2009-10-21 42 1 6 REPS 0 0 2009-10-21 The SPEAKER (Mr Harry Jenkins) took the chair at 9 am and read prayers. 10453 Business 10453 10453 10453 09:01:00 Hall, Jill, MP 83N Shortland ALP 1 0 Ms HALL —On behalf of the Chief Government Whip, I present the report of the recommendations of the whips relating to committee and delegation reports and private members’ business on Monday, 26 October 2009. Copies of the report have been placed on the table. The report read as follows— Pursuant to standing order 41A, the Whips recommend the following items of committee and delegation reports and private Members’ business for Monday, 26 October 2009. The order of precedence and allotments of time for items in the Main Committee and Chamber are as follows: Items recommended for Main Committee (6.55 to 8.30 pm) PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS Notices 1 MR CHESTER: To move: That the House: notes that National Landcare Week, 7 to 13 September, in 2009 commemorated 20 years of service across Australia; recognises that Landcare: is primarily a community driven, grassroots organisation that involves local people achieving locally significant environmental aims; and volunteers make an extraordinary contribution by understanding practical environmental work; and highlights the need for ongoing funding to employ Landcare facilitators and coordinators who play a pivotal role in: managing the volunteer programs; assisting community groups; providing professional advice; and mobilising volunteer effort. Time allotted—20 minutes. Speech time limits— Mr Chester—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend   that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 2 MR ZAPPIA: To move: That the House: notes the widespread calls from throughout the community to provide more clarity with respect to Australian food labelling standards; acknowledges progress made to date in ensuring that Australian food labelling laws provide consumers with the relevant and clear information that they require to make informed product choices; notes that Australian producers and consumers will benefit from clearer food labelling laws and that there are economic and health outcomes related to this matter; acknowledges the importance of this matter to both Australian producers and consumers; and notes and supports the review being undertaken by the Australian and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council and asks the Minister for Health and Ageing to consider any options available to speed up the review process. Time allotted—30 minutes. Speech time limits— Mr Zappia—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 6 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend   that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 3 MRS GASH: To move: That the House: recognises the extent of abuse and neglect inflicted on Australian children who were placed in the care of the Government in institutions or out of home care during the last century; acknowledges the neglect of all governments that allowed this abuse, pain and suffering to continue for so many years; condemns the Government for failing to apologise to these forgotten Australians whose lives have been adversely affected as a result of their childhood abuse; and calls on the Government to issue an unequivocal apology immediately to all victims of such abuse. Time allotted—25 minutes. Speech time limits— Mrs Gash—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 5 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend   that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 4 MR MORRISON: To move: That the House: recognises the service of those Australians who were employed as field constabulary officers (Kiaps) in the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary between 1949 and 1974; acknowledges the hazardous and difficult conditions that were experienced by the members serving with the Royal Papua and New Guinea constabulary; notes that former members of the Regular Constabulary of the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary may be entitled to long service and good conduct medals, such as the National Medal, subject to meeting eligibility criteria; supports moves to allow former members of the Field Constabulary to count their service towards the National Medal; notes that qualifying service to meet the eligibility criteria for the National Medal must include at least one day of service on or after the medal’s creation on 14 February 1975; expresses concern that many former Kiaps may not meet the eligibility criteria for the National Medal, as eligible Kiap service ceased on 30 November 1973; recognises that the Trust Territory of New Guinea, under the terms of the Papua New Guinea Act 1949 and the Trusteeship Agreement for the Territory of New Guinea, held sovereignty unto itself and as such, was at law an international country (and foreign to Australia); recognises that the Governor General’s assent of the Papua New Guinea Act 1949 and the signing of the “Trusteeship Agreement” for New Guinea by the Australian Government, prescribed service activity whereby the service was carried out by members of the Australian Police Force and the service was undertaken as part of an international operation; and calls on the Australian Government to change the eligibility criteria applying to the Police Overseas Service Medal so as not to prevent the award of the medal to those: Australian public servants who were employed through the Australian Government and served in the Australian administered United Nations Trust Territory of New Guinea between 1949 and 1974; and individuals serving in Papua New Guinea as sworn and armed Commissioned Officers of the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary (at the time an Australian External Territorial Police Force). Time allotted—10 minutes. Speech time limits— Mr Morrison—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend   that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 5 MR BRIGGS: To move: That the House: notes that: the young people detained in the Magill Youth Training Centre in South Australia are being held in degrading conditions; and in the assessment of Australia’s United Nations Youth Representative, Mr Chris Varney, this represents a breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child; recognises that: in 2006, the South Australian Labor Government acknowledged that the centre was in need of replacement as it breached modern building codes and occupational health and safety requirements; and the South Australian Government is yet to keep its election promise; and calls on the Federal Youth Minister to intervene in this urgent matter and ensure that a new centre is built as promised by the South Australian Labor Government. Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 8.30 pm Speech time limits— Mr Briggs—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend   that consideration of this should continue on a future day. Items recommended for House of Representatives Chamber (8.40 to 9.30 pm) COMMITTEE AND DELEGATION REPORTS Presentation and statements 1 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security Annual Report of Committee Activities 2008-2009. The Whips recommend   that statements on the report may be made—statement to conclude by 8.50 pm Speech time limits— Mr Bevis (Chair)—5 minutes Other Member—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 2 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence And Security Review of the Listing of Al-Shabaab. The Whips recommend   that statements on the report may be made—all statements to conclude by 9 pm Speech time limits— Mr Bevis (Chair)—5 minutes Other Member—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 3 Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts Managing our coastal zone in a changing climate: the time to act is now. The Whips recommend   that statements on the report may be made—all statements to conclude by 9.10 pm Speech time limits— Ms George (Chair)—5 minutes Other Member—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS Notices 1 MS PARKE: To move: That the House: notes that the 24 October is United Nations Day, celebrating the entry into force of the United Nations Charter (UNC) on 24 October 1945; celebrates Australia’s key role in the formation of the United Nations and the drafting of the UNC; recognises that Australia has been a consistent and long term contributor to United Nations’ efforts to safeguard international peace and security and to promote human rights, for example, by being the thirteenth largest contributor to the United Nations’ budget; by contributing to many United Nations’ peacekeeping operations; and by firmly committing to increasing Australia’s development assistance and seeking real progress towards the Millennium Development Goals; notes further the Australian Government’s commitment to the multilateral system as one of the three fundamental pillars of Australia’s foreign policy; that Australia is determined to work through the United Nations to enhance security and economic well being worldwide; and to uphold the purposes and principles of the UNC; notes that as the only truly global organisation, the United Nations plays a critical role in addressing the global challenges that no country can resolve on its own and that Australia is determined to play its part within the United Nations to help address serious global challenges, including conflict prevention, international development, climate change, terrorism and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction; notes also Australia’s commitment to, and support for, reform of the United Nations’ system in order to ensure that the organisation reflects today’s world and is able to function efficiently and effectively; and reaffirms the faith of the Australian people in the purposes and principles of the UNC. Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 9.30 pm Speech time limits— Ms Parke—5 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend that consideration of this should continue on a future day. Report adopted. 10456 Bills R4201 10456 Bills R4189 10456 Ms HALL (Shortland) 09:01:00 —by leave—I move: That the bills be referred to the Main Committee for further consideration. Question agreed to. 10456 Business 10456 Mr COMBET (Charlton —Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science and Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change) 09:02:00 —I move: That consideration of government business No. 1, Fair Work Amendment (State Referrals and Other Measures) Bill 2009, and government business No. 2, Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill 2009, be postponed until a later hour this day. Question agreed to. 10456 Bills R4227 10456 Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Ms Roxon. Bill read a first time. 10456 10456 09:03:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP Minister for Health and Ageing 1 0 Ms ROXON —I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Health Insurance Amendment (New Zealand Overseas Trained Doctors) Bill 2009 will amend the Health Insurance Act 1973 (the act). The bill proposes to streamline the operation of section 19AB of the act. Section 19AB provides that Medicare benefits are not payable in respect of professional services provided by an overseas trained doctor or a former overseas medical student, except in certain circumstances. Changes resulting from the bill Overseas trained doctors and former overseas medical students who were first recognised after 1 January 1997 have generally been restricted from providing professional services that attract Medicare benefits for a period of 10 years. This is commonly referred to as the ‘10-year moratorium’. New Zealand citizens and permanent resident doctors practising in Australia are currently subject to this restriction. Overseas trained doctors and former overseas medical students may be granted an exemption from these restrictions. A primary consideration in granting such a section 19AB exemption is that an applicant must work in a district of workforce shortage. Section 19AB of the act is therefore a key mechanism by which the government influences the distribution of the medical workforce in rural and remote areas of Australia, so that areas of workforce shortage have appropriate access to medical services. The 10-year moratorium has proven to be an effective mechanism in ensuring that overseas trained doctors provide services to those communities in greatest need, which tend to be rural and remote. The proportion of overseas trained doctors is significantly higher in rural and remote areas. In fact, 41 per cent of all doctors in these areas have trained overseas. This has been due in part to Medicare provider number restrictions imposed by the act. Despite the recent increases in medical students and emerging increases in medical graduates, our communities continue to be reliant upon overseas trained doctors. In this respect, we are no different from other OECD countries. With Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States of America, the percentage of foreign-trained doctors has increased significantly. There are four measures proposed in this bill. Firstly, the bill proposes to remove the restrictions imposed by the act on New Zealand citizen and permanent resident doctors in relation to their access to the Medicare benefits arrangements. The amendment will lift those restrictions so that New Zealand citizens and permanent resident doctors who obtain their primary medical degree from an Australian or New Zealand medical school will no longer belong to the category of ‘overseas trained doctor’ and ‘former overseas medical student’. Consequently, they will no longer be restricted by the 10-year moratorium imposed by the act. It is important to note that New Zealand resident and citizen doctors will still be subject to the requirement that they have appropriate recognition of their qualifications in order to access the Medicare benefits system. Secondly, the bill will rename the term ‘former overseas medical students’, which is defined in the act as students of Australian medical schools who were not an Australian citizen or permanent resident when they enrolled in their primary medical degree at an Australian medical school. This term will be renamed ‘foreign graduate of an accredited medical school’ to more accurately reflect its meaning The current provision in the act that subjects this category of doctors to the 10-year moratorium remains unchanged. Thirdly, the bill proposes to introduce a time limit for seeking a review of a decision to refuse an application for a section 19AB exemption or a decision to impose conditions on an exemption. Currently, the act provides no time limit for applying for a review of a rejected exemption application. The amendment will insert a provision into the act which will allow applicants to apply for a review of a decision within 90 days of a refusal. The amendment will also include a 90-day period for a review of a decision to impose one or more conditions on a section 19AB exemption. The bill also proposes to rectify an anomaly in the act which currently counts the 10-year moratorium from the time the overseas trained doctor achieves Australian permanent residency or citizenship. Most overseas trained health professionals enter Australia through the temporary skilled visa categories for initial periods of up to four years. For example, the temporary medical practitioner visa subclass 422 was extended from two to four years in 2003. In addition, since 2005, medical practitioners have been able to access the business long stay visa subclass 457 which allows a visa holder to remain in Australia for up to four years. During the four years some medical practitioners seek additional assessment and apply to migrate to Australia permanently following a positive assessment by the relevant professional body and/or registration board. The way in which the 10-year moratorium is currently counted excludes the years of tenure as a temporary resident, so overseas trained doctors may be prevented from providing professional services which attract Medicare benefits for in excess of 10 years. This amendment proposes that the 10-year restriction will commence from the time the medical practitioner is first registered as a medical practitioner in Australia, and will cease after 10 years, provided the medical practitioner has gained Australian permanent residency or citizenship during that period. The 10-year moratorium will continue to be used, along with the reforms to be implemented under the Rural Health Workforce Strategy, to recruit and retain GPs in rural and remote Australia—however, these measures make sure the system is a fairer system that recognises the service to districts of workforce shortage. As part of our $134 million rural package in the 2009 budget—this year’s budget—the 10-year moratorium will also be scaled, so that the more remote you go, the shorter the moratorium. From 1 July next year, more than 3,600 overseas trained doctors who have restrictions on where they can practise will be able to discharge their obligations sooner, the more remote the location in which they choose to work. The 10-year moratorium, therefore, will no longer be as stringent as it has been since its introduction in 1997. This package of reforms to this section of the act complements the significant workforce reforms already underway—making the system more transparent, fairer and consistent with government policy. Workforce reform Our workforce reform program has to date delivered the biggest ever investment in workforce through a $1.6 billion COAG partnership that will help to deliver training for the huge increase in Australian trained graduates which will increase from 12,700 this year to 14,700 in 2013. This funding will help support undergraduate clinical training for 13,800 medical students, 38,500 nursing students and 18,000 allied health students in 2010. We are also providing $28 million to help train around 18,000 nurse supervisors, 5,000 allied health and VET supervisors, and 7,000 medical supervisors. Alongside this, we are increasing the availability of specialty workforce places by boosting the total number of GP training places to more than 800 from 2011 onwards—a 33 per cent increase on the cap of 600 places imposed by the former government—and providing more specialist training places outside the traditional public hospital settings. This year’s federal budget also delivers more than $200 million to help tackle the shortage of doctors and health workers in rural and remote Australia, and to improve access to the health and medical services of seven million Australians who live in regional or remote areas. At the same time, we are streamlining the multiplicity of rural programs to make it easier for doctors and easier for communities to understand and access the initiatives that will help to build the rural health workforce for the future. New access to choice in maternity services and nurse practitioner services will also be enabled through bills which are currently before the Senate. The commencement date for these provisions to take effect is 1 April 2010 or on royal assent, whichever is the later date. Accordingly, I commend bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Mr Haase) adjourned. 10459 Bills R4229 10459 Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Ms Gillard. Bill read a first time. 10459 10459 09:12:00 Gillard, Julia, MP 83L Lalor ALP Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion 1 0 Ms GILLARD —I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Rudd Labor government promised in Forward with Fairness to abolish the coalition government’s unfair Work Choices industrial relations laws and create a simpler, balanced and modern workplace relations system. We achieved this with the commencement of the Fair Work Act 2009 on 1 July this year. We now mark the next stage in implementing our plan, with the introduction today of the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. Before I outline the key features of the bill, it is important to recall the stages of the government’s workplace relations reforms that have been implemented to date. Legislation passed by the parliament to date The Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Act 2008 was introduced into parliament on 13 February 2008. It abolished the making of new Australian workplace agreements and introduced the no disadvantage test to ensure workplace agreements could no longer disadvantage employees. That act also started the process to create new modern awards, which when coupled with the National Employment Standards will complete a fair and comprehensive safety net of conditions for employees. Award modernisation will result in the creation of around 150 easy to find and apply modern awards with national application to replace more than 4,000 state and federal industrial instruments. The next step of the government’s workplace relations reform process was the passage of the Fair Work Act 2009, which commenced on 1 July 2009 and established: a comprehensive safety net of minimum wages and employment conditions that cannot be stripped away; a new agreements framework, with bargaining in good faith at the enterprise level at its heart; and a new industrial umpire to oversee the system, Fair Work Australia, and a new education and enforcement body, the Fair Work Ombudsman. We proposed in Forward with Fairness that a uniform national system would be achieved either by state governments referring powers for private sector workplace relations, or other forms of cooperation and harmonisation. Our vision is for a workplace relations system that is fairer, simpler and more flexible and promotes productivity and economic growth; and a system where businesses, large and small, are covered by one national law and system. The Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Act 2009, which I introduced to parliament on 27 May this year, was the first stage in implementing this national system. That act supported a renewal of Victoria’s referral of workplace relations powers from 1 July 2009 to provide continued certainty of coverage to the working people and employers of Victoria. I indicated that the act’s framework would be adapted in future Commonwealth legislation to accommodate anticipated further references of power from other states, while observing that the reference framework may require amendment to account for the views and needs of other states choosing to refer. The benefits of a national workplace relations system for the private sector The bill I introduce today answers the many calls made by business over many years to end the overlap and duplication of state and federal workplace relations systems; to end the inefficiency, uncertainty and legal complexity for Australian businesses and employees. For example, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has stated: The level of complexity created by competing state and federal workplace relations systems is a decades-old problem which has been thrown into sharp relief by our contemporary market economy. Replication, overlap and confusion between state and federal workplace regulation has become increasingly unsustainable. And the Australian Industry Group has also noted the complexity and wastefulness of multiple systems. It said: On top of this, all but one of the States continued to develop and enhance their own industrial systems. No matter how well many of these systems operate the fact remains that no employer wants to be faced with dealing with six different systems in order to expand its business throughout Australia. The intermeshing and clash of these systems has nourished generations of industrial lawyers. In answer to these calls, the previous government took the significant step of relying upon the corporations power of the Constitution to regulate for a national workplace relations system. But for many Australian employers and employees, Work Choices only continued—and exacerbated—the problems of complexity, confusion, overlap and waste. We committed in Forward with Fairness to work cooperatively with the state governments to create a uniform national workplace relations system for the private sector. And with today’s bill, we demonstrate once more the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to achieving important national reform through cooperative federalism. This partnership approach is in stark contrast to the bullying tactics of the former coalition government. Their refusal to work with the states resulted not only in grossly unfair laws but in an unwieldy system characterised by legal complexity and uncertainty of coverage. In the absence of referrals of power from the states, the question of which system applies depends upon whether a business is a ‘constitutional corporation’ or not. This means that corporations that derive revenue through donations (such as charities) or through government grants may not fall within the corporations power. The jurisdictional coverage of an employer can change at any particular point in time if its activities change. For example, a charity raising money for medical research could open a second-hand goods shop to raise funds only to find it is now seen as ‘trading’ and that this leads to a change in its jurisdictional coverage. The question of coverage also depends on the nature of the entity running the business. For example, a professional services firm (say, an accounting or medical practice) might run as a partnership or sole trader and be in a state system. A very similar business down the street might be incorporated and therefore in the federal system and on a different award. And there are many more examples of perverse outcomes, confusion and complexity. There are thousands of employers and employees who are not trading corporations but who have been in the federal system for a long time, as a result of longstanding awards made in settlement of an interstate industrial dispute. These awards were preserved on a transitional basis under Work Choices. In the absence of state referrals of power, employers and employees on these transitional awards would have fallen back to the state systems from March 2011. For example, approximately 70 per cent of the farm businesses covered by the transitional pastoral award are unincorporated and without this bill, these farmers and their employees would fall back into state systems. And the uncertainty they were facing under Work Choices was exacerbated by the fact that many farmers operate across state borders and would have had to commence to apply different state and federal workplace relations laws. In support of farmers, the National Farmers Federation has been a vocal proponent of a uniform national workplace relations system, stating that ‘the overwhelming majority of farmers will be stranded [in the event that states do not refer their powers to the Commonwealth]’ and that this would be ‘totally unacceptable’. The uniform national workplace relations system for the private sector will resolve once and for all the confusion and complexity I have described. Employers and employees will for the first time have the same laws, tribunals, minimum conditions, rights and entitlements as their counterparts doing the same work, regardless of whether they are within the same state or across a border; regardless of whether they are trading as a corporation, a sole trader or a partnership. The new national system will make it far easier for businesses and employees to find the information they need. This will result in a permanent, intrinsic efficiency for businesses, especially for small businesses that do not have the benefit of specialised human resources staff. With this bill and associated state referrals, the Fair Work system will provide a single point of access for all private sector workplace relations services for Australia. There will be one website, one phone number, one tribunal and one inspectorate. This means that governments and taxpayers will benefit too. Nationally, state governments spend upwards of $60 million of taxpayers’ money each year maintaining duplicate administrative functions and regulation. The new system will be far more efficient into the future. Cooperative federalism and the benefits of state referrals For all of these reasons, there is significant support among the states for the national system. The governments of South Australia and Tasmania have announced their intentions to follow the Victorian government’s lead and make referrals of their private sector workplace relations powers. This is a significant vote of confidence in the new fair work laws. Both state governments have introduced legislation into their respective parliaments to facilitate these referrals of power from 1 January 2010. In leading these important reforms for their respective states, South Australian Minister for Industrial Relations, the Hon. Paul Caica MP, and the Tasmanian Minister for Workplace Relations, the Hon. Lisa Singh MP, have noted the broad support within their states to participate in a national workplace relations system and the significant benefits that will flow to employees and employers. I thank both of them for their support and leadership in this important endeavour. At this time, the Queensland government has agreed in principle to refer powers to the Commonwealth, subject to resolution of related issues. I am confident that we can reach an agreement on these issues. The New South Wales government has not yet made a decision regarding its participation but has engaged cooperatively with the Commonwealth to progress the national workplace relations system. This leaves Western Australia as the only state to declare publicly that it will not refer its powers. Unfortunately this decision puts Western Australia out of step with all other states and prevents Western Australian employers and employees from reaping the benefits of the national system. I note that the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia has publicly indicated support for a Western Australia referral, citing the obvious problems of complexity, uncertainty and duplication. The chamber joins many other business groups in supporting a national approach to workplace relations, including harmonisation of occupational health and safety laws, as essential reforms for the long-term productivity and efficiency of the national economy. I urge the Western Australian government to reconsider its decision. Supporting state referrals And this brings me to the bill before us today. To give effect to South Australia and Tasmania’s referrals, I introduce to the House the Fair Work Amendment (State Referrals and Other Measures) Bill 2009. Once enacted the bill will give effect to the references of South Australia, Tasmania and any other state that refers its workplace relations matters to the Commonwealth on or before 1 January 2010. These references will enable the Commonwealth to: extend the Fair Work Act in referring states to cover unincorporated employers and their employees, outworker entities and extend the operation of the general protections; amend the Fair Work Act so that it applies uniformly in referring states; and establish arrangements for the transition of referral employees and employers from state industrial or workplace relations systems to the new national system. Initial reference The Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Act 2009 inserted division 2A into part 1-3 of the Fair Work Act with effect from 25 June 2009. Division 2A gave effect to Victoria’s workplace relations reference to the Commonwealth. Schedule 1 to this bill will insert division 2B into part 1-3 of the Fair Work Act to give effect to state references of workplace relations matters to the Commonwealth after 1 July 2009 but on or before 1 January 2010. The creation of division 2B is necessary to accommodate differences in the timing of state references. Like division 2A, division 2B will extend the meaning of ‘national system employee’ and ‘national system employer’ to encompass all employees and employers in referring states subject to exclusions relating to state public sector and local government employment. Like division 2A, division 2B will also extend the definition of ‘outworker entity’ and extend the operation of the Fair Work Act’s general protections in referring states. Amendment reference The bill will give effect to references enabling amendment of the Fair Work Act in respect of specified subject matters, to the extent that such amendments would otherwise be outside Commonwealth power. The bill’s amendment reference provisions will enable the Fair Work Act to be amended to apply to all employers and employees in referring states uniformly. Consultation on amendments will be governed by a supporting intergovernmental agreement. The subject matters of the amendment reference provisions correspond with the matters regulated by the Fair Work Act. State public sector and local government The bill recognises that referring states can choose the extent to which matters relating to state public sector or local government employment are included or excluded from references. Schedule 3 to the bill amends the Fair Work Act to also enable states to exclude by declaration certain state public sector and local government employers over which the Commonwealth currently has jurisdiction (such as constitutional corporations) from the Fair Work Act. Declarations would be able to be made by the State in relation to certain kinds of entities that are integral to state public administration or local government activities and which are therefore regarded as appropriately regulated in state systems. To be effective, a declaration would need to be endorsed by the minister administering the Fair Work Act. Termination of reference The bill will enable referring states to terminate their amendment references and remain in the national system in the following circumstances: by proclamation of the state governor with six months notice, if the amendment references of other referring states all terminate on the same day; or by proclamation of the state governor with three months notice, if the governor considers that an amendment to the Fair Work Act is inconsistent with the fundamental workplace relations principles. The fundamental workplace relations principles encompass requirements that the Fair Work Act should provide for and continue to provide for: a strong, simple and enforceable safety net of minimum employment standards; genuine rights and responsibilities to ensure fairness, choice and representation at work; collective bargaining at the enterprise level with no provision for individual statutory agreements; fair and effective remedies through an independent umpire; protection from unfair dismissal; and an independent tribunal system and an independent authority able to assist employers and employees within a national workplace relations system. These principles prescribe fundamental values that the Commonwealth and relevant states have jointly declared to be essential features underpinning a fair and effective national workplace relations system. Transitional arrangements for State referral employers and employees The state references will support the transitional arrangements for state referral employers and employees set out in schedule 2 to this bill. Schedule 2 to the bill deals with instruments and processes on foot in state workplace or industrial relations systems and deals with federal awards and agreements made in reliance on the conciliation and arbitration power. Schedule 2 to the bill also makes amendments to the Fair Work Act and other Commonwealth acts that are consequential on new referrals. The transitional arrangements set out for incoming state instruments are, as far as possible, consistent with current arrangements for existing national system employers and employees. The key features of the transitional arrangements are as follows: State awards and state agreements will be preserved as federal instruments in the same terms as the state instrument. These will be known as division 2B state awards and division 2B state employment agreements. Division 2B state awards and state employment agreements will operate on a ‘no detriment’ basis with the National Employment Standards and the national minimum wage order. A division 2B state award (other than a division 2B state enterprise award) will continue to apply as a federal instrument for a period of 12 months from referral commencement. After that time, a relevant modern award will cover the relevant employees and employers. During the 12-month period, Fair Work Australia will be required to consider whether a modern award should be varied to provide appropriate transitional arrangements for incoming state employees and employers. Further, Fair Work Australia will be able to make remedial take-home pay orders where the take-home pay of one or more employees is reduced as a result of movement to the modern award. A division 2B state employment agreement will continue to operate as a federal instrument until replaced at any time by a new enterprise agreement under the Fair Work Act or terminated in accordance with the provisions of the bill. This bill provides a model dispute resolution clause to be prescribed by the regulations which applies in relation to division 2B state awards. Dispute resolution terms in state employment agreements will continue as terms of the division 2B state employment agreements derived from them. The new transfer of business rules in the Fair Work Act will apply to transfers that occur on or after the referral commencement. Division 2B state instruments will be transferable instruments for the purposes of the Fair Work Act transfer of business provisions. Bargaining and industrial dispute processes under state systems will not be carried over into the new system. Bargaining participants will either have lodged a state agreement for approval by a state tribunal before the referral commencement or commence bargaining for a new enterprise agreement under the Fair Work Act. This will ensure an orderly transition to collective bargaining in the national system. As a general rule, proceedings in relation to conduct that occurred before the referral commencement will remain subject to state laws and be dealt with in state systems. Other amendments Schedule 1 to the bill also makes a number of amendments to division 2A of part 1-3 of the Fair Work Act for consistency with the arrangements set out in new division 2B. Schedule 3 to the bill makes a number of amendments to the Fair Work Act to enable state ministers to intervene in court proceedings and make submissions in relation to matters before Fair Work Australia. Inter-governmental agreement States participating in the national system will each be party to a multilateral intergovernmental agreement which outlines the principles of the national workplace relations system for the private sector and the roles and responsibilities of those participating states and territories and the Commonwealth. On 25 September 2009, workplace relations ministers from the Commonwealth, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory signed the multilateral agreement. Education activities to accompany references I advise the House that the Commonwealth will provide additional services to assist transferring employers and employees to understand the new system. Education activities will include telephone advice and visits to workplaces to be implemented in cooperation with referring states. There is scope for states to deliver services on behalf of the Commonwealth during the transition and constructive discussions on these arrangements are continuing. Conclusion The government is well on the way to achieving a uniform national workplace relations system for the private sector. The fundamental basis of the new system was established with the passage of the Fair Work Act: fairness for working people, flexibility for business and the promotion of productivity and economic growth for the future prosperity of our nation. I commend the bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Dr Southcott) adjourned. 10466 Bills R4204 10466 Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Ms Gillard. Bill read a first time. 10466 10466 09:35:00 Gillard, Julia, MP 83L Lalor ALP Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion 1 0 Ms GILLARD —I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Prior to the last election, the government committed to examining the operation of Comcare to assist in the formulation of a policy on the future of migration by companies into the Comcare scheme. The Comcare scheme provides workers compensation and occupational health and safety arrangements for employees of the Australian government and of some private sector companies that self-insure their workers’ compensation liabilities under the scheme. The Rudd government placed a moratorium on companies seeking to join the Comcare scheme while this review was conducted. Concurrently, the Commonwealth, states and territories have been working towards the harmonisation of national occupational health and safety legislation. As the House is aware, the harmonisation of occupational health and safety legislation is progressing well—indeed, better than many observers expected. As part of the harmonisation of occupational health and safety, at the 82nd Workplace Relations Ministers Council it was proposed that, following the implementation of uniform OHS laws, OHS coverage of Comcare self-insured licensees would be transferred to state and territory jurisdictions. The rationale for this is that uniform OHS laws and nationally consistent approaches to compliance and enforcement will remove the need for Comcare’s OHS coverage of licensees. The transfer of OHS coverage would also reduce the number of dual jurisdiction worksites. Given the progress towards harmonised national OHS laws and the anticipated transfer of OHS coverage for Comcare self-insurers to the states and territories, it is the government’s intention to maintain the moratorium until uniform OHS laws have been implemented in all jurisdictions. To do otherwise would cause unnecessary complexities and duplication in that companies would be required to adapt to Comcare and then quickly change again to comply with the new model laws. The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 establishes a statutory framework of workers compensation and rehabilitation for employees and employers in the Commonwealth jurisdiction. It also covers private corporations that are licensed to self insure their workers compensation liabilities under the Commonwealth scheme. Currently, applications for inclusion in the Comcare scheme are automatic, bar for the moratorium put in place at the time of the Comcare review. The bill I am introducing today amends section 100 of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act in order to maintain the moratorium until 2011. Section 100 provides for the minister to declare corporations that meet certain criteria to be eligible to apply for a self-insurance licence. The amendment will give the minister greater flexibility in dealing with applications under section 100 of the SRC Act. When the government first announced the moratorium on new companies joining the scheme, it was in the context of the establishment of the Comcare review. Now that the moratorium is to continue for a further period, the government considers that it is appropriate to formalise the arrangements for the moratorium through legislation. The proposed amendment provides that the minister is not compelled to consider a request for a declaration of eligibility under section 100 by corporations seeking to join the Comcare scheme as self-insurers. This would apply to new requests or applications, and any existing applications that have been made but not determined. The bill will provide the minister with a clear discretion on whether or not to consider a request for a declaration. It makes it explicit that section 100 of the SRC Act empowers, but does not oblige, the minister to consider requests for declarations of eligibility. The proposed amendment to section 100 contained in this bill will enable the minister to consider important developments, such as progress with OHS harmonisation, in deciding whether to consider any applications to join the Comcare scheme. Importantly, under the proposed amendment the minister will retain the flexibility to consider applications to join the scheme. I take this opportunity to also advise the House of other improvements to the Comcare scheme arising from the Comcare review. These include introduction of a statutory time limit for the consideration of workers’ compensation claims; reinstatement of workers compensation coverage for off-site recess breaks; and continuation of payment of medical and related costs where a worker’s weekly compensation benefits are suspended for refusing to participate in the rehabilitation process. The government also recently increased substantially the lump sum and weekly death benefits under the Comcare scheme to align them more closely with death benefits payable under state workers compensation schemes. Furthermore, Comcare is undertaking a review of the permanent impairment arrangements in the scheme, in particular the current Permanent Impairment guide. The purpose of this review is to determine whether the scheme provides reasonable access to, and reasonable levels of, compensation in the case of workplace injuries which result in permanent impairment. I have also directed Comcare to strengthen its OHS enforcement approach. This is to include development of guidance material which reflects a proactive enforcement policy, and to increase the expertise of its investigators. Finally, I will be writing to Comcare regarding the issuing of guidance material which encourages employers, as part of their health and safety management arrangements, to consult with all workers at or near the workplace, not just their direct employees. The guidance material will emphasise that consultation should be an ongoing process. The government’s efforts to achieve harmonised national OHS laws and the strengthening of the Comcare scheme and its operations is another example of the Rudd government’s broader commitment to building a modern Australia. Australia’s long-term prosperity depends on this government delivering on our reforms that reduce the regulatory burden on business and deliver significant improvement in Australia’s competition, productivity and international competitiveness. With these objectives in mind, I commend the bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Dr Southcott) adjourned. 10468 Bills R4230 10468 Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr McClelland. Bill read a first time. 10468 10468 09:43:00 McClelland, Robert, MP JK6 Barton ALP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr McCLELLAND —I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Rudd Government has a genuine commitment to improving the lives of Indigenous Australians through progressing an agenda that aims to close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. Housing is at the centre of this commitment. It is vital to achieving the advances needed in health, education, and employment participation outcomes for Indigenous Australians. The Native Title Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2009 contains an important measure to complement and assist the agenda to close the gap by facilitating the timely provision of quality public housing and associated infrastructure. It will facilitate the construction of housing on land in Indigenous communities which is or may be subject to native title. The government has committed an unprecedented $5.5 billion over 10 years to address historic underfunding of housing in remote Indigenous communities. Further, the government is determined to ensure that Indigenous communities can benefit as quickly as possible from this historic investment. To ensure the new delivery model for Indigenous housing avoids the pitfalls of the past, secure tenure arrangements are now a requirement of all major investment in housing and other infrastructure. This makes government responsible and accountable for effective management and maintenance of these assets. However, some state governments have indicated that uncertainty in relation to native title can be a barrier to meeting housing and service delivery targets. This is creating delays. This bill introduces a new process specifically for public housing and a limited class of community facilities, including education, health and emergency services facilities. It will apply primarily to acts of state, territory and local government bodies. The new process strikes a balance between the urgent need for these services and the need to engage meaningfully with native title parties and protect native title rights and interests. It also contains important safeguards to ensure genuine consultation with native title parties. It sets in place a framework for meaningful engagement with key stakeholders in decisions about housing and other services for Indigenous communities. The new process sets out reasonable and specific periods for comment and consultation, and provides flexibility to allow native title parties to choose the level of engagement they feel is appropriate for each individual project. It will be subject to state and territory heritage processes. The bill also enables the Attorney-General to prescribe how consultations with native title parties should occur, including general guidance on the issues to be included in the consultations. This includes the capacity to set more detailed requirements such as face-to-face meetings and the provision of interpreters. The bill also requires that reports on consultation be provided to the Attorney-General. The Commonwealth may make these reports public, providing for public scrutiny on the new process. Acts covered by the new process will be invalid if there is a failure to notify, provide a consultation report or observe the minimum specified time periods. This ensures that a proper process is followed and that governments can then be certain that the investment has been validly applied. Finally, the new process will sunset after 10 years. The 10 year period approximates the duration of the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing, under which $5.5 billion has been committed. Conclusion The government is determined to continue on the course of resetting the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and to recognise and respect native title. Alleviating poverty and improving housing and infrastructure in Indigenous communities is paramount to this effort. Debate (on motion by Mr Haase) adjourned. 10469 Bills R4228 10469 Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr McClelland. Bill read a first time. 10469 10469 09:48:00 McClelland, Robert, MP JK6 Barton ALP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr McCLELLAND —I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Introduction The Personal Property Securities (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 represents the next stage in the government’s harmonisation of Australia’s personal property securities laws. Currently there are over 70 Commonwealth, state and territory laws, as well as common law and rules of equity governing security interests in personal property. These different laws vary in their application according to the form of the transaction, the nature of the debtor or the jurisdiction in which the property is located. This adds significantly to transaction costs. Personal property securities reform is an important part of COAG’s deregulation agenda. By harmonising the current laws and creating a single national online register, the reform will have a real impact for business and consumers. Transaction costs will be reduced and businesses will be able to use more types of personal property to secure lending, resulting in them being able to secure lower interest rates. This bill will amend 25 Commonwealth acts that deal with the creation, registration, priority, extinguishment or enforcement of interests in personal property. The amendments are necessary to facilitate the establishment of a single national legal regime for security interests in personal property. The amendments will clarify the operation of legislation that will operate concurrently with the Personal Property Securities Bill once enacted. This bill also makes minor amendments to the Personal Property Securities Bill 2009, which was passed by the House on 16 September. Amendments to other legislation The Personal Property Securities (Consequential Amendments) Bill contains measures designed to harmonise language and concepts with the Personal Property Securities Bill. The amendments will reduce complexity and increase consistency in the arrangements for creating, dealing with and enforcing security interests in personal property. Importantly, the amendments will support a seamless transition to a single national Personal Property Securities Register by amending provisions in Commonwealth legislation that provide for the registration of security interests on a separate Commonwealth register. For example, the Shipping Registration Act 1981 will be amended to change the current regime for creating and registering mortgages over ships. It will bring such transactions solely within the ambit of the Personal Property Securities Bill. Existing mortgages over ships currently registered on the Australia Register of Ships will be migrated to the Personal Property Securities Register. The result will be that the Personal Property Securities Register will be the sole register for the registration of mortgages and other security interests in ships. Amendments will also be made to the Designs Act 2003, the Trade Marks Act 1995 and the Patents Act 1990. The registration of security interests on registers created by those acts made after the commencement of the PPS scheme will have no effect on the registered owner of the intellectual property interest. This will encourage registration of security interests in intellectual property on the Personal Property Securities Register and resolve any conflict between the Personal Property Securities Register and the intellectual property registers. This bill will also reinforce the privacy protections applied to the PPS Register, as it will be known. The Privacy Act 1988 will be amended to confirm that unauthorised uses of register data are ‘interferences with privacy’ under the Privacy Act and subject to the Privacy Commissioner’s powers of investigation. The amendments effected by the bill will resolve possible conflicts between the PPS Bill and Commonwealth legislation that provides for other interests in personal property. The bill will make it clear that the PPS scheme cannot be used to frustrate other legitimate interests in personal property. In relation to the Commonwealth’s maritime and fisheries legislation, for example, this bill ensures that enforcement action taken under such legislation will not be circumvented by a secured party attempting to enforce a security interest under the Personal Property Securities Bill. This bill will also ensure that current rights and interests are preserved after the new PPS scheme commences operation. In particular, where Commonwealth legislation has clearly provided for the priority of an interest in relation to a security interest in the same property, that priority will be preserved upon implementation of the Personal Property Securities Bill. An example is the priority of statutory liens held by Air Services Australia under the Air Services Act 1995. Some additional amendments to Commonwealth legislation will be needed before the PPS scheme commences. I foreshadow now, for instance, that the Corporations Act 2001 will need to be amended as part of the new personal property securities reform. Prior to the introduction of those amendments, the government will conduct a consultation process on the proposed amendments in accordance with the intergovernmental Corporations Agreement. That consultation process will begin shortly. Amendments to the PPS Bill On 25 June 2009, the Senate referred the provisions of the Personal Property Securities Bill to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for inquiry and report. I thank the committee for its thoughtful consideration of this complex bill. The committee released its report in August 2009 and recommended that the government consider the stakeholder concerns raised with the committee and any further concerns brought to the government’s attention until 30 September 2009. The government has done precisely that. Following consideration of the submissions made to the Senate committee and subsequently to my department, a small number of minor amendments to the Personal Property Securities Bill were identified and are included in the bill that I introduce today. The amendments will, among other things, address stakeholder comments that the operation of some provisions could be clarified and correct drafting errors. The amendments have been included in this bill because the PPS Bill is supported by a referral of legislative power by the states. Moving government amendments to the PPS Bill itself would cause some states to have to revisit their referral legislation. The method adopted here—which provides the parliament with the same opportunity to consider the changes to the bill as government amendments—will allow the states to continue the referral process without interruption. I am pleased to advise that New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria have all passed their referral legislation. I anticipate Western Australia and Tasmania will introduce their referral legislation shortly. Conclusion This bill will facilitate the establishment of a single national regime for secured lending over personal property. By harmonising legislation across the Commonwealth statute book, the bill will provide greater consistency and support a seamless transition to the new national personal property securities regime. A recent World Economic Forum survey ranked Australia second among global financial centres. Making Australia’s secured transactions law more certain and consistent and less complex and costly will facilitate international investment in Australian businesses. This will further strengthen Australia’s position as a leading global financial centre. Debate (on motion by Mr Haase) adjourned. 10471 Bills R4224 10471 Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr McClelland. Bill read a first time. 10471 10471 09:58:00 McClelland, Robert, MP JK6 Barton ALP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr McCLELLAND —I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill amends various taxation laws to implement a range of improvements to Australia’s tax laws. Schedule 1 improves the fairness and integrity of the taxation rules that apply to shares or rights granted under an employee share scheme. This measure is one of two budget measures in this bill which enhance the integrity of our tax system. This measure will better target the employee share scheme tax concessions to low- and middle-income earners and decrease taxpayers’ ability to evade or avoid tax. The new measures will also protect Commonwealth revenues needed to support jobs and invest in vital nation building. The changes will boost integrity through, amongst other changes, reporting. Employers will be required to report shares and rights acquired under an employee share scheme at issue, and at an employee’s taxing point. These amendments better target support to low- and middle-income earners by introducing an income test to the up-front concession. The $1,000 up-front tax exemption will be means tested and only be available to taxpayers with an adjusted taxable income of less than $180,000, in line with the top marginal tax bracket. Corporate governance will be improved by requiring schemes to feature a real risk of forfeiture to gain access to the deferral tax concession. Eligibility for the deferral treatment will flow from the structure of the scheme rather than from a choice made by an employee. Removing the employee’s election to defer will decrease their ability to avoid tax. The government has undertaken a comprehensive consultation process to develop these reforms, and has worked with stakeholders to develop the most effective and workable reforms, while maintaining the current support for employee share ownership schemes. The government has listened to concerns raised in the many submissions it received, and made changes to the policy to address these concerns. This measure will have effect from 1 July 2009. Employees who have already entered into employee share scheme arrangements under the existing law will be covered by the transitional arrangements. Schedule 2 amends the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 and the Income Tax (Transitional Provisions) Act 1997 to require taxpayers with an income over $250,000 that carry on an unprofitable business to quarantine excess deductions to that business activity. The government announced in the 2009 budget that, to improve the fairness and integrity of the tax system, it would tighten the non‑commercial losses rules for taxpayers with an adjusted taxable income over $250,000. However, taxpayers that can demonstrate that their business activity is genuinely commercial, can apply to the commissioner to apply losses from their unprofitable business activity against their other income. In implementing these changes to the non-commercial losses rules, the government undertook a thorough consultation process. Schedule 3 requires superannuation providers to transfer the balance of a lost member’s account to the Commissioner of Taxation where the account balance is less than $200, or where the account has been inactive for a period of five years and the provider is satisfied it will never be possible to pay an amount to the member. The first transfer will occur from the 2010-11 income year. Currently, amounts are paid to the commissioner as unclaimed moneys when a member reaches age 65 and cannot be found by their superannuation provider, or when a member dies and the provider cannot ensure the benefit is received by the person entitled to receive the benefit. Recent changes also allow the superannuation of a former temporary resident to be paid to the commissioner. Requiring superannuation providers to pay small and unidentifiable lost superannuation accounts to unclaimed moneys is one of a number of steps the government is taking to address the growing problem of lost superannuation. The measure will assist providers as they will no longer need to administer or apply member protection to small accounts that are transferred. This will improve equity for other members where costs are apportioned in applying the member protection rules. Individuals who have their accounts transferred to unclaimed moneys will be able to reclaim these amounts directly from the commissioner. Former account holders reclaiming their moneys are unlikely to be disadvantaged. Earnings on small accounts would generally be offset by fees and charges. In comparison, amounts held in unclaimed moneys do not earn interest, and are not subject to fees and charges. This measure will result in a gain to government revenues, estimated at $238 million over the forward estimates. The mechanism proposed to achieve the payment of lost superannuation accounts to unclaimed money is similar to that currently used for the payment of unclaimed money from superannuation providers to the Commissioner of Taxation. For example, the measure will involve periodic reporting in an approved form in relation to lost member accounts, calculation according to a formula of the amount payable to the commissioner, and penalties for false and misleading statements. The measure excludes accounts that support or relate to a defined benefit interest. This will ensure that lost members with defined benefit interests do not lose entitlements to benefits higher than those that may be reclaimed if their account balance had been paid to unclaimed moneys. Full details of the measures in this bill are contained in the explanatory memorandum. Debate (on motion by Dr Southcott) adjourned. 10473 Bills R4225 10473 Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr McClelland. Bill read a first time. 10473 10473 10:05:00 McClelland, Robert, MP JK6 Barton ALP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr McCLELLAND —I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill imposes tax on certain amounts relating to employee share schemes, and for related purposes. Full details of this bill are contained in the explanatory memorandum already presented. Debate (on motion by Dr Southcott) adjourned. 10473 Bills R4208 10473 Debate resumed from 16 September, on motion by Ms Gillard: That this bill be now read a second time. 10473 10:06:00 Southcott, Dr Andrew, MP TK6 Boothby LP 0 0 Dr SOUTHCOTT —I rise to speak to the Long Service Leave Legislation Amendment (Telstra) Bill 2009. I can indicate from the outset that the coalition does not oppose this bill and will be supporting its passage. This bill has the effect of continuing arrangements established by the Howard government regarding the treatment of long service leave for employees of Telstra. In 2006, we introduced a previous bill to ensure that employees of Telstra were able to continue enjoying the benefits of long service leave provided under the Commonwealth Long Service Leave Act. We did this in an endeavour to ensure that the transition from government to private ownership of Telstra occurred in a manner that was cohesive, workable and practicable. We did not wish to alter the working conditions for any employee working for that telecommunications company. At that time a transition period of three years was envisaged. As is now apparent, that period will soon expire and there is a need to extend coverage in a manner consistent with the approach and intention of this bill. I can indicate to the House that the shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, the member for Stirling, for whom I currently act, has received a communication from Telstra management to indicate that they support the passage of this bill. I note with interest that the communications indicated that this bill is the result of an agreement between Telstra, its employees and the relevant union, in this case the CEPU. Like many other keen observers of matters involving workplace relations, I was reminded that things within Telstra had not always been so rosy. Previously, there were long-running disputes between Telstra and the CEPU about a wide range of matters. The disputes in that workplace were widely publicised and heated. Those disputes occurred for a number of reasons and involved a number of technical and perhaps even philosophical disagreements. However, in my view, those disputes boiled down to one simple issue: whether or not Telstra had the right to speak with and engage its employees directly without having to go through a third party intermediary. Telstra, of course, has previously adopted a position that I believe most, if not all, employers in the country would agree with, that being that, if we want to speak to our employees directly, we will. There is nothing wrong with management and workers sitting down to discuss issues that affect them both. This is called employee engagement. Those on this side of the House recognise that workers and management are the two most important and valuable players in any employment relationship. The actions of workers influence the success of the business and the success of the business influences the benefits and culture that the workers enjoy. Employment relationships are two-way streets. Both workers and management have obligations to each other. They both benefit from improving the lot of each other. Facilitating employee engagement is something that the coalition supports. We believe that workers and management are best placed to work things out amongst themselves, in a fashion which is amicable, effective and constructive. While third-party interference is sometimes warranted, by and large it does little to achieve what could have already been achieved had workers and management spoken directly. Often, sadly, it results in situations that benefit neither the workers nor their managers. Strikes, protests, lockouts, stand-downs, placards and picket lines are all features of the disputes in workplaces where there has been the involvement of a third party. When these types of actions occur everyone becomes a loser in the end. Productivity drops, workers lose pay and the culture can be adversely affected. In contrast, workplaces that adopt a focus on employee engagement are winners. There has been much research conducted into the benefits of direct employee engagement. For example, direct employee engagement leads to increased levels of emotional attachment. Employees who have a high emotional attachment are more likely to experience higher levels of personal reward for their efforts at work. They feel as though they are working towards a common purpose and have a higher level of personal fulfilment. Direct employee engagement also leads to increased levels of employee empowerment. There is nothing wrong with having a workplace where employees know that they have a say and a role in the broader direction of a business. Letting workers have a say should be a key objective in all workplaces; they make a contribution to a business and deserve to have the right to be heard. Worker commitment levels have also been shown to be markedly higher in workplaces that engage employees directly. A committed employee is likely to experience better feelings of job security and is much less likely to leave for another workplace. Their morale is higher. Higher levels of empowerment, commitment and personal reward are all significant benefits for employees and workplaces generally. Of course, enterprises benefit from employee engagement, too. Once again, studies have shown that workplaces using direct employee engagement have less turnover, higher levels of productivity, higher levels of staff morale and increased levels of customer satisfaction. When you take an approach of direct employee engagement everyone wins, and this is how it should be. I believe that all workplaces in Australia would agree with me. However, as I observed earlier, sometimes this is not always the case. Moving away from engaging employees towards engagement via third parties detracts from the benefits the former approach brings. In this context one has to question the intention of Labor’s recent changes to the Australian workplace system. Sadly, these changes facilitate, encourage, and sometimes even mandate, the involvement of third parties in a workplace. We acknowledge that Labor’s new laws are in their infant stages; however, the signs so far are not looking good. Broadly speaking, we are beginning to see an upwards trend in the levels of industrial action. So this will be a key test for Labor’s laws. Will they facilitate the reasonable and beneficial approach of employee engagement or will they take Australian workplaces backwards to the old days of strikes and disputes? Returning to Telstra, it was with this question in mind that I was briefly heartened by the advice received about the agreement reached about this issue in that workplace. I say ‘briefly’ because I then read the weekend papers and saw this headline, ‘Telstra unions set to strike’. I do not wish to get into the details of this dispute, which is apparently about a pay rise, except to observe that one comment reported in the article concerned the CEPU’s displeasure with the company for speaking directly to its employees about the terms of their pay offer. In essence, this was one third party criticising one party to an employment relationship, the employer, for having attempted to directly engage with the other party in the relationship, its employees. I find such criticism perplexing, particularly given the irrefutable benefits of direct employee engagement, which I spoke about a few moments ago. How anyone can be critical of an employer attempting to engage directly with their workers is beyond me. It does represent a genuine concern. However, if those comments in the weekend papers are not already concerning enough, things get worse when we consider them in the context of a recent decision by Fair Work Australia involving Transfield Services. In that decision, the new tribunal effectively banned the company and management from talking with each other. Orders were made that required the employer to communicate with their own employees but only via a third party. The result was that the benefits of direct employee engagement—productivity, employee empowerment and fulfilment, and a better workplace culture—were effectively stopped by the order of an industrial tribunal. And this stop was the result of an order made under Labor’s new workplace system by their new tribunal. These are early days for Labor’s new laws and some say that there is much to be said for giving them the benefit of the doubt. But I believe workplaces are entitled to be concerned about where the new laws are taking them. It looks like the new laws are so far failing to facilitate the reasonable and beneficial approach of employee engagement and by default are taking Australian workplaces backwards to the old days of strikes and disputes. I struggle to see how this goes towards the government’s stated aim of creating a balanced, flexible and productive workplace system. But it is a case of watch this space: those on this side of the House certainly will be, as will Australian workplaces in general. I remain hopeful that, whatever the future holds, Telstra and its workforce are able to achieve a resolution to their current circumstances. I also remain hopeful that the agreement giving rise to this bill becomes the norm rather than the exception. It is with this in mind that we support the passage of this bill. The bill reflects an agreement achieved in a manner that we believe should be encouraged throughout Australian workplaces—an aim that I hope will not be hindered by Labor’s new laws. 10476 10:16:00 Thomson, Craig, MP HVZ Dobell ALP 1 0 Mr CRAIG THOMSON —You do not have to scratch very hard to see Work Choices coming out from the Liberal Party. It is always there; it always has been and it always will be. What we have just had in the contribution from the member for Boothby on the Long Service Leave Legislation Amendment (Telstra) Bill 2009 was a veiled threat that we should be going back to individual contracts. It is probably not that surprising, given the recent statements from the Leader of the Opposition. I think it serves as a warning to all Australians that the other side of politics simply cannot be trusted with workplace relations. They want to put in place an unbalanced system like Work Choices. They do not get it that the last election was fought largely on this issue, and they lost. The Australian people made it clear what they thought of those unfair and unbalanced laws, yet at every opportunity the opposition brings out the anti-union rhetoric, and we heard more examples of it again from the member for Boothby. It is also worth putting on record that, unlike management consultants and lawyers that work for employers and are third parties, unions are actually made up of the workers who work for the employer. They are not third parties that are intervening; they are representing in a collective manner the workers of a particular enterprise. Quite frankly, until the Liberal Party get that, they can never be trusted on workplace relations. The telecommunications sector is one of the fastest growing, most dynamic sectors in this country. But, as the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union says, the sector’s success does not rest on wires, satellites and signals. Its future depends upon the strength and skills of the people who work in the industry. Today, the Rudd Government is putting through a commonsense amendment to long service leave legislation to give Telstra workers a little piece of mind in terms of their long service leave benefits. I will give a brief outline of why we have come to this position. When Telstra and its predecessor, Telecom, were government owned or, in more recent times, when the government was Telstra’s majority shareholder, its employees were covered by Commonwealth long service leave law. After Telstra was privatised, this coverage was continued as a transitional measure for three years, due to end on 24 November this year, after which workers would be covered by relevant state or territory laws. In the meantime the Rudd government is heading towards a seamless national economy by pursuing the most ambitious program of reform in business regulation in the nation’s history. Through this process we are developing a national long service leave scheme. If we were to continue with these transitional arrangements, Telstra workers would have to move to their relevant state and territory schemes, then back to the new national long service scheme as part of our seamless economy goal. This measure will avoid complexity for the company and uncertainty for employees. Telstra, the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union and the Community and Public Sector Union requested these amendments to avoid complexity and uncertainty in their industry. The Long Service Leave Legislation Amendment (Telstra) Bill 2009 amends the Telstra Corporation Act and the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Act to extend the application of the Long Service Leave (Commonwealth Employees) Act to Telstra. Once developed, a National Employment Standards long service leave standard will apply to all employers covered by the Fair Work Act, including Telstra. It is essential that the bill passes through both houses of parliament in these sittings in order to ensure continuous application of the Long Service Leave Act, which otherwise sunsets on 24 November. In keeping with the best reforming traditions of the Hawke-Keating Labor governments, the Rudd government is moving towards a seamless national economy. One of the concerns I hear constantly from businesses in my electorate of Dobell, on the New South Wales Central Coast, is that the red-tape burden has grown and grown and grown over a long time. Some have told me that it is like The Blob, the 1950s science fiction movie: it is gobbling up investment, jobs and opportunities. That is why the Rudd government is out there making sure that there are these reforms to our economy and that we move towards this seamless national economy. During the 1800s in Australia, one of the most significant arguments in favour of federation was the need for a uniform rail system. Each colony operated its rail system on a different rail gauge. Without a uniform gauge, trains could not cross colonial borders. At a time when trains were the main means of long-distance land transport, intercolonial trade had to unload and reload goods and produce at each border. This Federation-era experience is a good model of Australians overcoming barriers to prosperity for the good of the nation. If we were able to bring consistency to different state laws 110 years ago, surely it is time for us to bring consistency to our business regulation systems. The red tape burden in Australia is stifling economic growth and productivity. We all know that today’s productivity growth is tomorrow’s prosperity. We all know that growth and increasing productivity mean more jobs for Australians. It is no secret to the businesses of the Central Coast that red tape is strangling jobs in our region, as it is around the country. In 2009 Australia is an economy subject to no fewer than nine regulatory regimes overlaying regulations, with the eight states and territories each seeking to regulate in their own way. In some cases, those regimes are duplicated by national regulation imposed at the Commonwealth level. In the 2006-07 financial year more than 31,700 Australian businesses were operating in more than one state or territory. More than 4,300 operated in every state and territory, meaning they dealt with all nine different regulatory regimes. These statistics alone show how important it has been that, in the 18 months since coming to office, the government has demonstrated its commitment to Australia having a seamless national economy. Like the Federation example of a national railway network, a new national law covering long service leave will help create a uniform approach in our national economy. Long service leave is an almost uniquely Australian product. For a history of the scheme I looked at a research paper from the Labour Ministers Council. Long service leave is a period of paid leave granted to employees after a period of continuous employment with the one employer. In certain industries, such as construction, stevedoring and coal mining, policymakers in the past have allowed the entitlement to vest after a period of continuous service in that industry, regardless of the number of employers. The entitlement has its origins in the 19th century Victorian and South Australian civil service acts. These provided for civil service officers who had completed at least 10 years of service to be granted leave of absence with pay for periods of six or 12 months. The purpose of the leave was to reward those who had performed long and faithful service in the colonies by providing an opportunity for them to return to the United Kingdom. All state and Commonwealth public servants were subsequently granted the entitlement. It was then gradually extended to other public sector employees. Long service leave began to be included in federal awards by consent in the late 1940s. It did not become a standard employment condition for all employees until the passage in the 1950s of long service leave legislation in all states. The purpose of such legislation, according to parliamentary debates prior to the introduction of the Long Service Leave Act 1955 in New South Wales, was to reduce labour turnover, provide a reward for long faithful service and enable employees halfway through their working life to recover their energies and return to work renewed, refreshed and reinvigorated. In 1964, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission arbitrated its first long service leave award to provide what has become the standard provision for non-Public Service employees: 13 weeks leave after 15 years service, with pro-rata payment in lieu on termination of employment after 10 years of service. State legislation and existing awards were amended to provide the same entitlement. South Australia later introduced a 10-year qualifying period for the full 13-week entitlement, but this has not been followed by other states. Public sector employees generally have more long service leave entitlements. Whilst long service leave entitlements are currently predominantly provided for under state laws, the Commonwealth makes legislative provision for long service leave entitlements for those employed in the Commonwealth Public Service. The next stage in the evolution of the almost uniquely Australian entitlement of long service leave is being developed now. We are developing a national employment standard in long service leave. This next step will apply to all employers covered by the Fair Work Act. Long service leave is one of the 10 national standards to be introduced by this government. The others will be a standard 38-hour week, annual leave, parental leave, flexible work for parents, sick leave, community service leave, public holidays, information in the workplace, notice of termination and redundancy pay. Fair Work Australia gets the balance between flexibility and fairness right. There is of course—and we heard the contribution from the member for Boothby—an alternative view to the thinking that underpins Fair Work Australia. That is, of course, the extreme view of those opposite. I acknowledge that the member for Mayo, one of the architects of Work Choices is now in the chamber. The excesses of Work Choices have been consigned to the dustbin of history. All the members of the opposition who voted for Work Choices in the last parliament should be ready to be held to account for their actions in the next federal election. The previous member for Dobell, Mr Ticehurst, was a Work Choices true believer if there ever was one. He voted for Work Choices 23 times. We know that the opposition, in their hearts, still believe in Work Choices. We saw that in the advertisements in the last election and we have heard it in the speeches in this place, including a contribution from the member for Boothby on this piece of legislation. Whilst every speaker has said that in this place they will not be opposing the legislation, they have nonetheless gone on to talk about their true beliefs and have exposed their support and continuing commitment to Work Choices and to its principles. I notice the member for Mayo is speaking after me. It should not be forgotten that he was a key adviser on Work Choices under John Howard. IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs —I just refer to standing order 76—the member should address the subject of the bill. 10000 Scott, Bruce (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BC Scott)—That is not a point of order. It has been a wide-ranging debate. I call the member for Dobell. IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs —This is just a personal attack. 10000 DEPUTY SPEAKER, The The DEPUTY SPEAKER —No. The member for Dobell has the call. HVZ Thomson, Craig, MP Mr CRAIG THOMSON —I would like to pay tribute to the Your Rights at Work campaign on the Central Coast and the work those people did in highlighting these unfair laws in my electorate. To the great dismay of members like the member for Mayo, his creation was discarded by the voters of Australia. I do wonder if the member for Mayo and the former member for Dobell agree with the member for O’Connor, who said the only problem with the Howard government’s unpopular Work Choices legislation was its name. The government’s agenda is to create a productivity- and investment-friendly, seamless national economy that keeps the Australian tradition of the fair go alive in the workplace. Australia is well placed to emerge from this global financial crisis. But the road ahead will be long and tough. The Australian Labor Party is the political party of vision and reform. We are the only party with the ability to bring the nation forward through the stormy economic times. We are the only ones with the ability to make tough economic decisions as required while not forgetting Australia’s belief in social justice and a fair go. We need to build for the future. We need a building decade for productivity. This is an important bill for Telstra and Telstra workers, and I commend the bill to the House. 10479 10:29:00 Briggs, Jamie, MP IYU Mayo LP 0 0 Mr BRIGGS —It is a great honour to follow the member for Dobell, who is on his long march to the front bench. He is only a couple of steps away. After that wonderful contribution of light and grace, I am sure he will be sitting there in the not too distant future with the member for Blaxland, who is at the table and who recently was promoted—rightfully too, I would have thought—to a higher position within the Labor Party and is on his march as well. It is a great honour to speak in this debate. I will not, however, go down the same road of vicious personal attacks that the member for Dobell unfortunately felt he had to resort to instead of concentrating on the debate—that does disappoint me. He knows the subject of the bill so well and it is so close to his heart. He spent many years working as a union official before he entered this place. I congratulate him and the other 80-odd per cent of Labor members of parliament who have followed that path. On the Long Service Leave Legislation Amendment (Telstra) Bill 2009, I do have some familiarity with this issue. In 2006, the then government moved to ensure that Telstra workers were covered for their long service leave entitlements. The sale of Telstra meant that the workers were potentially going to fall out of the Commonwealth scheme, because they were not covered by the terms, and fall back to inconsistent state conditions. As the member for Dobell rightly pointed out in his history lesson on long service leave, different states have different levels of long service leave entitlement, which would have created massive confusion for Telstra workers, leaving some worse off and some better off. From memory, the balance was that most would have been better off but some would have missed out. So the then Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations moved to ensure that that situation was remedied. The then shadow minister for workplace relations, the member for Perth—who is now the Minister for Foreign Affairs—rose in this place and supported our moves at that time. It is with that same sense of bipartisanship that we stand today and support the government’s move to extend these provisions. It does raise a question, though, about what happens when the government’s plan to split Telstra up comes into being. What happens to the employees? I am sure the government are thinking at this time about what impact that will have on employees. That is the background to the issue. Telstra is, of course, a company that over a long period has had many vicious and nasty industrial disputes. Many famous industrial disputes have originated in Telstra—or Telecom, as it was, when it was a government instrumentality. Today we see that tradition continuing. A report in the Weekend Australian is headed ‘Telstra unions set to strike’ and states: THE five-month ceasefire between Telstra and its main union is on the verge of collapse. This is because what had been a period of industrial harmony in Telstra has come to an end due to the changes made by the government with its Fair Work Act and particularly the good faith bargaining provisions, which will see this massive increase in industrial disputes. The Reserve Bank governor has said already that, if you have this massive increase in industrial disputes, you will see pressure being put on interest rates. That will unfortunately be the result of the government’s changes. We are seeing that already with big companies like Telstra at war with their unions because of the rights in the new act for third parties to intervene, as used to be the case. It is an issue which is very important for the parliament to consider. It was brought to my attention by Workplace Express, which is a fantastic service dealing with industrial relations news, that the Australian Industry Group, a very firm supporter of the government, has put out a ‘First 100 days’ Fair Work Act bargaining provisions booklet, which talks about the changes brought about by the Fair Work Act and what it has done to the industrial landscape around the country. The report is actually quite critical of the new IR regime, which is surprising given the position of AiG in recent years. According to the Workplace Express report, the booklet says: … the key principles that have emerged include that parties have the right to bargain hard and that industrial action cannot be taken prematurely. In the booklet, the AiG says that since the 1 July introduction of the new bargaining laws the industrial climate had undoubtedly changed, with unions pursuing new claims with some vigour. This highlights the problem that we are starting to see. We have seen it with the stuff-up on the award modernisation. We have seen it with the Fair Work Act going too far and giving too much power to third parties to intervene, which will cause a massive spike in industrial disputes. That will be terrible for the Western Australian resource sector, where we are already seeing massive increases in these types of disputes. We have seen massive increases in the number of unfair dismissals. An article in yesterday’s Financial Review highlighted very strongly the changes in attitudes to unfair dismissal since the act was passed, which will of course impact enormously on small business. In summing up, this is a bill which I support. I have had something to do with it in the past. It gives Telstra employees a lot of certainty. It does highlight the inconsistency of long service leave arrangements around the country, which is an issue I believe the government is turning its mind to. One measure that the government may be considering and which I think would be a massive mistake, particularly for long service leave, is a portable employee entitlements scheme. That would be a huge new tax for small business. It has been part of the Labor Party platform in the past; we will have to wait and see whether we see it in the future. 10481 10:35:00 Clare, Jason, MP HWL Blaxland ALP Parliamentary Secretary for Employment 1 0 Mr CLARE —I thank all honourable members for their contributions to the debate on the Long Service Leave Legislation Amendment (Telstra) Bill 2009. As the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations noted in her second reading speech, this bill is designed to ensure the continued application of the Long Service Leave (Commonwealth Employees) Act to Telstra pending development of national long service leave arrangements for all federal system participants. The bill is an interim measure that recognises the particular historical circumstances of Telstra. In the absence of the measures proposed in the bill, Telstra will need to transition from the Long Service Leave (Commonwealth Employees) Act to multiple state and territory schemes, when current transitional arrangements expire on 24 November 2009, and then back to a Commonwealth scheme when new national long service leave arrangements are implemented through the National Employment Standards. The government agrees with Telstra and with the relevant unions that a sensible solution to the complexity and the uncertainty that these multiple transitions would cause is to extend existing transitional arrangements until the new national employment standard on long service leave is in place. With those comments, I commend the bill to the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. 10481 Mr CLARE (Blaxland —Parliamentary Secretary for Employment) 10:37:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 10482 Bills R4212 10482 Debate resumed from 15 September, on motion by Mr Albanese: That this bill be now read a second time. 10482 10:38:00 Billson, Bruce, MP 1K6 Dunkley LP 0 0 Mr BILLSON —I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 and, in doing so, indicate that the coalition has some significant reservations about some of the components in this bill. In that light, I move: That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: ‘given Labor’s rash, unjustified and irrational change of policy to force the break-up of Telstra in an arrogant attempt to prop-up its risky $43 billion National Broadband Network, further consideration of this bill should not proceed until after the NBN Implementation Study is presented to the Parliament’. The reasons for that amendment I will make clear in my contribution but, essentially, that amendment highlights where the coalition has severe reservations about this bill. There are, within this bill, legislative amendments that go to some specific powers of the ACCC under the Trade Practices Act, some changes to the universal service obligation and to the consumer service guarantee. It is not in those areas where we have our major grievance. If Labor were sincere in wanting to bring about that regulatory renovation, they could certainly consider moving forward on those areas where the coalition has no contest on the government’s objectives. Regulatory renovation was a part of the telecommunications landscape during the previous Howard government and will continue to be during this federal Labor government and in governments to come. What the government has done is to fit up that regulatory renovation with the most extraordinary attack on private assets, private capital, funds of investors and on a private company that this nation has ever seen. For those telecommunications companies that are often competitors of Telstra, I understand their glee and delight at some of these provisions. In terms of comments attributed to my friend Ravi Bhatia and others about the regulatory renovation, my urging to them would be to encourage the government to fill out the regulatory renovation provisions while the far more contentious—some would say extraordinarily draconian—measures relating to Telstra are properly debated and analysed. That is my invitation to the telecommunications sector, to those access seekers that rely on Telstra’s infrastructure and to those who are looking for the regulatory renovation. What is in contention is the new part 33 of the Telecommunications Act, which provides for Telstra to structurally separate. If Telstra does not—and I use the words of the bill—‘voluntarily’ submit an enforceable undertaking to structurally separate to the ACCC, this bill before the parliament requires functional separation of the company. We have often heard in times of conflict overseas that you never negotiate with a terrorist. If this is not an example of telecommunications terrorism by this federal Labor government, I do not know what is. For those people sitting on the sidelines cheering on this assault on Telstra, its value, its operational arrangements and its shareholder equity, I would ask them to think what if it were you. You might have a grievance with Telstra—many have, and I have had a number over many years—but just imagine what we are seeing here today. We are seeing a parliament assaulting a private company. It is a company where shares are directly held by 1.3 million Australians, and nearly all of us have some stake in the asset that is Telstra through superannuation investments and the like. What we are seeing is a government taking a meat axe to the company, or at least waving it and any other device of corporate assault over the head of Telstra, to bludgeon it into doing what the government says it should do. This is an extraordinary day in corporate life in Australia. For anyone interested in sovereign risk, corporate governance and the interaction of private equity, private assets and private companies with the central government, this is a time they should be taking notice. If this passes without much of a whimper from the private sector, from those that are holding shares in the company, from those that are investing and from enterprises themselves simply because it is Telstra, it sets up an extraordinary precedent. What next? Which company will be next? Which sector will be next? HK6 Lindsay, Peter, MP Mr Lindsay —Woodside. 1K6 Billson, Bruce, MP Mr BILLSON —My friend and colleague the member for ‘paradise’ mentions Woodside and other companies where there might be some disputes about access to rail lines, access to infrastructure and those sorts of things. What do you do? Do you just break up the company? Do you just march on in and bust up a corporation with the most spurious of explanations about why it is necessary and then dress it up under some sugar-coated term like a ‘national broadband network’ when really that is no more than a thought bubble by this federal Labor government, which has campaigned on it and seen the political virtue of trying to attach its brand to a concept like the National Broadband Network with no idea at all about how to actually go about implementing it? This is at the heart of the opposition’s objection to those provisions in this bill. The bill seeks to prevent Telstra from acquiring specified bands of spectrum, which could be used for advanced wireless broadband services, unless it structurally separates and divests its hybrid fibre-coaxial cable network and its interest in Foxtel. So that is the deal: you cannot expand your wireless service offer or engage in what is in many people’s eyes the most dynamic and exciting area of telecommunications innovation reform in the wireless space unless you do certain things. Telstra will be nobbled from engaging in the telecommunications future because of this bill. In addition to the prevention of access to spectrum in the absence of a structural separation undertaking accepted by the minister and the ACCC, the bill provides for functional separation of the company on terms defined by the minister. Have you ever seen a minister out of depth? We have had to save Minister Conroy from himself time and time again since he was appointed the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Even in Senate estimates yesterday he could not even explain a basic tenet of the government’s sound bite about broadband. He could not even make the maths add up in terms of technological reach and the like. Yet this bill seeks to give him the power to dissect and fillet out bits and pieces of a vertically integrated company like Telstra. If he cannot work out what percentage of customers will get wireless, copper or broadband—simple maths; my son could work that out and he’s 11; he’s pretty smart, but that is not hard maths to work out—how on earth is this minister going to start the difficult and complex of task of from Canberra dissecting parts of Telstra in a way that achieves a kind of separation that he had difficulty even defining? The bill also contains, as I mentioned, amendments to increase the powers of the ACCC under the Trade Practices Act and changes to the universal service obligation and consumer service guarantee. Quite obviously, the amendments that hold a gun to the head of Telstra and seek to force the company into a structural separation undertaking are of greatest concern to the coalition and the millions of Australia who are shareholders, employees and customers of Telstra. It is quite clear that these amendments aimed at Telstra are about one thing and one thing only, and that is a blatant and naked attempt to make the government’s poorly conceived NBN viable. This was confirmed during a recent public hearing when David Foreman, CEO of the Competitive Carriers Coalition, said: If you suggested to me that the NBN was likely to succeed in the absence of this legislation I would say that’s a pretty big bet. There is a direct correlation between the provisions of this bill and the political motive of trying to make a poorly defined NBN thought bubble somehow morph into reality. I will give the government credit for one thing. When I was shadow minister for broadband and communications, I made the point over and over again that there will be no such thing as a National Broadband Network. Ultimately, it will be a network of networks. For anyone listening to this broadcast or interested in this policy area, there is already abundant fibre based infrastructure that represents not only a down payment but substantial progress to the kind of coverage all Australians would hope for in terms of higher speed, more affordability and more available broadband. That infrastructure is there now. As I have argued over and over again, and today I again submit this to the government for them to consider, a network of networks is the only realistic, conceivable, cost-effective and affordable way for this ambition to be pursued. But in the pride that Senator Conroy brings to most things—for he must win the argument even if his proposition is wrong—he will not accept that and will not move in the collaborative way that the coalition has advocated for some time. Watching the minister’s attempts to implement Labor’s 2007 campaign promise to build a National Broadband Network has been like watching a slow motion train wreck. For almost two years, the telco sector, consumers and taxpayers have had to endure a sorry sage of incompetence, uncertainty, delays, bungles, wasted millions, announcements, re-announcements, refined announcements and even an attempt to say, ‘Look, we’ve messed this up but we’re going to go bigger and better’—from $4.7 billion of shambles to a momentous $43 billion of undefined objectives around a broadband thought bubble. All of this has gone without the delivery of a single new broadband service under this federal Labor government. All they have achieved in the fog and the confusion has been to freeze investment from other telecommunications providers. They have effectively cryogenically frozen broadband while they have tried to work their way through a model of their own making. While ‘cryogenic Conroy’ has frozen the communications sector, millions of Australians have missed out on service improvements that would have ordinarily been undertaken through the normal course of commercial investment and service innovation and improvement. More worryingly, though, is the blatant disregard for rural and regional Australia, as evidenced by the cancellation of the OPEL program. That program, put in place and carefully worked through by the former government, would have been delivering services to underserviced communities in remote, regional and outer metropolitan Australia. Most of those services would have been well underway now and all of them would have been fully rolled out by the end of the year. Kids could have been studying using that technology now. They would have started perhaps in year 7 at a secondary school and been able to use broadband to support their education. Now, they will have left secondary school before much of anything happens in terms of improving broadband in their areas. We saw cynical promises to voters prior to the election, when federal Labor went around suggesting that a vote for Kevin Rudd would turn the Flintstones age into the Jetsons age in terms of broadband. And it has been nothing more than a cartoon animation ever since. What we have now is very little activity. Not a single new broadband connection has been delivered under the failed NBN mark 1 or the NBN mark 2. The federal Labor government under Prime Minister Rudd and Minister Conroy have been anointed the net negative combo for our nation, freezing improvements in services. This legislation stemmed from a discussion paper, The national broadband network: regulatory reform for 21st century broadband. The discussion paper was released in April when the government announced that it was abandoning its proposal to provide up to $4.7 billion towards a fibre-to-the-node broadband network upgrade in order to attempt to build and operate a $43 billion fibre-to-the-premise network. Until 15 September 2009, when this bill was introduced, structural separation had never been Labor policy—not when it was last in government, not during its many years in opposition, not in the lead-up to the last election and not since its election. It has not been coalition policy, either. Telstra had been corporatised under the previous Labor government, not structurally separated, even though it was entirely in the government’s hands. OTC and other assets were rolled into it to make that corporatised Telstra. When the Howard government privatised Telstra, it was not separated, either. It was recognised that there would be difficulties in achieving that goal at a time when there were abundant challenges in dealing with the privatisation. It was also recognised that that would have an impact on the value of the asset. In the lead-up to the last election, Labor’s 2007 federal election policy stated: Labor will ensure that Telstra’s wholesale and retail functions are clearly distinct within the company … It was not that that would be in separate companies but ‘distinct within the company’, and that seemed to echo a lot of the operational separation arrangements that had been put in place by the previous government. Admittedly, not everyone was convinced that they were effective but unscrambling the egg was not on the table for either side of politics at that time, notwithstanding some views that it may have been a virtuous thing to do in the distant past. Federal Labor did not indicate before the election that structural separation was on the table and shareholders, the company and consumers took them at their word. As recently as May, during Senate estimates, Senator Conroy was questioned on his current position regarding structural separation and he replied: I am not advocating it. I have never advocated it. In less than two years, Labor have gone from promising to contribute up to $4.7 billion to a $10 billion to $15 billion fibre-to-the-node upgrade of Telstra’s copper network, reaching 98 per cent of Australians, to creating a new government business enterprise to build, own and operate a fibre-to-the-premise, wholesale-only network to 90 per cent at around four times the cost. We have even seen the description of what the government is trying to do in learned journals like CommsDay Australia, in articles written by the shires representative Luke Coleman, who has captured the essence of the confusion Senator Conroy injected into the debate yesterday. During Senate estimates Senator Conroy was asked what would happen to the fixed line connections under the NBN. In the bravado that he brings to most things he does, Senator Conroy said: Everyone who receives a fixed line service, through a variety of policy mechanisms, will continue to receive one. Those were his words; that is what Senator Conroy said. As the discussions evolved around the USO, Senator Conroy went on to speculate how that might be provided and who might provide fixed services to the last 10 per cent, saying that these are matters for Telstra. He said: But I am sure all of these will be matters that Telstra will represent to us as part of our discussions. He reaffirmed that copper would remain in place. Now, if the NBN is expected to deliver fibre services to 90 per cent of the population, we ask: what is happening with the other 10 per cent? The throw away line is, ‘Well, they’ll get wireless or satellite services.’ That is what the government has been saying until this week when Senator Conroy provided the assurance that if you have a fixed-line service now you will continue to have one. How does he deal with the fact that the copper service is currently available to 97 to 98 per cent of the population, which suggests that there will be a need to provide copper and wireless, and possibly satellite, to seven to eight per cent of the population if the government’s stated intentions are to be fulfilled? If that is happening—if the existing fixed lines need to be maintained alongside wireless broadband and the NBN—what does that mean for the promises as to the NBN itself? Are we going to see a government operated national broadband network running a service supposedly to 90 per cent of the population? Having stripped assets from Telstra and stripped out its most profitable areas of business, is the government going to have to set up an NNBN—a non-national broadband network, which is the copper—for the seven to eight per cent that does not factor into Senator Conroy’s figuring? And then are they going to put in an NNNBN, which is a ‘not here, nowhere near, national broadband network’ because they are talking about the satellite? You would end up with Ruddcom running, potentially, three wholesale carrier networks, all supposedly doing the kinds of things that Telstra does now, under this proposal that is so poorly conceived that the minister cannot even answer basic questions about service delivery. You can see why people are confused. You can see why the market is not investing. You can see why consumers are terrified about what this might mean. You can see why experienced people, such as Paul Broad from AAPT, who have skin in the game—that is, their own money and businesses operating in this space—are characterising this federal Labor government plan as a phenomenal waste of money. They have gone on to talk about it as nothing more than a negotiating tactic. What an expensive posturing exercise by a federal Labor government! Right now they are spending $25 million of taxpayers’ money trying to translate the government’s and Senator Conroy’s NBN thought bubbles into an implementation plan. An implementation plan sounds like something concrete that works out how to operationalise it. If only it was that. It is actually a conceptualisation plan. It is a canvassing of possibilities—a fleshing out of the sound-bite of federal Labor on NBN and trying to map a pathway out of the confusion of Labor’s own making. We are spending $25 million to get some idea of how to do that. While that work continues the government is dropping bills like this into this place. It is dropping these bills into this place to break up Telstra without any of that analytical framework that you would have thought such a big decision would have justified. You would have thought that if there were a strong, concrete, considered, evidence based conclusion from research and analysis—publicly available and able to be scrutinised and assessed—then there would be a pathway forward that may include something of this kind. You would think you would do that work first, wouldn’t you? No; not this crowd. They are known for not operating on an evidence based policy arrangement but on a policy based footing, which is that they know the outcome they want and they spend like hell—$25 million—to try and find someone who will give them some basis on which to arrive at the conclusion they have already made. That is what is going on here. And a part of that fraud is this bill which pre-empts what may be required to bring about the NBN when Telstra has indicated a preparedness to negotiate commercially with the government, when there are other telco providers with assets—in the ground and aerially deployed—that could well complement a network of networks delivering the ambition for NBN that Labor talks about. But, no, the government is not doing that. It will hold a gun to their head, start the process of busting them up and then at some point down the track, in February, the implementation plan—the game plan; the ideas that might actually bring about action on the thought bubble—will appear. Why would you not do the analytical work first? I have seen some of the commentators getting quite excited about that and my friend Graeme Samuel at the ACCC can barely contain his joy at seeing Telstra broken up. I know he has had his arm wrestles with Telstra and I know he was quite upbeat about the regime change at Telstra and the change of its posture and negotiating approach. The ACCC have not given that much of a chance to work, have they? They are already out there ready to bludgeon Telstra with a baseball bat even though a whole new team is on the pitch, even though Telstra said they are prepared to negotiate, even though Telstra and its people and its leadership know the nation, the parliament and many consumers are frustrated about their previous behaviour and are looking for a more collaborative approach. The ACCC seems to recognise that a market intervention requires transparency. In today’s papers there is talk about Woolworths venturing into hardware. The ACCC has had a bit to say about all that and some anxieties have been captured and carried forward about the competition space around Woolworths plans to venture into hardware. The ACCC has outlined issues of concern. That is serious stuff in the eyes of the ACCC. It is stuff that basically says, ‘It makes it hard to move on this.’ Issues of concern are a red light to the industry. Down from that, the second level is those issues that may raise concerns and require further analysis. That is an amber light. Lastly there are issues that are unlikely to pose concerns. They are read as green lights. That is what the ACCC does ordinarily, but where are the lights when it comes to this? Where is the competition perspective on having a government nationalise a key communications asset? Where is the open analysis that would accompany even a price determination? Right now there are discussions going on about what access prices and arrangements should be in place in the telco sector. They are advertised up hill and down dale so competitors can make a contribution and challenge some of the analysis that is being brought forward. They can put their point of view into the mix. They can make their case in a transparent way and that is right and proper because the impacts are felt in the share market, in the investments that people make and in the business viability of those governed by this competition framework. That is what happens with price determinations and a whole lot more happens with hardware. When it comes to telcos, the ACCC can cheer all it likes, but where is the analysis? The ACCC are letting themselves down by being some sort of cheap-tart cheer squad over this decision to bust up Telstra whilst happily ignoring all of the disciplines that accompany any other ACCC engagement in market regulation. Where is the analysis? Why are they not demanding a transparent exposure of the material that gives rise to this decision? Where is the opportunity for other stakeholders and interest groups to have their say, to point to other possibilities, to look at the overall health of the telecommunications system? Where is the ACCC on that stuff? This is all being done behind closed doors and by stealth. It is deal-making Conroy writ large. He even ventured down to my electorate to try and stitch up preselection deals in the humble seat of Dunkley while all of this is going on during his watch. He has got no idea what is happening in the telco sector, but he can push people around when it comes to preselection in the ALP down on the Mornington Peninsula—quite extraordinary. Where is the Productivity Commission analysis and all of the cost-benefit work that the coalition has argued for over and over again? Where is the cost-benefit analysis? Where is the transparent evaluation of policy options? Where is the canvassing and public challenging of assessments about policy alternatives? Where is all this stuff that goes to sensible governance of a crucial part of our communications sector? There is nothing. Whilst the ACCC might cheer the headlines of this piece of legislation, they damn themselves for doing so because of the lack of accompanying analysis and transparency. What a remarkable impact on a key shareholder-interest corporate enterprise sector of our economy, and all the ACCC can do is cheer about the headline of the bill. They let themselves down badly with that. They should be arguing for analysis and evidence based policy evaluation. Is that not what good governance and good regulatory and competition policy is really all about? We have got a massive spend on the horizon and no cost-benefit analysis. We have got to wait till February before anyone has got any idea how the government hopes to translate its audio bite and thought bubble into some kind of sound public policy, yet we are busting up the major participant in the sector in advance without the justification and policy rationale to accompany it. What this legislation shows is that we are witnessing in this country an extreme form of legislative blackmail of a private enterprise business that is crucial to the wellbeing of so many Australians, and it is being done with barely a whimper. What is happening is that the veil of the NBN is being draped over this legislation to disguise the ugliness that is happening within it. The legislation proves that the government cannot build the NBN without Telstra, as the opposition has been saying all along, and that the government is desperately attempting to find a way to salvage something that it can dress up to be the NBN. There are so many unanswered questions about the NBN. Each time we ask a question about how the rollout will occur and what price consumers can expect to pay for services, we are told the implementation study will provide all. Yet now we are being asked to pass a bill intrinsically connected to the NBN and in so doing give unprecedented powers to the ACCC and the minister before we know how the NBN rollout will occur, what the utility of this legislation is and why it is required to bring about that outcome. Labor does not have a mandate to renationalise telecommunications by establishing a government owned monopoly at a cost to the taxpayer of at least $43 billion, nor does it have a mandate to force structural separation on Telstra in order to pinch its fixed line customers and reduce its capacity to compete. If the government is having trouble with competition, it should deal with that. If you bust up the company, you go into a way new space. This is primarily what Labor is seeking to do in forcing Telstra’s fixed line customers to prop up the NBN. This is the biggest hoovering up of customers and of revenue streams I think we have seen in this country, and it is being done by a government business. As I say to the business community: ‘Where are you, guys and gals? If it were your company, I reckon there would be a whole lot more being said about it.’ The minister confirmed as much when he outlined one of the somewhat dubious choices the company is being forced to make when he introduced this bill. He said: … it may involve Telstra progressively migrating its fixed line traffic to the NBN over an agreed period of time and under set regulatory arrangements and for it to sell or cease to use its fixed line assets on an agreed basis. The government of course cannot afford to have any genuine competition against the NBN because it is more than likely that the vast majority of consumers would choose cheaper fixed line options over the NBN. We hear about 100-megabit service but, as we have heard in Senate estimates, there is no guarantee that that is what will actually be delivered and be available for people. The coalition have long argued and worked for and delivered faster, more affordable and reliable broadband. As technology has moved, so have policy and strategies to achieve that aim. We fully support the continued enhancement of broadband services, including the deployment of next generation networks and services, and that is why Labor’s spectrum threat is so disingenuous. I have argued that for taxpayer funding to address broadband black spots and bottlenecks it is reasonable to ask for a wholesale provider as an outcome of that taxpayer spend, but that would be a policy outcome you are purchasing, not one you are ripping off through this legislative assault on an Australian company. The coalition believe government funding for broadband should be specifically targeted at underserviced areas, and I touched on OPEL earlier. The OPEL approach provides a useful and practical model for how you go about delivering improved affordability, accessibility and performance of broadband services and achieve a wholesale service provider as part of the public policy outcomes you purchase with carefully targeted and thoughtfully arrived at taxpayer investment. There is so much that can be said about the Senate inquiry and what commentators have had to say about this, but this is a very interesting day for the Australian parliament. People might take some comfort, even those in the telecommunications industry, that Telstra is getting roughed up and beaten up with a baseball bat and told that if they don’t like it there is more heavy artillery coming their way. You might get a thrill out of that—but just imagine if it were your company. (Time expired) 10000 Andrews, Kevin (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. KJ Andrews)—Is the amendment seconded? PK6 Randall, Don, MP Mr Randall —I second the amendment. 10489 11:08:00 Turnour, Jim, MP HVV Leichhardt ALP 1 0 Mr TURNOUR —I rise today to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. Today is a good day for the Australian people and a good day for the Australian economy. Today we are seeing the Rudd government introduce nation-building legislation, regulatory reform that is about building the National Broadband Network, about ensuring that we can build the nation into the future. Telecommunications are the railways and highways of the 21st century. In the same way that road and rail opened up the country and drove productivity over the last 200 years, we are going to see telecommunications continue to drive productivity over the next century. Telecommunication links are particularly important to cities like Cairns and regions like Cape York and the Torres Strait in my electorate of Leichhardt. You do not build two roads or two railways to a city. Similarly, in a decentralised country like Australia you need one good quality telecommunications network at the wholesale level. You can then allow retail competition to work effectively. That is what this legislation is about: creating the right environment for the NBN to be rolled out and for people and businesses in the community to get the access to the telecommunications network that we all need. The NBN will provide the network we need, but the regulatory reforms create the right retail competition that is required. This piece of legislation is a critical element of the Rudd government’s commitment to reform the Australian telecommunications environment. Our telecommunications industry is due for a shake-up. The industry has been calling for fundamental changes for many years and ultimately it will be the consumer—residents and businesses—that will benefit. The bill proposes a package of reforms to deliver a more efficient telecommunications market, with appropriate consumer safeguards, as the National Broadband Network rolls out. It represents the most significant reform of the telecommunications regime since open competition was introduced in 1997. When you consider that the OECD ranks Australia 16th in terms of broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants and as the fourth, fifth and ninth most expensive for low-speed, medium-speed and high-speed average monthly subscription broadband prices respectively, it is clear that we need to improve our existing telecommunications regulations. It is in the interests of Australia’s consumers and businesses. I listened to the member for Dunkley’s contribution earlier as the spokesperson for the opposition. It highlighted the clear difference between the Rudd government and the opposition because, clearly, they are way out of touch on that side of this chamber. You do not have to get out into the community and talk to too many people before you understand how unhappy people are with telecommunications in this country, how they are annoyed about the lack of service and the cost of that service. They are tired of governments bleating about wanting to drive productivity and create a national broadband network, about supporting business out in a community by getting the telecommunications network its needs and about people getting the decent education and health services they need through improved telecommunications. They want a government to take action, and that is what the Rudd government is doing. The member for Dunkley was talking about the minister and running a lot of spin terms, talking about cartoon characters and cryogenics and he suggested this is a spiritless issue. He even suggested the minister was down in his electorate seeking to get a candidate down there. Well, I hope he is, and I think he should send the member for Dunkley’s speech out into his electorate because I do not think there would be too many people in his electorate who would be very happy with his contribution. I saw the member for Herbert here earlier and I understand he is on the speakers list for this debate, so I am looking forward to his contribution. I can assure all the members opposite that I get out and doorknock and run mobile offices in my community, so I know that anybody who lives in rural and regional Australia—I see the member for Capricornia is here as well—understands how upset and unhappy people in those areas are about telecommunications in this country. They are cheering today when we are introducing this bill because they want to see regulatory reform. The opposition, particularly the Liberal Party, are out of touch on this issue. I understand that the National Party is talking about supporting this legislation in the Senate, that Senator Joyce is talking about supporting this legislation. So when Liberal spokespeople talk about the coalition they are really talking about the Liberal Party’s position on this. I am looking forward to getting back to my electorate after the sittings this week and next week and talking about this legislation and the opposition’s position on it. I will be letting the community know the fact that they are opposing the introduction of legislation that is going to ensure we get regulatory reform, roll out a decent National Broadband Network and deliver good quality telecommunications services to places like Cairns. The purpose of the reform package, of which this piece of legislation is a key part, is to improve competition, strengthen consumer safeguards and remove redundant red tape. I look forward to it having a positive impact on regional Australia. I represent an electorate in regional Queensland and know the consumers of telecommunications services in regional Australia are more exposed to any shortcomings in the effectiveness of consumer safeguards such as the universal service obligation and the consumer service guarantee than those in urban Australia. The proposed strengthening of the consumer protection framework will reduce the potential for rural consumers to experience falling service qualities. I had an example of this in the last week or so up in Cape York, when somebody had their phone down and it was going to take an extended period of time to get it fixed. This legislation will address these sorts of failures to meet universal service obligations, enabling them to be met and action to be taken within an appropriate time. The four reforms also mean a step forward for the government’s delivery of the superfast National Broadband Network. The NBN will be the single largest infrastructure investment made by any Australian government. We are very proud to be a nation-building government. The opposition left a legacy of 18 failed broadband plans in 11½ years. Before the 2007 election the opposition were prepared to deliver high-speed broadband only to those living in the five mainland state capital cities, ensuring an ongoing digital divide and clearly not representing the needs and interests of regional Australia. The OPEL plan was a second-class plan for rural and regional Australia. It was dreamt up by the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, because he knew that our National Broadband Network plan was resonating in the community and that people wanted action. The reality is that wireless is being delivered out there by Telstra, Optus and others, and OPEL would not have been delivering anything additional. It would basically have been delivering a second-rate service to rural and regional Australia. I see that the Leader of the National Party is in the chamber. I am looking forward to his contribution on this bill, and I hope he is on the speakers list. The wireless broadband plan that was being put forward by the opposition would not have delivered decent services to rural and regional Australia. The Rudd government is very serious about delivering a fibre-to-the premise network to places like Cairns. No time is being wasted in progressing the NBN. The government will do whatever needs to be done to ensure delivery. Minister Conroy’s announcement in September of industry reform is one of the important steps on the road to achieving this. These are major reforms but I am hopeful that the government and Telstra can reach a good outcome that will benefit the future of telecommunications in Australia. I have spoken to some Telstra shareholders. They saw the share price being eroded more under the previous CEO and leadership than it has been since this announcement. This is a great opportunity for Telstra to get involved in the NBN. This is a great opportunity for Telstra to seize this and become a partner with government and others in terms of delivering good quality broadband services in the future, and it is a great opportunity for shareholders to increase their wealth into the future. This bill will address Telstra’s vertical and horizontal integration. Telstra remains one of the most integrated telecommunications company in the world. Telstra owns the only fixed-line copper network that connects almost every house, the largest cable network, half of the largest pay-TV provider and the largest mobile phone network. Telstra clearly has dominance in the market and a failure to address Telstra’s level of integration has not lent itself to an effective and competitive telecommunications regime. Australia is paying for this in terms of being behind the eight ball internationally when it comes to the cost, quality and so forth of telecommunications services. Telstra, as a vertically integrated company, provides both wholesale and retail services. As a result, Telstra has both the incentive and the ability to favour its own retail businesses over those of its wholesale customers. The overwhelming message from the industry and the ACCC is that the current arrangements to address the issues arising from Telstra’s vertical integration are inadequate. We heard the opposition spokesman criticising Graeme Samuel and the ACCC. The ACCC have backed the government’s reforms and want to see the government take action and break the dominance of Telstra within the market. They are tired of the complaints and of the follow-ups that they have to make in relation to telecommunications in this country. The legislation that the Rudd government is putting forward will address Telstra’s vertical integration by allowing Telstra to voluntarily submit an enforceable undertaking to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to structurally separate. The government’s clear preference is for these structural issues to be addressed on a voluntary basis. In addition to this vertical integration, Telstra is also horizontally integrated, as it owns and operates multiple different platforms—copper, cable and mobile. This is in contrast to most other developed countries, where there are restrictions on incumbents owning both cable and traditional fixed-line telephone networks. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 will address this anticompetitive environment by requiring Telstra to choose its future path. Telstra will be prevented from acquiring spectrum for advanced wireless broadband while it remains vertically integrated, owns a hybrid fibre-coaxial cable network and maintains its interest in Foxtel. Reforms to address Telstra’s high level of integration will mean greater competition, more choice and more affordable prices for people living in regional and remote areas. This bill will reform the competition regime. If we are to promote competition in our telecommunications industry, we need an appropriate regulatory framework. That is why the government is proposing a series of changes to the Trade Practices Act. I understand that many of the submissions received from industry on the discussion paper released by the government in April this year claimed that our regulatory framework is ineffective due to the ability of parties to engage in regulatory game playing and abuse. Litigation is used to obstruct the process in order to delay regulatory outcomes. Telstra has been using lawyers to basically stop the ACCC from doing its job of ensuring that we can get good quality price-effective services delivered in rural and regional Australia. The bill will streamline the arrangements through which telephone companies access wholesale services. The ACCC will be able to determine upfront terms and conditions for a three- to five-year period, following consultation with industry; determine principles to apply for longer periods; and make binding rules to immediately address problems with the supply of regulated wholesale services. The bill will also seek to reform arrangements in the Trade Practices Act so that the ACCC can address breaches of competition law and conduct damaging to the market. The ACCC will no longer have to consult with a party before issuing a competition notice, a process previously prone to delay and obstruction. These reforms can stop Telstra holding up needed action in the courts. We need to make sure that people understand the differences between the government and the opposition on this issue. The government is bringing in regulatory reform because we want to ensure that the competition regulator, the ACCC, can do its job in relation to ensuring that people out there who have complaints and concerns can actually get action on them and we can also get a competitive retail market with a decent National Broadband Network underpinning it as the wholesaler of telecommunications services. We heard the opposition spokesman, the member for Dunkley, criticising these arrangements, criticising the ACCC and effectively barracking for the lawyers, who have been part of the prevention of the rollout and the delivery of decent telecommunications services in this country. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 will strengthen consumer safeguards, particularly as we transition to the full rollout of the National Broadband Network. Reforms to key consumer safeguards include the universal service obligation, the customer service guarantee and priority assistance—all of which were flagged in the discussion paper feedback. The bill will strengthen the universal service obligation to ensure all consumers continue to have access to high-quality basic telephone services, including payphones, during the transition to the NBN. As the primary universal service provider, Telstra currently has obligations in terms of installation, removal and relocation of payphones. The government understands that there is considerable community concern about the ongoing removal of public payphones. I know this is something that is important to many of the Indigenous communities throughout Cape York in my electorate that rely heavily upon payphones as a means of communication. Under the new legislation the minister will specify the standards, terms and conditions of services, connection and repair periods, and reliability requirements. Telstra will be required to meet new minimum performance benchmarks. Failure by Telstra to meet the requirements, including the minimum benchmarks, will expose Telstra to a civil penalty of up to $10 million or an on-the-spot fine issued by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, potentially up to $2 million. The new universal service arrangements will make clear for consumers and Telstra the services Telstra must supply in fulfilment of the universal service obligation rather than those decisions being left to Telstra’s discretion. Priority assistance is another arrangement that has been discussed as part of this process. The government is acting upon the feedback to ensure such services are not impacted. Priority assistance arrangements require the highest level of telephone service to residential consumers who have a diagnosed life-threatening medical condition. I know of a number of residents in my electorate of Leichhardt who access this service and understand how important a lifeline it is to them. The legislation will require telephone companies to either offer priority assistance services or inform the customer where they can purchase these services. So we are taking action. We are not going to sit on our hands and do nothing— GT4 Truss, Warren, MP Mr Truss interjecting— HVV Turnour, Jim, MP Mr TURNOUR —when Telstra in the past has basically not met its requirements—and sought to use other methods to prevent the ACCC from doing its job in getting a fair, competitive environment—as a supplier, and as a vertically integrated company, as to other retailers in the market. I heard the Leader of the Nationals interjecting a minute ago. It is no wonder he is concerned about this legislation. I know that his constituents want us to introduce this legislation, get it through the parliament and roll out our National Broadband Network. I will give you some examples of why that is. These examples are from just a couple of constituents in my electorate and they are the sorts of things that I regularly hear about. This is one of the major complaints I hear in my electorate office. A constituent of mine, who lives in the suburb of Redlynch in Cairns, is an IT consultant who works via the internet for clients all over the world. Six staff rely on him for their employment. Recently he bought a property at Redlynch. He did background research and made sure that broadband was available in the valley. He even talked to a couple of his immediate neighbours before committing to buy. He ordered a business broadband connection and phone line from Telstra but was later advised by Telstra that ‘it is not commercially viable to upgrade the network infrastructure at this time’. Further investigation revealed that the Redlynch exchange is full. The only option is to reapply every two weeks and hope that someone disconnects their broadband. Telstra then offered Next G wireless broadband. The constituent’s views on Next G wireless broadband are: it is more suitable for residential low internet users, for email and occasional browsing, due to the restrictive bandwidth and download limits—the constituent is a businessman who wants to do business from home, as many people do, and there are people in the southern suburbs of Cairns with similar stories—and it will not support a continuous internet connection for the use of international voice over IP, teleconferencing or the remote management of computers on the other side of the world due to the way it regularly drops and re-establishes the line. The constituent lives in Cairns and wants to participate in the world economy; he wants to drive productivity and create jobs in the economy of Cairns. He said, ‘At its best, this significantly inferior service will cost me seven times what I was paying for my internet connection in Edge Hill’—another suburb of Cairns—‘and, at worst, 30 times more per month.’ That amounts to $1,500 as opposed to $50. It is no wonder the constituent said: Telstra has no financial incentive whatsoever to improve the wired infrastructure of its exchanges even in urban areas whilst it can happily sell a wireless solution for the sort of additional margins we are talking about. To know that my neighbour next door and his kids enjoy the sort of broadband I require for less than $100 a month, and yet I am being asked to pay more than ten times that makes me feel completely ripped off and abused. This is an abuse of the monopoly position Telstra have up in Cairns as a provider of both the landline and wireless infrastructures. Basically, with Next G, the government has been blind-sided by Telstra. This is the OPEL plan that they were talking about rolling out—a similar network. Telstra has a network like this, but it is overcharging and it does not deliver the service that small business wants in places like Redlynch, the southern suburbs and the northern beaches of Cairns. Residents in the northern beaches have raised similar concerns. The Smithfield exchange is oversubscribed and you have to get ADSL2. ADSL1 tends to run at dial-up speeds. People are upset out there in the community. I am looking forward to talking to them about the opposition’s position on this bill. I am sure that many members here will be going back to their electorates and talking about the opposition opposing our rollout of nation-building infrastructure, the National Broadband Network and the need for us to introduce regulatory reforms that ensure that retailers in the telecommunications area can have access at a fair price to those wholesale services. This is about regulatory reform, but it is also about ensuring that our National Broadband Network is rolled out effectively. It is good for the Australian people, it is good for the Australian economy, it will drive productivity into the 21st century and it is something that I strongly support and look forward to advocating in my local community. 10495 11:28:00 Truss, Warren, MP GT4 Wide Bay NATS Leader of the Nationals 0 0 Mr TRUSS —A few months ago, in April, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, went on ABC Radio to tell the people of Broken Hill that they could expect to have fast broadband up and running under the government’s much ballyhooed National Broadband Network by the end of 2009. I put that piece of information aside because it seemed to me to be a very optimistic promise—extraordinarily hopeful. The promise was also made to Victor Harbour in South Australia, Emerald and Longreach in Queensland, Geraldton in Western Australia, Darwin and the south-west Gippsland region. These were to be on a priority list for the rollout of the National Broadband Network. That is what the minister said in a number of press releases at the time: those regional cities would receive broadband with speeds up to 100 megabits per second by Christmas. The reality is that the successful tenders for the construction of these cables have not yet been announced. The minister has 64 days to deliver his promise to the people of Broken Hill, the people of Victor Harbor, the people of Emerald, the people of Longreach, the people of Geraldton, the people of Darwin and the people of Gippsland—64 days. There are many areas where the government’s election promises have evaporated into fantasy. Telecommunications promises have perhaps been the most monumental failure. Here we are, nearly two years after the last election, when Australia was promised a new world of excitement and supersonic speed when it comes to broadband, and nothing has happened; no-one has been connected. The member for Leichhardt said he was looking forward to my contribution to this debate, and he has immediately scurried out of the chamber. He must be embarrassed, like all Labor members, that they have delivered not a thing by way of accomplishments in relation to their NBN strategy. Regional Australians are worse off today than they were when Labor were elected and improvements which would have been operating by now have been axed. Politicians often say that the other side of politics has done nothing or has messed up what it has done. But in this case, better telecommunications, an area which both sides of the chamber acknowledge is important, this government really do have a big duck egg next to their name. There have been reviews, minor tenders, a series of grand public announcements—but that is not progress. Massive spin and the proposed expenditure of a gross amount of public money add up to zero unless they actually do something. Labor have never had a plan to deliver their broadband promise. There has been no infrastructure plan, no business plan, no financing plan, no market plan. Almost two years after the election they have now commissioned a $25 million implementation study to try and find a way to deliver on what they promised. Worse than doing nothing, this government have actually managed to take regional Australia backwards. By cancelling the coalition’s $900 million OPEL contract to provide the regions with fast broadband, services that would have been in place by now are not. Nearly a million underserved premises would have had fast broadband speeds by the end of this year, but Labor cancelled the contract. Labor criticised the OPEL contract because it was based on wireless, but now all they are offering, in the far-distant future, is wireless for regional areas. They have backed away from their election promises again and again and again, and all they are offering is the same as the coalition would actually have had in place by now—except country people will have to wait up to another 20 years to get it! Sadly, the NBN has always been Alice in Wonderland material. Before the election we were told that Labor planned 98 per cent fibre-to-the-node coverage, costing $4.7 billion. That was the promise that the member for Leichhardt and the member for Capricornia took to the Australian people. Now the coverage has fallen away to just 90 per cent but the cost has blown out to $43 billion. It is 10 times as expensive but more than two million Australians are going to miss out. What sort of deal is that? What a miscalculation. What a farce. What a dishonest promise to the Australian people. And where will these two million Australians live? Of course, they will be in the regions. It will be people outside the capital cities who will miss out. The government has also specifically excluded now from its promise all towns with populations of fewer than 1,000 people. There are well over 1,000 towns in Australia with populations of fewer than 1,000 people, and they are now excluded from Labor’s broadband promises. All they can expect is some inferior technology—according to Labor—called wireless, at about one-tenth of the speed. People in regional Australia don’t count. Labor is treating regional Australians with absolute contempt. The broadband that Labor advocates is a two-speed economy. The digital economy promises apply only to the cities. Labor’s NBN will deliver third and fourth fibre networks in cities but nothing in the country and to most regional areas. The government has said that it will now take eight years to build what it had promised to start delivering by last Christmas. It will be 2020 before country people can expect to get any broadband through the NBN. However, Goldman Sachs JBWere were quoted just recently as saying it will take 18 years for most homes to be connected—2030! Labor promised to start delivering this before last Christmas, but now it is going to be 2030 before people are likely to get this vital piece of infrastructure, as Labor described it. Under OPEL most country people would have had fast broadband speeds by now. Under Labor they have to wait until 2020 to get exactly the same technology. In addition, Labor stole the $2.4 billion Communications Fund, which had been established by the coalition to fund technology improvements in regional areas in perpetuity, to prop up the funding for their NBN. They stole the $2.4 billion from the country and will spend it in the cities. Labor have shown nothing but bad faith towards the regions, and now they are going to ask us to trust them with radical changes to telecommunications legislation without any commitment that services will be maintained. One very alarming aspect of the bill before the chamber is that it changes the legislated universal service obligation. Under Labor it will simply be at the whim of the minister as to whether services are provided or not. The coalition legislated the USO so that people in regional areas and other places who need services that may not be economic would have confidence that these services would be maintained. Now they just have to trust that the Labor minister thinks that the service is worth providing. It will not be legislated; it is simply at the whim of the minister and that is not good enough. Asking people put trust in a Labor minister and that their services will be maintained is a very big ask indeed. And the minister we are being asked to trust is Senator Conroy. This is the same minister who is proceeding with plans to close down analog television without having any plans in place to ensure that those who cannot receive digital television will not simply be cut off. This is the only policy that Labor proposes to deliver in the country before it is done in the cities. They are going to cut analog television services off in the country before it is done the cities, even though they have no plan in place to replace the black spot transmitters and no plan in place to help those people who cannot afford to buy a digital television set. We have digital channels opening up and they are all being supplied in the cities first. Some of the first areas that will have their analog television cut off do not even have all of the new television channels that are being offered in the cities. That is about the only incentive for people to move across to digital television. But it is not happening in many of these key areas. Labor just intends to cut off the television reception and leave people without an option. They would never do that in the cities. This is the contempt that Labor has shown towards people in regional Australia and now they are asking us to trust them with radical new telecommunications reform and take away any obligation on the minister to seek parliamentary approval before slashing the community service obligation. The reality is that we cannot trust Labor. Their performance over their two years in government makes it absolutely clear that to trust them with reforms that are not clearly spelt out—when there is no plan for the NBN—is a monumental leap in faith. They have not earned that faith. Before we can have any confidence that this bill will not further degrade services in regional areas, the government has an obligation to provide more information on its broadband proposals. The implementation study for the government’s proposed National Broadband Network is not due until February. It is not reasonable to make a decision about the government’s plans without knowing when, how and where the NBN promises will be met. Telstra is currently negotiating with the government regarding models for separation of Telstra’s retail and cable networks. These negotiations are reported to be progressing constructively and they should be allowed to run their course. The Nationals will assess our attitude for any new model for telecommunications in Australia on the basis of whether it will deliver quality services and technology to regional Australia. We will support measures that increase competition and consumer protection, especially in regional areas. However, it is not clear that this bill will achieve those objectives. We know that Telstra has lost the trust of people, even in regional areas. The Sol Trujillo era was a disaster. Telstra lost touch with its customers, it abused its market share and it lost the goodwill of the people who had relied upon it for such a long time. They forgot about their responsibilities as a service provider. However, none of the alternative suppliers or their competitors were willing to stray too far away from the profitable areas. There does need to be changes in the way in which telecommunications services are delivered in this country. Telstra has not behaved as well as it should have over recent times. I welcome the more constructive approach that the new management seems to be taking and of course they deserve an opportunity to prove that their words also will be transmitted into actions. But in dealing with this issue we also have to consider the property rights of the existing Telstra shareholders. Those rights must be respected. After all, they bought a vertically integrated telecommunications company, which the government now seeks to break up. These issues must be addressed constructively. The Nationals recently released their telecommunications policy. It clearly states what the people of regional Australia expect and demand in the area of telecommunications. The Nationals, in coalition, believe that better telephone services, internet access and broadcasting infrastructure will ensure that regional Australians have the ability to take their share of the social and economic benefits associated with new communications technologies. A robust communications network will have a range of applications in regional Australia. It will create better health services, better education, greater employment and business opportunities. We aim to deliver communications infrastructure to all regional Australians to provide access to high-speed broadband internet, timely and accurate weather forecasts, voice-over-internet telephony, online services such as banking, bill payments, shopping, buying and selling on auction websites and government services. We want the provision of education materials at all levels of schooling, and tertiary study. We also aim to deliver video conferencing; tele-medicine services, whether voice-over-IP telephony or, preferably, video webcam links to doctors; and, streaming media that allows users to listen to online radio stations and watch online TV stations and other audio and video programming. Fast broadband should also provide potential access to the things that have not even been thought of yet. The world is changing and will continue to change and regional Australians should have access to that new technology. The Nationals are also determined to address the regulatory issues which have discouraged private enterprise from entering the communications industry and providing parity of service to regional Australians. We will work to create a regulatory environment favouring initiative and support for those providing services to the regions. We recognise that no single technology or network will provide efficient and cost-effective communications services, for broadband in particular, to all of non-metropolitan Australia. We are prepared to assist in the development of communications infrastructure which is suitable for a vast range of needs and applications, while also taking account of the geographical diversity in Australian regions. The Nationals will ensure that regional Australians are integrated into the global community by fast-tracking communications infrastructure in areas with the greatest need. We recognise that, while the market will almost always meet the communications needs of people in the capital cities, government intervention will almost always be needed to ensure that those needs are met in regional and remote parts of the country. The Nationals believe that where the market cannot sustain a variety of networks in regional areas the government has a responsibility to provide an affordable single network. Public-private partnerships can be an appropriate vehicle for delivering telecommunications infrastructure in regional areas. It is also the case that in regional Australia the greatest productivity gains can be made from high-speed broadband. The Nationals’ policy is to place a priority on rolling out fibre-optic cable to a majority of consumers in regional Australia before cable rollout takes place in areas where competition is already driving the provision of higher broadband speeds. If you have a number of fibre-optic cables in capital cities already, why duplicate them when there are large parts of Australia that do not have a single cable? The Nationals support the continuing extension of the fibre-optic network to regional and remote communities that are reliant on wireless and microwave technology. Some of those who have the most difficult communications problems are in the most remote areas. The challenge for them is the greatest and it is not going to be provided on a strictly commercial basis. There will need to be support for those kinds of programs and it is especially disappointing that the government has failed to provide any funding in response to the recommendations of the Glasson review into telecommunications services. Reviews were being conducted on a regular basis as a part of the previous government’s commitment to regional Australia. They identified the black spots, they identified the gaps in services, they identified areas where improvements needed to be made and the government then provided funding to address those issues. This government received the Glasson report but has refused to provide any funding at all to fill in any of the remaining black spots in mobile phone telephony. It picked up one or two of the lesser recommendations of the Glasson review, but there is no money available to fill in the black spots in regional areas. This is another example of this government’s bad faith when it comes to addressing regional telecommunications. The Nationals have been particularly supportive of Telstra Country Wide and there needs to be a commitment that the physical presence of Telstra Country Wide offices in strategic locations will be maintained. The previous government established a $2.4 billion standing telecommunications fund to ensure that new technology and services could be made available to regional Australia as they became available. It was called future proofing and that term is still relevant. As a central plank of our telecommunications platform, the Nationals commit to reintroducing a standing telecommunications fund to give a level of confidence that regional Australia’s telecommunications services will not fall behind. Labor has stolen this fund and, by stealing it, it has taken away the hopes of country people that their telecommunications needs will ever be effectively met. We need to take a broad approach that strikes a good competitive balance between carriers, that establishes a fair and transparent regulatory structure and that accommodates new technologies and solutions. New technology will be a major deliverer for advancement in our economy and unless Labor is determined to entrench a two-speed economy for Australia it must ensure that regional Australians also share in the telecommunications advances that are going to occur in our nation in the years ahead. (Time expired) 10500 11:48:00 Neumann, Shayne, MP HVO Blair ALP 1 0 Mr NEUMANN —I am happy to speak in support of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. I heard the member for Wide Bay in a very animated, if not agitated, state talking about regional and rural Australia. It must have been very interesting to be in those cabinet meetings when he sat at the table in that period of failure and inaction by the coalition. The regulatory framework for telecommunications in this country has not changed much since 1997. The many plans the coalition came out with—18 in 11½years—failed absolutely dismally regional and rural Australia, including provincial towns in Queensland. The member for Wide Bay is so aggressive about our plans, yet what did he say when Telstra was engaging in this sort of behaviour for such a long time? He is highly critical of Telstra and of us but has no word of criticism for his own government, at whose cabinet table he sat. What happened to regional and rural Australia under the coalition? Very little when it came to telecommunications. The OECD shows that Australia has fallen to 16th out of 30 countries in broadband penetration. We are the 20th most expensive country in average monthly broadband subscription prices. Telstra admitted on 16 July 2008 that two-thirds of metropolitan areas and more than 50 per cent of people in regional areas cannot get 12 megabits per second. The only plan that the coalition came up with was the OPEL plan, and they want to reinstate it—a broadband network that comprehensively failed to demonstrate that it could meet the terms of the funding agreement on service coverage. You can see that in my electorate. The reality is that large parts of my seat were not covered by the previous government’s plans. You have only to look at what Geoscience Australia said in relation to my electorate to see that the coalition were not taking into consideration hills and mountains in their fixed wireless coverage. Large parts were not being covered. The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy determined that the OPEL network would cover only 72 per cent of identified underserved premises within its agreed coverage area. By calling for OPEL to be reinstated, the member for Wide Bay and the opposition are being grossly irresponsible. They are not thinking of rural and regional Australia at all. My constituents in the federal electorate of Blair complain constantly about Telstra. The previous government held a number of inquiries into telecommunications—for example, the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee, which reported in September 2008. The package of reforms we have here goes to strengthening the safeguards for consumers. If everything was sweetness and light, as the member for Wide Bay suggests, why establish this review? The truth is that consumers, businesses, hospitals, schools, individuals, farmers and students were frustrated with the lack of broadband and adequate telecommunications services throughout the country. The previous government knew that. The member for Wide Bay knows it. In his heart of hearts, he knows they failed the very constituents they mean to represent—the Nationals call themselves the people for rural and regional Australia. He knows they failed. Our national broadband rollout will make a huge difference in the lives of people in rural and regional Australia. We do not want to perpetuate the legacy of failure of the previous government. We certainly do not want to perpetrate problems in this sector. What we want to do is overcome the rigidities and the obstructionism of Telstra, overcome the failures of consumer safeguards and overcome the stringent and rigid monopolistic practices that Telstra engaged in. We want to make sure that we broaden the telecommunications network throughout the country and let other players have a fair go. That is what the National Broadband Network is going to be all about. Why are we dealing with Telstra in this way? Because we believe national investment in broadband infrastructure is critical for the 21st century. We want to increase our productivity. We want to give children who live in rural and regional Australia the same chances and educational opportunities they would have if they lived in Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney. We will not build the education revolution simply by building libraries and multipurpose halls and by educating teachers better. We have to make sure they get access to 21st century telecommunications so they are not disadvantaged in any way at all compared to children who live in Adelaide, Perth or Hobart. We want to make sure, if you live in Lowood, Toogoolawah, Esk, Gatton, Laidley, Boonah, Kalbar or even Ipswich, you get the same access to the same form of telecommunications. That is why the National Broadband Network is so important. It will rival, as we have said on many occasions before, the Snowy hydro scheme in terms of its scale, significance and importance for the future. I have every confidence that in decades to come Australians will look back and say, ‘What a great initiative this National Broadband Network has turned out to be.’ The investment of $43 billion over eight years to build that network is simply critical to the future of Australia. The legislation that is before the House in effect goes hand in glove with what we are doing. The member for Wide Bay was talking about the implementation study. We are getting the ball rolling by doing the National Broadband Network implementation study. We are initially putting in $4.7 billion and looking for further investment through the Aussie infrastructure bonds. We want to engage constructively in negotiations with Telstra and with state governments. I am pleased that we are negotiating with the Tasmanian state Labor government to build the network in Tasmania first. It is important that, whether you live in Strahan, Hobart or Launceston, you get access to the same form of telecommunications as everyone else. I heard the member for Wide Bay talk about the fact that Telstra is in many ways quite dysfunctional in its business operations and dealings with consumers. But no real plan was outlined by the member as to what they would do, except to hark back to the good old days—as he thought of them—in terms of bringing back OPEL, and OPEL failed. We need to look to the future and ensure that we increase productivity, promote greater competition and, at the same time, benefit consumers. That is why it is so important to get rid of the red tape, the redundant and inefficient regulation, in this sector. Competition is important, and we need to make sure that everyone across the country gets equitable access to telecommunications. In this regard, we are looking at changing the way Telstra operates. We are requiring Telstra to functionally separate, unless it voluntarily structurally separates. That is at the heart of this legislation. We are also making sure that Telstra does not acquire extra spectrum for advanced wireless broadband unless it submits to a voluntary enforceable undertaking acceptable to the ACCC to structurally separate and divest its Foxtel interests and ownership of its hybrid fibre-coaxial network. That is what we are doing in this legislation. Contrary to what the member for Wide Bay said, we are strengthening the consumer safeguards. If you left it up to the member for Wide Bay, the safeguards would all be at the discretion of the Telstra universal service obligation. But we are not doing that. We are going further than the previous government did. We are also increasing incentives for providers to comply with the customer service guarantee and we are putting forward what I think is very important: more stringent rules on the removal of payphones, because that is important, particularly for those in lower socioeconomic areas and those in rural and regional Australia. We are making sure that ACMA can issue infringement notices for contraventions and we are beefing up the support in that regard. We are also looking to amend the trade practices legislation, because we think it needs to be changed with respect to the specific access regime set out in one of the parts of the Trade Practices Act but also to make changes with respect to the anticompetitive regime set out in another part. We are making big changes in that regard. What we are doing here is important because we are doing it in response to what consumers of Telstra services and telecommunications services have said. There have been many reports, many reforms and many submissions made with respect to the challenges and the problems in relation to telecommunications in this country, and it is not surprising because the ACCC has noted that Telstra remains one of the most integrated telecommunications companies in the world, both horizontally and vertically. The consequence of that market share is that it is almost monopolistic in terms of its control of the market in so many areas. As I said, we have had many stakeholders interested in what happens in telecommunications. That is why we have announced this commitment to reforming the telecommunications regulatory system. A discussion paper was issued subsequent to the 7 April announcement in relation to the changes we were going to bring forward, specifically in relation to the National Broadband Network, and a consultation process occurred on similar issues in 2008, previous to our announcement. Over 80 submissions were received and there was a strong response to our recent discussion paper with respect to this matter, with 140 submissions received. We have consulted widely and those submissions have been on government websites. After a period of 15 months and the receipt of over 200 submissions, the message is crystal clear: there needs to be change; there needs to be reform; and the Australian public is heartily sick and tired of putting up with inadequate services including the removal of payphones, coverage for mobile phones and access to broadband and internet services generally. Because Telstra controls the only fixed-line copper wire that connects most premises in Australia, controls the largest hybrid fibre-coaxial cable and mobile networks and has a 50 per cent stake in Australia’s largest subscription provider, Foxtel, it really has the capacity to tell consumers what they need and what they should pay, and those people do not have access to the alternatives they need. That effectively means that it is put up or shut up—use Telstra services or go elsewhere and pay more. The truth is that we need to make the changes we are proposing in this legislation. As I said before, when it comes to the universal service arrangements, Telstra really has its own discretion and can do what it wants. We need to make sure, as this legislation does, that those universal service obligation arrangements are fulfilled. The member for Wide Bay was quite critical of us in this regard, but I think that when it comes to reliability and repair the Australian public knows that Telstra has failed on many occasions, particularly in rural and regional areas. A councillor in my area, Councillor David Pahlke, constantly contacts my office in relation to Telstra failings. When I was recently driving around with him in the Somerset region he was pointing out all the failings of Telstra. He represents 60 per cent of the Ipswich area. It is a big rural area including small country towns that are part of the City of Ipswich—places like Walloon and Rosewood. He was expressing to me his absolute frustration with Telstra. Certainly we know from the facts that Telstra has failed to fulfil its universal service obligation. The most recent Australian Communications and Media Authority report, published in the March quarter in 2009, makes that crystal clear and the facts are very obvious in the circumstances. The amendments in this legislation are about protecting consumers’ access and about reliability for basic telephone services—and we are going to do that and give ACMA, which fulfils the role of the independent regulator in the circumstances, more effective powers to regulate. We are not going to simply rely on Telstra saying, ‘We’ll be good boys and girls and do the job.’ We are going to make sure that they comply with their obligations. The Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee, which I referred to before, released a report which highlighted the declining effectiveness of the customer service guarantee. That should have been very obvious to the coalition in all those years they occupied this side of this House, but for some reason or other nothing was done by those opposite in relation to that. So we are going to give ACMA broad powers to issue infringement notices—on-the-spot fines, effectively—if there are breaches of the civil penalty provisions in the Telecommunications Act and other like pieces of legislation. As a government we recognise, and it is crystal clear to the public also, that if we are fair dinkum about protecting consumers the universal service obligation needs to be not just a matter whereby Telstra determines whether it complies but a matter of enforcement with respect to its obligation. Finally, we are going to remove a lot of the regulatory red tape. There are some major changes in the legislation with respect to that. I will not outline those in the couple of minutes remaining to me, but I will say this: the member for Wide Bay was highly critical, in a very agitated way, of the government’s commitment to communications and the reform plans that we have. But I say to those opposite that they should back this legislation. They have a failed track record when it comes to telecommunications reform and legislation. They presided over a system that was full of rigidities that allowed one company to dominate the market, not just vertically but horizontally, and it was done to the detriment of consumers and the very small businesses and the very farming communities they purport to represent. I have always maintained that it is Labor and Labor governments that are the true champions of small business and the farming community, because Labor is on the side of those who do not have the power. We believe the legislation before the House goes a considerable way to not just getting rid of rigidity but improving equity and accessibility to telecommunications services for rural and regional Australia. In the circumstances, I am happy to support the bill. 10503 12:06:00 Lindsay, Peter, MP HK6 Herbert LP 0 0 Mr LINDSAY —During discussion on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 I have been disappointed at the venom that has been expressed against a truly great Australian company, Telstra. Yes, all of us can find this little incident or that little incident of Telstra perhaps not performing as well as it should have. That happens in every business across this country. But we lose sight of the great work that Telstra has done for our nation. I want to stand up for Telstra here today in the parliament and give them a pat on the back. In the face of lots and lots of adversity, in the face of very heavy criticism, they have continued to roll out extraordinarily good services—highly professional, highly technical services—for our country. Wherever you go in Australia now it is hard not to be in contact through Telstra’s 3G network. I was recently in Boulia—Boulia is a town of probably 25 houses—and there was Telstra’s Next G network. I was able to connect to the world at Next G speeds. And so it goes on. Across the country, Telstra is there. Is there anybody else there? Of course nobody else is there. They have not had the interest or the commitment to rural and regional Australia that Telstra has had. In the metropolitan areas, the technology that exists at Telstra’s network control centre in Melbourne, for example, is truly extraordinary. In fact, Telstra has two centres. If one fails there is redundancy to move to another centre. It does not matter which subscriber anywhere in Australia they want to check on at that network control centre, they can do it instantaneously and see the standard of the service and whether it is operating properly or if the people are on the phone or their fax line is being used or their internet is going via a point of presence in Karratha. They are able to tell you all of that information and monitor the services to ensure a high standard of reliability of the services. Many Australians are shareholders of Telstra. This legislation today attacks those shareholders, the mums and dads who put their faith in a great Australian company. This legislation unashamedly attacks these particular shareholders. I pay tribute to David Llewellyn, who is the Telstra Country Wide general manager in Townsville, and to his team for the way they help the north of Australia and the fantastic service that they give. I also pay tribute to the many men and women in the two Telstra call centres in Townsville who respond professionally to the queries they receive. It is really terrific to see such great work being done in the north. Do not misunderstand this piece of legislation. It is a drastic piece of legislation. In fact, in my time in this parliament I have not seen the precedent that this legislation will create if it is passed. It is just another attempt by the Labor government to salvage their disastrous National Broadband Network policy. We have very significant concerns about this legislation and that is why we will speak long and loud on this matter. I hope those people listening to NewsRadio in Townsville on 94.3 megahertz and those watching this parliamentary debate being streamed on the internet will listen carefully to the concerns about this legislation that I and the coalition have—will listen fairly, to understand what it is that concerns us and to make a judgement in their own mind, with an open mind, as to how wrong this legislation is. Among other things, the bill changes the structure of Telstra by inserting a new part 33 into the Telecommunications Act. If Telstra does not give a voluntary undertaking to the ACCC to structurally separate, it will be made to separate by this legislation. Essentially this legislation is intended to force the break-up of Telstra. This radical decision has come as a surprise to the Australian electorate. Labor made absolutely no mention of any plans to change the structure of Telstra before the last election in 2007. It has no mandate to put this legislation before the parliament. Australians should listen and understand that, when governments are running very high in the polls, when they have very, very strong support, that is when arrogance sets in. That is when governments propose legislation because they know they can and they know they will get it through irrespective of what Australians think about the sensibleness of the legislation. That is what we are seeing here. We are seeing a government who just arrogantly says, ‘Well, we will put the knife to Telstra.’ That is not a good way to run our country. Any fair-minded person listening to or watching this broadcast will, I think, agree with me. Let us think of what Labor’s promise was at the last election, 2007. It would spend $4.7 billion upgrading the Telstra network to fibre to the node. What has happened since? That has been entirely discarded and now we are going to see a $43 billion government owned and operated fibre-to-the-node network. This move today is all about the Rudd government—the Labor government—trying to ensure that their National Broadband Network has no competition. We have heard Labor speaker after Labor speaker berating Telstra as a single entity with no competition. Well, hello: here is another entity that the government is setting up that will have no competition. If I had to choose between a private sector enterprise who had to turn a profit and a government organisation run as a bureaucracy and as a single entity with no competition, I would choose the private enterprise operation every time. This monopoly that the government is setting up has launched an unfair attack on Telstra and its 1.4 million shareholders. The bill and the government’s NBN are intrinsically linked. For this reason, the coalition proposes that this drastic legislation be deferred until a study on the implementation of the National Broadband Network is completed. The broadband policy of the Labor government has been hopeless from the outset. They pushed the original proposal back and back and after failing to secure a tenderer for the original proposal—which by the way cost taxpayers $20 million and dragged on for 18 months; hardly a great commitment from the Labor Party to fixing broadband issues—in April of this year Labor announced a new NBN, NBN mark 2. That is the $43 billion unplanned program—one costed on the back of an envelope—that will see the government own at least a 51 per cent share. Where have they gone from there? Listen to this: they have created a National Broadband Network company and they are paying the CEO and the board an astonishing $43,000 of taxpayers’ money each week. What does the gallery think of that? That is to run a company that has no customers and provides no services. What a good deal that is for the taxpayer! This is the Labor way. As a member of the Public Works Committee, I recently saw another example of the Labor way and the arrogance of the Labor Party. The Public Works Committee was presented with a letter from the minister for finance declaring the regional backbone black spots program, a $250 million program, as a program that had to be commenced immediately without the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee. That was rammed through the parliament in the last sitting weeks. They said: ‘We’re going to build this, the parliament is going to have no say in it and we’re not going to have the normal PWC process for expenditure of significant amounts of government money. We’re not going to let them run their eyes over it. We’re just going to do it.’ What are they going to do? Run a fibre in parallel to an existing fibre servicing existing points of presence without building any new fibre anywhere else in Australia. It is kind of like the coaxial cable rollout that we saw in metropolitan cities some years ago, whereby two cables were rolled out in a really inefficient way along the power poles of our metropolitan cities. Why did we need two cables when one cable would have done the job? In Australia, we have the fibre in place and the government, without the scrutiny of the parliament, is running out an exactly parallel fibre network and not providing one extra service to people who currently do not have a fibre service. That is the arrogance of the current government. I also have concerns that there has been no cost-benefit analysis done for this $43 billion proposal. Understand this: the coalition is not saying that the service should not be provided. Blind Freddy knows that we have to be as technologically advanced as a nation as we can be. It is a question of how it is done. There is a dangerous precedent being created by this piece of legislation, with the government using its legislative power to say to a single company, ‘This is what you will do or else.’ It is legislative blackmail. That is what it is committing in the parliament today; that is what the Labor Party is committing: legislative blackmail. How would you be if you were BHP and the parliament said, ‘In the nation’s interest, we determine that BHP will no longer be in the business of nickel and we’ll legislate for that’? How do you think you would be if you were the board or the shareholders of BHP with the government telling you how you were going to run your business? That is what we are doing today to Telstra. It is fundamentally wrong. This is socialism at its worst. This is Big Brother telling the private sector how they will run their own businesses. The previous speaker was the member for Blair, a lawyer. We could ultimately see the government going into all legal practices in the country and saying, ‘This is how you’ll run your legal businesses.’ That is untenable, as is what is being done to Telstra. The $43 billion proposal is certainly a very big risk for Australia without any cost-benefit analysis. In spite of concerns by the Treasury secretary, Ken Henry, who said in September, ‘Government spending that does not pass an appropriately defined cost-benefit test necessarily detracts from Australia’s wellbeing,’ the government is proceeding. In contrast, the coalition had a fully costed and responsible plan for broadband in Australia. Under this plan, effective and affordable broadband services would have been available to Australians across the country. The coalition’s plan would have seen a combination of government and private sector investment and it would all have been completed by the end of this year. Imagine that. At a far lesser cost, it would have been completed by the end of this year. But the Labor government’s hopeless handling of telecommunications means that the risky NBN mark 2 is still not out of the starting blocks. We saw initially Labor saying that they would cover 98 per cent of the country. Now it is back to 90 per cent. People in my area, those on Magnetic Island, will not get access to NBN mark 2. A suburb of Townsville—Australia’s largest tropical city; the capital of Northern Australia—will not get access to the National Broadband Network mark 2. How can that be? Labor have consistently bungled their broadband network plan. And, in an attempt to get their plans back on track, they are now introducing this legislation to forcibly break up Telstra. After nearly two years of problems and delays with their broadband network, Labor are launching an attack on a great Australian, Telstra. Their new policy is a clear admission about the failings of the Rudd government’s NBN. Labor have realised that for their current NBN to succeed they must essentially take control of the fixed-line telecommunications network. It is extraordinary. I wonder what is going to happen to our airlines. Are the government going to take control of our airlines because where an airline decides to service or not to service does not suit them? That is the implication of the legislation that is before the parliament today. The coalition has always been a firm believer in competition. We support the introduction of an effective and affordable broadband network but Labor’s handling of the NBN so far has fulfilled neither of these criteria. There are quite a few areas of this bill which need improvement and amendment. In its present condition it is an unfair and extreme attack on an Australian company and its shareholders. We must await the results of the NBN implementation study to best address this. When the amendments are put to this legislation I will certainly be supporting them. 10507 12:24:00 Bidgood, James, MP HVM Dawson ALP 1 0 Mr BIDGOOD —I rise to speak to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. The bill will make significant amendments to the Telecommunications Act 1997, the Trade Practices Act 1974 and the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. These amendments will require Telstra to functionally separate unless it structurally separates. The bill will reform the telecommunications competition regime to provide regulatory certainty and timely outcomes and minimise opportunities for regulatory gaming and anticompetitive conduct. It will also strengthen enforcement of existing consumer safeguards in the transition to the National Broadband Network, known as the NBN. These changes will boost competition and greatly benefit consumers in Australia by allowing Telstra to voluntarily separate itself or be ‘functionally separated’ by the government. This will mean that consumers in Australia will be better off and it will allow a more level playing field in terms of telecommunications in this country. Reform in this sector is a good thing for all Australians. Boosting competition in this sector is very important. The reforms are long overdue. The Australian consumer will be in a better position to gain access to fast, affordable and competitive broadband services offered by either Telstra or any other company. The enhanced National Broadband Network initiative announced on 7 April 2009 outlined the government’s commitment to the rollout of the NBN as a wholesale-only, open-access network. The lack of competition in the telecommunications sector has resulted in Australia lagging behind other developed economies on a range of telecommunications indicators and that is why this bill is so important for our future competitiveness in this sector. It is the government’s preference for Telstra to voluntarily structurally separate. Such an outcome would be consistent with the wholesale-only, open-access market structure to be delivered through the National Broadband Network. Provisions in the bill intend to correct this unusual and inherently anticompetitive situation by requiring Telstra to choose its future path. The government is committed to reducing red tape where it no longer exists. For example, under this bill smaller carriers will be exempt from paying an annual carrier licence charge, contributing to the universal service and national relay service levies and reporting to ACMA, as the cost of compliance for these carriers is often considerably higher than monetary contribution. Also, redundant reporting requirements under the customer service guarantee, priority assistance and the network reliability framework will be removed as long as benchmarks are being met. The bill will also replace the current unenforceable arrangements, which require Telstra to only take reasonable steps to fulfil the universal service obligation, with a legislated requirement for Telstra to supply, on request, specified services at specified standards—including connection and repair periods, reliability requirements, payphone placement criteria and performance benchmarks. The bill will provide for more stringent rules on the removal of payphones and new provisions allowing people to apply to ACMA to direct Telstra not to remove a payphone. I believe Telstra will work constructively with the government and that it will see that competition is a good thing for the industry. Telstra CEO David Thodey has said: Telstra supports the Government’s NBN vision. We are willing to discuss options around separation. In conclusion, I would like to say that as I do my community consultations, from Mackay, across the electorate of Dawson, right up to southern Townsville, one of the most common themes that is brought up by people who come up to me is that we have such a slow, fragmented telecommunications network, particularly in rural areas. Broadband is particularly slow. This is of interest to small businesses, which often need huge documents to be transferred from larger cities to rural areas. Slow broadband slows down business operations, and sometimes it can be quite intermittent. Having this legislation on the books is important as it will address many community needs for a much better, much faster broadband network. A competitive market will be able to produce some good outcomes, I believe, for the people of Dawson and particularly for the rural areas within my seat. With this in mind, I say that this is good news and I commend this bill to the House. 10508 12:30:00 Macfarlane, Ian, MP WN6 Groom LP 0 0 Mr IAN MACFARLANE —It is interesting to note that the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 is so important to the member for Dawson that he spoke for barely six minutes on it. It is a bill that will affect virtually every constituent in his electorate who relies at the moment on ensuring that they are dealt with equitably by the telecommunication service providers. The reality is that as he drives across his electorate, as he mentioned, the chances are that he will be using Telstra. The chances are that in the majority of his electorate—not the majority of his population but the majority of his electorate—the only reliable broadband service, mobile phone service and aircard service for his laptop will come from Telstra. Yet we see here a bill which will not only put at risk the level of service in regional and low-populated areas but also damage the hip pockets of every Telstra shareholder in his electorate. There seems to be scant concern for those people. In rising to speak on the bill, I express the shared concerns of many members on this side of the House who see the deep flaws within this legislation and are mindful of the destructive consequences those flaws will have on Australians and on the Australian telecommunication network. I am no fan of Telstra, but I have to acknowledge that they are the only telecommunications company that has done the job for regional and rural people. They are the only telecommunications company that can provide me with reliable service within my electorate and across the vast inland of Australia, where I travel as the shadow minister for industry and resources. In recent weeks, much of my time has been dedicated to addressing the most glaring problems of the government’s rushed and reckless CPRS legislation. Unfortunately, the telecommunications legislation we have to deal with now is just another example of rushed and reckless legislation where the Rudd government shows scant regard for the fact that its actions will impact adversely on all Australians. As earlier speakers have indicated, the coalition has strong reservations about several features of this bill—in particular, its provision to hold a gun to the head of Telstra and demand that that company undergo a structural separation. Has the government seriously examined the consequences of that, particularly for regional Australia? Who is making the big investments in regional Australia to ensure the continuation of Next G telecommunications? They provide the voice access on our BlackBerries, the data access on our BlackBerries and of course the data access on our Telstra aircards—were the Department of Parliamentary Services to give us one—which many members have been forced to buy privately to ensure we have access through our laptops while we are travelling in areas outside large capital cities, and sometimes within large capital cities, so much is the difference in the service provided between those data services. If this bill goes through and Telstra is cut down the middle, I fear that it will do what the other companies have done and simply become a cherry-picking operation where the density of population rewards the level of investment. On that basis, people in regional Australia will miss out. What we have already seen is that there are still difficulties in delivering broadband services to small communities in regional areas which will not be addressed by this legislation. They will not be addressed. I cite one example, and I will be coming back to it later. At the Quinalow State School, which has been in receipt of computers from the government, those computers are still not operating, simply because there is not a broadband link to the main spine that runs down the highway. So schoolchildren at the Quinalow school are missing out. They will miss out again under this legislation because Quinalow is a town of fewer than a thousand people. That is the practical impact of this, but, as I said, there is also a concern shared by millions of investors—everyday mums and dads, individual Australians, women and men, who have put their hard-earned cash into a company which they expect to be able to operate in a commercial way. They are the shareholders and customers of Telstra. This latest destructive development from a government that has so comprehensively bungled its handling of Australia’s transitional broadband services highlights its lack of understanding of the detail and time it takes to develop these proposals properly. It is in the most reprehensible manner that the government is sacrificing the best interests of Telstra, Telstra shareholders and Telstra customers so that it can frantically try and paper over the cracks in its crumbling national broadband strategy. The coalition has flagged several concerns with Labor’s NBN mark 2 proposal, the most significant of which is: it renationalises our fixed-line telecommunications infrastructure. Wind the clock back 15 years or, say, 20 years to when the person who sat in the seat on the other side of this table was Bob Hawke and the person who sat behind him was Paul Keating. They understood the risks of government ownership of public infrastructure that could be commercialised. When they started that privatisation, we supported them because the people who do business best are businesses, not governments. Yet here we have a massive renationalisation of what should be a commercial solution. Here we have a government who, faced with the prospect of what they are proposing—which they basically just plucked out of the air—not being commercial, have said: ‘Oh, we’ll just build it anyway. We’ll just borrow the money and build it anyway. It’ll never be commercial, it’ll never be used properly, it decimates the largest telecommunications company in Australia, but we don’t care about that. We have a policy—our first one didn’t work. With mark 2, we’re going to renationalise fixed-line telecommunications infrastructure.’ And doing so, as I say, exposes taxpayers to all the risks of running a telecommunications business. There is no proposal, no prospectus, no analysis of the numbers. Just take the taxpayers’ money and, when there is not enough of that, borrow some more, put it on the tab, get the taxpayers to underwrite it and off you go. This will involve massive borrowings which, like the Rudd government’s cash splash, must be underwritten by the taxpayer. Despite the government’s claims that this legislation will privatise the network five years after it has been built, it is likely that that will not happen. The legislation says it will be privatised, but in fact it is likely that the taxpayers will be saddled with financial responsibility for the network well beyond the government’s pledged time frame. Who is going to buy this? And where is the analysis; where is the prospectus? Where are the people queueing up to be part of this? The coalition has always supported the ongoing development of broadband services and recognises the significance of universal access to fast, reliable and affordable broadband. It is no longer a luxury. Every household should have access to fast broadband. In contrast to Labor’s policy, the coalition takes a practical and realistic approach to ensuring Australians can have access to broadband without taxpayers being saddled with a massive debt. Over the last two years, Labor has squandered the opportunity to develop a national broadband network, due to its own incompetence. After running a failed tender for its NBN mark 1 proposal, which wasted 18 months and $20 million, in April 2009 Labor announced that it had abandoned its 2007 election commitment and would commence a new process in a bid to deliver NBN mark 2—at a hugely inflated cost to the taxpayer, of course. To mask the collapse of its original NBN plan, Labor has made an extravagant promise to spend up to $43 billion—$43 billion. Even with all the money that is being splashed about at the moment, that is still a huge number. In fact, I dare say there are few people in Australia who could actually comprehend the size of that, even if you tried to stack $100 bills on top of each other. The government is going to spend $43 billion to construct a fibre-to-the-premise network through the establishment of a government business enterprise in which the government owns a minimum 51 per cent. Labor’s proposal to spend up to $43 billion of taxpayers’ funds has been committed without any detailed cost-benefit analysis or any semblance of a business plan or prospectus. The government has made that promise despite a failure to conduct the work that needs to be done. It has not done the business analysis, it has not done the cost-benefit analysis and it has not done the economic modelling. The government does not even know whether this new broadband company can be commercially viable. I would have thought that would have been the first issue to be covered. This proposal has every appearance of being a stunt cobbled together to mask Labor’s failure to deliver on its original election promise and to get it through to the next election. Telstra shareholders, employers and customers should not be forced to mop up this government’s mess or compensate the government for its inability to deliver its election commitment of a national broadband network for a cost of around a 10th of this proposal—$4.7 billion. That was the promise they took to the election. We are now looking at $43 billion and rising. And Labor said nothing at all in the 2007 election campaign about breaking up Telstra, just as it said nothing at all—in fact, the contrary—in regard to private health insurance during the election. Again, this is something that it has pulled out of nowhere that has surprised not only Telstra but also of course the investors, including the mums and dads who have put their money in Telstra shares. This new and radical Labor policy is the ultimate consequence of the debacle that Labor has produced on broadband. Many leading analysts predict that this project will be not only not commercially viable, as Labor claims it will be, but also extraordinarily difficult to put in place. Labor’s proposal also confirmed that towns of under 1,000 people will not receive the high-speed 100 megabits per second services but services at around a 10th of the speed delivered by wireless or satellite. Herein lies an issue on which the member for Dawson should be standing up for his constituency. He has got small towns in his electorate. I know he has: I have visited them; I have been there. What is he going to say to them? ‘Oh, sorry; if you live in Mackay, that’s fine, but if you don’t you don’t get much’? Is that any way for a government to treat its constituency or for the member for Dawson to treat his constituency? Apparently so. Apparently there is no need to look after people who live in small towns. I grew up near a small town. I was school captain because I was the only person in grade 7. They did not have a big choice. Small communities are just as important as big communities. HVZ Thomson, Craig, MP Mr Craig Thomson interjecting— WN6 Macfarlane, Ian, MP Mr IAN MACFARLANE —There is always one in the crowd, isn’t there. This oversight, deliberate or otherwise, of small communities is unacceptable in every form. Under Labor’s plan, 10 per cent of the population, or 2.2 million Australians, will get the comparatively slower services despite the enormity of the planned spend. So they are spending 10 times what they said they were going to spend during the election campaign, and they still cannot get to 10 per cent of the population—with $43 billion. Such an outcome will, of course, widen the digital divide within Australia. It will disadvantage those people who, because of their businesses or because of their lifestyle choices, have chosen not to live in major capital cities. Every electorate has them. I have them all across my electorate: Bowenville, Quinalow, Maclagan, Nobby, Felton et cetera. They are small townships, old townships, places where generations and generations have grown up—and they will be excluded from this. The coalition believes government spending of this magnitude of money on broadband, is reckless, irresponsible and unnecessary. Labor’s attack on Telstra and its 1.4 million shareholders is an admission that its new NBN policy cannot be implemented without effectively renationalising the fixed line telecommunications network supported by the migration of Telstra customers. There has been an overwhelming range of criticism of the Rudd government’s plan to split Telstra. It has not been limited to shareholders but extends to union questions. I thought these people were supposed to look after unions. I thought the unions got every one of them into parliament. I thought every one of them was a member of a union. But the unions have been ignored in this as well. The unions have extended concerns and questions about the human cost of the split, and they fear that the forced action will stifle innovation. Of course there are myriad concerns about the return of big government and government intervention into the market. We all know the Prime Minister wants government to be at the centre of the economy. He is a good, old-fashioned socialist. He said he was a fiscal conservative, then he said he was a social democrat. He is just a socialist. He wants to be in the middle of the economy. He wants to own companies which he can control to go out there and compete against the companies that people have already invested in and put their hard-earned dollars in. The coalition believes that government funding of broadband should be specifically targeted at underserved areas. The coalition believes in working towards parity between the residents living in cities and those living in rural and regional communities. We do not support the attempts by government to pick winners in a rapidly changing technology sector. We believe in competition as a key driver of service expansion and innovation. It is interesting that this government is pushing an emissions trading scheme which is all about getting competitive outcomes for least dollar costs. Yet they just junk all that when it comes to telecommunications. They say: ‘All that economic rationality and all the privatisation work that Paul Keating and Bob Hawke did is all rubbish. We’ll just forget about all that for now. We’ll bring in something completely different, which is all about government owning and picking winners.’ The coalition is a strong believer that competition is the answer to making sure you get the best return for your buck. We believe that government can use various levers to encourage investment in broadband services and to ensure that service is provided in regional areas. It is also important that a safety net be put in place for those Australians who do not have affordable access to metro equivalent broadband services. We had a fully costed and targeted plan to deliver fast and affordable broadband services across the country, which was rejected by this government when it won the election. That is fine. They can say, ‘Your plan is wrong; our plan is better.’ But to get their plan to work they had to spend 10 times as much money as was required under both their original plan and under our proposal. Labor’s mismanagement of this issue included the cancellation of OPEL in rural and regional networks, which would have started working by now. The reality is that all we have seen from government so far is heavy-handed socialist policy combined with blunders that have cost the taxpayer huge amounts of money. 10512 12:50:00 Thomson, Craig, MP HVZ Dobell ALP 1 0 Mr CRAIG THOMSON —I rise to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. It is a little bit sad to hear the contributions from the member for Groom and the Liberal Party. After 12 years of office, after this being a major issue for the economy in terms of e-business and so forth, the best they can come up and lament is: ‘We had a plan when we were in government. We didn’t actually do anything, but we had a plan.’ It is terribly sad that their sum contribution to this debate is lamenting the fact that the plan they never put into action, the plan that they could not get up and going when they were in government for 12 years, is not what we have adopted. On this side of the House we are about actually doing something to improve broadband for ordinary Australians. It also should not come as a surprise to anyone here that we find the Liberal Party again weighing in on the side of the big bosses, big companies. They did it with private health insurance. They did it with the alcopops. Now we have the big gorilla Telstra, and they are in there behind them again. They are putting the interests of big companies in front of the interests of the communities and ordinary citizens. That should not come as a surprise to anyone. This bill amends the Telecommunications Act 1997 to require Telstra to functionally separate unless Telstra voluntarily structurally separates. It is to prevent Telstra from acquiring spectrum for advanced wireless broadband unless Telstra submits a voluntary enforceable undertaking acceptable to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to structurally separate, divest its Foxtel interests and divest its ownership of its hybrid fibre-coaxial network. It includes a provision which enables the minister to exempt Telstra from the requirement to divest its Foxtel interests and divest its ownership of hybrid fibre-coaxial network, where the minister is satisfied that any concerns arising from Telstra’s market powers are sufficiently addressed by the enforceable undertakings to structurally separate as accepted by the ACCC. It seeks to retain the priority assistance requirement on Telstra in requiring other providers to either offer a priority assistance service or inform customers of providers from whom the customer can purchase a priority assistance service if they require it. It enables the Australian Communications and Media Authority to issue infringement notices for contravention of civil penalty provisions as an alternative to the institution of court proceedings, with the details to be confirmed in consultation with the Attorney-General. Many of my constituents on the Central Coast of New South Wales will tell you about the shortcomings of their existing broadband services. Some of them do not even know why the service is called ‘broadband’, because it always seems to be so slow. In particular, in the lower half of my electorate, around the Wyoming area, all current solutions simply are inadequate. Wireless just does not work. People are reduced to trying to run their businesses on dial-up. Simply, broadband is not available as a solution for their businesses. In the business park, which is where my electorate office is at Tuggerah, we experience, as does everyone else in the business park, extremely slow broadband services several times during the week. As anyone knows, that is extremely frustrating if you are trying to carry out work. Shortly, our office is moving to the other side of the main trunk route, where broadband speeds are much faster. That this situation was allowed to develop shows the lack of investment by the former government in this technology. On the Central Coast there are many businesses—including home based enterprises, services and government departments—and thousands of individuals looking forward to the day when they can have a real broadband service. It is virtually impossible in the modern, technologically based commercial environments for businesses to function without a proper broadband service—one that does not let them down with slow, inefficient speeds and bandwidths. At Ourimbah, which is just 10 minutes away from my electorate office, we have the University of Newcastle campus. Among the many degrees and courses it offers is a bachelor of information technology. The irony is that the broadband, even to the campus on the Central Coast, is below standard and technically not up to scratch for what the students are studying. Nevertheless, these keen students will still manage to do well—going on to graduate and secure careers in managing and processing information, especially in large organisations. From the first year the IT students work on industry-relevant projects and case studies involving such areas as digital media, e-commerce and medical information systems. They learn the principles of good design, using interfaces, databases and systems, and they can choose from three majors—business information and communication technology; digital media and entertainment; and software development and application. Students at the Central Coast campus work on real world projects. Current students have set up an internet radio station and they review audience, content and funding sources to keep the station operational. They do all this despite these broadband limitations. They really should be commended for their ingenuity given the circumstances under which they are operating. Without proper broadband services, the careers of these future interactive web developers, programmers, business analysts and project managers will be limited, especially if they want to work locally. Graduates of this program who want to go into leadership roles in companies involved in the development, innovation or application of information technologies will probably only be able to do that in the big cities like Sydney because companies that need proper broadband to do business have yet to invest on the Central Coast, where broadband has been inadequate. Indeed, this requirement is not exclusive to IT-specific businesses because a growing range and number of businesses need good broadband to be competitive. The proposed reform package featured in this bill will have a positive impact on regional Australia in areas such as my electorate of Dobell on the New South Wales Central Coast. Consumers of telecommunications services in regional Australia are more exposed to any shortcomings in the effectiveness of consumer safeguards, such as the universal service obligation and the consumer service guarantee, than urban Australia. The proposed strengthening of the consumer protection framework will reduce the potential for regional and rural customers to experience falling service quality. Let us take a look at the overall context of how this bill will affect the future telecommunications landscape of Australia. The enhanced National Broadband Network initiative announced on 7 April 2009 outlined the government’s commitment to the rollout of the NBN as a wholesale-only, open access network. The government also announced on 7 April its commitment to reforming the existing telecommunications regulatory regime. A discussion paper canvassing options for regulatory reform was released on the same day. There was a strong response to the discussion paper, with 140 submissions received from a broad range of stakeholders. These included all major telecommunications service providers, broadcasters and media companies, state and territory governments, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, disability and consumer groups, business organisations and unions. The overwhelming message from almost every submitter was that the current regime did not work effectively to achieve its goals. They said it was failing business and consumers and that reforms were urgently required. Taking into account public submissions, the bill proposes a package of reforms to deliver a more efficient telecommunications market with appropriate consumer safeguards as the NBN rolls out. The telecommunications regulatory reform package represents the most significant reform to the telecommunications regime since open competition was introduced in 1997. Amongst the important reforms is Telstra’s vertical and horizontal integration. Telstra remains one of the most integrated telecommunications companies in the world. It owns the only fixed line copper network in Australia, which connects almost every premises in Australia, as well as the largest hybrid fibre-coaxial cable and mobile network and it has a 50 per cent stake in Australia’s largest subscription provider, Foxtel. The government believes that the failure to address the issue of Telstra’s level of integration has meant that current regulation has failed to promote effective competition. The lack of competition in the telecommunications sector has resulted in Australia lagging behind other developed economies on a range of telecommunications indicators. Telstra, as a vertically integrated company, provides both wholesale and retail services. As a result of Telstra’s vertical integration, Telstra has both the incentive and the ability to favour its own retail businesses over its wholesale customers. The overwhelming message from industry and the regulator, the ACCC, is that the current arrangements to address the issues arising from Telstra’s vertical integration are inadequate. Most of the industry and the ACCC have called for stronger functional and structural separation measures. It is the government’s clear preference for Telstra to voluntarily structurally separate. Such an outcome would be consistent with the wholesale-only, open access market structure to be delivered through the National Broadband Network. It is important to note that the structural separation can be achieved in different ways. It does not need to involve the creation of a new company by Telstra and the hiving-off of its fixed-line assets through the new company. For example, to achieve the aim of structural separation, Telstra could migrate its traffic to the National Broadband Network and sell or cease to use its fixed-line assets. This would result in full structural separation in time. The reason the government is not imposing structural separation is that the structure of Telstra is a matter for Telstra shareholders. It has been widely observed that imposing mandatory structural separation on Telstra is likely to raise compensation issues. However, if Telstra does not voluntarily structurally separate, Telstra will be required to separate along functional lines. Even though structural separation is considered to be the better option, functional separation will significantly reduce the incentives for Telstra to discriminate against its wholesale competitors which will result in increased levels of competition. The ACCC supports functional separation as the next best option to structural separation. Functional separation may take time to implement. However, it is expected that there will be early benefits for competition in the sector. This was the experience in both the United Kingdom and New Zealand which have implemented their functional separation arrangements. The independent regulator and competition authority for the United Kingdom communications industry, Ofcom, has said that the net effect of the BT functional separation undertakings has been positive for both competition and consumers. While structural separation in New Zealand is still in its early days, the results appear to be positive. In addition to its vertical integration, Telstra is also horizontally integrated as it owns and operates multiple different platforms: copper, cable and mobile. Such horizontal integration across platforms is in contrast to most other developed countries where there are restrictions on incumbents from owning both cable and traditional fixed-line telephone networks. Provisions in the bill intend to correct this unusual and inherently anticompetitive situation by requiring Telstra to choose its future path. The proposed amendments would prevent Telstra from acquiring spectrum for advanced wireless broadband services unless it structurally separates, divests its fibre-coaxial cable network and divests its interests in Foxtel. If the minister is satisfied that Telstra’s undertaking to structurally separate is sufficient to address its market power, the provisions allow the minister to exempt Telstra from either or both the requirements to divest its cable and pay-TV interests to acquire spectrum for advanced wireless broadband services. These measures in the bill will promote competition and will deal with the mistakes of the past when opportunities to prevent the problems created by Telstra’s vertical and horizontal integration were missed. Generally the reforms in this bill will address the current regulatory framework and improve competition. During the transition to the National Broadband Network environment, the existing telecommunications regulatory regime will remain important for delivering services in the interests of Australian consumers and businesses. The vast majority of industry submissions received by the department claimed that the regulatory framework is ineffective due to the ability of parties to engage in regulatory gaming—litigious obstruction aimed at delaying regulatory outcomes. For example, by mid-May 2009, 157 telecommunications access disputes had been notified since the commencement of the regime in 1997. By contrast, only three access disputes had been notified in other regulated sectors, including aviation and energy. Under the proposed changes, the ACCC will set price and non-price terms for access to declared services in an access determination to apply to all parties. The bill will also remove the right to seek merits reviews of the ACCC’s regulatory decision. This approach is being pursued because Telstra has continually used the regulatory and legal avenues available to frustrate regulatory outcomes and cause uncertainty for its competitors. By providing the ACCC with the power to issue the rules of conduct, the ACCC will be able to immediately address problems relating to the supply of declared services. The overarching objective of the reforms is to streamline regulatory processes and provide the industry with a greater degree of certainty in relation to regulatory outcomes. This certainly will encourage infrastructure investments, including in areas where it is most needed such as in my electorate on the Central Coast. Other reforms will mean that the ACCC will no longer be required to consult with a party before issuing a competition notice. This is aimed at ensuring the ACCC can act swiftly when it believes anticompetition conduct is occurring in a telecommunications market. The scope of another part of this bill will also be clarified to ensure that anticompetitive provisions apply to content services supplied by carriers on carriage service providers. This will prevent a dominant provider from using its power in one market to damage a competitor in another. This bill also reflects the government’s commitment to protect consumer access to affordable telecommunications services. The package of reforms strengthens the regulator’s ability to enforce existing consumer safeguards and mitigate the risk of Telstra reducing service quality on its copper network pre National Broadband Network. Specifically, the amendments contained in this bill are focused on retaining and strengthening existing regulation to better protect consumers’ access to, and reliability of, basic telephone services and to address concerns with the removal of payphones and in giving the Australian Communication and Media Authority more effective enforcement powers through the use of infringement notices. The measures reflect the government’s decision to retain the existing universal service obligation for Telstra for voice telephony and payphones for the time being  and to require improvements to service quality by introducing new minimum performance benchmarks in meeting the customer service guarantee. The new universal service arrangements will make it clear for consumers and Telstra the services, both voice and payphones, that Telstra must supply in fulfilment of the universal service obligation, including reliability and repair requirements, rather than these decisions being left up to Telstra’s discretion. This will address the concerns raised in the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee report that the universal service obligation arrangements are vague and are difficult to enforce. New requirements on Telstra regarding payphone removal address widespread concerns that Telstra has too much discretion in removing payphones. The Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee report highlighted a declining effectiveness of the customer service guarantee. New requirements on service providers will be imposed to ensure statutory performance benchmarks are met. If not met, the service provider will be subject to civil penalties. The bill will give ACMA broad powers to issue infringement notices or on-the-spot fines for breaches of civil penalty provisions in the Telecommunications Act 1997, the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 and chapter 5 of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. Looking forward, the government will consider the broader range of issues associated with the delivery of universal access in the NBN environment once the detailed operating arrangements for the NBN have been settled. Another important aspect of the bill is the removal of red tape. Consistent with larger commitments to address impediments to Australia’s long-term productivity growth, the government is committed to reducing red tape where the need for it no longer exists. Smaller carriers will be exempt from paying an annual carrier licence charge, from contributing to the universal service and national relay service levies and from reporting to ACMA as the costs of compliance for these carriers is often considerably higher than the monetary contribution. Redundant reporting requirements under the customer service guarantee, priority assistance and the network reliability framework will be removed so long as benchmarks are being met. The government will repeal unnecessary accounting and operational separation requirements once a new market structure—functional or voluntarily structural separation—is in place. The government will remove the outdated requirement for Telstra to provide internet services with speeds of 19.2 kilobits per second. The Australian broadband guarantee offers broadband speeds of 512 kilobits or more. To sum up, Australians can no longer afford to be left behind in world telecommunications. This bill puts in place the changes we must make if we are to keep up with other countries that have already made the necessary technological advances. I commend the bill to the House. 10517 13:09:00 Tuckey, Wilson, MP SJ4 O’Connor LP 0 0 Mr TUCKEY —The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 is one of the most disturbing pieces of legislation that have been introduced in this parliament in my 29 years here. I underline ‘disturbing’. It is the first time that I have seen a government deliberately bypass the Constitution by way of a device that denies an established and recognised business access to the means of doing its business. In this case, the government is virtually forcing Telstra to transfer its fixed line traffic to the government’s new business. It is backdoor nationalisation. The major losers will be the 1.4 million shareholders around Australia who bought shares believing they could trust this parliament. They bought a product from the previous government, and they knew what it was. All of a sudden there is a change of government and the issue of sovereign risk arises again. When commercially can you trust the parliament to protect your interests? Maybe the parliament will protect shareholders’ interests if the minor parties in the Senate reject this nationalisation bill. They are stealing the value of the investment of 1.4 million shareholders. There will be divisions in this House and a list will be available in Hansard of members of parliament who voted for this device. It will be interesting to know, as we publish it around Australia, how those 1.4 million shareholders will react. Telstra has the most diversified shareholding membership in Australia. They will all be very disappointed with those members of this parliament who do not offer them the adequate protection that they expect for their investment. That is the fundamental of the issue. Of course, it gets a lot worse than that. I remember in my parliamentary history when Telecom, as we knew it, was a government monopoly. We would all hang around on budget night to find out how much everyone was going to pay for their phone calls. That was a government decision. You did not read ads in the paper saying, ‘Come buy my telecommunications product,’ or see Dodo fly in to tell you what his deal is. You did not get any of that; you waited for the arbitrary increase in the cost of doing business. If you were a rural resident who wanted a phone on the wall and your farmhouse was up the road from the highway or where the main line went through, in the early 1980s you paid A$6,000 to get the wire put up the laneway. Nobody else was allowed to do it. Who is going to set the charges to run the fibre optics up that same laneway when the copper wire has been disconnected by Telstra under the instructions of this government for fear that it will otherwise lose access to the new dimension of telecommunications spectrum? I think of the implications of a government wanting to deal with a business that has upset it. If that business is heavily reliant on water, you cut their water off—‘I’ll teach you a lesson. You will do as I tell you.’ Have I purchased your property? Have I exercised section 51(xxxi) of the Constitution, which enables this parliament to acquire property on just terms? No, I just cut your water off. When your business ceases, you either come to heel or hand it over to me or the government company I have established that wants it and does not want to pay for it. Of course, if it is not that, it might be electricity. Do you cut that off? This is a process by which the government renationalises Telstra, which has been sold to the Australian people and has a very significant body of competition. The message of this legislation is: ‘You, the consumer, will be happy. You’ll get better prices.’ That is pretty interesting because it is not the consumers who feel they are so badly done by; it is the other operators in the market who do not think they are making enough profit competing with Telstra. That is where the whingers come from. Telstra does a few stupid things, like putting a $2 fee on people paying in cash. It enrages people and it was silly and it was stupid. The fact that Optus did it six months before is not a matter of dispute. Optus, for instance, does not do much in my electorate. It was a silly thing to do. There are occasions when Telstra let the people down in giving them the service they are entitled to. But they are out there wherever anyone wants communications. And it is no longer the telephone on the wall I mentioned. I get complaints from time to time, and I am surprised how often they come by email. My recollection of being in this job was, after the first time I was elected, the town of Denmark in the southern area of my electorate—a little town—had 160 outstanding applications to connect an ordinary phone. That was the level of service that the government provided. And here we are saying, ‘Let’s go back to the future’, on the argument that there will be a competitive advantage to consumers. Not as far as the cost of the network is concerned. The government is going to run that and Treasury will tell you how much to charge for it. There were some estimates made when this announcement was made about the cost to the consumer, and one of the managers of one of these competing industries—AAPT I think it was—got on the radio and said, ‘We’ve done a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and if every household in Australia takes a connection to this service at the estimated cost’—I repeat: ‘estimated cost’; no-one knows what it is going to cost—‘then in fact we estimate the monthly fee will be $200.’ That is if every household takes a connection. There has been a lot of hoo-ha in Tasmania, and so far about 16 per cent of people have said they might take it on. A big seminar, a big publicity stunt was organised. They had to cancel it; nobody wanted to come. So outside of running some blue wire down a conduit somewhere down in Tasmania, nothing has happened. I might add the town of Burnie got full cable connection from one of the sale packages of Telstra, I think. This was organised with Senator Harradine, who had a pretty simple view about Tasmania: if you did not look after it, he did not vote for you. That was a fact of life. But they got that, and that is working and it would be an interesting test case of just how many people have connected to that system. And that was for free. It is interesting that when one turns to the explanatory memorandum, the opening paragraph says: The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 (the Bill) introduces a package of legislative reforms aimed at enhancing competitive outcomes in the Australian telecommunications industry … The clerks who wrote the legislation were not game enough to say ‘which will deliver competitiveness’. They gave themselves a bit of wriggle room: ‘aimed at increasing competition’. Of course the second reading speech, which has been repeated by a number of speakers here today and others, makes much of this ‘vertical’ problem. Let me read the second paragraph: The package has three primary parts: addressing Telstra’s vertical and horizontal integration; streamlining the access and anti-competitive conduct regimes; and strengthening consumer safeguard measures … It all sounds pretty good and one after the other, including the minister in his second reading speech, made much of the benefits to the consumer. The minister said: These reforms are not without cost. I say ‘amen’ to that! However, international precedents where governments have made reforms to the underlying market structure indicate that the benefits will outweigh the costs. Well we are entitled to consult history in that regard. History is dominated by reforms of this nature introduced in the United States of America—an extremely big market. The state of California is the fifth biggest economy in the world, and it gives you some relative example of where Australia would stand in that listing. But they had the company—I think it was ATT or ATM. Anyway, it dominated— TK6 Southcott, Dr Andrew, MP Dr Southcott —AT&T. SJ4 Tuckey, Wilson, MP Mr TUCKEY —AT&T, was it? Anyhow, I know the company and at the time, because of competition issues, which are paramount in the United States, they really pay attention to them, they were instructed to break up that organisation into what became termed baby bells—little operations all working. The major company virtually ended up as the national overseas telecommunications company. And year by year by year, those baby bells got worse and worse and worse. They failed to maintain a reasonable level of pricing for the simple reason they were not big enough. And what has happened in quite recent years? They have all been re-coordinated into a single company. That is what has happened. It is typical in this place that we always ignore history, we always ignore that this has been tried once before. Everybody who comes into this place with an original idea usually finds someone else tried it years ago. And that great free enterprise economy America, in the interest of free enterprise, believing that it would gain benefit for the consumer by breaking up this big company, has discovered it was a dog: it did not work, it has been re-amalgamated. So here we are, starting on the baby bell road, when it has been proven a failure in the most free enterprise country in the world. That is pretty interesting, but that is not all of it. Telstra has a copper network. What does the explanatory memorandum tell us about how the government is going to steal this business without paying compensation? It is very clever. Structural separation may, but does not need to, involve the creation of a new company by Telstra and the transfer of its fixed-line assets to that new company. You do not have to do that, because if you legislated that you would have to pay the shareholders compensation. Alternatively it may— Why did the draughtsman put ‘may’ in special letters? Just to make sure that the judge that tries to adjudicate on behalf of the shareholders of Telstra gets the message: ‘We were too mean and tricky to let them get a dollar back for their investment. We want to nationalise it. We want to recreate a union-dominated service and we’re not going to give you any money for it.’ So we get the word ‘may’ highlighted twice in a single paragraph. Alternatively it may involve Telstra progressively migrating its fixed-line traffic to the NBN— You know, ‘Mate, you don’t have to come on board. We are just going to send you broke if you don’t. But we’re not going to force you to do it.’ No! And we’re not going to worry about your shareholders—those people who thought they could trust government in Australia. The government is prepared to do the dirty on you, because it has got a secondary agenda. Alternatively it may involve Telstra progressively migrating its fixed-line traffic to the NBN— The major part of its business for decades is, admittedly, now being overrun by mobile phones et cetera and the new spectrum. But you are not going to get any more of that, Telstra. That puts an implicit value on your copper line traffic, which you are going to transfer to our new government company. I will wait and see who wants to join as an investor, unless they are guaranteed that they get Telstra’s network for free. Private enterprise has not been rushing to the fold to get into this new company, but you can bet they have all been round the back door and said, ‘Mate, we’re with you when you knock off Telstra.’ I will read that again: Alternatively it may involve Telstra progressively migrating its fixed-line traffic to the NBN over an agreed period of time and under set regulatory arrangements,— you know, we will set the rules by which you give it to us— and sell or cease to use its fixed-line assets on an agreed basis. I have been in business for a long time. Would I have liked to have been running this deal: I take everything you’ve got and I tell you how I will take it. This approach will ultimately lead to a national outcome— in other words, a national-ised outcome— where there is a wholesale-only network not controlled by any retail company— Exactly right: the new telecom will be controlled by the government. Who does business as a retailer without the network? And who is going to run the network, even if there is private investment—49 per cent, thank you very much. This is unbelievable stuff. Of course, those who will suffer first will be the shareholders of Telstra, and those who will suffer second will be those who believe that the government of the day will provide them with a better communications network. At some time even their mobile phones slide back into the network. They hit a tower somewhere and the tower is interconnected with the cable network. Telstra has a huge amount of cable, and some of it is involved with its Foxtel business. But this legislation says you have got to get rid of Foxtel, too. That is going to be a great help to the shareholders! As time is starting to beat me, I want to say a couple of words about the role of the Future Fund and its chairman, Mr Murray, in this fiasco. I have never seen anything so bad. The Future Fund was given a huge block of Telstra shares for the benefit of the public servants, particularly of Canberra, particularly of the defence forces, to ensure their guaranteed superannuation on retirement. The Future Fund was one of the great initiatives of the Howard government, because the money was not there and there was evidence, because of the ageing of the population, that kids would not be able to afford it. Part of that investment was a huge block of shares. How did Murray and his mates use it? They went round and bullied the board; got rid of the directors who were fighting to protect the shareholders; and got rid of the chief executive, who happened to be leaving anyway. They have put a couple of softies in there, who apparently are going to listen more to the government and their shareholders. They ought to be sued for that. You talk about the ACCC. If they sell out their shareholders, they have broken the law. The minister says, ‘I never talked to Murray once.’ I am not surprised. I think that is probably the truth. But who did? Who sent Murray into their boardroom to bully the directors to sack their chief executive? Who sent Murray in, as the biggest shareholder of Telstra? And what did Murray get for it? What did he get for the superannuants he is supposed to represent? He got a reduced asset. Then he flogged a chunk of it—very surprisingly!—just before all this became public. But he still has a lot of shares. They are going to be worth a lot less money, and that is going to cost the public servants and the Defence Force people a lot of superannuation guarantee in time to come. I raised this matter—if anyone goes back to the Hansard—a long time ago. I could see it coming. This is a takeover. It is going to deliver a government managed fundamental network—(Time expired) 10521 13:29:00 Georganas, Steve, MP DZY Hindmarsh ALP 1 0 Mr GEORGANAS —I am very pleased to be able to speak in support of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. This bill is an amendment to the Telecommunications Act 1997. It has been brought to parliament to require Telstra to functionally separate unless it voluntarily structurally separates, and also to prevent Telstra from acquiring spectrum for advanced wireless broadband unless it submits voluntary enforceable undertakings that must be acceptable to the ACCC to structurally separate, divest its Foxtel interests and divest its ownership of its hybrid fibre-coaxial network. The bill we are debating today is about strengthening the existing consumer safeguards. When we look at this entire debate, it is all focused on ensuring that we strengthen the safeguards for consumers, strengthen their rights, ensure that they have a very competitive telecommunications network and broadband, and ensure that they are getting value for their dollar. It is about improvements to the universal service obligation. It is also about strengthening the increased incentives for providers to comply with the customer service guarantee, the CSG, and more stringent rules on the removal of pay phones. These may seem like little things, but out in our electorates and especially in my electorate pay phones are a huge issue. People who perhaps are not lucky enough to have mobile phones like we do, and others who cannot afford to keep a mobile phone or even a landline at their home, are required to make phone calls from pay phones. For those people, it is an absolute essential. The stringent rules on the removal of pay phones will certainly be very important out in the electorates and in the areas where people are suffering. This will be a big help to those people. Many people who do not have mobile phones and cannot afford a landline rely solely on these pay phones. If you are a pensioner, if you are old, or if you are sick and you require emergency services, this is your only contact to the outside world. So I welcome the introduction of more stringent rules on the removal of pay phones. The other area is the customer service guarantee. We need to ensure that we increase the incentives for providers to comply with the guarantee. We have seen evidence of this in many instances and I have many constituents who contact me on regular basis. For example, one of the recent cases was from Flinders Park in my electorate where a whole street was out. There were no phone connections. When we called Telstra on behalf of the constituents, they threw the blame onto Optus by saying it was due to an Optus provided phone in one particular house. Yet the infrastructure was run by Telstra. When we rang Optus, they told us it was not their problem because the infrastructure was Telstra infrastructure. The poor consumer was left in the middle of all this without a phone for close to 10 days. That is totally unacceptable when we know that they have a customer service guarantee that requires them to fix the problem within the metropolitan area within a certain time. That certain time is well under the week and a half that these people waited for. Again, I welcome the increased incentives for these providers to comply with the customer service guarantee and, as I said, the more stringent rules on the removal of pay phones. This bill has been brought forth to retain the priority assistance requirement of Telstra and requires other providers to either offer a priority assistance service or inform customers of providers from whom the customer can purchase a priority assistance service if they require it. It also enables ACMA to issue infringement notices for the contravention of civil penalty provisions as an alternative to court proceedings. This bill will also enhance the National Broadband Network initiative that was announced in April earlier this year when the government outlined its commitment to the rollout of the National Broadband Network as a wholesale only, open access network. This will drive more effective competition, and that is what we are after—effective competition which will help drive the costs down and ensure that the services are available. This will provide more effective competition in the telecommunications sector, which will lead to better outcomes for consumers and for businesses. That said, during the transition to the full rollout of the National Broadband Network, which will occur over eight years, the existing telecommunications regime is going to remain absolutely critical to the delivery of competitively priced services. That is why in April this year the government also announced its commitment to reforming the existing telecommunications regulatory regime. A discussion paper which canvassed options for regulatory reform was released on the same day as the National Broadband Network announcement. This followed a consultation process on similar issues during 2008 which saw over 80 submissions received. There was also a strong response to the most recent discussion paper, with 140 submissions received from a broad range of stakeholders. This included all the major telecommunications service providers, the broadcasters, media companies, the state and territory governments and even some local governments, the ACCC, disability and consumer groups, business organisations and unions. After consulting for 15 months and receiving well over 200 submissions, the overwhelming message from almost every submitter was that the current regime put in place by the previous Howard government does not work effectively to achieve its goals. That is very critical. The overwhelming majority message from everyone that submitted was telling us that the regime that was put in place by the previous government did not work effectively to achieve its goals. When you get those submissions and you hear the views of everyone that submits, it shows that all of this was failing business and failing the consumers, and that reforms were urgently needed in this area. The telecommunications regulatory reform package represents the most significant reform to the telecommunications regime since open competition was introduced in 1997. This will lead to better outcomes, more competition, more choice and more innovation for consumers and businesses. These reforms are critical, irrespective of the National Broadband Network rollout and the implementation study. Every day we delay these reforms, every day they are taking longer to implement, is another day of higher prices, less choice and less innovation for consumers and businesses, including those in regional Australia who are affected greatly. When I say this, it comes from my experience of speaking regularly to people in my electorate. Recently all of us, on both sides of parliament, saw the implementation of a $2 fee to have your bill sent out to you. There is no other business I can think of that actually charges you to send you a bill, but I suppose this shows the way that they view their customers. They basically are a monopoly and can do as they please. I had many calls in my office from many pensioners and people with disabilities as well as everyday people arguing the point as to why they should pay $2 to have a bill sent to them. If it is claimed that it takes more work and costs more to send a bill, you can argue the same thing for putting packaging on a bottle of Coke, for example, and charge a premium for that. It is just incredible that they can get away with it. As I said, every day we delay these reforms is another day of higher prices, less choice and less innovation for consumers and businesses all around Australia. So we must improve competition, and this bill is all about improving competition through reforms to the current regulatory services and their framework. During the transition to the National Broadband Network environment, the existing telecommunications regulatory regime will remain important for delivering services in the interests of Australian consumers and businesses. The vast majority of industry submissions received by the department claimed that the regulatory framework is ineffective. That is due to the ability of parties to engage in regulatory gaming—the tactics of delay and obstruction which lead to uncertainty for all parties. For example, by May 2009, 157 telecommunications access disputes had been notified since the commencement of the regime in 1997. By contrast, only three access disputes had been notified in other regulated sectors including the aviation and energy sectors. That goes to show that there is an issue and a problem in the area. I am proud to say that this government has bitten the bullet and gone ahead with tackling the big issue, the big picture, and ensuring that the consumer will be the winner out of all of this. The bill will also remove the right to seek merits review of the ACCC’s regulatory decisions. This will provide greater upfront certainty for access providers and access seekers by removing the months and potentially years of uncertainty while they wait for final prices to be resolved. It will provide the ACCC with the power to issue binding rules of conduct so that the ACCC will be able to immediately address problems relating to the supply of declared services. At this point I must congratulate the minister responsible for telecommunications, the Hon. Stephen Conroy. When some issues arose about some SMS advertising, with people being tricked, I suppose, into subscribing to SMS messages through unscrupulous text messaging and advertising, I went to see the minister about it. After some discussion, we now see that the ACCC has been given some real teeth to tackle these areas. We have seen prosecutions in the last six months of many of these particular service providers of SMS messaging. Now, all other service providers in that area have to comply with the stringent regulation that Senator Conroy has brought in. Giving the ACCC more teeth to be able to go out and prosecute these unscrupulous providers has been a very good thing. The overarching objective of the reforms is to streamline the regulatory process and provide the industry with a greater degree of certainty about regulatory outcomes. This certainly will encourage more effective competition and efficient investment. Again, competition and efficient investment will encourage better pricing. For whom? For the consumer. The bill will also reflect the government’s ongoing commitment to protect consumers’ access to affordable and high-quality telecommunications services. The government has carefully considered the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee’s report of September 2008, formed by the previous government. This package of reforms strengthens the regulator’s ability to enforce existing consumer safeguards. It includes ensuring that Telstra does not reduce the quality and reliability of services on its copper network during the transition to the National Broadband Network. The bill does not remove any of the existing protections for consumers; in fact, it will ensure that the existing protections are better enforced to provide better quality services and more responsiveness to faults. Many of the reforms address issues raised by the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee. These reforms will be good for all Australian consumers and for businesses, including those in rural and regional Australia who suffer disproportionately from the inequities of the existing regulatory framework. For example, the most recent ACMA published report, for the March quarter 2009, found that for payphones provided under the universal service obligations only 59 per cent of faulty payphones in remote areas were repaired within the three-day period specified in Telstra’s standard marketing plan, and I have to say that the numbers in the metropolitan area were not much higher. For new fixed telephone connections, 84 per cent were provided by the universal service provider within the customer service guarantee time frame for remote areas, compared to 90 per cent in urban areas. The amendments contained in this bill are focused on retaining and strengthening existing regulations to better protect consumers access to and the reliability of basic telephone services. As Australians, no matter where we live, whether in remote areas or in the city, we have a right to basic telephone services. We have found over the years this was not happening. As I said, I have whole areas six kilometres out of the CBD of Adelaide that cannot get broadband. In today’s world that is totally unacceptable. Under the previous government we failed in this area, falling way behind other countries. It is about time we got our standards back up there. The amendments also address concerns about the removal of payphones, as I said, and give the independent regulator, ACMA, more-effective enforcement powers through the use of infringement notices. The measures reflect the government’s decision to retain for the time being Telstra’s existing universal service obligation for voice telephony and payphones and to require improvements in service quality by introducing new minimum performance benchmarks for meeting the customer service guarantee. The new universal service arrangements will make it clear for consumers and for Telstra the services, both voice and payphones, that Telstra must supply in fulfilment of the universal service obligation, rather than these decisions being left up to Telstra’s direction. As we have seen over the last 10-odd years, when it has been left up to Telstra’s direction it remains stagnant. This will address the concerns raised in the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee report that the universal service obligation arrangements are vague and difficult to enforce. The new requirements on Telstra address the widespread concerns that Telstra has too much discretion on removing payphones. Again, if you cannot afford a mobile phone or a landline connection, the payphone in your neighbourhood is your access to the outside world. If a disabled person or a pensioner requires access to emergency services but has no access to a phone then it is a sorry world that we live in. Telstra probably think they are not making enough money from payphones, but I think it is wrong to look at it from an economic point of view. We should encourage them to have more payphones in every suburb, ensuring that the people I spoke about earlier have access to the outside world. This is a good bill. It will ensure more competition, it will help drive prices down and it will ensure that our broadband is up to scratch when compared with the rest of the world. Without these services we will not be competitive in business, we will not get our education standards higher and certainly we will alienate rural and remote areas even more than we currently do. That is why I commend this bill to the House. Just about everyone supports it because it is vital for Australia’s future. 10525 13:47:00 Oakeshott, Rob, MP IYS Lyne IND 0 0 Mr OAKESHOTT —The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 is an example of the ongoing conflicts that all public policymakers face when reviewing and considering legislation. With just about every piece of legislation that comes through this chamber, there are competing interests. There are certainly many competing interests in relation to this legislation at various levels—shareholder interests, private interests, public interests and the processes in and around how public policy is presented to this chamber. I am pleased that the member for Hindmarsh mentioned the $2.20 administration fee that Telstra has just introduced in relation to their billing system. That has caused a lot of concern on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. Only today I received a response from Minister Conroy to a concern raised by a constituent of mine. In that response we can see a point of conflict that relates to the bill we are discussing today. I quote from the letter from Minister Conroy: Telstra is a private company and the Australian government does not seek to influence decisions about the day-to-day management of its business. Consistent with Corporations Law requirements, these decisions are left to Telstra’s board and management. By relating that paragraph alone to this bill, I think I could build a pretty strong argument to express my concern about the ‘dead hand of socialism’ infiltrating the affairs of a private company. But the next sentence balances the concerns in this legislation. I again quote from the letter: The government’s role is to establish the legislative and regulatory framework within which telecommunications service providers operate. In response to those arguments, we have to consider framework questions for the future of the telecommunications industry and, ultimately, as public policymakers, ask the question that I hope all members in this place ask when they are considering legislation: what is the national interest in this legislation? Previous speakers spoke about shareholder interests and they circulated lists of those who may support this legislation. They hope that the 1.3 million Telstra shareholders will go to the ballot box and vote against those who support this legislation. I do not buy that argument at all, even though I have concerns about aspects of the way this legislation has been introduced and what the government is doing. I think shareholder interests are for the many good company directors in Australia to look after, as is their fiduciary duty. I do not think public policymakers should be concerned, for good or for bad, with what is in the interest of shareholders in Australia. Rather, as I said, our only concern when passing legislation through this chamber should be whether it is in the national interest. In that context, I can certainly see why the government is doing what it is doing with this legislation. Even though I do not like what the government is doing with this legislation, I can certainly understand why the government is doing what it is doing. But I do not like how the government is doing what it is doing. I think there are great concerns about the targeting of a private company in Australia today and the issues that are being raised in such an approach. The old Westminster system has tacking laws whereby you cannot attach one piece of legislation to another. In this legislation I think we are seeing a variation on that, with the targeting of one company in a broad sweep of telecommunications framework changes. I also mention the heavy hand or the dead hand of socialism that we are seeing in pushing towards a private telecommunications approach in Australia into the future and the lurch back to nationalisation and public involvement in telecommunications. That sets some concerns about policy direction and investment in an important industry for the country’s future. I also raise concerns about ministerial authority that is wrapped into this legislation. I have raised this in debate on previous legislation. We are increasingly seeing legislation presented to us in this chamber that leaves ministerial discretion as the answer to issues of concern. I do not think that is good enough. We as legislators should expect more from the executive. We should demand that ministerial discretion, as an approach to future policy, is not enough. I see it in this legislation in various places. When it comes to the crunch of how policy is going to be implemented, the answer provided in the legislation is nothing more than ministerial discretion. That is a concern for the national interest that is considered in this legislation. From a policy making position, I have concerns—and I have raised these before as well—about the open-ended nature of some of the questions that are presented. They are largely shaped around similar arguments that I just raised about ministerial discretion. I pick out one example in this bill. We are supposed to take on good faith how government will use its powers moving forward. It is a question of voluntary or involuntary structural reform. When you read the detail of the amendment, there really is no difference. Regarding the voluntary option, as presented to Telstra, 577A, subsection (2), says: In deciding whether to accept an undertaking under subsection (1), the ACCC must have regard to: the matters (if any) set out in an instrument in force under subsection (3) … We then go to subsection (3): The Minister may, by writing, set out matters for the purposes of paragraph (2)(a). We are supposed to go back and forth between those two points: whether a minister is going to set an instrument and, if so, what that instrument is going to be. It is important that, if we are to consider this legislation in good faith as members of the House of Representatives, we know what the minister in the executive is going to set in this instrument, if anything, and what matters he will raise in instruments. For example, will customer service guarantees and universal service obligations be in there? They largely answer the national interest question: is this going to be good for people in communities such as mine who are already struggling to have access to various telecommunications services? But in this legislation it is left as an open question. We are supposed to take on good faith the important question: what is the standard that the minister is going to set, via the ACCC, for a voluntary handover by Telstra? It is an important question that is unanswered in this legislation. I would certainly hope that, in a ministerial response, we get to see which matters, if any, are going to be included in the ministerial instrument that will set the standard for voluntary engagement. I raise the question of the former ACCC chairman, Allan Fels, about abuse of market power. This is a bullying approach to legislation. It is a fundamental change. Whilst I have previously said I do not think the arguments of 1.3 million shareholders are to be considered in a policy framework discussion, I do think their concerns are certainly worthy of consideration when shaping policy and substantially changing policy, such as we are seeing here. The Fels question that has been raised about abuse of market power is certainly one that I hope government considers on spectrum questions. That is a question for regional and rural areas which is also outstanding. Whilst I concur with the previous speaker that we will hopefully see strengthening of universal service obligations and customer service guarantees through this legislation, I think there are valid arguments and concerns about the upgrade path into the future for regional and rural areas. If Telstra is not the way forward for us in regional areas, are we supposed to put all our eggs in the one basket of NBN Co? Again, we are then left to hope in good faith that the government delivers in the eight-year time frame. Next year we have the question of retail price control being considered by government. Nothing has been raised in this legislation about that. If there is going to be a shift for regional areas and the future of regional areas, there is the question of how government will handle retail price control in the next decade. In a ministerial reply, we would like to hear what is going to be decided in the six-month window that will set us up for the future. In conclusion, as I said previously, I do not like the way it is being done or how it is being done, but I do understand why it is being done. With regard to the coalition’s amendment, certainly from my perspective, apart from the seven or eight extremely emotive words in the amendment, I think it has merit, but I do not think the next step of completely blocking this legislation and this important change for the national interest is necessary. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! It being 2.00 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. I am not sure whether the member wanted leave to continue speaking, but he has it if he wishes. 10528 Ministerial Arrangements 10528 14:00:00 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 0 Mr RUDD —I inform the House that the Minister for Foreign Affairs will be absent from question time today, as he is in Padang in Indonesia and will be inspecting the Australian contribution to earthquake reconstruction efforts there. As a result, the Minister for Trade will be answering questions on his behalf. 10528 14:00:00 Questions Without Notice 10528 14:00:00 10528 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP 885 Wentworth LP Leader of the Opposition 0 Mr TURNBULL —My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the defence minister’s plans for an early exit from the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, which were discussed in a lead item on today’s ABC News entitled ‘Faulkner hints at early Afghan withdrawal’. Could the Prime Minister explain how this early exit strategy can be reconciled with his own comments on CNN in New York as recently as 21 September, when he said: … this is a time for all countries of good will, all countries of strong resolve, to keep their shoulder to the wheel. 10528 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 Mr RUDD —The Australian government’s mission in Afghanistan is clear-cut. The mission is to train an Afghan national army brigade within the province of Oruzgan in order to provide a basis for security, in time to be transferred to the Afghan National Army to provide security in that province. Secondly, it is also to engage in training support for the Afghan National Police, to assist with civil policing functions within that province as well. Our third mission is to assist within capacity building within the provincial administration of Afghanistan, within the province of Oruzgan, so that that provincial administration can in time also assume responsibility for taking on the civil roles within that part of the country. That is our mission statement. As I have said consistently, Australia’s policy in Afghanistan is to be there for the long haul. Our policy is also to be there to realise that mission statement and, once that mission statement is completed, to withdraw our forces—as you would expect. I would also contrast that with the position which was taken on Afghanistan by the previous government. The previous government committed to a military operation in Afghanistan, supported by both sides of the chamber, in 2001 following the terrorist attacks in September of that year. 885 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP Mr Turnbull —Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The question related to the defence minister’s statement, and the Prime Minister has not addressed himself to Senator Faulkner’s remarks. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The Prime Minister will respond to the question. 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —Senator Faulkner’s remarks—that is, those of the defence minister—are entirely consistent with the mission statement that I outlined to the House. It is government policy. And the government’s policy stands in stark contrast to the flip, flop, flap that we saw between 2001 and 2005-06 on the part of those opposite when it came to Afghanistan. I notice the member for Eden-Monaro nods his head, in full knowledge of what actually transpired during that period of time. What actually happened during that period of time was that we had an initial Australian military commitment in Afghanistan at the end of 2001 and into 2002, and then mysteriously the Australian Defence Force commitment to Afghanistan reduced to zero. 9V5 Pyne, Chris, MP Mr Pyne —Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The Prime Minister was asked about how his comments are reconciled with the early exit strategy of the defence minister. He is not addressing that question. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The Prime Minister is responding to the question. 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —For the benefit of the member for Sturt, as I said before, the defence minister’s statements are entirely consistent with the mission statement of the government, which is of the threefold nature that I described before. We have a mission statement. The previous government did not. Let me return to the policy that we inherited from the previous government on Afghanistan, which was that, after 2001-02, mysteriously in 2003 the Australian Defence Force commitment reduced to zero. When I visited that country myself, I think from memory in 2004, in the company of the member for Bruce, we asked to meet with the representative of the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan at that time. We were told that he was out of the country. There was one Australian Defence Force liaison officer—am I right, member for Bruce?— VU5 Griffin, Alan, MP Mr Griffin —Absolutely: one. 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —who was at that stage located in Kabul. And then throughout 2003-04 we had a slow and steady deterioration in the security circumstances within that country. 885 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP Mr Turnbull —Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Prime Minister’s rewriting of history may be amusing for him but it is not relevant to the question. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The Prime Minister is responding to the question. 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —When the previous government decided to reduce its troop commitment to Afghanistan to zero, in the years 2003-04 and into 2005, it was not to the amusement of our allies. Indeed, the United States and others, I understand, at that time were somewhat concerned at the decision on the part of the Australian government to reduce its troop commitment to zero. So, when it comes to moral lectures on the part of those opposite, in terms of consistency and resolve in our policy and engagement in Afghanistan, I would suggest that the Leader of the Opposition reflects long and hard (a) on the previous government’s engagement, (b) on the fact that we now have a clear-cut mission statement and (c) that this government is at one with the government of the United States in bringing about the realisation of that mission statement in the province for which we are responsible. 10530 10530 14:06:00 Campbell, Jodie, MP HWC Bass ALP 1 Ms CAMPBELL —My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the importance of high-speed broadband for Tasmania and the nation? 10530 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 Mr RUDD —I thank the honourable member for her question because I know that she, being a Tasmanian member, has a deep commitment to the rollout of this infrastructure in the great state of Tasmania as do, I believe, government members generally with the rollout of this infrastructure across the nation. As I have travelled across Australia, the number of individual communities and businesses that have asked me the simple question, ‘When can we get access to high-speed broadband?’ has gone through the roof, because this represents a huge new turbocharging opportunity for productivity in the Australian economy and new business opportunities across the nation. The government’s plan is clear-cut. That is why we have established the National Broadband Network company to invest up to $43 billion on a high-speed optical fibre broadband network, in partnership with the private sector, with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. In Tasmania we currently have the lowest proportion of households with access to broadband—39 per cent compared with the Australian average of 52 per cent. The National Broadband Network will connect 200,000 Tasmanian premises at speeds of 100 megabits per second. This is good news for Tassie. The remainder of the state will be served by the next generation wireless and satellite networks, offering minimum speeds of 12 megabits per second. In July of this year the Tasmanian communities of Smithton, Midway Point and Scottsdale were announced for the stage 1 rollout of the NBN. Construction work for stage 1 is underway and the first services are expected to be available from the middle of 2010—good news for those communities, good news for Tasmania and good news for Australia. Today I am pleased to inform the House that stage 2 planning for high-speed broadband in Tasmania has commenced. Today, together with Premier David Bartlett, I can also announce seven new regional, urban and outer-urban locations across Tasmania that will be next to receive high-speed optical fibre broadband connections. Work will begin on detailed planning for stage 2, including timeframes, numbers of premises and technical and procurement details for the following communities: Sorell, Deloraine, Georgetown, St Helens, Kingston Beach, South Hobart and others. I am sure the member for Franklin, the member for Denison, the member for Lyons and the member for Bass will be keenly involved and interested in the rollout of these projects. These are good projects for Tasmania; they are good projects for the nation—infrastructure to turbocharge our productivity growth for the 21st century. We recognise that Australia needs a strong telecommunications market that fosters innovation, competition and high customer standards, especially before the NBN is built. But if we are to deal with the 12 years of inaction on telecommunications, we must now confront what constitutes Liberal Party policy today, because what they have indicated today is that they do not want to progress the reform of the telecommunications industry in Australia; they want a recipe for further delay to push this off, somehow, into next year and to ensure that we do not in fact get a resolution of this matter while the parliament sits through to the end of this year. I note that Senator Barnaby Joyce is supporting the government’s approach. He said today: … I’m not convinced we’ll listen closely to the argument that structural separation is not a good idea. I strongly believe it’s something that we should have done. There you have the Leader of the National Party in the Senate fully supporting the government’s policy on strucutral separation of Telstra. What does the Leader of the National Party in the House of Representatives say? What is his policy? A government member—Who is he? 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —It is not just, ‘What is his policy?’ The question from the backbench on the government side is, ‘Who is the Leader of the National Party in this House?’ So there we have the coalition once again split right down the middle on the question of a core piece of economic policy for the future of the nation. Senator Minchin has indicated his opposition to the government’s approach. If the Liberals had their way, Australians would be left using carrier pigeons for the future rather than accessing an internationally competitive broadband network. The government is getting on with the job. Our policy is clear. After 12 years of neglect on this critical piece of infrastructure those opposite are simply floundering and flailing in the wind looking for a policy. Leadership on this matter is being provided, curiously, by Senator Joyce, the Leader of the National Party in the Senate—leadership having again been abandoned by those representing the National Party and the coalition in the House of Representatives. The government’s plan is to build nation-building infrastructure for the future. Jobs today, infrastructure for tomorrow: that is our plan. I would suggest that those opposite get with the national project. 10531 Distinguished Visitors 10531 14:11:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER —I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of a parliamentary delegation from the Kingdom of Bhutan led by His Excellency Lyonpo Jigme Tshultim, Speaker of the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Bhutan, and His Excellency Thrizin Namgay Penjore, Chairperson of the National Council of the Kingdom of Bhutan. On behalf of the House I extend a very warm welcome to our visitors. Honourable members—Hear, hear! 10531 Questions Without Notice 10531 10531 14:12:00 Truss, Warren, MP GT4 Wide Bay NATS 0 Mr TRUSS —My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer him to his statement six days ago on Adelaide radio that ‘huge political instability in Afghanistan’ was one of the so-called push factors in the surge of asylum seekers in the waters north of Australia. I ask the Prime Minister if he is concerned that the announcement of an early exit strategy from Afghanistan, as foreshadowed by the defence minister, would lead to greater political instability in Afghanistan, more Taliban terror against Afghans and therefore a much greater flow of refugees? 10531 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 Mr RUDD —Suddenly, it seems, the coalition have discovered push factors in asylum seekers. Suddenly, a week and a half into this debate, they have discovered push factors. Why? They spot a sliver of light—a possibility—for getting some political advantage. Except, once again, they have failed to do their homework. The defence minister has consistently argued that Australia must stay the course in order to execute the mission statement which I referred to before. Those opposite now seem to embrace the argument that one of the push factors alive in the asylum seekers debate globally is in fact instability in Afghanistan, and, as a consequence, parallel debates about instability in Sri Lanka. All governments must of course be seized of what is happening within push factors around the world. In a specific reference to Afghanistan, the UN Secretary General stated that in 2008 we saw the ending of the most violent year in Afghanistan since 2001. That is fact No. 1. A further fact relevant to this is that in 2008 there was an 85 per cent increase in the number of Afghan asylum seekers claiming protection in industrialised countries worldwide. Thirdly, between 2005 and 2008 the number of internally displaced persons assisted by the UNHCR in Afghanistan increased from 142,000 to 230,000, an increase of 62 per cent. These are the facts which the global community is dealing with. If you look also at the impact which those numbers have had right across the rest of the world, you will see a parallel impact in terms of the number of Afghan refugee flows across Europe, including the United Kingdom, as in fact has occurred in parallel circumstances to Australia. That is what is called in the debate ‘push factors at work’. That is why this government has remained resolute in its commitment to prosecuting the military campaign in Afghanistan. We cannot afford for that country to lurch back into the circumstances that prevailed prior to 2001. We do not want that country to become a training ground for terrorists. We do not, therefore, believe that we should replicate the policy of those opposite between the years 2003 and 2005, which was to abandon the field altogether. Instead, this government’s policy has not simply been to continue the troop presence that we inherited from those opposite but to increase the troop presence by 40 per cent in a decision taken by this government earlier this year. The government’s mission statement in Afghanistan is clear. It is resolute. We will continue to prosecute that strategy in partnership with our ally the United States of America. 10532 10532 14:16:00 Sidebottom, Sid, MP 849 Braddon ALP 1 Mr SIDEBOTTOM —My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government representing the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Will the minister outline to the House the response of business and policy analysts with expertise in communication to the government telecommunications regulatory reform? 10532 Albanese, Anthony, MP R36 Grayndler ALP Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government 1 Mr ALBANESE —I thank the member for Braddon for his question. I know that he appreciates the importance of broadband and the government’s plan for the National Broadband Network, which is the largest single infrastructure project in Australia’s history. The government announced historic reforms to modernise telecommunications regulations in the interests of all Australians. The communications sector and, indeed, the business community know that these reforms are sound, they know they are long overdue, and that is why these reforms were welcomed. They know that the nation requires a quantum leap in both infrastructure and competitive arrangements so that all Australians have high-speed and affordable broadband. But there are some people who are opposed to this plan. Senator Minchin, of course, is opposed to structural separation. However, Senator Joyce, the voice of rationality and reason over there in the Senate, unlike the alternative Deputy Prime Minister of the nation who sits across here unbelievably, is actually supportive of the project and supportive of the reforms that the government has advanced. The coalition may have different views, but the one thing that it appears they can agree on is that they should delay the legislation. Sound familiar—delay the legislation; don’t act for 12 years and sit on your hands. When the government proposes reform and action, whether it is on telecommunications regulatory reform, the CPRS or any of the major questions confronting the nation, the coalition vote for delay. They say that the legislation should be put off at least until after the NBN discussions are completed. But the regulatory reforms that we are advancing are critical, irrespective of the NBN. The fact is that the existing regime has failed to deliver the right competitive outcomes for Australian consumers and businesses. Those opposite have been talking up the knowledge on communications in particular of Paul Fletcher, the Liberal candidate for Bradfield. Perhaps they should actually listen to what Paul Fletcher has to say on these issues, because he does know a little bit about communications. He says: The core problem in the Australian broadband market is the flawed market structure, with Telstra hugely dominant. In his recent book Wired Brown Land he gives his assessment of the value of the structural separation of Telstra. He responds to arguments—the same arguments that are being put by people such as Senator Minchin. When Paul Fletcher enters this place Senator Minchin will be his shadow minister for communications. This is what Paul Fletcher says about the arguments against structural separation: In fact, as an argument, it was a dud. It was the old and comprehensively discredited claim that what is good for Telstra is good for Australia. What is good for Australia is a more efficient, competitive and fairly priced broadband market. That is what Mr Fletcher had to say about these issues. I say to those opposite that those keen to hold back these vital and historic reforms have to explain how delay will benefit consumers and our small businesses because these reforms are absolutely critical—they are fundamental. We have made it clear that it is our intention to address the problems with action and the time for action is right now. 10533 10533 14:21:00 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP 0 Ms JULIE BISHOP —My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the report in today’s West Australian newspaper that ‘Indonesia will be offered millions of dollars to intercept and house asylum seekers who attempt to make the journey to Australia’, which could be paid ‘as a bounty for every boat intercepted’. Will the Prime Minister inform the House whether such arrangements are under consideration and the estimated cost to Australian taxpayers? 10533 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 Mr RUDD —I thank the Deputy Leader of the Opposition for her question, which goes to the fabric of our cooperation with Indonesia in dealing with the global challenge of people smuggling. I note that that question follows the previous question from the leader of the National Party, which pointed to the push factors which are at work, one of which is from Afghanistan and another of which is from Sri Lanka, given the recent civil war. This government has been absolutely consistent in saying that in dealing with this problem, which is a global problem, we must maximise our global cooperation with the UNHCR and resettlement countries. That is the first part of it. The second part of it, of course, is to employ the cooperative arrangements with Indonesia and other regional countries through the Bali process and also under the provisions which are provided for under the Lombok treaty—which I seem to recall was negotiated by those opposite, though it was ratified and concluded after this government took office. That treaty, in one of its provisions, deals with cooperation between Australia and Indonesia on people-smuggling. The President of Indonesia and I have made no secret of the fact that we intend to continue to develop a framework for further cooperation on people-smuggling. That is what we intend to do. That will mean providing additional assistance to our friends in Indonesia to help with the resettlement task and to help with all the associated functions which they might undertake in the future to assist Australia and other countries in dealing with this regional problem. There is nothing remarkable in that; it is the right thing for Australia to do. This government makes no apology whatsoever for the fact that we have a tough line on asylum seekers when it comes to dealing with the challenges of people smugglers around the world—tough but humane. 10534 10534 14:23:00 Sullivan, Jon, MP HVS Longman ALP 1 Mr SULLIVAN —My question is to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Why is the government committed to comprehensive regulatory reform in Australia’s telecommunications sector? What impact will these reforms have? 10534 Tanner, Lindsay, MP YU5 Melbourne ALP Minister for Finance and Deregulation 1 Mr TANNER —I thank the member for Longman for his question. I know only too well from a previous life, as shadow communications minister, how important these issues are in his electorate. The government is committed to building a superfast national broadband network. As part of that commitment, we are also committed to serious regulatory reform in telecommunications to ensure that we create a genuine competitive market to maximise innovation, to maximise choice, to maximise high-quality service and to lower prices for consumers. This program is a fundamentally important microeconomic reform program that is long overdue. The Howard government was obsessed with privatising Telstra and neglected to tackle the industry structure issues that, as the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government just outlined, have been correctly identified by the possibly soon-to-be Liberal member for Bradfield. Under the regime that we inherited from the Howard government, Telstra remains almost two-thirds of the entire telecommunications sector, earning the vast bulk of the profits. The regulatory regime is comprehensively intrusive, burdensome and excessive, and it gives Telstra the incentive to focus much of its energy on ‘gaming’ the regulation rather than innovating, improving its services or reducing prices. Under the Howard government the biggest growth sector of the Australian economy was telecommunications lawyers, and Telstra were employing a lot of them. That might have been good for the lawyers, and it was not bad for Telstra, but it was terrible for the Australian economy. We ended up way behind comparable countries in broadband, with Telstra with little incentive to innovate, to develop new products, to get new services out to the market or to provide better services or to cut prices. There will be many members in this House who represent small to medium sized towns who will remember that not so long ago, for those towns to have a chance of getting ADSL—the poor person’s broadband—at their exchange, they had to gather 150 signatures and present them on bended knee to Telstra, after which maybe Telstra would think about delivering some broadband services to that community. The government is committed to comprehensive reform, to a genuine open market, to serious competition and to enabling innovation for what will be the backbone of Australia’s 21st century economy. It is great to see that our old friends in sections of the National Party, led by Senator Joyce, at least understand that, because some of them represent the kinds of rural communities that desperately need high-quality broadband and have little competition, little choice—they get Telstra or nothing. We want to give them a genuine open market, which the opposition used to stand for—a genuine competitive market, where there are incentives to invest, to innovate and to compete, that delivers better outcomes for Australian businesses and consumers. It is understandable that some Telstra shareholders are concerned about the government’s plans. But I would say this to those in the investment funds market who are trying to stir up that concern: it is important to look at the total picture. Yes, the loss of Telstra’s monopoly dominance does produce some risks and challenges for Telstra. But these changes also involve risks and challenges for other telcos. Also, what the government’s plans entail, of course, is a giant leap into a new telecommunications area with government-underwritten infrastructure that will be hugely beneficial to telecommunications providers. And who is the biggest telecommunications provider in Australia? Telstra. So, although they are challenged on one front, they have huge opportunities on the other—just as, if rail infrastructure is upgraded, rail operators benefit. If the government upgrades telecommunications infrastructure, makes that big advance to genuine 21st century broadband, guess who is best positioned to sell more services, to innovate more and to invest more? Telstra is the answer to that question. Telstra shareholders should not accept the line that they are getting from some fund managers. There are huge positive opportunities for Telstra in the government’s plans. In the modern economy telecommunications are just as fundamental to economic activity as financial services—just as fundamental. Telstra will continue to be the key player in telecommunications in Australia into the future, but it will be in a genuinely competitive market where the incentives are there for them to innovate, to take risks, to invest, to develop new products and to ensure that Australia can make that giant productivity improvement that we so desperately need for our future. 10535 10535 14:29:00 Ley, Sussan, MP 00AMN Farrer LP 0 Ms LEY —My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. I refer the minister to his statement yesterday that the Australian Federal Police report Strategic intelligence forecast—transnational criminal trends and threats to Australia, which reportedly stated that people smugglers will market recent changes in Australia’s immigration policy to entice potential illegal immigrants, was ‘highly classified and disseminated internally’. Will the minister confirm that a version of the report was sent to nine agencies in Australia and six agencies overseas, including the New Zealand Police, the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Will the minister also inform the House— Government members interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! Those on my right! 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —Will the minister also inform the House whether he has now read or been briefed on this report and explain to the House what it says about the impact of the government’s changes to border security policy? 10535 O’Connor, Brendan, MP 00AN3 Gorton ALP Minister for Home Affairs 1 Mr BRENDAN O’CONNOR —I thank the honourable member for her question. I thought after yesterday’s effort she would have realised that there is no way in which this particular classified report would be disclosed publicly. As the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police said two days ago in Senate estimates, there was prepared in March of this year an internal classified report that was provided to people within the Australian Federal Police. He went on to confirm there was a sanitised version that was provided to agencies within this country and some agencies outside of this country. Opposition members interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! 00AN3 O’Connor, Brendan, MP Mr BRENDAN O’CONNOR —He went on to say—if the opposition just calm down a bit; just relax and we will get to it—in Senate estimates, while being questioned by Senator Brandis, that he confirmed that the intelligence report had never been provided to ministers. Indeed, he stated that the report was an ‘operationally focused document’ and it would be inappropriate to provide it to ministers. That is already on the record. Unless the shadow minister for justice is seeking to suggest that the Australian Federal Police commissioner would indeed mislead the Senate— 9V5 Pyne, Chris, MP Mr Pyne —Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. 83Q Schultz, Alby, MP Mr Schultz —So PC blogs can have it but not the minister—what a joke! 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Now that the member for Hume seems to have ceded the call to the Manager of Opposition Business, who was the only one seeking the call, I now give the member for Sturt the call. 9V5 Pyne, Chris, MP Mr Pyne —With great respect, Mr Speaker, under the standing order of relevance the minister was asked: as the report has circulated around the world, has he now availed himself of the information so he can do his job properly as a minister? 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member will resume his seat. The minister is answering the question. 00AN3 O’Connor, Brendan, MP Mr BRENDAN O’CONNOR —It is quite remarkable that the shadow minister for justice and customs would indeed challenge the comments made by the Australian Federal Police commissioner. I repeat: the sanitised version, as the commissioner outlined, was provided to agencies inside this country and outside this country. This classified report was not provided to ministers of this government. It would have been improper for him to provide it. I cannot believe that the shadow minister again seeks to verbal the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police. 10536 10536 14:34:00 Hale, Damian, MP HWD Solomon ALP 1 Mr HALE —My question is to the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Social Inclusion. How will the National Broadband Network assist in delivering the digital education revolution? What other policies are assisting in making Australian schools relevant for the 21st century? 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for O’Connor on a point of order? HWD Hale, Damian, MP Mr Hale —You know the answer, Wilson—sit down! SJ4 Tuckey, Wilson, MP Mr Tuckey —I’m taking a point of order— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for O’Connor will ignore interjections. SJ4 Tuckey, Wilson, MP Mr Tuckey —This is a point of order on the question, before we get to the answer. Will the standing orders now give some opportunity for answers to questions or questions regarding matters being debated in the House? In the interests of the proficiency of question time, we are presently debating this issue and the last four ministers have wasted the time of this parliament when they could have put their name on the speakers list. R36 Albanese, Anthony, MP Mr Albanese —Keep up! SJ4 Tuckey, Wilson, MP Mr Tuckey —Let me tell you, keep doing it, because the shareholders are very— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for O’Connor will resume his seat! Order! As the member for Warringah has actually been of good behaviour today, I will not suggest that he go to the member for O’Connor and explain to him the standing orders changes that were made during the last parliament. And I thank the member for Warringah for his behaviour today so far. EZ5 Abbott, Tony, MP Mr Abbott interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —I know. Famous last words! The Deputy Prime Minister has the call. 10537 Gillard, Julia, MP 83L Lalor ALP Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion 1 Ms GILLARD —I thank the member for O’Connor for putting it beyond doubt that the opposition are living in the past. They are living in the past, particularly about the need for 21st century learning environments and the difference that the Digital Education Revolution and national broadband can make to the learning experiences of Australian students. Whilst the opposition lives in the past, in the last century, the century before or wherever they are marooned today, the government is getting on with the job of delivering 21st century learning environments and 21st century schools to Australian students and teachers. We believe Australian students deserve to learn in the best of facilities. That is why we are investing $16.2 billion in Building the Education Revolution, it is why we are investing $2½ billion dollars in trade training centres and it is also why we are investing $2.2 billion in our Digital Education Revolution to bring computers to schools. I can update the House and provide the following information to date: almost 290,000 additional computers are there and approved for 2,700 secondary schools. Already, 154,000 computers have been delivered to 1,694 schools across Australia. As we continue to fund this program we will reach a one to one ratio of computers to students for students in years nine to 12 of secondary school by the end of 2011—a promise given in the 2007 election and a promise being delivered. Of course, the Digital Education Revolution, working with the National Broadband Network, will open up a new era of learning for students in Australian schools. It will mean that they are able to source the best of curriculum, content and research material from around the world. It means those students who are in small schools and who perhaps do not have a specialist teacher, perhaps a specialist science teacher or language teacher, will be able to access content and contact with those specialists through the power of the National Broadband Network and our Computers in Schools program. It means, of course, that Australian students will be able to develop the skills that they will need for life and for work in the 21st century. In addition to the support for computers through our Digital Education Revolution, the Australian government is committing $100 million to support the provision of high-speed broadband connections to schools and $80 million for the establishment of a vocational education and training broadband network for technical and further education institutions. Whilst the opposition, like the member for O’Connor, live in the past, we are making sure that Australian children will thrive in the future with the skills they need in this century. 10537 Distinguished Visitors 10537 14:40:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER —I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of a delegation from Papua New Guinea. On behalf of the House, I extend a very warm welcome to the members. Honourable members—Hear, hear! 10537 14:37:00 Questions Without Notice 10537 14:37:00 10537 Ley, Sussan, MP 00AMN Farrer LP 0 Ms LEY —My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. I refer to the minister’s answer yesterday when he said the reason the AFP report entitled Strategic Intelligence Forecast—Transnational Criminal Trends and Threats to Australia could not be released was because it relates to operational matters. Can the minister explain how advice and commentary on government policy can be characterised as an operational matter? Will the minister clear these matters up once and for all and release the report? 10538 O’Connor, Brendan, MP 00AN3 Gorton ALP Minister for Home Affairs 1 Mr BRENDAN O’CONNOR —I thank the honourable member for her question. Can I say to the House that we understand that the opposition are trying to score some points on these very important matters. We understand that despite the overwhelming evidence in relation to these matters, the reason why there has been an increase in arrivals is because of push factors. We know the opposition are very desperate to score some points. I say to the House that it is quite outrageous that she wants to call into question the character of the Australian Federal Police commissioner by suggesting— 1K6 Billson, Bruce, MP Mr Billson interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Whilst I might expect it from the member for O’Connor, I do not expect it from the member for Dunkley. It is not assisting. 9V5 Pyne, Chris, MP Mr Pyne —Mr Speaker I raise a point of order that goes to relevance. The latest fig leaf of the minister was operational matters. He should answer the question— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member will resume his seat. The minister will respond to the question. 9V5 Pyne, Chris, MP Mr Pyne interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for Sturt is warned. 00AN3 O’Connor, Brendan, MP Mr BRENDAN O’CONNOR —Can I again repeat that at the Senate estimates hearing on 19 October 2009—2 days ago—AFP Commissioner Negus confirmed that the intelligence report in question has never been provided to ministers and, indeed, he stated that the report was an operationally focused document and it would be inappropriate for it to have been provided to ministers. 10538 10538 14:43:00 Billson, Bruce, MP 1K6 Dunkley LP 0 Mr BILLSON —My question is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to his comments about the National Broadband Network on 7 April this year: … there couldn’t be a better time for a more important investment than this one … Is the Treasurer aware of comments reported in News Ltd papers today by Paul Broad, the CEO of Australia’s third-largest telecommunications company, AAPT, who described the plan as ‘a phenomenal waste of taxpayers’ money’? Is the Treasurer still prepared to advise Australians to invest in such a scheme even though the government admits it does not even have a business plan for its NBN scheme? 9V5 Pyne, Chris, MP Mr Pyne interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for Sturt will leave the chamber for one hour under standing order 94(a). The member for Sturt then left the chamber. 10538 Swan, Wayne, MP 2V5 Lilley ALP Treasurer 1 Mr SWAN —We have had yet another example of the inability of any of those opposite to face up to the long-term reforms that are so essential in this country to lift our productivity and to build our prosperity right throughout this century. Nothing is more important than fast national broadband. There has probably been no more debate about any other topic than on this topic, which goes to the core of lifting our productivity. There is an incredible consensus in the business community about the importance of this initiative. It may be that somebody made that comment today. But what I know is that as I move around the business community there is strong support for what the government has put forward. Those opposite put this in the too-hard basket for 12 long years. The consequences have been there for our economy. We are proud of putting forward this bold initiative to lift our productivity and to meet the challenges of the future. 1K6 Billson, Bruce, MP Mr Billson —I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a simple question about where the business plan is for the NBN you want people to invest— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for Dunkley will resume his seat. 2V5 Swan, Wayne, MP Mr SWAN —The member knows the answer to that. DYN Jensen, Dennis, MP Dr Jensen interjecting— 2V5 Swan, Wayne, MP Mr SWAN —We have announced the staging of this proposal and we are putting in place all of those arrangements. He knows that perfectly well. They are so acutely embarrassed by their division on this issue that here they go again with a whole lot of smokescreens. We are serious about this proposal. The investment is being made. The business case is being developed. Australia will be a better place for it. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Before giving the call to the member for Blair, to the member for Tangney I say that, given that he was interjecting while not in his place—which is grossly disorderly—he should have been given one hour straight away. But I will warn him, and he should understand the meaning of the warning. 10539 10539 14:47:00 Neumann, Shayne, MP HVO Blair ALP 1 Mr NEUMANN —My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the progress of the Henry tax review and why tax reform is important to the future of the nation? 10539 Swan, Wayne, MP 2V5 Lilley ALP Treasurer 1 Mr SWAN —I thank the member for Blair for this very important question, because here is yet another example of how this government is prepared to tackle the long-term challenges that we need to tackle to reform our economy and to build prosperity in the 21st century—something that those opposite were incapable of doing when it came to the vital question of tax reform during 12 long years in office. We are all aware that at the height of the mining boom they went on a spending spree and instead of using those valuable resources to invest in fundamental long-term tax reform they simply squandered them. It will fall to this government to put in place a process of long-term tax reform so that we can maximise the opportunities that will surely come to this country as the global economy begins to recover in what is going to be the Asian century. We need fundamental tax reform in this country. The Henry review is the vehicle. This will be the single biggest review of the tax system in something like 50 years. The review has been out there working closely with everybody who is interested. The review has received over 1,300 formal submissions and over 4,000 pieces of correspondence. It has had something like 200 meetings; it has convened conferences. I am not going to speculate about the outcomes of the Henry review. That report will be handed to the government at the end of this year and we will release it with an initial response early next year. What I can talk about are the priorities that we have as a government for tax reform. We want to make the system simpler, fairer and more competitive. Individual Australians do not just see a tax system. What they see is a jungle. What we need to do is to make this system simpler. It is a fact that a very large proportion of Australians have to use a tax professional to prepare their tax returns—the largest proportion of any nation in the world. That is why we need to simplify the system. Australians deserve a simpler tax system. They need a simplified form of taxation as well. Tax reform will be hard. As I said before, those opposite squibbed it. They did not engage in fundamental tax reform at the peak of the mining boom. When the investment could have been made, they did not make it. This government will take the hard decisions when it comes to tax reform to secure the foundations of this economy and make them stronger for the future. Those opposite cannot face up to this reform, to fast national broadband, to educational reform or to any of the other long-term reforms that we have put in place. That is yet another demonstration of why they are incapable of governing. 10540 10540 14:50:00 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP 885 Wentworth LP 0 Mr TURNBULL —My question is to the Prime Minister. How does the Prime Minister justify urging Australians to buy bonds in the $43 billion National Broadband Network, assuring them that those bonds would be a good investment, asserting that the National Broadband Network would be commercially viable and claiming its services will be affordable when the finance minister and, just a moment ago, the Treasurer have admitted that all of those statements were made without any business plan or cost-benefit analysis—in other words, without any reasonable or responsible basis for believing those statements were true? E0H Laming, Andrew, MP Mr Laming —If he was in business, he would be struck off. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Bowman is warned. 10540 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 Mr RUDD —I am taken by the ideological obsession of those opposite against a National Broadband Network; I am taken by an ideological obsession which, in coming from the National Party in particular, surprises me, because so many Australians out there lack high-speed and effective broadband services. The government’s policy is clear. The implementation study is underway. We will work with the management of the NBN Co. We will roll this out over time. I am pleased today to confirm the second implementation phase in the state of Tasmania. Our policy is clear. Your policy is split right down the middle when it comes to the future of the National Broadband Network and Telstra. 10540 10540 14:52:00 Gibbons, Steve, MP 83X Bendigo ALP 1 Mr GIBBONS —My question is to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. What has the Commonwealth government done to help those affected by the devastating Victorian bushfires in February this year? 10540 Macklin, Jenny, MP PG6 Jagajaga ALP Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs 1 Ms MACKLIN —I thank the member for Bendigo for his question, but also for his work on behalf of the many families in Bendigo who were so affected by the fires earlier this year. It is now eight months since the tragedy of the Victorian bushfires and it is the case that the government is still working with communities, families, the Victorian government and, of course, the Red Cross appeal fund to help people rebuild their lives and their businesses after what was nothing short of devastation. I would like to acknowledge the work that has been done by other local members and in particular I would like to thank Fran Bailey, the member for McEwen, for the work she has done, and to acknowledge her work. I thank her as she approaches her retirement. We do appreciate, Fran, in the area that was so badly affected, your very sincere dedication. I would also like to thank Bill Shorten, the parliamentary secretary who has done so much and been out there week after week, meeting with communities, listening to their issues and dealing with individual problems. I think all of this shows that a lot of people have worked with the locals to do what they can in the face of such devastation. Last Friday, at the Flowerdale Primary School, the Prime Minister was there with the Victorian Premier; the Chair of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, Christine Nixon; and Pat McNamara from the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund. Together they released the state-wide plan for bushfire reconstruction and recovery in Victoria, entitled very appropriately, I think, Rebuilding Together. The plan provides a further $193 million to continue rebuilding schools, police stations, sportsgrounds and community centres—all essential for recovery. It is also funding some very important environmental recovery—restoring waterways in catchments, repairing national park facilities and restocking local streams. All of these are critical issues that need to be addressed in those parts of Victoria that were affected by the bushfires. The Commonwealth government is contributing $52 million to this plan, and that money is on top of the $400 million which has already been committed by the Commonwealth as part of our response to the rebuilding effort. This includes money that went to individuals, money that was available for infrastructure, money that was available for the very important case management services and health services—particularly, right now, mental health services—and, on top of that, there was money for business support, whether it was for small businesses, farmers or tourism operators. As the Prime Minister said at the time: We knew that we would have to be there with communities for the long haul, rebuilding brick by brick, school by school, as we saw devastated communities getting back on track. When we were there on Friday, we met a fellow, Michael, on our way up to Flowerdale. He had just moved back into his newly rebuilt house. Obviously, it had been a very difficult time and, although he was very happy to be moving back into his home, of course, he reflected on just how difficult it still was for so many people. We know that there is still for many a lot of frustration and a lot of difficulties as they confront rebuilding their lives. We will stay the course with the people of Victoria as they confront the very difficult task of recovery. Once again, I thank all of the members who have been so dedicated to this task. 10541 10541 14:57:00 Katter, Bob, MP HX4 Kennedy IND 0 Mr KATTER —My question without notice is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister would be aware that the life expectancy of original Australians is 17 years less than other Australians’. In spite of the Prime Minister’s genuine and generous saying sorry, is he aware that last year the front page of the Australian reported that there are three times more original Australian children stolen in New South Wales now than in the stolen generation era? Queensland’s and the Northern Territory’s are double this rate. Is the Prime Minister further aware that 30 per cent of the Australian continent is Aboriginal lands, yet upon it an original Australian cannot own even half an acre, since the law does not provide for any private ownership title whatsoever? This is in spite of promises by Queensland since 1991, for example. Additionally, land that came as a result of non-alienated reserved areas, purchases and the Mabo decision is now having most of its property rights stripped away through an ever-increasing dispossession by World Heritage, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, GBRMPA, national parks and, now, runaway conservation zones and wild river proposals. First Australians’ rights to earn a living from their lands and seas, or even get food, are now being taken away. In light of this panorama of lethal paternalism, could the Prime Minister consider designating in his department a senior official who could have the overarching power to deal with these cross-ministry issues? Finally, is the Prime Minister aware that the legal team that won Mabo is now being pulled together to fight against the wild rivers and other declarations? Would he agree that original Australians should not again have to go to the High Court to protect rights which the rest of us take for granted? 10542 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 Mr RUDD —I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. I do not think anyone in this House would dispute the passion which the member for Kennedy has in representing the interests of Indigenous Australians. I have heard him speak on this many times before. I have heard him speak on this before in jurisdictions other that than the Commonwealth parliament. So no-one questions his motivations in bringing forward questions to this place on the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians, including those whom he represents in the electorate of Kennedy. The first part of the honourable member’s question went to Indigenous life expectancy. He is absolutely right to point to the obscenity of the 17-year life gap which currently exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. As the honourable member will recall, that is one of the core elements of this government’s strategy entitled ‘Closing the Gap’—that is, that we cannot be serious in claiming that we are closing the gap or have closed it until we have made measurable progress in bringing that obscene difference down. Of course, the constituent building blocks of that, which are what happens with child health, infant mortality as well as educational opportunity, employment opportunity and physical safety and security within communities, are fundamental building blocks towards achieving a reduction in that gap as far as life expectancy is concerned. We are also, as the honourable member would be familiar with, embracing a range of measures not just in the Northern Territory but also elsewhere in Australia in partnership with state and territory governments, many of which are quite controversial, in seeking to effect change in each of those measures. There are measures, for example, that we are engaged in in the Northern Territory which are highly controversial. There are also measures which we are completely supportive of by the government of Western Australia, which are in turn controversial. This government’s resolve in bringing about substantial, measurable change in the gap in life expectancy is anchored in our strategy of closing the gap. The second point I would make to the honourable member’s question is this: I draw his attention to the agreement that we reached for the first time with the states and territories in Darwin in, I seem to recall, about July of this year. For the first time we have a national agreement between all governments—state, territory and Commonwealth—on closing the gap across all the fields of policy. This has been fundamental. As the honourable member would know, for so many years we have had state and federal governments running in reverse directions, conflicting directions, in producing integrated policies on housing, integrated policies on education, integrated policies on health and integrated policies on community security and community welfare. I would draw his attention carefully to the list of measurables which are attached to the intergovernmental agreement which was framed at the July COAG convened in Darwin. The third point that the honourable member goes to in his question is of course the complex question of land entitlement. I do not seek to avoid the controversy which is also contained within that question. As the honourable member will know, there is a huge diversity of views across Indigenous Australia as to how the land title question is best handled for the future when it comes to individual Indigenous communities and across the nation. I am entirely familiar with the breadth of passions across that debate. This is not an easy one to fix. Of course, we are dealing with it in one small part in the statements which have been made by the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs concerning certain housing infrastructure developments which we must undertake in the Northern Territory. They have involved quite controversial questions concerning the land tenure system. The final part of the honourable member’s question goes to how we best coordinate within the federal government that which we are doing. I would draw to the honourable member’s attention a decision which was taken some time ago by the Australian government to appoint the first Australian government coordinator-general for the delivery of federal government services to Indigenous Australians. Mr Gleeson was appointed to that position some time ago. I would invite the honourable member to spend some time with the minister and with Mr Gleeson to familiarise himself with exactly what he is seeking to do at the Commonwealth level. We have also encouraged our state counterparts to do the same so that we can speak with one voice in our dealings with Indigenous communities across the nation. The minister informs me that state and territory governments either have moved or are moving in a similar direction. We cannot allow, frankly, the federal-state divide to continue to undermine progress in bringing about a closing of the gap in reality, not just in name, because, as I said to this chamber at the time we delivered the apology to Indigenous Australians, our words will be as a sounding gong unless we achieve through our active strategies on the ground measurable changes in Indigenous communities which are provable in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and child mortality as well as maternal life expectancy and educational and employment outcomes for our Indigenous brothers and sisters. 10543 10543 15:04:00 Trevor, Chris, MP HVU Flynn ALP 1 Mr TREVOR —My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Services Delivery. Would the minister inform the House of what the government is doing to increase the health workforce in rural and regional areas? 10543 Snowdon, Warren, MP IJ4 Lingiari ALP Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Service Delivery 1 Mr SNOWDON —I thank the member for Flynn for his question and note that I was recently with him in Gladstone as part of our consultations on the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report, when we had a very successful meeting with the health professionals from the Gladstone region as part of the national program of consultations which we have been undertaking. Today we will have had our 61st consultation, of which at least 20 have been in regional and rural areas, areas as diverse as Gladstone, Shepparton, Wagga, Whyalla, Bunbury, Derby, Alice Springs—and the list goes on. 848 Secker, Patrick, MP Mr Secker —What about Murray Bridge? IJ4 Snowdon, Warren, MP Mr SNOWDON —The member for Barker pipes up about Murray Bridge. The member for Barker knows that the Prime Minister and I were in Murray Bridge as recently as last week in a consultation at which he was present, and I am sure he will agree that it was a very successful and positive meeting. There was a lot of support for the proposals within the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report and recommendations and a great deal of favour for the government by the community because it was the very first time in the history of the community that a sitting Prime Minister had visited the place. That in itself is something to be remarked upon. I know the member for Barker will know about the private practice at Murray Bridge, the Bridge Clinic rural general practice, which the Prime Minister and I were privileged to attend and to discuss with the medical practitioners and the health staff within that practice their ideas about how we might improve health care for people who live in regional and rural areas. The government has been and will continue listening carefully to what rural Australians have to say with regard to the health system and the NHHRC recommendations in particular. But I should say that it is important to acknowledge that the government has done a great deal already in addressing issues to do with rural health. There has been a 45 per cent increase in funding for rural health programs since the last full year of the previous government, 2006-07. This year’s budget delivers $200 million to help tackle the shortage of doctors and health workers in rural and remote Australia. Significantly, as part of that package—and this was commented on by the Prime Minister in Murray Bridge—we are introducing $134.4 million for incentives and reforms to encourage doctors to work in some of Australia’s most isolated and rural areas. The encouragement is based on a very, very simple principle, something I know all members will accord: the more remote you go, the greater the reward. These reforms mean that across Australia around 500 communities will now be eligible for rural incentives for the first time and more than 2,400 rural practitioners will become eligible for grant payments to remain in rural and remote areas. The retention payments will also be heavily geared, as I said, towards remoteness—and we make no apology for it. As a result of the reforms, more than 260 doctors who practise in the most remote locations will potentially have their maximum retention incentives increased from $25,000 per year to $47,000 per year. But it is not just about money. We acknowledge there are many issues which confront the rural workforce, in particular how to retain people in location. For many, this depends on getting adequate support. As part of our rural incentive program the government will establish a locum brokerage service to link doctors willing to do rural locum work to rural doctors and provide subsidies to cover some of their costs. These are very important initiatives. While the government are listening to the rural workforce and health professionals across Australia in relation to the recommendations of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report, we are actually on the job. Not only are we listening but we are doing the work that was not done by the previous government. 10544 10544 15:09:00 Abbott, Tony, MP EZ5 Warringah LP 0 Mr ABBOTT —My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. Why have stimulus payments being denied to the Royal Far West School and to the Stewart House School in my electorate on the grounds that they have a transient enrolment, while a $300,000 stimulus payment has been made available to the Palm Avenue School in my electorate which also has a transient enrolment? How can the minister explain this inconsistency, especially given that the schools denied funding are continuing to operate but the school given funding has just been closed by the New South Wales government? 10544 Gillard, Julia, MP 83L Lalor ALP Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion 1 Ms GILLARD —I thank the member for his question. The member who asked the question has been in contact with me and my office about this individual school, and what he knows from that contact is that the guidelines of the Building the Education Revolution Program did not provide, have never provided, for schools that have transient populations. Similar criteria have been used in the past for federal government capital programs because obviously the aim here, when we are talking about schools with transient populations like hospital schools, is that children go to them for a very limited period of time but their primary enrolment is in another school, their home school in their own community, and so their enrolment is counting towards the Building the Education Revolution allocations in their home school. The member who asked the question would also be aware that I have been working with him, I thought, to discuss the matters with the New South Wales government, because I understand that there are transient schools that have needs. As we know, the Building the Education Revolution guidelines require state governments to keep up their same level of capital investment. So of course it is possible for the school that he seeks to be advantaged—and I can understand as a local member he is advocating for his schools; that is proper—to benefit through a state government program, and we have been working with him on that. On the question of school closures, can I refer the member and the House to the Building the Education Revolution guidelines, which have always been crystal clear on this component. I will quote them to the House: Where two or more schools have a planned amalgamation over the next three years into either a new school site or an expansion of one of the existing schools, then the indicative funding allocation for the schools to be emerged may be combined to be used for capital or refurbishment in the new school. EZ5 Abbott, Tony, MP Mr Abbott —Mr Speaker, on a point of order on relevance, I appreciate the answer that the Deputy Prime Minister is giving me, but it is the inconsistency of treatment that I asked about and that is what I would appreciate an answer on. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for Warringah will resume his seat. The Deputy Prime Minister is responding to the question. 83L Gillard, Julia, MP Ms GILLARD —Well, of course there is no inconsistency of treatment. I have explained to him the circumstances of transient schools— Opposition members interjecting— 83L Gillard, Julia, MP Ms GILLARD —which have been used—before opposition members start jeering too much—in relation to federal government building programs in the past. 83P Bishop, Julie, MP Ms Julie Bishop interjecting— 83L Gillard, Julia, MP Ms GILLARD —So the Deputy Leader of the Opposition might have a little think about that before she interjects further. On the amalgamation criteria, they have always been clear: if a school is amalgamating and not continuing, if it is merging, if schools are going to a new school site, then the Building the Education Revolution money goes to a continuing school. Can I also say to members of the opposition on this point that schools do open and close over time. We all know that. We all know in particular that small schools are at risk of closure. But can I say this to the House and to the members opposite: we on this side of the House are not going to discriminate against small schools in the allocation of funds under the Building the Education Revolution Program. There are 1,373 schools with enrolments of between one and 50 students. I presume what the members of the Liberal and National parties would say to us is: ‘Don’t invest in those schools because they’re at risk of closure.’ Well, let me tell you something. This government is not going to discriminate against small schools who are predominantly located in rural and regional electorates and places around the country. You might want to discriminate against country kids. The opposition might think that that is all well and good to discriminate against country kids in small schools. Well, we will not. And we will continue to ensure that they benefit under the Building the Education Revolution Program. Can I conclude by thanking the member for Flinders for making it absolutely clear, in the pages of the Australian newspaper last week, that the opposition considers that every dollar of this $16.2 billion for schools is a waste—his direct words, his direct quote. Well, the principals, teachers, students and parents of Australia believe it is a great investment in schools. It says something about the value system of the Liberal Party that they think investing $16.2 billion in schools is a waste. 10546 10546 15:15:00 Jackson, Sharryn, MP 00AN2 Hasluck ALP 1 Ms JACKSON —My question is to the Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism. Will the minister inform the House about the economic contribution of the North West Shelf gas project, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year? 10546 Ferguson, Martin, MP LS4 Batman ALP Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism 1 Mr MARTIN FERGUSON —I thank the member for Hasluck for the question. I appreciate that she has been a long-term supporter of the oil and gas industry. I am pleased to advise the House that yesterday, along with many members of the House across both major political parties, I attended a function in the House to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the North West Shelf gas project. It is appropriate that the House was well represented. When you think about it, the North West Shelf venture has reached two major milestones this year—the 25th anniversary of domestic gas production and the 20th anniversary of LNG exports to the Asia-Pacific region. As I said at the launch yesterday of an ACIL Tasman report on the project’s economic contribution to Australia, the project is iconic in Australia’s economic history. It is an economic and engineering feat of the same national significance as the Snowy Mountains hydro scheme. Just think about these facts—and I know they are very much on the minds of the delegation from Papua New Guinea who are here in attendance for question time today. The project adds 0.7 per cent to Australia’s GDP and five per cent to Western Australia’s GSP each year. It spends about $800 million a year on Australian goods and services and generates about $1 billion a year in government revenue for important government services such as roads, railways, schools, hospitals and child care. It is also interesting to note that, over its life, the project has been the biggest resource development in Australia’s history, with construction expenditures of more than $27 billion to date. If we started the project today, it would effectively mean an investment in the order of $50 billion. In terms of exports, more than 2,700 cargoes have been shipped to Asia, mostly Japan, over the last 20 years. Each of these LNG shipments could keep the lights at the MCG continuously on for 20 years. But what of the project partners? I think it is about time we gave credit where credit is due. Woodside, then a small Australian company, seized on a window of opportunity early in the development of the global LNG industry and put Australia at the heart of the industry’s future. The North West Shelf project has built for Australia a very significant reputation as a reliable and secure LNG supplier and an attractive place in which to grow the industry into the 21st century. Without the success of the North West Shelf project, there would arguably be no Plutos or Gorgons for tomorrow. It is also interesting to note that LNG was a $10.1 billion export industry for Australia in 2008-09 and that, with the potential development of the Pluto and Gorgon projects, exports will grow to approximately $24 billion by 2017-18. Alternatively, if Pluto 2, Pluto 3, Ichthys, Browse, Sunrise, Prelude, Wheatstone and Gladstone LNG projects succeed, by the middle of next decade LNG exports could be in the order of $50 billion per annum. In addition to the export benefits, the LNG industry is a jobs powerhouse of the nation. I give credit to the North West Shelf joint venture partners: Woodside, BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron, Shell and Japan Australia LNG—better known as MIMI, a partnership between Mitsubishi and Mitsui. Perhaps more importantly, I refer to the comments made by George Kirkland, an executive vice president of Chevron, at the launch of the Gorgon project here in Australia last month. Chevron is the fifth-biggest company in the world, a partner in the North West Shelf project and the operator of the Gorgon project. He said: There is no doubt that this positions Australia very, very strongly in the gas world. It really and truly does. The good news is Saudi Arabia is all about oil, and what we’re seeing in Australia is all about gas. The North West Shelf created a major opportunity for Australia in the past and it will create even better opportunities for Australia in the future. In that context, I also welcome the Papua New Guinea delegation to the House because, in discussions last night, accompanied by the ministers for trade and finance, we discussed not only the significance of the LNG industry to Australia but also the potential major economic significance of the industry for Papua New Guinea in the foreseeable future. The LNG industry has the opportunity to create a new foundation for Papua New Guinea in the 21st century, effectively creating jobs and export opportunities and, in doing so, reducing Papua New Guinea’s dependence on Australian aid. I wish Papua New Guinea every success for its project. WN6 Macfarlane, Ian, MP Mr Ian Macfarlane —On behalf of the opposition, I associate myself with the minister’s comments. We join with him in highlighting the importance of LNG to Australia and to the world’s low-energy future. We also congratulate the North West Shelf consortium on 25 years of domestic gas production and 20 years of LNG. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! I thought that was going to be a request for indulgence, which did not have to be granted. 10547 10547 15:21:00 Somlyay, Alex, MP ZT4 Fairfax LP 0 Mr SOMLYAY —My question is to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, I refer the minister to the Queensland government’s environmental impact assessment for the Traveston Crossing Dam, which the minister is currently assessing and which is opposed by 80 per cent of the people in South-East Queensland. Does the minister regard Queensland’s proposal to continuously catch Australian lung fish, Mary River cod and Mary River turtles and carry them around the Traveston Crossing Dam as a satisfactory way to save these endangered species whose habitat will be destroyed by the dam? 10547 Garrett, Peter, MP HV4 Kingsford Smith ALP Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts 1 Mr GARRETT —I thank the member for his question. Before I answer his question in some detail, I want to point out to him that I have made it clear, on all the questions that have been put to me in the House about approvals that I am required to consider under the EPBC Act, that I do not come to a view about the matter until the final advice has reached me. I do that in the context of the legislation which I am required to observe. On this particular matter, I say to the member that I am aware of the significant interest that Queenslanders have in this particular proposal and that it has been the subject of some significant assessment by the Queensland Coordinator-General under the bilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and the state. The Coordinator-General has provided that assessment to my department, and my department is considering the advice that is already in place in relation to this matter and will look closely at what the Coordinator-General brings forward, including the many conditions that he has attached to the proposal. I will consider the advice that my department brings forward to me. I will also consider carefully that which has been put to me by the scientists who have considered this and have made submissions to both the department and the assessment process, and also the public submissions that I have received. I have not yet received that advice. It has not come to me from my department. When it does, I will consider the matter and I will make my decision properly and within the time required. 10548 10548 15:24:00 Bird, Sharon, MP DZP Cunningham ALP 1 Ms BIRD —My question is to the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and Social Inclusion. Why are the government’s student income support reforms important? What impact would any delay in implementation have on students? 10548 Gillard, Julia, MP 83L Lalor ALP Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion 1 Ms GILLARD —I thank the member for Cunningham for her question. I know she is someone who has dedicated a great deal of her life to supporting education and supporting students getting through school and into options beyond school. We have inherited from the former government a student income support system that is failing country students. Under the current student income support system, the participation rates of country students and poorer students in higher education are falling—the percentage is falling. At the same time, the student income support system we inherited from the Liberal Party and National Party government is one where some of Australia’s richest families end up with a benefit. In particular, three per cent of the so-called independent students who actually live at home live in families with incomes of more than $300,000. That student income system is telling you something about the values of the Liberal Party and the National Party and the character of the people who were in leadership positions in those parties and could have made a difference to this gross inequity. It is a system where country and poorer kids’ participation was falling and some of Australia’s richest families were getting a benefit. We are determined to change this. Who is, of course, defending this inequity? They are the same old characters: the Liberal Party and the National Party. I had thought, in the time that the member for Casey was the shadow minister for education, that we were going to see an outbreak of reason in the Liberal Party. He actually said— Government members interjecting— 83L Gillard, Julia, MP Ms GILLARD —I know—I am a dreadful optimist but a romantic optimist. He said a couple of sensible things. He said, ‘Overall, the evidence seems to suggest that it has become too easy for students from affluent backgrounds to qualify and too difficult for students from modest backgrounds.’ He was right about that. He said, ‘This means that students from a family earning an average weekly income cannot effectively go straight from school to university and be supported. It particularly disadvantages many students—particularly those from the country—who have to leave home to study.’ He was right about that. Our student income support system is about providing scholarships and support to students: providing 150,000 students a new scholarship of $2,254 each year—28 times more scholarships than when we came to office—providing a $4,000 relocation scholarship to students who need to relocate, and changing the parental income test to benefit more families. But what do we see from the Liberal Party and the National Party? We see obstruction. We have amendments that the member for Sturt, the now shadow minister, wants to move which would—and can you believe this—tear $700 million out of scholarships. It would reduce the scholarships that students are getting from $2,254 per year to $1,000 per year. Remarkably, this scholarship rip-off is a permanent rip-off. To finance what the shadow minister says is a transition problem, he is going to rip students off from now until the end of time. No wonder these amendments from the Liberal Party have been characterised by the National Union of Students as ‘scabby and sloppy’. I think we need to say this to members opposite: these scabby and sloppy amendments should not be proceeded with. The Liberal Party and the National Party should expedite passage of this legislation. This is what will guarantee for students next year the benefits of the new system. It is time to end the gross inequity that members opposite stood by and supported over 12 long years. We want to benefit country kids; we want to benefit poorer kids; we want to make sure taxpayers’ dollars go where they are needed the most. It is time that the Liberal and the National parties actually got out of the way and endorsed a decent student income support system for Australian students. 10549 10549 15:30:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP 0 Mr RUDDOCK —My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. Minister, I am seeking information, and I hope you will be able to help me. What is the government’s timetable to complete the missing link between the M2 and F3 on the national highway corridor between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane? Is the initial planning grant of $150 million offered by the Commonwealth no longer conditional on a New South Wales contribution of $30 million? 10549 Albanese, Anthony, MP R36 Grayndler ALP Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government 1 Mr ALBANESE —I thank the member for his question. Indeed, I can confirm that just last month, in a forum hosted by the member for Bennelong, I met with transport groups in the north-west, including state representatives, Greg Smith, the Mayor of Hornsby and other mayors. At that discussion we certainly confirmed that indeed, as part of this government’s Nation Building Program, we have included the $150 million that we committed during the last campaign to undertake further planning into this link. That is part of the plan that was signed off by us and the New South Wales government in the memorandum of understanding. That plan takes us through to 2014 and is part of the comprehensive $36 billion that we have allocated to road and rail infrastructure projects over that period. It is interesting that those opposite, who are arguing day after day that we should actually withdraw our spending on infrastructure, when it comes to specific projects in their electorates—whether it is the member for Gippsland, the member for Berowra or other members over there—want to argue that they would actually spend more whilst also arguing that they would withdraw infrastructure spending priorities. I refer the honourable member to the comments of the shadow finance minister, Senator Coonan, when she indicated that we should be looking at the withdrawal of all our road and rail infrastructure projects that are not appropriate to be moving forward. I would ask her whether, were it the case that the honourable gentleman opposite had won the last election, that spending commitment, which is a part of the agreement between the Commonwealth and New South Wales, would be withdrawn. 10550 10550 15:33:00 Hayes, Chris, MP ECV Werriwa ALP 1 Mr HAYES —My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister update the House on the importance of Australia’s strong relationship with Indonesia and its significance in tackling regional challenges faced by both countries? 10550 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 Mr RUDD —I thank the honourable member for Werriwa for his question. It was my pleasure and privilege yesterday to visit Jakarta to attend the inauguration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as President of Indonesia. I was there with the Prime Minister of Singapore, the Prime Minister of Malaysia and representatives of governments from around the region and around the world. This was an important occasion in our bilateral relationship. After 10 years of the return of democracy to Indonesia it is good to see we have now seen three successfully concluded elections in Indonesia. Indonesia represents a strong global and regional partner for Australia, now through the councils of the G20; increasingly on the question of climate change through the Bali road map, which leads to Copenhagen at the end of this year; and also of course in our combined efforts to combat transnational crime. I was also pleased to be able to speak with the President of Indonesia about Australia’s efforts in assisting Indonesia with recent natural disasters, including the appalling earthquake and its human consequences at Padang and Sumatra. Together with the President of Indonesia, the Prime Minister of Singapore and the Prime Minister of Malaysia I also discussed separately our cooperation on transnational crime, particularly the challenge we all face with people smuggling. We expect to expand our cooperation with these governments into the future, including Indonesia, and we believe that is the right way to go. This is a global problem; it is a regional problem; it is a national problem for all of us. When the question of people smuggling arises, what we have been witness to in this place and in the community more broadly for the last period of time is the Liberal Party’s most recent campaign, which is a fear campaign on immigration. The fear campaign is based on two core claims. The first is as follows— PK6 Randall, Don, MP Mr Randall interjecting— EM6 Stone, Dr Sharman, MP Dr Stone interjecting— 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —I think it would be useful for the honourable members opposite to actually listen to some figures. The first claim is that it was their immigration policy, the Pacific solution, which had children behind razor wire, that caused a reduction in asylum seekers coming to our shores. That is their first claim. The second claim is that it is this government’s approach to immigration policy that has caused the increase in asylum seekers coming to Australian shores—leaving aside the fact that, when we changed temporary protection visas, those opposite did not vote against it; leaving aside the fact that, when we said we were abolishing the Pacific solution, the shadow minister for immigration said she supported that course of policy action; leaving aside the fact that, when we said we were going to remove children from behind razor wire, they embraced that as a policy solution as well. Let us leave aside those minor technical details and go to the two core claims. The first claim is that Liberal immigration policy was the cause of the decrease in boat arrivals in Australia in the period following 2001—particularly in 1999, when temporary protection visas were introduced. Because of that, those opposite claim, there were significant reductions in the arrival of boatpeople from Afghanistan, from Iraq and also from Sri Lanka. That is the essence of their claim. The Liberal Party claims that this data is unquestionable and completely definitive proof that it was their policy that led to a reduction in asylum claims. But here is the unfortunate statistical fact: over the same period of time the reduction in the numbers of Afghans, Sri Lankans and Iraqis claiming asylum around the world also dropped—and by significant orders of magnitude. Around the world, between 2001 and 2003, Afghan asylum applications dropped from 52,000 to 14,000—that is around the world. Iraqis claiming asylum around the world dropped from 52,000 to 27,000. For Sri Lankans, that number dropped around the world from 14,500 to 5,600. The reduction in asylum claims by Afghans, Iraqis and Sri Lankans, of which the Liberal Party is so proud in their belief that that was actually a direct cause of their policy, is in fact a global reality happening in every country around the world at about the same time. This was not Australian government policy at work at the time; it was because of the global reduction caused by local events in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lankan, and the global response to it. Let us go to claim No. 2 advanced by those opposite. The second core claim of the Liberal immigration debate—the fear campaign currently being launched—is that it was the introduction of the government’s immigration policy that led to an increase in asylum seekers arriving on our shores. Again, the script goes like this: because of these government changes we saw an increase in the number of Afghans arriving in Australia from 31 in 2005 to 52 in 2008 and the number of Sri Lankans increasing from 320 to 417 over the same period. Unfortunately for the Liberal Party, over the same period the number of Afghans claiming asylum around the world increased in the same period approximately from 7,700 to 18,000. The number of Sri Lankans applying for asylum around the world increased from 5,600 to 9,600. The increase in asylum claims by Afghans and Sri Lankans, which the Liberal Party is, shall we say, claiming to have been due to a change of government policy here in Australia, has been reflected around the world. Opposition members interjecting— 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —The dimensions of their injections suggest that the facts confront them again. The two core claims that underpin the member for Wentworth’s engagement in this fear campaign on asylum seekers are in fact based on statistical fiction. These core claims are nothing more than Liberal Party fantasy. But they have been dreamt up in the same dark corners where the Liberal Party dreamt up the Pacific solution, where the Liberal Party dreamt up children behind razor wire and where the Liberal Party dreamt up other parallel measures. The Liberal Party is not about fact on the question of immigration policy; it is about the politics of fear. There is no substantive basis to their claims of policy success. There is no basis to their claims of policy failure. Asylum claims in Australia by Afghans, Sri Lankans and Iraqis have basically followed the global trend around the world. When numbers have fallen around the world, they have fallen in Australia. When numbers have increased around the world, they have increased in Australia. What we have seen in this place and beyond it is the party of children overboard, the party of Cornelia Rau, the party of Vivian Alvarez and, of course, the party of the forged email affair at it again at every level. On the question of immigration policy, this is a party without factual credibility on people smuggling, a party without policy credibility on people smuggling, but, worst of all, this is a party without one skerrick of moral compass when it comes to people smuggling as well. Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. 10552 Miscellaneous 10552 15:41:00 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP Prime Minister 1 0 Mr RUDD —On indulgence, I would like to take a moment to update the House on recent bushfires in Queensland. On behalf of all Australians our thoughts are with the people of Queensland who are dealing with yet another bushfire. I am advised that family homes have been lost—though only two—amongst other personal and commercial property losses. In addition, hundreds of homes have already been threatened by flames within metres of their fence lines. SJ4 Tuckey, Wilson, MP Mr Tuckey interjecting— 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —Mr Speaker, I would hope that the House, including the member for O’Connor, would not seek to intervene on a matter concerning bushfires in Queensland, on which I have sought indulgence. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for O’Connor. 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr RUDD —More than 10,500 hectares have been burnt. I thank the member for Capricornia and others for their comments and would like to reiterate her praise for emergency services workers and volunteers in that part of Queensland. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the Queensland Emergency Services workers as well as the assistance provided to Queensland by the New South Wales rural fire and ambulance services. At the Commonwealth level, Emergency Management Australia is continuing to work with Queensland authorities to ensure all necessary assistance required from the Commonwealth is provided. Yesterday, the Attorney-General announced that Commonwealth financial assistance would be provided to communities affected by the bushfires via the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements, the NDRRA. This includes emergency assistance payments, essential household contents grants, essential repairs to housing grants, concessional loans of up to $250,000 to eligible primary produces, freight subsidies of up to $5,000 to assist with the transport of livestock fodder or water and building or fencing equipment or machinery. The Commonwealth will continue to work closely with Queensland government authorities, with local governments and with community organisations to ensure that affected communities have all the support that they need. The government has been in constant contact with the Queensland government and the Commonwealth stands ready to support Queensland, however necessary. This is of course the start of what will be a long and challenging bushfire season for the nation. Before coming to question time I spoke this morning with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who in recent times has been inspecting the affected area. She has alerted me to the fact that those working in the area have been working for a long period of time. Our bushfire fighters and emergency services workers are exhausted and tired. This has been a very long fight for them all. Therefore, I again particularly commend the offer of practical assistance from the New South Wales government to see to the provision of addition fire fighters from that state. The Queensland Premier’s message to the nation is that we should all remain vigilant about how this fire unfolds in the future, particularly in terms of any adverse change in weather conditions. As the experience in Victoria in February this year demonstrated, Australian bushfires are capable of creating catastrophic loss and devastation. This fire season we have already seen the death of a volunteer fire fighter in New South Wales and we in this House, of course, send our condolences to his family. The Attorney-General made a ministerial statement on Tuesday outlining the work being undertaken by the Commonwealth in preparing for the forthcoming bushfire season. I would urge all Australians to make sure they are fully prepared for the challenges that will be alive during this bushfire season. 10553 15:44:00 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP 885 Wentworth LP Leader of the Opposition 0 0 Mr TURNBULL —Mr Speaker, on indulgence, the opposition joins the Prime Minister in extending the House’s condolences to the family of the bushfire fighter who has died. We welcome the commitment of the Commonwealth and state and local governments in responding to the fires in Queensland. We join with the government in admiration and commendation of the hard work and courage of the many volunteers and professional firefighters who are battling these fires and we express our admiration for the resilience and the fortitude of the communities affected, to whom go our best wishes and our prayers in these very challenging times. 10553 Personal Explanations 10553 15:45:00 Ley, Sussan, MP 00AMN Farrer LP 0 0 Ms LEY —Mr Speaker, I seek to make a personal explanation. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented? 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —Most grievously. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Please proceed. 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —On three occasions, once yesterday and twice today, the Minister for Home Affairs has sought to misrepresent my questions to him as verballing the AFP Commissioner and impugning the character of the Commissioner. R36 Albanese, Anthony, MP Mr Albanese interjecting— SJ4 Tuckey, Wilson, MP Mr Tuckey —Stop bullying! 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member must go to where he or she has been misrepresented, so the member for Farrer must go to where she has been misrepresented. 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —My questions to the minister are based on Senate transcripts and government responses. I strongly reject any assertion that I am challenging the professional integrity of the Commissioner or— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member must go to where she has been misrepresented. SJ4 Tuckey, Wilson, MP Mr Tuckey interjecting— 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —I strongly reject any assertion— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Farrer will resume her seat. For two hours, the member for O’Connor has had a comment on every piece of procedure. The member for O’Connor will leave the chamber for one hour under standing order 94(a). 0J4 Ruddock, Philip, MP Mr Ruddock interjecting— 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —I reject the assertion— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for Farrer will resume her seat—I have to deal with another recalcitrant. I am ignoring deliberately the member for Berowra. The member for Farrer has the call. 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —On three occasions, once yesterday and twice today, the Minister for Home Affairs, in his answers to my questions— R36 Albanese, Anthony, MP Mr Albanese interjecting— 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —On the Hansard record, Leader of the House—I am going to where I have been misrepresented— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member will ignore the interjections. 00AMN Ley, Sussan, MP Ms LEY —The minister accuses me of verballing the AFP Commissioner. I challenge the assertion that I impugn the professional integrity of the commissioner or the men and women of the AFP, for whom I have the greatest respect. It is in fact the minister who verbals me. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member will resume her seat. 10554 Documents 10554 10554 15:47:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER —I present the annual report of the Parliamentary Service Commissioner for 2008-09. Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper. 10554 Documents Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler —Leader of the House) 15:48:00 —Documents are presented as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members. Details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings and I move: That the House take note of the following documents: Australian Government Solicitor—Report for 2008-09. Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC)—Report for 2008-09. Department of Finance and Deregulation—Report for 2008-09. Migration Act 1958—Section 91Y—Protection visa processing taking more than 90 days—Report for the period 1 March to 30 June 2009. National Water Commission—Report for 2008-09. Reserve Bank of Australia—Payments System Board—Report for 2008-09. Debate (on motion by Mr Hartsuyker) adjourned. 10554 Matters of Public Importance 10554 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —I have received a letter from the honourable member for Casey proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The consequences of the government’s reckless spending for Australian families and small businesses. 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— 10554 15:49:00 Smith, Anthony, MP 00APG Casey LP 0 0 Mr ANTHONY SMITH —Five months, one week and one day ago the Treasurer stood at the dispatch box and delivered his second budget. In doing so he embarked, on behalf of the government, on their path of reckless spending, racking up deficits and debt with consequences that will flow for Australian families and small businesses for years to come. We have made that case since budget day; we have made that case here in the parliament and we have made it in the public arena. I put to the House that the Treasurer himself knows that the path of reckless spending that this government has embarked upon will have very serious consequences indeed. I say that because five months, one week and one day ago, when the Treasurer stood at that dispatch box and delivered the budget speech, in 30 minutes of speaking he deliberately failed to mention the size of the deficit. That was very much publicised at the time. In that same speech he went out of his way not to mention the dollar figure of the peak level of debt. The press gallery thought it rather strange that a Treasurer could deliver the speech without mentioning the size of the deficit. The day after the budget speech he was asked about it on Radio National, by Fran Kelly: ‘Why didn’t you mention the deficit? Do you want to say now what the deficit is?’ ‘57’, he said. Not 57 billion, just 57. And in case there was any doubt, this was followed by almost a week of verbal gymnastics from the Prime Minister, who went out of his way not to mention the dollar figure of the peak level of debt. It culminated in an extraordinary interview with Tony Jones on the Lateline program. Tony asks: What’s the peak figure? The answer? ‘Blah, blah, blah’ then: … 13.8 per cent of GDP. Tony asks: How much of that is in tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars; how much is that? Again, the Prime Minister refuses to answer with a figure. Again Tony Jones asks: But I’m just asking for one figure. After more verbal gymnastics from the Prime Minister, Tony Jones finally, exasperated, says: That figure is $300 billion, is that right? The PM answers: As I said before, 13.8 per cent of GDP … That went on for half the interview. The reason I go through those is that, whilst we and a number of commentators have made the case about the level of deficit and debt, those two illustrations, the failure to mention the budget deficit in the budget speech and the verbal contortions of the Prime Minister—the evasion, the absolute determination not to mention the peak level of debt in dollar terms to the Australian people—perhaps more than anything else confirm that both the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have a guilty conscience about the level of debt and deficit. The fact they went out of their way not to mention those two figures on budget night and in the days that followed confirms that, in their heart of hearts, they know that the level of deficit and debt is higher than it needed to be. The fact that they would refuse to be up-front with the Australian people is the confirmation of that. If you have listened to the Treasurer in question time this week, you would know that he would have the public and this House believe that there is absolutely no relationship between the size of net government debt and the effect on monetary policy. He knows that that is not right. We have had economic commentator after economic commentator make the obvious point that the stimulus should be being wound back. A week or so ago on The 7.30 Report, Professor Ross Garnaut was asked about this. His answer was telling. He said: … once there are signs that the economy is recovering faster than had been anticipated, then it’s appropriate to pull back that stimulus at a faster rate. The Treasurer ignored that in question time this week. Professor Ross Garnaut said that the stimulus should be wound back ‘at a faster’—or ‘quicker’, or whatever word the Treasurer needs to understand—‘rate’ ‘once there are signs that the economy is recovering faster’. On Monday on Perth radio, Chris Richardson of Access Economics said: You can now say that the stimulus was too big. The Treasurer might want to ignore everything the opposition says, but he is now ignoring respected economic commentators who know that there are consequences for families and small business, for all Australians, when government debt is higher than it needs to be, when deficits are higher than they need to be. As I said earlier, I think the Treasurer does understand, in his heart of hearts, that there will be consequences. I am not sure whether the Prime Minister understands that. I am sure the Deputy Prime Minister, the master of disaster, does not understand that. But the consequences are always there at the end of the day for families and small businesses. When Australia’s net debt peaked at $96 billion in the final year of the Keating government and the first year of the Howard government, it took 10 long years, one month and a few days to pay it off. In fact, 21 April 2006 was debt-free day. The cost of paying off that debt was big for families and small business, for every Australian. At the most obvious level, the interest costs peaked at around $9 billion a year, meaning that $9 billion was being spent on interest payments rather than on important services for the Australian community. It took 10 long years. It has been said that going into debt is as easy as riding down in an elevator but paying it off is like walking back up the stairs. With the magnitude of what this government has done, it is more accurate to say going into debt is like the government abseiling down a mountain and paying it off is like the Australian people having to climb back up. The consequences for families and small business, for all Australians, really boil down to this: when in our personal lives we incur debt through a mortgage or on a credit card, we pay it back, but, when a Prime Minister and a Treasurer do the same thing at a national level, all Australians pay it back. Many people have talked about the government spending as being like handouts. That is true at one level, but it disguises that all of this debt has to be paid back. The spending is really loans, because it is all paid back. It is not paid back in the same way mortgage and credit card debt is paid back, but it is paid back. It is paid back by the community not having the services they otherwise would have. It is paid back by interest rates being higher than they would otherwise need to be. For those opposite to argue that there is no relationship there is to argue that it would not matter how high debt got—it would not affect interest rates. No self-respecting member of the government would argue that. I doubt the minister at the table would argue that. Of course, ultimately, with Labor governments, when they cannot make things add up they pay back debt with higher taxes. That is where the story always ends with the Labor Party, if they are given a chance. We have seen in a number of policy areas the Labor Party slowly beginning to emerge from their witness protection watch-house. In the area of private health insurance, we have seen a clear breaking of an election pledge. In the area of superannuation, we have seen a clear breaking of an election pledge. Before the election, the Labor Party pretended to believe in fiscal conservatism. They even believed, at the end of the day, in tax cuts—so they said. But you only need to look back at what the Labor Party said before they entered their witness protection watch-house to know what they really believe. What they really believe is what they will do in the future if they are given a chance to con the Australian people. Back in 1994, the current Minister for Finance and Deregulation said in this House: We should have an inheritance tax or some tax of that nature. Deemed capital gains tax on death is another option in that regard. We are one of the few major countries that does not have some form of taxation for those circumstances where tax is the most equitable, the most efficient to collect and— get this— the least painful for the individual taxpayer. I think what he meant was that it was not painful because they were dead—it would not be the least painful; it would not be painful at all. He then went on to say: … there should be more steps in the income tax scale. For example, there should be a return to the 60c in the dollar tax rate for people earning over $75,000. I point out to members of the opposition that, contrary to the sort of rhetoric we often hear in here, Taiwan, for instance, has its highest marginal rate set at 60c. It also has a total tax take that is now higher than Australia’s. Yet Taiwan is moving ahead in leaps and bounds. It is quite clear what the minister for finance really thinks: higher taxes, 60 per cent tax rates and a higher total tax take. This is just one example of where the Labor Party will take Australia if they are given the chance. The consequences for families and small business are very simple: they always pay back the debt and they pay for the cost of that reckless spending all the way through. We have seen reckless spending on so many levels. We have seen it in the education portfolio and we have had yet another example today. But, as I have said, the Labor Party have begun to break their election promises on private health and superannuation. If given the chance, they will do a lot more in the future to pay back the debt that they have racked up. With Labor governments state and federal, it always ends the same way: deficit, debt, higher interest rates, higher unemployment and, ultimately, higher taxes. The cost of Labor and the Labor Party is always too high. 10557 16:03:00 Emerson, Craig, MP 83V Rankin ALP Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation and Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs 1 0 Dr EMERSON —What a dreary, tired speech from the shadow Assistant Treasurer. People talk about governments getting tired, but here we are not even two years into this parliament and we have a tired opposition. The member for Casey is one of the younger members of the opposition—he was born in 1967. You would think that he would at least fire up. We know there are some more senior citizens in the opposition, but I would have thought that one of the younger members of the opposition would have a little bit of energy and be able to make some compelling arguments. Instead, when he finishes his speech he gets one tired ‘Hear, hear!’ from the member for Groom. I want to go to the last part of his contribution today because the first part of his contribution was just a rerun of what— 83O Hull, Kay, MP Mrs Hull —What were you yesterday? Danger, danger: Will Robinson approaching! 10000 Burke, Anna (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke)—Danger, danger, the member for Riverina! 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr EMERSON —the coalition said after the last budget. There was nothing new in that, just the same tired old rhetoric, but the shadow Assistant Treasurer did make some claims in relation to taxes to which I would like to respond. He asserted that Labor is always the party of higher taxes and higher tax rates. 00AKI Dutton, Peter, MP Mr Dutton interjecting— 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr EMERSON —And here we have the member for Dickson—or I think he is the member for Dickson. He is the current member and, as long as no opportunities arise in Fairfax or Fisher, he will probably confirm that he will be running again for Dickson. Why? Because his options are completely exhausted. Opposition members interjecting— 10000 DEPUTY SPEAKER, The The DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr EMERSON —Let’s be clear: if he had any option at all he would take it. He would run away—cut and run out of Dickson—but he has run out of options because the LNP has absolutely framed him. He was described yesterday in the Gold Coast Bulletin as ‘the Liberal Party’s poster boy’. Well, a poster boy has just been framed by the Liberal National Party. Madam Deputy Speaker, I refer you to Budget Paper No. 1 of 2009-10. It shows a historic record of taxes as a share of GDP. I can report that the coalition was the highest taxing government in Australia’s history. Let me repeat that the coalition was the highest taxing government in Australia’s history. The member was talking about misrepresentation. Madam Deputy Speaker, let me take you through the basic figures. In 2000-01, taxation was 24.7 per cent of GDP. In 2002-03 it was 24.6 per cent; in 2003-04 it was 24.5 per cent; in 2004-05 and 2005-06 it was 24.9 per cent; and in 2006-07 and 2007-08 it was 24.6 per cent. So 24 point something high like six, seven, eight or nine is the coalition’s record. The highest level it ever went to under the previous Labor government was 23.8 per cent, proving conclusively that the coalition is the highest taxing government in Australia’s history. Then the shadow Assistant Treasurer went to the argument of high marginal tax rates. The fact is that when Labor came to office in 1983 the top marginal tax rate was 60 per cent, gifted to the Australian people by the Fraser government whose Treasurer was none other than John Howard. It was a Labor government which reduced the top marginal tax rate from 60 per cent to 49 per cent and further subsequently. So, on both counts of the shadow Assistant Treasurer asserting that Labor is the party of high taxes, he is wrong. The coalition is the party of high taxes. It is very interesting to go through the whole episode of the stimulus package and the efforts to which this government has gone to support working families in Australia and to support small businesses in Australia. We acted early and we acted decisively to support jobs and to support small businesses. As a consequence of that, we have the strongest growth in the developed world. We are the only country of the major advanced countries that did not go into recession. I say that is good news for working people and that is good news for small businesses. I think that is something of which we can be proud. Indeed, the small business community itself recognises this. The Sensis survey of September 2009 says: Business confidence among SMEs rebounded during the past quarter recording the strongest rise since the inception of the Sensis® Business Index more than 16 years ago, rising some 20 percentage points during the quarter. It goes on to say: This quarter’s strong improvement brought confidence to its highest level since August 2007, before economic conditions started to decline. And finally: Support for the Federal Government rose strongly, with small businesses remaining strongly supportive of the economic stimulus package and efforts to get the economy going. There is the small business community speaking out in support of the stimulus package and yet we have the shadow Assistant Treasurer saying that the stimulus package is too big and that perhaps it should not have occurred at all. What would happen to small business in this country either if the stimulus package had not proceeded—because it is hard to pin those opposite down on exactly their view as to whether or not there should have been any stimulus—or if, indeed, the stimulus was now withdrawn, which is what the shadow Assistant Treasurer just argued? The consequence of that for working people in this country would be that 100,000 more Australians would have their jobs at risk and small business would be smashed by the reckless, irresponsible policy prescriptions of the coalition saying that the stimulus should be now withdrawn. The fact is that this is nothing more than rank political opportunism on the part of the coalition. They have their self-interests, their personal interests, ahead of the national interests, ahead of the interests of the working people of this country and ahead of the interests of small business people of this country. 00AN0 Ciobo, Steven, MP Mr Ciobo interjecting— 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr EMERSON —The member for Moncrieff is a serial interjector in this debate. I will be fascinated to know whether the member for Moncrieff, the shadow small business minister, will make a contribution to this debate which has been initiated by the shadow Assistant Treasurer. The matter of public importance actually refers to the impact on families and small businesses. I look forward to the contribution of the member for Moncrieff. The Gold Coast is small business central. If ever there was a place that was reliant on small businesses and their success it is the Gold Coast, yet this is the man who fell like a stone, who plummeted like a stone, down to 93 and who fell out of the top 100 with the member for Forde rating well above him. He is joined, of course, by the member for Dickson, who went scurrying back to Dickson when he was knocked over by Karen Andrews. That is where the poster boy was framed because the member for McPherson said: ‘Come in spinner. Come down to the Gold Coast; I’ll secure the seat for you.’ Of course, the member for McPherson went on holidays. He made no phone calls, he missed out, he got framed and now he is back in Dickson saying, ‘The real reason I went back to Dickson is that I got 400 emails saying “Please come back to Dickson.”‘ Give us a break. I predict—there is a very good chance—the shadow small business minister will make no contribution to this debate today, but we will see. He still has time to make a contribution. But the fact is that this is an opportunistic opposition. They put their personal interests, their self-interests, ahead of the interests of working families and ahead of the interests of the small businesses of this country. On debt and deficit, they are doing nothing more than running a dishonest scare campaign. Australia has the lowest debt and the lowest deficit of any country in the advanced world. 00APG Smith, Anthony, MP Mr Anthony Smith —Why is that? 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr EMERSON —Let us just acknowledge, for a start, that we have the lowest deficit and the lowest debt of any advanced country, and you are going around with a dishonest scare campaign. What we need to know from the opposition is whether they support any stimulus and whether they ever supported any stimulus. Of course, Malcolm Turnbull, the Leader of the Opposition, said at the outset that the cash payments in December of last year were ‘right’ and he was ‘not going to quibble about them’. The next day he started the quibbling, he started condemning them and he said, ‘This is a cash splash; this is a waste of money.’ But, when the retail sales figures came in showing that we had the strongest retail sales of any country in the developed world, he started to change his tune. Indeed, small business retail sales grew more strongly than the average overall. So the cash payments were very good for small business. Then the opposition leader changed his tune and said, ‘This is not going to create one job.’ First it was about right, then he said it was too much and then he said it was ineffective. Now they are again saying that it is too much. They are all over the place on this. They do their internal polling to see if they can strike some sort of chord with the Australian people. There is no consistency. They will never strike a chord with the Australian people when they put their self-interest first ahead of the national interest and ahead of the interests of working Australians and small businesses in this country. Let us have a quick look at the coalition economic team, which has every possible position on an economic argument, depending on the opportunity of the moment. The chief opportunist, the opposition leader, puts his own self-interest before the national interest and shows exceptionally poor judgment. Just go to the fake email affair and you will understand what poor judgment he has. How could you entrust economic policy to the Leader of the Opposition? Then there is the shadow Treasurer, who said that jobs are not his top priority. They were running around saying, ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs: that is what we are really concerned about.’ Then at the first opportunity to change tack, the shadow Treasurer said, ‘No, jobs are not my top priority.’ There is no consistency from the shadow Treasurer at all. Instead of focusing on supporting the jobs of Australian workers during the global recession, he was more interested in focusing on his own job. He said on ABC radio in Melbourne, ‘The jobs we have to focus on— 00APG Smith, Anthony, MP Mr Anthony Smith —This sounds as though you are reading a script. 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr EMERSON —Indeed; it is a transcript. He said, ‘The jobs we have to focus on are our own jobs at the moment and in my case the job that I want is Wayne Swan’s job.’ How about that? That is from the shadow Treasury. The only jobs that he is interested in are not the jobs of working Australians and not the jobs in small businesses but his own and Wayne Swan’s job. How crass is that? Then he says that he is not even qualified enough to understand unemployment forecasts. He was asked to comment on the unemployment forecast during the crisis and he said to Leigh Sales, ‘Well, Leigh, you’re asking me to look into numbers that I’m not qualified to look into.’ He is not qualified? That is the truth: the shadow Treasurer is not qualified to run the Treasury of this country and the economic policy of this country. 00AN0 Ciobo, Steven, MP Mr Ciobo —Nor is Swannie. 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr EMERSON —Right on cue, the shadow spokesman on small business comes in. I cannot wait for his contribution to this debate. He has dropped out of the top 100. It is 510 days today since he last asked me a question in this parliament. Who else have we got in this economic team? We have the Leader of the National Party, who would be the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. There was a poll conducted on the Leader of the National Party and also on the Leader of the National Party in the Senate, Barnaby Joyce, and some other National Party identities. They could not find him. No-one knew who the Leader of the National Party was. They dispatched the CSI team to look for a little bit of evidence of his existence; a little bit of DNA here or there. But there was no sign of him. He disappeared without a trace. Anthony LaPaglia could not find him. The CSI team was looking for him. ‘Who is he? Who? No, I don’t know him.’ I have a bit of advice for the Leader of the National Party. He should change his name by deed poll to ‘Don’t Know’. If he changed his name by deed poll to ‘Don’t Know’ then his recognition would go up fourfold, because that was the most popular choice in that poll: ‘Who is the Leader of the National Party? Don’t know.’ People do not know who the Leader of the National Party is and they do not know what the coalition stands for. It is all over the place. It is completely opportunistic. The Liberal Party once presented itself as the party of small business, who Bob Menzies described as the forgotten people. Well, you have forgotten small business. You have betrayed small business. It is only through the active and determined support of the Rudd Labor government that small business has a fighting chance in this country to get through the economic downturn. You should be ashamed of yourselves. (Time expired) 10560 16:19:00 Morrison, Scott, MP E3L Cook LP 0 0 Mr MORRISON —I am very pleased to speak on this matter of public importance, because the consequences of the government’s reckless spending are quite straightforward for people who are trying to pay off a home: higher interest rates. There is a very simple question that the government has to answer: do they want to spend more or do they want to keep interest rates low? That is the very simple question that they have before them. They can continue their record spending in today’s economic conditions and put further pressure on interest rates or they can stop their reckless spending, wind it back, get it back to manageable levels and take the pressure off interest rates. They can have one but they cannot have both; they can keep spending money in the way that they are or they can have lower interest rates. This is something that the government seem to struggle to understand in framing their economic policy. Over the last 12 months the government have completely undervalued the impact of lower interest rates. If you listen to the government, the sun only gets up every morning when the Prime Minister commands it to do so, the only reason that we have an economy of any strength in this place is because of him and history started on 23 November 2007. But the Australian people are awake to this. The Australian people understand that when we entered this crisis the Australian economy was the strongest that it had ever been because of several decades of strong economic management but in particular 13 years of very strong economic management under the Howard government. This record of management has contributed to us being in the position that we are in today. The reason that we have a lower level of debt is because we entered the crisis with no debt. The government have worked to put debt back on the Australian public’s finance sheet. They have totally underestimated the strength of our economy, which was given great support by having lower interest rates. They would have you think that everything that happened was a result of the money that they spent and that it had nothing to do with what happened in China and nothing to do with what was going on with our export sector—nothing to do with any of these factors. In fact, it all had to do with the money that they gave away. But the truth is that lower interest rates have had an incredibly important role to play over the last 12 months in which we have had an easing policy on interest rates and a reduction in interest rates. Labor have decided that they would prefer the ongoing support for the Australian economy to exist in the form of them spending more money, and spending more money for a very simple purpose: to promote themselves. That is what you see with the hard hats and the luminous vests; that is what you see if you go to their campaign website, which is actually paid for by the taxpayer. If you go there you will see all these little google icons and all those sorts of things. That is what they want to spend money on. The reason why the government will not draw back on their spending to take the pressure off interest rates is that they want to keep spending money. They want to keep spending money because they want to keep promoting themselves by using taxpayer money all the way from now until the next election and, I add, beyond. They want to spend beyond then because there is a New South Wales state election in March of 2011 and they want to make sure those signs stay up well until that time so that they can help out their state Labor mates. So Labor have opted for higher spending to promote themselves rather than contracting that spending, getting that spending under control and taking the pressure off interest rates. The government have sought to justify their decision in several ways. Rather than telling us the truth, which is, ‘We just want to keep spending more money because that’s what we like doing, because we like promoting ourselves,’ they have sought to justify it by saying a couple of things. The first thing they have said is that the stimulus has peaked. They are saying the stimulus has peaked and they are arguing that the contribution of their stimulus spending to GDP has peaked, but it is a tricky statistic. And we are used to tricky statistics from this government when it comes to explaining what is happening in the economy. The Treasurer may argue that case, with the figures that have been provided to him from Treasury, but the figure he will not talk about is how much more money he is going to spend. There is a difference between the relative contribution of a stimulus to economic growth and how much money, in absolute terms, you are still going to spend. And this money is still going to be spent. It is going to be spent over many more years—out to 2011, 2012 and 2013. Even though money may have been paid off to the states at this point, I know that in my own shadow portfolio of housing the money still has not hit the ground. So when this money is actually finally spent—and the bulk of it is yet to be spent; it is yet to hit the ground—that is when we will see this further stimulus hitting the economy although our economy is already performing, as so many have said, in a manner which is far stronger than the government ever anticipated when they first put these measures in place. So the government’s argument that the stimulus has peaked is absolute rot. It is total spin and it is designed to dissuade the Australian people from thinking that there is so much more money to be spent. ‘It’s all winding down,’ the Treasurer is saying, ‘according to the schedules and the timetables.’ That is simply not true. The second issue they have spoken about, in justifying their position of spending too much money and forcing interest rates up, is that interest rates are already too low. They say that rates in Australia are already at record lows and that they are very, very low. Interest rates are low by Australian standards. The government know that interest rates are low by Australian standards. The opposition also know that it is true by Australian standards, but what the government fail to acknowledge is that interest rates for Australia compared to interest rates around the world are still high. Only four countries in the OECD have higher interest rates, on a cash rate, than Australia: Poland, Mexico, Iceland and Turkey. This is the club that this government aspires to put us in—to see our interest rates rise to the levels in those countries. The other thing that has happened with our interest rates is that the government have moved first. They have moved before everybody. It was the New Zealand government that just recently decided—unlike our Reserve Bank—to keep interest rates where they were. Why did they decide to do that? The statement of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand was: As we have said previously, the forecast recovery in economic activity is based on monetary policy continuing to provide substantial support to the economy. We expect such support will be needed for some time. As a result, we continue to expect to keep the OCR at or below the current level through until the latter part of 2010. Why can the New Zealand Reserve Bank do that? They can do that because their stimulus was not as big and they are not spending money like this government. So New Zealand have given their Reserve Bank the option of keeping interest rates where they are. This government have decided not to do that. They have decided to keep spending money, which takes that option away from the Reserve Bank governor, puts the pressure on and forces interest rates up. The other thing they sought to use in their argument was simply to deny reality. Despite the fact that the government are continuing their record spending—which is expansionary and the Reserve Bank has actually decided to raise interest rates, which is contractionary—the Treasurer stood in this place yesterday and denied reality. He said: The fact is that both fiscal policy and monetary policy are both working and going in the same direction, just as they did when we were responding to the crisis. As the economy has begun to grow, monetary policy is gradually going to be withdrawn. Interest rates are going up and monetary policy is contracting. Fiscal policy is expanding and the Treasurer is saying that it is going in the same direction. I had to think about what sort of picture I could paint if I had to explain it to my young daughter. What does something look like when one is going in one direction and one is going in the other direction? I thought back to my own childhood days and I remembered Dr Dolittle and his pushmi-pullyu. For those who need to remember what the Australian government’s economic policy looks like, I can tell them that it looks like this picture: a pushmi-pullyu. One is going in one direction and one is going in the other direction. Now the Treasurer says that we have both of these things working in tandem. This is the Treasurer’s economic policy; it is a pushmi-pullyu. The government are standing there; they have one foot on the accelerator and the other one on the brake. It is called a burn-out, and that is what they are doing to our economy, time and time again. But if the government will not listen to the opposition when we tell them what they are doing to interest rates and families trying to pay off mortgages, then why don’t they listen to some of the most eminent economists in this country? Talking about the stimulus, Warwick McKibbin said: It was too big and wrongly focused. Now is the time to step back and reassess the situation. What about Professor Garnaut? He said: But once there are signs that the economy is recovering faster than had been anticipated, then it’s appropriate to pull back that stimulus at a faster rate. Maybe the Prime Minister will listen to Kochie? Mr Koch said: The Rudd government was commendably quick with its stimulus package to fight the downturn but now it has to be quick to wind it back or face the prospect of an economy which overheats and forces the Reserve Bank to come to the rescue and raise interest rates. This is a government that is quite happy for the Reserve Bank of this country to do the heavy lifting of economic reform, to take the hard decisions on economics in this country. This government is happy just to stand back and let that happen without doing the heavy lifting—what they know they need to do in this budget. They are conflicted. They know that they want to keep spending money all the way from now until the next election. In doing so they are going to make it harder for more than 200,000 people who they have just convinced to go out and buy a new home. Recently I was at Ropes Crossing talking to one such home buyer. They never thought rates would move this quickly. They never thought they would but interest rates will move quickly under this government because this government cannot stop spending. (Time expired) 10563 16:29:00 Bevis, Arch, MP ET4 Brisbane ALP 1 0 Mr BEVIS —This is a debate focusing on small business, which is notable for the absence of the shadow minister for small business, who is not entering the debate. Not only will his own team not let him ask a question of the minister during the course of, I think, 510 days, but he cannot get a guernsey in the top three speakers on the other side in an MPI. It is time he hung up his badge and looked for a job somewhere else. Indeed, watching the performance of the member for Casey in opening this discussion, I would say the same to him. The member for Casey was long renowned for his close relationship with the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins. I used to think that part of his job was to make the member for Higgins look a bit good. Now that the member for Higgins has gone and we see the member for Casey by himself, I have to say that the reflected glory was all the other way. The performance today was truly underwhelming. The member for Casey started by referring, thankfully, to the last budget, and that is where I want to start. I want to talk about what the small business community actually said about the last budget. I imagine that the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia is a group that those opposite take some heed of. COSBOA said that it welcomed the new initiatives that support small business in the budget and then listed a whole raft of things, including the small business tax break and the small business support line. It went on to say this about that $10 million venture: The challenges that are now facing small businesses in this recessionary period are serious, and small businesses need the confidence to know that there is someone to turn to when things get tough. Having a dedicated first point of contact for enquiries ranging from problems with access to finance through to retail leasing issues will be an important service to small businesses. That is what it said about that measure in the budget. It went on about other initiatives in the budget. It said of the small business online program that it was designed to help small businesses participate in the digital economy and enter the world of e-commerce. I would have thought that would have met with some approval from those opposite. It certainly met with approval from the small business community. COSBOA said: Whether you’re a carpenter or a lawyer, a delicatessen or a pharmacy, more and more people use the internet every day to make their purchasing decisions. Government support for small businesses to enter the online world is very good news. It knows it is very good news. That was an initiative taken in the last budget that clearly was of benefit to small business. The last one I will mention from its statement is the new R&D tax credits, a very important initiative, Minister. Congratulations to you and your colleagues in the cabinet for re-establishing a decent R&D tax credit which COSBOA acknowledged by saying: The increased government support for small businesses and other firms who engage in R&D is back to where it should be. Interesting words: ‘back to where it should be’. Not only did COSBOA think it was good that we did it but they reflected on the fact that for a decade R&D had been ignored and relegated to a third-rate issue by those opposite when they had management of the economy. That was the budget. We then saw substantial packages to stimulate the economy through what has without doubt been the most stressful economic environment in the world for three-quarters of a century. I can remember going to one of the events in my electorate that was driven by the stimulus package. It was the opening of some new defence housing, part of an 800-house package of new defence houses. I remember talking to the contractors who were there. I can remember very clearly my conversations with the management and with the tradespeople. The management said that at the start of the year they were staring down an abyss. A major fall in the market confronted them. They were actually looking at laying off large numbers of their staff. When we as a government announced the initiatives in the stimulus package they decided to hang on in the hope that they might just be able to keep their valued staff on. Not only have they been able to keep their valued staff but they have expanded their staff. They were there doing great work building houses for the men and women of the Australian Defence Force at Upper Kedron, which are now occupied. These are real jobs—real people in real jobs who then ensure, through the multiplier effect, through all the things they spend money on at the shops and in entertainment at theatres and other places, that other small businesses are able to maintain their operations. All these things are understood by small business contractors and the families who rely on them. It is understood by people around the world that stimulus packages of this kind were essential in addressing the threats that we collectively confronted as a global economy. But it is not understood, even today, by those opposite. I am reminded of a meeting just this morning when members of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade met with an ambassador from one of the countries of Europe. The question came up about his country’s handling of the global financial crisis. He referred to the fact that in his country they had actually had to bail out one of the major banks. They had spent $60 billion to ensure the viability of just one bank because it was central to their economic activity. Every government in the world, every political party in the world, has understood that dynamic. It beggars belief that even now the Liberal Party, led by a merchant banker, cannot comprehend those fundamentals. I want to make some reference to retail turnover as another indicator of what has been going on over the course of the last year as a result of this government’s stimulus packages. The Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy made some reference to this. If you go back to October, just before the crisis, you can see the downturn. Our growth in October in retail sales year on year was down to about two per cent. Historically that is comparatively low, if you look over the last four or five years. In November it had dropped to 1.7 per cent. We, like the rest of the world, were heading for that abyss. The government took very strong, clear, decisive action early on to prevent the worst of that affecting the Australian community. And it has shown up very dramatically in retail sales. In December, retail sales increased year on year by 5.7 per cent. Bear in mind that just a month earlier the increase was only 1.7 per cent. So in December it had jumped to 5.7 per cent, and that higher level of confidence in the retail sector has been maintained since: 6.2 per cent in January and 3.9 per cent in February when, I guess, people were paying off their Christmas credit card bills. It then picked up again in March to 6.1 per cent and has been maintained at around six per cent ever since. That is an enormous endorsement of this government’s strategy. And who does this involve in a real sense? It is not just Myer and David Jones and the big stores of the world. This is very much impacting the mums and dads and small businesses in every suburb of every city and in every town of Australia. Yet it has escaped the comprehension of those opposite. You know, Mr Deputy Speaker, every now and then something comes along in this place and it is just too good to pass up. And when I saw the MPI here I thought, ‘I’ve got to have a piece of this!’ When someone walks along and pokes their chin out and says, ‘Here, hit me here,’ sometimes you just have to take up the offer. When member for Casey stood up and delivered his opening comments here, I thought, ‘Yep, this is the debate to be in.’ How absurd to stand up in this debate, as the member for Casey did and a couple of others will, to argue the point that somehow the government’s support of the economy, our support of the banking system, our support of the retail sector, our support of the construction sector—all of these things—were misguided, misplaced and we got it all wrong. Reference has been made to the debt, and this of course has been the big-ticket item for those opposite. They think this is their political nirvana to get them out of jail. We do not have time to debate that here fully. I just want to make some reference to an article in August written by Ross Gittins, well known to all of us in this place, where he spoke about the debt and posed the question: ‘So, how worried should we be about that debt?’ He said: Much less than Turnbull wants us to be. He is exaggerating the size of the debt, misrepresenting the cause of the debt, exaggerating the difficulty we’ll have repaying it, misrepresenting its effect on our prospects and pretending we’ll end up with little to show for it. I commend the article to all members to read. It is an excellent article. These are the simple facts, illustrating the confusion of those opposite. The Liberals have said for the last year that they support our initiatives like new buildings for every primary school, but they voted against that. They said they support the $950 back-to-school bonus that we gave to families at the start of the year, but they voted against that too. They said they support the $900 tax bonus and, yes, they voted against that. They said they supported the 800 defence houses and they voted against that. They said they support the 20,000 social houses and they voted against that. They said they support the rebate of $1,600 for ceiling insulation and they voted against that. And, indeed, they said they supported the $950 bonus for farmers devastated by drought and, would you believe it, even the cow cockies voted against that. (Time expired) 10566 16:39:00 Chester, Darren, MP IPZ Gippsland NATS 0 0 Mr CHESTER —I rise to speak about the government’s reckless spending and the severe impact it is having, and will continue to have, on families and small business. In the time available to me I will focus on just three words: value for money. That is what we all look for when we run our household budgets. For those of us who have been involved in small business in the past, it is something we focus on in everything we do. We ring around, we get quotes, we want to make sure we get the right price and the job well done. But judging by this government’s reckless spending over the  past six months, value for money is a concept that it simply does not understand. How else can we explain the $12.7 billion cash splash—the $900 sugar fix that should have been used for investing in projects that deliver real long-term benefits throughout our nation, not on a rush for plasma TVs and poker machines. I have no doubt that the cheques in the mail were particularly popular in the electorate, but they were not in the nation’s long-term interest and they did not deliver value for money in terms of benefits to infrastructure throughout the Australian economy. We are right in the middle of the Spring Racing Carnival so it is timely to reflect on the biggest punt of all time: the $12.7 billion gamble with borrowed money that delivered no long-term benefit to the future prosperity of our nation. Long after that joy of receiving the cheque in the mail, Australian families will be paying off this debt which that has been accumulated for every man, woman and child. Gippsland’s share of this reckless cash splash, if you do some rough calculations, was in the vicinity of $90 million. I can assure the House that Gippslanders who have spoken to me ever since have been very critical of the government’s reckless spending spree and stated that they would rather have seen that money spent on worthwhile long-term projects such as safer roads, better health services, upgraded sporting facilities in our community. 83V Emerson, Craig, MP Dr Emerson —Schools? IPZ Chester, Darren, MP Mr CHESTER —I will get to the schools, minister for small business. The consequences of this reckless spending will be felt for decades to come. We know, and the reports on this have come in already, that the health system needs an overhaul. I am sure the Minister for Health and Ageing, who is in the chamber at the moment, would really like to see some of the $12.7 billion allocated to her health budget. But it is gone now, and Australian families can look forward to increased taxes as they pay off Labor’s debt. The member for Casey correctly pointed out in his presentation in this debate that all this spending will end in pain for families and small businesses. It will end in higher taxes, and who knows what the Minister for Finance and Deregulation has in store for us in the next budget. Higher income tax? Death duties? They have not even ruled out extra taxes affecting the family home. I refer to a Hansard of 1994 which reflects the minister for finance’s opinions in relation to the tax treatment of the family home. He said: We should focus on the real issues of tax reform. Overinvestment in housing, which has been chronic in this country, has been contributed to by favourable treatment in the tax system. We should abolish negative gearing and modify the capital gains tax exemption by, for example, applying that exemption only to the unimproved value of houses purchased. In that way, there will be no bias in the tax system which impels people to invest in extensions and the like. Even the family home is not safe from the minister for finance. We are likely to see cuts to services across the board. Families and small businesses will feel the pain of Labor’s reckless spending. As the member for Cook also highlighted, it is as inevitable as night follows day that higher interest rates will follow Labor’s reckless spending spree. Those opposite like to claim that the opposition rejected any form of economic stimulus whatsoever. That is a fiction or a fairytale, if you like, that they like to promote to keep themselves warm at night when they reflect on the fact that they have fired every shot in the locker and have nothing left for the next challenge when it inevitably arises. Like the member for Cook with his ‘push me pull you’, I am reminded of another fairytale. It is not the one where the ugly duckling turns into a beautiful swan—with all due respect to the Treasurer. The fairytale I am referring to is The Emperor’s New Clothes. That is the one where the emperor of a prosperous city pays a fortune for a new suit and two conmen tell him that it is invisible to anyone who is either stupid or unfit for his position. The emperor and his ministers refuse to say they cannot see the suit, for fear of appearing too stupid. The emperor parades through his town naked, until a small child cries out, ‘The emperor has no clothes.’ And you can relax, Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not have any props of the emperor with no clothes. 10000 Secker, Patrick (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr PD Secker)—I am pleased! IPZ Chester, Darren, MP Mr CHESTER —But look around us—no-one opposite would dare to pronounce that Emperor Rudd has no clothes. No, they go along with the fairytale. They nod sagely behind him every day in question time. They trumpet his arrival. They hang on his every word, and repeat them day after day on the doors. Even though they know in their own hearts that this reckless spending spree has frittered away a budget surplus and left our nation facing a decade of debt, they all fall at the feet of Emperor Rudd. The emperor has no clothes—he has no economic credibility. The old maxim is proving true once again: Labor simply cannot manage money. In the few moments I have left I want to refer to the so-called Building the Education Revolution. Again in their desperation to shovel the money out the door, the government has set unrealistic time frames and is pressuring schools to accept whatever is on offer. There must be greater commitment to value for money. (Time expired) 10568 16:44:00 Rishworth, Amanda, MP HWA Kingston ALP 1 0 Ms RISHWORTH —I am very pleased to speak on this MPI. I am going to start with the ‘push me, pull me’ animal which the member for Cook displayed. I got a bit confused. I thought it was a diagram of the National and Liberal parties’ position when it comes to climate change. Or perhaps it is a diagram of the Liberal and National parties’ position on the structural separation of Telstra. Or perhaps it is a diagram of the Liberal and National parties’ position on asylum seekers. I am not really sure. I thought it was a diagram of one of those, but it is not. In this MPI debate, we are thinking about what the consequences would have been for both families and small businesses had the Liberal Party been elected at the last election. The consequences would have been huge—and not in a good way, but in a very bad way. More people would have been out of jobs, there would have been lower business and consumer confidence and more small businesses would have been facing difficulty. Why is that? It is because the Liberal Party and the National Party were completely against any economic stimulus. This is very disappointing because, while the rest of the world were moving towards stimulating their economies, the Liberal and National parties came to this parliament every day arguing against stimulus. We heard the member for Gippsland change his position on this just before. He said they were for some types of stimulus but not other types. But I remember clearly in this House that they voted against our stimulus package which helped small business, families and the Australian economy. One of those small businesses is Quattro, in my electorate of Kingston, which is in the business of building houses. They were successful in tendering to build some social housing that was part of the economic stimulus package. They told me that things were looking very grim for them. In fact, they were looking at laying off some people because of the severe economic downturn. But, as a result of our economic stimulus package, they put more people on. That was good news not just for Quattro. In fact, they attended my Kingston working forum— 10000 Secker, Patrick (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr PD Secker)—Order! The time allotted for this discussion has now expired. 10568 Motions 10568 16:47:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP Minister for Health and Ageing 1 0 Ms ROXON —I move: That, in accordance with section 10B of the Health Insurance Act 1973, the House approves the Health Insurance (Extended Medicare Safety Net) Determination 2009 made on 9 October 2009, and presented to the House on 19 October 2009. 10568 16:47:00 Dutton, Peter, MP 00AKI Dickson LP 0 0 Mr DUTTON —We welcome this small win for common sense. This has certainly been a case of great bungling by the minister and by the government. The motion today is a result of the work of the coalition and crossbench senators who successfully fought to amend the extended Medicare safety net legislation so that the Rudd government must seek parliamentary approval to make any changes into the future. This is an important safeguard for patients across the country who rely on the protection of the safety net to ensure affordable access to quality health care. Indeed, in a joint statement by Mr Rudd and Nicola Roxon on 22 September 2007, it was stated: With about one million people each year receiving some cost relief from the safety net, Federal Labor will not put more pressure on family budgets by taking that assistance away. This was just another promise that the Prime Minister and the health minister had no intention of honouring. Following coalition questioning of the figures used by the minister, the government was forced into negotiations with patient groups and doctors regarding the changes. Minister Roxon was eventually forced into a backflip on the caps on IVF treatment. Increases in Medicare rebates, increases in the safety net caps and the addition of new Medicare items now mean that those seeking IVF treatment will not be forced to pay thousands of dollars more in out-of-pocket expenses. Despite increasing the caps and the Medicare rebate for a number of items, the minister still claims that the government will generate exactly the same savings, casting more doubt over the assertions and calculations. I quote media release of 8 September this year by the Minister for Health and Ageing: The restructured items and caps achieve the same savings announced in the 2009-10 Budget ($451.6 million over 4 years). The coalition welcome the removal of item No. 42740—‘Injection of therapeutic substance into the eye’—which was only removed after significant pressure was applied by the coalition and the crossbench in the Senate. This measure would have had a significant impact on the treatment of macular degeneration, through the injection of the drug Lucentis into the eye. The safety net reimburses patients, not doctors, and the Rudd government tried to shift the cost for the treatment of macular degeneration to patients. Treatment of MD with Lucentis is only available at a limited number of public hospitals. It is not available in New South Wales. The patients who could not afford the increased cost may have stopped treatment and risked blindness. The $16 million in savings associated with this measure is insignificant when compared to the waste and mismanagement in other areas of the Rudd government’s spending. It would have had a considerable impact on patients, with some unnecessarily going blind as a result. It would have meant an increase in falls, fractures and associated hospitalisations for older Australians in particular, and that is why this government should be exposed for the frauds that they are in relation to health. This government promised a lot at the last election. They promised to fix hospitals and they promised to fix the health system. They have not done anything in that direction. This humiliating backflip by Minister Roxon today is further evidence that this government are not serious about health. We welcome the government’s backflip. We are sorry that it took so long but, in the end, I am happy that the coalition, with the assistance of the crossbench senators were able to force the government’s hand. 10569 16:51:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP Minister for Health and Ageing 1 0 Ms ROXON —It is good to see that the shadow minister for health is ‘back in the saddle’, his fate having been decided. The one thing you cannot criticise the shadow minister for is a lack of front. He has had the most humiliating couple of weeks, yet he accuses us of a backflip. It is convenient that the retiring member is here at the table while we have this discussion. The government does not accept for one minute that this is a backflip but, even if you do call it a backflip, it would be ‘junior grade’ compared to the Olympic standard backflip executed by the shadow minister opposite. 10000 Secker, Patrick (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr PD Secker)—The minister should keep to the debate. 83K Roxon, Nicola, MP Ms ROXON —This piece of legislation and the determination that goes with it are very important. The shadow minister did not mention it, but I understand that he has agreed to make sure that this has speedy approval through the processes of the parliament. It is a very unusual arrangement that the safety net determinations, as requested by the opposition, must be approved by resolution of both houses of parliament before the instrument can take effect. Obviously, this unique process is now required for giving the legislative instrument the legal effect that it needs. We are comfortable with the change that was made, as mentioned by the shadow minister, of removing item 42740 for the injection of therapeutic substances into the eye. We were persuaded by the arguments that were put by community members and the opposition that a save of under $20 million in a package worth nearly half a billion dollars, given the impacts that were highlighted to us, could be contemplated. We have made those changes accordingly. The only other change that appeared, in comparison to those that were tabled and released as draft determinations, was the indexation of the safety net benefit caps by the consumer price index. Of course, this is of benefit to patients as it means they will receive a higher benefit. The last matter that I would like to address is the lack of understanding that is still being displayed by the opposition about the budget measure—the fact that this will still deliver the budget figures as estimated and released on budget night, with the adjustment, of course, of the under $20 million for the injection of therapeutic substance into the eye. It was announced and contemplated in the budget papers that the reworking of, for example, the IVF schedule and the obstetrics schedule was part of the calculations that were made for this budget measure. It suited the opposition to pretend that that was not part of the announcement and it suited them to campaign on it while those negotiations were underway, but the truth is that a reasonable arrangement has been met with broad support from the industry. It was not comprehensive support—I acknowledge that. I am pleased that the opposition has decided that this is a measure that they will support. I welcome that support and commend the determination to the House. Question agreed to. 10570 Business 10570 10570 10570 16:55:00 Hall, Jill, MP 83N Shortland ALP 1 0 Ms HALL —I present the the revised report of the Whips relating to the consideration of committee and delegation reports and private Members’ business on Monday, 26 October 2009. Copies of the report have been placed on the Table. The report reads as follows— Pursuant to standing order 41A, the Whips recommend the following items of committee and delegation reports and private Members’ business for Monday, 26 October 2009. The order of precedence and allotments of time for items in the Main Committee and Chamber are as follows: Items recommended for Main Committee (6.55 to 8.30 pm) PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS Notices 1 MR CHESTER: To move: That the House: notes that National Landcare Week, 7 to 13 September, in 2009 commemorated 20 years of service across Australia; recognises that Landcare: is primarily a community driven, grassroots organisation that involves local people achieving locally significant environmental aims; and volunteers make an extraordinary contribution by understanding practical environmental work; and highlights the need for ongoing funding to employ Landcare facilitators and coordinators who play a pivotal role in: managing the volunteer programs; assisting community groups; providing professional advice; and mobilising volunteer effort. Time allotted—20 minutes. Speech time limits— Mr Chester—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 2 MR ZAPPIA: To move: That the House: notes the widespread calls from throughout the community to provide more clarity with respect to Australian food labelling standards; acknowledges progress made to date in ensuring that Australian food labelling laws provide consumers with the relevant and clear information that they require to make informed product choices; notes that Australian producers and consumers will benefit from clearer food labelling laws and that there are economic and health outcomes related to this matter; acknowledges the importance of this matter to both Australian producers and consumers; and notes and supports the review being undertaken by the Australian and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council and asks the Minister for Health and Ageing to consider any options available to speed up the review process. Time allotted—30 minutes. Speech time limits— Mr Zappia—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 6 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 3 MRS GASH: To move: That the House: recognises the extent of abuse and neglect inflicted on Australian children who were placed in the care of the Government in institutions or out of home care during the last century; acknowledges the neglect of all governments that allowed this abuse, pain and suffering to continue for so many years; condemns the Government for failing to apologise to these forgotten Australians whose lives have been adversely affected as a result of their childhood abuse; and calls on the Government to issue an unequivocal apology immediately to all victims of such abuse. Time allotted—35 minutes. Speech time limits— Mrs Gash—10 minutes. Next Member speaking—10 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x10 + 3 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 4 MR BRIGGS: To move: That the House: notes that: the young people detained in the Magill Youth Training Centre in South Australia are being held in degrading conditions; and in the assessment of Australia’s United Nations Youth Representative, Mr Chris Varney, this represents a breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child; recognises that: in 2006, the South Australian Labor Government acknowledged that the centre was in need of replacement as it breached modern building codes and occupational health and safety requirements; and the South Australian Government is yet to keep its election promise; and calls on the Federal Youth Minister to intervene in this urgent matter and ensure that a new centre is built as promised by the South Australian Labor Government. Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 8.30 pm Speech time limits— Mr Briggs—5 minutes. Other Member—5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend that consideration of this should continue on a future day. Items recommended for House of Representatives Chamber (8.40 to 9.30 pm) COMMITTEE AND DELEGATION REPORTS Presentation and statements 1 PARLIAMENTARY JOINT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY Annual Report of Committee Activities 2008-2009. The Whips recommend that statements on the report may be made—statement to conclude by 8.50 pm Speech time limits— Mr Bevis (Chair)—5 minutes Other Member—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 2 PARLIAMENTARY JOINT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY Review of the Listing of Al-Shabaab. The Whips recommend that statements on the report may be made—all statements to conclude by 9 pm Speech time limits— Mr Bevis (Chair)—5 minutes Other Member—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 3 STANDING COMMITTEE ON CLIMATE CHANGE, WATER, ENVIRONMENT AND THE ARTS Managing our coastal zone in a changing climate: the time to act is now. The Whips recommend that statements on the report may be made—all statements to conclude by 9.10 pm Speech time limits— Ms George (Chair)—5 minutes Other Member—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS Notices 1 MS PARKE: To move: That the House: notes that the 24 October is United Nations Day, celebrating the entry into force of the United Nations Charter (UNC) on 24 October 1945; celebrates Australia’s key role in the formation of the United Nations and the drafting of the UNC; recognises that Australia has been a consistent and long term contributor to United Nations’ efforts to safeguard international peace and security and to promote human rights, for example, by being the thirteenth largest contributor to the United Nations’ budget; by contributing to many United Nations’ peacekeeping operations; and by firmly committing to increasing Australia’s development assistance and seeking real progress towards the Millennium Development Goals; notes further the Australian Government’s commitment to the multilateral system as one of the three fundamental pillars of Australia’s foreign policy; that Australia is determined to work through the United Nations to enhance security and economic well being worldwide; and to uphold the purposes and principles of the UNC; notes that as the only truly global organisation, the United Nations plays a critical role in addressing the global challenges that no country can resolve on its own and that Australia is determined to play its part within the United Nations to help address serious global challenges, including conflict prevention, international development, climate change, terrorism and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction; notes also Australia’s commitment to, and support for, reform of the United Nations’ system in order to ensure that the organisation reflects today's world and is able to function efficiently and effectively; and reaffirms the faith of the Australian people in the purposes and principles of the UNC. Time allotted—remaining private Members’ business time prior to 9.30 pm Speech time limits— Ms Parke—5 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins] The Whips recommend that consideration of this should continue on a future day. That the report be adopted in lieu of the report presented earlier today. 10573 Bills R4209 10573 Ms HALL (Shortland) 16:55:00 —by leave—I move: That the bill be referred to the Main Committee for further consideration. Question agreed to. 10573 Bills R4212 10573 Debate resumed. 10000 Secker, Patrick (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr PD Secker)—The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Dunkley has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘that’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. 10573 16:57:00 King, Catherine, MP 00AMR Ballarat ALP 1 0 Ms KING —I rise to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. The Australian Labor Party has been around since 1891. As our nation’s oldest political party, we have a very long history. When we look back at the history of this party, we see that an important characteristic has always remained true: the Australian Labor Party is the party of nation-building. We are seeing this through our investment in education, road, rail and housing across the country. It is now even more apparent with the delivery of our election commitment to build a national broadband network. This election commitment involves an investment by the government of some $4.7 billion. The commitment to build a national broadband network is one of the biggest projects the nation has seen since Prime Minister Ben Chifley introduced the Snowy hydro scheme. It is a huge undertaking and a very complicated task. Many communities are currently constrained by inadequate broadband access and we as a government are keen to get things moving. Those same communities have also suffered from a telecommunications industry that has lacked adequate competition. What those opposite proposed in relation to providing broadband services, by way of a wireless network, to regional and rural communities was, frankly, quite laughable. Not only was the proposal of those opposite extremely unreliable but it was an inadequate option for rural and regional Australia. On the other hand, major stakeholders have shown great interest in the rollout of the National Broadband Network. They are excited by the possibilities that the National Broadband Network will bring to our local communities. In my own community, local councils—many of whom had discussions with Minister Conroy when he visited the Ballarat electorate last month—want to be part of developing the network. I have signalled to Senator Conroy that I am keen to work with him on how these measures will benefit regions in my district. With the bill before the parliament today we have taken another step in our task of revolutionising our nation’s telecommunications industry. The importance of the government’s reforms on growing regional Australia should not be underestimated in relation to the broadband. Discussions between Senator Conroy, local stakeholders across the Ballarat electorate and me displayed only a snapshot of the possibilities that come with a national broadband network—possibilities that will enable small businesses and regional communities to compete on a global scale. In order to make this national broadband network a reality, the telecommunications industry in Australia needs significant change—change that the Australian people have needed for some time. Under this bill before the parliament today, the government is moving to create greater competition across the telecommunications sector, strengthen consumer safeguards and reduce red tape. Much of the attention and debate that has arisen since this bill was introduced has focused on our proposed changes to the structure of the telecommunications sector. We have seen a huge focus on this because industry knows, and consumers know, that what we are proposing is significant reform to a sector that has been constrained for a long period of time. With this bill we are amending the Telecommunications Act 1997 to require Telstra to functionally separate unless they voluntarily structurally separate. The Rudd government’s reforms to Australia’s telecommunications sector are about implementing a system that is in the long-term interest of the Australian people. The level of Telstra’s integration within the telecommunications industry is currently highly uncompetitive. The fixed line copper network that connects almost every household is owned by Telstra. The largest cable network is owned by Telstra. The largest mobile phone network is owned by Telstra. Half of the largest pay TV provider is controlled by Telstra. Telstra’s ownership in the telecommunications industry is significant. The competitive benefits of such concentrated ownership are not easy to find. The Rudd government is working to reinvigorate sound competition across the telecommunications sector with the proposals in this bill. Our amendments in the bill work to achieve this. Our amendments address the level of Telstra’s integration in the sector to promote competition and address the failure of the previous government to act over the past decade. The current arrangements not only fail consumers but fail to promote competition for small and large business. This is no more apparent than across regional and rural Australia—and many areas in my own electorate. Our measures are working to place Australia in line with telecommunications across other developed countries. In comparison to OECD countries, Australia is sitting in the bottom half in terms of broadband take-up. This is astounding, considering that local businesses across my electorate tell me that they need adequate technology just to survive, and particularly to be competitive in this global financial crisis. Clearly the level of technology on offer cannot meet these requirements. Not only do we have a lower level of broadband take-up but those who choose to take it up are paying high prices for low-speed connections. It is really a damning indictment of Telstra—which, frankly, has had a monopoly over telecommunications services for such a long time period of time—that we have such a woeful broadband network and that government is now required to step up to the plate in order to provide the much-needed infrastructure that will boost Australia’s economy. The Rudd government has proposed the separation of Telstra as the company currently has an interest in favouring its own retail arm. These changes are all about introducing competition. Under our changes, Telstra may undertake, with the ACCC, to voluntarily separate its retail and wholesale services. In fact, it is the federal government’s preference that Telstra choose to do this voluntarily. If Telstra does not separate voluntarily then it will be required to do so on functional lines. This bill seeks to promote competition and to overcome the former government’s missed opportunities in telecommunications. The bill also amends the Trade Practices Act to improve access and strengthen anticompetitive measures by amending the ACCC’s regulatory powers. As part of these measures, we are streamlining the process of access to telecommunications services. These changes were given strong support by the submissions received as part of the consultation process. The ACCC will now be able to set price and non-price terms for three to five years for declared services. Measures in this bill will also give the ACCC the ability to act quickly on breaches of the law. This can now be achieved as we have removed the requirement for the ACCC to consult with a party prior to issuing a competition notice. The bill also seeks to strengthen the ability to enforce consumer safeguards. Consumers should have access to telecommunications services that are not only of a high quality but also affordable. High-quality and affordable telecommunications services are something that many of the residents in my own electorate have argued for, certainly since I was elected in 2001. This bill will ensure that the quality and affordability of services provided by Telstra will be maintained during the transition to the National Broadband Network. This bill ensures that consumers and small business, especially in regional Australia, are no longer forgotten. At present, consumer protection measures include the universal service obligation, the customer service guarantee and the priority assistance arrangements. But the government has received a clear message, from a number of reviews, that these consumer safeguards need strengthening, and this legislation is seeking to achieve this. We are putting forward rules to improve the regulation of payphones, to maintain the minimum performance benchmarks and to give the Australian Communications and Media Authority greater powers. The last point of this package I would like to recognise is the provision to reduce the level of regulation. The government has made a firm decision to work with industry to reduce red tape across the Australian economy, and this bill is another example of the government’s commitment. To achieve this we are doing a number of things. This bill will amend the Telecommunications (Carrier Licence Charges) Act 1997 to provide an exemption for carriers whose annual revenues are below $25 million from paying an annual carrier licence charge. These carriers will not be required to contribute to the universal service and national relay service levies. This is a positive move forward for carriers and consumers. As part of this package the government has also introduced changes to reporting requirements. If performance benchmarks are met, reporting requirements under the customer service guarantee, the priority assistance arrangements and the network reliability framework will be reduced. We will also be repealing unnecessary accounting and operational separation requirements once Telstra has been separated. The Australian people are tired of inaction from governments on addressing the myriad issues that exist across the telecommunications sector. Frankly, people are fed up. The reforms that the government has outlined in this bill reflect the most significant changes to the telecommunications sector in over a decade. The package will introduce a new dynamic to that sector. We are committed to the promotion of competition and to quality services for the Australian people both in the suburbs and in regional areas. The task ahead is a tough one but incredibly important, certainly for regional Australia. The government has set a significant policy agenda in the area of telecommunications. The Liberal Party, in government for over a decade, failed to deliver much-needed reform to the telecommunications sector. As a result, consumers and small businesses have been the real losers. Even now, with these changes in the pipeline, the coalition are not supportive of these reforms. Earlier today we heard the member for Dunkley speak on this bill and describe our position as rash, unjustified and irrational. On the other hand, we had Senator Joyce saying that he wishes they had introduced such reforms when they were in government. It is a bit hard for the government to work out what the coalition’s position is, not only on this bill but on a number of bills before us at the moment. Yet in the House of Representatives today we have heard little support for this bill from those opposite. It beggars belief that the Liberal Party still hold such archaic views. Either they are too ashamed to state that they failed to act or the party are out of touch with the needs of everyday households. The third possibility is that the members opposite cannot reach a common policy agreement on this vital issue. And what do they do when they cannot reach agreement? They do not try and sort it out, talk to each other and reach agreement; they try, through the processes of parliament, to delay much-needed reform. Unfortunately, that is what we are seeing again here today with this bill. Personally, though, I suspect it is a mix of all of the above. I, on the other hand, support these reforms to position Australia’s telecommunications industry for the 21st century. Members of the Rudd government are in common agreement and support of this 21st century measure. Regional Australia is looking forward to the National Broadband Network and supports many of the measures that are in this bill. I commend this bill to the House. 10576 17:08:00 Hull, Kay, MP 83O Riverina NATS 0 0 Mrs HULL —It pains me to stand in this House today to talk about this bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009, because of a speech I made in the House on Thursday, 8 September 2005. It was a speech wherein I explained the reasons why I would not be supporting the government that I was part of at that time but would be voting against the sale of Telstra. And I did vote against the sale of Telstra, for the very reasons that I espoused in my speech that day. I said: What my electorate of Riverina and what most Australians want is a reliable and low-cost communication system that provides equity of access and affordable access. I believe that the simplest way to achieve this would be to retain Telstra’s infrastructure as a public utility and to split off its retail business. It was clear to me at that time that we were privatising a monopoly. It was my view what we should have been doing what former communications minister Kim Beazley should have done when the former Labor government corporatised Telstra: Telstra should have been structurally separated then. It would have been the right and proper thing to have done then. Now, so many years down the track, the Labor Party understand that this was something that was required. In that 2005 speech I gave the reasons for my view that we should structurally separate Telstra’s retail and wholesale infrastructure. Sad to say—and I wish it were not true—everything that I outlined in my speech came true for the people of the Riverina. I am not sure how privatisation worked for people in the city but I can most certainly say that for the people in the country it was not the best decision that the former government made. Unfortunately, selling Telstra then became part of Labor policy. They agreed that Telstra should be sold and that it should not be structurally separated—as they had with corporatisation back when Kim Beazley was minister for communications. As recently as May 2009, the former Labor minister said that he had never advocated structural separation of the company. In this debate we are being asked to support something although we know very little about its outcomes and what it actually envisages for rural and regional Australia. People might think that I would be a natural supporter of this piece of legislation, but in fact the horse has bolted. The gate is open, the horse has bolted and it is very difficult to put the horse back in the paddock in the same state that it was. That is why I stand here to raise my significant concerns about what we are facing. The fact is we are being asked to support a bill that seeks to prevent Telstra from acquiring specified brands of spectrum which could be used for advanced wireless broadband services unless it structurally separates and divests itself of its hybrid fibre-coaxial cable network and its interest in Foxtel. We are also being asked to support the changes to the USO and the customer service guarantee, the CSG, without understanding exactly what those changes will deliver to regional people. That is not surprising, because this government has spent not one dollar on communications in my electorate since its election in 2007. But I am expected to accept the government has only good intentions where regional people are concerned. What we have in fact is a series of policy blunders over the two years that this government has been in power. The government promised a $4 billion broadband rollout that was supposed to be up and running, I think, by last December. That was shelved. The OPEL model was shelved because it was not good enough. There was some sort of wireless performance issue and, for the ADSL2 exchange upgrades, wireless was not good enough. Then the government proposal was for a $4.7 billion rollout of a wonderful communications network that was going to reach 98 per cent of the population! That was their election promise. That was shelved, and then it was replaced. They said: ‘We’re going to give you another broadband scheme now. The $4.7 billion that we anticipated would get to 98 per cent of the population, which was our election promise to you, is now a $43 billion program that is going to reach 90 per cent of the population.’ Now we have a $25 million implementation study for the government’s proposed NBN. It is due in February. They say to me, as a representative of regional people, ‘Trust me; I will still love you tomorrow.’ I do not have any faith in these promises. Everyone in this House talks about broadband. Everyone says that we are talking about fast and reliable broadband services, state-of-the-art communications et cetera. These things do not get dropped out of midair. They do not just get dropped into place and happen as soon as we decide it is going to happen. Who looks after the many people that I, Labor Party members and other members on this side of the House represent who are still on pair gains and RIMs? Competitors are coming through my office saying: ‘Now have we got a deal for you for regional Australia. We have not come to you before because you do not have the critical mass and there is not enough money in it for us to deliver services to you. We are interested in you now; we were not interested in you until all of this came about.’ They left us swinging on the end of the branch, with the bough ready to break. They have never been too interested in providing us with services, but now they have a deal for us. I asked about all of the people who are now reliant on copper wire and who will continue to be reliant on copper wire for a very long time, regardless of what happens with the proposed NBN $43 billion plan. As I said, it will not get dropped out of midair. I have seen quotes in newspapers that say it will take from eight years to 18 years to roll out. Who will look after the people on copper wire? Who will look after the people with the pair gains and RIMs? What are these competitors going to do when they come in? Are they going to replace the pair gains? Are they going to build the infrastructure to replace the RIMs systems? No, they are not. They do not want to enter into those areas either. They have told me clearly that they would require subsidisation to do that, and I have no evidence in front of me in this bill of any intent to subsidise the people in the Riverina that I represent who are living on pair gains and RIMs and have inadequate services already. I am not talking about in every gum tree in Australia and I am not talking about in communities of 50 or 100 people; I am talking about communities of 60,000 people and 30,000 people. They are in subdivisions where they are on pair gains and RIMs. You cannot deliver the technology that we are being promised. It is going to be some time till we have fibre optics running through our communities to every house. If we force this separation on Telstra, why should Telstra uphold, maintain and keep this system running and operational? Who is going to look after the people who have no other choices? When government members from regional communities tell us what great competition this is going to lead to and what lower prices this will lead to they conveniently forget all of these points. In reality, this will be a long way away for those people because it takes such a long time to build these networks. I have been hearing rubbish on broadband speed and the rollout. It just simply is not the reality. There has to be a reality check and understanding here as to what is actually going to happen and who is going to be responsible. In the past I have been in the position of having to vote against my own government—and it was not pleasant for me to do so—because it was something that I felt strongly about. I am sure I will never see the day when a Labor member walks across the floor and votes against their government. I can guarantee you that; I am sure of that. This legislation that has been presented in this House has so much rubbish and rhetoric attached to it. There are no real clear guidelines and understanding as to how it will work in reality and who is going to look after the people who do not get a service dropped from the sky in a short amount of time. Who is going to look after them, and why should they? Where are the safeguards? Where are the safety nets? Where are the guarantees? What is going to happen with the CSO? What is going to happen with the USO? We know that there will be changes to the USO in this legislation. We know that there will be changes to the CSO. How can we be confident that the regional people will be looked after? We have seen the $2.4 billion rural Communications Fund disbanded and taken away by this Labor government. That was put in place to continue to upgrade services and maintain the adequacy of regional services. That money was to be invested in continually building those services. In the flick of an eye the Labor Party came in and took it away. It was absorbed into their city-centric process. I feel that regional Australia has been continually sold out. It is my view that we should sit down and clearly assess how this new model for telecommunications in Australia will deliver quality services and technology to regional Australians. What will be the time frame for that to be delivered? Who is going to ensure the continuation of the maintenance and upgrades of services until the system is rolled out? How much money is going to be given to the companies and to the providers to ensure that this is being done? Telstra are the monopoly provider; there is no doubt about it. I am not here advocating on behalf of Telstra. I am here advocating on behalf of the people who are absolutely reliant on Telstra. Can I tell you this? They will continue to be reliant on Telstra because there will be no new group of people rushing into the electorate in the Riverina that I represent to offer these services. They will want to wait until it is all there for them so they will not have to make big-dollar investments. The critical mass is not there. The return to their shareholders will simply not be there; it is not in their best interests. We will not have the high returns of the critical mass that you might have in Sydney, Newcastle or Wollongong. They just will not be there. Even now, with the NBN, none of the communities with populations under 1,000 are covered—and this is a $43 billion program. We have gone from the Labor promise of 98 per cent of Australians being covered for under $4.7 billion—and they promised state-of-the-art, high-tech delivery—to a cost of $43 billion to cover 90 per cent of Australians. I simply cannot figure that. Are we supposed to let them say: ‘Trust us. We know what we’re doing’? Sincerely, that is a very big ask on anyone’s part. Any attempt to abolish the universal service obligation legislation and put into the minister’s hands the responsibility for determining what should or should not be in the USO should be opposed. I just do not think that would be a sensible outcome. I have been told by various people who have come through my office that the ACCC powers will be strengthened in our best interests. For goodness sake. I said this in my speech on 8 September in 2005: the ACCC will be the group of people looking to ensure accountability in services. That is what the former government did. They said, ‘Well, the ACCC is going to be given more power and services to make sure all of this happens.’ The fact is that the ACCC was a toothless tiger. It could not do anything when Telstra was government owned, so I do not know how it will do anything now that it is privately owned. We could not make Telstra accountable then, when it was majority government owned. I said in my speech that I just could not understand how the ACCC was going to do anything about the monopoly pricing that the sale of Telstra was going to lead to. The people I represented were totally reliant on Telstra giving them the services. True to form, the ACCC has done absolutely nothing. Now we say that it is a bit like GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch, that we are going to give the ACCC all these powers. We are going to put in a fuel commissioner and he is going to have all these powers. I still see the same discrepancy in prices for fuel in my electorate compared with other areas. You get the ACCC in to do an investigation and they say, ‘Oh, well, we really can’t do anything about it; we don’t have the powers.’ Yet we are supposed to believe that Graeme Samuel and the ACCC are going to look after our interests after this major plan supposedly succeeds. I have been too long burnt by the promise of riches to come. I have had the most enormous disillusionment about promises about the riches to come to regional Australia. It seems to me that every time somebody wants to do something, they all decide to make an industry of regional Australia. They say, ‘Have we got a deal for you.’ This Labor government is a classic at it. It is no different from anybody else. It speaks with a forked tongue. There is no commitment to regional Australia and that is proven by the very fact that we are simply non-existent outside of dispatch box rhetoric. They say, ‘Oh, this is going to be good for regional Australia.’ They say that as if that is the seal of the deal. I have said that Labor has already stolen our $2.4 billion from the Communications Fund. It was our guarantee that we would have quality services provided to regional areas. We have a major issue to confront here. In essence, as I stand here, it is extraordinary that we are saying two years later, ‘We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do with communications but trust us; we will deliver to you.’ That is not good enough. It is not good enough for regional Australia. I have no intention of being wooed by any false promises in the interests of the electorate of Riverina. I have not been wooed in the past; I certainly will not be wooed right now. It would be a mistake, an absolute mistake, if this bill were allowed to pass in the House without the proper scrutiny that it needs for the benefit of regional people. 10580 17:28:00 Grierson, Sharon, MP 00AMP Newcastle ALP 1 0 Ms GRIERSON —I rise to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. This bill is the legislative precursor to the most important facilitation to maximise individual potential, community potential and social and economic potential in our nation’s history. This is the legislation that begins an exciting journey of cultural change. It will change how we manage every aspect of our lives, how we connect with others, how we express our creativity and how we store, document, exchange and access all forms of human activity and human knowledge. The telecommunications legislation amendment bill is designed to reshape regulation in the telecommunications sector in the interests of consumers, business and the economy more broadly. Put simply: this bill will position the telecommunications industry to make a smooth transition into the new environment of the National Broadband Network, as the network is rolled out around the country. It will provide flexibility for Telstra, letting the company make its own choice as to how it will shape its future. It will also streamline the regulatory framework of the industry, protecting consumers and enhancing competition. People like me can feel the bonds and chains that have constrained our ICT sector finally loosening and, hopefully, falling away forever to liberate what is a wonderful industry. Most importantly, it paves the way for the rollout of the National Broadband Network, one of the most integral parts of the Rudd government’s blueprint for our nation’s future. The NBN will increase innovation and competition, and it will elevate customer standards and access. The implementation of the NBN will be one of the greatest infrastructure projects of our time—a modern-day Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme. I know the NBN will lay the foundation for generations of future development. Just to run quickly through the facts: the National Broadband Network will connect 90 per cent of all Australian homes, schools and workplaces with broadband services with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second—a hundred times faster than those currently used by many households and businesses. It will connect all other premises in Australia with next-generation wireless and satellite technologies that will deliver broadband speeds of 12 megabits per second. It will directly support up to 25,000 local jobs every year, on average, over the eight-year life of the project. Crucial to all of this, of course, is the future role of Telstra. It is fair to say that there have been very different views expressed on the best way forward for Telstra and its shareholders. As it stands, Telstra is one of the most highly integrated telecommunication companies in the world across a range of telecommunications platforms. It holds a virtual monopoly of the telecommunications industry. It owns the only fixed-line copper network, connected to almost every house in Australia. It owns the largest mobile phone network in Australia. It owns half of the largest pay TV provider in Australia, Foxtel. It owns the BigPond broadband network and the Sensis online directory. The Rudd government believes that the failure to address the issues of Telstra’s high-level of integration has resulted in the current regulatory arrangements effectively stifling competition. The regulatory arrangements have failed consumers—consumers like the residents of Thornton, a suburb in my electorate, who for years have struggled to gain anything more than the most basic broadband internet connections. Many commentators have argued that the wide reach of Telstra has contributed to Australia continually lagging behind other developed economies on the availability, price and quality of telecommunication services and, I have to say, I agree. Significant structural reform of the telecommunication sector has been a failing, one that lies front and centre at the feet of the Howard government. The former Howard government were guilty of delay and indecision. They were the dinosaurs of their age. I digress to reflect on my first year as a member of this House. I came in after the World Trade Centre attacks and destruction. I joined the ICT committee and I also joined the science and innovation committee. They were areas dear to my heart. I remember a government bureaucrat—a bureaucrat who advised the Howard government—telling us at an inquiry that SMS was just a fad—it would never catch on—and that mobile phones with cameras in them would always be just a small niche market. I remember saying to him at the time, ‘I would love one dollar for every SMS text message that is sent and every phone camera image that is taken in this country.’ I hope that we do not still employ that person. People like that were dinosaurs and they had no vision. For me, having been an educator and a principal, technology and innovation were just vital to everything I had done. The World Trade Centre takes me back to watching how young people experienced that event. I watched the television all night for my information. Young people were on my computer talking to people in New York. They do not trust media—they get their information first hand and direct. It was a terrible time for me. I can understand, observing the disconnect between government and reality, the member for Riverina’s disappointment because the Howard government certainly let everyone in this nation down when it came to playing a part in the future and being part of what should have been for this country a great accelerator of everything we value and believe in. A recent World Economic Forum ranked Australia 17th in the world for availability and usage of ICT. It is not getting any better—it did not get any better under Howard—and it certainly has meant that competition levels for ordinary businesses in Australia are diminished. As the Prime Minister said today, though, we do not want to stay in the carrier pigeon age. We do not want to always be behind international ICT development or behind the demands of the Australian people. We want change and we want vision. But we do not see any change or vision from the new Liberal Party leader, Mr Turnbull. Again, with the amendments put forward today, we see more of the same old approach—delay, indecision. Telstra, though, is a vertically integrated company and as such they provide both wholesale and retail services. As a result of that vertical integration, Telstra has both the incentive and the ability—already—to favour its own retail business over its wholesale customers. This system has not served us well. The overwhelming message from the industry and from the regulator, the ACCC, is that the current arrangements to address the issues arising from Telstra’s vertical integration are inadequate. Most of the industry and the ACCC have called for stronger functional or structural separation measures. This telecommunications regulatory reform package before the House today represents the most significant reform to the telecommunications regime since open competition was introduced in 1997. It will lead to better outcomes, more competition, more choice and more innovation for consumers and business. The rollout of the NBN will be of enormous benefit to the ordinary people of Australia. In particular, it will benefit regional Australia, including remote and rural communities. It will bring, finally, some equality in access and opportunity. For many years now residents have suffered from poor internet connections due in large part to ADSL being a distance-limited technology. That is, ADSL can only be offered effectively if the residence is within a certain distance of a telephone exchange. This has resulted in places like Thornton and Shortland in my electorate having so much trouble sustaining effective ADSL coverage due to distance and topographical factors. We do remember the pair gains, the RIMS, the 150 signatures—they were always just band-aid solutions. Telstra were, of course, aware of those issues, and they are aware of the subsequent importance of the effective rollout, too, of the NBN and its importance to so many people. Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network in 2008, Mr David Quilty, Group Managing Director of Public Policy at Telstra, had this to say: … probably the most important benefit of— the NBN of all— is— that we will be moving from what are distance limited technologies where the speeds that end users get decline the further you get from the exchange, to a fibre environment where everybody in the footprint will be able to get a guaranteed minimum speed. He went on to say: The idea of haves and have nots will hopefully disappear. That is the case in metropolitan areas as well as in regional areas because people in the suburbs, as you know, suffer from those distance limitations and also in some cases are not able to get services because exchanges are full or there are various broadband blockers, as we call them, that are in place that do not enable ADSL. … that is one of the critical reasons why an NBN is so important and why it should be proceeded with expeditiously. I have to say I agree. So we do have some consensus from Telstra that NBN is an integral part of Australia’s future. For this rollout to be most effective, the legislation must be enabled here. It is imperative that Telstra voluntarily structurally separate. As Minister Conroy has noted, structural separation can happen in a number of ways. There does not need to be the creation of a whole new company through which Telstra hives off its fixed-line assets. Telstra could transfer all of its traffic to the NBN and sell, or cease to use, its fixed-line assets. This would still result in full structural separation in time. There has been, of course, a great deal of discussion around these issues. I agree with several of the commentators regarding Tesltra’s future, such as Paul Budde and Richard Webb, just to name two. Busting the Telstra monopoly, I think, is a good thing. Strengthening the ACCC regarding competition in the market is a good thing. Increasing market access increases competition, and that is a good thing. Retaining government interest in infrastructure is a good thing. And what do they say about Telstra? They say that structural separation of the wholesale and retail businesses is also a good thing. I am not a shareholder in Telstra—not directly; I do not know what super funds are doing with my money, particularly—but I do sympathise with shareholders who have seen the Telstra share price decrease. Encouraged by the Costello-Howard government to invest after privatisation, they have seen major losses under the three amigos, then under the global financial crisis, and now around uncertainty regarding Telstra’s future. Until a clear decision is made, shareholders will be nervous. What is the best case for shareholders? I have to say that my view concurs with Adele Ferguson. Her article in the Australian on 16 September said it very well. Telstra should try to make the government’s approach work best for its shareholders. Like others, Ferguson suggested the best way forward would be structural separation, selling the copper network into the government’s NBN company in return, perhaps, for a stake in the NBN, and bundling its then 50 per cent share in Foxtel, BigPond and Sensis to create a separate clean digital media group with the size and capability to effectively take on the TV groups in Australia. If I were a shareholder of Telstra, that would surely excite me. Telstra could float a new business like that in an improving market, retaining a controlling share and cross-feeding customers into its retail business. So the advantages and the opportunities to Telstra and its shareholders are significant. But of course we will wait and see. I am pleased to hear, though, from the minister that negotiations are proceeding. I know the outcome is one that Telstra employees—Telstra Country Wide in my electorate—are keenly interested in. Major provisions of the bill are aimed at increasing competition and consumer protection, and that is very much needed as well. The bill also reflects the government’s ongoing commitment to protect consumers’ access to affordable and high-quality telecommunication services. The government did carefully consider the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee’s report of September 2008. But this package of reforms actually strengthens the regulator’s ability to enforce existing consumer safeguards that are in place. All of these measures that go to advancing competition and consumer protection are of great merit. I do want to say that, as the elected representative of the people of Newcastle, the most important aspect of this bill is the groundwork it lays for the most efficient rollout of the most effective NBN in my own region, Newcastle and the Hunter. Like every colleague here in the House, I suppose, I would love to see Newcastle as one of the first areas to benefit from the NBN rollout. That is something my Labor colleagues—the member for Shortland, the member for Charlton and the member for Hunter—are particularly supportive of. I make particular note of the member for Hunter, Joel Fitzgibbon, who has set up a working group to best position our region for the NBN rollout. That came about as a result of a Keep Australia Working forum held recently in his electorate. We are working together with the state government, with Regional Development Australia and with industry to advance our position and make sure that there are appropriate conditions and incentives so that Newcastle and our region are early receivers of the NBN. I say that not in a flippant way. I do not say it in just a greedy way. Newcastle is an exceptional place. During the financial crisis we have achieved remarkably low unemployment levels at the moment of 4.2 per cent. We recently had visitors from the Latrobe Valley to look at how we have done it. Economic growth real is in our region at the moment. If you recall, we have just passed the 10-year anniversary of the closing of the BHP steelworks in Newcastle. People thought we were doomed. We were never doomed, because we had always, for many years before, known that innovation, knowledge and excellence were ways to the future. We have successfully diversified our economy across health, education, the financial sector, manufacturing—all sectors, particularly research and innovation. We already have quite an extensive fibre network that links our major public hospital to our university, to the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship. I see at the centre table Minister Snowdon, who recently visited Newcastle. We were in the John Hunter Hospital having explained to us that because of that fibre network linking to Tamworth in the New England area doctors in the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle can be observing an operation happening in Tamworth, advising them how to do it, giving them the cautions, giving them advice, mentoring and making sure those operations are carried out in the best possible way. It is exciting; the opportunities are vast. We have been committed to technology and innovation for quite a while and we are convinced that it has been an important part of the success of the economy of our region. We want that to continue. Newcastle also has a very innovative private entrepreneur who put fibre some years ago into the Honeysuckle Development Corporation land around the harbour, into the main street and throughout the CBD. I am concerned for those private entrepreneurs in regional Australia who just got out and did it. I think that in government we need to be mindful that there are not just the big players; there are young, innovative companies that have done some amazing things around trying to improve telecommunications in regional Australia. Under the previous government we in regional Australia experienced the ‘black holes’ in the network. In my electorate the most disadvantaged residents are those in the Thornton area. They face every barrier possible to accessing high-speed broadband and experience high-speed frustration every day. Working with Telstra Country Wide, wireless download speeds from 550 kilobits per second to three megabits per second are now possible. For that I am very grateful for the cooperation I have always received from Telstra, but at peak times of usage those speeds plummet. Recently, the member for Paterson, Mr Baldwin, stood in this House and ranted and raved about what the member for Newcastle and the Rudd government have not done for the people of Thornton. It does not cut it with me, with the people of Thornton or with the people of Newcastle. They understand the opportunity lost by 12 years of a Liberal coalition government, a government that the member for Paterson was a part of. They understand and share the frustration that the Rudd government has experienced in inheriting an ICT ‘lemon’. They understand and share the disappointment we felt when the ‘Three Amigos’ adopted a testosterone fuelled approach and refused to cooperate to establish a new network with the government. They also celebrated when the Rudd government said, ‘Enough is enough; we won’t settle for anything less than the best model for telecommunications in this country. We will not just settle for fibre-to-the-node, downgrading the service to meet volumes; we will deliver fibre-to-the-home all around Australia.’ For the people of Newcastle and Thornton that means high-speed broadband to their house and every home every minute of every day. In conclusion, post this legislation’s successful transition through the parliament the Australian telecommunications landscape will never be the same again. That certainly will be a good thing. I can only say: thank goodness; this change is so long overdue, so needed. I welcome this legislation. 10585 17:47:00 Marino, Nola, MP HWP Forrest LP 0 0 Ms MARINO —I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. The reason the Labor government has proposed this legislation is that it is a typical post-media-announcement attempt to make its flawed NBN proposal actually viable. In the longer term regional, rural and remote areas will be affected by this legislation. The Labor government is prepared to ignore the concerns raised by the millions of Australians who are direct and indirect shareholders through the investment in Telstra by their superannuation funds and to ignore the concerns of employees and contractors that this legislation will have a severe and detrimental affect on them and their businesses. Clearly, the government is ignoring the fact that Telstra was sold to shareholders. The announcement by the Prime Minister also urged even more Australians to buy bonds in a $43 billion National Broadband Network, assuring them that these bonds would be a good investment, asserting that the NBN would be commercially viable and claiming that its services would be affordable—all this without a business plan or cost-benefit analysis, particularly a regional cost-benefit analysis, and, I would say, a longer-term regional cost-benefit analysis. Was this a sales pitch, I wonder, to the Telstra shareholders who will be most affected by this bill? That is besides the people in regional and rural areas. I note that Telstra pointed out another problem with this legislation in the West Australian on 15 October by stating: Under the legislation, Senator Conroy can exempt Telstra from selling its stake in Foxtel and its high-speed cable if it voluntarily institutes the strictest form of separation of its wholesale and retail networks. This bill also includes the provision to preclude Telstra from participating in future auctions for spectrum for higher-capacity mobile broadband services if it does not voluntarily separate and divest its cable network and Foxtel interests. In its submission to the Senate inquiry Telstra states: Taking Telstra out of the market for next generation spectrum will make the mobile market less competitive and punish the telecommunications company that has not only led innovation but invested in the world’s fastest mobile wireless network … as a global leader in the mobiles market. As I said, this bill seeks to prevent Telstra from acquiring specified bands of spectrum, which could be used for advanced wireless broadband services, unless it divests its hybrid fibre-coaxial cable network and interests in Foxtel. The bill also contains amendments to increase the powers of the ACCC under the Trades Practices Act and proposes changes to the universal service obligation and consumer service guarantee. What we are seeing is the government giving Telstra two bad options: to force the rollover of Telstra’s assets to the NBN and prevent Telstra being a genuine competitor for the NBN, and to compromise through that future markets to the detriment of Telstra shareholders and, ultimately, to the detriment of regional and rural consumers. In spite of the issues surrounding the vertical integration of Telstra, it is this which supports the network access for people in country areas. What other telco can or will be able to afford to invest in infrastructure in regional and remote areas where commercial viability is not possible? It is often not possible. We know it will not be the NBN—it is only going to be provided to 90 per cent of the population, and towns with fewer than 1,000 people will miss out. Will the NBN then assume responsibility for maintaining the existing Telstra network in these areas? If not the NBN, then who will be responsible for the existing network? Will the NBN take up the universal service obligation when Telstra is no longer responsible? I understand that there is no government anywhere else in the world that has imposed such separation on any telecommunications infrastructure—critical infrastructure in regional areas. The coalition strongly supports improved broadband services, but for very good reasons we have very serious concerns about this bill and the government’s entire approach to the proposed NBN. The coalition has never advocated the forced breakup of Telstra. We understand how important the existing infrastructure, and its maintenance and improved capacity, is to regional, rural and remote Australia. Until the introduction of this bill, it was not Labor’s policy to break up Telstra. The minister confirmed as recently as May this year that he had never advocated structural separation of the company, which leads one to believe that these amendments are proposed with the sole intent of making the government’s proposed National Broadband Network viable. As we all know, this is the second piece of legislation linked to the NBN program; it is a program that the coalition is still not convinced can be delivered by the government at the proposed cost of $43 billion. One of the greatest concerns for all Australians, including those in my electorate of Forrest, is and should be the very serious concern regarding the costings of the NBN and the amount of funding that needs to be borrowed and repaid by taxpayers. Already, we have seen waste and mismanagement in the NBN process. Labor’s election commitment was a $4.7 billion promise that the network would be operating by the end of 2008. After 18 months of wasted time and, according to shadow minister Nick Minchin, $20 million of taxpayers’ money having been totally wasted on the flawed original broadband tender process, we now have the NBN mark 2. The coalition fully recognises the importance of universal access to fast, affordable and reliable broadband and we support the continued enhancement of broadband services, including the deployment of next generation network services. I, like my coalition colleagues, believe that Labor’s proposal to restrict Telstra’s access to spectrum is anticompetitive and it will literally erode competition for this sector. What changes in media regulation will be required for the technological changes brought about by the NBN and how in time will they affect free-to-air access? Also, for the world’s biggest network to be left to stagnate is unprecedented. Unlike Labor, the coalition believes a practical and realistic approach is needed to ensure that all Australians have access to fast, affordable, reliable—particularly in regional areas—well-maintained broadband services in the most cost-effective way for taxpayers. Leading analysts and those in the telecommunications industry are not all convinced that Labor’s NBN program can or will be delivered at the proposed cost of $43 billion. Ovum research director David Kennedy said that the rollout of such a network ‘would take up to 20 years’, not the eight claimed by Labor. Commentator Terry McCrann said of the plan: It’s not crazy; it’s insane. Former Optus executive Paul Fletcher said: They may wonder where the traffic will come from to fill up the new network and generate the revenue streams necessary to earn a return on the $43 billion. Paul Broad, the chief executive of Australia’s third biggest telco, AAPT, has serious doubts about the NBN. Commenting on the issue in the Adelaide Advertiser on 21 October, he is quoted as saying: ‘… the NBN will never be fully established and is a phenomenal waste of taxpayers’ money.’ I recently met with telco people in my electorate and they informed me that in their view the proposed $43 billion will only cover approximately one-quarter of the cost of the NBN. As an example, again in my electorate, it was recently estimated that it would cost $1 million to run eight kilometres of fibre from a town site to a major industrial site. That is $1 million for just eight kilometres. This explains why the government is proposing through this bill to provide Telstra with two very bad options which by default will prevent the need for compulsory acquisition of Telstra’s infrastructure and assets and will therefore obviate the need to compensate Telstra and its shareholders for the acquisition. The Labor government is currently spending a further $25 million of Australian taxpayers’ money on working up the NBN proposal. This comes on top of the apparent $20 million cost of the government’s failed original tender process. Government funding for broadband should be targeted at underserved areas. Telecommunications are of extreme importance in regional and rural areas where individual users and businesses are faced with the issues of distance, isolation and challenging local terrain. In my electorate of Forrest we are directly aware of the importance of telecommunications for social interaction and communications purposes, as well as it being a core necessity for business, contractors and all forms of commerce. In Western Australia 80 per cent of the state’s wealth is generated from the regions. My electorate is one of the key drivers of this wealth. I note that the Glasson review also identified the important role that telecommunications plays in everyday life in regional Australia and the critical role that access to appropriate telecommunications services will play in the future prosperity and sustainability of regional communities. But there are 15 small towns in my regional and rural electorate that are likely to miss out on the broadband proposal because their population is less than 1,000. The combined population of these 15 towns is over 7,000 people, which means that over 7,000 people in my regional and rural electorate, where currently there may be fibre running to the nearest exchange, will be excluded from the government’s NBN. They are part of the 10 per cent of the population who will be excluded. Minister Conroy has previously said that the 98 per cent of customers with fixed-line access would still have this access after the NBN was built. This is inconsistent with his statement that only 90 per cent of the population will receive the fibre-to-the-home network, which is the very same network he said is decaying on a daily basis. I wonder who will maintain those after the NBN. For regional and rural consumers this is a very serious concern. As I said earlier, for regional, rural and remote customers it raises the very serious question referred to in the Age today: … who will maintain the fixed lines to the 8 percent who will not be covered by the fibre network. It is a serious core issue for regional Australia. And I would ask how many of these fixed lines that will not be maintained are in my electorate? The majority of Telstra’s existing copper network servicing rural, regional and remote areas costs millions. As Senator Nick Minchin asked: Will the NBN company be required to run three networks—fibre, wireless and satellite as well as the copper network? How will this affect Telstra’s existing community service obligation? Who will pay to maintain the network, services and system for regional, rural and remote customers, particularly the eight per cent of Australians who will miss out on the NBN? And what price will these customers pay for broadband services in the longer term? Will we see prices for NBN customers set each year in the federal budget? And what changes in media regulation will be required? We are aware of that one. These are very real questions and issues for my electorate. The Labor government is not considering the longer term issues. The Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Legislation Committee is currently examining this bill and the 99 submissions to the inquiry, a majority of which are strongly opposed to this legislation. The Labor government must not ignore the clear message and overwhelming concerns expressed in the submissions. In its submission to the Senate inquiry, the Australian Foundation Investment Co. stated: We are very concerned that the bill appears to have been formulated with the objective of forcing Telstra down a path of the government’s choosing. We do not think that legislation should be used as a negotiating lever by the government to manoeuvre a publicly listed company— a publicly listed company; that is what Telstra is— into a position where it has no alternative but to agree to whatever the government requires or it will be substantially disadvantaged And they are not alone. The Australian Shareholders’ Association also expressed their concerns, by stating: If the forced structural separation of Telstra goes ahead as proposed by the Government, Telstra shareholders are likely to see significant destruction in the value of their investment. It is extremely concerning that the government has so little regard for the rights of the 1.4 million shareholders who own shares in Telstra and the many others who through superannuation and other indirect investments own Telstra shares. The coalition has consistently stated that the structure of the company is a matter for the company and its shareholders, yet there has been no cost-benefit analysis on the government’s proposal, no business plan and a severe lack of consultation with shareholders. Shareholders are Australian families and individuals—Australian people who are being ignored. One Telstra contractor and shareholder from my electorate, Clinton, recently contacted my office regarding the forced break-up of Telstra. Clinton said that when the break-up of Telstra was announced there was a significant drop in his work volume from his usual five to six jobs a week to none. After two weeks it slowly came back to two to three jobs a week. He noted that this reduction in work volume has been felt right throughout Western Australia, with the metropolitan areas also experiencing a drop in their workload of approximately one third of the usual 100 to 150 jobs a week in maintenance and upkeep of Telstra lines. Clinton stated: I am a Telstra shareholder and I have already been hit, but if the legislation is passed I will be hit again! The coalition has a significant number of issues and concerns with this legislation. Whilst in government, it required the accounting and operational separation of Telstra, but it has never supported the calls for structural separation of the company. As I mentioned earlier, until now it has not been Labor’s policy to break up Telstra, but now they have to do it to make their $43 billion dollar taxpayer funded NBN proposal viable. Australian taxpayers will once again pay for this government’s decision. This legislation is predominantly about the government trying to force Telstra and its 1.4 million direct shareholders and millions of indirect shareholders to prop up Labor’s $43 billion project. I need to know—and so do people in my electorate—that in 10 and 20 years time, people in my electorate of Forrest and all those in regional, rural and remote communities, and businesses, will have access to the core telecommunications infrastructure and affordable services that are an integral part of living and working in these areas. At this time I have no confidence that that will occur under this government or this proposal. The coalition opposes this legislation until the implementation study is finalised early next year and we will seek to amend the bill substantially in the Senate should the debate proceed. 10589 18:03:00 Bradbury, David, MP HVW Lindsay ALP 1 0 Mr BRADBURY —I rise to speak in support of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. This is a very significant bill for the House because the measures contained within it are some of the most important measures that will be passed by this parliament. I am confident they will be passed and that is because when each and every member of this parliament—whether it be in this place or in the Senate—reflects upon their duty to the people that have elected them to this place they will come to the inescapable conclusion that these measures are the right measures to embark upon. It has been a very unsatisfactory regulatory arrangement that we have had in place in the telecommunications sector in this country, for many years. That has been widely acknowledged. IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs —Set up by Kim Beazley! HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —I take the member’s interjection. It has been a series of unsatisfactory regulatory arrangements that have been in place over the course of a number of governments. But the difference between those governments that have come before and this government is that this government is prepared to make the significant microeconomic reform that is needed to deliver a telecommunications industry in this country that will foster innovation, drive down prices and deliver a competitive framework. This will ultimately give consumers and small business—business generally but, in particular, small business—access to a telecommunications sector that is competitive and delivers the best outcomes for those groups. The current situation—if you listen to those on the other side—is clearly some sort of nirvana, when it comes to the current telecommunications regulatory environment. In fact, the reality of what we are dealing with is far from that. If we have a look at the process of consultation that the government embarked upon after making its NBN announcement earlier this year, we see that there were numerous submissions made. An overwhelming majority—in fact, nearly all of those submissions—identified the inadequate and unsatisfactory nature of the current regulatory arrangements. These measures are responding to the inadequacy of those arrangements. These measures, for the first time, are demonstrating on the part of this government a preparedness to make the hard decisions—the big decisions—that will set up the telecommunications industry and our economy into the future. If we look at what some of those submissions said, we see that the inescapable conclusion that I think was best identified by the ACCC was that Telstra remains one of the most integrated telecommunications companies in the world. There are a range of issues that are to be debated as part of this legislation. The National Broadband Network, albeit not inextricably connected to this legislation, is an important element of the debate that is to be had. The NBN is the plan that we will roll out across this country. It will deliver high-speed broadband and do what the previous government so abysmally failed to do. They have a very poor record when it comes to broadband. IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs interjecting— HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —They want to object and they want to stand in the way. They want to delay and block our plan, but they had 11½ years to deliver their plans. In fact, they had 18 failed broadband plans, and they still failed to deliver broadband at the level and the speed that Australians expect. The broadband record that we inherited is very poor. It is a record that this government is determined to improve upon. If we look at some of the OECD statistics, we see that Australia is in the bottom half of OECD countries in terms of broadband take-up—16th out of 30 countries. Australians pay more for their broadband than most OECD countries. On that measure, we are 20th out of 29 countries. In terms of average monthly subscriptions, Australia is the fourth most expensive when it comes to low-speed connections and the fifth most expensive for medium-speed connections. That is the state of affairs in broadband that this government inherited. It is not good enough. We are determined to make good on our pre-election commitments to roll out a national broadband network. We will do that. If it was not already clear to people before we went through the process of consulting in relation to regulatory reform in the telecommunications industry, it is now crystal clear that the current arrangements need to be reformed. It is not as if the government is without support on these matters. I find it somewhat amusing, but I think it also demonstrates a little bit of honesty, that Senator Joyce has come out and reaffirmed that it is the National Party’s position that they support structural separation. The Herald Sun reported on 16 September: Senator Joyce said the Nationals would discuss their position in the coming days but added that the party had always supported the structural separation of Telstra. “We have no problem with a company in the marketplace that is too powerful being broken into two to assist competition,” he said. That sounds pretty clear to me. It seems a bit inconsistent with some of the offerings from those opposite in this debate. As recently as this morning in the Australian Senator Joyce again reaffirmed his position. He said in relation to the coalition’s dogged, and very frustrating, determination to delay this process: “I’ve got no real problem with delay” … “But I’m not convinced we’ll listen closely to the argument that structural separation is not a good idea. I strongly believe it’s something that we should have done.” I think, at the end of the day, that will be the conclusion that most members who have a good look at the current regulatory arrangements will arrive at. The current arrangements are broken, and not just in the eyes of Telstra’s competitors, consumers and businesses. We do not have to go back all that far to see that many people who were associated with Telstra shared that view. It is interesting that the big argument that is being put forward by those opposite is that they have become the great defenders of shareholder value when it comes to Telstra shares. Forget about your obligation to all of those constituents that you represent, including consumers and small businesses, who are trying to access the services. IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs interjecting— HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —We are here, it seems, just to protect the interests of Telstra shareholders. I think there is a legitimate debate to be had about whether or not these proposals will in fact be detrimental to Telstra shareholders. I think there are some good reasons why Telstra could in the long run become a better company and could deliver better shareholder value as a result of these changes. I will come to that in a moment. That view is not without support amongst those that know a little bit more than the member for Mayo when it comes to valuing shares in the marketplace. IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs interjecting— HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —When it comes to shareholder value, I simply make the observation that Senator Minchin, who is the opposition spokesperson on these matters, has become the white knight for Telstra, defending shareholder value. I put a fair bit of effort into searching the Hansard record—and perhaps the member for Mayo will have some record to the contrary—for any previous comments from Senator Minchin in defence of shareholder value. I thought a good place to start might be to go back to when he was a minister of the Crown, the finance minister, and the T2 share offer came into effect. At that point shares were at $7.80. I noticed that, when T3, which was also undertaken by those opposite, came into effect, shares had dropped to $3.30—less than half the value of the shares just a few years earlier. You would have thought that, with this massive erosion of shareholder value, someone so principled in his defence of the value of Telstra shares would have had something to say. Yet I cannot find a single comment. No doubt the member for Mayo, when he makes his contribution—and I look forward to that—will bring forward some evidence to the contrary on that point. When it comes to shareholder value, just a few years ago, in the course of my research when trying to find some of those comments that I thought Senator Minchin may well have made, I saw some comments that were made by an executive of Telstra at the time, Phil Burgess, when what are largely the current set of regulatory arrangements were in place. He had a few things to say in relation to shareholder value. In fact, when he was commenting on shareholder value he brought his mother into the picture. I am sure she is a lovely woman—I do not know her personally—but he made an observation that might have been of some import to those people who were considering at the time whether or not to invest in Telstra. He observed that he would not recommend Telstra shares to his mum. That is an extraordinary thing for an executive of a company to say about his own company, so you would have to think that there was something pretty serious threatening or jeopardising the value of Telstra shares as they were then. I thought, ‘I’ve got to find out what it is that was such a threat to Telstra shares that an executive of Telstra would come forward and say that he would not even recommend to his own mum to buy a share in that company. Then I found the quote from Mr Burgess: ‘Our struggle— that is, the struggle of Telstra— is against a repressive, intrusive, draconian, punitive system of regulation.’ He is not known for his colourful language, but he went on to say: ‘if you put a baby in a cage with a tiger and the tiger eats the baby, you shouldn’t be surprised’ I am not even going to try and interpret the metaphor, but the point remains: so bad is the current set of regulatory arrangements that even those who benefit from them— IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs —The ones you set up. HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —The ones that we set up, says the member for Mayo—and the ones that clearly were retained for the entire period of the previous government, for a large part of which he was a senior adviser to the government. The reality is that I am not here to defend those that set up this failed system. We are here to introduce an improved system. There are those that will defend the failed system and then, when their defence can no longer be maintained, will say, ‘We didn’t set it up; you set it up.’ IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs —Aren’t you proud of the Hawke and Keating record? Have you walked away from it? HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —We are proud of the Hawke and Keating record, but they did not get it right on this one. But, by the same token, they delivered some major reforms to the Australian economy. Whether it was floating the dollar, deregulating the financial markets or liberalising our trading arrangements, they made the tough decisions in the way that this government will make tough decisions of the sort that it is proposing. This is one of the most significant microeconomic reforms that this government has put before this parliament. Those opposite have been left behind, their only argument being that they are the great defenders of Telstra shareholder value. IYU Briggs, Jamie, MP Mr Briggs —No, and the taxpayer. HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —Well, I think we have demonstrated— 10000 Saffin, Janelle (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms JA Saffin)—I remind the member for Mayo that he is on the speakers list and he will get a go shortly. So just contain yourself for a little while, please, so I can hear. Thank you. HVW Bradbury, David, MP Mr BRADBURY —On the issue of shareholder value, I think it is worth noting the views of some market economists and some people who are better placed than many of us to assess what impact these arrangements might have on Telstra and its share price. On 17 September this year I saw in the Australian Financial Review: Analysts at Macquarie Equities Research upgraded the stock to ‘outperform’ from ‘neutral’ while maintaining a $3.60 target price, saying the government’s regulatory reforms would allow for clarity and force a deadline by which a deal between the government and Telstra over the NBN would be reached. ‘Should Telstra reach a deal with the government, it may be able to recover significant value,’ said Macquarie analyst Andrew Levy in a note to clients. That is a very good point. The difficulty and uncertainty surrounding the current regulatory arrangements have not been a positive for the share value of Telstra shareholders. The member for Mayo may wish to contest that point, but I would be very surprised if he were prepared to contend that these current regulatory arrangements are delivering the best outcomes for consumers and businesses. Frankly, they are not—and that is what is driving this reform. But I make that point in relation to shareholder value because that seems to be the one fig leaf behind which those on the other side are seeking some cover. I also saw in the Financial Review of the same day a little piece entitled ‘What they said’. It is worth looking at. Goldman Sachs, which is a great authority in this place, particularly since the member for Wentworth joined us, said: The announcement could mark the last of the adverse regulatory news flow for Telstra. While full resolution is unlikely until the end of the year, we are nearing greater certainty. Obviously Goldman Sachs sees some opportunity for an optimistic outlook heading into the discussions between the government and Telstra and beyond. Credit Suisse said: In order for the government to deliver its policy objective, it needs Telstra on side. So, despite the large regulatory stick, we still see plenty of scope for Telstra to extract value from NBN negotiations. Merrill Lynch said: Assuming Telstra agrees to the gradual structural separation and is allowed to acquire future spectrum and keep Foxtel, there are no changes to our earnings forecasts or valuation. UBS said: Structural separation, if it emerges, should help crystallise the value of assets and Telstra’s dominant fixed-line customer base. Additionally, separation should release Telstra from regulatory shackles. I would suggest there was a little hyperbole in Mr Burgess’s commentary, but they are the sorts of shackles that he was referring to. I put it to the House that, far from being a great detriment to Telstra, these reforms also provide great opportunity. As a nation we need to keep our eye on the big picture, which is ensuring that we have a telecommunications sector that is open and competitive—one that encourages innovation, one that allows consumers to access those products on that market as cheaply as possible and one where the market is as efficient as possible. Citigroup were confident of a favourable outcome under the new management team. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty. Morgan Stanley said: Telstra’s negotiating position appears to be far better than the current stock price implies, and we believe a more moderate outcome will emerge. Deutsche Bank said: We estimate the cost of structural separation is about $2.5 billion, but vending assets in return for a minority stake in NBN and transfer of $8.5 billion of debt could prove attractive. These are hardly the sounds of the death knell of Telstra and hardly any support for this proposition that the Telstra share prices are going to take a hit of the sort that is being promoted by those on the other side. I would like to draw the House’s attention to a couple of other comments that really go to this issue of the opportunities it creates for Telstra. I see in the article Reinvention Essential for Telco’s Future in the Australian Financial Review on 6 April: There are potentially positive dimensions to structural separation for Telstra. A new wholesale division could be formed with capitalisation contributed by government and even in partnership with other telecommunications players. This is obviously speculating on various options before the government’s announcement was made. It continues: This business would be heavily regulated but would also be low-risk with predictable returns.             …         …         … It would still maintain significant market power because of its scale and brand. Its prospects of competitive success in this business must be considered good. With lower prices and better services, new waves of demand will be unleashed. These are the sorts of opportunities that exist. We want to work with Telstra to deliver separation either structurally in a voluntary way or functionally. It will deliver a more open and competitive framework. (Time expired) 10594 18:24:00 Briggs, Jamie, MP IYU Mayo LP 0 0 Mr BRIGGS —It is a great honour to follow the member for Lindsay. I respect his authority on these subjects and I know that, in the past, he has focused very much on these issues. He has a great understanding and depth of knowledge about this and it is a great opportunity to follow him in this debate. I appreciate the fact that he has put his point of view to the parliament and it is a point of view that I largely disagree with. I support very much the second reading amendment, moved to put off the debate of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 until we have the results of the implementation study into the NBN mark 2. I think it is mark 2 we are at. I am sure there will be mark 3, 4, 5 and maybe 6 to come, but it would make a lot of sense to wait for that study to be done, given the government has put a significant amount of effort into the study. It is a confused position we are in because we heard again today in question time that the whole concept of a business plan, for the ‘small’ figure of $42 billion, has not yet been put together, which is quite extraordinary I would have thought. The member at the table, Mr Gray, in his previous role in a very large multinational company would not have been able to get away with that. Nonetheless, we will continue. What this is about is the government’s complete and utter inability to get Telstra to play ball with them on their National Broadband Network. That is exactly what this bill is about. It is the sword over the neck of Telstra by using the availability of the next-generation spectrum, which Telstra will be very keen to participate in the auction of when this minister turns off the analog signal for TVs in a couple of years time. We know from international examples that the sale of the spectrum will yield extraordinary amounts of money. There is a very good reason for that. It is because it is in a very high quality spectrum and it will allow Telstra, if Telstra are successful in bidding for it—you would think they would be very keen to at least get part of that—to expand their very capable Next G network, which is already delivering very good speeds. I am sure many members in this place who use their Blackberries around the country—I am sure most now have Blackberries—are taken by just how quick the speeds are. There is a good reason for that—it is because Telstra have invested a lot of money in their Next G network, which delivers very good service. That is the truth of it. I know my electorate still has black spots or occasional dropouts because of the topography of the Adelaide Hills and the Fleurieu Peninsula, but the speed of delivery is actually very good. Telstra will want access to the additional spectrum because it will allow them to ramp up those services, which questions the very need for the fixed line service that the government is running around bragging about, saying how important it will be. My electorate of Mayo—which is 20 kilometres in parts and 30 kilometres in other parts stretching far out from the city of Adelaide, which is a lot closer to a major city than some of the members’ electorates in this place—will not get this NBN under any circumstances. I know Senator Minchin, our opposition spokesman on this, and who is doing a very good job, has highlighted the point that towns with a population under 1,000 people will miss out on the NBN and will be given a second-rate service. I contest that it will be lot more than that. I contest that all of my electorate will miss out on this because it will just not be economically viable, and we have not seen any evidence to the contrary thus far. The reason we are debating this bill today is that the government made a promise before the last election that it could never keep. It made a promise because it fitted in with the political opportunity at the time, which was to expose the previous government as being old and out of touch compared to the newfangled, technological age Prime Minister being put forward in the Kevin 07 campaign. It was a very clever political campaign, and I suspect the member at the table had a bit to do with thinking about how it was run and won. All credit to them; it was a very good campaign. This issue fitted in with it perfectly because it was a future-looking infrastructure issue. But the truth is there was no detail put into the work behind it. It was a campaign promise made with the figure of $4.7 billion plucked from the air: ‘This sounds like a good idea: 98 per cent of the country for 12 megs per second.’ That was not then possible to implement post the election. They had to seriously sit down and work out what they were going to. Rather than say, ‘Actually, we might have made a mistake here; we shouldn’t have got rid of the coalition’s OPEL plan to cover the underserviced areas’—which, had they continued with it, would have meant that today we would have faster broadband in my electorate and in many regional electorates throughout Australia—they cut that. They needed the money and cut that plan. Instead they announced this National Broadband Network mark 2. We heard the Minister for Finance and Deregulation today talking about just how important a superfast internet was and so forth. The reason that we have this bill is because Telstra did not want to cooperate with this whole idea, and if you do not have Telstra playing ball on this issue you do not have a plan. That is the truth of it, because Telstra have the network, of course; they have the asset; they have the means to deliver it. So the government had to do something. They found that Telstra was strangely not willing to be part of a $42 billion plan for which there is no business case, which no-one knows how to do and which does not make a lot of sense. What they have done is ask, ‘What would be the most attractive thing that Telstra would be looking for into the future?’ and then threaten it through a piece of legislation. It is an extraordinary attack on a business in our country. For a government to use the power of this place to attack a private company is extraordinary. Telstra is now actually a private company, of course. The previous government sold Telstra. Those opposite, who are supposedly completely committed to microeconomic reform, as we heard from the member for Lindsay, opposed that every step of the way—as they did pretty much every piece of legislation in the previous 11½ years. So you have a private company that is being attacked through legislative means by a government. You have a very large group of shareholders who will lose value with no compensation—not that we know of at this point in time; I suspect that in the end they will get very good compensation. So who loses in the end? The taxpayer. The reason that Telstra is as integrated as it is is because the previous Labor government, with the communications minister, the Hon. Kim Beazley, the new Ambassador to the United States of America, made the decision to have Telstra as one entity. That is why the company is the size that it is today. It was the next government, the Howard government, that sold Telstra as it was. It sold Telstra as an integrated company, including the network asset and the retail arm. I believe that if we could again have our time in the early 1990s we would separate Telstra from its network and its retail operations. We should have done so. We made a mistake in the early part of the 1990s. But the problem with these things is that you cannot unscramble the egg, because somebody will get hurt. The member for Lindsay claimed that all we are talking about here are the shareholders. I do not agree with that at all. The taxpayer will carry the can on this, because there will be a huge compensation bill for the government to pay on this. Our Constitution protects private companies at least to that extent. I am not sure that we can even change that here. So the taxpayer will lose on this, and all because this minister has absolutely failed to come up with a decent broadband plan. This is slogans above reality. What we saw was a very clever political campaign run against the previous government. That has now run into the reality of the brick wall of government, where they cannot do what they said that they wanted to do. Who will pay? Sure, the shareholders of Telstra will pay. But it will be the taxpayers who will pay. They will be the people who carry the can on this. That is the great tragedy in what the government is trying to do here. It is absolutely outrageous that in our free and open democratic country the government would use the parliament to threaten, bully and legislate a company into submission. No-one is saying at all that our regulations as to the telecommunications industry are perfect. I would agree. I went through a little bit of this in the last 12 months of the previous government, and it is a minefield. The role of the ACCC is a very difficult one and it has been challenged over a long period of time. Telstra have not helped themselves. They are an easy company to attack and to use as a whipping boy. They do things like creating the recent $2.20 fee. That was, frankly, a dumb decision for a company like Telstra to make. They encourage community mirth. However, that is not to say that we should in this place then legislate them out of existence or legislate them so that they behave in the way that this government wants them to behave. You simply should not do that. It is a dangerous path, in my view, that we are going down in doing this. This government will regret the decisions of this minister. This minister has fundamentally failed to recognise the realities of what he is trying to do with this piece of legislation. I support very much the shadow minister’s approach to this issue. The government would be very wise to wait for its implementation study—or its scoping studies—to be finalised, which I understand will be early next year. It is not that long a time to wait. What they are hoping for, I suspect, is for this legislation to not have to be used. What they are actually hoping for is for Telstra to come to them on bended knee saying: ‘We’re sorry. We know we’ve misbehaved. We’ll be better in the future and we’ll play ball.’ To that extent, the new management team seems to have a more reasonable approach to public policy than the previous management team; that is for sure. It was interesting to see the member for Lindsay defending a former government relations officer at Telstra previously. I am not sure that his constituents would agree with him on that. I also noticed that the member for Lindsay talked about different advisers’ or analysts’ recommendations about what will happen with the Telstra share price. He quoted one in particular, but he did not fully go through what exactly they had said. They also said that the NBN cannot be delivered until 2025. I am not sure that the member for Lindsay got the full briefing note on that one. I also noticed—if we are going to talk about people’s views on this in the national newspapers—that in the Australian Financial Review on 14 October there was an article which said: Investors Mutual is an Australian equities specialist that has more than $3 billion in funds under management for a range of clients across the country. It has a conservative investment style with a long-term focus and aims to deliver consistent returns for its clients. We are strongly of the view that the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 is not in the best interests of Australia’s population of 21 million and is certainly not in the best interests of Telstra’s 1.4 million shareholders. That is one. Another view is from Peter Swan, who is an academic at the University of New South Wales. The Labor Party used to like academics and what they had to say. He was a little stronger with his language in the Australian newspaper on 16 September, where he wrote an opinion piece. The headline was ‘Rudd playing Ned Kelly with Telstra,’ and he said: Shareholders will be the biggest losers from the government’s unconstitutional moves against the telco. He compared the government’s behaviour—they were his words, not mine—to Latin American dictatorships and an Asian country which we have a very strong trading relationship with. There are a range of views on this, as there always are on investment decisions and so forth, so I think the member for Lindsay needs to be a little careful in relying on just a couple. The inescapable truth is that the government has not come to grips, at this point in time, with just how much money this will cost them. If they force Telstra to structurally separate there will be a massive compensation claim—and all because of their flawed NBN mark II. So we think they need to go back to the drawing board on this. We think this approach of using this place to try to belt Telstra into submission is wrong. We think there is a better way to go about broadbanding this country. If that is what it is about then there is a better way to go about it. The government’s approach in this place is to accuse the opposition of being laggards on the issue of broadband or of not understanding the speed, the cost, the commitment and the need for it in Australia. They compare us to countries like the Slovak Republic, which I think is about 79,000 square kilometres in size. My electorate is about 9,500 square kilometres, so I am not sure we are actually comparing apples with apples in that respect—to use that much overused metaphor. If you look at countries like the United States and Canada you find that Australia actually compares reasonably well. And you have to compare us with countries like those, you see, because of the tyranny of distance. It is the great challenge of Australia. You cannot have the same system across Australia. You cannot have a fibre network that services all of Australia. It is just not economical; it is just not possible. You need a range of technologies, and that is what we have always argued. There are places—I said this last time we talked about broadband in this place and a couple of interesting emails were posted—in Australia, many of them in capital cities, where you can get the best speeds available today. There are not enough of those places. Sure, we need some more investment, but there will investment because the companies will be attracted. That is the very nature of the market. In the big cities that will not be a problem. The issue is, of course, in the under-serviced areas like my electorate and many electorates like mine around the country—the outer metro and regional electorates, like that of the member of Mallee. The member for Mallee represents that great township of Mildura, which has always had challenges. When I was growing up there, there were two TV stations. Those are the places where government needs to invest to ensure that those citizens keep up with reasonable speeds at reasonable costs. That is where the focus for broadband in Australia should be. Having a large integrated company actually helps with that. It helps ensure that you can service under-serviced areas through funding black-spot types of programs or assisting with the funding of technologies which help keep those places comparable with their city cousins. So I think there is a mistake in the way that the government is using this as a political bludgeoning tool instead of recognising the policy reality that is broadband in Australia. As I said at the start, the developing speed of the 3G network that Telstra, Optus and others are implementing is clearly part of the answer into the future. It will be more attractive for people to use wireless technology at reliable and fast speeds, and that all relies on that spectrum being available for the companies to use. That is where this legislation is most vicious—it uses what is an attractive and necessary technology for the future as the gun at the head of parliament to force a policy outcome that this government wants for political reasons. They talked themselves into a problem with their promise originally—before the last election. It was a mistake. It was very clever politically but it was never possible policy-wise. It was a five-page document, from memory. At least there was a document in that respect. On this policy there is not even a business plan. There is $42 billion, with the taxpayer footing the bill. Those opposite allege that our interests here are with the shareholders only. That is simply not true. Sure, we are representing over one million shareholders, including people in my electorate who are very worked up about this, but we are actually representing the best interests of the Australian taxpayer and the best interests of the Australian consumer when it comes to broadband, because the government is wrong-headed on this issue. They are going down the wrong path. They are using the parliament in an inappropriate fashion. It is a dangerous step for us to take. I oppose the decision of this government and I support very much our amendments on this bill. 10598 18:43:00 Raguse, Brett, MP HVQ Forde ALP 1 0 Mr RAGUSE —I acknowledge the last speaker and certainly some of the concerns raised. But I felt rather depressed by the end of that particular contribution, because you would expect some youthful exuberance over the government’s moving forward and what we are trying to do as a major part of infrastructure rollout and the business models that sit behind that. The concerns and fears probably need to be considered, but really the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 is about the future. It is about moving forward and taking ourselves from a position where our telecommunications systems do not work. There is a lot of history involved, and to a large degree it is about political positions that have been taken in the past, to the point where Telstra has become very political in its own structures. This government has taken action to get some clarity about the business model and the way the business model needs to be proposed for the future. In fact, we can almost suspect that things had stalled rather radically. I have spoken many times in this chamber about issues relating to telecommunications and certainly to Telstra and their response and non-response to a whole range of issues. So this telecommunications legislation that I rise to talk about tonight is very important, not only for the people of my electorate but certainly for the country. I will give a bit of detail about the bill before I talk about some of my own observations, some of the effects and what I believe are some of the benefits of this particular approach. As I said, this legislation is very much about improving competition. It strengthens our consumer safeguards and removes redundant red tape. This is very much like the analogy of the old Holden, which I think I have used before in this chamber. You have put on the dual exhaust, you have put on the triple carbies, you have put on the headers and have even put on a foxtail, but you find that the car still uses too much fuel and continually needs maintenance. That is the old system that we have. There is a point at which you decide that you have to get rid of the old Holden and invest in a new super-fast vehicle. Essentially that is what we are doing as a government. But to do that we need to consider the business structure and the level of competition that should go with that particular structure. The choices of successive governments to move to a privatised telecommunications system have changed the nature of telecommunications in Australia. While many people in my electorate question these decisions to this day, we must make the best of the environment in which we find ourselves. An effective privatised telecommunications system requires effective competition. The nature of fixed-line telecommunications has always presented a fundamental challenge in this regard, because it is impossible for a company to economically justify installing its own wire throughout our large country. This has meant that most fixed-line service competition continues to occur at the retail level. To differing extents, these retailers remain dependent on the substantial Telstra-owned infrastructure we all enjoy—or have difficulties with. Of particular note is that Telstra also competes at the retail level. The transition to a privatised system has therefore presented a myriad of challenges to providing effective competition. This legislation targets the systematic and developing challenges of telecommunications in Australia. Currently Telstra has formidable market power in Australian telecommunications through fixed-line copper, cable, pay TV and mobile phone and retail assets. This part of the reform targets Telstra’s motivation to favour its retail arm over its other retailers. This bill seeks to ensure that Telstra splits its network operations and wholesale functions from the remaining components of Telstra. The preferred approach of the government is for Telstra to structurally separate voluntarily, but options are left open should this not occur. The separation of Telstra’s wholesale and retail businesses must be considered within the broader context of the National Broadband Network. The NBN company is to be a wholesale-only telecommunications provider with open-access arrangements. This structure will allow effective and efficient competition amongst retailers. The government is open minded on the model used for Telstra’s structural separation. One of the more interesting options involves Telstra gradually moving its fixed-line network to the NBN, which would result in a wholesale-only network not controlled by any retail company. I believe that this particular approach would probably be a great outcome for Australian consumers. While the big news in this bill relates to vertical separation, meaning separating wholesale and retail components, the bill also proposes horizontal separation. Reforms in this area are to tackle the market power wielded by Telstra’s copper, cable and mobile assets. It is proposed that Telstra’s acquisition of wireless signal spectrums be dependent on structural separation and, if deemed necessary, on Telstra’s divesting itself of its hybrid fibre coaxial cable network and Foxtel interests. Telstra sometimes gets an unfair cop about the state of broadband and other telecommunications services in Australia. We live in a large, decentralised, hot, sparsely populated part of the world. The SCAX huts do not just appear in the middle of nowhere. They require expensive planning, equipment and continual maintenance. On this ground alone Australia’s communications systems are not directly comparable to those of the UK or most OECD countries. The fact that we have some effective communications systems in Australia at all is a credit to Telstra’s past work, particularly going back to the days of PMG and Telecom Australia. It is important to note that Telstra’s actions in the current system are mainly a reflection of that system. As a private company Telstra’s prime responsibility is to its shareholders, and its actions reflect this commercial reality. Telstra and other industry players will always seek to maximise their position within the provided regulatory framework. It is our role as a government to ensure that this framework provides the best results for the Australian people. Other changes include competition reforms of the Trade Practices Act. Changes to the Trade Practices Act are proposed to manage competition issues in relation to the telecommunications access regime. Telstra’s competitors have long been frustrated by issues of access to infrastructure such as local telephone exchanges. The ACCC has received more than 150 access disputes when, incredibly, only three disputes have arisen over other regulated industries. The changes in this area aim to clarify pricing terms and conditions for declared services, putting in place binding rules of conduct for services and immediate remedies for violation of these rules, determining fixed principles to apply beyond access to termination durations, removing merits, reviewing certain regulatory decisions made by the ACCC, removing the ACCC requirement to consult with a party prior to issuing a competition notice and clarifying the application of competition notices to content services. These changes will clarify where telecommunications industry players stand and allow the government to act more quickly and decisively when issues arise. Furthermore, they will limit the ability of industry participants to stall compliance when it comes to competition issues. Another component involves the strengthening of consumer protections. A number of telecommunications industry consumer safeguards are currently in place: the universal service obligation, or USO, which applies to the supply of telephone and payphone services; the Customer Service Guarantee, or CSG, which contains performance requirements and penalties for when these requirements are not met; and priority assistance arrangements for individuals with a diagnosed life-threatening medical condition. The proposed changes in this area are to modernise consumer protection regulation. Modifications to the USO are proposed to make it a requirement of Telstra to supply a basic service with specific connection and repair periods, reliability requirements and performance benchmarks. Telstra payphone and universal service requirements will be tightened, with ACMA to have more of a say on whether a payphone is removed. As telecommunications service quality standards have been falling, minimum performance requirements will be put in place for the CSG. Civil penalties and infringement notices imposing fines are proposed to manage noncompliance. New time frames for connections and repairs will apply to wholesale service providers. The intention of these changes is to minimise the ability of retailers to blame wholesalers for poor retail service. Consumers may still choose a service where the CSG does not apply. However, it is proposed that they will have to fill out a standard form of agreement to waive their service provider of CSG obligations. This will help ensure people are aware of the implications of their choice to forfeit CSG consumer protections. All telecommunications providers will now be required to offer priority assistance to customers or inform customers of providers that offer this service. This will ensure that people who need an ultrareliable service are aware of and able to access a priority assistance service. The fourth component includes removal of red tape. The government has had a hard look at the existing regulation structure to ensure that unnecessary and redundant regulation is removed. The proposed changes include: small carriers are to be exempted from an annual carrier licence charge, universal service live charge and national relay service charge; reduced CSG and priority assistance reporting if performance benchmarks are achieved; redundant Telstra reporting to be scrapped once separation has occurred; and the removal of the Telstra requirement to enable consumers to achieve 19.2 kilobits per second internet services. That last change may appear unusual on face value. However, 19.2 kilobits per second is less than three kilobytes per second. By modern standards, a three kilobyte per second internet connection is also not good enough. So modern internet speed demands, along with the variety of products and options available now, render this requirement redundant. Individuals in situations where they struggle to reach 19.2 kilobits per second are likely to also have difficulties receiving ADSL broadband. However, the Australian broadband guarantee initiative, where the federal government provides subsidised wireless or satellite services, provides assistance to people in this situation. It is an option for the future to put a higher speed data requirement in place through the universal service obligations. The challenge in this area is that imposing this requirement on any particular company would place that company at a competitive disadvantage. Inevitably, there would need to be compensation to a company or companies affected. Within the electorate of Forde there are significant telecommunications issues, and I have spoken about those a number of occasions. They range from cows chewing temporary copper line solutions in Running Creek through to difficulties accessing ADSL2+ in new areas of the electorate. Some of the strangest and most perplexing issues my office has had to deal with relate to the relationship between wholesale and retail telecommunications companies. The strangest issues tend to arise from the interface between Telstra Wholesale and retailers. I am sure many members in this House have had ongoing issues about getting information, and the fact that one company controls the access to that information makes it very difficult to break through. I will give some examples. Mr Bob Whitten recently came into my office with what appeared to be a relatively simple problem at his end. Bob was trying to sort out an ADSL service for a property near Yatala, which is less than 40 kilometres out of Brisbane. Two things made this case unusual. Firstly, a basic ADSL service had been on the property for two years before he attempted to access the ADSL2+ service, but he was then being told he could not receive the ADSL2+ and nor could he receive the ADSL, which he had been receiving for two years, because he was on a pair gain phone line. The pair gain explanation was as much as Bob could be told by his retailer. In turn, this explanation was all the retailer appeared to be able to get from Telstra Wholesale. This was an amazing situation when you consider that the pair gain explanation probably was to do with some sort of hub or splitting box, that essentially he had the service and it was later taken up. But despite the efforts of my office and his own inquiries, we could not get to the bottom of it and his service completely dropped out. We could not inquire with Telstra as the service was provided by a retailer other than Telstra. We were told to go to another phone number, but that number simply gave us an understanding of who our local retailer was, so we were going round and round in circles. In the end, all we could do was speculate on what the issue was. Our best guess was once the system reached capacity it could no longer work for anybody, so that was where we sat: with no service. Overall correspondence from constituents has been that resolving Telstra infrastructure problems through the retailers other than Telstra is difficult. In Munruben, a lady called Carol spent months seeking answers to an intermittent ADSL problem through her retailer iPrimus, but it was not resolved. In Buccan, which is a very close suburb to Beenleigh, another consumer attempted to get a landline service with retailer Dodo and was stalled indefinitely by Telstra simply because they were not prepared to lay the specific cables and lines. In the end that person gave up and put in a satellite phone when only 50 metres up the road people had a normal landline service. In my experience in our office, the main difference between being a Telstra retail customer and a customer of other retailers is one of information. Better information and advice on wholesale issues appears to be available through Telstra Retail rather than other retailers. Structural separation of Telstra will place all retailers on an equal playing field. What we need to ensure is that this is a responsive and effective playing field. Retailers and customers need to be able to access timely, valuable and accurate feedback on these wholesale issues. The wholesale entity will need to have appropriate drivers to ensure this occurs. In light of the concerns experienced in the electorate, whatever business model we propose as a government—and I believe this is a good business model—will provide the impetus to allow further competition and the cleaning up of a system that has been broken for a long time. The member for Lindsay spoke at length about his experiences in his electorate. I think we have all experienced the same problems and getting them resolved is always very difficult. I acknowledge that not all people are supportive of this legislation, and we have heard the varying arguments in this chamber, particularly on structural separation. However, to allow the current arrangements to continue would exacerbate the problems. It is like knowing that you are sick and need medical assistance but pretending you are not ill. Eventually, illness will catch up with you, and I think that is what has happened with our telecommunications system. This legislation will cause some short-term pain to Telstra. However, either now or in the future, the structural separation of Telstra is going to be necessary for Australia’s privatised telecommunications system to deliver for consumers. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 is critical legislation that will modernise telecommunications regulation, improve competition, strengthen consumer safeguards and remove redundant red tape. I therefore commend this bill to the House. 10603 19:00:00 Hartsuyker, Luke, MP 00AMM Cowper NATS 0 0 Mr HARTSUYKER —I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important legislation in the House tonight because telecommunications is the very linchpin of doing business in regional and rural areas. Without world-class telecommunication systems you cannot operate businesses in a regional area. Many businesses in my electorate depend on telecommunications as their lifeline. Many consulting engineers, architects and other professionals email their designs and developments to clients they may not have met, clients who are perhaps on the other side of the world. Such is life in rural and regional areas these days. It is very much about the provision of services as well as the provision of goods, and quality telecommunications is the key to ensuring that regional businesses can compete with metropolitan businesses and businesses around the world. So I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation, as it has the potential to impact on virtually every person that I represent in this place. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 amends a number of acts and has three major parts. The first part deals with the structural separation of Telstra. The second part deals with access and anticompetitive conduct regimes under part XI of the Trade Practices Act. The third part of the legislation deals with consumer safeguards such as the universal service obligation, the customer service guarantee and priority assistance. The first section of the legislation deals with the vertical and horizontal integration of Telstra. In effect, this legislation gives Telstra two options. The company can voluntarily structurally separate its retail and network arms. If, however, it chooses not to do this, the government will enforce the functional separation of Telstra and make it impossible for the company to access specified bands of spectrum which could be used for advanced wireless services. This approach is puzzling, as the government has not previously raised structural separation as an option. In fact, as recently as May 2009, Minister Conroy told a Senate estimates hearing that he had never advocated the structural separation of Telstra. Telstra has some 1.4 million shareholders, many of whom are small-time investors, self-funded retirees or holders of self-managed super funds. These people had no idea in 2007 that the Labor Party intended to use these bullying tactics to the detriment of their investment. The government has no mandate to do this. It may be that Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party have no idea what they are doing in heading down this path. In 2007, Labor’s policy was to scrap the Howard government’s OPEL program, which was providing high-speed broadband services in rural and regional areas—a program that would have been completed by now. But what do we have in its place? We have a scheme that is still in its very early stages, a scheme which depends on the carving up of the major telecommunications carrier, a scheme which has been ill thought out and a scheme whose viable future we are yet to see. The government merely destroyed OPEL and then proposed to build a $4.7 billion fibre-to-the-node network using taxpayers’ money. After realising that their grand fibre plan would not attract private investment, the government went back to the hollow men’s whiteboard and came up with a much grander scheme—the $43 billion National Broadband Network. It is quite incredible, really. The government could not get a sufficient number of businesses to invest with the government in their original fibre-to-the-node plan, so their response was to build a much grander plan, a $43 billion plan. It begs the question: how can this much larger plan be viable when the more limited plan was not? How can a much larger plan, funded by the taxpayer, be viable when there was little interest from the commercial sector in the commercial tender processes, resulting in the government being unable to fly its fibre-to-the-node plan? Is this a prudent investment of $43 billion of taxpayers’ money? Has there been proper consideration of the opportunity cost of capital? Has there been proper analysis? I will dwell on this a little later. The primary purpose of this bill is to ensure that there are no major competitors to the government’s National Broadband Network plan. Ultimately, the structural separation of Telstra would pave the way for the renationalisation of Telstra’s fixed-line network, as it would be gradually absorbed into the NBN. Even the CEO of the Competitive Carriers Coalition confirmed this in Senate estimates hearings when he said: If you suggested to me that the NBN was likely to succeed in the absence of this legislation I would suggest that’s a pretty big bet. It would be a pretty big bet this project would actually fly without this legislation. There is no doubt that the primary purpose of this move by the government is to set up a telecommunications industry for the development of the NBN. The second part of the legislation amends access and anticompetitive conduct regimes in parts XIB and XIC of the Trade Practices Act. Part XIC of the Trade Practices Act provides that, if parties cannot agree on the terms of access to a declared service, either party can notify the ACCC of the dispute. The ACCC must then arbitrate the dispute. The terms and conditions of access are then set by the ACCC in an arbitration determination for those parties only. This legislation amends the TPA to allow the regulator to set upfront prices and access conditions for declared services. The government claims that this will create a benchmark which access seekers can fall back on while still allowing parties to negotiate, although there is concern about this change within the industry. Part XIB of the Trade Practices Act allows for the ACCC to issue a part A competition notice to a carrier in the event that the ACCC believes that the carrier has been involved in anticompetitive conduct. Currently, the ACCC must give notice to the carrier that it intends to issue a part A competition notice and allow the carrier to respond to this notice within a given time frame. The legislation before the House would remove the requirement of the ACCC to give notice before issuing a part A competition notice. According to the explanatory memorandum, the bill also explicitly provides that the ACCC is not required to observe any requirements of procedural fairness in relation to the issue of a part A competition notice. The government claims that this is to prevent the delay of enforcement proceedings due to extended consultation and litigation on procedural grounds. But any removal of procedural fairness must surely be cause for concern and give unprecedented power to the ACCC. The third part of this legislation deals with the USO, CSG and priority assistance. These issues are of particular importance in my electorate as many properties and homes are in hard-to-reach places and would not have reasonable services if it were not for the universal service obligation and customer service guarantee. The bill amends the Consumer Protection Act to allow the minister to determine what standard of services must be provided under the USO. According to the explanatory memorandum, it is intended that the performance standards mandated by the USO will include maximum periods of time for new connections and fault repairs. The legislation also allows the minister to determine USO arrangements as they apply to the supply, installation, maintenance and location of payphones. The customer service guarantee requires telephone companies to meet minimum performance standards or provide customers with financial compensation when these standards are not met. ACMA reporting seems to indicate that industry performance is declining when compared to the customer service guarantee requirements, which suggests that the current arrangements are not providing enough incentive for the industry to maintain or improve service quality. There is a concern that the USO and the CSG may be determined by the minister and not the parliament. The burning issue is: what assurance can I have that the interests of my constituents in regional Australia will be protected? In this bill there is a strong focus on the outdated technology of payphones, yet there is neglect in relation to obligations with regard to leading-edge technologies and emerging technologies. If regional Australia is going to compete, we have to have a guarantee of service that relates to the very latest technologies, not overarching concern merely with outdated technologies such as payphones. The bill strengthens priority assistance provisions. They are very important provisions indeed. Priority assistance provisions are available to people with a life-threatening illness who need access to a phone at all times. Priority assistance customers are entitled to faster connection and fault repair services. The bill would force all home carriers to either offer a priority assistance service or notify customers of providers from whom they can purchase a priority assistance service if necessary. This may have the effect of encouraging more carriers to develop a priority assistance program. That is certainly a welcome improvement. Despite the fact that I have reservations about elements of this bill, as the shadow minister for competition policy and consumer affairs I support the idea of introducing more competition into the telecommunications market. After all, it was the coalition that sold Telstra and allowed competition into the market. We can see the benefits of this move. The options and possibilities available to the consumer are now much greater than 20 years ago. Competition has driven the introduction of new technology and has forced carriers to reduce prices and produce innovative products. The big question is whether government forced separation of Telstra is the best way to promote competition in this industry. While structural separation remains an option, vertically integrated telecommunications companies are not unusual. If the government were genuinely interested in improving competition in the industry, it would surely give serious consideration to improving the regulatory regime governing access to Telstra’s legacy networks as an alternative to forcing the structural separation of the company. Telstra’s competitors are understandably supportive of this bill as they see it as an opportunity to gain greater access to Telstra’s network. The Australian Telecommunications Users Group has also indicated its strong support for the bill, as has the Competitive Carriers Coalition—an association comprised of several major telecommunications companies. Overall, my main concern is ensuring that my constituents have access to quality telecommunications services at a reasonable price. I am also mindful that many of my constituents are Telstra shareholders and that their investment should not be damaged by this government decision. The way in which the government has gone about implementing these changes leaves a lot to be desired. For some reason, the minister is determined to ram through this legislation before the parliament before the end of the year, despite not knowing how the National Broadband Network is going to be implemented. The government is currently carrying out a national broadband network implementation study, which is due for completion in February. Without knowing exactly how the National Broadband Network will work, it seems premature to mandate wholesale changes to the telecommunications industry. It is quite bizarre that the minister would not wait until the completion of this study. The minister’s time frame is also puzzling in light of the fact that Telstra is currently locked in negotiations with the government about the best way to deliver the National Broadband Network. The CEO of Telstra, David Thodey, has indicated to me that Telstra is negotiating with the government and NBN Co. to come up with a commercial arrangement about Telstra’s involvement in the National Broadband Network. Mr Thodey has advised that Telstra is working towards achieving a satisfactory outcome by the end of the year. Why is there such a rush? With this in mind, it seems premature for the government to force through these changes. As an absolute minimum, it seems prudent to wait until Telstra has concluded its negotiations with the government and until the implementation study is finalised before concluding debate on this legislation. The minister’s haste to implement this legislation, regardless of the outcome of his discussions with Telstra, can only mean that he is not actually negotiating with Telstra in good faith—quite clearly so—in which case he is showing a gross lack of respect and honesty, or he is using this legislation as a threat to encourage Telstra to accept his terms in relation to the National Broadband Network. If this is the case, he is showing blatant disregard for the purpose and role of the parliament. Michael Pascoe summed up the problem perfectly in his article in Communications Day on 16 September, when he said: That Conroy is taking a cricket bat to the heads of Telstra shareholders when he’s yet to work out just how his National Broadband Network thingy might really function is simply thuggish. Conroy has talents— well, we can debate that— but calm and reasoned administration tends not to be mentioned as one of them. Delaying the bill until February will have no impact on consumer measures in this bill because they are not listed to commence until July 2010. Delaying the legislation may actually be of benefit because the explanatory memorandum suggests that the USO measures may have to be altered once the implementation study is completed. One very specific concern I have with the structural separation aspect of the bill is the impact it is likely to have on Telstra shareholders, in particular the Telstra shareholders I represent. As I mentioned previously, there are 1.4 million shareholders, most of whom are small investors or retirees. In addition to these direct shareholders there are millions of investors who hold shares in Telstra through superannuation funds. The minister has indicated that he believes that structural separation can be achieved without harming Telstra shareholders. However, the Australian Shareholders Association chief executive, Stuart Wilson, was scathing in his assessment of the plan. He said: I think it’s a giant kick in the teeth for Telstra shareholders; it severely damages the earnings potential of the company and there’s really not one good thing for shareholders to come out of the proposed legislation. It is hard to see how this massive change to the operation of Telstra will not have a significant impact on the value of its shares, and this is an issue which must be addressed by the minister. Another issue of significant concern is the government’s willingness to meddle with a public company in this way. Passing this legislation could have the effect of significantly diminishing Australia’s standing as an attractive place to invest. If the government is successful in forcing Telstra to separate, investors will rightly ask whether the government has plans to meddle with other companies—a very good point. At present Australia is seen as an attractive place in which to invest. We have a strong banking system, a valuable relationship with our trading partners, a strong resources sector and, until now, investment friendly governments. This legislation may harm that reputation and may harm our economy if it is passed in its current form. The government has a poor record when it comes to communications. The centrepiece of Labor’s 2007 election policies was a $4.7 billion national broadband network which was to reach 98 per cent of Australia’s population. That plan was then scrapped. Instead, we now have the National Broadband Network, which is going to cost $43 billion and reach 90 per cent of the population—and, I might say, it will be regional customers, such as the people I represent, and such as the people the member for Mallee, who is in the chamber, represents, who will miss out. The Prime Minister made it clear that the National Broadband Network would not be extended to towns with a population of fewer than 1,000 people. The ABS identifies 25 communities in my electorate that have fewer than 1,000 people, such as Moonee Beach, Corindi Beach, Smithtown, Gladstone, Frederickton, Scotts Head and Gulmarrad. They will all miss out, yet their taxes will be used to build the National Broadband Network. There are also countless smaller communities and farms that will be bypassed by the National Broadband Network—but, as I said, their taxpayers’ dollars will be used to build a network they will have no access to. I recognise the need for additional compensation to the telecommunications industry in regard to the loss of value in Telstra. What is going to happen? Will there be a claim for damages against the government in relation to this? Who is going to pay for the diminished value to Telstra shareholders that will result from this ill-conceived legislation? We have very much a market orientated communications system in this country, with the private sector working efficiently and effectively to deliver telecommunications services. Under this legislation we have the development of the 21st century version of the Postmaster General, where we have government control of a National Broadband Network. It will probably be very much a backward step insofar as delivery of services goes. Governments have a history of being unable to deliver services as efficiently and as effectively as the private sector, yet this government seems hell-bent on pushing the private sector out of the way and replacing it with a government owned and controlled monopoly. I certainly have some serious concerns about this legislation. 10608 19:18:00 Collins, Julie, MP HWM Franklin ALP 1 0 Ms COLLINS —I am pleased to rise in support of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009. The significant amendments included in this bill will deliver a regulatory reform package which I believe is critical in reshaping the telecommunications sector in this nation. I believe it will provide better protections for consumers, it will provide increased competition and it will also encourage innovation. The bill is making amendments to the Telecommunications Act 1997, the Trade Practices Act 1974 and the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. As I have said, these amendments will deliver a significant reform package which will improve the existing telecommunications network but which will also help us in the future in terms of a transition to the NBN and what that will mean in the future. This reform package will have a positive impact on all areas of Australia but particularly on areas like those I represent, which are rural and regional areas. In Tasmania at present we do not have what I would call free competition in the marketplace, with the ability for people to vote with their feet when they are dissatisfied with the existing services. That ability is just not there. Consumers will really benefit from this bill, as it proposes to strengthen the consumer protection framework. It will help reduce the failing service quality which has been experienced by consumers for some time. In my electorate office we receive many regular inquiries from constituents who are frustrated by the lack of service from Telstra on a range of products including landlines, mobile phones and the internet. I look forward to seeing more safeguards being put in place to assist in improving the quality of service delivery, especially as we move forward with telecommunications—and we all know that telecommunications do move forward at a rapid place. What has really concerned me in this debate has been hearing about the opposition’s decision to try and block and defer this important legislation and not to vote on it. I do not really understand why, if they are so opposed to it, they do not want to vote on it now. But, clearly, they are trying to delay debating this bill; they are trying to stop a decision being made. That will stop Australians from getting access to better products and better services. All the opposition are showing is that they are divided and they cannot come to a decision about what they want to do with this bill. They had 11½ years to devise a broadband plan, as we know; and they had 18 failed broadband plans during that 11½ years in government. Clearly, they are not sure what they want to do when it comes to telecommunications in this country and they are still divided on the direction they want to go. We know that consumers are demanding ever-increasing bandwidth and access to the internet. But, as they do, they are also demanding a vast improvement in service quality. We are beginning to see this transition from digital technologies, particularly in areas of health and education. In my state of Tasmania we are very pleased to be the first state to receive the National Broadband Network rollout. I have spoken to many community groups about the advances in tele-health and education services, particularly online classrooms in rural and regional areas. On the same day that the government announced its intention to go forward and deliver the NBN we also made public our intention to reform the existing telecommunications regulatory system. We released our discussion paper, National Broadband Network: Regulatory Reform for 21st Century Broadband, with the intent of canvassing options and opinions for regulatory reform. I understand that the discussion paper did receive a strong response and that those who responded included major telecommunications service providers, broadcasters, media companies, state and territory governments, the ACCC, disability and consumer groups, business organisations and even unions. The overwhelming response received from these key stakeholders was that the current regulatory system does not work effectively to achieve the goals that it is supposed to. It is failing us all; it is failing businesses and consumers and it is failing everybody who wants access to telecommunications in this country, particularly in rural and regional areas. It is these opinions from experts in the industry that we take into account when we look at regulatory reform. The crux of this bill revolves around a package of reforms that will deliver efficient telecommunications that are underpinned by appropriate consumer safeguards. We all know that Telstra remains one of the most integrated telecommunications companies in the world. Not only does it own the fixed line copper network in Australia that connects to almost every home and business but it also owns the largest hybrid fibre-coaxial cable network and the largest mobile network. On top of this Telstra has a 50 per cent stake in Australia’s largest subscription provider, Foxtel. We believe that the failure to address Telstra’s level of integration has meant that current regulation has failed to promote effective competition. Certainly, for consumers in my home state there is very little competition. The lack of competition in the telecommunications sector has resulted in Australia lagging well behind other developed economies on a range of telecommunications indicators. We know that that is the case in terms of our broadband speed at the moment and it is also the case in terms of access to innovative new products. Telstra is a provider of wholesale services as well as a provider of retail services. The vertical integration held by Telstra means it has both the incentive and the ability to favour its own retail business over its wholesale customers. The overwhelming message from the industry and key stakeholders is that these current arrangements are just not suitable and the vertical integration can only be described as inadequate. We have also heard from those on the opposite side some discussion about this bill in relation to Telstra and whether or not government should intervene and force it to separate. But Telstra does have a choice here. We have a clear preference for Telstra to structurally separate of its own accord—to act in a voluntarily capacity. Such an outcome would be consistent with the wholesale-only, open-access market structure that is to be delivered through the broadband network and through other telecommunications options. The other option for Telstra, if it does not voluntarily structurally separate, is that it will be required to separate along functional lines. Whether it is functional separation or structural separation Telstra does have a choice. At the end of the day it will result in increased levels of competition, which is better for consumers, better for the mums and dads that I represent, better for the small businesses that I represent and better for the schools in my electorate. We also know that it is supported by the ACCC. In terms of increasing the level of competition, the ACCC supports some form of separation measure. We know that it supports functional separation as the next best option to structural separation. In addition to its vertical integration, Telstra is horizontally integrated, as it owns and operates a range of different platforms, including copper, cable and mobile. At the core of these bills are two key amendments. Firstly we aim to improve competition across the telecommunications sector. Secondly, we aim to implement consumer protection measures as a way of improving service quality. Looking at how it is done in other developed countries, there are restrictions in place on entities preventing them from owning both cable and traditional fixed-line networks. Reforms to the current regulatory framework are overdue. We know from expert opinion from key stakeholders and those in the industry that the current regulatory framework is ineffective. The ACCC will be central to the changes we seek to make through the passage of this bill; it will be given powers to act swiftly when it believes anticompetitive conduct is occurring in the telecommunications market. I would like to turn now to my home state of Tasmania. There are some significant issues for consumers in Tasmania. You have heard from me before that there is a severe lack of competition. I have spoken about the concerns my constituents have and the fact that my office has quite a large number of telecommunications complaints. But in Tasmania Telstra has a very high market share, particularly in landline services and particularly in rural and regional areas. An increase in competition between telecommunications companies would mean that people would have different options when it comes to service provision and customer care. In Tasmania people find it much harder to vote with their feet and move between carriers and service providers, because often there is only one carrier who will service a particular area, and we all know that that is Telstra. For the same reasons, when you look at the landline and mobile phone coverage in Tasmania there are not a lot of alternative options. Where there is no market competition people are forced to use the only available carrier rather than having access to choice. The amendments in this bill will promote competition across Australia, including Tasmania. It will correct the anticompetitive situation that currently exists within the telecommunications industry in my home state. One of the changes we are seeking is to protect consumers’ access to affordable telecommunications services. The package of reforms contained in this bill strengthen consumer safeguards by lessening the risk of Telstra reducing service quality around its copper network specifically prior to the rollout of the NBN. One of the fundamental things with the universal service obligation, which the government has decided to retain on Telstra for voice telephony and payphones, is the opportunity to access reliable basic telephone services. We have already seen Telstra begin to remove payphones from around the country. I want to tell you a story about an island in my electorate in Tasmania, Bruny Island, where I was alerted by some of the property owners on the island that Telstra had removed three payphones, one in the far north, one in the far south and one in the tourist centre of Adventure Bay. Upon contacting Telstra I was advised that one of the phones had been removed accidentally and would be put back and one of them had been removed quite fairly. The third one was removed and, even though they put a sign in it, nobody contacted them. Telstra was told that it is actually 20 minutes away from another phone. Worse than that, the island has extremely patchy mobile phone service, if any service at all. If someone were to have an accident in this area of the island they would not be able to get to a payphone. There is certainly an issue with payphones in Tasmania. Debate interrupted. 10611 Adjournment 10000 Burke, Anna (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke)—Order! It being 7.30 pm, I propose the question: That the House do now adjourn. 10611 10611 19:30:00 Neumann, Shayne, MP HVO Blair ALP 1 0 Mr NEUMANN —I wish to speak tonight on Telstra and the broadband network. I know we had the telecommunications legislation before the House this afternoon, but this matter arises out of an email I received this afternoon from David Pahlke, the councillor for division 10 on the Ipswich City Council. David has been a strong advocate for the local area, complaining about what Telstra has not been doing. He sent an email to Telstra Country Wide today about how Telstra looks after the country, and he attached a photograph. The location shown is Tallegalla Road, Minden, not far from the intersection with Neuendorffs Road. I have here a picture that David has given to me. Last week, when I was driving around the Somerset region with David, we found similar situations in place after place. It is not good enough that Telstra behaves in this way. There is too much integration, too much vertical and horizontal control of the marketplace. That is what we are resolving with the legislation that is being debated in the House—we are making sure that there is structural and functional separation. We have asked Telstra to participate, to be involved in the great nation-building project that is the National Broadband Network, but they thumb their nose at us. So the government is putting forward its $43 billion plan and putting $4.7 billion into it, fulfilling an election commitment. The trouble we have now is the delay and obstructionism by those opposite. We have Senator Joyce supporting what we are doing. We have Senator Minchin opposing it. We have the Liberal candidate in Bradfield saying what a good idea it would be. We have the member for Cowper saying that hellfire and brimstone are going to come down if we do this. We have the animated and agitated member for Wide Bay saying how bad this legislation is and that we should not be doing anything until we have the implementation plan through. It is extremely important for regional and rural Australia and for my electorate of Blair that we get this legislation through. It is important we have Telstra behave not like it is but in a way that looks after regional and rural Australia. There are 18 failed plans for my electorate; 18 failed coalition telecommunications plans across this country. The coalition has not done much, except privatise Telstra, since 1997. The consequences are that farmers, small business operators, doctors, students and residential property owners in regional and rural areas—particularly in my seat, which is 6,400 square kilometres in South East Queensland—need proper telecommunications. They need better, fast-speed broadband. What is the coalition doing now? Coalition members are opposing it. It is inexcusable and inexplicable that the coalition is opposing our plans with respect to the National Broadband Network and the legislation before the House that we are debating. It is a disgrace that the coalition has adopted this attitude. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during their cabinet meetings. You wonder what they discussed when they talked about telecommunications. There was inertia, inaction, ignorance and idleness with respect to the National Broadband Network and bringing services to rural and regional communities across this country. That is what the consequences of the Howard years are for regional and rural Australia. The Nationals tell us how they are standing up for the bush. Well, they are not standing up for the bush in South East Queensland. They are not standing up for the bush in my electorate. They are not standing up for rural and regional Ipswich, Lockyer, Scenic Rim or Somerset. They are opposing the benefits that could flow to those communities by their obstructionism, by their opposition, by their ignorance and by their failure to come on board with a great national project that will be the great legacy of the Rudd Labor government. 10612 10612 19:35:00 Wood, Jason, MP E0F La Trobe LP 0 0 Mr WOOD —On 14 September I met with Fiona Grech, a Micah Challenge supporter from my electorate of La Trobe, who lives in Berwick. Micah Challenge is committed to lobbying the government to achieve the millennium development goals by 2015—in particular, halving global poverty, improving maternal health and reducing child mortality. This year marks the fifth birthday of Micah Challenge’s Voices for Justice national conference, held here in Canberra every September. Sadly, whilst Voices for Justice has gone from strength to strength, many children living in poverty do not reach their fifth birthday. That is an absolute tragedy. As part of their fifth birthday festivities, Voices for Justice are encouraging their supporters to hold a ‘survive past five’ birthday party in every electorate across Australia before next year’s federal election to highlight child mortality rates in Third World countries, and to lobby this government to achieve Millennium Development Goal 4: reduce child mortality. In the Asia Pacific region, 34,000 mothers and 400,000 children tragically die every year from preventable causes and across the world one woman dies during childbirth every minute, which is unbelievable. In September 2000, world leaders were committed to achieving the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015. It is now October 2009. The deadline is less than six years away and fast approaching. Of all donor nations, Australia is ranked 15th out of 22 in terms of aid commitment. To reach our international aid target and achieve the MDGs, Australia needs to increase its aid contribution to 0.7 per cent of GNI by increasing health aid to $1 billion over the next three years. Australia could help prevent over 240,000 children’s deaths and 26,000 maternal deaths. Another millennium development goal that is close to my heart is MDG1, ‘eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’, halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. In 2005, 1.4 billion people were living on less than US$1 every day—again, an unbelievable figure. Higher food prices are expected to increase this number by almost 100 million people by the end of this decade. The United Nations has serious doubts that MDG1 will be achieved by the deadline. Hindering the achievement of MDG1 is the global slave trade and human trafficking. Slavery and human trafficking go hand in hand with world poverty. Improving living conditions for the world’s poorest people will go a long way to ending slavery and human trafficking. I am pleased by Cadbury’s recent announcement that it will phase out the use of cocoa farmed using child labour by 2010. This is a step in the right direction. Hopefully their decision will encourage other major chocolate producers to follow suit and raise awareness of slavery and extreme poverty in Third World countries. Earlier this year I travelled to Europe with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission to discuss slavery and human trafficking with representatives from Interpol and learn about what measures the European Union is taking to end slavery in West Africa. Twenty-seven million people are thought to be enslaved globally, generating $7 billion every year, meaning slavery and human trafficking is behind only the illicit drugs trade and the illegal arms trade as the most profitable crime—something which, as a former police officer, I was amazed to hear. The sad fact is that many people do not realise their favourite brands of chocolate are sourced from Third World cocoa producers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, where the workers are underpaid and overworked. I am aware that the member for Sturt wrote to the Prime Minister requesting that all vending machines in Parliament House stock only fair trade chocolate, tea and coffee. I also note that the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, banned Tim Tams from council meetings. This action prompted Arnott’s to defend their choice in cocoa suppliers. It is action like this that highlights the problems and makes companies like Cadbury’s change their policies. I encourage everyone to, where possible, use fair trade products and really support this cause. Again, I congratulate Fiona Grech and all Micah Challenge advocates for their passionate pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, and urge the government to ensure MDG targets are met by 2015. (Time expired) 10613 10613 19:40:00 Symon, Mike, MP HW8 Deakin ALP 1 0 Mr SYMON —For those members of this place who do not know the eastern suburbs of Melbourne—as I am sure you do, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke—the Maroondah City Council takes in the eastern half of my electorate of Deakin. Covering suburbs such as Ringwood, Ringwood East and Ringwood North, Heathmont, Croydon, Croydon South and Bayswater North, it is a great part of Melbourne and a place that I have called home for 25 years or more. There is a lot going on in Maroondah in terms of new construction and refurbishments at the moment. The local recreation and leisure facilities in particular are getting a lot of attention, and that is something I know the local community is really pleased about. Some of this has come about through Labor Party election commitments in the 2007 campaign, some has come about through the Rudd government’s Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, and some has come from Maroondah City Council and the Victorian state Labor government. This partnership in the delivery of funding to community recreation facilities has helped to get more done in a shorter period of time than any single level of government could achieve in a suburban local government area. I was grateful to Maroondah Mayor Peter Gurr and the director of community and leisure services, Helen Croxford, for taking the time two weeks ago to show me some of the fantastic projects that are underway there right now. The council are doing a great job getting the work done expertly and quickly. For example, the Rudd government has invested a total of $325,000 for upgrades at the Ringwood Aquatic Centre, including a refurbishment of the pool water filtration system that, when commissioned in the next few weeks, will allow for around one million litres of water per year to be reused in the pool. There will also be the installation of a new cogeneration plant to deliver efficiencies in power and heat production and reduce the aquatic centre’s carbon footprint by 526 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per annum, the equivalent of taking 122 cars off the road. The Ringwood Aquatic Centre is a well-loved and well-used pool in Ringwood. So many people visit it, from local families during the summer and the winter to the swimming program kids from the primary schools during the week. The place always seems to be busy. I would really like to commend the great staff at the aquatic centre for the work they do in making sure the centre is running smoothly—everyone from the lifeguards by the pool to those who make sure the water quality is as good as it gets. Little athletics is also an important part of the sporting community in Deakin, with quite a number of clubs. Croydon Little Athletics, one of the very successful athletics clubs in Deakin, is located in the same building as the Croydon U3A, a partnership that both groups benefit from. I was very pleased to visit the construction site next to the athletics track to see work in progress on the extensions to the building. The work the Maroondah City Council is doing here, funded by the Rudd government as an election commitment along with a contribution from the council, will see both the U3A and the little athletics club enjoying better storage and amenities. I am looking forward to attending the opening of the new building and facilities in the next few weeks as work is now almost complete. Dorset Golf Course is also an important part of Maroondah City Council’s leisure facilities. It is used by many of my constituents. Indeed, in my younger days, when I had the time, it was a favourite course of mine as it was close to home. I was pleased to turn the first sod on the upgrade of their facilities in the middle of September. When I visited again just four weeks later, I was very surprised by how quickly the community rooms were being refurbished and how much work had happened since I had been there only a short time before. The work is progressing very well. The new water-saving measures that are included in this project will help make the course even more sustainable in the long term. The golf driving range is also getting a refurbishment and very soon Dorset Golf Course will be even better than it already is. Importantly, this project is also supporting 25 local jobs. This is another project funded under the Rudd government’s Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, which was voted against in this House by those opposite just a few short months ago. I am also delighted that in a few weeks the Ringwood soccer pavilion, a building that has not been refurbished since it was first built in the 1960s, will be demolished. This will make way for a new pavilion. The new pavilion will also include facilities for women, and it will much easier for women’s and girl’s teams to use the grounds than currently. The Rudd government is contributing $2.9 million to the project, with another $600,000 coming from the Maroondah City Council and the Victorian state Labor government. I look forward to working with the Maroondah City Council not only on these projects but on the many projects I am sure will come in the future. It is a great commendation for both the council and the state government that all three levels of government can work in a local government area to achieve these great outcomes for the local community. (Time expired) 10614 10614 19:45:00 Stone, Dr Sharman, MP EM6 Murray LP 0 0 Dr STONE —I want to talk about the problems that this government has created for communities like mine in northern Victoria. We are experiencing our seventh year of drought. I cannot blame Labor for that, but I can blame it for failing to respond to the exceptional circumstances that our regional communities face. When in government, we in the coalition understood that, when you have an extraordinary natural disaster such as seven years of drought, you have to make sure you help the food producers—the dairy farmers and fruit producers—survive that drought in order that they can go on generating the billions of dollars at the farm gate that they do, and the employment that they provide. The multiplier effects of food production are extraordinary. They go to the transport sector and salaried people in the manufacturing industries. We are now staring down the barrel of both community contraction and enormous regional economic stress. Why? Because this government does not seem to understand, or perhaps it just does not care about, what is going on beyond the tram tracks of Melbourne or the congestion of Sydney. For example, we have heard in the last 24 hours that the European Union is to give €460 million to its dairy sector, which, of course, is still suffering extraordinary below-costs-of-production prices as a result of the contraction of credit, which itself is a result of the global financial crisis. What has the Australian government provided for its dairy industry? Absolutely nothing. We have seen the government bail out the automotive sector—and internationally owned manufacturers of motor vehicles—who have been struggling for years, of course. They have bailed out the retail sector. They have also been very sympathetic to the textiles, clothing and footwear industry. I have again and again presented to the government the disaster that is now confronting the dairy industry in Australia, only to be told, ‘Yes, it is serious.’ The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Mr Burke, says, ‘Oh, yes, I understand exactly how disastrous this is but, no, we’re not going to help you.’ I have to say that is unconscionable. How can the Labor government pretend to govern for all people when that is the situation? There has also just been an announcement of $300 million, over three rounds, for on-farm water use efficiency. You would think that there would be some way that my irrigators could access these funds to put in things like subsurface irrigation, which will reduce water use by perhaps 50 per cent in some areas but increase productivity. No, my farmers and those from the electorate of my colleague the member for Mallee cannot apply for these grants unless they have what is called a ‘delivery partner’. This delivery partner has to be some institution or agency that will charge them a management fee for their application or use of the grant. If they are lucky enough to get one, they will see an extraordinary creaming off to some other agency of what the grant should in fact be providing them. The agencies that this government recommends should be delivery partners for these grants are typically state owned authorities, like the catchment management authorities in Victoria, which are renowned for things other than actually knowing anything about on-farm irrigation technologies. These grants are a farce. When they are so desperate for investment in technology on their farms, which might help them to survive this drought, you cannot imagine how distressed my irrigators are when they get this $300 million—a paltry sum after all—put in front of them and find when they read the fine print that there is no way they can apply. I have been besieged in my office by my farmers, whether they are fruit growers or dairy farmers, telling me that they have contacted the relevant agencies and have simply been told, ‘Go away. You can’t apply as individuals or as a cooperative of farmers; you have to work through some other agency.’ Some other agency says, ‘It’s too hard; we’re not going to bother,’ and so the farce continues. How can the government do nothing for rural and regional Australia? They have destroyed the opportunities for country students to go to university by destroying the independent Youth Allowance. They have destroyed the opportunities for people to move onto further ongoing support while this drought continues. These farmers have been told, ‘Exceptional circumstances support finishes next year. After that we’ll think about how you might respond to climate change. We don’t know how we’ll do that yet, but you are not going to get ongoing exceptional circumstances support.’ That money puts food on the table of my farmers. That is the only money most of them have coming into their households. I am sorry, but it is not a joke; it is what our farmers depend upon and it is to be taken away. (Time expired) 10616 10616 19:50:00 Dreyfus, Mark, MP HWG Isaacs ALP 1 0 Mr DREYFUS —Many members and senators would be aware that today eight world-leading scientists from Climate Scientists Australia visited Parliament House. Those scientists are all leaders in their respective fields: Professor Dave Griggs and Professor Neville Nicholls from Monash University, Professor Nathan Bindoff from the University of Tasmania, Professor Matthew England and Professor Andy Pitman of the University of New South Wales, Professor Lesley Hughes of Macquarie University, Professor Roger Jones of Victoria University and Professor Will Steffen of the Australian National University. This was a bipartisan event. The scientists were jointly invited to parliament by the member for Moore, who is the Deputy Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts, and by me. The scientists spoke to more than 40 government and opposition members and senators at a very interesting lunchtime briefing, which included short presentations by Professors Bindoff, Nicholls and Hughes and many very challenging questions from those present. The scientists also held individual meetings with some 15 members and senators this morning. The scientists from the Climate Scientists Australia group did not come to Canberra to talk about policy specifics or comment on competing party positions. That is not their agenda; their aim is to provide the best quality science information to Australian decision makers, including those of us here in the Commonwealth parliament. They describe their role as being ‘an independent group of senior scientists who hope to improve decisions on climate related issues in Australia by encouraging better use of the science’. How we meet the problem posed by dangerous climate change is a question for the Australian parliament and for other decision makers. But the message from scientists around the world is clear: urgent action is needed. The science is clear and it is compelling. The evidence puts entirely beyond doubt the effects of climate change and the fact that those effects are real and are occurring now. The effects of climate change will be to increase the severity and frequency of many natural disasters including bushfires, cyclones, hail storms and floods, to place increasing pressure on or urban water supplies and to cause major declines in agricultural production. By the end of the century, the Great Barrier Reef will face catastrophic destruction and there will be severe health impacts felt across the population as a result of climate change. Australia is one of the countries with the most to lose from climate change. Everybody knows that we are one of the hottest and driest continents on earth, yet, on a per capita basis, we are among the largest carbon emitters in the world. This is not some theoretical problem. It is predicted that there will be a 92 per cent decline in irrigated agricultural production in the Murray-Darling Basin by the end of this century if there is no mitigation of climate change. Australia’s environment and economy will be one of the hardest and fastest hit by climate change if we do not act now. We heard today from the climate scientists about the catastrophic impact climate change will have on the Great Barrier Reef, with the potential bleaching and the eventual loss of this natural wonder at an estimated cost to the economy of $37 billion. We heard that some climate change is already inevitable. We not only need to mitigate but we also need to adapt to that inevitable change in climate and warmer temperatures. Climate Scientists Australia is supported by another organisation, ClimateWorks Australia, of which I am a director. ClimateWorks Australia is a philanthropic organisation which was launched in September by the Deputy Prime Minister in Melbourne and is a partnership between Monash University and the Myer Foundation. ClimateWorks Australia aims to provide practical solutions dedicated to a sustainable and prosperous low-carbon economy, and I am very pleased that ClimateWorks Australia was able to bring this group of eminent climate scientists to Parliament House today. As we prepare to debate the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation and as the government prepares to represent Australia’s interests at the Copenhagen conference in December, it is vital that, as far as possible, we use the best available scientific information. We need to move away from the continual ill-informed questioning of the science and false and confrontational representations of the debate as between those for and those against. We need to close the gap between the available scientific knowledge and the debates in this parliament. The visit of the climate scientists has helped to close that gap. The best quality science information is always to be welcomed. (Time expired) 10617 10617 19:55:00 Hunt, Gregory, MP 00AMV Flinders LP 0 0 Mr HUNT —I rise this evening to address the way forward for the wonderful town of Balnarring in my electorate of Flinders. Balnarring is a town on the edge of Western Port. It is a beautiful town, it has great history to it and it has wonderful people. It has as its centre point the Balnarring Primary School as well as the shopping centre. It is a semirural town. There is obviously a congregated township itself but there are many people on nearby farms and in farming communities. I want to propose three things which will be vital for the health and wellbeing of Balnarring as we go forward. The first is a very simple one. It is a lovely idea put forward by students in the area, recognising that they themselves do not want to impinge upon the good order and the safety of people who visit the local shopping centre. Students have come to me through Braydon Patterson, who is a young secondary student living in Balnarring. Braydon wrote to me seeking support for a skate park in Balnarring. It is a simple idea and one which is achievable. I have approached the council on his behalf and I am going to hold a meeting with students and Braydon. We will work until we receive support for and achieve the goal of a skate park for the teenagers and young adults of Balnarring. They deserve it. I ask that they themselves work towards this goal and I think together we should be able to achieve it. It is not in the impossible category of asks. I am hopeful that the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council will be supportive and hopeful that the local community bank, Bendigo Bank, will also be supportive. There are other opportunities for working with Lions, Rotary and like-minded community organisations. I want to congratulate Braydon and those students who are working with him on a simple but constructive initiative. The second thing I want to raise here is something which is likely to help both senior citizens and others within Balnarring. I have been approached by Douglas Slattery, who is the secretary treasurer of the Balnarring Senior Citizens Club. He is seeking assistance with a petition for a pedestrian crossing in Balnarring. The petition reads as follows: The residents from the electorates of Hastings and Flinders draw to the attention of the House the urgent need for a pedestrian crossing starting from Balnarring shopping centre car park across Frankston-Flinders Road to the Balnarring community hall, kindergarten and preschool centres. What we see here is that there are many needs and uses for this pedestrian crossing. I know the road well. The Frankston-Flinders Road carries many out-of-town visitors and it is the primary route for those travelling to the southern peninsula and towns such as Shoreham, Merricks and Flinders. Many parents who are escorting their young children to the playground or kindergarten and seniors who are crossing back from the hall face a risk. It is an unnecessary risk and one which could be avoided. I have petitioned VicRoads. I would like VicRoads to come to the party and recognise that it is a dangerous road. It is a danger that we want to address before tragedy strikes. Too often dangerous sites are identified and addressed by the community but not addressed by the authorities and it is only after tragedy that action is taken. This is one occasion where the danger has been foreseen and there can be no excuse or justification for failing to act. I am very complimentary of VicRoads. I have found them an extremely good organisation with which to work. Successive CEOs have been highly responsible. The corporate structure in which much of the work is outsourced, with VicRoads acting as an overseer, has been extremely effective. I would respectfully say to the CEO of VicRoads, Mr Gary Liddle, for whom I have the highest regard, ‘Please consider the pedestrian crossing for Frankston-Flinders Road in Balnarring. It is an important way to protect and preserve the livelihood and health of our community in advance, rather than after a human tragedy. 10000 Burke, Anna (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke)—Order! It being 8.00 pm, the debate is interrupted. 10618 20:01:00 House adjourned at 8.01 pm 10618 Notices The following notices were given: YW6 Combet, Greg, MP Mr Combet —to present a Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to social security, family assistance, veterans’ affairs, military rehabilitation and compensation and taxation, and for related purposes. YW6 Combet, Greg, MP Mr Combet —to present a Bill for an Act to deal with consequential matters arising from the enactment of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) Act 2009, and for other purposes. YW6 Combet, Greg, MP Mr Combet —to present a Bill for an Act to deal with consequential matters arising from the enactment of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Act 2009, and for other purposes. YW6 Combet, Greg, MP Mr Combet —to present a Bill for an Act to reduce pollution caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and for other purposes. YW6 Combet, Greg, MP Mr Combet —to present a Bill for an Act to establish the Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority, and for other purposes. YW6 Combet, Greg, MP Mr Combet —to present a Bill for an Act about CPRS fuel credits, and for related purposes. HRI Kelly, Mike, MP Dr Kelly —to move: That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: AIMS Tropical Marine Research Facilities—Cape Fergusson and Townsville Works. HRI Kelly, Mike, MP Dr Kelly —to move: That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: Redevelopment of Tarin Kowt Stage 1 Project. 84T Haase, Barry, MP Mr Haase —to move: That the House: recognises that: the proposal to heritage list 17 million hectares of the Kimberley will deter mining companies from investing in the region, further disadvantage all local communities and seriously damage the future of mining in Australia; those involved in mineral exploration and mining projects, particularly in Western Australia, are subject to an already burdensome approvals process; adding more red tape by applying National Heritage status to such a vast area would be the breaking point for many companies who would consider moving their investments to other locations; an ill‑defined approach suggests a lack of research and understanding of heritage listings; and the indiscriminate listing fails to recognise the contributions that others such as miners and pastoralists make to the economic viability and heritage of regional areas; ensures that the Government commits to meaningful consultation across a broad section of the community; and condemns: the blanket listing of this vast area of the Kimberley; and the additional restrictions placed on pastoralists and miners. 2009-10-21 The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke) took the chair at 9.30 am. 10620 Constituency Statements 10620 10620 09:30:00 Simpkins, Luke, MP HWE Cowan LP 0 0 Mr SIMPKINS —There are a number of Lions clubs across Cowan. They do great work, raising funds for not only Lions clubs’ national and international causes, but also locally for individuals in need. As with all Lions clubs they do not do it for the thanks and they do not do it for profile or credit in the community. They do it because they believe in making a difference, with a positive impact on the community. As the federal member for Cowan I am proud that there are four clubs within Cowan—Ballajura, Girradoola, Kingsley-Woodvale and Wanneroo. These clubs do outstanding work in the community. However, I would like to refer in particular to the Lions Club of Ballajura that has just been named the champion club by the district governor of 201W1 district. I understand that the clubs are assessed with regard to their activities in the categories of service, fundraising and membership growth. The decision comes down to the emphasis applied by the district governor for those categories. Ballajura was named the champion club in 2009 and the title is well and truly justified. The club in Ballajura, with around 23 members, raises about $20,000 each year. The members are often seen working hard at the Bunnings sausage sizzle, running their iconic local prize wheel at community events such as fairs, as well as raising funds through the famous Lions Christmas cakes and Lions mints sales. The proceeds of these fundraisings are distributed to traditional Lions and other well-known causes such as the Perth Lions Eye Institute, the Lions Cord Blood Bank, the Childhood Cancer Research Appeal, the Breast Cancer Foundation, the Leukaemia Foundation, the Australian Red Cross, Foodbank towards the Lions and Rotary Rice Bowl appeal, the Ruby Benjamin Foundation to assist pensioners with the cost of sterilising pets, the annual Lions Walk for Sight at Perry Lakes and this year towards the Lions Victorian bushfire and Queensland flood appeals. In addition I note their local work in the last financial year where they assisted with the purchase of a small gopher for a Ballajura girl, the purchase of a wheelchair hoist-fitted van for a Marangaroo boy, the purchase of a walker for a Wanneroo woman, the purchase of an oxygen machine for a Ballajura woman and to pay for travel expenses for a Marangaroo boy with disabilities to attend a table tennis tournament in Victoria. They also donated towards Quad Dreamers, a group that has organised quad bikes that have been adapted for the use of disabled children in a safe environment in Wanneroo. They have conducted a Christmas dinner and bus ride for Ballajura seniors to visit the city and see the Christmas lights on decorated homes. They also purchased sporting and art supplies for the local scouts to present to the Derby cubs during a visit, assisted a Vietnamese girl attend the Blind Institute and donated towards the purchase of loan computers for the institute. They have for several years conducted an award at the three state primary schools in Ballajura providing $500 to each school for students attending Ballajura Community College the following year. The Lions Club also sponsors two or three children in the annual Lions Children of Courage awards for children who have persevered and overcome adversity in their lives. These activities are typical of the Ballajura Lions. I will take this opportunity to thank all the members of the club but will especially mention President Les Harvey, First Vice-President Kaye Scandrett, Second Vice-President Jill Middlemass, Secretary Philip Gaunt and Treasurer Bonnie Hull. I will also mention Sue MacDonald, whom has been a very positive force in Ballajura. (Time expired) 10621 10621 09:33:00 Kerr, Duncan, MP RH4 Denison ALP Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs 1 0 Mr KERR —I intend to table a petition for the consideration of the Standing Committee on Petitions which has been put forward by three petitioners who are all senior retired members of the Air Force. The original impetus for this arose out of the effective dismissal of the then commanding officer, senior Air Force officer and honorary ADC in Tasmania, Robert Grey. His grievance has always been a constant denial of simple natural justice in relation to a dismissal to which he was subjected by the then Chief of the Air Force, Air Marshal McCormack, at the asserted request of unnamed Air Force officials and without any prior reference to his commanding officer. But it raises broader issues which are endorsed in this petition by Air Commodore Garry Bates (Retired) and Air Vice-Marshal Peter Criss (Retired), going to the asserted exemption from the rules of natural justice by the most senior officers of the armed forces when dealing with their subordinates. The petition says that except in actual combat the rules and principles of Australian administrative laws should be adhered to so that discretionary powers are not abused, and it calls on still outstanding grievances to be reported correctly and finalised fairly as the Australian people were led to expect. This issue has been raised by Wing Commander Grey and me on numerous occasions. The Minister for Defence Science and Personnel has recognised, in Mr Grey’s case, that there were significant errors. As a result of a review conducted by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force, the Chief of the Defence Force wrote to Wing Commander Grey acknowledging the deficiencies and expressing regret for the resultant unfairness. But Mr Grey still has not had closure. He has not had any explanation of why this quite unfair process resulted in his effective dismissal from the role he held and of course the humiliation that it imposed in a public way on him and his family. It is important that the issues that have been raised in the petition be dealt with substantively so that all complainants of such nature are given an effective means of addressing what would otherwise be a gap in military discipline which I am certain that our government and the people of Australia would not wish to exist. If I might close by tabling the petition for the consideration of the Standing Committee on Petitions and for further action, which I hope will be directed towards the minister for a response. (Time expired) 10000 Burke, Anna (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke)—The document will be forwarded to the Standing Committee on Petitions for its consideration and will be accepted subject to confirmation by the committee that it conforms with standing orders. 10622 10622 09:37:00 Billson, Bruce, MP 1K6 Dunkley LP 0 0 Mr BILLSON —The Frankston Medicentre has been operating successfully in the Dunkley community since 1986. It has the confidence of all the stakeholders, widespread participation from local GPs, and the understanding and valued support of patients. It provides a crucial collaborative asset to the accident and emergency department at the Frankston Hospital, where it is collocated. The Howard government, recognising this very important after-hours GP service, provided $97,000 of funding for a year, on top of earlier avenues of support, to ensure that this service continued to operate. The collaboration with Frankston Hospital is crucial, though, because the medicentre sees about 12,000 patients per year—category 4 and 5 patients that would otherwise join the queues of the accident and emergency department of Frankston Hospital, queues that can be long. I think it does a remarkable job with far too few resources allocated to it by the state Labor government. So here we have collaboration between local GPs and the hospital, organised and coordinated by some dedicated professionals, including Jacquie Haigh. Jacquie is a wonderful individual. Jacquie’s role takes on many aspects in terms of keeping the program going. Jacquie Haigh and Dr Andrew Smith from the Medicentre Advisory Committee came to see me the other day, alarmed that the Rudd Labor government is going to halve the subsidy made available to this after-hours service—halve the modest funding of around $100,000 a year, to provide this crucial service that accommodates 12,000 patients that would otherwise be added to the waiting list in the accident and emergency department. What they have been told is that the termination of the Howard government after-hours funding program has been replaced in the recent budget by the General Practice After Hours Program, a grant program, where only a maximum of $100,000 is available over two years on a competitive basis. There is no certainty about whether the funding will be available, no confidence that they will be able to support the valuable service that is there. One thing we need to recognise is that, without this medicentre after-hours GP service, services would not be available. Local general practitioners stay involved in and are attracted to our community knowing that there is an after-hours GP service that works hand in glove with their clinics, with their practices. They will volunteer to take on certain rostering responsibilities, knowing that will be an after-hours duty but limited and quite specific during the month. This is an outrage. This funding needs to be reinstated. How can the Rudd Labor government stand here in Canberra and say they are interested in public health when they are running down the very health model that has cost-effectively and efficiently supported after-hours GP access for decades? If it at least could revisit the billing numbers, the Medicare item numbers, that limit the payment of after-hours bonuses to after eight o’clock and have them start at 6 pm when the clinics become open and available, that would ease the financial pain. The Rudd Labor government needs to take after-hours GP services seriously in the Dunkley community and reinstate and provide certainty for funding that is available. (Time expired) 10622 10622 09:40:00 Murphy, John, MP 83D Lowe ALP 1 0 Mr MURPHY —A number of weeks ago I spoke in this place about the need to prevent a repeat of the disgraceful, immoral and unethical conduct displayed by James Hardie in its attempt to mislead workers and run from its compensation obligations over the deadly effects of asbestos. I announced that I would be working to ensure that Australia plays a leading role in establishing a treaty that would once and for all ban the mining, sale and use of all forms of asbestos throughout the world. I also said that I would work to ensure that our young people would be taught business ethics in our schools and universities. The response by my constituents to this campaign has been incredible. In just one week over 500 residents signed a petition calling on this parliament to ensure that we lead international efforts to establish an anti-asbestos treaty and to promote business ethics. I intend to table this petition in the final sitting week of parliament this year. The response of the people of Lowe to the anti-asbestos campaign demonstrates that the Australian people are fed up with the dishonesty and the deceitful games played time and again by corporate giants such as James Hardie. With this in mind I draw to the attention of the House an article that appeared in last Wednesday’s Australian newspaper by Milanda Rout titled ‘Cruel and inhumane squabble puts asbestos victims in limbo’. This article reveals that compensation claims to dying asbestos victims are being delayed because Australia’s two asbestos manufacturers, James Hardie and CSR, are in a legal dispute over their respective share of financial liability. As a result of this feud, James Hardie, now Amoco, and CSR are insisting that victims of asbestos prove which company’s product they were exposed to. This is outrageous. Victims of asbestos have suffered far too long at the hands of corporate immorality and dishonesty. This latest game of corporate bickering merely creates more suffering and pain for the ever-growing number of innocent victims of asbestos who are urgently waiting to settle their compensation claims. I am not one for mincing words on this topic. As I said, this is an absolute disgrace. As a parliament, we must all do what we can to ensure that James Hardie and CSR meet their compensation obligations and ensure that the poisoning of innocent Australians by asbestos never happens again. 10623 10623 09:43:00 Cobb, John, MP 00AN1 Calare NATS 0 0 Mr JOHN COBB —Far be it from me to suggest a political motivation for anything, but I do welcome the fact that the Prime Minister is taking cabinet to Bathurst next month in November. I welcome the fact that he is going there because this is the man who in late 2007 stood up and said ‘The buck stops with me’ on health. Twice he said that in the lead-up to the 2007 election, once when he said that he would fix hospitals and then when he actually said that he would have all that sorted out by the end of June of this year, 2009—three months ago. If there is one place in Australia where health needs fixing up it is in the Greater Western Area Health Service, which has been looked after tenderly by the New South Wales Labor government—his colleagues in the Labor Party—over the last dozen or so years. I hope the Prime Minister takes the opportunity while he is in Bathurst, seeing as he is not likely to be the area again, to do a few things. First, I have written to his ministers about the helicopter service there, which has been totally ignored. There is no 24-hour service looking after the whole of western New South Wales out of Orange. I wrote to the Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Service Delivery, Hon. Warren Snowden, who said it was nothing to do with him. He flicked it to the Minister for Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Anthony Albanese—that well-known carer of regional affairs. Why would the person responsible for rural and regional health, Indigenous health and regional service delivery, which is everything that the rescue ambulance helicopter service in Orange is about, say this is nothing to do with him? I cannot believe it. However, if he is not in cabinet and Anthony Albanese is, one assumes the Prime Minister will tell him to fix that issue while they are in Bathurst. But they can do more. The Prime Minister also said he would fix hospitals in Australia. We have enormous issues. We have Forbes and Parkes hospitals, which the state Labor government promised to fix and renew—but they are not. The Prime Minister should go and have a look at them while he is there. He should have a look at the Bathurst hospital which has been an exercise in ridiculous building and inefficiency and while he is there he can fix that. And he can go to Cobar where the hospital will not accept women about to have babies, making them drive all the way to Dubbo and possibly have their children on the side of the road. I hope the Prime Minister looks at it. (Time expired) 10624 10624 09:46:00 Sidebottom, Sid, MP 849 Braddon ALP 1 0 Mr SIDEBOTTOM —Last Wednesday we made three major announcements in my electorate to a total of $6 million. The first was a fantastic announcement along with the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, Bill Shorten, for a $4.8 million new autism specific early-learning and care centre—something that we committed to in the 2007 election. I am really pleased that we have been able to go through the whole selection process and announce it last Wednesday, along with the auspices of the Burnie City Council. It will be established at the current Alexander Beetle House Children’s Centre. There will be a top floor put on the centre that currently exists and that will be to a value of $1.75 million in capital works. There will be $2.6 million for operating funding and $372,000 in capacity building for the centre. We look to employing up to six specialist staff, including an early childhood education teacher, psychologist, a speech pathologist and an occupational therapist to work alongside five trained childcare workers. It will be a hub-and-spoke model which will allow the main centre to be in Burnie, but their services will go right throughout the region and even, indeed, into Tassie. This is a fantastic initiative, and I do thank the minister for coming personally to open the centre and for fulfilling our election commitment. I also want to thank, apart from the Burnie City Council which was fundamentally involved in bringing the complex project together, Andrew and Marisa Barry, who met the minister in 2007 and have been advocating for autism services, but particularly for early childhood, for many years. Indeed, they have spent most of their recent lives helping their twin daughters to overcome autism and help support them. They are really glad that this has finally come about. Finally, two other announcements: $969,000 for the Burnie coastal pathway track, which will go from the magnificent Emu River right through to a grand place called Cooee, outside of Burnie. I do congratulate Burnie City Council. There is also $300,000 for the west coast, which is now part of Braddon—I am really looking forward to representing them both now and into the future—for bike tracks at the magnificent tourist centre of Strahan and also Tullah. This will, as part of the Jobs Fund, lead to more employment, traineeships, apprenticeships, particularly as the west coast is doing it hard. All in all, it was a fantastic day last Wednesday in the magnificent place called Braddon. 10625 10625 09:49:00 Marino, Nola, MP HWP Forrest LP 0 0 Ms MARINO —Carers Week raises national awareness of the valuable role carers play in our communities. Carers Week also provides an opportunity for carers to come together, support each other and share ideas and information. A survey of disability ageing and carers of 1998—some time ago—identified that there were 2.6 million carers, or 12.5 per cent of the population, and this has increased in recent years. One in five people is a primary carer, providing the majority of continuous assistance. In WA alone it was estimated, back in 2003, that there were 240,000 carers, 16 per cent of the population, 43 per cent of whom spent 40 hours or more on average each week providing care. At times, as we all know, that can be seven days a week and virtually 24 hours a day. These statistics show just how large our population of carers is, and I suspect it is just the tip of the iceberg. From a local perspective, just one person—Coleen Clifton of Australind—is the carer of her sister Susan Hopkins. Coleen has been Susan’s carer for over four years. Susan was diagnosed with schizophrenia and diabetes. She lives on her own, cannot socialise very often and is partially independent. Weekly care includes managing all financial matters, managing her disability pension, doing her shopping, ensuring she has cleaned and ironed clothing, changing her bed linen, carrying out intermittent house cleaning and making sure that Susan has meals and that she looks after her personal hygiene and medication. Coleen makes sure Susan is taken to her doctor and associated medical appointments and for outings. She takes Susan away for a short holiday, usually to the beach at Dunsborough, a great part of the world. Susan receives a much appreciated disability pension and gratefully acknowledges and appreciates the reduced rental she enjoys in her Homes West home. But Coleen also assists with the care of her 88-year-old mother so that she can also live independently. She has family and grandchildren of her own, and other duties as well. The other group I have come into close contact with recently is the Dementia Carers Group in Busselton—Lee Furnance and her group. I call these people the unsung and often unpaid heroes. Completely different to the official carers group, they often have in their homes a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a week job and they are often unable to access respite because there are not secure environments for the dementia sufferers. I thank all the carers for their loving care and support for those who so badly need it in Australia. 10625 09:52:00 Neumann, Shayne, MP HVO Blair ALP 1 0 Mr NEUMANN —I wish to pay tribute to my friend and my former constituent Leslie John Staines, who was born on 15 June 1940 and who died, after a long illness, on 18 September 2009. A memorial service was held at St Paul’s Anglican Church at Ipswich. Our thoughts and prayers and our hearts go out to his wife, Marlene, his children, David, Beverly and Judith, and their families. John Staines was feared by his political opponents and loved by his political friends. He was respected by all. He was a true believer—the truest. He was Labor. He was union. His life was a life of commitment and loyalty to the party and the movement. To John they were inseparable. He was a life member of the party, an honour not bestowed lightly or carelessly by the Labor Party. He served with honour, integrity and distinction as treasurer of the Blair federal electoral council, the Ipswich West state electoral council and his own Ipswich North and Suburbs branch of the ALP. He was a delegate to all levels of the party in Ipswich and he served in just about every position on the Ipswich Trades Hall and Labour Day Committee. For nine years he served as a Blair delegate to the Queensland state Labor Conference, easily elected by local branch members each time he stood—indeed topping the ballot in 2007. He was the party’s longstanding campaign director in Ipswich West, serving former member Don Livingstone and now member Wayne Wendt. He was the party’s campaign director in Blair in 2001 and the campaign manager in Blair in 2004 and 2007, with particular responsibility for rural areas. In the history of the Labor Party in South-East Queensland he was the best and most dedicated ALP campaigner in the western areas of Ipswich and the rural communities of the South Burnett, Somerset, the Lockyer Valley and the Scenic Rim. In his prime no-one could match him. He was simply brilliant at it. If the party had 10 John Staines in each marginal seat we would never lose an election. His boyhood on farms, particularly at Templin, his timber-working days and his long years as an ironworker enabled him to relate easily to people. He campaigned from Merrinbambi to Maroon, from Murphys Creek to Mount Alford, from Ropeley to Ripley, from Boonah to Brassall and from Karalee to Kalbar. He was persistent; he was fearless. He was relentless. He travelled thousands of kilometres during each campaign—organising, putting up signs, doorknocking and exhorting locals to support Labor at polling booths; he marshalled troops and he fed the troops—all the time in his four-wheel drive with the Labor trailer behind him, often with an ALP candidate in the front of the vehicle with him. He was happiest in the middle of a campaign. He thrived on it. He showed up in mobile offices at country shows, with his checked shirt and his old hat and his elasticised boots. He was persistent. He was philosophically honest and he kept all of us philosophically honest. To Marlene and the family we in Ipswich say thank you; we say thank you for sharing John with us. He fought the fight. He ran the race. He kept the faith. He served till the end. Thank you very much, John Staines. 10626 10626 09:55:00 Johnson, Michael, MP 00AMX Ryan LP 0 0 Mr JOHNSON —Our job as members of the federal parliament is to represent our constituents with dedication, enthusiasm and passion, and I take the opportunity to do just that. Recently I attended two community meetings in the Ryan electorate. On Thursday the 8th and on Tuesday the 13th of the month I had the great pleasure of meeting many of my constituents as well as many other locals who in fact were not my constituents but constituents of the federal seat of Brisbane, represented by the Hon. Arch Bevis MP. The reason why I was there was that the local community was up in arms over the decision by Telstra to put up a mobile phone tower some 170 metres away from Rainworth State School, which is in the Ryan electorate. Those who attended the meetings who were not Ryan constituents were there because they would be affected by this tower, in their view, and because they were deeply concerned about the potential health effects of a mobile phone tower. The very legitimate grievance of the people at those meetings was that this tower may have enormous consequences for their health and indeed the health of their children. For those of us who are parents, of course, the most important thing in the world is the wellbeing, health and safety of our children. As the father of a three-year-old I certainly treasure the life of my son and would of course do anything and everything for him. I must say I have enormous admiration for the residents of Rainworth and Bardon who came out on both those evenings—Thursday, 8 October, and Tuesday, 13 October—to raise their concerns. They came together in the spirit of goodwill and to seek knowledge both from experts and from technical specialists from Telstra. I must say I was deeply disappointed in Telstra’s behaviour at the meeting their representatives attended on 13 October. The way in which the meeting was set up was clearly so that they could defend themselves, not so they could provide substantial information to the people of Rainworth and Bardon. So in the parliament today I want to call on the federal government to consider revisiting the relevant telecommunications legislation that might mandate that mobile phone facilities be placed a certain distance away from sensitive spots such as kindergartens and schools, hospitals, aged-care facilities and retirement homes. This is in the interests of not only my constituents but also constituents around the country represented by other members of parliament. 10627 10627 09:58:00 Trevor, Chris, MP HVU Flynn ALP 1 0 Mr TREVOR —Late last year I had the pleasure of meeting with leaders of the Australian motorcycle community: Shaun Lennard of the Australian Motorcycle Council and motorcycling author Greg Hirst. Shaun and Greg had been in parliament meeting with a number of members and senators from both sides of the houses. I found it personally encouraging to hear the stories of a number of members and senators who shared my passion for motorcycling. Last year we gathered together as a group to assist in raising the profile of the positive aspects of motorcycling in a bipartisan manner. I started riding motorbikes at age 13. My first bike was a Suzuki TM75 motocross bike. I graduated to a Honda TL125 trail bike, then to a YZ125 motocross bike, then to a Honda XL250 road bike and then, in recent years, back to a KX250 motocross bike, which I raced on a motocross track south of Gladstone. These days I am the proud owner of a Harley-Davidson Softail with a Fat Boy conversion kit. I have ridden motorbikes now on and off for over 30 years. It is ironic that, at the same time as many people retain outdated prejudices towards motorcycling, everyone has a brother, sister, parent, friend or work colleague who rides a motorcycle or scooter. In recent years, motorcycling in Australia has undergone massive growth in popularity, with the total number of registered motorcycles in the country now well in excess of 500,000. More than twice that number of Australians hold a motorcycle licence. More and more people are taking to motorcycling for a variety of reasons—as a leisure activity, for long-distance touring or for commuting as traffic congestion increases and to combat rising fuel prices. There have also been a growing number of female riders over the past 10 years, with over one in five learner riders being female. Those Australians who choose to commute by motorcycle or scooter are contributing in a positive way to the endeavours of all of us to protect the environment by reducing carbon emissions. As I understand it, the government has co-hosted the first Motorcycle and Scooter Safety Summit. Again, as I understand it, the Australian Motorcycle Council and the FCAI are working in close conjunction with the government’s Motorcycle Safety Consultative Committee. Governments from across all OECD countries are now recognising motorcycles as an essential and core element of the overall road transport mix. One of the key recommendations from the OECD workshop was to ensure that motorcycles are integrated into all transport planning, and I encourage my government to do this. I congratulate the Australian Motorcycle Council, its member organisations across the country and Shaun and Greg for their excellent work in promoting the environmental benefits of motorcycling while continuing to promote road safety. 10000 Burke, Anna (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke)—Order! In accordance with standing order 193, the time for constituency statements has concluded. 10628 Miscellaneous Consideration resumed from 19 October. 10628 10:02:00 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP 0 0 Ms JULIE BISHOP —On indulgence: the Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water on earth. Its name means ‘peaceful’ or ‘making peace’. It was originally named by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who described it as a calm and peaceful ocean. Many thousands of Australians have swum in its waters and travelled to its beautiful island nations. Whilst the vast majority of visitors to the islands have come away with wonderful memories of sandy beaches and warm water, most Australians are aware of the potential for the Pacific to be a danger to human life, mostly through the cyclones that batter the Pacific coastlines. We have been warned many times over the years about the dangers of earthquakes and volcanoes along the so-called rim of fire that circles the Pacific Ocean. Those dangers usually seem distant; however, natural disasters can strike without warning and with great ferocity. In recent weeks the Pacific Ocean was anything but peaceful. Indeed, throughout South-East Asia and the Pacific many thousands of people were affected by a spate of natural disasters—typhoons, tsunamis and earthquakes. The first of the disasters, Typhoon Ketsana, lashed South-East Asia on 26 and 27 September. The typhoon flooded most of the Philippine capital of Manila. The flooding was the worst for decades. People were killed; many were injured; and there was devastating damage to cities, homes and businesses, particularly agriculture. The typhoon then hit Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It is deeply concerning to read reports that the typhoon caused more than 1,000 deaths. I extend my deepest sympathy to the people of the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who lost loved ones or were otherwise affected by this disaster. There was such significant damage to infrastructure that thousands were left homeless. The devastation has been massive. Australia as a good neighbour and friend of these countries has a role to play in helping rebuild the damaged infrastructure. The damage may well take generations to repair. We have a role in providing emergency help with food, water, shelter and other essentials for displaced people. On 29 September I extended my sympathy to the people of the Philippines as they struggled to cope with the devastating floods and welcomed the government’s announcement on that day that Australia would provide up to $1 million to support response and recovery activities in the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Ketsana. I understand this assistance is to be delivered through the Philippines Red Cross and UN agencies. I am pleased that the government has also announced $2 million to feed thousands of people affected by the typhoon in the Philippines, with this assistance to be delivered through the World Food Program. I would support the provision of further emergency assistance by the Australian government if the governments of the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos issued a request for further international support. Just as the world was coming to terms with the devastation caused by the typhoon, another disaster befell the region when Samoa was hit by a tsunami. This brought back horrific memories of the Indian Ocean tsunami that hit on 26 December 2004. That was a most extraordinary disaster which had a profound effect on the whole region, with more than a quarter of a million people killed, including Australians holidaying overseas. The news of the Samoa tsunami was deeply distressing. On 30 September, I expressed our concern at the news then known that several Australian tourists had been listed as missing and that many local residents were also missing. I confirmed that the coalition would support the government in providing whatever assistance was necessary to Australians in Samoa, especially those who may have suffered injury. Of course, we now know that there was a death toll of 138, including five Australians. Sadly, nine people also lost their lives in Tonga. We supported the government announcement on 3 October of a million dollars in support for Tonga. I take this opportunity to extend my deepest sympathy to the affected families and communities as they cope with the loss of loved ones and the destruction of homes and businesses. I have been to the Pacific and I have visited Samoa, and there are strong links between this Pacific nation and Australia. For example, there are 40,000 Australians of Samoan ancestry living in Australia and the Samoan community here was very active in the relief efforts. We must not forget the vulnerability of low-lying Pacific island nations to tsunamis, and the latest in Samoa is a tragic reminder of this geographic reality. Of course, Australia’s coast-loving communities are also at risk. It is for these reasons that, following the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the Howard government announced a major initiative to establish an Australian national tsunami warning system. The system gives protection to Australia. It supported international efforts to establish an Indian Ocean warning system, and it contributed to tsunami warnings for the south-west Pacific. And there was no end to the tragedy. An earthquake occurred in Sumatra on 30 September, which was followed by another on 1 October. The coalition supports the government’s announcement on 11 October of $17 million in recovery and reconstruction assistance. Thankfully, no Australians were killed, but I offer my deepest sympathies to all those who were affected. It is such a tragedy that over a thousand people have reportedly died and that many thousands have been left homeless. The bonds of friendship between Australia and Indonesia have again proven strong in our emergency efforts. We will continue to help Indonesia over the years it will take to rebuild this shattered region of Sumatra. With Indonesia we have one of our most important bilateral relationships. It will become even more so in the coming decades. Working together as friends in times of crisis such as these will bring us closer together. Australia and Indonesia must coordinate our efforts with international relief and development agencies in order to ensure the recovery of the region from this triple tragedy. Australia is at the forefront of development aid programs in the region, with the EU being the second biggest donor. But I believe that we can enhance the quality and effectiveness of our aid and emergency relief programs to the Asia-Pacific. I consider that there is more scope for better international development cooperation and humanitarian and disaster relief. The need for this has been tragically demonstrated by the spate of natural disasters in our region in these recent weeks. Australia and the region are bound by our geography and shared interests. Close engagement with the countries of the Asia-Pacific has long been a high priority in Australian foreign policy and, with the rapid and ongoing economic development of our region, Australia is in one of the most fortunate positions in the world to proceed into this, the Asia-Pacific century. The coalition is proud of its record of cooperation and constructive development in the region. The previous Howard government took us down the path of a long-term commitment to the countries in the region, with good relations with all key regional stakeholders. We contributed to initiatives to develop the regional architecture to better address regional issues and concerns and made Australia’s voice in the region welcome and respected. Australia will continue to help our neighbours in the region who are being tragically affected by this spate of natural disasters. We are a prosperous and advanced nation surrounded by many less fortunate nations. As we have done in the past, we will help our neighbours in times of crisis and help them to develop their economies. The coalition urges the government to stand ready to offer further assistance to Samoa and other Pacific countries. Australians can feel rightly proud that they have a reputation for generosity to others who find themselves in dire straits. This has been shown once again by the overwhelming financial and other support provided for those affected by these disasters in our region. I commend all Australians involved in these worthy causes. I urge the Australian government to continue to uphold Australia’s longstanding reputation in the region as a responsible and generous neighbour. 10630 10:09:00 King, Catherine, MP 00AMR Ballarat ALP 1 0 Ms KING —On indulgence: I would like to put on the permanent Hansard record a message of condolence for the tragic loss of life in Samoa last month. While Australians were stunned to hear the news of the devastation caused in the wake of the tsunami, the effects in the Ballarat electorate were direct and immediate. Vivien Hodgins, 55, a mother of two, was staying in Taufua, in the heavily hit area of Lalomanu, when the tsunami hit. She was holidaying with a friend, Claire Rowlands, also from Ballarat. Vivien’s death has had a deep reverberation across our community. Those I have spoken to in recent weeks, and in attending her memorial service last week, have described her as a loving mother and wife and an absolutely joyous teacher. I am sure there are many in this House who were inspired into public service due to the input and energy of a teacher. For many of us, our dreams and ambitions began when we were lucky enough to have a teacher who believed in us, who pushed and prodded us to the next plateau and who, in one apt description I read, poked us with a sharp stick called the truth. For 33 years, Vivien Hodgins was a deeply involved teacher at Mount Clear College. She possessed patience, enthusiasm and love. She touched the lives of thousands of students who passed through her classroom. Viv was a bridge builder. She possessed unlimited endurance. She treated everyone like a friend. She was inclusive; she was inspired. She maintained contact with her students for years after they had left school. In short, she loved teaching and she loved those whom she taught. She was what is called in teaching circles a natural. Vivien Hodgins was also a great traveller. She had a passion for fairness and justice. She sought out places that were exotic and hard to get to, where the local people were in struggle. She and her husband, Rod, visited Guatemala in 1983, where Indians and schoolteachers were being murdered by the military. They travelled to South Africa, where she touched firsthand the injustices of apartheid. At home she was passionate, involved and fun, conveying and sharing her appreciation and enthusiasm for the area’s natural beauty as well as for local galleries and markets. She was a film fanatic, a mother and both a teacher and a student of life. Her sudden and tragic loss has left a black shadow across her family, her school and our community. I want to send my deepest condolences to Vivian’s family—to Rod and their daughters, Stephanie and Carla. They have asked me if I can put the following message to their mother on the permanent Hansard record: Vivien was full of love for people and the world. She was without ego and without a shred of malice. Her life was a life of service—to her family and her students. She travelled the world and saw beauty and terror. She was deeply sensitive to both and lived her life in full awareness of its splendour and its fragility.  She was taken by nature, a nature that she communed with at every level. She will be deeply and widely missed, but we, her family, believe she will live on in the memories of the many who loved her and were touched by her generosity of spirit. Her legacy is one she would have never suspected, and only after her tragic death have we fully appreciated the extent of her grace and compassion. May this woman be a model for us all who briefly walk in this wonderful world. Rod, Steph and Carla. I know the small central Victorian rural community of Blampied will also be mourning and rallying to offer solace and comfort to the family. In the spirit of Viv, the family emerge from their grief to encourage us all to support Samoan communities as they rebuild. They have announced the formation of the Vivien Hodgins Samoan Appeal, and I encourage people in my electorate and beyond to donate to that appeal. Vivien was on holidays in the Pacific with another Ballarat teacher, Claire Rowlands. Claire is still recovering from her injuries, and I want to wish her a speedy recovery. I know she is a tough, brave woman, but I really want to encourage her to take care of herself and to let people take care of her. Finally, our hearts also go out to Ballarat’s Lili Aiesi. The tiny village she grew up in, Lalomanu, no longer exists. The tsunami took the lives of her sister and 10 of her cousins. Six of them were children aged between two and 14. This year has been one marked by natural calamity: floods in the Philippines, earthquakes in Indonesia, typhoons off Vietnam, fires in Queensland and Victoria and of course the South Pacific tsunami. At these times we are all tested. Whether catastrophe happens in a far-off place or on our own doorstep, we are confronted with our own humanity, its strength and its fragility. The ties that bind us as a community, country or region become more apparent and possibly more relevant in the face of devastation and death. Long after the event, long after the headlines and the attention have moved on, families and friends continue to grieve. I also take this opportunity to comment on Australia’s response to those recent regional events. In times of crisis we stand in solidarity with our neighbours. We acted quickly with aid, assistance and on-the-ground support in both Indonesia and the South Pacific. We worked around the clock not only to identify and help Australians but to supply help where it was needed. We did everything we could to support the rescue efforts in both Indonesia and Samoa. We stand ready as a country to act quickly and assist as future events dictate. 10631 10:15:00 Simpkins, Luke, MP HWE Cowan LP 0 0 Mr SIMPKINS —On indulgence: I rise to speak on this matter. Recently in both Samoa and Sumatra there have been some great tragedy and natural disaster. Yet this is certainly not something new in these regions. We know particularly over recent years of earthquakes around the ring of fire in the Indian Ocean and also there have been undersea earthquakes around the Pacific ring of fire. These have, for recorded history, inflicted pain and suffering on the peoples that live in those areas—no more so than back on 26 December 2004, when close to 230,000 people around the Indian Ocean lost their lives following an earthquake and then a tsunami that devastated a number of countries in that region. It was only at the end of September that this most recent tragedy took place. I would begin by talking a little bit about Samoa and what has been called the Samoan earthquake but has wreaked havoc not only on the Samoan nation but also on American Samoa and, to a degree, on Tonga. Following an 8.0 magnitude undersea quake it has been reported by various sources that as many as 143 people lost their lives in Samoa, and 143 is a significant amount of people. There is no doubt about that, particularly when you hear that there were villages wiped out and families very badly affected. Then when you consider that the island of Samoa has a population of only 179,000, to have lost 143 in one event is a major tragedy that will no doubt be remembered for the history of that nation. In American Samoa they had 32 confirmed dead out of a very small population of 65,000, and on one of the islands of Tonga nine people out of population of 104,000 were lost. These are very small nations but they have suffered greatly. Beyond the deaths we certainly know that the damage to infrastructure and homes has been absolutely devastating. I know, as other speakers have and will, we applaud the efforts of those involved with reconstruction and alleviating the suffering of people, the survivors, and helping those countries get back on their feet. We appreciate that. We know that Samoa is in the Pacific Ocean and we also know that the Pacific tsunami warning system established in Hawaii has been operating effectively for many years. Apparently at the time, or shortly after the earthquake in Samoa, it was registered by the Pacific tsunami warning system that the ocean rose three inches right above the epicentre of that earthquake. That sounds so small and insignificant, but there were four tsunami waves that crashed into Samoa that were three or four metres in height. They were all from that earthquake under the surface of the sea, and the water rose only three inches. That shows the strength of nature. When the tectonic plates shift and an earthquake occurs, you had better be on your guard. The Americans and the Japanese have done so much great work in the Pacific to be able to detect and predict tsunamis. I understand that Samoa had about 10 minutes notice of what was going to happen and the waves that were going to arrive. That of course leads us to how that information is communicated to the people on the ground. It is all very well having government informed and the experts knowing that there is going to be a tsunami in 10 minutes, 20 minutes or an hour and a half, but you must have the capacity to communicate that to the people on the ground. Here in Australia we have not had a very significant history of tsunamis—certainly none that have caused major damage, as I understand. As the commercial radio, the ABC radio and television can be co-opted into giving warnings then we have, to a degree, extra protection. Communication is a real worry in places like Samoa, the Pacific Islands and the Indian Ocean. I think UNESCO has required that the transmission of information from the experts in the warning centres down to the people on the ground be a priority and be looked at. I think there is a fair distance to go on that. I would also like to speak about the earthquake in Sumatra. As we know, the Sumatrans and the Indonesians have suffered mightily from the effects of earthquakes in the past. In this case I understand that some 1,300 people lost their lives. This is another warning for that nation. As their standard of living continues to increase, their building standards should be as good as they can be. The Indian Ocean rim of fire is an area of great and significant earthquake activity. On 4 June 2000 an earthquake measuring 7.9 was reported. That caused 103 fatalities and 2,000 injured people. The earthquake that caused the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 measured 9.3 and caused over 200,000 lives to be lost. On 28 March 2005 the Nias earthquake measured 8.7 and caused around 1,300 lives to be lost. Throughout recorded history there have been earthquakes in the region that have caused damage and loss of life. There is no doubt that there is a great need for governments, particularly the local governments in Indonesia, to look at the transmission of information regarding the threats and to look at the building standards. I imagine that that has been advanced, but it should always be looked at. The disaster in 2004 was acted on quickly, but, unfortunately, after the event. In January 2005 I think UNESCO convened a conference to look at the need for a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The Australian government acted quickly and established the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre, which is operated by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and Geoscience Australia. That was developed so that Australia had an independent capability to monitor, detect, verify and warn the Australian community of the existence of tsunamis in our region. It was a four-year project, as I understand it, and it has resulted in basically a state-of-the-art facility enabling Australia to predict tsunamis and earthquakes and model their effects on the Australian coastline. I also understand there are some 25 detectors around the Indian Ocean which serve to make sure that the threat of a tsunami following an earthquake is identified quickly and that the countries that are most at risk are warned. Obviously, it is a shame that so many lives were lost before the region acted on this, but I would like to think that progress has been very solid since 2004 and that we are in a position now where the people in the region are so much better protected than they used to be. But I reiterate that there is a difference between detection and the transmission of that information to the people on the ground. While we can be reasonably confident about this country’s ability to make sure people are informed of the threat, the likely impact of a tsunami on the coastline of Australia, I remain concerned that countries in areas such as the Andaman Sea—India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia—are not yet in a position whereby detection is communicated to the people who are ultimately going to suffer the impact of such events. I conclude by saying that in this world we will always run the risk of natural disasters and their realisation. It was in all our interests to take the actions that were taken after 2004 to be able to identify these threats, model their effects and take preventative action to minimise the consequences of these disasters. To those who are helping out in the most recently affected nations, including Samoa and Indonesia, whether they are locals or from other nations, I add my thanks and appreciation for the work they are doing to alleviate the suffering in those places. 10633 10:28:00 Sullivan, Jon, MP HVS Longman ALP 1 0 Mr SULLIVAN —On indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker: I rise today to join with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in expressing my condolences to those who have been affected by the recent events in our region. This has been a dramatic time in our region, with the tsunami that affected Samoa and Tonga, the earthquake in Sumatra and the typhoon that devastated parts of the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. We have seen a fairly concentrated period of quite high activity of this type. There are several thousand Samoans and Tongans who reside in my electorate of Longman. They are greatly valued and appreciated for what their presence adds to the community. I believe that the only Samoan architecturally designed building outside of Samoa, the Maota Fono, is at Deception Bay. The Maota Fono building has been a focal point of the Samoan expatriate community and for Australians of Samoan descent in South-East Queensland for some time now. Indeed, recently they hosted a reception for the Samoan rugby team as part of its World Cup campaign. Because of that concentration of residents in my electorate, I want to concentrate my contribution this morning on the Pacific tsunami. At 6.48 am local time on 29 September—which was 4.48 am here on 30 September—an earthquake measuring around 8.3 on the Richter scale was felt 190 kilometres south-west of Samoa and American Samoa. That is an awful time of the morning for a disaster to strike. Most people, I suspect even in Samoa, would be simply rising at that time, weary from sleep. Your eyes would still be laden with sleep and you would be wondering more about what is for breakfast than what is likely to be approaching from the ocean. The earthquake unleashed what we now know were devastating tsunami waves. The destruction was almost total in many areas of Samoa and American Samoa. There is an interesting piece of video available on the web, taken by CCTV cameras in the parking lot of the FBI offices in American Samoa. It shows the power of even the small wave that came through that parking lot. The footage shows a couple of people crossing the parking lot and then another gentleman leaving the building to go to his car and standing transfixed for a good number of seconds as he sees the wave approaching, before turning and running in the opposite direction shortly before the wave comes through and tosses heavy motor vehicles around as if they were plastic bath toys. There is certainly a great deal to be frightened of in the power of a tsunami wave. The consequential loss of life has been quite severe: 140 people or more in Samoa, more than 30 in American Samoa and another nine or so in Tonga. Tonga is some 1,000 kilometres away from Samoa. Five Queensland medical students were in Samoa at the time of the tsunami. Having been aware of its approach and having run to higher ground, they then returned to the hospital to work, helping people who were injured by the tsunami. They reported early on that it was a very difficult situation for those who had been injured. Their view was that many would succumb to their injuries and that there would be a great loss of limbs as a consequence of the injuries that people had received. Many families from Longman have lost family members. The effects of the tsunami are deeply felt amongst the aiga, or the extended family, of our Samoan community. The Samoan community is strengthened and comforted by its very strong Christian faith. The Sunday before last, I was delighted to attend with them a memorial service at the Holy Cross Catholic Church at Rothwell. They had also invited local people from the Philippines, Indonesia and other South-East Asian nations to join them. There was a very moving service, followed by, in the Samoan tradition, a fine lunch. I was not able to stay at that for terribly long because of other events that were occurring in my electorate on that day, but it was a great pleasure and a great honour for me to be with them and to participate in that memorial service. On Saturday just gone, I also attended a fundraiser put on by local Pacific islanders to raise money for the tsunami victims. That event was able to raise in excess of $2,000 in a very short period of time. I am aware that in our local community there are other events coming up. Australia’s responses to all the events—whether the typhoon, the earthquake or the tsunami—have been swift and I know it was very much appreciated by the former citizens of those countries now living in Australia. In relation to Samoa and Tonga, for Samoa there was an initial contribution pledged of $2 million, with a further $5 million pledged later on. We had expert people on the ground within 24 hours. In Tonga we have pledged $1 million. I know, as I said, that the members of those communities here in Australia greatly appreciate the effort by the Australian government. In my role as the secretary of the Pacific Islands friendship group in parliament, we met recently with heads of Pacific missions who had been recalled to Canberra for briefings. I met them here in parliament and we discussed issues in their various territories. Universally, they indicated to us that, from Australia, of greatest importance to these small Pacific nations were the remittances that went back to those countries from former nationals who are now living and working—or indeed, retired—here in Australia. Samoa and Tonga are going to undergo a lengthy process of rebuilding. I indicate here today that it is my intention to write to the Prime Minister with a suggestion as to how we may do something that will cost us nothing and yet be of great assistance to those countries as they proceed in that rebuilding process—that is, to waive the 13-week rule on the payment of pensions for former citizens or former nationals of those countries who wish to return there to assist their families and their communities in the rebuilding process. That would mean, for example, that aged pensioners who have not been in Australia for the 300 months that are required to be able to take their pension overseas would be able to go without having to come back to Australia within three months. Those on pensions that are restricted, such as the disability support pension, to only 13 weeks outside the country would be allowed to stay indefinitely whilst engaged in this process of rebuilding. Australia is a generous nation. We saw that recently with the bushfire appeal for Victoria, where not only Australians but people throughout the world came to our aid. I am hoping that we will be able to show the world how much we appreciated that by coming to the aid of those in the Pacific in a large way. To do that, there are a number of processes. The member for Ballarat spoke of an appeal that is being formed in the name of a Ballarat resident who unfortunately lost her life. We are aware that there is a Red Cross appeal. The Samoan government also has established two bank accounts with the ANZ bank of Samoa, to which people can donate directly to the government and to the relief and rehabilitation appeals. I would like to read those account details into the record today. The first is the TreasuryDirect transfer account, which has account number 1200033 and bank SWIFT code ANZBWSWW. The bank’s address is ANZ Samoa Ltd at Apia, Samoa. The second account is called the 2009 Samoa Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation account. Its account number is 3826921, its bank SWIFT code is ANZBWSWW, and the bank obviously is ANZ Samoa Ltd, Apia in Samoa. If the Australian people were to be able to make direct deposits to either of those accounts, if they felt that they would prefer to do that than to contribute to the Red Cross or to other local appeals, I would urge them to do so. As I said, this is a generous nation. We have received generosity from others during past events in this country—the recent past, as it turns out. I believe it would be really telling for us, not just as a government but as individuals, to reciprocate to others in our region who are feeling rather set upon at the moment. Again, I wish to express my condolences to all who have lost people who are dear to them in these events, whether they be locals in any of the areas where these events have taken place or Australians who have been caught up in those events, notably the five in Samoa. 10636 10:40:00 Hunt, Gregory, MP 00AMV Flinders LP 0 0 Mr HUNT —I begin by acknowledging the words of the member for Longman, which carry weight because he has worked in and given support to the Pacific Islands. I acknowledge that. In looking at the tragedies which occurred on 30 September in Samoa and Tonga through the tsunami and, within 24 hours of those events, in Sumatra through the earthquake centred around Padang, I want to begin in my home state of Victoria. Earlier this year Victoria suffered a natural disaster in the form of bushfires. The number of souls lost was very similar to the number who perished in the Samoan and Tongan tragedy. From our community to their community we say, with every good sense and intention, that we truly understand that which you have lost. You have lost your mothers and fathers, you have lost brothers and sisters. Most sadly of all, you have lost your sons and your daughters. There is no good answer. There is only support. That support takes two forms. First, it takes the immediate form of human compassion. That is appreciated and delivered with heartfelt intent, but it is no substitute for the second form of support, which is the grand Australian tradition of lending a hand to those in need. Successive governments from either side of the House, from either political philosophy, have lent their support. I know: I was in this parliament and I was very engaged as the parliamentary secretary when the Solomon Islands suffered their tsunami. I saw what happened there and the way in which we were able to deploy, at rapid speed, assistance from those within the RAMSI mission and assistance brought from Australia in the form of Hercules with people and material to assist with health, hygiene, accommodation, food and all the basic needs. That same sort of support has been delivered by the current government and I unequivocally lend my support and give my congratulations and thanks for the work that has been done on Australia’s behalf. What has occurred in Samoa and Tonga has been a great human and physical tragedy, and it will take many years to rebuild. The lives, however, cannot be rebuilt. For those who remain we will simply have to be there to lend our support. We do so as friends, as neighbours and as fellow human beings who are always mindful of John Donne’s imprecation: No man is an island, entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee. The message is that we are all of one common humanity. The same applies, of course, in Indonesia—Sumatra, Padang in particular. Australians know only too well the tragedy of the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004. We know of the extraordinary human devastation and that this country responded through its government and through the unbelievable generosity of its people with direct, immediate and indispensable aid. That aid, whether it was in the form of helicopters, ships, personnel, drinking water or any form of medical assistance or immediate sustenance, was vital in the early days. But it translated into a multi-year commitment which was begun by one government and which is being continued by another. Sadly, in Pedang, where over 1,100 lives have been lost, we have now had to pursue the same course of action. The difference this time is that the numbers are far fewer, but the human tragedy for those involved is no less. So we offer again our support—firstly, as human beings and, secondly, as neighbours who are equipped through historic circumstances to provide real human and material support. We lend our best wishes, our compassion and our most profound human emotions to those who have been lost and to those who remain in Tonga, in Samoa and in particular in Indonesia, which in Sumatra and Pedang at the epicentre have seen the most tragic of consequences. I thank the government for their work. We lend them our complete bipartisan support, and we as a nation will do all that we can to assist the survivors in Indonesia as well as in Tonga and Samoa. 10637 10:46:00 D’Ath, Yvette, MP HVN Petrie ALP 1 0 Mrs D’ATH —I certainly echo the sentiments expressed by the other speakers on this motion, including the Acting Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and, most recently, the member for Flinders and the member for Longman in their words and thoughts for the families and the many individuals affected not just in Samoa and Sumatra but here in Australia. I, like many members in this House, have a strong Samoan and Tongan community, particularly situated on the Redcliffe peninsula. As such a strong multicultural community, it came as no surprise when this community stepped up and supported each other through this difficult time. The member for Flinders took us back to the Boxing Day tsunami, and I do not know of anyone who would not be able to recall exactly where they were when they heard the news of the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia, and particularly devastated areas such as Phuket. I do not think that we will look at situations like that ever again without absolute fear for the people who would be involved. Australia is used to its disasters. It does not make it any easier, but we have seen our fair share of disasters, and we will continue to see our fair share of disasters through cyclones and fires. However, we have not really experienced a disaster such as a tsunami. We have not really understood the horrific impact that such a disaster could have. For it to happen so close to our shores really brought home to the Australian community the risks involved for small islands and coastal areas. We are all vulnerable in our coastal areas to such occurrences. When the news broke that Samoa had had an earthquake off its shores and consequently a tsunami had hit Samoa, we all braced ourselves for the outcome of that disaster. It has certainly touched many lives in my local community. My local community stepped up very quickly. Our local radio stations 99.7FM and Radio Pacifica held a radiothon on Saturday, 10 October of six hours—from 6 pm to midnight—and they raised approximately $6,000 just in that one night. They also had 15 volunteers staffing the phones and they ran a sausage sizzle. They were not just raising money and collecting goods; they were there to support the Samoan and Tongan community which came together to support each other at that difficult time. One gentleman turned up to the radio station not wanting to be identified and delivered a $1,000 cheque. There was such goodwill across the community that those donations just kept coming. As I walked in to make a donation that evening, there were bags and bags in the doorway of toys, clothes and blankets. People are still able to donate to that appeal through the radio station. They can call 32845000 to donate if they are local. Obviously if they are interstate it is (07)32845000. There was also a remembrance service held for the victims of the tsunami, which the member for Longman spoke about. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend due to other commitments, but certainly my thoughts were with them on the day. That service was held on Sunday, 11 October. There were representatives from all levels of government and people from not just our Samoan and Tongan communities but also our Indigenous communities and our Filipino communities. We are a strong multicultural community and we came together on that occasion. I wanted to specifically acknowledge both Theresa Butler, who was the organiser of the remembrance service, and Tavita Timaloa, who organised the radiothon. Mr Timaloa did not just organise this appeal; he was personally affected. At the time of the radiothon, Mr Timaloa was one of many Brisbane residents who had lost family members, with some still missing. On his mother’s side, unfortunately, three passed away. The good news is that the majority of them made it out alive. His own words were that it was tragic and they were trying to chase them down. They had a cousin go to the morgue because they could not get there. He saw the names on the board and quickly rang the rest of the family to tell them the news. So Mr Timaloa has also been personally affected, as have many, many people not just in my community but across the country. I want to acknowledge the Redcliffe Kippa-Ring Lions Club, who hold markets every Sunday and choose a charity each Sunday to donate their money to. They donated all of their takings for the following two Sundays and raised over $1,000 for the tsunami appeal. I congratulate them on their efforts. I have talked much about Samoa because of the large community I have in my local area, but I also want to talk about the Tongan community. Koliana Winchester, who works at the local radio station and is herself Tongan, is a strong community worker, and I want to acknowledge her great work. My husband is part Tongan and my mother-in-law is Tongan, so we were certainly concerned about the news that Tonga had been affected, and there were not a lot of reports coming out of Tonga. What we have since found out is that over a thousand people were stranded in the northernmost island of the Kingdom of Tonga, nine people were killed and five critically ill people, including a four-year-old, were transported to the hospitals. So the Tongan community was certainly affected as well, and my thoughts go out to the whole Tongan community—as well as all those affected in Sumatra by the devastating earthquake that occurred around the same time. Thousands of lives have been affected. It is a devastating situation, one that will take many, many months if not years to recover from and to rebuild from. Our communities in Victoria and in Queensland, after their fires and floods, know just how long it takes to recover from these disasters. I am pleased that the federal government has stepped in quickly, as have state governments, to provide support. I know that not only did Queensland have an appeal but also state government rescue workers travelled to Sumatra and Samoa to help in the rescue efforts. As a number of members have said, the federal government set up the Australian government disaster recovery payment and funeral assistance payment for Australian victims and their families. There is also the one-off payment of $5,000 available to family members, as well as other crisis intervention and personal support. I also want to acknowledge the wonderful work of aid organisations around the world that always step up, going into these areas immediately to provide support. One such very well known and respected aid organisation, World Vision, has already provided 6,000 family kits consisting of tarpaulins and sleeping mats, sarongs and personal hygiene items. World Vision have distributed more than 750 packages for children under five, consisting of powder, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, blankets and 4,000 collapsible water containers. They are setting up free, child-friendly spaces for over 400 children. World Vision continues to plan a further 10,000 family kits, 5,000 children’s kits and much more. I cannot end without commenting on the fact that so many children have been left as orphans as a consequence of these disasters. That makes our response even more significant in how we are going to assist these young people. We know that these communities bind together and support each other when children are affected in this way. Globally we have a responsibility to do what we can to support all of the children who have been left as orphans as a consequence of the earthquake in Sumatra and by what has occurred in Samoa and Tonga and the outer region. 10639 22:56:00 Tuckey, Wilson, MP SJ4 O’Connor LP 0 0 Mr TUCKEY —I commend the Prime Minister and, I might add, the Leader of the Opposition for their statements to the House. Natural disasters occur in many parts of the world, but more particularly in the Asian zone relating to earthquake activity, and tsunamis are an outcome of that. For many years, more particularly during the Howard government—although upon the election of the Rudd government, I corresponded with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in similar manner—I have questioned the fact that our response is typically, with the exception of some private donations, ‘Send the money.’ While it might be argued by some worldwide funds to be the best way to deliver assistance, I am not convinced about that. Furthermore, I think Australia misses a great opportunity to do better and to promote items of construction—for instance, water purification units. Even though it is an emergency, I think we should not ignore the opportunity to bring to the attention of the world Australian products which would be of great assistance in these circumstances and have a long-term benefit. I have corresponded with many within Western Australia particularly. I assume in other parts of Australia there are simple manufacturing techniques that produce robust plastic shelter tunnels—the type of plastic you see on the sides of trucks. They were designed originally for livestock and are commonly used at agricultural shows and things of that nature as shelter for humans. They could be lived in for a long period by humans and made very comfortable for that purpose. They can be erected in less than an hour to accommodate 100 people. More particularly, if there is an aftershock in an earthquake zone, they will not fall down. At the time of the North Pakistan earthquakes I had phone conversations with the ambassador, who was extremely interested in my argument that we should—as we could do—get a couple of Hercules transporters and take a stack of this stuff up there. They are simply just 50-millimetre pipes, curved and they can be slotted—you do not have to carry them as a full curve. When they are assembled the plastic is then sheeted over them and ratcheted down in the same way that you would on the side of a truck. They are very tight, very strong, very weatherproof, and they can be prepared in many different fashions. They can be as long as you wish and quite wide, certainly as wide as the room in which we now stand. They can be made big enough to put large harvesting equipment in, if you wanted one that big. In my discussion with the Pakistani ambassador I asked him about the sizes of houses that people reside in in that area and he mentioned that they were quite large houses for what appeared to be people of low economic ability. I asked why they were that big, and he said that in the winter the people have to put all the animals inside too. Suddenly it occurred to me that these buildings, if they were put up as temporary accommodation for people, would double very adequately for their original purpose here in Australia, which is the protection of livestock. Maybe someone over there, after all the tragedy, would say, ‘What a good idea these things are. Where do I buy them?’ In Popanyinning in my electorate—getting down south towards Albany—there is a group called Bird’s company that have been making these things expertly for years. There is another group in Kondinin that make them for the agricultural sector and which was very interested in gearing up to supply them. My view in the first instance was that we erect one on the front lawn of our embassy in Pakistan for others to view. Then I ran into the brick wall called the Public Service. The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, gave me a name to ring up, and this fellow came round to see me and said, ‘No, we just send money.’ Why do we do that? That was in the Howard era. Stephen Smith could not give me a more responsive answer when I took the matter up with him. That is not a criticism of him—I know I failed. The whole fact of life is that here is a practical form of protection, easily transported. It has no volumetric problem and could be airfreighted into these areas. They should be flying into Sumatra as we speak. And there is a roadblock in Canberra that says, ‘No, you don’t do those sorts of things.’ Yet the Pakistani ambassador at the time was delighted at the prospect and would have welcomed them. That is just one example. Let me go a step further. One of the biggest problems in Aceh after the tsunami was drinking water. The Australian government eventually packed up what I imagine was a very large piece of equipment, utilised by the Australian Defence Forces to purify water and fluid up there. In a town called Katanning is a manufacturing company that could have provided all that equipment on the back of a car trailer. They are called AQ2 and their whole industry is built around a worldwide patent of a very small, extremely accurate measuring pump, all of which is manufactured out of solid PVC. I am proud to say that under the now defunct Regional Partnerships system—which I introduced and which was later criticised by the Labor Party—funding was made available to small business in regional areas on the principle that if your small business is prosperous, you will always find paint for the scout hall and you will always find paint for a school hall. Making small business prosperous in small country towns is a positive initiative, and in this case the Australian government contributed to them buying some machine tools—to which their local investors made the major contribution—that allowed them to speed up their manufacturing process. That is, of course, done to very precise measurements. The machine that they make meters to the water supply a very small but measured amount of sodium hypochlorite, a liquid disinfectant. More particularly, to give you some idea of the size of this equipment, you can put two 20-litre square plastic containers of that product on top and they virtually take up the full area of the top of this piece of equipment. That is how small it is. It is fully computerised. They are marketing these units to Australian water supply authorities for remote communities. They are in Katanning, some 250 kilometres south of Perth, and they are controlling one of these units east of Derby in an Aboriginal community. When the sodium hypochlorite in one bottle runs out, they chuck one on the local overnight transport and the bloke—the driver—pulls up alongside the unit, pulls off the empty one, puts the new one on, screws the cap on and it is going again. If in the circumstances of Aceh we had had problems of the water going saline and if there had been other contaminants, you could have added to that equipment a typical household sand swimming pool filter and some of the smaller reverse osmosis desalinators. These people could have put that package together, with a two-inch firefighting pump if necessary. They could have been supplied and flowing up there in numbers and people in many locations could have got clean, fresh and sterilised water. Someone in the aid organisations might have seen those and said, ‘What a great thing they’d be in Africa.’ Who said no? It was the Australian bureaucracy here in Canberra. They said, ‘Just send money.’ I find this very annoying. I am giving examples of two items, of which there are many. The technology in building frame houses has existed in Australia for years. I cry every time I see the media coverage, the TV coverage, of the places that have fallen down in these earthquakes. You may as well put a sign on—and I should not laugh, because it is too serious. The reality is that these buildings are designed to collapse and, unfortunately, fall on top of people. If those buildings, particularly residences, had been framed—and that can be done in a multistorey context—they might have cracked and they might have rattled, but they would not have killed people. It is technology: steel frames, BlueScope Steel. We know all about that, and we do not go up there and build houses like that for them. We did not build any in Aceh, admittedly. At the back of Aceh are thousands of square kilometres of forest. Presumably wood framing gives you a similar design, and I think the little houses they replaced there were probably of that nature. But they are not so much an earthquake spot. The whole fact of life is that we should be out there saying to these people, ‘Here is the solution for your problem so that this doesn’t happen again.’ I have always been a great advocate for better community design. I am a bit of a frustrated builder. I have built horse stables and all sorts of things out of tilt-up concrete. It is common. Virtually every commercial building today is made that way. Yet we do not go out and teach Aboriginal people how they can make them in their communities from local materials, with the exception of a bit of reinforcing and a bit of cement. We could erect them with limited amounts of machinery. A reasonably sized tractor with a three-point linkage that you can put a cement mixer on and a front-end loader could build that sort of construction. It is very robust but it can also be designed to be much more resistant to an earthquake. You do not, typically, use that method for floors, although I know we do in some of our buildings. On Christmas Island, as minister, I was responsible for the construction of the staff accommodation building. Three-storey prefabricated concrete walls were designed and manufactured in Perth. They were then put on the ship that goes to Christmas Island; they were lifted out, stood up and a building was put up between them. I am not saying that is the perfect response to an earthquake, but we have all this building technology that we never export during these crises. I welcome the government’s financial commitment. Both sides of government cannot get into the newspapers quickly enough—‘We’ve sent 10 million’ or ‘We’ve sent 20 million’. Sometimes we do not know where it actually goes, and there has been public criticism of that. Why are we not loading up these new strata cruisers—or whatever they named the bigger ones that Brendan Nelson brought—with products of Australia, even food, as part if not all of our contribution? And I have named only two pieces of equipment. There are photographs of Pakistan showing these funny little tents in which they were housing hundreds of people. They could not have been very comfortable or safe and yet we had better technology that we never sent there. I just cannot understand that. I took this opportunity today to specifically make this point: as a parliament, why do we not start talking about what Australia could do for these people with real items. It would create work here and, what is more, demonstrate technology which—in the case of the sterilising pump—is unique to the world. Nobody else has anything as good or as small as this. These sorts of things are very suitable for small communities and, more particularly, are an appropriate response to the disasters to which the statements referred. I trust some of my colleagues in government might want to raise that issue in the party room. 10642 11:13:00 Bradbury, David, MP HVW Lindsay ALP 1 0 Mr BRADBURY —I rise to take note of some of the natural disasters that have hit some of our closest neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region over the past month. I would first like to thank the Prime Minister for bringing the parliament’s attention to the impact of these disasters on literally millions of people across the region. Since the end of September we have seen major calamities strike Samoa, Tonga, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, with thousands dead and millions more left to rebuild their lives in the aftermath. It has been a difficult time for all the communities affected in those countries and equally traumatic for those people who are now residents and citizens of Australia but who have had to watch these disasters unfold from afar—uncertain of the fate of their loved ones caught up in the strife. Each of these natural disasters—the earthquakes and tsunamis in Samoa and Tonga, the earthquake in Indonesia and the typhoons that struck the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—have exacted a devastating toll on human life and property. It is crucial that Australia continues to demonstrate leadership and uphold its leadership responsibilities in the region by providing the support and assistance needed to help these communities overcome the effects of these disasters. Without diminishing the seriousness of each one of these calamities I would like to take this opportunity to speak in particular about the events in Tonga and Samoa, and the typhoons Ketsana and Palma which struck the Philippines within a week of each other. I have quite a sizeable population in my electorate who come from the Pacific Islands. In fact, just days after these disasters struck Tonga and Samoa, I had the opportunity to visit the Oxley Park Public School, in my electorate, for their South Pacific Expo. This was a tremendous example of some of the outstanding talents of the young people within my electorate. Oxley Park Public School is an outstanding local school under the leadership of its Principal, Mrs Karen Maraga. The school had on display a presentation that was put together by a number of the students but, in particular, a number of students from Pacific island communities. It was hard not to be moved by the singing of ‘I am, you are, we are Australians’ by what was a very multicultural group of students. I know that many of the students and some of the families who gathered to participate on that occasion had been affected by these disasters in Samoa and Tonga. I wish to acknowledge those families and the impact that these disasters have had. I would also like to turn my attention to the situation affecting our good friends in the Philippines. As members would know, on 26 September, at the beginning of the fortnight of disasters in the Asia-Pacific region, Typhoon Ketsana smashed into the Philippines, hitting major population centres in the Luzon region, including the capital, Manila. Typhoons, intense storms with gusts and rain for hours on end, have been responsible for ripping off roofs, overturning cars and causing landslides and flash flooding. Ketsana dumped an entire month of monsoon season rain, almost 600 millimetres, on the Luzon region in just six hours. That is almost the equivalent of the entire year’s average rainfall in my electorate of Lindsay. The consequences of this downpour created the worst flooding in more than 40 years in Manila. Hundreds of people were stranded on rooftops and walls, scrambling to make it to high ground before the water engulfed their homes. It is estimated that three million homes were affected across Manila and the wider Luzon region. In the immediate aftermath, Ketsana took the lives of more than 100 people and, as the days rolled on, that toll climbed substantially as communities counted the loss of those washed away in floodwaters or landslides and missing loved ones who just did not return. As the people of the Philippines reeled from the savage impact of Ketsana, which later moved on to wreak havoc and destruction on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, another typhoon rolled in eight days after the first. Typhoon Parma struck the northern Philippines with another ferocious day of rain and winds that caused more widespread flooding and soaked an already storm weary Manila for a second time. Dozens of houses were buried in mud and rock as hillsides gave way under the weight of floodwaters, and many more hundreds of people lost their lives. According to the latest reports from the Philippines National Disaster Coordinating Council, a total of 8.4 million people were affected by typhoons Ketsana and Parma and more than 850 people died. This is a massive loss of life, on a scale even larger than our own Victorian bushfires, one of Australia’s worst recent natural disasters, which claimed more than 170 lives. While there is now a massive relief effort underway, those same communities are bracing for a third typhoon as we speak—that is, Typhoon Lupit. Its gusts reach more than 200 kilometres per hour and it is poised to make landfall tomorrow, but its outer rings of wind and rain are already lashing the northern region of Luzon. The Philippines authorities, the United Nations and the Red Cross are all making preparations for this next onslaught, preparing people for evacuation and readying food and water supplies. I know that the thoughts and prayers of everyone in this parliament are with the people of the Philippines as they not only try to get back on their feet but prepare to fend off another threat of nature. In the areas where there is still calm the biggest threat comes from disease. As water becomes stagnant, malaria, dengue fever and diarrhoea start to spread, and already more than 100 people have died from leptospirosis. The Rudd government through AusAID has provided $3 million in food aid, clothes, sanitation services, health care and other basic items that will help thousands of people survive the coming days and weeks. I would like to acknowledge the swift responses of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance in committing Australia to the relief effort. I would also like to take this opportunity to make special mention of the Western Sydney Filipino-Australian community who are organising a charity concert on Sunday, 1 November at Bowman Hall in Blacktown. A group of entertainers has donated their time and talents to help stage a concert to raise funds for the relief effort in the Philippines and this is being supported by all the major Western Sydney Filipino-Australian groups. In particular I acknowledge those groups within my local community that have given voice to the situation faced by those in the Philippines and I take this opportunity to express my personal condolences to those residents within my community who have been affected through the impacts of these devastating typhoons on their family members back in the Philippines. This last month has demonstrated how vulnerable we all are to the ferocity of nature. But it has been a testament to the cooperation among countries in the Asia-Pacific region that governments, NGOs and grassroots community organisations have all rushed to lend a hand to those affected. To the people of Samoa, Tonga, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, you have all faced a horrible month of tragedy and disaster, but you are constantly in our thoughts and I know that we are all offering our strength and support in this time of great need. 10644 11:21:00 Katter, Bob, MP HX4 Kennedy IND 0 0 Mr KATTER —For many years of my life I was responsible for the Torres Straits. There is great potential in this area for fish farming and crustacean farming, which lend themselves very much to development. In the Torres Strait Islands they have rock walls going out into the ocean, which are fish traps. At high tide the fish can get in; at low tide the water rushes out and they cannot get out and the people can go round in the morning and pick up their food for the day. It gives me no joy to relate to the Houses that whilst we are here—and quite rightly so—to mourn, and to pledge our support for our northern neighbours, the tragic reality is that we are very good at crying about others but not about looking after our own. A few of us went on the Closing the Gap trip to the Torres Straits. I was quite staggered actually when I went out there at what I found—and this is our little part of the South Pacific Islands that we are responsible for and this is how we are looking after them. When I was up there the last time, in 1990—and 1990 was last year, I think, I was minister—I would say that 90 per cent of the food I ate was locally grown. It was seafood that had been caught, and taro and yam and other vegetables that were locally grown. This time when I was up there I cannot remember having a single piece of food that was grown on the islands. AQIS, the quarantine service, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, and Queensland, had effectively stopped those people from having a source of food. The net result of this—and we were the Closing the Gap committee inquiry—is that there is a 50 per cent higher rate of diabetes and heart problems among the Islanders there than for average Australians and, as we all well know, those things are very much diet-related. The people of the Torres Strait have no way of earning any money anymore because their crayfishing and other fishing operations have been stopped. Their chooks and pigs have been taken away from them by the quarantine service. The people say that even their farming has been taken away from them. We are still investigating whether that is true or not, but that is what they told us. When we went into the supermarket, we saw that four to seven per cent of the entire shelf space was filled with rice. This is a drivingly poor Third World country, where the death rate is 50 per cent higher than in the rest of Australia. Why? Because of the actions of this place. People are dying up there at a 50 per cent higher rate than anywhere else because of the actions of this place. And do you think anyone cares, Mr Deputy Speaker Washer? With all due respect to the chairman of the Close the Gap committee, to my knowledge the committee has still not put out a report. I am not cognisant of any report having been put out. So whilst it is very good for us to be supportive and sympathetic towards the plight of our northern neighbours, we have a responsibility to the Pacific islanders, and that responsibility is being discharged in such a way that there will be shame on this place and, unfortunately, on my nation for the historical future. The gulf cattlemen live pretty sparsely; they live pretty hard. They do not have many of life’s good things. They live hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town. My station property was 230 kilometres from the nearest town, and that was the little town of Croydon, with 200 people. So we were right out in the middle of nowhere. Many of the people who were caught in the floods this year were in an even worse situation than we were distance wise. For the last 50 or 60 years, the fifth or sixth biggest export item of this country has consistently been beef. We have the growing area for the beef industry. If you wipe out the breeding herd in the gulf then all Australia will suffer. When the floods hit, it was communicated to state and federal governments. There was a request for fodder drops for the cattle. No fodder drops took place. No government even bothered to reply to the people. They did not come back to them and say, ‘We’re not doing it.’ They did not even bother to do that. So these people watched in horror as their cattle were washed away into the gulf and drowned. We hear a lot of people criticise their own. There is a name for these people: traitors. I will shortly be fixing up a few of them when I get up to Normanton and Karumba. These people said that we were crying wolf. The web and all the newspapers in Australia showed pictures of the hundreds and thousands of cattle that had died and the wildlife that had died in the great floods at the start of this year. It was the furies of February for Australia. Whilst the southern part of Australia was on fire, the northern part was under water. Once again, I make the point, as I have made a thousand times in this place: what is wrong with us as a race of people that we do not take some of the water from up there and move it south? It is quite extraordinary. Many of the cattlemen, the contractors who served them and the employees who worked on the stations are in diabolical straits. Many of them will be bankrupt as a result of what has taken place there. These are our frontiersmen. The people who live in the Gulf Country have no restaurants to go to; they have no picture theatres to go to; and they have no friends that they can visit. Our nearest neighbours were 40 kilometres away. You think twice before you drive an 80-kilometre round trip to say g’day to your neighbours. A lot of the time the telecommunications, which are very substandard, do not work. We are completely cut off. Sadly, many people that I know have had mostly children die as a result of that isolation because the telephone does not work or they do not have a telephone or the pedal radio is not working or the flying doctor could not fly in because the airstrips were too muddy and they had no access to a helicopter. So many of these people have died. The part that enraged me was that I could get in an aeroplane at Ingham, just north of Townsville on the Pacific Ocean, and fly all the way, 1,000 kilometres to Karumba and Normanton, and, except while crossing the Great Dividing Range, I could see water out both sides of the aeroplane. It was a flood of massive size. We have had worse but it was still a flood of massive size and all of the people have suffered as a result of this: the cane-farming people, contractors, employees and mill workers, who have had a short season because of the lack of cane. Many of them will lose their stations, their farms or their houses in the town as a result of this. But whilst this was happening the government announced three per cent interest rates from the Reserve Bank. If those people could have been able to access the three per cent that was made available then they would have had no problems. If the government is lending it at three per cent, why wouldn’t you lend it to these people at three per cent? But, no, the obsessive, stupid, brainless policies of the free market say, ‘No, you must go through the marketplace.’ Well, the banks do not compete against each other; they compete with each other. I defy anyone to point out to me where there is more than a one per cent difference between the banks. But if they can pick up three or four per cent before they send it out to you, why wouldn’t they? There was a time when there was enlightened government in this place, when truly great men walked in this place, and let me name them: King O’Malley, Ted Theodore, Ben Chifley, Jack McEwen and Doug Anthony. Each of these people put in place a banking mechanism that enabled people, when there was trouble through no fault of their own, to take money, effectively from the Reserve Bank but in some cases not from the Reserve Bank, at interest rates of two per cent. I am one of the people that set up one of those banks. I had responsibility from a state government under the Treasurer, Bill Gunn. He and I were assigned the responsibility for the QIDC. The argument is that this costs us money, and if you are a brainless, incompetent government it does cost you money. Perish the thought that a brainless, incompetent government would go into banking! When you are a smart government going into banking, you make an awful lot of money. Let me tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that we started off with a $200 million loan—it was a loan and no money was actually ever allocated—and the bank was sold for $1.5 billion some seven or eight years later. I deeply regret to say that the QIDC was sold by the National Party. It was the last of the banks to be sold. The Commonwealth Bank was sold, the Commonwealth Development Bank was sold, the Primary Industries Bank was sold, the AIDC was sold and, yes, the QIDC in Queensland was sold. Properly handled, and I have not got the time to say why nor are we canvassing the issue of banking today, a development bank makes money. But I will give you a quick hint that when you lend money intelligently to a farmer who is in trouble through no fault of his own he will give the money back to you and he will stick with you. So if you lend him $300,000, the amount of a debt to some other bank at the start and you take over that debt, then you have $300,000 worth of gilt-edged business which is secured by the value of the farm and you are dealing with a person who you know is going to pay it back when things turn around. So, Mr Deputy Speaker, that gives you a quick view of why you make money. These people have now been languishing since the start of this year, and my understanding is that not a single dollar of any substantial assistance has gone to a single person in the Ingham area or in the Gulf Country. Neither category of people has had a single cent of assistance, and yet the government down here is telling us they have money available at three per cent. We have not seen it. Some of those people, tragically, might join the ranks of the farmers who last time I looked were committing suicide at the rate of one every four days, thanks to the deregulation of the dairy industry, probably, more than anything else—actions by this place and, I might add, the National Party in this place. If they join those ranks then let it be upon the heads of the people in this place. Heaven only knows that representatives such as me have hounded endlessly and ceaselessly the ministers involved in this, trying to get some of that three per cent money made available to the people out there. If you have it and you are handing it out, why don’t you give it to them? Name me a more deserving group of people in Australia. What we asked for was so little. It shows the hypocrisy of this place and the hypocrisy of government as it operates at the state and federal levels that they would not give us any flood drops. They would not give us a helicopter to ferry people out of Karumba. Karumba is a little town, and it was surrounded by 15 kilometres of raging, crocodile-infested floodwaters. The airstrip was out the whole time. They do not effectively have an airstrip out there. The state government has done up the existing one in such a way as to ensure that we will continue not to have an airstrip there. So we do not have an airstrip, for about 2,000 people. The floodwaters were rising. We had no way—even if you broke a leg or broke an arm—of getting out of there except for 2½ hours in a dinghy in raging, crocodile-infested floodwaters. That is the only way we could get anyone out of there. We went to the media with the pictures of the raging floodwaters and everything, and we told them that they had not even got a helicopter there. We showed them the airport at Normanton, and there was no helicopter there. They told us that they had a helicopter. It was all right and I did not have to worry, because they had a helicopter based at Cairns. I said, ‘Do you think we should run the emergency services for Brisbane out of Sydney?’ He said, ‘No, why would we want to do that?’ I said, ‘It’s the same distance. You could save a lot of money.’ That is exactly the same as you saying to me that you had a helicopter based at Cairns that was going to be available to evacuate people from Karumba. But when the spotlight of public attention was turned upon them, and when the pain of these people, and the dead animals—the cattle and the kangaroos—were flashed onto the national media, suddenly we had politicians parachuting out of the sky and suddenly we got money through. But it was a bit too late for the fodder drops, because the cattle were all dead at that stage. These people did not have the money or the wherewithal to be able to get those fodder drops made to rescue those cattle. We do not do that to help the grazier. They say, ‘If they live up there, they should be able to live with these sorts of thing.’ We are not doing that to help the grazier. We are doing that to preserve the Australian cattle breeding herd. Heaven only knows! In India it is a religious belief that you are not allowed to kill the cow. The cow is the calf factory and it is the tractor. The sanction is not upon the ox as an animal. The religious sanction is upon the female ox. Similarly here: it is our belief that we should preserve the herd. That is why government should become involved. It always amazes me to see the animal welfare people that go running around and crying about the animals. We did not hear from them. They were pretty silent. Whilst hundreds of thousands of kangaroos, wallabies and other animals drowned, and whilst maybe 100,000 head of cattle drowned as well, they did not seem too worried. I certainly feel, as everyone in this place does, for our brothers and cousins up in the Pacific Islands. We have a very, very close relationship with those people. The Filipino people have had a western democratic system there for 60 or 70 years now, arguably longer. They have been an American colony—an Anglo-country colony, if you like—for a large part of their recent history. They have a similar religious belief system to our own—they are Christians—and we have many, many of those people in Australia. In some of the areas I represent it is a male society—we cannot get Australian women to live there. A lot of those men marry Filipino ladies and they are extremely successful marriages. One of only six people who were invited to my own wedding married a Filipino bride. I will mention their names: Col and Melinda Jenkins. They have a beautiful family—a really outstanding family. I think they are a great credit to anyone in Australia. We have a very strong kinship with these people. Many of our rugby league teams have Polynesians and Melanesians playing in them. They come to Australia and they always will. They have always been a race that has moved in and out of Australia, and we welcome them greatly as our cousins and our brothers. But let us start with our more immediate family that has suffered greatly and has not received the assistance that they should have received. In fact, they have really received callous disregard from government. That is still the situation as I speak. To my knowledge and information, no money has been passed out at all. 10648 11:41:00 Ripoll, Bernie, MP 83E Oxley ALP 1 0 Mr RIPOLL —I thank the Main Committee for this opportunity to make some brief comments in relation to natural disasters. I want to associate myself with the statements made by the Prime Minister and other ministers in the government in this regard. Natural disasters strike indiscriminately and all over the globe. They strike at home, they strike our nearest neighbours, and sometimes they strike in the most unfortunate of places. While natural disasters are very indiscriminate in the way that they occur they often, unfortunately, very much hit those least able to cope with the natural disaster in the first place. While we have heard a range of comments—and I appreciate the emotion and passion of members of parliament in terms of natural disasters around the country and also those within our own country—I note that Australia has played a significant role both at home and overseas in trying to mitigate those disasters as best as possible in the humanitarian sense and also in an economic sense. First can I just make a few brief comments about some natural disasters at home. We have seen many of those over the years. It is something that most Australians put in the back of their minds. We see ourselves as a very lucky country, a country that is lucky in a whole range of ways, but particularly in terms of having a very small number of natural disasters. But we can easily think back to the earthquake in Newcastle, flooding and fire in different parts of the country and most recently, of course, the devastating fires in Victoria and the massive loss of life there, which was a real shock to all Australians—just how large scale that disaster was for us. In my own home state of Queensland a number of floods have cost not only lives but have also done irreparable damage to some communities in terms of their land, their crops and, as we heard from the previous speaker, their livestock as well. I acknowledge that Australia, while it is a lucky country, has suffered probably not as severely in most cases as some of our nearest neighbours but certainly we have suffered as well. I note that governments of all persuasions have made efforts—and I believe appropriate efforts, as we have seen in the aftermath of the fires in Victoria—to assist people on the ground and also to provide services and facilities in the aftermath, because we know that natural disasters often occur quickly and they are over quickly, but the impact of those disasters on individuals and the community last for many, many years into the future. I also wanted to make particular reference to a number of natural disasters affecting some of our nearest neighbours, including Samoa, Tonga—all the Pacific islands that have been hit recently—the Philippines and Vietnam. I wanted to make particular mention of all of those groups because not only do I have a compassionate view about the circumstances but also many from those countries live in my electorate. I know first hand from speaking to representatives of those communities just how much impact it has on them here in Australia. I had the privilege of attending a cross-community church service recently for the Pacific Islander community, in particular the Samoan community, in my electorate, and the outpouring of grief, of sadness, made me understand that the disasters that happen in those places directly affect all of us here in Australia. There is actually a direct impact. There is almost nobody in the Australian-Samoan community who has not got a friend or a direct relative—perhaps a cousin, an uncle or an aunt—in Samoa who has been affected in some way, or lost their lives. It is very much something that we feel very directly right here in Australia. I am very appreciative of the way that the Australian government has been able to, in a very compassionate and humanitarian manner, deal with some of those issues, particularly in the immediate aid we provided by sending doctors and medical professionals, supply ships, helicopters and a range of other services directly to those hardest hit communities. We do that because we feel a kinship with our nearest neighbours. I have always been of the view, whether it is in relation to natural disasters, humanitarian aid or just those who are less fortunate than us—and I do not want to talk about immigration issues in relation to this—that often there is a link between natural disasters that take place and the immigration issues that come afterwards. There is a role for Australia to play, a place for us, as the good neighbour and a humanitarian neighbour in many of those cases. I will always applaud governments that look at it from a wide perspective and do the best that they can. We are a small country; we are only 20-odd million people. We have a large geography and there has always been a capacity for a wealthy nation like Australia to step up to the plate and do a little bit more. That is what we have seen with natural disasters in our region and a range of other areas. We should always continue to do that. I want to thank my local community for the way they have behaved and been able to come together as a community to demonstrate their courage, to demonstrate their ability to fundraise and to grieve within their community but to do it in a constructive way that means they can be of assistance. Many of the Samoan and Pacific Islander representatives in my community have actually flown back to their countries to lend assistance personally. That has come at a personal cost to them—a financial cost—and I am very appreciative of the Australian government’s approach in assisting those individuals. We have done that through Centrelink for a range of programs. That is an appropriate way to deal with understanding how these people—who, generally speaking, are not wealthy people—have taken a very high personal financial burden to try to assist others. Sometimes it is their own family, of course, but sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is just their broader community. This is on top of AusAID providing $3 million in the way of sanitation, food, clothes and a number of other products that we might provide. In closing, I also want to briefly thank the minister as well as the Prime Minister. I understand and appreciate the way they and their offices have dealt with these issues. The action that we have taken is always the appropriate action in dealing with natural disasters in our region and in dealing with our neighbours. We ought to continue that when those situations arise both at home and overseas. 10650 Bills R4188 10650 Debate resumed from 19 October, on motion by Ms Roxon: That this bill be now read a second time. 10650 11:49:00 Neal, Belinda, MP B36 Robertson ALP 1 0 Ms NEAL —I rise to conclude my remarks on the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009. Accordingly, the national partnership agreement on preventive health provided $872 million to reform how the Commonwealth and states work together on preventive health. This agreement represents the largest single investment in health promotion in Australia’s history. Prevention forms the foundation of the Rudd Labor government’s approach to health care. I am very heartened to know that the health professionals on the Central Coast have already endorsed the Rudd Labor government’s new approach to a coordinated national strategy for preventive health. In September 2009, Dr Phil Godden, the Chair of the Central Coast Division of General Practice, said ‘increased efforts in preventive health will result in fewer chronic illnesses, less pressure on hospitals and a healthier community’. Dr Godden also said that Central Coast GPs work with their patients every day in matters of prevention of chronic illnesses, especially obesity, smoking and alcohol. These are the three areas that we are specifically targeting with the National Preventive Health Strategy. The division is already running a number of programs supporting GPs in their preventive health roles. These include a lifestyle modification program that is run in conjunction with accredited physiotherapists and that aims to proactively prevent type 2 diabetes through a GP-monitored exercise program. The Rudd Labor government is in total agreement with Dr Godden when he states that ‘it is self-evident that prevention is better than cure’. Dr Godden concludes by urging the government ‘to act on the findings of the strategy and begin implementation of it as soon as possible, as the longer it takes to start, the worse the health outcomes will be for those Australians who are most in need’. I can assure Dr Godden and the rest of the Central Coast GPs that this government is acting both decisively and quickly on a national strategy for preventive health. The establishment of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency represents a bold new initiative in public health in Australia. It will boost Australia’s capacity to combat preventable diseases and set the nation up for a healthier and more prosperous future. I commend the bill to the House. 10650 11:52:00 Ripoll, Bernie, MP 83E Oxley ALP 1 0 Mr RIPOLL —I thank the House for this opportunity to speak on the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009. Fortunately for me, I happen to be a board member of the Inala Primary Care facility in my electorate of Oxley. It is a community role that I have undertaken in an honorary capacity because I felt that this was one area of health care that was desperately needed and could be better managed in the overall construct in the way health services are provided in this country. If there is one thing that we know after many years of study and many years of experience and learning in the health sector it is that preventive health care is the best health measure that we could possibly provide. Combining information from across the sector into a substantial health policy and providing that to all areas is, I think, the best approach. I am more than happy and more than satisfied to say that this is the approach that the Australian government, the Rudd government, has actually taken. We will certainly see that as part of the bill that is before us today. My experience of preventive health care and primary health care in my local community has shown me that the benefits they provide to a community are enormous. The Inala Primary Care facility, which is right in the heart of my electorate, is an amazing organisation. It has developed out of a need in the community and it demonstrates just what can be done by a community when it has the right partnerships in health services. It was a struggling organisation that was having financial and, I think, service delivery difficulties. With its reorganisation—the establishment of a new board, a new system put in place and an approach that looks at how preventive health can benefit the community directly—we have seen an amazing outcome. There have been not only health outcomes but also economic and financial outcomes, which provide for the taxpayer as well as the health consumer. May I say—and it is a great opportunity to do so—that the Inala Primary Care facility has won a number of accolades in the last two years. In particular, it has just won an award for the best preventative healthcare provider in Queensland. It is in partnership with the University of Queensland and with the state government department of health and really in partnership to with the private sector through GP services and through the people who actually run the organisation. I want to make particular mention too of Cathy Brown, the CEO, who is an incredible person. She has done some great work over many, many years and has brought an enormous amount of energy, experience and talent to the board and to the organisation, which has been able to provide fantastic service to the local community. I think that it is one of those areas where we can do the most good in many cases. For too long health care has always been at the wrong end of health provision—that is, after the event. If we look at the great issues of health care today—obesity, diabetes, chronic diseases such as liver diseases and lung diseases, cancer and a whole range of other areas—we can see that if we can take some early preventative measures we can actually have a positive impact for the individual, which in the end is the most important person, but also for the community they live in and for taxpayers as a whole. The communities in which we have seen the biggest impact are the Indigenous communities, and they are certainly a focus for Inala Primary Care. There are also other disadvantaged communities. It is not just about healthcare provision but also about education and about providing people with the right tools and knowledge to understand about lifestyle choices and about what they are actually doing themselves in order to get the right equipment so that they can be a major participant in their own long-term health care. Certainly there has been a lot of evidence of the good work done by Inala Primary Care and the long-term benefits that will be provided in that community. Through a range of changes and policy directions that the Rudd government has taken we have been able to step forward in a number of directions when it comes to preventative health care and health care more broadly. It would have to be one of the most complex portfolios that any minister could take on, and I congratulate Minister Roxon on her fine work. It is one of the most complex portfolios—and I daresay that no-one on the other side in the opposition Liberal or National parties would disagree—but also one of those portfolios that needs almost a bottomless pit of money. There is no limit to what you could spend on healthcare provision. There is an understandable and expected standard in the Australian community that we are provided with the best healthcare services in the world. For the most part, that is actually the case. Our training, standards and requirements are world class; they are world’s best practice. The amount of equipment and services and the types of resources that are provided are first class and world’s best practice. Also, through the Medicare system we have a universally accessible system that is affordable. Those different pillars within the health portfolio provide all Australians with an incredibly great service, one that does not discriminate on locality as such, on your income level, on who you are as a person or on what community you live in. In saying that, I do acknowledge that there are some limitations. Where you live does have an impact on your ability to get certain services, and locality is one of the great challenges for all Australian governments in how they provide services. But certainly the work that we are doing and the cost-saving measures that we are bringing to the health portfolio, along with the enhancements through our GP superclinics in communities where they are desperately needed and a range of other policy initiatives, I think take us in the right direction. I will sum up briefly by saying that having a preventative health framework, a preventative healthcare policy and legislation that does all that it can to provide the right instruments, tools and regulatory frameworks for the health sector to provide the best possible care and give people the tools necessary for them to look after themselves is the right way to go. It is a commendable approach by the Department of Health and Ageing. I commend the bill to the House and again congratulate the minister for health for her fine work. 10652 12:00:00 Perrett, Graham, MP HVP Moreton ALP 1 0 Mr PERRETT —I too rise to speak in support of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009. My first inclination is to use the word ‘preventative’ rather than ‘preventive’, but people should not be too disturbed about it. I looked up the etymology of the words ‘preventive’ and ‘preventative’. It is from Middle English and, prior to that, from the Latin ‘praevenire’, meaning ‘to come before’, so it is much the same word. People can relax because there is no big difference at all. The passing of the preventive health agency bill will bring about a new era in Australian health reform as we move on from talking about preventive health care to actually doing something about it. We have known for a long time that as a nation we must do better and do more to prevent chronic disease—from when the cartoon character ‘Norm’ was telling us to be more involved with life, back in the seventies. A former Queensland health minister, the Hon. Stephen Robertson, who was my boss, described it as ‘a tsunami of chronic disease coming our way’. The member for Oxley touched on that in his speech. There are some pretty chilling facts out there. The first baby boomers will retire next year. I was born in 1966. According to some definitions, I am either the last of the baby boomers or a few years into Generation X. That whole wave of baby boomers is going to put incredible strains on our health system. As earlier speakers have indicated, we have a high expectation of healthcare needs in the Australian community. People are not prepared to lower those standards, and obviously no government wants to lower those standards. But the costs to our community are going to be astronomical if this tsunami of chronic disease does reach us. I will take one example: obesity. It is estimated that the overall cost of obesity to Australian society and governments was $58.2 billion in 2008. Chronic diseases like diabetes, some cancers and heart disease loom large on the horizon for way too many Australians. But prevention, as they say, is better than cure. The other proverb is: ‘A stitch in time saves nine’. US studies have shown that every dollar we spend on preventative health saves us about $5 in health expenditure, so, to be more accurate, we could change the proverb to: ‘A stitch in time saves five’. When you consider the escalation of healthcare costs in recent years and the projections for the future, now more than ever, we need to, as Norm said, be a little bit more active. Not only can we save money but, more importantly, we can save lives, extend lives and improve people’s quality of life. During the parliamentary recess I held two seniors forums in the northern and southern bits of my electorate. Because they were so successful, I then held a seniors health forum in Annerley. After the Sunnybank and Annerley seniors forums, people were so excited about the local Brisbane South Division of GPs that they wanted more information about some of their health concerns and what they could do. It was a golden opportunity for our senior citizens to meet local health practitioners, to find out more about how to keep fit and healthy and to give their feedback on our health system. The chilling bit was when one of the GPs from Sherwood talked about inoculations. Basically, all of the characteristics of the people who should be getting swine flu injections applied to me. I thought it was for other people, but it became clear that if you travel a bit, meet lots of people and shake hands you should receive a swine flu vaccination, which I will be taking steps to do. The message I heard loud and clear from our seniors at the three forums is that governments have to do more to promote healthy lifestyle choices and help people stay healthy and out of hospital. Prevention, as they say, is much better than cure. If we do not act now, we will be overwhelmed by this tsunami. This bill sets up the Australian National Preventive Health Agency to drive research and investment in preventive health. The agency will report directly to the health minister and, through the Australian Health Ministers’ Conference, to ministers around the country. It is another initiative to come out of COAG and was agreed to in November last year as part of the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health. Again, the Rudd government is putting politics and turf wars aside in the interests of a better and healthier country. In consultation with Australian health ministers, the health minister will appoint the CEO and an advisory council for the National Preventive Health Agency. The council will include Commonwealth, state and industry representatives, including experts in preventive health—the people at the coalface, so to speak, in terms of saving and changing lives. The agency will help support health ministers around the country achieve outcomes through the national partnership. This includes delivering about $700 million to help Australians adopt healthier lifestyles. The Commonwealth is providing $133 million over four years to establish the agency and fund preventive health research and social market campaigns that target issues like obesity and smoking. It is no secret that obesity and smoking are major causes of chronic disease but the messages are not yet getting through. I remember when I was elected in November one of the first things that happened was that the ‘baby’ MPs were brought to Parliament House and were given a talk about the challenges of life in Canberra. The MP who gave us the talk spoke about putting on one kilo of weight a month. Thankfully I have not quite lived up to that; I think that would be 23 extra kilos. Looking at the other MPs who were at that talk, I do not see anyone who has done as bad as that. I am not sure that every MP can say the same thing. It was certainly an indication that you have to be very, very careful. Everywhere we go we get offered some food, and it is normally very tasty food but probably not the best food, and it is likely to put on a couple of extra kilos. Similarly around 20 per cent of Australians still smoke. Regarding the overall numbers, the trend is slightly downwards except, I was sad to see, amongst young women. The numbers of young women who are taking up smoking are actually increasing. With all of the knowledge that we have of cancer and carcinogens, there are still people who smoke. I know it is hard to believe, and some of them are informed people. We need to do what we can to get those trends down for young women and for Australians overall. Obesity is projected to lower our children’s life expectancy by two years by the time they reach adulthood. That is an amazing statistic. My children are nine months old and four years old and to think that we are breeding a generation that is going to have a lower life expectancy than us is a suggestion that civilisation is not getting it right. Even my four-year-old knows many of the brands and the ads connected with fast food establishments—I am loath to call them restaurants. It is amazing how much more efficient some of these fast food agencies are compared to parenting advice. It is almost unbelievable to consider that the next generation could have a shorter life expectancy than us, their parents. As I said, it is almost an abdication of the term ‘civilisation’. But, and it is a big but, spelt b-u-t-t, we can turn this trend around. The agency will focus on issues like healthy weight, physical activity, healthy eating and smoking to help drive the wholesale change in attitudes and behaviours. Of course, if our aims to reduce preventable chronic disease are to be achieved, we need cooperation across governments, across academia, through the media, through sporting bodies and through others. I think it is about time that the fast food industry stood up. I would certainly call on my local restaurants and fast food establishments to see what they can do. Rather than just having a token healthy food item on the menu, perhaps they could actually try and sell it rather than merely have it there as a token item that no-one buys. The Preventive Health Agency will have a big role to play in fostering this cooperation across industry and the non-government and community sectors. Other key roles of the agency include providing evidence based advice to health ministers on preventive health issues; pulling together data on preventable chronic diseases and risk factors; providing research grants; and promoting national guidelines, standards and best practice codes for preventive health. I have spoken about this before, but one of the most appalling legacies of the coalition government was their gross underfunding of the public healthcare system. Over the life of their government, they left state governments billions of dollars out of pocket on public health through the funding administered by the Australian healthcare agreement. In June 2007, state and territory health ministers released the report Caring for our health? A report card on the Australian government’s performance on health care. This report found that, around the nation, the coalition government were ripping off the public health system by about $1.1 billion every year. That equates to about 350,000 additional admissions each year. So starved of funding were our state health systems that there was very little left over to focus on the longer term preventive strategies to address the causes of chronic disease. You cannot worry about tomorrow or what is going to appear on the horizon when the ambulances are ramping outside the emergency services department. In contrast, the Rudd government are facing up to our responsibility to improve the health system, and we are moving on a number of fronts through our health reform agenda and the national preventative health strategy. In cooperation with state and territory governments, this strategy sets bold targets to reverse obesity trends, halve smoking rates to below 10 per cent and reduce risky drinking levels. The new Australian National Preventive Health Agency will have a significant impact on the future of health care in Australia. All of us in this place want to see Australians healthier, and I am confident this new agency will provide the kind of support and advice that our health ministers need to achieve that. I commend the bill to the House. 10655 12:12:00 Rea, Kerry, MP HVR Bonner ALP 1 0 Ms REA —I too rise to support this very important Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009 before us today, because, as we all know, there is nothing more essential to all of us than good health. If you are suffering from some form of illness or injury, it just makes resolving all the other problems that you contend with in your daily life so much more difficult. So we all know that the best start to any day is to wake up feeling healthy. That can prepare you for whatever the day may bring—and we all know, particularly those of us in this job, that the day can bring anything other than that which we have planned! It is also important for a well-functioning and productive society that all individuals have good personal health and that we support the physical and mental health of all who make up that society and community. Although these statements may be self-evident, unfortunately, as individuals and as a community our physical and mental wellbeing is not the highest priority at all. In fact, it is often the lowest priority. Whether it is work or family responsibilities or other commitments in our lives, they always seem to take precedence over taking care of ourselves during the day. As a result, often the only time that we ever really deal with our own physical wellbeing is when it is too late—when we are either ill or injured and we require medical attention and expertise. Rather than focusing on prevention, we wait until we get to the point of falling ill or hurting ourselves because we have not paid due attention to our health. If we took the time to care for our minds and our bodies before they break down, we would find that not only the rest of our own lives would be easier but many of the social problems that we as a society face, and, of course, the enormous amount that we as a government and other levels of government spend on health care, would drop dramatically. We are not talking about a new-fangled idea here. We know that prevention works. There is enough evidence to show, as the member for Moreton said, that losing weight, getting fitter, stopping smoking and reducing or even giving up alcohol consumption make a big difference in preventing disease and improving our life expectancy. But, for some reason, a vast majority of us just do not take any notice. But when we do take notice, when we see governments or community organisations embarking upon community awareness campaigns around a particular disease or some other form of injury and people do take notice, we know that prevention actually works. Whether it is the restrictions on tobacco advertising, which have seen a significant reduction in the number of people taking up smoking, whether it is the good old ‘Life. Be in it.’ campaign on television that we all remember, which got us up out of our chairs and our beds and got us walking and exercising, or whether it is something as simple as enforcing policies on the wearing of bike helmets, and what a significant reduction in head injuries and other injuries we have seen as a result of that small but very significant change, prevention works. There is the campaign around the wearing of seat belts and enforcing that policy. Indeed there are some very significant changes, particularly when we look at the campaigns on safe sex practices which have had such a significant impact on reducing the spread of HIV-AIDS in this country. All of these things clearly point to evidence that, when a good prevention campaign is run, people will take notice and it will have results. In fact, road trauma deaths have decreased by 80 per cent since the 1970s. There are probably a number of factors involved in that, but I think it indicates that the simple act of wearing a seatbelt and requiring all people to wear seatbelts in a car certainly has made a dramatic difference when it comes to road trauma, accidents and deaths. For that reason, I am very pleased to see that the Rudd government, under the leadership of the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, established the National Health Workforce Taskforce in 2008 and recently launched the National Preventative Health Strategy, in September this year. If we are serious about reforming the health system, and we know that we as members of the government were elected on that very clear commitment, if we are serious about implementing our commitment and our policies, we must start with prevention. We currently spend less than two per cent of the health budget on prevention measures and, as a result, we all know that the demand on our public health system, the reliance on GPs and the cost of, and reliance on, medication are increasing dramatically. But, of course, we could do a lot better if we were able to focus policies on prevention. We know that this is not just about feeling better ourselves. We all know the personal cost of being unwell, whether we just feel bad or have hurt ourselves. We know the social cost of being unwell and the impact it has on us both socially and economically. Whether it is the loss of work time or the loss of income, not only does that impact on the sufferer but also it clearly impacts on the family and the people they are dependent on. It also has a significant impact on general productivity. So this is not just about making us feel good. It is about saving the dollars that we spend through taxation support on the health system and about improving the economy through increased productivity. That is why the role of the preventative health agency is so critical and why I am so pleased to see this legislation before the House, because the government’s goal of reforming and improving our health system cannot occur without it. The health agency will be established as a statutory authority under the Financial Management and Accountability Act. It will be established as a result of the National Partnership Agreement on Preventative Health between the state and Commonwealth governments, which was agreed to in November 2008. Once again we see not only that this is an important initiative for health but also that it demonstrates this government’s constant argument that, when governments at all levels work together rather than in competition with each other, the community and all of us as individuals benefit. The Commonwealth will provide the agency with funding over four years of $133.2 million. This includes $17.6 million for set-up and maintenance of the agency, $102 million for national social marketing campaigns around smoking and obesity—two areas where we know prevention can significantly reduce the onset of a vast number of diseases, particularly in later life—$13.1 million for research to inform policy development around preventive health and $500,000 for an audit of the preventive health workforce. As you can see, this is a significant commitment. We acknowledge that, if we are to be serious about preventive health, if we are to put our money where our mouths are, it needs to be serious funding and clearly this legislation indicates that. Marketing and awareness campaigns will be funded, as will research around measures that will help us to develop better and more informed policies around preventive health for the future. I think that the most critical role of this agency will be that of coordination. The failure in the past to get the message across to members of the Australian community has not just been because there has been a lack of activity in this particular area; I suspect it is also because there has been a lack of coordination and cohesion, which has prevented a clear focus on the policies that can work when it comes to preventive health. The agency will provide leadership, coordination and monitoring to support the successful implementation of the initiatives that will be funded through the national partnership on prevention, and it will include $692 million for interventions to help Australians modify their lifestyles. As we know, $692 million is not an insignificant amount and I suspect that the investment in intervening in people’s activities and encouraging them to change their lifestyles will save much, much more than that in the long term. It will mean we are not required to spend that amount of money on treatment those people would require if they had not done anything about changing their behaviour. The coordination is important when you consider the diverse number of organisations, individuals and industries that already exist around preventive health, such as health and fitness operators from gym owners through to personal trainers; private health insurers; sporting clubs and associations; health professionals; allied health professionals and alternative medical people such as naturopaths, osteopaths and the like. When you consider the range of people trying to do their bit in this area, I think we can all appreciate the incredibly powerful impact that would occur in the community if there was an agency that brought together all of the good work those people are doing. The agency could start to coordinate and focus on how combined efforts could do more in the area of prevention of illnesses and injuries. The agency will be a significant government body and will therefore need to be accountable to the taxpayers who fund it. It will produce triennial strategic plans and an annual operational plan that must be approved by state and federal health ministers. The minister will appoint a CEO to the agency. There will also be an advisory council that will consist not only of the key government bodies—state, territory and Commonwealth governments—but also representatives and individuals with expertise in this area. So, once again, we will see a significant step towards being serious about preventive health by having an agency that incorporates not just the funding bodies but the people who are doing the work on the ground, that knows what works and can not just inform existing programs but help us to better develop future policies. I think it is important that we do acknowledge the role of all levels of government in this. Coming from a local government background, I certainly appreciate the role that all governments play. Indeed, I believe that local governments are key in the preventative health strategy of this country. It is local governments that provide the parks, recreational activities, the physical spaces and the sporting and recreational programs at a local level which encourage people to get out of their houses and be more active. Whether it is simply a festival that means you do not sit and watch videos on your TV but you walk outside and listen to some local music, whether it is a kite-flying day or whether it is providing bike paths—all of that physical and social infrastructure, which does not get acknowledged as a key part of the health budget in this country, is now being brought to the table with other levels of government and acknowledged as playing a key role in preventing illness and improving the health of all in our communities. The council will also focus on a couple of very key issues when it comes to developing policy and working towards improving the health of our citizens. Social marketing is a term not usually equated with health policy, but, as I demonstrated earlier with the number of significant community and government awareness-raising programs in this country, it is clearly a very important part of the health policy in the health budget because it is the way that you get the message out to people. It is the way that you encourage people to take some responsibility for their own wellbeing and to understand that it is not selfish, ignorant or negligent to take time out each day to care about yourself. You need to care about yourself and make sure you are functioning in a well and satisfied way. The people who depend on you—your work colleagues, family, children and friends and people in organisations that you are involved in—will benefit from you taking care of yourself. That is a very important message that we need to get out there. It is also why I think that this agency will work, particularly through the advisory council. This is not just a top-down approach; it is acknowledging the significant investment in dollars but it is doing so by saying that we have to form partnerships with not just the people who are working in this industry but the people who are benefiting from the industry. We need to encourage individuals and community organisations, as well as those providing the services to them, to be part of this program. You need to take responsibility for yourself. The government will invest in your health if you partake of those activities that will ensure a longer and healthier life. In the last few minutes I have got I want to talk about the local consultations I have been having in my electorate of Bonner. They have mainly been around the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report. Three messages came out of the discussions and consultations I have had with people about how we deal with the already fairly pressured health system: prevention, prevention, prevention. The health professionals are saying that we need more money put into prevention—‘Let’s get that graph of funding better. We don’t want less than two per cent spent on preventative health care and such an enormous amount spent on acute health care. We want to reverse that trend. We need to invest more in preventative health policies.’ I would like to pay tribute to Tyack Health in my electorate. It is a family run business that for 40 years has been doing just this. This group of doctors understand not just the significance of having a good supply of bandages and injections but the importance of preventive health care. They started doing it 40 years ago. They now have a massive medical centre on Radford Road in Manly West. They have pilates teachers, chiropractors, GPs, physiotherapists, nutritionists, dieticians and massage therapists all under the one roof. When someone rings to access any of those services the first thing that is done is an overall health check to find everything that may be affecting them. The professionals at the Tyack Health Centre understand that people do not always see the symptoms of a potentially life-threatening disease and that intervention is sometimes needed. They also appreciate that treating one symptom that a person has can often have an impact on everything else associated with their personal wellbeing. So a holistic approach to health care achieves great results when it comes to prevention. Obviously, it also means that we see great results in terms of the cost of health care in this country. On a final note, when I was researching for this speech I referenced a very interesting media release put out by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Hon. Tony Burke, who often does not get mentioned in health debates, but I think his press release is worth mentioning. The press release talks about the research that was done on the health benefits of Australian native food. Indeed, when you look at things like the Kakadu plum and the Australian desert lime, you find that they have incredibly high levels of vitamin C. The bush tomato, the Tasmanian pepper leaf and wattle seeds were found to contain the richest sources of iron amongst all the herbs and spices tested. The Kakadu plum is also rich in antioxidants, which all of us who are very concerned about our skin would know is of great benefit. It is well worth looking at what is literally in our own backyard. It reinforces once again that we should pay tribute to being in a country which is home to the longest living, longest running civilisation on this planet, the Aboriginal people of Australia. Perhaps it was the wattle seeds, the quandongs and the Kakadu plums that have contributed to such a vibrant, interesting and wonderful culture still being with us today. I think we know that there are many lessons to be learnt from the fact that Indigenous people have cared for this land and for themselves and their families for so many thousands of years. (Time expired) 10659 12:32:00 Neumann, Shayne, MP HVO Blair ALP 1 0 Mr NEUMANN —Less than two per cent of health expenditure is spent on preventive health. That is the legacy of the Howard coalition government after 11½ years. We are about to change that, because preventive health works. The federal government has brought forward a number of reports. There is the final report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, which was released on 27 July 2009, and also two other significant reports, including Building a 21st century primary health care system: a draft of Australia’s first national primary health care strategy. The report that is particularly germane to the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009 was prepared by the national Preventative Health Taskforce, chaired by Professor Rob Moodie, and is entitled Australia: the healthiest country by 2020: National Preventative Health Strategy—the roadmap for action. Professor Robert Bush from the Ipswich Campus of the University of Queensland was also a participant in that strategy. I was pleased that he, amongst other people, was present at the Ipswich and West Moreton health forum hosted at the Ipswich Campus of the University of Queensland on 8 October this year. I want to pay tribute to the many people who turned up to that forum: the Division of General Practice, many doctors, Ipswich General Hospital, the Queensland Department of Communities and, of course, the University of Queensland, which has engaged in a significant health study, including the Ipswich study. I want to thank Professor Alan Rix, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland. But the driving force, along with me, was Professor Helen Chenery, who was actively involved in the promotion of the health forum. As the member for Bonner said, the message is loud and clear. People are interested in this issue and in what we are doing both nationally and locally when it comes to preventative health. I was very interested to read the press release from the University of Melbourne; of course, that is where Professor Moodie comes from. It is from September 2009 and relates to the 307-page report, which had a broad range of recommendations to be implemented in three stages until 2020. They are all focused on reducing the burden of obesity and alcohol and tobacco consumption on Australia’s health and wellbeing for young people and our more senior citizens. We know from this report that these three risk factors cost us in the order of $6 billion per year, and we know that productivity loss is estimated at $13 billion annually by reason of the scourge of obesity, excessive alcohol consumption and the simple use of tobacco. The first National Preventative Health Strategy gives us what has been described by Professor Moodie ‘as a road map of guidelines’ to address these significant health issues. We in this country pride ourselves on our champions. We are terrific when it comes to sport for a country of 22 million people. Our Olympic record is fantastic. We are very good when it comes to sports such as netball, hockey, basketball, rugby league and rugby union. Our recent performances in men’s and women’s soccer are to be applauded as well. But it comes to the question of what we do in our classrooms, schools, kindergartens, preschools and homes. This is the big and problematic issue. What we do in our family life really affects the long-term health, prosperity and wellbeing of our people. The Rudd Labor government is strongly committed to recognising that prevention is better than cure, and we are working closely with the states. The Institute of Health and Welfare recently came out with its press release of 30 September 2009, relating to a study that showed that the Rudd Labor government is correcting the past failures of the Howard government with respect to health issues. The Australian government’s share of public hospital funding was 42.5 per cent in 1997-98. It plummeted to 38.6 per cent in 2006-07 and under the Rudd Labor government it has risen again to 39.2 per cent. But what we spend on our hospitals is really going to curing the disease or illness. The national health and hospitals strategy put forward a very serious problem in terms not just of the health and welfare of our people but of the economic development and future prosperity of our country. In 2003 in this country we spent—this is what the Institute of Health and Welfare says—$84 billion on health and aged care. It is projected that by 2033 we will spend $246 billion, or 12.4 per cent of our GDP. That is simply unsustainable. We really need to look at what we do with respect to preventative health. We need to keep our people fit, healthy and out of hospital. We know that, as Benjamin Franklin said, there are only two certainties in life—death and taxes—and we know that all of us will pass away at some stage, but what we need to do is enjoy an abundant, full, happy and healthy life as best we possibly can. The government’s commitment to preventative health is demonstrated not only by the legislation before the House but also by the record amount spent on preventative health, $872 million. We are doing that through the COAG process in partnership with the states and territories. So we are trying to keep people fit. We are providing health checks for four-year-olds to promote early detection of chronic disease factors. We are spending $12.8 million to fund 190 schools around the country to construct either a kitchen or a garden under the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden National Program. There are a whole raft of reforms we are undertaking. But it is the recommendations with respect to obesity, tobacco and alcohol that, if implemented, I believe will make the greatest change to the health and welfare of this country, because these things affect every family and every community and, when tackling primary health care, we need to focus on preventive health measures. The member for Bonner mentioned in detail the funding provision under this legislation. We are providing $133.2 million over four years for the Australian National Preventive Health Agency. That is a lot of money, and that is a demonstration of the seriousness of the government’s commitment in this area. As the member for Bonner outlined, of this money, only $17.6 million is for the establishment and maintenance of the agency. We are putting $102 million into the national level social marketing campaigns targeting obesity and smoking. It is sad to see that in a lot of other countries around the world smoking is an addiction and an obsession. Many countries have smoking rates at 40 and 50 per cent of the adult population. In this country, we have had a targeted strategy for smoking and we have seen a clear reduction in the per capita consumption of tobacco. The Minister for Health and Ageing, in her second reading speech on 10 September, pointed out some very interesting facts in this regard, and they are worth repeating: Between 1950 and 2008, more than 900,000 Australians died because they smoked … That is notwithstanding the fact that it was known from the middle of last century that smoking tobacco had clear risks to people’s health. The strategies that we have undertaken have seen a reduction in smoking. We have seen a reduction in the number of young people taking up the habit. The Australian public is more aware than ever of the perils of smoking. The average person on the street knows that smoking is a danger and that, if they smoke, not only their lifestyle but their life expectancy are affected and they risk a premature death. As the minister said: The Preventative Health Taskforce set a target of reducing smoking rates to less than 10 per cent. What a great target. If we can achieve that: This would mean approximately one million fewer smokers in Australia, and according to the taskforce— And this should really resonate with everyone— would prevent the premature deaths of almost 300,000 Australians. The government are also undertaking a big information campaign about the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption, particularly among young people. Certainly, the schools in my electorate have seen assistance with ‘mystery tour’ funding, which ensures that when young people have their school formal they do not engage in binge drinking but rather in alternative, enjoyable, healthy physical activity where they are not in danger of assault or misbehaviour or vulnerable to any other form of risk. I commend people like Tanya McKenna, a teacher at Ipswich State High School, for the program that is now being duplicated at schools like Bremer State High School and Redbank Plains State High School, and I commend the government for the funding they have provided to Ipswich State High School in this regard. As a bit of a sports tragic and also as a bit of a Brisbane Bronco supporter, I look forward to the day when my beloved Brisbane Broncos do not have alcohol advertising around Lang Park. I look forward to that day because, just as the abolition of smoking advertising on TV had an impact on young people and our community generally, I think that if we were to undertake that strategy, if we were to phase out alcohol promotions and advertising to our young people, as is recommended in the strategy, it would change the drinking culture in our community. I think we can do better with respect to advertising. I think we can ensure our young people are not put at risk. As the parent of an 18-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old daughter, I am very concerned about what I see amongst young people in my community with respect to excessive consumption of alcohol. But the member for Bonner was absolutely correct when she talked about the role of local government. That is what came through in the health and hospitals forum we had for the Ipswich and West Moreton area at the University of Queensland. One thing that came through very clearly was the role that community infrastructure could play, and that is why the federal government’s commitment with respect to community infrastructure is so important. The Ipswich City Council, the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, the Scenic Rim Regional Council and the Somerset Regional Council—all in my area west of Ipswich and the Ipswich City Council—have undertaken to use that Community Infrastructure Fund in a way which helps the health and welfare of the community. For instance, to the credit of the Scenic Rim Regional Council, they have used $480,000 of that federal money for the Scenic Rim health and hydrotherapy complex. The Ipswich City Council has used that money across the whole area—from the rural parts all the way down to Springfield—for funding for parks, toilet facilities in those parks, beautification of those parks, bike trails and the like, and they have used $10 million of federal government money for the Springfield parklands, which will make a huge difference. It will be like Central Park in Ipswich. That is how much it will be used by the people of Ipswich in those rural areas. Local government has a big role to play because what it can do is enormously important. For example, there are parts of my community in Ipswich where there are great bikeways all over the place. You see people out there walking, riding their bikes, jogging, with the dog, getting active and getting healthy. They are not being Norm; they are being healthy. That is the difference local government can make. So our strategy—in terms of not just our agency strategy under this legislation but also our strategy undertaken with respect to the Community Infrastructure Program rollout—is playing an important role in helping the health and welfare of this country as well. It is partnering with local government, making an impact on people’s lives locally. I think that we can do a lot more in this country. I think we can achieve what we hope to achieve by 2020. I think we can reduce the obesity rates. I think we can reduce the excessive consumption of alcohol. I think we can stamp out the practice of so many young people consuming and taking up the vicious and wicked habit of tobacco consumption. I think we can make a big difference. I am one of those people with a belief that governments can make a difference in people’s lives. I have seen it in my personal life and I have seen it in the lives of the people who live in my community. I think this legislation is one of the most important pieces of legislation we have ever passed in this House. I think that it is going to make a huge difference in every community across the country. I am so happy that we have taken this initiative. I think it is long overdue, and it is really to the discredit of the opposition that when they occupied the treasury bench they did not have the wit or wisdom to do what we are doing now. If they had done that, how many more people would live happy and healthy lives, lives of activity, lives of sport, and lives of abundance. I commend the legislation to the House. 10663 12:50:00 D’Ath, Yvette, MP HVN Petrie ALP 1 0 Mrs D’ATH —It is my pleasure to rise to speak in support of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009. This is certainly a step forward in the Rudd government’s commitment to health and hospital reform throughout this country. It is more than just a step forward; it is a historic step. It is the first time in this country that we will have a dedicated organisation to help combat the complex challenges of preventable, chronic disease. This bill establishes the Australian National Preventative Health Agency, an agency to support the Australian Health Ministers Conference and, through the ministerial conference, the Council of Australian Governments in addressing the increasingly complex challenges associated with preventing chronic disease in our community. This agency will be established under the auspices of the National Partnership Agreement on Preventative Health, which was announced through COAG in 2008. It is through this national partnership that the government has already committed to providing $872.1 million over six years for a range of initiatives targeting the lifestyle risk factors of chronic disease. These include settings based interventions in our preschools, our schools, our workplaces and our communities to support behavioural changes in the social context of everyday lives. These will focus on poor nutrition, physical inactivity, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, including binge drinking. It will also address social marketing aimed at obesity, tobacco and enabling infrastructure to monitor and evaluate progress made by these interventions, including the Australian National Preventative Health Agency. This new agency will have a very important role in providing evidence based advice and national leadership and stewardship through data collection in order to ensure that we improve the availability and comparability of evidence. It is important that we have this national coordination in providing evidence based advice to the minister and the government as a whole as they try to tackle this issue that we face in relation to chronic disease. The agency will also support behavioural change through education or promotion and community awareness programs relating to preventative health. I will talk in more detail shortly about how important those educational and promotional activities are in the community and how important it is to lift awareness and education. This agency will also have a role in supporting and facilitating partnerships with relevant groups; and promulgating national standards and codes to guide preventative health initiatives, interventions and activities. Of the total cost of the measures enabled under this bill, $133.2 million over four years, $102 million is allocated to national-level social marketing campaigns targeting obesity and smoking. Another $13.1 million will go to a preventative health research fund. Any focus on preventative health is welcome not just at the government level but by our health professionals in our local communities. In my electorate, local GPs, physicians and allied health professionals have been calling for a national focus on preventative health and for funding commitments to reflect this focus. I am excited at the acknowledgement of the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon. Nicola Roxon, that preventative health is a policy area that the government has given the highest priority. We all know that by focusing on preventative health significant benefits can be achieved. Those savings, of course, are not limited to financial savings. By working towards a healthy nation we will help improve people’s quality of life, the quality of life of their families and their ability to productively be part of society and to relieve the burden on the social services in our communities that deal with chronic disease. As the saying goes, prevention is certainly better than the cure. This brings me to some of the more commonly known preventable chronic diseases. Prevention has been defined by the World Health Organisation as: … approaches and activities aimed at reducing the likelihood that a disease or disorder will affect an individual, interrupting or slowing the progress of the disorder or reducing disability. Early intervention and treatment can result in complete recovery, remission or a long and improved quality of life than otherwise would have occurred if preventative measures had not been taken. There are a number of common preventable chronic diseases, and some wonderful initiatives that have already been undertaken in our local communities, in our states and across the country. Diabetes is one example. In Petrie alone there are 4,791 people with type 2 diabetes. Of all of the people with diabetes in my electorate, 84.41 per cent of those people are type 2. This is above the national average. There are 1,657 people in Petrie with diabetes who need insulin. Type 2 diabetes affects 85 to 90 per cent of all people with diabetes. While it usually affects mature adults, more and more young people, even children, are getting type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease and is strongly associated with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and extra weight around the waist. Across the globe the statistics are even more daunting: every 10 seconds a person dies from a diabetes related cause, every 10 seconds two people develop diabetes, every year a further seven million people develop diabetes. Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of global death by disease. I mentioned earlier that there are some preventative measures that are already being taken by governments and organisations both nationally and globally to tackle these diseases. World Diabetes Day is celebrated worldwide and is coming up on 14 November. It involves more than 160 countries. Millions of people are engaged to take part in diabetes advocacy and awareness. This year, 2009, is the beginning of a five-year campaign to address the growing need for diabetes education and preventative programs. The campaign slogan is ‘understand diabetes, take control’. World Diabetes Day is also a major fundraiser for Diabetes Australia Queensland, and helps raise awareness about diabetes. Funds are used to educate the public about the risks associated with diabetes and to support people, families and carers living with diabetes. Diabetes associations and Diabetes Australia have established a website. I attended the launch last year. This new website allows individuals to not only gain information about what are the risks associated with diabetes and what can be done to avoid getting diabetes but also gain more education about type 2 and type 1 diabetes and what are the types of treatment. It also provides an amazing tool for individuals who have diabetes, where they can put in their local suburb or postcode and it will come up with a map, a bit like a Google map, which identifies medical providers and pharmacists in the area who provide the equipment that they need. This is a great new tool to help people manage their condition. Prevention is not just about stopping the disease occurring in the first place; once someone has the disease, it is about managing the disease in a better way so that those people have a better quality of life overall. Heart disease is another chronic disease that is preventable, yet many Australians are still quite ignorant about the risks that they face. Cardiovascular disease is heart, stroke and blood vessel disease. It kills one Australian nearly every 10 minutes. It affects more than 3.7 million Australians. It prevents 1.4 million people from living a full life because of disability caused by the disease. Cardiovascular disease affects one in five Australians and affects two out of three families. It has claimed the lives of almost 46,000 Australians—34 per cent of all deaths in 2006—despite the disease being largely preventable. Females are particularly at risk of this disease and I think we are quite ignorant of that fact. Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to continue my remarks at a later stage. Leave granted. Debate adjourned. 10665 13:01:00 Main Committee adjourned at 1.01 pm 10666 Questions in Writing 10666 10666 958 10666 Southcott, Dr Andrew, MP TK6 Boothby LP 0 Dr Southcott asked the Treasurer, in writing, on 20 August 2009: In respect of Chart 17 on pages 2-33 of Budget Paper No. 1 for 2009-10: Which of the Government’s fiscal stimulus packages were included as part of this chart’s assumptions. By quarter from December 2008 to June 2012, what sum of money was spent or will be spent by the Australian Government in the (a) Economic Stimulus Strategy, (b) Council of Australian Governments reform package, (c) Nation Building package, and (d) Nation Building and Jobs Plan. 10666 Swan, Wayne, MP 2V5 Lilley ALP Treasurer 1 Mr Swan —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Dr Southcott is referred to the note under Chart 5 on page 2-17 of Budget paper No. 1 for 2009-10. Treasury’s submission to the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into the Government’s economic stimulus initiatives (dated 2 October 2009) outlines the size, composition and scheduled roll-out of the Government’s fiscal stimulus packages. Details of the individual measures within these packages were published as follows: Economic Stimulus Strategy: Table A4 on page 138-139 of the 2008-09 Mid‑Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (November 2008); Council of Australian Governments reform package: Table 2 (Appendix A) on page 49‑56 of the Updated Economic and Fiscal Outlook (February 2009); Nation Building package: Table 2 (Appendix A) on page 49-56 of the Updated Economic and Fiscal Outlook (February 2009); and Nation Building and Jobs Plan: Table 2.1 on page 17, and Table 2 (Appendix A) on page 49-56, of the Updated Economic and Fiscal Outlook (February 2009). Both the Coordinator-General’s first progress report on the Nation Building – Economic Stimulus Plan (released on 27 August 2009) and Treasury’s submission to the Senate Economics Committee outline actual payments to date under the cash payment and COAG elements of the stimulus packages. As noted in the submission, queries regarding the implementation of the investment components of the Nation Building package and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan should be directed to the Commonwealth Coordinator‑General, who has responsibility for these components. 10666 10666 965 10666 Ciobo, Steven, MP 00AN0 Moncrieff LP 0 Mr Ciobo asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 7 September 2009: In respect of the Centrelink office at Nerang, Queensland What funds were appropriated to this office for the 2008-09 financial year. What funds have been appropriated to this office (a) for the 2009-10 financial year, and (b) over the forward estimates years. How many staff were employed at this office as at 7 September 2009, how many of these were employed on a full-time basis, and what is the total budgeted funding for salaries and wages of staff in the 2009-10 financial year. How many (a) clients were seen, and (b) counter enquiries were made, at this office between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009. 10667 Bowen, Chris, MP DZS Prospect ALP Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law and Minister for Human Services 1 Mr Bowen —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Funding for Centrelink Customer Service Centres in the northern Gold Coast region (Biggera Waters, Nerang and Southport) is not appropriated to individual offices. As customers in this region use one or more of these offices regularly, resource management in the region is managed centrally to ensure maximum flexibility to meet fluctuating demand. Funds were not appropriated specifically to the Nerang office for the 2008-09 financial year and can not be disaggregated. Customers in the northern Gold Coast region attend the office most convenient to their work, study, employer provider and/or home. As noted in question 1, funding for 2009-10 and the future financial years, specific funding for Nerang is not fixed. Funding for future years, including 2009-10 and over forward estimate years, will be subject to customer demand and changes to service delivery. Funding will continue to be allocated to the northern Gold Coast cluster of offices, as a whole, to ensure that the Biggera Waters, Southport and Nerang Customer Service Offices are able to respond effectively to changing customer demographics and demands. On 7 September 2009, 31 employees worked at Nerang Customer Service Centre, of whom 22 were employed on a full time basis. The total budgeted funding for salaries and wages for staff for the 2009-10 financial year cannot be provided specific to Nerang, as noted above. Centrelink is unable to answer this question completely as it does not currently capture the total number of customers who attend a Customer Service Centre. Centrelink is able to advise that there were approximately 192,000 instances where customers reported income or were recorded at a reception point in Nerang in 2008-09. Of these, 66,999 were instances of customers reporting income at Nerang and 124,979 were recorded reception contacts. Data on reception contacts does not include situations where a customer’s record was not accessed and may not include situations where the customer was seen by a Customer Liaison Officer prior to reaching a reception point. 10667 10667 1012 10667 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP 0 Ms Julie Bishop asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in writing, on 15 September 2009: Can he indicate the most recent advice the Government has received regarding potential legal action against Japan regarding its whaling program. Can he confirm the point at which the Government may view that its diplomatic efforts have not succeeded, and that legal action may be required to stop Japan’s whaling program. 10667 Smith, Stephen, MP 5V5 Perth ALP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 Mr Stephen Smith —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: It has been the practice of successive governments not to provide information on the content of legal advice given to the Government. The Government is continually reviewing progress with respect to resolving Japan’s special permit (so-called ‘scientific’) whaling and will make a decision in due course on the success or otherwise of diplomatic efforts. 10668 10668 1014 10668 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP 0 Ms Julie Bishop asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in writing, on 15 September 2009: Has he received any advice on the Foreign Investment Review Board’s (FIRB’s) decision in relation to the China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Group becoming a majority shareholder of the Lynas Corporation; if so, can he indicate what this advice was and from whom it was received. Has he provided an opinion or advice on the FIRB’s decision in relation to the China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Group becoming a majority shareholder of the Lynas Corporation; if so, can he indicate what it was. Has any consideration been given to the fact that China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Group is the largest foreign investor in Burma. Are the track records of corporate responsibility by foreign companies seeking to invest in Australia taken into account; if so, in what ways. Is an application by a company like China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Group, a state-owned enterprise directly under the administration of the Chinese Government, treated differently in a foreign investment application; if so, in what ways. 10668 Smith, Stephen, MP 5V5 Perth ALP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 Mr Stephen Smith —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: I have been advised that the China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Group has decided to terminate its proposal to become the majority shareholder of Lynas Corporation. Questions regarding foreign investment applications should be directed to the Treasurer. Treasury consults with my Department as part of its consultations with relevant Commonwealth, State and Territory agencies on foreign investment proposals. These consultations are to identify any potential national interest issues arising from foreign investment proposals allowing Treasury to provide whole of government advice to the Treasurer. The Government is aware that the China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Group has investments in Burma. The assessment of potential foreign investments, including from foreign government entities, involves consideration of any matters that are relevant to Australia’s national interest, which can include corporate conduct and business standards. The Government has clearly stated that it welcomes foreign investment across all sectors, so long as it is not contrary to Australia’s national interest. Australia’s foreign investment regime is non-discriminatory and Chinese investors are treated the same way as other investors. 10668 10668 1018 10668 Morrison, Scott, MP E3L Cook LP 0 Mr Morrison asked the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, in writing, on 15 September 2009: In respect of the National Partnership Agreement (NPA) to Deliver a Seamless Economy, and the associated implementation plan: What benefits will the reforms made under this NPA deliver on housing affordability. What proportion of the $550 million of funding for this NPA will be allocated to the deregulation priorities of (a) environmental assessment and approvals processes, (b) development assessment processes, (c) the National Construction Code, and (d) the National Electronic Conveyancing System. By what date are the State and Territory governments expected to provide their first progress report under this NPA. Will the reports provided to the Council of Australian Governments Reform Council from each State and Territory government be made available to the public; if so, when, if not, why not. Have all overdue milestones set out in the implementation plan relating to (a) environmental assessment and approvals processes, (b) development assessment processes, (c) the National Construction Code, and (d) the National Electronic Conveyancing System, been achieved; if not, why not. 10669 Tanner, Lindsay, MP YU5 Melbourne ALP Minister for Finance and Deregulation 1 Mr Tanner —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Four reforms in the National Partnership Agreement to Deliver a Seamless National Economy (NP) are directly relevant to reducing business costs and compliance burdens in the building and construction sector, including the housing sector. These are: development assessment, to deliver improved development assessment processes to provide greater certainty and efficiency in the development and construction sector; a National Construction Code, to enable a nationally-consistent approach to on-site building and plumbing regulation; a national electronic conveyancing system, to deliver a single electronic system for completing real property transactions and lodging land title dealings for registration in Australia; and licences of tradespeople, to establish a national trade licensing system. The NP provides up to $550 million in Commonwealth funding to States and Territories over five years in order to facilitate and reward the delivery of 27 priority deregulation reforms. Available funding has not been allocated to the completion of individual reforms. All jurisdictions were required to provide their first progress report under the NP to the COAG Reform Council (the Council) by 30 September 2009. A decision is yet to be made on whether the Council’s report will be made public. The Council has yet to complete its report to the Prime Minister in relation to progress against milestones as set out in the NP implementation plan. 10669 10669 1023 10669 Robb, Andrew, MP FU4 Goldstein LP 0 Mr Robb asked the Treasurer (Swan), in writing, on 15 September 2009: Have the Heads of Treasuries for the States and Territories reported to the Ministerial Council for Federal Financial Relations concerning the expenditure and output benchmarks for additional Commonwealth funding; if so, (a) to what extent have the benchmarks reported at B3 of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Agreement of 5 February 2009 been met by each State and Territory, and (b) how has the Ministerial Council made the assessment that the benchmarks have been met; if not, to what extent has the Commonwealth imposed sanctions under B8 of the COAG Agreement of 5 February 2009. 10669 Swan, Wayne, MP 2V5 Lilley ALP Treasurer 1 Mr Swan —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: No, the Heads of Treasuries have not yet reported to the Ministerial Council for Federal Financial Relations on the benchmarks for sectors to receive additional Commonwealth funding. 10670 10670 1029 10670 Oakeshott, Rob, MP IYS Lyne IND 0 Mr Oakeshott asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 17 September 2009: By what date will he respond to letters from Mr Wes Watson of Port Macquarie, NSW, dated 19 February, 13 April, 27 June, and 7 August 2009, about Centrelink services in the Laurieton region. 10670 Bowen, Chris, MP DZS Prospect ALP Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law and Minister for Human Services 1 Mr Bowen —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Centrelink received two letters from Mr Oakeshott MP, on 19 February 2009 and 27 June 2009, in regard to Centrelink services in the Laurieton region. A response was sent to Mr Oakeshott MP on 12 August 2009. 10670 10670 1034 10670 Forrest, John, MP NV5 Mallee NATS 0 Mr Forrest asked the Minister for Resources and Energy, in writing, on 17 September 2009: In respect of the Solar Power Station to be constructed near Mildura in the electoral division of Mallee, currently in voluntary administration— What is its status. Can he provide the security status of the (a) $75 million grant provided by the former Coalition Government, and (b) $50 million grant offered by the Victorian Government. Is the future of this project secure. 10670 Ferguson, Martin, MP LS4 Batman ALP Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism 1 Mr Martin Ferguson —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The project is to build a 154MW heliostat concentrator photovoltaic (HCPV) power station project in Victoria in three stages. The first stage involves the construction of a repeatable HCPV unit at Bridgewater with a 2 MW pre-production prototype to be constructed at Mildura; stage 2 involves the construction of a further 100MW at Mildura; and stage 3 involves the addition of a final 52MW at the Mildura site. On 7 September 2009, Solar Systems Pty Ltd placed itself into voluntary administration by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). PwC is assessing Solar Systems’ financial situation and is seeking a buyer for the business. The Administrators have until 7 December 2009 to put forward recommendations to the creditors on the business going forward. The first part of stage one, the development of a repeatable HCPV unit at Bridgewater has commenced. Stages two and three have not commenced. The current status of government grants is: The previous Government committed $75 million under the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund (LETDF) to Solar Systems Pty Ltd to construct stage two, the 100MW stage at Mildura. LETDF funding is strictly tied to achievement of project milestones, none of which have yet been met; therefore no money has been paid. The previous Government also committed $4.5 million under the Asia Pacific Partnerships Program (APP) for stage one. Of this, $2.62 million has been paid through the APP following the successful completion of project milestones for stage one. The Victorian Government also committed $50 million under its Energy Technology Innovation Strategy Large Scale Demonstration Program to the project. Of this, $0.375 million has been paid by the Victorian Government following the successful completion of project milestones for stage one. It is too early to make an assessment about the future of the Mildura Project at this stage and the Administrator must be given time to explore all options regarding Solar Systems.