Mr MURPHY ( Reid ) ( 1 0 : 05 ): Today I have presented 10 petitions that the Petitions Committee has found to comply with the standing orders. I want to repeat a remark that I make from time to time. The committee may or may not agree with the contents of a petition but its role is not to decide whether a petition is acceptable for tabling on the basis of the members ' personal beliefs; rather, the Petitions Committee ' s role is to consider whether a petition complies with the rules of the House in terms of its form, content and language. If it complies, the committee will authorise its presentation. This approach reflects the historic nature of petitions, the committee ' s role as a conduit between the people and the House, and the House ' s respect for freedom of speech.

I would also like to point out that, in addition to House standing orders which govern petitioning, the Petitions Committee—and indeed all proceedings of parliament—are also guided by broader foundations of parliamentary practice. These foundations lay down some fundamental expectations of all who participate in the work of the parliament. This is something that petitioners need to consider when preparing petitions.

The right of petitioning the Crown and parliament is not a modern activity; it has existed in the Westminster system since the 13th century. Petitions are essentially requests by citizens or residents for action by the House of Representatives. Petitions set out the issue that gives rise to the petition and then make a request of the House. For example, petitions may ask the House to: introduce legislation or appeal or change existing legislation; take action for a certain purpose for the benefit of particular persons; or redress a personal grievance, such as correction of an administrative error.

Back in the days of King Edward I, the petitioning process was primarily used to redress personal grievances. Over the centuries, the basis of petitioning has evolved and developed such that petitioning now focuses less on individual grievances and more on issues affecting the collective. One of the reasons for this change is that there are now many other avenues for individuals to pursue the resolution of a personal grievance—for example, through approaching their local member of parliament.

Agencies today that may also be relevant for Commonwealth matters include the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman and bodies such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The petitioning process is therefore not usually the first port of call for petitioners to seek a resolution or a solution to personal grievances, given that other often more specialised avenues exist to raise these matters. Engaging in the petitioning process, like any engagement an individual or a group of individuals undertakes with the parliament, should be undertaken in a considered and respectful manner.

Finally, petitions are a powerful tool for the general public to air their views or issues with the possibility of influencing policy or causing action to be taken. Even if no action results immediately, one of the most valuable results of the process is that members and the government of the day are informed in a formal and public manner of the views of certain citizens on a given matter. Parallel to this ability is the expectation that petitioners will treat the process with care and respect, ensuring that petitions comply with the letter and spirit of the requirements of the House.

Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (10:20): In presenting this bill to the House I commend and congratulate the senator from South Australia who is often referred to as the farmers friend and the voice of the village. In this case, the village is paying twice what they should be paying for their fruit and vegetables in Australia and the farmer is getting half. In other words, the people in the middle are arguably getting 400 per cent more than they should be getting. Let me be very specific. These figures were compiled by Senator Xenophon and his staff. They were not very hard to compile because the markets give you a market quotation for the value of an orange every day in the markets. So anyone can find out what the farmer is getting paid. And of course you can find out what the consumers pay by simply walking into the supermarket. So it is not very profoundly hard to get these figures. It was profoundly hard for the ACCC—those people who assure us of no competition. Let me quote figures—and these are just ordinary, everyday fruit and vegetable items: apples—the supermarket pays the farmer $2 and charges the consumer $5.98; oranges—18c a kilogram to the farmer, $1.98 to the consumer; potatoes—35c to the farmer, $2.98 to the consumer; broccoli—$1 to the farmer, $1.92 to the consumer; and cabbages—55c to the farmer, $2.38 to the consumer. That is 199 per cent on the first item; 1,000 per cent on the second item; 751 per cent on the third item; 92 per cent on the fourth item; and 333 per cent on the fifth item.

How long is this parliament going to continue to accept the oligopolistic pricing regime in the supermarkets of Australia? I have said continuously in this place, wasting my breath, because no-one here seems to care: within three years, Australia will be a net importer of food. Every four days—I have not seen the latest figures, but two or three years ago these figures were from a comprehensive report—a farmer commits suicide in Australia.

Seven years ago we became a net importer of pork, thanks to the decisions taken by the LNP in this House. Four years ago we became a net importer of fruit and vegetables—the items I am talking about here. We cannot feed ourselves in fruit and vegetables. Two years ago we became a net importer of seafood. The projections for this year are that 72 per cent of our seafood will be bought into this country, so we cannot feed ourselves in seafood. So it is not remarkable for those who have been following this story to know that within three years we will be a net importer of food.

The Fin Review already claims that we are now a net importer of food. I can use different statistics which might push it out to nine years, but there is not the slightest doubt in any set of statistics you want to use that this country will not be able to feed itself within three years. Who is to blame? We have come into this place and said again and again that we are asked to meet conditions of health and hygiene in our production, which are not remotely being met.

Let me take the case of prawns. Our prawns have to be grown in absolutely pristine water. It has to be regulated on its way in so that it is pure and free of bacteria, but then it has to be regulated on its way out, pure and free of bacteria. All water contains some bacteria. The impositions upon this industry have simply closed it down. I am the minister given the credit for starting this industry off, for which I deserve no credit. It was the six entrepreneurs: Wahedy, Coco, Sciacca and the very famous Irwin Vidor. They are the people that deserve the credit and, probably most of all, Jimmy Ryall and Dr Joe Baker from the Institute of Marine Science that commenced this industry.

We started off with great hopes. We felt that we would overtake Thailand in prawn production by the year 2000—this was about the mid- to late eighties. We reckoned that over the next 15 years we would catch up to Thailand. Thailand was on $2,000 million a year of production, and we forged ahead. We went up to, I think, $65 or $85 million—some figure like that—within a few short years. Starting from scratch, we went zoom and were on course to catch them. After the environmentalists had finished with us, we are now down to $24 million, and I think that very shortly we will have no production at all. That would be my prediction.

Let's have a look at the prawns that are coming in. Those are the impositions that are placed upon the Australian industry. You have to have twice the number of ponds plus there is twice the amount of water because you have got to put clean water back into the ocean. I said, 'What contaminant is there?' They said, 'The prawns do their business in the water.' 'Do they have toilets out in the ocean for the prawns?' They said, 'Concentration' and I said, 'Good. I was waiting, Mr Environmentalist, for you to say that because we have fought again and again to have the sewerage outfall into the oceans stopped.' They said, 'Oh no. It dissipates.' You could write a treatise on this, couldn't you? Human waste dissipates but prawn waste concentrates.

It just demonstrates that these people are completely out of control. They are dangerous and they are evil. The environmentalist movement in Australia has moved from being a great asset to this country to a cancer. Here is their handiwork. Let's go back to Thailand. Australia has gone down from $65 million to $25 million; Thailand has gone up to over $8,000 million. All of our agricultural exports in Australia—200 items—only amount to $28,000 million. Thailand has got $8,000 million in a single industry. Their sugar industry is now rivalling ours—it might even be bigger than ours now. These are two industries. They are forging ahead of us. We will run out of coal, we will run out of iron ore and, when we do, this country will be bankrupt. I want to put on the record that I said this in the year of our Lord 2011. I pleaded with this parliament to wake up to itself. You have destroyed agriculture in this country and are destroying it whilst I speak.

Everyone knows the Americans are whingeing, crying, screaming and howling over Walmart. Walmart and its nearest competitor, the big two in America, have 23 per cent of the market. Depending on what set of figures you want to use in Australia, between 88 per cent and 92 per cent of the Australian market is held by the big two. There is no country on earth that would allow two players to dominate the market. They would not allow it on any items at all, but of all items they would not allow it on those—the anti-trust legislation would have smashed them long ago in the United States. Similarly, that would happen in Britain, France, Germany, Japan or any country you want a name. But not here in Australia, where we suffer the power of the great corporations.

I did the figures some years ago on milk, when this parliament decided that it would facilitate the deregulation of the dairy industry. Here is the letter from Dairy Farmers to farmers in my electorate. On the day of deregulation the price for milk was 59c; the day after it was 42c. (Time expired)

Bill read a first time.

The SPEAKER: In accordance with standing order 41, the second reading will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (10:31): If I go into a hotel or public place and people do not know who I am, I try desperately to avoid admitting that I am a politician. When I was a young man, politicians had great respect, and they deserved that respect. They had fought great battles for us. We had worked for nothing and we had died down the mines in horrific accidents or of the terrible 'miners-titis'. One in 31 of us, in fact, died down the mines or from what we encountered down there. The politicians in the Labor Party fought the great fight and changed all of that for us. Those men were heroes. If you read my history of Australia you will see them as great heroes—the likes of Ted Theodore and the other great Labor leaders before the Second World War. Curtin and Chifley were prominent amongst those before and, to some extent, even after the war. We praise greatly those men.

After the war, my family became members of the then Country Party, which fought great battles for us and secured statutory marketing. When Jack McEwen left this parliament, he said: 'I can stand up here and proudly say that, as I leave this place, every single rural industry is protected by marketing arrangements.' That was true even in beef. Under the beef agreements with Japan and Great Britain, we had a very highly protected situation. McEwen said: 'It delivers to our farming sector not a great wealth but a solid prosperity.' What a great statement to make. What a great man. That was why people admired, respected and looked up to politicians.

Now, today, we are pariahs. Of the top 30 professions in Australia, I think we rank second last. In those days we were in the top three or four. Why have we moved down? Does anyone care that thousands of jobs vanished overseas in the last few weeks with the announcements by Qantas and BlueScope or that a whole apple industry is being exported offshore? Does anyone care? Is anyone going to raise those issues in here? Not likely. Does anyone care that a farmer commits suicide every four days in this country? Not likely. I have not heard anyone, except me, ever refer to it in this place. And I do not want to mention it anymore because I think I have blunted the edge that a statistic such as that should have for the conscience of every person in this place.

Either Jack McEwen, the policies of the Country Party and that great man Doug Anthony, who introduced the wool scheme, stunk or the current policies of the LNP and the ALP stink. I know which side of the fence I fall on. There is no doubt about that. And the poor old apple growers got theirs last month.

The horticultural code of conduct is very interesting. Three or four elections ago the then leader of the LNP announced—and I am on record as praising him for it—that he was going to give us a mandatory code of conduct. The essence of this is twofold. Firstly, the farmer does not know what his produce is sold for. He sits up there in Mareeba or down on the Murray River or in Renmark in South Australia and has no idea. He sends his produce to market. He is out there picking the grapes, the oranges, the mangoes, the bananas or whatever; he does not have time to be sitting down in the markets every day watching what his produce, which goes to market on a daily basis, is being sold for. So he does not know what he should get paid. A lot of farmers are very nice and very trusting people—foolishly trusting people, in my opinion. They do not know what their product is sold for, so, quite frankly, an agent can tell them anything. He could sell mangoes for $40 a box and tell the farmer he sold them for $20 a box. There is no protection whatsoever.

In the real estate industry there is a trust fund. In the legal industry there is a trust fund. In the insurance industry there is a trust fund. In every industry there is a trust fund to protect the person selling. But there is no trust fund in this industry. Why?

The other issue is the supermarket giants: Woolworth and Coles. Again, we do not know what they pay for produce. There is a little game that is played here—and I speak with authority about it because I own a small mango farm, so I know. The game is as follows. Every farmer, for reasons we do not fully understand, will get a turn at being the first farmer off, so he will get spectacular prices—he will get $45 a box or whatever it is—for mangoes, which they will be pulling next month. But then, as all the other farmers start to come on, the price will tumble back down to $12 or $15 a box. The Woolworths or Coles manager has bought mangoes at $45 and thinks: 'Heavens! I'm going to lose my job here.' So he has a look at those mangoes and finds out that they are speckled and says, 'Jeez—we took these on consignment.' The truth is that he did not take them on consignment; he bought them. But there is no proof. So the trust fund is the first arm of this legislation; the second is a sales docket.

I hope the Prime Minister will not mind my quoting her here. When I was talking to her about my 20-point wish list for the Prime Minister, she said: 'Bob, you can't be serious. Are you telling me seriously that they will not give a sales docket?' She could not believe it, and I think most Australians and most people in this House who are not familiar with fruit and vegetables would also find it hard to believe. For everything you buy, from a hamburger to a banana to a motor car or a house, there is a sales docket—there is evidence of sale. The only group of people who are not allowed to have a sales docket are the farmers of Australia—and they are suffering greatly as a result, to the eternal shame of the LNP, who promised that sales docket in the election.

I do not have time to read out the quote from the then leader of the National Party, but I will say that Peter McGauran—a man of some integrity—went to the point of losing his portfolio because he thought, 'We cannot promise before an election something as important as this and then betray the farmers after the election.' So the honourable member from Toowoomba, who is not bound by such requirements, was put in charge of the legislation, and Mr McGauran risked his ministry. The end result of all this was that the promise was flagrantly broken, that the farmers were treated with absolute contempt and that the interests of the big corporations, whether they be agents or Coles and Woolworths and so on, were looked by the LNP in this place. Those are the sad facts of life. We have had three years since, and we have failed to get out of the ALP either. Why wouldn't you give the farmer evidence of sale? Every other sale that takes place in the world and in this country gets it, but all the poor old farmer gets is the rough end of the pineapple.

If you are genuine—if you are fair dinkum—then you will vote for this bill. But, if you do not, do not have the hypocrisy to go back to your electorate and tell them that you did. I am sending out a letter to every single newspaper in the electorate of every single country member in this place and saying: 'That's what we asked for; your member of parliament wouldn't even give you a sales docket—throw them out. But, if they vote for this, then you congratulate them and thank them.' So there is the choice, and it will be put in on the front page—if I get my way—of every country newspaper in Australia. (Time Expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): I remind the member for Kennedy to speak in future through the chair, not at the chair. He was in full flight, so I did not interrupt him, but I remind him now that in future I will interrupt him if he refers to the chair as 'you'.

Mr Katter: Greatly appreciated, your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Debate adjourned.

Mr WILKIE (Denison) (10:42): The Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Community Consultation) Bill 2011 would change the Telecommunications Act 1997 to allow for greater input from local communities about telecommunications developments—in particular, about mobile phone base stations proposed to be developed in their areas. This bill would make several important changes to the Telecommunications Act.

For a start, it would expand the number of people who would require notification when a telecommunications tower was proposed to be built or substantially modified. At the moment, only the owner or occupier of the land on which the new tower will be built must be notified, meaning that owners and occupiers of land immediately adjacent to a major development may not even know about the development until construction commences. There is a belief in the community that it is currently a requirement that everyone within 100 metres of the new tower be notified; but this is not enshrined in law and is often ignored. This bill would provide certainty about that and stipulate notification of those within a more sensible distance of 500 metres from a new tower.

The bill would also extend the amount of time for owners or occupiers of affected land to respond. The act currently gives them just 10 business days to respond after being notified—a hard task for local landholders and an even harder task for councils, which often have to consult subcommittees or public meetings. The bill would give them a much fairer 30 business days to respond after being notified. Moreover, the bill would restrict the types of developments which can be declared under legislative instruments—in particular the low-impact determination which allows new developments to avoid scrutiny under state or local planning laws.

I understand the necessity for some projects to be classified as low impact and therefore regulated federally; but there have been numerous cases where it has been clear that low-impact telecommunications facilities will actually have a very high impact on local communities and that they therefore deserve further scrutiny. To that end, this bill declares that no new telecommunications tower may be categorised as low impact and that, for an extension to a tower to be declared low impact, it must not extend the height of the tower by more than one metre.

The bill would also remove the ability of telecommunications carriers to extend the size and capacity of towers under the guise of routine maintenance. Currently the size of antennae extending from the top of the tower is not included in official measurements of the dimensions of towers and this allows carriers to extend antennae often by metres without any scrutiny whatsoever. In other words, this bill would remove the ability of carriers to extend potentially highly visible and disturbing antennae without scrutiny and includes any antennae extended from the top of a tower into the official measurements of that tower.

There is also a belief in the community that high-impact telecommunications tower developments will always be subject to state and local government approval, but in fact the current legislation allows the Australian Communications and Media Authority to issue facility installation permits to allow carriers to install high-impact facilities which have not been granted planning approval by state or local planning authorities. This bill would ensure that such permits are only issued in genuinely extraordinary circumstances. Moreover, under the current legislation, to grant a facility installation permit ACMA must decide, among other things, that the proposed facility is an important part of a nationally significant telecommunications network, but this bill would disallow ACMA from considering specifically the commercial interests of carriers when making this decision. Additionally, current legislation does not require ACMA to consider community sensitive sites properly when deciding whether or not to grant a facility installation permit to a proposed facility near a community sensitive site. Currently ACMA must only be satisfied that other less sensitive sites have been considered. Quite simply, this bill would raise that standard making it fairer to communities. Now ACMA would have to be satisfied that all alternative, less sensitive sites are unfeasible, and in any case the authority could not grant a permit within 100 metres of a community sensitive site, such as a school or local landmark.

This bill would also make it fairer for communities wishing to appeal a facility installation permit being granted. Under the current act, only carriers may lodge an appeal with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, but this bill would expand that right to local communities, thereby ensuring that communities and carriers are on a level playing field when disputes arise. The bill would also address the criteria whereby ACMA must notify the public about new developments. Under the current framework, ACMA must take its advice from industry representative bodies when deciding who to inform about new developments, but this bill would repeal that requirement and instead mandate that ACMA must consider the potential impact of the proposed development on the local community which will live with it every day.

If these changes seem basic, it is because they are. I understand that there must be a fundamental balance in this debate between the public interest in having fast and reliable mobile communications on the one hand and the public interest in not having inappropriate and hastily planned developments springing up all around our communities on the other. For too long this balance has been skewed in favour of telecommunications companies, who under the current legislation have carte blanche to place new telecommunications facilities essentially wherever they please. Communities are finding themselves in a position where they have no place to turn. The simple fact that the current act restricts the ability to lodge an appeal with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to carriers who have had permits disallowed suggests something is wrong with the level of community consultation in our telecommunications laws.

A case in point is Optus's proposal to build a tower on top of my local Woolworths in Sandy Bay. Originally it was declared by the carrier to be a low-impact facility, even though it would literally tower over a heritage neighbourhood and be an eyesore from nearby historic Battery Point. Yes, community pressure seems to have forced Optus to recategorise the development as high impact, and now the Hobart City Council is considering the proposal, but the community should have been spared the heartache in the first place and there still is no certainty that ACMA will not just ride in at the eleventh hour and issue a permit regardless of the council's determination. Congratulations and thankyou to Anthea Hopkins for leading the community revolt against this inappropriate development. This example is just one of the many reasons I am very pleased to present this bill to the House.

For too long communities have been unable to have a say in where in new towers spring up in their area. The playing field has been skewed towards the commercial self-interest of the telecommunications companies. I have had people from all around the country call my office complaining about the sense of hopelessness they feel when they are informed—if, indeed, they are informed at all—that a significant development will happen right next to their house and that there is next to nothing they can do about it. Some communities have fought these developments and some of them have been successful, but many more have failed, though not through want of time and effort. The consistent message I get from those who have succeeded is: it should not be this difficult. I agree with those communities: it should not require public protest; it should not require lobbying politicians and courting media to get some kind of say about a development happening in your own backyard. I propose that this bill, the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Community Consultation) Bill 2011, strikes the correct balance between developing our mobile telecommunications into the future and giving our communities real input into how we should do it. I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): In accordance with standing order 41, the second reading will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (10:51): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Day after day, week after week and year after year in our homes, our workplaces, our towns and our farms, firefighters put their lives and their safety on the line for us. The risk that faces a firefighter when they walk into a building, a structure or a home that is burning, or when they walk into a bushfire the likes of which we saw in Victoria on Black Saturday recently, is very obvious. But what is often less well known is that one of the greatest risks to a firefighter's health and their life comes not from those few moments, minutes or hours when they are fighting a fire but from what happens to them afterwards. That is because in an average home there are around 70,000 synthetic chemicals, and when they burn they produce a toxic cocktail of chemical smoke, with many compounds that we have not even properly identified the health consequences of yet. At the same time as everyone else is fleeing to get out of there, the firefighters put themselves right in the midst of that smoke.

In many parts of Australia we have some of the world's best protective equipment, breathing apparatus and turnout gear that the firefighters wear. But, because they are in an environment where their heart rate is up and they are working hard, of course the material has to be able to breathe—otherwise the firefighter would expire; they would suffocate. In the same way that it lets their body heat out, it lets that toxic chemical smoke in. When it does that, it comes at enormous, almost unpreventable risk to the firefighter.

What we know is that firefighters start in their career, as you would expect, about 20 per cent healthier than the average member of the population. But within five years, studies have shown, they can be almost twice as likely as the average person to contract leukaemia, and the risk of testicular cancer and other forms of cancer is much, much higher than that. It is for that reason that elsewhere around the world governments of conservative and progressive persuasions—in seven out of 10 provinces in Canada and many states in the United States of America—have changed the law so that firefighters who suffer those sorts of cancers are much more easily able to access compensation for themselves and their families.

The reason that is important is that at the moment, when a firefighter goes and seeks compensation for a work related injury for that kind of cancer, they get asked: 'Can you tell us at which specific fire you contracted that cancer?' Of course that is impossible. So many of them are right now suffering and many have died unable to access proper compensation. What the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Fair Protection for Firefighters) Bill 2011 will do is reverse the onus of proof so that for certain kinds of cancers where there is strong medical evidence in support it would be presumed that that cancer is work related unless it can be proved otherwise. This will make a world of difference to the people who protect us.

I introduced this bill at the beginning of July, and since then the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee has spent the intervening time inquiring into the provisions. I am extremely pleased to note that the report, which the Senate received only on Thursday, has as its main recommendation 'that the bill be passed'. In fact it makes four recommendations, each of which will improve and expand the scope of this bill.

If one wanted any reminder about why this was necessary, just think about the fire that we had here in Canberra on Friday. At the same time as police were going around evacuating people from the site and preventing them from attending, firefighters were going the other way, right into the middle of a toxic cocktail of chemicals. That is what they do every day. It is not just chemical factories, as I said, that pose a risk to firefighters; it is what is in every ordinary household.

I would like to close by quoting the Senate committee inquiry report:

The committee recognises that when a person spends their professional career inhaling and absorbing known—and probably some as yet unknown—carcinogens in the course of public service, it is the moral duty of the community to enable them to seek compensation should they fall ill as a consequence.

That is what we here in this House have the power to do and it is what we should do. I am extraordinarily pleased that, as is the case in other parts of the world, this is proceeding with cross-party support. I commend the bill.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): Is the motion seconded?

Mr Katter: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Ms VAMVAKINOU (Calwell) (10:56): I rise also to speak on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Fair Protection for Firefighters) Bill 2011, which was first introduced into the House in early July. I, the member for Melbourne and the member for McMillan jointly sponsored this bill to amend the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act, or what is known as the Comcare legislation. I want to thank the members for their contribution to this very important issue and for the constructive way in which this bill is presented before the House today. I felt compelled to raise the issue of fair protection for firefighters in an adjournment debate after meeting with a delegation from the United Firefighters Union of Australia who came to Canberra to raise awareness about the life-threatening aspects of their profession and to speak to us about the occupational health and safety concerns of those involved in the firefighting profession.

Since the bill's introduction, the Senate Standing Committees on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has held an inquiry that looked into the fair protection for firefighters bill and the case for presumptive legislation. The multiparty committee received many submissions and witness statements from individuals and organisations and, having conducted site visits—which included one to Tullamarine Airport in my own electorate to view a demonstration by aviation firefighters—tabled its report last Thursday in the Senate. In thanking the member for Melbourne and the member for McMillan, I would also like to thank the work of the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, chaired by Senator Gavin Marshall. I welcome the committee's report and its endorsement by members of the committee. This has been a comprehensive investigation and it is now this parliament's job to consider the findings of this investigation.

The Senate committee's report identifies key findings and recommendations guided by the facts, as is the case in the United States and Canada when it comes to fair protection for firefighters. In both those countries presumptive legislation already exists, and it is time for this parliament to enact similar legislation. Key findings of the Senate report reaffirm the original purpose of this bill, which is to provide for a rebuttable presumption for firefighters to access assistance and compensation if they are diagnosed with listed life-threatening diseases after the qualifying period of service. There are 14 listed types of cancers, and it is about recognising where, when a firefighter contracts one of these cancers, the burden of proof should sit, with appropriate safeguards in place.

The Senate report also affirms the fact that there is compelling scientific evidence demonstrating that cancer is an occupational disease for firefighters. We now know that firefighters are indeed at a greater risk of contracting some cancers because they are exposed to toxins and carcinogens in the course of the firefighting profession. The report also found that firefighters can never be fully protected from the hazard of absorbing toxins and carcinogens as the firefighting protective clothing must be able to breathe; otherwise, the firefighter would perish from metabolic heat build-up. It also found that the current legislation is an inadequate mechanism to achieve the objective of providing assistance and compensation for work related illness for firefighters.

The fact is that there is scientific evidence; there is a non-exhaustive list of occupational cancers directly associated with the firefighting profession. There is also evidence of the positive benefits that have resulted from legislation similar to that before us in North America, where there is not only an increased awareness of cancer among firefighters but also a more proactive approach to the health and wellbeing of firefighters, earlier detection of cancer and therefore a better chance of treatment and survival. That has a positive impact for recruitment and retention in fire services. We should note these facts and be guided by them. Concerns about the possible flow-on effects, notions of a flood of claims and costs associated with similar presumptive legislation in Canada and the Unites States, are entirely negligible, as the Senate report has identified.

If ever there was proof of the courageous and essential work that our firefighters do it was, as the member for Melbourne said, here in Canberra last week, when our firefighters had to battle a huge chemical blaze as a result of a toxic explosion. That is an example of the hazardous nature of this job. And it is not only the big toxic fires that risk firefighters' health but everyday household fires, with which the risks increase with the length of service.

It is important, therefore, that this parliament continues to reflect the evidence based approach to this issue shown so far by the members and senators who have contributed to this debate in a non-partisan way and that it recognise the importance of enacting presumptive legislation through the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Fair Protection for Firefighters) Bill 2011. I commend the bill to the House.

Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (11:02): I want to pay tribute to the United Firefighters Union of Australia. Unionism is something that seems to be maligned almost continuously in the media throughout Australia, and I am sure that the corporate owners of the media think it is a good idea to have no unions so they do not have to pay anyone very much money. In this case, I was a very reluctant starter. Staff had to sit me down and bang me on the head with the statistics. The firefighters union put forward a very professionally prepared brief and they had unassailable statistics. Clearly the incidence of cancer in firefighters was way out of proportion with that of the rest of the population. We know, of course, that certain chemicals are carcinogenic and breathing them can lead to cancer—as I have said many times in this House in relation to exhaust fumes from motorcars.

Before we had effective unionism in this country, one in 31 of us went down the mines, and this was really a mining and, to a lesser extent, a shearing country. All we had in the 1890s and 1900s was our mining industry. The one in 31 of us that went down the mines died down the mines or died the terrible death from 'miner's titus' when they came up. Humphrey McQueen and his social sketches of Australia went into the fact that everyone that worked for over two years digging the sewerage ditches in Sydney died of miner's titus. So we know that there are certain chemicals that, if they are breathed in, will tend to cause cancer. The firefighters union have made their case very professionally, and today we see again the value of trade unionism, as we saw before the start of last century.

I am very, very proud of the fact that my great-grandad put £3,000 behind the strike fund in the 1890s. In terms of today's money, £3,000 is nearly $1 million. All right, he was very wealthy but, at the end of the day, he was a storekeeper in Charters Towers—albeit Charters Towers was bigger than Brisbane in those days—and he made the decision to isolate himself socially from so many of the rich and socially prominent people in the community, not that that would have worried him. He is in the history books as backing that, and I am very proud to say that it is a tradition that our family have upheld for many, many years and I hope will continue in the future.

In backing up the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Fair Protection for Firefighters) Bill 2011 moved by the honourable member, I praise him for his work here. I also praise the members from the Liberal Party and Labor Party who have supported this legislation.

The fact is that, if you work as a fireman, you will breathe in fumes that will tend to give you cancer. You will have a far greater chance of contracting cancer than anyone else in society today. These people risk their lives. I think all of us watched the footage of 7-11, which probably brought out most graphically how these people did not think, they looked neither right nor left—they just went in and did their duty, and many of them died. Many of our firefighters in Australia have also died—maybe in less huge, but in very similar, conditions. So we pay them a great tribute and we also pay their union a very great tribute in bringing this to the attention of the House, and in winning over even sceptics and opponents such as me.

Mr BROADBENT (McMillan) (11:06): Thank you to the member for Kennedy for his remarks on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Fair Protection for Firefighters) Bill 2011. He has been won over by the argument. I think that is very important—quite often the Australian public do not get a chance to see arguments being put in this place that win over a member of parliament—even though he does not seem to have suffered a lot of damage from his staff knocking him about as he has claimed!

I also recognise the member for Melbourne's and the member for Calwell's work in this and the interest that they have taken in the interests of firemen and their families, having regard to the issue they brought before us in the first place. Secondly, I recognise that their actions have meant we are able to go through a process whereby we were able to go to a Senate committee and have the issues, can I say without any pun intended, flushed out. Before I go on, I promised myself at the start of this year that I would recognise those that have gone before us. I am not talking just about Indigenous people and I am not talking just about those who came on tall ships or our leaders of the nation; I am talking about people like Peter Marshall, the national secretary of the United Firefighters Union, and all those who have gone before him, who work in the interests of their union and the people that they represent and serve. It is not just about Peter; it is about all of the people.

We heard the member for Kennedy talk about his great-grandfather. He had a lot of money if he could put £3,000 into a strike fund on behalf of unionists of the day. It just shows you that this House is made up of many a complex person. We are not, any one of us, like all the others. And the stories that come out are often interesting.

I also want to note today, because it is important to me, that the member for Brand is in the parliament at the very moment. He has had a few hiccoughs along the way with his health. We welcome him back and we appreciate the fact that he is well and up to the task of doing the job on behalf on his constituency and this nation.

Having said that, it is very clear to me that there may be some in the House who have concerns about this bill. You heard the member for Caldwell say that if you have concerns after reading the report—she outlined a couple of them—it is only right to raise them with the executive government. What I do not want to happen here is that a report as important as this one is for firefighters and their families—in the arguments that it makes and the facts that it lays out—is put on a shelf somewhere to collect dust. That is not what I am here for.

I am here to learn that the report will properly be addressed by executive government, and if it needs further consideration or further inquiry, or people need to be reassured, let them put their concerns before the minister and have them addressed. Go back to someone who has the information, because to me it is fairly clear that if you are a fireman in this country today, you will be dealing with toxic fires that we did not have to deal with 10, 20 or 30 years ago. If a car burns now we do not know what the toxins are that come out of it—toxins that have detrimental health effects causing cancer in firemen here and around the world.

Although the member for Kennedy said 7-11 I think he meant 9-11. That event brought home to all of us that there were those who were killed on the day—I believe, to this day, that there could have been many more people killed—and there were those who have suffered after that massive event. I put it to you that firemen in this country are no different. They go out and put their lives on the line. In doing so, in the long run they put the health and wellbeing of themselves and their families on the line as well. It behoves this parliament to consider what the report has recommended and act on this bill on behalf of these people, especially those three little boys I saw over there in the Senate courtyard today.

Debate adjourned.

Mr ENTSCH (Leichhardt—Chief Opposition Whip) (11:11): by leave—on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition I move:

That this bill be read a second time.

I rise to strongly support the Wild Rivers (Environmental Management) Bill 2011 introduced into this House by the Leader of the Opposition on 12 September 2011.

The existing wild rivers legislation was put in place by the Queensland state Labor government in 2005. The existing laws gave the state government the power to declare any river a 'wild river', which allows the government to enforce a whole range of restrictions and regulations on what you can and cannot do on any land within certain ranges of that river or watercourse.

These Queensland government laws have negatively impacted on locals in Cape York, particularly Indigenous people. It is rather ironic that after decades and decades of campaigning by Indigenous people to recover some of their country at a time when they are becoming one of the major landholders within Cape York they are faced with the challenge of being able to do very little with the land because of the restrictions put in place by this legislation. It is no doubt that it is an agenda begin driven by the Wilderness Society and by an obliging and compliant state Labor government. Many of the opportunities for these people who have campaigned for so long to get their own country back are being put at threat by this legislation.

It seems like great rhetoric when you hear those on the other side always talking about recognition of land management by our Indigenous people for 40,000-odd years, but when there is an opportunity for Indigenous people to get out there and do something on their own country they are immediately stifled by this type of legislation. So much for closing the gap!

The Wild Rivers (Environmental Management) Bill 2011 has been presented by the Leader of the Opposition to give freedom back to landowners in Cape York, particularly the traditional owners, and to give them an opportunity to be consulted on decisions that are being made on their own land. This is something that needs to be seriously considered. This bill is effectively being introduced for a fourth time into this place.

The original Wild Rivers (Environmental Management) Bill 2010 was introduced into the House of Representatives by the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, on 8 February 2010 as a private member's bill. A bill with identical wording was then introduced into the Senate as a private senator's bill, the Wild Rivers (Environmental Management) Bill 2010 [No. 2], on 23 February 2010 by Senator the Hon. Nigel Scullion. The latter bill passed the Senate and was introduced into the House of Representatives on June 2010. Unfortunately, both bills lapsed when parliament was dissolved prior to the 2010 election.

After the 2010 federal election the bill was again reintroduced on 15 November 2010. In an attempt to frustrate parliamentary process, the Labor-Greens alliance moved to have this bill referred to a parliamentary committee which was designed to do nothing but stall and halt the progress of the legislation until Labor had the Greens and the Greens got the balance of power in the Senate. Unfortunately, that bill lapsed.

Last week the Leader of the Opposition introduced this bill to reiterate its importance to the economic development of Cape York Aboriginal people in particular and to recognise their stewardship over their own country and give them the opportunity to have a say and make decisions in relation to the long-term future of that country. Sadly, the Labor-Greens alliance has, again, referred this latest bill to another committee in a further attempt to totally delay and frustrate the parliamentary process.

There are some additions in this bill and I think these are quite appropriate, given some of the mischief that has been espoused by the other side. One is the new definitions of Aboriginal land, owner and register under clause 3, and the definition of 'native title' is deleted.

There is a new clause 4(3)(b), which provides a guarantee that the Commonwealth government should provide employment to persons who lose employment as a result of the enactment of the wild rivers. This one is particularly important given that, in an attempt to bribe some groups within the community, the state government has spent a lot of money in training up wild rivers rangers and there is a concern that these rangers, if the wild rivers legislation is thrown out or amended, may lose their jobs. This gives them a very strong guarantee that this is not the case. The reality is in Cape York, while the Wilderness Society and the Greens and the government obsess over this wild rivers legislation, the majority of national parks up there are underresourced, they have no management plans whatsoever and many of them are not even manned. So there is tremendous opportunity for wild rivers rangers to be able to go onto country that has been handed back. Rather than tokenism about handing back national parks to traditional owners, it provides a great opportunity for these traditional owners to play a very significant role in the management and be the face of these national parks as rangers and have that appropriate training.

Another difference in this bill is that it omits the term 'traditional owners' and substitutes 'owner', and 'native title land' is omitted and substituted with 'Aboriginal land'. Owners are required to agree in writing. A new clause 6 relates to obtaining agreement of native title holders, which should have been there right from the beginning. Amended clause 8 provides for regulations to be made. Clause 8(2)(c) provides for regulations concerning the continued employment of Aboriginal people if their employment should be lost.

I reiterate that these laws have seriously and negatively impacted on local Cape York people, particularly our Indigenous people. Recently, Mr Gerhardt Pearson of the Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation:

… strongly expressed concerns about the potential impact of wild rivers declarations on economic development opportunities for indigenous people on Cape York. Some critical issues in relation to legislation include the onerous and unnecessary process for development approvals in wild river areas.

A very good example of this was outlined in an episode of the Law Report on the ABC on 5 October 2010. It was a story in relation to the community of Lockhart River, which is on the eastern cape.

There are currently massive levels of unemployment up there, as there are in many remote communities. The biggest private sector employer is a biofuels company called Evergreen and it employs about 10 people. So we certainly need more private sector development in supporting the communities in this area. For this one to be out there actively working with the community, to drive the creation of jobs, can only be a good thing, but wild rivers is certainly not allowing this to happen. In fact, they have been very restricted in any opportunities for expansion. The government puts its hand on its chest and says, 'We are providing opportunities through the employment of rangers.' There was a very relevant comment made there at Lockhart River that having two rangers really does not make a great deal of economic sense, insofar as they would rather have a biodiesel plantation that would not just take the two rangers but also provide economic opportunities for at least another 100 people in that region. It would certainly be a hell of a lot more beneficial for the community.

It is interesting to note, in fact, that the Lockhart River airstrip would not even have been able to be built if the wild rivers legislation was in place at the time, because it is within a high-preservation area, as declared on any land within 1,000 metres of any designated river.

Staying in that eastern area, the Hopevale community has been desperately trying to establish a banana plantation. Now, they are not a wild rivers designated area, but they have gone through all of the hoops, all the different government bureaucracies, in trying to get approval to establish the plantation over the last three years—this is an opportunity for something like 200 jobs in the region, a great opportunity. They have a small area that they have set aside now. They have about 300 trees, and they have been training community members enthusiastically to build on this plantation. It has taken three years so far to get to this stage, where they have only 300 trees and are doing the training, because of all the restrictions put in place by existing government agencies. The imposition of wild rivers legislation on that area would complicate the process to the point that, even at three years, they are almost looking at walking away; it is only their own commitment and determination that allow them to stay there. But, if there were another level of bureaucracy over the top of that, it would make it absolutely impossible for them to do anything.

They have also had another situation that was quite high profile, at Pisolite Hills, the bauxite mine up near old Mapoon—great opportunities for the community, with the prospect of creating about 1,700 jobs over the 15-year life of the project. They were building a full village not far from the old Mapoon community, which was then going to be handed over as a lodge for tourism for the community. They were guaranteed all sorts of jobs as well. That has now basically been scuttled by the wild rivers legislation and through the influence of the Wilderness Society. On top of that, we are now looking at this federal government working overtime with the state government and, again, with the Wilderness Society to look at blanket World Heritage listing for the entire Cape York region. Of course, combined with wild rivers and all the other legislation, that will guarantee that they lock it up to such a point that the only opportunity you are going to find for our Indigenous people in Cape York would be to stand there bare bummed in a lily pond, on one foot, with a spear, being photo fodder for tourists. That is the sort of opportunity that this mob on the other side are looking to create for Indigenous people in Cape York. It is absolutely appalling. These people have struggled for so long to get their country back. They have every right, after that struggle, to sit down and contemplate what they have, to plan a future for themselves. They do not have to be curios for the benefit of the Wilderness Society.

I see my friend and colleague Mr Katter here and I would just like to recognise that Mr Katter as a minister gave the first cattle property lease, at Christmas Creek, to Eddie Holroyd, our good friend who just passed, who had a great amount of pride in that. If wild rivers legislation had been around, that would never have been able to happen. These people have very strong views on what they want to do, and they need time to assess what they have and to do their planning. It may not necessarily be of benefit to them, but it will be for their kids and grandkids, and for us to deny them that opportunity is absolutely appalling.

We on this side believe in the protection and sustainable development of our environment. But I think it has to be done in a cooperative and collaborative way that gives the Indigenous population the genuine opportunity to have a say, and the right to manage and operate their own land. And that is what this bill does. It is about giving economic destiny back into the hands of the traditional owners, the Indigenous people. It about giving them hope and aspiration and opportunity so that they can give better lives to their people, to their children, to stimulate their communities and to be able to make their own determinations. They certainly have the capacity to do that. Unfortunately, with the stranglehold that the Greens have over the Labor Party—and, particularly in Cape York, the Wilderness Society and the ACF—there is little chance of this happening under this current mob. (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): Is the motion seconded?

Ms LEY (Farrer) (11:27): I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Dr LEIGH (Fraser) (11:27): When the member for Warringah first introduced the Wild Rivers (Environmental Management) Bill 2011, he said that he was working for the economic advancement of Aboriginal people, that economic development is important to the future of Aboriginal people and that access to the benefits of all Australians is the right of Aboriginal people. In this view, he is not alone. Many of us on both sides of the House have worked hard on the issue of Indigenous economic development.

The member for Leichhardt has done a great deal in his own electorate, but I need to correct a couple of statements he made in his speech. He said that clauses 4(3)(b) and 6 were new; that is not in fact the case. Those clauses were in the 2010 bill.

As a member of that House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics I visited Far North Queensland in late November 2010 and early March of this year. Our inquiry was broadly into Indigenous economic development, not just the wild rivers issue. We heard from over 50 people in the public hearings and took 39 submissions. We visited Brisbane, Cairns, Weipa, Bamaga and the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation in Far North Queensland. What quickly became apparent to all of us on the committee was that Indigenous economic development in Cape York is a complex and an important issue.

Mr Katter: Seriously? Do you realise you have never spoken—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): The member for Kennedy!

Dr LEIGH: It is vital to get the economic development framework right. We on this side of the House are strongly committed to improving the opportunities and the life outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We deliver an annual Closing the Gap report. We have to continue to consider the full picture when it comes to Indigenous economic development. One part of that picture is mining. That has been brought to the fore over recent years. In the last decade, the price of alumina—one of the key minerals in the Cape—has risen by more than 50 per cent. It is important that we remember the role that mining plays in economic development. The national picture for mining is that it contributes 5.6 per cent of our GDP but employs only 1.3 per cent of the total labour force. The same picture shows up in the Cape. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures from the 2006 census show that there were 19 Indigenous people in the Cape who were employed in mining. That is 0.7 per cent of Indigenous employment in Cape York. We should be open to the possibility that mining has a bigger picture to play in the employment base for Cape York. We should always be looking to possibilities, but we should be clear-headed and guided by the facts that we can see in the most recent census data. Mining is an important part of our economy, and is helping produce record terms of trade, but it produces fewer jobs than its share of the national economy.

I agree with Noel Pearson who says that education has to be at the heart of Indigenous policy, that education has a critical role to play in overcoming inequality and disadvantage. The role of education in economic development was reinforced to me when I visited Cape York last year and this year. As part of the committee's hearings I had a conversation with Ms Yunkaporta about Noel Pearson's Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy, which is an initiative championed by the Minister for Families, Housing, Communities and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin. The program offered by the academy has four components focusing on class, club, culture and community. As Noel Pearson recently wrote, the Class program immerses students in numeracy and literacy using the Direct Instructions programs. Students need to achieve a mastery of 90 per cent at their level before they can move on. Tests are done every five to 10 lessons and both the students' and teachers' performances are carefully monitored.

Club ensures that kids do not miss out on those future opportunities, providing extracurricular activities that many children in non-Indigenous communities already enjoy—including the hope to one day include foreign languages and Shakespeare classes. Culture helps children learn the local Aboriginal languages and their culture and traditions. In-school activities are supported by the Community program. School attendance and readiness for school are carefully monitored. A food program provides meals during the day—

Mr Katter interjecting—

Dr LEIGH: I hear the member for Kennedy laughing, but education is an important part of Indigenous economic development. For those of us on this side of the House, Indigenous education is no laughing matter. This program provides meals during the day and families are helped to manage funds to cover educational expenses. Pearson states in his essay Radical hope:

Man cannot live by bread alone, but he does need bread, and in the modern world the broader economy is where he'll earn it.

That is why education is so important for the economic development of Cape York and the economic development of our nation.

Boosting the quantity and quality of education in Australia will flow on to improve the level of innovation in the economy. It will allow for more rapid diffusion of new technological changes. The boost to living standards that we get from improving our education system will rival any of the big economic reforms in Australia's history. It will rival floating the dollar, bringing down the tariff walls, enterprise bargaining or competition policy. Education then flows on to new jobs in Cape York. You can see the opportunity for that if you drive from Bamaga north to the very tip of Australia where you will see the ecotourism lodge which is, alas, now something of a wreck, but which offers great potential to be a new ecotourism centre for Australia. The white sands are breathtaking. The area has great potential to be a tourism destination. Not everyone in Cape York will be employed in the tourism industry, but it is a critical part of Indigenous economic development—the broader issue into which our committee inquired.

The causes of disadvantage in Cape York and the Gulf are complex, and we need long-term, considered approaches. We need to provide real opportunities, real jobs and sustainable development. I believe addressing disadvantage and creating opportunity through education are perhaps the most important thing we can do. The government respects the views of Aboriginal leaders in the Cape York area—

Mr Katter: No, you don't.

Dr LEIGH: and will continue to actively engage with them—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): The member for Kennedy may miss out on his opportunity to speak if he is not careful.

Dr LEIGH: in developing solutions for a sustainable and effective model of economic development and one that allows Indigenous people in Cape York to work towards and build the 'radical hope' of the future—a radical hope in which education provides the skills, economic opportunities and the ability to create and innovate new ideas and industries. As part of the government's commitment to economic development for Indigenous Australians we have agreed with the Queensland government to establish a new service for people in Cape York and the Gulf of Carpentaria, which will guide Indigenous applicants to develop new business and economic development proposals and assist them to effectively utilise the processes under the Wild Rivers legislation.

The importance of education, economic development and the future for the Cape was best put to me by Phyllis Yunkaporta, a witness appearing before the committee. She told the committee:

The education system, as I knew it before, has been of low standard. The curriculum in the past, as it is in all cape Aboriginal communities, has been of very low standard. By the time our children go out to mainstream schools they are hardly there—a child in grade 8 still has the understanding of a child in grade 1. Speaking for Aurukun, I was one of the persons who were invited to the States last October; I went to New York and Los Angeles visiting African-American schools. What we have brought back to Aurukun is a new kind of teaching method and we are having that implemented in the school. Of course it took time. At the beginning it pretty much had been, in my words, chaos before that. Since having this new program come in, if you come to the classrooms in Aurukun the kids are fully focused. This new method of teaching has got them going. The teacher is full-on with the tasks given and you cannot believe it when you enter those classrooms—it is as if some of those kids are play-acting. They are not; they are just full-on, focused. I guess in time we have to have expectations for our children to be educated in a way where they have to balance both worlds—the Western world and the traditional way. Of course we want them to hang onto the traditional way because that is where they are going to be identifying themselves for the future. And with them having to venture out into mainstream, we want them to compete. It is a competitive world out there. We want our black little kids to start taking on the world. That is the aim of all this.

Ms Yunkaporta's views highlighted to me—and to many of us on the committee—the importance of a holistic picture with Indigenous economic development. It is absolutely critical that we recognise there is not a single industry that is going to be part of the cape's success. Cape York Indigenous communities need the building blocks of education and the sustainability of strong jobs. And they need effective leadership that is willing to argue strongly for the interests of people on the cape.

If anybody went on this inquiry believing that there were simple solutions to economic development in Cape York, they should have come away disabused of that notion; they should have come away recognising that Indigenous development on the cape has many futures ahead of it.

I will return to the point I made at the start of this speech, where I referred to some statements that the member for Leichhardt made. The member for Leichhardt referred to clause 6 of the legislation. Clause 6 remains unchanged from the previous version of this bill. It details a process for obtaining agreement for native title holders. The heading of that clause refers to 'native title holders', which is not defined in the bill. It is unclear whether the details for obtaining agreement of native title holders could also include owners as defined in the bill or just the native title holder of the land. As a result, this is potentially a cause of uncertainty as to how agreements, which are a central component of the bill, would be practically achieved. This uncertainty is one of many uncertainties in the bill.

As we saw in the committee's inquiry, there are many Indigenous stakeholders in Cape York, and Indigenous stakeholders operate on different levels. Some groups will claim to speak for larger populations, but, as our inquiries went on, it would sometimes turn out that people were not comfortable with others speaking on their behalf. So the absence of a definition of 'native title holders' is one of the concerns that I have about the bill before the House.

I think it is critical that this debate focus on the big picture, on Indigenous economic development and not pretend—because it would be wrong to do so—that the only factor affecting Indigenous economic development in Cape York is the Queensland wild rivers legislation. It is not. It is a small part of a much larger picture. I would like to close by paying tribute once more to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Mr Noel Pearson for the work they have done together in improving Indigenous education in Cape York. If anything is to be the key foundation stone for Indigenous economic development it is getting school education right. I pay tribute to both of those people for the careful thought they have put into securing that outcome.

Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (11:41): I am very pleased that Dr Leigh spoke before me because I am going to take his speech and distribute it to all of the Aboriginal councillors, first Australian councillors, in my electorate. It demonstrates magnificently towering ignorance and complete nonunderstanding and nonsympathy.

I seldom do this, but I cannot help but mention that all of the advisors to the ALP sitting over there are all what we call 'migaloos', every single one of them. I met 32 senior officers of the department dealing with first Australian affairs, and two of them—only two—were nonmigaloos. So we have the white fellas looking after us again, telling us, as the last gentleman told us, that we all need an education. Let me inform you, Sonny, that I worked in mining; I was a miner before I came into politics. That was one of the three things I did before I came to this place. I tell you what, I did not have a shred of education to tell me how to mine. He thinks it is funny; he is laughing.

Dr Leigh: I am not laughing.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): The member for Kennedy cannot verbal someone.

Mr KATTER: The industries of North Queensland are cattle and mining. I worked in the mining industry and I would say 90 per cent of the people at the lead smelter—and that is a sophisticated operation compared with actual mining where you sort of drive a truck and a two-boom jumbo—I would say that three would have had tertiary education out of about 200. So much for education digging us out of the hole.

Maybe there have been some university graduates riding horses—in fact, the bloke who won the university medal actually does ride a horse, the highest pass ever recorded, and he is a good mate of mine. But he would agree with me that 99.98 per cent of the people riding horses and running the cattle industry have probably not even completed 12th grade. So you are going to tell us that we will all get an education and that will dig us out of the hole? Do you realise the towering ignorance of what you have just said? I would leave the chamber too if I were you.

Tourism is the third aspect. I know a lot of people in tourism. As the honourable member over here said, yes, we will get a bit of tourism out of throwing spears and boomerangs and those sorts of things. But when I went to school they never taught me how to throw a boomerang or a spear. It is not part of the educational curriculum. You might argue that it should be. He then said, 'We're moving forward.' Moving forward? We are back to the bad old days. We have one set of laws for blackfella Australians and another set of laws for whitefella Australians. Apparently it is quite safe for whitefellas to have pornography and alcohol, but it is very unsafe for the blackfellas. They cannot handle it. We had laws which delivered the ownership of every one of the community areas—and I look to my colleague the member for Leichhardt here—to the duly-elected local council with the machinery to devolve that to private ownership, with a title deed just the same as everyone else on planet Earth has. This gentleman over here said that we had gone forward. I will tell you how much we have gone backwards. In 1989, if you lived on Doomadgee or Mornington Island or Palm Island or Aurukun, your council—duly elected by you—owned that area, with no frills, no complications but just absolute freehold title. Now they do not. Now all of those areas are legally owned by appointees at the discretion of the minister—not even the governor and council but a minister of the Queensland government. So the Queensland government now owns the four or five million hectares of North Queensland that were supposedly owned by the first Australians. What a criminal theft! Those are Noel Pearson's words, actually, but he beat me to it; I would have liked to have used that phrase first. It was a criminal theft by the state government of Queensland, and we are trying to get the money together now to yard them and sue them for the theft of that land.

That is not the end of the story. They are not content to take the land back, and they now have a trust arrangement whereby an appointee of the minister is the trustee, the legal owner, and the beneficial owners are the first Australian people. That is a trust. A trust is used for little children who are not capable of running their own affairs. When they grow up and get to age 21, the trust vanishes. As this gentleman said, we need time. How much time do you need, you whitefellas? You have had 200 years; how much time do you need? He has had 200 years and he said he needs time. The children are being taken away. We in this place had the arch hypocrisy. I really felt like spitting or walking out of here or doing something to bring attention to the fact that here we were apologising for the theft of the children. The children in New South Wales and Queensland are being thieved now at twice the rate that they were thieved in the old days. Have we gone forward as far as ownership of land goes? No, we have had the land completely thieved off of us. We have gone backwards as far as anyone can go.

I need to return to the land, because Tommy Geia, a great Australian on Palm Island, got me aside last weekend and he said that every single person in an Aboriginal reserve community had to sign a document saying that they have to agree to pay all the rents—or rates, if you like, because if you are going to live in a house you have to pay some money to somebody. It is not going to be paid to the local council anymore; it is going to be paid to the whitefella administrators in the state government in Cairns and Townsville and Brisbane. So what do we need a council for? We are going to close them down, aren't we? We are going to amalgamate them, as the recommendations of the ALP state government have put forward. We will amalgamate them, which simply means closing them down. And the honourable member for Leichhardt will tell you that up in the Torres Strait it is a farce. Self-management now is a farce. We delivered to those people the self-management on every one of those islands. They had their own self-management. Even little tiny islands like Stephens and little tiny communities like Seisia were given self-management. They were given complete control over their own affairs. They had a lot more power than local government. They had power of the local police, for example. We gave these people the power, and the power has been completely taken off them in the Torres Strait. They are now run by a centralised bureaucracy, manned in the main by whitefellas on Thursday Island. That is how much we have moved forward, my friend.

I return to the ownership of the land. If the federal government is to build a house for you, you have to hand the land over to the state government; otherwise the federal government will not build a house for you. The only way we will build a house for you is if we thieve your land off you. I ask you, please, because you are nodding at me, to check it out. That is the agreement. All of the councils decided unanimously to oppose it—except one dingo mob who were hiding outside because they were taking their running from a whitefella CEO. Except for that dingo mob, I think it was 26 who voted unanimously to reject the proposition. Of course they rejected it! If you people would honour your promise, then the number of houses in Doomadgee, for example, would double—if we take you at your word and you are going to build 2,000 or 3,000 houses throughout Australia. But with the new Doomadgee, half the town will now be owned by the state government outright, completely, for 40 years. And you people agreed to it. You imposed that condition upon these people.

I will give you a sharp contrast with past Labor governments. When I rang up Gerry Hand, when I was minister, and I said, 'This is what we want to do,' he said, 'Mate, that sounds like a real good idea.' (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): I call the member for Parramatta.

Mr Katter: I'd dearly love another 30 minutes.

The SPEAKER: The member for Kennedy will listen in silence, as everyone did during his speech, or I will remove him.

Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (11:51): I acknowledge the members for Kennedy and Leichhardt for their contributions. There can be no doubt in this House or the broader community of their absolute commitment to improving the lives and independence of our Indigenous community. I note that neither of them spoke very much at all on the actual bill that is before us today, and I would like to go back to that.

They highlighted the many complexities in Cape York. I visited with the economics committee last year and found a fabulous, difficult—

Mr Entsch: I have lived there for 20 years.

Ms OWENS: I acknowledge that you have a greater knowledge of the area than me—wondrous, harsh, almost impossible place with people with various histories. Some have lived on their land with links back tens of thousands of years and many others were removed from their lands and are finding their way back. There are complexities in the understandings within the Indigenous population about who had the right to speak for them and who did not—many complexities that impact on the viability of the bill that we have before us today.

This is the third version of the wild rivers bill. There have been two Senate inquiries and a House of Representatives inquiry into the previous versions of Mr Abbott's bill. All those inquiries found the bill to be unworkable and stated that it did not address any of the real barriers to economic development in Indigenous communities in Queensland.

Now we have a third version with some further amendments. There are still old sections in the bill that raise many issues about definitions of owner and consent, but there also some new clauses which add to the complex and problematic nature of the bill and require careful scrutiny. For that reason, I believe that the changes should be referred to a House committee inquiry to analyse their construction and potential effect.

The government is strongly committed to improving the life outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and takes Indigenous economic development seriously. The causes of disadvantage in Cape York and the gulf are complex and solving the issues that the community faces will need long-term, considered approaches, which provide real opportunities, real jobs and allow for environmentally sustainable development.

The member for Leichhardt talked about one of the communities up there trying to build a banana plantation and that it had taken three years so far. Again, I would like to point out that that community is not covered by wild rivers. Even without wild rivers legislation, it has been incredibly difficult for many communities to move forward and, arguably, one cannot make a claim that the introduction of wild rivers legislation in 2005 has somehow led to a lack of economic development. There are of course decades—in fact centuries—of a lack of development in Cape York. There were wild rivers 2005 acts on top of a whole range of laws in Queensland, including the Sustainable Planning Act 2009, the Vegetation Management Act 1999 and the Water Act 2000. When we visited Cape York last year, we heard from many people who referred to a whole range of issues that prevent development, not simply wild rivers. In fact, we met communities up there that were supportive of the Wild Rivers Act in the form that it has now.

We also heard of the many, many issues and difficulties that people in Cape York have. It is a tropical monsoonal climate characterised by long warm to hot dry seasons and short, humid, intensive wet seasons. That monsoonal season is a major constraining factor on Cape York as it impacts on travel and many economic and social activities. It isolates most properties and communities for four to five months of the year.

For agriculture, Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation advised the board that broad-scale irrigation is limited as there are very few areas of arable soil on Cape York that are suitable for large-scale irrigation. Where such land is available, the water supply is not likely to be sufficient to support irrigated crops. Much of the west of the cape is very flat and unsuitable for dams and in the east the water flows to the Great Barrier Reef side, so dams are not really an option. It is an incredibly beautiful, harsh environment where roads are boggy and unpassable for much of the year, and one could argue that issues of freight and transport infrastructure are as much of a barrier to the development of Cape York as any other area.

The government respects the views of Aboriginal leaders in the Cape York area and will continue to actively engage with them in developing solutions. As part of the government's commitment to economic development for Indigenous Australians, we have agreed with the Queensland government to establish a new service for people in Cape York and the Gulf of Carpentaria, which will guide Indigenous applicants to develop new business and economic development proposals and assist them to effectively utilise the processes under the wild rivers legislation. We heard from many witnesses during our visit to Cape York last year about the difficulty that they had in navigating their way through a whole raft of legislation that govern development applications in the cape.

There are several differences between the 2011 bill and the 2010 bill, and I am going to concentrate on some of those. The key differences essentially are: a new subclause, 5(2), stating that agreement with native title holders is taken to be agreement with the owner, but the owner is defined very broadly in the bill. It is not clear how agreement will be obtained from owners of other types of land included in the bill or how agreement from other types of owners would relate to agreement from native title holders.

Insertion of a new clause, 6A, which specifies that dispute resolution is to be resolved by a certain section of the Native Title Act 1993 or by regulations, also creates some confusion. The section referred to in the Native Title Act 1993 does not set out a dispute resolution process; rather, it sets out the dispute resolution functions of native title representative bodies. How the section referred to in the Native Title Act 1993 will work in the context of the bill is difficult to interpret. It is not clear how disputes between native title holders and other owners governed under the new process would work.

Changes to the transitional provision in clause 7B extend the period of time from six months to 12 months for declarations to apply if this bill were passed. It provides more time for agreement to be reached before existing declarations are overturned. However, if owners do not agree within the extended time frame, existing declarations will still be overturned whether there is agreement or not. Such a complex and significant area of law must not be dealt with in an ad hoc way, particularly as the three clauses I have referred to so far are interpreted within the context of Indigenous—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ) (12:00): Order! It being 12 pm, the time allocated for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (12:01): On behalf of the Standing Committee on Economics, I present the committee's report entitled Advisory report on the Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labelling—Palm Oil) Bill 2011, incorporating dissenting reports, together with the minutes of proceedings. I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

Ms OWENS: The Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labelling-Palm Oil) Bill 2011 seeks to amend the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991 and the Australian Consumer and Competition Act 2010. If passed, it would require Food Standards Australia New Zealand, FSANZ, to develop and publish a standard requiring food producers to label palm oil on packaging if it were an ingredient in the product or had been used in its production. It would also specifically list palm oil as a characteristic of all goods in relation to the misleading conduct provisions in the Australian Consumer Law.

The drivers behind the bill are claims that the rates of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia are reducing habitat for orangutans and that orangutans are in danger of extinction. Deforestation is in turn said to be driven by agricultural interests in these countries clearing land to plant oil palms. Oil palms are a very productive crop which can deliver yields five or more times per hectare than other oil crops.

The committee understands the strong community support for the goals of the bill. Zoos Victoria gave evidence of its online and hard-copy campaigns where thousands of Australians expressed concern about the connection between palm oil and the reduction of orangutan habitat. However, the committee has come to the view that the bill will not bring about the result that so many people in the community desire. Instead, it will have a range of unintended consequences that will cause a great deal of damage to our commercial arrangements and international relations. Indeed, one industry group, Accord Australasia, described the bill as 'reckless'.

For example, its only legal effect for food labelling is to require FSANZ to draft a food standard and publish it on its website. In order for the states and territories to enforce the standard, it would have to be determined in accordance with agreed processes. This has not occurred. In short, the bill is not enforceable as it operates outside of agreements between the Commonwealth, state, territory and New Zealand governments. Its passage could lead to inconsistencies in labelling across these jurisdictions.

In relation to the Australian Consumer Law, the bill will not change its legal effect. Currently, if a producer of food provided an ingredients list on the packet and the label omitted to mention palm oil when this was an ingredient, then it would breach section 33 regardless of whether the bill became law or not. However, current labels do not breach section 33 because they do not claim to be a complete ingredients list. Nor is there a legal requirement for producers to fully list the ingredients. The bill would not change the operation of section 33 if it became law.

The bill overlooks the fact that much of the legislative power in Australia resides in the states and territories. In order to generate the benefits of a uniform national market, complex processes and negotiations are required to harmonise regulatory systems. In the case of consumer law, the Productivity Commission estimated in 2008 that the gain to the economy from uniformity is $4.5 billion annually. The bill simplistically overrides these important commercial arrangements without addressing the risks.

The bill also places our international relationships at risk. The food regulation treaty between Australia and New Zealand states that neither party can amend their legislation regarding FSANZ without effectively consulting the other party. This has obviously not occurred. Further, singling out palm oil means that it is more discriminatory than necessary to fulfil a health or environmental objective. Australia would then be at risk of a trade dispute under World Trade Organisation rules, and Malaysia and Indonesia have already indicated that they are prepared to do this.

Another negative feature of the bill is that, separately to it, the Council of Australian Governments has initiated a review of food labelling in Australia. The government released the review report, Labelling logic, in January this year. Recommendation 12 states that, where sugars, fats or oils are added as separate ingredients in a food, the label should list the actual ingredients This is already the approach in the United States and will most likely become law in the European Union. The whole of the Commonwealth, state, territory and New Zealand government response to Labelling logic is under development. It is expected to be considered by the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council on 9 December 2011. Given that a rigorous process is covering the bill's subject matter, there is even less reason to proceed with it. Therefore, the committee has recommended that the bill should not proceed.

I would like to thank the organisations and individuals that assisted the committee during the inquiry through submissions or participating in the hearing in Canberra. I also thank my colleagues on the committee for their contribution to the report. I commend the report to the House.

Mr RIPOLL (Oxley) (12:06): I continue where I started—that is, by saying that there are three simple things about all these bills together: 1) climate change is real; 2) there are things that we can do about it; 3) the things that we can do about it are affordable. Given that we all agree in this place and, of course, much more widely—not only in Australia but also right across the globe—about climate change, it is just a matter of what type of system we should put in place to best achieve our goals. By far the best system is a broad-based carbon price. It is the most environmentally effective and cheapest way to reduce pollution. A carbon price puts a price tag on pollution. Through the carbon price, for the first time, an incentive will be provided for people not to pollute—in particular for our 500 biggest polluters, who will be required to pay for each tonne of carbon they release into the atmosphere in.

This scheme will start on 1 July 2012. Let us be clear that these bills will go through this place—there is agreement here for these bills to pass. There will be a fixed-price period for 2 years, and then we will move to a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme whereby the market will set the price. A market based mechanism is by far the best way to deal with climate change. During the fixed-price period the starting price will be $23 per tonne, and during the next two years it will rise by 2.5 per cent. So, assuming inflation of 2.5 per cent, the carbon price will be $25.40 per tonne by 2014-15.

The flexible market, set-price period will commence on 1 July in three years time—that is, in 2015. During the flexible price period, the government will set the cap by issuing a fixed number of carbon units each year, and some of those units will be auctioned by government. This is the best way to move forward with the system. It means that the market decides and that business gets to adapt, to adjust, to evolve and to grow.

But we are not going to allow this to happen without accepting the fact that there is some cost and that that cost has to be abated in some way. That is why we have put together an assistance package for industry as well as for households. Over the first three years of the carbon price, the government will devote $9.2 billion to assistance for affected jobs in emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries. That is to provide with them a transition period to adjust, to adopt, to match what is happening in the rest of the world and an opportunity to continue to grow.

There will be $800 million in the Clean Technology Investment Program, which will provide grants to manufacturers to support investment in energy efficient equipment technologies, processes and products. Over six years there will be $150 million for the food processing industry and $50 million for the metal forging and foundry industries. The government will also provide $200 million in grants to support business research and development in areas of renewable energy, low pollution technology and energy efficiency.

The government is also ensuring that households, tradespeople, farmers and small businesses do not face a carbon price on fuel—because the will not be a carbon price on fuel. The government will reduce the fuels tax credits received by many large polluters so that they too pay an effective carbon price. Many businesses will be exempted from the reduction in fuel credits and shielded from the carbon price on fuel. Heavy vehicles such as semitrailers will also be exempt until 2014-15. While the carbon price will be paid directly by the 500 biggest polluters in this country, the government has designed a generous package to help small business grow and invest in energy efficient assets. Farming and other land-based activities will not be covered by the mechanism. However, the Carbon Farming Initiative will give farmers an opportunity to generate income by taking action to reduce their pollution.

I said earlier that these measures can be effective—and they are. The world is already acting on climate change; in every country there is something being done. It might be called something different and look slightly different in other countries, but every country is taking action on climate change. It is clearly in Australia's national interest to continue to work to achieve the international goal of limiting warming to below two degrees. In order to do this, it is imperative that we play a responsible role in the international arena by taking strong action at home. We have to act locally and think globally.

The government's plan will cut carbon pollution and drive investment in clean energy technologies and infrastructure. It will generate new jobs in these fields. The carbon price will see Australia's annual emissions reduced by at least 159 million tonnes by 2020 from where they would have been had we done nothing. By 2050, we will have taken over 17 billion tonnes of carbon pollution out of the atmosphere by saving nine out of every 10 tonnes of pollution we would have emitted had this plan not been in place.

Australia has some of the best renewable energy resources in the world, including hydro, wind, bioenergy, geothermal, wave and tide—not to mention one of our most abundant resources: solar energy. By 2050, according to Treasury modelling, with a carbon price $100 billion will have been invested in renewable energy, and 40 per cent of Australia's electricity generation will come from renewables. Australia's renewable energy sector will have grown 17 times because of the changes that we are putting in place.

But, as I said earlier, all this does come at a cost and we acknowledge that cost—and it must be compensated for. So nine out of 10 households will receive some assistance through tax cuts or payment increases, and two in three households will get tax cuts or increased payments that will cover the expected average price impact on them. We have tried in this area to be a little bit more generous: we will give a little bit extra, because we would rather err on the side of assistance than on the side of not getting it quite right.

Over four million Australian households will get assistance that is at least 20 per cent more than the expected average price impact on them. Over one million additional Australians will no longer need to lodge a tax return. That is right—one million additional Australian taxpayers will never have to lodge a tax return again because of these changes. On average, the scheme will cost households $9.90 per week, but they will get $10.10 per week in assistance. The assistance is permanent and will increase over time in step with any expected increases caused by these changes. The government will review the adequacy of assistance each year and will increase it further if necessary.

We will go further than that—there will also be tax cuts. Everyone earning up to $80,000 will receive a tax cut. For most people, it will be at least $300. The tax-free threshold will triple in size: no one will pay tax on the first $20,000 they earn. This means that half a million people will go from having to pay tax to paying no tax at all. This is a major tax reform that will encourage people who only need part-time work only to join the workforce. It is an incentive to create jobs and an incentive for people to work.

Of course, pensioners and self-funded retirees will not be left out. Pensioners and self-funded retirees holding a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card will get a cash increase of $338 each year if they are single and $510 combined each year if they are couples. That means that, on average, 1.8 million pensioner households will come out at least $210 ahead of the expected carbon price impact on them. Around 150,000 self-funded retirees and part rate pensioners will also receive tax cuts in the order of over $300. We have not forgotten families either. They are an important part of what we are doing. Increases in family tax benefit A for each child will be up $110 per year. Single-income families with children will get up to $69 extra in each family tax benefit B plus up to $300 in additional supplement. Allowance recipients such as people on Newstart and youth allowance will also get up to $218 a year for singles and up to $390 a year for couples. These are good things for the nation across the board.

Specifically, people will want to know what will happen in my electorate of Oxley. Out of the 62,000 taxpayers in Oxley, around 54,000 will receive a tax cut and 45,000 of these will receive a tax cut of at least $300. More than 38,000 people in Oxley will receive household assistance through income support payments or family assistance payments. A typical family in Oxley will have expected cost increases of around $497 per year, but they will receive around $754 in tax cuts and family assistance. They will be about $257 better off per year. There are more than 3,000 single parents in Oxley who will also get an extra $289 per year and 17,100 pensioners in Oxley will receive an extra $338 per year for singles and $510 per couple—that is, extra after all their expenses. Pensioners will be better off, students will be better off and families will be better off but, most importantly, our economy and our economy will be better off. It is always difficult to make the big decisions in government and to take the next steps forward. It is always difficult to be able to see beyond the horizon, to look where the future takes us—not after the next election or the election after that but the next generation in this country. That is what this is about. This is about making fundamental change. This is about structural reform. This is about changing the way our economy operates. This is about ensuring that industries of the future have a future. This is about making sure that we do not get caught in old thinking, old traps or old ways, which mean that you cannot transition economies and then the jobs you are trying protect today disappear tomorrow because no government took the courageous steps it needed to ensure you could have a clean energy future. This is about making sure we are part of the global economy, the global village. It is a small planet. We are connected. We are a trading nation. Not only do we need to do these things but also we need to shield the impacts of some of these things locally, at a domestic level, and that is exactly what we are doing. We are talking about one of the biggest changes in this economy that has been seen, I would say, for well over 100 years. It is well thought out and well considered and it will be well delivered. (Time expired)

Dr SOUTHCOTT (Boothby) (12:18): I rise to speak on the bills which will introduce the carbon tax. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important issue facing this parliament. It comes to one of the most fundamental issues in our democracy, and that is whether the community should be told what a government is going to do before an election. Six days before the last election the Prime Minister said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' It was explicit and in none of the documentation—in none of the policies, in none of the material that was put out by any Labor candidate—did the government say they would be introducing a carbon tax.

Australian political history shows that Australians will exact a very heavy price on governments which mislead. Paul Keating, campaigning against a GST, in effect introduced a GST by stealth in the 1993 budget. He massively increased the then wholesale sales tax on a range of goods. Here we have a carbon tax bill that emerged after the 2010 election, when the Prime Minister clearly said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' This shows no respect for democracy in this country. You cannot make specific promises as part of your election platform and then ignore them once elected.

The proposal of the government will cost Australians $9 billion per year. To put this in perspective, the carbon trading scheme in Europe, a much larger economy than Australia's, raises $500 million a year. The impact of the carbon tax will be felt very heavily by people with fixed incomes, such as self-funded retirees and pensioners, and by families. The government has spent a lot of time in this debate focusing on the compensation that people are to receive. If you do not tax someone, you do not need to compensate them. But, if the carbon tax does not hurt, it will not work. What will happen is that the carbon tax will result in a 10 per rise in electricity prices and a nine per cent rise in gas bills in the first year alone. There will be a $4.3 billion hit on the budget bottom line. At the moment we already see enormous pressure on the cost of living for families and all this will do is add to it. At a time when we are seeing retail and small business sectors struggling as never before, this is the worst time to be introducing a carbon tax, which will only increase all of those pressures. Since 2007, when Labor came to office, on average electricity prices have risen 51 per cent, gas prices have risen 30 per cent and water and sewerage prices have risen 46 per cent. Despite what the government says, any tax cuts provided will not keep pace with the increasing cost of the carbon tax, and most Australians know this. While the carbon tax will start at $23 per tonne, it will be a floating price after three years, with the government expecting the price to be $37 a tonne in 2020 and over $350 a tonne in 2050.

What will this do to the cost of living? Australian manufacturing is already under pressure, cost of living for everyday Australians is forever increasing, and a carbon tax will only make this worse. Australian businesses will be put at a major disadvantage. On the government's own figures, more than three million Australian households are going to be worse off under the carbon tax.

But worst of all is that under Labor's carbon tax scheme emissions will actually increase. Australian emissions will increase from 578 million tonnes in 2012 to 621 million tonnes in 2020. The whole point of the government's proposal is to reduce emissions in Australia. At the most basic argument, the carbon tax fails in this purpose. The only way the government is going to reach its emissions reduction targets is to buy offshore carbon credits from foreign carbon traders. Under Labor's proposal, the government itself estimates that Australia will be spending $3½ billion purchasing carbon credits from foreign carbon traders in 2020. By 2050 we as a nation will be spending $57 billion a year, or 1½ per cent of our GDP, on purchasing offshore carbon credits from foreign carbon traders. This means that we will be spending $3½ billion in 2020 to buy up foreign carbon credits from potentially dodgy foreign carbon traders to plant trees in other countries, not in Australia. To put this into perspective, Australian government health funding in the latest financial year, as a percentage of GDP, was only 4.1 per cent.

All the Labor Party's carbon tax will do is shift emissions overseas, at a huge cost to the Australian taxpayer. The only way that a carbon tax can reduce emissions is if people use less coal produced electricity and less oil powered transport. The problem with this is that the use of electricity is inelastic—not entirely, but quite significantly. Electricity consumption does not drop with increased costs. We are dependent on electricity. Labor's carbon tax will not work. It will hurt families and cost jobs.

The government's own paperwork reveals that the scheme will raise $27 billion in revenue in the first three years of the tax. This is not a tax about the environment; this is a wealth redistribution tax. The 750,000 small businesses in Australia will receive no direct compensation for the massive hikes in electricity prices. What it means is that jobs will be lost and product prices will rise.

As I go around my electorate holding my listening posts and doorknocking, the issue of the carbon tax is raised continually. Residents in my electorate have constantly contacted me about the impact that this carbon tax is going to have on their family, their household or their business. People tell me how this tax is going to mean that their small business is going to struggle even more than before when their expenses go up under the carbon tax. Labor members have spent a lot of time talking about compensation which families will receive, but they have not spent any time talking about the impact on small business, who will receive no compensation. Self-funded retirees and other people on fixed incomes tell me how this tax is going to mean they will struggle to make ends meet because grocery bills and electricity bills are going to go up. These bills are going to go up just as our emissions are going to go up under this carbon tax. There is negligible environmental benefit achieved under this new tax.

I recently met with one of the local councils in my electorate. They informed me that their annual power bill is $1.3 million, 70 per cent of which is for street lighting. Based on the government's own figures, the carbon tax will have an instant impact of $130,000 a year on this local council's budget—money that would otherwise have been spent on providing services to the community. The only way they can recover that $130,000 per year is to increase rates on their ratepayers. This is an example of the fact that power is inelastic. The council cannot just turn off its street lights.

I would also like to focus a bit on the impact that the carbon tax will have on health care in this country. We have already heard from the Victorian government that this will have an impact of millions of dollars on the power bills of hospitals in Victoria. The carbon tax will dramatically increase the cost of running Australia's public and private hospitals. Hospitals are huge consumers of electricity, and there is no way that this consumption can be reduced. Hospitals, through services like radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging, use enormous amounts of electricity, and there is no compensation for them in this carbon tax proposal. What a diagnostic imaging practice will see is a 10 per cent increase in their electricity bill. What a public hospital will see is, again, a 10 per cent increase in their electricity bill. A private hospital will see the same. For a clinic delivering radiotherapy and radiation oncology, it will be a 10 per cent increase in that power bill. Electricity prices will increase by 10 per cent in the first year alone, and the government refuses to tell us how much they are expected to rise in future years. When you consider primary care, a general practice, again, will see a 10 per cent increase in their power bill. In allied health, high users of electricity such as physiotherapy practices and dentists will also see a 10 per cent increase in their power bill, with no offset there at all. This is money that could have been spent on providing more front-line health services, and instead it will now be spent on electricity bills due to the government's carbon tax.

I would like now to talk about the coalition's alternative, which is our direct action plan. Despite what those opposite say, the coalition does believe that climate change is real and that mankind is making a contribution. Therefore we do support practical action on climate change. It is right that we protect our environment, and I do not think any Australian would argue with that. During the 2010 election, I made a promise that under a coalition government there would be several Green Corps projects to improve environmental conservation within my electorate. Our direct action policy is aimed at reducing emissions by five per cent by 2020, just like the government's plan. However, we believe that the action we take must be reasonable. We believe that the action we take must not be at the expense of Australian jobs or at the expense of our standards of living. The action we take should not, and must not, drive up the cost of living for people who are already struggling. There is a fundamental difference between the ideology of those opposite and that of the coalition. While those opposite prefer to penalise, punish, and tax, the coalition believes in providing incentive and optimism. This can be seen in many of the government's policies, but it is most clearly seen in their attitude towards climate change.

The coalition's direct action climate policy provides incentives for Australian businesses to reduce their carbon emissions voluntarily. Under a coalition direct action plan, there will be no cost to families, no new taxes and no rise in electricity prices. Our direct action plan is costed, capped and fully funded. By using incentives, our plan allows the market to determine the cheapest way to reduce emissions.

This is a bad tax, based on a lie. We must never forget that the Prime Minister lied to our country before the election—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): The member for Boothby knows that he cannot use that word.

Dr SOUTHCOTT: Madam Deputy Speaker, I withdraw.

The Prime Minister, six days before the election, said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' That can only be described as misleading. Residents in the minister's own electorate are well aware of this. I have a very clear vision of a nice photo opportunity held at the Findon bowling club, where the Prime Minister was explaining her carbon tax. She was buttonholed by a constituent who realised instantly what the impact of the carbon tax was going to be and said, very correctly, that India and the major emitters were not taking any action. This is a major breach of faith by the Prime Minister. The coalition will be voting against the carbon tax legislation and, if elected, we will rescind the carbon tax legislation.

Mr LAMING (Bowman) (12:32): On behalf of the residents of Bowman, I rise to make the two most obvious points that have been clear since the debate on emissions trading and the carbon tax began, and that is that we need to get the right mechanism and that we need to do it at the right time. I do not need to go back into the history of the misleading of voters before the last election, but I do need to acknowledge, more importantly, that it has been a long and tortuous debate on both sides of this chamber that has led us to this position.

The point I want to make clear today is that we need to get the right system for Australia because we are lawmakers here in Australia. It does not matter what the rest of the world is doing if we are doing the right thing for this nation. That is my job. It is the job of international agencies and international agreements to work out what is the right thing for the globe. I know if we do not have a global solution on carbon we do not have a solution at all. My speech today is going to focus on where we are globally in that agreement. I will also look at the temporal elements and the history of carbon negotiation—where we have got to and where the pitfalls have been. I do not doubt that a year or two from now we will revisit this debate and ask, 'What did we pass, and why?'

The best comparison for carbon negotiation globally is most likely the trade negotiations that began after World War II and continue today. We still do not have a worldwide trade agreement, 60 years on. More recently we have seen the poverty negotiations around the millennium goals—again, we are halfway to 2020 and we still do not have global agreement on action regarding poverty.

The point about carbon is that a quick and dirty agreement does not get you any closer to a global agreement. We know from international negotiation that it is a slow, trust-building, layer-upon-layer, meeting-upon-meeting approach that takes you towards the solution, or the destination, which is a global agreement. The early GATT negotiations began in 1947, in Annecy, Geneva, Dillon, Torquay and Kennedy. They then rolled right through Tokyo and then, finally, to the Uruguay Round, which began in 2001. Even 10 years after that tortuous process, no-one came out and said, 'I'm dropping all my trade barriers and that's the right thing for the planet.'

That is not the right thing to do in carbon. So the first point I want to address is this notion that we have to set an example for the rest of the world. We do not set examples for the rest of the world when it comes to jobs and livelihoods; we negotiate with the rest of the world. And what has happened since Copenhagen and since Bali? If we are this committed as a nation, why isn't this Prime Minister calling the President of the United States saying, 'Let's do something together'; getting in contact with Russia, Japan, Singapore and South Africa; bringing together the trade economies for meetings; and saying, 'Let's have a carbon arrangement'? It does not matter to this Prime Minister. This is purely a journey of political expediency for a Prime Minister desperate for something that she can look tough on.

Of course, in Australia we know that the impact will be significant. If we as a country wish to lead on climate we must be doing so at every opportunity, not just finding a way to punish our own people. That might be in some masochistic sense impressive to those that are looking for action on climate, but it does nothing to take us closer to global agreement. The fundamental point that has never been made by this government is whether us signing up to something makes other nations more likely or less likely to sign up. If you set up asymmetry in trade and in business where there is an advantage for other countries not to sign up, it is called the first-mover disincentive. It leads to perverse outcomes where you perpetuate the situation. Why would another economy come together and say, 'Australia's harming its trade exposed exports with this carbon tax; let's quickly do the same and remove the advantage we have'? It is pathetic and it is ridiculous. How that occurs is a point that has never been made on this side of the House.

The government would lead us to believe from their Treasury modelling that every other nation in the world will fall into a carbon tax when the ink is barely dry on the agreement—that they are only months or years away from a carbon tax. That is complete folly. No-one on the floor of congress in the US wants a carbon tax. Prime Minister, visit Japan. Go and visit Russia. Talk to Brazil. Show me the mining economies that say that a carbon tax is the right way to go. You will not find an economy that says that. With the greatest of respect to our colleagues in the EU and to New Zealand, our brothers across the Tasman Sea, they are not a mining, trade exposed economy. It is quite easy when you have consumed your natural resources to raise your hand for a carbon tax. It is not that hard to do—particularly when it is at about a dollar per person per year. It is not a hard thing to do. It is a far different thing when you are a commodity-producing economy, where carbon is attributed to the economy where it is mined, not where it is consumed.

I do not forget the words of those who were at the Copenhagen meeting just two years ago. They said that three things brought down Copenhagen. It is good to remember what they were. They said that the first thing was that the nations of this planet did not arrive at Copenhagen universally agreed on the problem. There was not universal agreement. The preparatory work had not been done. They had a ground rush and got there with all different proposals. No less than our own then Prime Minister came with his own shiny apple of an ETS. But nobody was interested. No-one was tempted by Kevin Rudd's proposal at the time because that is not where the world was heading.

The second thing was that the leaders turned up at Copenhagen too early in the negotiation process. So the minute the leaders jetted in everything was paralysed. All the cameras turned to the leaders and we got no agreement. The third thing that was pointed out by those who were at Copenhagen was the obvious point that this is no longer a debate about who has the shiniest apple and the fanciest carbon tax; it is now about what is right for me. It is now, if I am a commodity-producing trade-exposed economy, about how I do it with other like economies. I want to know what they are doing before I do something.

There is a weird notion that if we cut our hand in some sort of pact and hold it out, even though no-one grabs it, that will fix the climate. That is patently ridiculous. Every international agreement is a painstaking, slow process of trust-building. Where is Australia doing that at the moment? We are not. We have retreated to the simple task of having a carbon tax debate here in Australia and we have let the rest of the world back away from it.

My fundamental point today is the temporal notion of whether a carbon tax is the right thing right now. I know that we are incredibly animated by this carbon tax debate but it does deserve pause for thought as to why we are the only nation on the planet having a carbon tax debate in 2011. Is it because we have a finely balanced parliament? Is it because someone tapped the Prime Minister on the shoulder and said, 'Unless you pass a carbon tax we will not support you in government'? No, nobody said that. The reality is that, in wanting to do the right thing, we as a nation have simply chosen a foolish course. We have chosen (a) to go it alone and (b) to have a large and churning carbon tax through which the potential for profit seeking, rent seeking, administrative overload and corruption is simply too great for this chamber to pass it.

This carbon tax is clumsily designed. It is overly bulky. It is unwieldy. It offers none of the protections for the industries that we need to be looking after. I do not care that those industries are not voters for the Australian Labor Party, because at some point you have to separate yourself from your own political myopia and say, 'They may not vote for us but possibly it is the right thing to do for the economy and for jobs.'

I do not see why one job should be lost in the pursuit of a carbon agreement. I want to see the evidence that these clean green jobs are going to occur. Let us look for a comparator nation. There is none better than Spain. They embarked on the green economy just five years ago. They made enormous investments in solar energy. And no-one has pointed out to me yet exactly how paying twice as much for a solar panel as you will five years from now helps the climate. No-one has told me how paying twice as much now for a solar panel as Spain did will not bring down the economy just as it did in Spain—because the green bubble simply vanished at the time of the GFC. That enormous investment in solar energy has collapsed.

As Bjorn Lomborg says in his book Cool It, there is plenty of agreement that there is a problem. There are plenty of solutions. The question is: are we prepared to pay, now, for those solutions? Lomborg himself talks about climate being a $5 trillion economic problem between now and the turn of the century. Do we want to pay $15 trillion now to fix it or do we want to pay $3 trillion later? I cannot tell you when that 'later' will be but I know that the solutions get cheaper every day. I do not want to be in the one nation—the one economy—that has a carbon tax in place in 2011 because that will damage our economy. No-one overseas will thank us. The EU will not—it has a very light, almost imperceptible carbon tax. New Zealand will not, because in the main we do not compete with them as a commodity exporter. Certainly the other major economies of the world will not thank us. I do not want to always mention China but their growth in emissions over a year will be three times the size of Australia's entire economy.

I have used this analogy in the past, for people who do not have the time to read all of these carbon publications. Nobody loved peeing in the pool, did they? But we are all in the pool together here. It is an atmosphere just like a pool and, I tell you what, we are all peeing in that pool. We all agree it is a problem. We differ a little bit on just how bad for your health it is but if there is an elephant and a bullock peeing in the pool I see no point punishing the mouse.

I am sure we are all contributing to this problem but let us get an agreement in which we are all talking. We do not have that; we are not even close to that. Is this Prime Minister stepping out at saying, 'Let's bring together the tier-2 economies—the great exporters on this planet—for this discussion about climate'? No, there is none of that. She is too busy doing other things, like finding out ways to raise billions of dollars a year in carbon tax and then apportion them—distribute them—as only the friendly hand of government can do! Come on! We can continue under this Labor administration to find excuses to tax Australians. We have had 17 of these excuses so far without a tax cut. In the end we have to trust in their benevolence to distribute the funds appropriately.

How much can Australians take in this 'servility' to assume that all knowledge rests in Canberra? 'I don't care how much they collect,' we are meant to say, 'as long as I get a little more back than I am going to pay.' This servility—this sense that only a government knows how to distribute these carbon collections—is a complete fallacy.

We may not always have someone with the priorities of the current Prime Minister. I do not see why another $71 billion has to be collected out of the pockets of people like those in the gallery over the next six years, while at the same time the EU has only collected a fraction with their carbon tax. If you look at the eastern US renewable energy arrangements, where they have only collected $825 million from 50 million people, you see that it is about $5 per person per year. These systems overseas are token systems compared to what we are potentially doing to our economy. The points that I have made here have been simple. We are moving too early and we are moving alone. We are nothing like the EU because we are a commodity-producing economy. Our competitors are not Switzerland and Hungary. Our competitors are those that mine the iron ore and coal, those that bring the natural gas and other energy requirements to South-East Asia. They are the ones we need to be looking at—and do they move closer to a carbon tax? No matter how many times you try to airbrush away the reality, they are phasing it back, they are delaying, they are issuing free permits; they are doing anything they can to not harm their own economies.

That is exactly what this lot over here are not seeing. We have the temporal element and then we have the structural components of the carbon tax, which time will not allow me to go through. But let me say this: huge economic impact with very little environmental benefit. Australia's system alone would give a hundredths of a degree of Celsius reduction. We are talking about massive investment, in the billions now, that I cannot spend on hospitals and health care in order to—what—delay global warming by nine hours by the year 2100?

There is no solution without a global solution. I would love to see an administration focused purely on that very hard and adaptive work to bring other commodity exporters with us. I do not have a problem with being a leader in the field, but there is no point leading if no-one goes with you. Reach out the hand. Let us see if there is an agreement on this carbon tax structure. I severely doubt that there is. I ask if there is one economy heading in our direction in 2011. The frank reality is that there is not. I ask if there is one contemplating an economy-wide approach that hits not just 500 or 1,000 but 60,000 businesses having to pay or be compensated, and not the added prices that will be imposed upon their businesses as the result of the removal of fuel credits. In my electorate there are the waterborne taxis alone, the barges that serve our islands. It is okay to exempt one industry but not another, so they are paying more for their water taxis and vehicles are exempted. There is too much picking of winners. There are too many favourites. We have gone down this path alone with no support internationally and this is a bill that has to be opposed. (Time expired)

Ms HALL (Shortland—Government Whip) (12:47): I must say that the contribution by the member for Bowman really says a lot about the level of debate that has been engaged in by the opposition. There are no details, there is just a whole lot of political rhetoric. He even said in his contribution that he would not go into detail. What he said was misleading and did not paint a true picture of what is happening not only in Australia but also around the world. In comparing it with Spain and the collapse of the Spanish economy he might as well have compared it with Greece or any other nation that is having problems. It has absolutely nothing to do with investing in clean energy.

The clean energy bills are revolutionary legislation, legislation that will work with other measures and measures adopted by other countries to ensure the future of not only Australia but also our planet. I listened to the contribution made by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I learnt more about the opposition's policies from the Prime Minister than from the Leader of the Opposition, who used his 30 minutes to hurl insults at the Prime Minister, create fear and make unsubstantiated one-liners that he thought would make a good grab on the news—just as the member for Bowman did.

The legislation before us today is a market based reform which places a price on carbon pollution on around 500 big polluting companies. This carbon price mechanism is designed to reduce carbon pollution by at least 160 million tonnes a year in 2020, deliver tax cuts and increase pensioner and family payments to Australians. It is about putting a price on pollution whilst ensuring that polluters pay, not Australian workers, families and pensioners. The aim of the legislation is to change behaviour by making polluting costly and rewarding clean initiatives and non-polluting behaviours.

This legislation is a blueprint for a clean energy future, a future with investment in clean energy and clean energy jobs. This legislation is about embracing the future and moving to implement the recommendation of the myriad reports and inquiries that have spanned years. It is about action not inaction, the future not the past. Never has there been legislation that has been more vilified and never has the behaviour of an opposition leader been more irresponsible. For this opposition leader it is about living in the Lodge—not about the future of Australians and the best action to reduce climate pollution and address the pressing issues of climate change.

Not only do I question the motivation of the Leader of the Opposition but also I believe that he and his opposition have failed to substantiate their claim that putting a price on carbon would only lead to job losses, increased prices and failure to reduce carbon emissions. Not true. I also believe the opposition have failed to establish that their direct action plan is an effective measure to address climate change. It will require an increase in taxation of five per cent if they are to reach their target in 2020.

I believe that climate change is caused by CO2 emissions and that humans contribute to those emissions. I accept the science. I have visited the Solomon Islands and seen the impact that climate change has had on those islands, just as you have, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have spoken to people who have been forced to flee the islands on which they live because the increased temperatures have led to sea level rises, which have devoured their homes. I saw photos of orchards that separated the National Referral Hospital in Honiara from the sea, and I saw how today the ocean was just metres from the hospital. Recent news reports have shown that the polar icecaps are at their lowest level in recorded history, and the melting of that ice is leading to sea level rises. It is serious. It is not something that we can ignore.

In Australia, we have seen an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events. This year, we had the floods and cyclones in Queensland that caused havoc. In 2007, the electorate I represent was subjected to an extreme weather event when it and all areas in the Hunter and the Central Coast were lashed by storms, high winds and flooding, causing enormous devastation. There is no shortage of information that shows that climate change is a reality, and that temperatures are rising. There is no shortage of information that shows that CO2 is contributing to these increases, that humans are contributing to the increase in CO2 emissions and that, consequently, climate change is increasing. The government accepts that climate change is a reality and must be addressed. The opposition plays politics, promoting misinformation, as we heard from the previous speaker, the member for Bowman, and failing to provide a viable, affordable alternative to pricing carbon.

In Australia we hear the mantra that, until China acts, Australia should not act. If that is the case, the time to act is now. I recently visited China with the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Environment and the Arts, to see what, if any, action was taking place in China to address climate change. The overwhelming message that the committee received whilst in China was that the Chinese government and the Chinese people accept the reality of climate change. There is no debate there as to whether or not climate change is a reality. Rather, the debate is about how to cut CO2 pollution, and the Chinese government has committed to doing that. China knows its future depends on action to reduce its emissions; that is why China is making a massive investment in research into renewable energies. We visited an ecologically sustainable city, Tianjin. We also learnt about carbon price mechanisms that have been used in some regions of China; in fact, I believe that six such pricing mechanisms have been implemented within China. So China is acting and is putting a price on carbon.

The member for Wentworth knows that climate change and global warming are a reality and he knows that pricing carbon is the only effective way to change behaviour and reduce pollution—and he is not the only one on the opposition side who knows that carbon must be priced if we are to address the issue of CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition does not hold the same belief. He has stated in the past that climate change is 'crap', and his close alliance with anti-climate-change groups proves that he is a climate change denier. His direct action plan is really about inaction rather than direct action. I believe if the opposition gained government at the next election and Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, Australia would see inaction, not direct action, as his plan is costly and would place a tax on all Australians. On Thursday, 15 September, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the coalition's direct action plan would cost 'at least double' the cost of the government's clean energy package. Michael Hitchens, Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, said:

We understand … that the cost of abatement might double if we try to achieve the full abatement domestically—

as set out in the coalition's direct action plan.

The article goes on to discuss in some detail how the plan that has been put up by the coalition will cost each and every Australian.

The government's clean energy package will cut pollution and drive investment in clean energy technology. The legislation is about taxing polluters: approximately 500 of Australia's biggest polluters will have to pay for every tonne of carbon they emit into the atmosphere. These industries have been identified by the Prime Minister and the minister, and I do not intend to go into details here; it is all already on the parliamentary record. All the money collected will go to jobs, clean energy and households. The tax-free threshold will be increased to $18,000, and increased payments will be provided to those Australians who need them. Nine out of 10 households will get some form of tax cut or increased payment. The legislation provides for increased payments to pensioners, veterans, self-funded retirees, Australian families and other Australians who qualify for assistance. There will be an initial lump-sum advancement for households before the carbon pricing scheme comes into effect, and this is to ensure that nobody receives any initial disadvantage.

The legislation is about taxing polluters, as I said, not about increasing costs for Australians. It is legislation designed to change behaviour and to ensure our future and that of our children and their children. Over four million households will be better off in terms of the average price impact. On average, households will see a cost increase of $9.90, while the average assistance to them will be $10.10 per week. Almost six million households will be assisted to meet the average price impact on them, and this means they will receive assistance that covers at lease the average price impact of carbon on their cost of living. Around eight million households will get some assistance. They will receive some assistance through payment increases and tax cuts, as I have already outlined. Those households that improve their energy efficiency—and, remember, this is about changing behaviour—will help the environment and at the same time they will save money.

Pensions will increase by $338 per year for seniors and $510 per year for pensioner couples. Concession card holders who rely on essential medical equipment will also be eligible to receive a $140 essential medical equipment payment. Self-funded retirees who have a Commonwealth seniors card will get the same amount of cash assistance as is provided through the pension. Age pensioners, disability pensioners and carers will all be taken care of.

This government is about ensuring that the people of Australia do not bear the brunt of pricing carbon. This is about the polluters paying. Family payments will increase. Families who receive family tax benefit A will receive up to $110 per child per year extra and there will be up to $69 extra for families who receive family tax benefit B. There will up to $218 extra per year for single income support recipients, $234 per year for single parents and up to $390 for couples combined for jobseekers and students per year.

This is important legislation. This is legislation that is about the future. In summary, the government's clean energy legislation will ensure that big polluters pay, that householders receive tax cuts and are compensated for any cost-of-living increases and that there is a clean energy future for Australia, whilst the opposition's direct action plan will cost individual Australians $1,300 a year. The opposition's plan is not deliverable and will become a non-core promise if a coalition government were ever elected; the government's plan is for a clean energy future and will become a reality on 1 July next year.

Mr ENTSCH (Leichhardt—Chief Opposition Whip) (13:02): I rise today to speak on the Clean Energy Bill 2011 and related bills. I have gone through the plethora of bills to try to see if there is anything really positive that I can speak on but, quite frankly, the more you look into the legislation the greater your concern for your local community and the impacts that this legislation is going to have on it, both socially and economically. For that reason, I certainly support the coalition's position in vehemently opposing the imposition of this very, very unfair, job-destroying and ineffective carbon tax on my community—and, by extension, on the nation. There is no doubt that we live in a global economy, and these bills are certainly going to impose a very, very unfair impost on business, industries and families and they will have a serious negative impact on our trading with competing countries who do not have to endure this particular tax.

I think what makes this particularly difficult is that this whole debate has been predicated on deceit and dishonesty. The Prime Minister stated very clearly on 16 August 2010 on the Ten Network:

There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.

And in an interview in the Australian on 20 August she said quite clearly and categorically:

I rule out a carbon tax.

The Australian public voted on this issue. They accepted the Prime Minister on her word and on the basis that she would not introduce a carbon tax. To now break her word and introduce it without first taking this to an election represents, in my view, a very gross breach of trust with the Australian people. When I speak to people in my electorate you see that that is very much the consensus. They are very, very disappointed and they feel very much betrayed. I am talking here about people who would have voted for the Labor Party at the last election, and they feel very betrayed.

I was a member of this House back in 1998 when we went to an election on the GST. Much has been said about the then Prime Minister, John Howard, changing his view. But at least he had the conviction to take the issue to an election. We lost quite a few of our colleagues at that time but, nevertheless, we won that election based on that commitment, and subsequently a GST was introduced. I notice that a lot of attention is being focused on the Leader of the Opposition and this nonsense about his 'No, no, no' and 'He is not going to support these bills' et cetera. I was here back in the days when we talked about the GST, and it was 'No, no, no, no' from the then Leader of the Opposition and that was the chorus from the opposition at that time—and the member across the chamber from me, the member for Banks, was part of that very, very loud chorus at the time. So I think it is a little bit hypocritical to now come into this place and suggest that, because we have some very serious and real concerns about this legislation and the impact that it is going to have on our community, we do not have the right to express our concerns and say, 'No; we believe there is a better way.'

People always say that we have to keep up with the world. I do not have a problem with that but, at the end of the day, we should not lead so that we are so far out in front that we get absolutely destroyed. They were talking about what has been happening overseas. There is no other country that is planning to impose an economy-wide carbon price. The Productivity Commission clearly stated that not one country on earth is bringing in an economy-wide carbon tax or emissions trading scheme.

In the United States, for example, all moves towards a national cap-and-trade scheme have been abandoned. The government always uses Europe as an example—they say, 'Europe has got an ETS'—of course it has an ETS, but it certainly does not cover the whole economy. It provides many industries with free emissions permits, and the ETS, interestingly enough. only raises about $500 million a year. The tax we are talking about here in Australia, a much smaller economy, would be raising $9 billion to kick off with. That is a hell of a cost in relation to the Australian people. The government also claims that China is acting to reduce its carbon emissions, but the reality is that China is forecast to rise by something like 500 per cent by the year 2020. So that does not seem to me to be much of a significant reduction in costs.

The actual carbon price would start at $23 a tonne, but after three years that price—it will not be fixed—will float in line with market prices. Government will have no control over that. By the government's own forecast, that price will increase to $29 a tonne in 2016, $37 a tonne in 2020, and over $350 a tonne in 2050. What on earth is that going to do for our cost of living? The Centre for International Economics has forecast that the price will rise to $49 a tonne by 2016.

It is interesting to note that those who are really running the government at the moment—Greens senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne—say that the price needs to be at least $40 a tonne and that there needs to be a shift away from coal for electricity generation. Another Greens senator, Senator Hanson-Young, has canvassed a price of up to $100 a tonne. You can only imagine what sort of impact that is going to have not only on our economy but also on the cost of living of so many people. Any compensation is only being factored in for the introduction of this; this is not ongoing. I can assure you that, as the costs continue to escalate, the cost of living will be escalating with that. It will really make for a hell of an impost, particularly for those who can least afford it.

Cairns has a very diverse economy. From a regional perspective, we have mining—we have the Rio Tinto bauxite mine—but we also have agriculture and horticulture and we have a small Navy base. But tourism is the primary lifeblood of our economy, and we should never forget that. We have done it tough over the last few years, and businesses are now just starting to try to come back. Of course the floods and cyclones certainly have not helped; neither has the loss of flights into our international airport. That is just starting to recover now. There was the tsunami in Japan, one of our main feeder markets, and there was the disaster with the earthquakes in New Zealand, another major and important market for our economy.

We were in fact the unemployment capital of Australia; we were up to 13 per cent at one stage, and the value of the Australian dollar makes it very tough. So the last thing we need is a significant cost increase. They talk about whether we are going to compensate households for electricity and other living costs—as I said, very short term.

When you talk to people like Charlie and Pip Woodward—they have the Capita Group in my electorate, one of the major tourism operators there, operating buses, boats and a whole range of other experiences up there—you find that the increase in the cost of electricity and fuel is going to be quite profound. We have many other great companies up there, including Quicksilver, Jim and Jo Wallace, and Great Adventure Boats. Their costs for fuel for the dive boats going out to the Great Barrier Reef is going to be very significant. These are costs that they have to pass on; they cannot carry these costs. Down Under Tours, James and Gordon Dixon, is a bus tour operation that travels quite extensively around our region. They also have these costs that they are going to have to pass on to the consumer, in a market that is already very, very price sensitive. To suggest that they can cover these costs, while they are still trying to recover from the impacts of the last couple of years, is a nonsense. On top of that they have no control over costs such as electricity and other costs. Again, it is something that they have to pass on.

One of the big concerns I have is in relation to the impact on our airlines. As I said, we have just started to attract further services into Cairns, and this means that there is an opportunity for the whole region. The international airport is an area where people arrive and disperse. The fuel costs in relation to this are going to make travelling into this area a lot less competitive.

Those on the other side say that it is only a minimum cost and they are all doing it overseas, but I note that the International Air Cargo Association has recently urged the EU to suspend the implementation of its emissions trading scheme on aviation and instead pursue a global agreement on aviation carbon emissions. They firmly believe that the aviation emissions must be addressed through a global framework; otherwise it will not result in any decrease in emissions but it will certainly impose a massive impost on the aviation sector. Yet here we are looking at putting the same thing on Australian aviation as well. I think that what we need to do is what we have committed to do in opposition, and that is looking for direct action. One of the things we are looking at is the development, through James Cook University, of carbon dioxide-eating algae that is being developed up there. Professor Kirsten Heimann is heading that project and they are going to retrofit it onto the stacks at Tarong Energy in Queensland. Basically, the algae consumes the carbon dioxide, they are able to harvest the algae, which grows at an accelerated rate, and from that they are able to take biodiesel, stock food and fertiliser. To me that is a much more practical way of reducing emissions. Investing in that creates an opportunity to export not our jobs but a technology that we as Australians can get a benefit from and, in the meantime, we can continue to reduce our own emissions.

I note that we are talking about buying foreign carbon credits. We have seen them in the media in recent times, and I have got to say: start selling credits into equatorial Guinea or Nigeria. That is the sort of thing that would happen if it is a repeat of a lot of the other initiatives that this government has been involved in. I think it is absolutely appalling that we are continuing down this track. I think there are far better ways in which we could do this. We have got to look at alternatives. I think it is right that we should be absolutely opposing this. I think that the compensation will never cover the costs of the losses of the things that we are going to see for families.

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (13:17): When you are listening to some of this debate it is easy to forget why we are here. Ice caps are melting and the seas are rising. Hurricanes, storms and floods are becoming more intense and dangerous, and extreme fires are becoming more powerful and are happening more often. This is just the beginning of our pathway to a more dangerous and harsher world.

The existing and growing threat of climate change is the reason that we are here today. We are all—every person and every species on this planet—threatened by catastrophic climate change and the potential of it, and we are running out of time to prevent this catastrophe. The catastrophe is not going to be just social but also economic. The hit to the Australian economy if we are not able to prevent runaway climate change is going to be enormous. We have just heard about the tourism sector in Queensland. The Great Barrier Reef has bleached up to nine times since the 1970s, which is completely unusual when you look at the period before it. Sixty-seven thousand jobs are directly dependent on tourism and the Barrier Reef. There will be no compensation that will be able to fully address the situation of those people who are going to be turfed out of a job and a livelihood when the Great Barrier Reef becomes nothing more than a perpetually bleaching feature.

We can look at the Murray-Darling Basin and see Professor Ross Garnaut's predictions of, by the end of the century, a potential loss of about 92 per cent of productivity if we do not get climate change under control. The Australian Climate Commission released a report this year which makes it clear that, to prevent disaster, countries like Australia need to be effectively zero pollution economies by the middle of the century. Indeed, for countries like Australia, it should happen sooner, by somewhere closer to 2040. As the report points out, we are in a critical decade. This decade must be the one in which our pollution in this country is the highest it is ever going to be and it needs to reduce. That means we need to begin the big steps to transform our economy to one which runs on clean energy. I believe it is vitally important in this debate that we do not lose sight of those basic facts. Climate change requires us to act, and today we are acting with this legislation.

If you follow the current debate in the media with its almost obsessive focus on the narrow political implications of this package, it is easy to lose sight of the great significance of this moment in Australia's history. For the first time, after decades of discussion about the need for action, we now have a comprehensive package of national measures to make a start in tackling climate change. For the first time we have a pollution reduction target of 80 per cent by 2050, and that is close to what the science says is needed. For the first time we have a climate change authority that will make recommendations every year on a carbon budget that will get us to that target. And for the first time we have a price on pollution to drive up the relative cost of fossil fuels and to drive down the price of cleaner and renewable energy. And, for the first time we have a well-funded agency whose sole focus is the promotion of renewable energy. And for the first time we have a publicly-funded green bank that can invest in clean energy and leverage billions of dollars in private sector investment as well. We will also have in legislation a commitment to keep global warming below the guardrail of two degrees—one of the few changes that the Greens proposed to the draft legislation.

So I think it is a very significant step towards Australia making its fair share of a global contribution to cutting pollution as well as participating in the global fight against climate change. I am particularly proud to be speaking on these bills today because, of course, we would not be having this debate at this point in time if the electorate of Melbourne had not shown the leadership that it did at the last election. By switching to the Greens, Melbourne was able to empower me and my fellow party members to make a price on pollution one of our conditions for supporting a minority government. We did this because, whilst we agree that a price on pollution alone will not be enough to fix climate change, we know we will not be able to fix climate change without one. A price on pollution, it is worth remembering, comes from a very simple premise. Until now we have presumed as a human race that we can put as much pollution into the atmosphere as we like without any cost. This has not happened because some evil cabal has sat around saying, 'How can we put as much pollution into the atmosphere as possible?' It is just the way our society has been organised for the last couple of hundred years, and we have all benefited from it. We now know it comes at a cost. We now know you cannot continue to put pollution into the atmosphere for free, and this package will begin to say for the first time that polluters who put that pollution into the atmosphere are going to have to pay something approximating the real cost of that pollution.

A price is an essential part of both driving investment decisions and generating revenue that can be directed to cutting pollution and invested in renewables like wind and solar. It is a crucial platform on which further action can be built in the energy efficiency of buildings, transport and other areas of the economy. The negotiations with the government and the Independents, in which I participated and which led to these bills, set out a process for addressing some of these areas, and the Greens have a plan for more measures that will build on the carbon price.

I find very strange this current debate, within this parliament in particular, about false dichotomies between direct action and a price on pollution. That false debate has been created by the Leader of the Opposition for political purposes rather than a reflection of a real disagreement over the best way to act to cut pollution. How do we know that? Because we know the Leader of the Opposition has supported a price on pollution in the past, but we also know that conservative governments in Europe and the UK support the same. The conservative Prime Minister in the United Kingdom has just agreed to cut that country's greenhouse gas pollutions in half by 2025-27. We even have Silvio Berlusconi saying recently, 'You've got to put aside this national interest. It's going to affect us all.' There are not many things that I would agree with Silvio Berlusconi on, but he hits the nail on the head with that. It shows that elsewhere, when you step out of the narrow confines, you will find this is not a partisan political issue.

I think in different political circumstances the Leader of the Opposition would be backing a price on pollution. So I make the prediction that if the Leader of the Opposition ever becomes Prime Minister we will see a change of heart. We will see him join the ranks of the other conservative leaders around the world and back a price on pollution. The words of the shadow Treasurer today that the coalition will unwind the clean energy package and scrap the compensation that goes with it ring hollow.

This package will triple the tax-free threshold, and I cannot believe that a shadow Treasurer, if you were ever in the position, would go to the million Australians who will now not have to file a tax return and say, 'We want you to pay tax' and go to those hundreds of thousands of pensioners and recipients of welfare who are going to get hundreds of extra dollars, if not thousands, to help them deal with this and say, 'We want to take it back.'

The other reason that this debate between direct action and price on pollution is a false dichotomy is that if you think about other areas where we tackle problems in society we do not apply this kind of dichotomy. We know that smoking causes enormous damage and is a major risk to health. We know that, despite the misinformation and fear campaign pedalled by big tobacco, successive governments have sort to reduce, significantly curb and eventually get smoking rates down to zero.

When we discuss how to deal with smoking, we do not ask, 'Are you a direct actionist or a price supporter?' We do not suggest that putting a price on cigarettes is somehow in conflict with education and health sector intervention. We do everything. We jack up the price. We send doctors on the warpath. We put ads on TV and pictures of cancer on packets of cigarettes. Does anyone seriously believe that investments in public health alone would work to cut smoking if you could buy a pack of cigarettes for $2? Would education programs alone cut through if buying cigarettes was cheaper than a cup of coffee? It is the same argument here: if we allow polluting energy to continue to be unreasonably and wrongly priced as a cheap commodity, we are going to continue to see people flock to it no matter what kind of direct action we take.

It is not just the decisions of consumers that this package is going to change. If you happen to be lucky enough to have a spare few billion lying around and you want to invest in a power station here in Australia, this price sends a signal to you as well: you can either invest in a dirty power station where you are going to have to pay a price on pollution for every tonne of CO2 you emit or you can invest in a clean power station—wind, solar, solar-thermal—and not have to pay a cent. As investment changes we are going to set Australia on the path to being the renewable economy that it should be.

It has been my privilege since I have been elected to meet a number of remarkable people, one of whom is the adviser on climate change to the conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and the G8. He said, 'I cannot understand why you Australians are not leading the world in renewable energy technology. Look at your intellectual resources. Look at your human resources. Look at how much sun, wind and wave power you have. Why aren't you leading the world?' It is a very good question. We need to be willing to put in place a range of policies that will take us on the path towards a zero carbon economy. Believing it can occur without a carbon price is a dangerous false hope.

I want to outline briefly some important aspects of this package of bills that I think highlight the success of the Greens in negotiating the cross-party agreement that led to these bills. The package means $13 billion investment for clean and renewable energy. There will be a $10 billion publicly owned Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will leverage tens of billions more in private sector investment in clean renewable energy. There will be a new $3.2 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which will for the first time create a systemic, whole-of-government approach to renewable energy from R&D to rollout and planning. The Australian energy planner, AEMO, will prepare plans for the electricity grid to move forward with 100 per cent renewable energy. There is generous compensation for households, especially low-income earners. Nine out of 10 households will receive assistance through tax cuts, increased payments or both. A supplement will increase pensions, allowances and family payments by 1.7 per cent and a big increase to the tax-free threshold will mean over one million Australians will no longer need to lodge a tax return.

The bills also mean we will start replacing dirty power stations. Two thousand megawatts of dirty coal fired power such as Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest power station, will be closed. The price on pollution importantly means no new conventional commercial coal fired power stations will be built.

I want to take this moment to congratulate the Prime Minister on seeing this package through. Although Labor's platform was to do this in many years' time rather than now, the circumstances of this parliament, where the coalition did not win a majority, have meant that there has to be give and take. We have asked, and the Australian people want, the parliament to take action on climate change and for it to happen soon. I commend the Prime Minister and the government on sticking to that. I hope they use this opportunity not to have their foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. If they are looking to save $100 million in the next budget, they could easily do it by not giving it for the construction of a new coal fired power plant in Victoria, the HRL.

The reality is that the real opposition to a price on pollution in most cases is not based on a genuine desire to cut pollution. It usually comes from those who are opposed to any action on climate change. That is because, usually, carbon change deniers are those who want to protect polluters or have accepted the arguments of climate deniers. There are those who say that climate change is uncertain or not real, but really that is a question about risk. We may say, 'I cannot tell you the day when Australia will be invaded or where the ships will land or who will be invading us and I cannot tell you whether our submarines will be parked in the right place at the right time,' but that is not an argument for having no Defence Force. You do not get to the end of the year and say, 'My house did not burn down: that is more money I have just wasted on fire insurance;' you say, 'Thank goodness I am safe.' So it is that we should be adopting the question of risk when it comes to climate change. We should be saying, 'If the scientists are right in their over 90 per cent certainty that this is happening, let's address it commensurate with the full consequences of the risk of the most extraordinary extreme events occurring. What can we do to prevent them? How can we make sure that our children and our grandchildren in future generations inherit a world in a better state than it is in at the moment.'

There is also an argument that what Australia does is inconsequential because our pollution is too small. We are the world's largest per capita emitter and we cannot with any seriousness say to countries like China and India, 'We want you to cut your emissions,' if we do not do the same ourselves. Unless we do this, we will be a drag on any effective global action. Conversely, taking this action makes it much more likely that other countries will get on board.

It was reading the climate change science and a realisation of how quickly we had to act that led me to quit my job and begin running in election campaigns. It is with great pride that I stand here today knowing that we are taking our first ever steps on climate change one year into this government.

Mr COULTON (Parkes—The Nationals Chief Whip) (13:32): While it is tempting to spend my time rebutting the member for Melbourne's speech, I will try to resist. But I will say that in this House I have never heard so much emotional claptrap so removed from reality. The member for Melbourne thanked the people of Melbourne for putting him here for this momentous occasion. I was in Melbourne last week and it seems to me that there are a lot of houses and a lot of buildings in the middle of Melbourne made out of concrete. They have glass windows. They have trams running on steel tracks using electricity to drive them around. While the good folk of Melbourne might have a desire to improve the environment, they do not appear to be doing too much of it themselves.

The member for Melbourne's scare campaign of referring to catastrophic climate change is nothing short of ridiculous. The member for Melbourne is still using the images of the Murray-Darling Basin after suffering 10 years of drought to demonstrate his argument. If the member for Melbourne would like to get out of the capital city and go to look at the Murray-Darling Basin, he will find out that it actually has rained, we are not in drought and the system has not run dry, as he would lead us to believe. The interesting thing is that the good folk of Melbourne, supported by the Greens during that drought, started a pipeline to pipe water from the Murray-Darling Basin for the good people of Melbourne to flush down their toilets. This is gross hypocrisy.

Professor Garnaut, who did the original report on climate change and an emissions trading scheme for the Rudd government, said that regional Australia would have an economic downturn of 20 per cent and the cities would have one of eight per cent. When the member for Melbourne comes in here with a scheme where the people of his electorate undertake the same amount of hardship as the people of my electorate, we might start talking. This is nonsense.

We talk about 100 per cent renewable energy in Australia. How do you make a solar farm or a wind turbine without a steel mill? How do you make a wind turbine without an iron ore mine and a coalmine to make the steel to make the turbine? Do the good climate fairies come in at midnight and put these turbines up to generate the electricity? This is an absolute nonsense.

This is, indeed, a historic occasion, but I suggest that we do not want to get too far ahead of ourselves. This is the third time I have spoken on this subject in this place. On the previous two occasions that I spoke, the members of the government and the more recent Greens member had breathless anticipation of worldwide change, but it did not quite happen—so we have not got there yet. Do not count your chickens until they hatch. As I said in my very first speech on the subject, in 2008, this is going to have a devastating effect on the Australian economy.

This bill has been couched as compensation and it has been couched as tax reform. Pardon me—I thought the idea of this legislation was for it to have some sort of environmental effect. We are talking about global environmental effect; Australia does not live in a bubble. As a result of this tax and of the belief by some that it will come about, we are starting to see changes of behaviour, but not the sorts of changes of behaviour that the breathless member for Melbourne spoke about. We are starting to see Australian industry move offshore. For instance, about 100 tonnes of concrete are needed to secure each of the wind turbines which are supposedly going to generate all our power. But guess where that concrete is going to come from. It is not going to come from the plant in central New South Wales at Kandos, because, due to the uncertainty over the economy and due to the price of carbon, it has closed—cement is a triple emitter.

Mr Lyons: We haven't got a carbon price yet, and it has closed already.

Mr COULTON: Yes, it has closed; but I do not suppose the good folk of Bass are going to go without cement. No—the good folk of Bass are going to get their cement on a ship that will come from Indonesia or China or Japan where they do not have a carbon trading scheme and where, incidentally, they put out about 20 per cent or 30 per cent—

Mr Stephen Jones interjecting—

Mr COULTON: You will get your chance. Cement factories in Indonesia or China put out about 20 per cent or 30 per cent more carbon per tonne of cement than the factory in Australia did. So not only will more carbon be produced in a Third World country but the jobs will also be in the Third World country, and we will have ships traversing the globe to bring cement into Australia. It will be the same with the steel. Where does the good member for Melbourne think the steel is going to come from when they need new tracks for their trams in Melbourne? It is going to come from overseas. Where are the jobs that are going to create these things going to be? They are going to be overseas.

Being a member of parliament is not a popularity contest. People say that the coalition is running a popularity contest. In 2008, When I first spoke on the carbon price, 85 per cent of Australians were saying that they wanted an emissions trading scheme—that they wanted to put a price on carbon—but now it is down to about 20 per cent. I would like to think that this change was because of the great work that the coalition has done, but it is not; the reason for the change is that the Australian people have realised that they have been sold a dud and that they are going to be asked to change their lifestyle for no environmental gain. There was an article in the paper today about how the price of Weet-Bix is going to go up one cent per biscuit or something like that and that milk is going to go up by so much, and so on. But that is not the argument. A cement worker at Kandos does not care about the price of Weet-Bix; he has to worry about affording the Weet-Bix in the first place because he has lost his job. What about the steelworkers? We have the member for whatever that suburb is in Wollongong where the steelworkers in Wollongong are losing their jobs. What about the people in Western Sydney who work in the factories which do repair works on the steel mills—who is going to protect their jobs?

For the members of the government and the Greens and the Independents this debate is like a year 5 social studies class where they come in, breathlessly excited, to show the teacher how they are going to save the world with absolutely no practical understanding of the consequences. The reason I am opposed to this legislation is that regional Australia will have an economic downturn of 20 per cent—we are users of energy. Do you think the tractor that grows the wheat to make the bread eaten by those good folk in Melbourne who are so warm and fuzzy about this bill is going to be run on a solar panel? Do you think the irrigation pump that pumps the water which grows the cotton used to make their shirts is going to be run on a solar panel? This is gross ignorance and hypocrisy. This House has turned its back on this tax twice before. It is not too late to save Australia from this tax yet again.

Behind me here sit the Independents—the member for New England and the member for Lyne. The member for New England has been making some very disparaging comments of late about redneck politics. He has been taking the high moral ground: he wants to give the Australian environment the benefit of the doubt. But you don't give something the benefit of the doubt if you know that it is going to have no environmental effect. Why would the member for New England and the member for Lyne support legislation that was clearly going to be detrimental to the economies of their electorates—which are exporters—and their country?

A farmer in my electorate who wants to produce a tonne of grain and process it into bread or stockfeed or something like that will pay a tax; a farmer somewhere else in the world will not. If I want to dig up a tonne of coal at Mudgee in my electorate and mix it with a tonne of iron ore from the electorate of my good colleague up the back here and make something here in Australia, there will be a tax; if I want to put those things on a boat and send them to China to get them to make it and send it back to us, there will be no tax. But how are we going to pay for it when it comes back? Agriculture and mining were the two industries—and, in my electorate, they are now equally productive—that saved this country from global recession. It was not the stupid stimulus package that put up those dodgy walls and burnt houses down with insulation that saved the country; it was mining and agriculture. But those industries are going to be hit. My electorate is going to be hit. The pensioners in my electorate may get some compensation, but it will not be enough. Already we are finding that they are, through fear of the future, shivering in winter because they are not game to turn their heaters on.

Opposing this legislation is about doing the right thing. It is about looking after the future of our children and grandchildren. We have heard the member for Melbourne talking about looking after the future of our children, but you can only look after the environment when you have a couple of bob in your pocket to spend on making the necessary improvements. If you are a farmer who is cash strapped, you cannot afford to make the improvements in technology which you need to be more efficient. If you are a business and you are being taxed, the ability to improve your business to make it more environmentally sustainable is taken away from you. You do not help the Australian people to change and improve the way they live by taxing them.

This legislation is going to have no environmental effect. We have heard from others in this debate that we have to catch up with the rest of the world. Between 2005 and 2011, the EU's emissions trading scheme raised $2.6 billion to $2.9 billion. That operates in over 30 countries, including 27 members of the EU plus Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway. The Australian carbon tax, which we are speaking about now and will vote on—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. Peter Slipper ): Order! It being 1.45 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the honourable member for Parkes will then have the opportunity to continue his remarks.

Mr BRADBURY (Lindsay—Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) (15:31): I would like to take the opportunity to respond to a number of issues that were raised before the debate was interrupted. I think it is fair to say that the principal claim that was being made by the opposition went to the question of the integrity of forecasting and figures that might be provided by the Treasury. In particular, there was some discussion around the PEFO, the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, and I was able to indicate that those figures are independently verified and that they need to be signed off by the secretaries of the departments of Treasury and finance. In the context of that discussion, the member for North Sydney raised some concerns in relation to the other reports that might be required to be produced under the Charter of Budget Honesty Act, in particular in relation to the budget economic and fiscal outlook and the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The allegation was made that in some respects in the past there had been political interference by previous treasurers with those forecasts and figures. If I recall correctly, the member for North Sydney indicated that he had been there and that he spoke with some personal experience in relation to these matters.

In addressing those concerns, I make the following points. The first one is that each of the matters contained within the two reports that have been referred to—the budget and MYEFO—the forecasts upon which each of those reports is to be provided, are forecasts that are provided by the Treasury. The assumptions that underpin those reports are produced by the Treasury, but of course those reports are provided by the Treasurer.

In relation to those forecasts, it is worth making the point that these forecasts are the subject of considerable and very robust review, and there are a number of checks and balances that are in place and that have been in place for some time. In particular, the Treasury forecasts are informed by extensive and regular discussions with the Reserve Bank, the Department of Finance and Deregulation and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and also the ABS, through the Joint Economic Forecasting Group. In addition to JEFG, there is also the opportunity for the Senate estimates process to be used to test the assumptions and parameters outlined within the various reports. In addition, the Reserve Bank and others, in particular private institutions and market economists, will make their own forecasts from time to time and, in the context of the public debate around those forecasts and the scrutiny that will naturally be applied to the government's forecasts, there is a degree of accountability that occurs in that sense as well.

I think it is also worth making the point that the Parliamentary Budget Office will have direct access to the Treasury and finance departments, notwithstanding what has been said in this debate before. So, regardless of where those forecasts might be generated, there will be full, frank and free access, without any ministerial intervention or encumbrance, that will allow the PBO to contact and to test various forecasts and to raise concerns that they may have. That is something that is permitted within the regime that the government is supporting in the bill.

I think it is also worth making the point, in the interests of clarity, that the legislation does not in any way prevent the PBO from assessing, evaluating or analysing the economic forecasts. The PBO is free to do that, but what they are not free to do is to dedicate resources that would be allocated to them to the task of forecasting. There is a very good reason for that, and that is why the joint committee—which, I remind the House, handed down recommendations that were unanimous, including members from the opposition—made the point that this would be a very expensive exercise and one that would not be a very useful allocation of resources. The opposition referred to the Congressional Budget Office on a number of occasions. In doing so they should make the point that the annual budget of the Congressional Budget Office is $US50 million, considerably more than what is envisaged for the PBO, because it has different functions. (Time expired)

Mr HOCKEY (North Sydney) (15:37): The parliamentary secretary has just confirmed everything that I said. He absolutely confirmed that in fact the PBO will be only able to use the fiscal and economic forecasts of the Treasury, unless it is in relation to the pre-election fiscal outlook, which is the only document under the Charter of Budget Honesty that is in fact signed off as the figures that actually belong to the Department of the Treasury and department of finance. Otherwise, the PBO is constrained to looking only at the government's figures; that is all. Then they had the audacity to claim that this was a recommendation in the report. I do not recall seeing it; in fact, I went back to the report.

There is no recommendation in the committee's report. The mandates of the PBO can only use information and reports published under the charter. There is one mention, which at 3.100 says:

…the PBO should not be required to produce its own fiscal forecasts. Rather, it should provide analysis of the Government ' s fiscal forecasts…

Okay; fine. But that is actually not a recommendation, nor is it the case that it says it would not be able to produce its own fiscal forecasts. So, for example, let's take this, an issue that is highly contentious: what is the structural deficit? The Treasury does not do its own modelling on a structural deficit. It had a part of the budget papers that was allocated to a discussion of the structural deficit. This is an issue that is hugely contentious in relation to the fiscal outlook, and under the government's amendment the PBO would not be able to do any assessment of the structural deficit. How bizarre. It is not an independent body.

Secondly, it would not be able to use data provided by the Reserve Bank, nor would it be able to use data provided by ABARES. Under this situation, the government is saying, 'Look, there is only one set of data that can go into the PBO—that is, the government's data, the executive's data. All other information cannot go to the PBO because it cannot be challenged.' Frankly, if this is what the parliament thinks is an independent body, it is seriously kidding itself.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP (Mackellar) (15:39): When we began debating this last week, I made the point that what the government is proposing for this Parliamentary Budget Office is something that is simply linked to the coattails of Treasury. That is totally and utterly unacceptable to the opposition for very good reasons, because the Treasury has become so politicised. I made the point that Treasury and the head of Treasury had been rewarded for things that they had done to assist the government.

I want to go specifically to some of what happened after the election when the Independents said that they wanted to have our costings analysed because we had said we did not want to politicise Treasury to look at them. We had them done independently, and then the Independents said that they would make up their decision about how good or bad we were on what Treasury had to say about those costings.

I want to go to some of them directly to say why we cannot have a Parliamentary Budget Office which is attached to a politicised Treasury. Let's look at the conservative bias allowance. First of all we said we would have a saving of $2.5 billion. Mr Henry said, 'No, you can't have that, actually. You can't be counted as having $2.5 billion,' because, in his words, 'it will not realise any actual budgetary savings if you cut back on the conservative bias allowance that is factored in to allow a little bit of a buffer in the way projections are made.' Yet at the same time in the 2009-10 budget, Mr Henry, himself responsible for that budget, in Budget Paper No. 1 had set out that the government was saving $4.6 billion 'by savings from the conservative bias allowance over the forward estimates'. He said, 'This results in a reduction of expenses of $1.5 billion in 2010-11, $1.5 billion in 2011-12 and $1.6 billion in 2012-13, totalling $4.6 billion.' Yet Mr Henry said to the Independents, who were making a judgment: 'They can't count $2.5 billion. That's part of the $11 billion so-called black hole.'

Then we go to cutting expenditure for the Health and Hospitals Fund—another interesting one. Here we said we were going to save $3.3 billion, and Mr Henry said to the Independents, 'They can't do that. They would have to identify before the election just what programs were going to be cut out of the three funds.' They were: the Health and Hospitals Fund, the Education and Investment Fund and the Building Australia Fund. Then we said, 'But we asked you for that list of programs, Mr Henry, and you said you couldn't find one. It didn't exist.' Finally, in the middle of these protracted discussions for the benefit of the Independents to decide who they might back for government, he said, 'I've got a secret list. I've got it here, but guess what? I can't let you see it.' Isn't that amazing? 'I can't let you see it.' Did he ever give a reason for why this was a secret list, why it couldn't be made public or why it hadn't been able to be found before? Of course not. Of course Mr Henry should be rewarded. He did a wonderful job for the government.

Then we come to the NBN. Savings here were going to be $2.4 billion, and we were going to save that by not borrowing money on which we said the interest rate payable was 5.5 per cent. Mr Henry came to the rescue of the government again and said, 'You can't save that amount of money, because we say the interest rate will be 4.9 per cent.' He would not be moved. He said, 'I've made a decision, so that will be another $900 million to add to your black hole.'

I took the figures today for the average interest rate paid from July 2010 to today. Guess what it is? It is 5.23 per cent. So Mr Henry should be rewarded—4.9 per cent helped the government find an error in our costings of another $900 million.

Then we go on to employment participation where we said we will make savings in welfare payments of $600 million. 'Oh no,' Mr Henry said, 'you can't count that because that's a second-round figure.' But, heavens to Betsy, in the same budget this year we see that a second-round saving of $600 million on the so-called mining tax was allowed by Dr Henry. Dr Henry assisted the government to find another $600 million so-called error in our accounts. So Dr Henry should be rewarded with a $528,000 a year job in the Prime Minister's office. That is why it is politicised and that is why we cannot trust them. (Time expired)

Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (15:45): My two colleagues have shown how the current process is devoid of integrity and credibility and has been grossly politicised. I experienced that firsthand after the last election. The parliamentary secretary opposite is yet to provide one decent argument on amendment (1). We will start with amendment (1); that is what we are debating at the moment, right? He has not provided one argument why the PBO and all the rest of us should be hogtied to the numbers, figures, forecasts and analysis of Treasury. Why should that be the case?

I will give you an example. Over the last four years we have been debating perhaps the biggest structural adjustment that will ever be considered by any of these parliamentary members: the imposition of a carbon tax and, subsequently, an emissions trading scheme. There has been endless modelling for four years of the impact of this, but not once has the model that has generated all of these numbers, all of these outcomes, all of this rhetoric and all of these forecasts by the government been revealed. They are all part of a black box in Treasury. We have asked endlessly to see the modelling; never have we seen one line of code from that modelling—not one assumption. We have deduced that one assumption built into the model is that there would be no unemployment by 2050. Surprise, surprise! When they got the outcome of the modelling there was no unemployment by 2050. If you put in that assumption, it is not a surprise.

What if you changed that one assumption and made it a floating variable in that model? What would be the outcome? What is the sensitivity to fixing that particular variable? We will never know. What would the Parliamentary Budget Office do if they were given that model? They would do some of that sensitivity analysis. We would be better informed; the public would be better informed; the nation would be better informed—especially when we are going it alone on this carbon tax. We are ahead of the world. No-one else is doing it. Yet we have been tied to this situation with Treasury. This is why we need credibility and integrity restored to the process. Treasury has been politicised in this whole exercise. We need the capacity for an independent body to analyse such critical matters as the modelling—the detailed, exhaustive, massive modelling—that has been undertaken.

We will get results this week again, but I can assure you they will just be outcomes. Out of this black box again will come a whole series of outcomes around which you will make the most ambitious statements. You will hold everyone hostage to this black box. Having come to government and said that transparency was at the heart of the way in which you would run government, since then we have had nothing but obfuscation, no benefit-cost analyses and a refusal to provide any of the analysis that sits behind all of this. No wonder we need to go to the next election and debate policy based on independently assessed analysis—not only our policies but the policies of the government. The policies of the government need to be scrutinised and analysed. They have not been, and that is why this process is heavily politicised. It is why you need integrity and credibility to be restored to this process.

Mr BRIGGS (Mayo) (15:49): I rise to endorse particularly the member for Goldstein's contribution. The parliamentary secretary is a trier—I will give him that—but quite clearly he has not addressed any of the issues which are raised in the debate we had the other evening. In fact, he has tried to divert the argument by suggesting that this was a recommendation made in a report of a parliamentary committee. We do not accept the parliamentary secretary's argument that, if a parliamentary committee finds that in some way, the parliament has to agree. These debates have no purpose at all, apparently, if a parliamentary committee comes up with a recommendation. I am not sure why we sit. We should just let committees sit and come up with their recommendations.

The amendment moved by the member for North Sydney is probably the most important amendment of the lot that we are moving because it is about having that contested advice. The parliamentary secretary's view is that you cannot question Treasury. If you go through the history of our government and now your government, the Treasury never gets the numbers right on its forecasts. That is not a criticism; that is just the truth. For instance, last year they forecast—

Mr Perrett: The GST they got right.

Mr BRIGGS: Right on cue, the member for Moreton. No, they did not, member for Morton. The numbers changed—of course they did, because they are estimates, based on models. As the member for Goldstein rightly pointed out, they put numbers into a model and it spits out other numbers. The assumptions changed and the realistic outcomes changed. The point is we should have contestable advice from an independent Parliamentary Budget Office. If you want to take away the politics of the costings in an election campaign, which is what the member for Lyne talks about doing, and have a genuine assessment, you should have a genuine independent body.

One of the reasons the parliamentary secretary gave that we cannot go down the route of the Congressional Budget Office was that the funding for the Congressional Budget Office was $50 million a year. Of course, the United States is a slightly bigger country than Australia, Parliamentary Secretary, so it is little surprise that it would have a larger budget office. But quite clearly there is a need for additional powers for the Parliamentary Budget Office so that they can make their own assumptions and arrive at their own numbers based on an analysis of the information that comes before us. The ideas contained in the arguments that the member for Goldstein and the member for Mackellar have just put forward would reduce the unhappiness of an opposition—and, if you think that this is the first opposition to be unhappy with costings during an election campaign, you have not been around for very long. The same problems have arisen in election after election, and it is the very reason that we need and want a genuinely independent parliamentary budget office. The reason you do not want to go down this road is the short-term politics of today. That position is ill thought through, because in the long term it will have consequences for the effective operation of what should be a genuinely good development in Australian public policy.

This is a smart amendment. It addresses genuine concerns that have been raised about the reliability of the numbers, the independence of the decisions and the release of the information. It should be supported, and if you are serious about doing this, Parliamentary Secretary, you will take on board and answer some of the genuine questions that have been raised rather than try to cover them over with half-truths, as you have so far. This is an important debate and you should take it seriously.

Mr BILLSON (Dunkley) (15:53): I again commend this amendment to the government. We were all feeling a bit awkward while we sat here watching the parliamentary secretary last Thursday as very legitimate and considered questions about how the PBO would operate were being asked of him, and clearly his briefing had not extended to his being able to answer them. The shadow Treasurer and others sought to highlight that, by handcuffing the Parliamentary Budget Office to the Treasury numbers and then to the Treasurer's numbers—which was a very salient point raised by the shadow Treasurer—you are effectively undermining the whole point of the PBO. You are effectively saying, 'Be free to inquire and be free to add to the better governance of Australia, but we are going to nobble you so you can't drift too far away from what the Treasurer would like to assert is the only set of numbers that anyone should be taking any notice of.' This amendment is trying to inoculate against this situation, whereby the Parliamentary Budget Office—who, like the new kids on the block, cannot be left to their own professional competence to find the analytical basis best suited to the task being asked of them and must instead take the gospel according to the Treasurer—effectively become the apprentices of Treasury.

The only opportunity for the Parliamentary Budget Office to look at the numbers before the Treasurer puts his fingerprints all over them would be after the calling of an election. But they are the Treasurer's numbers up until that point and—given whatever mystery and nuancing has gone on to get them to the point—if we were to remain able to rely only upon Treasury numbers in the election context, I explained to the parliamentary secretary at the table how the situation would play out, since he could not answer my concerns himself. If the opposition announced a policy and then said, 'Here are the costings behind them', the first thing you would hear from the Treasurer would be 'No—those numbers are out of date', and the government would make up some mystery black hole and base an argument on it. They would do that because, prior to the election period, there could be some interaction between opposition members and the Parliamentary Budget Office, but it could only be on the basis of the Treasurer's numbers. Getting those numbers revised and updated on the basis of Treasury numbers could only happen in the election context, and in the election context all that material is publicised the moment that the work is concluded. There is no opportunity for the opposition to consider the data generated by the PBO. There is no chance to reflect on our own policy commitments and on the calibration of those policies on the basis of the most up-to-date information provided by Treasury, because as soon as that information becomes available we are in the election context, and it all gets thrown up in the air to allow the government to make all sorts of claims and allegations, even though the opposition may not even have a simple view on the question that it was getting tested and costed and analysed through the PBO. We may not even have a chance to reflect on it before the government makes all sorts of claims about what the data means, and that is an important point.

I have often spent considerable time trying to urge the Independents to do things, though I must admit that my track record is not great. Still, gentleman, I will persevere. The point here is that the numbers that now form the foundation of considerations are the Treasurer's numbers; Treasury's numbers form the foundation of considerations only during the election period. According to the way that this bill has been constructed, all those numbers will be thrown up in the air for the world to see during an election period. Where is the opportunity for sober and careful consideration of numbers by the opposition or any Independent members before the government sets its enormous resources to the task misrepresenting what we may be contemplating? I urge the Independents to agree that, under this bill, the PBO is not an independent costing organisation but a nobbled Parliamentary Budget Office.

As I said last Thursday, PBO could stand for 'pretty bleeding obvious'. The government is trying through this bill to nobble the PBO so it becomes yet another arm of government, not a body that can independently contribute to the good governance of the country. The government is trying to nobble the resources of the PBO and the basis from which it can start. The PBO's analysis will be throw out into the public domain during elections, because that is the only time that Treasury numbers are used. Why can't other numbers be used? Why can't the Reserve Bank's forecast, which many in the economy think are very reliable, be used? Why can't the Canadian model, by which a range of independent sources can arrive at their own numbers, be used? Why can't the PBO be treated as an adult and satisfy itself that maybe the Treasurer's numbers are a good starting point— (Time expired)

Mr BUCHHOLZ (Wright) (15:59): I commend the amendments. Although the funding was allocated in this year's budget for a PBO, we are now almost three months down the road in the financial year and only now beginning to debate the policy in earnest. It will be astonishing if the PBO is up and running by the end of this year.

Almost everything the government touches ends up turning sour. The only reason we are debating the bill this week is that the coalition has introduced its own PBO legislation. We on this side of the House believe that the government's bill is deeply flawed, and that is why we are pushing for a number of amendments. On this point it is worth examining the differences between the two pieces of legislation and, in order to do so, we need to reflect on the motivation for creating a PBO in the first place. The PBO is a necessary reform to ensure transparency and integrity of budgetary and fiscal processes. In short, it levels up the playing field between government and non-government members by giving them equal ability to scrutinise government policy and to evaluate their own policies. If it is to be anything more than a paper tiger, the PBO needs the power to obtain relevant information from government departments; it needs the flexibility to perform whatever analysis it sees fit; and, most importantly, it needs to provide a level of discretion to allow members and senators to retain control of their own policy. It is there, at the first hurdle, that the government's policy falls down. Under the government's proposal, the PBO is unable to prepare economic forecasts or budget estimates. Why and how is the PBO supposed to prepare accurate analysis of the budgetary impacts of policy over the longer term?

This bill also restricts the PBO from using any economic data prepared by a third party in its determinations, as mentioned by the member for North Sydney earlier. Data from the Reserve Bank and ABARES could not be used in a determination. Instead it can only rely on information provided by the Treasury and the Department of Finance and Deregulation. Again, why? What is the purpose of limiting the scope of the PBO's research to such an extreme degree? How can the PBO be expected to fulfil its full mandate with one arm tied behind its back?

Unfortunately, the problems do not end there. The government's bill severely restricts the PBO's powers to gather information by requiring it to enter into an agreement with the relevant departments to determine what information they can get and when they can get it. The PBO will have nothing to trade with during the negotiation of these agreements, so it stands to reason that any agreement entered into by the government departments will be heavily biased in favour of the departments in question rather than the PBO. In short, what we are looking at here is a Clayton's PBO: it is the PBO you have when you do not have a PBO.

The coalition's policy does not contain any of these rather obvious shortcomings. Instead the PBO, as envisaged by us, will have considerable powers to obtain information from government departments. These powers will be based more on the powers of the Auditor-General and will ensure the PBO is a much more effective body than the diluted version being offered by those opposite.

Of course, one of the most significant functions of the PBO will be to prepare costings, yet even here the government's bill has some rather strange provisions. For instance, during caretaker periods the costings facilities available to members and senators is different from those available at other times. Indeed, during election campaigns the costings functions provided by the PBO would be identical to those already provided to the opposition under the existing Charter of Budget Honesty. So, again, I find myself asking why. What is the reason for this differentiation and what is the point of this duplication?

The Charter of Budget Honesty was a groundbreaking reform, but unfortunately the costings process provided under the charter are not confidential. In fact, they are exactly the opposite. As it stands, not only are requests for costings immediately published on the website of both Treasury and the Department of Finance and Deregulation but also the results of the said costings are made available in the same way. Perhaps this is a belated attempt from the Prime Minister to live up to her promise last year to draw the curtains back and let the sun shine in. But perhaps not.

In conclusion I believe the government's bill is deeply flawed. The bill provides the PBO with insufficient power to gather the information it needs to do the job, it makes insufficient provisions for discretion and it is structured in such a way that it protects the interests of the government of the day rather than the interests of budgetary transparency and its fiscal integrity.

Mr WILKIE (Denison) (16:04): I want to speak very briefly to put on the record my condemnation of the opposition's accusation that the Treasury is heavily politicised. That is a most serious accusation, particularly as it comes from the alternative government of this country. It is the case that in times past there has been some politicisation within the Public Service. At the time I was very outspoken about the practice by the then Prime Minister John Howard to personally vet all SES appointments in his own office. I do not think that is the way we should be appointing our senior public servants. But those times are behind us now, thankfully, and it is my observation that we have the world's finest Public Service. It is to the great credit of the Public Service that the country ran so well during those weeks of uncertainty following last year's election result. There are very few countries in the world where the country can be administered so confidently as Australia. I put on the record my praise for the Australian Public Service and my concern that we should be having a discussion about the degree to which the Treasury, of all departments, would be politicised.

I support the government's Parliamentary Service Amendment (Parliamentary Budget Officer) Bill; I do not support the opposition's amendment. Not only is it important to have scrutiny of election promises but also it is important to have transparency; hence, I think it most important that in the period of the election campaign itself there should be some visibility of what has been costed. If the opposition or the crossbenchers want to have any policy examined privately, that can be done before the election is called, but once we are in the election period itself the whole purpose of the PBO is to shine a light on those costings. Frankly, I personally found the work that was done costing the opposition's policies in the immediate aftermath of last year's federal election very important. The fact that the opposition's policies were found to have a black hole of between $7 billion and $11 billion was not the reason for my decision to put support of supply and confidence behind the government, but it was not lost on me that that was in the mix, particularly at a time when I was very generously being offered $1 billion towards a new hospital in my seat of Denison. It was a time when I could not have confidence that the money was in fact there, given that the opposition had a black hole of between $7 billion and $11 billion.

In essence, I do not support the opposition's amendment. I think the government's model is sound because it does bring scrutiny and transparency. I applaud the government for again staying true to its commitment to the crossbenchers and to me personally, as contained in our written agreement.

Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (16:07): Firstly, I have been advised—and it was a matter that was raised, I think, by the Treasurer, the member for Lyne and others—that the model that they chose is based far more on the Canadian parliamentary budget office than on the US Congressional Budget Office. We were told that the Canadian budget office does not do analyses or—for the benefit of the member for Denison—provide transparency in regard to critical analysis, like four years of modelling of the biggest decision all of us will ever take, where we cannot analyse or look at one single variable out of hundreds of variables that are put into that modelling. Transparency is what we are talking about, not politics. This thing is dripping with politics.

Now we find that as of the middle of this year the Canadian budget office, in contrast to its previous practice of preparing fiscal projections using government numbers, is basing its fiscal outlook on its own economic projections. Answer that, Parliamentary Secretary—sorry, I forgot your office. Parliamentary Secretary, you might be able to answer that question. I will read from the latest PBO economic and fiscal outlook. This is the PBO of Canada. You might listen to this if you want to talk about transparency. This is a report by the Canadian PBO:

To enhance PBO's independent analysis on the state of the nation's finances and trends in the national economy and given the downside risks to the average private sector outlook, PBO is providing—for the first time—its own medium‐term economic outlook … PBO's economic outlook incorporates its judgement of the balance of risks and as a result it can be viewed as a 'balanced' projection, which means that higher or lower outcomes are equally likely.

In other words, in Canada, for the first time, they have an independent body which can in fact do its own analysis and give its own sensitivity of the government projections to changes in all sorts of variables. It seems an unremarkable thing that this should happen. It would seem to be a great strength for this parliament to have access to an independent body that can give some sensitivity analysis in regard to key analysis provided by Treasury. That does not mean Treasury is wrong; it just means that we have a far more substantial debate and that we have, in fact, an ability to test the projections and not sit here and be fed, like mushrooms, in the dark. We need this sort of analysis. This is what my colleague and friend the member for North Sydney has put forward. He has put forward this analysis and this request that we as an opposition be able to get the benefit of an independent analysis. I would suggest that the government at times would also benefit from an alternative point of view.

Secondly, on the question of the secretary and the Treasury, with great respect to the member for Denison, he did not spend 3½ hours in detailed debate with senior Treasury officers following the election and he did not witness, as my colleague the member for Mackellar has started to articulate, the type of discussion and obstinacy that was provided. There were many examples which we have documented previously, which are a matter of public record and which have again been repeated—some of them today in this House—where we were simply told, 'We have made a decision,' every time we got to a point where they could not argue against what we were saying, such as with the 5.5 per cent bond rate. We had canvassed around the community, with all the leaders of the finance market, what would be a sensible bond rate. Why would we, for the sake of a few dollars, try to obfuscate and cover up? (Time expired)

Mr FLETCHER (Bradfield) (16:12): As we consider the amendment before us at this consideration in detail stage, what we are doing is asking ourselves the question: which of the two alternative models put forward, one by the member for North Sydney and one by the government, better gives effect to the policy objective that, we are all agreed, makes sense—a policy objective in which resources are available to the parliament, the legislative branch of government, to assist it in having available to it alternative expert advice on economic, financial and budgetary matters? It is a question of which scheme—which mechanism; which process—is best going to give effect to the principle upon which we are all in agreement.

Against that backdrop, there is a pretty clear contrast between the two alternative frameworks which have been put forward. The government's framework, laid out in proposed section 64E(2) and (3), specifically bars the Parliamentary Budget Office from carrying out certain functions such as preparing budget estimates. It also specifically constrains the Parliamentary Budget Office to use forecasts, parameters and fiscal estimates released by the Treasurer. By contrast, the scheme put forward by the member for North Sydney in his excellent amendment is a scheme under which the Parliamentary Budget Office has a maximum degree of discretion in performing its functions. In the words of the amendment, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is given the discretion to 'prepare, or have regard to, either or both of economic forecasts or budget estimates'. In other words, it is a provision which grants the maximum extent of discretion to the Parliamentary Budget Officer so that he or she is best placed to discharge the functions which this legislation is imposing upon him or her—namely, the function of being a provider of independent expert advice to the legislative branch of government.

When the policy suggestion was put forward by the coalition, and subsequently taken up in the negotiations between the Independents and the government, the underlying logic was to establish an independent body, an independent office which would provide a source of independent advice. There is no notion of being critical of the existing departments of state. There is no notion of saying that they are in some way inherently flawed in what they do, but there is a mature recognition that executive government will often have a different set of interests from the parliament, from the legislative branch. There is also a mature recognition that it makes sense to better inform the parliament to provide a source of specialist expertise to the parliament to allow it to discharge its weighty responsibilities.

If a consequence of these new arrangements is that there is a battle of ideas, that there is contestability in policy, that is no bad thing; indeed we on this side of the House say that is a good thing. But the one thing we say very specifically and very precisely about the two alternative schemes that are before the House this afternoon is that we are deeply suspicious of the bona fides of the government in putting forward the particular scheme it has, because we do not believe that the restrictions on the Parliamentary Budget Office contained in proposed section 64E(2) or the constraints on the sources to which it may have regard contained in 64E(3) adequately and sensibly give effect to the policy objective which all of us share in this debate, which is a Parliamentary Budget Office best able to provide independent advice to the parliament about these complex and important matters. It is on that basis that I believe the amendment put forward by the member for North Sydney ought to be supported this afternoon.

Mr HUNT (Flinders) (16:17): In order to assist the Independents with their judgment I want to provide three real-world examples of why there is a need for contestability, as has been set out by the member for North Sydney. Let me begin with three examples from my own portfolio in recent years. Firstly, under the Home Insulation Program, we were given a set of estimates by the government which were rock solid and ironclad and which we were to accept as Holy Writ.

It is known by all members of this House that virtually none of those estimates came to pass. They did not come to pass in terms of their costs, their safety assessments, the rate of installation or, indeed, the emissions reduction. We were told that $2.45 billion had been set aside under the Home Insulation Program to achieve installation in just over 2.7 million homes around Australia. Unfortunately, only one million homes, less than 40 per cent of the government figures, were ever installed with insulation. Almost a billion dollars had to be set aside in provisioning for repair and maintenance and restoration. The rate of emissions reduction was one-third of that given by government agencies, and obviously endorsed by Treasury, as Holy Writ. We were derided for contesting those figures, yet we were correct and the government agencies were incorrect, I am sorry to say.

I do not blame the government agencies. They were forced to act against a set of parameters imposed upon them by the executive government. It is important to understand that executive government can, but it should not, under this current government impose parameters on the bureaucracy and administration. That has distorted the way in which that bureaucracy and administration produces its figures.

Contrary to what the member for Denison says, we are not asserting that this is a bad bureaucracy. We are asserting that there probably has never been any greater interference in the operations of the bureaucracy in Australia's history. For us, then, to have to rely upon the figures which come from that process is utterly unacceptable. There must be contestability. Perhaps we could have avoided a tragedy such as the Home Insulation Program, let alone the waste and the extraordinary impact on so many small businesses. Contestability in public figures would have assisted throughout the Home Insulation Program. That is not provided for under this bill but it is provided for under the alternative model that the member for North Sydney has set out.

I also want to give two current examples before the parliament under the existing carbon tax modelling provided by the government—again I say 'the government'. There is an assumption in the modelling that the United States will have an effective carbon tax—a cap-in-trade system, in their words—up and running on a full national basis by 2016. That is simply fallacious. It is a fantasy that the United States under any foreseeable political structure will have a fully functioning carbon tax or cap-in-trade scheme. That has a huge impact on the global assumptions and, therefore, the entire base for the Treasury modelling. That is not the fault of Treasury. It is the fault of a government that imposes a straitjacket on the bureaucracy, that reaches into its operation and distorts the way Treasury works and distorts the figures. For that, we say, there must be contestability. A similar thing is that there is a change in the assumption of elasticity regarding the sensitivity of the population to changes in electricity prices and demand. There is no basis for this. There is no explanation for this. It does not sit with Australian economic history. It does not sit with the work of the New South Wales independent regulator. Again, none of this is contestable under the model which is currently proposed.

These are real-world examples. There is the home insulation program. There is the fact that the United States, in no foreseeable future, will have a fully functioning cap-and-trade system by 2060. And there has been a complete rewriting of economic history regarding the sensitivity of people to changes in electricity pricing. That is why the amendment should be supported and there should be contestability in figures. (Time expired)

Mr OAKESHOTT (Lyne) (16:22): As someone who was part of the agreement—an agreement that included representatives of all members of this chamber—to establish a parliamentary office in this term, I am at a loss why we are seeing so much trouble in passing this legislation. Likewise, I was a committee member of the Joint Select Committee on the Parliamentary Budget Office, along with Barnaby Joyce, Kelly O'Dwyer and Christopher Pyne. The three coalition members, the government members, the Greens and I unanimously supported various recommendations for the establishment of a PBO. Again, I am at a loss as to why we are now struggling to turn this into legislation.

We are building a service for this House. We are not building a service for the executive. There was an important question asked at the end of the last engagement over this piece of legislation—I think it was last Tuesday night, when, thankfully, we adjourned so that we could all consider our positions. Further work has obviously been done by all of us. As far as I can see, questions that I was raising at the end of that debate regarding the difference between Treasury and the Treasurer seem somewhat spurious, at the very least.

Mr Hockey: Spurious!

Mr OAKESHOTT: Spurious, the member for North Sydney. I am increasingly—

Mr Hockey: You have been stiffened up by them, have you?

Mr OAKESHOTT: Not at all. The member for North Sydney thinks I have been stiffened up, sticking up for an independent parliamentary budget office, a service of this parliament agreed, by members of his own party, to be put into legislation twice in the last 12 months.

Mr Briggs: Stop verballing people, Rob.

Mr OAKESHOTT: I am not verballing anyone. The big question that I wanted cleared up at the end of the last debate was: can any member of this chamber, including the member for Mayo, confidentially ring the Parliamentary Budget Office and ask for work to be done on any topic of their choice? The answer is yes.

Opposition members interjecting—

Mr OAKESHOTT: You can have another go, all of you. I am happy if you have information that proves this wrong. The question then is: does the Parliamentary Budget Office, whoever the independent CEO is, have rights of confidential access into Treasury? The answer is yes.

The member for North Sydney shakes his head. I ask him, please, to get up and tell me his views on why that advice is wrong. Let's get to the heart of whether a confidential process, as a service for members of parliament in this chamber, with nothing to do with the Treasurer and nothing to do with the executive, actually applies. The only point in all of that is whether the Treasurer signs off on a budget or not. It is illogical if we, as a chamber, are asking for a Treasurer not to sign off on the budget. If we accept that then we accept that the figures that are used from the Treasury as the starting point for the process of PEFO, and other similar documents as part of the Charter of Budget Honesty, already apply. What seems to be in place is a direct attack on the independence of the Treasury. I have heard that from speakers twice now.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop: It is not independent.

Mr OAKESHOTT: The member for Mackellar confirms that. The shadow Treasurer and the shadow minister for finance sit either side of the member for Mackellar as she directly attacks the independence of the Treasury.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop: Correct.

Mr OAKESHOTT: She again confirms it: 'Correct.' We have silence from the two key finance officers of the coalition. This is a direct attack on the independence of the Treasury. If that is the case—if that is the point of your position in this debate—why on earth did you waste this parliament's time in the last 12 months by participating in a process that arrived at unanimous recommendations? That process involved Barnaby Joyce, Chris Pyne and Kelly O'Dwyer. Why on earth did you waste 16 days after the election reaching an agreement over these proposals for a better parliament? Please explain your position as to why you consider this is not confidential and why it is not independent.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): I remind all those who are speaking in this debate to refer their comments through the chair, not at the chair. It is not 'you' or 'your'; it is not 'me' and 'you'.

Mr HOCKEY (North Sydney) (16:27): To help the member for Lyne, who seems to pride himself on understanding how legislation works, I refer him to proposed section 64E of the bill before the House:

(2) The Parliamentary Budget Officer's functions under subsection (1) do not include:

(a) preparing economic forecasts; or

(b) preparing budget estimates (whether at the whole-of-government, agency or program level.

Mr Oakeshott interjecting—

Mr HOCKEY: Just listen. I know this is hard to get through, but give it a shot. And 64E(3) says:

(3) In performing his or her functions under subsection (1), the Parliamentary Budget Officer must use the economic forecasts and parameters and fiscal estimates contained in the most recent relevant reports released under Parts 5, 6 and 7 of Schedule 1 to the Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998.

The Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998—

Mr Oakeshott: You still haven't answered it.

Mr HOCKEY: Hang on. I know it is hard to listen because you have signed up to the other mob, but just for one brief moment put the parliament ahead of your own sectoral interests. I say to the member for Lyne that part 5 refers to annual government reporting. Then at (1) of 13 it says:

Commonwealth bodies to provide information to help prepare report

(1) To help the Treasurer to prepare a budget economic and fiscal outlook report, the Treasurer may request a Commonwealth body to provide information.

That means these are the Treasurer's numbers. They are not the Treasury's numbers, they are the Treasurer's numbers—and you do not understand that.

Mr Oakeshott: You haven't proved a thing.

Mr HOCKEY: Okay, fine. Vote with the government against this amendment and defang the Parliamentary Budget Office. We have given you a chance. We have given the member for Lyne a chance to have a truly independent parliamentary budget office. If the member for Lyne does not want it, okay, fine, no problems. Go with a weaker parliamentary budget office and live with the consequences, if you are there at the next parliament.

Mr FRYDENBERG (Kooyong) (16:30): I rise to support the member for North Sydney's amendments to the Parliamentary Service Amendment (Parliamentary Budget Officer) Bill 2011. We start from the position that the Parliamentary Budget Office is a net positive and it is not new. An OECD survey found that another 18 countries have some sort of legislative parliamentary involvement in setting the fiscal situation with a PBO. The United States has a $45 million per annum budget for its Parliamentary Budget Office. The Dutch Parliamentary Budget Office has more than 150 staff and we have heard about the Canadian budget office. Indeed, this is our idea and ever since 2007 the coalition has driven the idea of a parliamentary budget office. That is why the shadow Treasurer has before the parliament his own bill. It is because those opposite have such a poor record with costing and releasing their policies that we need a parliamentary budget office.

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

Mr FRYDENBERG: You will remember that in 2007 you released your costings the day before the election. In 2010 you released your costings the day before the election.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): Order! I would remind the member for Kooyong not to refer in your speech to 'you'. You are referring to me in this occupied chair, the Deputy Speaker. You will refer to the government or the opposition, please.

Mr FRYDENBERG: I was simply making the point that when—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You will refer your comments through the chair not at the chair.

Mr FRYDENBERG: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The point is that those opposite have a very poor record when it comes to releasing and costing their policies. What happened in 2007 and at the election in 2010 bears that out. The Parliamentary Budget Office amendment we are moving will bring greater transparency to the fiscal situation and fiscal process. It will ensure that non-government MPs and senators and parties have access to the proper costings and it mitigates the disadvantage that those in opposition have against a better resourced government.

We only have to look at what happened with our costings before the last election, when we were looking at the interest to be saved from not proceeding with the NBN. We used the Commonwealth bond rate as the discount rate. It was the NBN implementation study which showed that you should have used the Commonwealth bond rate to assess the amount of savings that you would have if you did not proceed with the NBN, and you would not have that information released.

There are three key criteria that our amendments to this bill are pushing. Firstly, there is confidentiality. Requests to have policies costed should not be immediately put up on the website when they are received. The timing of release of those costings should not be immediately put up on the website and made public once they are done. It should be up to those who are seeking those costings to assess the timing of that release—whether they want to resubmit a request for costing or whether they want to change the assumptions they are putting forward for their particular policy or whether they want to discuss and alter those particular assumptions.

Secondly, there need to be fewer restrictions on the PBO's ability to source material to make its analysis. As the member for North Sydney said: why cannot ABARE, why cannot the Reserve Bank of Australia be able to provide information to the Parliamentary Budget Office for them to make their analysis? Why restrict it to those reports under the Charter of Budget Honesty? That will very much limit the quality of the analysis that is done.

Thirdly, we must increase the powers of the PBO to get information from other departments. Currently, under the government's bill, it is about an MOU. It is just about an MOU with departments but not giving the PBO the ability to compel those departments to release that information. That is why the member for North Sydney has very appropriately suggested that he should use powers akin to those of the Auditor-General in order to source that material from other departments.

The Independents have a privileged position at the moment. They, particularly the Greens, are getting assistance from the government. But that will not always be the case. They need to get behind these amendments we are moving because they are right for the parliament and right for the budget office. (Time expired)

Mr BILLSON (Dunkley) (16:35): In order to assist the process, the member for Lyne was asking for a very specific piece of information. I think he was contesting the assertion of the opposition on confidentiality, to which he placed considerable weight, so that members could seek, with confidence, confidential advice and have some interaction. We were highlighting how that is compromised and he was contesting that, if that is a fair characterisation. I draw his attention to proposed section 64L of the bill and I will read it. This is under the heading 'Caretaker period policy costing requests made before polling day—public release of requests and costings.' It says:

This section applies in relation to a policy costing request that is made under subsection 64J(2) or (5) before polling day during the caretaker period for a general election.

It goes on to say:

As soon as practicable after the request has been made and before polling day, the Parliamentary Budget Officer must publicly release the request and a costing of the policy.

That is the practical black-and-white provision to which we were referring and I hope that is helpful. I was seeking to illuminate the parliament—and it is perhaps not as helpful as I might hope it would be and, dare I say it, the Member for Lyne, I have been there before, but I will persevere—and I hope that is helpful.

The point I was making and that the shadow Treasurer has made is that, up until the caretaker period, the base against which costings are provided is provided by the Treasurer. The Treasurer owns that costing basis. He can do whatever fiscal magic and wisdom he feels is appropriate to release his figures. The point I was trying to emphasise—and perhaps I did not do it well, and I stand admonished for that—is the only time the Treasury has undiluted, unadulterated data during the entire period between elections available is from the PEFO, the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. That is the only time, Member for Lyne, that the dataset upon which you are placing such great weight is actually the Treasury's dataset. The rest of the time under those other economic and forecasting bases it is the Treasurer. So if the member for Lyne places such an enormous weight and respect, as I do, on Treasury, let Treasury be heard. That is really what the opposition is on about.

But what we are also saying is if you are only interested—sorry, not you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): Yes, I was going to say to everybody that perhaps if he keeps—

Mr BILLSON: I have been pretty good up to that point.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, everybody has been pretty bad. I may enter the debate, seeing as I sat on the inquiry, but I won't be that cheeky. The member for Dunkley has the call.

Mr BILLSON: I hope the clerks take that 15 seconds off your time and not mine, Madam Deputy Speaker. The point I was trying to make to the member for Lyne is that if the Treasury figures are to be allowed to be used, let them be used, not the Treasurer's figures. The only time in which the Treasury's figures are used are during the caretaker period. So any effort by anyone in this chamber to rely upon Treasury's figures only happens during the caretaker period where there is this obligation under 64L to release all the material. There is no opportunity to go back on the basis of the analysis that is provided to recalibrate, to contemplate whether it is worth 'moving forward', dare I use a phrase, on the material that is provided—none whatsoever.

So if he is fair dinkum about Treasury, let them be heard. But if he is also only wanting to hear one tune—that we have all got to be on exactly the same tune in this nation's parliament—then persist with his point of view. If he would like to hear other voices, other options, other analysis to make sure there is rigour and robustness to this work, he must support the opposition's amendments, because there is a range of other analysis available that will strengthen the quality of governance in this country, and not have the parliament handcuffed to whatever the Treasurer thinks is advantageous from his political perspective.

We are on about good governance in this country; not what is good for the government. He has been hoodwinked into being locked into this 'PBO Lite' that relies upon the magic of the Treasurer doing whatever he likes with material that Treasury might produce, to have that as the starting point, to say, 'No other voice interests us; no other basis of analysis has any value whatsoever.' I get a bit sick of hearing unctuousness about public servants. We respect public servants, but when they get rolled out and manipulated by a dodgy, poor government, that is a problem for everybody. My last point is: what about the Parliamentary Budget Officer? Is he or she not deserving of the respect to go and source advice where he or she sees fit? I have respect for that position as well, not just some that are chosen to be favoured. (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has expired—with extra time for my interruption.

Mr OAKESHOTT (Lyne) (16:41): To try and settle this debate, I have seven questions that I would like to put to the parliamentary secretary. My understanding of the answers to those questions is yes, but if there is any doubt about any of these, it is good for them to be on the record and for us as a parliament to then work them through.

The first is: does the PBO under this legislation have full and unfettered access to the departments of Treasury and finance? I hope the answer is yes.

The second is: is this access direct—that it does not depend on any minister's office and it will not go through any minister's office? My understanding of that is yes, but I need to hear from the parliamentary secretary if otherwise.

Third: does this allow, therefore, the PBO to question, critique, test any of the forecasts of the budget or of the government more generally? My understanding is yes, but please answer otherwise if it is incorrect.

Fourth: is this direct access unencumbered by any ministerial oversight, providing another critical check and balance for this parliament? My understanding is yes.

Fifth: under these arrangements would it quickly become obvious, as was a point made by the member for North Sydney last week, if there were any fudging of the figures along the lines that were implied last week? My understanding is the PBO would actually add to this parliament and a shadow Treasurer's ability to pick up whether the Treasurer was fudging anything that the Treasury was actually doing.

Sixth: can the PBO inform their analysis by drawing on other sources of information such as the RBA, the IMF, the OECD, whatever? My understanding is yes.

Finally: is the use of forecasts and estimates prepared by Treasury and Finance about providing a more sensible basis for comparison of policy costings, reducing an expensive and unnecessary duplication of effort? Anyone in business understands double-handling is bad. We have got to have a common set of rules from somewhere. I would have thought an undisputed independent Treasury was the place for macroforecasting to be done, and then the politics can go its hardest on the back of that. Can you answer those seven questions to assist the debate?

Mr BRADBURY (Lindsay—Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) (16:43): The answer to those questions is yes. In relation to the first one, the PBO does have full and unfettered access to the Department of the Treasury. In relation to whether that access is direct or not, that is correct. In relation to whether or not the PBO has the ability to test that advice, there is nothing in the act to preclude them from being able to test that advice. In relation to whether or not there is the ability for that to occur unencumbered by ministerial interference, the answer to that is yes. In relation to whether or not it would become obvious if there were any fudging, for the reasons I set out earlier in terms of the robust processes that exist to test these forecasts, the answer to that would be yes as well. In relation to whether or not the PBO can inform their analysis by drawing upon forecasts from others, certainly that is an option that is available to them, with exception of course being in relation to the basis upon which costings are to be formed. When it comes to the question of the preparation of costings in relation to particular proposals, that is to be based upon the forecasts that are to be obtained from Treasury.

That goes to the final question that the member for Lyne has asked in relation to a more sensible basis for comparison. That is the very heart of this debate. We need to ensure that, when the public is being given the opportunity to compare one particular set of election commitments with another, they are able to compare apples with apples. It is important that the set of forecasts upon which those costings are to be made is a comparable set of forecasts. That is the key consideration in this whole debate. So the answer to that question of course is yes.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): The member for Mayo is warned!

Mr BRADBURY: That is why the elements that have been set out in the bill and debated and supported by the government go to the very heart of making sure that there is some integrity in the process.

I do not want to speak at great length, but I will make the point that, if this bill is passed and becomes legislation, for the first time oppositions will have the opportunity to test polices and cost those policies on an ongoing and iterative basis. That is something that is not currently available. That will be a major advancement in allowing a more level playing field when it comes to costing policies, particularly throughout the non-election period, and that will assist oppositions in a way that they do not currently have assistance under the Charter of Budget Honesty.

In relation to the importance of that point and the question that goes to this amendment regarding forecasts, I simply make the point that it is essential that, when the public is being given an opportunity to test the value of the proposals that have been put forward by the respective parties, they can have some confidence that the parameters and the forecasts upon which those costings have been based are comparable. If that were not the case, that would lead to a very destructive and very wasteful discussion, particularly in the course of election campaigns, around parameters and assumptions rather than where that debate should be focused, which is on the question of the actual costs of the proposals that have been put forward by the respective parties, so that the electors, the people of Australia, can go to that election in full confidence that the policies of the respective parties have been properly and comparably costed so that they can make their judgments. It is on that basis that we are opposed to the amendment that the member for North Sydney has brought forward.

Ms O'DWYER (Higgins) (16:47): I rise in support of the amendment brought forward by the shadow Treasurer to strengthen the independence of the Parliamentary Budget Office. We on this side of the chamber are the only people interested in a rigorous analysis on the economic and fiscal impacts of policy proposals, which is why we brought forward our very own bill. Let us not forget that it was actually this side of the chamber that brought forward, before the last election, a policy to initiate a parliamentary budget office. That is why we are having this debate in the chamber today—not because of any agreement with the Independents but because the coalition brought forward this policy before the last election.

This has not been a longstanding commitment of the government. They rushed in legislation in response to our policy proposal, and their legislation is deficient. That is why the shadow Treasurer has needed to bring forward an amendment, which he has done so very ably. What he has brought forward is an amendment to make sure that the Parliamentary Budget Office, when it is brought into effect, will be an independent parliamentary budget office, that it will not be unduly restricted in what it can look at and what it can do in the performance of its role and function. Critical to that, of course, is the fact that it should be able to have regard to its own ability to perform economic forecasts and budget estimates. It can of course have regard to Treasury's economic forecasts and budget estimates, but it also should be able to initiate its own if in fact it believes it is required.

The government's bill restricts the ability of the Parliamentary Budget Office to look at only Treasury and Finance figures, and this of course goes to the power of the Parliamentary Budget Office to perform its own functions. We believe that this will, unfortunately, make a of the eunuch parliamentary budget office. Unlike the US Congressional Budget Office or the Canadian Parliamentary Office, it will be a parliamentary budget office which is a parliamentary budget office in name only.

I was on the joint committee that recommended that a parliamentary budget office be initiated. I, along with the Independents, agreed that we needed to have a parliamentary budget office that had the power to gather information, a parliamentary budget office that would be independent and would not be unduly restricted. Unfortunately, though, I think the bill before us today will in fact restrict the ability of the Parliamentary Budget Office to perform its role and function, which is why we have needed to bring forward the amendment that we have.

I notice that the government has not been able to respond to the amendment that has been brought forward. It has not been able to provide one sensible reason as to why it cannot accept the amendment. Instead, I notice that, on the weekend, the Treasurer put out a media release that attacked our amendment by saying that it went to our economic competence. It said, in fact, that we were economically incompetent. That is a little bit like Silvio Berlusconi giving a critique on the virtues of celibacy. It is a little bit like the member for Dobell telling us about the importance of good governance and financial accounting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Higgins is straying.

Ms O'DWYER: It is not something that is remotely credible for the government to say. We believe, as I have just said—and which has been said by all of my colleagues—that a transparent, independent budget office that is not restricted in the performance of its role and function is the most critical thing that we can achieve here today. If we get this wrong today, we will be getting it wrong for the future. That is why it is so critical that the government actually answer the question that has been brought forward by the amendments that the shadow Treasurer has put on the table today. They cannot provide one reason why we should not be able to accept the amendments brought forward by the shadow Treasurer. I think they should simply accept that our amendments will improve their bill, and they should support them.

Mr WILKIE (Denison) (16:52): I think I have been developing quite a good relationship with the opposition. It has been a bit of a rocky start, but I have shown that I am willing to support the opposition when they have a good initiative. I have to say that on this particular issue I do believe the opposition has lost its way.

I pose three questions to the member for North Sydney. My first question is: will the member for North Sydney now withdraw and apologise for the opposition's attack on the Treasury and the claim that it is politicised? My second question is: why won't you now support an initiative which the opposition supported unanimously in committee—did someone belatedly realise that there had been an inadvertent episode of being constructive? My third question is: why all the focus in here this afternoon on the need for confidentiality during an election campaign, when, if the opposition stopped saying no to everything and instead did some good policy development work now, they could get everything they want costed in confidence before the next election campaign?

Mr HOCKEY (North Sydney) (16:54): In answer to question 1: no. In relation to question 2: you clearly have not even read the report that has come before this parliament on this bill, because in fact the specific amendment I am moving at the moment is not even a recommendation in the report.

Mr Bradbury: It is dealt with under the report.

Mr HOCKEY: It is not a recommendation of the report. Have you read the report? I would urge you to read the report that you are referring to. In response to the third question, relating to constructive analysis: we have not said that we will not reveal all of our costings before the next election. We have said we will but we are not going to submit our costings to a parliamentary budget office or a Treasury that is an arm of the government and is using government data. Full stop.

If the member for Denison had looked at all the other amendments when I endeavoured to engage in conversation about this bill, he would see that in fact what we are doing through these amendments is making the PBO more independent and more accountable to the parliament. That is why I said this is the chance; there may not be a second chance in the next parliament. And I would say to the member for Denison: look carefully at our amendments, have a good think about them and ask yourself whether these would enhance the power of the Parliamentary Budget Office and not reduce it.

I do not understand why the Independents—and I say this very genuinely—are so hogtied to the government on this bill. It is not a bill that goes to good government; it is a bill that goes to the integrity of the parliament and to the independence of the chamber. We were the ones who initiated a parliamentary budget office policy. Malcolm Turnbull as Leader of the Opposition did that, and it was carried on by the current Leader of the Opposition. We went to the last election promising to introduce a parliamentary budget office. Senator Guy Barnett in the other place had worked on this initiative for an extended period of time. This is not anything new. We are the ones who actually put forward the initiative. We were the ones who introduced a bill.

Mr Briggs: We introduced the Charter of Budget Honesty.

Mr HOCKEY: Exactly right. We are the ones who introduced the Charter of Budget Honesty. And we are the ones now who are introducing a bill for a PBO. The government only reacts when it is forced to do so. Obviously the Independents feel that they have done a deal with the government—they have made their decisions even though they do not even know what they are talking about—so be it. That is the way it is; let it be on their heads.

Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (16:57): I have some questions for the parliamentary secretary. Firstly, I would be grateful if he could confirm or otherwise that Canada and its parliamentary budget office now carry out independent analysis on the state of the nation's finances and trends. Secondly, I would like the parliamentary secretary to confirm that in the United States the Congressional Budget Office carries out independent analysis on the state of the nation's finances and trends. Thirdly, I would ask the parliamentary secretary to explain why in Australia the Parliamentary Budget Office, as pronounced in this bill, will not allow that authority to carry out independent analysis on the state of the nation's finances and trends?

The next question relates to the issue of access to Treasury data. The member for Lyne asserted and then asked a question about the PBO. He said that the Parliamentary Budget Office would get private access to Treasury data and analysis and would have the ability to make their own assessment of Treasury data and analysis on a confidential basis. The parliamentary secretary confirmed; he said yes to all of those propositions. So I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary: if the government's Parliamentary Budget Office is put into place, would the Parliamentary Budget Office get access to things such as the modelling to do with the carbon tax, which has been carried out extensively? Will the Parliamentary Budget Office get access to the variables and all of the assumptions embodied in that analysis? Do you want to take some notes, or have you got all this in your head? I am just getting a bit worried. I am onto question 11—

Mr Briggs interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): The member for Goldstein has the call and the member for Mayo should remember that he has been warned.

Mr Bradbury: When you say 'you', are you referring to me?

Mr ROBB: I said 'the parliamentary secretary', thanks very much.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The parliamentary secretary is not assisting and my patience is being worn down by everybody.

Mr ROBB: It would be better if the parliamentary secretary were to take notes rather than putting cheap shots across the chamber. I am very worried that I am not going to get answers to any of this, and it is quite relevant to the two Independents up here—and I am going to disregard the patronising cheap shots from the member for Denison in all of that. I ask: would the Parliamentary Budget Office be able to get access to Treasury modelling of, say, the education rebate? It is modelling that we were denied in the 3½ hours that we met with the Treasury officials. We got told to pull our heads in, effectively, and to take what they had to say—even though we had commissioned modelling from NATSEM, which Treasury uses. But they said there is a $900 million black hole, and we were told, 'You cop it.' That is what we were told, and you call that not interference. That was no cooperation whatsoever, and you have got the hide to stand up there and say that we are playing games. This is very serious business. They are in government because of the way in which that material was mishandled by Treasury and then by the government, and how you lapped it up! How those members lapped it up!

The next question I would like to ask is quite critical. In fact, I might come back to it in a minute, because I am running out of time. According to this bill as I read it: in the caretaker period if you present any proposal, automatically the costing of that is released immediately. I reserve the right to come back and finish that proposition. (Extension of time granted) The critical point in all of this, the thing that has really got our back up, is the proposition—and one of our own members of the committee has confirmed this—that unanimous agreements are not being delivered upon in this bill. The thing that is really getting up our nose is the fact that if we present a proposal, or two alternative proposals, to the Parliamentary Budget Office in the caretaker period, where we are trying to explore the relative merits of that proposal, or some competing proposals, we are trying to compare the relative merits. We are trying to come up with an answer which is economically responsible, economically doable, robust and independently assessed. If we present those two alternatives, over which we have taken no final decision, is it true that the analysis and costing of those two proposals—over which we have taken no final decision but we are in the caretaker period—will be automatically released? That is how we read this bill, and the shadow Treasurer's amendments go to making it absolutely crystal clear that that is not the case and that in fact we could test some proposals that we are looking at the relative merits of before we have made a final decision and keep in confidence the costings of those two proposals. If you say that it is true that those costings have to be released, no-one can form any other conclusion than that this is an act of politicising this whole Parliamentary Budget Office.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP (Mackellar) (17:05): I would cede to the parliamentary secretary to answer the questions, but he was not making any movement to rise to answer them. I have in front of me a 'note for file: post-briefing feedback for the opposition; meetings of Independent MPs with departmental secretaries.' As I read through it, I see that follow-up question No. 1 was to have some, but every other question says, 'no follow-up'. On the questions where our costings were challenged by Treasury, I went through earlier, chapter and verse—before the member for Denison came into the chamber but the member for Lyne was here—why the disallowing of a legitimate saving of $2.5 billion with regard to our conservative bias allowance savings was knocked out by Treasury. I went through why the $3.3 billion of expenditure savings against the Health and Hospital Fund, the Education Investment Fund and the Building Australia Fund were knocked out by Treasury and why the $2.4 billion saving that was put in place with regard to the NBN was knocked out. We had assessed that the savings that would be made on interest payable was 5.5 per cent, which was the average of the 10-year bond rate for six months leading up to the election, and Treasury said, 'No, we've decided it's 4.9 per cent,' and I said that I had taken out the figures today showing that, in fact, the bond rate from July 2010 to August 2011 is 5.23 per cent. And yet that was knocked out. Why were the $600,000 of savings from putting people back into the workforce—people over 50 and under 30—knocked out by Treasury, because they called it 'a second-round effect', whereas in fact they allowed it for the government in their own budget papers, as they had indeed allowed other things for the government and denied them for the opposition.

Then there was a further $1.5 billion knocked out by Treasury with regard to the savings that could be made on the PBS, whereas the forecast was that 40 per cent could be saved and the government's legislative base was 23 per cent. A further 17 per cent in savings was available, which was accounted for in the $1.15 billion.

That totals $9.95 billion knocked out by Treasury, and you accepted it according to these minutes. When the question was asked about the bottom line impact of the department's costings, that was when you decided that you would go with this lot, the government of the day and not us. The answer came back from Mr Henry, who, as I said, has been rewarded by the new appointment in the Prime Minister's office.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): The member for Mackellar is straying, and there is imputation in what she has said—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: This is why we have to have—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: and I would ask her to withdraw.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: No, I cannot withdraw, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Then the member for Mackellar may have to resume her seat.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: Madam Deputy Speaker, if the Secretary to the Treasury—and what we are talking about here is whether or not—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are not going to debate this.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: we have an independence. The point about independence is: is the head of the Treasury serving the government of the day and therefore not able to give independent advice on opposition costings? That is a fair and legitimate point to make in this debate—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: All I have asked—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: and it is the one that I am making.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: is for you to withdraw the imputation.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: I am sorry: it is a fact, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You have made—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: The fact of the matter is—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: All I have asked you to do is to withdraw.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: I will read from—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You have made an imputation about—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: I have made a statement of fact.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: a public servant, and I am asking you to withdraw.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: I am sorry: I cannot do that.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Then the member for Mackellar will resume her seat. The question is that amendment (1), moved by the member for North Sydney—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: On what basis am I being asked to resume my seat?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Because you are refusing to withdraw an imputation, and I think—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: It is a statement of fact.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The statement you made was that he had been—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: I will read you Mr Dreyfus's remarks.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: rewarded. That is an imputation—

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: Where is the standing order?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Mackellar will resume her seat.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not accept.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You will have to move a dissent, won't you? Otherwise, you will resume your seat.

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: I will resume my seat, but I do not—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you very much. The question is that amendment (1), moved by the member for North Sydney, be agreed to. I call the member for Mayo.

Mr BRIGGS (Mayo) (17:10): I wanted to just address a couple of issues which were raised earlier, particularly one raised by the member for Denison who said, in one of his cheap shots, as the member for Goldstein described, about doing work now in preparation for the next election campaign to avoid the release of confidential information which you would be familiar with. Budgets change. Numbers change quite substantially over a period of time, so much so that the government of the day's numbers change between the mid-year budget review and the final outcome. In fact, we do not know what the final outcome of the budget was last year, because the revenue numbers change and the parameters you work with change.

If you understood the Commonwealth budget and how budgeting works, member for Denison, you would understand that you cannot do a costing now for a tax cut you might want in two years time for an election campaign. Guess who does not do that themselves? The executive. So, in your view, it is okay for the executive to have that right to test their policies to get it right but not for the opposition or in fact yourself. That is completely illogical, but we should not be surprised, I guess. It is as logical as attacking any public servant appointed by John Howard but then getting outraged if anyone raises questions about current public servants. It is a completely illogical position. It is all right to slander the former Prime Minister, but if it is anyone in this place it is a great outrage. Hypocrite—absolute hypocrite.

I go back to the issues raised by the member for Lyne. I point this out to him: in the questions he raised to the parliamentary secretary, who did not answer those questions, he did not point to the sections but said, 'There is nothing which will stop it.' I thought that was a fascinating answer for the third question you raised. I put this to you, member for Lyne: 64B of the bill says:

Purpose of Parliamentary Budget Office

The purpose of the Parliamentary Budget Office—

I am reading from the bill—

is to inform the Parliament by providing, in accordance with this Division, independent and non-partisan analysis of the budget cycle, fiscal policy and the financial implications of proposals.

It then directly rules that out when in 64E2 it says:

The Parliamentary Budget Officer's functions under subsection (1) do not include:

(a) preparing economic forecasts; or

(b) preparing budget estimates

Give me a break. This is an absolute sell-out of this policy. If you want to go through the history, you do not own this. In fact, this was owned by the coalition who proposed this in the budget in reply, but that is not the point. If we want good outcomes in this place, if you want the parliament to work properly, as you say—and I take you at your word on that—this is a really good reform if you make some changes. What they are proposing is a halfway house.

It is the same as when the Labor Party opposed the Charter of Budget Honesty in 1996. We do not take these people on trust. They opposed the Charter of Budget Honesty in 1996 because they completely politicised the process in 1995 and 1996. The member for Denison probably forgets that. It might have been one of his hazy periods. They completely politicised the budget process in that time, and that is why, when the Howard government came to power, there was a $10 billion black hole in the budget. That is how the Charter of Budget Honesty came about.

This is our proposal from when the member for Wentworth was the Leader of the Opposition. It is a good proposal, with some improvements, including making it genuinely independent to give it the power to make its own forecasts. You know what: the Treasury is not always right. They would say to you themselves that they are not always right. It is economic forecasting. Access Economics does it. Lots of people do it. Lots of people on the internet do it these days. It should be a contested thing. We should have the right to improve policies in this place and get decent and genuinely independent access to information, including forecasts. This is a good amendment. It is not about playing politics; it is improving what is decent reform in this place.

Mr BILLSON (Dunkley) (17:14): Of the questions that were asked by the crossbenchers of the parliamentary secretary, I would like to add an eighth. I am sure the member for Lyne had so many questions that the issue he spoke quite vigorously about, in fairness—the opportunity to get considered independent advice—did not feature in the top seven. Maybe it would have been eighth. The assertion that was being raised by the member for Lyne was around our concern about the inability to obtain confidential independent advice, weigh policy options and even analyse announcements made by others to see where they might be improved through calibration and policy settings. The opportunity to do that confidentially is denied to the opposition and to all Independents during the caretaker period. As I sought to do before, I draw his attention to section 64L of the bill, which makes that quite explicit. If he wants a rewritten account of that, page 10 of the explanatory memorandum emphasises that point quite clearly.

To draw connections between why that should be of concern to Independent members and all members in this place and why it should be of concern to the broader Australian public, my friend and colleague the member for Mayo points to a very excellent example. In 1996, we were all told the budget was in surplus by the then Labor government, only to find a $10.4 billion black hole that took considerable expertise and adultness to work through to put the budget back into surplus. That leads to the point that, under the construct that the Independents seem to be shackled to, they seem to overlook the consequences of some of the settings within this bill. One is the caretaker period. There is no opportunity for private consideration and discourse, recalibration, weighing up of options or even examining other proposals that might come forward, even from the member for Lyne. There is no chance to look at that or at whether there may be some opportunity for improvement, dare that be conceivable.

Going back to 1996, the other point is that that is the only point in time when the Treasury's figures were available. If the member for Lyne and the member for Denison have such love and affection for the Treasury figures and point to them as such a credible and solid foundation for analysis, why then deny the parliament and all the members in this place the chance to have policy ideas costed against those figures?

The member for Denison was quite right and very insightful: policy work is an ongoing process. Even in my portfolio area of small business, there is some policy that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet blue book said would boost productivity. I am happy to have that work outsourced so the government could actually do something about small business. That work is an ongoing process, but the member and others would rightly criticise the opposition if we were not using the most up-to-date data for our costings. In the entire period between elections and the issuing of writs, we are beholden—we are hogtied—to the Treasurer's numbers, which in case after case have been illustrated as not as reliable and robust as they can be, because the Treasurer can influence them and, dare I say, adulterate them from what the Treasury may have provided and inject new assumptions. The only time there is purity in those numbers is during the election period. You would expect us to go back to those numbers to make sure they are up to date and as reliable as possible on the least adulterated data available, the Treasury figures, and that only happens during the caretaker period. There is an obligation under this bill that that work gets released publicly.

Please join up the dots. This is not that hard. It is PBO, pretty bleeding obvious, that what the government is trying to do here is nobble this process so we are all shackled and handcuffed to whatever the Treasurer expects to be the starting point for this analysis, and the only time we can get away from that and have pure Treasury figures as the starting point is during the election period, when there is no confidentiality. This is not that complicated.

I urge you to look at those points. I take you at your word that those things matter. If they matter, I am finding it hard to work out why you are not actually connecting the facts that are in these bills with that concern and the reason that the opposition's amendments are so important. I take you at your word, but you are all backswing at the moment and no follow-through. The follow-through would see you back the opposition's amendments if you are genuinely concerned about those points. Nice backswing; we are looking for a bit of follow-through, gentlemen.

Mr BRADBURY (Lindsay—Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) (17:19): I would like to address some of the questions that were asked in this debate by the member for Goldstein. The questions broadly fit into the following categories. The first one was in relation to other models of parliamentary budget office and the extent to which some of those models may be empowered to create their own forecasts. I can confirm that there are other parliamentary budget offices across the world that do have the capacity to generate their own forecasts, but that is not the model that the government has decided to go with. In fact, we are not going with that model because we happen to agree with the recommendations and, indeed, the content of the report that was handed down by the joint select committee.

I know that the member for North Sydney has made much of the fact that he says there is no finding or recommendation in the committee report. The committee report, at item 3.100, reads:

Given the resource intensive nature of the work and the need to minimise the duplication of work produced elsewhere, the PBO should not be required to produce its own fiscal forecasts. Rather, it should provide analysis of the Government's fiscal forecasts, commenting on the assumptions, judgements and overall reliability of Government assessments.

That is what was in the report and that is why the government has gone down the path it has.

The report indicated that this is a very resource-intensive exercise. It might be worth putting on the record the fact that Treasury currently has 30 officers engaged in economic forecasting and a further 50 engaged in revenue forecasting, and Finance's budget group has around 250 officers, all of whom are engaged in preparing the budget forecasts. I think we can see that, apart from it being a waste of time to duplicate those functions in a new entity, it would be a waste of resources—a waste of money. That is why the government has not opted to go that way. But the most significant reason why we have not opted to create an alternative set of forecasts and assumptions in the PBO is comparability of the costings. I note that in today's Herald Ross Gittins made the very point that the government relies upon. He said:

It is infinitely preferable that all parties' costings be prepared on the same basis—

rather than allowing oppositions to choose different economic forecasts or different budget parameters and costing conventions. Exactly. The second set of questions which the member for Goldstein asked was about the free flow of information. I can confirm that there will be unfettered and free access, subject to privacy provisions and the usual FOI requirements that operate outside the regime that is envisaged here. But that will occur, and that is contained within the bill.

Mr Hockey: Where's that?

Mr BRADBURY: Section 64F.

Mr Hockey interjecting—

Mr BRADBURY: It refers to a memorandum of understanding type arrangement, and that will put in place as the mechanism for the free flow of information. The third—and, I think, the most significant—set of questions raised by the member for Goldstein was about the confidentiality of costings during the caretaker period. These questions go to the nub of why the opposition, who unanimously supported these propositions in the committee process, have come forward now and opposed them. Why are they opposed to them? They are opposed to them because they know that under these arrangements their election commitments will be subjected to the scrutiny of the Parliamentary Budget Office. It is true that a matter which is publicly announced—and that is the key; what the legislation refers to is 'publicly announced'—

Opposition members interjecting—

Mr BRADBURY: The opposition has two years and 11 months of the parliamentary term to do the hard yards on policy. If the opposition cannot do the hard yards on policy throughout the two years and 11 months and instead have to rely upon the possibility of putting in election costings during the election campaign, it shows just how lazy the current opposition is.

Let us call this what it is, because this is all about one thing, and it is a very simple proposition: the coalition, now that they have stumbled across the fact that they have the huge challenge of a $70 billion black hole, have discovered that they need to construct an alibi so that they can avoid being held to account for the fiscal atrocities that they are about to commit. We know that these fiscal atrocities are going to be grievous. There is a $70 black hole, and they know how difficult a job that is. If casting aspersions, denying the importance of this reform and challenging the credibility of the PBO is what they need to do to avoid any scrutiny when it comes to the next election, that is exactly what they will do. They will try to talk down this body, because to do that is to deny— (Time expired)

Mr WILKIE (Denison) (17:24): I am deeply troubled by the lingering accusation in this place that the Treasury is politicised. I applaud some members of the opposition, who have trod around this issue much more carefully than some of their colleagues, but as it is at the moment the member for North Sydney has refused to withdraw and apologise for the opposition's attack on Treasury through the claim that it is politicised, and the member for Mackellar, by refusing to withdraw her comment, has not helped things at all.

For the public record, so it is absolutely clear to everyone in this country, I ask the member for North Sydney: will you now withdraw and apologise for the opposition's attack on the Treasury and the claim that it is politicised?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms AE Burke ): I gave latitude to the member for Denison before, but I say now that this is the consideration in detail stage and that we should actually be addressing the amendments before us. Does he have anything else he wants to add, or has he concluded?

Mr WILKIE: No—thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (17:26): The concerns of the member for Denison will be addressed if the amendments proposed by the member for North Sydney are adopted. The parliamentary secretary sought to answer some of the questions I asked, but in doing so he exposed the motivation of the government in the way in which they have interpreted the committee's recommendations.

Mr Bradbury interjecting—

Mr ROBB: The fact of the matter is that the only time that we see Treasury data in its rawest form, so the member for Denison can be satisfied that we are working with Treasury data unadulterated, is when PEFO is released. PEFO is not released until 10 days after the issuing of the writs—is that correct?

Mr Bradbury interjecting—

Mr ROBB: Right?

Mr Bradbury: You're telling the story.

Mr ROBB: Yes, right. Let us say that we had obtained access 10 days into the caretaker period, and we wished to see whether the policy proposals that we had been preparing for three years—

Mr Bradbury: What have you got at the moment?

Mr ROBB: The reason your government is in such trouble is that you did not prepare any policy in three years—that is the reason. We would want to wait for PEFO, despite having prepared a raft of policy, so that we got the latest statistics on costings when we released our documents publicly. Let us say that the government released a policy in the second week of the campaign and that we wanted to prepare and release a variation on that; or that we were preparing to release something, but it was partly covered by the government's policy. If you wanted to assess the merits of the policy, you are telling me, Parliamentary Secretary, that, if we put it into the office, the detail of that would be automatically released. We would not have the opportunity to make a considered assessment of whether that was affordable—

Mr Bradbury interjecting—

Mr ROBB: Madam Deputy Speaker, do I have to put up with these cheap shots?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The parliamentary secretary will stop interrupting.

Mr ROBB: The Treasurer has sent a boy on a man's errand here—that is what we have found out tonight. Why doesn't he have the courage to come in here and answer these questions? The only way you are answering any questions is with the help of the advisers over there; you have no idea yourself, Parliamentary Secretary. Why isn't the Treasurer here to answer these accusations? This is a very important issue. An election swung on it last time, and now we are sitting here with the parliamentary secretary grinning over at his advisers to see if they will give him another piece of advice that he can come up to the box with.

On the free flow of information, which the member for Lyne quite appropriately asked a question about, you have just confirmed, Parliamentary Secretary, that if the Parliamentary Budget Office is set up as you have described it and as it is embodied in the bill and if the office went confidentially they could get access to the assumptions, the variables and the modelling for such things as the education rebate and the carbon tax. I would be grateful if you could properly and directly answer the following questions. Would the Parliamentary Budget Office get private and confidential access to the modelling of such things as the education rebate and the carbon tax—not only to the outcomes but also to the hundreds of assumptions and to the way in which that model was written? Would it have the ability to get an assessment of what would happen if some of those variables were changed?

If you are true to the broad statement you made before, you will answer yes to that. If you cannot answer yes to that, the member for Lyne and the member for Denison and every other person in this chamber should be deeply concerned about the motive, the veracity, the credibility and the integrity of this process. On two counts now—firstly, on the access to private information and, secondly, on the presentation of policies before an election in the caretaker period—you have created great doubt. (Time expired)

Mr HOCKEY (North Sydney) (17:31): I think the parliamentary secretary really summed up the government's position. He said that other parliamentary budget offices have the capacity for independent analysis but the government has chosen not to have it with this.

Mr Bradbury: I said some.

Mr Briggs: Just the big ones!

Mr HOCKEY: Well, some. The big ones, like the Canadian budget office and the United States Congressional Budget Office. But that is okay, because now the Independents are about to support a lesser model, in the words of the parliamentary secretary. He said: 'Hang on, guys. We decided—

Mr Bradbury interjecting—

Mr HOCKEY: You did that! I encourage you to get a copy of the Hansard. It was a telling admission after how many hours of debate? He has now accepted that the government—

Mr Bradbury: It was the committee.

Mr HOCKEY: And now he is blaming the committee! There can never be any difference of opinion between this chamber and a committee! That is impossible to countenance!

Mr Bradbury interjecting—

Mr HOCKEY: Keep digging, old china! Now we have a new rule for this chamber. This chamber is not allowed to disagree with a committee, even though the amendment immediately before the House was not a recommendation of the committee. This chamber is not allowed under any circumstances to disagree with a recommendation of a committee. So we are the echo chamber of a parliamentary committee. That is all it is.

What most interested me in this debate is that, after admitting that this is a lesser parliamentary budget office than those of other countries, the parliamentary secretary then went on to say, 'Yes,' in answer to the member for Lyne, who has already made up his mind but who did ask a question about—

Mr Billson interjecting—

Mr HOCKEY: No, I do not think there is any change coming, mate. Sorry to let you down. I do not think he ever moves on these things. It was quite interesting when the member for Lyne asked the question about access to information from Treasury. The parliamentary secretary just retorted: 'Section 64F. Look at that. That is how you are going to get the information out of Treasury.' Now, I have read section 64F—I do not know if the member for Lyne has—and it says:

The Parliamentary Budget Officer may make an arrangement—

This is the subject of another of my amendments. It says the PBO may make an arrangement. Not 'will', not 'must', not 'shall', but 'may':

in writing, with the Head … of a Commonwealth body … to obtain from the body information and documents relevant to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's functions.

I am prepared to put my wallet on this table and make a bet with the member for Lyne. Here is 20 bucks, right here. I seek leave to table $20.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms S Bird ): The member for North Sydney would be aware that that is not a parliamentary thing to do.

Mr HOCKEY: I am seeking leave.

Leave not granted.

Mr HOCKEY: I am prepared to put $20 on the table to have a bet with the member for Lyne that the only source of information this body will have out of the Treasury will be the Treasury forecast in the MYEFO or the budget. I bet that the MOU, if it should ever be agreed between the Parliamentary Budget Office and the Treasury, will never extend to getting any further information out of the Treasury other than that which is published. I am betting my money here because that is what this piece of legislation says. It says you can only use the budget numbers—that is, the Treasurer's numbers—and should you require any further information you need to have an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, with the department from the PBO. What a laugh!

Mr Oakeshott interjecting—

Mr HOCKEY: I am sorry, but I understand the legislation. It is in here. It is going to come as a rude shock, but it is actually in the legislation and I look forward—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for North Sydney will resume his seat. I indicate to members that it is extremely unseemly to be casting bets around in this chamber and I will ask that you desist from doing so.

Mr HOCKEY: I am happy not to have a bet. I am just using that line. Perhaps we can lay something more significant on the line, like the seat of the member for Lyne. Maybe we could lay his seat on the line and see whether this turns out to be the case.

Mr BILLSON (Dunkley) (17:36): To reiterate a point the shadow Treasurer made, the saviour that the parliamentary secretary sought to offer was the prospect of an elusive MOU. We have established that we are handcuffed to the Treasurer's numbers. The only time we get a clear run at Treasury numbers is during the election period, when there is no confidentiality. I am grateful that it was not necessary for me to hand over the bill, but now we are relying on the provision that relates to the memorandum. I can just imagine a department secretary saying: 'Look, I've had this approach from the Parliamentary Budget Office. It's been so hollowed out by the parliament because the executive doesn't want it actually doing what parliamentary budget offices do in other jurisdictions, and now there's a memorandum of understanding.' Does anyone—particularly the Independents—think for one minute that an MOU will trump the legislation of the parliament? Does anyone think that will happen? Does anyone think that the department—the Treasury officials—will sit there and say, 'Look, I know there's been this express wish of the parliament, as reflected in the legislation.'

The parliamentary secretary has rolled out all of these spurious and incredibly unpersuasive arguments about why it is in the national interest to nobble the Parliamentary Budget Office before it even starts. Then Treasury officials say, 'Well, there is scope for us to enter into an MOU.' Do you think for one minute that that MOU will go anywhere further? Of course it will not. It may even be more restrictive than what the parliament said. It might even say: 'Now that you're nobbled to the Treasurer's numbers and PEFO, we don't even want you to be critical of those; that's under the MOU.' The MOU might say, 'You can't criticise any of the pre-election data or challenge any of the economic foundations in the forecasts, so, on the basis of the MOU, we will provide you with that material only so long as you are completely respectful and not in any way contradicting what the Treasury—or in this case the Treasurer—has had to say,' or the MOU might simply go down to: 'Would you like it on an Excel spreadsheet? Can we send it electronically? How quickly would you like it? If it happens to be late on a Friday night, is Monday okay?' Come on, Parliamentary Secretary! We know you are a lightweight in the Treasury portfolio, but do not tell the parliament or try to reassure the Independents that this completely empty, vacuous argument you put up has anything to do with the substantive issues that we are debating here.

The MOU will add nothing to this debate. It risks actually constraining further the information that is available. If it goes to information at all, it will not touch on any of the assumptions, any of the modelling or any of the various parameters that have been set and selected. It will not go to that; it will actually be more focused on the process of obtaining the already constrained information. The executive is hell-bent on making sure that only its view of the economic world and forecast ever sees the light of day.

I go back to where this started, the PBO—pretty bleeding obvious! They are trying to take the heart out of this, deny it to the Independents and deny it the respect that the Parliamentary Budget Officer deserves—and that is to satisfy himself or herself on what should be the basis of calculations that he or she is undertaking. That should be what is available here, and for the parliamentary secretary to come up and say, 'Hey, the MOU's the answer for everything,' is just utter, utter nonsense.

Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (17:39): I am just concerned that I get an answer to the last two questions that I put to the parliamentary secretary. I will reiterate. As I understand it, Parliamentary Secretary, you confirmed to the member for Lyne—

Mr Oakeshott: To the House.

Mr ROBB: In response to the member for Lyne's question.

Mr Oakeshott: Yes—to the House.

Mr ROBB: Either way, I am happy. You confirmed to the House in response to the member for Lyne's question that if the Parliamentary Budget Office as embodied in your bill wants to see, privately and confidentially, the modelling of the carbon tax, the education rebate or any other modelling for that matter—if it wants to see the assumptions that have been made, the variables that have been included, the code that has been written and the impact of changing certain assumptions on the outcomes—then that is in fact embodied in this legislation. If that is true, that is a huge step forward. I would be grateful if you could confirm whether that is true or not.

Secondly, I would be grateful if you could also confirm that, under this Parliamentary Budget Office as espoused by the government, if we as an opposition, in the third week of the caretaker period of the next legislation, present two competing proposals which we are looking to get costed so that we can make—

Mr Bradbury interjecting—

Mr ROBB: You have your chance to answer the question; let me just put it first so that people can understand what I am getting at. Suppose that we in the third week of the caretaker period of the forthcoming campaign, from opposition, have two competing proposals to achieve a similar objective and we wish to have those costed so that we can find out which is the proposal which has most merit, which is economically the best, which one may be robust and which one may be less affected by changes in the economic environment. If we wish to have that analysis done, are you saying, Parliamentary Secretary, that this bill requires that material to be made public on both of those considerations before we have made a decision?

Mr BRADBURY (Lindsay—Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) (17:43): I will address those two points. As I indicated earlier, in relation to the ability to access information, proposed section 64F provides the mechanism through which a memorandum of understanding can be brought into effect, and that would provide sufficient opportunity for access to that information.

In relation to the second question that the member for Goldstein has asked, on the provision of materials for costing during the caretaker period, I draw the member's attention to proposed section 64J of the bill, which provides the direction in relation to matters that might be brought forward for costing during the caretaker period. At proposed section 64J(2), the bill reads:

An authorised member of a Parliamentary party may request the Parliamentary Budget Officer to prepare a costing of a publicly announced policy of the Parliamentary party.

That, in effect, is no different to the way in which the Charter of Budget Honesty occurs in relation to the caretaker period.

Mr Hockey: It is just a duplication of the Charter of Budget Honesty.

Mr BRADBURY: I find that amusing because, for all of the time I observed those within the Howard government, they held up the Charter of Budget Honesty as though it were some particular beacon for good governance.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms S Bird ): The member for Mayo will withdraw!

Mr Briggs: Madam Deputy Speaker, I am a bit befuddled about what I am withdrawing but, whatever it is, I will withdraw.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

Mr BRADBURY: I am equally as befuddled about this suggestion that, somehow, the opposition is now not holding up the Charter of Budget Honesty as some beacon of good governance. The committee inquiry in its report did indicate that there were some deficiencies in the Charter of Budget Honesty Act, in particular, in relation to the uneven way in which those provisions treat governments and oppositions.

The proposals contained within this bill are significant and they are a significant step forward that will assist oppositions. It is not often you see a government come forward and support a set of proposals that in fact do provide assistance to oppositions in carrying out their functions. In fact, when the coalition introduced the Charter of Budget Honesty, they were single-minded in their attempt to make it as difficult as possible for oppositions then and into the future. And, having now come into opposition, they have seen just how hard that is. I will not restate the debacle that was the $11 billion black hole, other than to make this point, and that is that the provisions that the member for Goldstein is referring to essentially represent the way in which the Charter of Budget Honesty currently operates. Collectively, the amendments that the opposition are bringing forward represent a very desperate attempt to weaken the Charter of Budget Honesty. In fact, I will conclude by making this point in relation to the confidentiality provisions to which the member for Goldstein is referring.

Under the proposals that are being put forward in these amendments by the opposition, it would be possible for the opposition in the caretaker period to bring forward a set of policies that may be publicly announced, to have them costed but, in the event that their confidentiality provisions were allowed to prevail, then there would not be a requirement for the PBO to release those details. Under your proposals, that is what you have suggested. The other amendment that you are moving would suggest—

Mr Hockey interjecting—

Mr BRADBURY: With great respect, this has been a wide-ranging debate and the question I have been asked does not go to this amendment either; it goes to the amendment to which I am referring. I make the point that, under the amendments that have been brought forward by the opposition, you could have a situation where they publicly announce a policy, they take it to the PBO, they do not like the answer that they get from the PBO, they go off to one of their accounting firms—one of their mates—and they get alternative costings and then they shop around for the one they want. We do not want that. We want a comparable set of benchmarks and that is why we are proposing this system. (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms S Bird ): I know this is a more robust section, but we might all just lower the level of our voices.

Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (17:48): This has taken us about 2½ hours, but the parliamentary secretary has finally confirmed that the caretaker period under the proposal that is embodied in this government's Parliamentary Budget Office is absolutely no different to the situation we confronted at the last election and the election before that. We have a choice: we can use non-current Treasury data before the caretaker period or we can wait for PEFO—PEFO is very important data—and get accurate assessments of alternative policies, some of which we have not yet made a decision on because it depends on what data the PEFO comes up with. Those will be used and abused by the government. This is a total stitch-up and you have confirmed it. You have confirmed today that the only thing this does is give us access to costings well ahead of an election. That is what you have confirmed.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms S Bird ): Can I just ask the member for Goldstein to make it clear that it is not me who is doing that. You were speaking through the chair.

Mr ROBB: Madam Deputy Speaker, I apologise for that. The second thing is that we have heard great defences of Treasury here from the member for Denison, the member for Lyne and others, but both they and the parliamentary secretary have continued to cast imputations on me and the member for North Sydney. That is against standing orders. However, it is not against standing orders to cast imputations against others other than members.

Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—