In a few moments it will be one week since Christchurch was struck by this latest earthquake. As a mark of our support for, and our solidarity with, the people of New Zealand, I ask all members to stand in their places and observe two minutes silence.
Honourable members having stood in their places—
I understand that arrangements will be made at a later date for a condolence motion to be moved in relation to the tragedy. Arrangements are also being made for members to sign a book of condolence to record their sympathy for our New Zealand friends at this time.
Sitting suspended from 10.53 am to 2 pm
I remind the House that the address-in-reply will be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General at Government House at 5.30 pm tomorrow. Tomorrow’s sitting will be adjourned at approximately 5 pm. I should be glad if the members for Robertson and Lyons, together with other honourable members, would accompany me to present the address.
My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer her to a visit I made today to Arthur and Rita Clark at their fruit and vegetable shop in Queanbeyan, whose $6,000 a month power bill will increase by $1,500, and that is just for starters, under the government’s carbon tax. Why won’t the Prime Minister be honest with the Australian people about the impact of her carbon tax on the cost of food?
I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. As the Leader of the Opposition well knows, even in the words of his question he is continuing his campaign of misleading and generating fear amongst the Australian community. If the Leader of the Opposition today hung out at a fruit and vegetable shop and said to the owners of that shop the words he said to the parliament today, he has done them a great disservice. He has told them an untruth; he has told them something he knew not to be true at the time he said it, and he did it for no other purpose than to further his fear campaign and his political interests. It is not right to go around saying things that are untrue in order to generate fear in the Australian community, and that is what the Leader of the Opposition is doing.
I say to the Leader of the Opposition: we on this side stand for giving businesses, like the one that he went to today, certainty so that they know, as they make the arrangements for their business, what arrangements actually apply so that they can do their business plans with certainty. It seems to me a little interesting that at one point the Leader of the Opposition actually thought certainty was important for businesses. At one point, on 19 July, he was wandering around saying things like, ‘I think businesses deserve certainty,’ and, ‘I think what business needs is a period of certainty and stability.’ The shadow Treasurer said on 21 July:
We now accept the Australian people want certainty and stability out of Canberra.
Now, of course, what is the Leader of the Opposition promising Australian businesses? He said it on morning TV today. He was asked:
Big business is obviously a little concerned, a little confused. Where does it leave them in all of this?
The Leader of the Opposition said:
Well, completely up in the air and with no certainty.
With those words the Leader of the Opposition has named his own campaign—create fear and try to stop a confident nation dealing with the challenges of the future. If his fear campaign fails and we price carbon on 1 July 2012, as I intend to do, then he will go to the next election with a plan to wreck the Australian economy with economic vandalism, a plan to rip away from businesses the certainty that they need, a plan to trash this nation’s reputation in international markets, a plan to render void important investment decisions that Australian businesses have made, a plan to see electricity prices rise and rise because there is no certainty in investment in electricity, a plan to rip out of the hands of households the assistance we have given them, a plan to make sure that hardworking Australians have less money in their purses and their wallets than they have had before, and a plan to destroy Australia—
Honourable members interjecting—
If the Minister for Trade and the member for Flinders continue, they will be able to go outside and have a cup of tea while they have their discussion.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Prime Minister was asked about power bills rising $1,500 for an average business. If she does not know the answer or refuses to come clean, you should ask her to sit down.
The Prime Minister is responding to the question.
The answer to the question is: the figure is a product of a campaign that is designed to mislead and scare Australians. The political party in this parliament that stands for increasing power prices is the Liberal Party, with its plan for chaos and uncertainty. We will get on with the job of pricing carbon and assisting households on the way through.
Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question of the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the answer she has just given. She cannot tell people the rate of the carbon tax, she cannot tell people how long the carbon tax will last and she cannot tell people what the compensation will be. Where is the certainty in that, Prime Minister?
That contribution reminds me of the Sunday that I sat with the Council of Australian Governments, with the leaders of the nation, and struck a new national health deal—and before I walked out of that room to announce it the Leader of the Opposition did a press conference to try and trash it. What he is doing now shows that either the Leader of the Opposition has paid no attention to this debate because he has been so keen to run his fear campaign, or his question now is once again intended to try and mislead the Australian people.
As the Leader of the Opposition well knows, what the government has announced is a carbon pricing mechanism. The government made it clear on the day of the announcement that we would be announcing the carbon price and the household and industry assistance, and then we would bring legislation to this parliament. And when we bring legislation to this parliament that is when it gets interesting, because, as the member for Wentworth reminded the world on BBC—he has gone global, Mr Speaker—his policy position of pricing carbon is supported by half the Liberal Party minus one. So on the day that the legislation comes into the parliament it will be very interesting to see how the Liberal Party responds, because I believe that there are Liberal Party members over there who are sick of the race baiting, there are Liberal Party members over there who are sick of seeing politics played with grief—
Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. The Prime Minister is required to be directly relevant to the question. She was asked to end the uncertainty around her carbon tax plan and she was talking about everything other than carbon—
The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Prime Minister has the call.
I was asked about the further progress in carbon pricing and I am talking about the day of the vote, when members of the Liberal Party will be called to account. I do believe that there are Liberal Party members who are sick of the race baiting, sick of the politics being played with grief, who are pro the NBN, who are pro pricing carbon, who actually want to make a contribution to this country—
Honourable members interjecting—
The Prime Minister will resume her seat. There are a number of people in this House who could bother to spend a bit of time on self-reflection about the way they carry on within the House. That is on both sides. Respect is a word that I think has left the lexicon of many members of this place. They might just think about it. The Prime Minister has the call.
On that day we will see who stands for a prosperous Australia, for the jobs of the future, for assisting households, for making sure that this nation does not get left behind the standards of the world. We will see who lives in the past, who stands for less prosperity, fewer jobs, who stands for rising power prices with no assistance. On that day we will record the vote. I believe that there are some Liberals who that day will walk into this place with a very heavy heart as they are forced to follow the Leader of the Opposition down his path of economic destruction.
I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon a senator and two-term member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, Dr Lee Hye-Hoon. On behalf of the House, I extend to her a very warm welcome.
Hear, hear!
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, how will a price on carbon help to create a clean energy economy, and what would be the impact of rolling back a legislated carbon price?
I thank the member for La Trobe for her question. She, as all members of the government and other people of goodwill in this place are, is interested in the future of this country and making sure that we have a clean energy economy for the future.
Opposition members interjecting—
I expect the opposition to interject because, of course, they are a party of the past. Let me explain in detail our mechanism for pricing carbon. The first proposition is an incredibly simple one. At the moment carbon pollution can be released into the atmosphere for free. There is no disincentive for doing that. We will put a price on carbon, a price on every unit of carbon pollution. It will be paid for by businesses and as a result, because our business community is smart and adaptable and innovative, they will work out ways of pursuing their business and generating less carbon pollution. They will work out ways of making sure they pay less of a price when carbon is priced. Then they will enter into contracts, they will make investments on the basis of understanding the rules and understanding that carbon will be priced. And as they go about making those transitions, innovating, making the new investments of the future, we will work with those businesses in transition to a clean economy.
Having priced carbon and seen that innovation, yes, there will be pricing impacts; that is absolutely right. That is the whole point: to make goods that are generated with more carbon pollution relatively more expensive than goods that are generated with less carbon pollution. But because we are a Labor government this will be done in a fair way. We will assist households as we transition with this new carbon price. What that means is that people will walk into a shop with money in their pocket, the government having provided them with assistance. They will see the price signals on the shelves in front of them—things with less pollution, less expensive; things with more pollution, more expensive—and they too will adapt and change. They will choose the lower pollution products, which is exactly what we want them to do. Between the business investment and innovation, between households who have been assisted in a fair way by a Labor government responding to price signals, we will see a transition to a cleaner economy, to a clean energy economy, to a low-pollution economy.
What does that mean? Put very simply, it means jobs. It means that our economy will keep pace with a transition that is happening around the world. Our economy will keep pace and we will have the jobs of the future. What is the alternative? The alternative is to keep emitting carbon pollution. It is to see Australia left behind the tide of history with a high-pollution economy. It is exporting jobs to the rest of the world—jobs that Australian kids could have to build a future on. It is leaving households to deal with escalating electricity prices, which are going up because of a lack of investment certainty, and without household assistance in their pockets. And, of course, if we follow the Leader of the Opposition’s plan, it is also about ripping $30 billion off taxpayers. The efficient way to transform our economy is to price carbon and that is what we will do.
I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of an APEC delegation from New Zealand. This is the eighth delegation under APEC from New Zealand. It comprises a member of the parliament, Iain Lees-Galloway, who is accompanied by senior members of parliament staff. I notice the trans-Tasman strength of the whips club. The leader of the delegation is the house manager for the government whips’ office. That will go without comment from me—but I am worried about the whips getting control! In all seriousness, I iterate the expressions of condolence and solidarity with the people of New Zealand. I would ask that the delegation take those expressions of sympathy back with them. I warmly welcome you today.
Hear, hear!
My question is again to the Prime Minister. I refer her to her statement during the election, when announcing a citizens’ assembly, that action on climate change ‘must have as its foundation the genuine political support of the community’. Given the Prime Minister’s unequivocal promise that there would be no carbon tax under any government she led, wouldn’t a Prime Minister of integrity seek a mandate at the next election before departing from her commitment not to introduce a carbon tax?
Once again the Leader of the Opposition forgets what he said yesterday. The Leader of the Opposition comes into this parliament every day and, because he is a hollow person of no consistent beliefs, he believes that he can come into this parliament and say something today and not be held to account for what he said yesterday. The Leader of the Opposition should reflect that in the period of the parliament between 2007 and 2010, when the Leader of the Opposition was adopting different climate change position after different climate change position, when the member for Wentworth was writing of his embarrassment at the political hollowness and weathervane politics of the Leader of the Opposition, in all of those twists and turns of inconsistent statements, the Leader of the Opposition said that he accepted the government had a mandate to price carbon.
We went to the 2007 election campaign saying we would price carbon. Here is some news for the Leader of the Opposition, who seems to think that everybody has forgotten yesterday: so did Prime Minister John Howard go to the 2007 election promising to price carbon.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The Prime Minister seems to believe that the words ‘carbon tax’ are unparliamentary. Are they unparliamentary?
Order! There is no point of order.
Government members interjecting—
Order! Some of those on my right, on the back benches, who are inviting me to take action against the member for Flinders, might think about that when they are interrupting proceedings in the way that they do. The House would do well, to both the left and the right, if they sat there in silence. The Prime Minister has the call.
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I am a bit surprised that the member for Flinders would come to the dispatch box. He has caused me to ponder whether, if you walk away from your honours thesis, you get your honours degree stripped off you? I think someone needs to answer that question for us, because his honours thesis makes very good reading. I happen to have extracts of it here. He said:
… the market is the preferable regime as it better ensures that the polluter bears full responsibility for the cost of his or her conduct.
Good words. He wrote:
Businesses’ greatest concern, according to the Liberal Party, is the need to have a certainty which would enable them to plan for the long term.
I could not have written it better myself. I am glad he got first-class honours. I am a bit ashamed he is walking away from it now. In answer to the Leader of the Opposition’s question, the Leader of the Opposition well knows that the Labor Party went to the 2007 election saying we would price carbon with an emissions trading scheme.
Honourable members interjecting—
Order! The Prime Minister will resume her seat until the House comes to order.
Mr Abbott interjecting
The Leader of the Opposition!
Mrs Mirabella interjecting
The member for Indi! The Prime Minister has the call.
Prime Minister Howard went to the 2007 election saying he would price carbon through an emissions trading scheme. I went to the 2010 election saying I would price carbon through an emissions trading scheme. We, at the 2010 election, said to the Australian people: we believe climate change is real, we believe it is a caused by human activity, we believe in order to tackle climate change you need to price carbon and we believe the most efficient mechanism for doing that is an emissions trading scheme. What I announced last week will be an emissions trading scheme, a market based mechanism, a permanent system, with a fixed price for the first three to five years. The Leader of the Opposition raises with me community consensus and community debate. Let me assure the Leader of the Opposition—
Ms Julie Bishop interjecting
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is warned!
we will be out there in every community across the country advocating the need to price carbon and exposing his hollow, phoney, sham fear campaign for exactly what it is.
Go out there and sell it!
The member for Indi is warned!
My question is to the Prime Minister. Why is pricing carbon important for business certainty; and what would be the impact for business of rolling back a legislated carbon price?
I thank the member for Parramatta for her question. Of course, she understands the need for certainty, having been a small business person herself and because she is in touch with her local business community. I think it will amaze people who are watching this parliament today that the Liberal Party, of all political parties, think that business certainty is something to laugh about. They would prefer economic chaos, in their modern incarnation under this Leader of the Opposition. In pricing carbon we will be providing businesses with certainty. We need to convert our economy to a clean energy economy for the future. By world standards, we are very big emitters of carbon pollution—the biggest emitters per capita in the developed world, with 27 tonnes of carbon pollution per person. That is more than the United States and it is significantly more than the per capita emissions of places like China and India.
What we need to do is price carbon to give business certainty. Let me refer to the words of Brad Page, of the Energy Supply Association, who knows about the need for investment in energy generation. People who are genuinely concerned about rising energy costs for Australian families should listen to these words:
Uncertain greenhouse gas emission policy adversely impacts on new energy supply decisions …
An equitable and enduring greenhouse gas emissions price signal is required to promote investor confidence, deliver greenhouse gas abatement and reward the uptake of new low-emission technologies.
Industry is crying out for certainty—crying out for certainty. I look over at the member for Groom because he is a man who, in the past, has talked about the need for business certainty. He said it in the following words—these are the words of the member for Groom:
What I hear from small business is that they want certainty. They want to know where they are going to be in 12 months time.
He also said that they said to him, and this was about the GST:
What we don’t want is roll-back. We do not want roll-back. It will complicate our business. It will mean wholesale changes. It will mean wave after wave of reform.
Never a truer word was spoken about the consequences for businesses if they fear a loss of certainty, if they do not know what is going to happen next. The Leader of the Opposition himself once supported business certainty. In July last year, he said business ‘deserves certainty’. Again in July last year, he said:
… I think what business needs is a period of certainty and stability.
But today he was on morning television, proudly saying in answer to a question about business certainty:
Well, completely up in the air and with no certainty.
That is his vision of the Australian economy.
Let us be very clear about what this loss of business sense of certainty will mean. It will trash Australia’s reputation around the world as a safe place to invest. It will strand investments that people have made on the basis of a carbon price. It will cost jobs. It will rip out of the hands of householders money supplied to them that they are relying on to meet the costs of living. It will leave Australia a poorer place. The right strategy is to ensure we have the clean energy jobs of the future. We will do that by pricing carbon, despite the fear campaign, despite the campaign of uncertainty.
Mr Speaker, on a point of order: is it in order for the opposition to conduct ballots for whatever position it is during question time, or can they do it at other times, because it creates disorderly conduct?
As long as they do it quietly—
We are!
Order! There are one or two that are collecting ballots that at least are quiet, and I am glad the member for New England and the member for McMillan are not standing in the aisles conferencing! They could do that outside.
Mr Ewen Jones interjecting
The members for Mitchell, Herbert, and I will include Hughes because they are starting to be a bit of bad trio, will sit there quietly.
I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of a parliamentary delegation from the Federal Republic of Germany. On behalf of the House, I extend a very warm welcome to the members.
Hear, hear!
My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to her unequivocal statement on Sunday, reiterated by Labor backbenchers today:
Every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households …
How can the Prime Minister be trusted when the government entered into an agreement in December last year that requires the government to give a reported 10 per cent of any carbon tax raised to a United Nations climate change fund?
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has asked me how money raised from carbon pricing will be used. I refer her to what I said at the press conference last Thursday. When I announced the carbon pricing mechanism I said:
Every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households, helping businesses manage the transition and funding climate change programs. And the government will always support those who are in need of assistance with cost of living pressures.
That is where the money will go. When I was on the Today show on Sunday I said:
… I do want to be clear. Every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households, to helping businesses transition, and to programs to tackle climate change. But the highest priority will be assisting households.
Mr Speaker, on a point of order: the Prime Minister is referring to a quote she made on Thursday. I am talking about what she said on Sunday and what every backbencher who did the doors today said about—
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will resume her seat. The Prime Minister is responding to the question. The Prime Minister has the call.
Can I say to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition more broadly, I have very little idea of what she is on about but I am not on my own there. Whenever you meet one of the Liberal backbenchers in the corridors, they are very keen to offer an assessment about not knowing what the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is on about
Order! The Prime Minister will come to the question.
If the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has any real interest in assistance for Australian households than let me advise her of this: if she is really interested in assistance for Australian households, she will be supporting the government. Today, in a press conference shortly before question time, when her leader was asked about household assistance he said:
It sort of defeats the purpose of making everything more expensive and it creates this giant money-go-round.
Of the Leader of the Opposition’s utterances today, what we do understand is that he thinks that a carbon tax is the simplest way to price carbon and he is opposed to household compensation. That is what he said today. If the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is genuinely interested in household compensation, she will be endorsing the government’s position.
On the question of foreign aid, what I can say to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is that the government will make its own decisions. You will get yours from One Nation.
Ms Julie Bishop interjecting
Order! I remind the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that she was warned earlier. It is one more warning than she really needs today. If she continues to interject, she will be dealt with. I think I recognise the member for Lyne.
My question is to the Prime Minister. In light of media reports today of cross-parliament support for a national disability insurance scheme, will you outline how you intend to progress this important reform as a matter of urgency within government?
I thank the member for Lyne for his question. I hope that he, in his appearance, is setting a trend for those who work in Parliament House, including some members of the press gallery—Phil Hudson and Dennis Shanahan, amongst others—so congratulations to him. He asked me about a very important Productivity Commission inquiry which is underway—an inquiry into how this nation could better assist Australians with disabilities. The interim report of the Productivity Commission was made available yesterday and I am pleased that the interim report has got some general acceptance across the parliament as a very good piece of work.
As the member would know, this is the interim report. There is now a further comment period for people who are interested. So many people around the country have a disability or are a carer or a family member or a friend of an Australian with a disability and will want to have their voices heard in this inquiry process. So there will be a further period in which people can provide their comments and then the final report will be made available in July. After the final report is made available, the government will respond to it. As the member is probably aware, the Productivity Commission does genuinely take on board feedback between the interim report and the final report and we may well find that some parts of it are changed from what has been made available now.
I do endorse what the member has said. This is an incredibly important area of work. It is somewhere where the government has made a start, but there is more to do. We have doubled federal funding, providing more than $6 billion over five years to deliver more and better specialist disability services. We have improved access to specialist employment services because many Australians living with a disability do want to work, but they may need that extra bit of assistance to get into the workforce. Of course, we have delivered a historic pension increase to assist people with a disability and their carers, something that made a very big difference to them. These are Australians that live under a great deal of pressure.
The government is also funding the Better Start for Children with Disability program. This is all about early intervention for children diagnosed with sight and hearing impairments, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, fragile X syndrome, and it follows in the wake of the earlier successful program to assist children with autism.
But, despite these investments, I acknowledge and the government acknowledges that there is more the nation needs to do to support Australians with disability. I think, with the interim report yesterday, we are off to a good start on working out major new policy improvements. I am glad to see that that has received bipartisan support at this point. I do genuinely hope that that bipartisanship lasts as we go through the next stage of the process, which will be the final Productivity Commission report in the middle of the year.
My question is to the Treasurer. Why is moving to a carbon constrained economy dependent on setting a price on carbon? How can we encourage investment and business certainty through the implementation of policies to address climate change?
I thank the member for Deakin for his very important question. Economists and the business community understand that having a carbon price is a very important part of our economic evolution. Over 30 countries around the world have moved to a carbon price and, unless we move, we are at serious risk of being left behind. We do have to move to the low-pollution economy of the future; it is absolutely essential to future prosperity. Of course, there are even those opposite who think a move to a carbon price is inevitable. The shadow Treasurer himself said on 20 May that we have to, it is ‘inevitable’. And we have had the shadow minister for climate change who has written a thesis saying it is absolutely imperative to have a price on carbon. And we have got the member for Wentworth, who has had this to say—and he only said this on 12 June 2010:
… we cannot cost effectively achieve a substantial cut in emissions without putting a price on carbon. We have to put a price on carbon.
So that is the view of three senior shadow ministers across the other side of the House. But we really heard the truth of it last night when the member for Wentworth was on the BBC and he said: ‘Look, it would have otherwise been different. I was only beaten by one vote.’ So there are a lot more opposite who do really believe in a carbon price.
It is one thing to oppose what the government is going to do on a carbon price. It is an entirely different thing to say that it would be repealed. Nothing could be more damaging to investment in this country. You could not send a more damaging message to international investors and particularly to investors in renewable energy than a promise to repeal. I think that demonstrates how desperate are all of those opposite. They are prepared to do anything to trash our economic reputation and to trash our standing in the international community. Nowhere is this more damaging than when it comes to the energy supply sector. We have seen five-year forecasts in that sector fall from $18 billion in 2009 to $8 billion in 2010. As the Prime Minister was saying before, if we do not get a carbon price in place we will not get the investment in the energy sector, and electricity prices will be higher than they otherwise would be. Responsibility for that will be directly at the feet of all those opposite.
This decision not just to oppose but to repeal strikes at the heart of business certainty, strikes at the heart of investment in jobs in our economy. If anything demonstrates how irresponsible they are and how they have no economic credentials or capacity to govern, it has been this decision. What we have opposite with the Leader of the Opposition is a political con man who is not game to take a tough decision, a con man who wants to believe dealing with climate change is cost free.
Order! The Deputy Prime Minister!
Yes, sit down, you bagman!
Order!
Mr Sidebottom interjecting
Order! The member for Braddon!
Mrs Mirabella interjecting
Order! The member for Braddon nearly saved the member for Indi, but she continued. She will remove herself from the House for one hour under 94(a).
The member for Indi then left the chamber.
Mr Speaker, on a point of order: given that I have been asked in the past to withdraw both ‘Pinocchio’ and ‘Lady Macbeth’, I would ask the Treasurer to withdraw his slur against the Leader of the Opposition.
The Deputy Prime Minister will withdraw and he will conclude his answer.
I withdraw, Mr Speaker.
He has concluded his answer.
Mr Champion interjecting
The member for Wakefield is warned!
My question is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to his statement just six days before the last election:
… we will go back and seek to reconstruct a community consensus about how we deal with climate change … We’ll look at where we are going in 2012.
Treasurer, how can Australians trust you at your word when there is clearly no community consensus and, even on your reckoning, it is not 2012?
I am pleased the shadow Treasurer has asked me that question because it enables me to go back to our commitment to price carbon, which is longstanding and enduring—a lot more longstanding than the shadow Treasurer, who was only 12 months ago saying that he believed in a price on carbon. We have announced an emissions trading scheme. That puts a price on carbon. First of all we are going to have a fixed price and then we are going to have a floating price. What we have done is to take the courageous economic decision for the future of this country. Yes, there is political risk associated with that courageous decision, but we are putting the national interest ahead of our own political interest. Of course, what you have seen here from the scare campaign that has been run by the opposition leader, who is a political con man, who wants to pretend that dealing with climate change is cost free—
Order! The Treasurer will withdraw.
I withdraw, Mr Speaker.
He should be warned.
Order! I say to the member for Sturt: often people excuse his behaviour because he is the Manager of Opposition Business, but he does not need to catcall at all times. He should try to sit there quietly.
It is well-known that the Leader of the Opposition is a climate change sceptic. He is the best friend that carbon ever had.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is simply relevance. It goes to the words of the Treasurer talking about community consensus and not doing anything on climate change until 2012.
The member for North Sydney will resume his seat. The Treasurer will directly relate his remarks to the question.
There is a stark contrast between the government and the opposition. Labor has got its sleeves rolled up and is taking the tough decisions for the future of the country to support jobs, and what we are getting from the opposition is just negativity and scare campaigns—reaching the dizzy heights of negativity. You can just see him at the next campaign, out there saying to the Australian people: ‘No, we can’t! We can’t deal with the challenge of climate change. We can’t deal with making our country more prosperous by investing in infrastructure. We can’t invest in the NBN. No, we can’t.’ Well, I will tell you what: the Australian people respect those who have the guts to take the tough decisions for prosperity. That is what this government is doing, and everybody knows that what is being said by the opposition is a big con job. Pretending you can deal with carbon emissions in a cost-free way is nothing other than a con job. Those opposite want to tax families and hand the money to polluters. What we want to do is charge polluters and give the money to households and industry.
My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Why is a unified approach important to policymaking when it comes to major economic reforms? What is necessary to maintain public confidence in reforms?
Putting a price on carbon in our economy is a major economic reform that is in this country’s long-term interests, and it will drive cuts in pollution, it will drive investment in clean energy and it will provide a stable environment for investment in the future. The government’s policy proposal, the framework that we announced, is responsive to the climate science and it also applies market principles as the lowest cost means to reduce pollution across our economy.
The fact of the matter is that on the other side of this parliament, of this House, they are deeply divided. They are divided about the climate science and they are divided about the policy responses. The Leader of the Opposition, as we know, has had multiple different and contradictory positions on climate change himself. At various times he has advocated a carbon tax; he has advocated an emissions trading scheme on other occasions. Then, he has opposed both. He has been suspicious of market mechanisms. He has said he thinks the science is crap, although at other times he has supported action on the basis of an insurance principle. He has time travelled back to Roman times, as we heard yesterday. He checks into the One Nation website to have a look at things.
Today he had an interesting experience at a press conference. After boasting that he had all these letters of support from authoritative figures supporting the coalition’s so-called ‘direct action’ policy, he was interrupted by a journalist to say the following: ‘Sorry to labour the point, Mr Abbott, but your office actually sent me your letters of support and all these people who have supported your scheme. I rang them and most of them didn’t actually support your scheme, and those that did weren’t actually scientists.’ There are a few accusations about people being loose with the truth and gilding the lily—a little bit of it applies on the other side.
On the other side of the House there is one member in particular who has maintained a consistent and principled position that I certainly have respect for, and that is the member for Wentworth. He said only yesterday in an interview on the BBC:
In terms of the principles that I was standing for—
at the time of the last debate about this issue—
I think those principles are right - I maintain them today.
Just in case there was any confusion about any of this, last night on Q&A the member for Wentworth said a number of important things about this policy issue. He said: ‘I think there should be a price on carbon’, ‘I would prefer to put a price on carbon via market-based mechanism’ and ‘I don’t think there’s a people’s revolt so much about putting a price on carbon’. In relation to the coalition’s policy on direct action he said, ‘Well, I can’t cite any economists that agree with it’. He also said: ‘The coalition’s policy of the government spending money to put a price on carbon with taxpayers’ dollars is another way,’ of dealing with it, but, ‘There is always a risk when governments are making decisions like that that there will be, you know, fiscal waste. That is a risk.’
This is the position. They are deeply divided on that side of parliament about the science. We well know the member for Tangney’s point of view and those in other contributions that have been made from time to time. There are others that think it is a communist conspiracy. There are others that adhere to the science and recognise the best way of approaching this issue is through a market mechanism. They are deeply divided. The more we get into this debate the more those divisions will be evident.
My question is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to his statement on 12 August last year, just nine days before the election, when he was asked on The 7.30 Report:
… are you going to rule out a carbon tax in the next term of the Government - yes or no?
to which he replied:
We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.
Treasurer, why should the Australian people ever believe anything you say again?
I thank the shadow Treasurer for asking me the same question he asked me before and the answer is, of course, the same. We have been committed to an emissions trading system for many years. The shadow Treasurer was committed to an emissions trading system until about a year or a year and a half ago when he changed his mind, proving yet again that he has no principles whatsoever. We are committed to an emissions trading scheme. We have announced a scheme with a fixed price moving to a floating price. That is what we have done. We said all the way through the election campaign we were determined to price carbon.
Mr Speaker, a point of order on relevance: the Treasurer ruled out a carbon tax before the election; now he wants to introduce one.
Order! The member for North Sydney will resume his seat. The question went on to ask why people should ever believe anything the Treasurer said, which opens the question more than just slightly. The Deputy Prime Minister has the call.
I was drawing a very clear contrast with our policy and that of the now opposition. The now opposition have a plan to tax families and to hand all of that money to polluters. That is what they are proposing to do—$10 billion worth of so-called direct action initiatives, we are told, which are going to be paid for by the Australian people and handed to the polluters. We, in contrast to them, will charge polluters and provide assistance to households and industry. You could not get a clearer contrast between both those approaches. Our approach is strongly supported by many others opposite, as I was saying before. I will quote the member for Wentworth, again from 8 February 2010:
Having the government pick projects for subsidy is a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale, and there will always be a temptation for projects to be selected for their political appeal.
Order! The Treasurer will relate his remarks to the question.
What we have here is a scare campaign being run by a mob of people who have not a clue about what we need to do to protect our prosperity.
The Treasurer will bring his answer to a close.
We know that they were missing in action when the global recession threatened. It took Labor to have the courage to put in place a range of policies to support employment and small business. It was opposed every step of the way. That was for the good of our country—
The Treasurer will bring his answer to a close.
and so is our commitment to an emissions trading system.
I move:
That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Warringah moving immediately:
The Prime Minister today stood up before her caucus colleagues and said that she was very confident she could win a debate on the carbon tax. If she is so confident, why did she not have the debate before the last election? If she is so confident, why will she not have the debate with the next election? The fact of the matter is that this Prime Minister knows she cannot win any debate on a carbon tax because she knows (a) that it is bad policy and (b) that it is based on a lie.
We had the Treasurer stand up in this parliament today boasting—hysterically, almost—about what a courageous decision it was. I will tell you what, Mr Speaker: it would have been courageous to talk about it before the election. That is what courageous governments do: they talk about things before an election, not after an election. The courageous thing for this government to do now would be to seek a mandate for the carbon tax that it ruled out before the election and now has ruled in. If the Prime Minister and the Treasurer were so confident about the case for a carbon tax, why did they go to the last election running on a lie? They say that they want to give business certainty. If the Prime Minister was so keen to give business certainty, why did she sabotage the former Prime Minister’s campaign to have an emissions trading scheme in the last term of parliament? Perhaps it was not the Prime Minister who went in to see Kevin Rudd and sabotaged the ETS; perhaps it was a body double? Perhaps it was not the Prime Minister who stood up before the Channel 10 cameras during the election and said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.’ Maybe it was a body double.
This is the Prime Minister who understands business so well. Oh yes, she knows what business wants. She knows that business demands certainty. The certainty that it is going to get from this government is the certainty of taxes, taxes and yet more taxes. That is the last certainty that the businesses of Australia want—higher taxes. I have a little lesson for the Prime Minister and for the Treasurer. Higher taxes do not generate more investment. Higher taxes do not improve an economy. Business might want certainty, but it does not want the certainty of ever more taxes under a government that it just cannot trust.
Let me remind the House of these words that should echo around this chamber every day between now and the next election—these words that will haunt the Prime Minister every day that is left to her in this parliament. She said: ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead. I rule out a carbon tax.’ The truth is—I regret to say it of the person who holds the highest elected office in this country—that she told a lie to win votes and she broke a promise to form a government. It was a breach of faith—
Order! I remind the Leader of the Opposition that this is a motion for the suspension of standing and sessional orders. It is not a substantive motion and therefore he should be very careful with his language. On that occasion he should withdraw the remark.
In deference I withdraw. I accept your admonition but I am entitled to say, Mr Speaker, that this Prime Minister broke faith with the Australian public. This Prime Minister behaved in a contemptible way by telling a deliberate untruth to the Australian people before the last election.
It is very important that we suspend standing orders and we give this Prime Minister a chance to come clean. Why did she say it? Why did she say, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead’? Did she think a carbon tax was bad in principle? Did she suffer from blind political panic just a few days out from an election? The Prime Minister must have known at that stage of the parliament that the Greens were likely to hold a balance of power in the Senate, so we cannot have any of this subsequent rationalisation, any of this obfuscation: ‘Everything changes after polling day.’ She knew full well that the Greens were likely to have a balance of power in the Senate and she knew full well that the Greens wanted a carbon tax. So why, oh why, did this Prime Minister stand up and say repeatedly, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government that I lead’?
But that is not the only untruth that we heard from the Prime Minister during the election campaign. Remember the climate change citizens’ assembly? Remember the 12 months that the Prime Minister was going to spend building consensus? Well, 12 months have not passed; consensus has not been achieved and yet we now have, in total breach of faith with the Australian people, a carbon tax foisted on the Australian people by this bad, untrustworthy, lying government.
Let’s not hear any more from this Prime Minister, ‘I’m following the John Howard precedent.’ John Howard was a gutsy Prime Minister. John Howard was prepared to tell people before an election what he wanted to do. He would never have said one thing before an election and done something completely different after an election. So let us be absolutely crystal clear about what this government is doing: this government has broken faith with the Australian people. This government is seeking to do what this parliament has no mandate to do. This Prime Minister is asking this parliament to engage in a conspiracy against the Australian people.
Only one member of this parliament—the member for Melbourne—had the guts to say to the people before the election, ‘I support a carbon tax.’ Not one single member of this parliament apart from him had the guts to say that. This parliament has no mandate for a carbon tax. For this parliament to seek to impose a carbon tax would be a betrayal of democracy. It would be a betrayal of the Prime Minister’s word. It would be a betrayal of any trust between the people and the government. Any carbon tax that is legislated by this parliament would be the l-i-e lie tax. I would like to think that deep within the heart of even this Prime Minister is the desire not to live a lie. So do not put this tax in; seek a mandate first—
The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw.
I besought the Prime Minister not to live a lie but if—
Order! The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw.
that is offensive I withdraw.
Is the motion seconded?
Mr Ewen Jones interjecting
The member for Herbert is warned.
I rise on a simple point of order. You asked the Leader of the Opposition to withdraw. He knows how to do it and he should do it properly.
I believe he withdrew, eventually. He withdrew.
I second the motion. On a number of occasions over the last few days we have asked the Prime Minister of this country and the Treasurer of this country to defend their integrity. We have asked them to explain why, immediately before the election on numerous occasions, they deliberately sought a mandate to rule out a carbon tax and yet after the election they want to implement a carbon tax.
We have asked them to stand up for their courage. They have refused to do so. We have asked them to stand up for their integrity. They have refused to do so. These are the two most important public figures in the land—the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—and they are refusing to protect their personal integrity. Their sole defence is to attack the integrity of others. Their sole defence is to say something about another person, but they do not have the courage to defend themselves. They do not have the courage to defend their words. This means that this couple, who have become the Bonnie and Clyde of public policy, are not fit to occupy the offices. They have no mandate for government, they have no mandate for a carbon tax and they have no courage at all—not in this place, not amongst the public. It is quite unbelievable—
Order! I remind the member for North Sydney that this is a motion for the suspension of standing orders; it is not a debate upon the substantive motion.
This is why we are inviting the government to join us in suspending standing orders so there can be a debate about their integrity. We are providing a format and a platform for the Prime Minister to show courage, to show personal integrity, to show Australia that she is a person with some conviction. We are inviting the Treasurer to come before the Australian people and show that he does have some semblance of courage. But that courage was not on display when the Prime Minister announced the new tax. This is a Treasurer who has overseen the introduction or increase of 13 new taxes in four years and, for the most spectacular and largest of them all, he was cowering under his desk while the Prime Minister was outside in the parliamentary courtyard explaining to the Australian people why she was breaking a solemn promise. The Treasurer can cower under his desk like a modern-day George Costanza, but I say to him you cannot come into this place and run away from a debate on your integrity. You cannot come into this place and pretend that somehow everyone else is responsible for your foibles. If you seek to occupy a high office in this land, at some point in time you have to have the courage to look the Australian people in the eye and be honest. You have to have the confidence to explain to the Australian people why you want to introduce new policy.
The fact is that today in this place the Treasurer is running away from questions about his integrity and the Prime Minister is running away from questions about her integrity. It leaves the Australian people wondering who is running the shop. You can see the dynamics on their side of the House. Last night on Q&A Bill Shorten could not mention Greg Combet’s name enough, tying the minister for climate change to the Prime Minister and wrapping them around each other. They are solely responsible for this initiative, he said. How true it is! I say to Lady Macbeth watch out for the others because they will come after you. Ultimately, what did the previous Prime Minister in—and you held the knife—
The member for North Sydney will address his remarks through the chair and address members by their titles.
What did the previous Prime Minister in was that the Australian people no longer believed him—and now his successor can no longer be believed. I say to these people stand up for your integrity and show some courage. Do not give us the hilarious and hysterical laughter; actually give us some leadership. You were elected to lead. Do not cower away from the Australian people.
The member for North Sydney will address his remarks through the chair.
And now we have heard everything in this parliament—a lecture on courage from a man who tweeted and asked people to tell him what he should think on climate change! He is the man for whom the expression ‘no ticker’ was actually generated. He is a man who is hollow, without courage, and does not know what to believe in. He tried to get the leadership of the Liberal Party on the basis that he would say: ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t think anything, I don’t believe in anything. Everybody on the backbench can have a conscience vote.’ He is a man without courage and a man without integrity, because he has said in the past that he stands for a price on carbon and now he is walking away from it.
There are some days in question time where there is one moment that symbolises and comes to be the fulcrum on which a debate changes, and we have had that moment today. I have been saying to the Australian people that this is a desperate fear campaign built on a foundation of lies from the opposition—and we have had that proved today in just one moment. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition came into the parliament today and put to me the following question:
I refer the Prime Minister to her unequivocal statement on Sunday … that:
Every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households …
What she did in formulating that question was to cut the sentence in half. What I said was that every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households, to helping businesses transition and to programs to tackle climate change. This was one moment that symbolises a campaign of dishonesty—bringing in a transcript and deliberately cutting it in half to give a false and dishonest impression to the Australian people. That one moment symbolises what this opposition is about: a campaign of dishonesty.
The Leader of the Opposition has been out saying to the Australian people, ‘You’ll pay this dollar figure more, or that dollar figure more for the things that you buy.’ Well, let us just go to a statement from Woolworths—and they’d know a bit about pricing, wouldn’t they! They have said very clearly that they could not forecast the potential price impacts until more details of the scheme were released. Every time the Leader of the Opposition has used a dollar figure, every time he has stood in a shop, every time he has stood next to a car and put petrol in it he has been misleading the Australian people—a campaign of dishonesty, a campaign of fear, a foundation of lies from the Leader of the Opposition.
Let us continue going through the dishonesty, the foundation of lies, that the Liberal Party now relies on. Let us look at the track record of the Leader of the Opposition in dealing with the question of pricing carbon. This will tell you how contentless he is, how he will say anything, how he will do anything on the question of climate change. He has said the following in relation to the Rudd government:
The Rudd government has a mandate to deal with climate change.
He was in this parliament today denying a mandate. He said about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme:
If the government substantially accepts our amendments then there is no reason why this legislation cannot be passed.
He said that in the past. He has said in the past:
I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax.
They are statements made by the Leader of the Opposition, and when the government moves to price carbon, despite him having made those statements, despite him having supported pricing carbon, despite him in fact having directly supported a carbon tax as the best system, he decides that his political interest lies in generating fear. It is a campaign built on dishonesty and a foundation of lies. Should it be a surprise to the Australian community that this man, when faced with choosing between the nation’s interest and his own political interest, would say every time, ‘My own political interest comes first’? He believes in profiting at the nation’s expense. He believes that if he can profit from the nation going to economic ruin, if he can prosper from the economy going downhill, then he will do so.
Mr Ruddock interjecting
The member for Berowra is warned!
The authority for this—that he always puts politics first—is actually the Leader of the Opposition himself.
Mr Simpkins interjecting
Mr Symon interjecting
The member for Cowan is warned! The member for Deakin should be careful.
He has said, for example:
Look, certainly, I think the politics of this issue has changed. I think the politics of this issue has changed dramatically.
This is a man who basically has admitted that the only thing that drives him is the politics. He went on to say:
I don’t think my assessments of the science or of the policy ever changed that much. I think all that really changed was my assessment of the politics of the issue.
He is a man who believes in nothing, who will do and say anything, who will say any misleading statement that comes into his mind in order to politically profit.
Who has caught this the best? Who has best summarised this for the Australian people? Is it me as Prime Minister, as someone here who debates in this parliament? Is it someone on the government benches? Is it someone in the media? No, it is not. The person who best caught all of this about the Leader of the Opposition is the member for Wentworth, when he said:
Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now … also without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted …
This was the member for Wentworth’s critique of the leadership of this Leader of the Opposition. This was the member for Wentworth saying to the Australian community that, though he holds a Liberal Party card—
Government members interjecting—
The Prime Minister will resume her seat. The House will come to order! The member for North Sydney on a point of order.
Just as you expected us to speak to the motion about the Prime Minister defending her personal integrity, I ask you to bring the Prime Minister—
The member for North Sydney will resume his seat! Just a friendly warning: next time he approaches the dispatch box with a point of order of that ilk, he should not indicate in any way his disquiet with any ruling that I have given. I think that I gave both himself as the seconder of the motion and the Leader of the Opposition a fair degree of allowance. This is a motion on a suspension of standing and sessional orders. Rarely has it been mentioned in the debate. The Prime Minister has the call.
Of course we know the shadow Treasurer, in his bitterness and his shame, does not want to hear the words of the member for Wentworth about the Leader of the Opposition, but they are true words about the Leader of the Opposition. Let us be clear about this debate and where it will lead us. We went to the last election saying to the Australian people, ‘We have to price carbon.’ We went to the last election saying to the Australian people—
No carbon tax! No carbon tax!
No carbon tax! No carbon tax!
The member for North Sydney is warned! The member for Canning is warned!
the best way of doing that is through a market based mechanism where the market sets the price—
Mr Symon interjecting
The member for Deakin is warned!
where we cap the quantity of carbon pollution and the market sets the price. That is what we will achieve. We said to the Australian people we would do it and we will do it. We will stare down the dishonesty of the Liberal Party, we will stare down its fear campaigning, we will stare down its bitterness, we will stare down its lack of leadership, we will stare down its wont to wreck the Australian economy and we will get this done, despite the Leader of the Opposition, despite the shadow Treasurer and despite all of their antics and conduct and fear.
The member for Sturt will resume his place. For the record, I will admit that the Prime Minister got an extra 10 seconds—10 seconds! If that was a hanging crime, take me out. The question is that the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition for the suspension of standing and sessional orders be agreed to.
Question put.
Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.
Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?
I do.
The member for Fisher.
It has been drawn to my attention that during my response to an unprovoked attack on me by former Liberal member for Longman Mal Brough shown on Channel 7 Sunshine Coast last Friday—oddly enough, read by Mr Brough’s brother Rob, who is a nice guy—I was reported as saying that, if Mr Brough wanted to return to politics, he should contest his former electorate of Longman, now so ably represented by the honourable member for Longman. What I in fact said, referring to the last election, was that if Mr Brough had been interested in returning to federal politics then he should have contested the seat of Longman. It was incorrect to suggest that I implied that the honourable member for Longman should stand aside for someone already comprehensively rejected by the people of that electorate.
I present the Auditor-General’s Audit report No. 32 of 2010-11 entitled Northern Territory night patrols.
Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.
Documents are presented as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members. Details of the documents will be recorded in the
That the House take note of the following documents:Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency—Quarterly report of the Chief Executive Officer—1 October to 31 December 2010Broadcasting Services Act 1992—Review of local content requirements for regional commercial radio—Final report, March 2011
Debate (on motion by Mr Hartsuyker) adjourned.
I have received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The impact of the Government’s carbon tax on the Australian economy.
I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.
More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—
It is very important that we debate the impact of the government’s carbon tax on the Australian economy because this is perhaps the biggest single tax change ever proposed for our economy and it is a tax change that has not been thoroughly scrutinised by the Australian people. It is the biggest change in years, yet it is not a change that this government had the guts to take to the Australian people at the last election.
It is very interesting that the Prime Minister apparently told the caucus today that she was very confident that she could win a debate about the carbon tax—that confidence I hasten to add did not actually lead to her doing this prior to the election—but one she presumably is not confident she could win is the debate we sought to have earlier today about her integrity. She shirked a debate about her own integrity. It is very understandable that she did not want to have that debate, because the words that are going to haunt this Prime Minister to her political grave are: ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.’ Those are the words that she repeated in one form or another before the last election and the words she has subsequently given the lie to by her behaviour.
There are two important things: first, we have a Prime Minister who would not defend her integrity before this House and, second, we have a government that did not actually want to have a debate on this matter of public importance. They preferred that this MPI debate not proceed, given the suspension that took place earlier today.
The impact of the government’s carbon tax on the Australian economy will be immense and it will ramify. The first impact of the government’s carbon tax on the Australian economy will be that no-one looking at our economy will believe anything that this Prime Minister says and no-one looking at our economy will trust this government with anything, given that you could not trust this government or this Prime Minister to tell the truth about their intentions before the last election. It is very damaging to have a government that has utterly lost any reputation for integrity. A Prime Minister’s word should count for something. A government’s word should be able to be believed. This government cannot be trusted, and this Prime Minister’s word can obviously be jettisoned as soon as it suits her political self-interest to do so.
That is the first impact of the government’s carbon tax on the Australian economy. It will damage confidence and it will damage the faith that investors have previously had in our economy. It will damage the reputation for being a low-tax economy that we used to enjoy under genuinely reforming governments in the years up to 2007. The main impact of the government’s carbon tax on our economy will be that it will drive prices up and it will drive employment down.
Over the last few days members opposite have claimed that we have no justification for our statements that the price of electricity will go up $300 a year per household on average and the price of petrol will go up 6.5c a litre, and that is just for starters. I tell the House and the listening Australian public that those figures are based on the $26 a tonne carbon price that was precisely the price on which the Treasury modelling was done to underlie the emissions trading scheme that this government was formerly committed to.
We are simply taking the figures that were good enough for the Treasury and were good enough for the government. If they were good enough for the government before the election, they are good enough for us after the election. We will keep using those figures because they are true. I tell you what: that is just the start; that is just the beginning. The price per tonne will rise month after month, year after year because the only way the government will be able to achieve its objectives and stop people from turning on their air conditioners and stop people from driving their cars is if the price becomes prohibitively expensive, so there will be a massive rise in prices and a massive cost in jobs.
I will give you some examples of the various estimates and forecasts that were made of the government’s former emissions trading scheme by reputable modellers such as ACIL, Access and IPART. There will be a 25 per cent increase in electricity prices, up to a five per cent rise in grocery prices, 126,000 jobs lost in regional Australia and 16 major coalmines closed, with 10,000 jobs lost in the coal industry. This increase in prices will be on top of the massive increase in prices that we have seen over the last three years, which were at least in part driven by the poor economic management of this government.
The struggling families of this country are hurting because this government cannot be trusted to manage an economy. This government cannot be trusted to prudently and frugally manage the finances of this nation. This government has turned a $20 billion surplus and an international reputation for prudence, frugality and fiscal responsibility into a $57 billion deficit. Last year it was a $40-odd billion deficit. This year they say that they will eventually get back into surplus on the basis of their mining tax and their carbon tax. They never will because they are addicted to spending. It does not matter how high the taxes are, they will never keep pace with this government’s addiction to spending.
Do you know why they want this carbon tax? It is really crystal clear. They want a great big new tax to give them a great big new slush fund so they can provide great big handouts to politically favoured groups and buy their way to an undeserved victory at the next election. The households of Australia are struggling. The families of Australia are struggling, and if members opposite were not so cocooned in their political closed shop they would understand better. Electricity prices are up 44 per cent since December 2007. Gas prices are up 29 per cent since December 2007. Water prices are up 46 per cent. Health costs are up 15 per cent. Education costs are up 17 per cent. Bread is up 12 per cent. Groceries are up 10 per cent. Rent is up 19 per cent, and it is all going to get worse.
Much worse.
Much worse under the government’s carbon price, because making electricity more expensive makes everything more expensive. Making fuel more expensive makes everything more expensive, because a modern economy simply cannot work without electricity and fuel. Power and transport are the foundations of a modern economy. Power and transport are the foundations of our standard of living. Power and transport are the foundations of our way of life, and they want to undermine those foundations. They will make everything worse.
It is no wonder that the chief executive officer of one of Australia’s largest manufacturing companies, BlueScope Steel, said that this government’s carbon tax is nothing short of economic vandalism, and he told the truth when he said that this government seems to hate the manufacturing industry. It does not understand the manufacturing industry of this country and it is trying to destroy it by driving jobs offshore, by destroying employment in this country, by sending jobs and employment to countries where they are not guilty of the kind of economic vandalism of which this government is so obviously guilty.
Why does this government hate the coal industry so much? What is wrong with the coal industry? Why does this government want to ensure that so many regions of this country—the Illawarra, the Hunter, Gippsland, the Bowen Basin, Central Queensland—are destroyed? Why does this government want to destroy the economic foundation of those communities? Why does this government want to take away the livelihoods of those struggling families? Why suck the life out of the economy of regional Australia by putting the coal industry under a handicap that will surely kill it? Why does the government want to do this?
This government must explain, and this opposition will make this government explain day in day out, moment in moment out, all the time until the next election, because this change should not be happening without the opportunity for a full consideration by the Australian people. The most shameful thing about what the government are now proposing to do is that they have tried to hoodwink people, to hide this from the Australian people. That is the only possible explanation. There is no other possible explanation for the statements of the Prime Minister, who said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under any government I lead; I rule out a carbon tax,’ and the statements of the Treasurer, sitting opposite, who said, ‘It’s just a hysterical allegation.’ Well, Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, I am afraid that it has come true and, if you want to have any shred of integrity left, you have got to explain to this House, to the people and, above all else, to yourself why you made that statement. Come on, Treasurer. Are you a man? If you are, give us the explanation.
And while you are dreaming up the explanation, let me tell the House that there is a better way. Let me say it, lest it be questioned by members opposite: climate change is real; mankind does make a contribution; we should take sensible precautions against the risks of climate change. And that is exactly what the coalition are doing with our practical and effective plan to take direct action. We will actually reduce emissions. We will not make our way of life prohibitively expensive in the hope—the vain hope, I suspect—that people will suddenly decide that they cannot drive and cannot use their air conditioners. We will not whack a $13 billion tax on the economy, and that is just for starters. We will spend up to a billion dollars a year; we will plant more trees; we will get better soil; we will use smarter technology; and we will make our industrial processes, our power generation and our farming more efficient and more effective. We will reduce emissions in sensible ways that will provide all sorts of additional environmental benefits. That is what we will do. That is a better way and, above all else, it is a more honest way.
That is the plan we had before the election. That is the plan that we had after the election. That is the plan we have. That is the plan we will continue to have, because the most important thing of all is the trust that the Australian people should be able to repose in their leaders. I understand—we all understand—that sometimes people change their minds. But, if they are honest and they really have changed their minds, they should take the new position to an election. Have a bit of guts, have a bit of honesty—and that is what you should do, Deputy Prime Minister.
We have just heard from a political conman who does not have the guts to take any difficult decisions. He behaves like a political faith-healer, who thinks he can simply wave his arms and every problem will simply go away. Electricity prices: no problem.
Mr Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: the Speaker has already ruled the statement of the Deputy Prime Minister out of order during question time, and I would ask you to ask him to withdraw it now.
I would ask the Deputy Prime Minister to assist the House by withdrawing.
Certainly, Mr Deputy Speaker. He behaves like a faith-healer, who somehow pretends that if he waves his arms—
Could the Deputy Prime Minister withdraw using the words, please.
I did, Mr Deputy Speaker; I withdraw. He behaves like a political faith-healer pretending that he can solve any problem. If he stands up in the House and says he can solve it, he can solve it. Electricity prices would be going down if he were in power, according to the Leader of the Opposition. He can do something fundamental, he says, to reduce prices across the board. This is nonsense. This is fairyland stuff. This stuff is la-la land politics and la-la land economics.
I can see the embarrassment on the faces of many opposite who know the emptiness of what the Leader of the Opposition is talking about. Like all conmen, he will be found out in time. He wants to slide into the prime ministership of this country by demonstrating that he has absolutely no economic expertise whatsoever. Difficult problems such as climate change, such as dealing with a global recession and such as responding to floods require difficult decisions. What this Leader of the Opposition has proved during the global recession, during the floods in Queensland and during this debate is that he cannot be trusted in times of crisis and he most certainly cannot be trusted in times of challenge. He simply does not have the expertise, he does not have the economic knowledge and he does not have the temperament to deal with these challenges like a national leader does need to deal with these challenges.
The fact is the business community of this country absolutely understands the need for a price on carbon, for business certainty. It goes to the very core of our future prosperity. In the past in this country Labor governments have had the guts to take tough decisions, to take decisions which are hard politically. But we have done it in the long-term interests of economic reform and of wealth creation. Floating the dollar, bringing down the tariff wall, enterprise bargaining and competition policy are all great reforms of previous Labor governments. But the big reform that is required in the 21st century to cope with the biggest market failure in the history of the globe is to put a price on carbon, because the failure to price carbon has meant that it has been omitted in ways in which it should not be and it is gradually poisoning our planet. We have a responsibility to deal with it, not just an environmental responsibility but an economic responsibility. It is a great economic challenge.
Economists around the world from both left and right, governments from both left and right and think tanks from both left and right all understand the importance of putting a price on carbon, but not the Leader of the Opposition. I know at least half of those opposite understand the importance of a price on carbon. After all, they voted for it in the last leadership contest within the Liberal Party. They voted for a price on carbon, which is why the member for Wentworth was so explicit in his interview on BBC television when he reminded the interviewer that he only lost by one vote. What he was simply saying is a carbon emissions trading scheme in this country was not implemented because of one vote in the House of Representatives in the Liberal and Nationals party room. That is what it came down to. The threat that then flows from that to this country’s prosperity into the future is indeed substantial.
Of course, there is a furious debate about this, and so there should be. It is a very important economic decision. It is one that we have argued for long and hard for a long period of time. Following the last election, we thought it was our responsibility to get the price of carbon in place, working with the composition of this parliament, and that is what we have done. We do not apologise for that. We understand there will be political pain associated with it. But that is the right thing to do by the country.
I do not know what the Leader of the Opposition thinks of companies like Shell, Origin Energy, Santos or BHP Billiton, but they are very, very big investors in this country. They are responsible for a large number of jobs in our economy and they are making more and more investments. But the Leader of the Opposition comes in here and talks of anyone who is supporting a carbon price as if they are somehow irresponsible. The irresponsible person in this House is the Leader of the Opposition, who is wrecking business certainty in this country not just by opposing a carbon price but by now saying to the people of Australia and to the international investment community he will repeal it if it is passed. That is a very substantial threat to investment in our community, and it is absolutely reckless for the Leader of the Opposition to make that statement and for the Liberal Party to talk about it in those terms. What we do know is that he will be giving to subsequent generations, if we do not act, an even bigger burden of paying the price for climate change. He is transferring the cost to subsequent generations, to our children and to our grandchildren.
That is why we need to be brave now, why we need to be firm now: to put in place the arrangements that will assist in getting this in place, so they will benefit. The cost of inaction is far greater, far greater, than the cost of action. This is not something that the Leader of the Opposition understands but it is something that the investment community understand. Our largest companies understand. They certainly understand that we have to become much more carbon efficient. What this requires in particular is investment in cleaner energy and of course renewable energy, particularly when it comes to our power sector. What appalled me in the comments from the Leader of the Opposition today was his ignorance of the fact that the failure to invest in that sector is what is driving electricity prices upward and that, if we do not deal with certainty of investment in that sector, they will go higher and higher, and—
That is completely false. It is not remotely true.
Order! The honourable member for Flinders will resume his seat.
those opposite will be responsible for that. So this is a very important reform for Australia—on a par with floating the dollar, on a par with bringing down the tariff walls, on a par with introducing enterprise bargaining—because it goes to the very foundation of productivity and efficiency in our economy. That is where it goes. But we do not see any understanding of that. The Leader of the Opposition would rather be Prime Minister of a high-polluting, struggling economy. He would rather have an economy that was high polluting and struggling than one where the right decisions were taken for future generations. That is what he is effectively saying. He would rather see the country fail than see this government succeed in preparing us for the future. That is how irresponsible he has become.
In addition, there is the way in which the Leader of the Opposition is characterising what we have already done and how we are planning to put in place a price on carbon. That is important. Our plan charges polluters. It charges polluters so we can provide assistance to households and to industry. That is what it does. The plan that the Leader of the Opposition is outlining is to tax families so he can hand money to polluters. That is the difference. It is a clear, stark difference—not one that the Leader of the Opposition understands, but I know it is one that is understood across the back benches over there and of course on the front benches, because the member for Wentworth has put it very clearly. He had this to say on 8 February 2010 of such a plan:
Having the government pick projects for subsidy is a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale, and there will always be a temptation for projects to be selected for their political appeal.
In other words, the Leader of the Opposition wants the people of Australia to pay—and pay and pay. If they are going to get the emission reductions that are required, he will be spending a lot more than $10 billion. This is the crew that had a $10 billion costing con job in their costings for the last election, where the Treasury said they were so incompetent they could not even put together a budget. Of course, the opposition were warned about the approach that they are still articulating in the Treasury blue book. This is what the Treasury said to the coalition about their so-called direct action:
Direct action measures alone cannot do the job without imposing significant economic and budget costs.
That is what the Treasury advised the opposition.
The other big lie we have had in this House from the Leader of the Opposition is to do with his use of the word ‘tax’. He runs around the place talking about carbon pricing as if it is a revenue-raising measure which is just going to some general government services. It is doing no such thing. All of the revenue, every cent, that comes from the carbon price will be going back to households, into industry and into climate change policies, as it should. It does not suit his three-word slogans, but that is where it is going. There will be a day of reckoning for those opposite when budget time comes around and they have to stump up one or two alternatives. It will be a real day of reckoning.
We cannot wait!
Mr Frydenberg interjecting
Order!
Then we had his ridiculous discussion of the MRRT. This is a mob—
The members for Higgins and Kooyong ought not to be interjecting from outside their seats.
This is a mob of people who, at a time when our mining companies have record profitability, some making super profits, have the view that the mining industry is paying too much tax. What planet do they live on? The mining industry is paying too much tax! So when we put in place a regime which picks up the resource rents and uses that money to cut corporate taxes, they oppose it. The once great Liberal Party have come to that. It is just unbelievable that they could oppose a revenue stream from a resource rent tax on the mining industry, particularly one which is going to assist the savings of people on low incomes, build infrastructure and give a corporate tax cut. ‘Oh, no, we can’t have that. We should give the miners more money. They should pay less tax.’ Nothing demonstrates more than that how incompetent and bizarre those opposite have become in the bitterness of their opposition.
We also saw this kind of display when it came to the flood levy. Before then, there had never been a levy that Tony Abbott did not support. He supported six levies while the Howard government was in—never a levy he did not support. But then a levy came along that was for Queenslanders and Victorians, and he voted it down. It was a modest levy, far less than any other that he had voted for previously. Yet again, this demonstrates how irresponsible and reckless the Leader of the Opposition is.
They have another big lie about tax. That mob opposite was the highest taxing government in Australian history. They got the tax to GDP share up to 24.1 per cent. The other lie is their pretence that a global recession never happened. They pretend it did not happen and talk about the fact that we should not have gone into deficit to fund the stimulus. But what if we had not done that? Where would Australia be today? Unemployment would be far higher. Tens of thousands of businesses would have hit the wall. We acted responsibly and, all the way through that, we got more of this opposition. They opposed us every step of the way, once again proving that they are simply not capable or up to the mark when it comes to modern economic management. When this country was threatened by recession, we put in place a world-class stimulus which produced world-class results for Australia. The reason that unemployment at the moment is at five per cent is that the actions of this government put in place the correct economic policy to support our economy at a time of need. And we were opposed every step of the way. We were opposed when we put in place the bank guarantees that were absolutely fundamental and we were opposed on the stimulus, because they are not up to handling the big challenges that Australia faces. All of that is now surfacing in this very important debate.
Of course, the Leader of the Opposition was talking about Treasury modelling as though somehow what we are doing now is absolutely identical to what was done in the CPRS. I do recommend reading the CPRS material—and he did use some of it—but we have not yet taken the decisions on coverage in this emissions trading scheme. So there is no way anybody could make the sorts of assertions they have been making about cost impacts.
But there is one big difference between us and those on the other side of the House: we will provide the assistance to households that are affected. There is no plan for assistance by the opposition to provide for all of those people who are being hit by rising electricity prices right now. We will do the right thing by the people of Australia, the right thing by our economy in the long term and the right thing by our industry so that we can put in place the reforms which will produce the next generation of prosperity in this country and maximise all of the opportunities that should flow to this country from the mining boom. We will get the investment in renewable energy that is required. All of these things are essential decisions for Australia. They are the hard decisions and they are the decisions that the Liberal Party has not got the guts to take.
The headlines last Friday said it all: ‘PM’s broken promise will hit families hard: $300 TAX SLUG’, and that is only the beginning of the new taxation regime this government is determined to impose upon the Australian people. But what is also fundamentally at stake in this debate is the credibility of the Prime Minister, the woman who leads this country, and the people who sit behind her. She said to the Australian people on 16 August 2010:
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.
Was she telling the truth? Were the Australian people expected to believe her, on the eve of an election, when she said that there will be no carbon tax under the government she leads? Maybe I should put a good construction on this; maybe she was telling us the truth. Maybe when she announced the reversal of policy it was early advice of her resignation and she is no longer going to be the leader of the government. Or was she telling the Australian people, ‘Actually I do not lead this government at all; it is actually Bob Brown who is the leader of this government.’
If anybody can remember the pictures in the Prime Minister’s courtyard, when the Prime Minister came out surrounded by a bevy of Greens and Independents, Bob Brown shoved her away from the microphones so that he could make all of the key announcements. Maybe the Prime Minister is right: she does not lead this government and therefore she is free to break all of her promises. Indeed, wasn’t it strange that the Treasurer was not in the Prime Minister’s courtyard? It was completely taken over by Greens and Independents and there was no room for the Treasurer, even though the Prime Minister was announcing the biggest new tax in Australian history. The Treasurer was not even there to be involved with this big announcement.
What is more, the gossip tells us that the Prime Minister did not even consult the cabinet about it before she made the announcement, let alone the zombies who have all disappeared from this chamber. They were not consulted either. The Prime Minister just said, ‘We’re going to have this great big new tax.’ With all of my attempts to excuse her I really cannot explain away why on 20 August, right on election eve, she said:
I rule out a carbon tax.
The Treasurer said similar things. He ruled it out; it was not going to happen. This government has not told the truth to the Australian people. Some people actually believed her when she said that there would be no carbon tax. The Commonwealth Bank’s ACCI survey of business expectations says, ‘Eighty per cent of small business took her at her word and have not factored a carbon tax into their business plan.’ When she said no, people said, ‘We believe no.’ In fact, when she said no, was she already meaning yes, or have the Greens taken over and delivered this new tax to all Australians?
What we need to be aware of with Labor’s great big new carbon tax is that this is a tax on everything we do, every day of our lives. This great big new tax will add to the cost of every item on every shelf in every store. It will not just add to the cost of those items; it will add to the cost of everything we do with those items. Indeed, it is designed to do that very thing. It is designed to make things so expensive that we do not do them anymore. We cannot afford to run our air conditioners, so we turn them off. We cannot afford to run our lights, so we live in darkness. That is the purpose of this tax—to change people’s behaviour.
The cost of things on the shelf will go up. The cost of petrol that we use to drive the goods home to our houses will go up. The cost of the refrigerator that we put our fruit and vegetables in will go up. The refrigerator itself will cost more. The electricity to run it will cost more. When we cook the meal the stove will be more expensive. Electricity and gas will be more expensive. When we take the garbage to the dump, it will cost more. Transport, to cover the fill, will be more expensive. It will cost more to build your house in the first place, as it will cost more to build your roads and streets, install the services, operate the sewerage systems and the like. They will all cost more.
Your car will cost more. Your bus fares will cost more. Your aeroplane fares will cost more. If you want to go somewhere, it will cost you more. Your holidays will cost more. Indeed, the Minister for Tourism is on the record as saying that a carbon tax would kill the aviation industry, both domestic and international. So he knows that this tax will be very damaging to the Australian people. Your birthday cake will cost more and your funeral will cost more. This is an invasive tax that you will pay again and again and again. It will multiply and cascade through the cost of everything that you buy. It is $300 for electricity now, and we know that this is a tax which is also designed to go up, up, up and up. The government intends to continue to collect more and more. We know that this will tax everything that we do.
There is another thing it will tax that ought to matter to all Australians: it will tax your job. It may well tax your job out of existence, because this government is designing a tax that will put an extra burden on the price of doing everything in Australia. It will be more costly to manufacture here. It will be more costly to visit this country. It will be more costly to grow food in this country. It will be more costly to do the things that we need to do to earn our way in the world.
The Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency said on the ABC only yesterday that it was too early to tell how a carbon price will affect farmers’ costs. Yet if he had read the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics paper of August 2009 he would know that they estimated that the additional charges will cut a beef farmer’s income by 13.6 per cent, dairying by 9.7 per cent, sheep by 11.4 per cent and wheat and other crops by 8.5 per cent. But if you move to manufacturing you get exactly the same story. We are told that shopkeepers expect that they will have to put up prices—80 per cent said they will have to put up prices and 70 per cent said they will have to get rid of staff. That is the direct effect of Labor’s great big new tax.
Let us look at what Labor intends to do with the revenue it proposes to raise from this massive new tax. Firstly we are told that everyone is going to get compensation. The government is going to give everybody compensation, or even make a large number of families better off, the Prime Minister said. Only Labor could believe that a new tax will make people better off. I have never seen a tax that makes people wealthy, but this government thinks it is going to do that. It is going to provide compensation to people, so why turn off the light bulb? Why make a change? Why save CO2 emissions if, in fact, you are going to get more than adequate compensation for every additional cost you have? There are no grounds for making the savings that the government wants us to make. So in reality the tax will not even work. It will not reduce CO2 emissions at all because the government intends to compensate people. Of course, we know that all will not be compensated and that most Australians will be worse off.
The government also intend to spend some of this money on green programs, things like reducing CO2 emissions. Maybe they will have a new home insulation scheme. That is something they could spend it on—four dead, 200 homes burnt down, billions wasted. Maybe a new green loans fiasco—where millions have been spent training people but there are hardly any loans to be given. Or what about the green car fund? We could reinvent that—axed at the beginning of this year because it had not brought any new technology to our country in spite of the spending of tens of millions of dollars. And what about cash for clunkers? We have got the money now. We can afford to have cash for clunkers—axed before it even began. Now we will have a new tax to pay for this kind of nonsense.
Labor cannot be trusted with $12 billion a year. So perhaps they could have a citizens assembly to decide how to spend the $12 billion. What we do know is that Labor will waste this money. They intend to give $2 billion away, incidentally, to other countries to spend because they know they will waste it themselves. They have got more confidence that maybe Libya or Zimbabwe can spend it more wisely than they.
This is in fact a tax that everyone will be paying. The Treasurer said today that some people are not paying enough tax. I do not think there is anyone that Labor thinks is not paying enough tax. What this will do is affect families. Families should be suspicious that another promise will be broken and there will be no real compensation. This government has not been truthful and it should not be trusted to deliver compensation or any kind of program that will make a difference to our climate. (Time expired)
Again we have heard from the opposition, from the Leader of the Opposition and from the Leader of the Nationals, the disgraceful scare campaign that we are going to hear more and more of. That is what has been promised over coming months from the opposition. Since last Thursday, since the announcement was made by the Prime Minister of the framework for the carbon price, all that we have had from the opposition—particularly from the Leader of the Opposition and from the member for Flinders, and we have just heard a bit more of it from the Leader of the Nationals—is made-up figures, nonsense about what the carbon price scheme is going to be and taking quotes out of context, which is what we had from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in question time today.
Ms Julie Bishop interjecting
Only half of the quotation that was read by the Leader of the Opposition in fact was said by the Prime Minister.
It was a UN climate change document.
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition now mentions the false accusation that she made in question time based on a false story that appeared in the West Australian about the government’s intentions in relation to contributions from Australia to any green climate fund, being the fund that was negotiated and is in the process of being established following the agreement reached at Cancun in December last year. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition well knows that the document she was quoting from was a United Nations document produced by a task group assembled by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in which a number of individuals participated. One of them was Bob McMullan, not in his formal capacity as a parliamentary secretary because he had retired from that position and had retired from the parliament. I would ask for the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, if she is going to raise this again, to actually read the document and to stop making false accusations about where funds will go.
As I said, we have a disgraceful scare campaign by all of the opposition members who have spoken thus far today and, indeed, since Thursday. It consists of making up figures, taking quotes out of context and failing to recognise that what has been announced is the framework for the carbon price—in other words, the mechanism. It is what has thus far been discussed, and agreement has been reached on, by the multi-party Climate Change Committee.
We know on this side of the House that a carbon price will cut pollution and drive investment in clean energy. We know on this side of the House that a carbon price is the cheapest and fairest way to reduce pollution and invest in clean energy. And as a Labor government we will always support those who need help to meet an increase in their cost of living, especially pensioners and especially the most vulnerable. We have announced that a carbon price could start, if agreement on all of the details is reached and legislation is passed, by 1 July 2012.
We have announced that the mechanism that we favour, and that some level of agreement has been reached on in the multi-party Climate Change Committee, is a market mechanism commencing with a fixed price for a specified period of three to five years. The clear intent is that, following this fixed price period, there will be a smooth transition to an emissions trading scheme. As the opposition well knows, although you would not know it from the scare campaign that they have mounted, detailed issues including the starting price, the length of the fixed price period, and assistance arrangements for households, communities and industries are to be dealt with in subsequent discussions.
We have had, from the opposition, no recognition of the state of the parliament, no recognition of the fact that, for every single piece of legislation that comes before this House—and indeed through the Senate—there needs to be negotiation of the terms of the legislation and agreement reached for the legislation to get passage. The way in which the government has proceeded since the election is to work through a process of negotiation and agreement on a carbon price mechanism, which will be the subject of legislation. In that way, there will be certainty for business and for the Australian community.
The opposition would recognise that if they were concerned about economic matters at all. It is patently obvious that they are not; it is patently obvious that all the opposition is interested in is drumming up fear and confusion about what role a carbon price is going to play in the Australian economy and about the need for a carbon price to push the Australian economy in the direction it needs to go—the direction of becoming a low-carbon economy.
The Leader of the Opposition has continued to make up numbers—he has massive form for making up the numbers on the back of a cigarette packet and spruiking them as fact. In the wake of the election campaign, honourable members will remember, we saw a gaping black hole in the coalition’s election costings of some $11 billion. With a little bit of smoke and a few strategically placed mirrors, they summoned it from nowhere. You would think that, after having an $11 billion hole in your costings, and with that sort of thing having happened in the past, you might have learnt something, but not the Leader of the Opposition.
He again rolled out the smoke machine at a petrol pump in Western Sydney—you can expect him at petrol pumps near you!—and, another media photo opportunity, at a bus depot in Queanbeyan, which the Sydney Morning Herald described in these terms:
Abbott donned a fluoro safety vest. He filled the petrol tank of a bus. He back-slapped workers (one of whom called him ‘‘Mr Costello’’. Awkward.)
It is awkward, because the Leader of the Opposition is not Peter Costello. The Leader of the Opposition entirely lacks the economic credibility of Peter Costello—he has none. He demonstrates it every time he opens his mouth on the subject. Imagine the surprise of the lucky drivers on Sunday, who had the Leader of the Opposition leaning into their car windows, petrol pump in hand and cameras in tow, telling them that they would pay exactly 6.5c extra per litre at the bowser. Today’s effort was at the Queanbeyan fruit shop; the Leader of the Opposition seems to think he is back on the campaign trail. The AAP reported:
At the Queanbeyan fruit shop, Mr Abbott brushed aside the idea of an assistance package for households, saying: ‘It sort of defeats the purpose of making everything more expensive and it creates this giant money-go-round’.
That is showing how little Mr Abbott grasps of economics—that is the sort of incredible economics we are getting from the Leader of the Opposition.
As any of the people in this parliament involved in the serious negotiations on the carbon price mechanism could tell him, we have not set out what the carbon price is going to be—nor have we set out what the level of assistance is going to be.
Why did you announce it?
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is interjecting again, asking why we announced it. As the Prime Minister made clear, we announced the progress that has been made in the negotiations that are taking place in the multi-party Climate Change Committee. The opposition know they are welcome to participate—
Mr Chester interjecting
The member for Gippsland should return to his seat, leave the chamber or remain silent.
in the deliberations of the multi-party Climate Change Committee. That is the place they should come to if they wish to participate in the economic future of this country, if they wish to engage in serious debate. But, no, the Leader of the Opposition and some others in the opposition—not all of them; there are massive divisions in the Liberal Party on this—are back on the campaign trail. They are not interested in debating issues of public policy, discussing how we can build Australia’s economy and making the big decisions for the future of this country. (Time expired)
This matter of public importance today, at its heart, is about jobs. The coalition is fighting for tens of thousands of Australian jobs. The Prime Minister is interested in only one job, and that is her own. The Prime Minister was a lawyer in another life. Before she became the ‘Prime Misleader’ of this nation she was a lawyer in training and practice. This Prime Minister knows what it is like for people to be on trial. When she said in this place, in her own words, that there should be a standard for honesty in public life, she invoked her legal background. She said:
If the minister had been a businessman and offered a promise like that and not kept it, he would have been sued. If the minister had been in a court of law and made a statement like that and it turned out not to be true, he would have been tried for perjury. If the minister had been in a church and made a statement like that and it turned out not to be true, the congregation would have known that he had broken the ninth commandment. I do not see why the standard should be different in business, should be different in churches or should be different in courts from the standard in public life. If anything, the standard in public life should be higher.
Do you know what this Prime Minister did on that occasion? She called for the resignation of a minister because she said he said one thing before the election and another after. Members of this House, the Prime Minister is on trial. She is on trial in the court of public opinion. Specifically, it is the integrity of the Prime Minister and the character of this Prime Minister that is on trial. As the Prime Minister said on this occasion to the House:
This minister went to the Australian electorate before the last election and gave his word, and he did not keep it.
‘The minister should resign’ were the words of the Prime Minister. On the fundamental question, ‘Did this Prime Minister lie to the Australian people at the last election over a carbon tax?’ is she guilty or not guilty?
Guilty!
Guilty as charged.
The people in the electorates around Australia are saying this Prime Minister is guilty of misleading the Australian people in a most fundamental and significant way. If the Prime Minister wanted to claim a shred of integrity, she would take her carbon tax to the Australian people, let them exercise their democratic right and let them judge her on her honesty and on her integrity, because she gave a solemn promise at the last election that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led. By now, the Prime Minister’s promise, on the eve of the election, that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led is indelibly imprinted in the minds of all Australians.
But the Prime Minister misled the country in yet another respect. She promised, when she gave a major climate change speech, that she would not take action on climate change until she had built community consensus. Let me spell this out in case anybody on the other side missed it. The Prime Minister now claims that she spent the whole of the election campaign arguing for a carbon price. Oh no, she did not! I have gone back to the speech that this Prime Minister gave when she launched the government’s climate change policy and it shows there are even greater levels of deceit than we had realised. The Prime Minister gave a speech in July to launch—wait for it—‘Moving forward together on climate change’. This is the speech that promised the now defunct citizens assembly, which was the first broken promise of the post election Labor-Greens government. It is a speech worth reading in detail as it is somewhat different—I say, diplomatically—from her current argument that she made it abundantly clear before the election that she would implement a carbon price after the election. It is worth noting that her only reference to ‘carbon’ and ‘price’ in over 4,700 words was in just one sentence. There is no mention of a carbon tax, but in one sentence she said:
Adopting a market based mechanism to price carbon will transform the way we live and the way we work. Such a major change cannot be made and unmade on the oscillations of the political pendulum.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with the carbon tax that she now seeks to introduce, but it is referring, in a loose kind of way, to some sort of emissions trading scheme. But this is the critical point: the Labor policy was to not proceed with an emissions trading scheme or any other such mechanism without creating bipartisan consensus first. So the various statements she made in that speech that day include—and I will read them into Hansard:
We need national consensus on this vital, long term issue of national interest.
We need consensus among political parties.
But we need consensus in the community even more.
When that community recognition and support exists—
When.
The Prime Minister said ‘When’:
it means that a choice by a political party to reverse bipartisan support would not destroy the consensus. Instead the consensus would remain and the political party would be repudiated by the Australian people.
She went on—there is more:
In my view, consensus on this issue should not depend solely on a fragile agreement between political parties.
… … …
… this transformational change must have as its foundation the genuine political support of the community, a consensus that will drive bipartisanship.
Listen to this statement by the Prime Minister:
And if I am wrong, and that group of Australians—
the citizens assembly—
is not persuaded of the case for change then that should be a clear warning bell that our community has not been persuaded … as required about the need for transformational change.
What is absolutely crystal clear is that the Labor election policy—Labor’s solemn promise—was not to proceed with action on climate change, not to proceed with an emissions trading scheme or anything like it without bipartisan and community consensus. And then, on top of that, the Prime Minister promised there would be no carbon tax under a government she led.
This was the Prime Minister before the election. Yet the Prime Minister throughout the community consensus dropped what has become another stinker of a policy, a citizens assembly, and she did her secret deal with the Greens. The Prime Minister has no community consensus, the Prime Minister has no bipartisan support, the Prime Minister has no mandate, the Prime Minister has no credibility on this issue and the Prime Minister’s integrity is in tatters. The coalition will abolish this carbon tax if we are elected.
As for the carbon tax and the impact on the economy, the Chief Executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Peter Anderson, said this:
… is a blow for the competitiveness of Australian business, especially small and medium sized enterprises.
… … …
The extra lead in the saddlebags of Australian business will not reduce overall global emissions, nor will it help save the jobs that will be exported offshore to countries without a carbon scheme.
I think these are rather interesting headlines from today’s Australian: ‘Abbot vows to scrap tax’ and in the line underneath, ‘Labor loses key carbon supporter’. For those who did not see the front page of the Australian today let me read a little from this article. It says:
Tony Abbott has vowed to scrap Julia Gillard’s carbon tax and demanded she seek a mandate for the plan as Labor’s closest business adviser, Heather Ridout, refused to back the Prime Minister’s package.
The article goes on about Julia Gillard being a fraud and then it says:
… Ms Ridout, the Australian Industry Group chief executive, last night declined to back Ms Gillard’s proposal to introduce a fixed carbon price from July 1 next year and an emissions trading scheme three to five years later.
“The jury is very much still out on the introduction of a carbon price in Australia, with industry very concerned about the competitive impacts,” Ms Ridout said.
“In this regard, all options should still be on the table, including that of rollback until the final shape of the government’s proposal is clear.”
The article further quoted Ms Ridout:
“While certainty is important for decision-making around major long-term investments, this certainty should not come at the cost of a loss of competitiveness that sends jobs and emissions offshore or risks the continuity of energy supply.”
This government stands condemned for misleading the Australian public. For trying to take away Australian jobs this government stands condemned.
I rise to speak on the matter of public importance before the House.
The coalminers will be pleased!
With great pleasure I do so. As I come from five generations of coalminers I have great pleasure in supporting the government in its actions to introduce a price for carbon into our economy. It may well interest those opposite that the previous member for Throsby, Jennie George, the current member for Throsby, Stephen Jones, and I worked closely with our community through the various issues in terms of pricing carbon, and we were returned with increased majorities at the last election, you will be very pleased to know!
Opposition members interjecting—
I say to those opposite that they might want to settle down a little bit. Perhaps they are interested in generating their own levels of carbon with the heat and light they are creating in this debate but the words in today’s Illawarra Mercury from Mr Andy Gillespie, the AWU organiser in the area, should be heard well by those opposite. He says.
The scaremongering over the effects of a carbon price should stop.
If those opposite were genuinely interested in the wellbeing and future of an economy like mine in the Illawarra I would encourage them to contribute by having an informed and calm debate about this policy issue, which is of national significance, rather than engaging in the scaremongering that they are running in communities, including communities such as mine and the member for Throsby’s.
This has been an issue that has been confronting this nation for several years now. It is a difficult issue. It is a challenge to do major reform for your economy. It is never easy, and it should be the subject of an intense debate in this place and in this nation. It may surprise those opposite that we would welcome that. We would welcome a proper debate on this issue but we are not getting it. There are enough of those who sit opposite who understand economic reform and who believe that the point that I am making is absolutely correct. I think we saw that on display last night on the television.
We need a debate about the future of this nation as we transform to confront a carbon constrained future and work out how to ride the back of that to grow this economy into the opportunities that can exist for us into the future. In the Illawarra we know the challenge. We live it. We are at the forefront of every economic reform, and we come out stronger and more diversified.
It is also true of the Hunter.
It is also true of the Hunter, as my colleague indicates. We come out stronger not because we run around like Chicken Little waving our hands and saying, ‘The sky’s gonna fall in’ and ‘How can we make people afraid of reform?’ The members of the great party of economic reform on the other side should hang their heads in shame about the standard of debate they are putting up in this case.
We come out stronger because we rise to the challenge. We have been doing that for several years now in our region. Together with Jennie George, the former member for Throsby, I have worked closely with existing traditional industries including the companies—such as BlueScope Steel Australia—and their workforces and representatives. Along with Stephen Jones I will continue to do so. We work closely with our coal industry. We also work closely with our diversified economy.
The reality is that the RDA Illawarra has been working for a number of years now on a Green Jobs Illawarra program which looks, for example, at the opportunities for windmill creation on the back of our steel industry. We understand the capacity for transformation in addressing and dealing with the challenges of a carbon constrained economy and we want to get on the back of the opportunities that that creates. We want to build jobs for the future so the kids of our region have really good, long-term, sustainable jobs in manufacturing, in the mining industry and more broadly in research and development, tourism and education—all of the areas where we have built on our existing strengths to diversify our economy.
The great disappointment in the whole debate has been the fact that there are some among those opposite who are capable of engaging in an informed debate about the mechanisms by which we should address the challenge confronting us. They have the knowledge and understanding about reform agendas and how to drive them. They may have some legitimate issues that they want to raise with us about the ways in which we are doing that but they are silent. They are not being heard.
They are not being heard because they have a leader driving their agenda and driving their party on the basis of scaremongering and looking for the lowest common denominator: ‘Don’t look at the national interest; only look at what is going to get us a bit of a poll increase in the immediate future. Find or grab whatever you can in order to create fear, uncertainty. Distract the community from dealing with the very real challenges that confront us.’ That is the great shame in the whole debate that we are having in this nation. I can only hope that more members—like the member for Wentworth last night—come out and engage in a debate that is actually about the national interest.
Sitting opposite are members of a once-great party of economic reform. It was a party that believed in the capacity of the market to drive real growth and opportunity into the future. Over many decades we have engaged, across the chamber, on the details and processes of those sorts of reforms. We should be doing that now, and we are not.
What we are dealing with is a Leader of the Opposition who has had so many different positions on climate change that it is almost impossible for me to enumerate them in the 10 minutes I have available to me today. He has said himself that his position is predicated on wherever he sees the political advantage on that day—it is not even that week, or that month, or that year, it is that day; it changes as regularly as that. The question for those of us engaged in this important national debate is: how on earth do you debate somebody who moves their position around constantly and, in an even greater disappointment, moves the party around in the same way? I am sure there are people sitting on the opposite side who actually understand that this is an important economic reform debate and have something they can contribute to that. I do not presume that contribution to be agreement with us, but I presume they would have something of value to add to the debate. But they are gagged and silent—and more shame to them. This is a generational reform debate.
This is about communities like mine in the Illawarra. The international community is moving towards addressing and dealing with the carbon challenge that we have internationally. There are countries that are moving to address those forms of pollution in their own economies. We will confront the reality of their decisions in the future and we will have to deal with them. There are countries in the European Community that are jumping on board. President Obama recently said about his own community that here is an opportunity. How do we get in there and develop businesses and industries and innovations in our own economies that are going to allow us to be the world leaders into the future and build wealth for our own people and our own nation into the future on the back of this reform?
But what are we doing in Australia? We are a country that has driven so much innovation. Why do we say that we punch above our weight in this nation? I will tell you why. It is because we have researchers and tradespeople who have capacity to lead the world in innovation and adaptation. That is what we are so good at. That is why we punch above our weight. They deserve a government that supports that. They deserve a government that is driving that agenda. They deserve a government that is interested in long-term economic reform and building future wealth. That is what this government is all about. That is what this debate should be about. That is what the responsibility of every member of this House is about. That is what our commitment and responsibility to our communities and our nation is about.
Those opposite are failing this nation abysmally in the standard of their contribution to this debate. You could forgive that if you assumed that, at the end of the day, that is the best capacity they have got. You could forgive that if you looked around the ranks and thought: ‘It is a pretty poor standard and there’s a failure of debate and a failure of national commitment, but they are really not able to do anything else anyway. This is the level of their capacity and ability.’ But that is not the case, and those opposite know it. I challenge them to rise above the scaremongering lowest-common-denominator politically expedient debate of their leader on a nationally important issue and rise to the challenge of having the debate that we need to have in this nation. (Time expired)
It is worth reflecting on why we are even having this debate. We are having this debate because the scientists have told us with certainty that the planet is heating up. The last decade, from 2000 to 2010, was the hottest on record. We also know, with as near to certainty as one can get on questions as complex as the planet’s weather system, that humans are contributing to it and that there is a tipping point not far away from us, after which we will not be able to predict the effects of runaway climate change. But we do know that in some sense the effects are going to be potentially catastrophic. In the same way that we would not get on a plane if it had a 50 per cent, a 20 per cent or even a 10 per cent chance of crashing, it is incumbent on us now to manage the risk we know is there that we might exceed that climate change tipping point.
What do the scientists, especially Professor Will Steffen from the ANU, tell us about how close we are getting to that tipping point? They are telling us that, as a planet, we have a carbon budget that we can spend between 2000 and 2050 to give us a 70 per cent chance of staying under that tipping point. They have also told us that, in the first 10 years of that 50 years, we have spent 30 per cent of that budget and, if we keep on going the way we are going, within a couple of decades we will put ourselves at risk of exceeding the climate change tipping point, after which we do not know what the effects will be. Feedback loops will increase. As Arctic Sea ice starts to melt and exposes more of the dark surface of the sea, the process will speed up. We know that the same feedback loops are likely to occur elsewhere in the Arctic. As more ice melts, the permafrost is exposed, more methane is released into the atmosphere and the process speeds up.
It is this guardrail that we have to avoid—and at Copenhagen all the leaders from all around the world committed to staying below it—and firmly keep in mind when we are having this debate. This is not about whether something that was announced as a scheme by one party during an election amounts to a tax. It is not about the confected outrage from the party that invented the distinction between core promises and non-core promises in terms of whether a statement is being met. It is about what we are going to do to address the looming climate emergency.
In that context it comes as no surprise—and indeed it was the hot topic during my election in Melbourne—that there are distinctions between the Greens and the Labor Party on the question of how best to deal with climate change. For example, despite the confected outrage from the opposition, I note that the coalition and Labor are in agreement that all we need is five per cent pollution reduction targets by 2020. That is nowhere near the range that has been recommended by scientists and by the Bali roadmap, which says we need to be looking at 25 to 40 per cent. We will also continue to say to the Labor Party and the Labor government that, just as the market has never built a single piece of infrastructure in this country that has lasted the country, we are also going to need significant government investment to make sure that the renewable energy grid is up to speed, a feed-in tariff that will encourage a solar and large-scale renewable energy industry in this country, and continue to find appropriate amounts of money for research and development.
But despite those differences the occasion is on us and this parliament gives us the opportunity to start to find areas of common ground. One thing that is absolutely clear and that the Greens stand very firmly on is that putting a price tag on pollution is an essential element if we are to tackle climate change. Without doing that, none of the other measures will have enough effect. We need to put a real price tag on pollution. Part of that means having an honest debate about what it means to put a price tag on pollution. Not a misleading debate, but an honest debate. What it means is this: up until now, we have treated the atmosphere as if we could put as much pollution into it as we would like without consequences. Big polluters have continued, and still do continue, to put carbon dioxide and other polluting gases into the atmosphere and imagine that it has no consequences and pay no cost for the privilege of doing it.
We have dealt with this problem as a community before when companies used to pollute rivers, and we said, ‘Although it might save the company a bit of money, it has a detriment to the community so we are going to do something about it.’ Now, by putting a price tag on pollution, we will do the same with carbon dioxide and other polluting gases. We will say that those big polluters, if they are going to put pollution into the atmosphere, must pay for doing so and they must do so in order to reduce the amount that is going in there so that we stay below that guard rail. If they choose to pass some of that cost on to consumers, then consumers will be compensated for it from the revenue that is raised,. But overall it will have the effect of driving Australia’s transition to a renewable energy economy—an economy that has an enormous number of clean energy jobs, the kind of jobs that can set Australia up for the 21st century.
The Climate Institute recently said that with a $45 a tonne carbon price there will be 8,000 permanent jobs and 26,000 temporary jobs created as we move Australia to that clean energy future. But we do not have a rational debate about that; we have a debate that is reduced to cheap political point-scoring about lies or not lies. And we have a manufactured scare campaign, the likes of which we have seen many times before. We have seen it from big tobacco and we have seen it from the big mining companies. Just as the big mining companies and the ‘Rolex revolutionaries’ took to the streets of Perth in their billionaire protest, so too are we going to see the big polluters pretend to be proletarians again over the next few month. They will no doubt take to the streets, arm in arm with the radio talk-show hosts and the opposition, as they seek to confect outrage.
The Leader of the Opposition has come out swinging on this as hard as one could imagine, but as every prize fighter knows, you have to be aware of the rope-a-dope. You have to be aware of punching yourself out too early and getting to the point where your warnings become increasingly shrill. That is what is going to happen over the coming years. Certainly in my electorate of Melbourne and right across the country—and especially amongst our young people, who read the science and understand the threat that is coming to them, that they are experiencing now, and that they will have to deal with in their lifetime—people understand that we need to take urgent action and that Australia needs to do its fair share to commit to the global effort to combating climate change. There is growing support. I am confident that, once the Australian public has the science in front of them, understands that low-income earners and households are going to be compensated, and that this is going to have the effect of making Australia’s 21st-century economy a clean-energy, renewable-energy-jobs economy, there will be support for this.
In the same way that there was howling from the rooftops that the flood levy was going to be the end of this government and how could anyone support it—no-one talks about that any more—yet that seems to have sailed through, so too will this be in place. If we can reach an agreement for an environmentally and economically effective outcome, this will be in place and people in Australia will see that the opposition is full of so much hot air on this question. The opposition has made this about a number of questions—about integrity, about truth and about what was said—but there is one question that the opposition has not addressed, and that is: what if the mainstream science is right? What if the science is right and in 20 years time people are reading the Hansard of this debate and looking back at the opposition’s contribution to the single greatest issue facing our planet at the moment and realise that it was not about putting an alternative plan about how we are going to get Australia on the road to a clean energy economy but it was one about cheap political point-scoring.
They may not have realised it yet, but the debate is moving on. And as I said—and I will conclude on this—many people, especially young people, in my electorate come to me every day and they say: ‘We’ve been taught the science at school. We understand that we only have 10, 20 or 30 years to act. Why aren’t we doing it? Why are there still people who even want to debate whether the science is real? Why aren’t we getting on with it?’ It is that tide of history that is moving and is going to sweep the opposition away, and there are many on the opposition benches who know it.
There being no other speakers, the discussion has concluded.
I move:
That the bill be referred to the Main Committee for further consideration.
Question agreed to.
by leave—On 18 October last year, the Prime Minister and I announced that the government would move the majority of children and vulnerable family groups out of immigration detention facilities and into community-based accommodation by June this year. This was an important announcement and I want to update the House on its implementation.
Let me say at the outset that the government will be meeting this commitment. Through to the end of June, there will be carefully managed movement of several hundred people into residential arrangements. Since October, my department has been managing the expansion of the community detention program, with my advisory Council for Immigration Services and Status Resolution (CISSR) working closely with them to support this process. I want to thank the chair of the council, Mr Paris Aristotle, and the other members of the council for their invaluable assistance as we implement what is an ambitious program. I would also like to thank the Australian Red Cross and Life Without Barriers, who have been working intensively with the government to source suitable accommodation for the minors and families released into the community, as well as appropriate carers and case managers, particularly for unaccompanied minors. I would also particularly like to thank the CEO of Red Cross Australia, Robert Tickner, for his support for this initiative and his assistance in ensuring that the Red Cross has been able to devote the appropriate resources to this undertaking.
We need to make sure that a comprehensive and people-focused care plan is prepared for all people placed into the community to ensure that appropriate services and support arrangements are in place for each person. We need to ensure that appropriate health and support services are available and we need to ensure that they have access to schools and other education services, such as English language classes. This sometimes takes a little bit of time but we are making progress.
Since our announcement in October, 268 people have been approved for release into the community. This includes almost all of the male unaccompanied minors who are under 15 years old and all but one recently arrived female unaccompanied minor. The focus at this stage is on the youngest unaccompanied minors and families with young children, single-parent families, families with pregnant women and other particularly vulnerable families. As we work through these groups, the priority will be extended to older unaccompanied minors and other family groups.
A great deal of preparatory work has been done to set a sound platform for this program. A reference group has been formed, including representatives of faith-based, not-for-profit and welfare agencies, the Australian Red Cross, Life Without Barriers, members of CISSR, senior departmental officers and a representative of the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. This group is providing ongoing advice about the development and implementation of the program. Roundtable meetings with key stakeholders and potential partners have been held in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Hobart, enabling more detailed discussions about the ongoing implementation of this undertaking. A number of organisations have been engaged by the Australian Red Cross through an expression of interest process to provide services to support the expansion, and this process continues. These organisations are providing high-quality expert services to support families and unaccompanied minors in the community.
The location of community-based accommodation is largely driven by the availability of appropriate housing, while regional and rural locations may be used depending on the availability of other services. Public housing will not be used. Housing is being sourced through faith-based, not-for-profit and welfare agencies and other non-government organisations. Some of this housing is currently unused or is being used for another purpose, such as office space. Market rent will be paid for properties housing people in residential determination arrangements.
I update the House on this because of the significant community interest in the release of children from detention. This is a controversial and emotive issue. When the Prime Minister and I announced this measure, an Essential poll, for example, found that 53 per cent of people disapproved of the government’s decision to move children and their families out of immigration detention centres. Only 33 per cent approved. We clearly did not do this because it was popular. We did this because it is the right thing to do. Whatever one’s views about asylum seekers, I would hope the House would agree that we have a special duty of care to children. It is well known that I believe, and the government believes, there needs to be an international solution to break the people smugglers’ business model. But, while children’s refugee claims are being processed in Australia, they should be treated with care. Regardless of whether they are recognised as genuine refugees or returned to their homeland after consideration of their claims, they should be given the chance to learn and grow while they are here.
In this vein, I call on the opposition to support the removal of children from detention facilities—something they have not done since this decision was announced on 18 October. In recent weeks, more Australians have seen the human face behind the issue of children in detention facilities. Perhaps, if another poll were held today, the figures I shared with the House earlier in relation to public support for the removal of children from detention facilities would be different. However, this is not a matter of political popularity—it is a matter of providing appropriate care for vulnerable people. The government will meet its commitment to remove the majority of children from detention by June. I will provide the House with further updates as we approach the end of June and also beyond that date. We will meet this commitment because it is the only responsible thing to do.
I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for Cook to speak for five minutes.
Leave granted.
I move:
That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Cook speaking in reply to my statement for a period not exceeding five minutes.
Question agreed to.
I join the minister in acknowledging those working with the department to implement the residence determination orders for the 268 individuals who, the minister has advised, have been subject to these decisions. In particular I commend Mr Paris Aristotle, a respected and long-time adviser to governments on these difficult issues over many years.
In October last year the minister announced his intention to use the residence determination powers established by the Howard government to release children into the community. That is what those laws are for. Those laws are coalition policy and are the legacy of the Howard government’s management of these difficult issues. These powers have been available to this government from the day they were elected. It is they who chose to wait three years before using them.
In November 2007, the Howard legacy also included the fact that there were just 21 children in the detention network—15 of them in the community and the other six in alternative detention arrangements. There were none on Christmas Island. The grand total of people in the detention network who had arrived illegally by boat when the Howard Government left office in November 2007 was four. Today that same figure is a record 6,382, and there is a record 1,027 children in the detention network.
In June 2005, the Howard government removed children and families from formal detention. No child has been held behind razor wire since. I note that the Prime Minister sought to deceitfully appropriate these changes to her own government last year. It seems she was being as economical with the truth on that occasion as she has more recently been with her decision to introduce a carbon tax.
When the Howard government announced that children would be released into the community in June 2005 there were just 59 children in the detention network. Six weeks later they had all been released into the community. When the minister made his announcement last October to use the Howard government’s residence determination powers to put children into the community, there were 752 children in the detention network and only 10 of those children had been placed in the community. The other 742 were in places like the Asti Motel, Port Augusta and, of course, Christmas Island. Four months after this announcement, the minister advised today that 268 people have been subject to residence determination orders. What he did not say is what he said last Monday in an interview—that only 120 have actually been released into the community.
The minister spoke today about the special duty of care we owe to children. I have no doubt about the minister’s personal commitment and sincerity to that duty, and I share his commitment. The challenge, though, for the government is to explain why it took so long for the government to exercise the residence determination powers available to it under the act that were established and utilised by the Howard government. Why would we oppose the government’s use of such powers when we created them?
By contrast, between November 2007 and October 2010, on Labor’s watch the number of children in the community fell from 15 to 10, while the number of children in the network rose from 21 to 752. Why did it take the government so long to act? Since making their decision in October, another 275 children have entered the network after turning up on boats. Under the government’s failed policies we now have more than 1,000 children in the network who have come here by boat. There is nothing compassionate about that.
The government will use the Howard government’s powers to place children in the community but refuses to restore the Howard government’s powers and policies that stopped children getting on these boats. Our detention network is in crisis. This is a product of failed policy. The government has rolled back a successful border protection regime that reduced the number of people coming on boats to fewer than 300 people over six years. We have had more people turn up on boats in the last two months, including more than 100 last Saturday, than in the six years after the Pacific solution was introduced. Is it any wonder this government has sought an additional $290 million in operating expenses for asylum seeker management this year, more than what it cost to run the Pacific solution for almost six years?
Under Labor’s failed policies, more than 200 boats, carrying more than 10,000 people, have arrived, including the ill-fated SIEV36 that was set alight and SIEV221 that tragically crashed against the rocks at Christmas Island last December. And there was the disgraceful asylum freeze policy introduced by the government to deny refugee assessments to Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers. That side of the House is the only political party and government that has introduced, while I have been in this House, a discriminatory immigration policy in this country. This asylum freeze resulted in 500 more children in the detention network and a doubling of those in detention. The government’s asylum policy is in crisis, yet it remains in denial and unrepentant of its failures. If the government wants to look after children, then my message is simple: stop pursuing these policies that have encouraged more than 1,000 children to get on boats.
I move:
That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Wentworth’s private members’ business notice relating to the disallowance of the Public Works Committee Amendment Regulations 2010 (No. 1), as contained in Select Legislative Instrument 2010 No. 173 and made under the Public Works Committee Act 1969, being called on immediately.
I do not intend to speak at length to this suspension motion. This will facilitate the member for Wentworth moving his motion and then I will respond with the reasons why the government will not support his motion—because we believe it is just another tactic to delay the National Broadband Network rollout.
Question agreed to.
I move:
That the Public Works Committee Amendment Regulations 2010 (No. 1), as contained in Select Legislative Instrument 2010 No. 173, and made under the Public Works Committee Act 1969, be disallowed.
Can you tell us the detail of what that means?
See if you can repeat it. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport is enjoying a little bit of mirth because of all of the details in this motion, but at the heart of this is a very grave matter of accountability. The government says that we want to delay the National Broadband Network, that we want to frustrate the NBN. There is nobody in this House more committed to the universal availability of affordable fast broadband in Australia than I am. The coalition is as committed as the government is to the speedy availability, where it is not currently available, of fast broadband on an affordable basis. The object of the policy is completely bipartisan. There is no material disagreement between us on this point. The issue, however, is simply the fundamental one which I come back to again and again—and I fear I will come back to again in the future—and that is financial responsibility and accountability.
When this government came into office in 2007, it said that it would not undertake or fund any major public infrastructure project without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. What does a cost-benefit analysis involve? Let us just reflect on that for a moment. A cost-benefit analysis in this context means no more than this: identifying your objective—and for this purpose, all Australians should have fast broadband at an affordable price. That is the objective. The cost-benefit analysis seeks to identify the most cost-effective way of achieving that, stacking the various options up against one another and working out the one that delivers the service most expeditiously and at the least cost to the taxpayer. It is no more than fundamental, basic common sense. So when the government came in and made that commitment to doing a cost-benefit analysis on major infrastructure projects, it was widely welcomed.
They established a specialist body, Infrastructure Australia, an expert body with distinguished people from the private sector on it, and the public sector, I might add, with the express role of identifying major infrastructure projects around Australia, prioritising them, and performing cost-benefit analyses. If the honourable members have regard to Infrastructure Australia’s website, they will see there that they have their whole cost-benefit analysis set out. It is very detailed and very careful.
That is all, in a nutshell, we have asked the government to do. We are not trying to get into an argument about this technology or that technology—you can make all of those cases and people will take different views. The truth is that broadband in the future will be delivered, just as it is today, over a variety of technological platforms depending on the needs of the particular user, their location and the applications they are deploying. The real issue is: what do we need to do to deliver this objective—fast broadband for all Australians—and how do we do it at the least cost to the taxpayer? That is the fundamental question.
You would think that a government that came to office with the policy of doing a cost-benefit analysis for any major infrastructure project would not hesitate to do one for what is the largest public infrastructure project in Australia’s history. We are not talking about small change here. The total expenditure by the government on this project will be $50 billion. How much of that is netted off by revenue will depend on the performance of the network. Needless to say, the company’s business case, insofar as we have seen it, is based on some very optimistic assumptions. I say without any criticism of Mr Quigley or the staff of the NBN that all of us are familiar with the melancholy experience of commercial life, that every business that goes bankrupt began with a highly optimistic business plan. None of them started off with a business plan that said that they were going to go broke. They all said they were going to go gangbusters. Sadly, all too often, they do not. This involves a huge expenditure and huge risk on the part of the Commonwealth, so a cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly appropriate. We have argued that that should be undertaken by the Productivity Commission. That would be very well employed to do it, but if the government was prepared to have Infrastructure Australia do the work, I am sure that they could do it with equal or comparable effectiveness. When the minister gets up to speak in a moment he will take half a paragraph out of an Infrastructure Australia report in which the members of Infrastructure Australia, I think you could say, genuflected respectfully in the general direction of the idea of a national broadband network without actually giving any opinion on the cost-effectiveness of this particular proposal.
The government have never been able to answer the challenge of their failure to do this work other than to accuse the opposition of being Luddites or opposed to technology or addicted to wireless or stuck in the dial-up era, or some other curious slur to sling against us. That failure to undertake that work leaves this parliament in a very, very difficult position. We are literally going into a huge investment almost blindfolded. As parliamentarians we do not know, we do not have the information to know, whether this is the most cost-effective way of undertaking this exercise. We do not know whether there are better alternatives. We all have views on that—some of us have views that are more informed than others—but we do not have an authoritative objective, a rigorous study that identifies what those alternatives are. Yet they are spending more money on this project than our country has on any other infrastructure project in our history and we are doing that at a time when there are huge claims on our government and our governments for investment in public infrastructure. We are just about, it would seem, to raise a $1.8 billion levy to fund infrastructure for flood reconstruction. If money is so short that we need a levy to raise $1.8 billion, why are we spending $50 million without a cost-benefit analysis?
We know that there are substantial existing telecommunications assets in the ground, presently working and with many years of life ahead of them, which can deliver fast broadband on a fixed line platform to Australian homes. Indeed, even if you buy the rather spurious proposition that the entire copper customer access network is defunct or out of date and rendered obsolete, the HFC network passes 30 per cent of Australian households and that can be used for fast broadband at speeds equal to, if not greater than, those promised by the NBN. These are all the critical issues that need to be examined.
While the government can choose not to refer it to the Productivity Commission for a cost-benefit analysis, in the normal course of events this project would come before the Public Works Committee. The Public Works Committee is a committee of this parliament established 100 years ago to oversee reckless government spending on public works. The objects of the Public Works Committee Act are, for example, to enable better decisions about major projects, given that large projects have financial, social and environmental impacts on local areas and the community at large, and to provide objective scrutiny of the various different options for delivering a project.
I grant you, the Public Works Committee is unlikely to be able to do as rigorous a job of cost-benefit analysis on the NBN as the Productivity Commission could, although it could seek expert advice and conceivably could ask the Productivity Commission to assist it. But the act—and this is an act that is a century old—requires the committee, for example, to report on the stated purpose of a work and its suitability, the cost-effectiveness of the proposal, the amount of revenue it will produce if the work is revenue producing, and the current and prospective value of the work.
Looking at the NBN, this is what the Public Works Committee would do. It would identify: what are we trying to achieve? Presumably, the answer to that would be universal broadband at an affordable price. It would then seek to ask the question: is this a cost-effective way of achieving that agreed object? It would then examine the amount of revenue. Is this really a commercial project? Is this genuinely going to produce revenues to offset the massive Commonwealth government investment? And—and this is a particularly important one—it would look at the current and prospective value of the work, because the value of the work is a very material issue for the government. The government is, for the time being, working on the financial fiction that the dollars that it is investing in the NBN and that it is taking from cash—borrowed cash, of course—are being replaced, following the investment, with an asset equal to the amount of cash invested.
There is nobody, not one person, in the telecommunications world who believes that this investment will be worth anything like, anything approaching, the level of investment by the Commonwealth in the NBN. The consequence will be that at some point there will have to be a massive write-down. The National Audit Office will require the government to take a hit, and that will have to go through the budget. But that, I suspect, is some time off.
One can recognise why the government does not want the Public Works Committee to do its job. The Public Works Committee would, if it were doing its work, seek to answer the very questions that the government is trying to avoid having addressed. The rather dispiriting irony of all of this is that the government goes to great lengths to prevent the Public Works Committee examining this project.
As a member of the Public Works Committee, I found myself up in Brisbane considering a Commonwealth government project—a public work—of $50 million. In other words, it is of a value 1/1,000th the size of the NBN. The NBN will involve expenditure of $50,000 million or $50 billion. This was $50 million for vehicle sheds, some tarmac and some classrooms for the reception, inspection and deployment of new wheeled vehicles for the Army—important work but not the biggest project ever undertaken. Nonetheless, it was our duty, because it was more than $15 million, to look at it. The Department of Defence turned up—uniformed officers and bureaucrats—and described how they had undertaken a cost-benefit analysis. That is what they had done for a $50 million project, yet this government—so reckless—is determined, if this regulation is not set aside, to prevent the Public Works Committee doing that job on this, the biggest public infrastructure project in our country’s history.
The minister will say in a moment that they have a better idea and that they have a joint committee.
Mr Husic interjecting
Well, you do not have a lot to say in your defence, so you may as well be brief. He will say that they have a joint committee that is designed to supervise the NBN or keep an eye on the NBN. But the joint committee’s terms of reference are very different to the Public Works Committee. They do not provide for the investigation of the cost-effectiveness of the proposal. They do not provide for the committee to look at the stated purpose of the work and its suitability for the purpose. In other words, the committee is based on the assumption that the NBN is a given, that the decision has been taken and that the only role of the parliament is to get six-monthly reports about how much money has been spent, without any ability to influence or calibrate or redesign or change the way in which this project is being rolled out.
The honourable member there, the member for Chifley, is shaking his head. He has had a distinguished career in the telecommunications trade union sector. Nonetheless, he would be the first to recognise that there are billions of dollars invested in telecommunications and that it performs a great task for Australia but that every investment carries with it an opportunity cost.
This is the fundamental point: whether you are stuck in a traffic jam because there is no public transport or the roads are no good, whether you cannot get your kid into hospital because there are inadequate medical facilities, whether the schools are inadequate, whether your water supply is inadequate—all of these are legitimate claims on the public purse for infrastructure. Every dollar that is spent on the NBN that is in excess of that which is required to achieve the objective of universal, affordable broadband for all Australians—every dollar that is spent in excess of that objective—detracts, as Treasury Secretary Ken Henry said, from Australia’s welfare. That is why he has said again and again and, indeed, why the government echoed, in the days when we thought they were fair dinkum about this, that a cost-benefit analysis is required.
The Public Works Committee was established by our forebears in this parliament a century ago to supervise government investment in infrastructure and endeavour to ensure that it was not wasteful or reckless. That Public Works Committee today is being excluded from doing its duty by a government that is unaccountable, reckless and determined to spend this money regardless of whether it is needed to achieve the policy objective which we all share. The Public Works Committee must be allowed to do its job. If the Productivity Commission were doing a cost-benefit analysis, there might be an argument for not having the committee involved. But the Public Works Committee is there to do a job and it should be allowed to do it. It is only a government that is afraid of the facts, afraid of its recklessness being exposed, that would seek to exclude the committee from examining this gigantic project.
Is the motion seconded?
I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
The government does not support this motion. While I was listening to the member for Wentworth address this motion, my mind went back to when I was the shadow minister for water and the member for Wentworth was the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. In an address one January, the then Prime Minister announced $10 billion, done on the back of a serviette, for a national water plan which not only did not go to the Productivity Commission or the Public Works Committee; it did not even go to cabinet, it did not go to Treasury and it did not go to Finance. There were no costings—nothing, zip, absolutely nothing.
How much?
Ten billion dollars. So the member for Wentworth comes to this issue with a bit of form. He also has form in trying to undertake his task—which he was assigned by the Leader of the Opposition—to ‘demolish’ the NBN. That is the task that he was given. This motion today is another opposition tactic to delay the NBN rollout.
The regulations in place are an interim measure until the bill is passed. Without the proposed exemption, NBN Co. would breach the Public Works Committee Act and be liable for potential criminal penalties if it commenced a public work with an estimated cost above $15 million before a long series of processes had concluded—a referral to the PWC, examination and report by the PWC and agreement by the House that the work could proceed. The process of referral to the committee would have a high compliance cost and inhibit NBN Co.’s flexibility. The exemption reflects the fact that NBN Co. operates in commercial markets and will roll out networks in response to market conditions. This is why a similar exemption has been granted to Australia Post and why exemptions were previously granted to Commonwealth owned carriers such as Telstra, AUSSAT and the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation—all with bipartisan support, supported by both sides of this chamber as a common-sense approach to what is necessary for a government owned entity.
NBN Co. will remain subject to full parliamentary oversight. The Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network produced five reports. NBN Co. appears at Senate estimates three times a year. There have been hundreds of answers to questions on notice. We have a House of Representatives committee and, immediately after this debate, there will be a motion proposed to establish a joint committee on the NBN. Both will provide additional transparency and oversight of the NBN. Furthermore, NBN Co.’s annual report is tabled in parliament.
The motion moved by the member for Wentworth today is designed simply to delay and destroy the rollout of the NBN, to the detriment of end users. That is why it should not be supported. The fact is that we have released already a large amount of material on the NBN: the summary of the expert panel report, tabled 23 October 2009; the McKinsey-KPMG implementation study, with comprehensive financial analysis, released on 6 May 2010; NBN Co.’s 2009-10 annual report, tabled 29 October 2010; and the NBN Co. corporate plan, statement of expectations and ACCC advice on points of interconnect, released on 20 December 2010. There has been significant involvement by the parliament and the community for many years. Now we have two parliamentary committees to scrutinise the NBN, the proposed joint standing committee as well as the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications.
Quite clearly, this motion moved by the member for Wentworth will only have a delaying impact. That is why it is being moved. The fact is that it is totally inconsistent with the attitude the coalition had over many, many years with regard to other instrumentalities, such as Australia Post, Telstra, AUSSAT and the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation. It is about time that the opposition stopped playing these political games under the guise of wanting transparency and acknowledged the inconsistency of their approach.
If they were fair dinkum, the motion moved by the member for Wentworth would include, for example, Australia Post now. He is the shadow minister for communications and I do not see that occurring. The fact is that this is simply yet another step in the tactic to delay the NBN rollout. It is something that the government will not support because the government is determined to bring communications in Australia into the 21st century and make us a more competitive, more productive economy. I urge members to oppose this motion.
I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion because we have a very important issue at stake here—that is, the accountability of public funds that are going to be provided by hardworking Australian taxpayers. It is quite interesting when you look at the scale, the width, the breadth of this project and the issue of cost benefit. Generally, when you look at the internal control measures that you would put in place to supervise and manage a project, those measures should be commensurate with the size and scale of that project. We have in this case the largest government infrastructure project in the nation’s history and yet we are going to provide that project with a far lesser level of scrutiny than that normally accorded to much smaller projects.
It is quite astounding that we would be going into this project without a proper cost-benefit analysis. It is one thing to flick and tick, to ensure through audit processes that the funds are disbursed in accordance with appropriate accounting standards and so on and so forth. But the most important thing to do in a project of this scale is to ensure that we have the expenditure proposal right, that we are getting the maximum value for money and that the technology we are investing in is going to deliver the best outcomes for the taxpayers who are providing it.
One thing that is absolutely missing from all of this is transparency. We see through all of the reports this veil of secrecy that the government wants to cloak round the NBN so that it cannot be properly scrutinised, so that the Australian people will not know that this government is driving them down a very dark road indeed—a road that is going to lead to a massive capital loss on behalf of taxpayers. It is going to lead to a massive loss in value—a loss that is made not by the Australian Labor Party but by the Australian taxpayer. It seems astounding that we would not have a cost-benefit analysis for this project. When you look at the business case you see secrecy everywhere. Only 160 pages of the 400-page NBN Co. business plan were actually released. Why is that?
It is commercial-in-confidence.
Commercial-in-confidence —everything that the Australian Labor Party does not want people to know about this project is commercial-in-confidence. We have the member for Chifley chiming in there. Everything that people are not supposed to know is commercial-in-confidence. We look at issues such as cherry picking that are coming up in the legislation before this House. Why should a project of this magnitude—if it is as good as it is supposed to be, if it is going to deliver the overwhelming benefits that are supposed to be delivered—need to be protected from competition by competing technologies? Why does it need to be protected from competition with Telstra’s copper line network? Why does it need to be protected from competition with the HFC network? Why does it need to be protected from alternative fibre operators who might be operating in competition with the NBN?
In fact, that very same business plan, shrouded in secrecy as it is, indicates that the return falls to very unacceptable levels. From what I would say is a very miserly internal rate of return of seven per cent—which is pretty much the best case that the government dare put its name to—it falls down to five per cent, hardly a return that would be prompting an investment of this magnitude in a project of this magnitude. A return of five per cent would not even cover the interest on the project, and you actually have to protect it from competition.
Mr Husic interjecting
The member for Chifley continues to interject. His mates down at the ETU are probably revving him up.
They are.
I am sure they are. The situation is very clear. This project should be properly scrutinised. This project should have the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee. This project very much needs far more scrutiny, not less scrutiny. It is interesting to note that the Public Works Committee was actually formed by the ALP and Prime Minister Fisher, yet we have this government attempting to avoid scrutiny.
One hundred years—Andrew Fisher would turn in his grave.
Yes, Prime Minister Fisher would turn in his grave to see the deteriorating integrity on the other side of the House. It is a vitally important issue that this project be subject to not only scrutiny by the Public Works Committee but a proper cost-benefit analysis. Before one more dollar is spent there should be a cost-benefit analysis. This government refuses to do that. They will be condemned by history for the waste of taxpayers’ money that is to ensue and that is why it is important that this House properly consider this motion.
There is one question before the House today. That question is whether the default in our public policy, which is that significant pieces of public expenditure should as a standard and routine practice be subject to the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee, ought to apply to the National Broadband Network. That is the question we are considering here in the House today. In other words: should the parliament, should the legislature, should the people’s representatives have the opportunity to scrutinise a particular project which has been put forward by the executive branch of government?
As we ask ourselves that question, let us just ask a little bit about what you might expect would be the characteristics of a project which would appropriately attract the scrutiny of the people’s house. If, for example, the government came forward and said, ‘We are proposing the biggest infrastructure project in Australia’s history,’ would you think it was a good idea that a project of that magnitude ought to be subject to the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee, the routine, default, standard procedure employed in government in Australia for many, many years? If you saw that the project involved the expenditure of an enormous amount of money, $41 billion of taxpayers’ money being put at risk, an amount which the most elementary calculation will tell us is over 10 per cent of the budgeted annual expenditure of this Commonwealth government—if you saw that an amount of this magnitude was proposed to be spent, would you say to yourself, ‘This looks to be a good candidate for being subject to the routine, standard, business-as-usual, ordinary mechanism of oversight and scrutiny by the people’s house’? I think you would say that that was a good candidate.
Would you say that a project was a good candidate for scrutiny by a committee of the House of Representatives if you discovered that the proposed financial arrangements for this project involved the Commonwealth incurring a weighted average cost of capital of over 10 per cent? The source for that number is the corporate plan of NBN Co., issued publicly in December last year. If you saw at the same time, from reviewing that corporate plan, that the rate of return to be earned by this project—which this government considers it is a good idea to allocate $41 billion of taxpayers’ money to—was seven per cent, you might start to ask yourself some questions and say, ‘This appears to be a particularly good candidate for scrutiny by the Public Works Committee, the routine, standard, default, business-as-usual mechanism by which the parliament maintains scrutiny over public works to be carried out at the instruction of the executive government.’ You might very well also say to yourself: ‘This is extremely interesting. When I compare a weighted average cost of capital of over 10 per cent with a rate of return of seven per cent, what do I find? One of the most basic propositions of corporate finance, and that is: if your rate of return is less than your weighted average cost of capital, you are losing money, you are vaporising taxpayers’ capital.’
So the net present value of this project is heavily negative. And that alone might very well be enough for this House of Representatives to say: ‘Actually, we’re not too enthusiastic about this bright suggestion from government that this project ought to be exempted from the normal mechanisms of scrutiny and oversight. Actually, we’ve seen quite enough to think that alarm bells ought to be ringing. Actually, we think it would be a very good idea if there was the capacity for the House of Representatives, the people’s house, to exercise independent scrutiny and oversight of this project because, quite frankly, what we’ve seen gives us very little confidence that the executive branch of government has this thing under control. On the contrary, it is clear from the papers they have issued that they are vaporising taxpayers’ capital at a remarkable rate.’
You would also see as you looked at the papers which have been released by the executive branch of government in relation to this project that even that paltry rate of return of seven per cent, which they have the temerity to suggest to the Australian people that their money ought to be allocated to, is based upon a series of highly unrealistic assumptions. You would learn, for example, from the corporate plan issued by NBN Co. just before the end of last year that the current rate of penetration of wireless households is slightly over 13 per cent. You would also learn that that rate has risen quite sharply in the last few years. If you were to look at the trajectory at which the rate of wireless broadband homes is increasing, you would think that it was highly likely that that rate of penetration would increase, particularly having regard to the fact that it is the policy of the Gillard government—a policy not contested by this side of this House—that it will shortly auction off spectrum in the 700 megahertz band and that the telcos, should they be successful in acquiring that spectrum at auction, will use it to deliver 4G wireless broadband. So you might very well think that it was likely that the proportion of wireless-only homes was only going to increase. You might again think that the answers which have been provided by this government to those questions are wholly unsatisfactory and give you and, more importantly, taxpayers no satisfaction or certainty at all that taxpayers’ money is being spent wisely. And you might particularly think that when you turn to the page of the corporate plan which states that it is assumed the penetration rate of wireless households will reach only 16 per cent by 2025, notwithstanding the fact that it has risen from four per cent to 13 per cent in only a few short years.
There are a host of reasons why any objective observer looking at this project might say that the ordinary, normal, business-as-usual scrutiny mechanisms which apply to major public works under the act, and have applied for many years, ought to apply in this circumstance as well. You might also turn your mind to the political background of this project. What was first proposed was that $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ money would be committed to this and it would be a fifty-fifty joint venture with a private sector company. We later learned, in 2009, that that promise, that proposal, that project, was being scrapped, junked, because Labor could not deliver it and it was being replaced with a proposal to spend $43 billion on this project—that should ring some very serious alarm bells. At least we were assured at that time, by the then Prime Minister Rudd, that all $43 billion was not going to come from the public purse because there was going to be significant private sector involvement as well. Then, in May 2010, we learnt that that had gone by the board as well and it was going to completely funded by public sector investment—that was the recommendation in the implementation study. Now, we learn that it will be funded by $41 billion of public money.
We heard previously from the minister that there were no grounds to suggest that the ordinary arrangements ought to apply because there had been plenty of scrutiny, and he instanced the implementation study. But he did not mention the fact that the implementation study, having been provided to the government in December 2009, had been dropped by this government in May 2010—three short days before the budget. What kind of commitment to openness and scrutiny is that?
The question before this House is a very simple one: is this a project which is of such little moment, which raises so few issues of substance, which ought to trouble the taxpayers and citizens of Australia to such a little extent that we ought to waive the normal, default arrangements under which the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee would apply? It is very clear, from even the most cursory examination of the circumstances around this project, that the opposite is true. If ever a project deserved the bright light of scrutiny through every mechanism available to this parliament as the people’s House, on behalf of the taxpayers and citizens of Australia, it is this project, and that is why we moved this motion.
Question put:
That the motion (Mr Turnbull’s) be agreed to.
I move:
The establishment of this Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network with very wide terms of reference and a balanced membership demonstrates the government’s commitment to openness and transparency for the NBN. Unlike those opposite, who are determined to destroy the NBN under the guise of subjecting it to continuous political process and delay, the government supports genuine transparency. The establishment of this joint committee honours an undertaking given by the Prime Minister to Senator Xenophon during the passage of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 late last year. It is a bill that delivers historic reforms to the telecommunications sector and improved consumer protections, one that the opposition obstructed for almost a year. The committee will compose seven government members and seven coalition members, drawn from each house, with a non-aligned member from each house. Any member or senator will be able to participate upon a resolution of either chamber. The government has agreed to support the Independent member for Lyne, Mr Oakeshott, should he nominate as the chair of the committee. This is an important part of transparency for the National Broadband Network. I commend this motion to the House.
The opposition supports the establishment of this Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network. This is certainly a second-best option to the joint committee that we proposed and it does not have the same clear focus on the cost-effectiveness of the proposal that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works had, but it is certainly better than nothing. One question that the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport has not outlined—and if the minister could pay attention to what I am saying here—
We are discussing Jamie Briggs’s new child!
Thank you, Minister. Nothing could be more important than that. Scarlett Briggs is a matter of great interest to every member!
It is in Hansard.
She is in Hansard. She is just a baby and she is in Hansard! I will leave the distraction of the beautiful Scarlett Briggs. Her father tells me she looks just like her mother. He is very modest too; he is a modest member!
I have a question for the minister which he may be able to respond to. I know it not question time but it is a matter that could be addressed. It is not at all clear what resources this committee has available to it. We are dealing with a highly technical area of investment. We all accept that the members of the committee will give it their full diligence, and due care and attention will be paid to it—and it will apparently have an extraordinarily and recently clean-shaven chairman—nonetheless it would benefit greatly from some expert advice. A question the minister may care to address in the course of this debate is: what resources will the committee have? Subject to that and the start date of the committee—which we believe should be immediate and not put off to the middle of the year, which we understand is the government’s plan—we will support the committee. It is a second-best option. The only consolation we can glean from this is that if we had not pressed for the joint committee of our design, or indeed for the attention of the Public Works Committee, we probably would not have even this much from this government.
Question agreed to.
Debate resumed from 28 February, on motion by Mr Albanese:
That this bill be now read a second time.
I thank the member for Lyne for agreeing to put me ahead of him at this time. It certainly helps my diary immensely and I thank him for that. I welcome this opportunity to speak today on the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 and cognate bill. I really am very concerned at the way the government is trying to push these bills through so quickly to avoid part of the public scrutiny. We have seen much in the media but there should be more public scrutiny of the flawed NBN plan. The National Broadband Network Companies Bill will govern ownership. It will also be about the operations and the legal status of NBN Co., the Commonwealth owned builder and operator of the broadband network. It limits NBN Co. to business activities directly related to supplying wholesale communications services and sets out some arrangements for its eventual privatisation.
The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010I know it is a long title—also amends the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Telecommunications Act 1997. It requires the NBN Co. to provide open and non-discriminatory access to retail carriers using its wholesale services and imposes similar access rules and NBN compatible technical requirements on non-NBN fibre rollouts.
I, like many of my coalition colleagues, am committed to ensuring that there is a universally available, high-quality broadband—‘high-speed internet’ is probably a better term—available at affordable prices. The National Broadband Network is a $50 billion investment—let us be clear about this—on behalf of the taxpayers of Australia. Whilst it may not be on budget it is still a Commonwealth funded proposal.
I have no doubt that we have to build our nation’s network, and it is the government’s role to ensure that where the network fails—and there have been many failures in the past, dating right back to the days of the PMG—the government should be there to invest in what I call the nation’s backhaul. In other words, we are building the nation’s network infrastructure—I call them our highways—through optic fibre cable and the network. The government should be there where there is a market failure. Markets do fail.
We need to develop the nation’s backhaul. We should be replacing, as part of the NBN proposal—we are still waiting to hear from the government on this—those single-channel radio systems that are the legacy of the PMG and Telecom, before Telstra, out in the outback of my electorate. There are single-channel radio systems in this day and age! There are microwave links going right out into the outback and up into the gulf and the Torres Strait Islands. These are technologies of more than a century ago and we should be replacing them. But the market will always fail to provide the upgrade of those facilities and that is where there is a role for the government.
The government rolled out, through NBN Co., a $250 billion optic fibre cable link between Darwin and Toowoomba. Many out in those committees thought, ‘The optic fibre cable is coming through my town; we’re going to get access to high-speed internet.’ I have had to tell them, ‘No, it is actually a duplication of existing optic fibre cables that are owned by Telstra.’ NBN Co. have upset many of my constituents because they felt that they could go through people’s properties and just advise them by letter, ‘We’re coming through.’ We have had many fights on the way with NBN Co. They thought they had greater rights than the title deed holder who pays rates on this land.
Maybe it is going to be good infrastructure in the long term but, even when they came from east of Mount Isa through to Cloncurry, if they had used the Landsborough Highway between Cloncurry and Winton it might have made a little bit of sense to me. But no, they went further east, to Marathon, and cut across Mitchell grass plains to Winton. They could have used the national highway—and the communities of Kynuna and McKinlay are along that highway. That would have enabled providers at some time in the future to connect national phone towers along a national highway that links Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Darwin. But, no, they did not take that 300 or 400 kilometre route, which would have made sense. It is that backhaul, that connectivity, that would have enabled a connection to be made at some time by third parties rolling out mobile phone and wireless networks, albeit along a lonely stretch of highway north-west of Winton.
The other thing that concerns me is that this bill will mean there will not be appropriate parliamentary or public scrutiny of the NBN Co. The NBN is the single largest public works project in Australia’s history and it should be subject to some parliamentary scrutiny. It should be subject to investigation by the Productivity Commission as to whether it is appropriately funded and whether the money is being spent appropriately. Public works is part of it, but we on this side of the House are suggesting it should be investigated by the Productivity Commission. If the government believes it is such a good project then surely an independent analysis would be the best way to ensure we get value for money to provide the best services at the best possible prices. But no, the government is not going to let Public Works or the Productivity Commission oversight the greatest investment by the Commonwealth in any public works in our history.
This is probably only the tip of the iceberg for taxpayers, who are ultimately going to fund this project, but it does concern me that we have not had that public scrutiny. I am the voice of the people of the seat of Maranoa, which covers 45 per cent of the landmass of Queensland. The distance between the east of Maranoa and the west is further than the distance between Brisbane to Melbourne, and from north to south it is further than from Brisbane to Sydney. Across my electorate, communications are very important. I believe communications are a fundamental right. It should not be considered a privilege to have affordable modern communications—not only voice but increasingly data as well.
The tragedy of this legislation thus far, unless there is going to be a change of heart from the minister, is to see some of the nation’s backhaul, the nation’s network, being built where markets fail. We have not really heard from the minister; we have had soundings from him. I only hope he will listen to some of the councils in my electorate. What the coalition said prior to the last election was that we would have a fund that would be available to third parties to build an open access network where markets fail. One of those areas, in my own electorate, is the outback shires of Diamantina and Barcoo, where a single channel radio system connects Birdsville to Bedourie. They have a single channel radio system from Windorah to Jundah-Stonehenge. These could connect with Defence’s over-the-horizon radar facility. There is an optic-fibre cable from Stonehenge through to Longreach. It is the network they use to receive information from the over-the-horizon radar. These shires are prepared to put something like $2½ million to $3 million on the table. They have said that to the minister. I have supported their letters to him to replace those single channel radio systems. So in my electorate and, I am sure, and in other parts of remote Australia there are communities that are desperate to see that old technology replaced with optic-fibre cable. Because of the importance of it, it will be there in 20, 30 or 40 years time servicing those communities. It will allow a whole lot of other activities, including e-medicine. There is also a growing tourism market out there, so small businesses would be established around outback tourism.
We have got to upgrade the infrastructure. I have not yet seen any proposal put forward by the government that is going to guarantee to those communities a partnership arrangement between the Commonwealth, through NBN Co., and those two local council areas. I use them as an example because they are in a very remote part of Australia. From the coalition’s point of view, they are not forgotten people, and I just hope they are not forgotten people from the government’s point of view. The coalition government provided for this with the Future Fund. We put it into law that the money earned by the Future Fund would be spent every three years where there were market failures.
I would like the minister to also respond fully to the Glasson review of communications in rural and remote Australia. The coalition lost government in 2007. From 2007 to 2009 there was, we understood, some $300 million to be spent on addressing market failure out in those rural and remote parts of Australia and, in some cases, metropolitan parts of Australia, where markets also fail. I am sure the member for Macquarie can understand that—when you get into the Blue Mountains. There are market failures close to our large metropolitan cities.
The Glasson review and its recommendations have not been fully responded to by this minister. When we left office there was a fund of $2 billion that was earning something like $300 million over a three-year period that was to be used without having to go back to budget. The Treasurer cannot use the argument, ‘Oh, we were hit with the global financial crisis and we had to find savings.’ The money was there, invested by the Howard government to make sure that, where markets fail, we could address those market failures without going back to the taxpayer. I would like a minister to respond to that.
I want to touch also on Telstra Country Wide. I really want to know, with the agreement between the government and the board of Telstra, what they intend to do with Telstra Country Wide. Telstra Country Wide is out in those rural and regional areas. We put them there by regulation to ensure that they would be in regional Australia when Telstra was fully privatised. We did fully privatise it. Telstra Country Wide has been out there in the community with across-the-counter, face-to-face services. They have been invaluable, I can assure you, in the recent devastating floods and natural disasters. The minister at the table, Minister Bowen , would know. He came to Charleville in the March floods of last year. He knows how important it was to have Telstra Country Wide in the community, providing mobile phones and replacement phones for those people who may have lost them as a result of the floods. We saw it again in Dalby, Chinchilla and Condamine this year. They were there again. I wonder whether under NBN Co. and the separation of the wholesale and retail operations of Telstra what will happen to Telstra Country Wide. The Prime Minister says that this is a government for regional Australia. I am sure the member for Lyne heard that. This is a government for regional Australia. As part of this bill the government should tell us what they are going to do in relation to Telstra Country Wide and make sure that they continue to build the outback networks. (Time expired)
I rise today to speak on the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 and the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010. The National Broadband Network Companies Bill is about telecommunications, but it is also important to note that it is about the future of our health system, our education system, our commerce system and, importantly, our economy. This bill is about the long-overdue change that creates a telecommunications market that has integrity. As usual, it takes a Labor government to achieve this.
The bill consolidates the separation of the wholesale and retail parts of the telecommunications markets. It is also the mark of one of the most important economic reforms that the Australian government is undertaking. It is perhaps the most important thing we can do to increase the productivity of businesses in this country and particularly in areas like Corangamite. It will lead to a revolution in the use of household technology and it will open up new horizons for household entertainment. The Australian government’s national broadband strategy, which this bill addresses, will also lead to a revolution in the delivery of health services. Similarly, the NBN will lead to a revolution in educational services delivery.
This legislation goes to four things. The primary bill, the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010, limits and focuses NBN Co. on wholesale-only telecommunications activities, consistent with its mandate as established by this government. It also sets out the Commonwealth ownership arrangements and provides for the eventual sale of the Commonwealth’s stake in NBN Co., subject to parliament’s approval. The accompanying bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010, establishes new access, non-discrimination and transparency obligations for NBN Co., and it provides a level regulatory playing field for superfast broadband infrastructure.
It surprises no-one that the Leader of the Opposition continues to oppose the deployment of the NBN network. He is opposing this great economic reform that the Gillard government is delivering. Mr Abbott is opposing the health service delivery revolution that will take place as a consequence of the deployment of the NBN network across this country. He is opposing the billions of dollars that will open up our economy and open up our health system. He is opposing the speedier, more timely delivery of health services to regional and rural Australians, and in particular to remote Indigenous communities. Mr Abbott is opposing the educational services delivery revolution that the NBN can bring. He is opposing the expansion of educational services to regional and remote communities. He is opposing the billions of dollars this will ultimately save the Australian government in educational services delivery. For years people who have a passion for this policy area have been dreaming of the day on which the NBN would be deployed, the day the retail arm would separate from the wholesale arm, and the day there were clear transparency obligations in how wholesale telecommunications business operate.
The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010 amends the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. This bill introduces open access, transparency and non-discriminatory measures for NBN corporations under clear oversight by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. It also requires owners of superfast networks that are rolled out, upgraded or altered after the introduction of this bill to parliament to supply a wholesale layer 2 bitstream service on open and equivalent terms. The NBN access bill also simplifies the making of industry codes and standards for fibre infrastructure and services so new fibre-to-the-premises networks are NBN consistent.
I think this is great legislation. We have listened for a long time to what industry are saying. We have listened to what consumers want. We made changes in the exposure bill, taking on board the suggestions of industry, such as the scope for the minister to allow NBN Co. to directly supply specific end users. We have listened to industry about matters such as that.
I just want to make the point that this important bill, covering these parts, will cause significant, economy-wide opening up of my region. My region—the City of Greater Geelong and the G21 region, as it is sometimes known—has been working very closely with my office to ensure that it can take full advantage of deployment of the NBN. We have in my region some 25,000 small businesses, with the lion’s share of those businesses in my seat of Corangamite. Many of those small businesses are tourism operators, and of course they rely upon the internet to market and sell their businesses on the world stage. There is no doubt that the NBN will assist those businesses to access the world stage, and I certainly believe the National Broadband Network will dramatically increase productivity coming out of my region as a consequence. We also have within my region many design companies, architects, tradespeople and building companies who need to send very large files to their customers, and the current network is inadequate for them to be able to do that.
We also have very large areas within my electorate where year 12 kids cannot actually email files from their school to their home or from their home to their school because of the inadequate telecommunications infrastructure that is in place. The NBN will very much assist those students in being able to undertake those very important activities, and I certainly believe that, as a consequence of the deployment of the NBN, educational opportunities will open up, enabling those students to achieve the very best of marks.
Also within my electorate we have Deakin University. Deakin is a critical institution for our region. It is one of the largest employers within the region and certainly is the largest employer within my seat. Deakin also has campuses on the Geelong waterfront—in the federal seat of Corio—in Warrnambool and in Melbourne. Deakin, as I said earlier, is the largest employer within my seat, and it has thousands of students studying there; it is providing that educational opportunity. Deakin University is also driving economic and business reform across our region, producing new industries and new jobs. The NBN again will play a vital role in enabling Deakin University to assist our economy in innovation, which is very important.
Deakin University is training many GPs, nurses and allied health professionals, who will service our region into the future. Of course, we know that there is going to be a revolution taking place in the health profession over the coming years, and I believe that internet based technology will play a very important role in enabling those doctors, nurses, surgeons and the like to communicate with a much wider audience than they have been able to in the past. I certainly believe the National Broadband Network will play a very significant role in that. This is a very large and important investment, and I think it will be the foundation for productivity growth going forward.
Of course, with all of these very tough and challenging reforms, Tony Abbott has consistent form on this. He continues to oppose everything that this government does in terms of opening up our economy and providing opportunities for this nation going forward. The NBN is critical to my region, it is critical to the nation and, as a consequence, I implore both sides of the political divide to support this legislation to enable the government to deploy the National Broadband Network as quickly as we can and particularly to assist regional Australia to get a leg up and get on a level playing field with our metropolitan cousins.
I also rise to support the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 and the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010. I am quite obviously a supporter of better information and communication technology for regions such as the mid-North Coast and for regional Australia generally. I consider this more than just an NBN; I consider it an NDN—a national decentralisation network. Many members of parliament have talked about decentralisation, the importance of that and its place in building and empowering regional communities. This is, if done correctly, the opportunity to achieve that. I know many members have long been advocates for better ICT and for getting as close to equity as possible in the delivery of ICT services in the regions, whether mobile phones, television services or the internet.
Something that has been a frustration for a long time—in fact, it was mentioned in my first speech—is the example of a year 9 student living five minutes from a regional town who had to access the internet via dial-up, as much for technology reasons as for financial reasons. In all of this, we should not forget that while, yes, this is about technology it is also about the financial situation of many people and their ability to tap into the technology improvements that we are seeing rapidly coming into Australia. So this is fulfilling my commitment to her as a student in a regional area—trying to allow her as many opportunities as a metropolitan student. Hopefully we will allow the issues around rates of participation in education to finally start to be addressed in a way that we have not done before.
Also, there is the issue of employment opportunities, and I know the previous member talked about business opportunities. I quote the example of a veterinary business just outside of Wauchope that has been growing successfully and has become one of Australia’s leading veterinary oncology services. When I first heard about it I did not know and I suspect many people here would not have known that there was such a thing as a veterinary oncology service. They obviously now want to send files of a decent size, and they want to stay in a regional community to do their business. They are enormously frustrated by the lack of support with regard to both the speed and bandwidth abilities of existing services. If they want to grow their business then we have to provide better speeds and bandwidth to allow that innovation and entrepreneurship to flourish in a regional location. That is an existing business; we have not even started to explore the opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship that may and will come if we do this right for Australia.
I separate the issues to do with the National Broadband Network into three areas: the technology, the spend and the politics. I am not going to talk about the politics tonight—I think that has been played out by plenty of others—but I will talk about the technology and the spend. The technology, I would hope, is broadly recognised across this chamber as a sensible approach to the future for Australia. Fibre cabling is unmatched for both speed and bandwidth. I was having a look inside the blue cabling the other day, and it is worthwhile for everyone who is interested to have a look at one of these pieces of cable, to see just what we are actually using now and the opportunity for technological improvement still within the scope of the fibre cabling. Inside one of those blue cables there are about 12 mini cables, and inside each of those—correct me if I am wrong, advisers in the chairs—there are 12 of what are the equivalents of mini cables within cables. To use 100 megabytes per second, I was informed that we are only using two of those 12 within the 12 inside the cabling. There is enormous opportunity for technological improvement of speed. It is about the connections at the ends. I gather we are up to one-gigabyte connections in the technology at the moment. And this same fibre cabling can handle that technological improvement.
So the argument that this is a rollout that we are going to pull out in 15 years and that everything will have moved is wrong. There is opportunity within this rollout for technological improvement. That is an important fact that I think gets lost in this debate. That room for growth in technology within the fibre structure is a huge opportunity for Australia in innovation. Hopefully, over the 15-year life of the cabling, it will be taken up and we will all be the better for it in our education and employment and our general life opportunities.
The issue of complementary measures is also an important one. I saw some of the commentary around the 4G release by Telstra. I know that in communities such as mine, and right around Australia, there are sometimes arguments thrown up that wireless or WiMAX or other technologies are competing with fibre. I would strongly argue that these are complementary, not competitive, measures. We do need a base network if we are going to run these complementary measures. We are not going to be able to get 4G in regional locations without the backbone of this fibre technology. So, if we do not want to just replicate what we have already done in the past, which has been the great criticism of our approach to ICT, and allow the market to solve the problem; if we are not going to just have 4G in capital cities and maybe a few regional locations; if we are genuinely going to chase the principle of equity; and if we are to allow the technology to do its job of allowing 22 million Australians to communicate with each other and with the world, then we have got to build the backbone—the backbone that will allow those complementary measures to hang off it—for that innovation to really be worthwhile. We need the backbone. As to the wireless technologies—the WiMAXs—I think they are all valuable and important contributions. I hope we see more of them and I hope that technology improves. But I think we sometimes get lost in the woods of the debate around speed and forget the importance of bandwidth. I think it is the dual contribution of speed and bandwidth which make a fibre network and platform important.
From that, we then get into some conversations around the costs. I have said many times before that that is the fertile territory for all of us: to try and minimise the initial costs and maximise the efficiency in the rollout. That is the challenge that I hope this parliament is willing to take up.
I am pleased to take on a role in the proposed Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network and I hope there are 15 other members in this place who, with similar intent, with me will do what they can to make sure we get value for money, we have an efficient spend and we minimise the overall costs to government for this important rollout for Australia. I am particularly heartened by the terms of reference. There is a whole range of issues for the committee to monitor in the progress of the rollout, particularly paragraph (2)(g) which gives the members of the committee fairly open scope to look at ‘any other matter pertaining to the NBN rollout that the Committee considers relevant’. In the debate that has happened until now there has been concern that the government is hiding something or that there is a fear of scrutiny or a fear of anyone having oversight to look for value for money. I hope with 15 other committee members we can provide that oversight and scrutiny to make sure we get the efficiency from taxpayers’ dollars that I know we are all looking for.
I also give my private members’ bill, the Auditor-General Amendment Bill 2011, a bit of a plug. To many people’s surprise, the Auditor-General has some limitations on jurisdiction in any oversight or auditing role regarding government business enterprises, one of which is NBN Co. I hope the bill currently before the House will broaden that scope and allows for an auditor-general to follow the money trail from the point of receipt from taxation to the point of delivery. That point may be through a state, a national partnership agreement, a GBE such as NBN Co. or a contractor—and there will be many people working on a contract basis for Commonwealth dollars in this rollout. The Auditor-General Amendment Bill is important in allowing the Auditor-General to provide backup support so that we really do chase those principles of value for money and efficiency in this rollout.
I think a wholesale platform built without vertical integration is an important starting point in this technology improvement. The concept of bundling is one I hope the government talk a lot more about than they have in the past because people are generally confused about why we are upgrading one internet service with another. People forget that this is a bundling opportunity for all technology to the home. Telephony services and television services will potentially come down the one fibre line and the cost to the household needs to be considered in the context of all those bills received by householders. That is the bundling opportunity in a rollout such as this. I think when most people do that maths they will see a huge opportunity for a reduction in their living expenses through what will be done by this rollout over the next decade.
As well, I hope the commitments given about the roll-in stay in place. I think it is a very important part of engaging regional Australia in this technology advance. I even encourage, if possible, some point-to-point rollout that allows for networks within the network to be built as quickly as possible: for example, a hospital-to-hospital network or a school-to-school network as an approach to trying to get as much benefit in the build process as we can as quickly as possible.
My final point is that we should not be nervous about having a conversation about an end point and where and how any sale opportunities at the end could or should arise. Again, my personal view is that economic forces on the platform do not stack up. More than likely government is going to be a monopoly owner of this platform for a long time. But where they do stack up—and metropolitan areas would be the obvious location—I do not think this parliament should be shy of that conversation and starting to frame how we would look for sale opportunities at an end point to reduce the cost to the taxpayer, so long as we keep vertical integration as a core principle behind the wholesale platform. That is a conversation I hope we can start alongside the rest. I hope we now can get on with the job of building the thing.
I take this opportunity to speak briefly in support of the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 and cognate bill. Before I get on with my remarks, I commend the member for Lyne for his contribution to this debate. Few issues that I can recall from my time in this parliament have been debated as often as this matter has been. The claims and counterclaims have been expressed time and time again and the coalition’s criticism has been rebutted time and time again. The Australian people are quite understandably losing their patience on this matter. It was a key election issue in 2007. It was a key election issue in 2010 and, in particular, the cost of the NBN was a key election issue for the opposition in the 2010 election. Australian people have not been persuaded by the coalition misinformation and scare campaign on this issue which continues to date. It is a campaign which would have you believe that the cost of this project is something like $50 billion when the coalition know full well that the taxpayer contribution is about half of that.
If members opposite do not understand the importance of the NBN, let me assure them that the Australian people do. The people I speak with in my electorate do; the Independents in this place do, and we have just heard from the member for Lyne; the Australian people do. Clearly opposition members do not understand the significance of the NBN. They simply do not get it. Over 12 years in office they did nothing, and Australia fell further behind the rest of the world in the provision of high-speed broadband internet services. For the past three years the coalition have opposed the government’s NBN legislation every step of the way and at every opportunity available to them, most recently with a matter of public importance on this very matter only last Thursday. The member for Wentworth, who led that MPI as shadow communications spokesman, I believe does understand the importance of the NBN, so I asked myself, ‘Why the objection?’ I can only conclude that their political strategy is to block the NBN rollout so that at the next election they can go to the Australian people and say to them, ‘The government has failed to deliver the NBN.’
What is extraordinary is that the opposition, as the alternative government, do not have a credible alternative policy of their own, again highlighting that they simply do not understand the importance of this issue. Their view is that the market will sort itself out and that the private sector will build the necessary networks and provide the necessary services. That simply has not happened, and it did not happen during the 12 years of the previous coalition government. Again, there has been no credible alternative policy put forward by them—or, in fact, by the private sector—to provide the services that are needed.
Other speakers have spoken—I notice the member for Corangamite did earlier this evening—with regard to the productivity efficiency gains to be made from a modern, high-speed NBN. Those productivity gains would run into billions of dollars each year. Each year the rollout is delayed costs the nation billions of dollars. If there were ever a sustainable charge of costing Australians billions of dollars it would apply to the coalition for their opposition of the NBN rollout. But it is not just about dollars. It is as much about the personal and human benefits associated with a high-speed NBN. Whether it is in health, education, research, social life or entertainment—in fact, in every aspect of life—there are noticeable personal benefits from a high-speed NBN.
In Makin, the electorate I represent, poor access to reliable internet services is one of the most common issues raised with my office. The patience of the people waiting for decent internet services is wearing thin. They understand what the government is proposing and they want the government to get on with it. They have heard the opposition claims and simply are not persuaded by them. I welcomed the announcement last year that the national rollout of the NBN would commence in a number of areas, including the north-eastern suburbs of Adelaide, which is the area that I represent. I know that when I speak to residents in those areas they are quite excited by the thought that they might be one of the first communities to finally get some decent access to broadband services. I am also aware of the importance attached to a high-speed national broadband network by business. During the Howard government years businesses in the northern region of Adelaide had to enlist the support of Salisbury council to secure a decent broadband service. Salisbury council, to its credit, was able to deliver for them where the Howard government had failed to do so.
I have listened to this debate at length and I have listened to all sides of it, and it seems to me that the debate comes down to what I would suggest are three critical areas. The first relates to the cost of the NBN. The second relates to the monopoly situation that is being created as part of this proposal. The third relates to the cost and benefit of it. I want to talk about each of those areas briefly. In respect of the cost: yes, of course the cost is substantial. This is a significant national project, and if you compare the cost of the NBN rollout to the cost of other significant national projects in years gone by, it is not unreasonable. From my recollection, we went through an extensive tender process to come up with the proposal that we have before us right now. For all of the criticism by the opposition, they have not been able to put forward a credible alternative policy that delivers the same service at a better cost. I am also pleased to see that the government—we heard this only an hour or so ago in this House—will be establishing a committee to oversee the NBN rollout process.
Finally, cost comparisons have been made with similar systems in other countries and the costs of rollouts in those countries. It is my view that you cannot properly compare what is required in Australia to what is required in another country. Issues such as population density, distance between cities and other unique Australian factors simply cannot be factored in such a way that you can get accurate comparisons to other countries. If it could be done cheaper, I am sure it would have been.
I turn to the question of monopoly and the criticism that this will create a monopoly for the NBN network. National infrastructure has quite often been owned by governments in a monopoly situation. It is not at all unusual for governments to do that. In fact, there are still many examples of government monopolies over key public infrastructure. For example, if you look at who owns much of the water systems, the electricity distribution systems, the gas distribution systems, the postal services and telecommunications of this country, you see that they are all essentially either federal or state government owned monopolies. Previously we also had the government involved in things like aviation and a whole range of other areas where today a monopoly no longer exists. The roads throughout this country are owned by the government.
So to suggest that there is something unusual and something wrong about a company being a monopoly owner of key government infrastructure is, I believe, a very flawed argument. In fact, more often than not it has taken a government to make the necessary investment and then in subsequent years, once the system is running, to sell off the asset to private investors.
The third matter I want to talk about is the cost-benefit analysis. Again, this is a matter that you can debate at length, and it is very, very difficult to come to any finite conclusion. It is extremely difficult to accurately assess the benefit that will accrue as a result of having a modern, high-speed national broadband network. Let me use a couple of examples. Recently, with respect to the floods in Queensland, I heard several speakers commenting on how important it was that people were able to communicate with one another at critical times during emergency situations. It was because of that communication that people perhaps were able to save lives. How do you ever put a value on a life saved as a result of having the communications ability that a modern national broadband network would be able to provide?
We know that the NBN system will be able to provide cost benefits for our health system throughout the country. There are proposals in hand which will ensure that a high-speed broadband service in this country will be of immense value to our medical system and our health system around the country. Again, if one life is saved as a result of that system, how do you put a value on that?
But, if you want to go to productivity gains, I do not think anyone in this House would deny that having a high-speed NBN around this country would generate millions and billions of dollars of productivity gains for this country. I do not think that is in dispute. The sooner we have the system up and running, the sooner we will be able to benefit from those gains.
Finally, with respect to the cost-benefit analysis, I say this: we still do not know today what the infrastructure that we are dealing with will be able to do for us in the future. The applications and the systems through which we will benefit are still evolving and, in some cases, perhaps have not even been thought out. So how do you value something like that? I do not believe you can. I believe that there are questions that we need to ask. What systems do we have available to us today? Is there a shortfall? I think the answer is yes. How do we best proceed to ensure that we have the most efficient system for this country as quickly as possible?’ I believe the proposal before us does exactly that. That is why I support it. I commend these bills to the House.
I rise to speak on the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 and cognate bill. I think it is interesting to construct the story about the cost of this huge white elephant. People sometimes get confused about ‘a million’ or ‘a billion’, but as I point out to people a million seconds is about 12 days but a billion seconds is about 34 years. So there is a lot of difference between a million and a billion. This legislation is proposing a $50 billion cost, which will end up being a cost to the Australian taxpayer. To put it in those terms, it is about $2½ thousand for every man, woman and child in Australia, whether or not you use the service. It is about $10,000 for the average family.
The Labor government’s broadband policy is to construct the National Broadband Network—or NBN, as we have come to know it. This will be a Commonwealth owned monopoly. The estimated completion date is 2021. I find it interesting that my friend over the other side, the member for Makin, suggested that they would do it as quickly as possible. Well, 2021 is hardly quick, Member for Makin. It is 10 years—and there is no guarantee that it will actually happen in that time.
Labor believe—and they keep telling us—that when the NBN is completed it will reach all of the nation’s 10 million homes and business. That is poppycock. Connectivity will be provided by fibre optic cable to 93 per cent of premises—but that does not mean that they will actually use the service—and by fixed wireless or satellite service to the remaining seven per cent of premises in regional and remote areas. Of course, that is where an electorate like mine, Barker, will come in. We will be a large part of that seven per cent. A large part of my electorate will be paying for a service, at $2½ thousand per person—man, woman and child—and they will not actually have access to that service. That is hardly fair. Labor’s stated objective is to ensure that 93 per cent of households have fibre to the home. That has become Labor’s so-called single solution and the end of the policy, when it should only be one of several possible means. It is also the least cost-effective available.
It is worth looking at the history of this National Broadband Network. I think colleagues on both sides would understand that at the 2007 election Labor promised a system for $4.7 billion—not $50 billion or $43 billion—and it was going to cover 98 per cent of Australia’s households. We said at the time—before the 2007 election—that that simply was not possible. And guess what? They got into government and after about a year they worked out that it was not possible. So, instead of saying, ‘We can’t do this for $4.7 billion and get 98 per cent of homes covered,’ they said, ‘We’ll have the big bang theory—$43 billion; we’ll go for a $43 billion system,’ even though most Australians, at the rate of five to one, are actually connecting up to wireless as we speak. That is the market. They are connecting to wireless, for the simple reason that those speeds are also increasing and it is far more flexible. More and more homes in Australia are not actually connecting to a telephone line; they are just using a simple handpiece, mobile phone or a dongle on their computer to get a wireless service, because they can take it anywhere and do not have to worry about a hooked-in line.
Fibre networks may be fine if you live in the city or if your business is in a built-up area, but the Labor government are selling this broadband plan to the whole of Australia and, realistically, not all of Australia will be connected to fibre—and they know that. Many of the residents in my electorate of Barker reside in areas that are considered black spots. The NBN will be of no use to these people. It will be of no use to the farmers in my electorate. It will of no use to the people who live in the smaller towns—of which there are many in my electorate. About 100 towns in my electorate will not be able to get fibre to the home, because they are considered too small—villages, perhaps. Most of these residents are already connected to the internet via a wireless service—which, interestingly, was brought about by subsidies that we brought forward when we were in government during the Howard government years. We did that on the basis of equity. We actually had a plan in 2007 that would have been completed by June 2009, and 99 per cent of Australians would have been covered. This government scrapped the OPEL plan and, as a result, we have still got a lot of people out there waiting for connections because there has been no replacement program.
I think it is very instructive to note that Dr Jay Guo, the leader of CSIRO’s Broadband for Australia research theme, says that wireless is eminently suited for regional Australia—I believe so; I have got it at home—since it can be rolled out more quickly and cheaply than the fibre network. As I said, in many places in my electorate they will never have that fibre service—not in my lifetime. Dr Guo said:
In terms of the cost to cover rural regional areas, especially given the fact that most rural regional areas have sparse populations, the wireless solution will be much cheaper.
This is exactly what the coalition had planned. We were not one-eyed when we developed our policy. We looked at what would be most effective and, more importantly, what would be cost effective.
More and more people are using mobile devices. You only have to look around this chamber. Everyone has at least two—and maybe three or four—electronic devices, such as personal computers, smartphones and iPad style tablets. Those are predicted to outsell traditional PCs this year, for the first time. Let us just think about that fact for a minute. In 2011 we are faced with facts suggesting that wireless style computing devices are going to outsell fixed devices, and that trend is growing. Yet the Labor government thinks it is a good idea to push ahead with a fixed-line monopoly that will not be completed for another 10 years.
I cannot begin to fathom why the government would still continue with the National Broadband Network. I am concerned for the residents of Barker, who will be paying for a network for years to come that, on completion, will be outdated and hugely expensive. How can this government present a model such as NBN and promise speeds and advances in technology in 2011 but then tell everyone that it will not be rolled out completely for another 10 years? This solution might be up to date right now, but let us be honest: what are the chances that this model will still be relevant in 10 years time? I would not bet on those chances.
Interestingly enough, Telstra unveiled its newest 4G technology. This will be a significant upgrade to its mobile network that will allow users to obtain speeds similar to home ADSL broadband connections while on the go. This will boost mobile internet speeds in capital cities and some regional areas by the end of the year—not in 10 years time but by the end of this year.
The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, is confident that Telstra’s new technology will not interfere with his fibre-optic plan. He said, ‘Wireless is an important complementary technology to fibre.’ It is complementary, but it is more than that; it is actually taking over. The minister has said that wireless is important; so why has he forgotten all about wireless when developing the NBN policy? Why has he presented this inferior model for the NBN that does not utilise the best technology, which is changing every day?
The technology used in the NBN is not the only problem; it is one of many. The cost is a huge concern. It concerns me, and the rest of Australia should be concerned also. The government estimates that NBN Co. will require around $27 billion in equity funding and will need to borrow a further $10 billion to roll out the network. This $27 billion in equity funding has not been forthcoming. Nobody is putting their hand up and saying, ‘We want to invest in this. We think it’s a goer. We think people would be prepared to pay $200 a month.’ They are not coming the way of the government. If they do not, who is going to pay for it? The taxpayer.
If the NBN Co.-Telstra deal currently under negotiation goes ahead, NBN Co. and the government—hence the Australian taxpayer—will make payments to Telstra worth $11 billion in present-day post-tax terms for the use of its conduits and migration of its customers. The commonly used $50 billion price tag for the NBN adds these together: equity, debt and payments to Telstra. The head of NBN Co., Mike Quigley, has been quoted in CommsDay acknowledging that his construction budget is under pressure from the skills shortage, which has been made worse by the demand for skilled labour to clean up the damage caused by the storms and floods in Queensland. Mr Quigley said:
… we’ve done a detailed analysis of the skills we need in the company in order to build the network … there is a straight issue of will there be enough people to do this type of work in the construction industry? What I can tell you is that the view of the company won’t be such that we will just keep building regardless of the cost—if we find that costs are going up regardless of labor, we will go back to the shareholder and talk about that very carefully …
The shareholder will be the Australian taxpayer. In other words the NBN chief is saying that, if labour shortages mean his construction cost estimates are going to blow out, he will go back to government to get an okay to proceed at a higher cost or, alternatively, slow down construction until labour shortages have eased.
It beggars belief that a government could proceed with the NBN when the cost blow-outs have already made this an outrageously expensive rollout of technology that is very likely to be outdated before it is completed. What sort of arrogant government digs its head in the sand whilst the alarm bells are ringing? Taxpayers have every reason to be worried, as am I, that these problems are a sign of things to come with the NBN. Going by Labor’s track record of ‘easier to beg forgiveness later’, the NBN cost blow-outs could be massive. Will Labor just wait till the project is half rolled out then ask for more money from taxpayers to finish it, essentially giving them no choice in the matter?
I have seen this previously with the Labor government, in schools in Barker affected by Labor’s flawed Building the Education Revolution program. One school in particular had their hall ripped down and half rebuilt before they were told they would need to find half a million dollars of their own money to finish it. This government expected a drought ravaged town struggling to survive to come up with its shortfall. This ruthless government has exercised this sort of careless behaviour in the past; the NBN will be no different. As the price rises, so will the cost for taxpayers.
The problem with the NBN is that the government has kept it secret. Taxpayers should be concerned when a government refuses to let a huge, costly project go under the microscope. Only 160 pages of the 400-page NBN Co. business plan were made public. This is very concerning in itself. Then the government asked MPs who viewed the whole business case to sign confidentiality agreements. This is outrageous. It is deeply concerning. Australia has the right to know what is in those pages. You would not invest in shares without studying their performance and you would not buy a house without looking at the plans, so why is this government asking the Australian taxpayer to fund a $50 billion broadband model that they have no proper details about?
The bills before us today attempts to prevent the NBN from being scrutinised by the Public Works Committee Act 1969. Since 1988 all major government infrastructure projects have been subject to joint parliamentary committees, so why not this one? What have Labor got to hide? This is the first time to my knowledge that such a major project, the greatest project in cost of any government outlook in the future, is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Labor, you should hang your heads in shame.
in reply—I believe that the people who are opposing this bill and opposing the National Broadband Network should indeed hang their heads in shame. We have known for years that those opposite had countless plans—perhaps 20—which amounted to us being in the position of falling behind the rest of the world.
As government speakers have made clear, the NBN will provide broadband infrastructure to underpin productivity, prosperity and creativity into the future. Even opposition members have agreed that there is a need for much improved broadband services, noting a litany of poorly served areas. These bills ensure that NBN Co. delivers key objectives. Together the NBN companies bill and NBN access arrangements bill will ensure that the NBN operates on a wholesale-only, open and equivalent access basis, both now and into the future, subject to strict ACCC oversight.
Under this legislation there is transparency of the services NBN Co. provides and the terms and conditions on which it offers them. As a wholesale-only, open access network and without the conflicts that occur with also having a downstream retail operation, the NBN will drive fair and effective retail-level competition in the telecommunications sector across the country. It will mean more choice, more affordable prices and higher quality services for Australian households and businesses. Industry is crying out for this legislation to ensure NBN Co. adheres to the mandate the government has set it and to provide for its future operations.
The bills provide a clear framework for the operation of a superfast universal national broadband network with genuine retail-level competition for the first time across the country. In fact the bills are an important part of this government’s plan to transform the industry and provide genuine access to vastly improved broadband services across Australia. This is about advancing the future agenda in the national interest. Passage of these bills will ensure the new arrangements are in place as soon as possible, providing certainty for NBN Co., certainty for industry and certainty for the community. I commend the bills to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.
Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.
Before I seek leave to move the opposition amendments, I want to say something for the benefit of the Leader of the House. Given that the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network is inquiring into the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010, the intention tonight is to debate the amendments but not, considering the hour, to delay the House by seeking to divide on any amendments. There is one exception: the freedom of information amendment to be moved by the Greens. It may make sense to deal with that at the very end, because that will take us past eight o’clock. Is that—
Yes.
Yes, the member for Melbourne is comfortable with that—very good. I seek leave to move amendments (1) to (4) and (8) to (15) together.
Leave granted.
I move:
(1) Clause 3, page 3 (lines 8 to 22), omit paragraph (1)(b).
(2) Clause 4, page 5 (lines 9 to 26), omit the dot points.
(3) Clause 5, page 7 (line 2), omit the definition of Commonwealth ownership provisions.
(4) Clause 5, page 7 (lines 14 to 16), omit the definitions of declared pre-termination period and declared sale deferral period.
(8) Clause 43, page 37 (lines 5 to 22), omit the dot points.
(9) Subdivision A of Division 2 of Part 3, page 38 (line 3) to page 39 (line 5), omit the Subdivision.
(10) Heading to Subdivision B of Division 2 of Part 3, page 39 (lines 6 and 7), omit the heading, substitute:
Subdivision B—Productivity Commission Inquiry
(11) Clauses 47 and 48, page 39 (line 8) to page 41 (line 16), omit the clauses.
(12) Clause 49, page 41 (lines 19 to 22), omit subclause (1), substitute:
(1) This section applies if it is proposed to enter into an NBN Co sale scheme and there has not been a previous reference to the Productivity Commission under this section.
(13) Clauses 50 and 51, page 44 (line 14) to page 46 (line 4), omit the clauses.
(14) Clause 52, page 46 (lines 10 and 11), omit “unless the Commonwealth ownership provisions have ceased to have effect”, substitute “until 15 sitting days after the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Ownership of NBN Co has reported to both Houses of the Parliament”.
(15) Clause 53, page 46 (lines 16 and 17), omit “unless the Commonwealth ownership provisions have ceased to have effect under section 51”, substitute “until the completion of 15 sittting days after the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Ownership of NBN Co has reported to both Houses of the Parliament, under paragraph 3(1)(b) of Schedule 2, on the Committee’s examination of the report of the Productivity Commission inquiry mentioned in section 49”.
These amendments all deal with the provisions in the bill that are designed to make it almost impossible for the Commonwealth to sell the NBN. Essentially, the bill currently provides that the NBN cannot be sold until it is complete. That will take many years, and it may be that no government will complete the NBN. Indeed, the general view in the telecommunications industry is that this project is so misconceived and so expensive in terms of the required capital investment that it will never be completed. Tying the hands of future governments in this way is simply not good practice. We seek to delete those provisions in the bill that seek to tie the Commonwealth’s hands. In so doing, we seek to eliminate the attempt by the government and the Greens to make this massive government-owned monopoly be permanently and perpetually in government ownership.
The simple reality is that Australia does not need another massive government-owned telecommunications monopoly. We had one of those—it was called Telstra. Before that, it was called Telecom. Before that, it was the Postmaster General’s Department or a division thereof.
PMG.
PMG—exactly. A very good decision was taken to privatise it, and now the government is seeking not only to turn back the clock but also to make it practically impossible for this new government-owned monopoly to be disposed of. We note that there is a proposal to have a Productivity Commission inquiry prior to any sale, assuming that the network has been completed. It is remarkable that the government would agree to have a Productivity Commission inquiry into the sale of a $50 billion investment but not to have a Productivity Commission inquiry into whether it should be established in the first place. But this is just one of many incongruities that we see in the government’s approach to this matter. That is the first set of opposition amendments and it relates, as I said, to the Commonwealth ownership provisions.
The government does not support these amendments. Under part 3 of the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010, NBN Co. cannot be privatised until five clear steps have been taken. First, the communications minister must declare that the NBN is built and fully operational; second, the Productivity Commission must conduct an inquiry into the NBN; third, a parliamentary joint committee on the ownership of NBN Co. must examine the Productivity Commission’s report; fourth, the finance minister must declare that conditions are suitable for entering into and carrying out an NBN Co. sale scheme; and, fifth, it must be the case that the parliament does not disallow the finance minister’s declaration.
It is very clear that the retention of NBN Co. in public ownership until the network is complete and operational is designed to ensure that the network can be rolled out consistent with the government’s objectives and as recommended by the implementation study. The effect of the coalition’s amendments would be that a future government could sell NBN Co. at any time, even if only a small part of it had been built. As such, the coalition amendments would jeopardise the rollout of the NBN as a national network providing new broadband infrastructure to all Australians.
It is not surprising that the ideological free marketeers opposite want to repeat the mistakes they made with Telstra. We know that, when Telstra was privatised, it went from being a public institution to being a privatised monopoly with consequential negative impacts on consumers. Most importantly, we know that because the structural separation question was not addressed by those opposite when they were in government there was a failure of public policy that had to be fixed up by this government when we passed legislation dealing with the question at the end of last year.
The opposition is proposing amendments that also remove the right of a future parliament to disallow any sale. But this government considers that a sale decision would be best made in the future by the government and the parliament of the day. The amendments do retain both a Productivity Commission inquiry and a joint parliamentary committee inquiry on ownership of NBN Co., but the amendments do nothing more than pay lip service to them.
The amendments would allow a future coalition government to sell NBN Co. regardless of what the commission and joint parliamentary committee decide. The main purpose of the amendments is simply to enable a future coalition government to sell NBN Co. as quickly as possible, regardless of the needs of regional and rural Australians and the public benefit from restructuring the telecommunications market. That is why the government simply does not support these amendments.
We need to move forward in a positive way towards the future; not to look backwards at the mistakes of the past and repeat them. But those opposite are ideologically opposed to the idea that the government should address market failure, which is what we have seen in the telecommunications sector. We have seen market failure in practice, with 20 failed plans and a lack of services, particularly impacting on regional Australia. So the government will not support these amendments and, indeed, is strongly opposed to them. We say to the opposition: it is one thing to make mistakes in government—and they were made time and time again and reinforced by the coalition when in office—it is another thing not to have the capacity to step back, examine the consequences of those mistakes and concede that they were indeed mistakes and should not be repeated in the future. The government opposes these amendments.
Certainly, the coalition very much supports action in telecommunications where there is market failure. But the reality is that so much of the money expended in this project is going to be in areas where there is no market failure and where there are other, cheaper alternatives.
Let me return to the substance of the amendments in relation to the coalition’s view that it is not the role of government to hold this project in perpetuity and that we should not make it more difficult than need be to achieve a sell-off of this project. It is vitally important that we get a highly efficient and highly effective telecommunications system. History has shown that government as the owner has not been particularly effective in running business enterprises. That is clearly done more efficiently and effectively by the private sector.
It seems astounding that we are going to have a situation where there is a Productivity Commission investigation with regard to the sale of this project when we were denied a Productivity Commission investigation into the viability and important aspects of the business itself. It just seems absolutely unreasonable that you would propose to give the Productivity Commission input into the sale and yet not give the Productivity Commission input into the actual proposal itself.
I find it absolutely laughable that those opposite come in here and want to make it easier to privatise NBN Co. As the minister has said, there is one group of people in this parliament you should never take advice from when selling a telco—it is those opposite. There is one group who wrote the playbook on how not to do it—it is those opposite.
With these amendments they want to remove the very sensible protections that we have decided to put in there to make sure that a national piece of utility infrastructure is sold down in the national interest. The provisions in this bill will ensure that the government plays an important role in the sale when the government does sell down its interest.
The important issue is that we step away when the environment is right. The steps in this assessment include reference to the Productivity Commission. What a paradox it is indeed that those opposite are so ready to call on the Productivity Commission to prevent it from being built but then they do not want to call on the Productivity Commission to make sure that it is sold properly. These people want to reject assessments by the Productivity Commission, they want to reject parliamentary committee recommendations and they want to reject the ability for the minister to actually make an informed decision at the time of the sale to determine whether or not a sale is appropriate. Most importantly, the finance minister will need to declare—and there is a very strict process that is set out in the bill for the finance minister to declare—that favourable market conditions exist for a sale. How sensible is that? It is eminently sensible to ensure that when the sale is done it is done properly, it is done in the national interest and it does not adversely affect the national interest.
This is critical because there is the ability within this bill to ensure that the government can determine what is an unacceptable ownership or control situation. It is a very important constraint on the ownership of NBN Co. Again, these provisions reflect the government’s intention that NBN Co. be a national piece of utility infrastructure. We have heard the other side talk about what prudent investors would do in certain situations, but no prudent legislature would ensure its biggest piece of national utility infrastructure be privatised without considering the potential future of the industry. That is exactly what did not happen in the T2 and T3 sales.
In this process we are doing a very important thing in considering the role of government early in the process, and in the latter stages the role of the private sector. It is a well thought out plan which is documented in this bill before us. These are absolutely necessary protections to prevent what the coalition did to Telstra, the most productive outcome of which was to split the telco act into two and not much else. The most productive thing it did was to create more paper and split one telecommunications act into two.
These provisions will ensure that the selldown process is done in a managed way. It will ensure that it is done in a manner that reflects prudent investment and prudent financial judgment, and I urge all members present to reject the amendments that have been put before us, because they will simply repeat the mistakes of the past.
I want to respond to some of these points. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport demonstrated touching concern for the plight of regional and rural Australia and broadband services therein and said that there had been failed schemes. One scheme that failed to take effect was the OPEL scheme that was established by the previous government. That scheme would have delivered fast broadband services to regional Australia. That scheme was fully funded and was abandoned by the Rudd government immediately on coming into government. The melancholy truth is that people in regional and rural Australia would have access to broadband now if the Howard government’s plan for broadband services had been allowed to go forward.
Let me respond to the member for Greenway, who said that the only consequence of the privatisation of Telstra was the production of a lot of paper. Presumably, some of that paper was produced by the legal profession, which did very well with Telstra. She was a distinguished member of that noble profession. Her denigration of the sale of Telstra is a little unconvincing on that ground.
In a nutshell, without going through these amendments in the finest detail, they simply remove the obligation for the National Broadband Network to be completed before it is sold. That is the major amendment. The member for Greenway said it was a good idea to legislate that the finance minister says that circumstances are propitious for a sale. That is like legislating for ministers to do their duty. Obviously, no government—of any persuasion, one would hope—would sell a major asset other than when conditions were suitable for a sale.
If our amendments are accepted, there will remain a provision for a Productivity Commission inquiry to be held into the sale and for consideration by the joint parliamentary committee. This is not a question of parliament being, if you like, prevented from having oversight of the process. Our amendments would prevent this parliament from binding the hands of many future parliaments, because this network will take many years—perhaps many decades—to complete. This network cannot be sold until such time as it is complete. The provisions we are seeking to delete are effectively the poisoned pill designed to make it virtually impossible for the NBN ever to be sold.
The reality is that we are a free market economy. We have had a lot of lectures in the context of climate change from the Prime Minister about the virtues of the market, the law of supply and demand and the benefits of taking market approaches to measures. She is not very consistent, because this is an area where for decades there was a common commitment to getting government out and getting competition into the sector. What we have here is government going back into it at a level of investment that is staggering. We should remember that, for considerably less than the total amount of the investment in the NBN, the government could actually buy Telstra at its current market price. I am not suggesting that it should renationalise Telstra, but it gives you some idea of the scale of investment.
Ms Rowland interjecting
You could have a complete integrated telecommunications company with mobile, broadband and retail for a lot less than they are spending on the NBN. The member for Greenway says it is a great idea. Maybe that is something you can submit to a cost-benefit analysis. We commend these amendments to the House.
It is sad when you see great people forced to do things that deep down they just do not believe in. I will give the member for Wentworth credit: there is panache in the way he does it and it is inspiring. In many respects it is greatly disappointing. I love the fascination with a cost-benefit analysis. It was reflected upon earlier by the Leader of the House that the water plan that the member for Wentworth had responsibility for never had a cost-benefit analysis. It was $10 billion and a cost-benefit analysis was never called for, never sought, and never put in place by them.
When the member for Wentworth mentioned OPEL, it brought to my attention Henry Ergas, who the opposition have quite a deal of enjoyment quoting to us from time to time. In his book Wrong number: resolving Australia’s telecommunications impasse he talks about how almost $4 million through your 11 years in government was spent addressing telecommunications issues in regional areas. I do not know that at any point at that stage the opposition called for a cost-benefit analysis.
None.
Right, member for Greenway. There were other claims made during the debate too. Let me go back and quote directly from Wrong number: resolving Australia’s telecommunications impasse:
Since 1997, over $3 billion, at 2007 prices, of taxpayers’ money has been appropriated to schemes aimed at promoting the availability or use of telecommunications, mainly in non-metro areas. In mid-2007 the government committed a further $958 million to the Optus-Elders OPEL consortium for the construction of a WiMAX network in non-metro areas.
I do not know where the cost-benefit analysis was. I would be more than happy for anyone opposite to point out where that actually was.
There were some other outstanding claims. For example, the member for Wentworth said that people in the sector believe this may not ever happen, that the NBN may not ever get built. One, I would love to hear where he is quoting that from and, two, if it is the case, how come we have got over 30 construction companies lining up ready to participate in the build, ready to put people on to make this happen? Again he has no proof and no ability to back it up. He just puts a statement up.
The other thing too is the whole notion of the scare campaign on the monopoly. The fact of the matter is that we needed to get into this space due to the failure previously to be able to address the market failure because, effectively, we had what I would liken to a hundred year war between Telstra and regulators: Telstra saying that it would not invest unless it got a return rate that would see prices at a level that consumers would not bear, and the government of the day refusing to allow for Telstra to do this. We had a system where there was no investment in broadband because Telstra was—and I know this sounds hard for people in this chamber to believe—playing hardball against regulators, against government and against anyone that did not want to play by the ground rules set by Telstra. That is why I shuddered when the member for Wentworth was suggesting for that moment that we could almost buy Telstra back. I do not know whether you would want to buy them back in a million years.
There is a reason we got to this place, and the member for Bradfield quoted this back on 23 February. He was wondering why we went from a $4.7 billion plan to what we have now. You know exactly why: you had the strategic genius of the entrepreneur Sol Trujillo, backed up by Don McGauchie, whose great contribution to HR in this country was alsatians on the docks, saying, ‘We’ll put in a five-page tender and that is all we will do in relation to a multibillion-dollar program,’ and it was clear that the major telecommunications company in this country was not prepared to play ball on broadband. Optus could not foot the bill, Telstra was not ready to play, so we basically had the position put where we needed to move into this space and do so in a big way. They know exactly why this is the case.
And if we are in this area, we need to provide stability and certainty for the construction phase and at the proper point go to sale, unlike the situation before, where it was a grab for cash by the opposition. It failed to go through the issue of structural separation, which we have had the courage to undertake in government and then to ensure that the NBN is in a position to be let loose in the market at that point. What these guys are playing with they know is unsustainable. (Time expired)
Question negatived.
I move opposition amendment (5):
(5) Clause 9, page 15 (lines 4 to 8), omit the clause, substitute:
9 Supply of eligible services to be on wholesale basis
(1) An NBN corporation must not supply an eligible service to another person unless the other person:
(a) is a carrier or a service provider; and
(b) will use the eligible service to supply a carriage service or a content service to the public.
(2) For this section, a service is supplied to the public if:
(a) it is used for the carriage of communications between 2 end-users, each of which is outside the immediate circle of the supplier of the service; or
(b) it is used for point-to-multipoint services to end users, at least one of which is outside the immediate circle of the supplier of the service.
(3) In this section:
immediate circle has the meaning given by section 23 of the Telecommunications Act 1997.
This amendment deals with the issue of the supply of services by the NBN. I encourage the honourable members opposite not to be reactive and Pavlovian in their response here and immediately reject what I am putting to them.
Automatically opposing is—
Okay, thank you. Steady on! It is common ground that the NBN should be a wholesale entity—that is apparently part of the scheme—and should not be able to go into the retail space. That is the big idea, as they say. Unfortunately, this is not perfectly achieved, because we have in this bill too many loopholes to enable the NBN—and this is something a number of the telcos have alerted the Senate committee to—to provide services directly to companies who could, as has been pointed out by a number of the telcos, very readily acquire a carrier licence. A bank could do that, or Woolworths or any other large corporation could acquire a licence.
So why is that a problem? It is a problem because, firstly, the object, as we understand it, is that this will be a purely wholesale business. Secondly, we know that the NBN is a very expensive undertaking. It is going to be very heavily capitalised—we say excessively capitalised—but there will be an incredible pressure on it to generate additional revenues. That is inevitable, and that will apply whether the government of the day is Labor or Liberal or whatever; it does not matter. The finance department, the Treasury, will be saying, ‘You have got to find some more cash for us.’ So the natural temptation for the NBN will be to move upstream into retail services. There will be plenty of big companies saying: ‘Look, we don’t want to deal with the middleman. We do not want to deal with Telstra. We just want to do a deal with you.’ There is too much opportunity in the legislation at the moment to enable the NBN to get around that.
So what we are proposing here in amendment (5), in clause 9, is really a belt-and-braces provision to delete that clause which simply says that you cannot supply services to somebody unless they are a carrier or a service provider. It is very easy for a company to get a licence to be a carrier or a service provider and then just provide services to itself. We propose that this be fleshed out so that it says:
Then there is a further fleshed out definition of ‘the public’. I believe that is a critically important amendment and one that has the support of a whole series of players in the industry, both Telstra and Optus and a number of the other carriers. It really is quite consistent with the objects of the legislation and I would encourage the government, and indeed the crossbenchers, to consider this very carefully. It is quite consistent with the objectives of the act.
The government does not support opposition amendment (5). The National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 as drafted makes NBN Co. a wholesale-only provider. The mechanism it uses is a restriction on selling to any party other than a carrier or carriage service provider or specified utility. The proposed amendment puts a further restriction on the parties NBN Co. can supply. It leaves the requirement that NBN Co. supply only carriers or carriage service providers but only those carriers or carriage service providers that, in turn, provide a service to the public.
A couple of points can be made in response to this. First, NBN Co. will only supply a service that by its nature is a wholesale service—for example, a layer 2 service on the fibre network. This is not a service that can be used by an end user as considerable resources and capability is required in order to turn a layer 2 service into an end-user or retail service. Secondly, the restriction proposed by the opposition would prevent an arrangement that has been permitted by the legislation since 1997 that a person can become a carrier even if that person wishes to supply services primarily to his or her own operations. The opposition amendment is poorly drafted and has the effect of preventing service providers from reselling services to other service providers, which I am advised is a common arrangement. For these reasons, the government does not support this amendment.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on opposition amendment (5) because I think it is important that proper commercial activity is protected from mission creep by this massive monolith that the government has created. It is an organisation that is being protected from competition in a range of ways. I think it is important that we put in place the sorts of protection that would ensure that NBN Co. does not creep its way into providing retail services by stealth. It has certainly been represented to me by people in the industry that they are very concerned about that prospect. Also, when you look at the new exemption with regard to utilities, once again we see a situation where a service that could be provided by a range of other persons or corporations active in the industry may be usurped by the sale by NBN Co. direct to utilities. So I certainly speak in support of this amendment. I certainly reject the notions put forward by the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport that it is not an appropriate amendment. I think it is one that the House should support.
In response to the remarks of the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, I am not sure whether the notes relate to another set of amendments but the point here is a very basic one. In Telstra’s submission to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee—and I do not agree with all of its submission but I do agree with this part of it—the point is made:
… nothing in section 9 requires that the fundamental characteristic of wholesale supply—participation in retail end-user markets via on-supply to the public—be present at all.
The key problem—
as its submission goes on—
is that statutory concepts of “carrier” and “carriage service provider” are … ill-suited to the important task of defining NBN Co’s scope of business.
There are a large number of licensed carriers who do not provide services to the public but hold carrier licences for other reasons. The Telstra submission goes on to point out:
There are a number of large entities that are already carriers or CSPs, and who could therefore be directly supplied by NBN Co under the proposed draft. For example, the current TIO membership (of which a CSP must be a member) includes:
The simple fact of the matter is that everybody in business, if they can manage it, would like to cut out the middleman. They will see the retail service providers—the private sector part of the telecommunications industry in this NBN world, if we get to it—as troublesome middlemen that they will not want to deal with, and we will discuss that further in the next amendment. The consequence will be that NBN, acting quite rationally in terms of its own commercial objectives, will creep further and further into the province of the retail service providers. What we will see is the gradual evolution of the NBN from being originally a wholesale carriage provider to becoming a wholesale carriage provider with a large retail, government and corporate business. In other words, the only part of the retail telecommunications business that it will not be undertaking is that to residential and small businesses. But all of the larger customers will be eligible for assault from NBN.
I make one other point. A company may become a carrier for the purpose of this—so eligible to be sold to by a carriage service provider, eligible to be dealt with by the NBN under this clause, simply because it is in the business of supplying telecommunications services of a completely different kind as part of its business. It might be a mobile reseller, for example. So there is a huge scope for the NBN to puncture through the limitations that, supposedly, the government wants to set up around it. This is going to become a telecommunications equivalent of Frankenstein. It will literally take over large sections of the telecommunications business in Australia and it will do so unfairly and unjustly because it benefits from a massive subsidy from the government. Remember that there is no level playing field between the NBN and anybody else because it has access to unlimited funds with no commercial or even realistic return on the capital expected.
This is a shocking invasion of the private sector, a shocking incursion on competition, and, if the government is serious about NBN being wholesale only, it should support this amendment, which, as I said, has broad support within the telecommunications sector.
Question negatived.
I move opposition amendment (6):
(6) Clauses 10 to 16, page 15 (line 9) to page 17 (line 32), omit the clauses.
These clauses are just below the previous area of amendment I referred to. These provide express exemptions from the already sieve like restriction on the supply of eligible services referred to in clause 9. These provide complete exemptions in respect of a series of utilities. In other words, transport services, electricity supply bodies, gas supply bodies, water supply bodies, sewerage bodies, stormwater drainage services and road authorities can all deal directly with the NBN. So, for exactly the same reasons I articulated earlier, we are seeking to make that amendment in order to reinforce the importance of the wholesale-only nature of the NBN.
The utilities are very keen on these amendments of course, and what is interesting is that they are keen on them because, they say quite bluntly, they do not want to deal with the middleman. That is their language, literally. They see the RSPs—that is, Telstra, Optus and others—as being unnecessary, troublesome middlemen. The problem with that is, once you provide an exemption of that kind for these utilities, why shouldn’t any other large entity be able to have it?
The member for Chifley is shaking his head, and I know what he is going to say—that these services would only be used for providing smart grids. There are two points there. The provision of machine-to-machine telecommunications services is probably going to be the fastest growing area of telecommunications over the next few years. It will not be too long before most devices and most machines are connected to each other, and many of them, naturally—particularly those that are mobile—will be connected wirelessly. Nonetheless, that is a legitimate area of the telecommunications industry to be engaged in. These exemptions will have the effect of taking that away from the private sector in large measure and giving it to the exclusive preserve of the NBN. The simple fact is that we understand why Energy Australia, AGL or Sydney Water would rather not deal with a middleman. They would rather buy wholesale services directly from NBN. We understand that. But, in allowing them to do that, the government is seizing even more of the territory of the existing private sector telecommunications companies. It is for that reason—and it is exactly the same principle that I described earlier in respect of amendment (5)—that this amendment should be supported.
I perfectly respect the interests of the utilities, wanting to have the legislation drafted in a way that protects their commercial interests. But the House must remember that the object of the NBN, so we were told, was to provide a wholesale-only, common carrier that did not provide retail services and did not compete at the retail level with the private sector. Yet, both in the loopholes in clause 9 and now in these provisions, clauses 10 to 16, that we are seeking to excise, we are seeing a great opportunity for NBN to take over that part of the private sector’s business.
The government does not support this amendment. The general rule is that NBN Co. can supply only carriers and carriage service providers, but NBN Co. can also supply to specified utilities, for limited purposes.
There are three reasons why we need to permit supply to utilities in this legislation and therefore should not support an amendment deleting those clauses. Firstly, under existing legislation, utilities can do things that would otherwise make them carriers or carriage service providers without being classified as carriers and carriage services providers under the Telecommunications Act. The bill simply seeks to allow NBN Co. to treat them as carriers and carriage service providers when it comes to the supply of services. Secondly, these arrangements will support the growth of smart infrastructure management in Australia, including smart management of energy supply. A very important component of the future productivity growth of this nation is the development of smart infrastructure. Thirdly, it puts pressure on telcos to provide utilities with the services that they need.
The bill imposes tight limitations on the way the utilities use NBN Co. sourced services. They must use them for the sole purpose of carrying communications necessary to monitor and administer their own networks. Utilities cannot use these services to provide retail services to end users. Utilities and transport authorities will still need to purchase normal communications services, like telephony or broadband internet, from retail providers. Services that NBN Co. make available to utilities should also be available to other carriers and carriage service providers, and they could offer these to utilities if they wished.
This amendment moved by the member for Wentworth would deprive utilities of the benefit of arrangements they have now as well as undermine efforts to develop smart infrastructure and reduce incentives for carriers. That is the reason why the government does not support these amendments.
I do not know whether the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport has been sold a pup, because quite a large pup has been sold to the Greens—which we will come to later. What he just said to the House is absurd, frankly. The utilities have been quite clear about what they are seeking to achieve. The Energy Networks Association, in their submission of 24 February to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, said:
Even if retail service providers do offer an appropriate NBN service type, the requirement to deal through a third party would add additional costs, without adding value.
That is no more than saying, ‘I always prefer to buy wholesale; I do not want to deal with the retailer.’ On that basis the NBN will dominate totally all of the government and large corporate telecommunications business in Australia. Again, I do not know whether the government has been sold a pup on this by the department or by the energy and utilities sector, but there is no limitation on what utilities can do. They obviously cannot resell the telecommunications services to the public unless they have a carrier licence, but if they do have a carrier licence they are entitled to. In terms of their own services, consider clause 11, which deals with electricity supply bodies. It says that the prohibition on providing services to persons other than carriers does not apply if:
… the sole use of the carriage service is an electricity supply body to carry communications necessary or desirable for:
(i) managing the generation, transmission, distribution or supply of electricity; or
(ii) charging for the supply of electricity …
What else does an energy supply company do? That describes the entirety of its business. It manages the generation, transmission, distribution or supply of electricity and it charges for it. Literally everything it does is for that purpose. I challenge honourable members on the other side to tell me and the House a function of an electricity utility that is not covered by those general words. I cannot think of one. It covers the entirety of their operations and the same language is there in clause 12 for gas utilities, clause 13 for water utilities and so forth.
With respect to the honourable minister, this is an exemption that will basically mean that there will no longer be any fixed line telecommunications services provided to any of these utilities in Australia other than by the NBN. All of the corporate and utility business of Telstra, Optus and other providers will be gone. The NBN, because it has the benefit of this enormous government subsidy, will be able to undercut anybody else. It will have the dominant if not monopoly fixed line infrastructure and it will take over that business. If the government seriously believes what the minister just said, it has been deluded, conned or misled.
I recognise that we are not going to divide on this amendment tonight, but this is something that I would commend to the government and the Senate committee to reflect on very deeply. I listened very carefully to what the minister said and if the object that he sought to achieve in this bill was as he described, that object is not there. He has been sold a pup.
Question negatived.
I move opposition amendment (7):
(7) Clause 41, page 35 (after line 30), insert:
(3A) An NBN corporation must not supply an eligible service that is higher than Layer 2 in the Open System Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model.
This can be dealt with fairly quickly because we are talking about the same issues. This refers to the layer 2 bit stream service. We are proposing here that, on page 35 of the bill, in clause 41, a new subsection is added which provides at 3A that an NBN corporation must not supply an eligible service that is higher than layer 2 in the OSI reference model. This is designed to ensure that NBN does not creep up into higher value added services, creep up the value chain, if you like, and depart from what is said to be its objective as a provider of that layer 2 service.
This is a fairly technical area. I will not say any more about it simply because I know there has been quite a lot of correspondence between the government and the telcos and I think this section is probably in the stage of tentative amendment following those discussions. It is probably a matter that will be dealt with in the Senate committee. The bottom line is once again that this is a massive, highly capitalised government monopoly. The government has said it is to be wholesale only and it is to be like the freeway on which the retail service providers will be able to run their electronic buses, trucks, cars and trains and so forth.
This amendment is needed, just as the other amendments were, to ensure that the wholesale-only freeway does not start to get into the retail carriage business. I hope that I have demonstrated to the House that there is ample scope for it to do so under the bill as it is currently drafted and that this restriction here is effectively some legislative belt and braces to ensure that it does not escape the bounds that we are seeking to set for it.
The government does not support this amendment. NBN Co.’s corporate plan and the government’s statement of expectations very clearly set out that NBN Co. will operate at layer 2 of the network stack, but, for very good reason, the bill does not include that restriction. The government is reluctant to include technology specific limitations on NBN Co. unless and until there is a demonstrated need to do so. An inflexible rule could be counterproductive in terms of the services provided to customers. That was recognised by Telstra in its submission to the Senate committee that is examining the bills that the member for Wentworth referred to.
Once the market situation is clearer, and should such certainty be required, clause 41 of the bill provides for the minister to make licence conditions on what services NBN Co. must or must not supply. With suitable carve-outs, a restriction of the type contemplated by this amendment would most appropriately be dealt with by a carrier licence condition, if the need arises. For that reason the government will not be supporting this amendment.
Question negatived.
I move now to my amendments (16) and (17).
Are you going to do (18) and (19)?
No. In fact, because we will divide on (17) I will just deal with that one now. Accordingly, I move opposition amendment (17):
(17) After clause 96, page 79 (after line 15), insert:
96A Freedom of Information Act
NBN Co is taken to be a prescribed authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 1982.
This amendment is designed to make the NBN Co. a prescribed authority for the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act 1982. I will speak in apprehension of the amendment coming from the Greens, which, regrettably, is one where the Greens have been sold a big pup by the government.
Initially the Greens were proposing to move the same amendment that we describe here. This would have had the effect of bringing the NBN under the ambit of section 9 of the Freedom of Information Act, so it would then be an agency within the meaning of that act and would be subject to that act. This does not mean that every document of the NBN could, willy-nilly, be produced. The NBN would then be able to claim exemption under part IV of the Freedom of Information Act, including section 42, ‘Documents subject to legal professional privilege’; section 46, ‘Documents disclosure of which would be contempt of parliament or contempt of court’; section 45, ‘Documents containing material obtained in confidence’; and section 47, ‘Documents disclosing trade secrets or commercially valuable information’. It is absolutely critical that the NBN is thoroughly accountable in this regard.
Unfortunately, the amendment that the Greens will propose shortly—and the House may consider this in some detail when they propose it—has the effect of making the NBN completely immune in practical terms from the Freedom of Information Act. The Greens amendment, which I understand the government has persuaded them to put up, has the effect of making exempt all documents of the NBN which can be described as being ‘in relation to its commercial activities’. Given that the NBN is a business, it has no activities which are other than commercial. The words ‘in relation to’ have been construed by the courts on many occasions as being of very great ambit. So if ‘commercial activities’ has a defined meaning—and of course that has a very broad meaning; it is hard to imagine a term that is more generous in its compass—adding the words ‘in relation to’ makes it wider still.
I would ask the member for Melbourne, when he moves his amendment, to advise us what documents of the NBN would not be exempt under his amendment. We have, frankly, the farce of the Greens, who are claiming that they are interested in accountability and transparency but have been gulled or conned by the government into a set of amendments that will make the NBN, for all practical purposes, completely immune from disclosure of any documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
The amendment that we propose, and which the Greens did in fact support some time ago, is much more appropriate. It makes the NBN a prescribed authority under the Freedom of Information Act, which makes it an agency for the purpose of the act. The act gives it extensive exemptions that we are all familiar with, including those that I described. This is an effective Freedom of Information Act amendment which will result in the NBN being accountable without commercially confidential, trade secrets, legal documents et cetera being obliged to be produced. (Time expired)
The government do not support this amendment moved by the member for Wentworth. This amendment makes NBN Co. subject without express exception to the FOI Act. The government are committed to transparency and scrutiny of our NBN policy, so we have agreed to have NBN Co. subject to the FOI Act with appropriate protection for its commercial activities. I indicate to the House that the government will be opposing the amendment moved by the member for Wentworth but we will be supporting the amendment to be moved by the member for Melbourne.
I indicate to the House that it might be convenient for members of the House for the amendment moved by the member for Melbourne to be considered immediately after this amendment is dealt with, given that, it is my understanding, the opposition will not seek to divide on the remaining amendments moved by the member for Wentworth and, I would assume, will support the third reading of the act.
The government has agreed to support amendments being moved by the member for Melbourne to subject NBN Co. to the FOI Act with the same exemptions that apply to other government business enterprises like Australia Post. This is just a common-sense provision, one that maximises transparency whilst ensuring that we protect the confidentiality of NBN Co.’s commercial activities. It is worth pointing out that NBN Co. is not covered by the FOI Act because the act does not apply to Corporations Act companies—which NBN Co. is—which are not prescribed authorities. Prescribed authorities are entities which are by default covered by the FOI Act. So, contrary to some coverage of this issue, no decision was made by the government to exempt NBN Co. It is exempt simply because of its identity as a Corporations Act company. The government opposes the amendment of the member for Wentworth because it considers that it is too broad and disregards NBN Co.’s legitimate commercial interests.
I must correct the minister. He said that the amendment of the Greens—and I appreciate we are effectively debating these together—will put NBN Co. in the same position as Australia Post. That simply is not true. Division 1 of part II of the Freedom of Information Act is titled ‘Agencies exempt in respect of particular documents’. It lists, for example, the:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in relation to its program material and its datacasting content …
So the commercial activities of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation—and it does engage in quite extensive commercial activities, as we know—are not exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. It refers to the:
Australian Postal Corporation, in relation to documents in respect of its commercial activities …
I would encourage my friend the member for Melbourne to listen to this because I am trying to save him from an embarrassing blunder here. Section 7, subsection (3)(a) defines ‘commercial activities’. It is said to mean:
(a) activities carried on by an agency on a commercial basis in competition with persons other than governments or authorities of governments …
So it is only the activities of Australia Post that are competitive with other companies’ activities that fall into that definition.
However, the Green-Labor amendment proposes to insert the NBN Co. in this list of agencies that are exempt in respect of particular documents and to state that the NBN Co. is exempt in respect of documents in relation to its commercial activities, but to define ‘commercial activities’—in a new subsection, 3A, to go into section 7—as meaning activities carried on by NBN Co. on a commercial basis. A ‘commercial basis’ really means any basis other than a charitable basis, so—the member is shaking his head, but I can assure him I am right here—any basis on which the NBN Co. is providing services in return for reward is clearly a commercial basis. It is not going to be providing services for free. Given that the entirety of the NBN’s activities is conducted on a commercial basis, no documents would fall outside of this exemption.
So the government has gone to the Greens and said, ‘Oh, look, that amendment you’re proposing which is the same as the opposition’s is just a little too broad; we can tighten it up a little bit and you’ll still get what you want.’ But the NBN Co. will be, for all practical purposes, completely exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. So the amendment of the Greens which we are going to consider after this and which we will divide on, we will vote against it, is a solemn farce. It is an insult to this House. It is a con. The Greens have been sold a pup. The party that claims to have been part of the group to ‘let the sunshine in’ is in fact a party to the government locking it out.
Our amendment on the other hand, as I said earlier, will make the NBN Co. a prescribed authority and, hence, an agency covered by the act, with all of the traditional exemptions, including those relating to documents that are commercial-in-confidence and commercially valuable. All of those exemptions will be there, and appropriately so. Our amendment, which I commend to the House, will let some sunshine in to the NBN Co. The Greens amendment will lock it out forever.
Question put:
That the amendment (Mr Turnbull’s) be agreed to.
by leave—I move together amendments (16), (18) and (19) circulated in my name:
(16) Clause 96, page 79 (lines 13 to 15), omit the clause, substitute:
96 Public Works Committee Act
NBN Co is taken to be an authority of the Commonwealth to which the Public Works Committee Act 1969 applies under section 6A of that Act.
(18) Schedule 1, clause 1, page 82 (line 6), omit “(1)”.
(19) Schedule 1, clause 1, page 82 (lines 12 to 25), omit subclauses (2) and (3).
Amendment (16) has substantially already been dealt with today in the motion about the Public Works Committee but it would have substituted a new clause 96 to have the NBN Co. taken to be an authority of the Commonwealth to which the Public Works Committee Act applies. I will not repeat the arguments I made about that earlier today in respect of the motion.
The other amendments are designed to ensure that the ability of the NBN to go into retail businesses is limited. I am referring now to page 82. The aim would be, for example, that an NBN company would not be able to buy a retail carriage service provider at all. Under the current proposed bill the NBN would be able to acquire a retail carriage service provider but dispose of it after 12 months. There is no justification for that, because, frankly, if they were to buy a company that had fixed-line infrastructure but had a retail service business attached to it then it would not be very challenging to so agree that the retail service business would be disposed of prior to the completion of the acquisition. This is another example of the rigorous, belt-and-braces approach we are taking to ensure that the NBN is genuinely a wholesale-only business. What we are proposing here is entirely consistent with the objects of the act. There is simply no need for the NBN to be able to hold or control a retail service provider for any period at all.
The government does not support these amendments. Amendment (16) is to change the fact that the bill makes the NBN Co. exempt from the Public Works Committee Act. The amendment moved by the member for Wentworth attempts to remove that exemption. He is still proceeding with this amendment in spite of the fact that the parliament carried a resolution earlier today to establish a joint select committee, which will be chaired by the member for Lyne, to look into these very issues. It is an extraordinary proposition and, frankly, I am surprised that the member for Wentworth continues to pursue this position, which has already been rejected by this parliament once today.
The government does not support amendments (18) and (19). As drafted, the bill contemplates that NBN Co. might purchase other companies where this might help in the rollout of its network and the provision of high-speed broadband services. However, NBN Co. is required by the bill to be a wholesale provider, a rule that would breached if NBN Co. acquired a company with retail operations. NBN Co. would therefore need to put in place transitional arrangements for divesting any acquired retail operations. Under the bill, there is a 12-month window for such transitions, a period that the government and NBN Co. consider to be reasonable and that is long enough to avoid NBN Co. having to engage in fire sales at possibly reduced prices. The proposed opposition amendment removes the period within which NBN Co. must divest the retail operations. The effect of this would be to prevent NBN Co. from acquiring a business that has retail operations until that business had divested its retail arm. This would likely lead to delays in the rollout. There seems to be no real justification for such an amendment and it would have the effect of promoting fire sales, to the benefit of others, while limiting NBN Co. flexibility. The government does not support this amendment, as it does not support the other amendments which have been moved which attempt to constrain the success of NBN Co. Those opposite are determined to undermine the NBN. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition gave the member for Wentworth the task of destroying the NBN. These amendments, which are designed to undermine the success of the National Broadband Network, should be rejected by this parliament.
Question negatived.
Bill, as amended, agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
I would like to say that this has been an example of the parliament being accountable and of us being transparent on this legislation.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Debate resumed from 28 February, on motion by Mr Albanese:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.
by leave—I move Australian Greens amendments (1) and (2):
(1) Clause 2, page 3 (at the end of the table), add:
5. Schedule 1, Part 4 | The day after the end of the period of 60 days beginning on the day this Act receives the Royal Assent. |
(2) Schedule 1, page 69 (after line 4), at the end of the Schedule, add:
Part 4—Amendments relating to freedom of information
Freedom of Information Act 1982
115 Subsection 4(1)
Insert:
NBN Co means NBN Co Limited (ACN 136 533 741), as the company exists from time to time (even if its name is later changed).
116 Subsection 4(1) (at the end of paragraph (a) of the definition of prescribed authority )
Add “or”.
117 Subsection 4(1) (after paragraph (a) of the definition of prescribed authority )
Insert:
(aa) NBN Co; or
118 Subsection 4(1) (at the end of paragraph (b) of the definition of prescribed authority )
Add “or”.
119 Subsection 4(1) (after paragraph (b) of the definition of responsible Minister)
Insert:
(ba) in relation to the prescribed authority referred to in paragraph (aa) of that definition—the Minister administering the National Broadband Network Companies Act 2011; or
120 Subsection 7(3)
Before “means”, insert “(except when used in relation to NBN Co)”.
121 After subsection 7(3)
Insert:
(3A) In Part II of Schedule 2, commercial activities, when used in relation to NBN Co, means:
(a) activities carried on by NBN Co on a commercial basis; or
(b) activities, carried on by NBN Co, that may reasonably be expected in the foreseeable future to be carried on by NBN Co on a commercial basis.
122 Division 1 of Part II of Schedule 2 (after the item relating to the National Health and Medical Research Council)
Insert:
NBN Co, in relation to documents in respect of its commercial activities
The Greens have been big supporters of faster broadband and of the nation-building project that is the National Broadband Network. On current estimates the NBN will see one of the largest sums of public money invested in one of the largest infrastructure projects in our history. Accordingly, the Greens believe that the public does have a legitimate interest in how the project proceeds and should have access to all relevant information through the FOI regime as well as through parliamentary mechanisms such as Senate estimates, the committee process and questions to ministers.
The Greens are not prepared to see the continuation of a long-term trend of gradually corporatising government services and then claiming information is commercial-in-confidence. That trend has to be rolled back and NBN Co. is the place to start. We also believe that maximum transparency is in fact the best way to build public confidence in the NBN. Senator Ludlam announced in mid-January our intention to take action to make NBN Co. subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and it is that announcement that these amendments implement today. The amendments provide that the NBN Co. is subject to the freedom of information regime under the Freedom of Information Act. The amendments seek to have the NBN Co.—and this is an important point, because it has been raised in the debate so far—subject to the same level of transparency as Medibank or Australia Post, while affording NBN Co. a level of protection for material that is genuinely commercially sensitive.
I have listened to the contribution from the member for Wentworth, who has suggested that this is somehow a deviation from our original intention. The point that we made at the start was very, very clear—that is, we always wanted the FOI regime to apply but not in such a way that it would put NBN Co. at a commercial disadvantage. I understand from what the member for Wentworth has said that he does accept that it is appropriate for trade secrets and other commercially valuable information to be outside the reach of FOI as it applies to the NBN Co. However, the approach that has been taken by the opposition is that, rather than treating the NBN Co. similar to other government business enterprises such as Australia Post, they would rather apply FOI to the NBN Co. in the same way that it applies to departments of state or public sector agencies. That would force NBN Co. to defend trade secrets and other commercially sensitive information on a case-by-case basis as each request is received, which in turn would lead to a significant risk that NBN Co.’s competitors would gain access to its trade secrets and would also significantly divert its resources.
There has been a lot of talk about ‘pups’ and suggestions that the Greens have been sold one. The member for Wentworth seems keenly able to identify a pup when he sees one. I would ask him or his colleagues, if he believes that is the case, to raise these matters when the amendment to the bill comes before the Senate inquiry, because it is something that we will consider in good faith. Our intention behind these amendments is to have a narrow definition of commercial activity that essentially puts the NBN Co. on the same footing as Australia Post or a similar government business enterprise. Information is central to knowing how our elected representatives are exercising their power and to holding our representatives to account. Transparency and accountability is particularly pertinent in the expenditure of taxpayers’ money. The Greens believe that open and transparent government is a prerequisite to an effective democracy.
I was touched to hear the member for Melbourne say that the Greens were committed to open and transparent government! I was interested to hear the member for Melbourne say that this amendment would ensure that the NBN was subject to the Freedom of Information Act but was able to keep protected only those documents that were really commercially sensitive. This is where the member for Melbourne does his party, this House and this country a great disservice moving this amendment, because it is, as I said, a con.
I will take the member for Melbourne through this. His amendment will include the NBN in division 1 of part II of the Freedom of Information Act—this is on page 173 of the Freedom of Information Act. His amendment will say that its documents are exempt if they are in relation to its commercial activities. His amendment also adds an additional subsection to section 7—that is at page 17 of the Freedom of Information Act. I am sure that the member has got that at his fingertips! That new section 3A defines commercial activities in respect of the NBN as being activities that are carried out ‘on a commercial basis’.
I ask the member for Melbourne—and he has the opportunity to speak as often as he likes in these debates—to give the House one example, just one, of a document or a class of document that would not be exempt under the amendments he has moved. The NBN is a commercial enterprise. It is a business—not a particularly well-constituted business and it is not, certainly, going to be a profitable one, but it is a business—so all of its activities are conducted on a commercial basis.
He said that this would be similar to Australia Post, but it won’t, because the definition of commercial activities that applies to it are activities which are carried on in competition with persons other than governments or authorities of governments. So the NBN, which will be a monopoly on a fixed-line basis but will nonetheless be in competition in some parts of its business and not in competition in others, will nonetheless be exempt in respect of documents right across its entire business. I would invite the member for Melbourne to give us an example of a document or a class of document which his amendment will enable to be produced under the Freedom of Information Act and will not be exempt under his amendments.
The government supports the amendments moved by the member for Melbourne. They get the balance right between transparency and accountability whilst also making sure that we provide appropriate protection for the confidentiality of NBN Co.’s commercial activities. The member for Wentworth, of course, always thinks he knows better, which is maybe why he is the member for Wentworth and not the Leader of the Opposition. The fact is that we have received advice from the appropriate departments, including the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, that the amendments do indeed create the effect that is intended by the member for Melbourne. They are therefore supportable because they do get that balance right and do not undermine the effectiveness of the National Broadband Network. I commend the amendments to the House.
I would repeat my call to the member for Melbourne—
The member for Wentworth is straying. I think you are straying into abuse of a member.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I respond to the minister by noting that neither he nor the member for Melbourne, despite my invitation, has been able to nominate one document or one class of documents that would be disclosable or discoverable under the Freedom of Information Act by the NBN after these amendments are enacted. They have not been able to do that, because there are not any. Every document of the NBN is in relation to ‘commercial activities’, which is defined to mean activities carried out on a commercial basis. It does not carry on activities, one hopes, other than on a commercial basis. So this amendment is a solemn farce. The minister says that the member for Wentworth thinks he knows best. I am inviting him and the member for Melbourne, whose amendment it is, to correct me and to demonstrate the types of documents that will be disclosable under the Freedom of Information Act following the passage of this bill as amended in these amendments.
I hesitate to rise to the bait, but I have two points. The same classes of documents that can be FOIed from Australia Post, Medibank Private or similar government business enterprises will still be able to be FOIed under this amendment. It puts them on an equal footing, and that is a very square and clear answer to the member for Wentworth. Secondly, the member for Wentworth seems far better able to identify a pup than anyone else, and I invite him or his colleagues to bring their dog identification skills to the Senate committee that is looking at this, because, if he is able to give more persuasive advice than we have received or than has come from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, we will look at it. But so far we are convinced that this amendment gets the balance right: it makes sure that the NBN Co. is not subject to an unfair situation which would put it at a commercial disadvantage, but still ensures that it is subject to the FOI regime.
Question agreed to.
by leave—I move amendments (1) and (2) circulated in my name together:
(1) Schedule 1, item 50, page 21 (lines 20 to 32), omit subsection 152AXC (4), substitute:
(4) NBN must not discriminate between access seekers on the basis of the volume, number, quantity or amount of goods, services or other things that access seekers acquire or agree to acquire.
(2) Schedule 1, Part 3, page 47 (line 1) to page 69 (line 4), omit the Part.
Amendment (1) is a very important amendment. It really deals with a critical issue of fairness. Members in this House have complained often and loudly about the dominance of Telstra—or, indeed, other big telcos, such as Optus. What we are seeking to do here is to ensure that the NBN cannot discriminate between access seekers—retail service providers, whether big, small or medium-sized—on the basis of volume, number, quantity or amount of goods, services or other things that access seekers acquire or agree to acquire. It will come as no surprise to the House that Telstra do not support this amendment, because naturally, as they will be the biggest foundation customer of the NBN, they no doubt look forward to discounts based on volume or other services that are being exchanged or transacted between the NBN and themselves. So this is the first amendment. I ask the government: are they serious about a level playing field? Do they seriously believe they are creating a level playing field in the NBN? If they do then we should delete proposed subsection (4) of proposed section 152AXC—which, of course, basically permits types of discrimination—and insert a new provision which provides that there cannot be any discrimination on the basis of volume.
The second amendment deals with what has been called ‘cherry picking’. This is a matter of white-hot concern to many players in the telecommunications sector, large and small. This amendment involves part 3, and we are proposing to delete all of it. What this is designed to do is to ensure that any other broadband service or facility comparable to the NBN that can provide fast broadband services must offer its services on exactly the same terms as the NBN. Let us make no mistake: this is an anti-cherry-picking device. What this is designed to do is to prevent other companies from having infrastructure in cities or more densely settled areas or for particular corporate customers and, if you like, cherry picking the better parts of the Australian fixed-line broadband business. The government justifies this extraordinary restriction on competition on the basis that it needs to protect the economics of the NBN. That has been made quite clear in the explanatory memorandum, in the McKinsey study and in the business case. So, having set up this massive, overcapitalised, government-owned monopoly—which it should not have set up in the first place—the government is now restricting competition from other telcos in order to preserve the economics of that body. It says, ‘If PIPE Networks, Internode or Optus competes and offers services in the cities, it will stream off some of the profitable areas and that will make it harder for us to provide services in the bush.’ We say that if broadband services are going to be provided in the bush—and they should be—and they cannot be provided on a commercial basis then the subsidy should be absolutely explicit, and it should come out of the budget. There is no reason to impose higher telecommunications charges on people in urban and metropolitan Australia to cross-subsidise the bush. (Time expired)
Defending the interests of his electorate against regional Australia is an interesting position for the member for Wentworth. One thing the National Broadband Network is aimed at is overcoming the tyranny of distance, by providing access to people in regional Australia, who have been denied access by the failure of the previous government.
The government does not support these amendments. With regard to volume discounts, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010 as drafted provides the default position that NBN must not discriminate in the terms and conditions on which it provides access. In order to provide opportunities for innovation and differentiation by service providers, the bill allows for different treatment by NBN Co. but only where it aids efficiency.
The ability to discriminate to reflect demonstrable efficiencies is well accepted in economics. It is already provided for under part XIC of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. While stakeholders have been generally supportive of the principle of this kind of discrimination, there have been some concerns about the possibility that it will favour Telstra in particular, which it is feared could benefit from volume discounts. The bill, therefore, includes appropriate safeguards.
Under the bill, volume discounts would also have to satisfy the efficiency test and, as an added safeguard, NBN Co. will not be able to offer a volume discount unless it is in accordance with an undertaking that has been approved by the ACCC. Any differentiated deals must be published, so there will be full transparency and the ACCC and access seekers can take action if they consider that the rules have been breached.
The government’s view is that the discrimination permitted by the bill is good policy and that there are strong protections against preferential treatment based on volume that does not aid efficiency. This amendment is unnecessary and, in fact, goes well beyond the stated intention of banning volume discounting. In fact, it prevents NBN Co. from offering any sort of differentiated terms to aid efficiency. Further, this amendment would reduce the opportunities for service differentiation and innovation that increases productivity and efficiency, which is why the government will not be supporting it.
I now address amendment (2) that has been moved by the member for Wentworth. The government also does not support this amendment. Under the proposed rules, new, upgraded or significantly extended fixed line access networks offering speeds in excess of 25 megabits per second and servicing residential and small business customers will need to offer a wholesale layer 2 service on an open access basis. The provisions do not prevent firms entering the market; they simply require them to comply with supply and access requirements comparable to those applying to NBN Co. when they do. The provisions do not require competitors to match NBN Co.’s actual terms and conditions; they simply subject them to comparable layer 2 open access requirements.
The object of these requirements is to ensure that end users have access to the same kinds of service outcomes available on the NBN regardless of the network provider. Moreover, the rules will mean NBN Co. is not hindered in delivering its objectives, particularly uniform national wholesale pricing, by strict regulatory requirements while competing against other less regulated providers of superfast broadband.
NBN Co. indicated in its corporate plan that it intends to implement the government’s uniform national wholesale pricing objective through subsidising high-cost, low-revenue regions with revenue raised from low-cost, high-revenue regions. It is not fair to simply allow competitors to opportunistically target lucrative markets while leaving the challenging high-cost, low-revenue ones to NBN Co. The requirement is forward looking and will have minimal impact on existing providers and their operations. Exemption and transitional mechanisms have also been included in the bill to provide sensible flexibility.
The opposition’s amendment has the potential to leave some communities’ service outcomes below those available on the NBN and to undermine the government’s policy that NBN Co. deliver uniform national wholesale prices. The government does not support this amendment and the government believes that this amendment is contrary to the objectives of the National Broadband Network and contrary to the government’s view that equitable delivery of NBN is vital for Australia and vital particularly for those who live in regional Australia. (Time expired)
I welcome this opportunity to speak on opposition amendments (1) and (2) to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010. Certainly it is of concern that we are going to create potential discrimination between telcos when we are really keen to encourage as much competition in the market as possible. The offering of volume discounts, on whatever basis, does have the potential to create an advantage for the larger telecommunication companies over the smaller ones.
Cherry picking is an important concept. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport referred to the fact that regional and rural Australia is of concern in this area. Where there is market failure that is where the government should be stepping in. That is the role for the government. What we do not want is government interfering where there is no market failure. These cherry-picking provisions have the potential to discourage innovation and new services. It is vital that the free market has the opportunity to compete right across the spectrum.
We see highlighted here the very concerns that the opposition has been putting forward about this bill and this project—that we are going to have a subsidy being provided to the NBN. We have a massive financial subsidy through massive investment of government funds that would not be available to other competitors in the market. On top of that we have a distortion of the market through anticompetitive legislation that prevents competition. What will that result in? It will result in consumers paying more. So Australian consumers will be paying an effective subsidy to prop up the NBN project, as well as paying the massive capital cost that they are actually incurring.
So, whilst we believe very much that there is a role for government in regional and rural areas to ensure that there is high-speed broadband, that role should not be achieved through artificially propping up the cost of broadband in metropolitan areas or on high-volume markets. It is a very important concept. If we are going to make Australia a 21st century superpower, we need highly efficient broadband services, and the way to do that is not to put restraint on competition and not to artificially stop innovation. We should be encouraging those things and we should be encouraging competition in every area of the market. In fact, the very cherry-picking provisions that you refer to as providing some form of subsidy for regional and rural areas, effectively at this point in time are retarding the rollout of fibre in a range of regional centres. People are concerned about the impact and suppliers are concerned about the impact of these very same cherry-picking provisions. So, contrary to what the minister has said in relation to the fact that this is somehow going to be the panacea to the problems of regional Australia, the reality is quite different. It is going to drive up the cost in metropolitan areas and, at the same time, it is retarding the rollout of fibre in some regional centres.
Our two leading telecommunications companies have made very good submissions to the Senate committee on this subject—PIPE Networks, which is a smaller company, and obviously Telstra itself. I want to refer the House to the submission of PIPE in particular. It states:
Cherry-picking … is simply put the practice of a competing network operator building its network in areas where it is profitable to do so, and not building its network in unprofitable areas. Notwithstanding the pejorative terms used to describe this behaviour, such as ‘opportunistic cherry-picking’, this behaviour in fact reflects the simple commercial reality that businesses—in telecommunications or in any other market—will only compete in a particular area if it is profitable to do so.
It goes on to say:
If building fixed-line networks in metropolitan areas but not regional areas constitutes cherry-picking, then PIPE and every other telecommunications carrier with infrastructure in the ground in Australia is guilty of cherry-picking.
As the PIPE Networks’ submission points out, what the government claims to be doing is creating a level playing field, but there is no level playing field. The NBN is a massively advantaged corporation. It has tens of billions of dollars of free capital provided by the taxpayer. Nobody else has got that. It has got an exclusive deal in respect of Telstra’s infrastructure. Their conclusion is—and this is PIPE’s submission, and indeed it is Telstra’s too, substantially:
… the proposed anti ‘cherry-picking’ regime will give NBN Co a de facto monopoly on future competition in fixed-line telecommunications networks in Australia.
The very purpose, they say, of the anti-cherry-picking regime is to deny network owners the benefits that flow from network ownership. It will require network owners to supply wholesale services to third parties on the same terms that they supply them to themselves and, in that way, disincentivise investment in competing fixed line telecommunications networks, leaving NBN with a de facto monopoly. That is exactly what the NBN implementation report says is the object of the policy.
The Telstra submission makes a very powerful point by saying that Telstra has a monopoly fixed line business because of its historic background. Telstra has had to put up with cherry picking in the past. As it says:
If by ‘cherry picking’ the Government means competitive entry in areas where this is efficient, then it is not clear why this should be discouraged. This type of so-called ‘cherry picking’ has been a feature of telecommunications markets in Australia and around the world for the past two decades. Telstra’s competitors have been able to enter in precisely this fashion, without access obligations being directly imposed by legislation.
In other words, Telstra has been able to cope with cherry picking but the NBN, with all of the billions of dollars of additional free capital behind it, will not be able to do so.
As far as regional and rural Australia are concerned—and the honourable minister talked about Marrickville in his electorate and Kempsey in my colleague’s electorate—the simple fact is this: the people of Marrickville should be able to get access to telecommunication services at the lowest cost the market will deliver and insofar as people in Kempsey or any other regional centre are not able to get comparable services because of distance then there should be a clear, transparent subsidy through a USO or some other provision that comes out of the budget. Cross-subsidising by preventing competition in the city is anathema to anybody who believes in markets, in economic efficiency and indeed in a competitive approach to telecommunications. This cherry-picking legislation is another example of how this NBN is designed to suppress and subvert competition and promote monopoly instead of fostering the competitive market we should all be supporting. (Time expired)
The issue of cherry picking is a very important one insofar as what it actually says about this project. The fact that we have these provisions at all should sound a warning bell to the taxpayers of Australia, a very loud warning bell, in fact, because we have a situation where we have a business plan, much of it kept secret, but in that business case that we have had published—the small section of the total document—we see an internal rate of return of only seven per cent, a very, very low rate of return indeed. It is not a rate of return which would encourage investment in a project of this magnitude, not a rate of return that would provide the required return on capital. It really is a financial disaster for the taxpayers of Australia.
But when we look at the issue of why we have these cherry-picking provisions, it is to prop up that very poor and feeble rate of return. When we start factoring in real, live competition—competition that the businesses of Australia have to meet every day—then the project goes from abysmal failure to something far worse than that. We get to a situation where, when we factor in competition at an arms length without the protection of cherry picking, the IRR falls to a point where you cannot even cover the cost of the interest on the project.
It should be of great concern to the taxpayers that this government is going to invest in a project that is only kept viable through anticompetitive legislation. I wonder what the response of the government would be if one of our major corporates came to them and said, ‘Business is a bit tough. We are not really achieving the return we want for our shareholders, so we want you to put in a bit of legislation that is going to hamstring our competition, to prevent the competition from competing on a level playing field.’
This is a very bad outcome for Australia. It is a bad outcome because Australian consumers are being denied the benefits of a fully competitive market. Australian consumers are being denied the benefits of a market that would be encouraging innovation. Instead, we have a situation where the government has, through legislation, created a massive monopoly, a big fat monopoly. Competitive pressures are the way that we provide a better outcome for consumers, not through creating a massive monopoly. We have a situation where the government is propping up this monopoly through anticompetitive legislation. This legislation is going to effectively drive up the cost to consumers, drive up the cost to business and eliminate innovation. That is a bad thing for this country.
If the government is keen to ensure that we have the very best technologies and communications available to the people of this country then it should be encouraging innovation and competition. It should not be deterring it. If the government was really serious about providing the maximum return on funds invested, it would not be investing in a project that was only viable by virtue of anticompetitive legislation. It is an absolute outrage that the government would be investing in a project that requires not only a massive investment of taxpayers’ funds but an incredible anticompetitive regime to keep it vaguely commercially viable.
An IRR of seven per cent is far from commercially viable. It is not the rate of return that would encourage commercial investors to invest in the project. You would have to look in amazement at anyone who would commit $50 billion to a project on this basis. But, then again, if you look at the money that was poured into pink batts and if you look at the money that was poured into the BER, I guess the same sorts of decision-making processes apply. If there is a good outcome that can be spun, it is worth the risk to the taxpayer.
Question negatived.
Bill, as amended, agreed to.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
I commend very much this historic next step forward in the creation of the National Broadband Network.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Debate resumed from 25 November, on motion by Mr Shorten:
That this bill be now read a second time.
This Tax Laws Amendment (2010 Measures No. 5) Bill 2010 has seven schedules. I will run through each of those schedules briefly at the outset and outline the opposition’s position on this bill. As with most tax laws amendment bills, members would be aware that many of the schedules are not contentious. With this bill there is one schedule that the coalition wants to see further information on and reserves its position on until the outcome of an already underway Senate inquiry. I will run through each of those schedules.
As I said, there are seven schedules. The first schedule deals with film tax offsets. The second schedule deals with amendments to the capital protected borrowing provisions. The third schedule relates to capital gains tax in situations where there is a compulsory acquisition taking place. The fourth schedule deals with deductions in benefits for terminal medical conditions related to superannuation. The fifth schedule deals with non-profit subentities. The sixth schedule deals with technical details related to running balance accounts. The seventh schedule deals with education expenses, tax offsets specifically related to school uniforms.
As I said at the outset, the coalition do not regard as contentious most of the schedules in the bill and we will not be opposing the bill in this House. However, with regard to schedule 2, relating to capital protected borrowings, we do note that there is some history to this and it does warrant further consideration, which is occurring, as I said, through a Senate committee inquiry that is underway. I should also point out that, as the shadow Treasurer has previously indicated—I think in the debate on the last tax laws amendment bill—we on this side of the House will be moving an amendment to this legislation to add a schedule, schedule 8, to provide for the public to receive a tax receipt for the tax that they pay. That has been canvassed and debated in this House and, unfortunately, rejected previously by the government. But we live in hope that, under the new paradigm of letting the sunlight in, the government will see the folly of rejecting a sensible amendment to provide taxpayers with tangible information about how their taxes are spent.
I will deal with each aspect of the bill—and I am sensing, looking at the benches opposite, that it would probably suit the parliamentary secretary on duty, the member for Ballarat, if I dealt with these matters in some detail, for up to and including about 5½ minutes! Schedule 1 deals with two changes to the eligibility criteria for accessing the film tax offsets, reducing the qualifying expenditure threshold for the post-digital visual effects offset from $5 million to $500,000, and removing local production expenditure requirements for films between $15 million and $50 million. I have already mentioned schedule 2, and I will leave that until the end.
Schedule 3 deals with extending the main-residence capital gains tax exemption to deal with events—as was noted in the explanatory memorandum and the minister’s speech—where there is a compulsory acquisition of part of the adjacent land or structure of a main residence. This is where there is an involuntary event, to ensure that that existing exemption applies.
Schedule 4, as I outlined, deals with changes to the rules surrounding deductions in relation to benefits for terminal medical conditions. In doing so, it allows for costs associated with providing terminal medical condition benefits to become tax deductible.
Schedule 5 allows non-profit subentities to access the goods and services tax concessions available to the parent entity, including the higher registration turnover threshold available to non-profit bodies. As I understand it, this essentially legislates what the Commissioner of Taxation’s interpretation has effectively been and gives some certainty to it. I cannot ever allow any amendment relating to the goods and services tax to pass by—and I do this in every debate—without at least mentioning the fact that those opposite, who so vigorously opposed the goods and services tax, with every tax laws amendment bill inevitably find themselves protecting its operation and its base. I like to point that out every time we debate a schedule relating to the GST.
Schedule 6 of the bill provides that it will not be mandatory for the tax commissioner to apply a payment, credit or running balance account surplus against a tax debt that is a business activity statement amount unless that amount is due and payable. The history behind this recommendation and indeed the earlier one, I am told, is that they were made by the Board of Taxation in its review of the legal framework relating to the administration and operation of the A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act.
I return to schedule 2, which I indicated at the start is the one schedule on which the coalition do want to receive further information. This schedule makes amendments to the capital protected borrowings provisions. The coalition, and shadow Assistant Treasurer Senator Cormann in particular, are concerned about these provisions because the changes to the benchmark interest rate for those capital protected borrowings have a history in terms of government announcements and industry reaction, and all of the indications are that there should be further work in this area. We know that if the government can effect a tax increase in any way, as the shadow Treasurer knows, they will surely do so—
Like rats up a drainpipe!
sometimes brazenly, as we have seen in the last week, and many times secretly. Whichever way, they are always thinking of a tax increase. So the government made its original announcement. Industry was not consulted about the change. The government did make an amendment or a change to that. Industry still believes that the outcome itself will severely disadvantage that sector. We are told the government will have gained revenue of $170 million over the forward estimates, but that includes, I am advised, a cost of $28 million for a change to its original announcement way back in 2008, on budget night. At this time, the Senate Economics Legislation Committee is examining schedule 2 of the bill, and the coalition will not take a final decision until that Senate committee has reported. But, as I said, we will not be opposing the bill in this House.
Debate interrupted.
Order! It being 9.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the House do now adjourn.
I rise tonight to pay tribute to one of the greats of the club movement in New South Wales, Barry Alliston, who for 10 years served as the president of my beloved North Sydney Leagues Club. Barry passed away unexpectedly in December last year and I recognise in this place, the House of Representatives, his contribution to our community.
For those of us raised on the North Shore of Sydney, the North Sydney Leagues Club is a mighty institution. Its association with the great North Sydney Bears meant that, in days gone by, it was the sporting home for many Bears enthusiasts who would return there after a game at North Sydney Oval—perhaps too often—to drown their sorrows.
It remains a great club and is both a centre for and supporter of our community. Its membership is measured in the tens of thousands. To serve as its president for a decade is both an honour and a considerable responsibility. In Barry Alliston’s case his term as president followed 10 years as a director, so he spent some 20 years on the club’s board—something, I might say, that is not uncommon in the great club movement of Australia.
Barry was very much a local boy. He grew up in Artarmon and attended Artarmon Public School and the old Crows Nest Technical High. He married a girl from Croatia and raised his own daughter in the area. Being a fanatical Bears supporter was one of Barry’s great passions and his service to the club was a manifestation of that. Like so many of us, he was passionate about a team that had something of a patchy performance over the years. Loyalty was what was important and you stuck with the Bears no matter what their fate. I know that Barry would have loved to have seen the return of the Bears to the NRL in 2013, even in their new Central Coast incarnation.
As president of the club, Barry oversaw its transformation to meet the changing needs of its members and patrons. We all know that many clubs have struggled in recent years but Norths remains a successful and popular venture. That it has adapted so well is a testament to Barry’s leadership.
On a personal note, Barry was a person whom I greatly admired. He was born and bred a Labor man and I am not sure that I ever received his vote. In fact, one day I remember catching him handing out how-to-votes for the Labor Party at Chatswood West Public School. Nonetheless, I would describe him as a good friend and someone who never hesitated to help me in my work as a federal member of parliament. He was certainly prepared to put aside his own political views in the interests of the club and the community.
He similarly provided considerable support and encouragement to two of my state colleagues, Gladys Berejiklian and Jillian Skinner, and I am sure that they would want to be associated with these remarks. They are of course in the middle of a general election in New South Wales.
Barry will be missed by all those associated with the club. He will be very hard to replace. To the Norths board and members; to his partner, Judy, who was obviously devastated at the loss of Barry; and to his daughter, Diana, I extend my sincere sympathy. I also extend the sympathy of the nation. The club movement in my state has produced some giants and Barry Alliston was surely one of them. I offer a further condolence to all of those members of the Norths club who managed to attend the funeral for Barry and recognised Barry’s considerable service to our great local community.
Tonight I want to recognise and celebrate the contribution to this parliament, to Australian academic life and to journalism of Sarah Miskin, a former member of the Parliamentary Library staff, who recently died of breast cancer.
Sarah was born on 18 November 1965 in Rangiora, New Zealand, a small town north of Christchurch. She was the second child of six to Beverley and William Sands. The Sands family were a loving family environment, but their life was rocked when William was killed in a forestry accident in April 1981, leaving Beverley to raise the six children.
Sarah left home in January of 1982 and at 16 became the youngest person to be admitted to, and complete, the Wellington Polytechnic journalism course. This high achievement set the pattern for the rest of her life, as Sarah was a high achiever to the end, never satisfied until she knew what was over the next horizon. She returned to Christchurch in 1983 and began work as a journalist for the Press, the biggest daily newspaper in the South Island.
In 1986 she married Ben Miskin, a man she first met on the journalism course, who was to be with her until the end. While they had no children of their own, in 1994 they became the guardians of Briony Sands, Sarah’s little sister, and helped raise and guide her through life.
Not completely satisfied with her journalism career, academia called. This led to a degree, followed by honours and then her master’s at the University of Canterbury, all the while working nights at the Press and helping raise her sister. The achievements kept coming. A Fulbright journalism exchange in 1994 saw her working in the United States. In 1995 there was a Reuters Fellowship to study at Oxford.
Then, in 1997, Ben and Sarah arrived in Canberra. Full-time study at the Australian National University led to a doctorate in 2004 for her thesis, entitled The OECD: ideas, institutions and social justice. Sarah was a major contributor to the corporate life of the political science program and to postgraduate matters, as vice-president of their association, representing them on faculty boards and committees and editing their journal. As her husband, Ben, has wryly commented, ‘Anything to avoid full-time study.’
Sarah continued to be involved with academia and was book review editor for the Australian Journal of Political Science, a role that benefited greatly from her capacity for good judgment. Whilst completing her doctorate, Sarah also worked part time as a subeditor at the Canberra Times, where her outstanding skills for writing and editing were invaluable. But, most importantly from the point of view of this place, in 2002 she joined the staff of the Parliamentary Library, from where she made a particularly distinguished contribution to the parliament.
As those familiar with the work of the Library will understand, Sarah’s day-to-day responsibilities included responding to all manner of research inquiries—anything from whether Prime Minister Gorton opened the Woy Woy swimming pool in the 1960s to more detailed political science analysis in areas as varied as political philosophy, advertising, opinion polling and campaign techniques. Sarah developed a particular expertise in the field of funding and disclosure, which was much sought after and appreciated by the Library’s clients. Sarah approached all such inquiries with diligence, independence, wisdom, intelligence and, most importantly, enormous enthusiasm. I know on the many occasions I harassed her for assistance she always went out of her way to help. I always valued her opinion and her willingness to assist. Beyond all the unattributed assistance to MPs, Sarah was responsible for producing 16 highly acclaimed research papers in her own right, particularly in the area of political finance, which are widely referred to in the academic literature.
Sarah was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2008. After surgery and a gruelling round of chemotherapy, she returned to work in 2009. In perhaps the last professional accolade she received, Sarah was awarded a place in the prestigious Congressional Fellowship Program and left for Washington later that year. However, in January last year the cancer returned in multiple locations. As a result, she returned to Canberra for further treatment. The effects of this treatment meant that she could no longer continue with the Parliamentary Library, and she and Ben moved to Melbourne in August to focus on her treatment and to be nearer to her sister, Briony. By last November, it was clear that the cancer was not responding and Sarah decided to cease all further treatment. She enjoyed her final months in the company of her close family and died peacefully, with Ben by her bedside, on the morning of 19 February.
Sarah developed a wide circle of friends, both personal and professional, in the worlds of academia, politics and journalism, both here and overseas. Her determination to achieve ever greater heights was established at a very young age and never waned. She had great ambition and potential for further achievement, cut short by a cruel and untimely death.
Our thoughts and condolences are with Sarah’s family, particularly her husband, Ben; her sister, Briony; her brother-in-law, Jonny; and her friends and colleagues here in the parliament, at the ANU, in Manchester and Washington. She will be sorely missed.
I am speaking this evening to commend to the House the MediHearts Outreach Program that is being promoted by Brisbane based cardiologist Dr Rolf Gomes. The MediHearts Outreach Program aims to revolutionise the delivery of cardiac services across regional Australia, starting with a pilot program in Queensland. Over the past six months the program has gained significant momentum, including support from within the medical fraternity and private enterprise. The program is currently under review by the federal government as part of the Health and Hospitals Fund regional priority round, and I ask that this proposal receive favourable consideration.
Cardiac disease remains the biggest contributor to the death rate and mortality for middle-aged and older Australians, including women. Even though significant advances have been made in cardiovascular health, non-urban and Indigenous Australians still endure poorer cardiac health outcomes compared to urban Australians, largely due to inequalities in the availability and delivery of cardiac services.
At its core, the MediHearts Outreach Program represents a state-of-the-art, custom designed vehicle which will visit regional towns, providing a consulting cardiologist and a full suite of non-invasive testing locally. Rural and remote health in Australia, especially the health of Indigenous Australians, should be among the top priorities of our healthcare system. I congratulate Dr Rolf Gomes on this program and I recommend it to every member of this parliament.
I would also like to take this opportunity to talk about the effects of a carbon tax on my electorate of Flynn and particularly on the city of Gladstone. With two alumina refineries, Australia’s biggest aluminium smelter, a cement works, a coal fired power station and up to four LNG plants that are new investments worth a total of about $45 billion and are ready to start or have already started this year, Gladstone becomes the ‘carbon capital’ of Australia and the area potentially most affected by a price on carbon.
When this is combined with the increased costs associated with the resource tax, Flynn is wearing a large cumulative cost. If a price on carbon is introduced ahead of the rest of the world it will damage the international competitiveness of these vital export industries which deliver thousands of jobs in Central Queensland.
You agree with it as long as the rest of the world does it first!
Yes, that is okay. We will know the difference when there is no money coming out of those areas. Before introducing a price on carbon which affects these industries, the government should prove that it will not affect their competitiveness and it will not harm jobs. The burden of proof should rest with the government that is introducing the scheme, not with the industries that are vital to the seat of Flynn.
I rise tonight to speak about a campaign that I will be taking part in. Hopefully, in the five minutes that it takes me to give this speech, I will be able to convince my parliamentary colleagues here in the chamber today—like the member for Maribyrnong, the member for Oxley, the member for Parramatta, the member for Blair and maybe even you, Mr Speaker—to participate with me. I will be taking part in a fantastic campaign called Live Below the Line, which is a joint initiative of the Oaktree Foundation and the Global Poverty Project.
Live Below the Line aims to raise awareness of extreme poverty around the globe by challenging all Australians to spend only $2 per day for five consecutive days on their food. At the same time, participants raise money for international aid projects and help to spread the word about the impact of extreme poverty and what all of us together can do to help. This year’s campaign officially runs from 16 to 20 May, but participants can take part at any time of the year by signing up to the Live Below the Line website at:
www.livebelowtheline.com.
More than one-quarter of the world’s population live on less than $2 a day, which means that more than 1.4 billion people around the world are classified as living in extreme poverty. ‘Poverty’ means more than just being poor. It means not having access to the basic things in life that we in this chamber and in Australia take for granted, such as food, shelter, safe drinking water, sanitation, education and medical services. It means that 17,000 children starve to death around the world every single day. In the five minutes it takes me to speak on this issue, 60 children—60—will have died from starvation.
This level of suffering and hardship is difficult for us in Australia to comprehend. We all know that Australia is second only to Norway on the United Nation’s Human Development Index, which means we are right up at the very top. Our standard of living, education and per capita income is among the best in the world. An Australian earning $50,000 per year is in the top one per cent of the richest people in the world. Whichever way you look at it, it is extremely hard to deny that we are a prosperous and fortunate nation with enormous capacity to give, and we do give. The Australian government has increased foreign aid spending to record levels since being elected in 2007.
Nonetheless, it is easy to lose sight of the global picture. As we go about our daily lives, we can forget that even very small amounts of money can help smash the poverty cycle for whole families, communities or villages in some Third World countries. The deprivation the participants experience during the campaign will be nowhere near the deprivation experienced by people in Third World countries. We will only be doing it for one week and there will be light at the end of the tunnel; for a lot of these people there is absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel. By experiencing it firsthand for a few days, I hope I will gain a better understanding of what it feels like to be trapped in grinding poverty, right at the bottom of, or outside, the economic ladder that we take for granted.
Like many Australians taking part this year, I have made the commitment to take on this challenge with a degree of trepidation. But each time I think about it I remind myself that my deprivation will hardly be the same as that of people living in real and extreme poverty every single day of their lives, knowing that their future will not change. I might have only $2 per day to spend on food, but, for the 1.4 billion people we are doing this for, $2 is their total spend for the day, including for shelter, clothing, medicine, and education. Unlike them, I will also have a roof over my head, I will have water that I can safely drink from the tap at any time I wish and I will have access to a doctor if I get sick. These are all the things that we take for granted every day, but for one-quarter of the world’s population they do not even come into the picture. (Time expired)
I rise tonight to speak on an issue about achieving prosperity through competition, about ensuring that we have competitive enterprise in Australia. Last week I presented the Main Committee a petition of 6,409 signatures from chief petitioner Bill Brown and the residents of Colac and district. The Colac and district community want to draw to the attention of the House that the price of petrol in Colac appears to be set by the two major food retailers and there is no effective competition between them.
I commend Bill Brown and his team for their efforts in gathering support for this petition and I call on the government to ensure that the ACCC investigates this matter. If Australia, and especially its regional and rural communities, is to prosper, we have to make sure that there is proper competition in all sectors of the Australian economy. In the petition the Colac and district residents ask the House to take ‘positive action to provide the residents of Colac and district with ‘a fair pricing structure to ensure that the fuel they are getting is not overpriced. They would like the ACCC to investigate to see if there is unfair competition, if there is duopoly practice, and, if there is, to make some decisions which will prevent this occurring in the future.
This petition of 6,409 signatures is no small thing, and I hope that this government will give it the attention and consideration it deserves. Colac and district has 13,000 to 15,000 people, so the fact that they got 6,409 signatures means that the residents are very worried about what is taking place. If they do not think that there is fair competition then we are beholden to investigate whether or not their concerns are real. The residents of this community are already struggling with electricity hikes, interest rate hikes and the increased cost of living under this Labor government. Sadly, they are likely to get hit again with the introduction of a carbon tax—let us call it what it is, a carbon tax. They cannot afford to have the two major food retailers in an uncompetitive environment, if that is what is operating, putting up the cost of their petrol.
This issue is broader than one just of petrol. If we are seeing an increase in anticompetitive behaviour in the marketplace we need to act. One of the issues we have in the dairy sector at the moment is that one of the big supermarkets is using milk as a loss leader. If the supermarket wears milk as a loss leader and wears that to its profit, that is fine. But if it does not and it is looking to vertically integrate so that it can control the whole food chain when it comes to milk and introducing dairy products then, potentially, we have an issue. If there is not fair competition within the marketplace, ultimately consumers will be the losers and we have to ensure that this does not happen.
This is particularly important for our communities in regional and rural Australia. There is not the population to ensure that we get competition occurring naturally, so we have to ensure that when big players get involved they do not use the power of the market to intervene in a way which discriminates against the consumer. As the residents of Colac and district are telling the government through this petition, they are not happy if there is anticompetitive behaviour taking place and they want it fixed. I hope the government will get the ACCC to intervene in this matter. I hope it will look at it because competition is vital to the Australian economy and to our future. The government needs to intervene to make sure that we have proper competition in Colac. (Time expired)
I rise tonight to speak on what I see is a disturbing and fundamental attack on our national parks. One of the very early actions of the newly elected Liberal Victorian government was to allow graziers to take their cattle back into the state’s Alpine National Park. When I first heard that I found it quite hard to believe. I went to the Victorian government’s website and, sure enough, there it is. Down the side, under the Department of Sustainability and Environment’s website, we have:
Cultural Heritage
Marine National Parks
What’s New
Cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park.
It is presented as a scientific trial to investigate the impact of the cattle on reducing fire. I have heard of scientific whaling—and now we have scientific grazing. It reminds me of the Vapors’ song of the eighties: ‘I think they’re turning Japanese, I think they’re turning Japanese, I really think so.’ On the next page of the website, they go further. It is a six-year scientific research trial that will help them meet their responsibilities to:
… ensure that appropriate and sufficient measures are taken to protect each national park and state park from injury by fire.
I would think that they also have an obligation to protect the national parks from injury by cattle. You do not need a six-year scientific research project to figure out how to do that—you actually get the cattle out. It is very simple.
Because we are talking about fire—that is a serious matter; at least the Victorian government is talking about it—we do need to have a look at whether there is any reality to this notion. I will give three reasons why this might be a political smokescreen and not really about fire. Firstly, of the 10 recommendations from the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission about the need for research, cattle grazing was not one of them. Secondly, there is already significant research done on the impact of alpine grazing on fire reduction. It was done mainly after the 2003 fires swept across Victoria’s Alpine National Park and was published in a peer-reviewed journal:
Some 100 kilometres of transects across grazed and ungrazed areas of the Bogong High Plains were measured for fire occurrence and … for fire severity.
There is a comprehensive explanation of the research done on the Victorian National Parks Association’s website. It says:
There were 108km of transect lines, 419 survey points and 4050 twig measurements, with sample points equally distributed across grazed and ungrazed country.
It was found that grazing did not significantly lower the severity of fire measured by the diameter of the burnt twigs. In fact, the research comprehensively proved that there was no statistical evidence that grazing reduced the impacts of fire.
Thirdly, when Premier Bracks made his decision in 2005 to remove cattle from the alpine parks, finally, he announced at the same time that grazing would be preserved in the high country state forests of Victoria. So there was grazing in the state forests and not in the Alpine National Parks. That had been the case since 2002. Grazing was temporarily suspended, then, to allow the national parks to recover from the fire. If it is necessary to undertake scientific research, there are already nearly nine years of comparisons available and it would be equally possibly to carry out that research in the high country state forests where grazing has been taking place for the last nine years and prior to that.
While there is significant evidence that grazing does not reduce the likelihood of fire, there is also significant evidence that grazing has a significant negative impact on the alpine environment. In fact, there are over 60 years of scientific research to prove that they trample the stream banks, springs and soaks and they damage and destroy, in particular, the fragile alpine moss beds. If members of this House have not been to the highlands to see the sphagnum moss swamps, it really is worth doing. You can see them at Namadgi, very close to here, you can see them in the south-west forest and, of course, you can see them at Kosciusko, before you get to Victoria. They are well and truly worth seeing.
There is overwhelming evidence that cattle in our national parks do serious damage. I cannot believe we are even having this conversation in 2011. This is an argument that I thought was won a long time ago. I really thought we had won this one. Our national parks belong to all of us, to all Australians, and it is about time we got these cattle out.
I spoke last week in this place on the flood levy. During that speech I recognised the great calamity the floods had caused in Victoria and Queensland. While I mentioned at the time some local damage from flooding in South Australia I did not detail it, and I wish to do so tonight. Both December and February brought storms to the lower north and mid-north regions of the state. As I said, they were on a lesser scale than the floods which Victoria and Queensland faced.
It is worth noting—it helps in understanding South Australia—that it is the most centralised state in the Commonwealth and, as a result, has a more sparse rural and regional population and a number of small councils. In fact, I have between 24 and 32 local government areas in my electorate, depending on how you define a local government area.
But, big or small, the effect is the same if councils have unpredictable emergency costs which they could not possibly have allowed for in their budgets. I have been supplied with information from affected councils—estimates of the damage—which graphically illustrates the job at hand. Councils have fairly inflexible budgets. In fact, the only way they can raise extra revenue is by raising hikes. The rest of their revenue comes through fixed grants.
The Flinders Ranges Council is centred on the Quorn and Hawker townships in the mid-Flinders Ranges. It is a very small council. They have had damages of $563,000 and this represents 43.5 per cent of their rate revenue of $1.3 million. The Regional Council of Goyder, which encompasses the towns of Hallett, historic Burra and Eudunda, is a small-to-medium council with total rate revenue of $3.7 million. They have had more than $10 million worth of damage or 265 per cent of annual rates.
The Northern Areas Council, which is centred around Jamestown, Gladstone, Laura and Spalding and is adjacent to the southern Flinders Ranges, is a small-to-medium council. It has revenue of $3.7 million and has suffered damage of $320,000—a much smaller, but significant, nine per cent of rate revenue. The District Council of Orroroo-Carrieton on the northern side of the Northern Areas Council and adjacent to the Flinders Ranges is the smallest council in the state. They have had damages of $950,000 or 154 per cent of their estimated rate revenue.
The District Council of Peterborough, which is centred on the Barrier Highway, was built as the national crossroads for the steam-train network. It has a rating base of $1.05 million and they have had damages of $2 million or 190 per cent of that base. The Clare and Gilbert Valleys Council is not in my electorate. It is immediately to the south in the member for Wakefield’s electorate. It is a bigger council with revenue of $9 million, but had $15 million worth of damage or 165 per cent of rates.
While, as I said, the damage to these councils was smaller than the damage done to councils in the Queensland and Victorian areas, it was still significant. The roads have gutters down the middle, the verges are washed away and the towns have suffered flooding. In the town of Stockport, just to the south of my electorate in the Clare and Gilbert Valleys, 20 homes were destroyed in scenes reminiscent of the Queensland floods. They received household support but the damage to infrastructure that the council now has to deal with is significant.
This begs the question: when is a disaster a disaster? To the individual councils, what, in dollar terms, would be an inconvenience for one can be disaster for another. In my speech on the floods I highlighted the fact that through the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements, Queensland, before the latest floods had received $310 million in the last 10 years; the most populous state, New South Wales had received $194 million; South Australia had received just $17 million; Western Australia, $27 million; and Victoria, including what has been the most horrific national disaster ever and the most expensive up until this year—the 2009 bushfires—had received $323 million.
In closing, I raise these figures because I think there is a question of equity here. We know we are going to have a Senate inquiry into the national relief arrangements and the prospect of insurance for states. I think there also needs to be a re-examination of what these trigger levels are for separate states and council areas. (Time expired)
I meet a lot of interesting and innovative people in Ipswich and today I would like to speak about one outstanding and inspirational individual, Mr Frank Manthey.
To give a bit of background, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, recently widowed Frank worked out west as a roo shooter for the Queensland department of environment. One night, over a beer, he met a zoologist with National Parks, Peter McRae, who talked to Frank about his last decade’s work searching for the elusive bilby. Frank agreed to go with Peter one night to try to catch a glimpse of the bilby.
From that first sighting, Frank knew he had to do whatever he could to save the species from extinction. Listed as ‘endangered’ in Queensland and as ‘threatened’ nationally, the bilby was in serious trouble. Feral cats and farming activity were responsible for their plight so Frank and Peter, now known as the ‘bilby brothers’, had a mission. Their mission was to create a bilby sanctuary in Currawinya National Park. This meant fencing off a 25 square kilometre area with an electrified predator-proof fence at an estimated cost of $300,000. This sum looked impossible, especially when they were both public servants and had to convince their bosses that their ambitious plan was both possible and necessary.
Now, many people may not know Frank but he is one of Australia’s silent heroes. I can tell you, Frank is to threatened species in Australia what Peter Cundall is to gardening. He is an extraordinary individual. The idea of raising $300,000 would stump most of us, but not Frank. He and Peter set out to raise the money all by themselves. They used everything from bilby information nights to selling bilby T-shirts, and, incredibly, the money was raised. I say ‘incredibly’ but it becomes less of a surprise when you get to know how Frank operates. Frank and Peter featured on Australian Story and 60 Minutes. A documentary known as The Bilby Brothers has also been made about their extraordinary contribution towards bilby conservation.
In 2002, Frank received the Australian Geographic conservation award. In June 2005, after three years of lobbying, Frank travelled to this very place to try to convince the then Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, to establish a national bilby day. It will come as no surprise to listeners that the minister agreed and the second Sunday of each September is now known as National Bilby Day. Frank does not get any credit for the work he has done. In fact, he is one of those rare individuals who are selfless in their work and commitment.
I will share a summary of a touching letter that I read on the Save the Bilby website. It is from Steve and Merrin Curnow, whose son, Luke Curnow, tragically died from a brain tumour. The letter outlined Luke’s passion for bilbies. It said:
In 2010, on the anniversary of Luke’s passing, Frank Manthey, co-founder of the Save the Bilby Fund, came to visit Luke’s school, Eagle Junction State School. As a tribute to Luke, and to remember our beautiful little boy who loved bilbies, Frank brought Paul the Bilby to show the children and to share his story about his important work to save this national treasure.
On that day the children, parents and school raised over $2,500 for the Save the Bilby Fund. This money will be used to further support the activities of the fund, to protect and promote the plight of one of our much loved, unique and endangered native animals. Luke would have loved the thought that he was able to make a difference and to help prevent the extinction of this precious Australian animal.
In a further tribute to Luke a new baby bilby, born recently at the breeding program at Dreamworld, has been named Luke. This is an amazing honour to his family and friends and it is a lasting legacy for Luke.
There are many similar stories on the Save the Bilby website and I encourage people to have a look.
Between April and October last year, 4,771 people attended 198 bilby shows. There are now bilbies in shelters at Featherdale Wildlife Park, Taronga Park Zoo and Western Plains Zoo in New South Wales and at Dreamworld in Queensland. In fact, there is a very impressive display at Queen’s Park in Ipswich, which the Young Queenslander of the Year, Jessica Watson, recently visited to meet a newly born bilby who is now her namesake.
With the Easter period almost upon us, it is timely to remind everyone to bypass the bunnies and support the Save the Bilby Fund by purchasing a Darrell Lea Easter bilby—and I want to assure the House that I am not receiving any campaign contributions from Darrell Lea. Bilbies used to inhabit 80 per cent of the Australian landscape, but they now inhabit only some small pockets in a few states. I believe that if Frank Manthey and Peter McCrae had not met over a beer in a pub all those years ago, the bilby would no longer exist. We have gone a long way towards saving the bilby. I want to commend to the House Frank’s enormous contribution to native animal conservation and the bilby in particular.
Given yesterday’s release of the Productivity Commission’s preliminary report into the National Disability Insurance Scheme, it is appropriate that further attention is focused on meeting the individual needs and supported accommodation requirements of people living with a disability.
Bennelong is the home of a large number of disability service organisations and providers of supported accommodation facilities. I have the privilege of representing and interacting with many constituents who are working tirelessly in this important area. These organisations include the Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney; Macquarie Hospital; Crowle Homes, which has recently merged with the Achieve Foundation; the Ryde office of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance; the Shepherd Centre; and many smaller, volunteer-run community organisations.
I would like to draw particular attention to Ryde Area Supported Accommodation for Intellectually Disabled, or RASAID. This determined group was formed six years ago by 19 local families who were struggling to secure accommodation and support for their 20 adult sons and daughters with intellectual disabilities. All of them required a high level of care, and some required it around the clock. Like many other parents of children with a disability, the families of RASAID live their lives on a rollercoaster of emotion and fatigue. Most of them are aged 50 or above, with their most senior member still a full-time carer at 87 years of age.
The families of RASAID have supported each other for decades. Their adult children have grown up together attending school, day programs, work placements and social groups together. With more than 600 years of combined carers experience these parents are best positioned to advocate for the individual care and accommodation needs of their dependent children. They understand that there is no one-size-fits-all care or accommodation model. Significant funds are required at both the federal and state level. Hopefully the consultation surrounding the National Disability Insurance Scheme will provide guidance and options for future generations.
My great concern is their urgent accommodation and housing needs. Despite the drain on their time, members of RASAID have attended over 60 meetings with state and federal MPs and departmental representatives in an effort to find a solution. I have committed to continue working with my state and federal colleagues, RASAID and other disability service organisations and advocates to determine and pursue all available options to ensure we find suitable and acceptable solutions.
My federal colleague and shadow disability minister, Senator Mitch Fifield, has visited Bennelong and met with the families of RASAID and will continue to advocate for their needs. The New South Wales shadow disability services minister, Andrew Constance, and the state MP for Ryde, Victor Dominello, are campaigning for changes in this area, and I hope that the 26 March election brings this squarely onto the government’s agenda.
We need to find a way to have the system fit those needing our support through specialist accommodation and not have a system where those with an intellectual or physical disability are required to conform to a bureaucratic standard. We must measure our support systems against international best practice and recognise that a choice of how, where and with whom a person lives should be a right that is afforded to all people. I strongly applaud the tireless efforts of the parents of RASAID and all the carers and those involved in disability services in Bennelong, and I pledge my ongoing support.
As is rarely seen in these debates and in this House, I bring good news that is not of a political nature. Tonight I want to inform the House of a wonderful community event that brings together the young, the old, the fit, the not so fit and, most importantly, families from all walks of life. This year in my community we will be celebrating the 10th year of the Brisbane 2 Ipswich Challenge bike ride. This event had its first incarnation in 2001 as the Links in the Chain Centenary of Federation Ride. It then became known as the Mall to Mall Ride and today is known as the Brisbane 2 Ipswich Challenge.
It is not a race—in fact, it is not a long ride either—but it is lots of fun and an opportunity for young people, old people and people from all walks of life to just get out and enjoy cycling amongst the cycling fraternity and those who are not of that particular fraternity. For a lot of people it is an opportunity to reconnect with what is a fabulous pastime that has many benefits.
There is many a keen cyclist in this place. We know of some of them but not everyone knows all of them. There are quite a few. Of course, I am one of those and over many years I have done my little bit here to encourage people to stay active and fit and to take up cycling as a non-impact form of having a bit of fun as well as staying fit along the way.
The health benefits of cycling, of course, are clear and are well documented. It can increase fitness, improve muscle tone and strength, help prevent diseases such as heart disease and diabetes and is a great way to manage weight. Socially, of course, it is great fun and very enjoyable. It is a great way to spend time with friends and family and to discover new places. It is also an environmentally friendly way to get around. Apart from that, the only way to have a really decent cup of coffee is in the early morning, even before the sun is up. There is a whole subculture of people that exist out there that do this—way before the sun gets up. They are often your doctors, some professionals, some tradies—a whole range of people. It is really a great way to spend some time and you can do it before work, which is even better.
One of the great benefits of doing the job that we do as members of parliament is that it does grant you the ability to do some things outside of the normal scope of politics. One of the things I enjoy more than anything else is my capacity to organise the community to raise money for good causes. I find that today it gives me greater pleasure than just about anything else I do. I devote some amount of my time to doing that in the community—to really to strive to make a difference in people’s lives not only politically but from a community perspective.
One of the ways I do that—I do it in a number of ways—is to organise this bike ride. It is something that I take great pleasure in doing, although it generates a large amount of work in my office every year. Doing all this with just a few people is hard work. Every year we say, ‘Why do we do this?’ and, ‘Will we ever do it again?’ But this year will be the 10th year that we have done it.
There are two people I especially want to mention—only two, although there are hundreds. The first is Peter Rea, from Peter Rea Design. This is the bloke that actually put me on to his idea many, many years ago. Very simply the story: I went to him and said: “Look, I want to do something in my community. I want to raise money for charity. I want to do something that I can leave behind, something beyond any politics that I do.’ We had a good talk and he basically said ‘What do you like doing?’ ‘I like to ride my bike.’ He said: ‘There you go. That is what it’s going to be. It’s going to be a bike ride from Brisbane to Ipswich.’ And there it was born—a simple way to do things over a light lunch. The other person I want to thank greatly is a guy called Nev Byers, a big fellow with a huge girth and a heart that is even bigger. He is the guy that gave me my first opportunity to make this a reality by donating some money to the event. All the money he gave went to charity.
The way I have always run this ride is that we try to cover costs through sponsors, make sure there are no further costs beyond that and then give all the money that we raise to charity. The ride over the years has seen numbers anywhere from the very first ride of 40 people, which I thought was pretty spectacular at the time, all the way up to 1,000 people. So it has been a huge success and we have lots of great partners and people that help us. I would like to think it has become a bit of an iconic event in the region—certainly plenty of people tell me that it is.
This year we have moved it to a slightly later time. It is going to be on Sunday 22 May, because of the Queensland flooding, and we want to keep it as part of the Ipswich Festival. As I said, people from all walks of life and riding abilities come along. It is not a race; it is about having fun and about participating. The most important thing is that we have raised over $150,000 in that time through a small event organised of the smell of an oily rag. The proceeds go to great beneficiaries such as the Heart Foundation and the Ipswich Hospital Foundation. (Time expired)
The Forde electorate is home to a great many state and private schools which contribute greatly to our community. As the federal member, I am concerned with the welfare of students, teachers and premises. Recently there have been acts of vandalism carried out on some of our schools, the worst of which was an attack on animals at one of our state schools. I was shocked to hear of the recent brutal attack on the poultry compound and horticulture department at Loganlea High School. Loganlea State High School is renowned for its innovative specialist programs, including EMC2 Mathematics for Engineers; targeted literacy and numeracy enhancement programs affiliated with Griffith University; Dance Performance; Sport Development Access; and Knowledge House, an Indigenous education support program. And, as the only metropolitan Gateway School of Agribusiness, its students have preferred enrolment opportunities with the University of Queensland Gatton campus.
In the early hours of Monday, 7 February the perpetrators entered the compound and ransacked the area, torturing and murdering some of the animals within. These animals had been lovingly cared for by the students. This was a disturbing and violent act that left a number of tame farm animals wounded, missing and deceased. The violent acts were carried out on approximately 15 tame farm animals housed there. The offenders beat and tortured the animals with a steel rake and metal pole. There were 14 animals missing as a result of the attack. I was very saddened to hear of the students being exposed to such cruelty. In an area of the electorate which is one of the less fortunate it was even more disturbing. Chicken and duck eggs were destroyed, a female turkey was decapitated and the school dog ‘Snowy’ and two pigs, one of which was heavily pregnant, were brutally bashed. Although the school did a wonderful job getting it reopened a week later, many of the community programs that were run from the farm will be not begin again until the animals have recovered. The area is also actively used by those from outside of school—child care centres, nursing homes, the local hospital and some of the special schools.
I commend the school and the principal, Belinda Leavers, for continuing to function as best they can. I would also like to thank PETA for lending a hand to educate local schools on the correct treatment of animals and for distributing emergency humane education materials. The work that PETA does in the community is invaluable, as it teaches young people the importance of treating all living creatures with respect and care. It is integral that we as a community band together to show that this is not an acceptable act and educate our young people as early as possible.
This was a disgusting act of cruelty which one cannot even comprehend, and my sympathies and support go out to Principal Belinda Leavers and the Loganlea State High School community. I have strongly urged anyone with information on the attack to contact Crime Stoppers. This act has greatly impacted the local community, with many residents outraged at the attack. The local newspapers are currently rife with community members writing in to voice their disgust. These events bring to the fore the caring and supportive community that I represent, and that is indeed an honour. They have banded together to help the school through this difficult time.
It is my hope that those responsible for the attack will be found to prevent them from escalating their acts of violence. I would like to help in any way possible and, as I noted earlier, I urge anyone with information to come forth to the local police or Crime Stoppers.
I present a petition relating to Australians who live with paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria, or PNH disease, which is a rare and potentially fatal disease of the blood.
The petition read as follows—
To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives
This petition of Australian Citizens, who are friends, family or supporters of Australian sufferers of Paroxysmal Nocturnal Haemoglobinuria (PNH) disease, a rare and potentially fatal disease of the blood draws to the attention of the House the need to publicly fund out of the Federal Government, the only currently available treatment for PNH sufferers, namely Soliris® (Eculizumab) as a matter of urgency.
We therefore ask the House to introduce and pass any legislation or to take any administrative action available to the House that will enable sufferers of PNH disease to urgently receive breakthrough life saving treatment for this very rare and debilitating disease.
from 1,701 citizens
Petition received.
This petition has been considered by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Petitions and has been certified as in accordance with the standing orders. The petition draws the attention of the House to the need to publicly fund the only available medication for PNH sufferers, the drug Soliris, as a matter of urgency.
PNH can cause the onset of many varied health conditions, including disabling fatigue, poor physical function, fatal blood clots, chronic kidney disease, amnesia, stroke, heart failure and vital organ damage. The PNH Support Association of Australia has advised me that it kills one in three sufferers within five years of diagnosis if it is left untreated. The drug Soliris suppresses these symptoms and offers PNH patients a normal life span. Studies show that Soliris immediately and sustainably reduces the destruction of red blood cells in almost 100 per cent of patients living with PNH.
Noting all of this, I am particularly pleased to recognise that, since this petition was initiated, the Gillard government, on 9 December 2010, approved funding for Soliris on Australia’s Life Saving Drugs Program. This will make a huge difference to around 100 of our fellow citizens’ lives annually—plus, of course, the many more Australians who are family and friends of people who are living with PNH.
In a letter I have received from Linda Charlton, the President of the PNH Support Association of Australia, she has written:
On behalf of the PNH Support Association of Australia and all those affected by PNH, I would like to thank you for your show of support during our campaign for Government-subsidised PNH treatment.
She goes on to write:
This decision (to approve funding) has put an end to a great deal of anxiety and frustration felt by the PNH community, which—without access to effective PNH treatment—faced further deterioration of health, reduced quality of life and, ultimately, death.
I acknowledge the role played by the supporters of this petition—and in particular my hardworking and very capable electorate officer, Annette Hibberd, and her great friend Grace Gallucci, who lives with PNH—in bringing this issue to the attention of the government and the parliament. I firmly believe it remains an integral part of our democracy—an organic, street-wise and, indeed, longstanding practice of accountability—that we present petitions like this one in this place. The fact that this locally initiated petition pre-empted a recent government decision on Soliris is, in fact, real testament to the grassroots wisdom of Australian people.
People who live with debilitating medical conditions like PNH or who live with a disability often have enlightening and profoundly important and empowering stories and evidence to give the legislators and decision makers, as do their families and carers—a fact on evidence in the recent Productivity Commission draft report about a National Disability Insurance Scheme. We should always listen to people who lack power. It is not just our duty but a key source of advice on how this parliament and this country can conduct themselves. I think it is the quiet, modest pursuit of change through the parliament—the moderating institution in Australian life through democratic means—that means that I can recognise and admire all of the efforts of the people who signed this petition as I table it in our national parliament.
Question agreed to.
The following notices were given:
to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Trans-Tasman Proceedings Act 2010 and to validate certain court fees, and for related purposes.
to present a Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to elections and referendums, and for related purposes.
to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Customs Act 1901, and for related purposes.
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to present a Bill for an Act to establish a Commission of Inquiry into the Home Insulation Program, and for related purposes.
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It is my privilege to rise today to congratulate John Berryman, the CEO of the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children at North Rocks, in my electorate of Mitchell. After 33 years of service with the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children he is retiring.
In 1978 John Berryman was hired to install the first computer at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children. This fine charity is one of Australia’s oldest registered charities and this year is celebrating its 150-year anniversary. That is a fantastic achievement in anyone’s books. They have been providing services for blind and deaf children for 150 years, and with advances in technology the impact that they have had on children across this nation has been immense. They have early intervention, preschool and school programs. Their programs for deaf and hearing impaired children are built on spoken communications and involve the use of cochlear implants and high-quality hearing aids. They conduct programs for smaller groups of deaf children who need to use sign language. When you visit their campus it is amazing to see the technology that is being used for video conferencing, serving the country and regional areas of our nation. It is a fine facility.
Thirty-three years after John Berryman arrived he is leaving, after many wonderful years of success. He says that it has been a very big and rewarding part of his life, but he recognises that it is time to let younger, more vigorous and more up-to-date people take the reins. I reject the notion that Mr Berryman is not up to date. He has been a remarkable force for good in our nation’s history. He has served the deaf and blind community relentlessly during those 33 years and his impact has been immense.
The North Rocks campus is big; it is unusual in Australia today in its scope and size. It is so rewarding to see different classes of children using advanced technologies and signing the national anthem, doing all the innovative things that they do at that school, and having the same opportunities and advantages that so many of us take for granted today.
I also want to congratulate the Lantern Club, the formal fundraising component of the North Rocks deaf and blind school. They do outstanding work in this cause and raise so much private capital and money for things which would not be possible for the government to fund. Of course, the government does provide significant money in places. The institute recorded a $500,000 grant last year from the federal government, for which they are most grateful. It is important for us to note that on average one child in 1,000 is born in Australia with a significant permanent hearing impairment. By the time that child reaches the age of five, there will be another child who is diagnosed with a similar loss.
I want to congratulate John Berryman on 33 wonderful years and congratulate the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children at North Rocks for the institution it has become today. (Time expired)
I stand today to condemn the racism that eats at the Liberal Party and I call on the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, to show strong leadership and to stamp it out once and for all. Australia’s history is littered with politicians peddling hate. Whether it was Pauline Hanson claiming that the country was in danger of being swamped by Asians or John Howard tapping into the same mother lode for his own political gain, spiteful politicians understand the rich rewards to be had in going there and they have mined it for all it is worth.
Of course, nothing has changed. As the families of the victims of the Christmas Island disaster buried their dead last month, we listened in disbelief as shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, Scott Morrison, took politics to a new low by whining over the cost of flying mourners to Sydney, including the orphaned boy who probably watched his parents drown. Moreover, still on the website of shadow parliamentary secretary assisting the Leader of the Opposition, Cory Bernardi, are rants whipping up fear of Islam, including this comment on halal food:
I, for one, don’t want to eat meat butchered in the name of an ideology that is mired in sixth century brutality and is an anathema to my own values.
I say to Mr Morrison and Senator Bernardi: you are a disgrace—a disgrace to the high office you hold and to the people you represent. And I say to Mr Abbott: you must lance this boil once and for all. It is not good enough to dismiss the hate inhabiting the dark corners of the Liberal Party and the widespread community concern it engenders by just noting that your most senior operatives merely go ‘a little too far’.
What you should have done was sacked such people immediately from the shadow ministry and read the riot act. At least get Senator Bernardi to remove the bile from his website. You must also look afresh at your party’s policies and determine to address the way hate corrupts your party’s approach to public policy. For instance, asylum seekers are not illegals or terrorists, and heartfelt protection is not afforded by temporary protection visas. Trying to deny asylum seekers the use of surplus defence housing is nothing short of an act of bastardry, and threatening to slash foreign aid is abominable.
The Parliament of Australia should be a place for leaders, people who refuse to exploit the fault lines in our community and who instead seek to guide our society. Anyone who sits in this place and does not understand that responsibility has no right to be here. What we say matters, as evidenced by a letter TV personality Andrew Denton challenged Pauline Hanson with in 2004. It was written to an Asian woman by someone inspired by Ms Hanson, and it said:
You are nothing but an ungrateful, treacherous, yellow, slanty-eyed little Vietnamese whore. We have had enough of your lot, with their drug peddling and crime, so piss off now.
In other words, some politicians are as much to blame as the thugs themselves for episodes such as the Cronulla riots and the hate crimes which continue on our streets.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the National Prayer Breakfast and took particular pleasure in listening to the guest speaker, Ms Lulu Mitshabu. Lulu is a Congolese refugee who now works for Caritas Australia, an international aid and development agency within the Catholic Church. Her speech about the atrocities experienced by her fellow countrymen, particularly women and children, was most confronting. According to a major International Rescue Committee report, the conflict and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken 5.4 million people since 1998.
The sad history of the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of great tragedy for Africa and the world at large. Despite being incredibly rich in natural resources, the country is one of the poorest in the world. This is mostly due to the history of unrest and human rights violations at the hands of its own leaders, as well as the various militia groups from neighbouring countries. Rape, violence, intimidation and subjugation have been used for years to create instability and fear that will allow for economic control by its perpetrators. Violence, predominantly of a sexual nature, is, as Lulu stated, out of control and being used as a weapon for instilling a sense of fear, creating a divide in the community and prolonging the environment of chaos.
According to various UN reports, in October and November last year alone there were 2,000 reported incidents of sexual violence occurring in that country. The saddest part is the fact that the tens of thousands of victims of rape are not supported but rejected by their families and their communities after the incident. This misplaced sense of blame has caused shame, tearing families and communities apart. Lulu told the horrific story of a teenage girl being abducted and forced into prostitution by the men who killed her six siblings.
These are intolerable events that are occurring and unfortunately they are occurring right under the noses of the world community. While living in a country such as Australia, with all of the freedoms that we enjoy, I cannot even imagine how in some parts of the world atrocities like this are happening to somebody’s sisters and, importantly for me, somebody’s daughters. As the UN recently indicated, there is now a generation of children who will know nothing but violence. We have a responsibility in this respect. I praise Ms Lulu Mitshabu for her continued work in this area, making us aware of this horrifying situation and fighting to assist victims—(Time expired)
The issue of food labelling in country of origin is of great importance to Australian consumers and our primary producers alike. The independent review of food labelling law and policy commissioned by the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council released its report Labelling logic on 28 January 2011. The independent review recommended, as part of its 61 recommendations, that information on food labels be presented in a clear and comprehensible manner to enhance understanding across all levels of the population. The national peak industry body representing vegetable and potato growers, Ausveg, has been very active over the years in calling for more accurate and understandable country-of-origin labelling to aid consumers in making informed purchasing choices. It is vital they say to level the playing field and provide consumers with a choice to purchase Australian or imported products as they see fit. Ausveg cautiously welcomed the broad recommendations made by the panel members in the independent report, but stated that what was really required was a comprehensive plan that would address the current confusion about country of origin and put in place a nationally consistent and enforceable system for making country-of-origin claims at point of sale. They argue that not only are the current defences regarding the country of origin through the former Trade Practices Act and now the new ACL, Australian Consumer Law, difficult to enforce but they have been prone to exploitation over the years by companies looking to play on and gain market advantage through deceptive conduct. This continues to ring alarm bells for consumers. Numerous surveys have shown that if given the opportunity to buy Australian products consumers would exercise that right. Consumers should be afforded that choice and those growers, many of whom comply with strict quality assurance regulations that international suppliers do not have to adhere to, should be on an equal footing.
The traffic light system proposed by the panel is not the answer. Firstly, a voluntary labelling system is unlikely to succeed and, secondly, it fails to address the crucial issue of country of origin. What is required now is that appropriate power and resources be given to the ACCC to enforce these matters and ensure that consumers are not being misled. I support recommendation 57 in the report which states:
That monitoring and enforcement of food labelling requirements of the Food Standards Code (accuracy as well as the presence of labelling information) be considered equally important as other aspects of the Food Standards Code and the responsible agencies be given the appropriate level of resources to meet their obligations.
What also concerns me is the quantity of imports from countries whose questionable regulatory health and safety practices continue to increase. This is concerning considering the decreasing capacity of Australian consumers to distinguish between Australian grown and international counterparts. Only five per cent of imported produce is tested by AQIS and the testing range for chemicals is limited. That is not enough protection against diseases, pests and potentially unsafe chemical levels. Our biosecurity is a real issue that should not be taken lightly. At a national level, Australia imported $555 million worth of vegetables in 2009-10. While the new ground of defence afforded under the ACL, effective 1 January of this year, may be more difficult for companies to exploit, it does not go far enough. More information on safety concerns with regard to food products in general is required. I am also of the view that the Blewett report lacks clarity in an identifiable way forward when it comes to a solution to the overarching issue of country-of-origin labelling.
I am pleased to speak about matters particularly relating to autism spectrum disorder within our community. I know that members would be aware that the Gillard government have made a significant range of commitments in relation to funding to assist children with disabilities, particularly with early intervention services. We know that, as part of that package, the federal government have committed $190 million for the four years to June 2012 to help provide supported services for children with ASD. There are a number of other very valuable initiatives in the Helping Children with Autism package, including provision for autism advisers and assistance for parents and carers of children with ASD to help them better manage the pressures that they face in raising their children. I know very well that there is always more to be done in helping to address this issue. We also look to our state colleagues in order to address the needs of those affected by ASD.
That is why I would particularly like to mention today the construction of stage 2 of the Eastern Autistic School project in Ferntree Gully in my electorate. I recognise the particular need for a primary to year 12 school dedicated to the education of the children and young adults with ASD. Assuming that stage 2 of the school does proceed, it will give families with autistic children a great deal of comfort and support. I say ‘assuming’ that it does proceed because, although the former Victorian Labor government had committed funding for that project, there is now doubt that the Baillieu government will provide that funding in order to complete stage 2 of the construction. Indeed, it appears that funding has only been committed for the junior levels of the school, and the Victorian government has to date given no assurance that the additional funds needed for completion of the primary to year 12 project will be forthcoming.
What we are beginning to see in the Victorian government is a reflection of exactly what their federal counterparts are inclined to do when it comes to making genuine commitments. They make all the right noises without actually coming equivocally to make a commitment to deliver what is needed. They feign support for education and then fail to back it up with a cash commitment. Indeed, at the last federal election, the Liberal Party in my electorate committed to well over $100 million in spending, including a commitment—or seemingly—of over $80 million for a road upgrade. Unfortunately, as we discovered just days before the election, most of those commitments that they had purported to have made were not included in their own party’s costings.
For the present, I will give the Victorian government the benefit of the doubt, but I invite them to clearly spell out a genuine commitment to funding the completion, in full, of the Eastern Autistic School. I hope that they will recognise the confusion and upset that this will otherwise cause to local families with children who propose to enrol in the school.
The Simpson Prize is awarded each year by the History Teachers Association of Australia on behalf of the Australian government. The competition is conducted for years 9 and 10 students across the country and requires students to submit an essay or presentation on the history of the Anzacs. This year’s competition topic was ‘Has the Anzac legend changed over 95 years?’
I am pleased to say that Thomas Posa, a student from Melbourne High School, in my electorate of Higgins, received a runner-up prize and will be in Canberra for a three-day educational tour. Ms Geraldine Carrodus, a teacher at Sacre Coeur—also in the electorate of Higgins—will accompany the winning students to Gallipoli for the Anzac Service. Ms Carrodus was chosen for her passion for Australia’s Anzac history.
This is a wonderful competition that instils in our students knowledge and respect for the Anzacs, who form such an important part of our Australian national identity. By learning about the lives of ordinary Australians who sailed to Gallipoli to fight a foreign enemy, deprived of basic comforts and with little knowledge of what would confront them, students learn of the tremendous sacrifices that these soldiers undertook for us. They learn that the legend of the Anzacs is not just a mythology but something firmly rooted in the history of our country.
As Thomas says in his essay, it is the actions of the average soldier like Simpson and his donkey that truly inspire us. John Simpson Kirkpatrick, who brought the wounded from the frontline, exposed to enemy fire, was someone who put the welfare of others above his own. He was shot and killed in Gallipoli. Simpson has become an enduring part of the Anzac story, and it is fitting that this prize be named for him, as someone who embodies the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers from Australia and New Zealand.
After the Australian and New Zealand forces finally withdrew from Gallipoli, over 8,000 had lost their lives. Many who were left were physically wounded or were wounded mentally. The Anzacs would go on to have significant victories during the war in Egypt, in Palestine and on the Western Front. Since then they have been involved in a number of armed conflicts, from Kokoda and Tobruk to Long Tan. Yet it is Gallipoli that holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Australians. As Thomas put it in his essay:
For the ANZAC legend is not just about war. The values instilled by the ANZACs, while still as relevant as ever, have migrated from the forefront of our minds to our subconscious. The values embody the Australian of today, who is different from the Australian of the ANZACs’ time, but still shares the same beliefs, values and overriding sense of morality.
We could not put it better than that. Today we are very lucky not to live under a constant threat of war and tyranny. May it ever remain thus.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the Canberra area, the Ngunawal and Ngambri people, and pay my respects to the elders past and present. On 13 February I attended a function in the Chifley electorate to commemorate the third anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations. Chifley has one of the largest urban Aboriginal populations in the country. Many Aboriginal people in my electorate are either members of the stolen generation or their direct descendants. The apology made by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was an enormously healing moment for many in Chifley, and I am delighted that they continue to commemorate this historic occasion.
The function was organised by the Mount Druitt and District Reconciliation Group, originally known as the Chifley Reconciliation Group. They have been active in the Chifley electorate for the past 14 years, and over that time have organised an annual reconciliation walk and gathering in Mount Druitt. I would like to express my gratitude to their executive—Marguerite Tobin, President; Pat Smith, Secretary; Maureen Berger, Vice President; and Debra Robertson, Treasurer—for their continued work towards reconciliation.
Sadly we learned last Monday of the passing of Coral McLean who, along with Father Paul Hanna, Mavis Halverson, Ray Leslie, Wes Marne, Gloria Matthews and Rita Wright, began the work of this group all those years ago. The former member for Chifley, Roger Price, was also part of that group and has in the past spoken fondly in the House of Coral McLean and the contribution she made to the people of Holy Family at Emerton. Yesterday my colleague the member for Greenway eloquently detailed Coral’s many contributions to community life in the Mount Druitt area. She referred to the comments of Coral’s long-time friend and co-contributor in a range of crucial community activities, Father Paul Hanna, who figures Coral gave over 100,000 hours of her time to community service—just a phenomenal act of generosity towards a grateful community.
We sometimes take for granted the fact that literacy is the key to our effective participation in day-to-day life. Coral knew this to be a truism. It is what drove her to be involved in literacy and education courses at the Holy Family Education Centre. She saw the power of education to help put people back on a better path than the one they were travelling upon. Additionally, she worked hard to ensure that those without their own funds were not without a voice in our legal system. She, with others like Merleen Millson, devoted their energies to the establishment of the Mount Druitt and Area Community Legal Centre. Her success rested on treating everyone with respect and love, and a real care for the community. She touched the lives of so many because ultimately she was true to them and herself.
I last saw her at the 2010 reconciliation walk, her comforting smile masking a deep battle with cancer. While she fought bravely for such a long time, in the end that contest was too great to overcome. I am told today’s service at the Central Coast of New South Wales was a beautiful one conducted by family and the community. It was a packed service that, as someone said, they would likely never see repeated in their lifetime. While today she is committed to the earth, her legacy must be celebrated, remembered and built upon. I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the family and friends of Coral McLean. (Time expired)
On 20 August 2010, the day before the election, the Prime Minister categorically ruled out the introduction of the carbon tax. The front page of the Australian on that day quoted the Prime Minister as saying:
I rule out a carbon tax.
Since the election, circumstances have not changed for my constituents. My electorate comprises what is commonly known as the mortgage belt of outer Brisbane. Many of my constituents are struggling to make ends meet in the face of increasing cost-of-living pressures. The price of water has gone up. The price of electricity has gone up. The price of fuel has gone up. The cost of public transport has gone up.
It is getting harder and harder for ordinary Australians to make ends meet. Ordinary Australians are having to work harder and harder to achieve the aspirations we had previously taken for granted. Owning your own home, paying the bills, educating your children and setting them up for a better life than your own—these are not unreasonable expectations, but under this government they are becoming more and more unattainable.
Now the government is proposing to introduce yet another new tax that will add to the cost-of-living pressures experienced by my constituents. Already high electricity bills will get higher. The New South Wales government has stated that a carbon tax would mean a 25 per cent increase in electricity prices. The locals in my community simply cannot afford that. Since the Prime Minister’s announcement, my electorate office has been swamped with emails and calls opposing the tax and expressing disappointment at the Prime Minister’s fundamental breach of faith with Australians. One of my constituents wrote:
My parents are finding it hard to pay for power as it is … with other rises … a carbon tax will kill them. This country can not handle more taxes.
Another constituent wrote:
I am disgusted with The Prime Minister’s announcement of a carbon tax. This is the lowest moment of this government.
There were many more statements from constituents along the same lines, too many for me to read in detail today. Suffice it to say, many of my constituents feel betrayed by this Labor government.
My constituents rightly believe that it is the job of government to make their lives easier, not harder. They believe that government should exist to support them in their aspirations, not work against them to make their aspirations unattainable. They believe the government should reduce the burden so that their quality of life improves, not deteriorates. The government’s carbon tax will increase the cost of living for my constituents who are already facing soaring utility bills and other price hikes. It will simply make it harder for them to make ends meet and to fulfil their aspirations.
I stand here today to draw attention to the good work of the veterans support networks in Hasluck. These groups play a vital role in identifying those veterans with health needs and who are isolated in society. It is a travesty that we can call on these people to fight and die for us overseas, but when it comes to their welfare at home we are often found wanting. Groups such as the Men’s Health Peer Education Unit, on Newburn Road in High Wycombe, pick up the slack that has been left by government. Men such as Phil Quartermaine, Lester Leaman and Peter Cowley give these veterans a place to go where they can find advice on a range of issues and talk through their mental and physical health needs. The work that these people do for the community is unquantifiable and so is the generosity of Maria So, the owner of the Newburn pharmacy, who has donated one of her clinical rooms, which the men’s health group can use for meetings.
One of the main things that I hear from people when I go doorknocking or appear at local events is a yearning for a time when we all knew our neighbours, when we had street parties and when there was a greater sense of community. This is the sort of work that these veterans health groups do. They provide a place for Australia’s war veterans and their families to sit, talk and listen to each others stories. For many veterans, sadly, this is the only family that they have.
Not-for-profit organisations like these provide our society with an invaluable service that needs more support from this government. Once again, I would like to thank all of those veterans support groups in Hasluck and commend them for the support they provide to our community. These are the people that make Australia great. They come together and provide the support that is needed in mateship and comradeship. They work through the issues, they share the pain of experiences and they talk about their health problems, which often men will not talk about or share with each other. They encourage that. They also invite the partners of each of the men who attend, so there becomes a gathering in which they are comfortable and in which they invite other people to talk to them about some of the challenges that they face and how to overcome those challenges.
But, more importantly, they have a great sense of pride in the fact that they fought for their country; they gave their all in order to defend and give us the freedoms that we enjoy in our society today. I want to commend them because it is through their leadership that they bring together not only the current Vietnam veterans but also many others who they believe need that hand that helps them through the final stages of their retiring years when they reflect on what they had, what they contributed to their country and what they have done since coming back. But I think the most important part is the comradeship and the friendship that is extremely strong within these groups.
I rise today to acknowledge the work being done by the Lu Rees Archives, as well as to congratulate it on its receipt last year of a community heritage grant of $8,800. The archives is internationally recognised for its work and attracts authors, illustrators, publishers, researchers and literary agents from around the world. The archives developed out of a 1974 initiative of the ACT branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia to create a national collection of Australian children’s books.
The archives holds a comprehensive collection of books and other resources about authors, illustrators, publishers and their creative works. The collection includes over 20,000 books, over 370 research files and significant collections of papers, manuscripts and artworks of authors, illustrators and publishers.
Since 1990 the archives development has been overseen by Dr Belle Alderman. Dr Alderman, as the honorary collection development manager, donates up to 700 hours each year to maintaining the collection. Dr Alderman’s work is indicative of the tireless efforts of the many volunteers who maintain the archives as a labour of love. The money received by the archives by way of the community heritage grant will go towards funding two experts who will examine the archives, report on their national significance and assess the collections that require preservation.
The significant assessment will establish new or improved current collection management practices, identify nationally significant aspects of the collection to ensure they receive attention, assist the archives in determining the aspects of the collection that need to be given priority, enable the archives to enhance its public profile and allow the archives to inspire staff and volunteers with a renewed drive and focus on ideas, projects and the pursuit of future goals. The preservation needs assessment will examine the overall collection and identify items in need of urgent attention. It will also provide the basis for developing a working plan for future preservation activities and harness the collective energy of volunteers to perform preservation tasks where appropriate. I congratulate the Lu Rees Archives on the grant and thank the team for their continued efforts in preserving Australian children’s literature.
I would also like to congratulate the AIDS Action Council of the ACT for its grant of $6,700 for archival shelving. Anyone who lived through the eighties and who lost friends during the eighties realises the invaluable work performed by the AIDS Action Council of the ACT, and I congratulate them on the grant and their work.
Finally, I would like to recognise Craft Australia and its grant of $14,000 to digitise its slide collection. This collection shows the work of leading Australian craftspeople and consists of 7,000 slides. I would also like to encourage Canberrans and Australians to apply for grant applications. (Time expired)
In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members’ constituency statements has concluded.
Debate resumed from 28 February, on motion by Mr Gray:
That this bill be now read a second time.
upon which Mr Pyne moved by way of amendment:
That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House call on the Government to bring forward its timetable for resolving the inequity it has created in independent youth allowance payments for inner regional students, and in particular ensure that:
This debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 gives us the opportunity to look back over the first half-year of this new government. I do that in particular in respect of my own electorate and, to a lesser extent, in respect of the Wide Bay area and the east coast of Queensland. One of the decisions made in conjunction with the flood levy, or the flood tax as it has now become, was to cut back a billion dollars worth of infrastructure, $325 million of it in Queensland. What I find extraordinary is that the six projects that were chosen to be cut back in Queensland included the Bruce Highway, roads associated with the Bruce Highway and a flood plain—of all things a flood plain—involving the Herbert River. I am dumbfounded by that, because five of those six projects are in coalition marginal or semi-marginal electorates and many of them were promised by former Labor members for the seats. Why they would be targeted, especially after these floods, surprises me.
Let me tell you why. The greatest systemic failure in the Queensland floods in terms of transport—commercial and passenger—and getting people to places was that of the Bruce Highway, and that is the thing that has been targeted. ‘Sure,’ they say, ‘we’ll come back in three or four years time and have another look at it.’ But all these are things that need to be done now. One of them is not in my electorate but just outside it, in the electorate of Flynn. It is near the town of Gin Gin and it is called the Big Dipper. It is a big up-and-down section of highway that could be wider and is notorious for crashes. I have seen near-things there myself. Even today, just before I stood to speak, a friend of a constituent rang my office and said, ‘There’s a semitrailer tipped over on the Big Dipper with stuff strewn everywhere.’ This is one of the roadworks that have been put aside.
Let us look at what came out of the last election for my area. My opponent, who was a councillor on the Hervey Bay council, promised a toilet block would be converted to a canteen in Hervey Bay. She took the lowest item from the wish list of the Bundaberg Regional Council, a $3 million tartan athletics track, and promised half of that, $1.5 million. As well, prior to the election, she agreed to finish the community centre at Hervey Bay, something that I had promised three years earlier and had followed up with both the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and the regional development minister at the time, Anthony Albanese. So it was very much on my hit list, and I acknowledge that they went ahead and did that. And they provided money for an art gallery and a resource centre as well. Both of those I acknowledge.
Hervey Bay is one of the fastest growing provincial areas in Australia. It is synonymous with lifestyle, with sea change, with retirement. It is a beautiful lifestyle, and a lot of people go there because it is relatively affordable. But it has huge problems not unlike those the Gold Coast experienced 30 or 40 years ago. All of you who know the Gold Coast know that it has a north-south road system—the corridors go north and south along the coast. In Hervey Bay they go east-west, and for that quite large city there are only three corridors. I promised a fourth corridor, called the Urraween to Boundary Road extension. I had shown it to the Prime Minister and visiting ministers and to visiting shadow ministers. To me, it was most important and I would have thought it was important to my opponent, who was on the council. There was also River Heads Road, which is the connector road to Fraser Island. That is where you have to go if you are catching a boat to Fraser Island. I promised—and it was endorsed by the coalition—$10 million for three major roadworks, two of which are the ones I have just mentioned. Nothing happened.
In the lead-up to the election the local program for dysfunctional youth, the Triple S youth mentoring program, was closed down by the government. The coalition promised to provide it with $600,000 to continue for a further three years. Here again my opponent refused to endorse the project. Since then, we have had people—including my opponent, who is still a councillor—wringing their hands over the problems with youth in Hervey Bay.
For the northern end of the electorate I wanted $2 million for a very important environmental program to restore the mouth of the Elliott River. The Elliott River has two mouths. Over the years, because of human intervention, the second mouth formed and now when the tide goes out through the two entrances there is not sufficient flow to lift the sand out. The sand that comes in on the high tide is deposited in the river and, over time, it is slowly building up and the channel is getting narrower and narrower. It needs dredging and the closing of that second mouth through the restoration of an isthmus from the south bank. It would cost $2 million—not a lot of money for a project of that size. Again it was not endorsed by my opponent.
We also promised $350,000 to the two tourist regions that make up the Wide Bay area: Bundaberg and North Burnett and Fraser Coast and South Burnett. Again, nothing comparable from my opponent.
There was $180,000 for another environmental project: an aquatic weed harvester. In the many years of drought that you have all heard about we had a lot of trouble from salvinia and water hyacinth clogging up river after river. Under Minister Ian Campbell, in the Howard government, I was able to get one weed harvester. This was a different type. This was one that went into little nooks and crannies and shredded these foul weeds and allowed the councils, farmers and owners along the river to control the salvinia. Again, this was not endorsed.
One of my favourite projects was $3 million for a performing arts centre at the Urangan High School at Hervey Bay, one of the two state high schools. Urangan has a lower socioeconomic profile than the rest of Hervey Bay—that is not to say it is not a very nice area; it is a remarkably nice area. But there are probably more battlers down that end of Hervey Bay than up the other end. The kids from that school are the best I have ever seen in performing arts, whether in music, dance or acting—they are simply remarkable. I have had them here at Parliament House. I remember Alexander Downer walking in one day when we had them in the Great Hall saying, ‘What country do they come from?’ They were high-school kids from Hervey Bay—remarkably good at their job.
As you know, we have schools of excellence in the capital cities and in Canberra as well, where you foster particular artistic, sporting or academic traits. This school, in my belief, should have a performing arts centre. It should be a school of excellence. I have had Prime Minister Rudd, Minister Albanese and Tony Abbott there and all of them have agreed, verbally, that it is right. All of them have said that it is right. But again my opponent would not endorse it. So we have moved on.
There are other things there—$125,000 put aside to revegetate that dredged area I spoke about in the Elliot River. There was another $125,000 to do the foreshore at Hervey Bay, which is the subject of much comment in the local media. Again, it was not endorsed. Another project was $260,000 for the Hervey Bay Hockey Association. No single one of these, I suppose, is a great project, but I get very close to my electorate and I think I know the things that are good for it in logistics, in public access through transport, in education, in health and so on.
My opponent would not debate me very often, except in one of the phoney debates they had about health which, I might add, were the same all over Australia and at no one of which there were more than about 35 people attending—including the one where then Deputy Leader Julia Gillard actually spoke for her. What I suspected—and I thought it was very cynical—was that party officials said, ‘We will not allow her to endorse any of the projects that Paul Neville has decided this area should have.’ Why? So that if I won they would not be committed to doing any one of them. But, let me tell you, they were blazingly obvious; they were projects that screamed out to heaven to be done—roadworks, education and other interesting things.
Examples include two grants of $100,000 I proposed. One would have been to study a bridge from Hervey Bay to the north bank of the Burrum River. Such a bridge would create a coastal highway from Hervey Bay to Bundaberg and would be immensely valuable for easier facilitation, for shopping and for general tourism in that area. I am not saying that the study would necessarily have endorsed the bridge, but it was a study worth doing.
The second grant would be to look at a convention centre at Hervey Bay, which has neither a town hall nor a civic centre. A convention type civic centre where conferences, conventions and the like could be held would make a huge difference to Hervey Bay—which, as honourable members know, is a tourist destination. It has all forms of tourism facilities from resorts to better quality motels, to mum-and-dad motels, to caravan parks. It has plenty of accommodation. It is the ideal place for a convention centre. I thought that $100,000 would make it worth doing the job and doing it properly: where should it be, what form should it take, should it have break-out rooms for seminars—all those sorts of things so that you could come back and say, ‘This would require $20 million, $25 million or $30 million for a convention centre that would supplement tourism in Hervey Bay and, to a large extent, also in Bundaberg and Maryborough, the adjoining cities. Why? Because of the accommodation I have spoken about, the array of restaurants and the close proximity to Fraser Island, Hervey Bay is the ideal place.
I implore the government to think again about these projects. We are in opposition and they are under no obligation to do them. I understand that, because they certainly did not promise any of them. But I think these are important projects if you want to approach all of Australia with an even hand. If you want even development along the coast, if you want towns to grow up properly and not like topsy, you need to do these things. I put it before the government, especially the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, to give it great consideration.
I am very pleased to speak today on these appropriation bills, because I am very aware of the impact they will have on my electorate of Canberra. I have been privileged to have seen the outcomes of some of the programs that will be funded through this appropriation, and I am keen to ensure that they continue—not only for the ongoing benefit to Canberra but to ensure other communities around Australia will also benefit.
I draw the chamber’s attention to the provision for trades training centres in non-government schools. This appropriation will ensure that funding is available for schools once specific milestones in their plans have been achieved. Training in trades is an important component for the future productivity and economic growth of this country and is a key component of this government’s education revolution.
I can attest to the fact that in my own electorate here in Canberra there is a massive shortage of people skilled in trades. This has an inflationary effect on the local economy and is forcing local families to pay higher rates for basic services. For instance I remember, when we were looking at renovating a few years ago, finding out that Canberrans pay about 25 per cent more for building and renovation work than people in other cities. I know it is a challenge getting a plumber in most metropolitan cities in Australia, but try getting one at short notice in Canberra. It is a very challenging task, as most Canberrans in this room could attest.
I therefore welcome any plan to expand trades in my electorate and to provide an alternative career path for students while they are still in school. Already this program has seen an investment of more than $1 billion to create 288 projects, benefiting 927 schools across the country. This includes some schools in my own electorate.
I was particularly impressed with the plans for a $5.7 million centre at St Mary MacKillop College in Tuggeranong, which is acting as the lead school, in conjunction with St Clare’s College, St Francis Xavier College and Merici College. The centre will provide a certificate III in hospitality. This practical program will help local students and boost local productivity. It will mean that we will not have to import skills, particularly trades, because we will be able to grow our own, and that is particularly important for a place like Canberra. Yet this was under threat at the last election, with those opposite threatening to cut almost $1 billion from this program. As a consequence, over 1.2 million students from over 1,000 secondary schools would have missed the opportunity to engage in education that would lead to pathways to becoming the next generation of electricians, plumbers, bricklayers, hairdressers, chefs or carpenters.
I come to this House as a passionate advocate for education. I made special mention of it in my first speech in this place and my life is testimony to the truth that education is the great transformer. That is why we desperately need the Gillard government’s education revolution, of which this program is part. Without it, the opportunities, the choices and options of future generations and our future are diminished.
My sisters and I had a great public education that set us up for life. That is why I am a strong defender of government schools and a staunch advocate of access to education and support through it, no matter what your background. Education is the great empowerer, particularly when it encourages a quest for broad and continuous learning. But a quality secondary education is not one that only prepares a person for university. A quality education is multidimensional. It lays the foundation for a successful future in a vocation or a trade. It lays the foundation for a quality life and a better quality of life.
I want to see a return to an understanding of the dignity of work that values every job well done, because each job, no matter what it is, adds to the common good. I believe that education is the silver bullet that leads people out of poverty and economic and social disadvantage. As my colleague Andrew Leigh has said in the past, it is the poverty vaccine—and that is true. It is a social disadvantage vaccine and economic disadvantage vaccine. I will support in this place all policy and legislative measures that enhance the educational opportunities of Australians, which is why I support the trades training centres—a core feature of this government’s education revolution.
I would also like to make mention of the provision in this legislation of $21.6 million for the continuation of the Active After-school Communities program. The Active After-school Communities program is a free government initiative that gives school-age children the opportunity to experience more than 70 different sports and up to 20 other structured physical activities. The program aims to help establish healthy habits in primary school-age children in recognition that those children who develop these habits are more likely to continue them as they get older. Without the program over 80 per cent of participating children would not be engaged in any structured physical activity outside of school. The program is running at capacity, with over 3,200 schools involved in it.
I was fortunate late last year to present an award to Curtin Primary School, who won the school-age care program here in the ACT for 2010. The program received the 2010 territory’s Super Site Award for delivering safe, fun and inclusive sports activities to children. The award is presented each year to those locations delivering the Australian Sports Commission’s Active After-school Communities program. Curtin’s school-age care beat 49 other sites in the ACT to win the award. The students absolutely love and delight in the program, and they have great student teachers and teachers who are already part of the school showing the students a range of things. The students participate in a diverse range of activities, including dance, taekwondo, softball, cheerleading, cricket, soccer, rugby league, AFL and touch football.
I was also pleased to learn that this program is not just being rolled out to metropolitan constituents here in Canberra; the program is also actively embraced on Norfolk Island, where I was just recently with the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government. The program has received rave reviews from the teachers and parents on the island.
I would like to take this opportunity to report that I was recently informed that this program will now take place in the new $3.3 million multipurpose hall at Garran Primary School. The hall was built under the Building the Education Revolution scheme and I had the privilege of opening it with my ACT colleague, Senator Kate Lundy, a few weeks ago, where I learned of its many planned uses.
The BER is a scheme that draws much derision from those opposite, despite the fact that it is supporting the infrastructure needs of our schools. However, in Canberra, the BER has drawn nothing but praise—from parents, teachers, staff and students. Government and non-government schools alike are incredibly grateful for the libraries, the outdoor learning areas, the ICT and language rooms, the multipurpose halls, the garden centres and the millions of dollars invested in Australia’s future.
The BER program has also generated thousands of jobs and trained hundreds of apprentices in Canberra. That is vitally important, and that was the whole idea. In the true Labor tradition, the BER program was introduced to ensure that the children of today and tomorrow have the facilities they need to help them excel and create a knowledge economy. In the true Labor tradition, the BER program was introduced to ensure that Australians and Canberrans had work and that our economy did not succumb to recession like nearly every other nation on the planet. It was designed to ensure our economy did not have to be bailed out.
Contrast this with the Howard government’s chronic underfunding of education and education infrastructure. Those opposite failed to invest in the future of this nation: the children and their education. They are the backbone of our future growth, our future economy and our future productivity and prosperity. Unfortunately, those opposite were lazy, and it has fallen to this government to fix the problems caused by their laziness. The after-school program is another innovative educational program that enhances the lives of young Australians. It encourages teamwork, collaboration and healthy habits and stems the rate of obesity among our young. Having seen it in action at Curtin Primary School, I am keen to see it continue in my electorate and across others around Australia.
I laud the funding being made available for high-speed rail. In particular, I draw the chamber’s attention to the provisions for a feasibility study into high-speed rail. This $20 million study will look at high-speed rail along Australia’s east coast. This study is crucial to the economic development and future of Canberra. As many in this place would know, there has been an argument for some time for a high-speed rail link between Canberra and Sydney. In the short time I have been in this place I have been asked by many of my constituents, particularly the business community, to advocate for this rail link. It has the potential to bring many economic benefits to the people of Canberra and the region and, as such, I am absolutely delighted that Canberra will be included in the feasibility study.
Finally, I turn to the funding provisions for the Australian Civilian Corps deployment to Haiti. These bills appropriate some $377,000 to support the operation by the civilian corps in Haiti. The operation will deploy a civilian specialist to fill the role of a donor liaison officer in the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. This deployment complements Australia’s commitments to assisting in the rebuilding of Haiti, to which the Australian government has already committed $24 million. As a former DFAT employee, I was very proud to speak in this place on the creation of the Australian Civilian Corps. Foreign aid and development is important to me as a result of my firsthand experience of working in the Asia-Pacific region and living for a year in India.
The Australian Civilian Corps is a select group of civilian specialists who deploy to countries experiencing or emerging from natural disaster or conflict. Members of the corps are drawn from a register of screened and trained civilian specialists. They are selected from all levels of government and from the broader community for their technical skills and ability to work in some challenging environments overseas. They are tasked with providing advice, assistance and capability building in public administration, finance, law and justice, agriculture, engineering and health administration.
The Australian Civilian Corps will support stabilisation, recovery and development planning with a view towards the long-term viability of countries in need. It is all too easy to forget the people of these countries once the immediate crisis is over, and I am acutely aware of the need to provide support to our fellow Australians affected by the floods. That is why spoke in favour of the flood levy and why I am encouraging my constituents to give to Lifeline. We need to provide support now that the houses and the mess are being cleaned up, and I am very concerned about the welfare of the people who have been left behind with this emptiness in their lives.
How many people in these countries ask themselves: ‘What happens next? Who will restore the water and the power? Who will provide the experience to restore good governance?’ These are all fundamental questions that nations that have gone through terrible circumstances, terrible natural disasters, ask themselves. The Australian Civilian Corps will play a major and significant part in answering these questions. The present situation in Haiti is exactly what the Australian Civilian Corps is designed for and so I am pleased to see that its role is being funded in this appropriation. I support this bill.
I recognise the member for Canberra in this place. I think it is the first time I have spoken after her and I congratulate her on her election. In her presentation the member for Canberra spoke quite passionately about the issues relating to education—in fact, I think she used the phrase that education is a vaccine against poverty and a vaccine against social disadvantage. Without wishing to prolong the metaphor any further, I must say that regional Australia does need an injection of fairness and equity when it comes to education. So, in rising to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the related bill, I note the proposed amendment by the member for Sturt and I give credit to him for his relentless pursuit of the government in relation to the issues of student income support.
Today this government has another chance to do the right thing, the decent thing, and live up to its hollow rhetoric about the education revolution. It has a chance to deliver a fair go for all regional students seeking to access the independent youth allowance. In this, the Gillard government’s year of decision and delivery, the Prime Minister has the opportunity to fix up the mess she has created in the area of student income support.
The amendment put forward by the member for Sturt is about fairness. It is about equity and it is about tidying up the mess that was created by the former Minister for Education and now Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I acknowledge that the amendment put forward will not solve all the issues relating to equity of access to tertiary studies for regional students, but at least it will stop the current discrimination on the basis of random lines on a map that has heavily disadvantaged students who attended year 12 in 2009 and also disadvantaged students from regional areas who are undertaking gap years at the moment.
We need to be very clear about what we are debating in this amendment moved by the member for Sturt. It relates specifically to the independent youth allowance and the workforce criteria imposed in the aftermath of the former education minister’s failed attempts to overhaul student income support. We have this ridiculous system now of lines on a map which define areas as being either inner regional or outer regional for the purpose of accessing independent youth allowance. The students who live in those areas face different workforce criteria to achieve their independence.
The ridiculous situation is that, in my electorate, you have towns such as Yarram, Heyfield and Maffra, which are very small and service small agricultural areas around them, which are regarded as inner regional under this government’s classification. The workforce criteria of 30 hours per week over two years is almost impossible to achieve for many students in the small country towns that are in that inner regional classification. Towns like Yarram, Heyfield and Maffra are classified the same as Hobart under this system for the purpose of calculating the independent youth allowance. So we have Hobart, with a population of about 250,000, and we have a town like Yarram, with a population of about 1,750 people. So I invite members opposite to come to Yarram and explain the fairness of that system to the people in my community. This is a recognised problem with the system. The minister himself has acknowledged there is a problem with the system. We need to get on and fix the mess.
While I am talking about the Yarram community, I have a speech here that was given last year by the president of the school council at Yarram Secondary College, Mr Garry Stephens. Garry has been a great servant of that community, both in his role within the business community and in his willingness to work on behalf of the school on the school council. He has been a fierce advocate for the Yarram community. This is what Garry told people attending the speech afternoon last year:
Rural communities need to continue to get a message to all levels of Government that we are at a disadvantage in sending our year 12 students onto tertiary study and that if more rural people are going to be able to study at tertiary level we need better living away from home allowances and financial support for our students.
In this place, we often get caught up in political arguments. This is a comment from a fellow on the ground in a regional community, with strong business experience and direct experience in the Yarram Secondary College, giving a bit of free advice to the minister. I encourage the minister to start listening to people like Garry Stephens from the Yarram community.
As I said, even the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations himself has acknowledged that we have a mess. He was talking on Gippsland ABC Radio last week, trying to make a positive out of this government’s decision to bring forward the review and make changes allegedly from 1 January next year. The minister admitted on radio that the current system was ‘an inelegant solution’. He also admitted it was ‘a bit untidy’. ‘A bit untidy’ would have to be an early nomination for the understatement of the year. What we have is an absolute mess which is jeopardising young people’s careers, frustrating the hell out of teachers, making parents angry and causing Centrelink staff to run around in circles trying to figure out how to implement the system. So to say it is an inelegant solution and a bit untidy is the greatest understatement of the year so far.
The minister has put forward a pathetic solution. His solution is to bring forward the review process and make a promise about what might happen on 1 January next year. I will just have a quiet word about something that needs to be recognised by the Independents who have backed the government on this promise of action. What are the Independents actually saying to the students of 2009 and 2010 in these so-called inner regional areas and who have basically been left out in the cold by this decision? As the member for Sturt noted in his address, Senator Evans himself has already backed down on the deal; he has backed away from any promises or any undertakings to these students on the level of support and whether he will actually abolish the inner regional and outer regional boundaries.
The big issues surround uncertainty. We have students, we have parents, we have teachers who are making plans now for the rest of their lives. In about year 10 students in regional communities start working out their pathway—how they are going to possibly get to university. Many of the students in my community come from poorer socioeconomic groups, as is very typical of rural communities, with lower household incomes. I have acknowledged from day one that the changes to the income thresholds in terms of accessing the dependent youth allowance have been very positive. There is no argument on this side of the chamber with the government’s changes. The argument is about the independent youth allowance and the students who have taken a gap year. The students from 2009 in inner regional areas face a whole different classification, a whole different workforce criteria, to some other students who are actually in the same class. If I can give the example of Yarram again, if you are attending Yarram Secondary College the chances are you are going to school with a kid from Port Albert, seven kilometres down the road. The kid from Port Albert is regarded as outer regional; the students who live and attend school in the Yarram community itself are regarded as inner regional.
I support a complete overhaul of the system. The holding pattern from 1 July this year should be to abolish the current arrangement of inner regional and outer regional, and the changes from 1 January next year should include a tertiary access allowance which addresses this fundamental inequity and the fundamental differences which exist between country students who are forced to move away from home to attend university and their city counterparts who can stay at home while pursuing their academic dreams.
Members opposite like to talk a lot about the so-called transformational powers of education. I have heard it many times; it must be in the key messages sheet that was sent out at one stage by the minister for education. Instead of talking about the transformational powers of education, now it is time to deliver—to start working to reduce the economic barriers for regional students who are forced to leave home to attend university. I acknowledge that governments are not the complete solution to this problem. We have problems with aspiration in many of our regional communities. We need to encourage young people in regional areas to remain at school and to achieve their full potential. I believe we need to make sure that we value education more highly in our regional communities. We need to work with the parents and we need to work with the students themselves, particularly in regional areas.
The problem is, if students see some form of roadblock in front of them, whether it be a fight in this place about the whole issue of student income support or any other issue, and they realise that university is perhaps beyond their reach, their aspirations are killed off. That is a critical issue we need to consider in this place in our debate about student income support. Gippsland has one of the worst year 12 retention rates in Victoria. About 65 per cent of students in my community finish year 12, compared to a metropolitan average in excess of 80 per cent. There is a key issue here in terms of the importance to regional communities of training our own young people to take on roles in areas like health, engineering and other tertiary-qualified professions—these students are the ones who are more likely to return in the future.
The other important point to note is that we can send a very strong message to mature age professionals that if you move to a regional area, if you bring your highly valued skills that we need in our community, your child is likely to receive some support when they have to leave to attend university down the track. We will actually help you out with the additional costs. Right now it is a barrier to getting health professionals and other professionals to move to regional communities because they see this big bill looming in the future in terms of sending their child off to university. We need to understand these costs and why they are different for regional areas. It is at least $12,000 to $15,000 more than if your child can stay at home with you while they are attending university. That is after-tax income, it must be noted. We are sucking wealth out of regional communities, as it is often to pay a city based landlord who receives a tax advantage from negatively gearing the property the students are living in.
I believe these are fundamental issues we have to address in terms of student income support, and so far the government has talked about an education revolution but has really just tinkered around the edges. I believe we may need to be creative in the future as well. If you accept my premise that all students who are forced to move away from home to further their studies should receive some form of tertiary access allowance, we may need to look at the actual tax deductibility status of the accommodation cost to their parents.
I believe this review should go ahead. I support the government in that regard. But it should be broad enough to consider a whole range of student income support measures. I believe there is a potential for a tertiary access allowance at a specified amount for all students who are required to live away from home, who have no option other than to live away from home, and an extra component that is income-tested to assist lower and middle income earners. There may be something more we can do, as I said, in terms of more innovative tax treatment of the accommodation costs. It is very difficult for us to attract the high income earning professionals in many regional areas and the education opportunities must be at least part of the problem that we need to address.
The scope of the problem is referred to in a recent report into deferral rates put forward under the title Deferring a university offer in regional Victoria. Among the findings of the report was that the actual rate of deferral amongst regional people has been consistently higher than that of their Melbourne metropolitan counterparts. Over the last seven years in regional Victoria this rate rose from 9.9 per cent in 2004 to 15.2 per cent in 2010, with the rate reaching as high as 21.6 per cent in 2009. That is an interesting statistic in many regards because there was a peak in deferrals in 2009, when there was a sharp rise from 15.9 to 21.6 per cent in rural areas. While the data itself does not support a firm conclusion, you have to speculate that some of the changes that were announced to youth allowance and the confusion that was created in the May 2009 budget added to the deferral rate. So it is a very real issue. When we started legislating and changing the system, the reaction straightaway was a six per cent increase in deferrals from rural areas.
The other point I want to make from this report is that the factors that have been studied all combine to present evidence of what they call cumulative and enduring disadvantage among non-metropolitan school completers in terms of university entry. I believe that the uncertainty we have created over the past two years in relation to this whole debate about student income support is making it more difficult for students as they plan for the next five years. The submission by Deakin University to the inquiry into the extent of and nature of disadvantage in rural and regional Victoria dealt with issues directly relating to access to education. Amongst its conclusions, Deakin University said:
Increasing participation in higher education in regional Victoria is crucial to addressing disadvantage and inequality. If participation rates in regional Victoria are to be increased to achieve attainment goals there is much work to be done to change attitudes and culture. Appropriate financial incentives and access strategies must be identified and implemented.
Improving access to higher education for rural and regional students requires a range of responses … from Government in terms of incentives for rural and regional students and funding incentives for regional University Campuses and delivery.
Time prevents me from going into all the other recommendations and conclusions from Deakin University. But it just reinforces my overall point, that if the government is genuine in its attempts to give regional students a fair go it will put some real substance into its so-called education revolution.
Senator Fiona Nash, along with the member for Sturt, the member for Forrest and others, has been at the forefront of this debate and there have been many other coalition members and senators who have fought the good fight. We must continue to highlight this issue in the interests of fairness and equity for regional Australians.
We recently learned of the collapse of REDgroup Retail, owner of the Borders and Angus and Robertson bookshops. This has led to a range of accusations that the government’s decision to retain Australia’s territorial copyright legislation is to blame. Former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr in a recent blog alleges that the retention of PIR, or parallel import restrictions, caused the publishing company Borders and Angus and Robertson to enter into administration.
Firstly, I have to say that I have never met Bob Carr, but I do have a healthy respect for his contribution in public life, in particular as a former Premier of New South Wales. But I have to take issue with some of the ridiculous comments he has made on the PIR issue. Regarding the Borders and Angus and Robertson situation, Mr Carr is dead wrong. Maintaining PIR has had no impact on the company, as many commentators in the publishing sector have acknowledged. It had more to do with the failure of that company to adjust and restructure its business to meet the challenges that all the printing and publishing sector is facing worldwide, the strong Australian dollar and the fact that Borders was purchased by a private equity with no expertise in running a business, which then relied on merchant bankers who knew nothing about book retailing.
As well, book retailing across the board has suffered a decline in the past year or so. Indeed Whitcoulls, the largest New Zealand publishing house, has also gone into receivership, and I understand Dymocks New Zealand has closed several stores. The point I am making is that New Zealand abolished parallel import restrictions in its publishing sector a decade ago and has had an open market environment since then. It obviously did not help Whitcoulls. Mr Carr stated:
This old-fashioned protectionism was designed to save McPherson’s, a struggling factory with 300 employees in Maryborough, Victoria …
He then went on to say:
But that’s protection for you: you shore up jobs in a clapped out factory that is doomed to close eventually, but you lose them in retail and service.
Wrong again, Mr Carr. The printing and publishing sector estimates that the introduction of a 30-day rule on PIRs in 1991 provided a strong stimulus to the Australian book printing industry. Australian publishers are printing more of their books locally to protect themselves against the parallel importation of cheaper overseas editions. According to the Printing Industries Association of Australia in submission No. 168 to the Productivity Commission, the increase in local printing activity is reflected in official statistics as well as in anecdotal feedback from the book printers about the importance of the current parallel importation rules to their production volumes and commercial viability. The increase in book production has led to more jobs, particularly in regional centres such as Maryborough in Victoria. The book printing industry estimates that the abolition of the 30-day rule could result in a loss of turnover of between $70 million and $80 million and the loss of between 1,400 and 1,600 jobs throughout Australia, including several hundred in book-printing related jobs. The impact of this loss of business would be felt not just by book printers themselves but also by associated industries such as paper manufacturers, suppliers of inks and other consumables, prepress service providers, bookbinders and local transport companies.
Mr Carr stated that McPherson’s in Maryborough was ‘a clapped out factory that is doomed to close’. Wrong again, Mr Carr. McPherson’s Printing Group happens to be among the most modern, innovative and advanced printing houses in Australia. It has invested around $23 million in its business in the last five years and is constantly changing to meet the demands and challenges affecting its industry. This company is the foundation stone of the small community of Maryborough’s already depressed economy.
The statistics paint a disturbing picture. There is 11 per cent unemployment in Maryborough; the state average is 5.4 per cent. Youth unemployment is reported to be in excess of 20 per cent. In the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas, SEIFA, Central Goldfields shire rates 79 out of 79 local government areas in Victoria for disadvantage. Central Goldfields shire is highly disadvantaged across all four SEIFA indexes—advantage and disadvantage ratio, disadvantage, economic resources, and education and occupation. Central Goldfields shire ranks lowest in Victoria in average household income, average educational attainment and employment rates, significant long-term intergenerational unemployment and poverty.
The Vinson report of 2007, entitled Dropping off the edge, was commissioned by Jesuit Social Services in Melbourne. This report card on the Central Goldfields shire found that there was poor early childhood development, poor health, poor personal health, hunger, teenage pregnancy, and alcohol and drug abuse. It also found a strong link between socioeconomic disadvantage and poor health. Educational disadvantage included nonattendance at preschool, incomplete education, early school leaving and the lack of post-school qualifications. The Central Goldfields shire has lost around 400 jobs in the past six years, including at Nestle—140 jobs; Penny and Lang—80 jobs; Pyrenees Press—20 jobs; MidState Foods—10 jobs; Davis Poultry—80 jobs; Matisse Foods—40 jobs. Remember, Maryborough has a population of 8,000. Over a longer period, Maryborough has seen the loss of Phelans Homes, Maryborough Knitting Mills, and Patience and Nicholson, with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
McPherson’s Printing Group is currently the largest single industry in Maryborough and, as I said, has invested some $23 million in both its Maryborough plants over the past four or five years. It currently employ 300 to 350 people, including 33 junior and adult apprentices. Maryborough is indeed a depressed economy, with all the social challenges that accompany high levels of unemployment. The Central Goldfields Shire Council is doing a superb job in slowly turning this situation around and does not need the added pressure that Mr Carr’s inane comments have caused. Bob Carr and colleagues want to place the final nail in the Maryborough community’s coffin by shutting down a viable industry on the altar of free market economics, while being a director of one of the retailing chains that allegedly would benefit from changes to PIR regulations. To be fair, Mr Carr has always acknowledged his directorship with Dymocks, but this does not alter the fact. Indeed, Mr Carr would be well advised to avail himself of all of the facts before making any further comments on this matter.
Industry commentators have for some time pointed out the deficiencies in the REDgroup business model but those seeking removal of territorial copyright appear to blindly assume that REDgroup operated with perfect efficiency. Of course, they failed to acknowledge that its New Zealand operations have also gone under in a country where such copyright has already been abolished. The reality is that traditional business models in retail are changing, not least because of the advent of more internet shopping. It is up to Australian retailers to respond to this challenge, but the evidence to date is that they are falling behind. As the communications minister highlighted earlier this month, despite the potential of online retail to improve customer service and reduce logistics and other business costs, almost 60 per cent of Australian small businesses have yet to establish an online presence and almost 80 per cent are yet to offer online purchasing.
The state of the retail music industry provides ample evidence that, even though restrictions on imported CDs were removed some time ago on the recommendation of the Productivity Commission, 2010 saw a 32 per cent drop in the sale of CD albums, while the CD singles market collapsed by more than 94 per cent. This occurred while the digital music market as a whole increased by 32 per cent. The growth was all in online sales—a similar change in the business model that is facing the book retail industry. The removal of import restrictions is not about a few jobs in one printing factory in my electorate, as Mr Carr has suggested. Investment in book publishing would be likely to contract severely, with several small to medium publishers closing completely and a number of larger publishers downsizing. Skilled jobs will be lost not only in the printing and allied industries but also in editing, illustration, design, marketing and distribution. The number and variety of titles available in Australian bookshops as well as the number of bookshops would decrease, with independent bookshops worst hit. Market power would be concentrated in the large chain booksellers and discount department stores. It would be harder for new Australian authors to get published and dumped overseas books would undermine authors’ incomes. The risk appetite of Australian publishers for new Australian writing would reduce.
Exports of Australian writing would shrink and Australia’s carbon footprint would grow as more books were freighted in from overseas. We would be taking a wrecking ball to the Australian publishing industry, with no guarantee of significantly lower book prices or better availability of books to Australian consumers. Even the Productivity Commission acknowledged that book prices did not fall after New Zealand abolished its territorial copyright, and nor could it guarantee that any reduction in purchasing costs to Australian booksellers would be passed on to customers. There are no grounds for revisiting the government’s decision to retain the current rules on the parallel import of books. I note the Assistant Treasurer’s confirmation that the government will not be reopening this debate, and I welcome that.
I would like to turn to the matter of asylum seekers. Last week, during the private members debate, the member for Pearce spoke with her customary concern about the human trauma of those people who choose to seek refuge in this country from persecution. The member for Pearce, along with colleagues on the other side of the House, such as the member for McMillan and the former member for Kooyong, has been consistently calling for a more humane treatment of asylum seekers for several years. Last week in this House she made a special plea:
I … call on the government and the opposition to stop the political tactics and to end the escalating, hysterical rhetoric over who can produce the toughest policies, and for men and women of conscience in this place to call for the end of the politicisation of asylum policy.
I agree, and I believe that many of the comments that have been made about asylum seekers in the past few weeks have taken us over a line—a line that means we as politicians are failing to provide the moral and humanitarian leadership that the citizens of this country are entitled to expect from their elected representatives.
It is high time for us to stop using the plight of some of the world’s most desperate people for base political advantage. It is time for us to stop dehumanising people who arrived in this country by boat to claim political asylum. It is time to stop the xenophobic references to them as anonymous groups of foreigners, as boat people, as illegal immigrants or worse. It is time to stop the insinuations that all members of a particular faith or nationality are a threat to our Australian way of life.
This is the cynical, manipulative language of wartime propaganda. The depersonalisation of your foes plays a large part in the psychological conditioning of your soldiers. If they are allowed to see their enemy as a fellow human being with the same hopes and aspirations as them, they are much less likely to want to harm or even destroy him. It is the same depersonalisation that nurtures prejudice and persecution and provides a veil of respectability to the most abhorrent views about people from other faiths or countries. But it is not just through our careless use of language that we contribute to this xenophobia. Our silence, when it is used by others, encourages misinformation and reinforces the prejudice.
We only have to look at one of the public perceptions of asylum seekers to see the effect of this. An Amnesty International opinion poll in 2009 showed the majority of respondents believed that 80 per cent of asylum seekers in Australia had arrived by boat. In fact, in 2008-09 the true figure was 16 per cent. Even with the recent increases in arrivals, it is still less than half, with the majority continuing to arrive in Australia by air with a valid visa and then apply for onshore protection. We politicians have to take a large part of the responsibility for this misconception amongst our citizens. Our failure to correct the record at every opportunity, to contradict the radio shock jocks and the media pundits is a major contributor to perpetuating this misinformation.
People-trafficking, for whatever reason, is a repulsive business and we must take appropriate steps to prevent it occurring and punish those who seek to take advantage of genuine asylum seekers. But we have to stop demonising those who are legitimately seeking asylum in our country. As I said earlier, we have crossed the line in this debate on asylum and we have lost some of our basic humanity. In the conduct of this debate we have lost our empathy and our compassion. We glimpse it every now and then, but for the most part it is buried in the language of the debate and the incessant striving for political advantage.
There are times when we as politicians should be responsive to the public mood and there are times when we need to lead the public mood. If Arthur Calwell had consulted focus groups in the western suburbs of Sydney, this country would never have benefited from the wave of postwar European migration. If Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser had commissioned opinion polls about multiculturalism, this country would be much the poorer for it today. The asylum debate is one where we need to lead the country. As the member for Pearce has said, it is well and truly time for all political leaders to stop the politicking on asylum seekers.
I rise this evening to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 and the amendment moved by Mr Pyne with regard to youth allowance. It is a great frustration to me and many of the people I represent that this argument about youth allowance is still continuing. The former education minister, now the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, introduced these changes to youth allowance two years ago. They severely handicapp the ability of regional students to obtain a tertiary education. There was some negotiation and some ground given last year that allowed students from remote Australia and outer regional Australia to obtain independent youth allowance, but due to the vagaries of lines on maps and a methodology that had absolutely nothing to do with education and more to do with health provision we had huge anomalies in youth allowance. When students were living on opposite sides of a road, one was eligible and the other was not.
In my electorate, particularly disadvantaged were the students who live in Mudgee and Dubbo. Despite what people might think, many of my constituents are not from farms. Most of my constituents live in towns. I had a lot of correspondence from students in Dubbo and Mudgee and particularly from their parents who were concerned that they would not be able to afford a tertiary education for their children. One mother actually rang me and said that they had three children and they were going to have to decide which of their children was going to have a tertiary education and which two would have to miss out.
The Prime Minister, then the Minister for Education, spoke about the changes she brought in and said that there were many more scholarships available to allow country kids to study at university. But the issue is that they were not of a high enough value. I know the independent youth allowance is not perfect but I am a great supporter of it for several reasons. One is that it enables students to take a gap year after high school and take part in the workforce, to show some responsibility and earn money of their own. They get into the routine, they get out of the school environment and, as they are working and earning that money, they can contemplate their future. I know many young people who in that time have had a change of heart as to what they might really want to study at university and have gone into something else. So I think that 12-month period is very good. I also like the fact that they are more often than not in a fairly low-level, entry job in the workplace. Quite often academic students go on to something at university without experiencing working on a shopfloor, stacking meat in an abattoir or working at a supermarket checkout—all these jobs are worth while and very beneficial—and so they miss out.
We believed last week that there were going to be changes and the Independents in the House of Representatives decided to back the government and indicated that youth allowance was being fixed. But I tend to think they have been duped. At this stage, and Senator Evans confirmed it in Senate estimates last week, there is no clear plan for where the government is going with youth allowance. They have promised another review this year, but the problem we have is that two years of students—the ones in year 9 and the ones in year 10—are going to miss out. Mr Pyne’s amendment will allow youth allowance to start in June and students in year 9 and 10 will be covered. In the 21st century, to have students with perfect capabilities and the rest of their lives in front of them not being given the opportunity to reach their full potential because they cannot attend university is a shame. A lot of the reason we are still here discussing this is the pride of the Prime Minister, the pig-headedness of the Prime Minister. She will not admit that she got it wrong two years ago.
And the Constitution.
It would not be unconstitutional, in answer to the member for Dobell. We do seem to have this relationship that we turn up in this place at the same time.
Order! Members will keep making their remarks through the chair.
It would not be a constitutional issue because the Prime Minister has the ability to change this. The government could change this with the full support of both sides of the House. It need not be a constitutional issue. So, hopefully, we will gain support in the House for this from the crossbenchers and the government will have to address the issue of youth allowance for the students who left in years 9 and 10.
I understand that the appropriation bills do allow for free-ranging conversation. So while we are speaking about the bills that allocate funds for the management of this country and the operation of government, I will touch briefly on the carbon tax. As for the effect of the carbon tax, carbon pricing or whatever you want to call it, there is a fair bit of shadow boxing coming from the government on this. They are reluctant to say what they really mean but the people in my electorate know what it all means. In the original report addressing climate change, Professor Garnaut indicated that, through addressing carbon, through either a trading system or a tax, regional Australia would have an economic downturn of 20 per cent and the cities would have an economic downturn of eight per cent. If anyone expects me, as a representative of a regional electorate, to support legislation that is going to be economically damaging to my electorate, they are crazy. The issue is this: in a lot of the conversation in the past week we have not heard how the climate is going to be altered by this tax and how making the small business owners, pensioners and fixed-income earners in my electorate pay more money is going to affect the environment. No-one has stated that.
I have been called a denier and a sceptic and anything else you would want to say. The issue here is not about climate change; the issue is whether this economic measure will address the problem of climate change. In the discussions we have had in the last couple of weeks no-one has spoken about this. Senator Bob Brown, who is either the quasileader of the Labor Party or at least a close adviser to the Prime Minister, says no-one will be hurt because ‘We’re going to take the money from you to stop you using electricity but we’re going to give it back to you so you can use the electricity in compensation.’ So what is the point? If a carbon tax is to alter the way that we behave as a nation, if the carbon tax is designed to make energy dear—more expensive—so that we use less and if we are going to compensate people so they are not affected by the tax, how is it going to make people use less? So what is the point of doing this?
They have been saying the polluters will pay. Who are the polluters? The polluters are the people that flick the switch on their air conditioner. The polluters are the people that use energy in their small shop to run their deep-freezer. The polluters are the service station owners that use electricity to drive pumps to run their business. The polluters are the farmers that use electricity to run their irrigation plants and their shearing machines and that use diesel in their tractors to grow food. They are the polluters! The emission of carbon is directly proportional to human beings. Our existence generates carbon. Unless we want to go back to living in a subsistence environment with no electricity and no fossil fuel, then there is no point in what is being proposed.
This is a tax on civilisation. It is a tax on everything we do and it is being talked about without mentioning how the climate is going to be altered and cooled. When we had the emissions trading debate last year and the year before, we heard some crazy stuff from the other side. When I listened to the member for Isaacs he painted a picture of how many of the suburbs in his Victorian electorate were going to be submerged by the waterfront. The member for Makin spoke about the heat wave that was happening in Adelaide at that time and how parliament had to pass that legislation at the end of 2009 so that it would not be so hot when he went home on the weekend. To have crazy talk and scare tactics from the government about the issue of climate change without explaining how this policy would have any effect on the temperature of the globe is immoral.
On another note about issues in my electorate, one of the great frustrations is that we end up with academic debates in this place and a lot of time wasted, while people with great disadvantages go largely unnoticed. I want to bring to the attention of the House tonight to the Aboriginal communities in my electorate. I believe my electorate has the second-largest Indigenous population in Australia. I would particularly like to draw to the attention of the House the village of Toomelah on the Queensland border near the town of Goondiwindi.
The member for Moreton might like to take a bit of notice because I know he has sympathy. Two years ago the CDEP was removed. I know that the CDEP had some issues, but in Toomelah there was no other employment and they saw CDEP as their employment. The CDEP subsidised the employment of the people who worked in the co-op store. It helped out with aides who worked in the medical centre. It looked after the maintenance of the village, such as the mowing. To my knowledge, the CDEP built the only memorial to Aboriginal service men and women in Australia. But because Toomelah is located east of the Newell Highway it was considered not remote and when the CDEP was changed they lost it.
I am calling for the reintroduction, for a trial period of 12 months, of the CDEP until we can get some help into the village of Toomelah. The program is already going. It would not need legislation; it would just need a boundary change. There are huge problems of alcoholism and lawlessness. There have been attempted suicides. I have given my solemn promise to the people of Toomelah that their plight is going to be my No.1 priority for this term of government. I have spoken to Minister Macklin and I believe that she is discussing and deciding on this issue at the moment. I think that, as we get into our academic debates down here, sometimes it might be useful to reflect on the less fortunate people in our communities. Surely, with the resources of the Australian government, we can help the 400 people who live in Toomelah.
This last week I actually preceded the member for Parkes on almost every speech. It is a pleasure to now follow him. He made some important remarks in his contribution in relation to his community, which has the difficult challenges that many Indigenous communities face around Australia. It is a little unfortunate that it took him 12 minutes to get to what will be his main purpose of this term in parliament. He spent the first 12 minutes as a climate sceptic, arguing something that no reputable scientist anywhere in Australia would argue. But I am glad that he eventually did get to what is a very important issue not just in his electorate but in electorates around Australia.
The Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and cognate bill contain a number of key and important appropriations. One of them is the $10.1 million to introduce the fair entitlements guarantee. It is important to spend a little bit of time on this issue, because Australians will remember what the Howard government tried to do in relation to workers entitlements through the Work Choices legislation. This is not some dry, academic argument. This government has repealed the legislation and put in place fair work procedures and legislation so that workers throughout this country will not be exploited. Part of that is about ensuring that there is sufficient money for those people who are, unfortunately, made redundant. It is also important, because those opposite are continually going back to Work Choices. I am sure those people out in the electorate will not believe that, because the defining issue of the 2007 election was killing off Work Choices. We heard the Leader of the Opposition say that it is ‘dead, buried and cremated’ in the last election campaign, but that has not stopped those opposite from raising all those issues in Work Choices and from wanting to bring them back and revisit them on the Australian people.
It is incumbent on all of us here to remind the Australian electorate that, while the Leader of the Opposition may have said that Work Choices is dead, that is not the way he is behaving. You need only look at a recent article by the member for Mayo, who makes it abundantly clear that from his perspective the very things that Work Choices was designed to do need to be reintroduced. The member for Mayo is one of the brighter members of the opposition. It is unfortunate for him; he should be on the front bench. But he must have voted for the wrong person in the leadership struggles of those opposite, so he sits on the back bench. He usually makes some sense, but this article is very badly written. What he is saying is economically wrong. But what is important is to remind the Australian people of what the article is saying: we need to bring back the essential issues of Work Choices.
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Sitting suspended from 5.47 pm to 6.00 pm
Before the suspension, I was talking about how important it is that we remind the Australian public that, while the Leader of the Opposition may say that Work Choices is dead, that is not reflected in the behaviour of those opposite. Under these appropriation bills, $10.1 million has been allocated for the introduction of the fair entitlements guarantee. It continues this government’s determination to make sure that workers are properly looked after and that they are not exploited, as was the case under the previous government.
One of the big areas of expenditure that this government committed to back in 2007, and continues to pay for in my electorate, is the rehabilitation of the beautiful Tuggerah Lakes. Tuggerah Lakes has been described as the jewel in the crown of the Central Coast; it is a beautiful lake system that sits in the heart of my electorate. Unfortunately, there are some issues that challenge the health of the lakes. One of those is climate change, which I will come back to, and another is the development that has occurred there over many years. This government took the decision that we needed to invest in ensuring that these lakes were properly looked after and committed $20 million over five years. That was matched by the local council, which also put in $20 million. So there is a $40 million program of spending over five years on Tuggerah Lakes to try to make sure that we can bring it back, perhaps not to its absolute pristine condition, because of the development there, but certainly improve it so that the marine life that was once so abundant can continue to thrive and so that the people who live in my electorate can swim, boat and enjoy all types of recreational activities on Tuggerah Lakes.
Work that has been done locally by the council has included, in some areas, replanting salt marsh to help filter the various run-offs that go into the lakes and reducing the weed that has grown in the lakes. I am incredibly proud that this government has put into action our commitment to make sure that we look after Australia’s beautiful environment, in particular the beautiful Tuggerah Lakes, which, as I said, have been described as the jewel in the crown of the Central Coast. That is an important bit of expenditure.
It is also important to put on record that the Wyong Shire Council has done a superb job in managing this money and doing this work. In fact, it has done such a good job that it underspent the money that was allocated. The original budget for the work was around $20 million and the council came in $2.2 million under budget. The federal government recognised that important environmental work was being done, so we said, ‘Let us look at what else we can do to improve those lakes.’ As a result, that $2.2 million has gone back to Wyong Shire Council to do further work on the beautiful Tuggerah Lakes.
Another area that this government is committed to locally in my electorate is rebuilding the surf clubs. The Central Coast is an area with 15 surf clubs—nine of those in the electorate of Robertson and six of them in the electorate of Dobell. There are two different approaches that the two local councils have taken. The Gosford City Council have looked after their surf clubs. They charged a levy and they rebuilt all of their surf clubs, whereas the Wyong Shire council chose not to do this. We had a situation where the surf clubs at Soldiers Beach and Shelly Beach were literally falling down. Surf lifesaving is so iconic in Australia and, in an area like mine where we get thousands and thousands of visitors every year, the surf lifesaving movement, of which I am a part, does so much to make sure that they are able to swim and enjoy the beautiful beaches that we have on our east coast in safety. That was under some threat in my area because these surf clubs were literally falling down and surf lifesavers—volunteers and full-timers—were unable to properly do their work because of a lack of infrastructure.
This government stepped up to the plate. Unlike the previous government that did nothing in relation to these surf clubs, we said, ‘We need to invest in them. These are community assets that can be better used.’ We are right at this moment part of the way through rebuilding the Soldiers Beach surf club, which is expected to be completed in October and ready for the new season, and the Shelly Beach surf club, which is expected to be finished at the start of November and again be ready for the new surf season. It is tremendous work that is being done, a great investment by this government in our local communities.
Our beaches have taken rather a hammering over the last few years and I want to spend a little bit of time on some of the quite kooky notions that the previous speaker, the member for Parkes, was putting about climate change. He might not understand it but, in my electorate where our beaches are being continually washed away and where we have pressure on our environment on the lake, we on the Central Coast understand that climate change is real. You know what? This is not something that we are just saying for political reasons. It is not something that is being made up because we just have a hunch that it might be happening. The scientific community says that we need to act in relation to climate change.
The member for Parkes seemed to claim that we had two choices in relation to this: to go back to the caves—I think that was his term—and to put a tax on civilisation or, his alternative, to do nothing. There is another alternative, the alternative that we are being urged to do by the scientific community, the alternative that this government is determined to make sure happens—and that is to put a price on carbon to make sure that we address the issues of climate change so that our children and our grandchildren are going to be in a world where they are not going to be subject to the extreme weather changes that come about through climate change and man-made pollution. This is a very important issue. This is something you cannot put off. Those on the other side seem to have one policy response only. It does not matter what the issue is, their policy response is, ‘Let’s do nothing because doing nothing is a lot easier for us and doing something is a difficult thing.’
It has always been Labor governments that have had to come up with reform and make the big changes and make sure they put in place infrastructure. We have always had to make the hard decisions. Those opposite, though, have exceeded themselves at the moment with this current Leader of the Opposition, who has only one response and that is no. It does not matter whether it is investing in the NBN, investing in our schools, saving jobs through the stimulus package or saving our environment, the only answer that he has is, ‘No, I am going to oppose it and I have no alternatives to that.’ The Australian people expect more. The people of Dobell expect more. They expect a government, like this government, to act in relation to climate change and to put in place infrastructure that is greatly needed.
This appropriations bill also commits $20 million to a study on the high-speed rail network. One of the busiest parts of any highway in Australia is the stretch between Sydney and Newcastle which goes right through my electorate. At the last election we committed $20 million for a study on a high-speed rail link, with the initial part of that to be between Sydney and Newcastle. This appropriation bill goes to that. It is anticipated that the study will be finished by July of this year. Again, this government is putting money into infrastructure, making important changes that are needed and demanded by the community.
You look at what we are trying to do with this important infrastructure and you look at what the opposition is proposing. As I said, it does not matter whether it is about saving our economy. We all remember the debate here in which those opposite opposed the stimulus package. Now we look at how Australia is viewed around the world as the economic miracle, the country that got through the global financial crisis without a recession, the country that got through the global financial crisis and kept unemployment at moderate levels. These are things that those opposite seem to have completely forgotten. They are one-trick ponies and their one trick is to oppose everything; they do not have anything constructive to say. My advice to those opposite is: if you do not want to do anything, get out of the way and let us get on with doing what the Australian people want us to do—and that is to invest in infrastructure. That is what this bill is about and I commend it to the House.
I rise to contribute to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. It is always good to follow the member for Dobell. I know how passionate he is about his electorate and he is basically a good bloke, but I think he is starting to repeat himself. I have twice before heard him use the same ‘Get out of the way’ line in a speech. This is the third time now, so he is becoming a bit repetitive.
Be in no doubt—there is a lot of taxpayers’ money involved in these two appropriation bills. Each of these bills accounts for over a billion dollars of spending. The combined appropriation registers at well over $2.3 billion. As the member for Goldstein pointedly said in his contribution, these are appropriations for moneys that were not anticipated at the time of the budget, so this expenditure is essentially overruns or expenses that were unforeseen and unplanned when the Treasurer handed down the budget in May.
When we talk about such massive government expenditure and when we talk about unforeseen spending and overruns to the tune of $2.3 billion, it is pretty clear that proper and thorough scrutiny is needed. It is not only what the Australian people and, more importantly, the Australian taxpayers expect, but what they deserve. Yet over the last sitting days we have heard a procession of ALP speakers criticising the coalition for wanting this scrutiny.
Given this government’s history of being unable to achieve good value for money for the Australian taxpayer, we on this side of the House will not shirk from promoting a proper examination of these bills. After all, this is a government that is borrowing $100 million every day and spending $1.5 trillion over the next four years, which comes with an interest bill of $45 billion. This is an interest bill to the Australian taxpayer. This is a government that wasted millions on the pink batts scheme and could not get value for money on the school halls program. I doubt if we will ever know the real cost of the waste. If wasteful spending and poor management are allowed to continue, we will see a greater hit on families across the country through a higher cost of living. Dare we mention the word inflation?
Previous speakers have mentioned that these appropriations are an overrun and that they are due to bad management and poor process. I would have to agree that several components of this bill do suggest this. There is $35 million to be appropriated to address a shortfall in funding related to the transfer of the Office for the Arts from the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Apparently the shortfall materialised from the amounts being incorrectly appropriated to the wrong outcome in the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities during the 2010-11 budget. In addition, there was $15.1 million to support functions that were transferred from the former Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
It seems ridiculous that the sum of $15 million could be required for a reshuffling of public servants’ duties. My constituents and many others will be unimpressed that the government can spend $15 million on this and not match a $10 million commitment at the last election by the federal Liberal Party to build the much-needed Manning Road on-ramp, which even the Labor candidate agreed we should have. Communities in Australia are starting to look closely at expenditure by this government and they will perceive this as a waste.
In addition to poor management, close examination of these bills highlights the policy failure that this government has presided over. It is evident that Australians are still paying for the government’s dangerous pink batts scheme. Last year the government told us that it was going to wind up this program and allocated funds to do so. Now the government tells us that it needs a further $45.6 million to help wind up the program. There were blow-outs in the program and now there are blow-outs in winding it down. Many of my constituents have had insulation installed under the government’s scheme. In 2011 they are still trying to get their respective installations completed to an industry approved and safe standard. Labor cannot manage the spending of taxpayers’ money, and we have to go back a long way to find the last year that a Labor government actually delivered a surplus. Maybe members on the other side can tell me: was it 1990 or 1989? If Labor cannot manage the efficient rollout of a program like insulation into taxpayers’ roofs, how can they run this country?
I would like to make specific mention of a contractor in the southern suburbs of Perth. Like many other similar businesses, the contractor in question was given the task of installing pink batts on behalf of the government. The difference with this contractor was that he was so lax in his methods and so rushed in his work that even his local federal member, the member for Brand, has admitted that he has been inundated with complaints about how bad the work has been. To this day, constituents affected by this contractor in my electorate are still waiting for the installations to be brought up to a government accepted standard.
What I fail to understand is the level of accountability the government has avoided in this issue. In the time I have been in business, nearly 25 years, I have understood that a commercial contract, and all the responsibilities that go with it under the Trade Practices Act, is usually between the payer and the payee. You can, then, safely assume that the contract, and all those responsibilities, is between the government that introduced this flawed scheme and the contractors who they issued the work orders to. So you have a government which announces a scheme that invites and encourages people to put insulation into their homes to save the planet. The government announces contractors to get on board and save the economy by putting a grand scheme in place, the house owner invites the contractor to quote on the installation of insulation in their home and the quotation is sent to the government. The government then issues a work order to the contractor and, once the work is completed, the invoice is sent by the contractor to the government for payment. The government is supposed to pay the contractor but then does not pay for this particular contract. Why not, you may ask. Because the program collapses with four deaths and hundreds of house fires.
The collapse of this program exposes rorting. It exposes a complete failure by the government to implement, or have any ability to implement, any scheme beyond the headline of the day. But the real issue here is the woman in my electorate who, along with many others, has had below standard workmanship and below standard installation which is potentially a fire hazard and who is left holding the bag. Again, you may ask why. It is because this Labor government has made the householders sign an indemnity form absolving them of any contractual responsibility. I cannot think of anywhere else in the world where a government would hang its hat so publicly on a scheme and then totally walk away from any legal, contractual or fiscal responsibility towards that scheme. It begs the question: if Labor cannot get pink batts into a roof without damaging property or without setting roofs on fire, how can we trust them to deliver any program in the future?
Like the additional expenditure in the pink batts scheme, the appropriation in these bills of supplementary funding of $290 million for operational costs associated with the management of asylum seekers is an example of policy failure. Border protection continues to be a major concern for people in my electorate of Swan and in Western Australia and, unfortunately, the boats and tragedies out on the seas continue. The people in my electorate tell me that the government’s policy on border protection is not only weak but also inhumane.
Here we have a government that moved the goalposts on border protection, which was the equivalent of sending an invite to all the people smugglers to start their operations in Australia again. This is a trade that kills people and endangers lives, but we have a government that cannot admit it has made a mistake and cannot make the changes that will stop the people-smuggling trade. Dare we ask about the ‘Timor solution’, which no-one has signed up for? Not even this government has signed up for it. Again, this government cannot get passed a headline.
Upon reading through some of the other items earmarked for expenditure in these bills, it becomes clear that there is very little for WA to excited about. There is money for forests in Tasmania. There is money for a high-speed rail network study. There is funding for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. There are even millions of dollars for foreign aid, but almost nothing for Western Australia. How long will we Western Australians have to wait to be given a fair go by this Labor government?
The Gillard Labor government has lost control of Australia’s budget. The coalition knows this is a big call to make, but when you look at the figures they tell their own story—they tell a story of waste. This is a government that is deeply in debt but unprepared to cut spending. When a Labor government gets itself into this situation, we all know what happens: taxes go up or taxes are introduced. Last week we got two more taxes. We now have the flood tax and we now have, as the Leader of the Opposition calls it, the mother of all taxes: the carbon tax. On the Friday before the 2010 election Julia Gillard stated categorically: ‘I rule out a carbon tax’, having said a few days earlier, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.’ I know it is considered unparliamentary to use certain words in the federal parliament, but it is very clear that at the very least that Julia Gillard’s comments have fundamentally misled the Australian people.
Order! The honourable member should refer to the Prime Minister by her title and not by her name.
This is another broken promise by this government, and this is nothing more than a tax. It will hurt the Australian economy and achieve little in the way of reduction of carbon emissions. Since this government was elected in 2007 there have been 75 broken promises and, as the Leader of the Nationals said, they even broke the promise not to break their promises!
There is little detail in the carbon tax, which is not surprising from a government that cannot seem to get past the headline stage with anything it does. The Leader of the Opposition predicts a people’s revolt, and I think there will be one. People simply cannot bear any more taxes. The cost of living is high enough as it is.
The Prime Minister said in April 2005, prior to becoming the Prime Minister:
I think the public is often cynical about what politicians say and they expect them to use a bit of spin, to use weasel words to talk in shades of grey, but I think the public still gets shocked when they see someone like minister Abbott give a iron-clad, rock-solid guarantee and it is such a blatant lie. There are no shades of grey in that, no spin. I think that shocked the public and certainly justifies his resignation.
Does that mean the Prime Minister is prepared to resign? I do not think so, but I am sure some of her colleagues and the faceless men will make that decision for our Prime Minister.
There has been widespread condemnation of this tax. Not even Heather Ridout, who supports Labor’s announcements before they are even made, can back the government on this one. This is a direct attack on Australian manufacturers, and for a tax that will hardly make a difference on the carbon emissions of Australia. Can you imagine all the people who are being compensated sitting back at home saying, ‘Turn that light off; let’s reduce our power consumption’? Of course not, because this government is going to pay them not to do that. Paul O’Malley, from BlueScope Steel, had this to say in an interview:
Fundamentally, imports will get a free ride, and Australian manufacturing will be taxed, and there will absolutely be leakage because I don’t think we have a commitment to carbon neutrality.
When asked whether he meant carbon neutrality in Australia or the world, Paul O’Malley said:
Oh, in Australia. I think to really reduce greenhouse emissions we have to reduce global emissions. I think if you look at the experience in Europe, production emissions are flat since 1990, so Europeans are claiming victory, but carbon consumption has increased 47 per cent.
Mr O’Malley also said:
You also have to look at the intent of the policymakers to determine whether they want to support manufacturing in Australia. There is a huge question mark on that at the moment.
I’ve just spent the week talking to investors. They are aghast at the policy settings that we are being faced with and the additional costs, including the fact that we have to deal with a high Aussie dollar.
So the policy framework at the moment is wrong. It seems to be captured by people who don’t care whether there are manufacturing jobs in Australia, and you just wonder whether there is an anti-manufacturing focus in Australia and that people want jobs to go offshore.
Just to top it off, Mr O’Malley also goes on to say:
I think there is at the moment, absolutely. I think that there’s a lack of trust between government and business. I think there’s poor communication between government and business, and I think things that appear simple to investors and to ourselves are completely discounted from a government perspective. So you do question the sustainability of manufacturing in Australia.
Mr O’Malley has hit the nail on the head. This is a new tax delivered at a time when the government plans to end exit fees, which have been widely predicted to put upward pressure on interest rates. I must make it very clear that this is the only reason the coalition is not in favour of scrapping exit fees. Labor wants the Australian public to think that Labor is helping those who are paying off their mortgages because it is scrapping exit fees, yet the truth of the matter is that they will end up paying more in increased interest rates. This poor record of budget management has led to a flood tax being introduced. Labor’s first instinct is to tax first and ask questions later. I certainly support the urgent reconstruction of parts of Queensland, but these bills have certainly confirmed that there is fat in the budget that could be trimmed to avoid having to impose this levy and further squeeze what are already tight family budgets.
The Western Australian Liberal Premier, Colin Barnett, consistently and correctly attacks the distribution, insufficient by this government, of the GST revenue back to our state. If we received our fair share, the prudent financial operators and the WA Treasury would actually be able to get on with providing necessary upgrades to WA roads. However, due to the ever-increasing imbalance, WA will continue to suffer at the hands of the Grants Commission. The Grants Commission needs to be scrapped and a new, fairer method of distributing GST revenue needs to be implemented. There is nothing fair about propping up an inefficient state like Tasmania while hampering Western Australia.
Mr Ripoll interjecting
A good idea from the member for Oxley. I know the member for Curtin and the member for Canning have spoken on this issue before, but WA cannot be expected to be a cash cow for the other states. It needs its fair share of GST revenue so that it has sovereign ability to provide itself with the necessary funds to ensure that the current boom continues for as long as possible. A minimum rate needs to be set so that when WA is not in an economically strong position we are guaranteed a return of the GST raised by the people in WA. So I ask the government to step back from its never-ending cycle of taxing and spending and give the people of Western Australia and my electorate of Swan a fair go.
Before I call the honourable member for Oxley, I observe that there only appears to be members from Queensland and Western Australia in the chamber.
In appropriations bills there are many things we can talk about. In fact, there are many very important issues, including budgets, the economy, the environment, floods, infrastructure, the carbon economy, pricing, exit fees and no doubt a whole range of other issues, all of which I am happy to talk about. But I will focus my contribution tonight on a few issues, all related to sustainability, which I think are very important. The Intergenerational report released in 2010 predicts—and it is just a prediction—that Australia’s population will be around 36 million by the year 2050. This is a pretty important number, and people ought to pay a lot more attention to it than they currently do. The capital cities of Australia still account for the bulk of that population growth, and the concentration of population in capital cities currently sits at around the 64 per cent mark. This is expected to grow to about 68 per cent by 2056. These are big numbers, and very significant, because they mean that all our effort needs to be concentrated almost entirely in the cities on how we manage sustainability, lifestyle, growth, jobs, employment and the environment. As important as regions and the bush are, the real bulk of work in how we sustain this country into the future really needs to involve a lot of thought and effort put into our cities. Simply put, that is where people live, that is where the population is concentrated and that is where the population will continue to grow as a proportion of the rest of the country.
In fact, it already feels to me—and I suspect to most people—that Australia’s capital cities are choked. I will use a simple example of my own electorate. It is not a city based electorate; it is outer urban. It is on the outskirts between Brisbane and Ipswich. Yet where I live we are choked every single day by traffic issues, problems of people commuting to work and everything that is associated with it, including the diminishing value of lifestyle. I do not think we can just take a chance on how we continue this growth and development in the future. I think there is a massive role for the Commonwealth to play with the states and with local government. We need to recognise that the business-as-usual approach of people living on the city fringes and commuting to the centres for work is unsustainable in the future. Sustainable development must become a priority at all three levels of government: at the Commonwealth level, at the state level and at the local government level. I will say a little bit more about that later.
My view for many years—and I have spoken on it many times—has been that there needs to be a new compact, a new agreement, a new accord between the three levels of government about how we manage growth, development and sustainability into the future. State governments have produced plans for future development needs of our capital cities. In Queensland, in particular, we have go the 2020 vision, which does set out a plan. It sets out a strategic approach to developing the western corridor, of which my electorate is a part. It sets out a way to manage growth in the future. It is lucky that that is the case because if it were not you would have even further unchecked growth in areas that would be unsustainable. Most of these plans target infill development to provide around 50 to 70 per cent of new housing. This is for a good reason: it is simply cheaper, it is more sustainable and affordable for the people building them and it also means that they are closer in contact with public transport systems and where jobs are currently located.
Large swathes of the inner city cannot be demolished for new developments. We are finding this every day. I will use the south-east of Queensland and Brisbane as the basis for an example. It is very hard to put in new transport corridors, new rail lines, new roads and new highways because you simply cannot bulldoze people’s existing homes and properties. It is just uneconomical and it is unfair, if anything else. Perhaps that is why we have this trend for tunnels everywhere through our cities. These issues are very serious and they need to be dealt with not just at the local government or state level but they need to have full cooperation. And not just the full funding—I get the difference. State and local government authorities always want the federal government to dig deeply into its pockets to pay for things. They also want to have a say, before the necessity arises, in how we get to those positions where we need to have new roads, new transport corridors and new rail.
Base land costs are too high. I do not think anyone would argue with me on that. Having to accommodate existing buildings means that costs are going to continue to rise. There is a real disconnect between affordability, cost of building and development and where we actually allow building to happen. Often, people are pushed right out to the city fringes as far as possible so that they can afford a home but then forgetting that they have to commute back to work, which might take two hours. So it is a new cost. It is not just a cost for the individual but a cost for the state. It is a cost for our transport systems and it is a cost for people’s lifestyles. It carries with it a whole heap of diminishing factors of quality of life, which I think do not work and certainly will not work into the future.
Living in the suburbs in a stand-alone house with a backyard is still the preferred option for most Australian families. But I would like to think that that is significantly changing. My own views on this have changed in recent years. I think there is real potential and the possibility for development to take place on a real mix of lifestyle options—to give people that one-bedroom studio apartment out in the suburbs where traditionally you would never do that, right through to the larger 1,600 square metre blocks—for families, singles and professional couples and those living in an area where there is a lifestyle, public transport, jobs and entertainment facilities. I call it the coffee factor, but where you can get a decent cup of coffee these days makes a huge difference, because it is about a quality of life. People expect that today.
The old ways of thinking and developing and allowing development in the suburbs needs to completely change. I talk to my local council authorities and councillors about how that mix ought to work a bit better. I think there is a lot of potential for us to do that. It will take some courage and it will take some effort, but I think we have the capacity to do it.
I have spoken on these matters many times, particularly about the issue of decentralising out of the city out into the satellite cities and outer urban areas where people commute regularly for an hour or hour and a half into the city to work only just to commute back in the afternoon. Whereas if you led from the Commonwealth, state and local government perspective and started giving people options to work right where they live—and there are those opportunities currently—I think you would start to see that different mix taking place. Business would follow if government departments went out to the burbs. There were examples of this in the past. It is not a new concept. It has been done in Parramatta, in Geelong, in Mt Gravatt in Brisbane and in other areas where the ATO and other departments such as main roads have gone out to the outer regions. People want to work there because that is where they live. It gives them a better lifestyle. I think we need to take that next step up and pursue those particular issues.
Leading demographer Bernard Salt has called a system where our major cities are broken up into areas of employment a ‘mosaic city’, and I think that is an appropriate way to look at it. You work around transport orientated developments and nodes, and you give people those options. Not everyone has to be in the city to enjoy a city lifestyle, which is obviously what people want—that is what people demand. You could also do that on the city fringes. I think that would take an enormous burden off the Commonwealth, currently, and the states, in terms of building infrastructure and the massive costs that involves. It is a reality that people will move to where the jobs are. That is just the bottom line. People need to work and they will move to where the work is if they can afford it. This is the Noosa principle. If you are a service oriented provider—if you work as a police officer, a nurse or a teacher—you cannot live where you work. If you work around Noosa, who can afford to live there? Certainly not me and certainly not people who are teachers, cleaners, police officers and the like. So we need to consider how we work those types of issues as well.
There is a shortage of housing and I think everyone acknowledges that. I do not think I will get too many disagreements. It is a quizzical problem that we face in this country. There is a consistent shortage of between 50,000 and 80,000 homes a year. No matter how many more development applications are put in and no matter where they are, we just never seem to be able to catch up. Again, I think we really need to look at an integrated approach with the Commonwealth. I do not think there is a possibility anymore—it is not acceptable to me, anyway—that the Commonwealth sits on the sideline of these issues that are normally the purview of state and local councils. I think the time has come for us to play a large role not just in the funding but also in the policy development areas to do with housing.
The National Housing Supply Council’s 2010 2nd state of supply report sets out that the housing shortfall is currently over 178,000 homes. That is a lot of people missing out on a place to live. You do not have to travel too far in any city or, in fact, in outer urban areas to see that people are homeless. Whole families are living in caravans, cars or other pretty rough sorts of places. A lot of families miss out. Queensland alone has a shortage of 56,000 homes. That is only exceeded by Sydney. It is a pretty sad indictment of Brisbane. By 2029 the projected number of additional homes required if we just had a status quo would be 3.2 million. That is a phenomenal figure. I look at it sometimes and I think, ‘Is that possible? Is it real?’ But it is. It is a well-thought-out and researched figure—3.2 million additional homes. If we do not plan around that figure—where they are going to go, the transport and roads—we cannot do it later. It cannot be an afterthought. We have to actually plan it in. If we do not do that, in the future we are going to face even greater pressure on all of our cities and we will see a lowering of the living standard from what people expect.
I want to digress here slightly but in keeping with the whole theme of sustainability. There are many parts to the sustainability question. Certainly energy and fuel are part of that. The serious debate about carbon emissions and carbon pricing which we are having right now is part of that debate. The sooner and the quicker we move to a market based carbon economy, the better off we will be. I think the position that we have put on the table now for Australians to debate and accept is the first instalment of where Australia will be in the future.
I am heartened by the fact that the Prime Minister said we should not have to lead the world in this debate but we should not be left behind. We should put ourselves in such a position that we will not be left behind, because the world is moving to a carbon economy; in fact, it is already well and truly on that path now. We might be a small country in terms of our number of people but we are a big hitter, we have big influence and we have big potential and capacity. We are also one of the biggest polluters per head anywhere in the world.
The fact is that our economy is a coal economy, based on a dirty fuel. I think our clean coal technology is great but it is a long way away. We need to look seriously at all the options. One way to do that is to actually put a price on pollution, a price on what you emit, because right now, today, there is no incentive for anybody, none whatsoever, apart from goodwill. There is goodwill from good, honest, decent citizens of this country who do everything in their power individually and as families to reduce their emissions, which is fantastic, but the really big polluters, the ones who really ought to do something, just do not because there is no incentive. Why would you? There is no cost to it. You just spew out as much as you like and there is no repercussion. The sooner we get to a price, the sooner we get to a market based mechanism, the sooner we get to a logical, sensible, commonplace position, the quicker our economy will be part of an integrated global economy on carbon.
The funny thing about this is that not only do I and people in the government think this is pretty common sense; so do people on the Liberal side—because in fact it was their idea before it was ours. It is purely market based. We are talking about what should be core Liberal Party policy and principle. I am not too sure about the National Party, but at least with the Liberal Party once upon a time the imperative was the national economy, not the political economy. On issues such as ethanol and biofuels, a lot more can be done and there are some good debates to be had out there, but I would ask the responsible government ministers to ensure that Australia has a future in all of those areas.
There are lots of very important issues that we can raise in debates on appropriations. I want to make the point that this government is very much focused on building. We are builders—we want to build an economy. Be it a carbon economy, an infrastructure economy, a transport economy or an export economy, we want to build. We are not going to play the game of destroying and just saying no. I was really disappointed to hear the comments of the previous speaker, which were so opposed to getting rid of exit fees. Why would someone be in support of them? Why would you support exit fees, which are clearly unfair? It is not about cost recovery; it is about profiteering—even the banks admit it. This is the irony of the debate on that issue. Even the banks admit that exit fees are about profiteering. It should really be about cost recovery, fair fees and charges, fair interest rates and giving ordinary working Australians a fair go at having more choices in their mortgages and home loans.
Australia needs to do a whole range of things to meet the challenges of the future. I have laid out a few things that I believe will be part of a sustainable future for Australia. I think Australians actually get it and there ought to be a robust, healthy and vigorous debate on these issues. But I can tell you that, in my electorate, I will not be backing down—whether you want to call it a carbon price, a carbon tax or a carbon anything else. The reality is that this is a future for Australia. It is not a tax on individuals; it is a tax on industry and big polluters. (Time expired)
I rise to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 and the amendment put forward by the member for Sturt. There has been much said in recent times about what the government said going into the last election and what we now understand remains of those commitments. The list of policy abandonment, reversal and underperformance continues to grow. The latest announcement by the Prime Minister, concerning the introduction of a carbon tax, while just the latest, is certainly one of the most breathtaking. How is the Australian public to believe anything this government or this Prime Minister says when, in effect, we are currently being told that black is white?
Today I would like to look in particular at some of the commitments made to regional Australia, both during the election campaign and in the immediate period following, when the government sought to buy the votes of Independents. The government has loudly proclaimed the virtues of its Regional Development Australia networks and how they will be the primary vehicle for investing a total of $10 billion in regional Australia. I have three of the 55 Regional Development Australia boards within or partially within my electorate. I must say, there has been a flurry of activity as they have sought to meet deadlines for nominating a full list of the priority infrastructure projects within their management areas.
Judging by the lists I have seen, I think we can probably assume the RDAs have earmarked projects collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The RDAs have been positive and, indeed, quite excited about the money they hope to win in the process because they have been told that, as part of the deal with the Independents, there is to be $10 billion investment in regional and rural Australia. I have been checking the government statements to try to understand where this money is, how the program is coming along and when these RDAs can expect the funds they have been promised to address the long lists of infrastructure items they have compiled to meet the demands across their communities.
The first thing I learned is that the $10 billion is in fact $6 billion. In response to a question on notice asked by the member for Paterson requesting the total value of funds available for the Regional Infrastructure Fund, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government provided information confirming $6 billion was the total figure. So what happened to the other $4 billion that was announced in all the hoopla as the Labor Party sought to buy victory after the election? In fact, almost the total amount comes from one-third portions sliced off existing or announced programs in health, education and training. It is quite a coincidence really. There is about one-third of Australia’s population living in the regions, so the great deal we are to be grateful for is the pro rata allocation of funding guaranteed for regional areas. We are expected to be thankful for receiving our traditional share of the pie, for being promised what we were likely to get anyway.
One way or another that has chewed up $4 billion, so I will return to the $6 billion—not the $10 billion but the $6 billion—the minister tells us is available in the Regional Infrastructure Fund. It turns out that $5.6 billion of this money is to be raised from the mining tax. It begs the question: do we have a mining tax or not, and do we know how much it will raise? This highlights the point I made earlier about lack of delivery and policy reversal from this government. Remember the Prime Minister’s victorious announcements of peace in our time with the big mining companies in that brief period of euphoria when she disposed of the previous Prime Minister and basked in the glow of being Australia’s first female Prime Minister? That was before we found out that the government wanted to change the terms of the deal with the big miners, and now we find that they do not have a deal; it is a shemozzle.
If we put that to one side for now and take the leap of faith and suppose that the government actually does have the money it has promised to the regions and which has so excited the RDA boards, no doubt $6 billion is a significant amount of money. But it turns out that $5,427 million of this pool of money is not available to the RDA boards; that is money to be spent at the government’s discretion. I will come back to that later. The RDA boards have only $573 million earmarked for their projects, and that is to be spread over the forward estimates—four years, so about $140 million a year. There is another pool of money the RDAs can compete for, the $800 million Priority Regional Infrastructure Fund. This fund is available over five years. Unfortunately, the government has just withdrawn $350 million as a saving measure, leaving just $450 million of this program, or another $90 million a year. So in total it looks like there might be about $230 million a year available over the next four years. As I said, there are 55 RDAs around Australia, so that means on average they should hope to win about $4 million a year. That ought to build about one school hall on current rates. To quote Shakespeare, the government’s commitments to regional Australia are really much ado about nothing. That is $4 million a year per RDA to address the very large list they have compiled in good faith to build a platform to underpin the future of regional Australia.
How much of that $4 million will actually make its way to what I call regional Australia? Some of this gets curiouser and curiouser. It is worth examining what the federal government thinks qualifies as regional. While I have not investigated the footprint of each RDA, it turns out that 11 of the 55 RDAs are based in the capital cities, far-flung regional centres such as Melbourne and Sydney. So forgive my cynicism, but as someone who does genuinely represent regional Australia I worry just where the boundaries start for regional Australia when the head offices of the RDAs are in the capital cities. As I say, I am not familiar with the footprints but I do know that $480 million from the $5,427 million the government says it will commit to regional Australia, but will not allow the RDAs to get anywhere near, is earmarked for the Perth Airport upgrade. Talk about regional. Perth Airport! It seems that one does not have to travel far from the main street to find regional Australia, hence my apprehension. In fact, $900 million of this fund was already committed through election promises. While we are on election promises, it is worth looking at what the Treasurer committed to on 13 June last year. Western Australia and Queensland can expect $2 billion each in additional infrastructure from the fund. Simple maths will tell you that of the government’s funds theoretically available to regional Australia, wherever that is, an absolute maximum of just $1,427 million—$1.4 billion—remains available for New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the territories, and that is to be spent over 10 years. That is about $140 million a year. Once again, much ado about nothing.
I have spoken to a number of representatives in the Regional Development Australia boards and local councils who are beginning to understand that they have been deceived by the spin and that their enthusiasm for the much touted investment in regional Australia has been misplaced. In fact, collectively, they feel they have in good faith been developing proposals for the government which in reality have no chance of success. This investment follows the well-worn path of this government: overpromise; underdeliver. In the end, this government will be judged on what it delivers, not on what it promised. The further apart those two things are, the harder they will be judged. There is no goodwill left. Even among traditional Labor Party supporters there is widespread realisation and recognition that the government is not up to the job, that it promises large visionary schemes with motherhood objectives that it has no idea how to deliver. When we in the opposition point out the failure of their commitments we are castigated as obstructionists. The government would have done well to have listened to us on the Prime Minister’s pet project: the school halls program. They should have listened to us when we predicted failure in the insulation disaster. They should have listened to us about the overrevved stimulus package, which continues to borrow $100 million a day, and about the futility of the Asia-Pacific forum, of GroceryWatch and of Fuelwatch. They should have been listening to us when we called for a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN. The Regional Development Australia deception seems to be just another of these abandoned dreams. There is little for regional Australia to get excited about and the trust that our regional leaders have given to the government has been betrayed.
I will turn to the second reading amendment that the member for Sturt has put forward to this bill concerning youth allowance arrangements in Australia. This debate on youth allowance for regional students is a festering sore for the government. Last week we heard the announcements that the government was bringing forward a review of the arrangements for youth allowance. In that announcement the public was led to believe that the government was going to fill the gap until the review was completed by continuing the old arrangements—by restoring the youth allowance option of independent youth allowance to those who live in inner regional Australia. I have said before in this place that I was well pleased for my own electorate with the changes that were made last year, because all but one town in my electorate lies in outer regional, remote or very remote Australia. That one town is Eudunda and I will continue to remain interested in the debate on its behalf and also on behalf of all students who live in the inner regional part of Australia. I feel that even though they do not live directly in my electorate they are part of my constituency, because there is a basic unfairness in the system as it lies at the moment that needs to be addressed.
I heard a member speaking earlier in the chamber about what he believes we really need for Australian regional youth; that is, a genuine living away from home allowance for those who have to leave home to attend university. I developed a paper on this two years ago and launched it at an isolated children’s conference in Woomera—an ICPA conference for South Australia that was held in Woomera. I highlighted many of these problems and accumulated information from various reviews which had shown it costs around about $20,000 a year extra to send your child to university or other tertiary education if they have to leave home. That is not $20,000 in total; it is $20,000 over and above what any other parent would pay to get their child through university. So if your kid has to leave home, even if they live in the inner city and have to go to another city to access a course, you are $20,000 behind your neighbour. I have always thought this was a grave injustice. It may not have been due to my paper, but within three weeks of my launching it we had the announcements in the budget that changed the ground rules on youth allowance entirely. So we went back to ground zero and started designing it all again.
It has been an ongoing passion for me, and I must say it is one of the reasons that I got involved in the parliament. As someone who has raised three children in regional Australia and managed to get them all through university—I must report my youngest just finished his degree last year and started working a couple of weeks ago, so I am pretty happy about that—I really do understand what these costs are all about. I know the sacrifices we had to make to get our children through the system. I was in a position to meet that cost and I do not begrudge it, but there is no doubt at the end of the day that I am probably $500,000 behind where someone would be if their child had been able to live at home.
At the time of an earlier debate, almost in another life, I remember saying, ‘It’s not my fault that no university chooses to build a campus alongside my house.’ In fact, I have offered to make land available for just such a happenstance, so if any universities out there are interested in building at Buckleboo I would be pleased to provide a paddock for them. The point is that I make a decision about where I live; my children do not. If parents are in a position to help their children, that is good, but they may not be. Other parents may choose to find other things in their life more important than their children’s education. When the kid knows that maybe there is not that much money around the house, they do not have to be told by their parents, ‘We can’t afford to send you away to university; we can’t afford your tertiary education.’ They pick up the vibes and they say to mum and dad: ‘Don’t worry—that’s not really what I wanted to do anyhow. What I really want to do is to go and be a checkout chick or a plumber,’ or, ‘I’d rather be a council worker,’ or whatever. But they will send a message to their parents: ‘Don’t worry about me—I’ll be okay.’ That is why our university attendance rates in regional Australia are roughly half what they are in the urban centres, in the capital cities. That is why, as I say, this is a festering sore for the government. It is a problem which needs to be fixed up.
I thank all members making a contribution to debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the cognate bill. Over the course of the 11½ years John Howard was Prime Minister and his government was in office, they enjoyed almost unprecedented continued economic growth. They were the golden years, largely fuelled by a resources boom. But in many ways I feel they were wasted years. I am not suggesting that they were years without any economic reform; that would be churlish of me. Of course there was some reform, and much of that reform was supported by the opposition of the day. But in my view, and I think it is a historical fact, infrastructure investment gave way to populist fiscal policy and transfer payment policies.
It was a deadly economic combination which gave rise to significant inflationary pressures in the Australian economy. It is now a historical fact that by the first and second quarters of 2008 those inflationary pressures had really started to build in the Australian economy, and those inflationary pressures were in turn putting pressure on interest rates and therefore mortgage interest rates, and that again in turn put cost pressures on Australian families. Then, just as the new government was fighting to redress the wrongs and, in particular, the infrastructure bottlenecks which were contributing to those inflationary pressures, the global financial crisis came along. I should have touched wood, but I remember joking on many occasions in opposition that it would be just Labor’s luck that when we were returned to government the global economic situation would turn downward, and indeed it did.
Thank God Labor was in power when that global recession was making its way to our shores. That was fortuitous for two reasons. First of all, it is a historical fact that Australia avoided a recession. That is an incontestable fact. We also know that those who sit opposite opposed every measure that the government put forward as a means of avoiding that economic downturn in Australia. Labor’s fiscal stimulus package had many facets or components. There were cash payments to families and bank deposit guarantees. The most high profile component was infrastructure investment. It is those infrastructure investments that I would like to touch on for just a short while this evening.
It is another incontestable fact that the government’s investment in nation building not only saved us from recession but was well targeted. In my own electorate, every primary school has received a significant upgrade. These are primary schools that never dreamed of having the facilities that their students deserve in the 21st century. There are schools that I visited that had kids sitting in halls for some of their classes for want of classroom facilities. New community infrastructure has popped up everywhere: playgrounds, sporting fields, art galleries, skate parks—you name it, it is being built. These are projects that councils have had on their books for years but they were in despair at their inability to fund them and were fearful that they might never be funded. This was community infrastructure, therefore, not in excess of our needs but that was badly needed.
Social housing has had a big funding boost. Far fewer families are now sitting on the waiting list for public housing than there were prior to those investments. Our high schools have new science labs and trades training centres. Kuri Kuri TAFE, which is in my electorate, has had a $7 million hospitality school built, something much needed to address the skills shortage in the hospitality industry in my electorate.
Then there is the well-publicised Hunter Expressway, an investment of $1.7 billion by the federal government. This is the largest land transport project ever constructed in the Hunter region, a project that will transform the Hunter region, making our transport movements far more efficient, relieving many townships of heavy vehicle movements on their local roads, improving road safety and removing a nightmare congestion situation on the New England Highway, which too many Hunter motorists commuting to and from work have to put up with on a daily basis. I inspected the progress of the Hunter Expressway only last Friday at the end of the sitting week. I am impressed by the way that the contractors are moving forward with that project. I am advised by the RTA in New South Wales that the project is well and truly on track for completion by the end of 2012. I welcome that.
The government also provided an equity injection of half a billion dollars into the ARTC to upgrade the rail line that takes our coal from our coalmines in the Upper Hunter to the port of Newcastle. A third track is going to have a significant economic impact on the region by getting more coal to port more quickly and therefore opening up an expansion of the coal-mining industry. That is good for the economy and good for jobs. It is not just a third track; it includes a number of other large projects, including road overpasses over the track, because the track is now wider and safety considerations demand that. It also involves noise attenuation and the removal of gradients along the track which previously significantly slowed—and in some spots still slow—the rail wagons down.
I am a great supporter of this project, but I have been left with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth as a result of the way some of the ARTC’s agents have dealt with residents who have been adversely affected by the construction of the project. Some of those have been affected by noise, some by vibration and some by both. I feel that the ARTC’s agents have not on all occasions treated them with the sort of respect and courtesy that they deserve. Other people have been affected by the need to resume land and again I have been left disappointed on occasions by the way that the ARTC’s agents have been treating those people.
Given the ARTC is a wholly owned entity of the Commonwealth government, I expect the ARTC and its agents to act as model litigants. I believe that, when they are dealing with residents who are being affected by the project, as important as it is, they have an obligation to deal with them as courteously as is humanly possible. That certainly has not been the case with respect to a company known as Twojays Engineering and Fabrication in Branxton, in my electorate. It will be necessary for the ARTC not only to resume land but to block the only access they have from one side of the railway track to the other. The resumption of some of the land will require them to actually move their facilities. So this is a big deal for the principals of Twojays Engineering.
From my perspective, the ARTC’s approach to this situation has been one of intimidation and bullying, and far from the sort of approach I would expect from an entity wholly owned by the Commonwealth government. I have written to the ARTC expressing my concerns and I again tonight appeal to the CEO of the ARTC to intervene in the situation, to get the middlemen out of the way, to deal with the principals of Twojays Engineering directly and to bring a common-sense approach to the negotiations over those matters. The third rail track to the port of Newcastle is a great project, and I would hate to see it sullied by some unfortunate events which were, in my view, totally avoidable and should have been avoided.
I have not even got to the National Broadband Network yet, which of course will be a wonderful thing for the Hunter Valley. It is hard for me to believe, given what we know about the technologies, that those opposite would be opposing the rollout of the NBN. We formed, through Regional Development Australia Hunter, a committee to make sure that the Hunter and Central Coast regions—
Mr Craig Thomson interjecting
My colleague with me, the member for Dobell, has been very busy on this matter, making sure that we are well placed to be earlier in that rollout rather than later. We in the Hunter can see the enormous opportunities which will flow from the rollout of the NBN. We intend to be up there in front grabbing those opportunities earlier rather than later.
I would like to say something about the current carbon debate. People often turn to me and say, ‘As the member for Hunter, you must be a bit concerned about what your party is doing on carbon.’ Wrong, absolutely wrong. My coalminers, my power station owners, even those who work in the aluminium industry, understand that we have to make those industries sustainable and the best way to make those industries sustainable is to act on carbon now—act now, not later, before it gets too hard. I have always been very pleased that the coalminers union have been right out there—in front of the Labor Party, in fact—on these issues. They see how important it is to ensure that these industries have a future. They understand that the best way to make them sustainable is to give certainty to the industry and to start a structural shift in the economy which will provide that sustainability.
There has been a big change of attitudes in my electorate. People in my electorate, just like those who live on the North Shore of Sydney, are concerned about climate change. I believe there is an emerging consensus in my electorate that, even if we are in doubt, we should act on climate change; even if there is a question about the science, we should act as a form of insurance. So I do not fear the government’s position on climate change. I am very supportive of it and I am very confident that the majority of my electorate remains very supportive of it as well. We know that the majority of people who sit opposite support it as well. We have seen that in various manifestations, particularly when Mr Turnbull was leading the coalition. We saw it manifest itself through the last leadership challenge, which was of course a very tightly contested event. It is about time, for the sake of all Australians, that the opposition considered taking a bipartisan approach to this issue. That is what the Australian people want. They do not want us arguing about it; they just want us to do it.
I see Mr Entsch, the Chief Opposition Whip, sitting opposite. I remember doing a 7.30 Report program with him on the role of the whips, some time last year, and I have never had so much positive feedback from something I have done on television in all the time I have been here—as positive as it always is, Madam Deputy Speaker. I believe the feedback was so positive because they saw Mr Entsch and I agreeing and working together. That is what the Australian people want. On the big issues, and even the small issues like ‘whipping’, they want the major parties, just now and again at least, to come together and agree on something and get on with the job.
That is my very strong view about what is happening in terms of the community’s view on climate change. I think the Liberal Party—and indeed the National Party, but I might be dreaming now—would be doing itself a great service by getting on board the climate change issue and working with us to put the appropriate measures in place. If that means a change of leader, so be it. If Mr Abbott wants to stick his head in the sand and hold his party back, or even take it back to 19th century views, that is a matter for Mr Abbott, but I think the party has a choice and I think it should take the opportunity to rid him of the leadership if that is what it takes to get the consensus.
Last but not least, I am aware that the opposition have now pulled a stunt and moved an amendment with respect to youth allowance. It is a stunt. It has never been done in the 15 years I have been here. It is very clear that if this appropriations bill were amended it would knock out the appropriations and cut off the supply of finance to the government. It is the most irresponsible thing I have seen in the 15 years I have been in this place. The youth allowance policy is a good policy, but the Prime Minister has agreed to review it. For the opposition to try to score a few more political points by coming in here and amending an appropriation bill, which would cut off the supply of money to the government and payment of salaries to public servants and everything that goes with that, I think is highly irresponsible. Shame on them. They should see the error of their ways, withdraw the amendment and not waste the time of the main chamber by voting on another amendment which is nothing more than a stunt. We have had the youth allowance fight three or four times now in both chambers, but they want to have it again. Apparently, they think they are on a winner; I can tell them that they are flogging a dead horse. (Time expired)
I say to my friend and colleague the member for Hunter that I agree with him—but, first of all, in relation to the youth allowance. Yes of course we are trying again, but we are trying to get more kids in regional Australia access to youth allowance, and we will be persistent. Yes, I also have had the same positive feedback about the relationship that we have as whips. I intend to maintain that relationship because it helps to make the parliament work very effectively and efficiently, and I look forward to continuing that.
With regard to climate change, which the member discussed, there is always the prospect of changing a leader, but that goes for either side and I would suggest that there is always that prospect on his side of politics. Maybe somebody would like to step up to the plate and have a go at that as well, given that the Australian public clearly feel that they have been deceived by the commitments made prior to the election and what has happened since.
I also listened to the member for Hunter with a great deal of interest in relation to his comments about the value of investment in primary schools and public housing. It made me wonder whether there are two levels of members in the Labor Party, in the government: those who are privileged to have positive outcomes in relation to social housing and school halls and others who are possibly on a lower echelon, and that may well have been my predecessor. I can tell you that he had some serious problems and the community was severely damaged by decisions made in my electorate of Leichhardt in relation to investment in school halls and public housing.
In relation to investment in school halls, I know that, in one small school, the day that their brand new $250,000 school hall was delivered on site was the day that the closure of the school was announced. That was not great value for that school, it was not great value for the community and it certainly was not value for money for the Leichhardt community.
The state minister decided, in taking federal money, to build public housing with waterfront views on a marina in a place where there was no public transport and no facilities whatsoever. The entire communities of Bluewater, Palm Cove and the inner suburb of Earlville rallied against it and said: ‘This is just not the appropriate place. We have no issue with it, but it is totally inappropriate for the price that was paid and for the type of structure intended to be built.’ There was a huge outcry at the enormous amount of waste in Bluewater and Palm Cove, but the state government pushed ahead with it and forced it on. Interestingly enough, the Department of Communities is still struggling to find people to put out there. These places, at the end of the day, for what has been done are absolutely appalling. They have not been, and will not be, accepted by the community; yet here is a time when the state and federal governments are trying to push into areas where there is no need for this particular type of housing. It is being pushed onto the community, yet we have a desperate need within our community for supported accommodation for people with intellectual and physical disabilities. There is a chronic shortage of over 80 units of supported accommodation. That was ignored while the state government tried to drive a point in what it seems to regard as the prestige suburbs in the northern beaches of Cairns where there is clearly no need for it. Even the local managers of the Department of Communities really did not want this housing—they tried to walk away from it. Obviously there are two levels of membership in the government and the Labor Party because those particular decisions played a significant role in having me here in this place today. I will certainly continue to raise it and remind them of the dreadful waste of money in those areas.
I move onto something else. We recently had Cyclone Yasi—and we have spoken about it in this place. I appreciated the contributions from all sides when members spoke on the condolence motion about their support for the victims of these dreadful events that we have had. I will be a little parochial and talk about Queensland—the floods and, more recently, the cyclone damage. We have a Premier in Queensland, Anna Bligh, who was starting to languish in the polls, but I have to say that she did an outstanding job. The underpants came on the outside, the blue cape was put on, she flew up there and she was a supergirl. She elbowed her way into emergency services and the only spokesperson was the Premier. To all intents and purposes, she kept the profile and she did a very good job. But, at the end of the day, the job is not about presenting yourself to the media and showing that you care in the midst of a particular event—because we all care about that—but about getting the focus on you as a result of your position, and she did a good job in maintaining that focus. However, she is going to be judged on how she performs after the event with the recovery. Already, we are seeing some very serious issues emerging. For example, it is my view that a community has the right to rebuild itself. When you talk about rebuilding a community after the devastation of Cyclone Yasi, rebuilding the bricks and mortar is only a small part of it.
A community is not just bricks and mortar. There is the social infrastructure and the economic infrastructure. If you do not give the community the economic opportunity to rebuild its own bricks and mortar, there is no capacity to rebuild the social infrastructure. Only a week and a half ago we had a meeting with over 400 local contractors pleading with the Premier to give them the opportunity to rebuild their own community. Unfortunately, as we have seen in recent times with things like the stimulus package, with the school hall fiasco and with the public housing—with all of these other things—it always goes to southern based national contractors while our local people end up being fed the crumbs. We are the bottom feeders, if you like.
We have been on our knees as a community now for about three or four years. We need the opportunity to get on our feet and we are only going to do that if we are given the primary contracts. There has been rhetoric and there have been promises and we had the Premier up there last week throwing out bits of money like confetti. But it is $30,000 for a business study, so much money for a feasibility study—all of these sorts of thing. It does not do anything to rebuild our community.
The Premier needs to insist that her own departments give primary contracts locally. It was very disappointing to see the shortlist for NDRRA contracts for the restoration of works of $30 million and above selected by the state government bureaucracy, the Department of Transport and Main Roads. None of the three companies—Leightons, Seymour Whyte or Downer EDI—even have an office in Cairns. Yet there are other civil construction companies in Cairns, employing 200 or 300 people, that were not even given a look-in. That is disgusting and the Premier should hang her head in shame.
The other problem in Cairns is that, while we did not suffer the loss of our buildings, we did lose the economy of our area—because people stopped coming. Tourism is 40 per cent of our economy. People stopped coming. We have been pleading with this government to give support to our tourism industry to try to get it back on its feet after suffering one disaster after another. For example, we have been trying to get support from this government to allow the industry to participate in missions and trade shows. Nothing has been confirmed at this point in time, yet this is critical. We need to ensure that the tourism trade can get out there—they are the ones best able to push their own product, to get things going.
After seven years, businesses are no longer able to claim Export Market Development Grants. Therefore, since the tourism industry in Cairns is mature, many of the businesses can no longer access the EMDG. But the market has changed and there are special circumstances. We need access to the EMDG scheme to be reinstated to allow businesses to get out there and market around the world. Why is it that inbound tourism, which is clearly an export, cannot get the same level of tax offsets that other export industries receive? And why is it that our overseas marketing activity is subject to the GST? It is absolute nonsense when a mission to Europe to sell Australia and the region is subject to GST. As a consequence, many of our operators cannot participate because of the cost. So there are a whole lot of issues there.
For too long the tourism industry has been very much taken for granted. The industry itself is saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ People in the industry are tired of visits by politicians, like the Premier and federal members, who simply want to create spin and photo opportunities in a beautiful part of our world. All they do is repackage previous commitments and announcements, providing no more real support for the industry. Some of the media campaigns they have announced in recent times are classic examples of that. It is about time they started to take the industry seriously and put serious money into our tourism industry, to get it back on its feet and doing what it does very well—presenting a beautiful part of Australia.
For four years now this Labor government has committed to a $150 overpass for Ray Jones Drive in Cairns. Four years ago, at the 2007 election, that commitment was made. I am sure that helped my predecessor get elected. I can tell you that by 2010 there was a lot of cynicism about the fact that the government had not delivered on this commitment, which probably helped me to get re-elected. Here we are in 2011 and this commitment still has not been delivered.
In closing, I would like to make the point that businesses generally—not just the tourism industry—did not have to be blown away to be impacted by Cyclone Yasi. I have here an email dated 28 February 2011 from Rosie Johnson, who has a small family business located two kilometres from Bloomfield, on the coastal road between Cape Tribulation and Cooktown. The email reads:
My name is Rosie Johnson, I run a roadhouse in Bloomfield less than 2 kms from Wujal Wujal, in between Cairns and Cooktown, the only shop north of Wujal Wujal itself that sells fuel on the coast road to Cooktown.
Rosie Johnson is seeking assistance. Her email continues:
… we have been told by DEEDI and QRAA we are located outside the disaster declared zone (and therefore can receive zero assistance) although we back onto the river which is the cut off zone for Wujal Wujal …
That town is getting some level of assistance. The email further states:
We have only just been able to return to our business yesterday.
… … …
We have found out that we are not covered by insurance and have returned to a very distressing situation. Although the Cyclone Yasi has not hit us directly … the resulting storms have caused our business severe hardship.
… … …
The Bloomfield Track … Causeway has been completely washed away. … it might be mid-April before the Cook Shire Council can put the bridge in.
This means we have no customers … we rely on the trade from the community of Wujal Wujal and the tourist industry. …
Due to power outages we have lost refrigerated and frozen stock both as groceries and stock to serve take away food etc. This means that when customers do start to return to the store we have nothing to serve them.
… … …
We have equipment such as tractors and mowers and vehicles that wont run or start. As a result we have no vehicle …
We cannot travel to Cooktown to get more stock. …
Our 3 children can not attend Rossville State School …
We have a son with Di George Syndrome which can be life threatening in the wrong circumstances and we cannot get him to either the Wujal Wujal Health Service … or the Cooktown Hospital.
… … …
Ms Johnson says that they need the government to ramp up its efforts to support people like them. They need to get the bridge built in a hurry. They need grants to support their business, which has been affected by Yasi. They seriously need support. I plead with the government to extend their benefits to people like Rosie Johnson who have been affected by this cyclone. (Time expired)
It is with pleasure that I rise to speak in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. In the time I have today I wish to touch on some of the important initiatives that will be funded under these appropriation bills. Firstly, the bills will deliver an additional $120.7 million through the Attorney-General’s Department to assist people in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia who have been adversely affected by the floods which began in late 2010. Of course, there are many members on both sides of the chamber who have talked about the devastating effects of the floods in Queensland, but we should not forget that there are other homeowners and other businesses across the country that have been affected by floods as well.
This additional funding will enable Centrelink to make payments for up to 13 weeks to people who have temporarily lost their income as a direct result of the flooding. People in that situation will be eligible to apply for those payments. We need to make sure that those who have lost income as a direct result of the flooding get the support they need and get access to that payment through Centrelink. The extra funding measures contained in these appropriation bills are very important initiatives.
Another important initiative under these appropriation bills is the provision of funding to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to introduce the fair entitlements guarantee to protect employee entitlements when an employer enters liquidation. I have to congratulate the Labor government because, in fact, the minister has already changed from the General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme that existed prior to the fair entitlements guarantee through administrative arrangements. The reason this has been done was so that these new entitlements could commence from January this year so that people who have found themselves redundant due to their employer’s liquidation are able to access these new entitlements already. However, this additional funding will ensure that that entitlement continues to flow until such time as the minister is able to introduce into this House legislation to ensure that these important entitlements are protected by statute and can be changed only by the agreement of this parliament.
Under the previous GEERS system, someone who was made redundant as a consequence of liquidation could get up to a maximum of only 16 weeks redundancy payment. This was irrespective of how many years service they had. Under the new fair entitlements guarantee, what is provided is the ability to be paid up to a maximum of four weeks for each year of service. So if someone had 20 years of service then they are going to see a redundancy payment that will at least be closer to what they would have got if that company had not been in liquidation and those assets were available as opposed to walking away with no more than 16 weeks for all those years of service with that employer. This is a fantastic initiative. I just want to point out that, through these changes by this Labor government, which were announced during the election in 2010 and are already operational, about 97 per cent of employees will now be eligible for this redundancy payment. It is a fantastic initiative and important funding to flow through these appropriation bills.
There is also an additional $20 million which will go to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. This is part of Australia’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. We have an obligation to contribute to the Millennium Development Goals and the issues, especially the health issues, and those targets that we seek to meet by 2015 under the World Health Organisation. Some of the figures are certainly scary, to say the least. In 2009 there were 1.8 million AIDS related deaths across the world. Yes, this was lower than in 2004. That means that the contributions of countries through the global fund and their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals are making a difference. That means that we need to continue our commitment to meet those targets in 2015.
Can I say how disappointed I was when the Leader of the Opposition, in reference to Indonesian school funding that the opposition would seek to cut to deliver new infrastructure of reconstruction after the floods, said in passing, ‘By the way, in relation to the Millennium Development Goals, we are still committed to them but that is for 2015 and so doing nothing for the next couple of years is okay.’ I do not think it is okay to do nothing for another two years. Certainly people across the electorate of Petrie do not think it is okay to do nothing for the next two years.
Another important initiative under the appropriation bills is the government’s undertaking of the first stage of an implementation study into a high-speed rail network. This first stage will involve a high-level costing and identification of routes and is expected to be completed by July 2011. The Department of Infrastructure and Transport will be provided with $6 million to undertake this study. I have spoken in this House about our local commitment to having a new rail line from Petrie to Kippa-Ring, a commitment that this government made in the 2010 election. It is already underway and will be operational by 2016. It is such an important initiative to have this study done. Australia is not a big country. It is hard to believe we did not have a national gauge before Labor came into government in 2007. This is the next step. Look at other developed nations and their high-speed rail networks. The fact is that, if Australia wants to compete, if we want people to move around this country for jobs, for school, for study reasons, we need to make sure that we have transport that accommodates that, that meets that need—and right now our transport does not meet that need.
Another important initiative, one that really is not part of the debate out there at the moment—we know that the Labor government is committed to solar power and clean energy sources—is one of the funding programs under these appropriation bills which is providing funding to the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism to support joint projects with the United States designed to reduce the cost of solar energy technologies. The funding will support new research on advanced solar technology projects, exchange programs and research scholarships focused on affordable solar energy solutions. We know that, at the federal and the state level, there have been many programs to assist homeowners with the costs relating to solar energy, but the fact is that solar energy is still quite costly—and we want more homes and more businesses to be able to take up this initiative. We need to invest in that research, and to do that in collaboration with the United States is fantastic. We can gain skills and knowledge as well as, hopefully, move closer to reducing the cost of solar energy technologies in our country.
An issue that is very close to my heart and that I am very pleased to see in these appropriation bills is additional funding to the Australian Sports Commission to extend the Active After-school Communities Program until the end of the year. This is a fantastic program. Many of my primary schools run this program after school. We know that many of the children who participate in these programs are children who otherwise would not participate in extracurricular activities and sporting activities outside of school, because of the costs involved in those activities. So this Active After-school Communities Program is such an important program. It has my full support. I will continue to advocate for the continuation of this program. It is a fantastic initiative and I am very pleased to see additional funding in these appropriation bills.
There is also additional funding for Centrelink in these appropriation bills, to provide families with the additional option of receiving childcare rebate payments directly to their bank accounts on a fortnightly basis from 1 July 2011. Those who have young children, like me and the member for Dobell, who is in the chamber, know the costs involved in child care; we know the importance of the childcare rebate and how it is appreciated by the community that the Labor government increased that childcare rebate for families. But we need to make it more accessible. Instead of parents receiving a cheque, they will be able to get it directly paid into their bank accounts. This is a fantastic option. It is a choice, and a great choice for us to provide to parents. I applaud the government for that initiative as well.
The last important program I want to raise, which is receiving funding under Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011—the ones I have just raised were under Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011—relates to the $69.8 million being brought forward from 2011-12 for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to meet contractual commitments of projects relating to the non-government schools component of the Building the Education Revolution program. The reason this funding is being brought forward is that these projects have been completed earlier than expected.
We have heard so much criticism from the other side of the House in relation to the BER projects and their alleged failures or problems. Firstly, on behalf of the schools across the electorate of Petrie I can say that the BER program has been an absolute success. Schools, students and teachers appreciate the use of these state-of-the-art facilities and so does the broader community. We will not just listen to my words. I take the House back to the comments of the Building the Education Revolution Implementation Taskforce Chair, Brad Orgill, when he talked about the BER projects in the task force report and said:
The vast majority of the BER projects across the country in the government and non-government systems are being successfully and competently delivered, which has resulted in quality and, from our own observations, generally much-needed new school infrastructure, while achieving the primary goal of stimulating economic activity.
In the executive summary, Mr Orgill stated:
It is projected to support approximately 120,000 jobs over the full life of the program, filling a gap left in demand from the private sector and playing an important role in supporting apprentices and skill retention in the building and construction industry.
I know these programs are still supporting jobs out in the community right now. If those on the other side were willing to go out and talk to those construction workers and those managers, they would find that this work is sustaining their employment and providing training that is much needed where there are other gaps in work available at this time. This is an important initiative. I am very pleased to see additional funding for the reason that this project is going so well that some projects are running ahead of time and need the funding brought forward to pay for them.
I certainly support these two appropriations bills. There are many more important programs that are being funded under these appropriations bills, but I have just touched on some. They are important initiatives. They are important programs for the country and important programs that will see benefits flow to the people in the electorate of Petrie. I commend the bills to the House.
I rise today to speak on a number of issues regarding a carbon tax, energy alternatives, nuclear energy and the economics of climate change. Let us assume that global warming is indeed occurring and it is man that is causing it. My views on this topic are well known. Although I would consider myself a climate agnostic, for argument’s sake let us say that global warming is anthropogenic.
I will assume that the government have taken action through the various international treaties to which we are signatory yet which have no parliamentary oversight. The many failures in international institutions such as the UN, the World Bank and the IMF are well documented, and most have less than average track records in public policy. Yet here we go again, letting them dictate to Australia, a sovereign nation, what we should be doing with our environment. Let me be clear: every time we sign up to an international treaty, Australians lose more of their right to self-determination. These treaties bypass parliamentary procedure and mean that we are tied to the whims of these non-democratic international institutions.
How did pricing carbon become the only way to tackle climate change? Global action on climate change was effectively mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1987. The assembly welcomed moves by the World Meteorological Organisation in cooperation with the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program. The action was to explore and, after appropriate consultation with governments, establish an ad hoc intergovernmental mechanism to carry out internationally coordinated scientific assessments of the magnitude, timing and potential impact of climate change. Again, I take umbrage at the ‘appropriate consultation with governments’. This parliament would never have voted on the accord if it had known the scope that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, had over Australia’s sovereign right to self-determination.
Carbon pricing resulted from a number of reports commissioned by numerous scientific sources but was given a legal framework by the Kyoto protocol. Under this treaty, signatories must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto protocol offers additional means of meeting targets by way of three market based mechanisms: emissions trading, known as the carbon market; the clean development mechanism; and joint implementation. Basically, the need to price carbon has come through creative thinking by non-parliamentary, undemocratic NGOs—and I wonder if anything could go wrong. I was going to take the time to explain the massive issues with the carbon market itself, but the width and breadth of issues in the European market alone would need several debates to flesh out.
The overarching issue I see at hand is the way Australia is ignoring the experiences of other countries with a carbon tax. The international market is factoring out the solution. Look at the Chicago Climate Exchange, which no longer exists after a complete collapse—so much for the vaunted market mechanisms. This was something put forward by Al Gore and was much vaunted by him, but it has collapsed. The European market has similarly failed. When Hungary sold two million credits of emissions reductions onto the open market last year, there were suspicions about the validity of the certificates and the market price dropped from €12 a tonne to €1 a tonne in one day. ICE Futures Europe, the largest exchange for carbon trading, are now trying to restore investors’ trust after online thieves targeted emissions permits. Spot trading in Europe has been disrupted since 20 January after the EU regulator closed all 30 national registries following a hacking attack by thieves who have illegally transferred permits, valued at about €60 million, in past months. With a market based emissions trading system there is a very real prospect, based on international examples, that the government is giving the green light for polluters to pollute even more by simply buying cheap credits—hardly the point of what we are trying to achieve.
Has the government learned from these mistakes? Will the government guarantee the integrity of Australia’s carbon markets? Climate minister Greg Combet is not sure yet. He says all of that detailed work is yet to be done. Again, I am willing to put the huge issues with the market itself aside to discuss the validity of the idea of a tax merging into an ETS. Obviously, the national debate has progressed through the recommendations of the Kyoto protocol and through understanding that taking action through a trading system is the way forward. But is it? Is pricing carbon the only way to reduce our emissions, or have we been following a massive example of public debate groupthink? Are there alternative options for reducing our emissions other than taxation and creating a new market for bankers and financiers to get even wealthier? Yes, there are and some of these ideas have come from the IPCC itself although ignored by the government. One of Ross Garnaut’s original recommendations, overlooked by the Gillard government, was that governments should reinvest some revenue raised by putting a price on carbon to help make low-emission technologies more accessible.
During the period 1993 to 2003, China’s R&D expenditures grew faster than those of any other nation, pushing China’s share of world R&D investment from 3.6 per cent to 9.5 per cent. Australia’s R&D expenditure as a proportion of GDP remains lower than the OECD average, although it has increased in recent years. China has made the seemingly obvious connection between R&D investment and the multiplier effect on its GDP growth and a more energy-efficient future. While I think certain renewables have promise, they are not there yet and will need Australia to lead the world in innovation.
Let us look at dismantling the department of climate change. After all, we all agree that climate change is happening. What exactly is this department doing? And let us have a look at doing all of this with minimal government intervention and minimal wealth redistribution. A nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself up by the handles. I would argue that the same goes for the carbon tax debate. We do not need a tax or an ETS to bring about change. The carbon tax dance is now outdated. As the International Climate Science Coalition notes:
Attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change.
Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering.
Australia produces only 1.5 per cent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions worldwide. How will a small reduction in Australia’s emissions, generated by a sizeable tax, actually affect the climate? We all know it will not have any effect. At least we will be leading the world by example, you say. That presupposes that big polluters are actually influenced by Australia. I doubt that our country has much impact on any policies of the US or China. Proponents of a carbon tax argue that it will generate greater economic growth than we would have without it and that it will create new efficient industries as old ones are taxed out of the market. Yet, by that logic, coal fired power plants are at present far more economic than solar farms.
The Gillard government is allowing social factors to influence economic matters. BlueScope Steel CEO, Paul O’Malley, was bang on the money when he labelled the carbon tax as ‘economic vandalism’. Furthermore, Labor and the Greens cannot continue to say that climate change is the most important issue to confront our society but then say that the one method that is capable of making a massive dent in carbon emissions, nuclear power, should have a legislative ban associated with it.
McNair Ingenuity Research showed that between 1979 and 2009 those in favour of the construction of nuclear power stations increased from 34 per cent to 49 per cent, with around 10 per cent undecided. More people are in favour of nuclear power than are opposed. It is not the will of the people to take nuclear energy off the table. Australians are open to change, while the Greens and Labor are not. If the Greens and Labor do not embrace nuclear power as a possibility they are not serious about addressing climate change. They also cannot continue to argue that we should have a nuclear ban as it is economically too expensive. If they really believed this they would allow the repeal of section 10 of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998, knowing that power generators would not build a nuclear power plant if it were economically uncompetitive. Repealing section 10 would be a worthwhile step forward. It would remove the prohibition on a Commonwealth body operating a power reactor and would allow nuclear energy to be one of the options explored for most efficiently conserving and producing cleaner energy for Australia in the longer term. In the national interest, it is time to move past the politics of fear.
An interesting by-product of this decision to introduce a carbon tax is the revelation of who is really running the government. Julia Gillard is predicting a fast and furious debate over her carbon tax plan and has promised to give as good as she gets. In reality, she only has to beat the drum for another four sitting weeks in parliament. When the Senate changes in July and the Greens gain the majority in the Senate, a quick call to Bob Brown will ensure a free flow of legislation. As a coalition, we have long been saying that the Greens have the government singing their tune and the Green tail is wagging the Labor dog—an appropriate aphorism for this dog’s breakfast of a policy. The announcement has demonstrated Labor cannot sing from their own hymn sheet. Our PM has devalued the standing of her office with her view that she can quite comfortably lie to the Australian people in order to obtain votes. Election promises and the will of the people should be sacrosanct. The fact that the PM did not just keep quiet on the issue of a carbon tax during the election campaign and the fact that she lied about it clearly show that she knows that the majority of Australians do not want a carbon tax. If most Australians did support it, she and Wayne Swan would not have felt it necessary—
Order! I ask the member for Tangney to withdraw the statement about the Prime Minister lying. That is unparliamentary.
I thought that calling her a liar was unparliamentary but to say that she lied was not.
I am asking the member to withdraw.
Very well, I withdraw. If most Australians did support it, she and Wayne Swan would not have felt it necessary to not tell the truth about the issue, to state that they would not introduce the tax. They would have said they would introduce it or, at worst, have simply remained silent on the issue. This is an appalling breach of the social contract of the governed allowing a government to govern on their behalf. Untruths mean that the government is not acting on behalf of the nation but on behalf of vested interests. Why tell untruths otherwise? The PM must seek the mandate of Australians for a carbon tax before she seeks to legislate it. The only mandate she has presently is to not introduce such a tax.
Before I get to the substance of my contribution to this debate, I note that the member for Tangney talked about the Labor government singing to the tune of the Greens. I find that rather strange for a man who is a member of an opposition party that has its policies written for it by One Nation. We sit here in the parliament each day and we listen to One Nation. We know that the member for Tangney is quite supportive of the One Nation policies. We know the member for Tangney in this place—
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker: I would seek that the member retract that statement. She knows no such thing whatsoever and I resent that remark.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I can only comment on what I see in this House, and I would have to say that the member for Tangney—
Order! The member for Tangney has requested that you withdraw and I ask that you withdraw.
I withdraw. The Gillard government is about strengthening Australia. It is a government that is about the future and for the future. It is a government of positive ideas and it is working to rebuild Queensland and other areas affected by the floods. It is about providing opportunity for all Australians. It is not about supporting sectional interests but about governing for all Australians and providing opportunity for them to work and for all children to gain a quality education.
The Gillard government is about fighting climate change through placing a price on carbon and by investing in green industries, green technology and green initiatives. Why is that? That is because we are a party of positive ideas, we are a party for the future and we are a government that governs for all Australians, unlike the opposition, who have a goal of blocking, wrecking and spoiling just for the sake of opposing—no ideas, nothing positive—and getting their policies from the One Nation webpage.
I would like to concentrate a little on placing a price on carbon. The previous speaker did not quite tell the truth. The government have always said that we need to address climate change, and it has always been the contention of the government that the only way to do this is to place a price on carbon. The Prime Minister said it before the election and has said it since the election. The arguments put forward by the member for Tangney were quite spurious, particularly when he said that the majority of Australians support nuclear power. Obviously he has not been talking to the people I represent in this parliament.
The appropriation bills give us quite an insight into the direction in which the Gillard government is going. What the Gillard government does is act. It is providing finances to assist the areas affected by floods. It has introduced legislation to provide a levy that will support and help the people of Queensland. It has had that legislation passed through parliament, and that will benefit those people whose infrastructure and economy have all but been destroyed. This is a government that acts and works for the future. There has been quite an investment, through Centrelink, in helping people out with payments during the time of the floods, helping them get themselves back on their feet and helping them to survive during that really acute period.
Whilst I am talking about Centrelink, I would like to mention a program that Centrelink is undertaking. It appears in the budget papers. Charlestown Centrelink in Shortland electorate is one of the trial sites for this program, where job seekers, when they become unemployed, rather than being allowed to languish for a period of time, are being given intensive assistance early in the piece. There are group sessions where people prepare resumes, talk and look at ways to find jobs. The idea is to try and address the issue and help people to get a job quickly rather than be unemployed for a period of time before they can link into the Job Network providers. That is one of the initiatives. The Connecting People with Jobs Relocation Assistance Pilot Program is another program that is going to operate. Up to 4,000 places will be provided to help Australians relocate to Queensland to help up there.
Through this legislation the government provides AusAID with additional amounts of money. This will work to fund partnerships between the government and the non-government sector, and there is $20 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are something that most members of this parliament are committed to, and I have a particular interest in goals 4 and 5. I was lucky enough to see the way in which our Australian dollars are being spent through AusAID when I went with the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing to PNG and the Solomon Islands in 2009. I saw on the ground how money that came through our budget was being used to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The initiative that is included here should be supported by all members of the House. It provides vital funds to those countries that we assist.
I also notice in these budget papers that the government will be undertaking the first stage of an implementation study into a high-speed rail network. The Shortland electorate straddles the Central Coast and the Hunter, and the initial implementation studies for high-speed rail are taking place within that area. This will benefit the people that I represent in this parliament. The completion of the implementation studies will lead to the next stage of actually bringing about high-speed rail.
These papers also provide for an extension to the end of this year of the Active After-school Communities program, a program that I am particularly supportive of. The health and ageing committee had an inquiry into obesity, and the Active After-school Communities program was one of the standout programs that we visited. We need to put in place strategies to encourage children and ensure that they are more active as well as to ensure that they have a proper diet. The Active After-school Communities program covers both. The young people who are involved in the program are exercising rather than sitting in front of a TV, and all the food they eat during the period when they are there is healthy, nutritious and designed to create good eating habits.
Health is one of the issues that have always been very important to me. The health and hospital reforms that the Gillard government has announced will benefit enormously the people I represent in this parliament. We have already seen how the increase in the number of doctors, nurses and allied health professionals who are being trained will complement the workforce. Whilst the Howard government cut places for the training of doctors, the Rudd and Gillard governments have increased places for training. That is vitally important for the people I represent in this parliament, because we have a chronic shortage of doctors. But the situation is improving thanks to our health and hospital reforms. There is money going into hospitals and extra money being put into training specialists. In the electorate of Shortland, two places have been created in Belmont Hospital and a number of other places have been created at the Wyong Hospital and at the John Hunter Hospital, which is a major teaching hospital.
It is all about investing in the future and making sure that we have enough doctors and that our children can get an appropriate education. It is about improvement in the way that GEERS operates by the introduction of the fair entitlements guarantee, which provides workers of employers that enter into liquidation with their entitlements. It is a much better scheme than GEERS. The government is putting in excess of $450 million into that.
This week in parliament we have heard a lot about placing a price on carbon. The Leader of the Opposition has opposed that position, but I do not think that there is anyone in this parliament who would be surprised by that, given his record in the area of climate change: ‘It exists; it does not exist; I support an ETS; I do not support an ETS; placing a price on carbon is the way to go; no, it’s not.’ In the end, he just opposes for the sake of opposing. No matter what it is, you can guarantee that the Leader of the Opposition will be out their opposing it.
And where does Mr Abbott get his policy information? What is his source? The One Nation website. I visited the One Nation website once I started hearing that this was where he was getting his information from. Sure enough, there it was: information on the schools in Indonesia about which John Howard had the foresight to see that we needed to invest money in educating those young people who were at risk of poverty and radical Islamism through lack of education. It is only through programs like this that you can combat those things. But the Leader of the Opposition used as his source of information on this the One Nation website. What we need are appropriation bills like the ones that we have before us today: appropriation bills for the future that look forward, do not look back and are not about wrecking.
I rise to speak today on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 and specifically to highlight the needs of the southern Gold Coast. There are a number of issues that I would like to speak about tonight, including the transport needs of the southern Gold Coast, tourism and the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, an iconic tourism attraction, wildlife sanctuary and animal hospital located at Currumbin in the south of the McPherson electorate.
I will start with the transport needs of the southern Gold Coast. Residents, business owners and visitors to the Gold Coast consistently express to me their concerns about the poor transport infrastructure on the Gold Coast and particularly on the southern Gold Coast, which is primarily the area from Merrimac in the north and Mudgeeraba in the north-west through to Coolangatta in the south. At Coolangatta, we have the Gold Coast Airport, which in January this year achieved 558,600 passenger movements, which was a new monthly record. Congratulations to the Gold Coast Airport. As well as setting a new monthly record, it is also the first time that the monthly passenger movements exceeded 500,000. The January 2011 passenger movement figure shows an increase of 20 per cent over the January 2010 figure and is 13 per cent above the previous record, which was set in the preceding month of December 2010. Of the total passenger movements, 478,500 were domestic passengers and more than 80,000 were international passengers, which was an increase of almost 22 per cent for domestic passengers and more than 13 per cent for international passengers—a significant achievement that demonstrates the growth and potential for future growth of the region.
Once passengers arrive by air at the airport, they are then faced with the task of finding a suitable method of transport from the airport to their accommodation, perhaps to a business meeting or basically wherever they are going. Whilst airport management assures me that current passenger transport needs and expectations are able to be met, my concerns are for the future and to make sure that proper planning takes place. Options for transport to and from the Gold Coast Airport are already somewhat limited and comprise various means of road transport. There are buses, including the Gold Coast tourist shuttle as well as local bus service providers offering an affordable means of transport and hire cars, taxis and private vehicles.
Access from the airport directly to the Gold Coast Highway is mostly efficient. However, potential delays can occur after that point as there is no direct access to the motorway either to the north or to the south of the airport. So it is just not possible to quickly move vehicles away once they leave the airport precinct. The Gold Coast Highway suffers from bottlenecks at the nearby suburb of Tugun to the north of the airport. The situation will only get worse when the new housing estate of Cobaki Lakes comes on line later this year and traffic accesses the Gold Coast Highway via Boyd street and Coolangatta Road in Tugun.
The section of the motorway that runs through my electorate of McPherson remains at four lanes—two lanes northbound and two lanes southbound. Bottlenecks occur at various points along the M1, notably at Mudgeeraba and Reedy Creek where consistently traffic is at a standstill, particularly during the peak morning and afternoon periods. With the population predicted to increase in South-East Queensland, traffic congestion will continue to worsen.
In 2007 both the Howard government and the then Labor opposition promised $455 million to upgrade the M1—the priority areas were identified as Nerang to Tugun—from four lanes to a six- to eight-lane motorway. Subsequent to the 2007 election, money was used for upgrades to the motorway to the north of Nerang. So it did not take place in the identified priority areas. The result is that the southern Gold Coast continues to wait for the much-needed upgrade of the motorway to take place.
It is also important to note in this context that the M1 serves a dual purpose—it provides motorway access to local residents and tourists and also forms part of the national road network, linking Brisbane and Sydney. The recent floods in Queensland have reinforced the need to build and maintain proper transport networks to allow the safe and prompt carriage of people and essential supplies during times of emergency. It is therefore essential that the M1 is upgraded, and this should be a government priority.
If we look at alternative means of transport, there are two options for us to consider. The first of these is heavy rail. Extension of the rail line to Coolangatta has been identified as a priority by the many businesses and individuals that I have spoken to in the last year or so. Heavy rail, servicing Brisbane to the Gold Coast, only goes as far south as Varsity Lakes and that station was opened just over 12 months ago. It took 11 years to lay 4.1 kilometres of track from Robina to Varsity Lakes, which is just one station. Commuters from the Gold Coast to Coomera, Beenleigh and Brisbane rely on trains for faster transport than the M1 can offer vehicular traffic. The peak-hour trains are regularly full after the first two to three stations and passengers have to stand. However, I am very confident that even a ‘standing room only’ train would be attractive to our residents on the southern Gold Coast who do not have access to any trains at all. Extension of the rail line to Coolangatta must become a priority, and it must be introduced in a timely manner. Based on the time of 11 years to build 4.1 kilometres of track between Robina and Varsity Lakes, it will take about 40 years for the line to reach Coolangatta, and that simply is not good enough.
A second transport option is light rail. I am aware that there is some support for this proposal from parts of the southern Gold Coast business community. Construction of stage 1 of the light rail project, which will run from Griffith University to Broadbeach and comprise 16 light rail stations, has commenced, with financial contributions from the three levels of government. Potential future stages for the light rail have been identified and are: the corridor north of stage 1, from Griffith University to Helensvale; the corridor south of stage 1, from Broadbeach to Burleigh Heads; and the corridor from Burleigh Heads to Coolangatta. However, there have been no funding commitments for these further stages and no time lines for commencement or completion. My concern is that the final stage may well be from Burleigh Heads to Coolangatta and that this is not envisaged in the foreseeable future.
In summary, on the issue of transport infrastructure, there are three critical projects for the southern Gold Coast: (1) upgrading the M1 south from Worongary to the border and beyond if necessary, (2) extending the heavy rail line from Varsity Lakes through to Coolangatta and (3) proper investigation and assessment of light rail options. These projects are essential, not only for our residents but also for our tourists.
Tourism is a major Gold Coast industry. As I have said previously in this place, the flow-on effect from tourism impacts on almost every other industry and business on the Gold Coast. Tourism is the largest export earner for Queensland after coal and contributes billions of dollars to the economy. Well over 100,000 people are employed in tourism businesses, with an additional 100,000-plus working in businesses supported by the money that flows from tourism.
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Sitting suspended from 8.22 pm to 8.47 pm
To continue, these include businesses such as the local newsagents, laundromats, restaurants and coffee shops and a whole range of small to medium enterprises. Directly impacted in recent months are accommodation providers, who have been adversely affected by the reduced number of tourists to Queensland as a result of the floods and Cyclone Yasi.
On the southern Gold Coast we have many apartment complexes, with resident managers, that offer serviced apartment accommodation. They are competing for the tourist dollar with the large establishments further north, such as the larger hotel chains, which are discounting room rates to boost occupancy. Whilst this is an understandable practice on their part, it is having a negative effect on local accommodation providers. This in turn impacts on local businesses, which are dependent on tourists.
We are implementing a ‘holiday locally’ program, where we are actively encouraging people to spend their leisure time on the Gold Coast. We have great beaches, a wonderful climate and many things to do. Why wouldn’t you want to holiday with us on the Gold Coast?
Without doubt tourism is vitally important to the Gold Coast and the industry now needs our support more than ever. The southern Gold Coast is home to one of Australia’s iconic tourist attractions, the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. The sanctuary is doing it tough at the moment and is in need of our urgent support. The operating costs of the wildlife hospital alone are $600,000 per annum and rising, with up to 30 animals per day arriving at the hospital. I urge you to visit the sanctuary and enjoy all that it has to offer. For the more adventurous amongst us I encourage you to attempt the Green Challenge high ropes adventure course. I am proud to say that I have completed the green and red challenges, but I have reserved the black challenge for another day. I urge the government to support the sanctuary’s application for funding for the development of a regional gallery, cultural heritage and cellar door gateway, including the necessary extension of time to allow further funding from other sources to be finalised.
Finally, it is appropriate at this point to talk about the cost of living, because it has an impact on people and their leisure activities and spending patterns. I know that a lot of people and businesses are financially hurting at the moment. I hear it every day from the people in my electorate of McPherson, who talk to me constantly about the impact of rising prices on their day-to-day lives. Some are now very scared about future rises in prices for water and sewerage, which are already up by 29 per cent; electricity, which is already up by 34 per cent; and fuel, which is projected to rise by about 6c per litre if a carbon tax is introduced. They are concerned about their ability to pay for these most basic of needs. Cost of living is often raised by our pensioners, who can afford very little by way of an increase in cost of living. But it does not just affect our pensioners; it affects our entire community.
At the 2007 election, federal Labor promised to address cost-of-living pressures and reduce the cost of everyday expenditure. Labor promised to do something about groceries, fuel and banking but to date have done very little to fulfil the promises they made. With a budget deficit in excess of $40 billion this year and a budget deficit next year, this government is on track to deliver a burden of debt that will put upward pressure on interest rates and have a huge impact on families for years to come. Wasting money on poor projects, including the failed Home Insulation Program and the proposed National Broadband Network, increases debt and the deficit, and that exacerbates the problem.
This government is borrowing $100 million a day. In 4½ days this government will have borrowed the money that was budgeted for the upgrade of the M1, with the target area of Nerang to Tugun, and that is $455 million. It is a AAA rated borrower and is in competition for finance with ordinary Australians, pushing up costs. It is a simple and straightforward concept: when the debt is reduced, the costs on borrowings are reduced. This government needs to take urgent action now.
I acknowledge my colleague the member for Kooyong, who has allowed me to sneak in front of him here tonight. It is appropriate that our discussion tonight is on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011, which is to appropriate an amount of $1.36 billion for ordinary annual services to the government, and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011, which is to appropriate about $1.024 billion for non-ordinary and other annual services of government.
I was elected on three major platforms for which I lobbied in my preselection. One was to protect small business and work towards reducing red tape. These appropriation bills offer me an opportunity to work towards changing the culture of our Public Service and trying to introduce more efficiencies. I come from a transport background. I had 14 depots throughout Queensland. I employed 105 permanent staff and contractors. Our growth strategy had two sectors to it. The first was an internal sales team that worked on domestic growth, and the second was mergers and acquisitions. We merged many businesses into our own, which got us to the size that we were, but as a result of that I was no longer a transport operator but a specialist in mergers and acquisitions and in the changing of cultures. So I believe I have a skill set that can offer some assistance in reducing some of the red tape and bureaucracy. I can advise the parliament that it is my intention in my first term to prepare a paper about how I will achieve those objectives.
The second point on my election platform was to fight for a better price for farmers at the farm gate. This week it is appropriate that we speak about the price war that is taking place between Coles and Woolworths on the price of milk—$2 for two litres. This will have huge ramifications for our dairy industry. I have 35 dairy farmers throughout my electorate. Whilst it is the given right of any business to turn a profit—in fact, it is their duty and it is their responsibility to their shareholders—I take objection and draw the line at companies profiting at the expense of other businesses, such as corner shops, milk bars and milk vendors. Some milk vendors have reported to me a loss of 30 per cent of their revenue from their route trade as a direct result of the people they service being unable to compete with the multinationals by selling generic milk brands.
There is a way that those small businesses can, hopefully, protect themselves. As a nation, we have protection mechanisms in place via the Trade Practices Act, in particular section 46, which speaks to the misuse of market power. This week alone, I have spoken on several occasions with Coles executives and on several occasions with the Queensland dairy organisation. It is our intention to pursue these matters so that we can get out the other side and offer that protection of prices at our farm gate.
The third part of my platform was to fight to keep more money in mums’ and dads’ pockets. Mums and dads go to the elections, and the great majority of Australians are not very politically connected. They do not particularly care whether it is local, state or federal government, but at the end of the day their ears prick and they become very interested when some government wants to put its hand in their pocket and start taking money out, which puts pressure on their day-to-day and week-to-week activities. Part of my role here as an elected official for the seat of Wright will be to propose new taxes. It is quite relevant that we speak about taxes, because this week and in the last several weeks we have seen the introduction of possibly three taxes—the resources super profits tax, the ETS and the flood levy.
Before I go on and expand on that further, I would just like to talk about the macroeconomics of the nation and, in particular, our inflation band. Currently we have our inflation band set at two to three per cent. We are often told by our government how buoyant the Australian economy is, and that is a true statistic—the Australian economy is quite buoyant. But what is more dynamic about our economy is the fact that our resources sector is going through the roof. Our trade surplus is off the charts. That is driven by the demand from China.
Our resources sector in the next 12 months will experience a one-in-100-years spike in capital investment. That means we have the likes of Gorgon in Western Australia and Port Curtis in Queensland coming on, with reference to our gas exploration services. The Galilee Basin in Queensland will be coming on. We will have upgrades of a number of ports, Abbot Point in particular. The capital investment from the resources sector will be a one-in-100-years spike.
That puts undue pressure on our inflation rates. We are currently sitting at around 2.75, and that extra money stimulating the economy will push it out. I have said to Governor Glenn Stevens of the Reserve Bank that our traditional mechanism for dealing with inflation is to put the cash rate up. I have suggested to him that as a nation, when we put the cash rate up, it has very little impact on the resources sector because the resources sector borrow a lot of their capital infrastructure money offshore, so they are not subject to the cash rate as mums and dads and mortgage holders are. They are not susceptible to the volatility in our local market because they do not borrow from our local market. At the other end of the spectrum, they sell out on forward contracts, and possibly in US dollars, so they are not even susceptible to the fluctuations and the parity of the Australian dollar.
There are electorates in our nation that have links to the resources sector, and they can feed off the inputs that the resources sector requires. My electorate in particular is predominantly in a primary industry sector, so we have no linkages to the resources sector at all. So, in default, when the Reserve Bank puts the cash rates up, all that does is magnify the impact of the increase in interest rates for the people who can least afford it, the mums and dads who are on the ground, the mums and dads who are struggling to make their mortgage payments already under the adverse cost-of-living prices, the small businesses that are already struggling in the retail sector and the businesses that are already struggling as a result of slower commodity prices as a result of the parity with our dollar to the US. The point I am trying to make and emphasise is that, whilst we are told that the Australian economy is extremely buoyant, we have a two-tiered economy. One part of our economy is going gangbusters but the other guys are just hanging on for grim death. Movements in the cash rate will ultimately have a huge impact on the lower sector of the market.
I also want to take the opportunity to speak about the flood levy. We have recently spoken in the House about the flood levy. My seat of Wright was drastically affected by the floods, in particular in the Lockyer Valley and in the townships of Grantham and Murphys Creek. I hold the opinion that the government should have picked up the tab. There should not have been an impost passed on to the people of my electorate, the people of Queensland, the people of North Queensland, the people of Victoria and the people of Western Australia who are genuinely struggling in this time of hardship.
Take your mind back to the 1990s, when we had the Queensland and New South Wales floods. In Charleville and other places around the state, six people were killed, 60 were injured and 200 homes were inundated. We never called for a flood levy then; we had strong, diligent management. In 2006 Cyclone Larry went through Queensland. There was a damage bill of $1.5 billion. The government did not ask people to put their hands in their pockets then. They managed it; they got out the other side. More relevantly, in 2009 on Black Saturday, 173 people were tragically killed, 2,000 homes were destroyed and there was about $4.4 billion worth of devastation. We did not ask people to put their hands in their pockets then and we should not have done it this time.
One of the downsides of prematurely calling for a flood levy was that the generosity of Australians, their willingness to give to other Australians to help out in these dramatic circumstances, was shut off. Australians stopped giving straightaway because, once they knew they were going to be taxed, the generosity was shut off. It was a poor call by the Prime Minister.
I will also take the opportunity, while I am talking about the floods, to remind the Queensland state government that we are now at day 51. The Queensland disaster fund had $227 million donated to it through the generosity of Australians from all around this nation. There are people in my electorate living in motels. There are still displaced people in my electorate living with relatives and friends who are trying to make ends meet. These people face uncertainty about whether or not the damage to their homes is going to be covered by insurance and uncertainty about whether council is going to allow them to move back into their home. The state government could have given them more certainty and it could have simply given them a handout.
When people gave money to that disaster relief fund, they gave it with the intent that it end up with the people on the ground—and it is not a hard task. When someone gives you the money and an application is received with a name and bank account number on it, you simply take it out of one bank account and stick it in the other one. But this simple task has eluded our state government and it gives me grief. I will continue to belt the drum and remind our state government of the hardship, pain and suffering being felt in my electorate at the moment. It is my right as their elected official to stand up and constantly remind people of that hardship.
I turn to the ETS. It is going to be a vigorous debate. But in order for it to be an honest debate we need transparency. We need transparency from our government and we need transparency from a government that we can trust. It is hard to build trust and it is hard to break down the belief of many Australians that politicians of this nation cannot be trusted. Now is the opportunity for us to turn the corner. Now is the opportunity to stand up and be counted.
The Prime Minister, only days before the election, said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government that I lead’—yet only this week we received advice, through a bill introduced on the floor of the House, that there will be a carbon tax under a government that she leads. It was a complete 180 degree reversal, a complete turnaround, a complete deception of the Australian people. I need to remind the Australian people of the environment in which she made that comment. When she said that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led, the blood on her blade from her assassination of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was still fresh. I then bring your attention to the Treasurer’s comments just before the election, when he said:
Certainly what we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax … We reject that.
That cannot be interpreted in any other way; it is not a sleight of hand. That is not a comment that someone would make lightly. There was thought given to that. It was driven by polls. These guys, at the point that they made that decision, clearly said, ‘We are not going to have a carbon tax.’ But what has happened between that period and now?
In closing, I would like to quickly touch on electricity costs under the ETS—they are going to go through the roof. I can talk about opposing for the sake of opposing. There are some bills that we are going to be putting up that we would like the government to support. I thank you for your time.
I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. The main purpose of these bills is to propose appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the ordinary annual services of the government in addition to those provided in the budget. In the case of Appropriation Bill (No. 3) it is around $1.36 billion, and in the case of Appropriation Bill (No. 4) it is just over $1 billion.
Whenever called upon to speak on the fiscal decisions of this government we are reminded of the large sums of taxpayers’ money wasted and misspent. From pink batts to school halls there have been expensive policy failures on a grand scale, failures that this Labor government wants to pay for with a litany of new taxes that will punish Australian families. But, just as too much money is being spent on the wrong programs, not enough is being spent where it is needed most. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of mental health.
It is this government’s unconscionable failure to properly fund mental health programs in this country that I would like to address tonight. Nowhere is this more clear than in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) before us, with only little more than $10 million of additional spending allocated for ‘improved mental health and suicide prevention measures’. This is barely a ripple of the wave of government support required for this critical area. The impact mental illness is having on our community touches each and every one of us nearly every day. Only recently one of my friends, whom I met while studying overseas, took his own life. A young man, he had everything to live for—recently married, a great sportsman and with a terrific career ahead of him. His unexpected and untimely death was a ferocious blow to those who knew him. Angus’s suicide awoke me to a tragedy that is all around us. It seems I am being reminded all too often of friends who have lost loved ones. More often than not they are young people with everything to live for. In a moving article in last Saturday’s Weekend Australian magazine, entitled ‘It’s time to talk’, Kate Legge pointed out that 2,191 people took their own lives in 2008. That is far more than tragically die on our roads each year, yet well funded and very public campaigns encouraging road safety are a common occurrence in our society, while tackling suicide is often a subject of taboo—seen but not heard.
This has to change. We need to be far more open about the scale of the challenge that we face. Let us get our heads around this alarming human toll. In Australia, suicide kills seven people a day, or one person every four hours. There are another 180 people every day who attempt suicide. That is one every eight minutes. Suicide is responsible for the most deaths in Australia of persons under the age of 44. Mental illness will be experienced by nearly half of our population at some point in their lives, and one in five people will experience some form of any mental illness in any particular year. It is particularly prevalent among our younger people, with studies showing that nearly half of the Australians aged between 12 and 25 will experience a diagnosable episode of mental illness. In health terms, only cancer and cardiovascular disease affect more people in Australia.
Every day, around 330 people with serious mental illness seek help at a hospital emergency department but are turned away. Around two-thirds of those suffering from mental illness have no access to professional help. The Mental Health Council of Australia estimates that up to 85 per cent of the 100,000 homeless people in Australia and 75 per cent of those with alcohol and substance abuse issues also suffer some form of mental illness.
Why, when the statistics tell us such a clear story, do we continue to chronically underfund mental health? Why, when mental illness represents 13 per cent of the healthcare burden, does it receive only six per cent of healthcare funding? It cannot be because of a lack of social cost, because personally many of us know it all too well. It cannot be because of a lack of economic cost, because experts like Access Economics have quantified it, estimating it to be costing our society in the vicinity of $30 billion per annum. In my mind, it has to be due to a lack of political will. In years gone by, we—metaphorically speaking—in this place have not done enough.
But at the 2010 election we started to see a major shift. The Leader of the Opposition’s $1.5 billion package of reforms for mental health was a game changer. Professor John Mendoza, Chairman of the National Advisory Council on Mental Health until his resignation in protest last year, described it as, ‘The most significant announcement by any political party in relation to a targeted evidence based investment in mental health.’ The coalition’s commitment to the establishment of 20 early psychosis intervention centres in metropolitan and regional areas, providing targeted care to persons aged 15 to 24 at clinical high risk; to the funding for the capital and recurrent cost of 800 new mental health beds; and to the establishment of 60 additional youth headspace sites, first introduced by the Howard government in 2006 to provide a one-stop shop for young people aged 12 to 25 years for information and services relating to health and wellbeing, including alcohol and substance abuse, are exactly the types of initiatives that both John Mendoza and Professor Patrick McGorry, the 2010 Australia of the Year and professor at the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne have been calling for.
There will always be the need for more funding, but the 2010 election commitment by the coalition was more than a significant start. It was a paradigm shift and it is a commitment that the coalition strongly stands by. Unfortunately, the Labor Party did not match the coalition’s election commitment and since forming government has been a major disappointment. It is fine for the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to say during the campaign, ‘Illness of the mind is as debilitating as illness of the heart, the lungs or the bones and no less important or deserving of our understanding and care.’ But where is the money? It is fine for Labor to appoint a Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, the member for Port Adelaide, Mark Butler, and parade him in front of the sector claiming that they are giving the issue more attention. But why then ignore him during question time, in which he has only ever spoken about mental health on two occasions? In fact, the minister was happy to write in his foreword to the 2010 national mental health report:
… the system needs an overhaul to build a modern system of mental health care in Australia.
… … …
As a community, we need to do better.
Hang on! As a government, you need to do better. Stop trying to shift the blame. It is you—the Labor government—that must do better. It is after all, according to the Prime Minister, the year of delivery and decision. The message for Labor is clear: words will not wash; it is action that counts. This is not just the coalition telling you that you need to act; it is the healthcare industry and your own appointed experts. It is the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission with its 12 mental health recommendations, the Australian Medical Association in its 2011 budget submission and a host of individual experts like Professors McGorry and Mendoza, who are imploring the government to undertake large-scale, long-term reform. More resources for system capacity, research and early intervention, or what is termed ‘intergenerational equity’, are both critical and urgent. To the government I say: you have expectedly but shamefully failed the test in this appropriations bill. One hopes that, come the May budget, you will see the light, seek to correct this wrong and better fund mental health services in this country to the benefit of all Australians.
I thank the member for Kooyong, but I would gently remind him of the provisions of standing order 64, which means that he ought to refer to the Prime Minister and ministers by their titles. It is not appropriate, even if one uses the term ‘Minister for such and such’, to then add the name.
I start my speech in the second reading debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 by acknowledging two students from my electorate who yesterday were awarded prizes for the Northern Territory in the Simpson Prize right here in Parliament House. It was my absolute pleasure to meet with the Northern Territory winner, Hayley Chamberlain, and her very proud father, Dave, who also travelled to Canberra for the award ceremony. Hayley will travel to Gallipoli in April for the 2011 Anzac Day service with the other state and territory award winners. The Territory runner-up was Amelia Hoffman, who was also here. Both girls are year 11 students at Palmerston Senior College. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I live in Palmerston, so I am very proud of both these young ladies.
I am more than happy to participate in this debate and would like to comment about being elected as the member for Solomon. I am a lifetime Territorian and feel absolutely privileged to represent my constituents in the seat of Solomon. I came into this parliament with the aim of not making promises that I cannot deliver. Last week I honoured my election commitment to stand up for my constituents by voting against the nuclear waste facility to be located at Muckaty. Territorians, including the people of Solomon, want to be taken seriously. That is why I represent the Territory in Canberra, not Canberra in the Territory. I am here in parliament today to represent the local people in my electorate of Solomon and, more widely, those in the Territory. I am working very hard to ensure that people understand that not only do they have access to me through my electoral office in Darwin and my mobile offices in shopping centres but I am open and responsive to the needs of my constituents, including those from the wider community, businesses and individuals.
On this matter, since November last year I have asked the current Labor government, on behalf of the Jingili BMX Club, about their 2010 election promises to deliver a $1.5 million all-weather BMX track at Jingili. Only this week I have received a letter from the senator who is the Minister for Sport, stating that the Prime Minister—
It is actually in order, Member for Solomon, to mention the name of a senator.
I was not sure, Mr Deputy Speaker. The letter was from Senator Arbib, the Minister for Sport, stating that the Prime Minister has given her assurance that these commitments will be honoured. Both Senator Arbib and the Prime Minister are aware that the BMX track is now closed to riders until the start of the dry season in Darwin and may not reopen until April this year. Effectively that means that all the Northern Territory riders, including Jake Tunney, the current world champion, have been disadvantaged in their lead-up and preparation for future events due to the high rainfall in Darwin over the wet season. Preparations for future events will continue to be put on hold, including those for the upcoming rounds 7 and 8 of the Champbikx Probikx and UCI, which is actually being held in Canberra this coming week. I wish all riders, the very, very best of luck, including those Territorian riders that I know are here, Nathan and Ryan York-Morris, who are travelling from Darwin. My question to Senator Arbib and the Prime Minister is: thank you for saying you will honour those commitments but when will those commitments be honoured? Will it be this financial year? Will it be next financial year? I need a bit more of a definitive answer for my constituents.
Another matter that I have been asked to raise, with the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, on behalf of a number of schools that provide Indigenous education, is that of the Indigenous funding guarantee program. The current Gillard Labor government committed to this funding in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election. The commitment was to provide increased funding to non-remote boarding schools with more than 50 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from remote Indigenous communities. When my office spoke with one of the affected schools last month, Kormilda College, they were yet to see any of this funding and had not actually been contacted about the information that will be required for calculating any additional funding. Quite frankly, this is not good enough. There are a number of other colleges in my electorate, including St John’s College and O’Loughlin Catholic College, that are affected by these delays in payment. This delay is costing jobs in the Indigenous education sector. The schools are very concerned and seek further assurance as to whether the promised but delayed payment of the remote rate for remote students based at their school will indeed be backdated to 2010.
Another matter that my constituents have raised is that of the GP superclinic at Palmerston, which is where I live. The current Gillard government and the Minister for Health and Ageing need to be held accountable for the non-existent 24-hour-a-day GP service and the many healthcare services which were promised to be provided to my constituents. In fact, urgent after-hours services are provided at the nearby Palmerston Health Precinct, which is actually funded by the Northern Territory government, but urgent after-hours services are not a 24-hour-a-day GP service. Local residents were led to believe that the Palmerston GP superclinic would include a 24-hour-a-day GP service, which currently it is failing to deliver. It is another promise made by this Gillard Labor government that has not been delivered. It is no secret that I have advocated and will continue to advocate for a long-term solution—a hospital to service Palmerston and the rural area. It is essential that the planning starts now. I will continue to push for the delivery of good medical services for the Territory.
I would also like to take this opportunity to announce the 2011 Solomon awards. These awards will be honouring community service and achievement during National Volunteer Week from 9 May to 15 May. This year it is entitled ‘Inspiring the volunteer in you.’ My office will provide an opportunity to highlight the role of volunteers in our community and say thank you to the many volunteers in the electorate of Solomon. The Solomon awards have been designed to recognise community service and volunteers and the achievements of community organisations and individuals in a range of areas, including youth, environment, the arts and health. Application forms will be available from my office and also from my website, which is currently being redesigned. Nominations will close on 29 April and the awards will be presented during a special ceremony during Volunteer Week.
The recent discussions taking place on the Gillard Labor government’s plan to introduce a carbon tax deeply concern me as this will have an adverse effect on the Northern Territory economy. In my electorate, in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election, the then federal member for Solomon, Mr Damian Hale, contradicted his own Prime Minister’s stance that she would rule out a carbon tax. This week Prime Minister Gillard has now announced that she will introduce a carbon tax—a fundamental breach of faith with the Australian people. Damian Hale supported a carbon tax and he was unsuccessful in the election. I am here today to stand up for my constituents in Solomon and the Northern Territory who are opposed to the carbon tax. My constituents are very concerned about the increased cost of living that they will face. They are already paying record house prices and the highest of any capital city for groceries, petrol and rent along with soaring power bills and interest rates.
Unfortunately, a carbon tax will affect every aspect of people’s lives—in particular, those families that are already struggling to make ends meet. Many of my constituents will simply not be able to afford to pay for the power that they use. We know that living in Darwin you need to have the air conditioning on. As stated in a release by my colleague Senator Scullion last week, the Prime Minister’s climate change committee is seeking to include transport in the tax. This will have massive ramifications for the Territory. The Territory, and in particular my electorate of Solomon, will be hard-hit by a high cost of fuel. As members of parliament are aware, generally petrol and diesel prices are higher in regional and remote areas of Australia and the distances travelled are greater. Last week in Darwin and Palmerston, according to the Northern Territory government’s fuelwatch website, the mean unleaded price of petrol was 141.9c per litre, with some constituents paying, believe it or not, up to 147.9c. The mean price of diesel was 150.1c per litre and was a maximum of 150.3c. looking at average prices of fuel in Sydney today, my electorate’s fuel was 1.7c and 2.8c more per litre for unleaded and diesel respectively. I am concerned. This proposed carbon tax would see even higher prices for everything that Territorians buy, including petrol, which is expected to rise about 6.5c a litre, taking prices well above $1.50 per litre in my electorate and close to $2 a litre in some remote areas of the Northern Territory. Quite frankly, this is not good enough.
In addition to this, key industries in my electorate such as primary producers, mining, tourism and construction will also be hard-hit. In particular, the Northern Territory gas industry may see harmful effects. The reason for the existence of the proposed carbon tax is to reduce the generation of carbon dioxide by making the activities that cause it more expensive. As a gas province, the Northern Territory relies on these businesses and it is anticipated that jobs will be lost so that businesses can remain internationally competitive. This can already be seen by responses from prominent businesses such as BlueScope Steel. Their chief executive, Paul O’Malley, was reported in the Australian only yesterday sharing the views of many of those in the manufacturing sector—that is, if they are made to pay for carbon, a resulting loss of competitiveness will mean plants will shut down here with the void filled by imports from countries without a carbon tax. Furthermore, costs as a direct result of the carbon tax will not be shared by our international competitors, as there is no global agreement on reducing emissions.
This appears to be a tax on remoteness and indeed the Territory. It stands to increase the cost of living and directly impact our key industries in the Northern Territory. I ask: how can the Gillard Labor government be trusted when Ms Gillard said before the election, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,’ and now, after the election, we all know that she wants to introduce a carbon tax? It is a tax on electricity, a tax on petrol and a tax that is going to affect all Australians but particularly Territorians, increasing the already high cost of living. For shame!
In supporting the amendment, I must say there is something palpably wrong with a government which refuses to even consider allowing regional students in some areas to have access to independent youth allowance. Among those areas is a large portion of my Riverina electorate. That portion includes Wagga Wagga, the largest inland city in New South Wales, as well as the important centres of Adelong, Batlow, Coolamon, Gundagai, Junee, Mangoplah and Tumut. University students in those places might not seem important to the government and certainly not to the Prime Minister, who was the Minister for Education when changes to youth allowance criteria were unfortunately introduced, but they are important to me and they mean everything to the hardworking families supporting them. Country students do not deserve to be done over in this way. They know it, their parents know it, I know it and members opposite know it in their hearts—but does the Prime Minister?
I might use the words of a particularly engaging and thought-provoking address which I feel sums up the inequality of the youth allowance debate. It was delivered, rather appropriately, on 11 November 1998—Remembrance Day. I quote:
… not only economists but ordinary people understand that the future of Australia and the future of themselves and their children is tied to educational success.
Australia cannot afford to waste talent. But, under this government, we are engaging in that shameful and cruel waste. We are denying Australians access to opportunity. In its 1996 budget, this government took $1.8 billion of public support away from our university system. The inevitable result has been a decline in the number of students starting courses at our universities. When the cuts took effect, Victoria tumbled from having the second highest growth rate in commencing enrolments to being the state with the biggest fall, a 4.7 per cent fall in commencing enrolments—a statistic which speaks of misery and lost opportunity.
Is this a bedtime story?
No, it’s not a bedtime story, and if you care to listen you will find out. It continues:
Perhaps worst of all, under this government we have returned to a system of privilege rather than merit in our universities, a system of allowing the rich to buy a place while those with better entrance marks but not enough money miss out—a system which was eradicated by the Whitlam government when I was in primary school.
Who said these incisive words? Who stood up as the great protector of students’ rights to equity in education? Who was it calling for a fair go for our kids? Those words were taken from the inaugural speech to parliament by the member for Lalor—our current Prime Minister, no less. That is who: the same Prime Minister who now does not want today’s university students to receive equity, the same Prime Minister who now does not want today’s university students to receive opportunity, the same Prime Minister who now plays politics instead of doing the right thing by our youth. They are tomorrow’s leaders, our future.
But it is not just Riverina students who are missing out. The Prime Minister, in her passionate maiden speech, spoke of the decline in commencing Victorian students. ‘Misery and lost opportunity’ were the words she used. It is fair and accurate to say great numbers of Victorian students will be facing misery and lost opportunity if Labor and perhaps moreover the Prime Minister do not support this amendment. Many of those Victorian students hail from electorates presently held by Labor members. Indeed, a great swathe of rural Victoria is designated as inner regional by this ridiculously discriminatory DoctorConnect system used to determine whether students will or will not have access to independent youth allowance.
I would be fascinated to know what they think of the fact that their federal Labor member is denying them youth allowance. I would be fascinated to know what they think of their Prime Minister, for whom it was all right to stand up in 1998 and beat her chest about inequity for Victorian kids yet who now, by her very stubbornness, refuses to give them a fair go. How mean. How—what did she describe it as?—shameful and cruel. The problem is not that this Prime Minister thought that having independent youth allowance being debated in the House of Representatives last week was unconstitutional—oh, no—but that she feared an embarrassing defeat. She knows it is bad policy, she knows it is hurting students and she knows it is damaging to some of her colleagues who represent Labor electorates. So what did she do? She played politics. She shut down the debate. In doing so she once again denied many country kids the same opportunity afforded to others. How unfair. How inequitable. How unAustralian. The core of the problem with all of this is that the Prime Minister does not understand and, worse, does not care about regional Australia. If she did she would have fixed this problem a long time ago. Indeed, if she did, there would not be a problem in the first place.
Here are some facts pertaining to regional students. Finding full-time employment in regional areas and small communities is often very difficult. The youth allowance legislation does not take into account seasonal employment sectors such as agriculture and tourism in regional areas, creating further barriers for regional students. Regional students face significantly increased costs associated with relocating for study. Many regional students have no choice but to relocate to study. Evidence has shown that it is the financial barrier of the cost of relocating which prevents regional students from undertaking tertiary study. The cost is between $15,000 and $20,000 per annum. Students who defer tertiary studies for longer than 12 months are less likely to attend university. Very few universities accept deferments longer than 12 months, meaning those who have to work a 30-hour week for 18 months over a two-year period will have to give up their spot and reapply later. A Senate inquiry found that 55 per cent of metropolitan students go on to tertiary education compared to only 33 per cent of students from regional areas. They are telling facts and figures. The message ought not be lost on members opposite.
Members who sided with four Independents to silence this debate last week and put it to another review committee now at least have the chance to ensure that all students who had a gap year in 2010—that is, 2009 year 12 school leavers—and who meet the relevant criteria qualify for the payment. They have the chance to ensure that the bill is appropriated with the necessary funds to pay for this measure. Surely members opposite realise there is an injustice in the system. Surely they will want that wrong made right. The Prime Minister and the Labor government have until now ignored concerns about the financial and emotional burden their changes to the independent youth allowance criteria have caused for inner regional students, their families and communities. Labor’s commitment to Independents to bring forward a review of youth allowance, to report by 1 July this year, does not address the problem now. The coalition’s bill sought to do that. Nor does Labor give any firm undertaking to fixing the independent youth allowance issue.
The media release of the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Chris Evans, states:
The review will report by July 1 this year, and the Government will move to implement any new eligibility arrangements from January 1, 2012.
Senator Evans said the review will consider appropriate savings which can be made to pay for any extensions in eligibility for youth allowance. Any new arrangements must be offset by savings. This is simply not good enough. It does not measure up to what is required. Even if Labor does make changes after its review, it is too late for those inner-regional students who left school in 2009 and had a gap year in 2010, as they are now still required to work an average of 30 hours a week and defer for up to two years. Had the coalition’s bill passed, they would now be relieved of this unfair criterion. Last year’s school leavers are also left in limbo, wondering what to expect after the review. There are already cracks in Labor’s deal with the Independents and many unanswered questions.
How can regional students and their families trust the government to deliver on this new promise given its poor track record? This government’s new promise should be weighed against the many broken deals, bungled programs and hopeless mismanagement of youth allowance over recent years. This Labor government promised no carbon tax but now is drafting one. It promised a national takeover of hospitals but scrapped the idea. It promised a national curriculum, to begin in 2011, but it has been delayed until 2013. And the list goes on and on. Now the government promises a review—and another delay. More delays and more reviews but no outcomes for young rural people. The Independents who supported Labor represent regional areas directly affected by this issue. Their constituents deserve an explanation as to why their Independent MPs have sold them out and not voted in favour of the Commonwealth payment made to students to assist them in meeting living and education costs when studying or undertaking training.
In early 2010, the Labor government altered the eligibility criteria for independent youth allowance, requiring students from areas identified as inner-regional to work more hours for longer before being considered as independent. Students living in inner-regional zones cannot access independent youth allowance if they do not qualify for Labor’s new criteria. The regional zones in which students live are determined by the Australian Standard Geographical Classification map. There are many cases where arbitrary lines on the map mean one student is eligible yet another in the same town is not. There are ridiculous cases which have been cited in this parliament whereby students from one side of a street get the allowance and those living on the other side of the street do not. Students may come from the same class in the same school but be discriminated against based on which side of the line their homes sit. The map is therefore inappropriate, and is, in fact, used by the health department.
After months of campaigning by the Liberal-Nationals coalition, the Labor government was forced to make changes to its independent youth allowance criteria, which would have unfairly disadvantaged rural and regional youth. These hard-fought changes meant students living in outer-regional, remote and very remote areas, as per the ASGC map, would now qualify for the independent rate of youth allowance under the original criteria. Unfortunately, the inner-regional zone continued to be excluded. All regional students who have to relocate to attend tertiary education should be treated equally. The Liberal-Nationals coalition sought to move further amendments to include students living in the inner-regional zone, but this was defeated by Labor and the Greens. The Nationals’ Senator Fiona Nash and the member for Forrest have waged a tireless campaign to have this unfair policy altered. I support them in their endeavours on behalf of the thousands of Australian students who Labor has disadvantaged.
I will finish with some pertinent quotes which underline everything I have said about this issue and why this amendment is so important. Cayla Edwards, the President of the Deakin University Student Association, said the Deakin University Student Association:
… condemns the youth allowance work eligibility criteria of 30 hours of work per week for two years. Young people living in rural and regional areas have expressed that their ability to obtain this type of stable employment is seriously limited. Many young Australians living in rural and regional Australia are more likely to access seasonal, or casual work. For this reason—
the association—
strongly recommends that the legislation be amended to allow young Australians the ability to spread out the 30 hours per week, to reflect the reality of their employment opportunities …
Clement Mulcahy, the President of the Catholic Secondary Principals Association of Western Australia, said:
Our prime objection to the change is that it will militate against country and regional students. This is unjust, when these already face serious difficulties in their pursuit of higher education. Such students are already at considerable disadvantage when it comes to studying at University in the metropolitan areas, as they must relinquish the security of home and family life to pursue tertiary education. Ultimately, this will mean higher education will only be available for those who are better off financially”.
The member for Lyne said on March 18 last year:
So they’ve picked a health rating which is basically drawing some artificial lines around what is rural, what is remote and using that as a determinate for whether people have to qualify for independence via 15 hours work or 30 hours work a week. While 85 per cent of the changes are positive, more students would have been assisted if this final aspect was not included in the package …
Sarah Dickins, a student and witness at the Senate inquiry, said:
There is no way you can work 30 hours a week while at university. I have got a friend who does work 30 hours a week at university, a very bright boy, and he is just scraping passes. He is never involved in any of the social or cultural aspects that are the fantastic parts of uni because he is working his job and when he is not working his job he is trying to scrape in the study to get those passes. That is not the way we should be doing university especially in courses like medicine which has 38 contact hours a week, there is no possible way you can be working 30 hours.
And in an age when minimising stress is considered so important, University of Queensland researcher Dr Helen Stallman, regarding a study that found 83.9 per cent of students were mentally stressed and that much of it was caused as a result of financial pressure, said:
Studying full time and having to work to support yourself puts unrealistic pressures on students and more needs to be done to ensure their mental health and that they stay in our universities.
National Union of Students President Carla Drakeford said:
NUS is concerned about the number of students who are mentally stressed, which is why we have always advocated for more students to receive youth allowance.
John Brearley, West Australian South West Mental Health Service and Senate inquiry witness said:
These financial pressures, we understand from mental health, lead to family disharmony; increased levels of mental ill-health and depression; pressures on other family members and risks to younger siblings; increases in domestic violence potential loss of family home or car; family discussions about financial prioritising; feelings of discrimination; and, in small communities, the fears of shame leading onto isolation are real pressures. We are also concerned about the pressures on our young people. There is guilt felt by young people who have concerns of putting financial pressure and burdens on their families. We are having real instances of this where young people not choose subjects in year 11 and 12 that are going to lead them onto university pathways. They are instead looking at pathways that can earn them a quick buck.
Finally, the Prime Minister again, speaking at a higher education conference before she landed the top job, in March 2008 said:
Of course getting our young people to university, TAFE and private institutions is only the start. Once there, we have to ensure they get the best higher education and training possible.
The Prime Minister said there would be no carbon tax in a government she leads, but now she is hell bent on bulldozing that through. Here, now, is her chance and her government’s chance to put fairness back on the table when it comes to independent youth allowance.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. Over the last week, we have seen some quite erratic voting by the Independents. I was certainly stunned early last week when the Independents voted against supporting their rural students. The fact that the member for Lyne would vote with the government, to prop up an ailing government, rather than voting to give assistance to students, is really amazing. I hope he is held accountable for that on the streets of Port Macquarie and Taree because rural students do it tough getting to university.
All university students sacrifice a lot to get further education and further qualifications. The reality is, if you have to move away from home, which many rural students face, that becomes a much more difficult task with the cost of accommodation. It seems incredible that these government reforms would take away the independent youth allowance pathway from students in regional areas. It seems even more incredible that the member for Lyne, who holds himself out to allegedly represent students in a regional area, would vote against providing much-needed support for regional students. In his electorate, the member for Lyne has two major regional centres—Port Macquarie and Taree. I hope the families of students from those two major centres hold him accountable for the decision he has made to vote against assistance for students and to support a review.
Labor has a history of review after review after review and this is just one more. There is no guarantee of the outcomes that students will obtain. In fact, when Labor and the four regional Independents voted to kill off the youth allowance bill in the House of Representatives it was a dark day. Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Labor government did a last-minute deal with the Independents to avoid the embarrassment of supporting the coalition’s bill. You would think that the interests of students would take precedence over propping up a sick and ailing government. But it does not stop there.
Later in the week we had the same member for Lyne voting against small business. Not to be content with voting for a review rather than voting for assistance to students, he said, ‘I can improve on that. I can knock my small business constituency as well. I can kick them in the guts as well.’ When faced with the opportunity to vote for a bill which would have relieved the paperwork burden of small businesses—and there is a very large small business constituency in the electorate of Lyne, there are many hardworking people in small business in Port Macquarie and many small businesses in Taree and other centres—what did their local member do? He said, ‘I’m going to vote for me. I’m going to prop up an ailing government. I’m going to ignore the calls from small businesses to take away the paperwork burden, I’m going to ignore those calls and I’m going to vote for me and I’m going to vote for this ailing government.’
I hope he stands condemned by those small businesses, because every member of this House knows—or should know—the stresses and the strains that small businesses are under due to the endless pages upon pages of administrative work that they have to do every month. If it is not a BAS it is some other thing that they have to do. There are endless compliance burdens. The opposition provided the Independents with a chance to stand with small business and to demonstrate their small business credentials, but what did they do? They dogged it.
All the member for Lyne could do was vote to support that ailing government. ‘Voted for me’—that is what he did. He should stand condemned for that. In going for the hat-trick, what was the next part of the puzzle? It was to profess support for a carbon tax. The people of his electorate would really love a carbon tax! We know that if we impose a tax the planet will suddenly get cooler. The climate will become temperate. It will be a perfect temperature every single day—not too hot; not too cold. All you have to do is impose a new tax.
The member for Lyne is no doubt going to go down the main street of Port Macquarie and tell them, ‘This carbon tax is going to be good for you because you will all be fully compensated.’ If you believe that you believe in the tooth fairy. We have a Prime Minister who said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government that I lead’ and she was proven to have told a porky. I guess you could argue that there is no carbon tax under a government she leads because Bob Brown is leading and she is just the one who lives in the Lodge. It is an interesting conundrum.
So in one week of parliament the member for Lyne firstly voted against regional students to prop up the government. He then voted against small business by voting to burden them with the paperwork and responsibility for administering Labor’s Paid Parental Leave scheme. You have to say that it makes sense for the government to administer such a scheme. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for this scheme to be administered by employers. The member for Lyne should have understood that but he clearly did not.
Then the final issue was the carbon tax. That was the last element of the hat-trick: professing to support a carbon tax that is going to drive up the cost of electricity—
And petrol.
I am coming to petrol. But I am sure the constituents in the electorate of Lyne who are struggling to pay their electricity bills will be sending the member for Lyne a very clear message—and that is, ‘I don’t want to pay more for electricity in order to cool the planet.’ I think the electors of Lyne, the next time they get into their cars, will be keen to send the member for Lyne a message and say, ‘I don’t want to pay more for petrol to drive my car; I cannot handle these increasing costs of living—you have to do something about it. You were the one who was sent to Canberra to represent the people of Lyne, and you voted against the students, you voted against small business and now you are voting against everybody to impose a tax.’
And how does this tax work? I had an interesting debate with the member for Page on the issue of the carbon tax last week. She was asked to explain how the carbon tax worked. She did her best, I must admit. She was quite gutsy going on to the radio station, because there are not too many people out there who are pleased to have the new tax levied upon them. She was explaining how you have to put a price on carbon and da da da. I really do not know what she was going on about, but she was doing a pretty good job of trying to explain this jumbled mess that the government are proposing to impose on the Australian people despite their solemn promise that they were not going to impose a carbon tax. During the interview I volunteered and said, ‘I can tell you how the tax works: it drives the price of electricity up so high that you can’t afford to run your air conditioner, you can’t afford to heat your home, you can’t afford to cook a meal’—that is exactly how the carbon tax works—‘and it drives the price of petrol up so high that you can’t afford to drive your car.’
That is the magic of this tax—when you impose the tax it cools the planet and everyone feels good; everyone feels that warm inner glow because they know they are contributing to a better planet. Let us not even consider for a moment the fact that China’s emissions are increasing at a massive rate, which makes anything that we might do in this country seem a mere sideshow, or that India’s emissions are also increasing at a massive rate.
This government’s hypocrisy is demonstrated by the fact that it is happy to let coalmines export coal, yet apparently we have to do something about coal industry emissions. It is a very counterintuitive argument, and it comes as a great surprise that the member for Lyne can stand there and support a carbon tax that will penalise pensioners, a carbon tax that will smash small business and a carbon tax that will hurt families. It is a carbon tax that is not going to provide the sorts of solutions required. How do you solve the emissions problem? You certainly do not solve it by lumping a tax on people. You do not solve it by having an emissions trading scheme. You solve it by actually doing something about it, by actually investing in the technology that is going to achieve a reduction in emissions.
We know that the demand for electricity is relatively inelastic, and that is what the Prime Minister is not telling us. The member for Lyne is not telling his constituents that in order to achieve a reduction in demand for electricity, the price rises will have to be massive and the initial $26 a tonne carbon price that we are likely to see—$300 on your electricity bill, 6½c a litre on fuel—is going to be a mere kiss compared to the impact of the tax when the Prime Minister really gets stuck into the tax on a basis that is going to achieve what the Greens are going to demand. It will be interesting to see, with the Greens really in control of this government, how the final make-up of this tax occurs.
Do the Greens really care if they bankrupt small business? Do the Greens really care if people are losing their jobs? I am sure they do not. They have not cared in the past. They have had no care and no responsibility, living in a dream world. But now they are actually going to have to start being accountable for the things they do in guiding, and I suppose effectively leading, this government down a path that is going to destroy the economy, destroy jobs and lower Australia’s standard of living. That is the question that the member for Lyne needs to answer to his constituents when he goes out there spruiking this tax. He is going to have to answer to them why he is voting to lower their standard of living, because that is precisely what he is doing. The government will put up this smokescreen that says ‘polluters will pay’. They will stand up on the pulpit and say, ‘Polluters will pay.’ The reality is it is people who pay, because businesses are there to make a profit. If they do not make a profit, they go out of business. The only way they can maintain their profit stream and remain viable is to put their prices up, and who is going to pay for that? I don’t think the member for Lyne is going to be forking out from his pocket to compensate the people of the electorate of Lyne. I don’t think the government is going to be forking out anything like the amount of money that is going to represent the costs that consumers face. It is a massive confidence trick. It is a massive fraud.
Ms Smyth interjecting
Member for La Trobe, I wouldn’t want to be you, fielding all the calls from those people absolutely elated about this new carbon tax that is going to cool the planet!
Turn off your heater!
Absolutely, turn it all off, because that is how it works. Shut down the country, turn off your air conditioner and stop your car. That is how it works. I tell you: you are on the way to being a one-term wonder if you back the Prime Minister on this one. You have not been here before, but when people are unhappy they let you know, and they are only just starting to realise the full implications of this tax. You should not thank the member for Lyne for supporting you; you should really go over and lobby him and say, ‘Vote against it.’ Then the bill would not get through and we would all be saved from this carbon tax. We would have cheaper electricity, we would have cheaper petrol and we would have higher employment.
It was interesting that the Climate Change Coalition brought out that study that said this was going to create 34,000 jobs over about 20 years. When you look back at the rate of job creation in this country, it is normally more like 34,000 a month than 34,000 over decades. So you could hardly put forward the carbon tax as a generator of jobs. It is a job destroyer. It is a scheme that is going to lower the standard of living. It is a scheme that the government is responsible for, the Greens are responsible for and the two Independents—the member for Lyne and the member for New England—are responsible for.
They will be held accountable for the fall in living standards and the extra cost of living that people will endure as a result of this carbon tax. I hope they have the guts to walk down the main streets of their major towns, to get out there and tell people why this carbon tax is going to be so good for them, why their standard of living is going to be so great and how a carbon tax will actually cool the planet. They have a lot of explaining to do in their electorates. It is going to take more than a beard for the member for Lyne to hide from his constituents on this one, I have to tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is going to take much more than a garden gnome type beard to do that. He is going to have some serious explaining to do, not only to the students, not only to small business but to everyone in his electorate. He stands condemned. (Time expired)
Debate (on motion by Ms Smyth) adjourned.