearted Australians have already given, and I see this tax as quite appalling on many levels.
We have great concerns for the capacity of this government to administer large sums of money. Again, I will be quite parochial and refer to my area in Far North Queensland. You only have to look at the Building the Education Revolution fiasco and the pink batts. Combined, these programs cost the Australian people massive amounts of money, to the tune of millions. I know that the pink batts fiasco alone cost something like $2.4 billion of taxpayer funds. That is money that could have been used here very effectively and, from early estimates, could actually fund half the rebuild cost without having to go to another tax. Not only did it cost us over $2.4 billion; it also electrified roofs and was linked to the tragic deaths of four installers, including one in the Atherton Tablelands.
I had examples of brand-new $250,000 school halls being delivered to small communities on the same day that it was being announced that the schools were being shut down. You just shake your head in disbelief that such a thing could occur, so you have to ask the question: how in the hell can you actually trust this government to manage this program effectively and not to stuff it up as well?
There are a number of reasons the coalition is opposing this flood tax that is being imposed on the Australian people. I have to remind the government that the Prime Minister has already called on Australians to donate generously and to volunteer their time. The level of generosity and the amount of money that has been raised has been amazing. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised. Before the cyclone occurred in my area, pensioners were putting $10 or $100 into accounts and sending it down to the area. People were sending all sorts of things down there. We had lots of builders and lots of other people travelling down to the area—not to sell their time but to give freely of their time and resources to help immediately, as is the Australian way. We see it happening all the time, and I think the enormous volunteer effort that we saw was nothing short of inspiring. There were literally armies of hundreds of people rolling up their sleeves and helping those in greater need than themselves. In many cases the people who were helping were equally affected.
Even after Cyclone Yasi, people from affected areas in the southern part of the state were coming up into some of the worst affected areas in the far north to assist them, even though in their own areas they were still a long way from rebuilding their own homes. They did it willingly, because it is the Australian way. It is what mates do when the chips are down. If someone owned a truck or a skip bin, or if they had food or other products available, they would just hand them over. They did not expect anything from it, and neighbours really got to know each other and they really appreciated the outstanding effort.
This is not a small tax; it is a very significant tax. I know there have been references to similar levies that were raised by the Howard government, when I was a member of that government, but they pale into insignificance in comparison. If you look at the gun buyback levy, which I do not think anybody would argue was necessary, and even the Ansett levy protecting the entitlements of Ansett workers, none of those amounted to even half a billion dollars—let alone the $1.8 billion that this is intended to raise.
We raised levies in the early days of the Howard government, there is no doubt about it, but when we came into government in 1996 there was an appalling deficit. Remember the Port Arthur incident happened in the same year that we came into government. There were massive deficits there that we had to try to clean up from a previous Labor government. We were trying to get the economy and the financial affairs back in order. If you compare that with 3½ years ago when the Labor Party came to government, there was a $20 billion surplus, there was zero net debt and $60 billion in the Future Fund. Have a look at that: three and a half years later we are talking about a net debt approaching $100 billion. Little wonder we are concerned about the motives of the government raising this as another tax. One thing you can be sure about a Labor government: they are seriously great at creating deficits.
When you have a look at some of the history, they have got serious form here. They have a problem with the sale of Australian cars, so they put up a higher luxury car tax. They have an issue with the miners, so they whack them with a mining tax. They have a problem with alcohol, so they introduce an alcopops tax. They have a problem with people smoking, so they introduce a higher tobacco tax. They are introducing a climate tax through the carbon tax, and now we are hit with a flood; so instead of looking around at what they can do, they go out there and whack on another tax. How can this possibly be seen as good financial and economic practice? It seems that Labor’s default is to punish people by making them pay more, because they simply cannot make up their finances.
The waste just seems to be endless. The Gillard government should bow its head in shame because of this disastrous record of waste. We have a massive NBN program that is going to take forever to deliver and it will not be effective. Surely to goodness there could be something coming out of that. There were thousands of dollars going up to some areas of my community for the flood—to communities in the middle of Cape York. There has been such absolute waste. If they had managed things properly, they would have found considerable savings.
Abusing the generous spirit of the Australian people is not an honourable way to dig yourself out of a financial big black hole. Making the tough decisions to cut spending and do the right thing by a country is the way you should do it, in my view. We should be looking at doing that before we even start considering the levy. To suggest that we take on another type of tax as a first option of dealing with the problem—when they do not even know the size of the problem or what they are going to be faced with—is a reflection of the overall thinking of that mob on the other side. They need to seriously reconsider this. There are certainly other ways that should be considered before they have a levy. It should be used only as a last resort.
It gives me pleasure to contribute to the debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and related bill. At the outset, I want to acknowledge that I, along with other Australians, had the opportunity to hear reports directly from the member for Leichhardt at the onset of Cyclone Yasi. I was very pleased to hear that he, his family and his community were able to come through that safely—and I note that he had the benefit of the stabilising and calming effects of red grape juice. It was enormously heartening to hear that he and his community pulled through. We had the opportunity through the condolence motion led by the Prime Minister and followed up by the Leader of the Opposition to hear firsthand the impacts on local communities and we were able to appreciate the depth of the human cost that these terrible natural events had on Queensland.
We have had reason to reflect in the past 24 hours on how harsh Mother Nature has been on both sides of the Tasman—to both Australians and New Zealanders. I was moved by the words of the Prime Minister today when she rightly remarked that New Zealanders are our family and that we should provide them with support in this difficult time. I certainly extend to New Zealand our best wishes during what is truly a terrible and burdensome event.
The Treasurer detailed quite graphically the impact of these natural events on Queensland, with three-quarters of Queensland declared a disaster area and floods covering an area five times the state of Victoria. When we take a look beyond the immediate to what the impact will be, we see that it will take about half a percentage point of growth in the 2010-11 financial year. That is the equivalent of about $6 billion stripped out of the real economy. Clearly, Queensland’s key economic sectors have been dealt a significant and massive blow. As you can imagine, the infrastructure has been severely impacted—rail lines, ports, roads, schools and community infrastructure. I remarked upon this during the condolence motion. From the stories my friends the member for Blair and the member for Oxley have recounted to the House and also individually, you can tell that a massive rebuilding effort is required.
The cost of repairs to public infrastructure and the disaster recovery payments for individuals tally up to around $5.6 billion. Importantly, under our natural disaster relief arrangements the Commonwealth rightly picks up about 70 per cent of the cost of the rebuild. It is rightly a major responsibility for the Commonwealth. These two bills, the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, are critical in helping us engage in the massive task of rebuilding essential public infrastructure. I am proud to say that the levy has been constructed with a progressive element at its core. When you look at the way it is structured, you see that people with a taxable income under $50,000 a year pay absolutely nothing, recognising that those on higher incomes have a greater ability and capacity to assist in terms of this temporary level. I think it is important to emphasise that it is a temporary levy that sits for one year only. For those people on taxable incomes of $55,000 pay less than 50c a week. Those on $60,000 a year pay less than $1.
I got the updated figures today from the Parliamentary Library in terms of the impact this may have on the electorate that I am proud to represent—the electorate of Chifley. The median annual income in Chifley is a shade over $61,000 and close to $66,000 for families. So families will be contributing between $1 to $1.50 per week to assist those people to the north of them, in the state of Queensland, who have lost so much. As I previously commented, we are obliged nationally to do what we can to ensure that Queensland can get back on its feet and become the great state that it was and that it should be.
I believe many in the community have donated generously. Again, it is indicated that $200 million has been raised through the fundraising efforts of people in communities across the country. I was proud to see the fundraising drives in the Chifley electorate by local Rotary clubs, like the ones in Mount Druitt, through to the massive Filipino community fundraising effort that took place in Blacktown recently which managed to raise $15,000 in one day to be directed towards Queensland. People are chipping in of the own accord. I got a cheque this week for $10,000, which we will be presenting to the Queensland government, from another group in the Chifley electorate, the Ahmadiyya group from Marsden Park. They financially chipped in themselves. Members travelled to Queensland, provided their own labour and, importantly, consoled people and provided support to people greatly in need during that time. The way that Australians joined together in a combined task in order to help was a truly great thing to watch. As much as we are able to reflect positively on that, we note yet again that the opposition have been unable to bring themselves to the national task of unifying for the purpose of rebuilding Queensland. I have no problem with alternatives. I actively seek other ideas because, frankly, we have a responsibility within this chamber to tease out alternative options to be able to determine the best course of action in deploying government funds or making savings and then using those savings for the purpose that has brought us here this evening.
After beating their chests continually, saying that they would be able to come up with a package that is an alternative to what the government has put forward, and after saying, before parliament resumed, ‘We will be able to define in our own way a savings package free of a flood levy but that can meet the $5.6 billion repair bill to help get Queensland back on its feet,’ they were unable to meet their own deadline. I note, for example, that the member for Wentworth was going around the country indicating that they would be able to find a way to save money by deferring the NBN, which neatly fit within the political agenda of the opposition, which is to do whatever they can to delay the NBN. When it came down to it, they were not even able to put forward the savings task. They did not do anything about the NBN. There are no savings to come out of altering the NBN and they were not able to save a single dollar from deferring any spending on the NBN.
When they were unable to find their own savings, they effectively outsourced policy. They were unable to detect the savings themselves. They basically outsourced their policy ideas to One Nation. We all got those emails going around suggesting that foreign aid be cut or that we cut back the programs that are designed to provide support and provide development of education in Indonesia—something that was started by the Howard government and rightly supported by this government, and it is still supported by previous members of the Howard government. The current opposition, in its recklessness, basically figured, ‘If this is the base level of argument that exists out there and we know it will get support, and we are unable to find the savings ourselves, we will just go ahead and promote that as policy.’ Frankly, it is a disgraceful position and a slight on the opposition that they would have to rely upon those so-called savings efforts with the consequences that flow from it.
In terms of the opposition’s performance, it has been reflected on by many of my colleagues and by others that the Liberal and National parties have used levies as a feature of raising funds from time to time. In particular, I make reference to an article that Peter Hartcher penned back in late January. I think some of his remarks are noteworthy. He rightly points out that the Liberals and the Nationals have had no problem in using a standard tool for managing all sorts of demands and exigencies. Tony Abbott proposed, as has been remarked upon by the Treasurer, a levy to fund his program for paid parental leave. Peter Hartcher reported:
The opposition says it wants the Gillard government to instead pay for the flood damage by making cuts to other government spending. In other words, the opposition is trying to force the government into a difficult position. It has urged Gillard to dump the national broadband network to find the savings, for instance.
Peter Hartcher then makes the point:
The opposition, in short, is playing pure, unadulterated, 100 per cent politics with the recovery from a national, natural disaster. This is an error of judgment.
A number of remarks have been made that, frankly, need to be taken on. There is the idea of a contingency fund. We had some comment from members opposite about a contingency fund. They propose that we lock up billions of dollars. Instead of spending it on need, they propose that we lock up billions of dollars and use that for, effectively, a rainy day. Regarding the billions of dollars that could be used on vital infrastructure, health programs, schools, roads and whatever the government believes is reflective of the demands of communities, those opposite believe we should lock it up and not touch it at all.
One of the good things as a member is that you get good analysis provided from time to time. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in its February 2011 issue of Special report, said this on the front page, headed ‘Sharing risk—financing Australia’s disaster resilience’:
On average, the Australian community spends $1.58 billion each year in recovering from natural disasters …
Effectively, they want us to lock up $1.58 billion every year, but they have a problem with us raising, for one year alone, $1.8 billion from a flood levy.
The other thing that is supposed to count as analysis by the other side is this idea, put forward earlier in the debate, that a government budget is like a household budget. It is simplistic in the extreme when you consider that governments fund roads, schools, hospitals, research and the Defence Force. The types of responsibilities placed on government that require us to be able to step forward and fund programs, with the complexity involved, cannot be likened in any way, shape or form to a household budget. These are tough decisions that need to be made but that the opposition were unable to make, even when they set their own deadlines, and yet they come in here and spout this type of stuff.
Similarly, they lectured us about fiscal responsibility while going into a federal election campaign knowing that they had an $11 billion hole in their own costings. I am sorry, I am never going to be lectured by the opposition about fiscal responsibility when they propose a series of programs to win office and know in their heart of hearts that they cannot even fund them properly. By the way, if the opposition has a problem with the BER, as I have heard a number of members say here and in other places, why don’t they hand back the BER spending that took place in their own electorates? They do not, they cannot and they are not up to the task that is required of this legislation. (Time expired)
Despite the very engaging title of this bill, Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011, it is plainly and simply a flood tax. It does not meet the standards of former levies on several fronts. Before I outline where it fails, let me first say this: I have no objection to paying levies that are just, necessary and uniformly applied—note ‘uniformly applied’. Here again, this particular tax, or levy, if you want to call it that, does not meet those requirements.
The first thing is its size: $1.8 billion. Medicare aside, that is 3½ times the size of the previous largest levies, such as the dairy levy and the gun buyback levy. The second thing is the precedent. We have never before in Australia’s history, certainly not in recent memory, used levies for natural disasters. They have always been funded through consolidated revenue. You can look back at precedents such as Cyclone Tracy and the 1974 floods in Brisbane and come all the way through to Cyclone Larry and the Victorian bushfires and you will find that levies have not been imposed. They have always been funded from consolidated revenue. The third thing is its application. Is it applied uniformly across the country to all people according to their means? No. People who have already received various forms of flood payment will not be required to pay the levy. There is an unintended downstream consequence of that. The member for Page proudly told us that this would only be applied to 50 per cent of the population, as if there were some virtue in that. There is no virtue in that. She mentioned that one of the more recent levies, the gun buyback levy, was applied to 80 per cent of people—and so it should have been. If we have a levy it should be applied according to means, uniformly across the spectrum to all Australians.
The fourth thing is how it was imposed and how it was characterised. It was imposed after the Premier’s appeal in Queensland began. The Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal, which to this point has received about $220 million, was at about $180 million to $200 million before the Prime Minister announced this levy. In my view, that was cynical. If you had intended to impose the levy, why would you have not imposed it earlier? I will tell you why: because a lot of people would not have donated. One of the downstream effects of this is going to be the impact on philanthropy. Will people be as willing as they were literally in their tens of thousands to sweep streets, wash down houses and help people? Will they donate generously if they know there is going to be a tax imposed to do that sort of work? It is creating a precedent for a disaster tax. Once you have done this once you can always go back a few years later and say, ‘Oh, well, we had to do it for the Queensland floods; I suppose we can do it now.’ Then, as I said, the effect on philanthropy could have long-term impacts that you cannot foresee at this stage.
Then there is its credibility. Hardly an economist in Australia said it was a good idea. People like Saul Eslake and Professor McKibbin said that it was not necessary—it was one, but the least favourable, of the alternatives that the government could have chosen. It was, might I say, the easy way out. As the member for Higgins characterised it, it is the makings of a disaster tax.
There is plenty of scope for the government to be able to handle about $5½ billion worth of debt. If you have a look at the direct tax income in the budget papers—things like income tax, super tax, company tax and GST—from about 2009 through to 2014, you will find that from 2009-10 through to 2010-11 there was a growth in income of $28½ billion. The next year, 2011-12, there was another $28½ billion. The year after that, in the forward estimates for 2012-13, there is $22 billion. In 2013-14, there is $20 billion. In total, that is near enough to $100 billion. Are you seriously telling me that a government that is concerned with people’s futures and believes all its own rhetoric, which we have heard today, about the poor people of Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia could not find $5½ billion out of $100 billion in the four years from last year onwards? What sort of managers do we have here?
Have a look at some of the things that were cut to make up that amorphous $5.6 billion. Quite apart from the $1.8 billion, $1 billion is going to come out of infrastructure works across Australia. But the greatest irony of all, if Queensland is the great concern of this government, is that the government has taken $325 billion—nearly a third of the money—out of the very state that needs it most, and it has largely taken it out of roadworks and floodplains. The greatest systemic failure during the flood crisis, and to some extent during the cyclone crisis that followed, was the Bruce Highway. My colleagues here from North Queensland and from the Riverina, on the border with Victoria, know all about this. The Herbert River flood mitigation plan cost $40 million and it was deferred.
I might be a cynic, but I would like to think that when these things are imposed, if the government is going to cut or defer six infrastructure projects, it would try to do it fairly. But—surprise, surprise!—five of the six projects are in coalition seats. Even more surprisingly, three of those five were firm, hand-on-heart promises of sitting Labor members who have since been defeated. I might be cynical, but why would you cut those projects? I add that the sixth project is in the seat of the Independent member for Kennedy.
The other thing I put to the government about management and the question of why it could not find $5.6 billion is that one of the things that we did was to create the Future Fund of $70 billion. We created a communications fund, which has been raided, of $2½ billion. We had $6.5 billion in an education endowment fund for our university research into the future. The Future Fund was going to be able to fund the long-term superannuation needs of the Public Service. In all, we had put aside about $100 billion by the time Labor came to power.
Where is it now?
My colleague the member for Riverina says, ‘Where is it now?’ It has gone, and in its place is a debt of $79 billion. So we have gone from $100 billion in reserves to $79 billion in debt. That is truly extraordinary. I stand to be corrected, but I think that would amount to about $4½ billion of interest—that is, twice what the levy is going to raise.
You can look at this from any angle, but I think the worst thing of the lot is that the Prime Minister tried to characterise this as ‘mates looking after mates’. It is nothing of the sort; it is pure, unadulterated spin by a government that cannot manage and did not want to delve into its reserves properly or plan over a period of three or four years to put sufficient funds aside to look after eventualities like this. Where flooding has occurred, even some of the $1,000 community grants have been badly administered. In fact, the Treasurer said that anybody who applied for one of those and did not need it was ‘low-life’. Even if you met the guidelines, you were still ‘low-life’. But the only low-life are the people who make rules that cannot be adhered to properly or who are cavalier and then try to pull the thing back when it gets out of control. That is where the low-life lies. This is a bad tax. It could have been funded much more easily from another source. It is a disgrace and it is an insult to impose it in the name of mateship on the backs of people who have suffered tragedy.
Debate adjourned.
The following notices were given:
to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, and for other purposes.
to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Migration Act 1958, and for related purposes.
to present a Bill for an Act to deal with consequential matters arising from the enactment of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Regulatory Levies Legislation Amendment (2011 Measures No. 1) Act 2011, and for other purposes.
to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Copyright Act 1968, and for related purposes.
to move:
That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, it is expedient to carry out the following proposed work which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and on which the committee has duly reported to Parliament: Fit-out of new leased premises for the Attorney-General’s Department at 4 National Circuit, Barton, ACT.
to move:
That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, it is expedient to carry out the following proposed work which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and on which the committee has duly reported to Parliament: Fit-out of new leased premises for divisions of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research at Buildings 2 and 3, Precinct Corporate Centre, 105 Delhi Road, Riverside Corporate Park, North Ryde, NSW.
to move:
That this House:
to move:
That this House:
to move:
That this House:
to move:
That this House:
(1) recognises:
(a) Australians are keen to have better access to information about government performance;
(b) more transparent public services have been shown to perform at higher levels; and
(c) greater access to information helps Australians make the best choices; and
(2) commends the Australian Government on the creation of the MySchool, MyHospitals and MyChild websites.
to move:
That this House:
Volunteers are what make this country great. We have seen in the past 12 months and earlier on this year that the spirit of the volunteer is alive and well in this country. I would like to take a moment to thank some of the volunteers who have made a major difference in the lives of people not just in Hasluck but across this great nation of ours.
My office received scores of calls and emails from people who wanted to know the best way they could help the flood appeal from the other side of Australia. Many donated what they could. Pensioners put their hands in their pockets to help others when they hardly had enough to help themselves and young people raised money at shopping centres. All of these efforts are worthy of praise, particularly the efforts of the Swan Districts Football Club in Bassendean, Western Australia. Instead of putting their feet up after winning the WA AFL grand final, the team and management at their own expense flew to the other side of Australia and mucked in with the clean-up efforts in Brisbane. I understand this was the single biggest effort from a sporting club in Australia, and I salute them.
Western Australia has not escaped unscathed from this summer of natural disasters impacting on our coast. Literally the fringe of my electorate was hit by a major bushfire. Over 70 homes were lost but, mercifully, there was no loss of life. That was in no small part thanks to the SES and bushfire fighter volunteers who call Hasluck home. I would like to thank the 25,000 bushfire fighters in WA, who are organised into 750 brigades, but there is just not enough time. Instead, I want to thank the volunteer firefighters from across the City of Swan, the City of Gosnells, the Shire of Kalamunda and the Shire of Mundaring, who pulled together to help their colleagues fight this terrible blaze. I would also like to thank the SES organisations of Swan, Gosnells and Kalamunda for their efforts in assisting with the storms and natural disasters that impacted the region over the past 12 months.
Volunteers come from all walks of life. Last year I attended a volunteer thankyou barbecue in Kalamunda. There are over 200 local volunteers who aid in a range of programs across the shire. Without these magnificent people, Hasluck citizens would not enjoy the quality of life that they do. They care for our elderly, work in our schools, help out at sporting clubs and strive to improve the lives of our disadvantaged. To you all, I say thank you.
The contribution of people who put in time and effort is significant to the communities in which they live. Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith did not want to let his mates or the people around him down. Let us hold these people up as modern-day heroes from all walks of life. To all of them, I say thank you for the volunteer work that you do to make the lives of others better.
There has been some public discussion recently about the role the Labor Party plays in the local community. This is an important debate, and I am glad we are having it. Australia’s oldest and greatest political party has a long tradition of being enmeshed in the local community. Sports clubs were a feature of party life in the 1930s, as were camps and excursions in the 1940s. In recent years the Labor Party has struggled to retain members. In this we are no different from hundreds of other mass membership organisations. As I documented in a book last year, Australians are less likely to join the Scouts and the RSL, to attend a religious service and to know their friends and their neighbours well.
While we should always aim to improve, we should be proud of what we have achieved. Today I want to speak about some of the community activities of the ACT branch of the ALP and how my own branch of the party is working to make itself more engaged and accessible. Local Labor members are involved in community festivals across Canberra. In my own electorate we organised a stall at the recent Canberra Multicultural Festival; at last year’s Fairday, which is an annual event of the AIDS Action Council; and at the Belconnen Community Festival, where I learned the hard way that, when the local strongman offers you a chance for an arm wrestle, discretion is the better part of valour.
This coming weekend ACT Labor members will be at the Canberra Show. We will be there to share the community spirit, offering face painting and balloons, and speaking with ACT residents about how we can work together to build a better city and nation. In the neighbouring electorate of Canberra, I have it on good authority that Labor is an active presence at the Woden and Tuggeranong community festivals.
In our local sub-branches and policy committees, people have worked hard to build an environment that encourages new members to actively participate in the discussions. Recognising that moving motions is not always the best way to canvass a complex issue, some have built a ‘general discussion’ component into their meetings. Others have made a habit of holding occasional meetings as a barbecue in a local park and encouraging members to bring along their friends and families. Another successful strategy is to invite regular guest speakers, including community leaders, businesspeople, union leaders and academics. ACT Labor also holds regular social events in Parliament House, including budget night drinks and policy forums. From its origins, Labor has been a regular presence in the community. I pay tribute to the many Labor Party members who continue that tradition in Canberra today.
I rise to speak on Townsville’s recovery from the cyclone and our readiness to receive visitors and tourists. My city of Townsville is still open for business. In fact, we never closed. I want to tell you that the days currently are hot and the nights are balmy, which is code for hot. But the barra are biting and the mud crabs are just about jumping into your tinnie. My city extends an invitation to any and all Australians to visit us for a short while and sample one of the truly great regional centres of Australia.
Hop on a Kookaburra Tours bus with Tony O’Connor and have a really great bloke show you around the region. You can ask him anything and he will answer. It may not always be the truth, but he will answer with a smile on his face and a wink of his eye. Come and stay at any of our fine hotels and motels. If you want something a little more intimate, get a room at Classique Bed and Breakfast on the city fringe. The food there is to die for and the hosts are so friendly you will want them to adopt you.
Go to Reef HQ and see the work being done with our Turtle Hospital, where research meets entertainment. The Museum of Tropical Queensland is a must if you have children. Go and dive at the Yongala wreck, one of the truly great dives in the world. It is coming up to 100 years since the ship sank and they are planning a series of events to mark that occasion.
Go out to Mungalla Aboriginal Tours just outside Ingham for a wonderful walk through the Dreamtime, and mix with people who not only own the property but are part of the land. Come for a weekend and watch the Cowboys as we light up the NRL this year. Yes, it will be our year this year! Come by plane or car or motorhome—you will have a great time. Go out to the reef on a Sunferry, or catch the Sunferry across to Magnetic Island. It is truly a beautiful place. With its beaches and bays and restaurants and bars, you are guaranteed to have a great time.
One thing, though, when you are on Maggie and you hop off the ferry and cross the hill towards Geoffrey Bay, be careful as you walk over the hill because it is exceedingly dangerous. The verges and shoulders are narrow and blind for the drivers. You see, there was supposed to be a beautiful walk around the front of these hills to link the bays and the beaches. It was going to cost only $4.5 million and both major parties made that promise. It would be one of the great walks in Australia as it would link not only the bays and beaches but also the walks through the world natural heritage parks. Unfortunately, our government has seen fit not to stick with that promise. But do not let this government’s callous disregard for election promises put you off. Get out to the island and have a great unwind. It is a great place and we will welcome you there with open arms. Townsville is open for business.
Last week and this week there have been a number of birthdays celebrated in my electorate of Parramatta and, because of those birthdays, I find that I have been spending quite an amount of my time with my Islamic community. Last weekend they celebrated the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed.
On Sunday I attended my local Shia mosque down in Granville, Nabi Akram, a place that I know quite well, where some of the nicest people I have met were quietly celebrating, as is their way, the birth of Mohammed. I should also say that I am often invited at Christmas time to that mosque to celebrate the birth of Christ. It is usually on Christmas Eve, so I have managed to get there twice, I think, in the last six years. The rest of the time I was off with my own family. They are a charming group of people at the mosque. They had made a very large cake shaped like a mosque. It was bright green and I had to eat at least half the dome on my own.
It is worth pointing out, though, that in many places of the world it is not safe for the Islamic community to celebrate the birth of Mohammed. It is not celebrated by the fundamentalists and we have seen in recent weeks a number of bombings of mosques and events around the world where people celebrating the birth of Mohammed were targeted by extremists. It is really clear in my community that Australian muslims are grateful to be able to live in a country where they can live in peace, build good lives and celebrate their faith without fear.
I also attended a concert by Darulfatwa Islamic High Council, largely of chanting of the Koran, something which I quite enjoy. This time I got to hear it from the African community and the Polynesian community and the Bosnians as well. I have to say when you hear the Arabic chanting style performed by Africans it is amazing how it takes on quite a different colour. It was an extraordinary event and again a fabulous celebration of the birth of a person that is incredibly important to many people in my community.
This Sunday is a birthday of a different kind. I am off to my Ismaili Shiah mosque in Auburn. Just as there are a great range of versions of the Christian faith, there are a great range, even in my community, of versions of Islamic faith. The Ismailis are a particularly interesting group who believe that if you can only educate one child you should educate the girl. They come from all over the world and virtually every woman you meet has a university education and the men are all in small business. It is very interesting way to manage their economy. This Sunday they are celebrating the 100th birthday of his Holiness Dr Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, their leader, a person who they hold in great esteem. It is a very important celebration for them and I will be pleased to be there.
It is a pleasure to rise in this House and share with members the wonderful community spirit of the Healesville community. Last Friday I had the honour and pleasure of attending the opening of the Healesville Community Bank branch of the Bendigo Bank. This was the culmination of around two years of community work. The Healesville community wanted a Bendigo Bank branch and it was in the wake of the tragic bushfires in Victoria that they decided to put together the community bank and work together to achieve this end. It was, as you would expect, a wonderful day of celebration and a real tribute to the community effort, determination and spirit which saw them succeed in opening their very own branch in Healesville.
I want to take the time this morning to pay tribute to the board of directors. I would like to mention Gary Slater, the chair; Neil Skinner, the secretary; Fred Ward, the treasurer; Kerri Goding; Kath Gannaway; Bob Gannaway; Kath Holton; Barb Honan; Jeanette McRae, who is also a local councillor with the Shire of Yarra Ranges; Andrew Ricketson; and Sandra Schoffer. I also wish well all the staff of the new bank branch, led by Suzanne Dixon.
The opening of branches like this cannot happen without the combined efforts of so many people. There are so many community groups in Healesville who pledge support and will support this new bank. They made it possible. There was the mentoring from other community members who have opened bank branches within the Yarra Valley. I would particularly like to mention Jacqui Hall, who acted as a mentor. Jacqui is on the board of the Warburton and Yarra Junction and District Community Bank. Adam Rimington, a Bendigo Bank employee, also provided a great deal of support.
It was a wonderful day and a wonderful opening. The Healesville community were ecstatic, as you can imagine. They were treated to a number of songs from the Healesville Rocky Road Choir and also the Healesville Primary School choir. I would like to congratulate all of the kids at Healesville Primary who made the celebration just that little bit extra special last Friday. Congratulations again to all of those involved and to the Healesville community, who have such a strong community spirit.
I rise today to talk about the dairy industry and concerns expressed by many in dairy communities about the current price war going on amongst major retailers, in particular driven by the actions of Coles, who have put in place a $2 home brand price campaign. That has been matched by other retailers, such as Woolies, and I understand Aldi and others are now coming on board. In rural dairy communities there is incredible nervousness. They have lived through a decade of deregulation. The rights and wrongs of that have been played out by many. That 10-year period saw the number of dairy farmers in my community drop from 150 down to about 35 or 40. If we now have a price war that is unsustainable—and I use the word ‘unsustainable’ because Woolworths have said it is a price that is unsustainable—it will have flow-on impacts on regional and rural communities.
Government must act. The ACCC must do its job and look at the long-term implications of short-term loss leaders and price wars such as what is going on now. I have asked the Prime Minister to consider the issues around this price war. I have asked the ACCC and Graeme Samuel to respond to the issues around this price war. I have also asked government to get its skates on with regard to food policy generally. I think this is an opportunity to really deliver on the question that is facing many communities to do with staple products: just what is the place in public policy of fresh and local nutritional products in Australia today? We have an obesity crisis. It is well identified, yet we seem to be accepting the increasing loss of key products that are being priced out of the market. That is a loss to regional communities but it has broader implications for food security in Australia.
I hope that on those two fronts—the ACCC and the start of some public discussion around food policy generally—we see some action from government and government agencies. I hope we do not have to go through the public rallies, town rallies and jersey cows out the front of Parliament House to recognise the place that dairy farmers have in this country. (Time expired)
I recently had the pleasure of launching the inaugural Ryan Community Service Awards. Volunteer organisations and those who work within them are the backbone of the Ryan community. I have been privileged to travel around the electorate and present awards to the outstanding residents who have been nominated by local organisations for their contributions to our community. I sincerely thank these volunteers for their tireless work to make Ryan a better place to live, work and raise a family.
I start by acknowledging Mr Andrew Bolton. Andrew has been the main driver behind remodelling the top sports field of St Ignatius School in Toowong, a process to which he dedicated over four years. He has been heavily involved in designing the field, based on the specific needs of the children, and has overseen its construction daily. Andrew is a deserving recipient of a Ryan community award.
Just down the road from St Ignatius School, Mr Ron Archer has long been involved in the West Toowong Progress Association, helping to establish the West Toowong Bowls Club, a project that he has been leading since the 1950s. Over these decades, Ron has been a driving force in building an outdoor bowling green for the club and overseeing the move from a solely indoor venue to an official competition location for the Royal Queensland Bowls Association. Ron has continually strived to take initiatives to improve the club, whilst maintaining its heritage and uniqueness, a trait which attracts members not only from the local area but from all over Brisbane. The West Toowong Bowls Club would not be the success it is today without Ron’s tireless dedication to the progress association.
Another deserving recipient is Mr Dennis McKee. Joining the Greenslopes Private Hospital team as the volunteer welfare officer in 2008, Dennis has always shown compassion and integrity, continually putting others’ needs above his own. Dennis has never sought recognition for his efforts, and his unassuming and humble nature has endeared him to his peers and veterans, earning him the utmost respect of the local community.
Mr Bill Beeson also falls within this category. For the past three years Bill has voluntarily taught seniors in north-west Brisbane basic computer and internet skills. He teaches eight classes over two days, 48 weeks per year. Bill’s commitment to our seniors is highly respected and appreciated, and I am proud to recognise his dedication and initiative.
Mrs Marion Thomas is another example of a selfless individual using her skills to serve the community. Mrs Thomas uses her talent for music to play piano for residents at various aged-care facilities around The Gap, on top of her commitments as an organist for The Gap Uniting Church. Mrs Thomas is an active member of The Gap Amnesty International Group, and helps raise funds and awareness for international care agencies. In the past, she taught literacy programs in the prison system, and she continues this support through her membership of The Gap Uniting Church Mission, Outreach and Community Services leadership team. Mrs Thomas’s unwavering compassion, care and support for those in need is a trait that I truly admire, and I take great pleasure in recognising her efforts.
I would like to collectively recognise the volunteers of the Wesley Breast Clinic. For many years, these volunteers have acted as conduits of communication between the patients and clinical staff. They perform various duties as part of their voluntary work, from the simple comfort of providing tea and coffee to patients to being a supportive ear to any patient or family member in need. In so doing, they create a welcoming and less stressful environment during a difficult time.
The calibre of the recipients of this year’s awards was truly outstanding. The nature and skills of volunteers around Ryan are as diverse as the individuals are dedicated, and I offer my continued encouragement and support to community organisations throughout Ryan.
Hey!
The honourable member’s time has expired and I am sure that she would thank the member for Herbert for his enthusiastic support.
I want to congratulate the member for Ryan for getting all of that in. I want today to talk about Glebe Post Office: a social and commercial hub in my electorate which offered essential services to the Glebe community for over 120 years until its abrupt closure earlier this month. Senator Faulkner has spoken twice in the adjournment debate in the Senate about the history of Glebe Post Office. It has been in its current site from 1886 when it opened on 5 January with a postmistress, Miss Minnie Knott. Miss Minnie Knott’s story is a very interesting one. There were not too many women in charge of post offices in those days and of course eventually she was replaced because she could not earn more than £160, so they had to put a bloke in over the top of her. I am glad to say things have changed a lot since those days.
I learned about Australia Post’s plans for Glebe Post Office along with the rest of the community in a newspaper article less than a week before Christmas. On 4 February, despite the unanimous protests of the local community and despite the fact that the local government, the state member of parliament, the federal member of parliament, Senator Faulkner and others were unanimously opposed to the closure of this post office, Australia Post went ahead and closed the Glebe Post Office for good.
I would like to take this opportunity of tabling a non-conforming petition which carries the names of around 4,000 local residents, who have been thoroughly opposed to the closure of Glebe Post Office. I share residents’ anger at the lack of meaningful consultation from Australia Post about this decision. Australia Post could have harnessed the genuine groundswell of support for this historical service and worked with the local community to keep Glebe Post Office open.
The minister as a minister is able to table a document but because it is a non-conforming petition it cannot be received as a petition.
Thank you. I will take the opportunity of tabling it as a document. Australia Post decided that the community’s energy and passion for this service was a storm to be weathered rather than a force to be harnessed. I also share residents’ anger at the model of corporate governance bound by the letter of legislated community service obligations but blind to the spirit of community service itself.
This post office serves a poor and disadvantaged community. Most of the work done at this post office is to do with people paying bills with cash because a lot of residents do not have the money to have cheque accounts. That is not of high value to Australia Post, so they took this opportunity of closing this post office instead of keeping it open and meeting the spirit of their community service obligation not just the bland letter of it. This is a genuine example of community service and a lifeline to local residents the loss of which will be deeply felt in coming years.
I finally want to acknowledge the enormous work of the residents of Glebe. They fought hard to keep this post office open. They are used to fighting. They fought to keep the Glebe as it is, protecting it from developers. Unfortunately, this recent fight was lost.
I rise to express my support for the Victorian coalition government’s decision to allow a trial of cattle grazing in the high country to help reduce the severity of bushfires. In expressing my support for the current trial, I condemn the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities for his theatrical display in support of the Greens during question time yesterday. If ever we needed any further proof that Labor is in government but the Greens are in charge, we had it yesterday. In response to a question from the member for Melbourne, the environment minister could not wait to fall in behind his Green masters. It was like whistling to a kelpie in the high country: Bandt whistled and Burke came bounding across the chamber, wagging his tail! I was worried he was going to lick the face of the member for Melbourne, such was his enthusiasm to please his master!
Labor may be in government but there is no doubt the Greens are in charge—and, come 1 July, it is going to get worse for regional Australians. When the Greens secure the balance of power in the Senate, regional Australians have a lot to be worried about. The Greens want to ban live exports, they want to ban rodeos, they want to shut down commercial fishing and the timber industry, they hate recreational anglers and they are already talking about a private member’s bill to kick the cattlemen out of the high country.
Let me tell the House about the boiling resentment in my community. People have had an absolute gutful of city based Greens and Labor MPs telling them how to live their lives. The Greens have never created a job in regional Australia and they are a direct threat to jobs in our traditional industries. The minister for the environment needs to think twice before he becomes the wagging tail for every dog of a policy that the Greens put forward.
The issue of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park is a contentious one; I acknowledge that. There are strong views on both sides of the debate. But the Victorian government took a clear policy to the state election in November last year that it would take action to return cattle if it was elected. It won a clear mandate for that policy, particularly in the seat of Gippsland East, where Tim Bull removed the last remaining Independent from office. The Labor Party has been wiped out in eastern Victoria because it would not listen to locals.
The Victorian government wants to take direct action to help reduce the severity of further bushfires. We need to reduce the fuel load in the high country. We know that hot fires destroy the environment. But in the past the more extreme elements of the Greens have even opposed fuel reduction burns. Returning the cattle for a trial has been conducted in a responsible manner; for example, there are no cattle in the areas regarded as environmentally sensitive such as the Bogong High Plains.
I can tell you what is up there: noxious weeds, about 8,000 wild brumbies and thousands of deer. We got rid of one ‘Brumby’ in Victoria last year, but there are a lot more to go. If the minister and the member for Melbourne were serious about caring for the environment, they would support practical action. The trial to assess the impact of cattle grazing on reducing fire intensity deserves our support, particularly in the aftermath of the devastating Black Saturday bushfires.
The Greens and Labor have a ‘lock it up and leave it’ mentality when it comes to managing parks and the environment. If the environment minister wants to be taken seriously, why doesn’t he reinstate the $11 million he ripped out of Landcare in his previous job. If the member for Melbourne wants to take on a real environmental issue, support the coalition’s efforts to control wild dogs, foxes and weeds, which are destroying the natural environment. (Time expired)
I rise today to speak about a really outstanding individual in my electorate. This wonderful woman is Lorraine Grennan. I would like to congratulate Lorraine. She was recently awarded the Tweed Shire Council Citizen of the Year. She is a truly remarkable woman. Lorraine was recognised as the Tweed Shire Council Citizen of the Year at the Australia Day ceremony held at Bogangar. She and other recipients were acknowledged for the great work and achievements that they do within the Tweed Shire.
I was very pleased to be able to attend these Australia Day celebrations, which also incorporated the citizenship ceremony. But it really was a day that highlighted Lorraine’s remarkable work. She was recognised for her ongoing work with a group called Compassionate Friends. This is a group that provides ongoing support for bereaved family members. Lorraine has been doing this work for a long period of time and is such a committed, dedicated and inspirational woman.
Lorraine was born in 1940 and has lived her whole life in the Tweed, where she met and married Barry Grennan and where they raised five children. On 23 March 1983 Lorraine experienced her own family tragedy with the heartbreaking death of her son Michael at the age of 20 from leukaemia. As Lorraine has said:
The grief process is extremely complex. It is very different from one person to another and these feelings never go away entirely.
She was very eager to fight this disease and assist where she could. She did lots of voluntary work with St Vincent de Paul and assisted many groups in raising money for cancer research. In August 1992 she started having meetings in her home for bereaved parents to provide support. The local chapter of Compassionate Friends was started to provide much-needed support right across the North Coast. Nearly 18 years later she is still having meetings in her home, with many people coming from South-East Queensland as well as from around the Northern Rivers. Compassionate Friends is an international organisation of bereaved parents offering friendship and support. It is non-denominational and non-profit and was founded in England in 1969.
For the past two decades Lorraine has staged many meetings in her home. She makes many phone calls to grieving families. She organises special Christmas lunches. In 1993 she completed a book about her son Mick as part of dealing with her grief, and the book was titled Mick, Send Me a Butterfly. She receives overwhelming support from our community and she is a very highly regarded and very caring woman who continually reaches out to those in need of compassion and sympathy. I think the fact that she has been committed to Compassionate Friends for over two decades shows her level of absolute dedication. She really is one of the most truly caring and sympathetic people I have ever met. I congratulate Lorraine Grennan on this outstanding effort. She is an incredibly worthy recipient of the Tweed Shire Council Citizen of the Year.
Order! In accordance with standing order 193 the time for constituency statements has concluded.
Debate resumed from 10 February, on motion by Mr Gray:
That this bill be now read a second time.
I rise to consider the appropriation bills that are before us today. The main purpose of these bills, of course, is to propose appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the ordinary annual services of the government in addition to those provided in the 2010-11 budget. The appropriation being sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 is around $1.4 billion and the total appropriation in Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 is just over $1 billion. These are appropriations required for moneys that were not anticipated at the time of the framing of the budget, so they are overruns or expenses adding up to close to $2½ billion that were not anticipated some eight months ago. In the context of these bills, there are funds being appropriated to support what would appear to be bad management and poor process. In other words, these appropriation bills will become a symbol of the incompetence, the waste and the failure of due process that have come to characterise this administration.
For example, for the Department of Climate Change and Energy, there is an appropriation of $15 million to support functions that were simply transferred from the former Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. Why do you need an extra $15 million for a new bunch of public servants to do exactly what a previous bunch of public servants had to do? Fifteen million dollars rolls easily off the tongue. It is not considered by those on the other side to be of any consequence. But it is a lot of money—a lot of money—and, at a time when households are pulling in their heads to try and make ends meet, to live within their means, we have a government that continues with this approach to public funding and the management of taxpayers’ funds which is unacceptable.
There is $45.6 million for the closure of the Home Insulation Program. Now, the government made provision for this in the last budget. They spent all last year and part of the year before with red faces, apologising, as community resentment built by the day over the total incompetence of the Home Insulation Program. Given the public outcry that occurred with this program, you would have thought that the government would have at least given every consideration to what it was going to cost to mop up the mess—how much it would take to close the damn thing down and how much it was going to cost for public servants and others to do their best to fix the situation and satisfy the literally hundreds of thousands of householders who were dudded under this pathetic and mismanaged program.
Six months later we find another $46 million, more or less, is required for the closure of this program. They still got that wrong. What can they get right in managing taxpayers’ money? This is another example of waste that just keeps on giving. The government seem incapable of taking full responsibility for this program: for the waste, the hurt and the deaths that have occurred. This program has so much against it, yet they are not capable of properly costing even the closure of the program.
In relation to Immigration and Citizenship, of the $2.5 billion nearly $300 million is supplementary funding for operational costs associated with the management of offshore asylum seekers. In the space of six months the government has underestimated the cost of border protection to the tune of $300 million. It shows how out of control this government is when it comes to managing our borders. We now have about 6,000 people on the mainland due to be processed. We have boats arriving almost weekly, even though it is the wrong season. Individuals are putting their lives at great risk, as we saw tragically a few weeks ago. This government provides absolutely no deterrent for people who risk breaking through our borders. It has no control over the borders, which means people have no confidence in the whole immigration program. Is it any wonder that people are concerned more generally about the way this country is being managed and its borders are being protected?
No country has even signed up to the East Timor proposition. The Prime Minister had a thought bubble before the election and put out there as the ultimate solution that there would be a processing centre set up in East Timor. After six months of the most assiduous representations by our departmental officials all over the region, not one country has shown a scintilla of interest in signing up for that program. Yet Nauru is still willing to sign the UN agreements. It is just pure politics that is stopping this government from doing what it has to do. It is letting politics interfere with the cost of running these programs and it is threatening human life because of this lack of deterrent for people who seek to break through our borders.
In the space of six months the government have underestimated the cost of spending on the border protection program to the tune of $300 million. We are now billions of dollars behind what was anticipated in the forward estimates some two or three years ago. This is a symbol of great waste and incompetence. The measures in these appropriation bills are endless symbols of the waste and incompetence by this government. This is a snapshot of some of the activities to be funded through these appropriations. These modest amounts add up to significant sums—in this case, $2.3 billion. The government would say these modest amounts are neither here nor there: ‘What is $15 million here or $300 million there?’
This is why we have a debt heading towards $90 billion. This is why we are aiming at a deficit this year of $40 billion and had one of $57 billion last year—the two worst deficit situations in our history. It has occurred because if you do not look after the pennies you do not look after the pounds. How can you justify a $40 billion deficit? How can you justify a $57 billion deficit and then stand there and say that you are managing this economy? How can you put up appropriations like this that demonstrate enormous incompetence? Overruns on so many programs should have been anticipated but have not been anticipated.
Last night I stood in the main chamber and debated the levy for flood reconstruction. This levy will raise nearly $2 billion. If the government had stuck with its budget of six months ago it would have paid for that levy and more. If the government had shown that it was able to manage this place without further waste, without further overspending—if it could live within its means like every Australian family is being required to do at this point in time, despite massive increases in prices—we would not have to have the levy. It is quite ironic. We have two debates going on almost in tandem that demonstrate that the money was there, is there, to pay for that levy. There was no need for the levy, but of course this is a government whose instinct is to tax, to spend and to borrow.
All the government have done since they arrived is to borrow, tax and spend. Where has there been one hard decision on the fiscal front? Even the measures towards flood reconstruction that they are paying for out of savings were basically all measures that we had identified at the time of the election. This government pilloried us in a political sense for putting up those savings. Now, after we went out and took the heat for those political decisions some months ago, they have taken those savings. Who has bleated about any of those savings? More or less one or two interest groups have, and they have caved in on those. They caved into the Greens. They bought off the Greens and Independents with hundreds of millions of dollars in order to enable their program to go forward. They cannot even make a tough decision and make it stick. They cave in to the political demands of the crossbenchers.
It must be remembered that this government, in the middle of all this, is borrowing $100 million a day. A lot of the interest rate increases are because this government is still borrowing $100 million a day. In other words, every 17 days this government borrows what it is going to collect on the levy. Every 17 days it has borrowed an amount equivalent to the levy. This government is being exposed almost daily for its incompetence and its lack of fiscal rectitude. There is a $45 billion interest bill to be paid over the next four years. This is incompetence in the extreme. There is no plan to address this funding and fiscal situation. The government claims that a surplus will be achieved in 2012-13. It may be manufactured, but what it is not telling you—the dead cat on the table—is the situation with the structural deficit. It is the issue that needs to be explained and it is the issue that the Treasurer has studiously avoided. The blow-out of the underlying structural deficit puts a lie to all the rhetoric we hear about the government having some plan to address our debt and deficit situation.
So what is a structural deficit? A structural deficit represents ongoing spending commitments that are relied on from revenue that will not persist—in this case, the mining boom. It is a bit like a situation where someone who has been achieving, say, $20,000 a year in overtime for the last couple of years then thinks: ‘I’ll take out a mortgage. I can now afford a $500,000 mortgage with my regular pay and overtime.’ The expectation is that the overtime will continue into the future. So the worker takes out a $500,000, 25-year mortgage and then finds out two years later that the overtime has stopped. The excess demand for the products that the company was producing has dried up. He is back on his normal pay. All of a sudden he realises—
You’d fix up the penalty rates.
Here we are—the incompetence pouring out of those opposite. So you have a situation where this person finds that he now can only afford a mortgage of $300,000 to $350,000 and not $500,000. But he has got a 25-year commitment. He has got a problem. He has to sell the house and get a smaller mortgage. He has to take tough decisions to live within his means. He has a structural deficit. He has long-term commitments, but the income to pay for those long-term commitments has not persisted.
It is the same thing with this country. We have long-term commitments, nearly $100 billion of debt that this government is building up, and we have spending programs that will continue. They are recurrent expenditure. They will come year in, year out as annual commitments that this government is making that have no end, yet they are funding those commitments out of the proceeds of the mining boom. They are wasting the mining boom. There is an illusion about the state of the books of this country. They are going to use the mining boom money to meet current commitments, maybe in 2012-13. But what you find is that, when you allow for the mining boom and commodity prices going back to normal—and they will—there will be a supply response, and the demand will come off at some stage. There are 1,000 mines around the world that are now being put into production. There is infrastructure being built in Mongolia, in South America, in Africa, in Eastern Europe and in North America. There is port infrastructure to take the resources from thousands of mines to meet demand. So the supply response will increase. We think we are awash with gas, and we are, but we have still only got two per cent of the world’s gas reserves. So we will face competition. We will still do well, but the mining boom will come off, and it may come off sooner than we anticipate. It is all right to predict 10 years.
I was in agriculture for 18 years and there were always booms and busts. Every time there was a boom in grain, people would move out of sheep into grain and everyone would always predict a longer boom that what really occurred. Invariably, it was because no-one anticipated the supply response, not only the extra grain production within the country but the extra grain production around the world. Invariably, the price came back. It did not necessarily collapse; it came back to more normal levels because of the supply response. It invariably came back sooner than everyone predicted. There is a sort of boom mentality where people want to make assumptions about how long these things are going to last.
We have those on the other side feeding in 10- and 15-year assumptions about the mining boom. It is unrealistic. It demonstrates their lack of contact with the real world—with the commercial world. We now have a situation where, in the 2009-10 budget papers, the government featured this structural deficit. There had been a small structural deficit beginning at the end of our previous term in office, but it was about $2.5 billion. You know what it is today? It is $50 billion. There is an underlying structural budget deficit that has been identified by Treasury. It was first put in the budget papers of 2009-10. In 2010-11 there is no reference to it; it has disappeared. Six months after last year’s budget, Treasury quietly put out a paper that updated the structural deficit. It showed the structural deficit was growing astronomically—that, instead of coming out of it in 2015-16, we would come out of it in 2020. So we have a structural deficit of a large order.
The reality of the budget as identified by the Treasury, as agreed by the government but never talked about by the government, is that the government have an underlying budget deficit which is going to go through at least to 2020. This means we will not have paid off one cent of debt—you do not pay off debt until you are into a real surplus—until 2020. We will not have paid this debt off until 2030. We are talking 20 years until the debt is paid off.
What an absolute disgrace that this government would put us in such a vulnerable position. We are a small, open economy. If there is a double-dip recession or if there is a serious downturn in any way—instability coming from the Middle East with oil prices going up—then we are vulnerable. This government needs to restore the economic resilience that they inherited and subsequently trashed—that economic resilience that we need as a small country to work our way through things that are outside of our control, and the rest of the world’s control. But no, we go on blindly as though everything is fine. Spending, spending, spending; more commitments, bigger structural deficit, off into the future using all of the mining industry money. What a disgrace. What an absolutely irresponsible, inconsiderate, highly politicised approach to government. They are just looking to save their own jobs every three years. That is the total preoccupation of this government. That motivates all of their major decisions and it is has driven the spending, spending, spending approach of this government. They need to be held to account.
These appropriations are a huge symbol of the waste and incompetence and politicisation of this whole budget process. This is a government which needs to take stock. It needs to do what every family in Australia is doing—that is, seeking to live within its means. For at least 12 months now every family in Australia has delayed incurring expenses they were going to incur and delayed things they were going to purchase because they can no longer afford them; the electricity bills have gone up 35 per cent in three years and interest rates have gone up $6,000 on the average mortgage in the past 12 months. This government’s $100 million a day in the finance market is putting pressure on interest rates. At least half of the interest rate rise is due to the excessive spending of this government. So $3,000 a year is due to the incompetence and politicisation of this government and its spending programs. That is the contribution they have made to average families in Australia, and it is putting enormous pressure on them.
If this government exercised the same fiscal rectitude, if it exercised the same restraint that families who need to live within their means are exercising, then we would find that the economy would start to take some shape. But all we hear is spin and all we see is illusion. They have created the illusion of progress, and it is not there. Look at the structural deficit. Explain the structural deficit. Explain the worsening of the structural deficit. The government tried to say in 2009 it was due to the stimulus spending. What do they say now as it grows and grows and grows in the face of a mining boom of unprecedented proportions? It beggars belief that we are seeing this unfold. An opportunity to set Australia up for the future, to set Australia up to be resilient against any major events outside of our control has been squandered by this government.
We need some checks and balances here. We need a situation where these sorts of things can be exposed. At the present time the government hides behind the so-called independence of the Treasury. Of course it is not independent; it is there to work for the government of the day. Most of the material in the red books and the blue books that came out after the election is blacked out. You could not see what any of the figures were; you could not see the really tough advice that was given to this government. All we ever see from the public service is what the government wants us to see.
We have not got any group that is capable of providing some independent assessment. This is why we put up a proposal for a Parliamentary Budget Office at the last election. We were looking to have an independent and well-resourced statutory authority located in Parliament House, an authority tasked with providing objective and impartial advice and analysis on the Commonwealth budget and the budget cycle, on the medium- and long-term budget projections and on the cost of policy proposals. Look how politicised that was last time. We put up $50 billion of savings and the whole process was politicised by this government. I met with Ken Henry for 3½ hours and, on nearly all of the proposals for which the government subsequently pilloried us, the only difference was assumptions. Even when we put up a case, in most cases the head of the Treasury said, ‘We’ve made our decision.’ Sometimes it was a case of just two per cent—82 per cent versus 84 per cent—in terms of a take-up factor, but when you put that over four years, in a big program, it looks like a $900 million hole. They were simply assumptions and they were very close together. But Ken Henry said: ‘We’ve made our decision. That’s what we’ve put into our model. You can like it or lump it.’ That was the politicisation of this process.
We need to take the politics out of the budget and the campaign process. We need a Parliamentary Budget Office. The government fought this proposal all the way through and denigrated it when we put it forward during the last term, but they accepted it when the Greens and the crossbenchers insisted upon it. But what are we seeing? Nothing as yet. It is our expectation that this office will be three desks in the corner of the library; that is what we will get. It will be another political response to a very legitimate concern. If we were in government we would have to face this scrutiny and objective assessment as well. This is not something put up to advantage us on one side of politics. This is a genuine, legitimate and sensible proposal. We should have an independent body, stationed within Parliament House, that can respond to any member or senator in terms of individual issues, deal with the policy costings of both sides of politics well in advance of an election and find numbers that everyone accepts are the right numbers. We can then have a debate about policy in the election and not some orchestrated political process in a campaign which seeks to denigrate the opposition because the government has numbers and assumptions which may differ from other authorities. This is a really important proposal and it needs to be adequately financed so that we get the politics taken out of this process.
I have another example of the great hypocrisy associated with this government on many issues. If you look at the forward estimates you will find that, in the latter years, the appropriation for natural disasters is the lowest in 10 years. I talked about it being an illusion if we get to a surplus. The government is seeking to manufacture a surplus. The appropriation is $80 million. We have just had to agree to $5.6 billion of expenditure for natural disasters. The government has a provision of $80 million, which is the smallest amount in 10 years. When the Minister for Finance, Senator Wong, was the climate change minister, she warned that:
Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including cyclones, storms, droughts, heatwaves bushfires and floods.
The finance minister is on record saying we are going to experience far more natural disasters in the years ahead, because of this government’s belief in the consequences of climate change, yet she has reduced the appropriation for natural disasters to its lowest level in 10 years. What hypocrisy! It just shows that there is an attempt across this government to manufacture a surplus in 2012-13 and ignore the structural deficit. This is politics. This is another example of the hypocrisy of this government in the way in which it is constructing and running the finances of this country.
This government needs to tackle the cost of living. This was its big election pitch in 2007 but it has failed on all counts. There are families around this country who are facing deep financial pressures but living within their means. This government needs to take a leaf out of the book of Australian families and live within its means. (Time expired)
I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. I have listened very carefully to the member for Goldstein’s appropriation speech and his reference to meeting for three hours with the Treasury secretary. All I can say is that I feel sorry for the Treasury secretary. He had to endure what we have had to endure, which is just a tepid audition by the member for Goldstein to take the member for North Sydney’s job. It is a shockingly transparent attempt to audition for another position within the shadow cabinet. The member for Goldstein talked a bit about the cuts that the opposition are going to make, and I would like to talk about the cuts to foreign aid in particular.
There is in these appropriation bills an appropriation relating to foreign aid, which is a very important part of Australia’s international commitment. Australia has reached arrangements with other countries to provide resources to combat poverty, malaria and other blights on this world. Of course, the coalition parties are proposing to defer, as I understand it, $448 million of foreign aid to Indonesian schools. That might sound good in a One Nation email or when you are shouting it out in a shopping centre or in the front bar of a hotel. No doubt you would get a lot of heads nodding, because it is understandable that people would want to look after their own first. But if you make the counter-argument and say to people, ‘Would you support Australia welshing on its deals, welshing on its words, welshing on its commitment?’ they would probably say no. What if you said to people, ‘Should we invite the Taliban to our doorstep?’ We have to remember that ‘talib’ means student. The Taliban drew their ranks from the schools and from young men who were made refugees by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. We know that schools can produce educated, moderate people who are committed to economic growth and peace and justice in this world, but we know also from the Afghanistan experience that they can produce soldiers and movements and colour a nation’s politics and put the gun into a nation’s politics.
It was John Howard who put the education aid scheme in place. It was not the Labor government; it was John Howard and Alexander Downer. And we know that Alexander Downer does not think much of the coalition’s referrals and does not think much of them walking away from this very important Howard government program. According to one source in the Sydney Morning Herald on 11 February this year, Alexander Downer said it was ‘a filthy proposal’ to defer the assistance that we might provide to Indonesian schools.
We know that his successor in the seat of Mayo, Jamie Briggs—a very able coalition member—called on the party to retain the funding. He broke ranks on ABC radio the day before the funding cut was announced. He said the programs were designed to prevent terrorism and the rise of extremism in Islamic schools in our nearest neighbour. He said that the axing of that program, the cuts that were proposed by Tony Abbott and his shadow cabinet, were a bad idea. They are a terrible idea. The foreign minister has said that the only winner is Abu Bakar Bashir, but I fear that that would be the least of our problems if we allowed schools in our region to be radicalised by extremists, by people who seek to promote extremism. So we know that this was a terrible decision by the coalition. We really cannot believe they would propose it, that they would propose welshing on a deal, that they would take something out of a One Nation email and propose it in the parliament of this country, in the politics of this country. We now know it is all part of a broader strategy to appeal to the darker angels in our nature, to run not so much a dog whistle but a megaphone in the shopping centres and pubs of this country, to say that it is all right to be bigoted, all right to take a short-term view and all right to be reactionary. It is not all right. It is actually against our national interest. It is a terrible blight on our national interest. The coalition should think very carefully about the cuts they proposed and the impact they would have on our national circumstances. I think it is just terrible. They should rethink what they are doing.
Also in this appropriations bill is $10.1 million for the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, which is part of delivering on Labor’s commitment to improving GEERS, increasing redundancy protection to up to four weeks pay per year of service rather than the previous cap of 16 weeks, removing access to financial assistance for company directors or excluded employees and making sure that this scheme is preserved in legislation, as opposed to just being set up under regulations or by government fiat. It is a very important thing. There have been a lot of contests in the community about unpaid entitlements, and I know this from my own experience of meeting with the lead union in this area, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. I have met with John Camillo many times about unpaid entitlements, and I have also met many times with Jon Gee, the secretary of the vehicle division. Jon is a very passionate advocate of making sure that people’s entitlements are secured, a passionate advocate of the car industry in my state and a passionate advocate of the Holden GMH plant at Elizabeth, which of course lies in the heart of my electorate. He came to see me only the other day with Paul Brown, Heinz Joham and other delegates at the plant. They came to meet me, obviously about the future of the car industry. We know that we have the new Holden Cruze coming online, a new car rolling off the line. It is a symbol, I think, just as when Ben Chifley waved the first Holden off the line. It is a symbol of progress, a symbol of our nation’s ability to make things. It is a symbol in these troubled times, when the country is buffeted by the global financial crisis and by the troubles in the international car industry. It is a sign that this plant can prosper and survive in the most difficult of circumstances. Of course, the union, led very ably by John Camillo and Jon Gee, continue in the strongest possible manner to put forward their views about how we might secure even more production at Holden’s Elizabeth plant and in the car industry generally.
We know that it is of tremendous importance to my local community. One in four workers in the city of Playford is a manufacturing worker. We are a city that makes things. We are a town—Elizabeth is still a town—that makes things, and it is important for this country to manufacture and export cars. We know that, despite all the difficulties that we faced through the GFC—and there were many sacrifices made by workers in that plant, sacrifices that they made together to preserve one another’s jobs and to make sure that the plant got through a difficult time in General Motors history—all of those sacrifices were based around the future of the car industry and making sure that Holden is still there in 10, 20 or 30 years time making cars for this nation, making cars for places like Bathurst and the hill.
In the time I have left I want to talk about a couple of events. Recently I attended a family day to welcome 7RAR, some 1,200 troops who were relocating from Darwin down to RAAF Base Edinburgh. It was a terrific day. His Excellency Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce, the Governor of the state of South Australia, attended, along with Kevin Foley, the relevant state minister; Group Captain Reg Carruthers; Michael Callan, Director General of the Defence Community Organisation; and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Garraway, who is the commander of 7RAR. They all attended that day, along with many soldiers and their families. It was a wonderful thing. There was an expo-like feel. Many of the local community organisations turned out to provide their services and to endeavour to encourage the soldiers to join in community life. There is at least one rugby club that is bidding for new players, and I am sure it will find a good pool of new players which will improve rugby in my state. It does need an improvement. We are predominantly an Aussie Rules state, and I am sure we will get a few players there for the local clubs as well. It was terrific to be down there to be part of one of the first events to welcome these soldiers to our local area. I look forward to meeting them again and, in particular, to seeing the improvements that they bring to RAAF Base Edinburgh. We know that the transition has not been entirely without its issues and difficulties, but it is very important both for the country and the defence forces and for 7RAR for that move to occur.
Finally, I want to praise the Nicholls family, who are an absolute institution down at the Elizabeth Vale Soccer Club. More than one generation has participated in the club’s life. The bar in the club is named the Nicholls Bar. I would like to praise David Nicholls in particular, who for the past 45 years has been part of that club and has played 900 games for the division 1 A-grade, reserves, C-grade and the over-35s side. His contribution just in playing football—or soccer, as some would call it—is absolutely unparalleled. It is good to see someone out there playing at that age. It puts some of us, including me, to shame. I think it is an absolutely sterling contribution. Of course, it is not just on the field that he has contributed. He has coached junior teams, reserve sides and the senior women’s side with great success. He has been the chairman of the senior and junior teams committees. I am sure that even though his playing days are now ended he will continue to be a big part of this club, just like his brother Roger Nicholls, who is an absolute stalwart not just of the Elizabeth Vale Soccer Club but of the shop assistants union—a person I have often relied upon for his good judgment and for his counsel not just in union affairs but in my own conduct as the local representative in this parliament. The Nicholls family is one of those families that you are proud of and proud to be associated with, and I would like to congratulate both David Nicholls and Roger Nicholls for being great South Australians.
I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. The appropriation being sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) is $1.359 billion, and the amount sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 4) is just over $1 billion. Critical in all this is that we have a Gillard Labor government that does not understand the cost of living. We have a Gillard Labor government that is addicted to tax and therefore addicted to increasing the cost of living for everyday Australians. The effects of the Gillard government’s increasing taxes will be felt more in regional and rural Australia than in any other part. The impacts of mining taxes, flood taxes and carbon taxes will be significant.
Not only do we have a Prime Minister who does not understand the effects of rising costs of living on the average Australians; we also have a Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government who does not understand the needs of regional Australia. The minister does not live in regional Australia; he lives in the capital city of Melbourne; therefore he can be partially forgiven for that. But his department should be providing briefings to him to give him a full and detailed understanding of the needs and the concerns of regional Australia. On the ABC’s Insiders program, on 3 October, when questioned about what constituted regional Australia, the minister said:
Every part of this country is constituted within their own region, Barrie. We’ve got a regional development Australia infrastructure that is comprised of 55 geographic regions.
… … …
When I talk about regionalism … it is saying all regions in the country, the whole 55 of them …
Therefore it is no surprise that this minister considers capital cities as eligible for funds which should and must be targeted for regional Australia. I put a question on notice to the minister about the eligibility for Labor’s Regional Infrastructure Fund. It took him 90 days to provide a response. I asked the minister whether capital cities will have access to the Regional Infrastructure Fund, and all he could say was that he has not finalised the program guidelines yet, despite Labor having been in government for nearly six months. Minister, if you cannot answer a question about your portfolio, if you cannot rule out capital cities having access to regional funding programs, just what do you do as the minister for regional Australia?
If Labor’s Regional Infrastructure Fund were really about investing in regional Australia, it would have been pretty easy for the minister to rule out capital cities as being eligible for the funds. I have to ask the question, as many people in this House and many people throughout regional Australia have: where will the money from the Regional Infrastructure Fund go? It is no secret that the Gillard Labor government is already taking $480 million out of the Regional Infrastructure Fund for Perth airport. Last time I flew to Perth and last time I looked, Perth was the capital of Western Australia. Perth is a capital city, but here it qualifies for $480 million out of the Regional Infrastructure Fund.
In Senate estimates last night Mr Crean’s representative, Senator Sherry, was questioned whether he considered Perth airport to be a part of regional Australia. He said no. Then when he was questioned about the biggest single allocation under the Regional Infrastructure Fund he was lost for an answer. So what we have here is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. It is no wonder that our 55 Regional Development Australia committees around the country do not know what is happening either. This is an example of a government baffling more in the community by increasing the bureaucracies and the red tape than delivering real action. This government is not delivering action or results for regional Australia. This government is more about rhetoric and spin than results.
I note that in 2010-11 the government will spend some $15 million on administration costs for the 55 Regional Development Australia committees around Australia. I have travelled around Australia, I have met with the RDAs, I have had some confidential discussions, and there is disillusionment in what is happening. They are not being empowered. They cannot make decisions. They are sent forth to consult with the community but nothing is happening. Our communities, our representatives, the people that work on these RDAs, want to be empowered to make decisions that benefit all Australians. Can you imagine how a community struggling for funds feels when they sit there in regional Australia when dollars are tight, when councils have not got much money, when they are ignored by the state Labor governments, and all of a sudden $480 million of their allocated funding is given to a capital city project? The committees have told me they feel bogged down in holding endless community consultations and producing these wonderful, glossy, motherhood-statement brochures, but they are not able to deliver the results for their community because this government clearly has not found its way. Kevin Rudd was sacked as prime minister because it was felt that the Labor government had lost its way. I have to say that our new Prime Minister, the new Julia or the old Julia, neither of those in that split personality have found their way either. There is a difference between the needs of regional Australia and the needs of the capital cities.
I cite an example of the arrogance and lack of understanding of a government about regional Australia. The youth allowance scheme that was put in by this government meant young people in inner regional areas were being forced to work more hours and for longer before being considered independent. Did we hear the minister for regional Australia stand up for these young people? No, he just toed the government line. Yet this bill was also disappointingly killed off with the support of people who also live in regional and rural areas, and there I am referring to Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott in their respective electorates. I think that their constituents will deal with them because they have failed to represent their regions independently.
Another area of great contention for people in my area and people in regional areas across Australia is the lack of broadband. This government under the leadership of Kevin Rudd going into the 2007 election made much of the need to increase broadband speed. This was despite the coalition having a plan, the OPEL plan, at a cost of less than a billion dollars, which would have rolled out wireless infrastructure all across Australia. Today we have an NBN network which is going to cost tens of billions of dollars and I expect that we will be coming back here to visit appropriation bills where more money will need to be provided because it has blown outside the original budget estimates. But in regional and rural Australia there will be many cities that will not have access to this optical fibre, and these communities will only get wireless broadband.
If you had a plan and if you are representing regional Australia, you would have made sure that if you are only going to get wireless transmission—and if a plan that was already there, the OPEL plan, was going to cost less than $1 billion and would have been completed by the middle of 2009—then you would have continued with that plan and expedited it to deliver results. I fear, the community fears, and people in regional Australia fear, that they will be left until the last when their needs should be considered first and foremost because they suffer the tyranny of distance. In fact, at a doorstop interview on 17 February 2011, the minister for regional Australia was asked, ‘What’s actually being done to improve regional development?’ to which he replied, ‘Look, the key infrastructure agenda for the time is the rollout of the NBN broadband.’ More rhetoric, not results, for regional Australia. In fact, in this parliament on 24 November he said:
… we will deliver better services, particularly to people in regional and remote communities.
How is doing nothing delivering for people in regional and remote communities? How is delaying a program, which was to be delivered by mid-2009 across Australia, doing the right thing by people in regional and remote communities? People will miss out, and I welcome the decision by Telstra to roll out their new 4G network. I think it will be good.
This government could have continued that OPEL project for less than $1 billion while it was developing its NBN program. One billion dollars, as against $40 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion, probably $70 billion, $80 billion or $90 billion by the time it is rolled out, is but a drop in the ocean. In 2007, the former coalition government announced the OPEL network, which would have delivered 12 megabits per second wireless broadband to nearly 900,000 households across regional and rural Australia. So here we have it: 18 months have passed since that date when it would have been completed in 2009, and still nothing.
I am sure the member for Newcastle must feel totally embarrassed because she campaigned very heavily in a town called Thornton, a very large town, which, through the development processes at the time, put in the twin pair gain wire. It still only has dial-up speed, yet is a major town. And here we are, nearly four years on, and she has delivered absolutely nothing to those people—apart from rhetoric, more rhetoric and excuses. I say to the minister: now is the time for action. Now is not the time to burden people more and more and more with taxes. Now is the time to start to roll out some of these agendas for regional and rural communities.
In April 2008 the Rudd-Gillard government announced it was abandoning the OPEL networks contract. Yet when Labor cancelled the contract they had absolutely no plan in place to deliver broadband for regional and rural Australia. The Labor minister for broadband, Stephen Conroy, said at the time of cancelling the contract:
The Government will … call for comments on policy and funding initiatives to improve access to affordable broadband in remote areas … into the future.
That was a press release by the Senator Conroy on 2 April 2008. So here we have a government that understands the principles of business—
Ms Marino interjecting
so he says—but does not understand community needs. And, if it is all truly examined, it does not understand the principles of business either because he cancelled a plan without having a plan to replace it. He cancelled a plan that would have rolled out wireless infrastructure to regional and rural Australia for less than $1 billion under the OPEL contract to pursue a $55 billion flight of fantasy. He is a minister who to date has delivered nothing to those communities four years on. And they suffer the tyranny of distance; they suffer communication blackholes. What we want to see is action.
The issue with this government is the fact that they are not businesspeople; they are not business managers. They have never had true skin in the game. They do not understand risk. They do not understand that when you spend a dollar you need to make a return on that dollar. What we have here is a government who are just prepared to fritter away money and, when times get tough, all they do is revert back to the old Labor mantra—which was reflected in the times of Keating and Hawke and that icon of the Labor Party, Gough Whitlam: let’s just tax. As Tony Abbott said so eloquently this morning in the House, Julia Gillard has never met a tax she did not like or a tax she was not prepared to hike.
I was going to start off my contribution by going through some of the good programs that are contained within Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011, but, having sat here and listened to the drivel that I have just listened to, I have to respond. I have to put on record some things in response to what the honourable member was just talking about. First of all, he started talking about regional development. He was saying that the government is not doing anything in regional development. As he was talking, I cast my mind back to 1997, when the coalition were in government, having been elected in 1996. What did they do for regional development? They just axed the department! That is what they did for regional development. That is how much they cared about it. This is the National Party, who say they are the natural party of the bush. They say one thing and do another.
Then the honourable member talked about there being some disillusionment with things in regions and local councils. What did this government do? It funded a Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, which operates through local councils. Local councils put up their priorities, as determined by local communities through the councils, and there is money, real money, in it—hundreds of millions of dollars. In my electorate of Page there are small projects, and some larger ones, all over the electorate—which has five local government areas—where that money is being rolled out. We have a Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, who worked in the area in a previous government. We are rolling the programs out.
Then I listened to the words on the NBN. I heard from the coalition that when they were in government they had the OPEL plan, and had that been implemented all would have been well and we would all have 12 megabits per second of broadband. They had 12 years; they had 18 plans. And what happened? Nothing. So to listen to them is to—
We had a signed contract which your government cancelled!
They had 18 failed plans. Then they flogged off Telstra, without even ensuring proper mobile coverage. That is how much they care about regional Australia. So for me, as I live in regional Australia, sitting here listening to that just gets my goat—just listening to them talk as though they are so fiscally responsible, and talk about how there is nobody on this side who has been in small business and therefore we cannot govern. What an absolute lot of rubbish! The opposition’s approach to the budget is not only reckless; it is incompetent—it does not stand up to scrutiny. A recent example happened just this week: the recklessness with which they treated the Constitution with the student income support legislation—or youth allowance, as we call it—in trying to introduce money bills from the Senate.
The opposition have demonstrated their fiscal recklessness by twice blocking $5 billion in savings measures put forward by this government. This includes the closure of the chronic disease dental scheme. That scheme had significant cost blowouts—an Abbott designed scheme that will cost the budget $3.1 billion over the next four years. I see that having an effect in my electorate. The government is trying to introduce a Commonwealth dental health scheme, which will benefit all in my area. If the resource distribution formula was implemented at its correct rate, we would have an extra $2 million put into my area. That would buy a lot of dentures. I have people waiting for dentures. Who closed the former Commonwealth dental health scheme? The coalition when they were in government. That was another thing that they closed, along with the department of regional development and other things.
Back to fiscal recklessness, the means testing of the private health insurance rebate will cost the budget $2.1 billion over the next four years. And they claim that they are responsible fiscal managers who know who to manage money. There is an additional $5 billion in spending over the next four years as a result of opposition recklessness. They are also in the process of trying to block a further $2 billion in savings to the budget over four years by voting against reforms to the PBS. The opposition have demonstrated time and time again that they are not committed to bringing the budget back to surplus. The say one thing outside the parliament and their actions in the parliament are completely different.
Their plan to pay for flood reconstruction was another debacle and fiasco. After spending weeks of Mr Abbott saying that it would be easy to find savings, what we got was a series of deferrals, double counts and back flips. They double counted $700 million in savings. And while they say that they would use that to fund rebuilding, they have already earmarked those savings to fund other spending measures. You cannot spend it twice on different things.
They also claimed over $100 million in savings from the BER. But that is already allocated to projects that are committed or underway. It is very easy to find out—a simple read—that 99.9 per cent of projects have been completed or commenced. In my area, where I have 96 schools, I have been involved in these projects from day one and have seen them rolled out. Parents, students and teachers are saying that they never would have got these things but for this spending. It has been a one-off opportunity. They think that it is great to have these things done in their area. And it is infrastructure; it is what we need.
We also saw the opposition have a debate about foreign aid, reversing their initial position. I have always been able to talk locally and at other levels about how there is bipartisanship in this area. To get a headline, they dropped that like a hot potato. They reversed their position on foreign aid, taking savings out of a measure that they not only supported in government but introduced. Mr Downer introduced it. At the time, funding schools in Indonesia was seen as a good and sensible thing to do. Then they rolled out Warren Truss and the Nationals, who said they would not support our infrastructure savings. I can remember how well they supported the regional rorts that were damned by the Auditor-General. They are probably missing that.
Who can forget the election cost blow out? Obviously, the coalition opposition do not talk about that. They have conveniently forgotten their shambolic costings release during the election campaign last year. When Treasury and Finance were finally able to take a look, they found that the coalition had a $10.6 billion hole in their budget numbers. These are the parties that claim that they know all about the economy and running businesses. They say that because they have run small businesses they can therefore run a national budget. But the figures just do not add up.
The recklessness continues. I have observed it in the Senate. The Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Amendment (Fair Indexation) Bill 2010 was introduced by Senator Ronaldson. It would have a fiscal cost of $1.7 billion over four years and an underlying cash cost of some $175 million over four years. And it would increase the Commonwealth’s unfunded liabilities by $6.2 billion. That is not small bikkies; not small dollars; not small money. That is reckless. Why are they doing it? It is purely political rhetoric. They are playing politics. Some of these issues are not new issues. They are issues that communities grapple with all the time. During 12 years in government they did not tackle them; they did not even try. And now they do this. It is just reckless behaviour politically and it is also reckless behaviour fiscally.
The opposition preach one thing but their actions prove another. They cannot be trusted with either the budget or the economy. They certainly cannot be trusted with the truth. because I hear what they say, I see what they do—it has always been fuss. They say one thing in the electorate when they are out and about and then do another thing in here. Their election campaign left a $10.6 billion hole. They blocked $5.2 billion of savings in both houses of parliament, and then they say, ‘We have to find savings.’ They have blocked close to $2 billion in savings by opposing the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme reforms in the House of Representatives and they have double-counted $700 million of savings in their flood response. What a mess around the flood response, too, with the flood levy, talking as though a levy was something new, something unusual, something that only Labor does.
The opposition tried to introduce eight levies when they were in government, with Mr Howard as Prime Minister. Six of them went through. They were broadly supported by the parties and by the community. Some of them were not for natural disasters that we have never seen the likes of; some of them were for corporate failure. But we wanted to ensure that workers got their entitlements; we wanted to ensure that we helped the dairy industry. Some levies were for the stevedoring industry. I did not support some of the reforms on the waterfront, particularly the balaclavas and the dogs on the waterfront. Who can forget that? Six levies went through parliament. They were supported and they helped sections of the community. That is what Australians do. We are good at it. We do not object and yet you have the honourable member for Warringah running around, talking as though a levy was something that was invented by the federal Labor Party and that it is something new. People do support it.
The opposition’s budget black hole has blown out to over $18 billion. That is a large amount of money. It is clear that the opposition have no credible plan to bring the budget back to surplus. In contrast, the federal Labor government has a clear budget and a fiscal strategy to return the budget to surplus in 2012-13, comfortably ahead of all major advanced economies. In fact, we are the envy of other major advanced economies in the world.
These appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 seek the authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the consolidated revenue fund in order to meet requirements that have arisen since the last budget. The total appropriation being sought this year through additional estimates bills Nos 3 and 4 is a little over $2.3 billion. The total appropriation being sought through Appropriation Bill (No. 3) is $1.36 billion and the total appropriation being sought through Appropriation Bill (No. 4) is a little over $1 billion. Some of these appropriations are in areas that are of benefit to all Australians and, when I read through them and note the areas in which they are in, I see they are of particular benefit to those in my electorate of Page—for instance, the trade training centres program.
The Labor government has already awarded more than $1 billion for 288 projects, benefiting 927 schools, to create better job pathways for students. What a good thing to do, creating those pathways. Having a job really does mean everything. Having a job is something that we in the federal Labor Party know is important. That is one of the things that marks us out: we understand that. This year, 70 projects have already been completed and are operational, benefiting students at 171 schools. Some are in progress in my area and I can tell you that they are welcome.
What do Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne want to do? They promised to cut $968 million from the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program, robbing more than 1.2 million students and over 800 secondary schools of the opportunity to find better pathways to becoming the next generation of electricians, brickies, hairdressers, chefs, carpenters—people working in trades, working people. That is what we do. We manage the budget responsibly and we have a good fiscal strategy. We have to do that so that people get those jobs. I commend the bills to the House.
I am very pleased to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011, which is an actual appropriation bill—as opposed to the youth allowance bill, which we know was not an appropriation bill, despite the government’s attempts to label it as such for the sole purpose of maintaining their discrimination against regional students across Australia, like those in my electorate. In an action that reinforces the absolute contempt this government has for regional areas, the spurious arguments put forward by the Labor Party sacrifice democracy and fairness, a fair go, for students in my electorate simply for political expediency.
Thousands of students arbitrarily classified as ‘inner regional’ by this government have no certainty and no guarantee of being treated equally. What they do have is the promise of another of Labor’s famous reviews that do not deliver. Students who finished year 12 in 2009 and 2010 in particular are in absolute limbo. They are contacting my office on a regular basis. They do not know where they stand and they do not know where they are going to stand after this review or where they will stand in the future. Even under the Rural Tertiary Hardship Fund Scheme, nothing at all has been delivered.
Those who framed the Australian Constitution—including Sir John Forrest, after whom the seat of Forrest is named—envisaged a nation where there was no discrimination against people based on their location. This is seen, for example, in section 51. It states that the Commonwealth has the power to make laws with regard to taxation but, as it says under part (ii), it must do so ‘so as not to discriminate between states or parts of states’. That is exactly what this government has done in relation to youth allowance and it is continuing to do. Our forefathers decried discrimination based on locality—the sort of discrimination the Labor Party has entrenched in legislation.
The government’s handling of the economy is an absolute disgrace, and it will go down as one of the worst in this nation’s history. According to the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the government will run a deficit of $41.5 billion this financial year and a deficit of $12.3 billion next year. Spending by the Gillard government will result in an expected net debt level of $94 billion by 2013—$94 billion. The interest on that will reach nearly $6 billion a year. It is an obscene number, even for this government. Of course, this does not include the government’s NBN investment, which, through an astounding accounting deception, does not actually appear in the forward estimates. There is no doubt, however, that the NBN will have a significant impact on the debt level of the Australian government in the next decade, probably well beyond the $43 billion price tag being bandied about, and that is certainly open to discussion. The ultimate net debt level of $140 billion is the legacy that the Gillard Labor government will leave the people of Australia, long after the stimulus spending is gone and forgotten.
Once again, it will not be a Labor government that repays its own debts; it will no doubt fall to a coalition government to pick up Labor’s financial pieces. This will happen because a coalition government will end the waste, and this is a historically wasteful government. Irresponsibility continues to mark the performance of this Labor government. What about the waste with the BER? No-one can question the waste under the BER or the debacle that was the pink batts program. But, beyond paying back Labor’s debt, a coalition government will need to end Labor’s waste in order to provide the investment needed in regional areas like the south-west of WA. We have seen a neglect of infrastructure in my region, as in a lot of others, and it is an indictment of this government that, four years in, nothing has happened.
Regional Development Australia in my electorate basically has no funds attached to it. It is a toothless tiger, trying with its gums to nut away at the infrastructure needs of the country. It has no capacity to invest. It can only go cap in hand to the government, and unfortunately it seems to be told that the cupboard is bare. The south-west of WA has infrastructure requirements that could have been funded by just one of the billions wasted by this government—and there have been multiple billions of dollars of waste by this government. Just one of those wasted billions could have funded all the infrastructure needs in my electorate. Some of these would be extending the AusLink program to include road and rail transport south of Bunbury; finishing the Bunbury ring road, the port access road and the Preston River realignment; and upgrading the South Western Highway, providing 12 additional overtaking lanes from Yarloop to Waterloo, two from Waterloo to Picton and six from Bunbury to Manjimup. This is what I know needs doing. There is also upgrading of the Coalfields Highway from the Wellington Weir turnoff to Collie, providing additional overtaking lanes between Roelands and Collie, upgrading the Bussell Highway to dual lanes from Bunbury to Margaret River and the construction of the Margaret River perimeter road. Just one billion of this government’s waste would have done all this and more. Some things that could be done is to expand the capacity of the Collie-Brunswick Junction-Port of Bunbury rail network; to upgrade the Vasse Highway; to use the disused rail lines, perhaps south of Bunbury, to expand freight capacity when it becomes feasible; and to upgrade the Busselton airport and its runway. These are some of the things that could have been done with just $1 billion of the waste.
I also bring to the attention of the House the plight of the dairy industry in Australia—and I ask the member opposite to listen to this because I am sure that this is something he may not be aware of. The Australian dairy industry has a long and proud history. When the first fleet landed in 1788 it brought with it one bull, four dairy cows and one calf to supply milk to the new colony. This little herd was the foundation of the original Australian dairy herd. The pioneers, however, were not great stockmen. They managed to lose their cattle. The herd wandered off and was not discovered for seven years—but it had grown to 40 cows, so someone had done their job. Despite the industry now having a couple of million dairy cows, like the early settlers we have lost touch with our dairy herd, our dairy farmers and our dairy industry. The dairy industry in Australia has grown into a significant contributor to the Australian economy, and there is no doubt that Australian dairy farmers are amongst the most efficient in the world. We have the second lowest cost of production anywhere in the world and some of the highest quality milk.
The question I put to this Australian parliament today is: do we actually want to maintain our dairy industry into the future, particularly in a state like Western Australia? Do we want to? What I am hearing is that we do not. According to the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry food stats, Australian milk production in 2007-08 accounted for 13 per cent of all food production and had a gross value of $4.9 billion. Of this, $2.8 billion worth of milk products were exported. But when you scratch beneath the surface there is pain and heartache being felt by dairy farmers, their families and their communities right across Australia. This industry, these families and their communities are hurting. Many are struggling to stay viable, with their incapacity to drive commercial returns. Many dairy farmers have left the industry that has sustained their families and their communities, often for generations. Most of those remaining are using their capital to subsidise their lack of income.
According to ABARES, the proportion of Australian farms with a negative farm business profit hit a peak in 2004-05 of 61 per cent. Of those making a profit, many in the farm sector have incomes equivalent to welfare. In short, many Australian dairy farmers are losing money and many others are making the equivalent of the dole—and we are expecting people to work under these conditions and provide us with a staple food that is the best in the world. The only way many dairy farmers can afford to keep farming is to simply go further into debt or eat into their capital, or both. According to ABARES, in the six years prior to 2008 average farm debt increased from $237,000 to $494,000. At the same time, incomes for dairy farmers have stagnated, averaging over the same period a two per cent return on investment. Who is going to invest for a two per cent return and do the work that is required? Yet we expect them to; we demand that they do.
The return for dairy farmers only reaches levels acceptable to most businesses in Australia by including capital growth in their net return. That is if the price of their land has increased; and when this increase is written in as a cash return annually, the overall return to dairy farmers is 8.2 per cent. However, this level of return requires the farmer to sell their land to access the money. That is what you have to do. Nice if you are ready to sell your farm and retire, but useless if you are not, and hopeless should one of your family want to carry on farming after you. And what about the new farmers who want to start? Where do they start? It costs money to produce milk, and in this debate we must be prepared to acknowledge this. It is an indictment when water in the supermarkets is priced higher than milk. That is just an abomination.
We also have to acknowledge that the farm gate price—the price the farmer actually receives for their product—is impacted, particularly in the liquid milk states, directly by the retail price consumers pay for their milk. Dairy producers are absolute price takers. The negotiations they have with their processors and, by default, supermarkets in a state like WA are extremely one-sided affairs. The processor, via the supermarket or the major retailer, will tell them the price they are going to receive. That is the price that the supermarkets have dictated. In a state like Western Australia, which is a majority liquid milk state, this has a direct impact on the price that is paid to farmers. The price that the supermarkets dictate will govern the price the processor can afford to pay to the grower.
The poor old farmer has just one choice. He has this marvellous product but it is perishable. What does he do with it if he cannot sell it that day? It has to be picked up, it has to be processed and it has to be delivered to the market every day. It is not something we can store. That in itself creates a vulnerability that I do not think many, if any, in this place really understand, but it is one that the supermarkets understand because they certainly take advantage of it. It is ‘take it or leave it’ for the dairy farmer.
It is in this setting that the supermarket chains, led by Coles, have decided to engage in a milk-marketing war using deep discounting to steal market share from each other. The supermarkets have said they will absorb the cost and that farm gate prices will not be affected. Well, if this is true it will be a groundbreaking event because it does not reflect the history of milk pricing since deregulation in 2000. When asked by members of the Senate Economics References Committee in their investigation into the milk industry in May last year, the major supermarket chains denied using milk as a loss leader. However, that is clearly not the case now. I notice, too, that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Joe Ludwig, is coming out in support of Coles in its bid for market dominance. Unfortunately, this demonstrates that the minister does not understand the impact that this type of activity in the market will have on dairy farmers in liquid milk states like Western Australia.
The Senate has instigated another inquiry because it appears that the supermarkets are in fact using milk as a loss leader in the war for a greater share of the market. So how much faith can we put in the responses of those supermarkets in 2010—or was that previous inquiry misled? I hope this next inquiry will look at this, and I would ask how much faith we can have in the answers that will be given by the supermarkets. We will not get to the truth behind this because of the market power and dominance of the supermarkets and because those who could give evidence will be too afraid to do so. They will not do so because they will be out of business if they do and because they are dependent on the supermarkets to sell their products.
The market share and market power of the major supermarkets, their collective buying and selling capacity, also mean that their profits are probably far greater than they will claim. They have the capacity to dictate and dominate. The barrage of lawyers and consultants they employ will ensure that, in spite of all the inquiries that we might have, we will never get to the truth about the contractual issues and product pricing of the supermarkets. I would say to Wesfarmers, who own Coles: change your name. Your genesis was in the rural sector. Your genesis was in farmers. So change your name because your behaviour in this instance does not reflect your history.
In Western Australia since deregulation we have gone from 400-odd farmers down to around 160. We have recently seen a processor go out of business in our state. How are our farmers going to hold on when all of the chains have to meet that same price to be able to sell milk and all those who sell milk have to meet that particular price? It will come back to the dairy farmer. Coles knows this well. They know very well that this will happen but they will say, ‘We will not put the price down but we know the rest of the market will have to react to meet that price,’ and by default that price will come back to the dairy farmer. That is how it will work.
I say once again that the milk price war now threatens the viability of the farmers, their communities and their future. I ask this parliament: ‘Do we actually want a dairy industry in those liquid milk states?’
I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. I should indicate that Appropriation Bill (No. 3) involves a total appropriation of $1.36 billion and this flows from the changes to the estimate of program expenditures, the timing of payments, forecast increases in program take-ups, and some reclassifications and policy decisions that have been taken by the government since the last budget. Appropriation Bill (No. 4) has a total appropriation of $1.02 billion for numerous departments.
I want to take this opportunity in the debate to address a number of specific issues within that range of policy areas and also address some of the local implications for my electorate. I would like first to address the component that addresses the fair entitlements guarantee to protect employee entitlements when employers enter liquidation. I would indicate that Illawarra workers have been victims over many years now of losing their legal entitlements when companies go broke, starting with the very famous example of Parish meats at Yallah quite a while ago. The lost entitlements often include superannuation. It is a particularly devastating circumstance for workers when this occurs. It is important that the government is committed to protecting workers who lose entitlements through no fault of their own but due to the insolvency of their employer.
The Fair Entitlements Guarantee was announced as part of the government’s Protecting Workers’ Entitlements policy. We will deliver on that commitment. I know it will be very welcome in my area and I am sure in many other areas of the nation—anywhere where this has been the experience of local workers.
The guarantee improves on the existing General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme, known as GEERS. It improves it in two key areas. Firstly, it increases the redundancy protection under the scheme to pay up to four weeks per year of service rather than the previous cap of a total of 16 weeks. It also removes access to financial assistance for company directors or excluded employees and, unlike GEERS, it enshrines the Fair Entitlements Guarantee in legislation. These are important improvements to the protections we provide. They recognise that workers’ superannuation is forgone income serving as an insurance against their long-term wellbeing at retirement age. It is very important to the wellbeing of the people in our community.
These changes will provide certainty to those employees. It will ensure that almost all Australian workers will get all of their redundancy entitlements in these situations. Protecting redundancy entitlements is a priority for the government. Consequently, the increased protection of redundancy entitlements has been implemented through changes to GEERS prior to the Fair Entitlements Guarantee legislation coming into effect. This change applies to cases where an employer enters liquidation or bankruptcy on or after 1 January 2011.
The following entitlements currently covered by GEERS will continue to be protected under the new Fair Entitlements Guarantee and they include up to three months unpaid wages and the amounts deducted from wages such as employee superannuation contributions that are not passed on to a superannuation fund up to three months prior to insolvency. It also includes all unpaid annual leave, all long service leave and up to a maximum of five weeks unpaid payment in lieu of notice. I think this is an important component of the appropriation bills before us and something that will certainly be very welcome in my own electorate.
Within this range of appropriation bills there is also increased funding support for regional development. This is something that, since its election in 2007, this government has put a great deal of focus on, and it is particularly important for regions and their wellbeing both economic and social. Over the long term, regions are the drivers of growth in the Australian economy. So whilst the cities are, if you like, the headline growth drivers of the wellbeing of the nation, if they are doing well but the regions are dying on the vine then overall we are not doing well. So it is important that regional development policy addresses linking regions into growth opportunities and encouraging them beyond that to actually become drivers of innovation, productivity and national growth themselves. The regions are the place where those great opportunities for the nation actually are.
In particular I want to acknowledge in addressing this issue the role that the Regional Development Australia Illawarra branch has played in our region since its establishment after we came to government in 2007. It was a combination of the previous area consultative committees of the federal government and the regional development boards of the state government, so they have been combined into one organisation. I was particularly pleased that the RDA Illawarra attracted to its board a really impressive range of local leaders who have done a tremendous job in progressing issues of regional development for the Illawarra. It is headed up by the chair, Eddy De Gabriele, who is a significant businessman in his own right in our region in the employment sector and also a well-known aficionado and official of the soccer industry. He has a widespread coverage of experience and is a well-known Illawarra person for the variety of roles that he plays. He has headed up the RDA tremendously well, seconded in the deputy position by Roger Summerill, who has a long history in communications—in particular with the ABC management over many years and also WAVE FM—and who is somebody who brings a profound understanding of our region to that role. The board more broadly has a good variety of expertise in the business and community sectors.
The board has established a tradition now of what is called the State of the Illawarra Regional Leaders Summit. This is held each year and this summit pushes the region to look at the challenges and opportunities arising over the next 12 months and to come to a consensus view about where the priority efforts of our regional leadership should be placed in progressing the region over those following 12 months. It is really a tremendously useful thing for people like me because, as we would all know in this place, you get lobbied on about 101 ideas in your electorate, with people saying: ‘If only we did this, it would be the thing that would make everything so much better. This would address the unemployment issue. This would progress environmental improvements. This would address social disadvantage.’ Whatever the case may be, there is no lack of great ideas in all of our communities and so the challenge becomes being under the pump to work out which of those can be best utilised and how to best utilise them. The RDA has fulfilled this role really effectively in the Illawarra and encouraged people to bring all those ideas with a good solid plan—what would be required, how much it would cost, what needs to be done—and then leaders from across all sectors go through those and say, ‘We think these have the best leverage opportunity for us all to get behind them.’ That does not mean the other ideas cannot be progressed by their individual organisations and so forth, but we drive the key ones as a region.
It has been a tremendous initiative and most important from my perspective has been the push to have the National Broadband Network rollout extend as quickly as we can get it to do from the Kiama Minnamurra trial site throughout the region. The RDA has put together a clear priority list for major infrastructure which will connect Wollongong and Port Kembla with better road and rail links, so it is also looking at the transport opportunities and challenges. And we currently have the business case for the Maldon-Dombarton rail link underway. It is a $3 million feasibility study and I was very pleased to see in the release yesterday of the National Freight Strategy by Infrastructure Australia a recognition of the port of Port Kembla as a key national part of that task. Certainly we will be progressing the opportunity for that port to take on a greater role—because it drives jobs growth in our region—and to have that linked effectively by road and rail links.
There is $5.9 million in these bills to strengthen local engagement and improve the whole-of-government coordination of policy for regional Australia. I am very encouraged by the minister. I think Minister Crean has been well and truly known for a long time as an advocate of regional responsibility and autonomy, regions understanding what they need and driving that. This funding is in addition to resources that have already been transferred to the Department of Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government; the former Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government; and the Attorney-General’s Department. The recently established Department of Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government is growing by the day and is a dedicated agency which will have responsibility for regional policy and overseeing the rollout of initiatives across other departments. I believe that if we are to achieve real and long-lasting outcomes for communities across this nation then a coordinated approach is needed.
There is an additional $100 million as part of the government’s partnership with local government, which has been an extraordinarily effective local partnership. I indicate that the government will provide $800 million over five years to establish the priority regional infrastructure program. The funding will be allocated following consultation with local governments and Regional Development Australia committees. The funding will be provided for transport infrastructure such as roads and bridge upgrades, community infrastructure projects such as town halls and sporting facilities, and economic infrastructure projects that support regional economies.
I particularly appreciate the importance of regional infrastructure programs because I look at the great success that has occurred in conjunction with Wollongong City Council over a number of projects that have been funded under the previous community infrastructure funding. For example, what is known as the Blue Mile, which is a development of the foreshore of Wollongong from a fairly run-down footpath making it difficult to access part of the foreshore around the harbour and the bathing pavilion and pools, has been upgraded so that people with mobility issues, the aged and the frail are now able to share that beautiful part of our electorate. It has been a truly successful on-budget, on-time project that the council has rolled out. I would acknowledge that there was some criticism of our council getting that funding by the member for Cook, the shadow minister at the time, who thought that because there had been some issues around the governance of Wollongong council we should not have been given that money. But I can say that, as I was sure at the time, the council has provided an excellent outcome in terms of that investment and it is truly valued by the local community.
In the brief time left to me I highlight that the smart infrastructure facility at the University of Wollongong, which is worth $62 million of which the Commonwealth contributed $35 million, is nearly completed. The member for Throsby and I had a look at that only last week. The construction is coupled with two other buildings invested in by the Commonwealth at the University of Wollongong’s innovation campus which have helped support the region’s construction and building industry during the global financial crisis. In March I will also officially open the Wollongong Workers Educational Association’s new vocational training centre. This is a new building worth nearly $2 million and the Commonwealth contribution is $1.3 million. These investments, together with the Building the Education Revolution program which has been so successful in my schools, investments in TAFE facilities including a new engineering building at the TAFE, and the investments outlined at the university, represent nearly $300 million worth of investment in my area’s skills and education. They are particularly important foundations for the long-term future of the region. I have indicated that the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program has been particularly successful. The Blue Mile project of the Wollongong council involved a $5.9 million investment in local infrastructure in my electorate, and I would particularly commend the $836,000 worth of new investments to be made in the bathers pavilion upgrade at north Wollongong—a project that was well and truly welcomed by local people. (Time expired)
I am pleased to rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. These bills come forward in the context where we have a government that has shown a proven incapacity to manage the budget in a responsible fashion. We have a government which this year is proposing to spend $354 billion. That is almost $100 million a year more than the federal government was spending only four years ago. We have a government that is rampantly engaging in deficit financing. This year the deficit will be $41 billion. This is a government which is addicted to spending. We hear the assurances: ‘Don’t worry—in three years time we’ll return to surplus.’ You will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I am somewhat sceptical of that claim, because these people have no track record of doing something which they promised they would achieve in three years. When we hear them say, ‘We may have consistently engaged in deficit financing; we may have turned the lever from surplus to deficit the moment we came to government and started spending in a profligate fashion, but don’t worry—we’ll become pure in three years time,’ I am sceptical, as would any objective observer be. The context we face is a government profligate in its spending which has shown a consistent lack of discipline and there is absolutely no reason to be confident that that lack of discipline is going to be corrected.
I want to focus on one area where the lack of discipline in spending is particularly egregious, and that is the National Broadband Network. We have seen a very sorry saga of fiscal ill-discipline since the National Broadband Network was first put on the agenda by the Labor Party in April 2007. When the plan was announced then, Labor was going to spend $4.7 billion of public money, and that was going to be combined with private money. It was going to be a joint venture with the private sector—that is to say, a private sector player would be spending at least as much as the Commonwealth—and it was going to be a much less ambitious and a much less expensive scheme. It was going to be a fibre-to-the-node scheme that would deliver a 12 megabit per second speed to 98 per cent of the population, and it was generally thought to be an incremental improvement on the broadband infrastructure which Australia had at that time.
It transpired, though, that the plan could not be delivered. In a fit of political desperation in April 2009 the previous plan was abandoned, and it now transpires that we were to spend $43 billion—an extraordinary rate of increase in spending—because all of a sudden we were going to be much more visionary, much more grandiose. Part of being visionary, part of getting the political shock and awe effect which was so desperately sought, was to spend more money. But in April 2009 we were told that some of that money would still come from the private sector. We were told that the $43 billion would be the total spent and there would be funding from both the Commonwealth and the private sector.
Some of us, even at that time, were sceptical. Some of us, even at that time, were not drinking the NBN Kool-Aid. But when the implementation study emerged last year, the sad truth became all too apparent: not one dollar was to come from the private sector until the network had been built, until all of the risk had been assumed. And we now know that what is proposed is that there will be a total commitment, a total taxpayer exposure, of $41 billion, including $27 billion in equity, all of which will come from the Commonwealth, all of which will be taxpayers’ money, all of which will be public money put at risk in an unconscionably risky and poorly thought through venture. In addition, there will be $13 billion of debt which taxpayers will also be exposed to; if NBN Co. is unable to repay that, it will be taxpayers who will be on the hook. So we have seen extraordinary ill-discipline.
The second point to make is that the accounting practices which have been followed in relation to the NBN have been dubious in the extreme. The fiction on which this exercise is based is that this is an investment and that, because taxpayers are going to get a return, there is no need to put this on the balance sheet, there is no need to put this on the profit and loss account of the Commonwealth—that is, to put it on the budget. But when we look at the figures which are put forward we learn that, even with the most optimistic massaging of the basic expectations around this business venture, the internal rate of return is going to be barely seven per cent. In the NBN corporate plan, which was published in December last year, we also learnt that the weighted average cost of capital is somewhere over 10 per cent.
Let me make a basic observation about corporate finance. When you work out the net present value of a project, you compare the weighted average cost of capital with the return. In the private sector, in any environment where you do not want to throw your money away, what you want to have is a return which exceeds your cost of capital. Here we have the opposite. The return is seven per cent. The cost of capital, on the admission of NBN Co., is over 10 per cent. The net present value of this project is seriously negative. Public money is being splashed away in this project. This is the same project, I might add, which former Prime Minister Rudd called a first-class investment, and he called on mums and dads to get their money into it as quickly as possible when this project was announced in April 2009. He did not lose his job because of his misunderstanding of accounting and financial practices but, based upon that revelation, he might as well have.
We have seen that a ridiculous and rapidly increasing amount of money is going to be spent and we have seen that the accounting processes underlying this project are very dubious. But the third problem with this plan is that the policy underpinnings of it are very poorly thought through. It is far from clear what problem this is designed to solve. Shortly before Christmas the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy issued a media release in which he claimed that the most recent figures issued by the OECD demonstrated the need for the National Broadband Network. He argued that because Australia was ranked 19th in broadband penetration, one place behind New Zealand—and apparently that in itself was a completely shameful thing—that demonstrated the need to spend $41 billion on this project.
There is a clear lack of coherent thinking in the rationale for this project. If our objective is to increase broadband penetration, to get up the broadband penetration rankings—which, according to what Minister Conroy tells us, is our objective—then the most powerful policy lever to pull is to reduce the price that most people pay for broadband, and the best way to do that is to increase competition. The Prime Minister herself told the parliament last year that Australia has very high broadband prices. Australia has the fifth most expensive broadband prices in the OECD.
Let me engage in bipartisanship and agree that Australia does have the fifth most expensive broadband prices in the OECD. What, then, would be a sensible thing to do about that? Would it be a sensible thing to spend $41 billion on a new network, the capital cost of which will need to be recovered, consistent with this government’s promise that it is going to be an investment that will generate a return and therefore will require high prices to be charged to consumers? We know from the corporate plan that the entry level wholesale price will be $24. This will be the foundation on which the retail price will be built—and it will be the retail price that will dictate the number of people who take the broadband service, that will dictate whether we achieve our objective of increasing broadband penetration.
What is the wholesale price that is charged today for the most common product, the unconditioned local loop service, which is the basis on which most people receive competitive DSL services today? The price is set in various bands. The vast majority of people in Australia are in band 2. The unconditioned local loop price today is $16 per month. This will be replaced with a price of $24, which is 50 per cent higher. The wholesale price, the entry level price, is going to be 50 per cent higher. That is before you look at the details of the corporate plan, which makes it clear that NBN Co. intends to ramp up the price which is charged over time. We are going to see prices increase. How that is consistent with an increase in penetration, if that be our policy objective, is very unclear.
The fourth point is the amount of money that is likely to be wasted. So far, I have taken it for granted that the assumptions in the corporate plan are reasonable and credible and therefore the financial projections are credible. There is $41 billion at risk on the proposition that this network will capture 70 per cent penetration, that 70 per cent of homes around Australia will take a service from this network. It is well accepted that the main source of competition is likely to come from wireless services. So we might well ask: what proportion of households take a wireless service today? Today 13 per cent of households take a wireless service. That number is up from three per cent just a few years ago. The corporate plan assumes that that rate will top out at 16 per cent, that it will stay flat at 16 per cent and just will not move. That is certainly a helpful assumption if you are trying to come up with a plan which demonstrates that there is a financial return to be generated—bearing in mind that it is this government’s commitment that it will generate a financial return. But is it a credible assumption?
The only experience I can bring to bear is my 15 years of public policy experience in broadband, including eight years on the senior leadership team of a large telecommunications company, where I was regularly involved in assessing the viability of business cases. Let me say very clearly that anybody who brought forward a business case of this kind in the large telecommunications company I worked in would rapidly have been invited to make alternative career plans. This is not a plan which is financially credible, it is not a plan on which any private sector player would for a second contemplate risking the investment that the Gillard government plans to risk. Indeed, the corporate plan makes that quite explicit on its face. The corporate plan says quite explicitly that these are not returns that would attract a private sector player. Well, isn’t that the truth!
Forty-one billion dollars of public money is at risk on a project which is based upon fuzzy policy assumptions, which is based upon unrealistic projections about take-up and which will have a series of disastrous side-effects, including reducing competition, because it constrains—it seeks to block—anybody else from building a network in competition and it trashes perfectly viable existing infrastructure. There is no dispute that fixed line competition in Australia needs to be improved and the way to do that is to separate Telstra. That is our policy. That is the Labor government’s policy. There is no difference between the parties on that core point. Nor is there any dispute that broadband infrastructure needs to be improved. The dispute is about this particular plan, which is extraordinarily wasteful and profligate and very, very badly thought through.
I would like to start my speech in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 by acknowledging the heartbreaking situation that is now developing in New Zealand, our nearest neighbour. Clearly New Zealand has a very special relationship with this country. The word ANZAC means much to many, whether they be young or old. It is a special relationship, but now we see our friends in New Zealand in a very special time of need. My deepest condolences go to the families who have lost a life. To all the workers who are working so tirelessly over there, including a number of Australians who have been sent over there in the last 24 hours: I wish them well in their endeavours and I hope we recover more people and rescue lives as quickly as possible. This is another significant time that we in this parliament should be reflecting on, just as we did on the floods in Queensland, the bushfires in Victoria and other disasters, because I think the Prime Minister got it right when she said New Zealand is a family to us.
I am happy to participate in this debate. I want to make some comments about being elected as the member for Fowler. As I was just saying to my colleague the member for Parramatta, Fowler is a very new electorate for me. I need to work very hard to ensure that people understand not only that they have access to me but also that I am in tune and responsive to the needs of that particular community. Things which are very striking out there include the strength of community spirit in Fowler, which has been tested many times. There was a threat to local libraries, with a council decision aimed at closing the local libraries. Also, people came together in a very difficult time to raise money for flood victims—and I know you were in the chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I spoke on the condolence motion about the Queensland flood appeal. There is also the spirit I see in the most multicultural electorate in the country—if we can believe the ABS statistics—particularly in various associations for the elderly and others that not only support the preservation of traditions and culture but also have a very clear support for the ongoing education of people in the electorate at large.
It has been a personal objective of mine to provide as much assistance as possible to the community to achieve these goals by providing information, whether it be on funding or grants as they come forward from time to time, using our database for those organisations as opposed to people having to get out there and read the Herald to determine when and where those opportunities lie. I think it is a role for every one of us in this parliament to go out and help those organisations in our communities that do good work in our community, in effect making their work easier by using what facilities we might have. I have always strived to maintain my promise to the electorate, whether that be my former electorate of Werriwa or my current electorate of Fowler, to be as available as possible, particularly for those in most need. I have found it helpful more recently to deliver a permanent outreach program, to complement what we do with mobile offices. I will talk about that a little later.
I have spoken about the threat to such institutions as local libraries. I could not believe this, but it is true—fortunately, we had a debate in private members’ business on this issue only this week: the Liberal and independent councillors on Liverpool City Council took a decision to close local libraries. Local libraries very much go to the cohesion of our community. They are not just repositories of books, they are not just places where you can go to have meetings, where people can gather; but they are places where people can go and use the internet. A lot of people use our library facilities to apply for jobs online. We have a lot of young people, including people like Ian McNamara, who came from Miller, who gained his love of computers at the local library and has gone on to become a computer engineer. It just staggers me that a group of councillors would take a view such that that sort of rationalisation could just go through on a balance sheet, and they could move to close local libraries. It took many months of strong campaigning by local residents—with the support, obviously, of Labor councillors; and I would also pay regard to the state member, Paul Lynch, who supported the local campaign—to have those Liberal councillors revisit their decision on the first council meeting this year. The result, in my humble opinion, was a victory for common sense. It demonstrated what a community can do through cooperation, through commitment and through a genuine belief in common sense itself.
The individual stories that rose out of that battle show the spirit of the community. I commend the members of my community for standing up and fighting this battle, not only for every kid to be able to access books, in an academic and in a social way, but also to have those facilities retained and made available for all members of our community. It is just so essential. We often talk in here about the development of the love of reading, and yet we see that there are bureaucrats out there who think that is something we can trade off. If we are here, and we are committed to advancing our communities into the future, one of the things we should never attack is the library. Interestingly, local libraries were recently aided by the introduction of a new program which is going to help with greater accessibility for the disabled. Again, in Western Sydney we are overly represented—only because of land values—by families with disabilities. I was happy to be able to draw to the attention of not only the Liverpool council but the Fairfield council—and, quite frankly, anyone who wanted to listen—that they could access further Commonwealth moneys to help with the accessibility of their library space for people with disabilities. Again, that goes to what all modern societies should be looking at: a bigger role and greater undertakings with respect to inclusion.
The community of the electorate of Fowler, in recent times, has also confirmed for me a passion for education. Fowler is an outer metropolitan seat. It is the most multicultural seat in the country. We have a very strong enclave of the Vietnamese people. They have only been here for the last 35 years—since the fall of Saigon. I was very happy to attend the Tet festival, the Vietnamese New Year festival. The highlight of that was making presentations to each of the kids who scored in excess of 99 per cent in the HSC. There were about 35 kids all up. I saw a passion for education and the drive to achieve not only in these commendable young individuals but also in their parents. Some of the parents whom I spoke to told me that they work two jobs in order to ensure that their kids have the very best education. That is very positive from a group who would ordinarily be referred to as ‘new Australians’. The amount of emphasis that they put on education is because they know that the key to success in our vibrant land is a good education. They are ensuring that their children participate.
The other thing that is pretty interesting, given the demographics of the area that I represent, is that the majority of schools have very active P&Cs. The parents take a very active role in supporting not only their own children’s education but the school and the teachers. That was something that I was very interested to see on display out in Western Sydney. The principals and the teaching staff at those schools are the fundamental learning resources to establish the children’s futures. I know them to be very professional and very committed.
I would like to mention one, Beth Goodwin. She is the principal of Cabramatta High School. She was also named the Fairfield Citizen of the Year. Beth does not live in that municipality—I happen to know where she lives, which is in Campbelltown. I get to see what this woman does at school and at every other form of social event designed to include young people in our vast and changing community. She is in there in many different ways, such as through sponsoring or encouraging the participation of young people, whether through Rotary events or other events to do with social inclusion. She plays an extraordinary role.
I had the opportunity to meet with a couple of young people who recently graduated from university but who had been taught by her. One of the young fellows—and I cannot remember whether he was Vietnamese or Cambodian—said that Miss Goodwin gave him his thirst for education and learning. This young man is going to go on and make a significant positive impact in the world that we live. Those are good stories. We should be celebrating, when we get the opportunity, the people who make a difference in our communities. Beth is one of those, so I very much welcome her being named Citizen of the Year. That recognises her passion for education. She brings the world to her students. She is to be highly commended. It is something that we should be encouraging. This reward is well deserved for her contribution to education and her commitment to the region.
While on that, I would like to mention another prominent person. I know her very well, and I should not refer to her age. She retired as a teacher many years back, Norma Shelley. She is better known locally as Auntie Norma. She is an Aboriginal elder and former teacher. I see this woman participate in various events, whether they are Aboriginal specific, about inclusion, about education or in the interests of the development of young people in outer metropolitan Sydney. Her hard work in representing and fighting for the rights of the local Aboriginal community is to be commended. Her role in championing the cause of young people has been tremendous. In our community, the pace of life is probably no different than anywhere else. Everyone has other things to do. People need second jobs to pay their mortgages. It is very good to have someone there who has a firm grasp on reality and who, when decisions need to be made, can take the bull by the horns and stand up and make them. I thank Norma for her years. She just demonstrates so much energy and so much commitment. We in the community are very lucky. I understand how lucky I am as a member of parliament to have people like that in my community to help do good work.
The general philosophy I had when I came into this parliament was not to get out there and promise things that you know you cannot deliver or try to be all things to all people. I took the view that I should, in the first instance, identify those people who make a difference in their community and try to work with them to help them do their jobs better. I am very fortunate I have identified two. They make such a tremendous difference themselves, but I know it is only two of many.
My staff will not be happy because, I suspect, that I have departed very much from what they want me to talk about. But I just want to say that, from a local member’s perspective, one of the best things we can do is to go out of our way not only to learn from our communities but to actually understand those people who do make a difference and to spend our time, effort and resources helping them, regardless of politics.
This time last year, when we considered appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4, I stood here and said that the government were going to seek more money for failed policy and they did. They came into this place this time last year and they sought an extra $98 million in the immigration portfolio for offshore asylum seeker management—an extra $98 million. The actual budget for that year was $124, 981,000. They came here in February and asked for almost a doubling of that budget. It did not stop there because, by the end of that year, not only had they spent the $98 million but they had spent an additional $69 million, more than double what they had spent that year. At that time I said that these were the costs of failed policy. At that time, when the government put their first budget together, in 2009-10, the estimated costs for that year were $125 million. At that time, since the failure of the government’s policies, 19 boats and 707 people have arrived.
When I stood in this place in February last year, when the government were asking for more money, around 70 boats had arrived. There is a terrible sense of deja vu here because, here we are again, the government having already budgeted at the beginning of this year for $460 million, they have come back into this place on operating costs alone and they are now asking for another $290 million. And 208 boats have arrived. There is a pattern here of failed policy. The government continue to persist with policies that have failed and they keep coming into this place and asking for more money to pay for those failures. Those are the facts that are before this parliament and that is the question being put to this parliament. The government say, ‘We won’t change the policies, we can’t change our failures, so just give us more money to pay for these failures.’ By the end of this year I guarantee that they will not have spent $760 million which, by the way, is more than seven times the amount the government were spending on this matter when they were first elected. It will be more than that, more boats will come and no changes will be made to policy.
I oppose the government’s policy in this area, because it has failed. It is a policy which I oppose. That opposition will not change until the government changes their policy to things that work. Interestingly, this time last year when I was engaged in this very same debate, when I raised the issues of cost in this chamber, the member for Longman—who, I note, is no longer here—called me a racist. This time last year I raised issues of cost. I find it a chilling echo of a year ago: when I continue to raise issues of cost the government cast all sorts of slurs. My comments on cost continue.
Here we are back at groundhog day, because the cost is not changing and the government’s policies are not changing. Here they find themselves throwing the same old insults without any proof or any ability to substantiate anything they have claimed. Things have been repudiated and here we have a government that are trying to run away from their own failures.
Let us go through those failures. Those failures to date have seen 10,250 people arrive on their watch on 208 boats. Two of those boats included SIEV36, which was set alight and on which people were killed, and SIEV221, which was the most tragic of those cases as it crashed against the rocks of Christmas Island in December last year. There are other boats that have gone missing. In a speech last year I referred to one boat containing over 100 Afghanis who had left in the previous October and their families never heard from them again. At least 220 people, we know, have perished on these voyages. Yet the government still have not changed their policies. The costs continue to rise at all levels both in human terms and in financial terms. I oppose the government on their policies because they are not effective in discouraging people from taking these journeys that lead to their most tragic loss. I oppose the government on these policies because, since the government came to office, the number of special humanitarian visas that have been provided to offshore applicants in our program has fallen from one in three to one in five. That is around 1,500 fewer places for that special humanitarian program in this year alone. These are the impacts of failed policies.
I know the government do not want to focus on their failures. I know the government want to cause every distraction they can because they do not want to sit in this place and hear me remind them on a daily basis of their failures. Their failures in the area of border protection are manifest. They can throw whatever they like at me, but this opposition to their failed policies on border protection will continue. It will continue until they are changed.
As I look at the specific appropriations in these bills, I see that in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 there is $290 million extra for the running costs in the blow-out this year of offshore asylum seeker management. In Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011, there is $152.8 million in additional capital expenditure for the establishment of the Northam detention centre and the Inverbrackie detention centre, which was previously announced by the government.
It is interesting what you find when you do your homework in this place. A statement by Senator Evans—and I will seek to table this document at the end of my remarks—on 8 February 2008 said this:
The Pacific solution was a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise introduced on the eve of a federal election by the Howard government.
This is how much he said the entire program cost—$289 million. That is less than what the government are asking for in this appropriation for their blow-out just this year. This cost that the minister at the time referred to was not just for a six-month period. This cost of $289 million was for between September 2001 and June 2007 to run the Nauru and Manus OPCs. It cost less to run the Pacific solution for almost six years, on the government’s own statement, than what the government are asking for in this appropriation bill to cover the cost of their own policy failures in less than a six-month period. That is an indictment of the government in their own terms. If they think $289 million to put in place a policy that worked is a waste of money, I would like to know what the cost blow-out of the government is in their own terms, using their own criteria.
Let us think about what these have been. In May 2009, in the budget for the following financial year, they estimated forward costs of $124 million for that year, $113 million for the following year, $110 million for the 2011-12 year and $106 million for the 2012-13 year. This is how the record now reads in terms of the most recent additional estimates published by this government: in the year they were going to spend $125 million—that is, last year—they spent $292 million, and in the year they said they were going to spend $113 million—that is, this year—they are going to spend, at this stage, $761 million. But guess what? They say, in their additional estimates, that next year the costs are going to fall by half a billion dollars. This government is saying that next financial year—it is not that far away; it is four months away—the costs in this budget for their failed border protection policies are going to fall by half a billion dollars.
Such is going to be the success of their not changing their policies that they are going to continue to keep costs at that level for the next three years. What that means is that, on their own additional estimates figures, they have already blown out the budget by over $1 billion. If costs stay at least where they are forecast to stay this year, then over the next three years that is going to cost another $1.5 billion—and that is just running costs; I have not even started talking about capital. That is on top of the $290 million they are asking from this parliament today. It is worth observing that that blow-out over the next three years plus the blow-out they are asking for in this document alone are more than the funds they intend to raise from the flood levy through the legislation that they have brought into this parliament.
This is a government whose failings on this level know no parallel. This is a government that does not want to hear and does not want the Australian people to hear the scale of its failures. The Australian people can rely on one thing, and that is that this is an opposition that is not easily intimidated. We have an opposition leader in this country who is not easily intimidated. There is a shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, supported by my colleagues, who will not be intimidated into refraining from holding this government to account for its failures in border protection. This is a government that seems to think it can make decisions that are above public scrutiny. Well, the Australian people do not think that and the opposition does not think that.
As uncomfortable as it is for the government to hear me come into this place day in, day out; week in, week out; month in, month out; and year in, year out, I will be loud and clear in saying that this government’s border protection policies have failed. That failure is on this government’s head. It is there in the costs and it is there in the human tragedy that has occurred as a result of people smugglers that the government has been unable to stop with its own policies. The government’s only reaction is to come into this place and repeat malicious gossip in a way that tries to distract attention from its own failures.
Government members interjecting—
Order! The member has the right to be heard in silence.
They can try, but they know I am not going anywhere. They know I am going to be here day in, day out, holding them to account for the sake of the Australian people.
Government members interjecting—
The members opposite say that I should be embarrassed, just like the member for Longman said last year when he called me a racist in this chamber for having this exact same debate on costs. Today, I have the members opposite accusing me again because they do not want to hear the cost.
Madam Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: nobody on this side made those remarks. The member for Cook is well and truly extrapolating.
I heard you say ‘embarrassed’.
You said we were embarrassed!
You said I should be embarrassed.
Is the member for Parramatta seeking for the comments to be withdrawn?
Yes, I am.
I have nothing to withdraw, Madam Deputy Speaker D’Ath. Those opposite said I should be embarrassed. If I have misheard that then I have misheard that. If I have misheard that then I withdraw, and I would also ask them to confirm that they do not think I should be embarrassed.
I give the call to the member for Cook.
They are very touchy on this topic, and they should be touchy on this subject because the costs and the appropriation sought in this bill speak for themselves. They speak of manifest failure. They speak of a government that simply cannot admit the truth of its own failures.
I am going to go back to the issue of the Pacific solution and at the end of my remarks I will also seek leave to table a Senate question of February 2002 that was answered on notice. The answer goes into precise detail of the cost of the Pacific solution. It was part of a report by Senator Cook into these matters some years ago. It shows that the establishment and provision of infrastructure costs at Nauru and Manus Island—the Pacific solution—was a grand total of $20 million. Northam is costing eight times that much.
I have come into this place again today to talk about the failures of this government. I have talked about the cost of the failures of this government. The government refuses to answer to the costs that they have incurred and continue to seek from the Australian people on these matters. This opposition and this shadow minister will not shirk from continuing to hold this government to account on these matters.
I will finish on this remark: one of the reasons we have such a big problem in our detention network—over 6,300 people—is the asylum freeze introduced by this government against Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers and the suspension of their claims. If the government wants to look at a discriminatory policy on immigration, this is the only one I am aware of that has been introduced into this parliament, and it was by this government.
I seek leave to table the documents.
Leave granted.
I was going to speak on another matter in relation to the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 but that contribution by the member for Cook has led me in a different direction.
I will start by saying first that I would be delighted if one aspect of what the member for Cook was saying was true, which is, that a country the size of Australia, through its policy on our treatment of asylum seekers, could somehow stop 46 million people from moving around the world—if we were so powerful that our policy in this one area would stop the number of refugees in the world from rising as it has in the last three or four years from 15 million to 46 million. Countries all around the world are experiencing the same surge in arrivals as we are—in fact, greater surges than we are. The US and France and Europe are receiving many more. The surge is far greater there than it is here. If the member for Cook is suggesting that those surges are actually caused by Australia’s policy, that is a very weird assertion.
The idea that Australia’s policy somehow caused the increase in violence that caused massive numbers of people to flee Sri Lanka or massive numbers to flee Afghanistan is quite absurd. If you look at the history of people arriving by boat, consider the Vietnamese, for example, where millions of people fled Vietnam, and around 800,000 are estimated to have drowned fleeing Vietnam. Every country on the way was pushing people back out to sea. They all had policies of pushing the boats back out to sea and yet the people still came because they fled circumstances of certain death. When people flee what they believe is certain death they flee to somewhere. It is really simple. As many as 1.8 million Afghanis have fled into Pakistan, 1.2 million have fled into Syria and three million have fled into Iran. Enormous numbers of people have been displaced and are fleeing what they believe is certain death. So the idea that our policy could somehow stop that is absurd. When people flee certain death they flee to somewhere. We in Australia receive by boat a very, very small number of people relative to those fleeing in the world.
When you look at the cycle of arrivals in Australia, every time there is a great outbreak of war or civil unrest around the world the numbers increase, and they increase here as well. They increased for Vietnam, they increased around the year 2000 with the Afghanistan war and they decreased significantly following the outbreak of what we thought was peace in Afghanistan, all around the world including in Australia. So to assume that somehow, as the member for Cook seems to suggest, Australia with its humane treatment of asylum seekers could actually prevent people from fleeing from certain death is quite absurd.
I want to talk too about the response we saw last week to the government’s decision to fly asylum seekers to the funerals in Sydney, because we have heard some of the comments by the member for Cook and he has not admitted at this stage that he was wrong in those statements, just that he made them on the wrong day. It was an astonishing thing for me, and it showed an extraordinary ignorance of the plight of the people that we are talking about when we are talking about asylum seekers. In Australia—many of us gratefully—have never experienced the kinds of life experiences that many of our migrants, particularly our refugees, have experienced. I have a lot of them in my electorate, and the stories I hear are appalling. I have a couple who were forcibly separated from their two-year-old child and do not know where she is. She is in the Congo somewhere. I have a 24-year-old boy who arrived in Australia with his six younger brothers and sisters. He has put them all through university or high school. He is now 24. He never tells me where his parents are, but I assume that somewhere along the way he lost them. They are dreadful stories.
We in Australia saw the plight of a young boy who lost his parents in that dreadful sinking on Christmas Island, and we were rightly moved. But I think what we need to understand as people is that, for every one of those stories that we are now aware of that happened on Christmas Island, there are many, many stories of circumstances and experiences that are appalling and that have occurred before the people came to Australia. That is why they fled. They fled because they had to pick up their sister’s body after she had been tortured and they had to pay for it. They fled because their entire families are dead and they are the only one left—appalling circumstances; things that we do not even want to think about. We know what happened once that young boy reached Australia and we feel for him, but surely we did not need to see him crying at a funeral in order to feel compassion for his plight. Surely we should have felt compassion before that, and surely we should feel some compassion for what people are going through around the world and play our very small part in adhering to our responsibilities under the UN convention.
We take and have been taking around 12,000 or 13,000 people a year under the humanitarian program for quite some time. This is not new. In fact, I think the first time we did it was in about 1958, when we took some refugees from Europe after the Second World War. It was about the same number, about 12,000, and we were a much, much smaller country then. We have been doing it for a long, long time and it has proven to be, I think, a very good thing for us. We have within our community through our refugee program, but also through our large migration program, contact with the world. We actually have the world in us. We have bright, shining threads that link us to cultures that are thousands of years old where people have come to the same conclusions about building better lives, becoming better people and raising families via different paths. This is a remarkable thing that we have in our country.
In my community of Parramatta, I am continually astonished at how I can be talking to a person that I have known for ages—I have not known he was of Hindu faith but have known him for ages; I have worked with him; I have ridden my bike with him—and suddenly I will say something and he will come out with something which philosophically just takes a slightly different angle to get to the same result. I said to someone the other day, ‘Oh, I was terribly weak on my bike this morning,’ and he said, ‘Failure leads to success,’ in a very typically Hindu way, and then three other people came in and said very similar things. I have absolute delight in my community when I meet people who have lived lives that have run parallel to mine.
One of the great human tragedies, in many ways, is that we can only live one life. I know that some people in my community believe that we can live more than that, but I believe we live one. Maybe, if you are lucky in that life, you can become good at one thing. Maybe you can become knowledgeable at one thing. Maybe you can learn to live within a certain cultural framework or a certain religious framework well in one lifetime. But what a great gift it is that we have in our community people who have experienced those paths from different perspectives.
We, as members of parliament, would all know that we have an opportunity that very few people in Australia have—which is to look in those windows, to be invited into the families, to the weddings, the festivals, the temples and the mosques and to share just a tiny glimpse of the wealth of the world, the philosophy, the approaches to self-improvement and the approach to life ever after. It is all here in our community and it is one of the great things that makes us strong. I wanted when I first came in here today to refer back to something I said in my first speech. I think it is quite topical here today. I said:
One of the great strengths of Parramatta is its rich cultural diversity. Our multicultural society is something to be treasured. Parramatta is home to large Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Korean and Tamil communities, among others, and these communities have added to the economic and social capital of our region. In recent years—
and this was in 2004—
I have noticed a change in the language governments use in relation to multiculturalism, a trend towards the use of the word ‘tolerance’, or ‘tolerating difference’. For me, tolerance is the bare minimum. Tolerance is the level you set for the most racist elements in our society to lift them to the barest acceptable level. For the majority of open-minded, decent Australians, a celebration of diversity is the benchmark.
That was said when I came into parliament and since that time I have had six years of this great gift of being able to celebrate with communities in a way that most people simply do not.
I know there are some people who are afraid that the world might be changing, and I suggest to them that the world that they think is coming, where we have different cultures within us, has actually been here for a long time. You can work alongside a person who might look like she is of Indian origin. She might be Hindu, she might be Buddhist or she might be Muslim, depending on which country she comes from. You probably do not know. I worked with a woman for two years before I knew she was Jewish. I worked with a man for two years before I knew he was a Muslim—he was Bosnian. I just did not know. We had good relationships, we worked well together and we socialised together, but I just did not know. Many Australians do not get to experience the way some of us do the incredible breadth and diversity of our own communities, and that is to be regretted.
I urge my community members, if they feel uncomfortable with a certain group in the community, one group or another, to walk towards them, not away from them. Around 25 per cent of Australians were born overseas. That is the same proportion we had in 1901. It has been constant for 100 years. About 45 per cent of us have one parent born overseas. That has been constant for about 100 years. It goes up and down a little bit, but essentially it is the same. We are an extraordinary example of a country that has taken people in from around the world and built a society that actually works. It has not always been easy. There were times when I was younger where I heard people say some dreadful things. For example, I heard that people in my street had become terribly worried about the Greek Australians because they painted their houses blue and concreted their yards and property prices were going to plummet as a result of those blue houses. I was working in a factory when the Vietnamese boat people first arrived and some of the people in the factory were incredibly worried that these Vietnamese refugees would take over economically because they worked too hard. We have all heard people say that our Chinese migrants’ children are getting too much tutoring. We all hear this fear.
My Muslim community sometimes asks where the women can swim without the presence of men. In my community, it is not that much of a problem because the leagues club segregates its swimming pool. Parramatta Leagues Club takes women on one day and men on the other. I have told them all this, so a lot of the Muslim women in Parramatta go to the leagues club for their segregated swimming. Again, I suggest to anyone who is criticising the Muslim community for seeking segregation they could perhaps have a go at the Parramatta Leagues Club for doing the same thing. In fact, I know that quite a few leagues clubs do the same thing.
I would say to people who look at what is happening overseas—who look at unrest in one country or another—that we in Australia have lived through this before. We have lived through circumstances where we have had people in Australia who in their homeland might have been in conflict who live together quite peacefully here. In my African community, for example, the women in particular get together on a regular basis across national boundaries, across language groups and across religions. Even where they may have been in conflict between north and south, they are now together and learning to live together in this country in a positive way.
We in Australia will not be defined by what happens overseas. We in this country are defined by the way we treat each other—not by what happens overseas but by the way we treat each other. To pull away from a person because you fear that they might behave in a certain way is very foolish because it causes that person also to respond defensively. I think for our Muslim community the response after 2001 has caused many of them to reaffirm their approach to Islam perhaps even in a more fundamental way than they did in their homeland. I am aware of some girls who were not wearing the veil in their homeland but do now in Australia, largely as a response to that pushing away of that particular community. I again urge all my fellow Australians to have a very good and open look at some of the extraordinary wealth we have in our community and to remember when you see what is happening overseas that it does not happen here and we will be defined by our relationships with each other.
I am very pleased to make a contribution to the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. In the same vein as the previous two speakers, the issues I wish to raise are on migration. I spoke earlier in the House today and pointed out how we are dealing with probably the most disorganised and bad government since the Whitlam era. I am going to point out to this House today some examples of why this government is in such a mess. Not only is it in a mess financially and economically on things like the levy but it is in a mess on migration issues. As representatives, as we all are in this place, trying to represent people in our electorates and trying to do our job to help good, decent people wanting to come to this country, we are being thwarted by the dysfunctional, shambolic nature of the Labor Party’s reorganisation of their migration system. For example, since 2010 some of the changes in the ASCO codes to ANZSCO classifications mean a retrospective view of people that have been here on 457 visas, stranded here because of the retrospective changes made on issues such as eligibility of occupations, the IELTS tests on English and not taking into account the nuances of occupations et cetera. As a result we have a whole lot of people here with families, people who have sold up overseas to come here to try and make a contribution to Australia as skilled migrants, and they have been stranded because of the Labor Party’s retrospective application since they have been in government. They are hanging on by their fingernails now and they are still making a mess of their migration system.
One of the clearly and patently crazy and disturbing cases is a case in my electorate, where Vince and Teresa Borrello own a cheese company called Borrello Cheese, a very successful business set up by a couple of Italian migrants who have come here and set up a cheese business. It is a boutique cheese business and they sell bocconcinis around Perth to just about every outlet, because bocconcini is the flavour of the day along with other specialty cheeses. Vince was self-taught and he started up his cheese factory just off Thomas Road in Oakford in my electorate. He and his wife and his family are involved. The business has grown to such an extent that—how dare they?—they try to bring across a qualified and skilled cheese maker from Italy.
Mr Pelati, who they have tried to bring to Australia, is not only qualified but someone who can help and mentor those who are all self-taught in Vince’s cheese factory. That is all fine. He ticks all the boxes. If you think that this is a partisan thing, anyone on the other side, Vince is trying to get help from a former Labor member of parliament, Nick Catania, who is now the mayor of Vincent in Western Australia. Vince is throwing his hands up in the air about the application of the migration rules in this case with Mr Pelati. His qualifications are right and his English is right, not to mention the fact that he is mentoring and training those on the ground. I got contacted by Vince. Vince is an enthusiastic and energetic sort of person. He started yelling down the phone at me one day about the fact that Mr Pelati was going to be thrown out of the country. Why? He had ticked all the boxes, as I said, to do with qualifications. They had advertised throughout Australia for a cheese maker before they went to the huge expense of bringing someone and their family here. They had to pay all the transport, medical and set-up costs for him because he came on a 457 visa. Then they were told that he was going to be thrown out of the country.
When I got involved, the young case officer—I will not mention his name because he was probably only following instructions—had hit him with this letter saying, ‘Unless you deal with this, this man is going to be thrown out.’ So I went to a senior case officer, Mr Robert Hardy, who is very good. Robert drilled down very quickly to what the problem was. Everything was fine except for one thing. The problem was that the Labor Party, because of their exposure to the unions, do not like skilled workers coming here on 457 visas, so they make it as tough as they can.
They should join the union.
That is stupid. I expect better from you. We know that every Labor member of parliament had to join a union to become a member of the Labor Party. And you are saying that the only way that a skilled worker from another country can advance is if he joins a union. Do not be so stupid. This bears out why this man is in trouble: it is because of your mentality, you cretin. Fancy saying that. I cannot believe that you would go down that track.
While I understand the passion, the member will withdraw that comment.
I withdraw. At the end of the day, the issue here is that they have said that this company—for whatever reason, and I know that this is happening throughout Australia in other businesses—must pay one per cent of their 2009-10 wages, which in this case is $8,890. This is extortion at its best. They do not need to do this. But somehow the Labor Party, because of influence from the union, have said, ‘We’re going to put a hurdle in front of you, which is that you have to pay one per cent of your wages into a training levy.’
Ms Rishworth interjecting
I would appreciate a bit of support, Deputy Speaker.
It is a more robust chamber, but I remind people that if they want to intervene they can rise and ask the member a question. Do not yell out across the chamber.
You will have a quorum called on you when you are up—that is what will happen.
I have made the point. While it is robust, the member for Kingston should remember that if people want to ask a question they can rise and ask a question of the member. We will not yell at each other across the chamber. The member for Canning has the call.
Thank you, Deputy Speaker, for your support. The paying of this one per cent levy on wages is ridiculous. You will see why in a moment. Anyway, he was willing to pay this $8,890 over and above everything else that he has paid to get this cheese maker into Australia. What happened is that Mr Hardy came back to me and said, ‘We can probably get this through if he agrees to pay two per cent.’ So now we have nearly $18,000 that Vincent Borrello has got to pay. When I asked why it was two per cent, they did not have any good reason why. They just said that two per cent might get them out of jail on this issue. So who do they pay it to? Not the immigration department. No, you have to find a registered training organisation to pay your two per cent levy to—that $18,000. Begrudgingly—Vince is filthy about the fact that he has to pay this extra when he had been shown in writing that it is one per cent—he is going to pay it. His business is going well enough to pay two per cent. But he cannot believe this arbitrary hit on him. He then goes out to get a receipt from a registered training organisation after he pays them this two per cent levy. He cannot find a registered training organisation in Australia that does cheese makers. That is the problem. So Vince is still fishing around Australia trying to find a registered training organisation. They think they have found one in Melbourne that he can give the money to. Can you imagine what this registered training organisation in Melbourne is going to say? ‘Why in the hell are we getting a cheque like this from a cheese maker in Western Australia?’ Vince would reply, ‘Oh, it is because that is the extortion I have to pay to get this man into this country under the rules of the Labor Party.’ It is shambolic and it is ridiculous. At the moment he is being held to ransom by this government’s policies. This government’s policies are absolutely out of whack.
We hear a lot from the other side feigning their interest in humanitarian issues. I have a Mr Harati in my electorate, whose daughter, Ms Samira Harati, is stranded in Malaysia. It is a sad story. Mr Harati wants to go on a hunger strike out in front of my office on behalf of his daughter. Mr Harati became an enemy of the state in Iran and as a result he had to leave the country. He came here on a humanitarian visa. His daughter and her husband left Iran with him and they ended up in Malaysia, where they made an offshore application. The Haratis cannot return to Iran. She became pregnant whilst in Malaysia. Her husband absconded with their child back to Iran and left her stranded there. She cannot go back to Iran and she cannot come to Australia. She has no means of support in Malaysia. The Haratis spent much of their time and much of their money going to Malaysia to try to help their daughter. So where is the humanitarianism of this government? I have written to two ministers about the Harati case. No help—‘just get in the queue’. When they came to my office and I told them that the minister said, ‘Just get in the queue,’ Mr Harati then said to me, ‘Well, why don’t I just get on a boat. Why don’t I pay a people smuggler $20,000 and get on a boat because then I will get a visa.’ We know that, of the 10,000 people who have come to this country by boat in the last 12 months or more, all of them bar about 160 have been given a visa—160 out of 10,000 have been sent back. And here we are with Samira Harati stranded in Malaysia. Where is the humanitarianism from this government?
The migration policies of this government are absolutely skewed all over the place. I have a case of a Ms Thivanka Liyanage, a Sri Lankan resident, who is seeking a resident return visa. She was here and went to Murdoch University in Western Australia from where she graduated four years ago with a Bachelor of Commerce. She gained permanent Australian residency soon after that and remained in Australia for approximately six months before returning to Sri Lanka. Why? Because her father was involved in the civil war there. He was one of the special forces commanders. She was there to support her family through that conflict. She tried to return to Australia to re-ignite her residency and they have given her only a three-month visa—and her family is here. Talk about family reunions! It is just crazy. It is another one that has been put the minister and put on the too-hard shelf. To his credit, I had a meeting with the minister and he was very polite to me and said he would do what he could to help. But nothing has eventuated on all these cases that I am raising with you.
There are so many other issues to consider. How about Francesco, an Italian who came out here on a visa with a business that requires his specialist skills. They have changed the ASCO. He has his wife and children here—they go to school—and they want to make Australia their home. They have changed the ASCO codes so that you can no longer have restaurant managers in the codes. Where is the fairness in that for him?
Then there is Nono, a Portuguese man who is in the same position. He is trying to get support but hurdles have been put in front of him. He is a fantastic person but he will probably have to leave this country in about 12 months time because he does not fit the box of the Labor Party’s new policies on migration. I will never know why you are absolutely hell-bent on looking after the rights and the interests of those coming here unlawfully by boat but you ignore decent people who have applied properly through the right means.
I will conclude by mentioning that I caught a taxi in Perth the other day and the driver was a guy called Kenny, a black African from Zimbabwe. Kenny came out here as a person who was involved in the flour-milling industry. He had the skills. He is now actually driving a taxi, and I cannot understand why he would rather drive a taxi than be a skilled flour miller. He said that he is so frustrated because he knows so many people in Zimbabwe who have problems with the Zimbabwe regime and they are in queues—
Order! The debate is suspended. If he so wishes, the member will have the right to continue for his remaining time when the debate is resumed.
Sitting suspended from 1.00 pm to 4.00 pm
I speak in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. The total amount of additional appropriation, reclassification, modification and changes as a result of the legislation is $2.3 billion. This is an important piece of legislation because it deals with a variety of different areas which I will address in the course of this bill—issues in relation to floods, particularly in my home state of Queensland, trade training centres, local and community infrastructure, and Active After-school Communities programs in a variety of different areas.
It is important legislation in a number of ways. It provides $120.7 million to assist people in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia who have been adversely affected by the floods. I said this morning in a speech in the main chamber that my electorate of Blair has been really adversely affected. Its schools have been devastated. Bundamba, Ipswich State High School, Mount Tarampa, Patrick Estate, Ipswich East, Brassall State School—school after school has been affected. And road after road has been affected. I read out a whole list of roads and bridges this morning in the main chamber—essential community infrastructure, which is vital to maintaining business, helping farmers get produce to the markets and getting children to school. I was speaking to the principal at Toogoolawah State School and she was telling me of the real trouble they are having in getting the kids in her school community to school because of bridges that were down and roads that needed to be fixed. So providing assistance in this way is so important.
That is why I am absolutely aghast at the coalition’s attitude towards the flood levy. We have seen their response to appropriations, their response to savings and their response to a levy. We have seen an almost Shakespearean tragedy over on the other side since the budget. I can never forget the response of the Leader of the Opposition to the last budget. He said that the shadow Treasurer would provide information later about that—about the savings they were going to particularise. The shadow Treasurer passed the parcel to the member for Goldstein, the putative and aspiring shadow Treasurer, and he said that he would do it. Then they had the fiasco where no-one could provide the information. We remember how those press conferences all ended. And then we had the coalition’s costings in act 2 of the Shakespearean tragedy. We saw them in the last federal election alleging that they would comply with the Charter of Budget Honesty but not doing so, claiming that they would find $50 billion worth of savings and not being able to do it. We know that the Treasury and Department of Finance and Deregulation have found a $10.6 billion black hole in their costings.
Now we are seeing the third act of the Shakespearean tragedy, something akin to Macbeth. We are seeing the savings soap opera mark 3 with respect to the opposition leader, who said it would be easy to find the savings, that he would have them ready in the next few days. A day went by, another day went by, a further day went by, a week went by, a fortnight went by and then I saw him on the Sunday program Insiders saying, ‘Gee, it is going to be tough to find those savings; it is going to be really hard.’ We saw an absolute and utter farce. This is their response to the flood levy, this is their response to appropriations and this is their response to budget integrity, probity and capacity.
The opposition wheeled out all these deferrals, which they knew would happen year after year and would leave a black hole of $1 billion. Then they said, ‘We’re going to sacrifice our national interest with respect to Indonesian schools.’ John Howard knew fighting fundamentalism was important. He absolutely knew it was important. And the deputy leader of the Liberal Party knew it was important as well. They said, ‘We’re going to cut back on GP superclinics.’ GP superclinic performed magnificently in my electorate during the floods. Dr Simon Barnett and his crew ought to be congratulated for the work they did at the Ipswich evacuation centre and at the Riverview Neighbourhood House evacuation centre. Then they said, ‘We’re going to cut back on the BER’—$150 million deferred on the BER. If they had come to my electorate they would have known full well that the school halls we built through the BER in many cases acted as evacuation and recovery centres in places like Esk and Fernvale.
We see this utter farce over on the other side—a Shakespearean tragedy of mouldering and smouldering ambition of different players. But the money that is being allocated will help my electorate, and I am very pleased to support it. The opposition claim that the trade training centres are useless and that they would get rid of them. Here we have funding allocated for non-government schools for trade training centres. In my electorate we have the Ipswich Trade Training Centre and three non-government schools: St Edmunds College, a Catholic school; Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School; and Ipswich Grammar School. There has been a $3 million investment, and you can see what is being done there for those kids. You can see the delight on their faces when you go there. It is a fantastic initiative in my seat.
And then, of course, there is money being allocated for additional trade training centres. Staines Memorial College, another independent Christian school in my electorate, will also be getting money. You can see that funding is going to happen for that. The college is teaming up with other independent Christian schools to provide trade training centres that will help kids in the Ipswich and West Moreton region—a fantastic initiative being played out on the ground in Blair right now. There is funding here under our Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program opposed by those opposite—opposed forever. But if you went to places like Esk and saw the delight on the faces of those kids at the skate park or if you went to the Fernvale Indoor Sports Centre, funded with $2.1 million, and saw how important and popular that centre is, you would see how it helps those kids. If you saw the Ipswich Civic Centre, funded with $300,000 for an outdoor cafe and eatery, or if you saw what the funding meant to the Brisbane Valley rail trail, you would see how it helps as well. We are funding further assistance through this program: over $300,000 given to the Ipswich City Council for the Bell Street redevelopment, partnering with the states and with the local council, and for drainage and for the skate park up at Kilcoy. In these appropriation bills we are seeing funding for local community project needs under the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program.
Another important matter is the Australian Sports Commission’s provision of $21.6 million to continue the Active After-school Communities program until December 2011. This is a fantastic initiative. Over 3,200 schools are taking part in care services out of school hours each semester. In the six-year duration of this program 52,000 community personnel, including teachers and after-school carers, have had access to free training for community coaches, boosting the capacity and the capability of our sports system. Seeing traditionally non-active young people being involved in this program is terrific. Recently we had an announcement of another round of funding, and 14 outside-school-hours care services in Ipswich and the Somerset region will get that funding—places like Coominya, Fernvale, Brassall, Rosewood, Walloon, Redbank Plains, Minden, Booval, Springfield, Karrabin, Kilcoy and Ipswich. Given that the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that one in five Australian children is overweight or obese, this is an important program that is being funded under this appropriations legislation.
Two thousand new kits were announced as part of this program. We are seeing Playing for Life kits keeping Ipswich and Somerset kids active. These important kits from the Australian Sports Commission are being rolled out particularly under this budget announcement and the appropriations bills here. These 2,000 new kits represent a federal Labor government investment of $1.2 million in addition to the $43.5 million already invested under the Active After-School Communities program. I have been to St Joseph’s Catholic School in my electorate to talk to the young people there and see the sorts of activities they do. It is a wonderful program, with additional funding under this appropriations legislation.
The NBN is also mentioned in terms of modification of assistance. The NBN is important in my electorate. Why? Because in little country towns in my electorate there will be fibre to the premises. In towns like Minden, Fernvale, Esk, Coominya, Toogoolawah, Kilcoy and Lowood there will be fibre to the premises 100 times faster than the broadband speeds we have today. The Somerset region has been a broadband backwater. That is why the Somerset Region Business Alliance, not necessarily known as a body affiliated to the Australian Labor Party, has been so supportive of the NBN. There will be fibre to the premises for 93 per cent of Australians, with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second.
Broadband is particularly important in the Western Corridor, as those members who represent rural and regional seats know. How do I know it is important? I have here a submission from 31 May 2010 on making the Western Corridor NBN ready, signed by the mayors of the Ipswich City Council, Toowoomba Regional Council, Lockyer Valley Regional Council, Somerset Regional Council and Scenic Rim Regional Council. It urges bringing the NBN to those areas. Two of those mayors represent cities in my electorate and three of them represent cities in the federal seats of Groom and Wright. All of them urge in the submission that the NBN be rolled out in the Western Corridor of South-East Queensland. All of these council areas are flood affected. The submission says:
Support for the Western Corridor National Broadband Network’s submission has been provided by many leading business, educational and community organisations including the Queensland government owned corporation, Springfield Land Corporation, University of Queensland, University of Southern Queensland and Regional Development Australia.
The councils—all of them, not just the ones in my electorate but the ones in the federal seat of Groom and the federal seat of Wright—say:
The councils applaud the Australian government on the establishment of the National Broadband Network to implement this critical infrastructure.
That is why it is important that in this appropriation money is given and assistance provided for the NBN.
The NBN will make a big difference in those regional and rural areas in my electorate. That is why people who do not traditionally support the Australian Labor Party have been so supportive. I am very supportive of these appropriations bills because they include additional assistance which will flow through to my seat of Blair. I said this morning that the coalition has forgotten about the federal seat of Blair. In the last federal campaign they made zero commitments in Blair and not one shadow minister visited it—not one. But the federal Labor government has 1,311 projects, worth $180 million, in my electorate under the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan. There are 220 projects in 65 schools, totalling $108 million; 11 roads projects totalling $3.1 million; and 1,069 housing projects totalling $69.3 million. The coalition voted against all of them. That is the extent of the coalition’s concern for the people of Ipswich and the Somerset region and of their opposition to investment on roads, projects, housing and infrastructure. But the greatest example of all is their threat to close down the Ipswich Motorway upgrade.
But the greatest example of all is their threat to close down the Ipswich Motorway upgrade. Only we have brought it in; only we support it. Even my opponent in the last election campaign could not bring himself to have the wit and wisdom to support it. The coalition is always against the people in my electorate because it is crystal clear from the way they vote in this House and the way they campaign back home that they do not support money going into South-East Queensland, particularly in the federal seat of Blair.
Appropriation of funds is extremely important for my electorate of Gilmore. Gilmore is now a very diverse electorate. Whereas prior to the last redistribution it could genuinely be described as regional, the addition of part of the urban area of the Shellharbour local government area has made the seat a challenging proposition.
The seat is fundamentally made up of five urban clusters. There is Milton/Ulladulla at the southernmost point, the bay and basin area further northward, followed by the Nowra/Bomaderry area, Kiama, and then the southern parts of the Shellharbour LGA. Until the inclusion of the Shellharbour component, Gilmore could be described as occupying the lower socioeconomic demographic. The Shellharbour area was part of Throsby, which at one time was one of the safest Labor seats in Australia. Its population was aligned to the culture of the steel city of Wollongong from which most residents relied on their income.
But life is in a constant state of flux. Nothing stays the same and certainly not forever. The demise of the once great steel industry has brought with it a subtle change, but a change nevertheless. As working-class areas have become gentrified, so have attitudes and expectations. When I was presented with the challenge of going into Labor heartland, I approached it with some trepidation. For a long time it was accepted that this area was hardcore Labor and that I was in for a pasting. Luckily, I did not let that colour my thinking and just went on doing what I did best. The result speaks for itself.
What it did show me was that there is more at stake than just plain political affiliation. It showed me that people were not so rusted to their beliefs that they would not change their mind if a better argument were made. It showed me that if they were treated with honesty and respect, rather than being served dogma, they were at least prepared to listen. When I doorknocked, I can honestly say I cannot recall any instance of resentment at the fact that I was a Liberal. All were polite and civil even those that admitted that they would be voting Labor, despite saying they thought I was personally okay.
Whilst things and areas change, deep down where it counts, the issues confronting individuals and families are the same from one place to another. People are worried about their family’s welfare, the rising cost of living, taxation, global warming, the future for their children, quality of life and whether or not they have a job. They feel the pinch when interest rates go up, when the price of petrol goes up and when they cannot get timely medical treatment. They worry about who will look after them in their august years and how they will cope if they lose their job. They worry about crime, juvenile delinquency and the fact that they often feel alienated from the mainstream of government. Many do not think their opinion matters and, given the shenanigans of the New South Wales Labor government over the course of the last 16 years, I am not surprised. They hate talking to recorded messages and they hate anyone who jumps the queue. In short, regardless of where they live, they are just like you and me.
During the 2010 federal campaign, I secured a number of promises for initiatives that would bring benefit to specific areas. I want to list some. They included $2.6 million for a Shoalhaven headspace site, $1 million for the Kiama Harbour upgrades, $35 million for a cancer care centre equipped with a linear accelerator and $20 million for the Princes Highway. There was $10 million for the Shellharbour marina, $1 million for CCTV cameras, $25 million for an Australian technical college and the list goes on.
Unfortunately, most have had to be placed on the backburner for a better day—I hope we will be in government soon. I ask the residents to try to remember just what their Labor counterpart actually did promise for Gilmore. A GP superclinic was promised for last December if Labor came into government and still we have nothing—not even on the drawing board. I acknowledge the former Prime Minister’s promise of a cancer care clinic for the Shoalhaven and a commitment to the GP superclinic. I am not going to deny they will be welcome, especially in light of the chronic parlous state of local health services. The linear accelerator is a subject that has been well canvassed by my state colleague, Shelley Hancock, member for South Coast, who has also described the gradual deteriorating decline in service standards in regional areas. The direction I am going in is to seek better and more opportunities for the people of Gilmore, no matter their political inclination, but this will not be achieved by imposing more taxes on the Australian people, particularly in Gilmore.
I have long been an advocate of the need to improve accessibility to education and encourage young people to pursue learning for their own benefit. There is nothing more liberating than an education. I know, because I was forced to leave school when I was 15. I will again be pursuing the realisation of the commitments I made in seeking re-election last year, albeit from another direction. With an imminent change of government in New South Wales things will change, hopefully for the better. We might now begin to see funding for projects we know are necessary for the social and economic good of the community. It has been shown that a prosperous community is better placed to weather uncertainties than one that is in the red. What better example than Australia’s ability to weather the worst of the global financial crisis, not because of the $900 handouts, the failed pink batts or the school BER programs, but because the Howard government left a surplus and a Future Fund—now all, sadly, gone.
I want more for all the extended communities within Gilmore. The people of Shellharbour and surrounds are confronting a local economy less and less dependent on the steel industry. Their economy is evolving from a reliance on manufacturing to a reliance on other industries, some yet to be identified. The greater Wollongong area we see today will not be the same in 10 years time and we need to prepare for the change. The same applies southward but perhaps in a slightly different direction.
With the change of government, I lament some of the things that have been let go, things like the principle of mutual obligation, which required a token contribution from individuals who accepted unemployment benefits. This is what Work for the Dole was all about—trying to resurrect the notion that the world does not owe you a living and, in the process, benefiting local communities. What is wrong with trying to discourage a free, handout mentality? There are many out there who see unconditional social security payments as their natural right, an entitlement that is sacrosanct.
I also lament the demise of area consultative committees. ACCs were hugely successful. They delivered many benefits to Gilmore during the life of the Howard government. The ACCs had the ability to coordinate community interests and bring together disparate interests and, most importantly, to deliver the goods. They were truly focused on the community in which they were situated. The government’s alternative model is a shadow of the ACC model. Regional development offices, whilst seemingly pretending to do what ACCs did, in fact, do not. They cover a wider area, are less connected with the community and, so far, have remained comparatively invisible. The new beast has proved to be disappointing. Bring back the ACCs is what I say.
The demise of the Green Corps has been in a similar vein, with its replacement model more a gesture than a practical response. I cannot remember any projects completed under this government that have assisted the community. Where a new Green Corps project was being announced almost quarterly by the former coalition government, I am hard-pressed to remember when a project under the new regime was last announced.
I am also concerned at the backslide of defence contracts. There is now talk of the MRH90 helicopter replacement program being axed, yet the previous two Labor defence ministers guaranteed me that the program would be implemented to the benefit of HMAS Albatross. Should this not happen, it will have a severe impact on the prospects of the defence industries in and around Nowra. Defence is a huge contributor to the local economy and any diminution of its activities will be keenly felt. If the MRH90 is to go then it is imperative the government does all it can to fill the vacuum it creates in Gilmore. Procurement tenders are long and expensive and the risk of losing trained, qualified staff is great.
The former coalition government’s Investing in Our Schools Program recognised the importance of infrastructure investment. This enormously successful scheme provided over $1.2 billion dollars directly to schools. Crucially, Investing in Our Schools also recognised that it is the people on the ground, the school communities themselves, who are best placed to decide what is needed and how to get it done. In contrast, Labor’s BER rip-off completely ignored schools. In typical Labor style, Julia Gillard’s school halls program told schools what they would get and did not even bother to ask what was needed. Labor’s system gave taxpayers’ money directly to state education department bureaucrats—who are not accountable and are not construction experts. No thought was given to local contractors, who have been doing it tough. Under the current system, government schools have no incentive to save, as money not spent at the school is reclaimed by the state governments. Labor’s addiction to bureaucracy, combined with Labor’s ‘We know what is best for you’ attitude has prevented parents, students and schools getting value for money.
That same dynamic has struck the government’s public housing projects. In the Shoalhaven and the Illawarra, subcontractors working on the building sites have been left out of pocket following the collapse of the prime contractors retained by the government—all out-of-area contractors. Many local tradesmen are owed thousands and are unlikely to get anything back. It is a failure of adequate oversight when the contracts were let and afterwards, adding to the litany of waste of the BER projects.
Talk about promising so much and delivering so little. What happened to the big-ticket item promising to take over public hospitals? It has been massively diluted to warrant being described as a non-event. So too the carbon tax. In August of last year, the Prime Minister emphatically ruled out the introduction of a carbon tax.
Under the government I lead—
she said—
no carbon tax.
Guess what? It is back on the books and with it sky rocketing electricity and other energy bills and the cost of living generally, something I am sure a lot of Australians are looking forward to with bated breath! I think not. GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch also had a short life, as if they were ever a realistic proposition. They also promised not to change the Baby Bonus eligibility, a promise that had a life span of less than a year. They said the same thing about health insurance, and that met with the same fate. In the same vein as GroceryWatch and FuelWatch, the idiotic concept of a peoples’ assembly on the issue of climate change. Talk about a ‘mini-me’ version of the 2020 Summit talkfest that went nowhere.
I am waiting for their much-vaunted trade centres to be delivered. The previous speaker spoke about that. He is lucky he has a Labor seat, I suppose. But they seem to have slid into the same time frame of delivery as the NBN scheme. Vincentia High School was promised a trade centre just after the election. Still zip—nothing, not even tenders called. At least when they do call tenders I hope they look at local tenders.
Let us talk about the NBN scheme. When they rolled out the pilot program in the Kiama/Minnamurra area everyone thought it would be underground. Yes, locals thought that would be great. At first it started out that way. The trenches were dug, then filled and then overhead cables started to appear. Extra steel posts were erected on houses that already had the trenches dug, and large, thick, black cables, spreading three or four houses from the one poll were erected. So what is going on? Like the cheque that is in the mail, the GP superclinics are on the way, but I am not holding my breath. But most of all, I lament the frittering away of a surplus that took ten years to build and a single year to expend.
Whilst the necessity for spending as a stimulus at the time cannot be denied, the means by which this has been done and the extent is also disappointing. The waste and mismanagement surrounding recent stimulus spending projects is a worrying concern. So too the massive investment in an NBN that could well be made redundant before it is even delivered. The point is that this huge commitment of taxpayer funded resources has effectively hobbled the room we had to move in the future.
Despite the government’s continued reiteration of its commitment to bring the budget to surplus in three years, few believe it and they have good grounds for those doubts. The litany of failed or broken promises, underperformance or just plain waste by this government is extensive and well known. They have an unenviable track record and any serious punter cannot ignore such a track record when new promises are wheeled out. In comparison, some of the achievements of the Howard government that set the stage for a prosperous and secure Australia cannot be allowed to be forgotten.
The commitments I subscribed to in the election campaign of 2010 remain valid today and I reiterate my commitment in pursuing them—a total of $104 million compared to the two promises my Labor counterpart made and has still not delivered. However, I am encouraged with the prospect of a new coalition government in New South Wales. Many of these commitments require a bipartisan and cooperative relationship, which was utterly absent during the last 16 years under Labor. They simply predicated most of their decisions on politics unless it suited them to do otherwise. There are examples, some of which I have alluded to previously, where the interests of the community took a back seat to politics—the North Nowra Link Road and Princes Highway are but two shining examples in Gilmore. In fact, my Labor opponent in last year’s campaign stated clearly that the Princes Highway was not important to the residents of Gilmore. How many more funerals do we have to have before there is a change of mindset?
In the context of habitually ignoring your constituents, the New South Wales planning minister wants to urbanise the Killalea State Park in Shellharbour, also in my electorate. For a government that once railed against the evils of urban sprawl, it is revealed they are now its keenest advocates. The same party also railed against the evils of coastal development, transferring many planning powers to the New South Wales Department of Planning, accusing coastal councils of planning laxness.
Emerging in this government is a similar and patent want of conviction, direction and concern for the interests of all Australians, not just their select few. It is a sad state of affairs and it is painful to watch billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money going to waste at the altar of political expediency. My pledge is to continue working hard to ensure the best outcomes for the future of Gilmore and to pursue the benefits that many in the cities have taken for granted and that we in country Australia do not have. I want to see this country headed by a Prime Minister who is elected by the people not selected by Labor powerbrokers.
I speak in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. I have a particular interest in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) as it includes an appropriation for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations of $10.1 million to introduce the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. The Fair Entitlements Guarantee will replace the existing General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme, much better known as GEERS, of which I have been critical for many years due to its shortcomings when dealing with employee entitlements.
This measure will deliver on Labor’s election commitment to improve workers entitlements protections in the event of the financial collapse of their employer, something which over the years we have seen happen far too many times. It has certainly happened in my electorate of Deakin in the time that I have been the member. It is a very stressful and trying time for workers in companies to find that suddenly they have no money in that week’s pay but not only that they have no annual leave, no long service leave entitlements and no redundancy payout whilst the company goes through the process of being wound up. This certainly happened with two local employers in Mitcham, where my office is in the electorate of Deakin, and it dragged on for an awfully long time. Workers had to rely on local charities like the Salvation Army to get through that period of time. Although there needs to be changes above and beyond the coverage of the Fair Entitlement Guarantee, what it does cover is of great benefit to workers in that situation.
This allocation of $10.1 million will extend current entitlements to include redundancy pay, up to a maximum of four weeks for each year of service whereas currently the maximum is only 16 weeks in total under GEERS. When those local employees were thrown out of their jobs, there were people that had worked at the one company for 20 years. Although they qualified for a GEERS payout, 16 weeks of redundancy pay for 20 years of service is something way below any acceptable community standard.
On 25 July last year the Gillard government committed to taking strong action to ensure all employees receive their entitlements, including superannuation, if their employer went bust. As I have said, GEERS did not cover many things and, although it was better than nothing, this is a much bigger step on that path. The Howard government GEER Scheme left workers in many cases tens of thousands of dollars worse off not only in current entitlements but in prospective entitlements.
To give you an example, a worker who had worked at the same factory for 20 years, as I have already spoken about, with an annual income of $65,000 and an award entitlement to three weeks of redundancy pay for each year of service is entitled to a total redundancy benefit of $75,000 under that industrial instrument. Under GEERS a worker with that length of service would only be guaranteed their 16 weeks redundancy payment of around $20,000. Under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, such a worker would receive the entire redundancy payment of $75,000.
Everyone in this House knows how hard Australian employees work and they deserve to know their wages, superannuation and other entitlements are safe. The Fair Entitlements Guarantee will deliver new certainty that workers will receive the redundancy entitlements they are owed in the unfortunate circumstance of an employer going out of business.
The entitlements covered by GEERS which will continue to be protected by the Fair Entitlements Guarantee include up to three months unpaid wages and amounts deducted from wages, especially employee superannuation contributions—a topic I spoke about in this chamber only a few days ago. Superannuation is particularly problematic because in many cases an amount may be shown on the payslip but not deposited with the super fund. So the employee may well think that they have the money in the bank, as it were, only to find out many months later—or in some cases over a year later—that there was no deposit. There are processes, through the Australian Taxation Office, to try to recover that but it is a long and uncertain process. As I was saying, the Fair Entitlement Guarantee also covers all unpaid annual leave, all long service leave and up to a maximum of five weeks payment in lieu of notice. The Fair Entitlements Guarantee does not apply to the portion of income earned above the annually indexed rate of $108,300, and directors and excluded employees of the employing company, as defined by section 556 of the Corporations Act, do not quality.
As with the GEERS, payments under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee will only be made once an employee’s company enters liquidation. That is another area that needs to be looked at further, because in many cases a company can take an awfully long time to go from administration across to liquidation. Remember that those people who had a weekly, fortnightly or monthly income and certainty—in some cases for many years on end—are suddenly thrown into uncertainty and turmoil. I think people in Australia deserve something better than the system we have at the moment where they may have to rely on charity only a number of weeks after having had a full-time job for a decade or more.
The Australian government will continue to seek to recover payments from companies through the liquidation process. That is also a very long term undertaking. Currently, the government recovers approximately $15 million per year through this process. It is anticipated that a similar level of recovery would continue under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee.
This is a continuation of winding back Work Choices and other pieces of legislation that were brought in during the time of the Howard government. As I said, although it is not a huge change in dollar terms, on the ground for people who are affected, it will make a real change. Workers will now have the knowledge that they are protected against the loss of their hard-earned, banked entitlements which are held on trust by their employer for all those years.
I would also like to talk about the effect of the Building the Education Revolution in my electorate of Deakin. It has been a revelation. Schools which, in many cases, have not had any substantial capital work done on them since they were built in the 1950s or 1960s now have a new lease of life. They can now advertise to prospective parents and look good. I have some great schools in the electorate of Deakin that have suffered from a bit of an image problem. They have been great schools on the inside but the paint has been peeling off the outside and the buildings are old and unsuited to modern-day learning. Those schools are always at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting parents to come and have a look with the intention of sending their kids to that school.
Some of the schools now have new buildings open or underway. And those are the things that the schools like to show off first. This is their move, in many cases, into the 21st century. For example, I have seen a classroom built in the 1950s which only had one power point in it. That might have been fine when there were no laptop computers, overhead projectors or any of the other equipment that, these days, is taken for granted in most schoolrooms, but it certainly does not work now. Our children deserve better than that. To be stuck with out-of-date infrastructure is simply not fair on them. Our local schools need to be able to take that step into modern learning spaces and there is so much more to be done with them. Infrastructure as a whole, right throughout Australia, is lagging behind. Things that were built 30, 40 or 50 years ago may still be standing but are not always suited to the current task. As a nation we need to make sure—especially in education—that our infrastructure, the teachers, and the environment in the schools are first class at every school.
The schools I will talk about in my electorate of Deakin cover the range. I have large private schools, I have small Catholic schools and I have primary schools that range from 140 students to over 800 students. They are all types and each one is different. They all have a different culture and they all have a different way of doing things. But the one thing they have in common is that they all strive to do their best for the students who go there. I, as the local member, am always on hand to assist with anything that I can do. Sometimes I can help directly and sometimes indirectly.
The BER has helped schools such as Blackburn Primary, which has an original building dating back to the 1880s that is still in use. It is one of the historic buildings of the suburb of Blackburn. There is very little left of that age in the area. They also now have, out the back of the school, a brand-new full-size basketball facility which they can now use for school assemblies. In the first few years that I went to that school for school assemblies they had assemblies in four converted classrooms with the walls knocked out. You could just about fit the 400 children in the building, but you could not fit the parents in. So, if the parents came along for the school assembly, every time I went there I would see a number of them standing outside. When the assembly started they would stick their head in through the window so they could hear what was going on inside.
Blackburn Primary has an excellent school band, one of the best in Melbourne, I dare say, at a primary school level. There is great interest from the parents in hearing what their children can do musically. Now they have an area where they can set up a stage, where they can play, where they can practise but, more importantly, where people can come along and see that. One of the great joys of opening a building like that is to see the uses it can be put to. That school also has an agreement with the local basketball club, which uses it after hours. That not only provides a little bit of income for the school but also helps out the basketball club because there are not enough courts in the local area for them to practise on. That is just one example of how this program works at one school.
But, of course, it is not just one school. There are 28 schools in my electorate that are doing different things with different buildings. Some have taken state government designed templates, but many others have sat down with me and the state department and worked through designs and worked through differences and got to a point that they would not have got to if we had not done that work. We managed to put together a local template design that provided a larger building for some schools that were not allocated the same amount of money as the bigger schools. That has meant that some schools that were lined up under the state template program to receive a building that would have housed half a court now have a full court and can now also rent that space out to sports clubs. Schools like Dorset Primary or Ringwood Heights have managed to do more with less. The difference between that and the experience of other schools that already have their buildings up and running is that this took a bit longer, but it is a piece of infrastructure that I hope stands there for many, many decades to come.
I think it is much better that way, and on the day the building is opened everyone at the school appreciates it because they have had that input and because they have got what the school wanted. It might be a sports hall or a library or, in many cases, new classrooms. As I said before, many of the schools in my area have very old classrooms and some of the schools have opted for new learning spaces and classrooms that are used in a different way from the traditional methods. Classes are grouped together. Laptops are carried around by the children and teachers mix and match. That is a great thing to see. It is such a change from the days when I and many other people in this place went to school.
I would also like to talk about the buildings still to be opened. I still have around 23 BER projects to be opened in the seat of Deakin. There are a great number of those coming along in the next few months. I know the children at all the schools where they are being built are so keen to get into their new classrooms. Every time I visit a school they always ask me if I am there to open the new building, even though they can see the builders still on site. But it is a great thing that we can stand in this place and talk about projects that will benefit not only our community now but also our communities for many years into the future.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on a matter of great concern to me and so many of my constituents in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. It relates absolutely to the government’s use of taxpayers’ money—and just as absolutely I question it. I take this opportunity to speak of the outlays already expended in pursuit of a carbon price. As we should remember, the imposition of a carbon price on the Australian people was specifically ruled out before the 2010 election. The Prime Minister said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.’ What was said before the election by the Prime Minister had no bearing on what she would do after the election. What we have seen, therefore, is the real Julia.
Regardless of the reliability of the Prime Minister, my intention is to speak of anthropogenic global warming or, rather, the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Normally, any speeches in this place about AGW are confined to recounting various estimates and claims of the coming apocalypse brought on by human induced global warming. It always appears more interesting, apparently, to talk about the calamity that approaches—the rising oceans, the bleaching coral reefs and the increasing number of extreme weather events. I will speak of such claims in the future, but today I speak of science and computer models. The government will soon seek to impose a price on carbon to reduce the CO2 output of our nation. I do not believe this would be successful, nor do I believe it would achieve a drop in temperatures. Rather than going over the entire amount of evidence on AGW, I will cover the alleged link between CO2 and temperature.
In the last 2,000 years there have been two previous periods of substantial warming, demonstrated by studies based upon reconstructed temperature data from a variety of sources. These periods are the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. Using the same calculations of reconstructed data over 2,000 years to the present, it may surprise many members that 80 per cent of all studies have demonstrated that the Medieval Warm Period was, in fact, warmer than the current period. Bizarre as it is, there are some people here that continue to believe the current period is the hottest ever and that this is due, in the main, to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Ever since the government chose to only engage in dire predictions and computer modelling above science, debate has been closed down in this place.
I reiterate, however, that an overwhelming number of studies suggest that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than now. But here is the point: there is a further anomaly beyond the fallacy that somehow this current period is hotter than any other period in recent history and it relates to CO2 concentrations. During the Medieval Warm Period, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was some 100 parts per million less than it is currently. It was typically hotter a thousand years ago than it is now, but there was less CO2 in the atmosphere. Indeed, during the Roman Warm Period it was typically about the same or a little hotter than now. Yet again, there was less CO2 in the atmosphere.
The question must be: how can it be alleged that CO2 is the forcing factor when both warm cycles of the last 2,000 years corresponded with lower CO2 concentrations than there are currently? What has occurred is that the figures for the current period have been fixed by some to a convenient degree. Indeed, to make sure the current period appears warmer than previous warm periods, recent data has been assessed using instrumental temperature data, which is not available beyond the last 100 to 150 years. Before that, temperatures have been calculated using the reconstructed data method. Using reconstructed data from a variety of sources, from the present back 2,000 years, the current period is demonstrated to be typically cooler than the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period. It is only when comparing ‘apples with oranges’—in other words, reconstructed data with instrumental temperature data—that the current period can be made to seem warmer than both the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. In any case, there remains the fundamental and critical disconnect that whenever there were higher temperatures in the past 2,000 years there were in fact lower CO2 levels compared with now.
Rest assured that I do not base this speech just on these highly relevant facts but also on more recent information, because in recent times there is also a similar disconnection between CO2 and temperature rises. In particular, the significant warming in Greenland in the 1920s took place without CO2 rising higher than three to four parts per million, while the temperature rose by two to four degrees Celsius. That warming was actually attributed to local climate issues, such as the Northern Annular Mode—the North Atlantic Oscillation—but clearly without a significant anthropogenic influence. A study by Overpeck et al in 1997 determined that from 1955 to 1990 the mean circum-Arctic air temperature fell by 0.4 per cent during the same period that the CO2 concentration rose from 313 to 354 parts per million, or by 41 parts per million.
As previously stated, there are significant disparities between temperature and CO2 concentrations. Predictions of catastrophic climate change are predicted only through computer models. Let us think on that with regard to these models and their predictions. The assertion is that computer programs have been developed that consider every possible natural influence and factor that controls weather. That is what we are being asked to put our faith in. We are in effect being told that these models are so advanced, so technically accurate and so completely representative and inclusive of every possible facet or vagary of the weather that they can tell what is going to happen in 30, 50 or 100 years. What a marvel of modern-day science they represent. It is a pity they cannot predict cyclones, Queensland floods or even the exceptionally cold Northern Hemisphere winter.
To return to my points so far, I question whether computer models that do not even consider clouds can be trusted to be accurate in their long-term future predictions when real temperature comparisons do not show a relationship between temperature rises and CO2 concentrations. I suspect that if you threw into these models the influence of the entrails of a rock python you may not reach any more credible prediction, but the output of snake oil to be sold would be even greater than the amount already being produced.
I have spoken now at fair length about key science issues regarding the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Of course, in addition to name-calling of people like me who question that theory and who are genuinely interested in investigating the science and truth in these matters, there is also the other part of the orchestrated campaign to restrict free speech in this country, and that is to deride those who still question the apocalypse as being in the pay of big oil companies. Alternative views are dismissed as being motivated by vested interests. There is, however, no better example of the influence of vested interests pushing an agenda than those who adhere to the theory of AGW. It is on that side of the debate that vested interests truly lie—but I hesitate to call it a debate as it seems that so many individuals, groups and businesses now see the acceptance of the theory of AGW to be in their interest, and hence there is no debate.
I would classify adherents of the AGW theory into three groups: those who believe that AGW is a reality, those whose first priority is the advantage they discern they can achieve from the acceptance of AGW as a reality, and those who fear personal and professional ruin should they oppose and speak out against the theory. Of those three groups, I have the least problem with those who totally believe in the theory, as they are authentic. I think they are wrong, but they are at least authentic. I speak next of those who fear personal disadvantage should they oppose and speak out against the theory. I consider them low on courage but I think it is sad that they are willing to stand back and admire the emperor’s new clothes rather than adopt a professional approach.
Yet of the three groups the most despicable of all are those who do not believe in AGW yet still see a personal advantage for themselves or their organisation. That advantage may be political, as we see in this place. It may be an advantage in a business sense, whereby market share or advantage may be gained by deriding the business of competitors as producing high emissions or as being responsible for high carbon outputs. It may be an advantage in an academic sense, whereby research dollars are being sought or the standing of one area of science may be improved over the standing of another area. In any case, my main point is that in many cases there is anything but an honest belief in the science of AGW. It follows that a person who does not believe yet still supports that theory most definitely stands as part of vested interests in this matter. It is my view that of all those who advocate for the theory of AGW, more than half would have political, business or academic potential benefit and would sense the advantage and move to realise that benefit.
I will speak of political benefit and who stands to gain from being a believer. First and foremost there is the party of socialism—the far Left, the radical Left. I of course speak of the Greens. For the Greens, the AGW issue is like a Trojan Horse that carries within it the real Greens agenda—a Trojan Horse that is being moved inside Western democratic societies, only to then reveal the socialist agenda: the redistribution of wealth and the legalisation of illicit drugs, along with other bizarre Greens policies like Medicare funded sex change operations et cetera. There is no more sinister vested interest in the political arena than that of the Greens, and they are socialists all.
I have described the three groups of advocates of AGW theory. Perhaps they are better listed as believers, opportunists and cowards. I do not doubt that all three groups are represented among the government’s ranks. There are believers such as the member for Wills and the member for Lyons, two members whom I respect for their belief. However, the vast majority in the government are those who see political advantage in maintaining government, internal advancement or just continuing in this place. Those who toe the politically opportunistic line are the majority, yet there are still those who fear to speak out and they are the silent ones who have never spoken on this matter.
Before concluding, I will speak on the scientific community—or those who purport to be interested in the science. Some time ago I attended an event here at parliament called ‘Science Meets Parliament’. At that event a couple of years ago the MC spoke of how much research was being influenced by the theory of anthropogenic global warming. He quoted a research study that had investigated the influence of AGW on flea populations on dogs. Clearly the way to get your research funded in this country is to ensure that AGW is part of your study. If you want to be able to do research and exist as a scientist in this country, join the AGW advocacy team and reap the benefits. Does that mean that if you question the theory of AGW you are on your own? It certainly looks like it.
I would therefore make the point that if we speak of vested interests then we should look at everyone whose job depends on not questioning the theory of AGW. Beyond research projects, what about those specific businesses, organisations or institutes that mention climate or carbon in their titles? Because their businesses and jobs depend on the theory of AGW, I name as non-objective vested interests the Climate Institute, the ANU Climate Change Institute, the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre, the Climate Futures team at Macquarie University, the Monash University weather and climate centre et cetera—the list goes on. Every employee, every academic, in every one of these bodies would personally suffer from any critical examination that highlights the faults in the theory of AGW. The list of people without vested interests who could be considered genuinely neutral is getting very light.
I am sickened by AGW advocates pointing the finger at those of us who question them by calling us vested interests. I and those who question this theory of AGW have no motivation of personal gain in this matter. What we are motivated by is a search for the truth and a wish to do what is right, not what is easy. Going with the flow and hiding in the crowd is the easy option. It is the path of least resistance, but it is not in the national interest and I certainly was not elected to oppose the national interest.
I am approached by an increasing number of constituents who are concerned about what they see happening around the world: record cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere and the predictions of endless droughts in Australia, now broken by heavy rains clearly influenced by the La Nina weather system and not AGW. It is little wonder that there are also increasing calls for the Australian National Audit Office to conduct an audit of the Bureau of Meteorology’s records. I support that request. Let the sun shine in, I say. As I have said before, I am not a scientist, but I think there is more than enough scientific information available and it is easy enough to understand. It suggests that there is nothing settled about the science.
There have been further developments in this matter. Another body of vested interests has been established. Although it has been suggested that the Gillard government’s well-funded task force is some neutral force in this matter, in reality it is nothing more than a facade for spending up big to promote and advertise carbon pricing. It is a PR unit whose sole purpose is to avoid the sort of scrutiny that I have today highlighted the need for and instead push for the final result of imposing a carbon price—an electricity tax, a petrol tax—which amounts to a tax on living. It is a tax that will undermine the productivity of this nation, a tax that will lower the standard of living of our people, a tax that will reduce our capacity to respond to natural disasters, a tax that will weaken our ability to respond to future financial crises, a tax that will take away our capacity to react to future challenges, whatever they may be.
Overall, this carbon tax will weaken our nation and waste more money on the fallacies that there is a link between temperature and CO2 concentrations and that this nation is in any circumstance able to take action that will result in lower global, or even local, temperatures. The science backs me on this, and if this place had not abandoned sense for madness late in 2007 we would not be in a mess like this.
I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. The new measures that this funding will be applied to represent public expenditure that will enhance productivity and economic growth. I am pleased to note the allocation of funding to conduct an implementation study into a high-speed rail network. The Gillard government has put high-speed rail back on the national agenda, and that is welcomed by all in my electorate.
This first stage, a study, will determine the economic benefits and financial viability of a high-speed rail network along Australia’s east coast. I know that there is great interest in high-speed rail in my electorate of Throsby because both the Illawarra and Southern Highlands currently serve in many respects as dormitory villages for the 20,000 people who daily commute to Sydney for work. A high-speed rail network would provide an enormous economic benefit to these regions and bring this population closer to the employment and other opportunities in Sydney. And while this region is not yet within the scope of this study, I will be working with the member for Cunningham to do everything we can to ensure that the Illawarra is on the radar for the future. The Gillard Labor government has put high-speed rail back on the national agenda because of its potential to spur economic development and transform the way Australians get around this vast continent of ours. We are making the first significant federal investment in urban passenger rail and we have begun rebuilding more than a third of the interstate rail freight network.
The Gillard government has a proud record of economic achievement and fiscal responsibility. It is now well established that Australia’s economy is in a far better position than almost any other advanced economy in the world. Australia’s economy is strong. Our job creation capacity is strong, with over 740,000 jobs created since Labor came to office. Our fiscal position is strong. Despite the challenges from recent natural disasters, our budget is still on track to return to surplus in 2012-13, the fastest fiscal consolidation of any country anywhere in the world.
While the Gillard government’s economic record is one to be proud of, the contrast with the economic credibility of those opposite could not be more stark. The opposition’s approach to the budget is both incompetent and reckless. The opposition have demonstrated their fiscal recklessness by twice blocking $5 billion in savings measures put forward by this government—this is from an opposition that says, ‘There is plenty of fat in the budget and we know how to save it.’ As well as that, they are also blocking a further $2 billion in savings to the budget over four years by voting against the reforms to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The coalition not only opposed the economic stimulus package that kept Australia out of recession but have opposed just about every sensible measure this government has put up. They know all about how to say no, but do not know what the word ‘yes’ looks like.
The coalition likes to claim that there are plenty of savings to be found in the budget. However, when it comes to the detail of their proposals, what we find is double-counting, misrepresentations, political opportunism and downright economic vandalism. They have, for instance, double-counted around $700 million in savings, showing that they simply do not understand that you cannot spend the same money twice. And who can forget that in the 2010 election campaign the coalition were forced to own up to a $10.6 billion black hole in its election costings?
It is not just the record of the coalition in opposition that calls into question their economic credentials. In government, despite presiding over the mining boom mark 1, the Howard government squandered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity this economic circumstance offered this country. They did not invest in infrastructure, they did not invest in education and they did not invest in skills. In fact, the coalition left this country with a $46 billion infrastructure deficit and an appalling record on productivity—in fact, productivity had been declining for around a decade.
This morning we heard the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Warringah, claiming that the Howard government was the gold standard in fiscal responsibility. Well, if that is the gold standard, I suggest that it is fool’s gold. The rewriting of history by those opposite in this regard is nothing less than astounding. For most of its time, the Howard government was the highest taxing government in Australia’s history. That is right—the highest taxing government in Australia’s history, because Australia’s tax to GDP ratio during the Howard years was constantly around 25 to 26 per cent. It is, since the election of a Labor government, now around 22 per cent and forecast to drop even further.
The record shows that whilst in government the coalition presided over some noted ideological follies that wasted billions and billions of taxpayer dollars. That is right—billions of taxpayer dollars wasted over the years by the Howard government. One of these coalition money wasters was the way the proceeds from the privatisation of Telstra were used to pork-barrel regional electorates on projects that did nothing to enhance regional telecommunications. This is from the party that now purports to stand in this chamber and elsewhere to champion the cause of regional electorates and that opposed our plan to do something to offer real, fast, reliable broadband to regional Australia. They did nothing at all over their 11 years in government.
According to some analysts, the coalition wasted more than $1 billion on fattening up Telstra for privatisation on various programs that did absolutely nothing to improve regional services. When the Audit Office looked into some of this expenditure they found a complete shambles. In a 2003 report, the Audit Office said there was no evidence of any framework to monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of program delivery for Networking the Nation. And while the coalition make much of their record of retiring debt, the fact is that the only way that this had happened over their period in government was by selling off Telstra and other public assets.
And where did that leave Australians in terms of their critical telecommunications services? The answer is exactly nowhere. The coalition short-changed Australian taxpayers yet again when they sold off the first tranche of Telstra shares by massively underpicing them. These shares increased by $12 billion in just one year. That is $12 billion that could have gone into consolidated revenue but did not.
Let us talk about IT outsourcing. This is another coalition money waster: the IT outsourcing initiative that was rolled out between 1997 and 2000. This was an initiative that was supposed to lead to a billion dollars in savings but instead lead to a massive blow-out in costs across government departments before it was abandoned after yet another damming Auditor-General’s report. We will never know the full cost of this coalition ideological folly but there is no doubt hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted—and departments were left with computer systems that did not work and contracts they could not get out of. It is terribly convenient for the coalition members opposite to now rewrite history and gloss over the massive waste of public money that occurred during their time in government—billions of dollars wasted on reckless, ideological programs.
There are a host of other examples that could be detailed here if time permitted. There was the waste of money on the sale of Commonwealth estate property, which returned a negative financial return and which was condemned by the Auditor-General in 2001. There were the billion-dollar foreign currency losses in 2000, condemned by the Auditor-General in 2000, and the hundreds of millions wasted on Employment National and Job Network in 1999-2000.
There was the regional rorts program in which the Auditor-General found that $350 million was handed out to coalition held seats—with some projects funded before an application had even been received. Then there was the $121 million spent trying to sell Work Choices, part of the massive $2 billion spent on advertising by the Howard government. Those opposite have absolutely no credibility left when it comes to fiscal responsibility or managing waste.
Maybe, if we had this record, we would be desperately trying to rewrite history as well. But I do not think that Australians will ever forget John Howard’s broken promise on interest rates and the humiliation for the coalition government when the Reserve Bank was forced, by bad economic management, to raise the interest rate—for the sixth time—during the 2007 federal election. So let’s not have those homilies from those opposite, those gold standard allusions from the member for Warringah that somehow their 11 years in government was one of immense fiscal responsibility. They presided over squandering the greatest mining boom since the gold rush and the waste of literally billions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds, and they have very little to show for it. There were 19 broadband plans and still not a decent broadband system for areas of regional Australia or indeed anywhere outside capital cities.
The Gillard government takes its role as a good economic manager very seriously. However, this government is far from complacent when it comes to the future. We know we face a challenge to create a high-productivity and low-pollution economy. That is why the Gillard government has an economic plan. It plans to cut business taxes, invest in the infrastructure this nation so sorely needs and keep building our pool of retirement savings so that we can be more self-reliant when it comes to domestic investment. It plans to build the capital that we need to fund the mining industry boom mark 2 and the infrastructure and business investment that is needed for future productivity growth in this country.
We have a plan to build a stronger, broader, more competitive economy that will create even more jobs, and let us not forget that over 740,000 have been created since Labor came into government. Let us compare that with where we would be if we had followed the economic prescriptions of those opposite, who said, ‘Don’t inject fiscal stimulus into the economy; let’s see over 10 per cent unemployment.’ This is an unemployment rate that is currently crippling the economies of the US and many of the countries within Europe right now and having a devastating effect on spending, consumer confidence and business recovery.
If we followed the prescriptions of those opposite, we would have unemployment hovering at around 10 per cent when many economists are describing the five per cent unemployment that we now enjoy as full employment. I for one believe—and I am sure the member for Eden-Monaro will agree, representing a similar electorate—that five per cent unemployment, while our historic low, is still not good enough for us. We will not be happy until all of those people, particularly young people in electorates such as ours and yours, Mr Deputy Speaker Thomson, are in meaningful employment. But we are on the path to do that and we have a plan to do it and a plan to meet the challenges of Mining Boom mark 2.
These bills are an important part of our plan to manage the economy through these difficult times. We are dealing with the challenge thrown up by the worst natural disasters to beset our nation in living memory. We are dealing with that challenge and we are dealing with the capacity constraints that we will have to manage as we manage record levels of mining investment, particularly in Queensland and elsewhere. We are dealing with the big long-term challenge of improving productivity and dealing with global warming. We are dealing with all of those challenges with very little cooperation from those opposite. When you look back on their economic record it is of little wonder because they are clearly clueless when it comes to managing this economy in the interests of ordinary working people. I commend the bills to the House.
I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. In doing so, I want to touch on some local and national issues which relate to government appropriations. They certainly concern the people of Dawson. Before I do, I want to respond to some of the claims made by the member for Throsby, particularly in relation to Regional Partnerships. The reality is that the government cannot hold its head up high with regard to regional funding. Regional Australia has been waiting since November 2007 for a locally driven regional funding program. The government was keen to scrap Regional Partnerships and sink the boot in there, but it has not put anything back on the table. Now we have regional development organisations right across this country that simply do not know what is going on. They have been made to do studies and make pretty books, but no-one is any the wiser about what funding is coming. So the government cannot hold its head up high with regard to its regional funding commitments.
The member for Throsby talked about the government’s response to mining boom No. 2. Its response is basically to tax it. That is not a response at all. I did the sums during the election period. We worked out that about $40 million a week was going to be ripped out of Central Queensland when you look at what the mining tax would take from the coal exports. It would be like having a pittance thrown back at you. For every $100 note that floats out of the Mackay region, with its mining industry, the government would be giving us a gracious 50c back. That is certainly not any way to treat mining areas, but that is how the government is going.
I want to put on the record that I am opposed to many of the items that the government seeks to appropriate funds for in these bills, but I will touch on that later. Before I do, I want to talk about the funding promises that were made in the seat of Dawson by the government. A range of commitments were made by the Labor Party during the election. Very interestingly, earlier this week I got an answer to a question on notice that I had put to the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government back in November. I asked which funding programs those promises were coming from and when that funding was coming. The answer, particularly to the second part, was very telling. The funds are coming from this financial year. So I have to say: why are we still waiting for those promises to be delivered?
The Mackay Amateur Basketball Association were promised $6 million as a contribution to a new basketball stadium, only after the Liberal-National Party made a similar commitment. The Mackay football association are also waiting for a $1 million commitment to the relocation of the Mackay junior soccer grounds. Why are they still waiting if the funding is allocated in this financial year? The Airlie Beach main street funding is a $5 million contribution, and we just do not know where it is. Where is that money? More to the point, where is the rest of it? The Airlie Beach main street upgrade project is going to cost in excess of $45 million, and that figure does not even include the land resumptions. Labor committed a whopping one-ninth of the funding for that project. How nice of them.
We got $1 million in funding for a Bowen water park, but we are not sure exactly where it is, even though it is allocated for this year. More to the point, why the hell is the government funding a water park when a private developer has already built a water park for tourists about a five-minute drive down the road? Why did the government not put forward funding for the real water issue in Bowen—the fact that the town has been drinking dirty water for the last 15 years or more? It was not something that the government can claim they did not know about. Their candidate was the local mayor of the area, who has presided over a situation where Bowen residents have had to drink, wash and shower in brown, rank and unclean water. The government could have chipped in to help the community out with a solution to this problem. They could have offered the Whitsunday Regional Council funding for a short-term or long-term solution. But, no, instead of dealing with Bowen’s biggest problem, dirty water, and building a water plant, what we got was a proposed water park when the town already has one. And we are still waiting for those dollars, even though we know that they can be made available right now.
We have Labor’s paltry $10 million commitment to a feasibility study for the Mackay ring-road. They put up $10 million for a key transport project for Mackay that is going to cost probably in excess of $300 million—perhaps $400 million. The Labor Party could not even follow the Liberal-National coalition’s lead and get this project to the point where it was shovel ready. Yet we are still none the wiser as to exactly where that paltry $10 million for this project will be made available. I am told that the Department of Transport and Main Roads are none the wiser either, and they are the project deliverers.
We cannot dillydally on the funding for this ring road project. It needs to be delivered as soon as possible so that we can get the study done, which will probably tell us what we already know—that the traffic situation in Mackay is getting too congested and a ring road has to be built. When we get that study out of the way we can get into the planning, design and preconstruction works. But this will, of course, need extra funds. Those funds need to be forthcoming before 2015, when the third round of AusLink funding, the major transport funding program of the federal government, becomes available. Here is a message for the Prime Minister and the federal transport minister: if the $10 million study is not done in a timely fashion, if further funding is not forthcoming to get this ring road shovel-ready before 2015 so that we can access this AusLink funding to complete the project, and if Mackay residents are left to suffer in traffic jams of the size you would not witness here in Canberra, it will be on their heads.
I want to mention some things that the government did not commit to during the election—things that the government is not appropriating funds for right now—that would greatly assist the Dawson electorate. The first thing is a youth mental health headspace centre. The Liberal-National coalition committed to funding such a centre in Mackay for four years. We had a motion that the House passed, calling on the government to roll out headspace and EPIC centres across Australia. I am told we have one person a week attempting suicide in Mackay. A growing number of those are young people. So I would call on the government to look at Mackay as a vital-need area for a headspace centre. I would call on them to consider, in the coming budget, allocating funding for a headspace centre at Mackay. We need $4 million for that centre. The process for funding these headspace sites seems to be very arbitrary; often it is a marginal seat that gets one. I would say to the government: forget the politics; look at the facts. Look at the situation we are facing in Mackay. Put a headspace centre where it is needed and help us by providing that funding.
There are many other deserving projects that the government should be looking at funding, particularly through its community cultural development grants and its community organisation infrastructure grants programs. This is stuff that the Liberal-National coalition looked at, during the last election, and found worthy of funding. The Mackay showgrounds need to be transformed into a major regional events precinct. The Whitsunday motorsports raceway is a brilliant local project that would boost tourism in the Whitsundays by opening up the lucrative rev-head market. All it needs is funding from the Commonwealth.
There is a need for funding for the Proserpine Community Centre—a small, volunteer-run centre that offers an array of community support services to Proserpine and the Whitsundays. They need $700,000 to build a new centre because they are currently bleeding from rental costs after being kicked out of an old hospital building by the state Labor government. Then there is a need for funding to upgrade the facilities at the Whitsunday Sports Park in Airlie Beach. There is a need for funding to help the Burdekin Shire Council with local vandalism and crime problems. Perhaps the government could dip into its Safer Suburbs funding program to help with that particular problem.
There is a dire need for government assistance to help with the beach erosion that is occurring at McEwens Beach, Midge Point and Slade Point in the Mackay region. Residents in these places, particularly at McEwens Beach, are at serious risk of losing their homes due to the continual erosion of their beachfronts over the last 50 years. So I call on the government to consider a special grant to help these communities out.
In fact, it could fund nearly all of the initiatives that I have just outlined by simply reallocating money from one thing that I probably do not want—funding for the superclinic. If the government could look at that funding and reallocate it, all of those other worthy projects could be funded. We would have those projects instead of a superclinic that the government wants to build in competition with, and against the wishes of, hardworking local GPs and their staff in the Mackay region.
I also want to bring to the attention of the House and the government some other local matters which have only come to light since the election, over the last few months. I have spoken before in this House about the situation that is faced by the sugar industry. It certainly is a dire situation that we have. The huge rainfall that occurred before Cyclone Yasi, before the floods, impacted greatly on just about every sugar growing area in my seat of Dawson. Cyclone Yasi has caused a 10 per cent loss to production, particularly in the Burdekin.
I acknowledge that the government and the state government are currently offering $250,000 concessional loans to farmers who have been affected, but that only applies to certain areas and it has a lot of strings and conditions attached. What the industry needs is a grant or a concessional loan for growers from Mackay and to the north that would assist with replanting. The industry is telling me that basically they will be under full capacity of production until 2014 because they cannot afford to replant. If we could get a concessional loan for those people to do replanting, that would be a quick way of getting the industry back to full production.
I refer to tourism which is also suffering at the moment in the wake of the floods and Cyclone Ului. We have had massive cancellations throughout the Whitsundays. The Liberal-National coalition is proposing $100,000 concessional loans to people in the tourism industries and other industries that have been indirectly impacted. But the government should also look at other measures to help the tourism industry. One measure that has been put to me is a special round of funding that could be looked at through the Export Market Development Grant program. To get these people out there marketing their businesses to the world is probably the best marketing that tourism could have right now. There is probably no person more passionate than the person who has got their backside on the line, so to speak, who has got their money in the till. If we could look at the EMDG program for the tourism industry, I am sure that they would be able to sell their product to the world.
The fishing industry, which I also spoke about earlier in the House today, is also suffering the effects of Cyclone Yasi, but they are not eligible for the $250,000 concessional loan. I would again call on the government to look at that situation and rectify that, because these people hurting. The catch has basically gone from Cairns to Mackay, and there are going to be people out of work and fishermen basically shutting up shop because the industry will just not be sustainable as it is.
I also bring to the government’s attention and the House’s attention the state of digital television reception throughout the Dawson electorate. From Congulla in the north to the Whitsundays in the south it is very patchy. In fact, it is just unbearable in some areas. We face a switchover, I understand, this year, and the situation needs to be addressed. If there are funding implications there, so be it. People cannot be left without basic television coverage and service.
These are the things that the government have not funded—things that should be funded. What they have funded in this appropriation bill in some instance does beggar belief. We have $290 million allocated to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship for operational costs associated with the management of offshore illegal immigrant processing. That is more than six times the annual operating cost for the Howard government’s Pacific solution. It just shows that the government have completely lost control of the borders and now we, the taxpayers, are paying for it.
There is a proposal for over $300 million in foreign spending—which, quite frankly, I personally find unbelievable at a time when we have got crises on our own doorstep that the government plans to tax people for. There is more than $17 million being allocated to the NBN at a time when we are cutting funding for flood-proofing on the Bruce Highway. What is more important: downloading movies on the information superhighway or getting essential supplies up national highway? There is $15 million in funding going to the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. I assume that some of that is going to pay the climate commissaire Tim Flannery. Some of that money perhaps should be used to pay for the other side of the coin—Professor Bob Carter, an actual climate scientist, a geologist, from my electorate. He could certainly handle that debate.
It is unbelievable that these measures are being funded when the basics—roads, mental health services, local sports and community facilities—are not being sorted out. We can only hope this government starts getting the priorities right for the people of Dawson.
What a pleasure it is to be able to speak in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 which are further evidence—if further evidence is needed—of this government’s agenda to sort out the long-term problems of this country and set a forward, visionary accomplishment of the things that this nation really needs. In following the member for Dawson, the stark contrast is there for all to see. Obviously, the member for Dawson is yet another one of those flat-earthers who thinks the NBN is only about downloading movies. Nothing could contrast the two sides of politics in this chamber than that statement and the statement I have heard echoed by Barnaby Joyce in the Senate as well. Not understanding what this technology will deliver for rural and regional areas in particular is an indictment of those members who sit in these chambers who represent or claim to represent those regions.
What a contrast we see from those Howard years to now—those years that I refer to as the Rip Van Winkle years when we saw the complete negligence of the key infrastructure and skills issues in this country. We saw the groaning road and rail problems we faced and the pile-up of the ships in the ports. We saw the 18 failed attempts to deal with our national broadband network needs and now yet another failed policy approach, adding to 19 their attempts in this sphere, as we recently saw another paltry effort to address this issue. Also, the key issue of climate change was ignored throughout those years. One of the great indictments of the Howard government is the fact that during those years the renewable energy percentage that was servicing this country fell—did not increase but fell—from 10 per cent to nine per cent. It is a delight to see that those agendas have been addressed and are being brought forward now so effectively, delivering real results on the ground for this country. The issues are being delivered through these budgetary measures for rural and regional Australia. What a stark contrast this is. Why are those members of the National Party, those members representing rural and regional Australia, not standing up for their electorates, their people, supporting measures that will clearly benefit them?
I look at some of the specific provisions of these bills that address these issues. I look at the $12.5 million going towards supporting the joint projects with the United States which are designed to reduce the cost of solar energy technologies. We can reflect on the success of the microgeneration projects that the government has been engaged in—the subsidisation of the solar panels and solar heating—which, in their own right, have dramatically reduced the cost of the installation of these systems in domestic housing situations. This has opened up to a much vaster section of our community the possibility of installing these systems on their homes, a possibility that certainly did not exist before with the price of these components—the panels et cetera. Those microgeneration programs and policies have had the desired effect and it is now the challenge for this government, for this country, to move on towards tackling those macrogeneration issues. We can see the evidence of that as this government moves forward to fund research and to promote the investment and provide the market opportunities for that sort of investment to happen. It is a great tragedy that the coalition reneged on that CPRS deal we had made with them; otherwise, we would have seen the flow of $100 billion, as estimated by many investment funds, towards the installation and development of those critically needed energy generation capacities.
In these bills we see $69.8 million being brought forward for the non-government schools component of the BER program that has been completed earlier than expected. This is a success story, again. It is further evidence of what a wonderful program the BER has been and of all the investment that we are making in our children. As I move around my own region and visit the 71 schools, I see the overwhelming reaction by students, parents and teachers and their gratitude at seeing the investment, particularly in these rural and regional areas, that is opening up the broad quality of the education that kids in rural and regional Australia will get. It is very exciting and very rewarding to see.
For example, we know that where we cannot now teach languages, when this technology is fully delivered we can have a classroom in Moruya linked with a classroom in Jindabyne being taught by a language teacher in Sydney. This means that kids in rural and regional areas will have the opportunity to get the same quality of education that exists in metropolitan areas. So it is wonderful to see those projects all around my region, particularly in the 71 schools, including 17 private schools, that have done such a wonderful job of managing these projects and delivering beautiful facilities that are well and truly overwhelmingly enjoyed and supported by the community and their teachers.
We also see the trade training centres program evidenced in these bills—the $48.3 million reappropriating amounts from last financial year. These trade training centre projects were extremely important, are extremely important and will be extremely important, particularly for rural and regional areas. It is so important that we build the skills that are needed to match the potential local industries and job opportunities in these areas. Why anyone would oppose these trade training centres is beyond me. Obviously, it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the importance of marrying these technical educational opportunities with local needs.
In my region, I am very pleased to say that the Bombala High School Trade Training Centre is already under construction. It will focus on primary industry and forestry skills for our region and for our kids. Also, the Eden Marine High School Trade Training Centre project will focus on construction skills and marine industry skills. That centre will team up with the trade training centre project at the Bega High School, which is also supported by Bega TAFE. This brings together the wonderful capacity that the TAFE system brings to our rural and regional areas. The Bega High School project will focus on primary industries and construction. This is very well in tune with the sorts of needs that our region has.
We can already see the impact of other investment from the government in our region. A particular issue we talked about was the groaning road and rail problems. A classic example of that was, of course, the Princess Highway in Eden-Monaro. The Bega bypass, which has been on the books now for over 40 years, is critically needed. It is a key choke point in that system. What happens now is that any B-double that attempts to pass through Bega has to uncouple on the outside of town and recouple on the other side of town. It is very dangerous when these trucks navigate the dog leg through town and it also reduces the amenity of life for the citizens of that town. When the bypass is complete B-doubles will be able to travel straight past the town, which will reduce the inconvenience and be far more economically efficient. This will also tend to open up possibilities—as I would hope to see in the future—for the port in Eden. It is one of the country’s finest deep-water ports. I think it will play a pivotal role in the future of port capacity in this country as we start to see the problems of strain developing in the ports of Sydney and Melbourne.
Also, we see $17.1 million dollars for additional work to support finalisation of the definitive agreements between Telstra and NBN Co. and the implementation of arrangements for the establishment of a new agency to manage the universal service obligation. A critical issue for rural and regional areas is universal service obligation. It means that providers have to ensure that standard telephone services, pay phones and prescribed carriage services are reasonably accessible an equitable basis to all people in Australia, wherever they reside. This is very important for regions.
I mentioned the NBN Co. and what it will potentially offer. It was a privilege to be at the Heywire activity at Old Parliament House a couple of weeks ago, where a number of our fine young men and women from country Australia received awards. It was very clear from talking to them how much they get the importance of the NBN. It will open up for young people in those areas the possibility to break through the straitjacket that their current support systems constrain their imaginations with. When this system is available, they will only be limited by their own imagination. Their creativity will be unlocked through this. Business, health and education applications will also be available through the NBN.
Of course, the bills provide for the government to meet its obligations in relation to the disasters we have recently experienced. It certainly has been wonderful to see the nation respond to those situations, and this government is definitely playing its part. It would be wonderful to see the coalition play its part by stumping up to support the levy bills that are presently before the main chamber.
We have also seen the government’s implementation study for a high-speed rail line going ahead. This future capacity for this country will arrive, I believe, at some point in the future. This funding will help accelerate that process. This program is of very much keen interest in my region, because one of the possible routes for that VFT would be through Eden-Monaro, coming through Queanbeyan, down through Cooma and Bombala and then perhaps on to Orbost and through the Latrobe Valley. That is only one possible route. We will have to see what emerges from the study but it will open up enormous potential for the country when it is delivered. We need to get that process going, and this is a very important instalment in that.
We also see the investment in local infrastructure and the $800 million program for priority regional infrastructure projects. It is magnificent to see what has been achieved on the ground in relation to community infrastructure projects. Just this last Saturday I was down at the Bega rec ground, where $200,000 of government investment made it possible for us to attract National Rugby League first-grade teams—the Canberra Raiders and the Melbourne Storm—to come and conduct a trial activity at that ground, which attracted a crowd of nearly 7,000 people and brought a lot of visitors into the region. More than that, the two teams spent an entire week in the region engaging with kids. They went to the high schools pursuing themes of decision making, eating healthily and engaging in active lifestyles. It was just a wonderful fillip for the entire region, all made possible by the investment in the Bega recreation ground.
This is what these investments can achieve and why they are so important. We have seen so many towns around the region benefiting—all of them have benefited. In every town you go to in my region you will see these projects. They have created local jobs. They got us through the GFC without the damage that could have been caused with lost jobs. At the same time, they have improved the amenity of life for people in the country and improved the towns’ tourism attraction at the same time. These things are wonderful achievements of the government’s programs over these last few years.
One last aspect of these bills that I think is also of interest to my region is the $52.9 million that is being invested in the construction of a satellite receiving station, which is related to the government’s International Forest Carbon Initiative. Many people in my region are very concerned about the impacts of deforestation and its contribution to climate change. The government has been aggressively pursuing this issue because, as we know, the mechanism to address emissions from deforestation is not currently included under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. So it has been an ambition of this government to pursue the so-called REDD-plus aspect of this scheme, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, particularly in developing countries, so that it can be included past 2012 as we see the new climate change agreement that will replace the Kyoto process. We have invested $273 million in that process. What we seek to achieve there is to make it demonstrably clear that it is possible to measure, to metricise and to incorporate deforestation, reforestation and maintenance of forests in a carbon pollution reduction scheme process. This satellite ground station will be a key component in demonstrating that, for the benefit of our neighbours in particular. Through this process we have been engaging with Indonesia. The ground station will demonstrate that forests can be monitored effectively through satellite data and on-ground forest measurements. So we are leading the charge in this respect, and I know that will be very heartening for all those members of my community who are interested in seeing greater action taken on climate change.
I am very proud of what this government has achieved. We are governing for the future. We are delivering real improvements for people on the ground, for their daily lives, as well as addressing the long-term challenges and needs of this country, in stark contrast to the troglodyte attitudes of the coalition.
That was not a bad address from the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. However, his last statement was uncalled-for and unnecessary and inappropriate. Having said that, I would like to talk about some good news and some bad news.
The good news concerns the Long Jetty at Port Welshpool. For the last two federal election campaigns we have made a promise down in south Gippsland to rebuild the jetty. Because we have failed to gain the confidence of the Australian people, we have been unable to fulfil that election promise. I have also been unable to convince Martin Ferguson to invest in the Long Jetty. Perhaps, if we had not had a change of Prime Minister and there needed to be an announcement down in south Gippsland, it would have been an ideal tourism announcement and it would have been a great fillip for this community that suffers in a number of ways. We are not the rich community we once were in the fifties and sixties when dairying was at its peak. It would also have been great for the current government to commit to the heritage of this nation by rebuilding the jetty. Part of it was burnt out 12 months ago, so it became more imperative that something be done.
Along comes the miraculous restoration of the Liberal-National Party in Victoria. Last week the Deputy Premier, Peter Ryan, made a great announcement. He said that they would not only do a feasibility study for the reconstruction of the Long Jetty but also commit $3 million to those parts that are broken and open up the jetty for use.
Why is an old jetty important to me? It is one of the longest jetties in Australia, going into deep water and servicing a magnificent deepwater harbour. It is important to me because I always had a dream that people with disabilities should as much as possible be able to share in the life that those of us with full abilities have. This is a fantastic spot for wheelchair fishing and for disability access. It is great for recreation of this nature, and it takes us out into water we could not otherwise get to. Disability has always been a passion for me, and it is still a passion for me today.
Rebuilding the Long Jetty will create building jobs, and that is great, and we have changed the attitude of the organisations that look after the jetty—Ports and Harbours, DSC and those people—from the Labor government’s view, who just wanted to close it down and get rid of it. It happens to be down in Peter Ryan’s area, which helps a lot. The Jesuits did a survey of that area around Port Welshpool and they found, as I mentioned before, that rather than it being a wealthy area it turned out that this area was quite poor and anything we could do to enhance the economy in that small township of Port Welshpool, and Welshpool, would be a fillip to the rest of the community.
Why would it be a fillip? I know the two members here at the moment are not from rural Victoria but, just the same, they would understand the decline of small towns. When you have your economic indicators decreasing rather than increasing, things happen. You start to lose your stores but, worse, you lose your kinder, all of a sudden the school is under threat, perhaps you are not buying as much fuel as you were so the fuel outlet is under threat, and there is a steady spiralling down. The investment that Peter Ryan and the Liberal-National coalition have made here is going to enhance the area’s economy. It is going to grow their tourism industry, it is going to create jobs, it is going to help with disability services, it is going to break the nexus of decline in the area, and it is going to give a fillip to the whole of the community, which is now enthused about getting on with it.
In Busselton in Western Australia there is an underground viewing area off the Busselton Jetty. It attracts 600,000 people a year to the Busselton Jetty to go underwater and look. We have got amazing fish and sea lions—very special species—in the area of this inlet. So the commitment to the jetty means that we will have a great opportunity to perhaps commit further funds or even for private enterprise to come in and build an underwater viewing platform.
I have other dreams too. This is where the ferry to Tasmania used to leave from to go to Launceston and there are some lovely facilities there that could be enhanced with either a small train from there around to the pier and access out onto the pier or a small unit of some sort that will actually take people from one spot in Port Welshpool to another. The pub would get more business. The other areas of activity such fishing tackle, bait, and recreational fishing would all grow. All of a sudden you would have one very strong, very viable community that was previously in decline. You would have people wanting to come into that area to start new businesses and new operations. Instead of the spiral going down we would have a spiral going up. That is the good news and I thank Peter Ryan and his Nationals for the commitment that we could not deliver. I apologise for that. We had to win an election to deliver it. Perhaps one day we will get a chance to enhance what is already there—sooner rather than later I hope.
The Prime Minister went to New Zealand only a few weeks ago, and I should say that we have just witnessed a horrific earthquake in Christchurch and I would like to identify myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and others. We do see our relationship with New Zealand as a family one. There is not a person in Australia who does not have a friend somewhere who is either from New Zealand or associated with it. I have not been there myself, but everybody who goes there tells me it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I just want to identify with the pain and suffering they are going through at the moment. Having regard to that, the Prime Minister went there only a week ago, went into the parliament and announced that, regardless of the process, she will accept the umpires’ decision on New Zealand apples coming into Australia.
I would just like to quote a former member of parliament. He is talking about apple growers and pear growers. He said:
Instead of doing nothing for these people when they face this very genuine risk from New Zealand apples, the federal government should be saying to them, ‘We will stand with you, we will support you and we understand that the risk which you are talking about is not one which you are imagining, is not one which you have made up and is not an issue about you guys getting a subsidy. We understand that there is a very real risk that many of your orchards and properties will be substantially devalued if we allow this disease into our country.’
I reiterate clearly and passionately: Australia is still a sovereign nation. We should not kowtow to the likes of the World Trade Organisation. The role of the federal government is to stand with the apple and pear growers of Australia, not to aid and abet the World Trade Organisation and the New Zealand government to the detriment of apple and pear growers in Australia.
That was Christian Zahra, the former member for McMillan, talking about apples.
I am concerned about those apples coming into this country. They say to me, ‘Look, Russell, your apple growers will survive.’ Yes, I believe they will. Although there are things we can put in place, once fire blight is here we cannot get rid of it, and it will absolutely devastate our pear industry. If it gets a run here, it will devastate our pear industry. Where do many of our pears go? They go to New Zealand. I know we live in an international world and an international market and I know we are trying to get stone fruit into New Zealand, but this is an issue for this nation. There is a process that we were going through and the Prime Minister baldly said we will accept the umpires decision and bring these apples in, giving a green light to those apples coming into this country from a country we know has fire blight when we do not have fire blight.
I may have lost this argument and now the apples will be coming in, but I am putting it on the record: I hope we do not rue the day when the Prime Minister of Australia went to New Zealand and made that commitment to have their apples in this country and I hope it does not destroy forever our clean, green pear industry—gone. That is the great threat. There has been an argument for a long time—from Christian Zahra in my electorate, back to Barry Cunningham, John Riggall and Barry Simon—about this very issue. Every member has stood up on behalf of his apple growers and pear growers. It is the right thing for us to do. We have to address the concerns of our community. I believe this fellow, Christian Zahra, rightly, addressed that. But he was attacking the Howard government at the time. At least Mr Howard followed process on this. I know it is a battle in the international field when it comes to one agricultural product against another. In admitting that I have lost the battle, I want to put on record my great disappointment that the Prime Minister would go over and make a statement like that when there is still a process in place which she would have been advised of.
These are appropriation bills. In these bills the government has a need to outline to the community why it is raising more money and where it is spending it. There is one thing I will not do: I will not pick something out of here, particularly, say, on immigration or on overseas aid in two spots here, and start telling this government or any other government how it should be spending it or setting one person against another in this nation over issues such as overseas aid or immigration. I will not do it. I will not say, ‘There is an extra $300 million going into our aid or immigration program or the need for the department to spend more money.’ If you want me to come into this place and say, ‘We should not be spending it on people coming in; we should be spending it on this school or that hospital,’ or ‘You should be getting more of a pay cut,’ and ‘Why are we sending money overseas?’ I will not divide my community on issues like this. I will not do it.
It is really important for this nation. I just talked about our international argy-bargy with other people with regard to agriculture. We have international responsibilities, too, as a wealthy nation. I have spoken to Mal Washer about the Islamic schools in Indonesia, which he has visited. They are beside themselves with our support. He has visited those schools. He knows how important those schools are to the regions and the kids that they are serving—and they love Australia. We just heard from the Mongolian Prime Minister today how important the liaison is between his country and our country through education scholarships. The Prime Minister, you heard today, announced those.
I will not be a divisive person on these issues. It is important that we do go out and explain to people why we spend the money that we spend. But to divide one in our community against another or set one group against another for political benefit is not my style. I will not do it, and where I see it I will stand against it and every time it raises its ugly head in this place I will stand against it again. If it eventually costs me my seat, my political activity or my career or the attacks start to come, I tell you now that you have an option: if you do not like what I do and you do not like what I say, in the election that comes up within three years you can vote against me and you can vote me out. I will say that on any issue that arises in this place. You have a choice: you can vote me out of this place. (Time expired)
These are exciting economic times. While many developed countries struggle with large debt burdens and double-digit unemployment, Australian public debt and unemployment are both extremely low. Business activity and consumer sentiment remain strong. The causes of the current economic boom are unprecedented. This morning, the Reserve Bank governor told a conference in Melbourne:
Thus far, the demand for resources has stretched the global capacity of suppliers. Prices of key raw materials have consequently been driven upwards. As a result Australia’s terms of trade have risen sharply, to be about 65 per cent above the 20th century average level, … Even assuming the terms of trade soon peak and decline somewhat, they are nonetheless, over a five-year period, at their highest since at least Federation—by a good margin. With the terms of trade at their current level, Australia’s nominal GDP is about 13 per cent higher, all other things equal, than it would have been had the terms of trade been at their 100-year average level. Of course Australia has substantial foreign ownership in the resources sector so a good proportion of this income accrues to foreign investors. Nonetheless, probably about half of that additional 13 per cent of GDP accrues to Australians one way or another.
But with this growth also come new challenges. How the rapidly increasing global supply of commodities rises to meet global demand will be a critical factor in Australia’s future. David Gruen, Executive Director of the Macroeconomic Group of Treasury, said earlier this month:
There are a range of possible scenarios here. One possibility, which presumes no serious prolonged adverse developments that derail the catch-up process in China and India, is that average prices for commodities remain relatively high—well above the average cost of production—for an extended period to maintain strong financial incentives for continued rapid exploration and development of new mining capacity.
An alternative possible scenario is that, in the rush to exploit the current extremely high rates of profitability, so much global supply is brought on stream that commodity prices fall substantially over the next several years—back closer to the marginal cost of production, or even below it for some time.
While these scenarios are both possible, it seems most likely that the terms of trade will be significantly higher on average over the next couple of decades than they were in the couple of decades preceding the current mining boom.
He went on to say:
A related development, and one that is likely to be relevant over the next 15 years, is increased direct competition in the non-resource parts of the Australian traded sector from China and India, with flow-on effects to employment in those sectors of the Australian economy. The most obvious parts of the Australian traded sector likely to be subject to this increased direct competition are manufacturing—especially as Chinese and Indian production moves to increasingly sophisticated manufacturing goods (for example, automobiles) as their real wages rise, but also parts of the IT sector, where lower costs, especially in India, provide a continuing incentive to outsource. The high level of the Australian dollar acts to accelerate these trends.
Similarly, the RBA governor has noted:
… the rise in Australia’s terms of trade over the past five years is the biggest such event in a very long time. It reflects powerful forces at work in the global economy to which our country is more favourably exposed than most. It presents opportunities and challenges. With a large boost to income, we need to think about the balance between saving and spending, because we do not know the permanent level of the terms of trade. I argue for erring on the side of saving for the time being, and I think this is by and large what is happening so far. With a large change in relative prices, we should also expect to see a good deal of structural change in the economy.
As these quotations illustrate, these are exciting times to be an economic policymaker but they are challenging too. They call for a commitment to ongoing economic reform yet, sadly, that commitment has been lacking from the opposition in recent years.
In contrast, Labor has a strong and proud tradition as economic reformers. Whether it is the Curtin, the Whitlam, the Hawke, the Keating or the current Labor government, this side of the House understands the need for economic reform to ensure a strong economy. Alas the opposition is currently led by a man who has described economics as a bore. Why bother with that detail when you can simply say no? To illustrate some of this confusion I would like to go back a few weeks and read you a couple of quotes from some of the leading economic spokespeople in the coalition who seemed at that stage undecided as to whether the Australian economy was strong or weak. The shadow Treasurer, speaking on ABC’s AM program on 27 January, said:
Yet Australia is growing at above trend growth. We have unemployment at 5 per cent.
He also said:
… the Labor Party in Government today is still running what’s known as an expansionary fiscal setting. They are still running a big spending budget as if Australia is suffering the impacts of a recession.
On the same day, however, the shadow finance minister said in the Australian:
… the economy remains soft and when households are already hurting.
The economic spokespeople for the opposition cannot agree as to whether the flood levy will dampen economic activity or overheat the economy. The Leader of the Opposition, when asked about the flood levy, said:
Look, er, inevitably, um, any new tax, I think, will, um, dampen economic activity.
That is what he said to ABC Brisbane on 28 January. The day before, however, the shadow finance minister was telling Melbourne talk radio:
You do get a sense that their first option that they always jump to is another tax, and it is unnecessary. We don’t need it, and people are feeling the heat. This is going to add to that inflationary burden.
They cannot even decide whether the impact of a flood levy is going to be contractionary or expansionary. They cannot decide whether they are Arthur or Martha on this fundamental economic question.
Fortunately, though, while those opposite are prevaricating, Labor is getting on with the job. Today we are talking about two important appropriations bills. These bills, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011, will bring about fundamental economic reform. I would like to go to four aspects of that reform now: Trade Training Centres, Active After-School Communities, flood assistance, and contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Trade Training Centres are an essential part of Labor’s recognition that we need to reinvigorate trades training for the 21st century. We need to make sure that young people receive the trades training that they need and deserve and because adding trades training to the school curriculum can increase school attendance rates. We know that schoolchildren who stay on to year 12 tend to do far better in the labour market. The government has already awarded more than $1 billion for 288 projects, benefiting 927 schools. To make that a little more concrete, I visited the Trade Training Centre that will be used by many students in the electorate of Fraser. It is a trade training centre set up for four schools. It is based at St Mary MacKillop College in Tuggeranong. It works in conjunction with St Francis Xavier College, Merici College and St Clare’s College. It will be the ACT’s first Trade Training Centre. When I went down to St Mary MacKillop College in Tuggeranong I was met by Principal Michael Lee. He was extremely enthusiastic about the potential of the trade training centre. He showed us around the building work which had started in 2010 and talked about the importance of improving vocational education and training opportunities. This is very much the next stage of the education revolution and it will underpin our nation’s prosperity and the prosperity of young Australians.
In his report on the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program, released on 2 February, the Auditor-General said that the program is being delivered in a generally sound manner. Alas, the Leader of the Opposition has promised to cut nearly $1 billion from the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program. Were that to happen, that would rob 1.2 million students and over 1,800 secondary schools of the opportunity to find better pathways. It would rob those students of the chance to become the next generation of electricians, brickies, hairdressers, chefs and carpenters.
I would also like to talk about the Active After-School Communities program. Under these appropriations bills, $21.6 million will be provided to the Australian Sports Commission to continue the program. They aim to engage primary school aged children who would not otherwise be physically active in sport and other physical activities. This follows the ‘Play for Life’ philosophy, aiming to inspire children, their families and coaches to continue their involvement in sport outside the program.
The Active After-School Communities program provides funding so that schools can work in collaboration with local sporting clubs—that little bit of seed funding that we know can be so important in providing the social glue that allows community sporting groups to work in conjunction with their local schools. Funding goes to things such as training to become community coaches and getting equipment, and provides up to 200,000 primary school age children the opportunity to take part in this program.
For example, in Canberra, Basketball ACT is a registered sporting organisation and junior basketball participation rates are booming in Canberra’s north—the result of the Active After-School Community sessions run by Basketball ACT coach Jesamine Wheeler. Jesamine is the winner of the 5 Star Community Coach Award in the Active After-School Communities Program for being a positive role model, delivering the ‘Play for Life’ coaching philosophy, receiving community endorsement and showing innovation in getting kids active.
This legislation will also provide $121 million to assist people in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia who have been adversely affected by the floods that began in late November last year. Those payments will go towards assisting employees, small business people and farmers who have had a loss of income as a direct result of the flooding and the severe weather. These payments have been extended to flood-affected areas of Tasmania and areas affected by Cyclone Yasi.
Lastly, I would like to go to our contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. As I do so, I want to strongly associate myself with the remarks the member for McMillan made in this debate before I stood up to speak. He very honourably said, ‘I won’t divide my community on issues like this.’ The implication of that statement, as I take it, is that he is, as many in the community have been, concerned about the divisive attacks as a result of statements by the shadow minister for immigration and by the shadow parliamentary secretary assisting the Leader of the Opposition—statements which I think are unbecoming in this House and which, in the words of the member for McMillan, aim to divide Australians. I praise the contribution that he made in this debate and I only hope that more in his party will speak out on this critical issue.
The government is providing AusAID with another $129 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund focuses on some of the world’s deadliest diseases. It provides resources for research and treatment. Australia’s new commitment will provide HIV treatment for an estimated 28,000 people, provide tuberculosis treatment for 35,000 people and allow the distribution of over a million bed nets worldwide for the prevention of malaria. These are simple interventions but they are interventions that change lives throughout the world. Global poverty is an issue that all of us bear some responsibility for. As Australians we should do our part to ensure we have a world in which fewer children contract these three deadly diseases, in which fewer people have to suffer from AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria.
Since 2002, the Global Fund has saved an estimated 5.7 million lives. It is an astonishing figure: around the population of New South Wales has been saved by the Global Fund. The funding is incredibly cost-effective, used to tackle diseases which, in the case of HIV, threaten to strip away people in their most productive years. Australia is pledging a 55 per cent increase on our previous three-year pledge, demonstrating our confidence in the ongoing success of the global fund. We are a partner in HIV programs in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Mekong countries. The Global Fund is doing important work throughout these regions.
I urge the House to support the bills.
I rise this evening to address the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. It gives me little pleasure to deliver this speech. It appals me, in fact, that I stand here in the House as a representative of the people of Australia, my particular patch Durack, with the knowledge that Australia is being bled dry by this Labor government. With an estimated $10 billion in outright waste and mismanagement, this government should be charged with negligence—negligence towards Australian tax-earned dollars and, more importantly, negligence towards the very constituents who gave it the authority to act on their behalf.
The bleak state of affairs Australia suffers at the moment could be likened to the evil stepmother being left the inheritance and the children having to contest the will. If this were a fairy story—and, God help me, I wish it were—the story would have a happy ending. Alas, the story that the purse strings are being held by and the money is being wasted by a Labor government is in fact a true story. Until this government is voted out—or abdicates, as it should do out of goodwill to the Australian people—it will never have a happy ending.
We have seen $2.4 billion mismanaged and wasted in the Home Insulation Program. What did Australian taxpayers get for their money? A hundred and ninety-one house fires and the creation of a quarter of a million dodgy roofs—not value for money in anyone’s eyes—and there is still the cost of thousands of inspections to ensure roof spaces are safe.
We have watched Labor spend over $1 billion on consultants since coming to government, breaking a 2007 election promise to rein in $395 million of spending by 2009-10—consultants who would have had a hand in overseeing the cancelled Fuelwatch program and the abandoned GROCERYchoice scheme (after it had cost us at least $7 million); consultants who watched as the solar homes program blew out by $850 million and was then cancelled; consultants who nonchalantly administered $300 million into the Green Loans scheme, which was subsequently cancelled.
Colleagues, to coin an old phrase, this government have more front than Myer. They come today to ask for more money—
Myer is doing pretty well.
more of my constituents’ money, more of my money. Surely if they had not splashed around the money they inherited as if there were no tomorrow they would not be here today asking for more. Before the 2010 federal election, national mayhem erupted with the talk of slugging the resource sector with a big new mining tax. This tax was to be implemented to finance the promised return to budget surplus by 2013. Now we know there will be a $60 billion budget black hole over 10 years even with the introduction of this great big new tax.
The proposal to introduce the new tax created confusion and doubt in the international capital markets, with rumours abounding that Australia would rate as a high-risk investment destination, putting at risk future jobs—
Mr Melham interjecting
future state royalties, tax revenue and the standard of living of all Australians, including that of the member for Banks. This tax has always been about bailing the Labor government out of the massive debt it has accumulated. Now it is obvious that even this great big new tax will not result in a budget surplus. This great big new tax will not clear the debt, will not get us out of the red and will not ease interest rates.
Pandemonium seems to be the order of business for this government, creating hysteria and fear amongst both national and international investors in our resources sector and ruining our international reputation. All for what? To try to cover the continuing waste of Australian taxpayers’ money. It seems that chaos abounds everywhere we look with this Labor government.
This government has ignored concerns raised by a Reserve Bank board member regarding the impact on interest rates of Labor’s uncontrolled spending. Surely concerns such as this must be listened to by the government. Economic mismanagement is leading to fiscal policies that work directly against the Reserve Bank’s efforts to rein in and stabilise inflation. The everyday impact of high government deficit is higher interest rates. Small businesses and homeowners are doing it tough enough. Increased interest rates on working capital and mortgages are the last thing we need.
I reiterate the reason I am standing before you today: this Labor government have come asking for more money—the gall of them! First they blew the $23 billion left to them by the Howard government, then they taxed us some more. They blew that, then they taxed us some more. They blew that and now they want to tax us some more—only this time they are getting a little more devious. They have named one of the new taxes a ‘levy’. Somewhere in the Labor den is a little Laborite dreaming up new names for taxes. I can just see him dressed in red, green and white, with a big red nose and huge black shoes, tapping a pencil on his forehead as he checks the thesaurus for tax synonyms. You do not need to be a Rhodes scholar to see a pattern emerging here: more taxes; more money to waste.
If Prime Minister Gillard and her band of tax grabbers have their way, 2011 will not be known as the year of decision and delivery but will be noted in history as the year of great big new taxes. So far we are looking at a carbon tax, a petrol tax, a flood tax and a mining tax—and we are only in February!
I read with interest the summary of appropriations for these bills and noted the request for more money for the Immigration and Citizenship portfolio. In particular, there is ‘supplementary funding of $290 million for operational costs associated with the management of offshore asylum seekers’. I also noted funding requests under the Attorney-General’s Department to the tune of $17.6 million to reimburse state and territory legal aid commissioners for providing legal assistance in national security, people-smuggling and drug related matters. I read a little further and, lo and behold, there is the Federal Police wanting $24.8 million to increase its own technical and operational capabilities, especially for people-smuggling activities.
I can think of a much cheaper way of handling asylum seekers and people smugglers—reintroduce the Liberal Party’s policies in full. In 2010-11 the government will spend more than $760 million on people arriving illegally in Australia. This compares to less than $100 million in annual expenditure when the Howard government left office in 2007.
They didn’t want to come to Australia—there was a Liberal government.
It was for good reasons. The extra $290 million being asked for as supplementary funding for operational costs associated with the management of offshore asylum seekers represents a budget blow-out of more than 60 per cent on the $470 million already budgeted for in the current year and more than double the amount spent in 2009-10. The last boat to arrive, on 19 February, had 46 people on board and, with a recently reported average cost of $150,000 for everyone who arrives by boat, this latest arrival will cost Australian taxpayers $6.9 million.
When framing their budget for 2010-11 this Labor government assumed 2,000 people would arrive illegally by boat. More than 3,600 people have arrived this financial year, with four months to go. Since the softening of border policies in August 2008 we have seen 10,250 people arrive on 208 boats and since Prime Minister Gillard took over we have seen 67 boats with 3,698 people on board. Apparently a bill of almost $2.5 million a month is being racked up by this Labor government to house some 500 asylum seekers outside detention centres as it struggles to find a solution to the record number of boat arrivals.
One interesting statistic I point out to show the difference with a government that had strong border policies and was careful with taxpayers’ money, as opposed to the current Labor government, is that this budget blow-out for one year of $290 million is greater than the total cost of running the Howard government’s Pacific Solution over almost six years.
That’s not right.
It is dead right and, yes, you heard me correctly—this year’s budget blow-out is more than the Howard government spent on the Pacific Solution over almost six years. There is something in that for all of us to think about. As I said before, I can think of a much more financially viable option for Australia when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers—stop encouraging these people to come here with weak border policies.
Waste, waste and more waste. This government should be ashamed, or at least embarrassed, but do we see even a hint of remorse? No, all we see is a government with a rhinoceros hide asking for more money. In recent times we have seen an estimated $8 billion wasted in the Building the Education Revolution school halls program. We observed a promised $4.7 billion broadband network replaced with a $43 billion scheme, which still does not have a business plan and now looks like being superseded by advances in wireless technology. We witnessed $50 million wasted in advertising on the stimulus package, and then they wasted $46 million of the stimulus package by sending money to people overseas, criminals and the deceased. The apathy on the opposite side of the House is truly pathetic. This is real money we are talking about, real money earned the hard way by constituents, and the government’s apathy displays the contempt with which they treat both the money and the people.
As you are all aware, I represent the electorate of Durack, the largest electorate in Australia. It is the largest by land mass and the largest by rating the optimism of the people. For the people of Durack the glass is always half full. Just recently when talking to a constituent about the Labor government’s waste, a cocky said: ‘Well we can’t complain about waste in this neck of the woods. They haven’t spent any dollars to waste.’ And that, colleagues, is the plain and simple truth. I do not need to dress it up, put quite plainly this government has not wasted money specifically in regional Australia, disregarding of course the city-centric policies that overlapped into regional Australia. They have not wasted regional spending; they have instead cut it. Either this government is wasting billions of dollars on schemes that are irrelevant to the people of Australia or it bungles and fails. Either way it is a waste of taxpayers’ money of the highest order.
In the first months of this financial year, this Labor government racked up a deficit of $21.7 billion. Net debt increased from $42.3 billion to $62 billion. Labor continues to borrow well in excess of $100 million each and every day to fund its continued spending. Net interest payments will peak at $6.5 billion per year in 2012-13. This $6.5 billion could be better spent investing in regional Australia.
They do not mind taking the tax dollars from the bush but they sure as hell do not like spending any money in return. Labor’s first budget stripped $1 billion out of regional programs. The second budget stripped out even more and included an emissions trading tax. The third recommends a big new mining tax, a carbon tax, and probably a tax on petrol as well. What can we expect in their fourth budget?
In a statement by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government on Regional Development Australia made on 20 March 2008, he said amongst other things that he would support regional Australia, he would drive economic prosperity, he would deliver on pre-election promises—that was a big call—and he would build partnerships in the bush and be responsive to local priorities. These partnerships were going to improve with new investment in infrastructure, health, housing, water innovation, education and skills development. I am yet to find evidence of delivery that makes any of these statements truthful.
Labor has broken its promise to expand the role of what used to be the area consultative committees. Instead, their replacement, Regional Development Australia, has no programs to administer because in the first three years it had no dollars to allocate. A whole network of regional people were selected and then given nothing to do. In the transition more than 500 voluntary committee positions were terminated and 150 jobs lost. That was in spite of repeated assurances from the Labor minister that the jobs were secure. Regional development is no longer funded direct to community organisations or to the private sector. This has added another layer of bureaucracy. Apparently this government believes that Canberra knows best, and it has instructed that all future funding decisions will be made in Canberra.
Amongst other things the Labor government abolished Land and Water Australia and cut $63 million in CSIRO agricultural research. A $12 million cut has also been made in funding to the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation and in the 2009-10 budget Labor cut cargo-screening resources at ports and airports by $58.1 million. This has made it much easier and more likely for animal and plant disease to enter Australia, putting our agricultural sector at risk. There is no excuse or pardon for a government that is incompetent when managing taxpayers’ funds. I do not accept it and neither should the people of Australia.
I am delighted to be speaking in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the cognate bill this evening. It is an opportune time, because we are hitting the six-month mark since the election in August last year. There is a question that I often get asked and which I am very happy to answer—that is, in addition to why did I decide to pursue an interest in being a member of this place and how I find it, and I can answer those in a couple of ways. The first is that, as members here may know, I come from a proud local government background. I was previously a councillor on Blacktown City Council, the largest local government area in New South Wales, as its deputy mayor. One of the reasons why I became so interested in public service was that I wanted to be able to do something that would have immediate effects on people’s lives. Some people talk about local government being the level of government that is closest to the people. For example, people who are standing in the rain one day waiting for a bus contact their local councillor and you are actually able to make something happen for them in a positive way, by getting a bus shelter put there within a short period of time. Those are the kinds of positive things you can do for people lives.
The additional question people ask me now is whether that changed when I came to this place, and I am delighted to say, Madam Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou and the member for Banks, who I am sure will agree, that by working with communities you actually end up being closer to your constituency than anyone could have imagined. I would like to go through a few of those things because, as I said in my maiden speech some five months ago, we have a wide range of people and places, and a diversity of community in Greenway, as I know the member for Banks and you yourself have, Madam Deputy Speaker. To be responsive to those various communities means that you need to listen to them. As I said in my maiden speech, during the campaign I found myself doing far more listening than I had ever done in my life. Six months later, I am very proud to say—and I know the community is proud—that we have been able to work together to secure a number of very significant projects for the local community that are being delivered and that are making and will continue to make a very positive difference to people’s lives. That is the reason why we are here.
The first area I want to run through is health, which obviously came up as one of the biggest issues during the election campaign, and it is one that I made sure was at the forefront during the campaign when I was listening to people and at the forefront, of course, when I was elected to this place. I am very pleased to say that, in addition to the COAG agreement that the Prime Minister announced, things can be translated to Greenway that are really going to make a difference to people’s lives and are making a difference now. I am very pleased to say that work is about to begin on the $15 million Blacktown GP superclinic. When the minister wrote to me late last year confirming that as the local member I was pleased for this to go ahead, it was with absolute delight that I was able to confirm that this was something the community said they wanted. Their main cause for concern was that we are in such a high growth area in Greenway—with not only a growth area to the north of the electorate but also a growing ageing population to the south of the electorate—that having access to quality health care was an absolute priority for many families and individuals. A GP superclinic is going to take so much pressure off the only public hospital in Greenway, Blacktown Hospital. In fact, it is the hospital where I was born. So I am very pleased that we will be able deliver substantial benefits in the form of a GP superclinic and for Blacktown Hospital itself.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that the GP superclinic is coming on top of a number of other very significant funding announcements in health by the federal government. We have had a $17.6 million injection for the University of Western Sydney’s clinical school at Blacktown Hospital, which will train future doctors and nurses. Importantly—and because UWS is a local champion of Western Sydney—this means that young trainee doctors and nurses will be trained in Western Sydney, and, if they are trained in Western Sydney, the likelihood is that they will stay in Western Sydney. I think it is very important for young people to know that they have a career path locally and that they have that support. There is $4.2 million for new beds at Blacktown Hospital and nearly $900,000 for new equipment. When you calculate that these individual pieces of equipment can save lives, including a defibrillator, and heart monitoring and breathing machines, it shows that on the ground we can actually make a positive difference to people’s lives. There is also over $400,000 from the government’s elective surgery strategy for other equipment at Blacktown Hospital.
I am also very pleased to say that funding has been delivered to ensure over 8,000 more clinical training days for local medical, nursing and allied health profession students. As I said, this is important because when you grow up locally and train locally you are then more likely to work locally. So I am very pleased that, with the community, we have been able to argue for our fair share and I am very pleased that we are able to deliver on those commitments to the people of Greenway in the area of health.
The other things I want to mention have to do with some projects in a variety of areas. The first area I want to talk about is sport. With a high growth rate of young families, sport is an integral part of life in the Greenway community. One project in particular that I want to mention is the Football New South Wales headquarters. Minister Anthony Albanese came out to announce an investment of $8 million in a project for Football New South Wales to move their headquarters to Riverstone, which is central to the north-west region growth area. Amongst other things the funding will help to construct are nine purpose-built quality football pitches, a boutique stadium, an indoor pool swimming complex and the new official Football New South Wales offices. There are no fewer than 14 local football teams in the community and all of them will benefit from this facility. I am very certain that we have a young Tim Cahill or a Harry Kewell in Greenway and that this project will make a substantial, positive benefit to the young people in my area.
I also want to mention a couple of what may seem like small local grants made by the government; however, they have made a very positive difference to the lives of a number of groups in my area. Coming, as I said, from a local government background, Blacktown City Council was only recently able to announce that it had received over $5.6 million in funding from the federal government as part of a series of community infrastructure grants for five projects that I personally took up for the people of Greenway. We are now in the process of delivering them.
Those projects include an upgrade to Morgan Power Reserve at Kings Park, which is just down the road from where I grew up. A $20,000 grant will go to Kings Langley Little Athletics, and here I want to mention Darren Tait. I talked before about working with people; obviously these things do not happen just by being identified by the local member. Darren Tait, from Kings Langley Little Athletics, helped to make that project happen.
Also, the Riverstone Girl Guides will receive $50,000 for an upgrade of their hall. I have mentioned the Riverstone Girl Guides in this place before. I joined with them a few weeks ago to conduct a flood fundraiser. Despite the fact that they require a new hall because their hall is falling apart, they put aside their needs and helped out with that fundraiser; they put the needs of others ahead of themselves, which I thought was absolutely fantastic and a testament to those young women. They have for a long time needed a new hall, and $50,000 is going to make an incredible difference in ensuring that Riverstone Girl Guides continue and they can meet in their own facility.
A project that is very close to my heart is the upgrade of the International Peace Park at Seven Hills to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars. The International Peace Park is the home ground of the Seven Hills Junior Rugby League Football Club—and I have very happily accepted being their patron. I met with a senior person from their club, John Regan, during the election campaign. When you meet local sporting people who are so committed to what they do and who get absolutely nothing in return, you see how much they want to ensure that their sport continues and that young people come up through the ranks. The club has for a very long time needed an upgrade of its park and new change facilities. During the election campaign, I was very pleased to show the then minister for sport, Kate Ellis, around there, and we were absolutely convinced of their need. This is one of the largest junior rugby league clubs in the area, and they were in desperate need of an upgrade to their facility. I happened to be walking through the Seven Hills shopping centre the other weekend when the club were having their registration day, and I could see the delight of these young people and the club’s senior personnel in having this project get off the ground. These are things that only happen when a community is working together. I am so pleased that I have had the opportunity to work with Seven Hills Junior Rugby League in bringing this project to fruition.
The other area is a topic that was probably my main area of interest when I was on council, and that is the environment. When people think of the urban environment in cities such as outer Western Sydney, they might not think that it is something that is of great importance to people, but of course it is. It is of tremendous importance to people to ensure that they have open space that is well maintained and that they have facilities to be able to take their families to. I was extremely pleased to be able to deliver $765,000 in the revitalisation of Faulkland Crescent Reserve in the suburb of Kings Park. This is a suburb that borders an industrial estate, and it is a well established suburb. For many, many years, Blacktown City Council has been developing a master plan for that reserve. It was literally shovel-ready, the residents had for many years been consulted and I was able to put that case to the minister responsible at the time, Mr Tony Burke, and take him around. I saw the delight from residents who had contributed to the master plan over all those years when it was finally announced that it was able to come to fruition. I cannot tell you how pleased those residents are. This is a huge park that is going right through their suburb. Their amenities are going to be completely upgraded and it is something that has been really welcomed.
As I mentioned, being in a growth area brings with it many challenges in terms of infrastructure, and one of the main challenges is, of course, roads: connecting part of the suburbs—the newly developing areas—to Schofields, Quakers Hill and Riverstone in the north. The upgrades of roads there have been a significant issue for residents for many years. Bear in mind that many of these areas do not even have footpath paving or guttering of any kind, yet they are in urban areas. We were able to secure $4,550,000 for the upgrade of a significant road through Quakers Hill called Burdekin Road. This is an example of being able to take some leadership in infrastructure and put in the necessary road improvements before houses come. How often do we say we should not go planning and putting in houses until we have the necessary transport, schools and other infrastructure links in place? This is really an example of listening to the community—listening to the concerns of local residents and also the council, which is very well informed on these matters—and being able to deliver. I can honestly say, as someone who traverses the long electorate of Greenway on a regular basis to be in touch with my constituency, that this is really going to make a significant difference in the quality of life of people when they move into those suburbs.
I want to say something else about some local projects in the area of Building the Education Revolution. I have now gone to many of the openings, every one of which has been absolutely well received. It has been an absolute delight to be able to meet with parents, students and teachers, each of whom has welcomed the projects that have been delivered. The member for Banks will agree with me on this: how many times do you go to these schools for these openings and hear them say: ‘This would not have happened. We have needed this for so many years. We have needed this hall. This school has been standing for 50 years and we have needed it, and it simply would not have happened if not for the BER.’
I was very pleased that Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan was able to attend the opening of my new electorate office in Seven Hills just before Christmas. We had a number of community members who were at that function, and it was a fantastic occasion. I thank him again for taking the time to come. In his speech he talked about the BER and in response, without even being prompted, so many people—community members that I have had occasion to deal with—said the same thing. How good is it that we have been able to have a policy which kept the good, hardworking men and women of Western Sydney in work and invested in education, which is the great enabler for young people in Western Sydney to be able to get ahead in life? A policy that was fulfilled and was able to combine those two things is really an example of the community and government working together.
I make the point in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 that there needs to be more expenditure in Australia on a particularly difficult problem we face as a result of our culture of drinking. I know this government, as did previous governments, recognises the problem of alcohol abuse but we need to spend more time and effort on recognising foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Alcohol consumption is a part of the Australia way, and it has been since 1788. We all know about the Rum Rebellion, when alcohol was part of our exchange system because other money was difficult to get. A 2010 study from the Western Australian Department of Health found that 86 per cent of people in Western Australia over 14 stated that they drink alcohol, while 10 per cent say they drink on a daily basis. Most Australians consume alcohol at a low level and at a level that does not affect their health. In fact it is part of their general recreational pursuits. However, this Western Australian Department of Health study indicates that 41 per cent of the sample reported that they drink at levels that do put them at risk of short-term harm—that is, binge drinking—and 11 per cent reported that they are at risk of long-term harm to their health.
The highest rates of drinking at harmful levels occurred with teenagers and young adults; 31 per cent of 20- to- 29-year-old women reported that they are binge drinking at least monthly; and 12 per cent said that they binge drink at least weekly. The study defined binge drinking as ‘five or more standard drinks per occasion’. At least 23 per cent of teenage girls said they binge drink monthly and 11½ per cent said they binge drink weekly.
When you realise that about half of all pregnancies in Australia are not planned, that we have some of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the developed world and that the numbers are getting higher, it becomes extremely concerning that the very high rates of alcohol consumption are amongst our teenage girls and young adult women. Many of these pregnancies are well advanced, and alcohol consumption has been continuing, before the woman even realises she is pregnant.
Two key factors contribute to foetal harm from prenatal alcohol exposure. The first is the timing of the drinking during the pregnancy. It is generally considered that the first trimester is the most dangerous time for damaging the brain and other parts of the developing baby. The second factor is the intensity of the exposure. However, low levels of alcohol consumption during critical times of foetal development can also result in foetal harm.
Unfortunately, women with a drinking problem are the least likely to access antenatal care, compared to other women in Australia. This means babies may be born with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD, or foetal alcohol syndrome, commonly called FAS. This is an irreversible and 100 per cent preventable cause of brain damage, often associated with physical disabilities. This is about babies born in Australia in the 21st century—we should not ever tolerate one baby being born with these permanent and debilitating conditions.
Why am I talking about these things in parliament in February 2011? The problem is that we do not even know in Australia how many children do have foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We do not have any routine screening for alcohol use during pregnancy, and so very often a woman who is pregnant when she presents to a doctor, gynaecologist or obstetrician is not even warned about the dangers of consuming alcohol. I have already mentioned that up to 50 per cent of women do not know they are pregnant for quite a few months anyway.
There is a lack of standardised routine data collection for monitoring and evaluating maternal alcohol use in pregnancy, and research into pregnancy, infant and child outcomes is inadequate. There is a lack of routine screening of infants and children known to be at risk of harm from prenatal alcohol exposure. For example, there is still no effort to diagnose FASD in infants whose mothers are known to be dependent on alcohol.
Health professionals have limited knowledge of the diagnostic criteria for FASD and many are reluctant to make a diagnosis for fear of stigmatising the family or simply getting it wrong. Few health professionals have been assessing children for foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. One of the problems is that it is only since the 1970s that this disorder has received much attention in the medical professional journals and numbers of our health service professionals were trained before that time. It is very difficult to obtain a sound picture of the social and economic impacts of FASD in Australia. There are no Australian studies of the costs of FASD for individuals or for communities. The prevalence data for FASD in Australia is both underestimated and incomplete. It is not possible to determine the current population costs.
However, I want to commend the Gillard government for announcing a $1 million grant to support a key Indigenous children study which aims to identify the prevalence of this alcohol spectrum disorder in some Indigenous communities in remote Western Australia. Let me stress, however, that FASD is not an Indigenous condition or something that is only found in indigenous communities around the world. It is a problem in the population of Australia as a whole. It just so happens that, given the socioeconomic status and the alcohol consumption and abuse in a lot of our Indigenous communities, there is a higher incidence of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder at this time.
We have to rely on FAS or FASD studies from outside of Australia to understand what sorts of outcomes there are when a child is born with the intellectual and physical disabilities associated with exposure to alcohol during foetal development. In the United States, in a study of 415 patients aged six to 51 years old, 90 per cent were found to have mental health problems, 60 per cent had disrupted education, 30 per cent had alcohol and other drug misuse problems and 50 per cent had inappropriate sexual behaviour—those were people 12 years and over. Antisocial behaviour, alcohol and substance use and abuse and mental health problems are common in individuals who are affected. They are often not able to have an independent life. This is a serious condition for individuals who, through no fault of their own, were born with this condition.
The potential adverse life outcomes for individuals have also been studied elsewhere. There are studies showing that 60 per cent of people diagnosed with FASD end up in trouble with the law, and 50 per cent have experienced confinement in detention, jail, or a psychiatric or drug or alcohol related inpatient setting. This is a condition that has major impacts, and not only on the individual but on their family and their community.
Individuals with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder very often become involved with the criminal justice system. They may not understand the arrest and court process. They have diminished competency and capacity and often do not fully grasp the severity of the situation. At the moment, there is an inquiry being run through the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs that is looking at juvenile offending in Australia among our Indigenous populations. We have taken evidence that numbers of the juvenile offenders from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities would seem to be suffering from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. That is a great shame, given that this is a totally preventable condition.
Prevention is about understanding the relationship between alcohol and complex psychosocial issues, including aspects of the history and culture of a community. It is about poverty, lack of information and education, addiction to alcohol and the extent to which those in our medical profession understand or want to learn about this condition. There are a range of prevention efforts that all require very special strategies. These must be aimed at the whole population as well as specific groups, such as school age children, adolescents, women of child-bearing age, pregnant women and high-risk women.
I was very pleased to see that one of our beer companies very recently stated that it would begin to put labelling on their beer, warning that alcohol could be a risk to health. I am disappointed that they did not go a little further and say ‘in particular, in relation to pregnancies and the health of the unborn child.’ When that statement was made by the beer company, it was unfortunate that, almost at the same time, our wine producers were saying that any further labelling of their product—referring to wine—as dangerous for the unborn and that it should not be consumed during pregnancy, was considered too much information to put on a label and was not appropriate. When we export our wines into countries like the United States, in some states we have to include that information on the label; it is a legal requirement. In Australia we have recommendations from our National Health and Medical Research Council saying that no alcohol should be consumed during pregnancy, given the dangers to the unborn.
Foetal alcohol syndrome is the most common preventable non-genetic cause of intellectual disability. The broader spectrum of disability associated with exposure of the foetus to alcohol in pregnancy involves considerable morbidity and costs to society—not to mention the costs to the individual in lost life opportunity. The effects of FAS and FASD occur in early childhood and persist throughout life. In the special schools in my own electorate, which I visit very regularly, I find particularly poignant the numbers of children with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, because in each of those cases it was totally preventable.
With the assistance of some of my colleagues on both sides of the House, I am going to organise a group of parliamentarians who will do all they can to bring about a change in the Australian community’s attitude to the drinking of alcohol during pregnancy. Of course any other alcohol abuse is not to be tolerated, but this is particularly for women drinking during pregnancy. I want to commend the then Senate Select Committee on Regional and Remote Indigenous Communities for putting recommendation No. 14 into their final report in 2010. It asks that:
... the Commonwealth considers the development of a communication strategy to provide simple, practical advice to parents and guardians caring for a child with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and that the status of FASD as a recognised disability is clarified to ensure that parents, caregivers, schools and communities are able to provide adequate support to children with FASD.
This is most important. At this point in time we do not even have recognition of FASD as a disability, so it is so much harder for carers to seek and receive adequate support. Very many of the children with FASD or FAS end up in foster care or care beyond their family, so it is even more important that the community is educated about the symptoms of foetal alcohol syndrome and what can be done to give these children every chance to live an independent life.
I am very pleased that the women of Fitzroy Crossing, in particular the Indigenous women, have taken up this extremely difficult issue for their community. They have presented the problem to the United Nations at an international forum. They have been courageous in addressing the alcohol problems of their community. The early prevalence study reveals that maybe as many as 50 per cent of their children are suffering from this condition into the second generation and that the school in that community will have to have very special support. That support is going to be provided to make sure all of those children and their carers are given a chance. But of course the most important thing is that that community, like other Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities right across Australia, understand that it is not wise to drink at any time during pregnancy.
All women and men in Australia need to understand that alcohol and pregnancy are a dangerous mix. It is not simply against the human rights of the child to be born with a disability that is 100 per cent preventable; it is a permanent problem for them and for the community.
I rise to take this opportunity—in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011to update the House on some developments in my local community: in particular in relation to commitments that had been made prior to the 2010 election and also commitments that had been made during the course of the last term of parliament, many of which have now been delivered and some of which are well and truly underway.
Before I report on the progress of those particular projects, I will comment on some of the initiatives that we proposed during the course of the 2010 election campaign. One of the commitments that we made was a commitment of $1 million to an upgrade of the Western Sydney International Hockey Centre’s fields. The hockey fields are a regional facility, and they are home to many games not just throughout the weekends but on weeknights as well. They really are the centre of hockey in the greater Penrith region. The facilities have been there for some years, but unfortunately over that time they have fallen into a state of disrepair. That has meant that in recent years one of the two hockey fields has not been available for use for hockey. The granting of this $1 million for the upgrade of these facilities will go a long way towards addressing those difficulties. The commitment that we made was to provide $1 million to upgrade both of the hockey fields and, to the extent that there are any funds left over, to apply those funds for the purpose of embellishing and improving the surrounds of the hockey fields.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank the University of Western Sydney, on whose premises the hockey fields are located—in particular the vice-chancellor, Professor Janice Reid, and also Rhonda Hawkins—for their assistance in facilitating this particular project. I acknowledge Tony Geange from uwsconnect, who was also involved in the project. On the hockey side, I make special mention of Noelene Knowles and Pat Hurley, who have been great advocates of this project for some time and have undertaken a considerable amount of work at the preliminary stages to ensure that we had a proposal that was suitable for a funding application. Whilst processes take some time, and it looks as though the university is working through the implementation of this funding, we look forward—if not later in this season then certainly for the season next year—to new or upgraded hockey fields being available for use not just for local players but for players from further afield.
Another commitment that we made in the course of the election campaign was $200,000 in community safety funding under the program for CCTV, which is an initiative that the minister, Brendan O’Connor, came out to Penrith to announce. These funds will be applied not just for the purposes of CCTV but also to improve general levels of safety in the area that is located between Westfield Penrith Plaza and the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. This is an area that has become idle loitering space, if you like, for many of the young people in the area. On a Thursday night in particular, after frequenting the shopping centre, they will hang around in this area, which can sometimes cause a little bit of concern to those that might be attending a show at the performing arts centre or doing some shopping themselves. I would like to acknowledge Mr Antony Keenan, who is the centre general manager at Westfield. Antony is a young person himself but a man with great passion and someone who is working very hard with local young people and other stakeholders to ensure that there are activities there to keep young people engaged in their spare time, particularly on a Thursday night and particularly in this space. The space is commonly known in the local area as the Mondo, and I know that this funding will go a long way towards improving that area and lifting the overall levels of safety for all concerned.
In the course of the election campaign we also made a commitment to expand our commitment to the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. Prior to the 2007 election we committed $15 million to expanding the conservation corridor. Subsequent to that commitment, working closely with the New South Wales state government, we were able to apply those funds towards the purchase of the former Airservices Australia site at Cranebrook, a 181-hectare site containing several important and critical remnants of native vegetation.
Having preserved that site, which now forms a very central part of the Cumberland Conservation Corridor, at the last election we committed to provide an extra $7½ million to build upon that. This corridor connects up with the regional park on the ADI site and the other areas secured as part of the commitment we made back in 2007. That commitment was to secure the bushland on the Orchard Hills defence site and to set aside, for future preservation, the Airservices site at Shanes Park. All of these sites are connected, particularly through South Creek and Ropes Creek, forming a flora and fauna corridor throughout Western Sydney. These funds will help with acquisition and further tree planting in order to augment the Cumberland Conservation Corridor.
Those were some of the commitments made in the course of the last election campaign. But I want to take the opportunity to update the House on some of the projects that are currently being delivered in my electorate. Perhaps the most significant one, not just because of the dollars involved but because of its impact on the local community, is the $96.4 million investment in the redevelopment of the Nepean District Hospital. This is an investment that will massively increase the capacity of a hospital that is located at the centre of one of the key growth areas in outer Western Sydney.
As part of this funding, there will be six additional operating theatres; extra day-only and extended day-only beds; two new purpose-built, 30-bed surgical wards to replace the older wards; a new surgical outpatient clinic; a new 12-bed intensive care pod, including six more Intensive Care Unit beds; a new renal dialysis unit for hospital inpatients; significantly, a new 64-bed mental health unit and community mental health facilities; and an extra 32 chairs in the oral health building. These investments are well and truly underway. Anyone that has driven past or walked past the Nepean hospital site will see that the buildings are well and truly under construction and we look forward to those works progressing to their completion—to deliver the sorts of health services and health infrastructure that a growing community such as mine not only requires but deserves.
I acknowledge the important contribution of Professor Michael Peek, in particular, to securing funds for the Nepean Clinical School, which is located adjacent to the Nepean District Hospital. The funding of $17.2 million will ensure that we have a first-rate, state-of-the-art teaching clinic—a clinical school-opposite the Nepean District Hospital. This will ensure that the teaching hospital that the Nepean hospital has become is also a place where young student doctors will, hopefully, have the opportunity to get a better sense of the community—to sink their roots, so that in the future they not only contribute productively as doctors to our community but also become an important part of it. I acknowledged Professor Peek. There are many outstanding doctors operating at the hospital, many of whom live in our local community. I know that this is a philosophy that they are keen to foster. All of this health spending will, I think, ensure that we have the capacity that we need. But, most importantly, it will ensure that the nurses and other assisting staff doing outstanding work under difficult circumstances at Nepean District Hospital will start to have the facilities that they need in order to do their job and do it well.
I recently attended a function held by the Penrith Cricket Club at CUA Stadium. In attendance at that event was Richie Benaud, that great icon of the game of cricket. Richie was, of course, born in Penrith. In coming back to re-establish that connection many years later, he spoke very highly of the facilities that are now on offer in our local community. Within eyesight was the work currently being undertaken at the Howell Oval, which is the centrepiece of cricket in our district and is adjacent to CUA Stadium, which is where our rugby league is played. Together they are establishing the nucleus of an important sports precinct along Mulgoa Road.
The work has had $5 million allocated to it. About $3 million has been dedicated to the upgrade of the Howell Oval pavilion. The other $2 million has gone towards improvements at the southern end of CUA Stadium. These improvements, whilst not complete, are certainly very visible to the onlooker. You can see that tremendous work has been undertaken and that the improvements are not far away from being completed.
One of the items that I have spoken about in this place before is my commitment to delivering a healthy river. The Nepean River is a great artery that channels through the centre of my electorate. The health of that river is so important to our community. That is why it was so important when our government committed $77 million to improving the health of the river. To provide some feedback on what that has achieved—and I am sure there are many scientific studies and analyses that will demonstrate that that work has been worth while—a couple of months ago there was a sighting of a platypus in the Penrith sewage treatment plant. The sewage treatment plant is connected by various waterways to the Nepean River. I am told that it is the first time that a platypus has been sighted within the catchment in a very long time. In large part, that is a testament to the improvements in water quality. So if it is good enough for the platypus, it is good enough for all the young people in Penrith, on the scorching hot days that we get throughout the summer, pushing up around 45 degrees, to go and have a swim in the Nepean River, as so many of their parents and grandparents have done previously.
I also note that I have spoken at length in the past about the $500,000 commitment we made towards the aquatic weed harvester. It is almost like a lawnmower on the water to chop away the salvinia and other aquatic weeds. The Nepean Rowing Club have taken a delegation to see me on a few occasions to raise the fact that the work of the aquatic weed harvester had not been extending out to the front of their facility. I took the opportunity to write to the New South Wales Minister for Water, Phillip Costa, to see whether or not he was able to provide any assistance to better resource the Hawkesbury River County Council as they undertake their weed management activities. He wrote back to me on 22 February. This is good news. He has indicated that he has made available some seed funding, the amount of $20,000, to ensure that further activity can occur in ripping up those weeds out the front of the Nepean Rowing Club so that our rowers can continue to undertake their activities on the river. So that was a good little win. Congratulations to Phillip Costa. I hope that in the future we get a longer term commitment from the state government for funding for those activities.
I recently had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Barnardos homework centre at Cranebrook. They received some funding from the federal government but they also received funding from a philanthropic organisation within the property industry. As result of those funds, a new homework centre has been established in the middle of Cranebrook, servicing a disadvantaged community. Many of the residents in that part of Cranebrook are facing a range of challenges. It is an area that has been typically characterised by a high concentration of department of housing accommodation. Over time, that has created a challenging environment. From working very closely with Barnardos, I know that many of the young people who may have otherwise found themselves going off on the wrong track have been able to be steered back in the right direction as a result of the work of Barnardos. I acknowledge Barnardos, in particular Stephen Cole, who has been the inspiration behind that project. He has done an outstanding job in making it all happen.
It is a great privilege to be in this place, representing my community. One of the things that I am very proud of is that I have been, and continue to be, part of a government that is delivering real improvements and real projects that are making a difference in my community. (Time expired)
I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. I do it on the basis that the government have made some quite preposterous claims. The government said before they were elected that they were going to be economic conservatives, that they were going to be great economic reformers and that they were going to be good, strong economic managers. Very sadly for the Australian people, not one of these claims is true. One only has to look at these appropriation bills to find evidence of that. We need only look at the border protection policy of the government to see that they have had huge blow-outs in the border protection budget.
The government claimed, when it changed the policy in August 2008, that it would have different policies from the previous coalition government. It claimed it would be more compassionate but that it would be equally successful at deterring people smugglers and deterring people from getting on leaky boats to come to this country in dangerous circumstances. There could be nothing further from the truth. Since the change in the government’s policy in August 2008 the number of boats that have arrived in Australia is 208, and counting, and the number of people who have arrived is upwards of 10,250. Very tragically, lives have been lost and families have been torn apart. But rather than look to the failures of its policy, rather than change its policy, this government ploughs on. It ignores the human tragedy, and we see in this appropriations bill some of the serious economic impacts.
In Appropriation Bill (No. 3) there is an extra $290 million for running costs in the blow-out this year of offshore asylum seeker management. In Appropriation Bill (No. 4) there is $152.8 million in additional capital expenditure for the establishment of the Northam detention centre and the Inverbrackie detention centre, which has previously announced by the government. This is very interesting. The government has made much of the fact that it cannot pick up the telephone, speak to the President of Nauru and again begin offshore processing directly in Nauru. One of the great claims why this cannot occur and why, instead, it must pursue the East Timor solution—which we know will never happen—is the terrible cost of the program. Senator Evans said in February 2008 that the Pacific solution was very costly, ultimately unsuccessful and that part of the reason for its lack of success was this extraordinary cost. We have done our homework and looked at the figures. The cost of running this program is $289 million. That is less than what the government is asking for this year with its budget blow-out. And it would cost much less to run the Pacific solution for almost six years, based on the government’s own statements, than what the government is asking for to cover the cost of its policy failures for less than a six-month period.
So this is not part of the solution, but this is not the only area that the government has claimed to want to reform. It has also claimed that it wants to have great new tax reform. The government spent just over $10 million asking the Secretary of the Department of Treasury to conduct a tax review. It said that this was the most comprehensive tax review that had ever been conducted and that this review would form the basis of its great tax reform. There were 138 recommendations that came out of the Henry tax review. One of these recommendations was to introduce a new mining tax. Well, surprise, surprise—this was the only recommendation that the government liked. In fact, it liked it so much that it took it to the election and, despite the fact that the mining tax will have a significant impact on Australian businesses and jobs, it will proceed with its flawed mining tax, having stitched up a deal with a number of mining companies before the last election.
We should look back on the Henry tax review. It said that we had just on 125 existing taxes. This government has added an extra tax, the mining tax. It said before the last election that it would not be looking to deliver a carbon tax but already this promise has been broken. The government is now looking to when it can actually introduce this carbon tax. The latest example of the government’s supposed tax reform is the new disaster tax, the flood tax, that we are now debating in the other chamber. It is probably useful to refer to the American humorist Art Buchwald, who said:
Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that have not been taxed before.
This is certainly a mantra that the government knows well and it is certainly the mantra that they live by.
We should compare the government’s tax record to that of the previous coalition government, which is a much better record. It is a record that the present government could learn from. When we were in government we lowered the tax rates—at the top level, from 47 per cent to 45 per cent and, at the lowest level, from 20 per cent to 15 per cent. This of course had a very direct impact on Australian families. It made it much easier for Australian families to save their money, because they did not have to contribute so much in tax. We increased the income tax thresholds across the board, again, making it easier for Australian families to save and to then choose how to spend their money, whether it be on educating their children through the independent school sector, on new business initiatives or on a whole variety of things. The choice was absolutely with them. We cut the company tax rate from 36 per cent to 30 per cent, again, making it easier for companies to do business and to employ Australians. We also introduced the concessional 50 per cent tax rate on capital gains.
But probably the most extensive reform that the coalition government brought into effect was the GST reform, aimed at bringing about a fairer tax system for Australians whereby we were then able to provide further tax relief through tax cuts in 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. The GST reform replaced the wholesale sales tax and nine different state taxes and provided a source of funding for the states.
Today in the other chamber we are also dealing with the introduction by this government of a new flood tax. The government claims that it requires this $1.8 billion flood tax in order to preserve its current fiscal management. It claims that, in addition to imposing this tax, it will make cuts to expenditure and that this balance is the right balance. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The supposed expenditure cuts that the government says it will bring into effect have already disappeared before our very eyes. They have disappeared because, in order to secure the support of the Australian Greens, just over $340 million which was going to be cut from various government programs that the government said were superfluous to the needs of the Australian people has in fact gone back onto the books. They have cut a deal with the Greens.
But they have not just cut a deal with the Greens; they have also cut a deal with the member for Denison. He has his own claims. He wants $50 million that was to be cut from the teaching program to go back onto that program, which means that almost 25 per cent of the expenditure cuts that the government claimed they would bring into effect do not now exist. Despite the fact that we have asked the government repeatedly whether they are going to make further expenditure cuts, they have been silent on this matter and they have told the opposition that we must wait and see what cuts they are going to bring forward in the budget.
The government claim that they are going to put on the Australian people a $1.8 billion flood tax because it is the right thing to do. It is the first time in history that a disaster tax has been imposed on the Australian people. Normally, when unforeseen events occur, those unforeseen events and disasters are dealt with out of consolidated revenue. This creates a very new precedent—dare I say a dangerous precedent—and in fact the recent inquiry that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics held into the flood tax supports the view that this is a very bad precedent. Economists appeared before the committee and Professor McKibbin, who is a very senior economist and a member of the Reserve Bank board, presented strong evidence that to bring in a disaster tax, to respond by taxing, would create a very bad precedent in terms of the broader economic framework. This was supported by another very senior economist, Mr Saul Eslake, who also said that this was a very bad precedent.
Not only is it a bad precedent; both economists also spoke of the churn factor involved in actually collecting a tax such as the $1.8 billion flood tax. The fact is that, because some exemptions apply because of the way this tax will operate, a substantial amount of the tax will be going into paying for the administration costs of the tax. We simply ask the government to be serious when they talk about reform and make the expenditure cuts that we know they can make. We have made the offer to the government that we would be prepared to sit down with them, to actually go through things line by line to find those expenditure cuts so that the government can live within their means. They have rejected that offer. Despite the fact that we have been rejected, we have put in place our own expenditure cuts that we would bring forward in order to ensure that the government live within their means, just like they ask all Australians to live within their means.
There is another element that the government needs to address, and that is further tax reform. As I said before, it made very great fanfare of the fact that it would be implementing serious tax reform. We saw nothing come from the Henry tax reform except for a new mining tax, and the government promised the Independents on receiving their support to form government after the last federal election that it would put in place a tax summit. The Independents are probably scratching their heads because they have heard nothing further about this great tax summit. Questions directed to the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, about when this will be, what date will be set and who will be invited are all met with stony silence. This goes to demonstrate that this government is not serious about tax reform; the only reform it believes in is implementing new taxes—a carbon tax, a mining tax and a flood tax. We do not believe that this is good reform. We believe that this will bring new costs for Australian families. It will hurt them further because it will put upward pressure on interest rates and it will increase the cost of living for Australian families. It is the wrong thing to do, and we do not support the government’s new taxes.
Debate (on motion by Mrs Griggs) adjourned.
I move:
That further proceedings on private members’ business order of the day No. 12, Paid Parental Leave (Reduction of Compliance Burden for Employers) Amendment Bill 2010, be conducted in the House.
Question agreed to.